Anyway, on to something else.
I've noticed that a lot of the people I know are, at the end of the day, the absolute antithesis of what they proclaim to be or aspire to be.
I could provide some decent examples from my escapades tonight, but without a whole whack of backstory, it's pretty likely that none of them will make a whole lot of sense.
Anyway, I don't get it. What's the point of being anything besides what you are and who you are?
I get there is a certain element of politeness that is required for functioning relationships, but one can be polite and present themselves plainly, right?
I don't know. I realize I'm not a popular guy and that people, while generally attracted to me for a short time, tend to find me irritating or unpleasant or what have you after a while. I'm pretty good with this, as I don't really like being around most people for more than a short amount of time, and frankly it usually works to my benefit as most of my more impersonal interpersonal interactions are brief.
While there's probably more to it than simply being what I perceive myself to be, I'm fairly certain that my general lack of self-inhibition and willingness to do what seems proper for myself does factor into the above. That said, I am absolutely certain that because what you see is generally what you get, those few people that do know me well and like me genuinely do like me exactly as I am, no strings or pressure attached.
It seems like maybe the world would be a little calmer if other people were of this mindset, but perhaps that's just hubris talking. I don't know.
I remember many of the girls I've dated saying a if part of my appeal is how "mysterious" I am or was, and a few others saying it was more a case of pretty black and white thinking combined with a "down to earthiness". I think it makes for an interesting contrast, though I think the matter of which is the "correct" opinion is probably pretty subjective to the observer.
27.4.14
You know, I think I've written the "you" blog out a pile of times, usually while we are talking while I'm wasted. It won't ever be published. Even this blog has been through a few revisions in the last hour or so, and I don't feel that any of them really contribute to the overall theme.
Sometimes, I can't find the right words. The poetry doth not flow forth.
Sometimes, I can't find the right feeling. The words are there, but convey things wrongly.
Hell, this post, which is about as close as I think you will ever get, dear reader, certainly falls under both those categories.
Aren't Oxford commas marvelous?
Anyway, there are a lot of problems with the you blog, because it would never be quite right, and some things are maybe worth doing right or not at all.
So, I've pretty much given up on that, and instead you get whatever this will turn out to be, and then will be left to draw your own conclusions.
In the end, I really just have too much self realization for their to be an honest blog with yourself as the topic. I have no illusions, and even though I doubt you do either, have you ever stopped to ask yourself what I might be getting out of this particular aspect of our friendship? I don't mean this as in some whiney rhetorical "what do I get" or "why are we friends" way - I certainly get something, and the question is quite genuine; What do you figure that something might be?
I think I have a pretty good idea what you are getting out of it, and I know exactly what I get out of it. And frankly, I just won't allow myself or am genuinely incapable of expressing that to you. This is very unusual, as I don't usually have much trouble expressing myself at all when I want to, but not really that unexpected. So if you take nothing else from this blog, feel a little special on that, I guess.
So that's about it, I guess. I wish I could have compared your eyes to the depths of a glacial lake, or said something about what a great person you are for always being so positive and fundamentally kind (you laughed pretty hard when my head hit that window), but in the end, that's not really what this is about.
Don't get me wrong, I would have loved to have spent the next hour or so of this evening hitting on you and enjoying the attentions of your pretty, charming self, but if this blog makes any sense to you, then perhaps you can see why I didn't.
And if it doesn't make sense, then I suppose I apologise though there is nothing I really can or intend to do about it - as I say, I have written this out a few times since we had that particular conversation, and this is really the only way to write this that feels genuine and not falsely flattering or even more falsely unflattering. Though I suspect the significance is pretty minor, you certainly deserve better than what probably looks like a very vague paragraph.
Sometimes, I can't find the right words. The poetry doth not flow forth.
Sometimes, I can't find the right feeling. The words are there, but convey things wrongly.
Hell, this post, which is about as close as I think you will ever get, dear reader, certainly falls under both those categories.
Aren't Oxford commas marvelous?
Anyway, there are a lot of problems with the you blog, because it would never be quite right, and some things are maybe worth doing right or not at all.
So, I've pretty much given up on that, and instead you get whatever this will turn out to be, and then will be left to draw your own conclusions.
In the end, I really just have too much self realization for their to be an honest blog with yourself as the topic. I have no illusions, and even though I doubt you do either, have you ever stopped to ask yourself what I might be getting out of this particular aspect of our friendship? I don't mean this as in some whiney rhetorical "what do I get" or "why are we friends" way - I certainly get something, and the question is quite genuine; What do you figure that something might be?
