Work all day, drive up, attend funeral, sleep, drive home, half-sleep, work all day.  I feel like maybe we should have a truckload of Coors beer and Jerry Reed running interference for us…

At least the weather will be nice, they say it’ll be in the 50′s at night.  I’ll be too tired to notice.

Happy labor day everyone!

Oh, I’m sure YOU think they are.  I am well aware that to you, these kids are the center of the universe.  But you’re wrong.  They may be the center of YOUR universe but out here in the real world, they are just one in trillions.  Insignificant background noise.  Dust.

Teresa and I went to Becca’s open house last night.  It’s her first year of high school and I liked most of what I heard.  The teachers pretty much said, “You signed up for an advance studies school, this is college-light.  This is the #8 high school in the entire nation and we’re not going to treat you like you’re attending a regular high school.  Get your shit together and do it fast because we’re hitting the ground running.  Can’t hack it?  Quit now and go to your local neighborhood school.” They said it a LOT nicer than that and they weren’t as crass and elitist as I just typed out but that’s the general feeling I got.  And I liked it!  Until they started kissing our ass a little bit…

When they explained the rules of the classrooms, most of them were the same: No eating, no drinking, no cellphones.  Each teacher went on and on about how they rarely have discipline problems in the advance studies school and how the kids seem to be well rounded and better prepared for higher education.  So far I’d pretty much agree…  But then they attribute this “success” to us.  They say the parents deserve the credit for raising such wonderful children and setting such a great example.

I so badly wanted to call bullshit!  I stood there and watched as three of the parents were texting on their phones.  One was actually trying to whisper into their phone.  One brought a younger child who was playing his NintendoDS and another parent was eating Taco Bell.  This was in just ONE of the six classrooms we visited.  Good example my ass.

And what do they really know of these kid’s homelife?  They’ve been in school for all of six days so far.  Maybe the parents are super-strict and beat the kid for bringing home a “B”.  Maybe one of the kids is excelling because he watches as his drunken father comes home from the factory every night and beat his family and the kid is only doing well in school to escape this life.  Examples of extreme possibilities sure but they are possibilities so don’t kiss our ass until you get to know our kids…  However I suspect the majority of these kids are suffering from over-involved parents.

We all love our kids, we all think they are important.  Every parent raising a child wants the best in the world for them, we want them to be successful and happy.  So that may explain why half the parents expect the rest of us to be accommodating and patient when they hold up every process to make exceptions for their kids.

“Johnny can’t make it to class on time because I drop him off on my way to work at 8:30.  Can we switch his first class to an elective so he doesn’t miss anything important?”

“Judy gets thirsty between classes.  I know your rules say that water bottles are not allowed in class but is it okay for her to have one anyway?”

“Joey has church on Wednesday nights, can you move football practice to Thursday nights so he can join the team?”

“I know your rules say there is to be no wild hair colors but Janie has orange and purple hair because we like for her to express herself, can’t you make an exception?”

Fuck Johnny, fuck Judy, fuck Joey and especially fuck Janie!

If your kid is late, they don’t get in my class.  If they don’t go to the meetings, they lose out on joining the club.  If you can’t make it to the parent night meeting, you don’t get a make up class.  Rules are rules.  Either change them for everyone or shut the fuck up already.  Your kid is NOT important enough to be the only exception to the rule and definitely not important enough to disrupt the flow with your asinine questions!

Goddammit didn’t we just go over this recently!?  I’m starting to feel like Walter from “The Big Lebowski”.  “Has the whole world gone crazy?  Am I wrong!  Am I the only one around here who gives a shit about the rules?  Mark it zero!”

