Miscellany

Okay, so I had my doctor's appointment, and after about a 5 second questioning, it turns out I have shut-the-hell-up-you're-a-whiner disease. No, what he actually said was "fibromyalgia," but they're pretty much synonymous. Anyway, I have to call and see how the lab work came out (they're ruling out lupus and about 4 other things), but if it's "fibromyalgia," I will just ask for a foot X-ray and drop the whole matter. Fybromyalgia . . . I swear to god.

Piggs is all moved in. His office looks great. Clothes whore that I am, I still managed to make some room for his clothes (not nearly enough, but some). There is still some detritus around to deal with, but he and I are basically tidy folks, so I believe it won't last long. I get the impression that he's more anti-clutter whereas I am more anti-dirt, so we may just complement each other cleaning-wise.

SBC sucks. Piggs called long before the move-in date and asked whether his DSL could be moved to my number. Nope, I had to cancel. Which I did, effective the 28th. Then he transferred his service (complete with new phone #) to our place effective the 29th. That day, we moved all the stuff, then put most of it away, then he started fiddling with the DSL hardware. Well, it didn't work, and they said on the phone that the customer service person he'd talked to previously was on crack rock, and they wouldn't be able to get it done until Tuesday. Needless to say, Piggs is cranky about it. Sample exchange of 30 seconds ago: "What are you doing over there type-head?" "Blogging." "GRRRRRR."
I've still got the ol' dial-up, which he is WELCOME to use, but he has decided to be cranky about it instead. I just sent out an e-mail saying I'd changed my phone number, but I might just change my e-mail as well, because I don't really need to keep the dial-up if I can use the DSL. I'll think about it.

I made yummy sugar cookies in holiday-themed shapes and gave them to neighborhood kids and took them to a party. I decided not to keep any here, because I have such a sweet tooth that I would eat them ALL.

Let's see, what else. I have to go back to work tomorrow, and I have a TON of grading to catch up on by Friday, when grades are due. I'm not looking forward to it, and even worse is that I have a workshop tomorrow after school. Hmph.

I was Twiggy for Halloween -- houndstooth mini, very mod boots, batwing sweater, toggle coat, and I pretty much already have the haircut. I did the big false eyelashes, too. I think if you knew who she was, you'd get it, but how many people would? Oh well, I amused myself.

I finished "America: The Book." Very funny, not only in what it had to say, but in the way it mocks history textbooks. Some very astute and pointed shit in there, as well as some very silly. My favorite quote was about how all the senators were Republicans or Democrats, then it notes that yes, there might be some Green party senator from Oregon, but Hippie Q McFreakington probably wasn't going to get much outside the greater Eugene area. Hee.

Okay, I really should go do something else now. Take care, all.

Gee,

. . . you must have missed my mindless ramblings over the last few days! I've been busy with house stuff. With my mom's help, I painted the trim and ceilings in the two bedrooms in my house that I don't sleep in. My home projects are a lot like having the 3 stooges in the house all the time. Just ONE example of many is the heating vent. It needed cleaning, so I took it down. I couldn't clean it with regular products, so I used oven cleaner (it's metal, right?). It cleaned it, but also took some paint off. So I decided to spraypaint it. I spread newspapers outside and sprayed it with Rust-oleum. It looked great. Then I went inside while it dried. I went back out later, and because of the breeze, all the newspapers had blown up against the fresh paint and stuck to it. So I scraped all the newspaper off, sprayed it again, quickly removed all the newspaper and brought it inside. Except some newspaper was stuck to my feet, so I came inside with newspapers and leaves floating around and under me like Pigpen in Peanuts. I was like the spraypainted newspaper monster. That's pretty much how everything goes with me. You should have seen me with the caulking gun. Ridiculous. But it's mostly done now.

I just made the best oatmeal chocolate chip cookies ever. They're my uncle Allan's recipe. I totally forgot how much they kicked the ass of the Quaker Choc-Oat-Chip cookies. It's a KO.

