Enough Taxes Already!

It has come to my attention after weeks of infamy, that there is a movement in the United States to kill off as many tax items as possible, thus leaving more money in the hands of consumers for the crap they think is more important than stuff the taxes pay for.
     There is also a movement in this country to make sure that the first African-American president in the history of this country fails miserably as president. Part of this is based on the suspicion, fomented for the most part by entertainment news figures such as Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, that the president is a tool of the left-wing revolutionary socialist agenda pushers for the total conquest of the world, as opposed to a white man that they'd rather see in the White House.
     Black man in the White House, he bad juju.
     White moron in the White House, he plenty savvy man tru.
     Or to quote Mel Brooks from Blazing Saddles, "the sheriff is a nigger."

That having been said, here are my suggestions for getting past this "Tea Party"/"No more taxes"/"I want my [white, slack-jawed-yokel-worshiping, beer-drinking, noisy-car-drivin'] country back" bottle-neck:

• Rent the Roads: Everyone pays whoever they like to keep the roads that they use all the time nice and straight and pot-hole free. You find a guy does asphalt and/or concrete driveway resurfacing by auction bids on eBay. You then pay this person an agreed-upon sum to make sure that the road surfaces that you use all the time are clear and smooth.
  
• Road Rent Enforcement: You find on eBay a company that will patrol the road surfaces that you pay for clear of any traffic but you. You pay this company to keep others [people who don't pay for your road surface] from driving on your road. This and similar companies will also make sure that you don't drive on anybody else's roads unless you pay a road rent fee to the company and person whose road you wish to use. Use of intra-state roadways not directly included.
  
• Rent Police/Fire Protection: You find on eBay a company or persons who will wear a spiffy uniform and patrol the areas where you feel in need of law enforcement. You then pay this company to drive around your neighborhood looking for possible miscreants & other "types" of people who give you the willies. They park in front of your house or roam your property as need be so you feel safe. Same-same a company that will rush to your house should a fire break out or should you need help 'cause you've had a heart attack or some other medical emergency. [It's kinda like fire insurance but with real people standing around waiting for stuff to happen. May include flood and storm protection (offer not available in some areas).
  
• Rent Atmosphere & Environmental Safety: You find a company or group of persons on eBay who will cover you from diesel smoke or bad water or stinky air or any other environmental problem that keeps you up at night or makes you cough and hack or whatever you got. These folks come out and make sure nobody fouls your air or water rights on your property. They will punish or fine those who offend your environmental sensibilities. Does not include global concerns such as global warming, solar cooling, or any other environmental concern that won't affect you personally.
  
• Rent Courts & Law Applications: You find on eBay lawyers and people who will supply services to punish miscreants and others who break the laws you pay rent on to protect yourself and your family and/or possessions. You then pay these folks to process through the legal system those who offend you, your family, your sensibilities and/or possessions.
  
• Charge Rental on Law Enforcement: Make the perpetrators pay for the jail time. If someone offends you or messes with your stuff, you have your rental enforcement guys arrest the individual and take them to court. The court, for which you pay by way of rental [one-time fees may be possible here to your advantage], then decides the innocence or guilt of the perp. If the perp is found guilty by your rental court system, the perp must pay for his or her jail time. You don't need to pay for someone messing with your stuff. Let those who mess with your stuff pay for their punishment. And the people necessary to guard them, the facility in which the perp is incarcerated & so on.
  
• Rent Military Protection Services: You find on eBay a company that will stand watch so that no one invades your country, or at least your part of the country for which you have contracted said bunch of soldierly guys. You pay this bunch of guys to guard your part of the country as professional soldiers. This service protects only you & your family (if you're using the family protection option) and your stuff. It won't protect your neighbor's stuff or family (unless you and your neighbor set up with the same guys, at which point a group purchase may be worked out). If anyone tries to invade your country or that part of the country for which you are paying, they'll fight world war three or worse to keep you and your family save. Restrictions on nuclear, biological or chemical weapons apply. See small print for details.
  
