pig

it seems as popular as ever to bash the president... i really think this song, by dave matthews band, is about gwb...

Everybody wake up
If your living with your eyes closed
See the man with a bomb in his hand
Everybody wake up
Oh baby it's not easy sometimes
They build these walls ever higher and hide behind them
Seems an odd way to try and make things right
Oh I feel like I go crazy sometimes

Our finest hour arrives
See the pig dressed in his finest fine
The believers stand behind him and smile
As the day lights up with fire

Everybody wake up
If your living with your eyes closed
See the man with a bomb in his hand
Everybody wake up

I Remember the words of the misguided fool
Do unto others as you'd have them do
Not an eye for an eye is the golden rule
Just leaves a room full of blind men

And the finest hour arrives
See the pig dressed in his finest fine
Don't believe him leave and stand behind him and smile
As the day lights up with fire

of course

now, of course, as i feared, i feel like i could fall asleep and stay there for quite some time... i'll just go get coffee.

restless

i don't know why, but i woke up at two last night (3.5 hours ago) and wasn't able to sleep again. i kept looking at the clock so i'd know how long i had stayed awake. i like to know that, if for no other reason than to tell people how long i had been awake when i couldn't sleep. well, usually it takes about 30-45 minutes, but i never got tired, just thirsty. so i got up and had some water.

then i tried to lay down again, but could tell i wasn't gonna sleep. so then i organized a bunch of school stuff i should have organized during the summer. i found my swingline stapler finally.

it was then 4:00, and i decided it was the point of no return, and i'd be up for the day. i put on my bike gear and went for a ride. it's awesome riding so early: the air is cool, the roads are clear, and you're up before everyone.

i smelled dog doo doo, and thought of a good way to describe the smell: won't go into it here...

i went down reservoir, a huge hill with railroad tracks at the bottom. that was scary: i go down that hill frequently, but never in the dark. it was the first part of my ride that wasn't lit with street lights and storefront lights. as i sped down the hill at what was probably 25-30 miles an hour, i considered the people whom i'd chosen to be my I.C.E. on my cell phone (In Case of Emergency)... my dad would tell the EMTs that they must be mistaken, his son never gets up before 10 in the morning in the summer, and never before 7 when he needs to be at work. i wondered if caryl and dallas would wake up for the phone.

i made it to the bottom and across the tracks. i was safe and would probably make it back safe. now i'm gonna get ready for school.

i think i should write all the things about myself that i think are not good sometime.

goin good

started school yesterday. it was cool. one of my students smarted off to another teacher in the hallway. it was not so cool.

i guess a couple of my kids were running in the hallway, although i was watching them and they seemed to be walking. this teacher was also running for some reason, and she told my kids to stop running. this kid says, "if you can run, we can." good point, but not coming from a 6 year old with a 'smart-ass' tone.

goin to bed. this regular work stuff really does me in.

a large military

i just received an email from john kerry. we are buds, he emails when gwb does something wrong or dumb to get me and other people to sign a petition. this time, he wants us to demand answers, real answers, from gwb as he goes to utah to speak to the vfw.

most of the questions he asks are understandable; mostly kerry wants more than rhetoric and beating-around-the-bush. however, one question asks: "when will the president support a military large enough to face the challenges of today's world?"

that one doesn't make sense. i think our military is pretty much big enough for the challenges of today's world... but what they are not, it seems to this nonmilitary person, is trained for the specific challenges. i guess i'm asking for quality, not quantity.

hidden curriculum

jk rowling was a teacher, and maybe i'm wrong, but i've sensed that she feels a personal responsibility to educate the world's youth in her series of books.

i've noticed, since she gained so much fame, that the more she writes, the more she uses terms that i think kids would have to look up in the dictionary. i can't think of examples now, but i know they are there.

she's also been using that "former/latter" stuff... i don't recall her using those before, and i wonder if she wants to teach kids what all that means... it's not everyday language, and personally i think it's annoying and haughty, moreso the latter.

