Declaration of Dependence

Posted on September 18, 2013 by sabasabas

booboo14f-1-web

 

As a public high school teacher, it’s difficult to blog about the state of education in Arizona without sounding like a whiner. After all, we are privileged enough to work with young people who are caring, talented, and enthusiastic as opposed to corporate minions who are jaded, backstabbing, and Machiavellian. The snarky accountant who shares your office would probably make the occasional paper airplane seem like a love letter from the gods. Shamefully, public schools in America are no longer places to celebrate academic achievement, community involvement, and athletics. Public school today is the supernanny of government services, operating as a central feeding station 365 days a year, a day care provider, emergency hospital, psych ward, and an industrial dispensary of services previously provided by family. Consequently, public schools in Arizona are little more than staging areas for low-skilled workers. Rockefeller once said of public education, “I want workers, not thinkers.” He is well on his way to achieving the robber-baron’s wet dream.

Bussed to school in caravans, students arrive in time for their morning feeding. Having consumed high-calorie industrial-flavored mystery meats, sugary juice, and watery milk, maximizing their calorie intake and conditioning them to crave sugar and saturated fats, they proceed to classrooms packed with 30, 40, even 50 children, repeated seven times daily at the high school level. P.E. classes, electives like music and art, have gone by the wayside as budget cuts eliminate all subjects that are not required to pass mandated standardized tests. Each students represents approximately $7,000 for his/her receiving school, and interest in entertaining and providing for this demanding clientele takes precedence over true academic achievement.  “Dropout prevention” has less to do with concern for the child’s future than concern for the school’s bottom line. If teachers are not proficient at juggling or dancing and actually challenge a student to think, the teacher is a villain out to destroy the client’s self esteem. A student might graduate with enough literacy skill to fill out a McDonald’s application, although grade inflation would have parents believing they’ve raised the next Einstein.

Teaching, sadly, has become a starter job. We here in terminally underfunded Arizona have heard the myths about east coast teachers earning six figures, but for our purposes I will address the 99%ers who earn a fraction of that amount and haven’t had even a cost of living raise in eight years. Our pay checks have been slashed as our jobs have become increasingly more demanding and complex. At the same time, class sizes have mushroomed, supply budgets dried up, and students arrive who are not only unprepared to learn, but are often so differently abled that the threat to other students and staff is quite real. For example, exceptional education students, i.e. those who need accommodations such as diapering, full-time aides, or feeding tubes due to physical or mental disabilities, cost the taxpayer four times what an average student costs. Thus, more students with acute problems are being mainstreamed into regular classrooms to save money. Administrators celebrate their “achievement,” a mouse-click changing the student’s schedule to a mainstream class, while teachers are overburdened with a growing population of students performing far below grade level. No resources are available for support, and paper, ink, and pencils for 180 students can put quite a dent in a struggling teacher’s wallet.

Where, one might ask, are the parents of public school children in this equation? They have been absolved of all responsibility for their children from birth until age 26, which is now the hypothetical cut-off
age for health insurance coverage under a parent’s plan. Parents demand individualized education plans and accommodations for all of their children’s challenges. At the same time, most public school parents provide little to no academic support at home. Public school families are more likely to include teen parents, who are often unprepared academically and financially. Behavioral issues arise when children have little structure in the home. Public school students might not know their multiplication tables, but they do know which Kardashian is married to an NBA player.    

 Private schools often require students to pass entrance exams, effectively barring exceptional education students and the most challenging public school students. Even charter schools are allowed to exclude underachievers. For example, BASIS, a school touted by Time magazine as one of the top charter schools in the nation, requires that applicants score 90% or higher on “placement tests” in order to be admitted. Obviously, the deck is stacked from the beginning. BASIS is not working miracles; they simply took advantage of the lax oversight for charter schools in Arizona. Anyone can print up a placard and re-purpose a defunct 7-11, hire teachers who are not qualified in their subjects, pay them minimum wage and rob the public school system blind. Charter schools are championed by the Far Right who want their children in Bible Study instead of Biology. The godless hordes who insist that public schools are the last great melting pot deserve to rot in hell.

