Education.

While I was in a waiting room a child asked me what school was like. He was going into kindergarten, and wanted to know what to expect. I was first surprised that a child so young would approach me being large and bearded, but secondly rather at a loss for what to tell the child about k-12 public education. The boy's mother came up and got him before I could answer, she seemed worried, but the child was in no danger. Since then I have tried to think of a way to describe k-12 education, here are a few of my thoughts.

If I were to be bluntly honest, I would say school is 7 to 8 hours a day of psychological torture and emotional abuse. Most actual learning will be done alone on your time, and teacher will serve only to get in the way of the process. I guess the teachers are mostly acting as an obstacle so they feel like they earned their paycheck. This is clearly not something to tell a child, so perhaps speaking more symbolically would help.

School is basically a raping of the mind. Only when you don't enjoy being raped, you are told it is "for your own good", and that you will "look back on it fondly someday". Gang rape might be more accurate, do to the fact you will deal with many teachers over your time in school. Here again, I think this might be a bit much to tell a child. Maybe something the child could relate to would help.

Ever watch "Tom and Jerry"? Well in school you will be Jerry, and the teacher is Tom. Only Tom never gets any comeuppance. So... basically just "Tom and Jerry" if Tom won. This feels about right, but the child might think you were talking down to them.

School is like if you saw a vast forest, and in that forest was someone tryong to cut down the trees with a sledgehammer. And when told that a saw or axe would work better, that person treats you as if you have just spoken blasphemy. In this the students are the trees, and the teachers are holding the sledgehammers. This gets across the unpleasant nature of the experience, while also hinting at where the root of the problem lays.

Daylight Savings Time

It is that time again. The time when an hour is lost. We set the clocks a head an hour, and lose an hour of sleep. Or we sleep in for an extra hour (according to the clock anyway), and completely destroy what passes for a sleeping pattern. Some might ask why do this, and the good news is there are a few theories.

The idea that makes the most since is to further torture insomniacs. What that your lucky to get 3 hours of sleep at a go? Good news, your going to be cutting back on that!

As it now takes place in March, used to happen in April, it could be a scam to make the hangovers from Saint Patrick's Day even worse.  Too early for that you say? That is the great genius of this scam. You think that doing the week before gives you enough time to adjust. It does not.

Could be that there is no real reason. It is just a collective expression of masochism by the American public. This is just a sign that the average person's self-hatred has gotten to critical levels. Not sure how it got this bad. Reality TV might be part of this self-hatred, or be another sign of it.

Well this time of year is a special hell all its own. So happy Saint Patrick's Day, know that hang over will hit just a little harder this year, thanks to daylight savings. Have an exhausted day.

Yuletide Rapin'

I don't want to talk about Christmas. I don't want to think about it. I sure as hell had no plans to blog about it this week, or this month. Sadly, after today, I simply must. Today started alright, then I had to go buy a few things. It is when I went into stores that it became impossible to ignore Christmas.

In every store you are greeted at the door with a yuletide raping. Every where you go Santa is waiting, with his pal Jesus, to tie you down with tinsel and take turns on you with their "yule logs". Sometimes they take turns, sometimes they go both at once, it doesn't matter, they are waiting for you at every store. They also go by the motto "Blood is nature lube". In the worst of cases they let the reindeer have a go.

Everywhere you go there are poorly made decoration punishing your eyes. Screaming children and yelling adults making you wish for sweet silence of death. Every where there are heaters on, making rivers of sweat and stink. Why must everything about Christmas make to world so much worse? Why does it have to have to involve the torture of every one of the senses?

We must start a war against Christmas. We need to see that it is contained, and isolated. Make it so it only exists a week before December 25.