Gotta go to ballet. See y'all.
Oh, just in case the news didn't make it out of Cah-lee-for-nee-ya, the latest symptom of the Governator's foot-in-mouth disease was last week's quote "The Indians are ripping us off."

Formula

Let O = Outside temperature.
Let B = Temperature in my bed.
Let M = number of minutes I stay in bed past the first alarm.

B-O=M

I am a snooze button abuser.

I'm afriad it's hypochondria -- a severe case.

Okay, I'm going to air my neuroses here -- lately I have noticed a bunch of things going wrong with my body, and I sort of put them all together and realized they were all joint related. So I finally gave in and looked online for some possible reasons. I assumed it might have something to do with my vegetarian diet, and that maybe I was B12 deficient, since although I'm not vegan, my dairy intake is pretty low. But B12 deficiency seems to manifest itself in anemia, which I don't have. In fact, every web site I looked up joint pain and stiffness on came up with arthritis. (Well, except the lupus one, but I don't have any of the other symptoms of lupus at all.) Yep, and my joint pain fits the symptoms of osteoarthritis better than rheumatoid arthritis, even though OA tends to develop in older people. I've got pain and stiffness, but not swelling, redness, or elevated temperature. Like I said, I think it's just hypochondria, but here's the list of symptoms:

Stiffness, crunchiness and pain in both shoulders, but particularly the right one.

Occasional temporary "locking" of the hips.

Pain, usually sudden and brief, in the knees, as well as locking, popping, and some crunchiness.

Loss of flexibilty in the right ankle (it does not bend nearly as far as my left).

Some pain, crunchiness, and stiffness in both ankles, including occasional severe pain that feels like a sprain, but goes away quickly with rest and icing.

Stiffness and pain in both big toe joints, much more so when weight bearing (i.e., when walking it's "Ow. Ow. Ow," as opposed to all the time "Oooowwwwwww."

Something odd has happened to my right hand twice lately -- when Piggs was grabbing it to lift me up, the bone on the pinky side of my hand suddenly made a popping feeling, accompanied by extreme but short lived pain.

(This last one is the worst, but it might be tendons, not joints.) My right foot has two bones in it (seemingly attatched to the 3rd and 4th toes) that have been painful off and on since about February. It feels like they are rubbing against one another, or have something going on between them, and it is noticably exacerbated by a lot of walking or other use (dance class). These become extremely irritated, to the point that I walk with a limp and can't wear shoes other than very comfortable flats. Rest also improves this condition, and sometimes it will go away and not bother me for days at a time, but when it comes back it's always in the exact same spot -- I suppose this one might be a metatarsal stress fracture.

Am I making too much of this? Should I call my health care provider just to check? I started taking B12/Folic Acid/B6 vitamins, but is there anything else my loyal readers (about two friends and my mom) would suggest? Humor me.

Curses!

Well, I only got mildly lost getting out of the air force base. I turned left at the left turn only sign exiting the parking lot, onto a one-way street with no turnoffs for about a quarter mile, going exactly the wrong direction. What really should be the embarassing part here is that I actually used to work on that base -- grading standardized tests as a temp job (so did monkeygirl, just later on) -- and worse yet, an ex-bf also used to work there, and I picked him up or dropped him off on several occasions.

It wasn't the worst workshop ever. I did find out that the technology we're using can do exactly what I want -- YAY. As soon as I can coerce, cajole, and nag the computer guy into installing the new version, so maybe in another 5 years or so (for the record, that's how long it has taken to get him to get another program working for me).

I think that's it. I need to clean.

Oh, um, quick survey. Do you think an all-girl punk rock pajama party with pillowfights would be an entertaining show, one that you might like to attend? Just out of curiosity, nothing in the works yet . . .

Frustration!

