I really don’t.
I don’t know who the hell Carole Baskin is. But what I can say is today has been fraught with interruptions. I guess I’m just a popular guy to talk to today. It has been this way since about 6:50am, and so far it shows no sign of letting up.
One call after the next. One text after the next. And let’s not forget about the emails from people at work. You know, the profs who are such brilliant thinkers in their field who can’t even be arsed to provide any details on their “URGENT” requests, forcing me to have to look that stuff up.
They are in for a rude awakening in a month when we are all gone.
My son is doing his schoolwork right now on the other computer and jeez, it just sounds like a lot of busywork. Modules that talk down to kids. Infotainment at its best. It makes me want to stick my head underwater until the bubbles stop coming up.
One of the things I remember from being a kid was knowing when I was being patronized. I always hated it. It made me feel incredibly guilty whenever my mom would buy some kind of summer math or reading workbooks and I would thumb through them and see nothing but pandering and patronization. “Let’s make it swell for the kids! They’ll really dig this groovy scene!”
Fuck. Off.
I just couldn’t even stomach those things because they were so out of touch, so hokey, and just close enough to what kids my age were actually interested in, but so generic it felt…wrong.
“Star Wars is big! Let’s put a rocket ship on this. Not a cool looking rocket. No, a big bulbous one with lots of soft edges just in case kids are scared of rocket ships.”
“You mean a friendly rocket ship?”
“Yes! Exactly! You’re going places, Johnson!”
“Then we’ll make it more recognizable to minorities.”
“I have just the thing: Maria has three serapes. If she trades her serapes to N’dugu for his six cassowary feet, what is the current rate of exchange?”
“My heart is swelling with such cultural relativity.”
“Wait until I tell you about Jamal and Ling!”
It’s almost endearing to see the effort educators try to put into this stuff. Until it isn’t. It reminds me of how ducks must feel when they float up alongside a decoy and think just seconds before they are blasted, “Somethin’ ain’t right with this guy…”
I think when these modules are made, scads of educators who don’t have kids or were never kids themselves must just be throwing up the high fives like a big bulbous rocket ship just cleared the launchpad to go to Taffy Planet.
Next rant will probably be about how law enforcement agencies still believe 1980s Glenn Frey songs bear any meaning in the lives of people driving on the roads today.
“The Heat is On!”
If I ran the world, my PSA would be, “Hey! Shithead! Put down your phone and fuckin’ drive!”
Wendigo Mountain 