He claims his work isn't good enough

Posh! I'd say this is great! While generalized as a mother and child, it is very likely Mary and Jesus.

-- art by James Freygang

New July 4th tradition

photo courtesy of MR

"They're using artillery on us!" with a picture of fireworks. The line is from Die Hard. It's better when it's sent on cellphone.

irony and Iron Maiden

I saw a guy come in at work wearing an Iron Maiden t-shirt, and bade him, "good band" as he left. He agreed and he was on his way. Later, MR sent me a picture from Bed, Bath, & Beyond featuring posters for sale. How IronMaidenic!

Fluptz Putz

More people are underemployed. The rate of 4.5 unemployment might be that people aren't home anymore because they are working two or more jobs. Man that upsets me when they note -- people are employed. Right, and minimum wage at McDonald's, which is still poverty level, constitutes "employment"? Look at salaries for those people, not merely if they are "working". For another example: someone lives to 106 being a lifelong smoker. That might be a good campaign for R.J. Reynolds, except if you find he was on life support for 25 years and ate up 4.8 million dollars of medical funds to keep him alive.

Numbers aren't important if taken out of context, butt heads! Trying showing the average salary for families with one job only per person. That doesn't look so fine, now does it. I don't like half-facts, it irks me because it influences the weak minded to believe --- well, then, there isn't a problem. Subtract the golden parachute CEOs and start examining the salaries and employment, then give me some numbers.

instant resistance

I made a suggest that would take about 10 seconds to do ... daily. That is ten seconds out of a day. I got resistance to it right away. It doesn't cost money, costs no real significant time, but I got resistance.

F' em! I mean that, in that they get an "F" and that [rhymes with duck] them!

July 4th Mayhem

Happy Independence Day!

oh, crud!

Why didn't somebody tell me my butt was so big?!

I saw Logan hold himself up on the swing, so by golly ... I was going to do it. Work has me a little stronger than before and I had little challenge in doing it. I also dropped 35 pounds.

Virginians and odder Suthern states done be repulsed

Givin' birth to siblings -- "kin" as we call 'em is a God-given natural pro-cess we all been doin' fo' centries! Course we do it thu old fashion way of rollin' in da hay with sisters, cousins, ma, pa, aunts and uncles.

I cannot believe dat dem damned Brits wanna interfere with our way, claimin' dere's is better with sciencey stuff and frozen eggs. Dat just ain't natural!

from the BBC, infertile daughter may use her mother's frozen eggs to bear children

pardon me for presidenting

So what if Bush pardons him ... what does Bush stand to lose? Heck, Clinton sold pardons and while a shifty man he remains, that didn't harm him as much as it should have.

I think he ought to find some schmuck and pull a King Bugs Bunny on him and do:
arise Sir Loin of Beef [whap with the septre]; Sir Duke of Earl [whap]; Wellington of Beef [whap]; Benedict of Eggs [whap]; Sir side of bacon [whap]; Burlington of Coats [whap]; Sheriff of Knotted Head [whap]

You are too kind, sire. [Schmuck falls with ten visible welts on his head]

This story is no story that matters. So he pardoned him. That really isn't significant. Think of Nixon -- pardoned. Get over it.

personality disorder

Well ... interesting. G.I. has personality disorder. I believe that if you shoot him in the head with enough bullets, his brains will be re-ordered and better organized and liquefied. Dude, you're a disgrace now. Die with dignity and ask for some shoelaces, cut your wrists or something. Just die. Personality disorder! There's a cure for that, you know. It's always after the fact, "well, you know I've been kinda depressed, or I've been hearing voices for the last few days, I ate too many Skittles with Red Bull, I'm lactose intolerant, I have red-green deficiency, I have an ingrown toenail".

Don't know, don't care.

How the Neo-nazis won the war

Well, I'm no fan of Nazis, neo-nazis, Klan, KKK, or any hate group, but this stuff makes for great recruitment posters. If you thought the "Hun" posters, and the other propaganda posters depicting others as sub-human were somewhat effective, wait 'til they put posters of Hamas with bombs on babies, stoning teen girls, beheadings and none of which are photoshopped.

Muslims all over the world ... you give yourselves a bad name. Step up and crush this stereotype, otherwise tick-tick-tick ... it's gonna blow up in your face.

By golly, they were close on the name

They should have used spell check on "Islamabad". The phrase should be, Islam is bad, which is quite close. Thankfully I'm here to help you on this issue. I'm gonna side with the group that no longer accepts, "those are the corrupted teachings of Islam" argument. I'd say with the stomp, stomp, stomp, Idiot convention,+ there are no safe versions anymore. This one here is virus-free, oh ... wait, no I'm mistaken. They must be taking after those lovely folks in Atlanta, Chicago and the masters in LA, with when in doubt, loot; riot; pillage; blame others. Oh, and red is green.

+ Anthrax, "Caught In a Mosh"

Don't worry

Fidelity Financial says, "Please continue shopping with us, there is nothing to fear". 'A worker' stole data. Huh. I'd say "a worker" probably had access to something he should not have had access to, especially if he's a "worker", not titled in any fashion. I guess next there will be a peon who causes trouble, then surely 'a nobody' and 'a gopher'. Fidelity makes it funnier still with, "the data was not used in identity theft ...", like they would know. If they knew, then they are part of the plan. "Look, you're sitting there like we didn't already discuss this."+ So, come shop and invest "securely" with Fidelity Inventments, er, I mean, Di-vestments. Your identity, Arthur P. Moody of 9 West Chester Lane, Pembrook, North London, is safe with us.

+ Fargo

I'm some box, *itch

Some box at work leaped off the shelf and hit me square in the forehead. I think it shouted, "unity"+ or apparently, "alpha" for there is the Greek alpha letter on my forehead. I just threw it away, but I should have cross-kicked it into a mirror.

"had the word [alpha] embedded in that [white] head of [mine] for about a week."+ Ha ha ha, cold blooded!

+ allusion to "Charlie Murphy's True Hollywood Stories", on Dave Chappelle show

Hey, you ought to bring that up

An "m" suggested that I bring up a suggestion to the m-meeting. Well, the problem is that there is no follow-through with the team, so anything worthwhile might be good on paper, but never performed. I'll suggest 'em, but I'll follow up with a Foghorn Leghorn, "I keep a-pitchin' 'em, and you keep a missin' 'em!"

Sadly, some of them are, exactly 5-second fixes, when done consistently, help. Namely, if someone should know something, write it; organize as you go; make your walking back and forth productive, that sort of thing.

Proof God loves me

I got out EARLY last night. That's right, boys and girls ... early! Normally I spend my time trying to find, "why are we so flippin' short? Where are the ...", but we didn't do squat of business, which allowed me to get my stuff done and finished, not done, then re-done. I got paperwork done a little early. Overall, much smoother than the typical, late night bullstuff that I usually get that puts me ruddy well behind.

So, cheers and thanks to God for getting me out of there early last night!

clarifying my ideals

I strongly believe that schools, while it would be expensive, should strive to be more like the following:

$ smaller class sizes, peaking at 22:1 student to teacher ratio, but preference toward 15:1 ratio
$ community schools where parents can actually go to the school for activities, rather than 45 minutes away
$ be granted more flexibility regarding materials (books used, etc. rather than getting the state mandated selected books) -- in my experience, there are teachers who use 70s books because they are more effective. I saw books I had when I was a kid ... and they work based on phonics and sound principles.
$ greater scale accountability on part of student and parent/guardian: in other words, when the child prevents education in his/her class, the child is subject to removal and faster removal from that school, rather than having the child in the school for 6 out of 9 months making education impossible for one class or that school.
$ schools should be allowed to "lane" students into classes that better meet their needs; students who need more remediation should get that and those needing less repetition and more challenge should get that { THIS IS NOT the SLOW kids and the SMART kids, but rather making schools the best they can be for children's success } +
$ ensure safety of students with community schools, in that even less-savory parents might give a darn about the success of the school and children; yes, I've seen it happen

^^ With the cost of fuel and vehicle costs, eliminating waste is important ... so true that administration could be cut, for who needs a vice-assistant-vice-assistant-sub-chair-committee-approval secretary's secretary? In other words, the administration has too many bodies, with too high salaries and doing nothing to help children learn. Don't cut a Hydra at the head, cut it at the claws, in this case cronies or couldn't teach-we'll promote him/her.

+ potentially further removes some behavior problems by challenging students rather than confusing or boring them

Get back ... get back .... get back to where you once belonged

Schools, no longer "forced" to meet racial balance? That might be the Castor oil for school's problems. Some soundboarders would claim, "That would make Black schools". To them, I'd say ... yep, that would happen. In this case, you could then better find the better, but not happy, medium for the "No Child Left Behind".

Hey, this school has a cluster[fudge] of problem kids, "I'm a problem child".+ This school needs some help, dude! You think? Where many or over forty percent could factually, actually be Campbell's soup; ADHD, ADD, FAS, MMR, ED, home six in Foster Care, AIDS, opiate or amphetamine baby, etc. I mean this, not as a slant toward non-whites, but rather the racial balance swing will undoubtedly be applied to many other categories. Throw into this non-English speakers and you got mini-metropolis and the start of PS 01 and so on.

So, with this potential policy, there may be fewer bus drivers and a vast need for non-white teachers specializing in special needs. It isn't a bash against communities, it's just a likelihood that the token white teacher would be a target for profiling, harassment, and lawsuit in a nearly all non-white school.

On the "positive" side, there will be the local, "protected" as it were golden schools that could realistically have a waiting list. It will also spell the regrowth of racism, for if you don't see many non-whites and the locals tell you they are bad --- you're likely to make that assumption before meeting one.

If this law goes into effect, then the proverbial gauntlet is cast and I dare-say that racial balance policies will hereafter fail. The perfunctory retort will be, 'quotas kill competition and potential success'.

+ AC/DC

Jacob's ladder roads

Well, well, well. So you wanna go West or East. Too bad. We'll close off a main road for two months -- so, ha! Now that one is open, we'll seal off another. On the first one, you'll notice that it's new and kicks butt. The second, well ... we did something, but not that you can tell.

Happy July 4th and good luck trying to get where you are going, care of the 3RC (Three Rivers Construction [barricades]).

100225

Well, putting 90 miles daily on the car quickly pushed the odometer past 100,000. Right now, over 100.2 K. I need to retire it for a car that isn't spontaneously going to quit on me. It's held it's own, but it won't last forever, so Hundai is likely my next car, for they are cheaper, fuel efficient and becoming reliable.