Okay, I'm at a workshop for school, and the e-mailed confirmation had a link to mapquest. I've been out to this area before, but it's an old Air Force base, and the roads throughout are curvy, the names change frequently, they turn one-way without notice, and it's generally difficult to navigate. So when Mapquest said it would take 16 minutes, I left half an hour early. Still, Mapquest had not accounted for the GIGANTIC friggin' accident on one of the only big streets out of my neighborhood. And naturally, the thinking-outside-the-box creatice geniuses in the turn lane in front of me decided to just wait it out rather than flipping a bitch. So I was already running late when I actually hit the AFB, and then I kept looking for streets that didn't exist, or running across streets that were supposed to be two or more turns later. Finally (after turning completely arond in the middle of the street about 3 times) I saw a big sign on a shiny building that said SCOE (Sac county office of education) and I figured that was it. I get really uptight when I'm late (if you know me, you'll understand) so I was freaking out when I walked in at 4:02, but as of 4:11, they just now finished taking attendance. Now they're starting. --CM out.

Wrap-up

So, I pretty much covered Palm Springs, but there was one last page of notes yelling at me to include them. At Ruby's, the 50s diner, we saw billowing clouds of smoke flowing out of the upstairs window of the steak & martini joint, so much so that it looked like they had one of those misters . . . (To any Portlandians reading -- here in hot climes many storefronts are equipped in the summer with hoses that emit a very fine mist to help combat the heat.) All along the sidewalks are stars like in Hollywood, but not all of them are famous people -- some are, like Sophia Loren and Bob Hope, but others are just the normally anonymous backstage guys. I liked that. There was a guy selling his book, Sunkissed: Bathing Beauties something or other . . . I didn't go up to look at the book because I don't like to have to talk to authors. I think it's leftover from the sad booksignings we always had at one of my retail jobs. But he looked suave, all in 50s gear.

I was a little troubled by the Cahuilla maiden statue -- am I the only one who thinks that Native American women probably did not all look like bare-breasted nubile white chicks in Injun drag?

I liked waking to the church bells that had the same ring as my childhood doorbell.

I started having major Holden Caulfield moments, feeling like the place was full of phonies. Rich, gay, foreign, or a conventioneer . . . that was the entire population, minus the wait staff at restaurants and the maids in the hotel. I wonder what home they go to at night. Not that being rich, gay, foreign or a conventioneer makes you phony -- it was more like the whole place had that air, so you couldn't help but get caught up in it.

I mentioned that one of our presenters yesterday looked like Christopher Walken and Spalding Gray, but the third person to mix in there to get a really clear picture would be Andy Warhol. And picture this guy slapping his hand to his forehead to puch his hair out of his face. While we were in our last workshop, you could tell it was shutting down, because some guys came and picked up the fake ficus and loaded onto a cart.

Oh, one more thing -- I haven't looked up this Johnny Lang character who gave the concert on Friday night, but I was noticing that his stuff sounded really old time rock 'n' roll . . . Kinda Bob Seger, kinda Lynyrd Skynyrd, kinda Creedence . . HEY WAIT! I thought. This guy is country! I realized that the old style of rock has so faded from our collective consciousness that if you hear it today, it's probably another genre altogether. Odd.

Hey, SD, I bought three albums lately and have read a shitload of books, so I promise to get over to ZZZ right quick. I've just been busy.

Painted the Piggs Office. The color is "Spring has Sprung" and he picked it (but I'm happy, 'cause I was gunning for green). This weekend Mama Mockula and I are doing trim and ceilings in Piggs' and Mockula's respective offices. Offici. It's strange to refer to oneself in the 2nd person possesive case when using one's online-only nickname. Okay, I could blather about nothing all night, but I'm in the middle of a good book, so I gotta run. Take care all,
CM

