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This is a question I asked on twitter last night as I tried to de-stress from a hectic day in a classroom where the forces of stupidity were strong.
There are two students in my Art theory class who need the simplest of concepts explained to them in great depth making a simple fifteen minute introductory session, stretch into an hour of eyeball stabbing frustration.
There is also one rather large bombastic young man who very seriously told me that he had never been a teenager because he had been a chef at 15. I couldn’t think of a reply to that statement as I was trying not to choke on my coffee.
At least in this group we don’t have the obligatory over sharer who feels compelled to regale the class with anecdotes of their time living in a grass hut, building fires from camel dung and drinking yak milk smoothies or some such other sensory delight.
To be totally honest I know that I am the flippant smart arse in the group who, when things get particularly grim in the stupidity stakes bursts out with a one liner and of course that wastes more time.
Sometimes listening to one of the students carry on I feel like Yoda is on my shoulder whispering to me, “The stupid is very strong in this one.” I am in danger of developing a nervous wince when ever they open their mouths and even now I am shuddering as I remember a particularly painful question and answer time.
On the upside the class is interesting and I keep on thinking of that old saying no pain no gain.There are also some really talented people in the group who are as frustrated as I am. I just wish that sometimes the painfulness of being in a group situation where the class moves along at the pace dictated by the slowest learner in the group wasn’t quite so sharp.
The Australian Government, namely Senator Stephen Conroy has given the green light for a ‘Clean Feed’ to be applied to Australian internet.
News posts here, here and here.
In laymens terms, this means that come next August, MANDATORY ISP filtering will occur on all internet.
It’s not up to the Government to say what I can and can’t look at on the internet. I am an adult and so long as my activity isn’t illegal (ch*ld porn) then the Government should have NO RIGHT to filter my internet.
It is up to me to keep my children safe on the net. Not the Government.
See NoCleanFeed for more details and if you agree with me, sign the petition.
SIGN PETITION AGAINST CLEAN FEED.
As a web publisher, this scares me senseless. Officials have admitted that the filtering, while effective against the kind of sites they are wanting to filter (a blacklist, if you will. who knows what exactly they will be deeming ‘not suitable’) there are also plenty of false positives, ie: sites blocked that shouldn’t have been.
Does that mean I could ‘accidentally’ have Frog Ponds Rock blocked? Or what about you. What happens if your website gets blocked?
I don’t agree with it. It is censorship plain and simple.
Sign the petition against it. Please.
Reproduced with permission from Sleepless Nights
I need a robotic stunt double to do the morning shift for me.I am sick of saying the same things over and over to my teenage son.If I had a robotic version of myself, I could take a nice little holiday and give my vocal chords a much needed rest.
Robo-Mum could be programmed to stand at the doorway of my teenager’s bedroom repeating, “Get out of bed, get out of bed now!” every five minutes from 6.45 am to 7’15.
Then Robo-Mum would casually follow the teenager to the bathroom door and start repeating,”Move away from the mirror, get into the shower” from 7.20 to 7.30. Once the water had been running for 5 minutes, Robo-Mum would start chanting,”Get out of the shower.That’s long enough and my personal favourite, Do you think water just falls from the sky?”
Still stationed at the bathroom door Robo-Mum reverts back to the, “Move away from the mirror” cry at 5 minute intervals until her tune will change to the more frantic chorus of, “Hurry up, breakfast is ready,you are going to miss the bus.”
Robo-Mum will be skilled at juggling all the normal morning demands and wont even bat a robotic eye,when informed that the teenager needs some obscure item from deep within a Brazilian rainforest cave for a science project right this minute. Robo-Mum will just magically pull the obscure item out of her arse along with unlimited amounts of ready cash.
I doubt that David would even notice that I had employed a robot to do the repetitive hurry ups, the clean your teeths and the you are going to miss the bus, phrases that I say eleventy billion times every single fucking morning. Aaaaaaaaaaaaarggggh!! He might be a tad surprised at the money out of the robots arse trick though, because I am sure he thinks it grows on trees.
The end is nigh. The point of no return. The grand finale.
This is where you, the reader can feel free to insert whatever dramatic quote you like. I was thinking of a bit of Dylan Thomas myself. Or even a bit of Shakespeare, the bard is always handy for a descriptive word or two.
Not into poetic quotes? What about a Doors song then? ‘ The End’ seems remarkably apt.
Scratching your head yet? Wondering what on earth I am blathering on about this time?
Sorry.
Fear makes me a little more scatterbrained than usual.
Today, in approximately three hours I am having all my teeth taken out. The whole twelve of them that I have left that is. All my teeth will be unceremoniously yanked out. One by painful one. Then I will be sent home with a brand new set of shiny plastic choppers.
So what are you doing today my lovelies?
Tell me a story to cheer me up. Come out of lurkerdom and say “Hello Kimmy”
It would be very nice to come home from the dentist and be totally distracted from the pain and the dreadful lisp by your fantastic comments. It would be especially nice to see where some of my lurkers come from.
If you need me in the next two hours or so, I will be hiding under the bed.Shhhh.
If you want happy you wont find it here today. You should probably just google lolcats instead.
I met with the real estate agents at Mum’s on Monday and about 5 minutes into the conversation the tears started to roll down my cheeks. I walked to the window and watched the rain for a moment or two whilst I regained my composure. The real estate agents shuffled their feet and mumbled that it was perfectly understandable and were visibly relieved when we got back down to business.
A price has been set. There will be an open home in two weeks. It is all happening very quickly.
Yesterday I stood in the middle of Mum’s living area and tried to see the house with unbiased eyes and I couldn’t manage it. All I could see was my mother and my mothers things. After two hours of working like a cut cat I had the house presentable enough for marketing photos to be taken.
When I came home, The Spouse had cooked dinner and as he hugged me he asked if I was okay. I told him that I was and that I had a bit of a cry.What I didn’t describe to him was how I had stood for ages, just staring at the suitcase that I had brought home from the hospital, willing myself to open it. When I finally did open it I could smell the hospital and my Mother. I buried my face into Mum’s favourite pjs and in between my sobs I tried to capture her scent.
Today, finally after weeks of grey, grey weather that has been slowly sending me a little insane, the sky is blue. Mum’s good friend Lyn rang me last night and it was a relief to be able to talk to someone other than Veronica that actually gets how much we miss Mum.
It has been ten weeks and somedays the pain is so raw it hurts to breathe.
At least I have this place, my blog, where I can just dump all the words that are in my head and walk away. Contrary to what Veronica’s evil little troll thinks, I am not writing for sympathy. I am writing for myself. I am writing out the pain so that today I can go outside and enjoy the blue sky before I have to go back down to Mum’s and pack away more of her life into cardboard boxes.
