The DoN Says, "You're Fired!"

"Now is the winter of our discontent..."

That line is, of course, Shakespeare's. It's from Richard III, but I think it should be the motto of Ohioans. According to Zogby, the poll people, we are an uhappy lot, and it's not just the lousy winter weather. Oh, hell. Let me just quote Zogby International verbatim here, because it's just too luscious:

A Zogby International online survey, conducted a week after the Nov. 8
election and released yesterday, shows just 6.5 percent of Ohio voters view the
embattled GOP governor very or somewhat favorably. Barely 3 percent rate his job
performance as "good" or "excellent."

61% of respondents want Boob..er, Bob to resign. (Only!) And what's more, nearly 50% of those polled said that Taft ran a "purposely corrupt" administration. Those Buckeyes don't even think he's just stupid, ignorant, and inept. They think he's downright shifty!

That's where I part company with them. I know he's just dumb. See, Boob...er, Bob Taft came to my high school to speak a couple years ago to promote himself and some lame initiative that I can't even remember because it failed, like all of his initiatives inevitably do. He asked for one of our school leaders to introduce him. We chose a young man and he prepared a creative and well-written introduction. Which he shouldn't have, because Taft's lackeys gave him a card with a pre-written generic intro on it full of political crap. But the student read it like the decent kid he was. And Governor Taft got up there and spouted his empty rhetoric for a while and the students were polite and applauded in the right spot, and the local paper took a picture. Well, later, when the kid went back up to the podium after it was all over, he found a page of Taft's speech that had fallen out of the sheaf of papers and been left behind. Between two of the paragraphs was this typed notation: "pause and smile." THE GUY HAD TO BE CUED WHEN TO FREAKIN' SMILE.

 

Ohio has no legal mechanism for recalling its governor. He is too damn stupid and prideful--over what, I know not--to resign. The best we can hope for (the 90+% of us who aren't related to him, apparently) is that he'll just shut the hell up and not do any damage before he gets up off the chair in Columbus.

A Little Learning yada yada yada

I have two college degrees, yet I cannot:

1. Program my cellphone.
2. Successfully tape the correct television program.
3. Drive anyplace beyond a 20 mile radius of my own home.
4. At any time tell where North is (or any other direction, for that matter).
5. Swim.
6. Play any adult card games at all.

I suppose the thing to do is ask if any of these half-dozen things really matter. Dangerous question, that. Opens up the field of whether the vast compendium of things I do know matter. Now I'm looking at the subject-verb agreement of the sentences. Should the verbs be "matters"? Sigh. Screw it. I know too damn much.

Virtue, Liberty, and Independence*

Pennsylvania is to be commended for having the smarts to go to the polls and pull the right levers or touch the right screens or hang the right chads or however they vote there. Not only did they go blue in the presidential election, but they put Rep. John Murtha (D) in his seat 16 times.

If you haven't been following the news the past 3 days--shame on you!--then you've missed quite something. This longtime hawk has stepped to the microphone and given voice to the American majority and has not backed down, no matter how harsh the vitriol from the backlashing Republicans. Among his snipers was, of course, Darth Vader Cheney, who accused this Vietnam vet of having no backbone. This from a man who sought and was granted five deferments and never did see military service. Disgusting.

I used to really dislike Pennsylvania; it was a long state that was in the way of where I wanted to go, which was New Jersey, where my then-fiance was living. It made my trip way longer than I wanted. People from the Pittsburgh area say things with a funny emphasis, like INsurance and UMbrella, rather than inSURance and umBRELla. But now, I think Pennsylvania is just goshdarn freaking brilliant.

*Pennsylvania's state motto, and that first one's a toughie for the Angel of Death's admin, no doubt!

Food for Thought...Literally

Lately and for a variety of reasons, I've developed almost a love-hate relationship with food, and I've had to think an inordinate amount about it. That's not too hard this time of year; the ad executives use the holiday season to bombard the consumer with commercials and print ads that encourage each one of us to eat, drink, and be merry, and the minute it becomes New Year's Day, they turn around and assail us with messages from Jenny Craig, Bowflex, Lean Cuisine, and TrimSpa.

Anyhow.

I've come to the conclusion that there are quite a few foods that are overrated:

1. Pizza. It's boring. Basically bread, cheese, spaghetti sauce. Food for teenagers whose tastes are suspect anyway. After all, they made Britney Spears and face glitter popular.

2. Crab Legs. Too worky. Crab is delicious, but crab legs or crab you have to crack forever is too much effort for what you end up with. Get a good crab cake--if you ever, ever can--or a pasta with a decent crab sauce, or best yet, a crab bisque.