Palm Springs Land

Hi y'all! I'm just back from Palm Springs, where it was 98 degrees on Wednesday. It's overcast, rainy, and rather cold here at home. I went to a conference on dropout prevention. It was a good one -- I heard two great keynote speakers and went to several good workshops. For your amusement, I will probably only make fun of the bad ones instead of talking much about the good ones. We flew in on a prop plane on Wednesday and immediately went for lunch in the restaurant that our hotel, the Spa Casino Resort (talk about a no-frills descriptive name) housed. It was okay, nothing spectacular. I learned that our allowance for meals was $5 for breakfast, $9 for lunch, and $16 for dinner. Here at home, no problem, but in Palm Springs it proved challenging. We then walk to the convention center to register and get our tote bags (I am the queen of free tote bags), and it's not a long walk, maybe 10 minutes, but it's HOT out. Still, we beat the rush and now have the whole afternoon and evening free with no workshops scheduled! We all go back to the hotel and the guidance counselor and I change into bathing suits, and we all go sit by the pool and have beer, margaritas (mmm) or virgin daquiris (for the lightweight). I hang out in the spa mainly and read My Year of Meats (great book by the way). After a while I go shower and change for dinner, and we start walking downtown. We choose just about the first place we see, the Kaiser Grille, and bop in. It takes us a while to get service, but that's okay because it's taking almost everyone else a long time to decide (one of the beauties of being vegetarian is that I rarely have to decide between more than a couple things). Finally we all order and get our food, and the waitress tells us we can't have separate checks, but that she can just split the bill evenly 5 ways. Yeah, but I ordered the $10 pizza, and everyone else was getting booze and a $20 special! I decided to run across the street to the ATM so I could opt out of this whole equality thing (I'm not cheap, just poor). I also think it might be smart to have change, so I break the 20 by getting a drink, a kahlua and soda, which in most places would probably be in the $4 range. Nope . . . in beautiful Palm Springs an ounce of Kahlua costs you $7.50. Okay, well, at least I'm getting the hang of the place now. Incidentally, there was a guy sitting at the large open windows on the side of the restaurant, smoking a cigarette and exhaling massive lungsful of smoky air straight into the restaurant. I couldn't figure out exactly how this failed to violate the "no smoking in restaurants law" California has, but it was only the first of many occasions I noticed something like this. After dinner we walked to the casino that is across the street from our hotel (and part of the hotel), but were stopped at the door because the math teacher couldn't bring her leftover box. It was really smoky in there, so in the like 15 seconds it took for us to figure out we weren't getting in with the box, I announced "I'll walk you back to the hotel!" She agreed, and we walked out, both gasping for air (she's asthmatic and sensitive to smoke, too). We spent a quiet night reading and watching the presidential debate, and I didn't even miss the opportunity to gamble.

Thursday -- we slept in, I read the LA Times, and then it was conference time. They gave us bag lunches and we heard an inspiring keynote speaker. Actually, she made me cry. I told you I wouldn't talk much about the good ones, but a highlight was when she played the theme song from "Cheers" and made us all sing along. (Her point was that every child should feel that way about school -- that it's a place where everybody knows your name, and they're always glad you came.) The same speaker was the one in my first workshop, so I lucked out. Then I went to another one -- a good one, actually, but the speaker had a lishp. "Shtudentsh need reshilienshy." It sounded like the "Pork chopsh and appleshaush" episode of the Brady Bunch. After the workshops we all walked downtown together. We stopped in a great many shops, most of them selling postcards, t-shirts, and tacky desert souveneirs, like scorpions encased in plastic. I'm okay with going into ONE shop like that, but by the third one or so I'm ready to hang myself, so I keep running out to check the London Underground or the skate shop or cool stationery place. I actually found some really cool stuff in the stationery place -- cards and calendars . . . Plus, the salesguy looked like John Cusack. There was a market thing going on much like one we used to have in Sac called Thursday night market. There were produce stands, but also flavored coffee, hot food carts, chair massage stands, handmade soap sellers, artists . . . It was cool. We walked south through the market to the end, and settled on a Mexican place there called Del Rio. It was crowded and noisy and I'm not certain it was all that clean. I ordered a margarita, thinking I would get the regular size, but if you don't specify they bring it to you in a bucket. After drinking that whole thing, I honestly couldn't tell you whether my burrito was any good or not. The counselor, VP and admin asst. went back to the casino and the math teacher and I stayed in again.