I am often asked why I don’t teach at a private school where the young Rockefellers become connected and where my car, the least new and shiny in the parking lot, would be under no threat of being keyed. After all, private schools can set their own rules when it comes to teacher pay and behavior standards. For a price, private schools offer parents the chance to exclude the Honey Boo-Boos in the gene pool from access to their children’s overactive gonads. Private school children’s success later in life is immeasurably improved, not by some miracle of teacher performance, but by bumping elbows or other body parts with acceptable future mates and business partners. Private schools are allowed to hold students and parents accountable by enforcing standards of behavior. Expulsion from private schools is commonplace and not subject to outrageous litigation by parents seeing dollar signs. Conversely, even public school students who stab, rob, and fight others are never expelled. The worst cases are simply transferred to another unsuspecting school with privacy laws making it illegal for schools to share information on the expulsion. Your child could be sitting next to a youthful Jeffrey Dahmer who’s been expelled several times for violence, but who still has a right to a public education at taxpayer expense.

However, private school standards such as listening and speaking at appropriate times, academic performance, and reasonable dress codes somehow infringe on individual rights in a public school setting.  A nun at a Catholic school can still ruler-smack miscreants, ensuring that one student who cannot control himself does not rob 30 others of their chance for an education. Conversely, a public school teacher would be sent up on abuse charges and the district forced to shell out millions in pain and suffering claims if a public school teacher made students do push-ups as a consequence for cussing in class.

Having sworn an oath of poverty when I entered the profession, I have learned the value of couponing and how to choose a secondhand professional wardrobe. My public school students always arrive in time
for their meals, often without a backpack, but never sans iphone, usually sporting this season’s spendy styles from Abercrombie & Fitch. Funding formulas must be re-worked to eliminate costs which should be covered by parents. School supplies for 180 students should not come out of teacher pay. We must get real about the next generation, or prepare to write the Declaration of Dependents.

Posted in Diet | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Terraplane Sun

Posted on September 12, 2013 by sabasabas

I rarely blog about music, because I’m not pretentious, full of crap, or a scene girl. Once in a while I like to pay verbal homage to a band which is firing on all pistons, though. Terraplane Sun, a top notch L.A. band with diverse influences like Delta blues and Led Zeppelin, is surprisingly tight for a three-year-year old band. TS deserves not just my little elegy, but also a weekend slot on Bonnaroo’s “This” stage, and a top spot on your shuffle. I was lucky enough to catch them mid-week in Tucson at Congress, a popular stopover for hot Cali bands who want to put a little cash in their pockets to keep them in diner food and gas during that long, dusty drive to Austin. The singer, Ben Rothbard, evokes the slightly forward-layering, echoing tone of Foster the People’s Mark Foster and Ben Bridwell of Band of Horses, all while strumming like Robert Johnson on a humid Mississippi front porch. Gabe Feenberg, a true maestro who plays lap steel guitar, trombone, piano, and Wurlitzer, is one of those versatile musicians who bands court as rabidly as Carl’s Jr. hamburger models. He deserves a corner office, a raise, and a road suite all to himself. Johnny Zambetti, Cecil Campanaro, and Lyle Riddle on guitar, bass, and drums round out Terraplane Sun. The bluesy, surfy tunes on their EP “Friends” are all strong and Universal has snatched up Terraplane, and I hope it’s a good fit. I’m friended.

Posted in music | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Scoop on The Dish

Posted on September 11, 2013 by sabasabas

GossipPhoto300

 

Gossip is a vaguely shameful dish which, like over-processed, pink slime-ridden fast food, should be consumed only rarely. It causes stomach ache, bloating, and indigestion while providing a false sense of fulfillment. Regular consumers of gossip soon find themselves inexplicably empty after a particularly messy feeding frenzy.

A good friend of mine, an accomplished lady entrepreneur with sharp business acumen, charisma, and, most importantly, a warm heart, recently stayed with me a few days while she was in town for a trade show. One of the reasons I enjoy her company so much is that our conversations seldom stray into gossip. She has interests and passions similar to mine, and we don’t have time to slander and henpeck. Similarly, most movies that don’t pass the Bechdel Test don’t interest me (i.e., they must have at least two named women who talk to each other about something other than men) just as most women whose conversation topic list is limited to the bedroom habits of acquaintances, the failures and foibles of rivals, and the merits and shortcomings of men have me yawning in five seconds.

No, girls are not all sugar and spice. However, the stereotype of the catty, spiteful Mean Girl these days is nearly eclipsed by the shark tank of Fork-Tongued Mean Boys who have appropriated the formerly feminine realm of petty gossip. Of course, Gen Next males, in touch with their inner emo hipster who is much less demanding than their inner John Wayne, need more to discuss than golf, investing, and BBQ recipes, but it remains as true today as it was 500 years ago that while a little dish on men bounces neatly off of their Under Armor, a few well-chosen words can still quickly destroy a woman’s reputation. Maybe that’s because both genders are complicit in female skewering, while women tend to protect and mother men.

Discretion and privacy are gossip’s chief enemies, two crumbling, tattered cornerstones of civilization. Our descent into petty gossip, along with increasing hunger to not only tolerate but also execute Big Brother-like privacy intrusions, marks a startling backward shift in values. “The savage’s whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men,” Ayn Rand wrote. However, gossiping elitist soccer moms are no better than savage Frito-munching droolers enraptured by a Maury paternity test-fest. Gossips set out, like savage hordes, to exile those deemed unfit by wont of zip code, lifestyle norms, or religion from their tribe of shopping, duck-lipped gum-flappers who replace substance with shock value.

And did you see who Kim was with at lunch the other day???  

Posted in blogging, current events, relationships, women's issues | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Proud to Work

Posted on September 9, 2013 by sabasabas

I was rocking my yard yesterday, and by that I don’t mean I was head-banging and playing air guitar, although to say I’ve never done that would be a lie. I was unloading and spreading a truckload of DG rock onto my lawn to keep the dust down and to generally beautify my property. The rock is organic, and gives my lawn the appearance of a baseball infield. I work in my yard often with all sorts of tools, wearing gloves and bandanna. As I was dumping my umpteenth wheelbarrow of rock, a ratty pickup pulled up across the street. In order to understand this blog, the reader must conjure a mental image of “those neighbors.” Yes, the neighbors who have been repeatedly cited for a car on blocks, trash in the yard, dogs at large, children on the loose, yelling at all hours, and general community blight. These neighbors, oblivious as they are to their neighborhood, pay next to nothing for their Section 8 housing. In fact, the U.S. government foots the bill for their housing, food, and transportation. They sleep well into the day, and seem to do most of their business on the street. More occupants live in the house than can be reasonably counted.

Back to my yard rocking. The family patriarch, an aging Mexican hippie who has never worked in the six years I’ve owned my house, pulled up in front, waiting for god knows what. Much waiting in cars is done in front of that house. I looked up and caught him staring at me, again no surprise as leering, too, seems a favorite pastime among those neighbors. “You work too hard,” he said with a stupid smile. I suppose I should have smiled back and yucked it up at his witty remark.

“No, I work just right,” I said, pointedly staring at his trash-strewn yard and returning to my job.

At what point did working become shameful? The neighbors low-class norms include identifying with a culture of helping themselves to the feed trough of life without contributing to its contents. I realize that my Midwestern roots are showing. I was raised in an area where hard work was a way of life, both honorable and rewarding in and of itself. We got up early and happily went about our days, “slacking” an unheard of concept. In fact, the one or two families who bred poverty and crime as reliably as a barn cat throws litters were so vilified that the bloodline thankfully ended when the progeny became unmarriageable.

Such is not the case these days. SNAP cards are refilled monthly, and recipients are taught by an expensive government media campaign there should be no shame in receiving welfare. They compete to find ways to cheat the system until work like rocking one’s yard is a shameful endeavor for those too foolish to take advantage of the giveaways. Far from taking pride in honest work, folks like my neighbors actually ridicule it. Yes, the culture of welfare dependence is more than alive and well; it’s bloated and obese like the leering, lazy neighbor watching me rock my yard.

Posted in Diet, jobs, politics | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Barbie Era

Posted on September 4, 2013 by sabasabas

real-life-barbie

Today, my students wrote about beauty. They’d been reading John Donne’s elegies, several of which are satirical poems which form a literary antithesis to Shakespeare’s sonnets. They are, in fact, hilarious: “Such are the sweat drops of my mistres’ breast, and on her brow her skin such luster sets, they seeme no sweate drops, but pearl coronets…”

Sadly, Donne’s turn at satire was lost on most of my students. They reacted with disgust at the imagery of the seedy, sweating mistress, of course, but saw few connections to the modern world. Why anyone would write such a detailed honorarium to what they consider repulsive physicality was beyond them. Teenagers have been conditioned to equate beauty with Barbie: well-coifed, manicured, matching, sans sweat. This made me consider the beauty ideals we’ve come to expect from women in “The Barbie Era.” Are we regressing to medieval, punitive standards for beauty like foot binding, rib removal, and leg elongation? Here is my list of Barbie Era beauty trends that women should forego and men should discourage in an effort to bring humanity and equality into gender relations.

  1. Claw nails. The ancient Samoans valued obesity in their women because the mountains of fat proved that she was from an upper caste family and did not perform physical labor. By marrying her, he would be assured of an easy existence. Likewise, long, bejeweled claws in the modern Barbie Era scream “I ain’t workin for no one” because I got my Obama phone, SNAP card, and Section 8. Be my baby daddy, and I got you.
  2. Full body electrolysis. While grooming is important, permanent removal of one’s body hair is ill-advised. Barbie is plastic, but people are encased in skin, which has tiny, sensitive hair follicles. Post-electrolysis skin is often discolored, shows more faults than it eradicates, and makes the skin itself more tough as it works overtime to protect itself from the elements. Shave.
  3. Hair extensions. Have you ever run your fingers through a scalp with extensions? Frightening and dangerous. Why any woman would purchase hair from India and call it her own is beyond me.
  4. Tattoos and piercings. Barbies these days come with decals so that the kiddos can “tat her up.” Admittedly, I have no ink, and no holes in my skin. Some men are apparently like crows and need dangling, sparkly objects to hypnotize them into submission. Luckily, I’ve never come across these Crow Men.
  5. Muffin Top/Camel Toe: Clothes Too Small. Barbie, with a waist cinched so tightly she’d asphyxiate if brought to human dimensions, encourages women to stuff themselves into garments so tight that their veins show in relief like river maps.

I hope that today’s young women throw Barbie ideals out the window and get real about physical beauty. I marvel at how often I am hit on at the grocery store after working out, sweaty and gleaming, hair a mess. Barbie followers will one day realize that pheromones attract men, and if plastic is his kink, the adult store downtown has a blowup doll which will fit the bill.    

Posted in Diet, relationships, sex, women's issues | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Let Them Eat Popcorn

Posted on August 30, 2013 by sabasabas

woody allenWoody Allen’s new movie, Blue Jasmine, sent me into paroxysms of literary glee. His paean to Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire hit all of its marks and then some. I fully expect Cate Blanchett to win an Oscar for her flawless turn as a modernized, Xanax-popping Blanche DuBois. Only the acerbic wit of Woody Allen could do justice to Williams’ classic play. As I gushed about the merits of the film, one of my friends, a brilliant Scottish poet who lives honestly and is always true to his inner Elvis, loudly proclaimed that he would never see a movie made by a “door-scratching lecher who fucked his own child.” While I am the first to admit that Woody Allen is among the sleaziest in a long line of sleazy directors, his personal life falling in an obnoxious, Napoleonic heap somewhere between Roman Polanski’s nymphomania and Mel Gibson’s racism, I fully acknowledge his genius as a writer and director. Having the resolve to boycott his movies is beyond my level of engagement, as I would then need to eschew so many products, services, and entertainment options that I would die an altruistic asthete on my couch made of nails.
After all, Mia Farrow, Allen’s wife in the 2oth century, adopted a tribe of Benneton kids that dwarfed the Jolie-Pitts and made Madonna look like a dilettante in the game of ethnic child collecting. The fact that Woody Allen, a notorious casting couch lothario suffering from a serious Napoleon complex, slept with and later married one of the children should serve as an ominous warning to these international octo-mom wannabes. Adopting a herd of diverse Lolitas into the household of a well-known Don Juan is like staking out a lamb in white tiger territory.
While I wouldn’t vote any of the aforementioned directors into public office, their stellar work remains unblemished by pedophilia, ethnocentrism, and misogyny. It stands alone, timeless testimonial to artistic vision. Conversely, Stanley Kubrick, John Ford, and Frank Capra produced work that was clichéd, simplistic, and formulaic to me, although each by most accounts led lives worthy of moral emulation. I have always believed that art stands alone, independent of the artist who created it. My Jewish friends stopped patronizing Mel Gibson’s films after his boozy roadside rant a decade ago, and I applaud them for their commitment. Just don’t expect me to join the boycott, not because I endorse his anti-semitic beliefs, but because I judge his work on its artistic merit alone, although it does seem that the public’s distaste for his personal life did whip back on him like an out-of-control firehose and extinguish any creative talent that remained after he’d booze-stewed his brain.
Maybe my failure to join arms and march against the powers of Paramount and United Artists to end the creative careers of morally deviant directors marks me as complicit, or hypocritical. However, media spin isn’t reason enough for me to boycott a film. To those of you who do, I salute you. Now let me enjoy my popcorn.

Posted in politics, relationships, sex | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Ethical Suicide: Three Contenders

Posted on August 22, 2013 by sabasabas

letter21n-3-web

 

Among the high-profile news stories that caught my attention this week, the Duncan, Oklahoma execution of a young Aussie baseball player looms large, while a nutbag would-be school shooter came in a close second, followed by the Ontario case of a family who received a note urging them to euthanize their autistic son or move out of the neighborhood (missive above). My modest proposal outlined below covers all three in a most delicate, considered solution.

 In the first case, a trio of frighteningly hydrocephalic youths who were “bored” selected a random victim and shot him from their moving vehicle as he jogged. They were quickly apprehended, of course, as the entire crime was caught on video, the perps had facebooked vines of themselves wielding the weapon in question, and had made no secret of their intentions on social media. To put the felons on trial, feed, clothe, and house the useless triad will cost U.S. taxpayers millions and ensure their coveted slots in the Gangsta Hall of Fame which often overlaps with the Darwin Awards but with a different target demographic.

The second case involved a bipolar teen who slipped into a Georgia elementary school with a stolen gun. His testosterone level luckily wasn’t peaking that day, and he surrendered quietly without harming a soul. His spectacular entrée into the stingy mental health system now assured, this human time bomb will soon be roaming the red clay hillsides of rural George seeking out bigger game.

In the third eye-catching story, an Ontario family received a letter (pictured above) from fed-up neighbors urging them to euthanize their yowling autistic son. The family was outraged, of course, but despite the overuse of exclamation marks, the letter writer has a point. Canadians are often more willing to breach the false insulation of political correctness that misleads Americans into truly believing that they live in peaceful kum-ba-ya world. We might all pretend that the haunting yowl of an autistic child would be appreciated as sweet music if he were our neighbor, but in truth most of us would be chilled to the bone by these unrelenting bestial moans interrupting our DVR’d Big Brother marathon.

Disclaimer: I am not suggesting that we euthanize unwilling humans. However, doctor-assisted suicide is far more preferable than suicide by police. Ballot initiatives could be drafted conferring the legal right to euthanize themselves peacefully to those damaged, society-sucking few who self-identify as incorrigible.  First, instead of murdering or ruining the lives of others, the unfit among us would be performing a meritorious service that might be posthumously rewarded with a federal monument and perhaps even a tax break given to qualifying survivors. The qualification process should be quick and simple, not bogged down by saggy-diaper bureaucracy.  The 2Bor02B (thanks, Vonnegut) option could become one of the hallmarks of a truly democratic, liberal society which respects the needs of the many over the rights of a few. While some readers might take offense to my including the Ontario boy, they might be advised to examine the living hell into which he is forever sealed which spurs the plaintive wailing.

Until the ironclad Christian underpinnings crippling our legal system are modernized, we will continue to waste increasingly limited resources promoting ineffective preventative measures such as metal detectors at schools, body armored jogging suits, and sound-proofed ruckus rooms for low-functioning autistic folk. Instead, a hearty Kool-Ade toast to Ethical Suicide Parlors and a posthumous salute to Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. and his pioneering ideas.

Posted in politics | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

A Big Arriba For Nogales, Mexico

Posted on August 15, 2013 by sabasabas

woody allen

Nogales border crossing, Arizona/Mexico border

Nogales border crossing, Arizona/Mexico border

 

As a longtime Tucsonan, let me enumerate (or emunerate) five compelling reasons to head South, cross the border, and patronize our border city, Nogales, Sonora. Yes, little Timmy, the Nogales that’s in Mexico. One of the many reasons I chose Tucson as my permanent home is its proximity to Mexico, land of the mariachi and the maquiladora, the street taco and the cartel. In less than an hour, a scenic southbound drive takes the intrepid, passport-wielding border crosser into a land where soccer, bullfights, and novellas replace football, the Kardashians, and the latest dumbed-dreck from corporate media conglomerates. Not that novellas and Mexican game shows possess any merit other than unabashed sensationalism, but my point is that they’ve never pretended otherwise. Bill and Martha Snowbird, of course, cite cartel violence and unnamed fear for their failure to patronize the once-thriving border town, although blatant racism usually seals the deal. What could these diminutive, dark-eyed campesinos have to offer the cotton top crowd who is already flush with Hallmark tchotchkes? Here are a few compelling reasons to head south.

  1. Drugs. While U.S. prescriptions are honored, Mexican pharmacies offer an array of life-improving pharmaceuticals at minimal cost, especially when one considers that a prescription, while welcome, is completely unnecessary. For those who trust their own instincts over a Pfizer-enslaved physician’s, Nogales is your go-to open air drug market. If you are dubious about declaring your drug of choice, simply hide it in an out-of-the-way crevasse on your return trip. Border agents don’t cavity search unless they possess a court order and a video of you engaged in, say, an armed robbery or terrorist act, in which case extending your southward journey would be more advisable.
  2. Home Décor and Gifts. Mexican products such as Talavera pottery, native sculpture, kitsch art pieces, and handmade “Southwest” furniture can be had for the smallest fraction of the wholesale cost in your upscale Scottsdale furniture store. Negotiating price is a brain exercise worthy of Luminosity and teaches marketing skills. While you will be inspired by free blue agave tequila by every shill in the agora, remember that you are smuggling pharmaceuticals in that crevasse and your border demeanor does matter.
  3. Duty-Free Shopping. Park your valuable ride on the American side, safely guarded and enclosed behind concertina wire, and shop at the duty-free stores lining the boulevard. Cigarettes at $25 a carton, perfume, booze, and other sin-taxed-to-the-maxed items on the Puritan watch list are available here at a cost approaching their true value. Heck, resell them to your friends and make your border outlaw fortune simply by hiring a few curriers to carry your swag.
  4. Cuisine. Nogales is home to some top-notch restaurants. You won’t die of e-coli, cholera, or diphtheria by enjoying a fine meal in a Nogales restaurant. Avoid ice, and tell your friends that you ate authentic Mexican food that wasn’t  blanded down to please stingy gringo tastebuds. The mariachis that prey on tourist largesse are harmless and won’t wait for you in the parking lot if you say “No canciones.”
  5. Culture. Head to the graveyards on Dia de Los Muertos, enjoy a Mexican street parade, check out the Iglesias, and listen to the music. You won’t be gut shot by a passing cartel who mistook you for his arch rival in a battle over territory. While cartel violence is real, it really, really doesn’t involve turistas. In fact, you will be safer in Nogales than in most thug-choked American cities.

In the end, most Arizonans live in fear of that alien land south of the checkpoint. American media has effectively scared off southbound tourism in its effort to keep American dollars north of the border. Mexico is unsanitary, violent, and corrupt, no place for retirees from Michigan. And if you believe this, I have a $200 piece of Talavera pottery which might look stunning in your formal dining room.

