Oh, No

I have a sort of millennium bug up my ass. It’s not exactly a Y2K problem… it’s a Y2KX… no YMMX… well, it’s all these end-of-the-decade-wrapup stories I’ve been seeing the last few days.

Remember back when everyone was partying like it was 1999? I mean, when it actually was 1999 and they were all like, “It’s the end of the millennium!” And all the geeks [like me] were all, “No, the millennium actually ends next year.” And we would try to explain that there was no year zero, which NEVER worked, so then we would say, “OK, see. The first century had to be years 1 to 100, and the second century had to be years 101 to 200, and so on. So the twentieth century has to be years 1901 to 2000.” And that’s when we were uninvited to all the new year’s eve parties that year and some of us the next year also [because we just couldn't let it go and we would have spent all that night too explaining that this was the dawn of a new century] and a few of us several more years after that [but I'm not bitter].

OK. So we have NOT just finished the first decade of the twenty-first century. We have finished a decade of years with 0-numbers. But even though I am one of those annoying people [shut up] that said twenty-oh-one right up through twenty-oh-nine, not even I ever said twenty-oh-oh instead of two-thousand. [I have said uh-oh a LOT, but the date has nothing to do with that. Well, once it was on a date. But that's a different story....] And I know you’re wondering, so yes, to me this year is twenty-ten, not two-thousand-ten.

Is this what Santayana meant by, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”?

RRR: My Extremely Brief, Unintentional, and Unprofitable Ownership of a Pornographic Website

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.
This is an update of a post originally published on 21 November 2006.

I garnered three new followers on Twitter this weekend. I have blocked two of them because they link directly to porn sites. [I am not philosophically opposed to porn. It's just not what I publish in this space nor will I promote it here.] I’m guessing I picked them up because I had the word “erotica” in my Friday Flash title and the tweets promoting it. And I’m guessing I’ll have to block a couple more when I publish this post. ~Tim 14 December 2009

Here’s the old post with updates:

Let me tell you about the time my website was labeled “pornography”. [And it was not last month when I got all crude and rude on a couple posts. In fact, it predates my blog by a few years.]

The school district where I work has only been hosting websites for teachers for about a year or two. Those of us that were ahead of that curve were on our own. So for a while I used some of the space provided for personal pages by my ISP to post information for my classes. I registered a domain name and had the URL forward to my pages.

That worked well… until one day the filtering software the district used blocked access to my site. It was classified as pornography. Hmm. Well, I was angered a little and amused a lot. But URL forwarding was a trick often used by pornographic sites so you could have a link for PureAsTheDrivenSnow.com that actually links to RaunchyDebauchery.com. And since it wasn’t really practical for them to, you know, actually have a person look at every website that passes through our servers, the filtering software just blocked every site that was forwarded. And labeled it pornography.

[I just made up those domain names and figured I better check whether there are websites attached to them. As of this writing PureAsTheDrivenSnow.com is registered but does not have a site up and RaunchyDebauchery.com is not yet registered. Wow! Same as three years ago! ~TVS So if you're looking for the Christmas gift for the person that seems to have everything....]

I copied the section of the agreement with my ISP that expressly prohibits posting obscene material and emailed our district network administrator. The reply shocked me more than having my students see the big stop sign when they tried to get to my site. It was district policy not to unblock sites owned by teachers. I think they adopted the policy because a lot of people were using services like Geocities [remember Geocities?] that were full of banner ads over which you had very little control. But I wasn’t using Geocities for my class pages and I had no ads (or pornography) anywhere on my site. And shouldn’t we expect a site owned by a teacher to be among the most relevant of the sites we want our students to access?

Fortuitously, I also emailed the publisher of the software the district was using and they unblocked my site. The argument with district policy was moot for me then and it was a battle I was not inclined to fight just on principle. Eventually web hosting prices dropped low enough that I was willing to have a site devoted just to my classes so I don’t have to forward the URL any more. And thus ended My Extremely Brief, Unintentional, and Unprofitable [dammit] Ownership of a Pornographic Website.

Details, Details…

Obviously I am too critical of what I read. I followed LAWKI with books I chose for pure escapism, Sail by James Patterson & Howard Roughan and now Spy by Ted Bell.

