Werk...

I go every day and bleed out from every pore. I teach. My chosen vocation is directly connected to the future of the world. My colleagues are professionals, as hard working and dedicated as you would find in any professional environment. We truely enjoy the hands-on portion of our career and the impact we have on the world. Really, if you think about it, no other carrer would exist without teachers.

Now, however, we are embattled in a contract dispute, that starts with money and goes from there. I don't feel that I'm violating the spirit of contract negotiations by mentioning it here; if you've read before, you see this is a sounding board for things that tick me off. Lately, though, district e-mail has become everyone's sounding board. I spend no instructional time reading through peoples' rants, but I do see that my colleagues are all feeling the pinch that our current economy, coupled with our current incomes, has placed us in.

In a recent e-mail, broadcast to all users, a young lady by the name of Shawnyell Tumbling wrote the following open letter (in triplet form) to those who could ease our plight, but to date have not. It struck a chord with me and so I'm including it here:
Do you know me?
I have to know you.
From Marta to Solomon to Rudy F. Crew.

It’s a two way street,
Upon which we won’t meet,
Because you’re quite content with me under your feet.

I come and I serve,
With commitment and verve,
A profession, left dying, that I’m trying to preserve.

Do you know me?
Are you aware of my plight?
Do you think of my family as you slumber at night?

Do you know how it feels,
When you can’t pay your bills,
And you have to depend on your parents for meals?

When the car note is due,
And you haven’t a clue,
How to pay it, the insurance, and FPL, too.

Do you know me?
Are your worries like mine?
Do you feel like you’ve come to the end of your line?

When the boss doesn’t care,
Isn’t even aware,
That the job that you chose brings you pain and despair.

My Master’s Degree,
Means nothing to me,
If, with it, I still live in poverty.

Do you know me?
Can you even relate,
To the fact that I can’t afford to live in this state?

The houses are 350,000
And you deny me,
A cost of living increase?

No, you don’t know me,
It’s an obvious truth,
With you on my side,
My enemies are few.
You say you’re behind us,
But you do what you do,
I have never known supporters,
Who support like you do!

re-posted with permission

Songs and shiznit

Baby Tiger bought me my first piece of Apple hardware for Christmas last year, and I've since completely rethought my whole "friends should not let friends compute with fruit" stance, going so far as to get an iMac. In Weasle terms, I'm digging the techno, bra.

Now, as is a must for anyone with more than 10 posts, I feel the oblilgatory iPod playlist coming on, in no particular order:

1) Revolution - The Beatles
(must have... or not)
2) Little Boxes - Malvina Reynolds
(the most perfect railing against suburbinzation ever, I'm glad they picked it as the theme song for Weeds.)
3) One Tin Soldier - Me First and the Gimme Gimmes
(take a good song, play it with overdrive guitar at 160BPM and scream the lyrics. How can you miss?)
4) Overkill - Laslo Bane featuring Colin Hay
5) History is Made by Stupid People - The Arrogant Worms
Why must all honesty come from foreigners?
6) You - Bad Religion
Second best song ever used in a Tony Hawk video game
7) I'm Destroying the World - Guttermouth
The best song ever used in a Tony Hawk video game
8) Drunken Lullibys - Flogging Molly
9) We got the Power - Dropkick Murphys
"It's like a history lesson in a punk song..." - Baby Tiger
10) Got the Time - Joe Jackson
Prophetic? You decide.
11) Plastic Jesus - Jello Biafra and Mojo Nixon
Great version!
12) Rondo a la Turk - Dave Brubeck
13) Volare - Al Martino
Gotta have one for the paisans!

Now that you've read this playlist, you've probably got opinions about my musical taste. I used to think myself eclectic in my listening prefrences, but now I realize that I just like crappy music, so long as it's not popular crappy music. So, feel free to completely ignore this.

You go Bill...

I've watched, generally in utter contempt and frustration, as this "administration" has spent 6 years blaming the previous administration for everything that it has royally hozed up. It's drawn my hackles on many an occasion, but it never seemed to rattle President Teflon. Until this weekend. Bubba went off with all of the ferver that the situation required, and left Chris Wallace scratching holes in his temples.