I think I have a pretty good idea what you are getting out of it, and I know exactly what I get out of it. And frankly, I just won't allow myself or am genuinely incapable of expressing that to you. This is very unusual, as I don't usually have much trouble expressing myself at all when I want to, but not really that unexpected. So if you take nothing else from this blog, feel a little special on that, I guess.
So that's about it, I guess. I wish I could have compared your eyes to the depths of a glacial lake, or said something about what a great person you are for always being so positive and fundamentally kind (you laughed pretty hard when my head hit that window), but in the end, that's not really what this is about.
Don't get me wrong, I would have loved to have spent the next hour or so of this evening hitting on you and enjoying the attentions of your pretty, charming self, but if this blog makes any sense to you, then perhaps you can see why I didn't.
And if it doesn't make sense, then I suppose I apologise though there is nothing I really can or intend to do about it - as I say, I have written this out a few times since we had that particular conversation, and this is really the only way to write this that feels genuine and not falsely flattering or even more falsely unflattering. Though I suspect the significance is pretty minor, you certainly deserve better than what probably looks like a very vague paragraph.
23.4.14
I wonder who picks these pictures, knowing that they are trying to convince people to pay them tons of money to consume a health product that probably won't work. I get "infected nipple fruit" and some of the other pictures I've seen in these ads, but for some reason "giant rotting squid carcass" isn't really something I think I'd want to see on an ingredient label, even if it's healthy as fuck.
After spending about 20 minutes on the site that ad links to, I have watched what seems like a really bad movie trailer, and still have no idea what the fuck I am supposed to be buying or where to put the money in. This is a great example of a whole different type of bad advertising - I'm left thinking the old dude in the picture isn't actually cringing at the collapse of western society, but staring blankly in terror and confusion because he has no idea what the fuck he just watched and what some shitty summer movie has to do with the implosion of the U.S. economy or his checkbook.
This shit's all from the Sun Media series of websites, which for some reason I am now starting to really have trouble remembering, I actually pay a small monthly fee to look at.
The articles aren't much better.
Pretty self explanatory. As sometimes happens, a dude tried to smuggle himself out of someplace, in this case Africa, and died of hypothermia, or oxygen deprivation, or was crushed by the plane's wheels as they retracted.
Because this headline was also in the papers recently...
...Some highly intelligent dude who maintains the website decided to put this poll on both pages:
I guess news and entertainment media aren't really all that far apart, but still.
In case you were wondering.
Been pretty uninteresting over here lately.
10.4.14
Facebook is always so silly
Click the pictures, they never size right.
You mean never, ever have any scientists stumbled opon a dead elephant and cut open the trunk? Edward has been playing this new game, and my facebook has been drowned in shitty game notifications that aren't even really "facts".
I find a few things funny about this. One, these ads are targeted, so apparently something in my searches indicates that I need rehab and would also function well as a drug and health councillor.
Also, 855 people had a lot of fun in rehab.
I now know one of "those people", you know, the ones who post pictures of themselves with ten hashtags on twitter, and then have to facebook about how they posted pictures of themselves on twitter.
You can't see it in the picture, but twelve people liked this.
But you can see it in this picture. I am a little stoned and not super twitter savvy, but it took me a minute to clue in as to the fact that they are not congratulating him on finishing a coke and the posting pictures of it.
A little off topic, but if you've ever been bumped to first class, you know that on commercial flights, the food and salads are the same shitty stuff you get in coach. For somereason "airline salad" seems like a bad marketing move to me.
And, on the topic of advertising. I think my booty would have 2m likes (whatever that means, "m" not actually being a statement of any sort) if I cold afford to advertise it on facebook.
Anyway, had not blogged in a while.
You mean never, ever have any scientists stumbled opon a dead elephant and cut open the trunk? Edward has been playing this new game, and my facebook has been drowned in shitty game notifications that aren't even really "facts".
I find a few things funny about this. One, these ads are targeted, so apparently something in my searches indicates that I need rehab and would also function well as a drug and health councillor.
Also, 855 people had a lot of fun in rehab.
I now know one of "those people", you know, the ones who post pictures of themselves with ten hashtags on twitter, and then have to facebook about how they posted pictures of themselves on twitter.
You can't see it in the picture, but twelve people liked this.
But you can see it in this picture. I am a little stoned and not super twitter savvy, but it took me a minute to clue in as to the fact that they are not congratulating him on finishing a coke and the posting pictures of it.
A little off topic, but if you've ever been bumped to first class, you know that on commercial flights, the food and salads are the same shitty stuff you get in coach. For somereason "airline salad" seems like a bad marketing move to me.
