Although things are relatively calm on the home front, with us getting ready for a five-day trip up to Portland, OR to see family and whatnot, I'm certainly getting more and more perturbed by the shite I see coming down the pipes on the various news outlets (and yes, equating the American news media with sewer lines is definitely appropriate)...Here are some of the stories I'm following:

 

Well, folks, I had my first interview for a teaching position at the dauntingly humongous headquarters of the Los Angeles Unified School District this morning and, if I do say so, it felt pretty good. While I wasn't offered a job per se, I was placed into their system and will very likely be called for substitute work before long. Yay!

 

Meantime, I finally received the headstone for my dad's grave---good timing, since the one-year anniversary of his passing is fast approaching (January 5). I think that after Christmas might be a good time to run it up to the Milton Masonic Cemetery (a more remote place on Earth one is unlikely to find) and place it. I was hoping to go on my own, but the thing is so damned heavy---somewhere in the ballpark of 120 lbs.---that I'll need another body just to move it. Gy? You busy?

 

Dad's headstone, currently awaiting deployment.

 

 

This year has certainly had its ups & downs...although maybe I shouldn't say anything quite yet, as there are still four weeks left--surely plenty of time for either bucketfuls of awesome wonderfulness or buttloads of gawdawful horribleness to ensue---yet I can't help but gaze agog at how briskly time seems to flash by these days. So much so, that I actually have to sit down (oh wait--I am sitting) and think hard about what's happened in the past few weeks...I hope something of interest to you, gentle reader, shall pass through my fingers.

 

The Sondheim show/Blair High fundraiser went off very well, we raised lotsa cash and had a great time. As a result: there are already plans afoot to do it again in the spring of '05. I'm still game!

 

Happy to say, the bureaucrats at Cal State finally got off their collective duff and processed the paperwork I'd been waiting for since early September, which then allowed my degree to post, and my transcripts to come as well. Now not only am I officially employable as a teacher, but I found out the other day that I'm graduating Summa Cum Laude! Yes, yes, thank you, thank you, please, no applause, just throw money. (Please.)...as a result of my finally attaining my degree, I have an interview at the infamous Los Angeles Mummified (er, I mean Unified) School District next week. Although they are interviewing officially for the 2005-06 school year, there is always the possibility of something popping up sooner. I am also applying at various smaller (and therefore less gonzo) local school districts. Please send me good thoughts!

 

Food for thought:

Hitler rose to his position as the "Leader" of Germany with the support of three major elements in German society: big business, which was won over by Hitler's covert promise to break the labor unions; the defense industry and the military, which responded to Hitler's call for disregarding the restrictions on German military buildup imposed by the treaty that ended World War I; and rural religious conservatives. Hitler won over this last group with his appeals to their feelings of defeated, yet resurgent nationalism; and with his hateful condemnations of those of their fellow citizens at the top of their personal enemies list: communists, homosexuals and Jews.

Substituting "Muslims" for "Jews," this is today's Republican Party, which now controls all three branches of the federal government, most of the nation's governorships, and perhaps most importantly, the major media (now owned by a handful of corporations).

America has lost its democratic republic to a system of one-party imperial fascism.

Michael Hasty, Online Journalist

 

Election? What election? Ohhhh, that election. Need it be said that I found the results of the recent presidential election depressing at best? I'm still flabbergasted by the notion that literally half the country has their collective head so far up their collective bunghole that the most obvious of egregiousnesses goes unpunished. I've been weaning myself off the nightly news--especially Fox--and have actually felt cleaner than I have in years. Right now, I no longer give two carps for anything that any so-called "pundits" or "commentators" have to say. I don't care that the most pressing motivating factor in the election (according to aforementioned pundits) appeared to be something called "moral values"---as if Bush and his fucked-in-the-heart cabal is anything close to being a primo example of said things. I'm sorry---I'm so tired of the self-proclaimed arbiters of "morality" always having their way in our society simply because they're pushier, nastier and richer. If being a "Liberal" means actually acting as Jesus would have and speaking as Jesus would have (instead of this bizzaro, bass-ackward, money-driven version of what American conservatives refer to as "Christianity"), than you may continue to call me a bleeding-heart, sopping-wet commie pinko fag LIBERAL. And I will happily continue to wear that mantle until I'm dead. Jesus wouldn't have grinned sappily under a banner screaming "Mission Accomplished" while hundreds of his own countrymen and women continue to perish.

So nyeahh nyeahh nyeahh.