Monday, July 3, 2006 5:21:59 AM
It's that time of year again. Garage sale time. That mystical time when people everywhere put all their unused (and often unusable) shit on their driveway, decorated with fluorescent-orange circles crying out "Ten for twenty-five cents!!", waiting for some hapless garage saler to come by and...well...buy.
Me, I just like to think of them as crewmen aboard the most unusual ship since the
Crimson Permanent Assurance.
Thursday, June 29, 2006 4:22:34 AM
Yeehaw. House #2 is finished. It's actually kind of sad to leave. I mean, it was awfully nice to take lunch breaks on the roof, looking out over arguably the prettiest stretch of Puget Sound. Alas, we must move on...to a house with beach rights!
I love this job.
I also love the respect that I get: my boss is hiring Will, my best friend from high school, simply because I gave him a good recommendation. No interview, no nothing. Is there any other job setting where a person can earn trust so quickly? Doubtable.
Seattle has confused God, I think. Tricked him into thinking that July 4th had already come and gone. Poor God - he falls asleep at the wheel for a second, and the vicious, unbelieving hedonists from the city of seven hills take advantage of him, for something so trivial as nine straight days above 70 degrees. But God will have his revenge, as he always does.
Tonight, on the KING 5 11 o'clock news: a large golden calf landed in front of the Experience Music Project, attracting a crowd of several hundred onlookers, most of whom were slain by the ensuing explosion of fireworks that issued forth from the the idol's golden snout.
Wednesday, June 14, 2006 5:28:25 PM
So I started what is sure to be my short, yet still at least mildly illustrious, career as a house painter yesterday. It seems to be pretty good work -- for great pay, if we work quickly -- and it'll be a decent way to spend a summer. The only downside is the back pain at the end of the day. One's spinal column can only take so much abuse, particularly if it's abuse occurring 30ft off the ground on an 11/10 pitch. At least working on the roof around here rewards you with an incredible view.
On the academic side of things, we finally watched my sister walk across the stage and receive her diploma. This may seem rather ordinary, but I assure you, it is not. My sister did not know for sure whether she would be able to walk until Friday afternoon at 2:00pm, when her grades finally got approved. So congratulations to her, and good riddance. And may the blessings of the empty nest soon be bestowed on my parents. My sister's high school years have been less than kind to them.
As for why I am not at work right....now...it's raining.
Housepainting in the Puget Sound area is a crapshoot.
Monday, June 5, 2006 9:22:52 PM
There's a debate underway in the US Supreme Court that strikes rather close to home for me.
http://www.christiansciencemonitor.com/2006/0606/p02s02-usju.htmlThe gist of the article is that the Seattle, WA and Louisville, KY school districts are using race to determine where students go to school, in an effort to break away from the tendency of neighborhood schools to follow the pattern of racial segregation dictated by a school's location within a high- or low-income neighborhood.
In short, they are forcing black kids and white kids to mix and mingle.
Now, there is nothing wrong with asking kids to overcome any fear or shyness toward students of other race. But the school districts in question are discriminating between kids of different races. Not all schools are equal. Schools in dangerous areas are going to be more dangerous and less successfull, while schools in safe areas are going to be hubs for growth among the student body.
So then, why is it fair to force any student (possibly one whose family moved to a neighborhood because of a particular school) to attend a school that they find undesirable because of its security or academic track? It just isn't right. It isn't fair to any kid to have to go to a dangerous school. But it's even less fair to take a kid out of a safe environment and place him in a dangerous one. And to use race as the deciding factor? That's just plain stupid.
Monday, June 5, 2006 1:32:47 AM
I just finished watching an ESPN replay of the National Spelling Bee, during which I was perplexed by two things: (1)that the VAST majority of the words used, while present in the English dictionary and somewhat common in modern American jargon, were very clearly NOT English words; (2)that a small yet substantial minority of the participants were not from the US.
Let me clarify the first point. Two of the last three words were out-and-out German. "Weltschmerz", which translates literally to "world pain" (though it has slightly different connotations in the English use) and "ursprache", meaning "parent language". I realise that we've accepted them into common usage, especially within the academic realm -- both terms were actually on my AP Lit & Comp test -- but it seems fishy to me that they were accepted, without question, as English words for the National Spelling Bee. It's not that I'm for a national language, it's just that both words are GERMAN. Not of German origin. Not Germanic in tone. Actually, certifiably German.
On the second point: the National Spelling Bee is open to participants from any English-speaking country. This seems like a half-cocked idea to me. Either ALL children should be eligible to participate, or only US citizens. It seems terribly discriminatory to me to say that a child from Kenya or Japan or the Phillipines is ineligible to participate in the Bee, no matter how great their command of the English language, just because the national language of their country is something other than English. It may seem like an absurd statement, but it is rooted in experience. I grew up in a high school with a strong International Program, and a great many of the International Students had a much greater command of English spelling and grammar than some of my American-born schoolmates. And this was at a private high school, supposedly renown for the quality of its students.
That said, my hat's off to Katharine Close, the young woman who ultimately won the Bee. Here's to hoping it's not her greatest achievement.
Sunday, June 4, 2006 7:50:12 PM
I had never seen this movie before. Possibly because it's old, and probably because I hate Barbara Streisand. In it, she plays a Jewish, Communist activist from New York. It seems that they felt she didn't have much talent for acting, so they asked her just to be herself.
I do sympathize with the plot of the movie, though. Thousands of American Communists blacklisted by HUAC, among them the characters played by Streisand and Robert Redford. It was tragic that so many creative people we forced out of American culture for so long, just because of some ideological fear.
And yet we still allow NSA wiretapping. Naivete, thy name is W.
Sunday, June 4, 2006 4:20:41 AM
My sister will graduate from high school in eight calendar days. There will be ceremony, celebration, and drunken commisseration among the adults. My sister will be oblivious to all of this as she is oblivious to all things.
I always used to think that she was simply a teenage girl. But now, as she is about to unleash herself upon the "real world", I realise that she may actually be a complete, unadulterated bitch. I came to this realisation tonight as I sat in a Chinese restaurant and listened to my sister beleaguer my mother and the poor minimum-wage waitress with insults about the food choice and the quality of the cooking, not to mention the "tacky decor". When the waitress fired a shot across the bow about how she would never have gotten away with talking like that to hermother, my sister fired right back: "Well look where listening to her got you."
I think my sister has been stolen and replaced by a clone. A clone developed, programmed, and sent by MTV to destroy us. I think I may kill her. In public. With a bit of brick. It's my duty as an American.
My Opera
