More Thurmond Wackiness

Longtime Onion readers just knew this link was coming.

Cause and Effect

Wow. This afternoon, the Supreme Court strikes down a Texas law banning sodomy...

... and mere hours later, geriatric right-wing racist (and senior... very senior... Senator from the Confederate-flag-wavin' state of South Carolina) Strom Thurmond dies.

Not much has been going on... hence the lack of update goodness.

If I only had a nickel for every time I wanted to do this...

Bad Teen Blog of the Day

okay im bored....most of my pictures here wont upload.....gRr...i think this blogger sever is down toOh.why? cos i could publish for the last 10 mins!!! well i got to go to math camp tahDay..buh accordin` to andy and tiff (le) , tiff is goen to that math camp tahday!yay!!!! well yeah...its 7:49 soOoo i think ill have another post comen today sometime....aiite payce.i g2g delete the pictures....gggrrrr onlee not the quizes ....i think those work...and the wons i direct linked from websites...

Geez. Math camp? Phonics camp might be more necessary.

I don't scare easily. But I shuddered multiple times while reading this Harper's article by Jeff Sharlett, and the followup interview with Sharlett found on Alternet.

The crux of the article: An organization called "the Fellowship" exists in Washington, D.C. Its membership includes a bipartisan group of Senators and Representatives (several of whom live together). They admire the political adroitness of Genghis Khan and Adolf Hitler (they even talk about a "Hitler Concept," the idea of having a loyal leadership cadre, and making it work for Christ). They have an almost monarchist view of power. They have international connections. Their self described goal is "an 'invisible world organization' led by Christ" (the organization's leader even tells them, "You're here to learn how to rule the world"). And, most frightening of all; this isn't merely a conspiracy theory. It's real and documented.

So much more to say... but I'll let the links speak for themselves.

An abbreviated synopsis of the past few days

(Note how radically it varies from this calendar. Yay, summer vacation. Boo, potential unemployment)

Friday: Turn in my keys. Sulk. Play Diablo II. Go to an a cappella ensemble rehearsal.

Saturday: Wake up late. Give a voice lesson. Go to a gig for the men's chorus. Play Diablo II. Eat pizza and watch romantic comedies with Julie.

Sunday: Wake up late. Play Diablo II. Lay around all morning watching Clerks. Play Diablo II. Go to the store. Grill steak for dinner. Play Diablo II.

Monday: Wake up... well, earlier than I have been, but later than I do when school is in session. Drive down to the school board offices to update my certification paperwork. Play Diablo II. Update my resume, convert it into a "curriculum vitae" format. Clean the bedroom top to bottom. Eat dinner with Julie. Play piano. Sulk. Play Diablo II.

Today: Wake up late. Play Diablo II.

Tomorrow: Jury duty.

Exciting stuff.

Actually, there are a couple of interesting job possibilities out there right now- one in academia, and one in the private sector. Plus, I can easily get another teaching job if I want to remain in Miami-Dade County Public Schools (and that's the plan for the time being).

Today was graduation; my show choir sang during the ceremony as usual, and I ended up singing the national anthem because the baritone in the quartet originally scheduled to sing that piece blew off the performance.

Tomorrow will be my last day as a faculty member at H-ML Senior High.

Handicapping the Democrats

I mean that in a gambling sense, not literally. "Take that, John Edwards," cries The Bone as he swings a baseball bat at the senator's kneecap.

I have no idea who John Edwards is, but apparently he's running for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Although I registered Democrat right after turning 18, I haven't belonged to the party for a while. Clinton's centrist approach pissed me off- I want my Democrats to act like, well, Democrats... not half-assed Republicans.

The only nationally active Democrat that I've thought was worth a damn in the past few years was Minnesota senator Paul Wellstone. Unfortunately, he died several months ago. He would have been a great President.

I don't plan on voting Democrat just to stymie Bush... they've got to convince me that their candidate is going to be a worthwhile Chief Executive. If not, I'll just vote for Nader again, or write him in if he's not running on the Green ticket. Here are my impressions of the men and women running right now:

JOHN EDWARDS: I still don't know who the fuck he is, save that he's a Senator from North Carolina. In the course of researching this post, I ran across this transcript wherein he confronts Ashcroft over the military tribunal issue. Interesting, but I remain unconvinced. Plus, he voted with Bush regarding the Iraq war, which in my eyes is a huge strike.

