A school only Grandpa Munster could love

It was only a matter of time before the bat-s*** craziness of my home state extended to . . . bats. And s***.

In New Orleans, McDonogh 35 High School's flying-rodent problem has been well known for a while now. In fact, it made the TV news in January (above).

Plans were hatched (none of them, sadly, involving input from Grandpa Munster, who knows bats better than your average ghoul), and Orleans Parish School Board officials spoke earnestly about the school's winged dilemma.

On the television, doctors gravely noted that people can, like, catch stuff from being around bats -- and their droppings. Rabies, for one.

Of course, this wasn't deemed a problem, and district officials noted that a student was far more likely to die falling through a floor or when a ceiling caved in on him.

OK, Orleans school administrators didn't actually say that. It well could be true, but that's because the McDonogh 35's falling-down problem just might be worse than its bat-infestation problem.

Anyway, that was last month. Plans hatched. Anti-bat blitz promised. Students thought to be perfectly safe -- just so long as you didn't actually think about it.


NOW WE fast-forward to Friday's TV news.

It seems students are protesting outside the school and are refusing to go inside. Now, why might that be? Guess.

Actually, WWL television didn't have to. Let's go to the videotape . . . and the Channel 4 story below:

Students at McDonogh 35 High School refused to go to class early Friday morning, saying they are fed up with problems at the school, specifically bats in the building.

Students and parents say there have been bats inside the school for months and they've begged the principal to do something about it with no results, so Friday students stood outside the building demanding action.

Outstide the school students chanted, “No more bats, no more bats.”

Organized and determined, these high school students said enough's enough. They were teaching the first lesson Friday morning, and it was the right to protest. They say the school building is old and falling apart, and they've been living with that but say now its infested with bats and they can't learn.

“When I walked out the class and turned the corner,” said student Tatiyana Nodoselski, “I saw a white bat and it was coming toward me. It was in my face and I forgot the wall was behind me, and I ran, and it forced me into the wall. I just panicked.”

Parents share the frustration and stood alongside their kids demanding something be done immediately.

"The only thing we want to do is protect our children, this right here is our future and if they dont' care about it, we care about it," said Gail Greathouse, a parent.

Orleans Parish School Superintendent Darryl Kilbert said bats are common problem in older buildings in blighted neighborhoods. He said they will close the third floor of building, at least through Mardi Gras, to let pest remediation continue.

IF YOU'RE shocked, you must not be from Louisiana.

What is shocking, though, is that parents and students cared enough to actually raise hell. That may be a first.

Obviously, all that flappin', swooping and screeching must have driven them, uh . . . batty.

3 Chords & the Truth: The war on suck

DEATH TO SUCK!

Join the revolution.

Claim the power.

Stand up for your rights. And stand with 3 Chords & the Truth in the revolt against suckage.

No longer will we tolerate sucky music (as if we ever did here). No longer will we tolerate those who tolerate sucky music.

We will take to the streets, and we will raise our digital players high, and will will crank the Big Show the hell up. And a world o' suck will not be able to withstand it.

REMEMBER, you are the musical change you have been waiting for. Don't suck, and don't mess around with them what do.

Music for the people!

Down with suck!

Long live the revolution!

Death to the suck mongers!

The eclectic, united, will never be defeated!

Musical diversity now!

End cultural hegemony of the corporate reactionaries!

IT'S 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.

Another grown-up exits the scene

Now it's Bill Monroe who has passed from this mortal coil, another media grown-up who hasn't been -- and can't be -- replaced.

Monroe died Thursday at age 90, leaving behind a legacy as the first news director of Channel 6 in New Orleans, and as Washington bureau chief and moderator of Meet the Press for NBC television.

The Times-Picayune's obituary tells the story of a career defined by integrity . . . and guts:

In 1950, The New Orleans Item, one of the city's two afternoon papers, hired him as an editorial writer. Mr. Monroe had had print experience as a New Orleans reporter for the United Press wire service before he went to war.

Four years later, when WDSU was looking for a news director, Mr. Monroe applied for the job -- and landed it. When he joined the NBC affiliate, it was six years old.

The news staff amounted to "three or four people who just read the news," he said in a 1998 interview. "Early television reporters were converted from newspaper reporters."

Mr. Monroe hired a fleet of seasoned journalists, including the reporters Alec Gifford, Ed Planer and Bill Slatter, and the photographers Mike Lala and Jim Tolhurst.

By that time, the station had already made a name for itself in 1951, when it covered U.S. Sen. Estes Kefauver's organized-crime hearings in New Orleans. Five years later, after Earl K. Long was re-elected governor, Mr. Monroe sent Gifford and Lala to Baton Rouge to show what he felt would be an interesting legislative session.

This was long before open-meetings laws, but nobody said anything, Mr. Monroe said in the interview, because everyone seemed to believe that someone had given them permission.

"We were there a week and a half before we were challenged," he said.

Long tried to have them removed, but the New Orleans delegation resisted because they had become stars.

"That experiment "put people in touch with the Legislature in a way they hadn't seen before," Mr. Monroe said in the interview. "The Legislature came alive. We got more letters for that than any other thing we did."

During that period, the station started airing editorials that Mr. Monroe wrote and delivered. The station stirred up controversy when it called for calm during the civil-rights period, when New Orleans' public schools were facing desegregation.

There were about 50 editorials related to the civil-rights movement, Mr. Monroe said.

The station's call for calm "appealed to the common sense of a lot of people in New Orleans," he said, "but that mild message, in the context of the times generated a bit of hatred toward the station."

Mr. Monroe said he received death threats, and advertisers threatened the station with financial ruin if it didn't back off. But station owner Edgar Stern Jr. stood firm.

For the editorials, WDSU won a Peabody Award, broadcasting's most hallowed honor, and a national award from the Radio and Television News Directors Association.

A THOUGHT EXPERIMENT: First, picture a television station running regular editorials, thoughtfully delivered. In many markets -- despite the death of the "Fairness Doctrine" decades ago -- that's difficult enough right there.

Then picture a news director adamantly advocating for a wildly unpopular position . . . just because it's the right and responsible thing to do. Picture him doing this some half a hundred times over the course of a year or so, despite hate mail and death threats.

Now picture the station's (most likely) corporate owner stand behind the station's wildly unpopular editorial stance despite advertisers' threats of an economic Armageddon.

I lost you a step or two ago, didn't I?

That's because the grown-ups have left the building. The loss is all ours.

What were we talking about, again?

My life, in song.

And hey . . . uh . . . uh . . . uh . . . podna, why did I walk into this room, again?

Haley is devo . . . D-E-V-O. Y'all.

If you can't denounce Nathan Bedford Forrest -- and a Mississippi effort to give the Confederate cavalry general, reputed war criminal and early Ku Klux Klan figure his own commemorative license plate -- you'd just as well secede from the Union.

Again.

You'd think that. Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, however, is looking like he wants to lead the Union. If Barbour were to win in 2012, the White House might be just that, indeed.

I wonder whether President Obama would have to leave the inaugural festivities through the "colored" entrance?

GIVEN BARBOUR'S tin ear on all matters racial -- and given his "moonlight and magnolias" nostalgia for the good ol' days of the South's bad ol' days -- I don't think that's an entirely unfair question. Let's start with a CNN story on the gubna's license-plate shuck and jive:

Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour refused Tuesday to denounce attempts to create a special license plate honoring a 19th-century Ku Klux Klan leader.

"I don't go around denouncing people," Barbour told reporters Tuesday in Jackson, MS.

When asked by a reporter what he thought about the KKK leader in a historical context, Barbour gave a terse response.

"He's a historical figure," Barbour said.

SO IS Adolf Hitler. I eagerly await Barbour's non-denunciation of some Mississippi neo-Nazi group's future bid for a commemorative plate for der Führer.

Actually, the CNN report didn't even begin to cover Nathan Bedford Forrest's greatest hits. That Forrest was -- and is -- so revered in the South tells you something Not Good about the place.

In an effort to show you the true breadth of the Mississippi governor's moral cowardice (if not outright moral depravity), let's go to this New York Times obituary of Forrest, circa 1877:

A story is related of his reprimanding a young Lieutenant with such severity that the latter, stung beyond endurance, drew his pistol. Forrest deliberately walked up to him, and using his great physical superiority to the uttermost, literally cut the young man to the ground with his bowie-knife, and then coolly wiping the bloody blade of the knife, mounted, and rode off as if nothing had happened.

It is in connection with one of the most atrocious and cold-blooded massacres that ever disgraced civilized warfare that his name will for ever be inseparably associated. "Fort Pillow Forrest" was the title which the deed conferred upon him, and by this he will be remembered by the present generation, and by it he will pass into history. The massacre occurred on the 12th of April, 1864. Fort Pillow is 65 miles above Memphis, and its capture was effected during Forrest's celebrated raid through Tennessee, a State which was at the time practically in possession of the Union forces. Gen. Sherman had started on an expedition from Vicksburg, in February, through Mississippi; he was to be supported by Gem. Smith with a cavalry column, which, marching from Memphis, was to join him at Meridian. Sherman's march from west to east across the State was so rapidly and skillfully done that it was a mere promenade. The Confederate commander, Gen. Polk, could make no effective resistance to him, but he bent all his energies to preventing the junction of Smith's cavalry column with Sherman. For this purpose he ordered all his cavalry to join Forrest, and intrusted that commander with the task of heading off Smith. This was done most effectually, for the conduct of Gen. William Sooy Smith seems to have been marked from the start with utter inefficiency. His start from Memphis was made late enough to give Forrest time to collect all his forces for resistance; the march of the Union cavalry was an utterly disorganized one, so that when, on the 22d of February, it reached Okalona, 100 miles north of Meridian, discipline seems to have been utterly relaxed. Here Forrest's cavalry met them, and at the first charge the Union forces were practically routed. Everything fell into utter confusion, and Smith had to retreat, pursued by the enemy for 10 days over the wasted country through which he had just advanced. Forrest now saw his opportunity for a raid into the heart of Tennessee. The garrisons there had been weakened by the concentration of forces for the Spring campaign, and he had nothing to fear in the way of a superior force. Late in March he passed into that State, and the route of his advance was marked by outrages and brutalities of the most cold-blooded character. He captured most of the small garrisons on his line of march, in each case summoning the defenders to surrender under a threat that if he had to storm the works he would give no quarter. On the 12th of April he appeared before Fort Pillow. This fort was garrisoned by 500 troops, about half of them colored. Forrest's force numbered about 5,000 or 6,000. His first attack was a complete surprise, and the commanding officer was killed early in the engagement. Still the defenders fought so gallantly that at 2 o'clock the enemy had gained no material advantage. Forrest then sent in a flag of truce, demanding unconditional surrender. While the flag was flying, Forrest's men treacherously crept into positions which they had been unable to take by fight, (a trick they had played at other places,) and thus were in a situation to make the assault which soon followed under every advantage. After a short consultation, Major Bradford, on whom the command had devolved, sent word refusing to surrender. Instantly the bugles sounded the assault. The enemy were now within 100 yards of the fort, and at the sound they rushed on the works, shouting "No quarter! No quarter!" The garrison was seized with a panic: the men threw down their arms and sought safety in flight toward the river, in the neighboring ravine, behind logs, bushes, trees, and in fact everywhere where there was a chance for concealment. It was in vain. The captured fort and its vicinity became a human shambles. Without discrimination of age or sex, men, women, and children, the sick and wounded in the hospitals, were butchered without mercy. The bloody work went on until night put a temporary stop to it; but it was renewed at early dawn, when the inhuman captors searched the vicinity of the fort, dragging out wounded fugitives and killing them where they lay. The whole history of the affair was brought out by a Congressional inquiry, and the testimony presents a long series of sickening, cold-blooded atrocities. Forrest reported his own loss at 20 killed and 60 wounded; and states that he buried 228 Federals on the evening of the assault. Yet in the face of this he claimed that the Fort Pillow capture was "a bloody victory, only made a massacre by dastardly Yankee reporters." The news of the massacre aroused the whole country to a paroxysm of horror and fury. A force of 12,000 men was sent against Forrest, under Gen. Sturgis, who so wretchedly mismanaged the affair that he was utterly routed by him. Another column was sent against him in July, under A. J. Smith, which met with scarcely better success, and the next thing heard of Forrest was when, on the morning of Aug. 18, he made a sudden and daring raid through Memphis, escaping with small loss.

BUT WHO AM I to criticize? Obviously, Mississippi is a place, like the rest of the South, where it really is true that "old times there are not forgotten." This extends to Southerners' license tags.

Too -- judging by election results -- Mississippians obviously think Barbour is a cracker-jack governor, which is fitting on so many levels my head is starting to spin a little.

If only the rest of America had the luxury to "look away, look away, look away" from these ugly ghosts of Dixieland. Tragic ghosts that aren't quite ghosts, being that they're not quite dead.

Simply '70s: Boring myself to sleep at night

I'm bored, like Iggy Pop.

Now I'm sick.

Naw, I'll bore myself to sleep at night instead.

Definitely . . . I'm bored. I'm the chairman of the bored. I'm bored over being sick of 1979. No doubt the 1980s will be boring, too.

Whatever.

We can't handle the truth

At the tender age of 30, suburban Philadelphia English teacher Natalie Munroe found herself at the heart of the fall of Rome.

It was right there before her in her Central Bucks East High School classroom.

"My students are out of control," Munroe wrote in her blog Oct. 27, 2009. "They are rude, disengaged, lazy whiners. They curse, discuss drugs, talk back, argue for grades, complain about everything, fancy themselves entitled to whatever they desire, and are just generally annoying."

Then the entry got good . . . or bad, depending on whether you're reading it or living it:

In the past week alone, I've written up 4 separate students--one for dropping the f-bomb in class, one for repeatedly saying "s***tin'," one for crafting a pencil topper made from paper clips into the shape of a man and woman having sex, and one for being disrespectful to me (Me: Stop tapping. Him: (ignores and keeps on tapping. Another student tells him to stop but he still doesn't, indicating that if he didn't stop when I told him to, he wouldn't stop for this kid either. Another student then kicked the back of the first student's chair. Me: "I DID tell you to stop that already!" Him: "Yeah, you were ignored." Me: Do you want me to write you up?" Him: "Go ahead." Me: "Done!")

Then there's the kid in the other class who wasn't happy with the score he earned on his test. (Nevermind that I told kids what to study in preparation for this test, or that I offered to move the test to Wednesday instead of Tuesday to give them more time to study but they voted to keep it on Tuesday.) So this kid earned a 54% on the test, having lost 2 points for not following directions, 7.5 points for being unable to match the names of characters and settings with the story names (which is the easiest section on the whole test if you've simply read the stories for lan's sake!), another 10 or so on another section asking him to match definitions to terms... really, the kid just didn't study enough.

The issue was, though, that his test grade brought his overall grade down significantly (because he had an A, he had farther to fall), from an A to a B. He approached me last Wednesday when I handed back the tests and wanted to know if we did second-chance learning. No, I told him. He wanted to know if he could do some extra credit. No, the English department doesn't offer extra credit, I told him. On Thursday he approached me to find out how many more points are on the marking period because he wants to be able to pull his grade up by then. I told him the assignments I know I'll be grading prior to that time. On Friday he emailed me and explained that he was unhappy with his score and again asked for extra credit or a chance to make up his test, citing that he must have been having a bad day and was very upset that his grade dropped so much. He then approached me the same day in class and wanted to discuss the email. I explained again that the test is done and he needs to move forward, just working as hard as he can before the marking period ends to recoup points, but that he could not do other work to make up the grade. On Monday there was an email waiting for me from his mom weighing in on the no extra credit/no retakes policy and intimating that the test was unfairly weighted as it brought her son's grade down from an A to a B. I responded to that email sharing the information about where he lost points on his test (indicating that he should have studied harder), explaining how it's unfair to kids prepared the first time around to have an opportunity to make up the points somehow, defending the weight of my test which was 67 points and was the culmination of 3 weeks worth of work, and giving her the heads-up that college courses often base their grades on 2 tests and a paper. Today this boy visited guidance during my class. I'm not positive that it was about this grade issue, but I suspect it may have been. I did not, however, receive any emails from guidance trying to get me to modify my stance, so perhaps it was simply a coincidence. Frankly, I really want the issue to drop because it's rather annoying me that I've had to have the same conversation about this issue as many times as I have. What it comes down to is this: you did poorly on your test for whatever reason; you may end up with a B because of it; move on and try harder next marking period. It really isn't the end of the world. Maybe the next time I announce a test and give insight into what should be studied, I will be taken more seriously.

Or not.

OBVIOUSLY, there's a problem here. Unfortunately, what's so obviously problematic isn't that "(k)ids today are out of control." It isn't that "teenagers are complete asses." It isn't even that "(t)here's no respect for adults, for authority, for teachers," or that "(p)arents won't allow anyone but themselves to discipline their kids, but THEY don't do any disciplining either."

No, the problem is that young high school English teacher in affluent Bucks County, Pa., said so. In her anonymous blog.


NOW MUNROE has been suspended with pay, escorted out of the building by the principal and a security guard, and just might lose her job. For being honest.

It would seem we can put up with a society of spoiled louts and incompetents -- Hey, Rome managed it . . . until it couldn't -- but what we can't handle is the truth.

And the truth, folks, is that a lot of your kids are a-holes and cheats. Ignorant ones at that.

If you doubt what I say -- or, more importantly, what Munroe wrote -- the comments on her most "notorious" post, left after some Central Bucks East students somehow came across the blog, serve as a rather bracing quod erat demonstrandum moment.

READ ON and be educated:

dontcare said...

Jokes on you because this link is being cycled throughout the students of
CB East via facebook. Have fun applying for unemployment.

Sincerely,

"cooperative in class."

February 8, 2011 5:54 PM

brett said...

haha shes leaving due to being knocked up... she probably found a piece of toilet paper in the trash that a guy cleaned up after himself with and impregnated herself; i can think of no other way this homely ass c*** could get f*****

February 8, 2011 6:09 PM

cbeast123 said...

Well..good luck getting a job as a teacher anywhere else.

If you're in a school district as prestigious as CB East, you should act like it and stop blubbering to people who couldn't care less about your life.

Just because you hate your job, doesn't make it okay to whine about it on the internet.

And I can guarantee that at least 50% of the students you just spent making fun of will become a lot more successful than you.

How sad is it that you're way too busy blogging about your students that you have no time to actually leave a mark/make a difference on their lives. I can't imagine that you do not aspire to be that one teacher that changes someone's life, and if you do not..why are you a teacher?

If you hate kids, your own intellect would tell you to choose a career avoiding them.

February 8, 2011 6:16 PM

ConcernedStudent said...

Why would you waste your time blogging about how we are belligerent f*** (you spelled belligerent wrong dumbass)? You should be spending your time helping out students instead of insulting them on here. You have cheated, screwed, and under-cut every single one of your students this year. And i speak for everyone when i say you were a douche to all of your students in class and made no effort to help any of us achieve our academic goals. Maybe you should learn to teach and be compassionate with your students. Respect goes a long way, and the only way people will respect you is if you respect them (too late). Have a nice life. Good luck with the inner-city s***hole they call a school in philly.

February 8, 2011 6:35 PM

grapist said...

Students suck almost as much as teachers who think they're god and spend more time trying (and failing) to control their class than actually teaching. I feel bad for her and all the other bad teachers who just don't get that.

February 8, 2011 6:45 PM

jcs002 said...

Dear... you,

Hey, I remember you. This is Jeff Shoolbraid talking, just so you know I'm not hiding behind a computer screen and just randomly bashing you. I'm not sure if you remember me, but you were by far the worst teacher I've ever had because you were simply a c***. Turns out my assumption was correct. Though, if I just sit here and call you names and such it really doesn't prove any points and makes me essentially as unintelligent as you. It also doesn't really solve too much, but now that it's out of the way, here are my just as pointless two cents: Students can be a pain, but it's your job to deal with them. So this means it's your job to deal with the a**holes, weird kids, drama queens, quiet kids, and so on. The students, on the other hand, don't really owe you anything. You see, as a teacher, the world should not revolve around you. You should revolve around the students' lives. Sure, maybe kids treat you like s***, or don't give a s*** in general as far as the class goes, but you have to remember the demographic here. You're teaching high school kids. These are the rebellious/self involved/self discovering times in there lives. They are transitioning from being kids to adults. So sorry if they don't exactly know how to go about being interested in a high school English class. You need to give them a reason to give a f***, and this starts with showing respect to them, which involves a little bit of extra work on your part. Though, if you're not willing to do that, I don't blame you. I for one don't know what it's like from a teacher's prospective like yours, and I'd believe you if you said it was tough. Maybe teaching isn't cut out for you though. It doesn't give you the right to virtually abuse your class via an internet blog, which is just tacky by the way. It also doesn't give you the right to rob you students of a solid high school education. It's not a students' job to please you, it's your job to get a student an A to the best of your ability in a reasonable fashion. So sure, some students may still not give a s***. If so, give them an F. Some students might still be a**holes, but I had a pretty good relationship with Silverfox and all the principles at the school (not in a bad way) and I know they're all more than capable with dealing with those kids. And sure, some kids still might be drama queens (and kings, lets keep it pc) but hell, that's life. I also heard that this little stunt is getting your fired, and to all the students and parents that you've pissed off over the years, I'm going to take this opportunity to say good riddance!

Sincerely,
Jeff Shoolbraid

PS. Presidents have something to do with politics, I hope you've learned this by now.

February 8, 2011 7:53 PM

matt said...

wow ur future as a teacher is pretty muched f***ed at this point. i dont even go to east

February 8, 2011 7:55 PM

style&music said...

Real Classy Ms. Munroe. I just have to say that I am very disappointed by this. I originally didn't completely loath you like the rest of the junior class, but my feelings have now changed. I don't appreciate how in a previous post you stated that describing teachers and administrators with four letter words was inappropriate, is describing your own students with these same words acceptable? How's that for a rhetorical question?

Also, how could you not have even thought to delete this? The worst of the posts are from a year ago, why didn't you delete them? It's understandable to want to talk about your day at work, but the internet, seriously? By the way, what is my "cooperative in class" comment mean?

"A complete and utter jerk in all ways. Although academically ok, your child has no other redeeming qualities." well I don't believe an hour and a half a day for half a year can really lead you to a point where you can see a person's full character, you can't make those types of assumptions.

"Asked too many questions and took too long to ask them. The bell means it's time to leave!" FYI your job is to teach.

and the classiest "Rude, beligerent, argumentative f***." you tried to throw in a few "big words" but the final four letter word makes up for it.

I am not going to call make up some "comment" to describe your teaching skills, personality, or character because I only spent an hour and a half each day for a semester with you. Just a small part of my day, and an even smaller part of my life. I can't judge you from just that... But your blog(this post alone) gives me a better and full picture.

P.S. How was my use of ethos, pathos and logos?

February 8, 2011 8:19 PM

WhatThe.... said...

Hit the screenshot button so many times, it's borderline rape.

February 8, 2011 9:21 PM

Laura said...

Why in gods name would you become a teacher if you have so many problems with all your students. This is insane, I'm a senior at cb east right now and I'm almost positive you're leaving this school with me after this year.. sad thing is, I'm actually going to do something with my life.. you just ruined your chances. It's really sad that a 17 year old girl like myself can be more mature than a grown freaking woman like you. I'm just glad i had Hendrickson and Rosini my first couple years at East, I couldn't stand the thought of someone like you secretly bashing me and my classmates. Shame on you.

February 8, 2011 9:23 PM

HELL HATH no fury like a teenager whose self-esteem has been assaulted. Especially those who have been raised by wolves.

I will, however, award a couple of points to the commenter who upbraided Munroe's condemnation of problematic students in her blog with some of the same profanity she found objectionable in the classroom. That would be at least a middling command of logos, while I found this aggrieved student's attempts at pathos and ethos less compelling.

Then again, my wife and I were volunteers in Catholic youth ministry before Munroe even was in high school herself. We've seen it all -- and that was at church. I can only imagine. . . .

Then again, I don't have to. We have the cache of a beleaguered educator's blog from the front lines of American decline. The date: Dec. 2, 2009. It sounds about right to me:

That brings us to today. There were myriad problems with today's class proceedings; so many, in fact, that I won't even bother to circumscribe them here. For the sake of relevance, I will note only those bits that concern this lad. First, when I was checking vocabulary and another boy didn't have his, I mentioned to the unprepared kid that this is the 3rd week in a row he didn't do his work. He asked if it would hurt his grade. I told him it would, a great deal. Then the other kid chimed in and said, "Yeah! She ruined my grade last marking period." I said, "I'm sorry... I ruined your grade?" "Yeah." "No. YOU ruined your grade. It was your actions or inactions which earned you your grade. I think it's time for you to stop trying to pass the buck to other people all the time, and start taking responsibility for your own actions. All you ever do it blame others for what happens to you. You need to own it." He told me I sounded like his mom and should stop saying things like his mom would say. Then, he had his head down for most of the block. When he did finally raise it, he took out paper and--surprise!--wrote another note. After my lesson, when walking past his desk, I confiscated the letter. He tried to hold the page down. I sternly told him that he'd better let it go because I was, indeed, taking it. He tried to tell me that I had no right--that it was his letter. I said, "Actually, it's MY letter. This is MY time in MY class, and this is now MY letter." I took it and put it on my desk. I didn't even look at it. Moments later, he came up to my desk and picked it up as though to take it. I said, "You'd better put that letter back on my desk and walk away." We had a reprise of the "It's my property" conversation, but I said, "I suggest you put it down now because if you leave here with that letter you are most definitely getting written up for it." He said, "I was just going to rip it up and throw it out." I told him that I would take care of it. He then followed me to the door saying, "I'm waiting to see you rip it up. I'm watching.... Rip it." The bell rang. I fixed him with a stare and said, "This is now my letter. I will do with it what I want. The discussion is closed. Get out of my room." By this time, he was in the hall and the girl was coming over from across the hall. He said something to her like, "Yeah. I don't have the letter--" I interrupted and said, "--I have it. Now go." Then SHE started in, trying to get it from me. She goes, "Can I have my note?" I said, "No. It's my note. Goodbye." She said, looking annoyed, "But it's mine. Can't I just have it?" Me, getting more and more pissed off, "The note is mine. He wrote it in my class on my time. You two are always writing notes back and forth and texting through class. It's going to stop. You aren't getting this letter." He sort of pulled her away and said something to her. I can only assume he'd indicated the contents of the note to her because she came back, told me that she'd asked him to write it, and some other bunk. I interrupted a final time, a nanosecond from writing this chick up, too, for arguing with me, and said, "I don't know what the note says. I didn't read it and don't really care what's in it. I won't even read it. But neither of you are getting it back and I'm not going to discuss it with you further." The boy latched onto that, saying, "You didn't read it? Good. Because you'd cry. But ok, if you don't read it, good. Deal!" and pulled the girl away with him.

WHAT CAN one say? Apart, of course, from "We welcome our new Chinese overlords!"

Perhaps when they take over what's left of America, it will be safe for Natalie Munroe to teach once again.

The better angels of the iPhone's nature

It takes indie band OK Go (of course) to show us how to use the iPhone -- and tech in general -- for artistic good and not evil.

Their iPhone project, using video, GPS and . . . you, is something called Dance Through Your City. Basically, what you do is plot out a course that spells out a message from a map's-eye perspective through whatever place you call home. Then you walk it, drive it, dance it or whatever, recording the sights and sounds along the way.

And then OK Go gets to create something really cool out of your handiwork. From the website:

Just download the free app and plan a journey through your city. You can walk, drive, cycle or skate. Take a friend or two and draw out something awesome. Spell out a word or name, write a message to someone, draw your spirit animal or just take a more creative route to work.

Take pictures or video while you do it. Then share the GPS image of your route and the footage with us. Then OK Go will compile the GPS drawings and the best moments of making them into one big celebratory video.

THIS, I imagine, will end up as a stark contrast to the four-letter Dadaism served up for iPhone the other day by the Flaming Lips. And good on Range Rover for sponsoring this bit of OK Go magic.

A musical salve

Gwyneth & Monko, the San Francisco country-folk duo, kinda reminds me sometimes of Nanci Griffith's wonderful work of the late '80s -- if Nanci had been hanging out a lot with Lucinda Williams.

Or maybe I should just say it's as if Lucinda Williams had Nanci Griffith's voice. Or something highly complimentary.

Aw, hell. What I'm trying to say is this is good stuff.



Thank you, Hear Nebraska for turning me onto this. After that Flaming Lips thing yesterday, it's a much-needed salve for my musical soul.

Happy now, Rush?

I'm sure Lara Logan of CBS News is bearing up stoically in her hospital room knowing that she damn well deserved her fate at the hands of an Egyptian mob.

What would we do without Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck to give us clarity on these things?

FROM the CBS News website:

In the crush of the mob, she was separated from her crew. She was surrounded and suffered a brutal and sustained sexual assault and beating before being saved by a group of women and an estimated 20 Egyptian soldiers. She reconnected with the CBS team, returned to her hotel and returned to the United States on the first flight the next morning. She is currently in the hospital recovering.

KXVO: Omaha's 'burtation' station

Pity Channel 15, the station with more attitude than assets.

Listen, if you run a struggling UHF station, and you're going to air snarky promos making fun of everybody else in town -- LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME! THEY SUCK! I DON'T! NO, REALLY, LOOOOOOOK AAAAAAAT MEEEEEEEEEEE!!! -- it would behoove you to buy a dictionary.

Or hire production help who passed junior-high English.

"ForeGASIM" is to "orgasm" as KXVO is to television -- not an exact correlation. Maybe it's just that watching retreads all day and CW network programming all evening leads to brain spasims.

Don't mess around when burtations strike

In Los Angeles, when a reporter does this, it's cause for alarm and much legitimate speculation about on-air strokes or possible brain tumors. Scary stuff.

In Omaha, when a reporter does this, it means you must be watching Channel 6.

A flaming zip

The good news is that we're still a creative, innovative nation.

The bad news is it's increasingly in the service of the banal. The dumb. The pointless.

And the profane.

Enter the Flaming Lips' new YouTube project, something the group is calling a "cell phone symphony." It really is quite clever and innovative -- 12 separate videos that correspond to a single track of the band's new free single. (Profanity alert, etc., and so on . . . click at your own risk.)

The idea is for you and 12 of your closest mates to each download a track, go "one, two, ready, play" . . . and you're the Flaming Lips. Or your iPhones are the Flaming Lips . . . whatever.

AND WHAT is this new development in popular music? It's a little avant-garde number called "Two Blobs F***ing."

Paste magazine was all over the story. I hope it was practicing safe keyboarding:

The Flaming Lips have been known to experiment with ideas such as this in the past. The 1997 album Zaireeka is made up of four discs intended to played all at once. Around the same time, the band produced “The Parking Lot Experiments” and “The Boombox Experiments” inviting fans to simultaneously play cassette tapes issued by the band with varying pieces of music through their car stereos and ghetto blasters to create a psychedelic symphony conducted by the band.

Now, the next logical step has come to fruition with “Two Blobs F***ing,” which was specifically designed to be utilized with the mobile devices that dominate our increasingly digital culture. “Imagine the lo-fi symphonic joy that you, along with family, friends, pets, and others, will create at the touch of a button,” reads a press release. “The more devices, the more harmonic possibilities can be constructed. You and your device, at one with the music, become the orchestra, just as the Gods of Technology naturally intended it to be.”

OF ALL the things that could have been done as the first multitrack, interactive, do-it-yourself smart-phone single, we get vulgar nonsense like "Two Blobs F***ing." What could have been genius -- and kind of is genius from a technical standpoint -- ends up being birthed as the idiot offspring of cleverness and a dirty mind.

It's rather like a Philip Glass composition consisting of variations on the theme "There was a girl from Nantucket. . . ."

Call it the debasement of art. Listen for yourself, though. (I assembled all the audio tracks in a multitrack digital audio workstation so you wouldn't have to . . . or have to try to round up 11 friends with smart phones -- and a high threshold of pain.)


I'M NOT SURE what this is more of, prurient or pointless. Actually, what it's more of is 8th grade -- which is where, unfortunately, too much of our culture's "artistic" sensibility lies.

As it is, "Two Blobs" just leaves me with . . . nothing. I'm not shocked. Neither am I outraged.

The single didn't have much of a beat, and you couldn't really dance to it. I might give it a 42, Dick.

It didn't leave me smiling, and it troubled me not with deep thoughts. Really, it's nothing. And art -- music -- should not be nothing.

But we're addicted to pushing envelopes for the pushing's sake, even when we have nothing to say. Unfortunately, increasingly, we're a culture that has nothing to say.

It's almost as if we were 300 million blobs mentally masturbating. Call it a mortal sin of the mind.

Simply '70s: The real TV spiel

You say it's Feb. 14, 2011. I say your clock is fast.

Way fast. Thirty-seven years fast.

According to my clock, it's May 1974. Bell bottoms are all the rage. Platform shoes, too.