• Rent So-called "Natural" Resources: You will need to have water and air and such. You find a company on eBay that you can bid to purchase water, air and weather from. You pay this company to make sure that you are surrounded by a breathable atmosphere and that you have water to drink & a pot to piss in. If global warming is a reality, you can pay this company to assure that you don't have to worry about it. (This can be part of the "Rent Atmosphere & Environmental Safety" program above.)
  
• Rent Health Care & Health Care Facilities: You find on eBay a way to make sure that, should you have to call the emergency squad (covered in "Rent Police/Fire Protection" above), they will be able to take you to a hospital with which you have contracted (also via eBay) for your health care and health maintenance. (May include "Doctors & Nurses Care" option.) This way, if you get sick, there'll be a place where you can go to get treatment or help.
  
• Rent School & University Education: You find on eBay the school that fits your pocket book. If you don't want much more than using a pencil and making change, you buy that much education. If you have a kid with a learning disability, you rent a school takes care of that. If you yourself are a slack-jawed moron & all you need is a part time job at a burger bar, you buy that much education and get out of the way.
  
• Rent Coverage of Everything Else:You find on eBay a batch of folks, companies and groups of people, to cover whatever else you got needs covered. Emergency room service. Disability insurance. Occupational health and safety coverage & enforcement. Interstate highways. Kindergarten. Remedial classes for your kid on Ritalin. Stuff like that. You bid it out on eBay and pay and you get the service, protection, treatment, whatever it is.
  

Of course, all this bidding and outsourcing means that you will be safe & healthy, protected & assured within the confines of your house, yard & driveway, not counting the streets you pay to use.
     Thus, if you want to go on vacation and drive from Ohio to North Carolina, or drive to Cincinnati International, you will have to arrange via eBay to have your use of some other folks' highway and street system validated. You will also have to make sure that you have transferred health coverage, air quality control, police & fire protection, military protection & other such assurances to whoever is in charge of such stuff between where you are and where you wanna get.
     This way you get what you want from the sources available for a price you can bid out on. If the cost is high and you don't like that situation, you can opt to have no service in that area. If it costs too much to have a fire department at your disposal, you can forgo that necessity. This would mean, of course, that your house would burn to the ground if it caught fire, since you ain't got protection. If you get sick, you'd have to pay a lump sum to get a doctor to even think of looking at you, should you forgo having a hospital or emergency room available to you anytime you want. Same-same you don't pay for military protection: comes a war and the country is invaded, those who haven't paid for military coverage would summarily hand their land, house, children, whatever else, over to the enemy outright.
     Saves on messy treaties and the like.

Of course, how this saves you on taxes is you don't have to pay for anything you don't need. It does mean that services and locations necessary for your continued existence can charge you whatever they think is cool and you have to pay up or do without.
     No more big government to provide disability payments if you have multiple sclerosis or muscular dystrophy or total renal collapse so bad you need daily dialysis treatments. No more big government paying for your kid's university education. Who needs that anyway? The kid's a moron, right? Let him learn how it is in the real world.
     The real world. Yeah, that's the ticket.
     The real world doesn't need any government assistance. No rent support. No money for education. No road upkeep or snowplows paid just to sit in a barn until winter comes. Hell no!
     No more taxes takin' money from you that you can use yourself to buy the services and functions that you can bid for on eBay.

Ah, the world of the future: No taxes. No big government tellin' you how much it costs to cover your snivelling little ass. You want: you pay. Simple as that. The invisible hand of the Free Market at work in your life, your family, your neighborhood, your country, your planet.
     Oh, I'm sorry, you didn't pay for the planet to support you?
     Line up for the death panels.
     That much you know from ignorance will be real.
 

Practice, practice, practice!