3. Caviar. Are you kidding? Salty, fishy, and a gross texture all wrapped into one. It's like Nightmare Tapioca of the Devil.

4. Waffles. I'm not even sure we need this food. After all, we already have pancakes. Waffles are redundant. And those things from the freezer that you put in the toaster that are hard on the outside and defy syrup to penetrate them...not sure what those are.

5. Veal. Aside from the objectionable way in which this meat is produced, isn't veal really just sorta porky chicken? Or chickeny pork? Do we really need it? I'm thinkin' no.

6. All Melons Aside from Watermelon. Okay, Maybe Cantaloupe Can Stay. All the rest of them are boring and basically bland. Watermelon has personality and an identity. It IS summer. It's juicy and recreational; who in his life hasn't spent a summer afternoon spitting watermelon seeds? Cantaloupe is pleasant and sophisticated--I'll give you that. But all those casabas and honeydews and santa claus melons have gotta go. Admit it--you just bought one to try or to add color to a fruit salad. It tasted lousy and you've never bought it again.

There are more, but let's not get carried away. I was watching my favorite cooking show Paula's Home Cooking , and she was talking about being asked what her all time favorite food was. She said hers was the potato. I had to agree. I could live on potatoes for the rest of my life: french fries with ketchup, baked potatoes with butter and chives and lots of salt and pepper, garlic mashed potatoes...as long as I had a few light condiments, I could hang with potatoes for a good long while. Screw those half-dozen foods up there. And I could add so many more, as I bet some of you could, even as you detract from my list.

DoN Gets a Little Bit Smug, Politically

Tough times for The Angel of Death (Dubya, for those of you who are still sporting kid gloves). The latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll is a Democrat's dream. Click on the link to see the numbers for yourself, but the thing that I'm most excited about is the fact that 80% of Americans see the indictment of lil' Scooter Libby in the outing of Valerie Plame, CIA agent as a serious matter.

Remember doing analogies on the ACT or SAT college entrance exam? Those onerous word pairings where you had to determine the relationship between the first two words and then duplicate it?

Here's one for Bushie, then.

Monica Lewinski : Bill Clinton :: Valerie Plame : George W. Bush

At least Bill had a good time with the woman who brought down his presidency.

It Was a Dark and Stormy Night...

I advise and edit my high school's literary magazine. It comes with the territory of teaching our creative writing course, which I love. What I do not love is seeing students stride firmly over the same tired ground, year after year, committing the same egregious acts, using hideous and predictable snippets of writing.

Things like these in short fiction writing:
1. ice blue eyes
2. raven hair
3. piercing eyes
4. a romantic dinner always being in candlelight and always having roses and always having wine and always being something actually unromantic to eat, like spaghetti or steak or lobster
5. auburn or chestnut hair, shoulder-length or midway down her back
6. the lovers always calling each other "babe" or "love" or "my angel" or some sappy combo of the three
7. the found note that wraps it all up at the end
8. vampires

Or things like these in poetry:
1. warm sun caressing skin, or pretty much anything
2. 1st person voice who "wears a mask"
3. breeze drifting lazily and/or caressing again
4. the phrase "in my mind"
5. the theme of "no one understands the real me", usually repeated ad nauseum
6. "the blade against my skin"
7. the simile of tears and rain
8. vampires

I could go on and on. I have already told my new crop of writers that they are forbidden to use the word "amazing", which certainly must be the single most overused word in the English language this century. Also, that no one's heart is allowed to be "pierced" , nor is it allowed to "melt" in their stories or poems. And that if I read one more creative piece in which a hero has "steel grey eyes" or the heroine has "lush lips", I will likely blow my brains out. I threatened to Google them for the rest of their lives, always on the lookout for these nasties. Such good sports, they laughed and took an oath to protect my sanity and blood pressure forever. Thank goodness. Deadline is November 11. In my mind, no one understands what it is like to be the real me, with tears falling like rain, waiting for some steel-eyed, lush-lipped writers to submit their work on time, all the while knowing that I'm just another raven-haired English teacher who wears a mask of toughness on the outside; all it would take to melt my heart is a good story that would satisfy me like warm sun caressing my skin.

DoN Bosses the Final Frontier

It's not that I fear change; it's just that I truly believe with all my heart that some things should be left alone. They nibble at the edges of Big Things That Matter and they just mess around with Things That Should Not Be Messed With. Let me try to explain.

