This has been the longest week of my life. The Big Freeze hit the Midwest along with a blizzard last Saturday and we are just now digging out from under all that snow. My shoulder hates cold weather and I spent most of our “inside time” watching pirated first-run movies (the critics were wrong about Oblivion- it was really good) and wishing I was on that island with Naveen. Time drags when you only leave the Lazy Boy to make more popcorn. We were fortunate we didn’t lose power- a lot of folks around here did. Kind of amazing to me considering our little electric co-op flips out when there’s a squirrel on the line and we’re down for hours. It’s still cold but at least you won’t freeze to death in 20 minutes now. And this weekend? 50’s. Go figure. HAS to be global warming.
I’ve been hearing all this crap about the Polar Vortex the last few days and how that’s actually a bi-product of global warming. Now, I consider myself a fairly astute individual, and if there is a solid base of scientific reasoning out there linking the two I am more than willing to study the facts. But, it has to be FACTS. And it HAS to be delivered by someone other than the same morons that are delivering Common Core to our kids.
Let’s talk about that for a moment. My kids are either in college or have graduated by now. My oldest is 23 and is in military intelligence and my younger two are both sophomores. I got lucky- even in my little half-horse town they brought Common Core in, but it wasn’t until AFTER the younger two graduated. I didn’t pay a whole lot of attention to it at first for that very reason. Until I learned how They were attempting to re-write our very history. But, what really got me was math. Yep, even Euclid’s not safe anymore. Did you know that according to the Common Core Method two plus two may or may not equal four? If it equals seven in your universe as long as you explain how you achieved that answer, it’s okay.
S’cuse me?
My middle son is pre-med; wants to be a combat surgeon. By the same logic, as long as he EXPLAINS why he chose to remove someone’s spleen as opposed to performing the thorasic surgery they were prepped for, it’s okay.
In what world does this make any sense?
It was bad enough when the Classics were taken out of public school curriculums-when junior high Jack London was replaced by more “modern literature” whose topics included bulemia and teen suicide (that’s what mine got- I made them read Jack London instead). And it sucks that the fine arts programs are always the first to take the hit.
But what the hell is THIS? I don’t understand. And what I REALLY don’t understand is why more people aren’t distressed about it. If I still had a kid in the public school system I’d yank him out and home school him. Oh, wait, I can’t- because that would put me on a terrorist watch list!
Is it just me or is anybody else feeling like they moved into a parallel dimension sometime after 2004?
I grew up in Catholic schools-grade school, high school, even a Catholic university (pretty ballsy for a pagan, huh?). I wrote a high school term paper on Jim Morrison and my English teacher refused to accept it because the topic wasn’t “appropriate”. Wonder what he’d say about high school english now.
My kids had no choice. I’ve got a degree in English Lit so they pretty much HAD to read Chaucer and Keats and Kerouac. I threw some Hunter Thompson in there so they wouldn’t suffer too much. Their friends don’t even know who Hunter Thompson IS, much less Chaucer or Keats. My kids know the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, the history of the men who wrote both and why (history minor). They know EXACTLY where their ancestors came from and why (Scotland, because they’d pissed off the Crown. Again.). And they know EXACTLY where they’re going. (They also know the difference between their, they’re and there….). I can’t say the same for their friends.
But, if it’s not global warming and the polar vortex scaring the shit out of the masses, They’ll just find something else; sabre-rattling with North Korea, on the brink with Syria, new antibiotic-resistant flu strains, banking bailouts, bail-ins or just plain crashes. One thing this Administration does quite well is get the word out about the next impending apocalyptic possibility- without saying much of anything at all.
I guess we could all hold our breath till 2015.
Not me.
Not this year.
This is the year everything changes.
This is the year I come out of my shell.
Think how much fun we could have if we all lived like we could never fail, never lose. I’m sick to death of all the near-disasters and the Fatalists, of wondering if I should live in fear just in case they’re right. I’m sick of the control and the insidious insinuations and life being sucked out of everything by the unemployment numbers, or low housing starts or how broke I am.
I’m done.
This is the year *I* start living dangerously……
On the Edge of History 