Friday morning -- we had to be at the conference center earlier, but I had slept poorly so I jumped out of bed and walked downtown. I read my LA Times again and got a continental breakfast which, though tasty, was marred somewhat by the acrid cigar smoke assaulting my nostrils the whole time. My first workshop was a real dud. Basically it took the guy (who looked like Christopher Walken and Spalding Gray) an hour to tell us that if we feel stressed out, we should take deep breaths. The second workshop was much better, and the guy gave us plenty of practical applications for his ideas, as well as keeping us entertained and involved. We had another box lunch and another awesome keynote speaker. My workshop after lunch happened to be the same guy as before lunch, so I was happy. Then I went and changed into cooler clothes. We had been experiencing a lot of togetherness, and I'm by nature a bit of a loner, so I went out exploring by myself. It was nice to be able to walk at my own (much faster) pace. I walked all the way up Palm Canyon drive out of the downtown area and well into uptown. I turned and walked down another street on the way back once I started hitting residential areas. It wasn't until this day that I really started to get a feel for the town. I had noticed a lot of Spanish-style architecture, and I assumed that, like many small historic towns, those newer constructions had been modelled to look like the oldest buildings in town. But the more I walked, the more I realized that the Spanish-looking places were ALL new. In fact, the oldest places in town were in the 50s modern style, and had probably been built like that in the 50s! There is this big "check out our Cahuilla indian stuff" motif around town, but there are no historic structures or anything. It's got the same feel as a castle at Disneyland -- it's ALL new, it's just made to look old, like it's "Disney's Magical SpanishVillaLand." After this all dawned on me, I started to get a creepy feeling about the place. Not that I hated it, just that it felt really phony, kind of like South Lake Tahoe did with all its Alpine Ski Lodge-style Carl's Juniors. I stopped in at the Welwood Murray Memorial Library, and I haven't been in a library that musty and forsaken in a long time. While I walked, I considered heading for the hills and hiking in the mountains a bit, but I only had sandals on, my right foot (which I think is injured) was starting to throb, and I wanted to get back at a reasonable hour for dinner, so I skipped it. Also, every time I'd think "maybe I'll turn here and wander alone into the wilderness," some skeezoid would walk up behind me.

There were things I liked about the town, too. I mean, even if the Spanish thing was a fiction, they did a pretty good job of sticking with it, and had some pretty tiled fountains, a gorgeous Moorish looking feature on the hospital, and a building that looked like the old Alhambra theatre in Sac. Also, where they landscaped with native plants it was very exotic and appealing to me -- there was salmon-colored bouganvillia, sea hibiscus, frangipani (or "frangy pangy," see my Virgin Gorda entries) lantana, oleander, succulents . . . And there was a lot of public art, even if some of it was funky (the larger-than-life Sonny Bono leaps to mind). By Friday I wished I'd struck out on my own more -- I passed Persian restaurants, sushi, several Thai places . . . I definitely would have eaten better if I wasn't with a bunch of picky eaters. I swear, for a vegetarian I am almost the least picky eater I know. On the other hand, I did opt out of that night's popular choice -- the overpriced seafood buffet in the smoky casino. No thanks, dude. Math teacher and I ate at a 50's style burger joint instead, and I had a Gardenburger patty melt with "fit fries" and a root beer float. Mmmm. On the walk back to the hotel, we heard the strains (and "strain" may be the right word here) of "Sweet Home Alabama" as performed karaoke style by a patron of Peabody's. Math teacher and I stayed a minute, listening to another guy sing Bob Seger's "Still the Same," then some country song I didn't know but she did. We both sat down, ordered a Sprite, and I grabbed the binder of available songs. I settled on "Me and Bobby McGee," but the DJ didn't have it. He had "House of the Rising Sun," though, and I nailed it, if I do say so myself. I got a round of wild applause which followed us out into the night . . .
I spent more time in the spa that night, and listened to the outdoor concert going on just outside the pool area, and read "Gangsta Rap," (shut up, I have to preview young adult books before I recommend them to the kids, and they have to be books my kids might actually WANT to read).

Since we took off the next morning after a Jamba Juice, early morning walk, and LA Times gorge (on my part only), and one last conference (boring -- one hour on "kids need to be motivated"), there's not much more to tell. Palm Springs is surrounded on three sides by sandblasted mountains that always look a little hazy and purply, like watercolors in the distance.

Maybe a little more tomorrow. --K

Palm Springs, here I come!

Whoo hoo! I'm going to a conference in Palm Springs. And having been to this conference before, I know that not only are there a bunch of interesting workshops to attend, there's a lot of free time. I have never been to Palm Springs before, so I'm going to treat it like a mini-vacation, check out some restaurants, some shopping, and maybe a spa!

I was so incredibly organized for the sub -- I left attendance, seating charts, referrals, a list of names to watch out for, extra work in case he needs it, a clean desk, pens, pencils, a clipboard, projects for my TA . . . oh, it was beautiful. I even left assignments that are generally of the high buy-in quiet kind, rather than disorganized group work or art or something that requires a lot of materials. But, naturally, having finished all this, I left my purse in my classroom. I'll be on my way back shortly (they set the alarms and lock the gates at 5).

I'm so excited about getting all this house stuff done -- Dad came and picked up a desk I wanted to get rid of, and soon I'm going to paint the room it was in (before Piggs moves in). He chose the color "Spring has Sprung." I like it too. I also am replacing moulding -- this is a new project for me, so I'm kind of excited. I would never be featured on one of those reality home makeover shows, though, because every ten seconds they'd have to put up a new "Don't try this at home!" warning. "Warning: Do not search for rusty nails in the carpet in your bare feet!" "Danger: Do not attempt to jump off a step-stool while holding on the the moulding with a pair of pliers." I haven't gotten hurt, so I'm considering it all a success so far.

I have a lot left to do tonight -- packing enough reading materials to satiate me on a trip is really rather a challenge (not that I read a thousand books a week, as some have claimed, but I do tend to devour them when I have free time.) I also want to go to two ballet classes tonight so I only accrue one make-up session while I'm gone instead of two. I also have to put some clean laundry away, do the dishes (about ten glasses -- I drink so much water at home), and pack cosmetics and the old iPod. I was thinking of putting my new Spanish language CDs onto the iPod, but was a little worried that on the plane I might forget to be quiet and find myself saying, very slowly and with excellent enunciation "DONDE HAY L'ESTACION DE TREN?"

Okay, all for now. Take care everybody!
Mockula

The Entertainer

They have been playing "The Entertainer" non-stop in the band room next door since 7:50. It is now 12:45. Oh, no, I'm sorry, there was a brief "Dreidel Dreidel Dreidel" interlude. And people wonder why there are school shootings . . .

Idiots Rule (thanks Perry Farrell)

Okay, listen, I don't judge people on their spelling. First of all, I am merely a good speller, not a great one. Second, I know a lot of intelligent, wise, interesting, cultured people who can't spell for beans. Many of them have other qualities that I envy, like artistic ability, math skills, or spatial ability. I occasionally still get a laugh out of the multiple-meanings blunder, like a friend (one of those intelligent, wise ones) who recently wrote about his "bowel haircut." I'm sorry, that's just funny. But when in the newspaper I see that someone's interest was "peeked," I just get on with my life (it happens all the time). Spelling just isn't a measure of intelligence or character (that said, though, the diligent determination to look shit up when you know you're a bad speller gains the utmost respect from me).

So when I first read the article about Maria Alquilar, who designed a big piece of art to be installed in front of the new Livermore library, I just thought, "okay, so she can't spell, whatever." Here's the article.