I really like the Alex Cross novels by Patterson. I wonder how much writing he really does on the books he co-authors. It seems he is more of a brand now. All the way through Sail part of my brain kept saying, “This is stupid!” while another part reminded me, “It’s supposed to be.” I need to read things just for fun and after LAWKI anything is an improvement. So I finished Sail and chalked it up to my need for an easy summer read.

Now I’m almost half-way through Spy. Novels often require a suspension of disbelief. Super heroes need super villains and what would be the point if the fate of the entire world did not hang in the balance? So, okay, I’ll accept that a terrorist group has spent years building a huge military complex in the rain forest of South America virtually undetected. Honestly I can let that go much more easily than little things like this: A sheriff breaks up a bar fight on a Sunday afternoon. The next Sunday he is again called to service and thinks, “It had been nine days since the incident at the Wagon Wheel.” Nine days? Damn, that’s a long work week!

And this: Two characters playing gin rummy. One plays a winning hand with “three queens, three jacks, and a royal straight.” He explains that he only drew three cards, “the third queen, the ace of diamonds, and the jack of spades filling in a lovely straight.” Scoring in gin rummy requires sets of cards all with the same face value or runs of cards in sequence (a straight) all in the same suit. So he needed to have all four queens and all four jacks in his hand and the straight would have had to be in diamonds (to use the ace), not spades. If that weren’t bad enough, his opponent was caught with, “two kings, two jacks, pair of nines, pair of sevens….” That puts six jacks on the table. Haven’t the author and editor ever played this game?

So while terrorists amass south of the border, these are the things that get under my skin….

The Moon as We Knew It

Someone at the school where I teach [SWIT] had the brilliant idea to require all students to read the same book this summer. From a letter to the parents our fearless leader explains:

In an effort to support academic performance, cross-curricular and community connections, and a lifelong love of reading, [SWIT] proudly announces our 2009 “One Book, One [SWIT]” required summer reading title Life as We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer. The book is a heart-pounding account of one family’s struggle to hold on to the most important resource of all—hope—in an increasingly desperate and unfamiliar time.
Every student in the school will be required to read Life as We Knew It. This is in addition to any summer reading assignment for specific programs or classes. A school-wide test will be given to every student during the first week of school; some ideas and questions to think about as you read are listed on the back of this letter. In addition, all content areas will use the book as a foundation for many activities, writings, and projects during the first few weeks of school.

While I appreciate the concept, imagine the difficulty in choosing one book for all our students in grades 9-12 (which easily spans ages 14-19) of widely varying abilities and interests. Frankly it is a task I would not want. And while they chose a highly rated, award-winning title it is one that I think is really terrible. Bad science. Bad fiction.

Life As We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer

My review

rating: 1 of 5 stars
This book is just awful. Honestly, I don’t understand why it is so highly regarded and has won so many awards. I don’t believe the premise on which it is based and I don’t believe the way the characters act. It doesn’t even get the phases of the moon correct. Ugh!


View all my reviews.

Meaning Wanted

I am a fan of some of the shows on the USA cable TV network. I am not a fan of their various “Characters” promotions. One of them in particular gets me every time I hear it.

The 2009 Character Approved winner for music is hip-hop artist Lupe Fiasco. In the spot he says,

I try to write about meaningful things… drug abuse, skateboards, giant robots….

I freely [and quickly] admit that I am not a fan of rap or hip-hop. To be fair, I’m not exactly in the target demographic for rappers, so maybe I’m just not supposed to get it. Does he really think that drug abuse, skateboards, and giant robots are all meaningful things? Equally meaningful? Or is he being ironic and I’m just being too literal?

Not that I care.

Nor should you.

Crap^TM

I was indirectly privy to this exchange:

Fast food worker after removing an entree from an oven and dropping it on the floor — “How did that happen?”
Her supervisor — “I don’t have time to explain gravity to you, honey.”

There is an ad (or maybe a PSA) soliciting blood donations running on radio that begins with:

“It’s been said that it is as blessed to give than to receive….”

If I hear it again they can collect from my bleeding ears. The incongruity of “as” and “than” just really irritates me.