And we like to settle in on the living-room couch in front of the big console television set and watch all the cool kids dance to the top hits on American Bandstand.

Or The Real Don Steele Show on KHJ-TV out in Los Angeles.

Sorry, I meant Boss Angeles.


Hey, man, can you get that open flame away from my shirt? Please?

If you don't, I'm a cut you up bad with the big, big comb I got in my back pocket for my big, big hair.


Think I'm not serious? Maybe I'll introduce Gary Glitter to your 12-year-old sister, man. I hear he gives lip-syncing a whole new meaning.

Or maybe I'll make you watch Don's "Show Biz News Stuff" skit twice. Tina Delgado may be alive, ALIVE, but that bit just died, DIED.

Rock 'n' roll, man.

Power to the percolators!

Would you like to see the definition of insanity?

The epitome of consumerism run wild?

The alpha and the omega of insane faddishness?

Yet another example of planned obsolescence in the name of unnecessarily separating suckers from their no-longer-so-expendable income?

Making a damned cup of coffee a lot more complicated than it has to be?

HERE YOU GO, courtesy of Reuters:

Starbucks Corp, the world's biggest coffee chain, on Sunday said it plans to announce a new product for the single-serve market "in the near future."

Analysts long have expected Starbucks, which also sells Via instant coffee packets, to make a more aggressive move into the small, but fast-growing single-cup brewing segment.

Word of its new plan comes as Starbucks is getting ready for the March 1 termination of an agreement by which it provides coffee discs for Kraft Foods Inc's Tassimo one-cup home brewer.

Kraft's Tassimo brewer won some loyal fans with its bells and whistles, but it was bested by Green Mountain Coffee Roasters' generally lower-cost Keurig brewing system that now has a near-monopoly in the single-cup category with roughly 80 percent market share.

While several analysts expect Starbucks to begin providing coffee for the Keurig system, some also have concerns about expiring Green Mountain patents, patent challenges and whether current Keurig users will migrate to the company's new machine.

"Starbucks is currently exploring all options to expand its presence in the premium single-cup coffee category, beyond our initial entry with Starbucks Via Ready Brew," Starbucks spokeswoman Lara Wyss told Reuters.

"Single-serve is still in the earliest stages and no clear delivery system has been established as the gold standard so it is important for us to look at all options," Wyss said.

HERE'S THE PROCESS: People threw out their old drip coffee pots and percolators because somebody invented the Mr. Coffee, which was way better because it was NEW! And because it cost more.

But the Starbucks took over the world with espresso drinks and other gourmet coffees, which you couldn't have at home unless you bought an expensive espresso machine, which was better than a $25 stove-top espresso pot because it, like, cost 10 times as much. Duh!

Espresso makers, though, were too complicated. What was needed was something as simple as a stove-top espresso pot, but would make only one cup of coffee using high-priced, proprietary little packets that fit in little coffee makers that cost $200. This was real progress, which is defined as quadrupling -- through technology -- what the average consumer might have paid in Luddite days for an espresso pot and a hot plate.


ENTER the Tassimo single-serving coffee maker, for which Starbucks supplies overpriced coffee in little proprietary packets. The Tassimo represented a tenfold leap in progress, as measured by the cost of making a cup of decent coffee increasing from roughly a dime to a dollar.

Progress, however, requires obsolescence. Thus, the inevitability of Keurig -- shoving Tassimo to the margins of java history, and the need for your average coffeeaholic to shell out another $120 bucks -- Look, Marge! Economical coffee at home! The new coffee machine is $80 cheaper than the one we bought last year! -- for the new coffee-making system that's incompatible with the old one.

AND STARBUCKS will be there with a product that we know will be superior to whatever swill you're drinking now . . . because it will cost so much more.

It's The American Way.

As a card-carrying Democrat, however, I have no interest in The American Way. So you'll see me in the kitchen of our little collective here in Omaha, by God, Nebraska, spitting in the face of bourgeois society by making myself a cup of communist coffee in a proletarian pot.

On a prehistoric contraption called a stove.

Simply '70s: Punk in England in '76

From 1976, London Weekend Television takes a look at the British punk scene, in which we see the Sex Pistols before Sid Vicious, Clash before the "The" and Siouxsie before the Banshees.

We also see Joe Strummer, Mick Jones and Topper Headon making some sense about why there had to be punk at that moment in musical history. And we see a calculatingly bored Johnny Rotten unable to grasp the contradictions of condemning bands like the Rolling Stones as "a business" while immersed in The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle -- the real one, not the mockumentary -- up to one's spiky hairdo.

The mod, hip, now and happenin' -- or should that be "mawd, 'ip, now 'n' 'appenin' "? -- Janet Street-Porter presided over all of this, despite being nearly 40 at the time and well-ensconced in the establishment the punks so loathed.

Well, at least Rotten didn't spit on her.