HOWARD DEAN: He seems awesome in some ways- mostly because he signed same-sex civil unions legslation into law. But this article from Counterpunch calls his record into question, particularly on environmental issues. I'm not overly impressed with Dean. Counterpunch, by the way, is a site that I've found to be consistently reliable.

JOESEPH LIEBERMAN: Child, please. The man is the most conservative Democrat out there. Not interested.

JOHN KERRY: Around the time of our late pseudo-war, he said something along the lines of "Now we need a regime change in Washington," which endeared him to my heart. Plus, he was active in Vietnam Veterans Against the War. But, he voted for war. That'll probably be my litmus test.

So, at this time I don't see myself voting for any of these guys (and the same goes for Dick Gephardt and Tom Daschle, unless I see a really great proposal for universal health coverage). I could be convinced to change my mind about Dean, but the allegations raised by Counterpunch would need to be refuted. I'm undecided about Bob Graham and Al Sharpton. I'd actively consider voting for Dennis Kucinich (or however the fuck you spell his name). And I'd vote for Carol Mosley-Brown in a heartbeat.

32.34714%

This is my "geek percentage" from the Geek Test, found here. I am evidently a "Total Geek"- which is, believe it or not, the third-lowest rank of eight.

I scribbled a longish post a while back wherein I discussed the term "geek." The Inner Geek webmaster has a much cleaner and more concise definition: "Geeks strive to prove their worth outside the definitions of mainstream." Nice.

Dick Cheney: Queen Of Hearts

As goofy as I found the whole "Iraq's Most Wanted playing cards" thing, this idea was just screaming to be parodied.

Here's one of the best spoofs: the "War Profiteers" deck.

Of course, my picture can probably be found on this deck of cards (note the careful use of capitalization on this site). I find it odd that the Clintons are on there; Bill enforced sanctions during his presidency that arguably made it easier for Dubya and his puppeteers to conquer Iraq for their buddies (while apparently lying about WMDs), and Hillary supported the war in Congress.

Oh, about that whole missing weapons thing- I believe I called that back in December (read the Gandhi article in the archives). If I figured that out, it's unacceptable that those viewpoints were not represented in the media until after Iraq had been totally devastated.

And finally, a history lesson: While searching out links for this post, I discovered that congressional Republicans really are anti-war- if the war is being prosecuted by a Democratic president. The real reason for their viewpoint, I suspect, is that there wasn't much money to be made in Kosovo.

Another great Carlyle Group article can be found here.

Sigh. Haven't been in the mood to blog.

The HML chorus banquet was tonight. Nice, in a bittersweet way.

No job yet. I'll have one soon, because my resume is pretty damn great and I have administrators at the district level pulling for me. The wait sucks, though.

The South Beach Men's Chorus sold out the Lincoln Theatre and sounded awesome.

There we go. Terse. Points made quickly. Blogging as an exercise in autobiographical minimalism.

The torture never stops

The main computer was acting up something awful, and Julie took it up to her brother's so he could take a look at it. As it turns out, it needed to be reformatted. Unable to get in touch with me, Julie transferred things she knew were important to a CD... but a lot of stuff got lost. My Sims neighborhood, a bunch of RPG material, and so forth has now disappeared into the digital ether.

Fortunately, all the compositions I had notated using Finale were among the things that were rescued, which is nice. It would have taken me weeks to rewrite all of that stuff, and there's one or two works that I'm not even sure I have original copies of anymore. Time to print hard copies and store 'em in a safe place.

I'm not really mad about it, but it's a little frustrating.

Woke up this morning and thought, "Hey, I'm not going in to work today until after homeroom. Screw it." Yay for me.

Now that I've made the announcement to my students, I can post it here: I will not be returning to H-ML Senior High next year. The chorus and keyboard positions were rolled into one job, and I was surplused. Anybody that wants the details can email me.

I am not sure where I'm teaching next year... hell, I haven't even begun actively looking. The school district has to find a place for me. For now, I'm just trying to get through the end of the school year and trying to make sure that some semblance of a chorus program exists at H-ML next year despite this administrative decision.

That's all. My main computer is being reformatted, and this one (the backup) is ridiculously slow, so I'm gonna stop here.