SPOILER ALERT

but within her curriculum, something bothers me more than word usage. it didn't occur to me until yesterday what impact this might have in the world. all through the book, harry is telling dumbledore and anyone who will listen that snape and malfoy are up to something. no one listens, and the whole castle comes under attack and dumbledore dies because he doesn't listen. now, it's a tragedy that dumbledore didn't listen to harry, and that would be very annoying. but i think- realizing that jk rowling had all control over how things would happen - why would she make dumbledore seem so dumb? why would she, even though harry is supposed to be the hero, make it so that only he, a 16 year old boy, knows the truth? perhaps dumbledore had to die, but did it have to be because he, a wizened, tough, and most-powerful wizard ignored the advice of a 16 year old boy? the book makes it seem that old people ignore young people to their own disadvantage.

it's not right to ignore people, that's true. so why did jk rowling allow dumbledore, who seemed to me to represent fairness and justice, along with wisdom and power, to ignore the pleading of anyone, let alone harry potter? i know she is the one who knows how the series must end, but here we are with two years until the final book, where maybe she will rectify this "old vs. young" squabble...

but until then, we have all these kids running around saying, "you better listen to me, old man, cuz you know what happened to dumbledore when he didn't listen to the young harry potter..."

she's doing it again

is there anything wrong when a cat plays with water all the time? she's abusing the fountain again. i don't know what her problem is... ?????????

um

i went to a wedding yesterday. it was cool... i wasn't looking forward to it, but it was fun. family was all there, as it was a family wedding. and my brother and his girlfriend announced that she is no longer his girlfriend but has become his fiancee... she told my mom and my mom went into fits of crying and hugging and everything. with all the excitement, and other people rushing to them to find out the story, i didn't congratulate them until i was leaving, which was when my brother asked me to be his best man... i accepted excitedly... i had been informing him of gag gifts i might bring when he said, 'just make sure you bring a good 'best man speech' with you. will do.

at the moment i am downloading a podcast called mugglecast... it's harry potter related...

oscar is crazy... (my cat) she's always been into water. she's the reason i got the fountain that cycles water...

before oscar came, it was just me and snuffy. we were happy, but not complete. then a friend asked if i wanted another cat, and i took oscar home to meet snuffy. well, we are a very happy family. when oscar came, snuffy had been drinking from a normal cat water bowl. this was no good for oscar... actually, i think oscar liked it, because she likes to play with her water. a normal cat water bowl is easy to knock over and spill, which is what oscar likes to do. my first solution to this problem was to wedge the bowl under a cupboard where it couldn't be moved or spilled at all. then i saw this huge water bowl at the pet store that could not be spilled or moved, and i got that one. it worked just fine. no spills, holds lotsa water... the thing with that is, though, it's such a big bowl, i don't have to add water everyday, and then i forget about the idea of water and the bowl goes unattended: sometimes empty, sometimes hairy... then this one girl, angie, informed me about these fountain things, so i bought one of those, thinking it would be good for the cats and for me, it would help me to be conscious of 'water' for the cats.

it does help, cuz when it gets kinda low, it makes a humming sound. and if there's hair in it, it makes that humming sound then too. anytime there's a problem with the water flow, it makes this humming sound.

so now, there is always clean, fresh, aerated water for oscar. the fact remains, though, that for some reason, she likes to 'knock the water bowl around' while she's drinking. i don't know why this is. mainly, she nudges it and tips it back with the top of her head. i guess you could say she's a violent drinker. today, i caught her twice drinking, not from the pool of water in the drinking bowl, but from the water pouring out of the spout. and between drinks, she was head-butting the spout and tipping the machine backwards. then tonight i came home and the top had fallen off the water-fountain. oscar denies having anything to do with this incident.

angels in america

i just watched the second installment of 'angels in america' which is 6 hours long, it was on hbo, and won a couple emmys. it was entertaining, sad, educational...

i recommend watching it; it deals with the topic of aids, homosexuality, politics, social justice.

so anyway, tomorrow i go up to lake geneva, and i was gonna stay up there for the week, but i think that's too long a visit, so i'm stayin till tuesday night. then i go back up there on saturday for a wedding.