Ok, so another boring and stupid day in my life leads me to comment on the even more boring and stupid events in the world…
As I attempted to revive myself this morning in preparation for the dreaded return to life after a three-day holiday respite, the subject of Obama’s speech that was to be broadcast in schools across the nation landed a top spot on the local news this morning. While I don’t consider myself gifted in the art of politics (that would imply I actually care about what goes on inside the beltway), I listened with the appropriate amount of interest while I waited for the morning miracle of caffeine to do its thing while running the required brushes over teeth and hair.
The report seemed to indicate something about the travesty of involving our children in the running of this country, leading the viewer to believe that children would have about as much interest as I do and perhaps are just dim witted enough to not be able to discerne a sock from a suspension bridge. Now that I think of it, they may be on to something? The competency scores tell it all but thats for another post when even the news falls short.
The next few sound bites are from local people voicing their opinions, yay or nay on the subject when one particular man interviewed said “I don’t want my child to be raised as a little community activist…” errr…..surely I hadn’t heard this correctly? Maybe I heard it wrong, maybe he said he didn’t want his child raised as a little community communist? who knows, people will say the most retarded things….rewind….listen….rewind….listen again.
A ‘little community activist’…..as I ponder that characterization, clearly I could see where doing helpful deeds for no motivation other than to contribute to thier community, state, and country, would really send the wrong message. What’s next? A side of meth with the animal crackers served before naptime? Clearly we’d be better off just packing handguns in their lunchboxes and telling them to shoot anyone who looks suspicious. Got kevlar?
Perhaps I’m too pessimistic, perhaps I’ve somehow missed the bigger picture with this Obama fellow. For fear of being too narrowminded or judgemental, or just plain missing something that would make this man say such a thing, I gave the President’s speech a quick listen. Waiting for the embedded message of being a dreaded community activist to spring on me at any time.
Well, clearly I’ve not been listening to what the left-wing, tree-hugging, granola eating, jesus-shoe-wearing democrats have been spewing all this time and merely hearing the words ’every single one of you has something to offer’ and ‘you have a responsibility to yourself to find out what that is’ from the President made me want to sell everything I own, live in a commune and work towards utopia for all! Go Babeuf!
Oh yes, this Obama character is a real threat to us. So grab your guns, load for bear, hide your cash and don’t EVER ask yourself what you have to offer the world, you may just might turn out to be a critical thinking, intelligent, selfless person and we all know that’s what’s wrong with the world today.
As I sit watching CNN and the latest talking head about sleep, teenagers, and SAT scores I find this is an opportune time to reflect on my own experiences with teens and sleep…..that and nothing particularly earthshaking happened in my tragically predictable and mundane life today…
According to this expert, for every 15 additional minutes a teenager is allowed to sleep each morning, testing indicates that students will increase thier scores by a full letter grade. Have I been missing something all this time? Is this the cure for the multitude of ignorant people I come in contact with or observe each day?
Is the only thing wrong with the guy who wanted to make a right hand turn from the left lane of traffic and causing a 4 car pileup simply that he didn’t hit snooze one last time that morning? What about the man who slapped someone else’s child in a Walmart 4 times? Is the answer there that he was a moron or perhaps he is a chronic insomniac in need of some serious sack time? (In defense of the man whom this has been alleged, I am not without sympathy to some small degree, we see how well the ‘time-outs’ have been working, don’t we?)
Having barely survived the raising of a teenager myself, I can offer the following observations on teens, sleeping, and school. No matter how much you let your child sleep, they will be as stupid as you allow them to be….and no, putting the AP Chemistry text under thier pillow in the hopes of absorption by osmosis will not help no matter how long you let them sleep on it. The stupid kids are the ones who are sleeping while in the classroom. Taking the above referenced study at face value, shouldn’t these kids be getting smarter while sleeping in the classroom?
For years now, I’ve heard about blogs….can’t say I’ve ever really been interested in one up until now. Why now? I can’t say that some particularly interesting or insightful event prompted me to do this. So often, much of my life has been guided and shaped by whims. Like the time I was looking for a plumber and ran across an ad for Paramedic training. “Hey! That would be fun!” next thing I know, I’m sliding down the ice covered streets in Denver, Code 3, and wondering what the hell am I doing?
So for what it’s worth, here I sit….I could easily see where something like this media could easily become all about me. Heh…after all, we don’t even know each other and you’re being kind of quiet right now. Ahem….
Please consider yourself warned that I am not inspirational, I’m not charismatic or even particularly nice. I don’t even really like meerkats all that much….why is the name kat in their name? I don’t get it. In the words of Kevin Spacey in American Beauty “I’m just an ordinary guy with nothing to lose.”
Today’s observation revolves around lunch time for the working crowd at Drive Thru’s. Why is it that when all you want to do is make a quick stop for something these places try to pass off as food, inevitably there is the soccer mom in front of you ordering what can only be described as lunch for the entire varsity cheerleading squad?
Or is it an attempt at a hostile takeover of El Pollo Loco done at the drive thru window? Come on lady! Get your trough and go! and let’s not forget to mention that Mom there could stand to be grazing at the salad bar instead of dining on fat drenched chicken followed by a side of lard beans and flour tortillas.
First comes the 8 bags of food, followed by 4 drink holders which look about as stable as my 87 year old grandmother on ice skates (do you ever hope they will bust apart too?) and then of course, dessert. Let’s not forget the additional 5 minutes she spends looking for her debit card in her latest, gotta have it, prada bag where a small contingent of terrorists could hide undetected for days.
The upside to being behind Mother of the Year is that my food is ready and not quite cold by the time I get up there! w00t!
I guess I can be optimistic after all, eh?