A memorial for a hometown friend. In a church. Not my thing. I silently grit my teeth through all the references to religious tenets i regard as semantically void. Later, we spread his ashes using shot glasses i happened to have provided at a teenage drinking spot requested by the deceased for his ashes to be scattered. Another attendee is similarly Outside the church experience, but from the perspective of another religion. Safely and respectfully OFF the turf of our christian hosts, he adds the POSITIVE differing information that in a few hours Rosh hashanah would begin, and he explains how that aligns with our remembering our dead friend.As in many other cases, my otherness from christianity aligns with that of judaism, even as my LIMITED UNDERSTANDING of its tenets shows it markedly at odds with my own position. I am impressed with my friend’s positivist contribution. I really, really ain’t got that positivity to bring to bear from my own standpoint.
What on earth are gaslighting, triggering, safe spaces and snowflakes? I am sure i have missed some.
From a friend:
"Lately when I'm walking around town, in my mind I'm playing the game "Fash or hipster" Mohawk combover, rugby shirt and skinny jeans... Fash or hipster? Handle bar mustache...Fash or hipster? Celtic cross tats...Fash or hipster? Stressful times." -2017
wonder what's at the gilman tonite. big knot of teenage punk rock historical reenactors at north berkeley bart. -2016
Homophobophobia.
when someone dies who you wish wouldn't have, part of asking how they died is the 'bargaining' aspect of the grieving process. the bottom line is acceptance. dead is dead, gone is gone. period.
I have one friend fewer because of this motherfucker called death. Goodbye, Raja Shortell. You sure didn't look like you planned to die.
attention home brewers. i really need help. i have 2 trees full of apples. i will rent a breaker and a press if you can provide carboys and expertise. we can go halfsies on the bottles. and on the product. did i mention i need help?-2012
I get a lot of help from the the trans tech guy. I’m a frq flyer bc my room is a mess for tech. Then he said somethin i didn’ understand and i say “ma’am?” It’s like it came from a different part of my brain. :(
Hypothesis: millenial “yeet” derives from cartoon sound effect which in turn derives from vaudville slide whistle sound effect.
Dear cal state hayward: wtf? Y'all ain't got a bilingual teacher training program? This pisses me the fuck off!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! -2014
downtown oakland: a charter school holds pe classes in the public park. huh. why don't they open a charter _park_?
Parent of a student last November: how dare you bring your own opinion into class by stating that people were dancing in the street bc T-word lost!
Also, same parent, different occasion: have a blessed day!
my entire plan for the next 12 hours hinges on finding goretex sox.
Say what you want about the plague, the lack of hugs is great. Perhaps i need some hard convos about consent.
Death be not proud but dementia be downright cowardly.
Kid talk: That dark green, leafy, tender veg, Popeye's favourite? "Finish". Isn't it funny how they named it the same as what you say when you are done?
lovely bk to sch night. was it the Buddha who sed "if ya don't care, they can;t fuck ya up"? i prolly looked like a nincompoop, but it's moslty b/c i work more and have less time, so, hey.-2010
I’m an ultraconservative consumer.-2008
It is autumn and really hot. But is "Indian Summer" a racist term in the way that Chinese firedrill= disorderly affair? Oklahoma credit card is a rubber hose for siphoning gasoline. Irish pennant is a loose thread. Any other "gems"?
I guess I would have to say this came to me in a dream. I would like to see photographs of people standing near each headstone in a graveyard to represent the lying dead as the standing living as they once were.
Delphina’s Swedish teacher says her Swedish has a Finnish accent. What have I created?