And, on the topic of advertising. I think my booty would have 2m likes (whatever that means, "m" not actually being a statement of any sort) if I cold afford to advertise it on facebook.
Anyway, had not blogged in a while.
27.3.14
21.3.14
Ok, ok, one more kind of funny teacher story. Any maybe a bus driver story if my hand doesn't hurt.
I probably should have realized I did not get along with teachers early on in my school "career".
I remember in elementary, our class would regularly go to the computer lab and either type, or just look shit up on the internet.
I always hated computer class when we were just looking shit up. Oregon Trail was fun, and so was typing, but I think Mr. Blais was frankly just too fucking lazy to bother to make sure we were all typing, or was too busy ogling the girls and deciding who to creep on when we all eventually had him again in middle school, so most of the time, we were just assigned to look up shit on the internet.
I want to take a second here to note that this was never anything informative. Usually, someone in the class would go "Oh look, Pokémon!", and Mr. Blais would then exclaim:
"Regard la! Tout le monde, allez a le site que Alica a trove!"
And then we'd all go spend a while looking at Alica's pokemon website.
Now, the only thing I think I ever learned from that is that you could make decent Pokémon card money by printing off pictures and descriptions from that site and selling them to people at school for 25 cents a pop. Don't try it now though, it's creepy and I suspect that while copywrite lawyers have better things to do than sue little kids, they probably don't have much better things to do than sue petty 20-something intellectual thieves.
As much as I was a problem child, I think I was also really fucking precocious as a little kid, and could probably describe my elementary school years as "profitable" - from selling the boy's side's box full of paper hornets to the girls for meal card tickets, to trading really worn porn mags I found laying around the school yard for my first and most disgusting cigarette, to my $8 bucks a pop gerbil farms, I think I was definitely an 8 year old's version of a millionaire. I could buy all my own shit, and while I am still very, very skilled at taking people's money away from them, I think that if I could have a proportionate level of adult income for a decade, I could retire.
Anyway, back to computer lab. Many more of the classes were pokemon oriented or spent emailing the friends I'd made at French camp than actually learning anything. This was almost ten years before Wikipedia, long before Youtube, and even before Google, when people still used fucking AskJeeves, and actually ASKED FUCKING QUESTIONS like "Can you find me a wicked fucking Pokémon website?". This was at a time when having a porn site called the White House that featured chicks with really hairy vags actually made sense and was kind of funny (I JUST got the fucking joke, fifteen years after seeing that particular website once, and LAWL!). There was barely anything to learn online without looking hard for it, and let's face it, a bunch of kids are not going to look too hard.
Worse than all that, my dad has always been big on gadgets, and thusly, I had a nice shiney brand fucking new Pentium II at home, and even with the shoddy internet one comes to expect in the Great Northern Wasteland, that machine killed fucking lag like Woodie Guthrie's kills fascists, and was faster than a white trash widow at the Indy 500. By comparison, the school had bought possibly the worse glorified fucking calculators available that were internet capable, and everything DRUG ON. Eventually, I got kind of sick of it and stopped bothering to look things up when I didn't feel like it.
This eventually came to the notice of Mr. Blais, who was not impressed at his authority being questioned. I suspect I was over at someone else's computer, rather than my own, looking up things in collaboration with them. The ultimatum he laid down was that I needed to go look things up online, or type in things for the computer to say back to me, or play the typing game, or I could go downstairs and sit infront of the office.
I need to make it clear here - I am very, very literally minded, despite rarely being serious myself much anymore, and have always been very fucking black and white.
So, instead of taking this as what I'm sure was in reality an icy, stern Gallic rebuke and an order to get back to "work", I took it as this understanding sort of "Well, tell you what. If you don't want to use the computers, then you can go sit in front of the office until the end of class." Logic now dictates that I could have sat in class and not used the computer just as well, but at the time, I thought it was a genuine offer of an option to go sit quietly in a nice, comfortable chair somewhere where I could be supervised.
So, I said "Thanks, I'll go sit in front of the office", and did, stopping at the classroom to grab a choose your own adventure book. I sat there for a long while.
Eventually, someone, I don't remember who except that it was not the principal, as she was a truly miserable old wench who would of laid things out quite clearly and thus not have left me so confused during what came next, came out of the office and asked me what I was doing there.
I smiled and said "Oh, Mr. Blais said that I could come and sit down here while they used the computers, and I thought it would be ok if I brought a book."
She gave me a puzzled look and went to go find him.
I don't really remember what happened next except that parents were called, and because they knew what a literal son of a bitch they had raised, it was one of the few times they ended up taking my side. I was incredibly confused about the whole thing, being a cute little disturber back then rather than an angry, intentional one, but it's pretty funny looking back on it.
I think perhaps I will write more kid stories, as most of them make me chuckle.
The porn website was funny because Bush was the President, thusly, the best place for Bush was the White House. Not G.W. Bush mind you, Herbert Bush, the one from Saddam Vs. Bush I, and who was succeeded by the excellent Bill Clinton. Unfortunately, the site no longer exists and I suspect the government pulled some sort of early virtual eminent domain stunt on them, barring them from profiting from Bush the Second and the joke from being even better.
In case you don't get it, I'll reword - there sure was a lot of pussy in the white house for a while, surrounded by Bush.
I probably should have realized I did not get along with teachers early on in my school "career".
I remember in elementary, our class would regularly go to the computer lab and either type, or just look shit up on the internet.
I always hated computer class when we were just looking shit up. Oregon Trail was fun, and so was typing, but I think Mr. Blais was frankly just too fucking lazy to bother to make sure we were all typing, or was too busy ogling the girls and deciding who to creep on when we all eventually had him again in middle school, so most of the time, we were just assigned to look up shit on the internet.
I want to take a second here to note that this was never anything informative. Usually, someone in the class would go "Oh look, Pokémon!", and Mr. Blais would then exclaim:
"Regard la! Tout le monde, allez a le site que Alica a trove!"
And then we'd all go spend a while looking at Alica's pokemon website.
Now, the only thing I think I ever learned from that is that you could make decent Pokémon card money by printing off pictures and descriptions from that site and selling them to people at school for 25 cents a pop. Don't try it now though, it's creepy and I suspect that while copywrite lawyers have better things to do than sue little kids, they probably don't have much better things to do than sue petty 20-something intellectual thieves.
As much as I was a problem child, I think I was also really fucking precocious as a little kid, and could probably describe my elementary school years as "profitable" - from selling the boy's side's box full of paper hornets to the girls for meal card tickets, to trading really worn porn mags I found laying around the school yard for my first and most disgusting cigarette, to my $8 bucks a pop gerbil farms, I think I was definitely an 8 year old's version of a millionaire. I could buy all my own shit, and while I am still very, very skilled at taking people's money away from them, I think that if I could have a proportionate level of adult income for a decade, I could retire.
Anyway, back to computer lab. Many more of the classes were pokemon oriented or spent emailing the friends I'd made at French camp than actually learning anything. This was almost ten years before Wikipedia, long before Youtube, and even before Google, when people still used fucking AskJeeves, and actually ASKED FUCKING QUESTIONS like "Can you find me a wicked fucking Pokémon website?". This was at a time when having a porn site called the White House that featured chicks with really hairy vags actually made sense and was kind of funny (I JUST got the fucking joke, fifteen years after seeing that particular website once, and LAWL!). There was barely anything to learn online without looking hard for it, and let's face it, a bunch of kids are not going to look too hard.
Worse than all that, my dad has always been big on gadgets, and thusly, I had a nice shiney brand fucking new Pentium II at home, and even with the shoddy internet one comes to expect in the Great Northern Wasteland, that machine killed fucking lag like Woodie Guthrie's kills fascists, and was faster than a white trash widow at the Indy 500. By comparison, the school had bought possibly the worse glorified fucking calculators available that were internet capable, and everything DRUG ON. Eventually, I got kind of sick of it and stopped bothering to look things up when I didn't feel like it.
This eventually came to the notice of Mr. Blais, who was not impressed at his authority being questioned. I suspect I was over at someone else's computer, rather than my own, looking up things in collaboration with them. The ultimatum he laid down was that I needed to go look things up online, or type in things for the computer to say back to me, or play the typing game, or I could go downstairs and sit infront of the office.
I need to make it clear here - I am very, very literally minded, despite rarely being serious myself much anymore, and have always been very fucking black and white.
So, instead of taking this as what I'm sure was in reality an icy, stern Gallic rebuke and an order to get back to "work", I took it as this understanding sort of "Well, tell you what. If you don't want to use the computers, then you can go sit in front of the office until the end of class." Logic now dictates that I could have sat in class and not used the computer just as well, but at the time, I thought it was a genuine offer of an option to go sit quietly in a nice, comfortable chair somewhere where I could be supervised.
So, I said "Thanks, I'll go sit in front of the office", and did, stopping at the classroom to grab a choose your own adventure book. I sat there for a long while.
Eventually, someone, I don't remember who except that it was not the principal, as she was a truly miserable old wench who would of laid things out quite clearly and thus not have left me so confused during what came next, came out of the office and asked me what I was doing there.
I smiled and said "Oh, Mr. Blais said that I could come and sit down here while they used the computers, and I thought it would be ok if I brought a book."
She gave me a puzzled look and went to go find him.
I don't really remember what happened next except that parents were called, and because they knew what a literal son of a bitch they had raised, it was one of the few times they ended up taking my side. I was incredibly confused about the whole thing, being a cute little disturber back then rather than an angry, intentional one, but it's pretty funny looking back on it.
I think perhaps I will write more kid stories, as most of them make me chuckle.
The porn website was funny because Bush was the President, thusly, the best place for Bush was the White House. Not G.W. Bush mind you, Herbert Bush, the one from Saddam Vs. Bush I, and who was succeeded by the excellent Bill Clinton. Unfortunately, the site no longer exists and I suspect the government pulled some sort of early virtual eminent domain stunt on them, barring them from profiting from Bush the Second and the joke from being even better.
In case you don't get it, I'll reword - there sure was a lot of pussy in the white house for a while, surrounded by Bush.
After rereading this, I now understand a little more why teachers don't like me, and why I wil likely never pull off a real education
I think I am going back to school. It should be pretty simple - I've now completed most of the math courses offered on Khan academy, which go beyond highschool level anyway, and never had any real trouble with other courses beyond occasionally completely disagreeing with the point of view offered by the textbook or teacher.
Which has really kind of screwed me up a bunch over the years.
Take, for example, my 'Finding Forrester' assignment, one of the few I really remember. We had to watch this movie about this kid who is a basketball star but secretly loves to write, and his relationship with his literary idol.
The big theme of the assignment was "Explain the story, and detail how "Kid's Name" grew and developed across the course of the movie".
The big problem I had was that to be pretty frank, it was a shitty fucking movie, and "Kid's Name" didn't really develop at all, or grow, or change, or learn new things until the very, very absolute end of the movie, when he had to in order to allow everyone to have a happy ending. I get why things are that way - if he'd had an epiphany in the first five minutes rather than the last five minutes, then the rest of the movie would have been pretty fucking dull, because what's the point?
Now, had they picked a classic horror movie instead of a sappy movie, I could have done it. Take a show like "I Still Know What You Did Last Summer". Sure, it's a meaningless story and stars annoying people, and while it could be argued that it's not school appropriate, I distinctly remember reading the novelization around the age of 10, when I stumbled on it in the English portion of the school library.
The point is that it follows a very classic horror formula:
Take a weak, shy, or innocent girl, and place them with some rowdy friends. She will be the wallflower, the hidden beauty, the one without a boyfriend or with a dick boyfriend.
Put them somewhere remote, and start the creepiness.
At first, she will run and cry and hide, and any boyfriend that is present will spend his time trying to protect her.
By about midway through the movie, some people will be dead, and she will have begun to lose her fear. Research into what is happening will probably begin, maybe the boyfriend will die. As things progress, it will become clear to her that someone needs to really step up.
By the end of the movie, our heroine usually is now well armed, and has fought a battle with the villain. Maybe the boyfriend is dead, maybe not, but regardless, he is unavailable, and she will have to truly face her fears. No longer will she be the wallflower - she's pissed and out to kick ass.
Should the villain be defeated, we will usually be treated to happy scenes afterwards of how much our heroine's life has improved and how much more outgoing she is.
And that, poorly written and thought out as it often is, is far more character development that you can squeeze out of Finding Forrester or movies like it.
So, I ended up doing two essays. One as a persuasive attempt, arguing how there is more character development in shitty B movies that in the tripe I'd been assigned to watch. The other was somewhat more in the curriculum, and was about how LITTLE character development had occurred in the movie, despite the main character constantly being mashed headfirst into ridiculously unlikely and blunt situations that would have given any real person plenty of new perspective on life. Though I don't think I'm overly grammatically correct at this point in my life, nor am I an overly good speller anymore, I know both essays were pretty well written in comparison to those of the rest of my "slow class" peers.
I turned in the second and got nothing but a comment that it was not the assignment. Yay.
Another good example of this that comes to mind is an assignment from the same class, but a different teacher. At the start of the year, to assess our skills, we were asked to read an article on a homeless woman, and then write about what difficulties she might face, or how to help homeless people on a larger scale, or how one's life decisions affect you, etc. etc.
I frankly came up with a blank on most of that shit. Every homeless person I've ever known, not met, but actually known anything about, has ended up in their situation as the result of what were either really, really unfortunate fucking circumstances, mental illness, or because of some really obviously terrible choices, like selling all of their shit for crack. How the fuck do you help someone who lost their life because they were convicted of a crime they were later proven innocent for and have now lost it and can't cope with life, or someone who ran away when they were ten and have lived such a rough life they are now this nearly instinctual, feral creature? Or someone who willingly sold all their shit for crack, and would do so again in three point five seconds flat?
Now that I am older, I could maybe come up with something to say on that.
Unfortunately, at the time I had nothing. So, I tried to write about the difficulties she faced.
Even more unfortunately, no matter how many times I reread the article, I just could not see any sort of indication that this lady actually was all that unhappy with life. Granted, it is not easy being homeless and I'm sure it's a shitty way to live, but for what it was worth, she seemed pretty content with how things were. She had some friends, she could make money delivering papers, and she had a nice little shack to shelter her. Food was usually available at banks if she was broke, and she considered a whole wack of critters that hung around her shack to be her loving pets. The winters were really hard, she stated, and she didn't know how many more of them she could survive, but she figured she could always move to the south end of Ontario and things wouldn't be too bad.
All in all, this left me with nothing. So, once again, two essays.
One, certainly rushed through. Winters suck for homeless people. Not having houses or food sucks for homeless people, though our lucky lady seemed ok on that front. Things in general are harder for homeless people, etc. It was admittedly a piss poor show as there was nothing really to quote from the article besides the two lines about winter.
The second was about how the lady in the article seemed pretty happy considering. The general theme was that here we have a lady with pals, food, and shelter. It's a step above rock bottom, sure, but it's still the same things that all people need, and it's still present. On top of that, she spent the whole article referring to herself by a title used by the pre-Revolutionary French nobility, which makes it pretty clear that she's maybe just a little fucking whacked and may not really perceive herself or her situation the same way we do. She has no major drug problems, and is capable of caring for herself. On top of it all, nowhere does she say she's unhappy or worried, and sounds much more like someone describing their lifestyle to someone else leading a completely different lifestyle than someone in distress. While it might not be the kind of life most people would be happy in, she obviously was, and isn't the whole point of life to just be happy?
I turned in the second essay, because the first was dull and wretched, and got it back with a big note asking where I got the idea she thought she was a French noblewoman (art/"planning" teachers are not usually overly well educated, nor apparently motivated enough to look up terms like "Marquess") from and to come see the teacher.
Who then called me insensitive, that I should lighten up and give life a chance because not everyone is so jaded, and said that life gets better when you get to college and meet other gay people.
Which was certainly much better than the school psychoanalyst/career guidance type person I was later forced to go see asking me in the middle of a battery of job placement questions why I hated the Jews. I'd imagine that even if I did, that would be a really fucking hard question for a 16 or 17 year old to answer when put on the spot like that.
And far better than getting locked out of class for a week because I had to go to the bathroom pretty damn bad, and regardless of how many other people were already in the hall, it was going to happen very shortly, either here, or on the toilet.
So yeah, that's how most of my classes went, and eventually, "went" was something I no longer did in respect to them.
Don't get me wrong, though, I was certainly a problem kid in some ways, and felt I was as mature as any of the teachers. I tended to talk to them as though we were both on the same level, something which most teachers I had did not like, and certainly did not respect any of them, even those who meant well - pretty hard to respect someone who knows nothing about you and still thinks they know best about your sexuality. I can remember many meetings with parents, teachers, and principals where I "won" any argument against the lot of them (teachers side with teachers, not their kids), and left with a mutual apology. Once I was in highschool and the parents had stopped bothering to come, I remember a few great meetings with an angry teacher, the vice principal or some other witness, and the principal, in which I could hear Maurer ripping whomever a new asshole through the door for a good few minutes after the meeting had ended. I am totally sending my kids to school with tape recorders - it pays off eventually.
I was not always so contrary about everything simply because I just fucking love being different and constantly argumentative. I did it because I truly felt that there was no real thought behind those types of assignments and so long as what I wrote or said had good substance, a reasonably valid point, and was well written, then everything the teacher really wanted to see was still there, and maybe it would give them something more interesting to read. Also, I do just fucking love constantly being argumentative.
As it turns out, teachers fucking hate actually having to really read things, something which I can confirm firsthand based on the fact that everyone in my direct family, besides my father's siblings and their kids, are teachers. This includes all my aunts and uncles, barring one aunt who is not only completely worthless to humanity, but is also unemployed, and all my cousins, barring two who have become so fucked up from living in our extended family that they have mentally regressed to the point that one cannot leave their room without a crane and can no longer speak, and the other cannot leave the care center because, now, he will forever be an eight year old. I can safely say that teachers hate reading, because none of these fine folks know anything that you can only learn from a book, and because I got to help grade French papers as a kid.
Anyway, so long as these fancy new college teachers have something a little more interesting to throw at me, things should go smoothly.
Maybe I should become a teacher. It's not in my blood, but it's in my heritage, and I think I could do a better job of it than anyone I had growing up. Plus, I love people to respecting me, forced or not, and always being smarter than everyone else. I don't think I admit that too much, but I certainly have a great personality for it.
Which has really kind of screwed me up a bunch over the years.
Take, for example, my 'Finding Forrester' assignment, one of the few I really remember. We had to watch this movie about this kid who is a basketball star but secretly loves to write, and his relationship with his literary idol.
The big theme of the assignment was "Explain the story, and detail how "Kid's Name" grew and developed across the course of the movie".
The big problem I had was that to be pretty frank, it was a shitty fucking movie, and "Kid's Name" didn't really develop at all, or grow, or change, or learn new things until the very, very absolute end of the movie, when he had to in order to allow everyone to have a happy ending. I get why things are that way - if he'd had an epiphany in the first five minutes rather than the last five minutes, then the rest of the movie would have been pretty fucking dull, because what's the point?
Now, had they picked a classic horror movie instead of a sappy movie, I could have done it. Take a show like "I Still Know What You Did Last Summer". Sure, it's a meaningless story and stars annoying people, and while it could be argued that it's not school appropriate, I distinctly remember reading the novelization around the age of 10, when I stumbled on it in the English portion of the school library.
The point is that it follows a very classic horror formula:
Take a weak, shy, or innocent girl, and place them with some rowdy friends. She will be the wallflower, the hidden beauty, the one without a boyfriend or with a dick boyfriend.
Put them somewhere remote, and start the creepiness.
At first, she will run and cry and hide, and any boyfriend that is present will spend his time trying to protect her.
By about midway through the movie, some people will be dead, and she will have begun to lose her fear. Research into what is happening will probably begin, maybe the boyfriend will die. As things progress, it will become clear to her that someone needs to really step up.
By the end of the movie, our heroine usually is now well armed, and has fought a battle with the villain. Maybe the boyfriend is dead, maybe not, but regardless, he is unavailable, and she will have to truly face her fears. No longer will she be the wallflower - she's pissed and out to kick ass.
Should the villain be defeated, we will usually be treated to happy scenes afterwards of how much our heroine's life has improved and how much more outgoing she is.
And that, poorly written and thought out as it often is, is far more character development that you can squeeze out of Finding Forrester or movies like it.
So, I ended up doing two essays. One as a persuasive attempt, arguing how there is more character development in shitty B movies that in the tripe I'd been assigned to watch. The other was somewhat more in the curriculum, and was about how LITTLE character development had occurred in the movie, despite the main character constantly being mashed headfirst into ridiculously unlikely and blunt situations that would have given any real person plenty of new perspective on life. Though I don't think I'm overly grammatically correct at this point in my life, nor am I an overly good speller anymore, I know both essays were pretty well written in comparison to those of the rest of my "slow class" peers.
I turned in the second and got nothing but a comment that it was not the assignment. Yay.
Another good example of this that comes to mind is an assignment from the same class, but a different teacher. At the start of the year, to assess our skills, we were asked to read an article on a homeless woman, and then write about what difficulties she might face, or how to help homeless people on a larger scale, or how one's life decisions affect you, etc. etc.
I frankly came up with a blank on most of that shit. Every homeless person I've ever known, not met, but actually known anything about, has ended up in their situation as the result of what were either really, really unfortunate fucking circumstances, mental illness, or because of some really obviously terrible choices, like selling all of their shit for crack. How the fuck do you help someone who lost their life because they were convicted of a crime they were later proven innocent for and have now lost it and can't cope with life, or someone who ran away when they were ten and have lived such a rough life they are now this nearly instinctual, feral creature? Or someone who willingly sold all their shit for crack, and would do so again in three point five seconds flat?
Now that I am older, I could maybe come up with something to say on that.
Unfortunately, at the time I had nothing. So, I tried to write about the difficulties she faced.