She apparently misspelled 11 names in the artwork, including those of Albert Einstein and Michelangelo. Now, due to the receipt of several pieces of "vile hate mail," she has decided to leave the artwork as is, and not fix the names. Well, I guess that's her perogative, but listen to some of the stupid-ass shit she's been saying: "There seems to be so much hatred within certain people. They continuously look for a scapegoat. I guess I am the sacrificial goat." The definition of scapegoat is as follows: "someone punished for the errors of others." Um, wait. She's saying she's not the one who made the errors?

She apperently also "noted that plenty of people from the city were on hand during the installation who could and should have seen the errant spellings." Uh huh, so the people who didn't catch your mistakes are responsible for your mistakes?
"Even though I was on my hands and knees laying the installation out, I didn't see it." Okay, but what about all the times when you were designing it, creating it, painting it, transporting it . . . ?

This is my second favorite: "The mistakes wouldn't register with a true artisan, Alquilar said." (---Sac Bee)
"The people that are into humanities, and are into Blake's concept of enlightenment, they are not looking at the words." Hee hee. I guess I'm too unenlightened to fail to notice the big "Eistein."

Here's my very favorite, though, direct from the Bee. "When asked whether she chose the words and names for the work or whether the city provided her with a list, Alquilar said 'The art chose the words.'" Translation, "I didn't have any goddamn list to blame it on, okay? I came up with it, I jacked it up, my bad, I can't spell and I'm too lazy to look shit up."

Incidentally, she initially agreed to fix it -- for $6,000 plus travel expenses.
Sheesh.

Quickie

I was a painting fool last night. I painted the bedroom wall "Almond Sugar." It rules. It looks so much better than the shiny pearlescent paint I had on there before. Then I was on a roll, so I did my office, too, a light sort of chambray-like blue. It looks great. Even after I was done, I kept walking by both rooms and peeking in. Yay me!

Blud Fyood, My Demographic, PTSD and the 8th grade . . .

Last night on the way home from Ross (my first venture there in years and a massive disappointment) Piggs and I noticed a folded piece of binder paper taped to the door of an apartment in his complex. I'd actually noticed it on the way out, too, and my curiosity was piqued. I sidled up to the door and read this message "We are your nabers but we dont like you. We are mad and we want you out. LOL bitch."
A: 8th graders in Miss Mockula's class are poor spellers.
B: The writers of this note are bad spellers.
C: Therefore the writers of this note are 8th graders in Miss Mockula's class.
I know it doesn't work, but it's funny. They must be having a blud fyood. Someone must have enstugated something. There must have been a terrible uffense cummited. Perhaps Jim Nabors was involved. I think Piggs was a little hopeful there would be a similar note on his door, but alas, no one is enfyooreated at him.

In the last week or so, one of the three radio stations I listen to regularly started playing these listener tesimonial things. They all go kind of like this: "My name is Mike/Tim/Kurt and I'm a mechanic/trucker/machinist. In my spare time I like to mountain bike/shoot guns/kickbox. I love Korn/Limp Bizkit/Metallica."
Okay, I thought, good for them, but my name is Miss Mockula, I'm a junior high school English and drama teacher, and I like to write poetry and practice ballet and I love Nirvana, Black Sabbath, and AC/DC. Why don't I call in and give them a testimonial that celebrates the diversity of their listeners? I call in, and the DJ, after letting me know that it's a PR guy that creates those things, tells me in no uncertain terms that they do not give a crap about diversity, they don't reach out to my demographic, their demographic is 18-45 year old males, those are the listeners they court, and it's all about advertising dollars. If chicks listen, great, but basically it is a man station, for men. Well, okay. Actually, I appreciated his honesty and told him so, then requested Metallica's "Creeping Death" and hung up feeling fairly satisfied. Really, I'd rather someone just be honest with me than hand me some horseshit and brush me off. So I turn on the radio (you have to have it off when you call, of course), and hear, no shit, a commercial for the new Gilmore Girls, then one for One Tree Hill, a planned community commercial that emphasizes the pool and fitness center, a decidedly sports-themed bank ad, then a spot for Sex and the City on TBS. Then the DJ played Enter Sandman. Did I get fucked with, or what?