They say the def. of insanity is doing the same thing over and over, expecting a different result. Sounds to me like the def. of educational reform.
the standardised effing test that got thrown down on my desk 1 1/2 weeks ago? the one that needed to be inputted at the end of the week before last? the one i didn't have quiiite enough of to include my new kid? yeah. must not have been that important, or they would have hired editors who know that 'laid' is not the past tense of 'lie', or that 'lead' is not the past tense of 'lead'.
on state of feminism: I thought I heard the under-30 year old teacher who came to my class intro. herself as "Miss Smith", so I asked her later if i had heard correctly. was it miss or Ms.? She replied, "I don't know... what does it mean??"
i understand when older colleagues title themselves according to their marital status. i figure they just don't know better. after all, there are those who use the word "gal" [i don't know if I have heard "lady"]. i expect better than that from anyone smart under the age of, say, 50. WTF??
if haters can call autism a mental illness, could one theoretically call neurotypicality a mental illness in turn?
this in response to fox news calling Greta "mentally ill".
Reading a history of Britain, i wonder to what degree categories like British [Welsh], Saxon, Dane, Norse, and Norman would figure in the UK's famously stratified class system. Clearly, one would expect to find Normans heavily represented among the elite. Would one find Celtic genetic markers among what one recent study labeled the "precariat"? Would the settled "middle" class of ordinary people with resources come up more "English" of "Dane"?
However else the rest of you view cities- concentration of resources, garbage dump, social battlefield, transportation intersection, etc.- the long- distance, itinerantly-sheltered hitchhiker views them as sinkholes to be clambered out of, to near their edges by public transit and shoe leather.
Gunfire, properly timed, is a fairly effective stimulus for waking up in the morning. 22 caliber, i would say. Apparently random potshots from a bicycle.
Yow! Piet learned the hard way why so few of the other hand-catch mousers he know wear kilts traditional! heh-heh. heh-heh. heh-heh!
2016: friends don't let friends watch this debate crap.
Via a friend: "If you are Hawaiian, chances are you have been asked the question, “How much Hawaiian are you?” These types of inquiries are offensive and stem from an obsession with blood quantum. So let’s talk about why blood quantum does not matter. Blood quantum is a tool used to aid the settler colonial goal of eliminating Native people completely. The logic behind blood quantum is not grounded in science, as we know that blood does not differ according to race or culture and Native identity is not a biological substance that eventually runs out. With the logic of blood quantum, it will only be a matter of time before there are no longer any Kānaka walking the earth. Ideas of blood quantum continue to impact Kānaka every day. In order to be eligible to apply for Hawaiian Homelands through DHHL
“You must be a native Hawaiian, defined as “any descendant of not less than one-half part of the blood of the races inhabiting the Hawaiian Islands previous to 1778.” This means you must have a blood quantum of at least 50 percent Hawaiian. This requirement remains unchanged since the HHCA’s passage in 1921.”
These racist policies are not grounded in indigenous perspectives on what qualifies someone as being Native or not, and they only serve to define and eliminate our people. If you have ever felt like you were not “Hawaiian enough” to do something, remember that the systems that want you to believe that blood quantum is valid do not want you to exist. E ka lāhui Hawaiʻi, e kūʻē kākou! E ola mau ka lāhui Hawaiʻi! Mahalo nui to Kona Au for her commentary on Blood Quantum."
One day we will look back on the innocence with which we faced the early days of the plague in October.-Sep. 2021
Let's bring back conservative values like lying, deception, theft, hatred, subjugation, bullying, imprisonment, emotional and intellectual stunting, torture, beatings, coercion, disposession, racism, sexism, rape, deniability, political murder, ...
It's International Book Week. The rules: Grab the closest book to you, turn to page 1 and start reading. Don't stop reading until you fall asleep, have to pee, or have to go to work.
I thot my multimodal commute was pretty decent until I met the man who packs his origami kayak from Emeryville to Jack London Square and paddles to work on Alameda.
30 kids inst. of 20 = 50% better chance of meeting wonderful kids!
Guns are, like, wack.-2010
Traffic tie-up from power outage in Hayward, supposedly. Many kids late. Took me 15 minutes to take roll. %$%$&%$%#!!!
mr ramos: thank you for informing me that you are not "mexican". gosh-- i did not know that the portuguesh pronunciation of your name was "ray-mus". that makes you white, right? i can understand how you would be eager to establish your whiteness given the "portagees' " status in the east bay as the nonwhite "other" mere decades ago.