Personally, I see nothing wrong with having a water bottle.  They are in class for ninety minutes at a time and then they have to run to the other side of the school in five minutes to sit for another ninety minutes.  It might be nice to have a drink of water, especially in the Florida heat.  But Judy’s mom is going about it the wrong way.  Judy is not the only thirsty kid.  Judy is not significant enough to warrant an exception.  Ask the school for the reason behind the regulation.  They may tell you that when they allowed water bottles in years past, the kids spent all their time in the hallways on bathroom passes.  They may tell you that high school kids imbibe other liquids that appear as though they are water.  And they may tell you that you are right and that they should change the rule.  But regardless of what they tell you, don’t delude yourself into thinking that your precious little Judy deserves to have a bottle while the rest of the kids don’t.  I like blue and purple hair.  But Becca can’t wear her hair like that until the rule is changed (and until mommy goes blind…)

None of these kids are exceptional beyond their own hard work.  They’ve earned their position in a top school and they are in for more hard work ahead of them.  When they come out on the other side, they deserve to be praised for their perseverance.  We as parents have the easy part.  We’re driving them all over town, we’re buying necessary supplies, we’re helping them study.  But isn’t that what ALL parents do?  Other than some encouragement and guidance when they hit hard times along their chosen difficult path, we as parents deserve none of the credit.  In fact, the over-active meddling ones probably deserve a lot of the blame…

I thought, “She doesn’t look like a plastic surgery victim.  What are they talking about?”

And then I realized I was thinking about Estelle Getty…

I’m looking at you “Resident Evil” franchise…

Okay, turning the sarcasm down for now…

Back when Bill Clinton got in trouble with the intern, I didn’t care at all.  The private sexual actions of a man barely concerns me.  Until he lied about it while under oath.  I thought that was one of the worst things he could have done.  I’m not an adherent to either political party, I distrust them equally but when it was discussed, I thought he should get into trouble for lying.  And everyone told me to stop being so upset, stop witch-hunting the President.  “Of course he lied, you would too.”  No, not true.  I might lie, I’d do whatever it took to save my marriage, deny the intern, whatever… up until the point that I was sworn under oath.  Once I was sworn in, I’d have to come clean.  Completely.  You just can’t lie in court.

That’s another one of those idyllic concepts my mother drove into my head.  No matter how embarrassing, no matter how incriminating, you can’t lie in court.  You tell the truth or you plead the 5th.  Some of you would just LOVE to get me on the stand and ask some of those uncomfortable questions to see just how honest I’d be…  Unfortunately for me, I’d be brutally honest.  I’d spill every dirty little secret.  Years ago, a man I love had some trouble and got pulled into court for it.  I was called to give a statement and as much as I knew it would hurt him, as much as I wanted to lie to protect him, I couldn’t.  I told the truth.  Since childhood, my brain has always known that lying under oath is very, very bad.

So you people ridiculed me and said that I had my priorities out of whack (and some of you even went so far as to call me a liar) because I said I would be honest about marital infidelity if questioned in court.  Time has gone by, the issue is forgotten and now we have Roger Clemens facing thirty years because he lied under oath.  And a lot of you people are saying we should crucify this guy.  Many of you are the same people that said I was wrong for thinking we should crucify Clinton!

One of these two cases involved the most powerful man on the planet compromising himself and disregarding the very system of government he represented, the other case involves a baseball player using drugs…  If you’re going to make allowances for the severity of the situation, doesn’t it seem to you that the public has them backward?  I don’t care if Bill had some fun time in the oval orifice, that’s between him and Hillary.  I don’t care if Roger shot horse tranquilizer into his nutsack, that’s between him and his team/fans.  I don’t care.  But someone did.  And they cared enough to bring them both into court over it.  And once they were in court, they are compelled to tell the truth.

I say nail them both.  I don’t believe in any gradient for the crime of perjury.  This is a black and white offense.  You did or you didn’t LIE.  It makes no difference to me whether you are lying about plugging an intern with a cigar, where you were the night of the murder or the spelling of your middle name.  Perjury is a tool to keep people honest and let the rest of the court system work.  The punishment should be severe enough to keep people from slipping into some self-preservational dishonesty.  The system is imperfect but it completely breaks down if we don’t all follow and enforce the rules we have put into place to hold the system together.  Rules and regulations are there for a reason.  Either enforce them or abolish them.

That’s twice now that my mom has been wrong…  Last week I found out that I should judge a man by the color of his skin and this week I found out that lying under oath is alright under popular circumstances.  Soon they’ll try to tell me that hard work doesn’t count as much as kissing the right butts at work…

I’ve been listening to interviews with Diana Nyad, the 60 year-old woman who is trying to swim the Florida Straits from Cuba to Key West.  The attempt keeps getting put off because of politics so I keep hearing more and more about her.  She got swept in to the Gulf on her previous attempts when she was younger and wants to go out there and prove she can still do it at 60.  Okay, personal endurance, good for her.

But as she explains the history of marathon swimming, I keep hearing about other records and exceptions and secondary records and that’s the part I just don’t like.  The first woman to swim this… the first African American to swim that…  How about just making it the first person, that’s it.  Who got there first?  Whether they happen to be black, white, male, female, Chinese or Mormon is irrelevant.

The only objection I could understand would be that women and other minorities had fewer opportunities to explore and attempt new things back when records were made.  I guess that’s a well thought out and reasonable objection…  Over-ruled.

Holding up the flag and proudly saying “I’m the first (insert minority here) to do what a white man already did” is just crazy to me.  It screams second place.  We all know that the white man is the devil, he’s responsible for everything bad in this world from slavery to tooth decay.  So change it.  Go make your own records, stop impersonating the white devil by duplicating his events and claiming your second place trophy.
Do it better, do it faster, do it cleaner… whatever, but make your own mark.  Following in the footsteps of those that came before you is natural, but get a footprint or two off the trail.  “White man X climbed this mountain for the first time fifty years ago.  But I’m the first to do it naked.”

So after listening to this and getting slightly riled up, they go to commercial:  “The Jacksonville Black Artist Festival.  Bringing artists of African American heritage together to display their various art…”

I almost blew out a vein.  THIS is the shit I’m talking about!  I’m not the guy that goes out there and screams about the Miss Black America, the United Negro College Fund or the NAACP being examples of reverse racism.  The word “reverse” is my problem.  To me the words “racism” and “bigotry” stand alone.  Same thing with “hate crime”.  Bullshit.  Crime is crime and should be punished accordingly regardless of who the victim is.  Every time we draw a line between ourselves we’re reinforcing this bullshit division of the races that I still can’t fucking believe exists.  You’re creating an “Us and them” situation and that sucks, no matter who the “us” is.  Why do we institute this volunteer segregation?  Would the event have been any worse off if it had just been the “Jacksonville Artist Festival”?  Why should the color of the artist’s skin matter to me?

The commercial made it perfectly clear that this was not art about Africa.  This was art and performances of all sorts by black artists.  If you go into most libraries, the books are grouped by genre and then sorted alphabetically.  If you like Psychology, you go to 150.  If you like Physics, you go to 530.  So out here, if you like art about the continent of Africa you’d go to the African Art Festival.  I get that.
But if you walked into a library and they had black authors of all genres sorted out into one section and called it the Black Writer’s Section it would display the level of stupidity of this Black Artist Festival.  Alex Haley, Lisa Williamson, Langston Hughes, Octavia Butler and Terry McMillian all lumped together because of the color of their skin?

You want to know the worst part about this?  When I began writing that last paragraph I sincerely meant it.  Then I read it back and realized that this very thing happens in schools and libraries across the country every February…  Makes my words look tongue-in-cheek but they weren’t written that way.  I just don’t understand why we still think it’s necessary to single a person out by the color of their skin.

Back when I was young, I grew up in a small town up north.  We had just one black kid in my junior high (this was around the time of the “Thriller” craze and I SWEAR to you that black kid’s name was Michael Jackson).  I never saw black people in my town, I just didn’t grow up around them.  But even back then, when it was a complete non-issue, my mom taught me that skin color was not important.  Now these organizations and events are telling me otherwise.

Sorry mom, I just don’t fucking get it anymore…

If he’s not, why is Batman?

What about James Bond?

The first time man crossed the Atlantic in a balloon would be cool in the days of Jules Verne.  In 1978 we had airplanes and jets and rockets and shit.  We had already been on the moon for nine fucking years!  Balloons are no longer transportation.  Climbing the highest mountain is a record, running the fastest mile, holding your breath under water…  Playing with a balloon is not a record.

Doesn’t impress me.  Especially when they were flying zeppelins across the Atlantic sixty years before in World War One.