I try not to go on what an old professor called "birdwalks." Basically, students' entire lives are wrapped around trying to get you off topic and avoiding work by getting you to talk about, oh, say, drivers in Canada (if I may use the example of my 11th grade biology teacher's favorite birdwalk subject). But every once in a while, they trick me into it by pushing my buttons, and every once in a while I consciously agree to it. Today was the latter. We were reading a selection about the Vietnam Veterans' memorial in D.C. and the kids had a lot of questions about veterans. It kind of got started off when Tony asked why you see homeless people with signs that say they're vets. "I thought if you joined the military you were like, set for life? How come you would need to beg for change if you'd been in the military?' Well, it was a frickin' good question, and I decided to address it, rather than going "Now Tony, let's not get off topic." We talked about mental illness, the VA, Veterans' benefits, PTSD, and whether giving change to the homeless was really helpful or if there were better ways to help. Some students also shared stories of their family members who have been or are currently in the military. One girl asked why her cousin couldn't come home, when his tour of duty in Iraq was supposed to be over. Another student asked what the draft was. Today was one of those days when I answered their questions as honestly and objectively as I could manage, and didn't pretend to be an expert on anything. Students who shared stories that didn't really need an answer, I just thanked them for sharing. I hope I also got some sensitivity towards the homeless and mentally ill in there. They were definitely not just trying to get out of work today, though. They all seemed really engaged, and wanted to talk or listen. Even though we didn't exactly get any further in the "talking walls" unit, I think I made a good call today.

I guess that's it for now. I rented Charly for the kids (they just finished reading "Flowers for Algernon" and Charly is the movie based on it) and made some crack to the clerk about watching a movie about retards and dead mice being a great way to spend a Tuesday evening. He hadn't seen the film. Ooookaayyy. Now I feel dumb.
Mockula out.

Freakin' DMV

Okay, so I have this van that's an old piece of shit, but very useful fo rhauling band equipment around. A year after we buy it, registration is due. It fails smog. Since at the time, we have no money and our friend who is a mechanic and agreed to look at it is busy, so in order to avoid being too late in registering it, I register it as "Planned non-operational." Then I leave the goddamn thing in the driveway and don't operate it. Now, the mechanic friend is back in town and ready to work on it, but I can't drive it to his place of business, so I'm having it towed (wouldn't want to operate it, right?). I start looking online to see what I need to do to re-register it as operational, and if I can just drive it to the smog test joint just this one eensy weensy time so I can get it smogged. Now, passing the smog test is required to register a vehicle. But as I'm looking around online, it says you can't even have a vehicle TOWED while it's planned non-operational. So to get it registered again, I have to pass smog. But to get the van to the smog test station, I have to have it registered! Despite being aggravated, I'm almost happy, because it's so rare that I stumble onto an actual Catch-22. What I'm going to do is just pretend I didn't know you couldn't have it towed, and tow the damn thing all over creation, because I don't really see a better option, besides letting it decompose in my driveway. Harumph.

There's a new special ed teacher at school, and she fits neatly into my theory about special ed teachers -- that they are in fact, a little bit special themselves. Not dumb, necessarily, but socially awkward or eccentric. She sits too close, talks too much, and while I'm trying to read, announces shit to me that I have no interest in. "I have to go to Staples later. I need a few things." "Mmm," I reply. Why did that thought travel out of your head through your mouth? And why was it addressed to me? Did I look like I cared?

Incidentally, I saw Silver City yesterday, and it was excellent. To be quite honest, John Sayles (the director) can really do no wrong in my eyes, but this really was a great movie that I'd recommend to anyone. There's a real focus on big business' stranglehold on politics and the media, and Chris Cooper does an excellent stuttering, stumbling, sound-biting Bush impersonation as Dick Pilager. Go see it.