I am so glad that the athletes Kaepernicking the national anthem are doing it in response to widespread gratuitous state murder of people the society devalues, rather than to protest jingoistic patriotic displays that support exceptionalism, militarism, and, ultimately, much more widespread state murder of people minding their own business in other states.
Is it evil of me to suggest my son form an anti-beach-cruiser club at UCSB?
Hayward school district sensitivity training demands we stop using the epithet “Eskimo”. In light of my recent reading, i urge you also to eschew the usage “cannibal”, a corruption of the name of the extirpated Carib (as in Caribbean) people.
At my mom's house. Basically, all the food here is poisoned. Also, the water tastes like mould.- 2013
You cain’t dictate to your health. -9/23/24 when i attempted to return to work
There is a shadowy figure-- a man-- who always is within firing range of you. You can't see him. He always looks at you, and carries a pistol which he occasionally loads, unloads, aims at you, dry-fires or otherwise manipulates. He is in fact blind. All he can see of you is your footprints where you stand. Another shadowy figure, also blind, follows him, sometimes finding him, sometimes not. He has always been there throughout your entire life. He is a ballistic missile submarine, poised to murder you.
If we use hagfish slime as binder, a substitute for eggs in cooking, can it be Vegan? -2009
Me: I purty much got 2 reading lessons-- one in each language, not recapitulations. I purty much got routines for writing, though if we got 2 reading lessons, writing is purty much what fell off when they all rolled over. I got math, though how the text I have is 'posed to relate to the way we 'posed to be teaching it I have no idea. Social studies is s naive fiction, as are the remaining ed code PE minutes. science is compartmentalised over to another teacher.
But are you doing Lexia Mr Bess? How 'bout AR? I-Station in espanish? Reading intervention? Writers' conferences? One on one reading tests in each languages? Are you using your smart board with the dim projector bulb to demonstrate math processes instead of objects they push around with their hands? Getting the kids to use the iPad cart? The computer lab? Using the clap-tap-clap phonics program they printed up for you? Using the language notebooks for kids to summarise what they read like we showed you? Going online to wade through pages of textual chaff to find what to teach in the language arts units that do not align to the text you actually possess? Ditto for math except that it consists of link after link to follow, download, and THEN print on the printer which, at least, now you are able to use? Don't forget to use these books that you will be held responsible for returning except there is nothing to say that they belong to a set. No, not those. Not those, either. The other ones. Oh, here's another set. Don't use these, though.
Hey, we're about to start ELD with, shoutout, FUCKING EXCELLENT class lists. We're sorry our alleged curriculum is, again, a ghastly nightmare of textual chaff, but, hey, at least you'll prolly have a blast improvising for half an hour a day. Could be worse. Could be teaching SLD, for which there is no textbook on gOD's green earth.
Tell yourself you are being effective. Have a nice weekend.
someday pretty soon, i'ma look frightened and mutter something like "crap, this is it". after that, i won;t say anything any more.
not too too soon, i hope. although...
i hope i face the moment courageously and, you know, somewhat gracefully. don't get too freaked out by the frightened look. see y'all. -probably sometime in 2022
i don't think I am particularly sexist, but in the broad, deep spectrum of state murder, i find the _execution_ of a woman particularly obscene. reading tangentially of ethyl rosenberg.
Sure, English has a history of colonising South Asia whereas its incursion in East Asia is much more crypto-colonial. But still, with so many Indian words-- punch, pajamas, jungle, candy-- intimately imported into our language, why are there so few Chinese words in similar position? Is it in part because of the river-rock streamlined nature of Chinese syllable/ word structure?
Dungarees, pugaree, pajamas,
“…veteran pilots of the T-6 class (airplane racing) Nick Macy and Chris Rushing _passed_ after the T-6 Gold race had ended. …While there are inherent risks with any motorsport, we work diligently year around to mitigate these risks and safety is our foremost priority.”