I recently received a complimentary first issue of a magazine for “a reinvented old-world style barber shop franchise.” I have no idea how I got on their mailing list. This barber club “caters to discerning gentlemen looking for a fine grooming experience with the old-world charm of your father’s barber shop. Offering the finest in haircuts for men, the lost art of straight-razor shaves, and a modern selection of grooming products….” They have obviously never met me.

My initial reaction was “snobs!” and I nearly tossed it without even opening it. But I was sitting on the toilet anyway and what better place to read crap? some perverse curiosity drew me in. Apparently their marketing strategy involves trademarking just about every other word they print. [So it isn't just crap, it's Crap^TM!] Misspelling one the trademarks in a rather prominent spot does nothing to stir my confidence in the business or the people behind it. The articles were inane and contained logical inconsistencies.

Reading was, in short, a waste of my time. And now I’ve wasted yours.

Sorry^TM.

As They Struggle with the Undertaking of Simple Thought

When doctors don’t know the cause of your ailment they may refer to it as idiopathic. It’s sort of a polite way of saying, “It’s just you.”

When I see the word idiopathic I think there should be another word, idiopathy. If sympathy may be summed up as, “I feel your pain,” then idiopathy may be summed up as, “I feel your stupidity.” [Alternatively, "I feel you're stupid."]

I’ve been fairly swimming in idiopathy this week — it was semester exam week. And I’ve decided that idiopathy sometimes just isn’t enough to express how I feel when, for example, a student shows up for an exam without a pencil. We have moved into idiopathetic territory at that point.

As a teacher I am a soldier in the war against ignorance. Unfortunately, while education is effective against ignorance, some other cure [if one exists] must be found for stupidity.

Soon please….

*

The Doctor Say He’s Comin’, but You Gotta Pay Him Cash

Two snails were traveling south.

A turtle was traveling west.

Two snails were traveling south.
A turtle was traveling west.

Two snails were traveling south.
A turtle was traveling west.

Two snails were traveling south.
A turtle was traveling west.
Soon they approached each other.

Two snails were traveling south.
A turtle was traveling west.
They got closer.

Two snails were traveling south.
A turtle was traveling west.
Closer still.

Two snails were traveling south.
A turtle was traveling west.
Just inches apart.

Two snails were traveling south.
A turtle was traveling west.
And then…

…calamity!

One of the snails was directly in the path of the turtle.

It was inevitable, perhaps.

Maybe the turtle just couldn’t stop.

At any rate, it didn’t stop.

The turtle ran over one of the snails.

And kept going.

West.

“What was that?” asked the violated snail.

While the turtle kept going west.

“I don’t know,” replied the other snail. “It all happened so fast!”

Last summer some of the ceiling tiles in my classroom were water-damaged and moldy. They were replaced today.

So there’s that….

*

Ah, but Who Would Want to Listen to You, Kissing his Existence Good Night

I have a bad habit. Almost every work-day morning I stop at a 7-11 and buy coffee and a donut. Breakfast of champions it ain’t. I know.

But here’s the thing. Two store-fronts over from the 7-11 is a Starbucks and nearly every week some poor schmuck parks across the street, pays five times as much for his/her coffee as I pay for mine, and then starts to walk back across the street RIGHT IN FRONT OF ONCOMING TRAFFIC! They are halfway between two intersections. Both intersections have crosswalks and signs warning drivers to yield to pedestrians.

Have they not read Fulghum? Do they not realize that I have not drunk my coffee yet either and would dearly love [most mornings] to run their TSTL* asses over? I grudgingly happily yield to pedestrians in the crosswalks. In the middle of the block, you’re pushing the limits of my bleary-eyed good graces.

Maybe we all need one of those Jack Bauer alarm clocks — it screams, “You’re running out of time!!!”

Maybe not.

*TSTL = Too Stupid To Live

*

New American Perspective

Okay, you may officially question my resolve to stay away from politics….

The local CBS affiliate [for reasons that I'm sure must make sense to them] broadcasts EXTRA after Letterman’s Late Show moving Craig Ferguson’s Late Late Show even later. Not that I could stay up that late on a regular basis any way…. But as a result, I rarely get to see Ferguson.

I did see an interview with him not long ago in which he talked about recently becoming an American citizen. His patriotism seems genuine and his enthusiasm can be infectious. And here is his perspective as he prepares to vote in an American presidential election for the first time: