Some Pig

Skip This If You Flunked US History

If you liked third period US History, you'll love Bob in Portland, Maine:

CHEERS to bold vision.  The more I listen to John McCain, the more my support for the DemocRAT party wavers.  In his latest groundbreaking proposal, the straight-talking maverick suggests that the best way to deal with Iraq and Iran is to form an organization called a League of Nations. I like it.  Sounds international but also evokes the pinstriped can-do spirit of American baseball.  Today McCain is expected to unveil his new economic proposal, which he calls a "Smoot-Hawley Tariff."  Sounds muscular!

CHEERS to great deals.  382 years ago, on May 6, 1626, Manhattan was purchased from Native Americans for around $24 in beads, trinkets and wampum.  Or as it's known today: A medium espresso. Or a Euro.  Or funding for 1/100th of a second of the Iraq war.  Or twenty grains of rice.  Or your savings from the McCain/Clinton "gas tax holiday."  Shall I stop now?

What?  Doesn't everyone find a reference to the Smoot-Hawley Tariff a thigh-slapper?  Huh.  Maybe I am a history geek...

Excuses, Excuses

To Whom It May Concern:

Please excuse my daughter, India, from the social standards by which most of us live.  I realize she has appeared in the same outfit three times this week.  Little did I know when I opened the packages from Nonni containing the pink dress with ivory and blue flowers and the snowflake-and-striped tights that I was going to see that particular fashion statement, with only slight variations thereon, multiple times per week for the next six months of my life.  At first I thought it was sweet when she insisted on wearing dresses and only dresses, NO PANTS MOMMY NO NO NO, figuring it, like all her other fashion enthusiasms to date, would be a phase that would pass within the fortnight.  But when the dress craze stretched on for three weeks and then four weeks and then into months, months that were especially snow-laden and cold, well, it got old fast.  Add to that her sudden insistence that everything in her life had to be "beeeyooooteeeefulllll" and she wanted to be a "pwincess" and, well, this is one Free To Be You and Me-era girl who was biting her tongue so hard she nearly severed it off.  Oh yes, while we're on the subject of minor royalty, no one warned me that I would be living in the land of the Passive Aggressive, and India is their Queen.  Those times when I put the maternal foot down, clothing-wise, the doyenne of despair spent hours (or at least it felt like hours) doing the verbal equivalent of donning sackcloth and ashes (which she would never deign to wear, as you know, since they are neither beautiful nor princessy, even if you can get away with calling a sackcloth somewhat dress-like).  "I'm coooooooooold," she'd moan, basset-like, over and over; or, alternately, "I'm toooooo tiiiiiiiiired to wear this, Mommy.  Mommy, I'm tooooooooooo tiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiired."  And it didn't help that one time when we absolutely, positively mandated that she wear pants to go sledding, her friend Amy came prancing into the house fully bedecked in all manner of princess attire, from the gaudy tiara on her head to the "glass" slippers on her feet.  She didn't say anything, but I could feel India's respect for us plummet as her gaze slid over her friend's royal regalia.  "Sledding my ass," her facial expression said to us as she glared us down, "that's the last time I take fashion instruction from the likes of you!"

To make matters even more galling, we lucked into the motherlode of all hand-me-downs when some relatives bequeathed us with three giant storage tubs of youth clothing.  I now have a nearly-full box of size 3T girls' wear that got only passing use, if that.  When I could wrestle the aforementioned dopey pink dress off her body, India had two other dresses on top rotation, a second string of perhaps four other dresses, and a distant third team of items I managed to get her to wear through force, subterfuge, or outright bribery.  Even now I feel a pang of regret when I think of the cute outfits I never could entice her to wear.  The LLBean sweater with the lobster on the front?  Worn twice, maybe.  The cute pink pullover top with navy stripes?  Perhaps she wore it once.  The red cableknit turtleneck with navy leggings that looked so fetching in my mind?  Existed only in my mind.  Even some of the aforementioned dresses got the short shrift, like the purple corduroy jumper (so cute!) with the multicolored buttons, or the navy pinafore dress with little pink polka dots.  "I'll wear that next time," India would demur when I dragged them from the nether regions of the closet, reaching past me for the snowflake dress, the denim jumper, or the (gag!) STUPID PINK DRESS WITH BLUE FLOWERS. "I'll wear it on Thursday," she'd promise on a Monday, although I knew full well that Thursday would find us either 1) with a sobbing India on the floor and an irritated Mommy standing over her, hated garment in hand, yelling, "YOU PROMISED!", or 2) with India making up excuses about why she actually couldn't wear that dress today, after all ("I can't wear that dress.  Anya doesn't think I look pretty in it."), upon which my head would blow up.  Either way, it seemed to be a lose-lose situation for me more than anyone else, and in the end, if I wasn't willing to take it to the mat, I had to let it go.  But I will admit to hurrying India along to the next size up perhaps a few weeks earlier than absolutely necessary, if only to savor the moment when the dreaded stupid pink dress would make its last appearance in the laundry basket prior to being burned carefully put away in archive-quality storage. 

I know all you mommies with docile, well-behaved children are now congratulating yourselves for your superior child-raising ability, and mentally figuring I'm getting what I deserve, but I just want you to know that I am not alone in being collateral damage in the fashion wars.  I will leave you with the thoughts of no less august a personage than Sandra Tsing Loh:

Susannah is busily rummaging around for the Kitty Cat Glitter Blouse and the Pleated Red Skirt (KCGBATPRS). It's her school uniform. Of course, Susannah is the only kid there who has a school uniform. All the other preschoolers vary their outfits...(I could always send a mass e-mail to the other parents: "For the record, we do own a washing machine. And yes, we have bought Susannah other clothes. Photos of cute alternate outfits she will never wear are attached. Enjoy.")

If you would like visual confirmation of the panoply of clothing options that India chooses to forego, I will gladly send you notarized photos.

Yours,

Some Pig

Because I Live This Every Day

You do need some context for this quote.  ACW is discussing the reek wafting from his local emporium of adolescent conformism disguised as unfettered individualistic freedom of choice, aka Abercrombie and Fitch:

But walking past the store wasn’t even the worst of it! Three hours later I still smelled like I was a non-consensual participant in a boy-band gang-bang, and nothing I did would make the stink come off me. 

Why does this quote speak to me so?  Perhaps it's because I'm old enough to remember the glory days not just of N*Sync and the Backstreet Boys, but of N*Sync, Backstreet Boys, Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch, New Kids On The Block, aaaaand - wait for it now - Menudo! 

Or maybe it's because I still remember (vividly, and with great regret) the time when two of my male students had a fight when I was pregnant with India, suffering from morning sickness and teaching in a room with no windows - using a spray can of "Axe" as their weapon of choice.  I had to move classrooms for the rest of the day, or retch my way through junior US History.  Oh yes, my friends, I've lived through the heyday of many a cheap cologne fad (whether cheap in price or just in smell):  Axe, Polo, Canoe, Davidoff, Drakkar Noir - when applied by the fistful, it all smells pretty heinous.

Or maybe it's just because I hate A&F with the passion of a thousand white-hot burning suns.  I know - I just know - someday my kids will want nothing more in life than to dress themselves in a bunch of cheaply made, pseudo-preppy crap that's cleverly advertised by images of torrid (and precocious) sexuality because they want to be accepted by their peers.  And while I have absolutely no problem invoking the "It's my money and I decide where it gets spent" argument, I don't relish the thought of the fight.

Why Didn't I Say That?

The latest addition to the "wish I'd said that" list:

Beneath the melt, our yard bore the distinct characteristics of a drunken archaeological dig on some lost white trash society.

How'd he know I live near the trailer park?

Stupidity, Cont'd

I swear, if they could bottle stupidity like that, it would become a dangerous, dangerous weapon. Can you imagine all that concentrated stupid being used to wipe out the intellect of an entire country? They could probably call it American Idol or Dancing with the Stars. But I digress.
-- Anonymous Coworker

In order to continue, we need some back story.  Well, actually, YOU might not need it - in fact, you might have stopped reading by now once you realized I'm still on a tear from the previous post, but *I* feel the need to give you some context.

Here in the World's Only Remaining Superpower, unlike other industrialized countries, we allow students to stay in school and apply for spots at postsecondary schools regardless of their ability, perceived or real. How do we provide education for people who cover the whole range of intellectual ability?  The bulk of our public schools still track students at the high school level, presumably according to ability.  However, any teacher with any marginal intelligence of his/her own can see within five-point-two seconds that the the general ed tracks (excluding that very bottom class that's reserved for the poor souls who function well below chronological age level) wind up pretty closely paralleling our socioeconomic structure.  Everywhere I've taught, the honors track is always chockablock with the kids of doctors, lawyers, and Indian chiefs.  The middle track (college prep, academic, 200 level or what have you) tends to the lower middle class and upper working class.  And the bottom track becomes the de facto dumping ground.  Oh, sure, it's not cast in stone - there are honors kids whose families have not a pot to piss in nor a window to throw it out of, and there are kids in the bottom classes whose families are very well off, but the overall trend holds true. 

So what are you in for when you get a bottom track (general ed, standard, 300, etc.) class?  A typical class of low-level juniors includes a bunch of kids who are truly academically below average, mixed in with stoners, lazy jerks who don't want to do any work, the occasional middle-class kid with a learning disability and a lawyer, kids who are basically left to support themselves, vocational students who hate/don't think they can do anything that looks like school, chronic absentees who come only on days that fit the Fibonacci sequence, and the occasional sociopath.  Often, by any "hard" intellectual measure, these kids are stupid:  They can't read at grade level; they can't explain the reasoning behind the answers they give; their work lacks internal cohesion and logic; they have difficulty taking a larger task, breaking it into smaller components, and working through those components in order; they have a hard time thinking of creative or original ideas that don't refer to something they've already seen or heard; their awareness of what's going on in the world around them is vestigial at best.

The question is, why?

Let's go back to Lissa.  Why is she so eager to avoid letting anything we're doing in Economics class actually sink into her brain?  Is she stupid because she avoids learning, or does she avoid learning because she's stupid?  And is she lacking-in-ability stupid, lacking-in-effort stupid, or some combination of both?  I'm not so egocentric as to deny that it could very well be that I am just a bad teacher, and if I were actually any good at this I'd have a roomful of budding John Kenneth Galbraiths on my hands.  I'm sure my Ed professors, God bless their pointy little heads, all could point out a million and one ways in which I'm denying my students full expression of their copious abilities simply because I'm not doing my job very well.  But in my defense, I will say that I do care about whether or not they get this stuff.  I care because economics is about the consequences of the choices we make, and as people who are not the sharpest knives in the drawer, these kids are often the victims of our competitive culture.  I don't give a damn if they understand the difference between GDP and per capita GDP, but I do want them to understand how the market works and what kind of economic system we have and why they have to have some kind of advanced skill or ability when they leave this place so they don't spend the rest of their lives fearing that they'll fall so far down the social ladder they can't ever get back up.  I try to make the concepts concrete and specific and relevant and immediate, since these kids tend to have the attention span of gnats and tune out as soon as ideas get too abstract or distant.  But then I look up and Lissa's twirling her hair around her finger, two kids are texting their friends in other classes, the juvenile delinquent pothead is making the "4:20" sign at the kid across the room from him and the pregnant girl in the corner is busily doodling potential names for the baby on her notebook, and I can't help but think,

"What are you guys - STUPID??"

Wait for the stunning conclusion!

Words I Wish I'd Written

I'm starting a new category of blog posts.  Every once in a while, I run across a sentence or a phrase or a paragraph that's so true, or so funny, or so chillingly apropos to my life, or just so well-written, well, I wish I'd written it myself.  I meant to start this category some time ago when Crazylainetrain wrote something particularly pithy about fried foods and cheese, but I let it go and now I can't be arsed to dig through her archives and find it (not that it would take particularly long *cough write some posts Elaine! cough*).  But for the record, I am taking Elaine as the patron saint (saintess?) of this idea since her writing inspired it. 

Anyhoo, here's what grabbed me today:

Okay, so the fact that she has a blog proves that she is capable of writing words into her computer, but that’s sort of like saying that I’m a mathematician because I was able to count-out exact-change for the coffee-dude this morning.

How good is that?