This is the most egregious instance of the already repulsive usage “passed” I have noted. The men died in a fiery, high-speed collision of massive, piston-powered 1930s aluminum machines.
Let’s hear it for the influence of, for lack of a less accessible label, Appalachia, or perhaps the English/Scottish borderlands (and Ulster!). Social isolation, illiteracy, and historical dialect difference give us critter, varmint, cuss, and bust.
American rhyming slang. I wonder how it channelized our thinking. I don’t know if the examples i can come up with are restricted by the necessity to rhyme, but here goes: study buddy. Most recently, gal pal. I despise the word gal, but it pops up here bc of the rhyme.
From the US Army manual of the law of land warfare:
FM 27-10
Appendix A - 18
65. The Levée en Masse
If the enemy approaches an area for the purpose of seizing it, the inhabitants, if they defend it, are entitled to the rights of regular combatants as a levée en masse (see GPW, art. 4, par. A (6); par. 61 herein), although they wear no distinctive sign. In such a case all the inhabitants of the area maybe considered legitimate enemies until the area is taken.
Should some inhabitants of a locality thus take part in its defense, it might be justifiable to treat all the males of military age as prisoners of war. Even if inhabitants who formed the levée en masse lay down their arms and return to their normal activities, they may be made prisoners of war.
i'm sorry for dumpin' on y'all. y'all don't share the nitty gritty of y'all's working life on facebook. i apologise. i'll try and keep it to a minimum. unless there's cuteness involved.
Given that Xians have been goin on about a big scary Beast/666/deceptive messiah for about 2 millenia, many of them sure do have a hard time seeing GOP leaders as anti-christian.
If the Tea Party oppose big gov't, do they oppose NCLB [the education bill named in Newspeak whose name I do not speak or write]?-2011
Someone appears to think their opinion superior to that of others and put up a half a dozen banners between oakland and hayward on I80 overpasses that say “jesus or hell”. One of our people went through and painted out jesus and put a red border around hell on several of them miles apart. I owe them a beer.
Hey, how is it that fair-haired people been indicated as in one way or another as preferred for about a millennium, yet the phenomenon of the blonde joke exists? Doubtless, this has much to do with the devaluation of women as sex objects. After all, a "blonde" is a woman. Who ever heard of the masculine form "brunet" [brunay]?
bollocks to the breeze!
no, li'l 7-year-old: i am not a "cheacher".
12 little girls. b-day party. hiding in garrridge. -2009
NY September 11th: men in their 20's strike again. we gotta put these guys behind bars!
Haters: damn the gov’mint for jamming mask mandates down our throat!
Also haters: They can’t make me mask up! Grocery clerks, BART station agents, Amtrak conductors, teachers— they cain’t do shit! It ain’t illegal. Let ‘em call a cop!
No, little Miss Gutiérrez Gómez, Gutiérrez is _not_ your "middle name".
Can we discuss the monarchy as a waste of human potential?
Orange wine not so much. "Amber wine" being much the same thing at a Georgian restaurant, _with Georgian food_, most certainly!-2019
Nothing kills family life like HEADPHONES!!!-2012
Say what you want about, say, the LDS and their attitudes and their efforts to suppress the rights of my friends and their origin story and their goofy system of proselytization: they aren’t known to have deep systemic historical links to organized crime, heroin, protecting war criminals, anti communist pogroms, the Dirty War, the CIA, etc. And I didn’t even mention pædophelia.
what is it that keeps me from burning down the houses of assembly of those whose ideation i regard as markedly anathema? fear of punishment? a desire not to cause incidental destruction of human life? self interest in a clear karmic slate? how is this different or similar to what keeps me from participating in the time-honored transaction called prostitution?
managed to get the laundry pile on the couch folded by getting the following located to the TV in the living room: "sportscast"-style coverage of a downhill skateboard race in SoCal called "Angie's Curve[s]", part of the IDF [not that IDF, the int'l downhill something or other]'s race series. an "official' race, it featured hay-bales lining the road and, of course, the ubiquitous U-Haul truck to take skaters back to the top. [do U-Haul do a sponsorship??].-2014
Waste is the highest expression of the Free Market System.
