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Racist Graffiti And A Paper Noose

This not only appears on the KNS, it’s on the AP Wire.

The Sumner County Sheriff’s Department is investigating a possible hate crime after racist graffiti defaming a black school administrator were found with a paper-towel noose.

Graffiti in a restroom?  *gasp*

A noose made out of paper towells? *oh no!*

Congratulations news outlets.  The juvenile morons who did this just got way more attention than they could’ve ever hoped.  This is nothing more than some immature, ignorant kids expressing their ignorance and stupidity while they take a dump.

We may not like the fact that they are immature and ignorant, but a hate crime?  Let’s hope these dangerous criminals are apprehended before Halloween.  If not they may graduate to stealing pumpkins or maybe even TPing a yard or two.

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Hold On…Let Me Get My Gun!

The Missus and I an ongoing disagreement. Disagreement is probably too strong of a world. It’s more like a difference of opinion–when is the right time for a child to have a gun, shoot a gun, be around guns, etc?

We both have a healthy respect for what they can do, but hers is more like a fear. She sees them as weapons, but I see them as tools. I think this difference of perspective comes mostly from the fact that she’s never been around guns, but I’ve been around them my whole life. In my mind, this experience gives me a much more educated opinion.

It came up again when we were watching Superbad and saw the scene where the kid is fascinated with holding and shooting a gun. To me, a 16 year old who’s full of adrenaline over the prospect of holding a gun is a much scarier proposition than an 8 year old who thinks it’s no big deal.

She asked once when I first shot a gun. I honestly don’t even remember when that was. To me that’s like asking when you first used a screwdriver. But I do remember being drilled constantly by my dad on the rules of gun safety. Those rules went for any gun at our house. When I hear people now talk about having BB gun wars as kids, I can’t help but imagine what would have happened to us if we’d done that. Honestly, punishment would have been the least of our worries–we could both actually shoot. There’s no way I’d want my brother drawing a bead on me.

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How Would DLR Raise My Kids?

As I’ve said before, I often pause when I’m at a crossroads in my life to ask myself WWDLRD–What Would David Lee Roth Do?

I guess it’s reasonable to suspect that my perspective would change once I decided to unleash version 2.0 of this gene package onto the world. Then again, when have I been reasonable?

I remember reading an interview with DLR a long time ago where he described what his parents called “monkey hour” when he was a kid. He, being DLR, would act like a total lunatic for an hour.  According to him, he took Monkey Hour and turned it into a career.

I like the idea of Monkey Hour, and I think I want to have that at our house. One hour of anything goes madness (confined to one room). No rules–throw whatever you want at whatever you want, turn over the furniture and jump off it, leg drop of doom your younger siblings–whatever. Get all that energy out before bed (or a trip to the emergency room).

But at the end of the hour we have to clean up everything. Making them clean up will ensure that they don’t end up like DLR. Then again, they may just end up like one of his roadies instead, huh?

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Me! My Favorite Meme Ever!

Taylor tagged me with a meme.  In her post she mentioned that she was celebrating her 6 month anniversary blogging, and I realized that I let my one year anniversary slip.  Oh well, I don’t put much stock in that kind of stuff anyway.  Here are the rules to the meme…

** Post about the meme and link back to the person that tagged you.

** Go back to your archives and link to your five favorite posts.

Link One: must be about family
Link Two: must be about friends
Link Three: must be about yourself
Link Four: must be about something you love
Link Five: can be anything you choose

** Tag five other people (at least two must be new acquaintances so that you can get to know them better).

A post about family:  I almost feel bad claiming this post as my own, because I didn’t write most of it, and definitely didn’t write the best parts of it.  It’s all about my grandfather’s Thanksgiving day in 1945.

A post about friends:  it happened ten or so years ago, but I just posted last year about my buddy Eaton Beavers

A post about me:  in September I was busy damning Scrubs straight to hell.  The writing is corny and contrived, but the clips of highlights at the end of the post make it all worthwhile.

A post about something I love:  I wrote one in in December about the abandoned practice of exchanging emails with My Favorite.  I love My Favorite, and I love exchanging emails with her too…especially the kinds we’ll never ever ever show our kids.

A past about anything I choose:  Back in July, before I had the HUGE following I enjoy today, I wrote a post about Fury Face.  A tale of a terrifying mask or a cartoon character who is perpetually showing his anger?  Nah, just a group of educators who can’t spell.

So I think I’ll tag….

SVD, who is currently enjoying an Instalanche and riding the wave of success.

The Wookie at Total Diatribe, who will probably have something mean to say in every post he chooses

My Favorite, who is very starved for time to write, so everything she writes is very important

Hungry Mother, who has a plethora of interesting posts about every one of these topics.

NewsComa, who probably doesn’t even have time to participate because she’s churning out great posts one right after another.

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More Educashun

I had a couple of interesting conversations about education yesterday. One was with a friend who home schooled both of his kids, and the other was with a couple of high school teachers. The one thing I took from both conversations is that it doesn’t seem like anyone is happy with the system, whether they are getting paid by it or paying into it.

So why do we keep it around? As I commented over at Meville, who is happy with it?

As is the case with most things, the answer probably lies in asking another question–who has the most to gain by keeping the status quo? That’s probably the group fighting the hardest to maintain it. I’ll leave it up to commenters to guess who that may be, but I have some ideas.

