Elements Of Repose

SO THIS IS TODAY's lunch, just for the sheer hell of it. The weather has turned, highs in the sixties and blue skies up to the weekend, and around here that means-- or at least could mean-- the end of stew weather for the year. The sandwich is grilled cheddar on multi grain. Lemme amplify that: cheddar cheese and Plochman's Premium Stone-Ground Mustard on Arnold Healthy Multi-Grain bread, grilled to a brilliant crispy finish. Frankly, it was kinda weird, but it went really well with the stew, which I had while watching last years's Formula One race at Interlagos, the road course in Brazil.

And let's call THAT the movie of the day. The movie of the day is most certainly not the current foul, lousy, half-assed "debate" that's going on over whether our children are in imminent danger of being brainwashed by their incompetent, overpaid Marxist overlord teachers.

Now, I had more than my share of bad teachers during my school years-- including one who tried to teach me that a "sentence" is what you read, while a "sentance" is what a prisoner gets, "a lot" is a real estate while "alot" is an amount, and "Tuesday" is spelled "Teusday." And that was in just one year. The ultimate irony came about every third year when I, an eager student always hungry for knowledge, would butt up against a teacher who would declare me lazy, unintelligent, or borderline uneducable. I also have only a passing tolerance for teacher's unions, based solely on my brief interactions with North Carolina's specimen, who, when I knew them, maintained that a teacher's competence was never EVER to be a factor in his or her compensation. But, and I know this to be a fact, teachers in America are not only a soft and easy target for the ignorant and angry, they have been used as scapegoats for everything that might be wrong in our society since the early days of Lee Atwater's assendancy. (Typo. Keeping it.) (Actually, quite like it.) Also, I am lead to believe, by casual example and observation, that my experience was the anomoly, that most teachers are not just competent, but also energetic, intelligent, inspiring, and selfless. How true that is I know not, but really, for crying out loud, people, you gotta know that there are always, ALWAYS going to be more sensible ways of cutting budgets than getting rid of the teachers and/or crippling their unions. But the jack-wagons keep insisting that firing all the teachers is the only way to stop the world from sliding off the edge of the universe and plunging headlong into Hell, which is why the teachers desperately require the assistance of their trade unions.

Just thinking about the whole thing sickens me. It's like they're proud of being lazy, unitelligent, and borderline uneducable. So, instead, I bought new shoes.



These popped up from a tailored e-mail I get from time to time from Zappos.com, where I think I placed an order for shoes that turned out not to be in stock once. (I am fairly certain that this is the first time I have ever bought shoes from them.) I was actually looking for something with a blue body and bright trim, but the colourway (as they say in England) just jumped out at me and knocked me down. Also, oddly enough, it's virtually the same as the color scheme as a pair of Nike Elite Waffle Racers I found at a British shoe selling site, which I would have bought if they had been available in any size above men's 10. Yay shoes.


So the next step was to find someplace for them to live. Not a problem. (This cabinet, on the arrival of my new Onitsuka Tiger Ultimate 81's, will officially be full.)