is calm despite great stresses. Cheer up, i sez to the kid in my class-- it'll be _easy_. -2009
thank you, mr. bess. we didn' even know that that "14" graffiti was a trope of notional "norteño" streetgang. that said, no one else on the staff figured that juxtaposition with the number 88 made it a whyte supremacist thing.
hey, howdjaknowthat??-2017
A kid candidly discusses self-harm, extemporising on methods, access to implements, etc.: receives visit from uniformed, lethally armed man with severely limited horizons vis-a-vis social interaction, personal liberty ["a cop]. spends weekend incarcerated in hospital ward. (Refers to my friend whose HHS graduation I attended.)
Another kid: brings, on a lark, 2 airsoft "pistols", explicitly designed to mimic firearms except for orange barrel tip, to school with liberal supply of pellets, chases classmates about cafeteria with said implement: gets stern talk from nice mr. johnston, has toys sent home with his dad, and spends next day filling out dittos in big, scary upper grade classroom. (Refers to the plump AfAm boy who barely attended school, yet participated in 6th grade graduation.) Something of a mismatch, eh?
nex' time you see some hapless correspondent misspell something, remember that information-- and "education"-- are hard-won, expensive privileges. he says to himself, hoping to stave off his next unfair judgmental incident.
(My own) Kids watching 'Anaconda' by Niki Minaj. So we had to watch 'Baby Got Back' by Sir Mixalot. Then we had to watch 'Me So Horny' by 2 Live Crew. Finally, we had to watch the relevant scene in Full Metal Jacket.-2014
Are Haitians Latinos? What about Cajuns or Quebecquers?
Merkwürdiger amerikanischer Begriff: Alma Mater: "Schule", d.h. Universität, der man eine gewisse Treue schuldet. Zeigt man bei Autoaufklebern, T-Shirts usw. Funktioniert, so viel ich erkennen kann, um Karten zu Fussballspielen zu verkaufen. Lässt mich voll kalt.
Of a certain age: canes, dialysis, xanax, various scans and -oscopies, dental implants, et cetera. It becomes a struggle of prolonging the whole affair. After a youth spent apparently attempting the opposite.
1st time slightly scared on bart. Started out alone on platform with incoherent possibly drunk man. Now actively avoiding him on train. At least the car i moved to has AC.-2019
as 2 grungy, casual guys get on bart with some kinda audio around the neck of one of 'em playin' "Life sucks and then you die" by something nazarene, i realise that punk may be dead [sorry omid] but punk's definitely still PUNK!
Does anyone else think Sea Shepherd New Zealand would be well positioned to interdict people smugglers who abandon refugees in the Med just as well as they interdict Patagonian toothffish poachers in the southern ocean?
My daddy still knows who called his grandma a "danged ol' Reb" when she was in grade-school.
New earworm: The Band's rendition of "The Night They Drove Ol' Dixie Down".
Wanna drive a monster truck to haul yr boat? Easy. File an affidavit of need and pay, say, 5K/yr. taxes. Need a minivan to haul that third kid? Similar deal.
Wait-- teaching puts you at risk for developing OCD? I wish I had been informed of this a bit earlier!!!!!!!-2011
No hope without dope. To wit, pseudo-ephedrine and chamomile.—2011
It has come to my attention that there are those who do not like cats. Uh...
i am supposed to use a particular week-by-week plan in daily instruction. i am only given an 11x17 packet or a pdf. when i ask for a word doc so i can format it to make it usable, i am told they "don't have it". thanks for the professional respect.-2012
Here is the breakdown of my dual language immersion classroom. Ostensibly, we're supposed to have 1/2 English Language Learners and 1/2 Spanish Language Learners. More realistically, we would like to think we have 1/3 ELL, 1/3 SLL, and 1/3 "No-No's"-- subtractive bilinguals, or kids who have managed to grow up deficient both in English and in Spanish. *shudder*
Discussing ethnos with my class, after someone called a Filipino kid "Chinese". One kid says her family are from India. We get into a discussion of the peoples who have been in the "United States" for thousands of years. The Indian girl graces us with the information that those Indians are all dead. great.