Way to go Bill. Rest of the party? Time to show the pair you have.

Yet another reason to hate Hugo Chavez

I drive a car that recommends that I use premium gas. I don't. I can't afford it. I can't afford it because very early in his reign, my president (sic) may have been an accomplice in an attempt to topple the government of Venezuela, the chair-state of OPEC, and in retaliation, Hugh Chaves' policies contributed to a gas price hike of nearly 2 dollars per gallon. Now, oil companies making record profits may also be attached to the high price of gas, but for the purpose of this post, I'm fingering Hugo.

Enter the UN. September 19, nut-job makes a speech calling Shrub "el Diablo," among many other barbs. Now liberals like Nancy Pilosi, Chuck Shulmer, and I are in a position we never wanted to be in... defending Bush.

As someone who had a visceral dislike for him long before he ran for president and someone who has voted against every Bush who has run in Florida since 1991, I wince when I rationalize this in my own mind. I still dislike W, his entire cabinet, and every decision he's made domestically and internationally since stealing office in 2000. I hate that people who had a benign dislike for me because of my birth country now feel their bile rise because of Bush; that my class (the middle) is targeted for extinction -- not at the hands of concentration camps, but due to intentionally bad economic policies, i.e. outsourcing and tax cuts; and that we are embroiled in a culture war drawn along religious lines that the president seems to endorse.

That said, he's my (gag) president, and if I want to kick him around, I will. I've earned the privilege by living here and paying the price of his stupidity. You, Mr. Chavez, were really only incovenienced by W for a few days before returning to office. If you want to say something bad about him, you should do it from your own pulpit, not from the podium that is the symbol for the spirit of international cooperation and brotherhood.

Leave it to Ask Yahoo...

to answer this age old question...

Tolerance... it's not just for drinking anymore.

Crikey

So, I'm sitting there on the couch in and out of conciousness, and in between naps I think I hear my wife say something to the effect of, "Steve Irwin tribute ...", perhaps she said something about a Mazda Tribute, maybe one being driven by Steve and Irwin.

"That's nice," I say as I drift back to sleep. I spend the next 20 minutes fighting slumber, catching snippets and asking myself questions like, "Why the hell is one of the Wiggles in my dream?"

I finally come to and really start watching what turns out to be the saddest thing I've seen on TV in years, Bindi Irwin reading a tribute to her deceased father (and reading amazingly well, the educator in me must point out), and it happens: here come the tears.

Get it strait, though... I've never pretended to be a tough guy when it comes to watching things. I had a helluva time watching Armegedon, and couldn't sleep for 2 weeks after watching "The Day After" (late cold-war era nuclear holocaust movie to encourage responsibility with our atomic arsenal). In fact, I think I've cried over nearly all of these movies. So there I am, bawling my eyes out over the death of someone who, most of the time, I considered a complete whack job.

A few years ago, while doing my internship, I took on a part time job driving the tram at Flaming Gardens. During my break time, I'd go watch the otters frolic; I'd oogle the bobcats pace nervously about a habitat 1/10000th the size of their natural hunting area; I'd stare at the flamingos in their pond, leg cocked restfully, desparately trying to make verbal contact with every airplane that flew overhead; I'd go watch the rescued birds of prey as they made the best of their small aviaries. Then there were the aligators. Huge. Massive. Amazing. Always still and yet seemingly never satisfied in their small pond. As I think of it now, I felt O.K. watching them because I was separated from them by the bridge that went over their waterway and by the 8-foot tall chain link fence. They scared the crap out of me. Steve Irwin would have given his eye-teeth to dive over that fence and roll round with those big blokes. Not to prove he wasn't affraid, but to show us that we shouldn't be. I take my class to Shark Valley every year, because it meshes well with the science and social studies curriculum, and because it's just way cool. While riding in the back of the trolley with my class, I'll frequently break in to a Steve Irwin accent to tell them about a gator habit that the driver skimmed over, or just as a humorous break. The kids are rapt with attention when I do, and I've found that since his death, they are all champing at the bit to talk about him.

They know more about wildlife than I ever will, and it's all because of Steve Irwin. Crikey! Well done, bloke.