I live in Ohio, a state with not much to recommend it. Our weather sucks, the stars who get inducted into our Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (and Museum!) go to a ceremony IN NEW YORK, our governor was recently in court to face criminal charges and has an approval rating of 19%, and we are the state that blushed enough to put Dubya (aka The Angel of Death) in the White House last year. We have the river that actually caught fire, too. But we do have one thing, and that is Lake Erie, a Great Lake right smack on top of us. I was raised a couple of minutes away from that lake, so in elementary school when we had to memorize the Great Lakes, I could picture Erie lapping around my ankles. Huron, Ontario, Michigan, ERIE, Superior, I memorized; H-O-M-E-S, homes. How simple. Then, in 1998 Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont proposed new legislation declaring Lake Champlain a Great Lake. He was after federal moolah for colleges and almost sneaked this by, but it didn't pass. Could you have imagined if it did? Little schoolchildren everywhere denied the simple mnemonic of HOMES; what would they use then? CHOMES? HOCMES? HOMECS? And those of us who grew up on HOMES? I shudder. All Great Lakes Staters really got pissed off, and I can't say I blame us. After all, tradition and history should count for something.

Which brings me to the topic at hand...and yes, I still have one. And it is Pluto.

Not the Disney dog (who is mysteriously allowed to be doggishly naked whilst Goofy, also a dog, is clothed; that is for another post), but the planet. Which is the issue we must wrestle with.

Apparently, there has been some backdoor dealing amid the pointyheads in the science world to delist Pluto as a planet. How did I, average person, find this out? On Comedy Central! I immediately (and accusatorially) emailed my colleague Jeremy, physics teacher extraordinaire, who emailed back that he'd "been telling people Pluto wasn't a planet for so long that it had never occurred to [him] that it was news." Well, I am devastated. When I was in 3rd grade, I did my planet report on Pluto! It most certainly was a planet! I memorized the NINE planets--count 'em--9 by the mnemonic device everyone did: My Very Elegant Mother Just Served Us Nine Pickles. Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus (ha ha you said your anus), Neptune, PLUTO. Are we going to just toss yet another valuable learning tool on the scrap heap just because of a bunch of picky nerds who can't even agree what a planet IS? (Not to mention the fact that I got an 'A' on my report! And old Mrs. Fauver never gave A's in Science to anyone, believe you me!) Besides, now the Hubble telescope has found two new moons orbiting little old Pluto, who has one fine big moon already. It even has a name, Charon. This adds yet another facet to the debate. If Pluto is just a spaceberg, a big chunk of space ice, why name its moon? I really think you science types are just looking for trouble and things to argue about. I'd be glad to submit my Pluto report to any of you who cares to read it. I still have it, and it's even illustrated. In Venus brand colored pencils, no less. Venus: also a planet. SO FAR. So, leave Pluto alone. Or I'll put you all on MY list, and it's not a very nice one. So there.

The world is changing fast enough. Some of it can be...let be. If you're not sure which stuff, check with me. The Dept. of Nance stands ready to decide.

DoN Says Pick Your Battles

I ran into my buddy and fellow teacher Teresa at Target last night. She told me this story about her son who is in 8th grade:

"It was Kyle's turn to bring home Baby-Think-It-Over this weekend for health class. All he heard from all his friends was 'support the head, support the head' because if you don't, the baby registers it and you flunk automatically. So, what does my wonderful son do? He straps a rubber band around the baby's one ear and hooks it around its opposite foot. And he shows me. And I say, 'After all these years as your mother, and this is what I've taught you?' And Kyle says, 'No, Mom. What you've taught me is how important school is and how important it is to get good grades. And that's what I'm doing. Making sure I get a good grade.' How do I answer that?"

Geez. By jumping up and down, cheering, and weeping openly about the fact that he heard and remembered and actually followed such an important piece of advice, maybe?!

DoN Hits the Use By Date

When did I get this old?

1. Last night, I fell asleep with my glasses on. In bed. How did I know this? I woke up with them on.

2. I fall asleep sitting on the couch. Often. With my mouth open.

3. I seem to eat Tums a lot more often than I used to.

4. I keep turning the television sound up during programs and down during commercials.

5. I spend an inordinate amount of time in conversation with the cats. -- Wait, does that mean I'm old or just nuts?

6. When my husband says, "Wanna go to bed?" I get excited not because of the prospect of sex, but because of the prospect of actually going to sleep.

7. I actually contemplated incorporating prunes or prune juice into my diet. If I have to tell you why, it just makes me feel even older.

8. I have one of those weekly pill cases that have the days of the week on each little module, and even without my daily vitamins, there are more than 3 pills in each cell.