Posted in Diet, politics, travel | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Privacy#notanissue#

Posted on August 14, 2013 by sabasabas

obey

 

Trapwire, NEC networks, smartphones as tracking devices, drones, wiretapping, spycams…our Cowardly New World seems to know no boundaries where privacy is concerned. This morning, my students and I were discussing spying as a motif in Hamlet, and extended the conversation to make more connections as it became apparent that the students attributed no negative connotation to the word “spying.” None of them found Polonius’s hiring a spy to watch his son at college, or indeed any of the other intrusive spy scenarios, at all disconcerting.

 The gist of their remarks can be boiled down to one shocking question that they asked: “If you have nothing to hide, why does privacy matter?” It was at this point that I wanted to tear out my hair, to shrink into the floor, or to take an abrupt flight out the window. These are teenagers who check into social networks at every opportunity, skype and facetime with great abandon, tweet and vine like a camp of chattering bonobos, and devour, digest, and forget more information in a day than teens of my generation accessed in a year. They also make willing, gullible marks for invasive advertising, easy armies for propaganda makers, and unhealthy, reliable consumers of garbage. The proud public displays of nearly all bodily functions by today’s youth borders on barbaric. Having grown up with the government as nanny and provider, many teens have been brainwashed into believing that Big Brother knows what is best for them, and as long as they are well fed and jacked into wi-fi, they see no reason to be skeptical of the motives of those who crunch all of that data and produce the pablum that fills their brains. Having seen no true abuse of power close at hand, and sheltered from real information in the blizzard of sound bytes and 6-second vids, the generation that will lead what is left of the United States into the middle 21st century might not know Eric Snowden, but will be able to describe Tosh.0’s latest video breakdown in great detail. They don’t know how to weigh the value of the information at hand, detect biases, or question the motives behind the message. Their academic vocabulary has declined over the past decade so much that scholarly works are simply inaccessible to the vast majority. The new soma, an amalgam of reality TV, video games, Ritalin and social media, keep today’s youth vacuously content and undemanding. Why would anyone use their consumer habits, movements, and purchasing records against them? Maybe mandatory mall shopping should replace English classes.

Posted in Diet, education, politics, relationships, sex | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Ewww!!

Posted on August 12, 2013 by sabasabas

filner

The Andrew Weiner and Bob Filner sex scandals have hardly caused a ripple in the already-churning political waters where publicity of any sort is coveted. It’s as if the voting public merely sighs and slouches on toward an inevitable inertia brought on by too many loose cannons (or pellet guns in this case), cheating leaders, and sexted close-ups of body parts presumably attached to minds we have deemed worthy of ethical leadership. We have developed immunity to tales of rape and harassment, coke cans with pubic hair, and pictures of adulterers cavorting on yachts with women half their age. While expectations for more demure sexual behavior might seem Puritan these days, young women’s role models now include “Stand By Your Man” types who don’t blink an eye at marital indiscretions as long as their power is intact and Muslim wraiths whose self esteem lies somewhere between the family milk cow and the household maid.

Filner, for his part, has attended a class on sex addiction. This will allow him to disavow his behavior in a disingenuous manner, as if he couldn’t possibly have known any better than to ask a secretary to work in her underwear, drool down the side of a colleague’s face, or slap a constituent on the ass. He has asked the good people of San Diego to pick up the legal fees for the numerous lawsuits coming his way so that he isn’t held personally accountable. Weiner continues to run for Mayor, although his “family man” ads with his tow-headed infant and adoring wife are laughable. Carlos Danger should don a superhero cape and have himself photographed with his S & M sidekick, Sydney Leathers, in a Gotham spoof which would surely boost his poll numbers.

Short of neutering candidates at the primary level, how can we ensure that voting taxpayers are represented by legislators with moral and ethical boundaries? We might have to wait for baby boomers to die off in large numbers before single candidates of any gender become electable. A growing trend among Americans is the choice to become or remain single long-term, sadly ensuring that this cohort of legislative hopefuls will remain political pariahs. While the “ewww” factor of seated legislators shaking hands with foreign leaders while texting in their pockets sets a horrific example for American youth. I am no Puritan, but when I discussed these scandals with my students, they were surprisingly forgiving. They don’t hold elected officials to a higher standard than reality, sports, or music stars.  Of course, as a public school teacher, sexting would get me fired. Maybe then, though, my state senate campaign would catch fire.

Posted in Diet, politics | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment