fate of the nation

I often complain about the sorry state of today's education, based on my own sad experiences in American public schools and the experiences of my children. I used to think that the bigger problems had their roots in the 1970s when the inner-city populations began increasing dramatically, causing a need to shift funding from rural to urban, creating a balance between the two although most ended up inadequately funded.

Now I know it's worse than I thought. Randall Monroe of XKCD.com recently addressed a point-of-order that had tickled my brain in high school but never solidified as a proper horror: President John F Kennedy's lack of geography knowledge. I realize nearly all successful politicians hire speechwriters, but if I were in their shoes, I would do a little fact-checking prior to opening my fat gob and sticking a foot in.

If a man that dumb can become president of the United States of America, either there's hope for my kids, or ours is a sorry nation indeed.

Starvin' Marvin

So we have had satellite television since 2000, with the same company. Our relationship has had its ups and downs, but generally has been better than most commercial ventures. There has been one point of contention, however, that once again is an incredibly painful thorn in my side. No, I'm not talking about loss of signal during bad weather.

When we first signed up with Satellite X, they offered an array of music-only channels by the company MusicChoice. It had a lineup that had something to please everyone, including this one channel that played ambient music (rainfall plus quiet instrumental, etc) that was great for getting rowdy babies to settle down. After about 4 years of subscription, they switched to Sirius/XM radio. The lineup changed although not dramatically; we lost our beloved ambient channel but gained an awesome heavy metal channel, which made me most happy.

Once again, Satellite X has changed their music brand to something I've never heard of. Ambient music is still gone, head-banging heavy metal is also gone. In its place however, is a channel of "radio-friendly metal" which only scratches the surface of the MA-rated music I listen to. They have also expanded the Spanish-language music lineup. Really?

In a time when people are looking to cut back, we have kept our full-service satellite television package, which runs more than $100 per month for 3 televisions. Add to that the $80 per month we spend on home telephone and the last truly unlimited internet package in the world, and that's a lot of money falling out of my wallet when I'm unhappy. Complaining to my satellite provider only adds to my ire. Apparently, they've done extensive market research that indicated change was for the better.

The local cable provider can offer me a "bundle" with capped internet, home phone, and expanded television for $80 per month for the first year. Adding movie channels to bring us up to the same level of television options would only add $30 per month to the bill.

It's the capped internet that has stayed my hand. I need more information, useful data from people who have used Comcast brand cable service. Finding those people are harder than I expected. We have gamers here, and "lag" is a four-letter word in this house.

Reality Show

Stop me if you've heard this one: A teenager walks up to her mom and says, "I'll let you take me driving if you take me to Walmart."

Yup. I got blackmailed into a driving lesson. Granted, she planned on using her own money, and she already knew what she wanted before she even mentioned it. Nonetheless, it was just weird. Days of moaning on about not wanting to and all of a sudden, it's she who's bribing me.

Nonetheless... Now that is one odd word. According to Etymonline, it popped into our lexicon around 1847, as the phrase 'none the less;' and then contracted into one word from around 1930. My guess is that the Great Depression made those extra spaces too expensive.

And finally, we anticipate being debt free (except for mortgage and braces; one never escapes those bills!) by March of 2011, just in time if Eric retires. But maybe he won't retire. Maybe he'll take an assignment overseas. Or maybe he'll star in an off-Broadway Spanish-language adaptation of "The Hills Have Eyes."

Life is full of variety and opportunity.

I used to be apathetic, but now I just don't care.

So I've got this teenager. We used to say that she 'operated using Plan 9 From Outer Space.' It was a joke, because she was different from 'normals:' the kids represented by TV shows and neighborhood gatherings. Whatever it was that the average kid found interesting, my kid wasn't paying attention.

Right now, I'm thinking the joke is on me.

This kid has not spent her teen years dreaming of the day she'll get her license, of what she wants to be when she grows up, of getting the hell out of Dodge and making it on her own.

Recently, I read an article about the consequences of micro-manager 'helicopter parents,' who planned out every waking minutiae of their kids' lives, overprotecting them and turning them into indecisive wimps who can't cope in the workforce. I look at myself and say, "But-but-but... If I don't do this--she'll NEVER LEAVE!!"

A successful parent is one who has raised a child who is confident enough to try spreading her wings but humble enough to ask for assistance when they falter. I really thought I was headed in that direction. After all, without any push from me, she campaigned to be president of an art club at school, taking on responsibilities such as meeting planning, crowd control, and recruitment.

But now, my hope for the future is wavering. I had to trick her into the DMV to get her learner's permit. How many kids do you know are more excited about getting braces than learning to drive? We talked about going to college. She said, and I quote: "Whatever, Mom. Just sign me up for some stuff, and I'll do it."

Some. Stuff.

Oy. Perhaps I should sign her up for "Creative Welding" and "Animal Husbandry." She did say "some stuff," after all.

What a snoozer!

You know it's a boring game if the announcer falls asleep in the middle of it: click here.

Granted, it's professional baseball, which is about as exciting as watching golf.

Strange things are afoot at the Circle K

Mister hits the 20-years-of-service mark in February of 2011. He's been threatening to retire at that moment since he hit his 15-years mark. Now more than ever, he's been talking it up, encouraging me to find myself so that we will not be too hard-hit when we lose the bulk of our income when he retires at the end of this year.

Until yesterday.

Yesterday he offered me a list of locations around the world where a person with his qualifications could be given a Special Duty Assignment (SDA) as an Attache, most for 3 years. The details aren't important, the locations are.

One demands males only, as it is a strict Islamic country that is also more in turmoil than not, and is surrounded by unstable countries as well. Some are in Africa, some are in the Balkans. One is in Israel, which seemed to appeal to Mister, as did the one in Hong Kong.

I will admit that I haven't been keen on his retirement. I'm just not ready to leave the safety net of the military. On the other hand, if uprooting my kids--again--is the other option...

The bonus is, once overseas, getting to wherever else we ever wanted to visit would be simply easy! From Hong Kong, visiting the Great Wall, Seoul, Kyoto, Vietnam, even Moscow would be a snap. The Girl would be in anime heaven. The Boy would at least be in a nearer time zone to his best friend from Virginia, who had moved to one of the islands near Japan. Israel is similar--all of Europe (and Asia, even) is just a trainride away. Granted, there's the whole 'we're not getting on with Palestine' thing, but it's generally safer than, for instance, Sudan.

Not sure how I feel about it, want input, etc, etc. If he applies and gets accepted for any of the few that accept his rank, he must be prepared to report by June of 2011. We would obviously follow only after he has secured housing. I've always been apprehensive about moves, even coming back to Augusta where we had lived before, so I expect to lose what little sleep I have regardless. The tough part would be renting our house out again after finally getting it back in order. I may be able to convince my sister to move down here and live in my house, if she could get a job. Perhaps we'd just sell it. I don't know. Again, input, ideas, blah blah.

So Sorry

I've ignored you. I'm sorry. I hope that with the conclusion of my contract, I'll have a little more free time to share with you.

Dookie Doodle Doo

On the drive to our Myrtle Beach Getaway in which it was snowing, we got to talking about illegal drugs. The conversation was relatively informative, and the children were asking very intelligent questions.

Out of the blue, Mister asks if I recall any information about a very deadly drug that was being made from human feces. I did not, but the children all decided that it would be a very nasty drug and that anyone who smoked poop deserved anything bad that happened because of it.

Then one of them pointed out that monkeys like to fling poop. The Boy says, "Now there's a weapon!"

I said, "Sure, sh*t bombs would be effective against terrorism alright, but who's going to load the planes?"

The Girl says, "Monkeys! You know, Gorilla Warfare!"

The Boy says, "OMG! That would make an excellent video game. It could be the new 'Call of Duty.'"

The Baby says, "Oh yeah! But we'd have to call it Call of Duty 7, because they've already made #2."

I almost wrecked the car, I was laughing so hard I got dizzy. I love my family.

65% of the time, it works all the time!

Here's a fact: I missed an election.

Here's my excuse: I really didn't know my region was involved.

Here's what happened: The representative from "Augusta" was chosen to be the state's Attorney General or some such. He needed a replacement. The election came about one year after the newly-anointed AG took his post and his representative seat was vacated. All the news channels were talking about the election "in Augusta," but I live in "Greater Augusta," and I never saw any signs, billboards, or other pre-election pollution alerting me to my choices or that I should be involved.

Here's how it ended: Apparently, people either thought like me or they just can't be bothered with an out-of-cycle election. 13% of eligible voters turned out to elect the representative for "Greater Augusta."

Kinda sad, and I'm partly to blame. *sigh* Here's to hoping the newly-elected representative really is the good guy his opponent said he was.

something something something dark side

I was talking with the Network Guru, who got his start in the early days of UseNet in the universities, about my son, who's a budding computer geek. As mentioned previously, I broke the Wii. It was supposedly unfixable, I damaged the delicate internal components, etc.

The Boy fixed it, although you can't tell by looking at it.

Instead of asking me to buy a triangular screwdriver, he just kinda broke apart the plastic casing so he could get to the guts.

Once inside the guts, he did a little fiddling. Then he either created or found a backdoor boot hack (I choose not to ask) and saved it to an SD card, which had to be inserted prior to start up. Once he got it booted, he used HomeBrew to download some more data and viola! A working [butt-ugly] Wii.

Now he's trying to find a way to hack it so it can run Playstation discs.

What I said to the Network Guru at work was that I just hope that in the future he bends back towards the path of good instead of the path of the Dark Side, as it seems he's doing right now.

This, of course, brings me to tonight's discussion: If the evil part of The Force is called "the Dark Side," what is the good part called?

New Year, New Wii

Had to get a new Wii. Dropping delicate electronics from about 5 feet onto a rain-flooded pavement isn't good. Delicate electronics tend to get their feelings hurt and refuse to come out and play.

And now we're rocking out. I want to create my own rockstar name and avatar for the game. I've only been able to come up with two possibilities: Mitzy vonFaustwright and Shadrak the Encourageable.

If you can think of anything better, by all means suggest away. I'm open.

Win

My kids are awesome. We were discussing a television show, and I made this comment:

"I would've just maced him by now."


I was thinking, "pepper spray." My kids, however, were thinking, "Medieval weaponry."

Death of the Hyphen

I have noticed a trend in professionally-written language, and that is the omission of the hyphen. Laziness has caused most editors and editting software to just give up on it. Unfortunately, that causes some of us grammar nazis to have to read a sentence twice or more to fully gauge the sentence's true meaning. The only thing more irritating is the improper use of the apostrophe, but that's another rant.

Back to my beloved and apparently deceased hyphen!

Consider this little tidbit: New age tool.

What does that mean? Is there some new weapon in the fight against aging? Actually, the answer is Deepak Chopra. Seriously. So, Deepak Chopra can help me look younger, longer? Sadly, no; however, you would not know that from the Fark headline I just read.

The actual sentence: "Deepak Chopra: new age tool, or EPIC new age tool?"

Including the hyphen that used to belong to "new-age" would have made this a good laugh, but alas--ear wax. The hyphen is now being left out of previously-hyphenated words at an alarming rate, causing responsible writers like me to actually struggle with reading. Well, not so much reading per se as not bashing our e-readers against our skulls in frustration.

I think it's pretty dreadful that some people are concerned that immigrants are not learning our language when there are so many shameful examples of born-and-bred citizens who don't even grasp the basic grammatical principles of their own language.

tumbleweeds

A parent is often mistaken for a parrot. Around my house, an oft-repeated mantra is "When the fat girl steps on things, things get broken," which of course means that if your things are left lying on the floor and Big Mama stumbles over them, they will get destroyed.

Big Mama also regularly feels like a nag, especially when it comes to electronics. One of these days, I do believe I will smack The Boy right upside his cranium because he "borrows" my computer and downloads crap onto the desktop rather than directly onto his thumb drive. I also can't begin to count the number of times I've had to nuke a hard drive and reload Windows because nobody but me updates virus protection.

This last week, I had the pleasure of not only blending those two facets of my existence into reality, but also to demonstrate the truth behind the words. From the moment it was unpacked, I repeated over the course of several days, "Mister, don't leave your laptop lying flat on the floor. If it gets stepped on/If I step on it..." yada yada yada.

And so, Thursday evening, in a search for something else, I stumbled over a toy left on the floor and stepped on the corner of his laptop, the very same laptop for which I stood in line in a store I don't particularly like in order to get a very good bargain, and I hear a sharp, "Crack!"

I instantly transform into Sailor Swears, but, being in a rush, I didn't check it and promptly forgot about it. The following night, Mister reports that his LCD screen is definitely cracked. I honestly don't think I've ever peppered my speech with so many f-words in so many languages. After inspecting the unit myself, it is still usable but would benefit from a new screen.

I just priced a new screen. Mister can bite my butt.

Days Like These

On a whimsy, we decided to drive two hours to Atlanta in order to visit a 'family' cemetery that was described as the centerpiece of the parking lot for a Walmart store, and then we went to a Persian restaurant to spend over $100 on kabobs and stew for dinner.

The 'family' part is that the people buried in the cemetery may be long-distant relatives of Mister's. It is in fact part of a parking lot, but it's actually cut off from the main Walmart parking lot and is instead off to far front corner.

The dinner was a quick hop a few exits up the beltway, and was extremely delicious. I didn't even like what I ordered but its yumminess was still begging me to eat it, and so I did. Even my non-adventurous girls were stuffing themselves.

How was your day?

Stay on target!

When the monkeys were younger, my problem with Christmas shopping was never what to get them but when to stop buying for them. I was mindful of not spoiling them; people who get everything they want inevitably suffer a decline in ambition.

Now that the monkeys are teenagers, I am almost at a complete loss.

They are in possession of portable entertainment devices. Our home also has a video game console, albeit not the one The Boy preferred. While they always have fun with the Smithsonian products I place under the tree, it's kinda boring to only get "educational" stuff as gifts.

Rock Band will be purchased, but as a "family" gift. Every year we also get movies and games (table and video) for the family. Individual gifts, however, are what stump me this year.

The Girl is an artist. She loves to paint and sketch. She also plays the flute, although I never hear her practicing anything. However, it's not her entire life. She also wastes an inordinate amount of her free time playing MMORPGs. Okay, she plays just one. She regularly spends her own cash money to buy virtual crap for her avatar even though gameplay is free.

The Boy loves computers and video games. He also plays an MMORPG, and exchanges labor for paid gameplay. He has a blog about video games. He will talk you into a coma about video games--you'll be like that guy on Airplane! who douses himself with gasoline and lights a match before Ted Striker is asked to fly the plane.

The Baby loves her Webkinz brand stuffed animals, but she really has way too many stuffed animals altogether. She is also an origami prodigy. You should see her miniature dragon. The full-size is hard enough to fold, but her mini is a perfect rendition and it's only one inch long. She's really artsy-craftsy, and enjoys learning new skills. Oh, and here's a surprise--she also has a favorite MMORPG, but it's Webkinz-related.

I had considered just purchasing each kid a brand new laptop, thereby allowing us to declutter the dining room, but several clever friends pointed out that laptops are non-repairable by DIY enthusiasts like me, and they get dropped/damaged on a regular basis. Plus, since they travel, they might very well end up in bedrooms, which is not allowed in my house. Instead I will upgrade the desktops we have and redesign my office space to create a more open look, replacing the hulking armoire-style cabinets.

I don't want to wimp out and just hand them all cash this year, but I'm stuck in a vacuum and just can't think of anything. I also don't want to spoil them or spend a metric assload of money.

Help!

Genius!

I'm watching an "old" concert on VH1 Classic channel by Queen. If I ever have any regrets in this short life, it will be that I never had an opportunity to see the band live in concert before Freddie Mercury's untimely death.

I'll be honest: I don't think The Beatles were all that great. I feel it's more that they hit the market at the right time and then changed enough over time to remain relevant. But brilliant? I dunno. I guess if you call writing music and lyrics whilst stoned "brilliant," then I'll have to give you that, albeit unwillingly. I will admit to being a rather big fan of "Octopus's Garden" and "Yellow Submarine." I'm sure if there were others that I liked, I could name them, but alas. Ear wax.

But Queen... They were just awesome. Every song had butt-kicking music, some had silly lyrics, some songs were heart-breakingly sad, all were singable. Their multi-talented front-man presented himself in the gayest way possible but rocked so hard that most fans just said "meh" and carried on regardless.

At any rate, you have to admit that a guy who can seriously compare feeling in love to wiggling like a jellyfish in a rock song is pretty awesome.

Things seen at high school football games

Possible answers:

• Crack, as in butt-crack
• Inappropriate t-shirts worn by band chaperones
• Hurling, as in lunch, especially when it's too humid to be outdoors
• Gang fights and tasering
• Arrests

The crack episode involves a spectator who is either addicted to tanning or really well over 40 but likes to dress as a teenager. Early in the season, after the national anthem was played, I spotted her as she bent over to fuss with a small child. The waistband of her thong panties clearly showed over the top of her skinny jeans. Add to that her tank top, zip-up skinny jacket, ball cap, and big hoop earrings, and we've got a woman who is refusing to act her age and embarrassing herself in the process.

A couple of weeks ago, a band chaperone was wearing a black, form-fitting tank top that had a big pink-ribbon logo on the front and read "celebrate ta-tas." As if that wasn't bad enough, "ta-tas" was about six inches tall and positioned directly over her breasts.

Yesterday was surprisingly humid after a week of cooler weather. Normal operating procedures have the band kids scattering after school to scarf down food. Most go home while some find fast-food. Yesterday was no different. Skip to the half-time, where the band is free to use the concession stand. One student didn't make it; the humidity was too much and he was sick to his stomach. Worse--his parents did not attend that game, an away game in a run-down neighborhood.

As a chaperone, I like to be last out of the stands to make sure we've got everyone. Last night was no different. As I was walking from the gate to the area where the buses were located, I noticed a group of youths walking with a sense of purpose from across the street into a grassy area located between the gate and me. There was lots of yelling going on, so I looked behind me and saw a second, similar-sized group of youths walking with a sense of purpose from the gate area into the same grassy area. Fighting commenced immediately; however, the police were rigth on top of things. Within moments I heard the sound of a Taser being fired. I looked back and saw a young man squirming on the ground. I announced that we needed to get out of there as fast as possible.

We arrived at the buses only to discover police at our end, too. Some "locals" decided to try to get onto the buses, and were being arrested for trespass. We were encouraged to board the buses as quickly as possible and then shut the doors.

Where were we? Downtown Augusta, at a school known for its quality educational program for "gifted" students.

no chinchilla

For the last two years, I have managed to average one post every three-ish days for a total of 100 posts annually. This year is nearly done and I have only managed 45 posts.

I don't believe there has been less to talk about; I think it's more a matter of motivation. I haven't been too motivated to post to my blog, and feel that maybe I have let you down. The Pittsburg Pirates still blow. People hopped up on drugs still do stupid stuff. Our government may have "changed the guard" but still has its head up its butt.

The only thing I can really report with any newness is that I am helping a gay man design and sew a Halloween costume, and while there will be neither Bedazzling nor fur or feathers, he is most excited.

oh the huge manatee

I love irony. Thanks to Fark.com, I can share this little tidbit:

"Yes, true change has come. Toby 'put a boot up your ass' Keith to perform at Nobel Peace Prize concert in Oslo"

The article goes on to list other artists who will be performing live at the concert. Fark's headline, however, is too awesome to pass by unmentioned.