9. I don't ever listen to anything on the car radio, and the CD player in my car has been broken for months and I don't care.

10. I say things in the grocery store like, "If they think I'm going to pay $2.00 for a bunch of broccoli, they are sorely mistaken. That is just ridiculous. I'll go without." Loudly. As if the produce manager, if he is even within earshot, will immediately and shamefacedly run up and whip out his Sharpie and mark it down while admitting he is price-gouging due to Hurricane Katrina.

When did this happen to me? I pride myself on being somewhat with it, and thanks to my job as a high school teacher, I'm pretty much up on the latest trends and slang and whatnot whether I like it or not. And having a seventeen year-old and a twenty year-old at home helps, too. But, I fear it is the inexorable march of Time; I'm 46 and it was bound to start happening sooner or later. The sad fact is this: Youth has an Expiration Date. And mine is apparently up.

DoN Skews the Nielsen Ratings

This morning I stumbled upon The Brini Maxwell Show on The Style Network; I was trying to get myself off the couch and into the shower in order to face my day before noon, honest I was.

My husband and eldest son wandered in, and soon we were all watching, transfixed by the oddness of this show, hosted by a man in drag dressed in vintage 50-60s June Cleaveresque couture espousing hints for living the gracious lifestyle. My son shook his head. "I can always tell when Mom has the remote. It's guys in drag, Brits, or costume dramas."

I keep trying to think of the ultimate: something with all three.

Ahhh...Youth

We finished up reading the play The Crucible. I wanted to impress upon the students, just sophomores of merely 15 and 16 years, the injustice of it all. I wanted them to realize that we owe something to the memory of these innocent people who died undeservedly back in Salem in 1692, that it is important to right wrongs, no matter how long it takes.

Me: Sadly, only one judge ever apologized for the part he played in the Trials, and only one
"afflicted girl" ever asked forgiveness for her role. And...guess when the last pardon
was issued by the governor of Massachusetts to a condemned Salem witch.

(students guess several years, including the 1700s, 1800s, etc. I gleefully shake my head.)

Me: Nope. It was Governor Swift in October of... 2001!

(students react suitably shocked, surprised, and dismayed, "that's horrible", "why did it take so long", etc, then above it all, like a sour note at a concert...)

Student: Oh my God! Was she still ALIVE?!

DoN Regulates Holidays

Last night, it happened. I saw It. Brazen, bold, unconscionable, it flashed on my television screen as if the date weren't only October 18th. As if it weren't just, as Keats so aptly described it, the "season of mists and mellow fruitfulness": still the time for pumpkins and little boo-ghosts who had yet to make way for turkey, cranberries, cornucopias and Pilgrims. Good heavens! My porch furniture is still out! My neighbors are still gathering ripe tomatoes!

"It" was the first Christmas commercial.

And the perpetrator of this crassness? Carnival Cruise Lines, hawking gift certificates for the holidays. The ad showed people in stocking hats and winter coats skipping around in a fluffy snow scene carrying miniature cruise ships bedecked in red velvet ribbons. Tastefully blurred in the background were lit evergreen trees adding a hint of Christmassy ambience. I sat on the couch, horrified and speechless. To be honest, I don't even recall if there were music, although I'm sure there must have been and that it must have been somewhat jingly.

This is madness, and it must be stopped. When I am in charge, no Christmas decorations or ads will be permitted to show themselves until the day after Thanksgiving. All holidays will wait their turn, get center stage, then be done and over.

And can someone tell me when Halloween got to be such a bigass holiday? Or why? Because that's next. Halloween, you're way overinflated as a holiday. ONE DAY, that's it. And kids only.
And do NOT get me started on yard decorations.

Every Mom's List

Things That Aren't Fair

1. Life

It's a Perception Thing

On Thursday I decided to take a break from the intense drama of The Crucible and also take advantage of our shortened work week by putting the kids in teams and playing Trivia Challenge for extra credit points. I didn't tell them what the plan was at first...

Me: Okay, everyone. We've been working hard all quarter, and I've decided we've earned
a break. Let's do something fun!

(odd pause. silence in room. students look confused, trade glances.)

Me: What gives? (I knock on lectern for comic effect.) Hello, is this thing on?

Brave Student: Well, it's just that we don't really know what your idea of "fun" is. For all we
know, you might be having us write an essay or something.

Me: (disappointed sigh.) Oh. I see.

Brave Student: But I really love your belt. It's sooo cute! Where did you get it?