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And I Ain’t Lost Yet

Billymac just got back from Vegas, and it sounds like he did pretty well at the poker tables. I’ve known and loved Billymac for years, and this is one reason why…

I like no, I LOVE, taking money from punk-ass kids that show up to a poker room wearing a track-suit, pulled down hat, wrap around sunglasses, and listening to their iPhones at the table.

My favorite stunt to pull at Vegas poker tables is to sit down and immediately start talking. I like to play up the fact that I’m a stupid hick. It’s not much of a stretch, and I’ve preparing for that role my entire life. That kid with the iPhone and glasses Billymac mentioned almost always falls for it, and I can usually take them for a while.

Invariably, a couple of people at the table realize after a while that I’m a somewhat intelligent hick.

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Was This Part Of The Dream?

I’ve wrestled for a couple of days on how to compose this post, and I’m still not sure I can do this idea justice.  I think the best way to frame it is to begin by quoting an email a friend sent to me on Saturday.  A little background–he has two small children who are enrolled in arguably the best pre-school in their city. 

When he picked up his kids last Friday and asked them what they’d learned, they told him about “Martin Luther The King”–very cute.  How sad it is that the lesson they learned about one of the greatest Americans in history is sprinkled with horrible ideas that totally contradict Dr. King’s message…

He helped black people. The white people weren’t nice to him. They put him in jail.  Yeah, and they killed him.
All black people are nice. White people are mean.
The white people hit him and wouldn’t go to school with him.

Those were direct quotes from the kids.   And as my friend pointed out:

By the way, before yesterday, they had absolutely no idea that
there were black people or white people.

There’s no better time than childhood to reinforce what kids already know to be true–that people should “not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”  I realize they are kids, and they obviously get some things mixed up.  And I also realize that they still don’t really grasp who Martin Luther King Jr. was.

But I don’t think “All _____ people are bad and all _____ people are good” is what Dr. King had in mind.  Fill in the blanks with any adjectives you want–black, white, red, yellow, Christian, Jewish, pretty, ugly, stupid, smart, rich, poor, Mexican, French, short, tall, fat, skinny, etc.–and that statement couldn’t be further from the truth.

It’s shameful when a great message like Dr. King’s is bastardized to further an agenda.  Knowing no other details that what I’ve shared here, I can’t say that’s what happened in their school.  I doubt the teacher(s) told these kids directly that “all white people are bad and all black people are good,” but if that’s the message that was received, they might as well have.

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My Homies Shakespeare and Tupac

Taylor’s right. Shakespeare kicks serious ass. I would say he kicks more ass than Tupac, but he didn’t continue to publish works after his death, so I can’t go that far. But she has an interesting point–lots of kids aren’t into Shakespeare mostly because they aren’t into their teachers.

So, if you’re a high schooler trying to avoid reading Shakespeare because your teacher is telling you to do it, hear this: They’re right about him. But contrary to what your goofy-assed English teacher says as she swoons over some lines you barely understand, you don’t have to like him right now. The important thing is to NOT LET THE ENGLISH TEACHER KILL IT FOR YOU.

In my case, the school system in general screwed it up by introducing us to Romeo and Juliet first. I guess because it’s “easiest” to get? Dunno.

Anyway, when I read Hamlet, I couldn’t believe how great Shakespeare was. I was kicking myself that I’d not gotten everything from Julius Caesar I should have the previous year.

I attempted to make up for my iambic pentameteric deficiencies in college, but ended up studying just enough Shakespeare (one semester) to know how much more there is out there and that I’d barely even scratched the surface. Although, I’d make the argument that one of the side effects of really learning is that you find out how much you don’t know.

So here’s the advice that I’m almost 100% sure no one will take–kids, read all the Shakespeare you can while you have the time and someone willing to fill in all the stuff you don’t catch on your own and answer your questions.

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The Wire and The Press

Last night we watched the first episode of season 5 of The Wire, and it is already shaping up to be very interesting. This season is focusing heavily on the newsroom of The Baltimore Sun and how news is sorted and reported. The best quote so far is, “I wonder what it’s like to work for a real newspaper,” which is ironically the same thing said about the Baltimore Police Department in season 3.

All we know of the newsroom so far is that staff has been cut by the parent corporation in Chicago, and the older guys who can actually write (“you don’t want to say that people were evacuated”) are being pushed out in favor of young kids who see the Sun only as a stopping point on their way to The Times or The Post.

One thing I’ve noticed about The Wire is that it exposes the fact that every profession they’ve examined is made up of people that basically fit into the same categories. There are always people who only care about their stats, the people that are there to do the minimum to get the paycheck, the ones who are only interested in furthering their careers, and the ones who do the job because it is a part of who they are and only want to do their best work. So far this has held true for police, politicians, teachers, drug dealers, thieves, and sometimes drug addicts.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out in the newsroom.

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Dream Connection Radiothon

If you are feeling more like Bob Cratchit and less like Ebenezer Scrooge Tuesday morning, I’ll be manning the phones with the Knoxville Rugby Club at Dream Connection’s annual Radiothon on WIVK–call in and make a pledge from 7am to 10 am!

If you aren’t familiar with Dream Connection, it is an East Tennessee charity that makes dreams come true for local kids with life threatening or chronically debilitating illnesses. Our club just started working with them last year when we did a golf tournament for their benefit, and they are a top notch organization. My favorite thing about this organization is that 100% of the funds they receive goes directly to making dreams come true for kids.

No overhead costs–printed materials and the like are donated. No paid positions–everyone involved works as a volunteer solely to help the kids.

Call in Tuesday morning and help this great cause!