Even more unfortunately, no matter how many times I reread the article, I just could not see any sort of indication that this lady actually was all that unhappy with life. Granted, it is not easy being homeless and I'm sure it's a shitty way to live, but for what it was worth, she seemed pretty content with how things were. She had some friends, she could make money delivering papers, and she had a nice little shack to shelter her. Food was usually available at banks if she was broke, and she considered a whole wack of critters that hung around her shack to be her loving pets. The winters were really hard, she stated, and she didn't know how many more of them she could survive, but she figured she could always move to the south end of Ontario and things wouldn't be too bad.
All in all, this left me with nothing. So, once again, two essays.
One, certainly rushed through. Winters suck for homeless people. Not having houses or food sucks for homeless people, though our lucky lady seemed ok on that front. Things in general are harder for homeless people, etc. It was admittedly a piss poor show as there was nothing really to quote from the article besides the two lines about winter.
The second was about how the lady in the article seemed pretty happy considering. The general theme was that here we have a lady with pals, food, and shelter. It's a step above rock bottom, sure, but it's still the same things that all people need, and it's still present. On top of that, she spent the whole article referring to herself by a title used by the pre-Revolutionary French nobility, which makes it pretty clear that she's maybe just a little fucking whacked and may not really perceive herself or her situation the same way we do. She has no major drug problems, and is capable of caring for herself. On top of it all, nowhere does she say she's unhappy or worried, and sounds much more like someone describing their lifestyle to someone else leading a completely different lifestyle than someone in distress. While it might not be the kind of life most people would be happy in, she obviously was, and isn't the whole point of life to just be happy?
I turned in the second essay, because the first was dull and wretched, and got it back with a big note asking where I got the idea she thought she was a French noblewoman (art/"planning" teachers are not usually overly well educated, nor apparently motivated enough to look up terms like "Marquess") from and to come see the teacher.
Who then called me insensitive, that I should lighten up and give life a chance because not everyone is so jaded, and said that life gets better when you get to college and meet other gay people.
Which was certainly much better than the school psychoanalyst/career guidance type person I was later forced to go see asking me in the middle of a battery of job placement questions why I hated the Jews. I'd imagine that even if I did, that would be a really fucking hard question for a 16 or 17 year old to answer when put on the spot like that.
And far better than getting locked out of class for a week because I had to go to the bathroom pretty damn bad, and regardless of how many other people were already in the hall, it was going to happen very shortly, either here, or on the toilet.
So yeah, that's how most of my classes went, and eventually, "went" was something I no longer did in respect to them.
Don't get me wrong, though, I was certainly a problem kid in some ways, and felt I was as mature as any of the teachers. I tended to talk to them as though we were both on the same level, something which most teachers I had did not like, and certainly did not respect any of them, even those who meant well - pretty hard to respect someone who knows nothing about you and still thinks they know best about your sexuality. I can remember many meetings with parents, teachers, and principals where I "won" any argument against the lot of them (teachers side with teachers, not their kids), and left with a mutual apology. Once I was in highschool and the parents had stopped bothering to come, I remember a few great meetings with an angry teacher, the vice principal or some other witness, and the principal, in which I could hear Maurer ripping whomever a new asshole through the door for a good few minutes after the meeting had ended. I am totally sending my kids to school with tape recorders - it pays off eventually.
I was not always so contrary about everything simply because I just fucking love being different and constantly argumentative. I did it because I truly felt that there was no real thought behind those types of assignments and so long as what I wrote or said had good substance, a reasonably valid point, and was well written, then everything the teacher really wanted to see was still there, and maybe it would give them something more interesting to read. Also, I do just fucking love constantly being argumentative.
As it turns out, teachers fucking hate actually having to really read things, something which I can confirm firsthand based on the fact that everyone in my direct family, besides my father's siblings and their kids, are teachers. This includes all my aunts and uncles, barring one aunt who is not only completely worthless to humanity, but is also unemployed, and all my cousins, barring two who have become so fucked up from living in our extended family that they have mentally regressed to the point that one cannot leave their room without a crane and can no longer speak, and the other cannot leave the care center because, now, he will forever be an eight year old. I can safely say that teachers hate reading, because none of these fine folks know anything that you can only learn from a book, and because I got to help grade French papers as a kid.
Anyway, so long as these fancy new college teachers have something a little more interesting to throw at me, things should go smoothly.
Maybe I should become a teacher. It's not in my blood, but it's in my heritage, and I think I could do a better job of it than anyone I had growing up. Plus, I love people to respecting me, forced or not, and always being smarter than everyone else. I don't think I admit that too much, but I certainly have a great personality for it.
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