DoN Says Time for a Chuckle

Some stuff just always makes me laugh:

1. Wiener dogs. Especially if they're running. I love to watch a wiener dog take a corner at top
speed. Hell, even thinking about wiener dogs cracks me up.

2. The fact that my mother does not know the correct lyrics to any songs. She denies this, and
then I have to prove to her that she doesn't even know "Happy Birthday". She gets
frustrated, tries to sing it, then totally screws it up.

3. Any episode of Seinfeld. But the one with the old set of the Merv Griffin Show is really, really
funny.

4. Kids who jump off their bikes because they don't know how else to stop.

5. Dogs chasing their tails for a long time.

6. This joke: A blind guy goes into KMart with his guide dog. Suddenly, he starts swinging
the dog on its leash in a huge circle, high above his head. A clerk rushes over to him. "Sir!"
the clerk says in a panic, "may I please help you?" "No," the blind guy says. "I'm just
looking around."

7. Hearing really elderly people cuss.

Sigh. It's a Burden...

Student--(after my explanation of the science behind John Proctor's cruel comment to his wife "Oh Elizabeth, your justice could freeze beer" in The Crucible)

"Geez, Mrs. D., English teachers know everything."

Yes. Yes, we do.

This-n-That

Not that it will affect many, but I had to add comment verification to my blog to stop the random comment spam generators that stopped by with alarming regularity. Sorry if it inconveniences you in any way, truly.

Secondly, I am really trying to post more often. I am. It's been a tough time.

Finally (and this will explain my lax posting), if there is anyone out there who has experience with a condition known as adhesive capsulitis (aka "frozen shoulder") please tell me. The shoulder malady that I have been struggling mightily with for the past several months is not a torn rotator cuff as thought previously, but this adhesive capsulitis. It's a chronic, horrible condition of mysterious origin that has me wacked out on oxycontin and in the grip of the worst pain of my life. Worse news: it takes, on the average, two years to run its course and leaves its sufferer with compromised mobility.

I'll take any helpful hints, miracle cures, and testimonials from partners in this test of endurance.

And that's the last you'll hear from me on this subject.

DoN Wants YOU

Everyone hates whiny English teachers who bitch about poor spellers and random apostrophe usage; I do both. I whine and hate the whiners amongst us. But I am enlisting DoN readers out there to help me, right this minute, with the following infractions that I just don't think I can stand any longer. Divide yourselves into teams if you must.

1. The saying is "intents and purposes" NOT "intensive purposes", as in "George Bush is, for all intents and purposes, a murderer."

2. The word is "sophomore" NOT "southmore" which is not a word.

3. The word is "pedestal" NOT "peddlestool", as in "For some inane reason, George Bush has put Karl Rove up on a pedestal of virtue and will not see his blame in the Plame case."

4. The word is "regardless" NOT "irregardless" which is not a word and is only mentioned in a modern dictionary or dictionary.com because it has lapsed into incorrect and nonstandard usage, as in "George Bush has nominated another of his buddies for an important office in government, regardless of the fact that she has absolutely no experience or qualifications."

5. The saying is "I couldn't care less" NOT "I could care less" which would mean that you could, in fact, care even a little bit less than you do now, which would then be in no way an insult.
DUH. The correct usage would be "I couldn't care less that George Bush and his wife are having marital problems; she is an idiot for marrying into that family in the first place."

Help me, DoN readers! Start small; resort to small weapons only as need dictates, and even then, rubber band snapping only.

That Half-Empty Glass

We got behind the school bus taking elementary kids to St. Mary's again the other morning. The cute little boy, hardly bigger than his backpack, came scurrying off the bus at top speed and went scooting into the school in about 2 seconds, skipping lightly. My son, a senior at my high school this year, and I grinned at each other.

"Look at that little guy," I said fondly. "He's so excited. He is so happy to go to school and see his teacher and all his little friends in his classroom!"
"Or," said my more laconic and less Pollyana-ish son, "he's just glad to get the hell off that bus."

Apologies and Explanations

Sorry for the long gaps between blog postings. The rotator cuff malady I mentioned in earlier posts is more severe than I thought; seems there is a nasty tear. The pain is getting progressively worse, and now that I'm back to work, managing it is more of an issue. I'm on stronger meds, facing more fatigue, and trying like hell to work through it all before I can even see a surgeon to find out what I'm facing in that department.

Which is to say, the blog is not always making onto the list of things I can get accomplished.

I'm trying. Thanks to those of you who keep checking in. I refuse to write about boring and depressing personal health issues, so until I can get past them, we're all better off. Believe me.

Hope to be back with something fun real soon.