Thank you USG for springing for roving patrols of F-18's. I have nothing to fear from AQ MiGs. Oh, wait-- AQ don't _have_ an air force. Idiots. -9/11/2011
Dear “gender “ reveal idiots: _which_ of the “2” “genders” does orange indicate?
So when ISIS says 'caliphate' , it really means a new Ottoman Empire, right?
Note: “cat lady” bad. Also, eating cats bad.
I just googled the Polish spelling of the place called Ausschwitz, which is, after all, in Poland, not Germany. I got it right first time. Scary. For the record, Oswieczem.
The sad thing about a person spelling things wrong is that it shows that the writer does not really understand what they are saying. "Pouring" over a document makes no sense. Facts don't "jive". Unscrupulous people don't "pray" on the credulous. Vehicles don't need "breaks".
It will surprise no one that the new NPR Music theme song is not at all pleasing to me. It may surprise some that it sets me off humming _this_ tune on my way to work. I am not all that happy about this state of affairs.
Too much hip hop? Just what the fuck do you think 40 year old whyte guys listen to?-2014 (what is this about?)
Obscene. 6 teachers writing lists, crossing out and making arrows to other lists. Sat it out. I understand that it was new to be into spreadsheets in 2003, but now... I am apoplectic. Nervously exhausted. How do you open Excel? How do you open a file? Aaargh.-2009
One of my 2nd graders, a kid I like a lot whom I visualised all summer as the "face" of my class, has problems. I asked him to write "un" [Spanish]. He blocked. I told him to write the letter U. He proved unable to do so. Then he got a 1/7 on his math test. I took him outside and explained that he would henceforth be staying with the 1st graders when i sent the 2nd graders off to work on their own b/c I need to be teaching him all the time, and b/c he needs to 'learn to be smart', his phrase which I like a lot.
Thing is, he went right in with his new books and told his nghbr, "I'm a 2nd grader _and_ a 1st grader." I guess I did my job of pitching this positively, but I didn't ask him to brag about it. Siighh... -2013
Dear nongay folk: _now_ do you understand AIDS??-2020
I’m up to 2 train and bicycle commutes a week!-2008
7:55 a.m. "emergency" staff meeting to announce that the least senior teacher will be losing their position and that our classes will be reconfigured. first priority: seek out the new bilingual teacher--suffering a cold dropping feeling in her gut-- and tell her it ain't her because she's bilingual. not that that's why any of us signed up to be bilingual teachers.
It’s a spare the air say, so ride your b... i mean, take the b... damnit!-2020, the orange sky days
I'm tryin' to figure out who this guy is. He's on a knucklehead (or panhead?) Harley, a flatly unpretentious, stripped down machine that looks at home in about 1970, but whose engine hails from 2 or 3 decades earlier. Its breathy exhaust note appears to stem from the fact that its exhaust pipe- not muffler- is simply pinched shut in a linear gap. It is not terribly loud, not ridden to be loud. It idles great.
Rider is about 35, maybe latino. There is little to set him apart from any given crowd. Worn, dusty gear, ball cap under half helmet, rolled up jeans, boots for work, not for appearances.
So who is this guy? A dedicated motorcyclist who keeps this grimy treasure in running, "live" condition for Sunday rides around town? Hipster scum living out the biker dream of my--not his-- generation? Actual biker? Mechanical whiz with a love for the old stuff?
He pulls away ahead of traffic, the engine no more than loping. Pulls in the clutch, engine at idle, reaches down to the left below his seat and JERKS THE SHIFTER INTO THE NEXT GEAR. This, then, is the infamous "suicide clutch", foot actuated, meaning you can't put that foot down at a stoplight without dropping into gear. A number of you may remember Fat Freddie of the Fantastic Furry Freak Brothers having a misadventure with this, falling right over on the unsupported clutch foot side, saying, as I recall, "Oh, no, oh, no, oh, no!" On his way down.
One more detail. That rolled-up pantleg? Selvedge denim. That's one pretty danged advanced hipster.
Bier nach Wein, das ist fein, Wein nach Bier verbiet'ich dir.
I wasted much of the morning today dealing with accusations by a girl who 'want[ed] her mommy' and disturbed the whole hallway with her crying yesterday. Now, after school, her mommy wanted to discuss these accusations with me. No. F**k no. GTFO. It's already been dealt with by the principal.-2015
A 12 y.o. on why he prefers Karate over Aikido: Aikido is not really useful if someone is saying mean stuff to you. It's more like just for self-defence.
Yep.
"Sir Duke" from looted hard drive on usb stick in civic. blasting it,
nearly blowing the speakers. 80mph on the way to work, tears in my face.-2010
A friend posted “There are few phrases I hate more than "people experiencing homelessness." The only reason to not just say "homeless people" is if you think there's something shameful about being homeless.” Among the euphemisms i hear are “houseless” and “unhoused”. I don’t know what the tension between house and home is in our language is about but i know it exists. We have “a house that is not a home”, a brothel. Meanwhile homes that are not houses include places for the elderly and the dead. Somehow there is a tendency away from buying a “house”. Certainly no one buys a second “house” in the country. The same children, many bridging from Spanish to English, who say could instead of can (I could ride a bike) struggle with phrases like “going home”, substituting “going to my house”.
I sware someone jus’ walked past at hayward bart whistlin’ ding dong the witch is dead.-Sep. 9 2022: death of queen of UK
"Often" is pronounced "offen", but many say "off-ten". There is also a word "oftimes". There is no word "oftentimes", but when I hear people say "oftentimes", they pronounce it "offentimes". I suspect that the same people who say "offentimes" are the same ones who say "off-ten". I don't understand this.
getting back into wearing clothing after a brief interluud.
I won the lottery. Not only did I find a woman wacky enough to put up with me, but somehow we have managed to sustain a relationship through more than 2 1/2 decades.-2009
Now: about the fleeting, gratuitous final "-s" of American English working class dialect: what gives?
To wit: anyways, we've come a ways, somewheres, anywheres, etc., Nordstroms, K-Marts... I hear this a lot out in Haywards where I teach, but that one is a historical fact, the original name of the place based on its naming from Hayward's Hotel, which belonged to a Mr. Hayward.
Any others?
the genocides of the indigenous peoples in this country? about a hunnderd years ago and more? slavery? like 150 plus!
guatemalan coup? iran?
folks try reading up on the history of friendly little western democracy italy since 1943. and heroin. and the underground organizations that included people like silvio berluscone.
and heroin. and more heroin.
Woman on the phone on the train: “Just send him to school and see what happens.”-2022
Climate control is not half as important as climate control control.
messenger on facebook has a record of all the things you have previously messaged a person. i like that it can keep your from repeating yourself. wait-- did i already post this?
Renewed my credential to teach third grade. Good thing i don’t have 34 felony convictions.
if autism is a spectrum, are some chartreuse? others crayola orange-red? pale grey?
Reasons to appreciate being Latvian:
There will never be a Latvian Spring soap.
No one will ever advertise Latvian Charms cereal.
No private religious college will ever identify any antiquated ethnic Latvian stereotype for its "Fightin' Latvian" football team.
No one will ever claim to be Latvian for a day.
No one will ever dye beer, rivers, or hair whatever the hell colour is Latvian.
No one will ever talk about getting their Latvian up, though I hesitate to imagine what that might mean.
You may stay tee-total, have an occasional nip, or get blotto entirely regardless of any notional Latvianness. Latvanity?
Gee. Is that really it? Elizabeth Creely? Maureen Hurley? Máirtín? Apologies due to Maira Dizgalvis, who really is Latvian.
cool morning, thin shirt, sweaty, inhaling deeply, luv my bike!-2009
Wow. Some people don't make stuff.-2015
Both "loser" and "sucker" have deep, corrupt underlying cultural bases. Corrupt like a maggot-ridden corpse, not corrupt like a cop on the take.
I am stoked that I can commute on Amtrak for only about 1 1/2x what BART was costing me by using my pretax debit card for a monthly pass. Bathrooms. Table. OK to eat and drink. Few riders. Few bloodstains. Few socially dysfunctional people. Same ride to work from Hayward station, if a severely truncated one on the Berkeley end. Don't have to drive a kar. Think I'll get out at E-ville on the way home and get a ride in.-2020
For 40 years, it has bugged me: I get why England wears white with red jerseys. Brasil-- Ordem e progreso!--it makes sense to wear screamin' yellow with some blue and green. Argentina is supremely sensible with their rayas de celeste y blanco. But of all the national teams that matter, why does Germany wear white with black?? I finally figgered it out: the Teutonic Knights.
Remembering the woody scent of my grandmother's house, gone now these 8 years.-2010
The gearhead/ mechanically inclined/ engineer/ techie sees something well executed and says, "cool", "elegant solution". My daughter sees that the frying pan of my camping cookset doubles as a lid. She squeals. I mistake it as an expression of cuteness, kawai, but it is actually her reaction as a gearhead. Cool.
I will be voting fot the pres. candidate who chose to reproduce acc. to ZPG, not the one who decided that the world would be better off with 5 copies of himself.-2012
Am slowly realising: my kids are native speakers of the "hella" dialect.
I’m smart enough, I’m emotionally well-balanced enough, and if you don't like me, you can just step off!!!
i'm a gonna make it 'less i get hit by a bus/ meteor/ brain tumor.-2009
Opposite of “eulogy”? * malogy (latin prefix, so no, Steve Lew) Dyslogy? Kakology? … asking for a friend.
NYT says Claudia's family's province is called "Western Pomerania". I think this loses something from the German "Vorpommern"-- Fore-Pomerania, or frontal Pomerania. To be contrasted with Hinterpommern, where said family are from before the ethnic cleansing of 1945. That would have be Rear Pomerania.
"curated disdain": how an commentator on "Idiots on BART" describes my mild attempt to troll them.
dear teenaged bart rider, the reason i am shouting at you is not, as you suggest, because you are black. it is because you purposefully threw a small ball of paper or something at me and hit me on the shoulder after filling the air with hate speech. don;t be an idiot.
Dear @Acme Gakery: "edible baby loaf"? Certainly there must be some way to interpret this phrase that ends happily for all involved.
Fascism in brief:
1. Nationalism
2. Disdain Human Rights
3. Enemies/Scapegoats
4. Supremacy of the Military
5. Sexism
6. Controlled Mass Media
7. Obsession with National Security
8. Religion and Government Intertwined
9. Corporate Power Protected
10. Labor Power Suppressed
11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts
12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment
13. Cronyism and Corruption
14. Fraudulent Elections
Authoritarian state communism, integrated from the intimate to the anonymously public, infantilizing the incapable and raising to full— authoritarian— personhood only those who show themselves capable of appropriate compliance: this is America’s just desert.-2023
At the core of any relationship btwn any two people lurks a WTF like the grain of sand in a pearl.
Huntsman on NPR today said that his entrepreneurial class was being "strangled" by pernicious Gov't regulation. I know many in other social classes who are being kicked in the face and would gladly trade places.-2011
I am just absolutely lovin' being back at work teaching my class!!!!!!!!! The frontal lobotomy I had over summer really works!-2010
Bicycling in this air-you-can-bloody-well-see takes me right back to growing up in the Pomona Valley in the 70's. I half expect to get "the smog"-- a searing, piercing pain in the middle of the chest when too deeply inhaling the summer air of that time and place. The Colosseum is hazy when viewed from the BART station.-2017
