some lights seem eternal
in this springtime of hope

I wrote this during Iowa tests:

May 17, 2004
The Iowa Test of Basic Skills is difficult to stay awake during. If it weren�t for the racket caused by the construction across the street I think I would go crazy. I�m not in my classroom for this so I don�t having anything of my own to do. I should have brought a book to read or something. That�s always a disaster anyway because I cannot enjoy a book and proctor children. At the same time I can�t sit here either and just slowly fall asleep.

Behind the selfless reasons for being a teacher there are a couple of selfish ones as well. I like to talk and teaching provides me with an audience, albeit a captive one but I�m sure after years of practice they may well develop into a captivated one. My needs are being met and as it�s a selfish reason I can sum this paragraph up with a quote from Theodore Roosevelt, �Bully!�

The other selfish reason is that I like to get up and move around. You can�t do that during these stupid tests because it�s distracting to the students. The students, it�s all about them all the time. Their needs always come first, baw.

This classroom has more windows than mine does. This isn�t fair at all, no wonder my classroom feels like own corner of hell May through September and this joker is as cool as a cucumber. I hope he�s enjoying my classroom, ha.

Two nights ago I argued with my sister on the internet and about things and was talking to Emily about the gossip about family members that I no longer talk that my sister repeated to me because it�s really very sad. My aunt is pregnant again and I only repeated it to Emily because Emily had the misfortune of dining with my Aunt and her children. Emily said, �Excellent, another person for your aunt to screw up! I hope she home-schools this one too!�

My aunt�s ability to conceive is a testament to the fertility of those with lower IQ�s. My aunt is also the strongest argument I can think of for licensing conception. You need a license to operate a car, own and use a gun, fly planes, or practice a profession but you can make all the babies you want if you pair off with someone else stupid enough to replicate retardation with you. Does anyone else realize how dangerous this is?

Emily has met them and my aunt on this occasion took the opportunity to repeat her repertoire of racist jokes (primarily directed at African Americans and Jews) to Emily. She had informed her children that they were meeting the woman that I would one day marry (information from her own imagination) and I suppose she wanted to impress Emily by an astounding display of public bigotry which would only lead me to ask, �What does this woman keep to herself.� Thankfully my aunt also loudly proclaimed her support for Howard Dean and dislike for Laura Bush establishing for the entire resturaunt we were in that she wasn�t representing conservative thought.

The ironic thing about my aunt and her jokes about Jews is this: she�s Jewish. It would be like me making Lutheran jokes, which I do, but inappropriate ones. None of my jokes draw on genocide for their punch line but I guess like Chris Rock calling other African Americans �nigger� - it�s okay if you�re in the club. She pretends to be open minded and enlightened (the fairy tale of all liberals) but at the same time has a very sorted past. She talks about how she�s a good mother because she home schools. She home schools so her sons wouldn�t have to go to school with black and Hispanic children. My dad�s mother (the woman who died) initially won�t see doctors who were less white than she was. I credit her death on racism. She was white like Michael Jackson, for her there was little hope.

The normative home-schooled child has delayed social skills. This point is usually countered by the fact that home-schooled children get along just fine with other home schooled children and octogenarians. Their inability to get along with or relate to other children their age is usually cited as the fault of the child being raised in the normative environment. I really doubt it. One of the unique abnormalities of my cousins (and I pray that it is indeed unique) is their propensity to be naked and desire to be naked with other naked people. They really like being naked and at ten and five this isn�t normal or healthy. That family is the naked family, they�re into that and I don�t even pretend to think it could be normal.

Have you ever noticed that nudists aren�t really people you want to see with clothes on much less off? Honestly. It�s always baggy old hippies and grandma. You can be comfortable in YOUR body: I don�t want to see it.

And thank God no one in my family has been born naturally because they would have had the indecency to film it for us and we wouldn�t know that it was a live birth until it was too late. My sister cringes at this not because it�s foul but because it�s true. These people have no common decency. They would think nothing of showing you the way to Maine.

Okay, the test is over (thank God) see you later.

11:13 PM :: 4 comments so far ::
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