I got the word back from the who's-it-alls that I'm gonna retired on February 28, 2010. That's a Sunday, for you believers. To me it's gonna be another winter day hiding from hypoxia, overreaching the snow shovel and sitting around the house thinking of making lentils and rice a la Turk. Or maybe a la Punjab.
     Same thing, really. One's in 7/8, that's all.
     So with that retirement point in mind I took the past week off to practice. For retirement.
     I went to the store and bought a bunch of stuff to make fancy food with. I went to the hardware store and got all kindsa parts for my antenna tower project, which I hope to have completed 'fore the snow flies & all that. Better.
     I don't wanna mow around the tower layin' in the yard.
     So the ten-days-o' practice report is: I could use some help with the tower but that won't come for a week, at least. Cluttered up the backyard with the tower project. I had some interesting culinary experiences, most of them thanks to Nasser's place down in Dayton. Made a pizza with Cid last night for dinner. Read a bunch of weird stuff while snacking on lunch bits when Cid ain't home. Wrote some more of the ongoing story of D.S. Wilson and his cat experiments. Set a bunch of type – after distributing something like 12 pages (20x30p).
     Took three (count 'em! three!) naps from overexerting myself with the tower project. (Thirty feet of steel tower loaded with rotor, thrust bearing, ten foot steel pipe mast, cabling & hardware weights I don't know what but it's damn heavy to even lift a few feet. And I ain't got the antennas on it yet even!)
     Watched a little TV with Cid, mostly National Geographic HD channel stuff about places I'd been to or wish I could see.
     Thought a lot about Portland, where Cid & I went to visit Rishat & Rema and Ian and Sarah couple weeks back.
     Enjoyed not having to do much more than keep my spending down. And Enjoyed big time not having to go to work and hussle through crap should have been done by someone else during the summer 'cept that person was worried that recent command line changes were gonna force him to work forty hours a week, dammit.
     And no office rumors, politics, snarking, howling, kvetching and scouting out. No Don Testosteroni walkin' around smug.
     It was great. I hope the next six months burn off fast so I can enjoy it some more. Which reminds me: how often can I call in sick a week without anyone thinking something's up? Couple guys get away with like at leas t one day a week if not more. And the guy worried about having to work 40? Hell, he comes in around ten most days and is gone by three. Unless he "works from home."
     Yeah, I think I'm gonna like this.

Obama Not Using His Powers of Certification . . .

Ok, it's been a week almost since Henry Louis Gates got busted for forgetting his keys. The president of the United States has weighed in and out of the go-down. It's been deconstructed on the Daily Show and it's been editorialized by Leonard Pitts, among others, in the local newspaper.
     And you have to ask yourself "Is it time to move on?"
     Well, maybe.
     See, one of the things that I noticed up front about Obama indirectly apologizing (twice already) for having said the Cambridge police acted "stupidly" was that he hadn't taken the certification course.
     It works like this: you take the A+ certification course so you can be a "real" professional IT person, eventually you have to take the test. And one of the questions on the tests is

48.  A customer complains because he has been put on hold several times. What should you do?
    1. Apologize for the inconvenience
    2. Tell him you will find out who keeps putting him on hold.
    3. Explain how busy everyone is.
    4. Give him your personal telephone number.

The correct answer is . . .

  1. Apologize for the inconvenience.

At which point we get back to Obama's apology, in which he said that he should have "calibrated" his words.
     Calibrated?
     That sounds like something you'd do with a volt/ohm meter when you were lookin' at that yeller wire in the PC power supply without a wrist strap and the grounding mat!
     Calibrated?
     Damn, bro! You sure did decide to talk some shit there, buddy!
     Yeah, buddy!
     Yeeehah!
     Calibrated?
     Man, somebody please that this guy in for certification training!
     First thing you do after you get the name &c is apologize!
     It's in the friggin' manual, dude! On the test! Catechism grade stuff, here, yo. You should know it by heart, a-fearin' of the iron cross rosary of Sister Merry Discipline, fer cryin' out loud. As in:

"I'm so sorry to hear that my stupid remarks about stupidity messed with your mainframe day, sir . . . How can I be of assistance?"

And next time, fer Chrissakes, remember your keys!
 

Beach Vacation '09 Reportage

You go beach vacation with Cid, you get up every morning early up and go for a walk. Cid takes great pride in being up and mobile around 7 a.m. She likes to collect her electronics & go marching off up the coast toward whatever promontory she has set in her sights, up to wherever and back with the little GPS doodad I got her a couple solstices back cluing her in on her prowess as a marcher.
     Me, I’d rather take a nap, truth up.
     So while Cid is up and mobile, I’m still aslumber. By the time I finally get tired of fighting the intrusion of sunlight into my cognitive fluidity, Cid’s probably half way up to wherever and ready to come about for return. That’s when the cell phone bleeps and I thus get informed that I should meet here at some point in the morning activity.
     I usually get about halfway to halfway. I go along for a while & eventually come to rest on a dune or walkway or such. Off in the distance I can make her out, resolutely stomping along, usually barefoot. Me? I’d rather have shoes on. Beach stomping takes a toll on footleather.
     As things go, it usually works out pretty well.
     Now this year, like so many before that I have lost track, we ended up beach side one row back. To get to the beach we trudge our crap across the street and over the gravel of public access beach parking. Chairs, umbrellas, bags of sunscreen, stuff all around carried over the asphalt & gravel, over the dune, down to the tide line of the beach, where we all sit around and sometimes go out to fall in the surf.
     This year, I ain’t been but once to the sea, as in feet in the water, but only once.
     As if that were hinted, this year, among the things I didn’t remember to pack were my swimmin’ shorts. Been here three days and ain’t once had the need any. But having made remark of how I’d forgot, Glen (Cid’s brother’s wife’s brother) loans me a pair of his special.
     I thank him, go on with what I was doing and then take a nap.
     I must have needed the nap ‘cause I was out like a light – even with Cid openin’ the windows for more light – for something like two and a half hours at least.
     And if that ain’t a hint, I ain’t had the radio gear on real big time yet ‘cause one of the other things I didn’t pack was the telescoping fiberglass pole that usually serves as a support for the sky wires. Which then gives me a reason for not getting totally psyched for the early morning E-skip and tropo that allows signals from Puerto Rico to cross over my head on their way to Europe.
     At which point every nap becomes a sign of just what’s going on here.
     Nothin’.

See, for me, there are vacations and then there are vacations. One kind of vacation, the kind with which I am probably the most familiar owing to the serial nature of their happening, involve going somewhere and staying somewhere at a nominally great expense so as to do nothing but drink beer, cook food, eat with many relatives similarly travelled and then sit on the beach or sleep off the drinking the rest of the time.
     Which is exactly where I am today, three days in on this trip, taking naps out of sheer, well, boredom.
     I prefer not to dwell on that so much, that napping and doing nothing out of sheer boredom, ‘cause it makes me think of the things I could be doing, were I not a large sum of cash and many hours on the road away from things I could or would rather be doing.

Now the only way to get past that set up is to consider what I’m gonna do the rest of the summer while Cid is back at work and I am back at the ranch, with things to do.
     First, of course, is to finish printing the last pages of the next penny dreadful for the APA. And subsequently distributing the type set for that, with plans for the next edition in the works already in my head and on paper.
     Then there’s the fixing up of the garden/back door shed where the cats and their night visitors sleep. That will involve hanging insulations, putting in trusses and other lumber to make that happen, followed by laying in of some masonite deck plate material that I’ve had for 25-odd years just in case I needed it. Once that’s done I have to figure out how to make shelves &c for the cat nesting boxes, which are needed so the outside cats & friends will have nominally warm places to park their fur during the winter months.
     Not to mention the lawn mowing, the house cleaning, the office clearing out & other such things as I am wont to do when I have time on my hands and the beach ain’t out there calling me to take another nap.
     Not that I won’t nap when I take vacation at home.

If you sleep like I do – in fits and broken bits of tranquility – you’d understand.

So I’m halfway through a week at the beach, ain’t been to the water but once and even then barely, with a dinner reservation thingie coming up in a couple hours, all set to go but nowhere to go, other ‘n maybe to the USS North Carolina Museum. And I had a very nice nap, thank you very much.
 

Honk! Honk! Gesundheit!

Ok, let's get this straight: The Swine Flu thing is two presidential administrations old. It's kinda like the economy, which Cheney & Bush told us was sound. Not to worry 'cause we have it under control, the we in this example then being Cheney & Bush.
     Sometimes you just have to trust people.
     Yeah, right.
     My own take on this all is a bit different: I think the swine flu thing is being used by the Mexican government under influence of the Gringo government (but not this government 'cause we're still running on the inertia of the past administration, as Cheney & Bush assured us was happening in their administration many times enough to choke on).
     More directly: The Mexicans are using the swine flu to control the drug cartels.
     See, they've been havin' trouble down there recent 'cause of the drug gangs going around blowing each other up. Kinda like here – where a guy was shot at the memorial for the guy that was shot at a memorial for a guy who was shot -- but with beaners instead of them.
     At the same time, there are other things to consider.
     Like chemtrails.

Either you are hip to chemtrails or you're not. If you hip, then you either believe there's a plot by the government (or some forces outside of or inside of the government, either extraterrestrial or human, and if human perhaps some semi-Jewish kabal or maybe communists or maybe alien hybrids who may be communist, among other troubling paranoias) to poison people or make us weak & easier to conquer or you don't believe and it's all weird shit voodoo to you.
     If you believe, well, then you're either psychotic or deranged or have actually fallen to not thinking rationally about this, or you're already poisoned and thus, due to your poisoning, you believe it's true.
     If you don't believe it's either because you're poisoned already and thus, due to the poisoning, brainwashed into not believing, or you're a rational human being who sees things they way they are and knows from experience and investigation that there are millions of better ways to poison the livin' shit out of entire populations that don't require huge amounts of aviation fuel to sprinkle pixie dust on anybody from a couple miles up and downwind from the intended targets.
     Either way it's obvious that you've been co-opted by the extraterrestrials living under the Denver airport or in the tunnels under Dulce NM. Or maybe it's 'cause you're too stooped and sheeple-ish to not pay your taxes and thus avoid things like government help in keeping aliens and extraterrestrials from freeing the Guantanamo terrorists to run amok through decent, clean-livin', god-fearin', white racial purity Amerika.
     Which means that you're already carrying the swine flu and hard set in your easily controlled mind to killing off as many Mexicans as you can before they all turn into chupacabras and eat your brains for a snack.
     And you'd have accomplished this already if Cheney and Bush hadn't held up funding for stem-cell research that would have helped find a cure for swine flu before it found a cure for AIDS, which we know is here 'cause god hates fags.
     You do know about the hating and all that, right?
     Ok, well at least we're all on the same page.

In the end it's simple: While Cheney and Bush were ruining the strength of our military by allowing Colonel Saunders and Pizza Hut to replace good old-fashioned, worked-for-my-father's army chow halls run by Halliburton, they could have gotten this swine flu thing under control and the entire freakin' population of this country, except for the Mexicans & them, inoculated against the swine flu in the first place.
     And they could have used the chemtrails to do it.
     But did they?
     No!
     They went on about their namby-pamby ways, making money for rich people off the hardworking backs of American citizens and their nice lawns and trailers up on blocks outside some Indian reservation ain't got a casino in Enon, Ohio, for cryin' out loud. Just like that!
     I said "No!"
     "NOOOOOooooooo!!!!!"
     Which is why this swine flu thing is so important!
     "KAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHhhhhhhhhhhhnnnnnn!"
     
See, the swine flu has been a known subject for at least eight years, counting in two terms of the Cheney/Bush administration. Eight years. And over the past eight years there have been innumerable times when it has caught the attention of the media, liberal or biased or both. And over that entire time the Center for Disease Control has told us again and again not to shake hands with pigs or birds, to wash your hands often and regularly with soap and/or alcohol or any other substance like sand or whatever before we go to the . . .
     And in all that time what have we gotten from our government, controlled by alien beings with lizard skins or not?
     "Oh, don't be such a worry-wart! It'll be just fine, ok? Here, have some cheese."
     Yeah, just about that.
     So we've gone to war with a very persistent enemy, an enemy that has the power to transform itself from crazed warriors into just a bunch of diminutive people dressed in black pajamas or turbans or whatever. And against this enemy, which wants to kill us all off and replace human kind with another kind of human, we have turned all our attention.
     We've sent people on missions in vehicles that would blow up like a can of cat food left on the burner unopened.
     We've improved our intelligence about the enemy but we haven't been intelligent enough to figure out which enemy it is that we're really fighting here.
     And thus, as the Mexicans use the swine flu to control vicious infighting of the multi-faceted the drug cartels and gangs, we've done nothing.
     So here's the swine flu comes to the USA and we got . . .
     Nothin'!
     Nothin' is all we have and, if the tax revolt loonies have their way, nothin' is what we'll have 'cause not even the government will have the money to do the research that it should have been doing all along these many years.
     People will get sick and die.
     The disease will spread as a pandemic around the world.
     The aliens under the airports and the big spraying UFOs disguised as supersonic intercontinental jet liners will be of no help; they won't come to our aid.
     But the world will never blame it on Cheney or Bush, 'cause that ain't the way we do things in this PostModernist Limbaugh & O'Reilly universe.
     Not any more.
     So it's good bye and thanks for all the germs, yo.
 

In Yer Face, Book

Cid says I spend a lot of time at the computer. Maybe I do. There's one at work that pretty much tags my day with job schedules and other appointments of travail and the sweat of my brow. There's one at home that keeps my records, allows me to have a good typewriter & gives me access to things like circuit board drawin' software and such. But then, Cid's got a laptop downstairs that usually accompanies her watching of her favorite television programs, usually into the evening light.
     It's a work tool. It's a householding tool. It's an entertainment and communications device, that computer. All computers, actually.
     And being as how computers are now so ubiquitous between family members and such, what else is there to do after cleaning the house, doing laundry, mowing lawns, changin' cat litter, feeding cats, feeding the humans and in general not doing anything that involves the computer, computers are part of the 20th Century domestic toolkit. Like the chip flakin' stuff our long-distant Paleolithic ancestors hand.
     They had their flint and dolomite chips.
     We have our computer chips.
     Which, I guess is a way of saying that, yeah, I do spend a lot of time at the computer. But I'd bet that, keystroke for keystroke & mouse click for mouse click, Cid and I spend just about the same amounts of time at the machines.
     Nothing makes this more clear than family communications.

See, a couple weeks ago the eldest who, having been employed with a money firm down in Cincinnati, came up jobless. He was basically jobless and soon enough he was ready to move on. His target was Portland, Oregon, where, he claims, many of his friends live and work. And, as most tech heads know, there's money in computer-related businesses out there in the Northwest earthquake zone.
     So off he goes, now homeless as well as jobless, in his fancy red car.
     And given as how he's computer literate & all that, he promised to keep in touch with the rest of us by way of FaceBook.
     If you don't know FaceBook you spend almost as much time at the machine as I.
     I didn't know FaceBook until a couple days ago last week when the eldest hit the reciprocating engine-related highway. But the desire to know where he was at and how his trip was going made it necessary to join the rest of the family.
     Seems Cid's been on FaceBook for a month or more now. She's found old school friends and folks she hadn't heard from in decades on FaceBook. She's got a "friends" list. She's got links and bits and pieces of her life, some of her photos and a whole bunch of info & interchanges with other folks. She's "on FaceBook."
     Being thus pressured – and after lookin' at what she could do with it – I reluctantly signed on and got "friended" by my sons, by Cid, and by some folks who I had otherwise known elsewhere but otherwise didn't have any connection with.
     Now I know FaceBook. I am a FaceBook person.
     I have arrived.
     Yeah, right.

Right up front, FaceBook looks like a great way to keep track of other folks and for other's to know what you're up to.
     It's better 'n Twitter, so I've been told.
     And knowing absolutely nothing about Twitter beyond that which has showed up on the Doonesbury comic strip, I'd have to say that Twitter would be annoying as hell. Who needs to know whether I'm washing dishes or takin' a crap? Good grief!
     But FaceBook is different, they say.
     Yeah, I have yet to see a FaceBook day covered from underwear to shower stall, as Twitter has been portrayed in the daily papers.
     But I do know that there is a certain amount of egoboo to it.
     Why else would I take the time, at the start of my day but before the official work day begins, to keyboard in the fact that "Nils Young is on watch and station"?
     And what's with that nautical verbiage, yo?
     Seriously.
     But there I am, a week and some on FaceBook and already I've logged myself on to say I was logged on and I've uploaded pictures of stuff that I've got stashed elsewhere as well and I've provided links to things that I doubt anybody gives a true rat's ass about. And I've done it with naught an quiver or shake of shame.
     "Me!"
     "No, ME!"
     "No, goddammit! ME!
     "No! ME!!!!!!!!
     "No!"
     "Me!"
     "Yeah, right."
     "Get a grip!"
     "Get a life!"
     "Stupid neck beards!"
     "Whatever."

After two some odd weeks with this high-end locator & communicate system going on the various computers to which I have access, I can tell you right up front that I know where the eldest son is. I know what he ate for dinner and I can tell you how much he paid for a speeding ticket in Texas. I can see pictures of his dinner and one of his deserts. It's all there on his FaceBook page and you can't see any of it or read any of it unless you have a FaceBook account.
     So there.
     But I can also tell you that I have logged many hours of finding friends and discovering where old ones might have been.
     And out there in the middle of all that, I found an as-of-that-moment unread email from someone who had found one of my blog pages – and I believe it was this 'n here – wherein I mentioned another old friend.
     And the person who read that blog sent me a missive to inform me that the person I'd mentioned had disappeared over the Atlantic, flying around in circles spotting targets for fishing trawlers.
     Good news.
     Bad news.
     All of it brought to you the machine upon which you are reading this.
     It couldn't get any better.
     Could it?
 

On Setting Childish Things Aside

So here's the deal: A teacher in a classroom is using computer-organized media as a teaching prompt. Maybe the teacher is using presentation software provided by the publisher of the text book. Maybe the teacher is using a presentation package that the teacher designed for the class. And maybe – and more that likely in my experience – the teacher is using a presentation package put together by a graduate assistant or teaching assistant.
     So at some point in the presentation, in front of a room of kids, most of whom already know what the presentation looks like 'cause they found it on the InteWebs, the podium monitor or some other gizmo toasts out. A puff of smoke and an electronic screech.
     So the teacher gets on the phone and calls the department on campus that is responsible for the equipment. A few minutes later a technician shows up and upon entering the room, catches hell from the teacher.
     "Why do I have to be stuck with equipment like this?"
     "Why can't you people keep this running right?"
     "I always have trouble with this junk!"
     "I'm not here to chit-chat! Fix it!"
     Only problem is, the fix ain't that easy. That's 'cause the department in charge of keeping the media presentation stuff running is so compartmentalized that the fixes are under the purview of someone else. And that someone else more often than not is not on campus. Be in later. Home sick or at the dentist or taking an aging dog to the vet. Not feeling well. A thousand excuses.
     And the spare parts are locked up like you little sister's diary.
     So there stands the technician in the classroom being attacked for something that the technician cannot change over a piece of equipment for which no spares or parts exist.
     "How do you expect me to teach with this junk?"
     "This is cutting into my classroom time!"
     "I can't teach like this!"
     "Fix it!"
     A room full of young people watching a nominal adult person with a high degree of education act like a petulant little ragamuffin sniping because there are three pieces of fish on the plate instead of four and the juice from the peas is running into the mash potatoes.
     Neanderthals might have acted like that on a bad day in the Pleistocene but a university professor?
     You gotta be kiddin' me.

Of course, in my perfect world, one of the students would have stood up, walked to the front of the room and taken a piece of chalk or a dry-marker from the rail and handed it to the teacher.
     "Here, ma'am. If the technology is broken, you can always go back to old-fashioned teaching."
     At which point the teacher lights into the student as the technician slinks away.
     "How dare you!"
     "How dare I, ma'am?"
     "Yes! How dare you!"
     "I dare ma'am because if you cannot teach without technology, then you may as well be a television monitor and the university could just roll you into the room at the start of class and haul you back out at the end of it."
     "Leave this classroom right now! Get out!"
     "Nah. I want to watch a grown up person attack someone over something that broke. Kinda like my kid sayin' he broke his arm 'cause a rock jumped up and hit his skateboard."

Evidently the class was going on when President Obama said that it was time to put childish things aside.

Have a nice day.