Oliver Twisted

I think that pun is good.

Today children were yelled at by someone who was exceptional at it. For the past few weeks I've had a shift at a particular elementary school where I have to start my shift at 10:00 AM, meaning I start my day smack dab in the middle of lunchtime. This isn't really a problem, most of the kids are nice enough, and while loud, it's not so loud that it blocks anyone's thoughts or makes it hard to hear someone talking directly in front of you. However, the other attendants seem to think that it's that loud, and will take every opportunity to get a foot away from your face to yell something that belongs on a coffee mug you'd see on the desk of a person you hate.

Most of the time, it's just one elderly dutch woman with a slight Jersey accent telling kids to be quiet and if they don't shut up before the recess bell sounds she'll force them to stay in until they turn to dust. Usually this either works or is completely ignored and the kids are released anyway because apparently they're so unbearably, vulgarly loud that she cannot even stand to hear them talking at a normal speaking voice over there in the corner. It's irritating, since I've actually developed a decent rapport with some of the kids, and they always calm down when I ask them nicely.

Today, however, they brought in one of their resident experts at treating children as if they were unruly barbarians. This gentleman, wearing khaki slacks, a white dress shirt, and a black Halloween tie bearing the image of a zombie emerging from the ground in front of a grave which is labeled merely "Bad to the Bone", starts tearing a path of psychological destruction the likes of which I have not seen since my experience in elementary school. If a child, in his or her infinite uneasiness, fidgets in line, he or she is called by label, not name, and is then commanded to sit at the table of lost souls. If a child, in his unnatural tendancy for revolution, tries to talk to his or her friends in line or at a table, he or she is bellowed upon, and sent to the previously mentioned prison table. The other lunchroom matrons were enthralled by his draconic spirit and soon began murmuring amongst themselves about how damn great this asshole was, and how he can come back anytime he wants to. I voice my distaste for this turn of events multiple times. In a turn of events that honestly shocked me, I am totally ignored. Not just "Oh don't worry about it" style ignored, but full-on didn't fucking hear me ignored. I decided to hold a personal strike and refused to clean anything during that excruciating fifteen minutes.

To take a sidebar; the lunch period at this, and every other elementary school I've worked at, is fifteen minutes. That seems insane to me, if I could eat something in fifteen minutes I certainly wouldn't want to go outside and run around like an idiot for twenty after that. That brings up another amusing problem, the recess afterwards is longer than the lunch period. I don't get it, for the most part all this does is promote gastro-intestinal problems and waste. Whatever.

Why do these harsh, "tough love" style methods of child control permeate time? How many generations of hate-filled, revenge driven misanthropes do we have to create until people figure the fuck out that the reason you're so pissed off is because the adults in your life treated you the way that you're treating the kids you're in charge of? For God's sake, 90% of the willpower expended in my childhood was to undo the damage that people like that did. All that I could think about when someone treated me like an animal that couldn't be tolerated was how I can get back at these opressors. Granted, I was in elementary school, and in the grand scheme of things, the stuff that I lost wasn't that big a deal, a recess there, an infraction for calling a kid a bastard (the son of a bitch body checked me out of a jump shot he should BURN IN HELL), but what it taught me was that these people in charge of me do not care to help, all they will pay attention to is how they can bring me down to a level that they have deemed managable.

I know there's more to this in my head, but I can't seem to go any further so this might end up being a two parter! TUNE IN NEXT TIME FOR MORE OF ME BITCHING ABOUT HOW MUCH I HATED BEING A KID.

White people walk like thiiiiiiiis

I guess I shouldn't be so surprised by it all the time, but damn if my co-workers lean towards racism more often than not. Janitors aren't known for their reading, like that's a surprise or something. Anyway, last Wednesday a mammoth of a woman who dresses like she wishes she was a picnic table remarked in relation to a swimmer's cap, "Hey, don't the blacks wear something like that on their heads?"

I don't know if that's a benign remark or not, but given the source I doubt it is. Something about an enormous white grandmother who lives in the outskirts of a suburb referring to black people as if they were a rival sports team makes me a little uncomfortable. I stayed quiet, though. I mean, I don't care quite hard enough to make a thing out of it, since I'm sure the argument would devolve into it being her opinion and how she's not hurting anyone. Which is technically true, it's just words and words can be deflected much easier than a torch or a truck. It's just not exactly a good habit to start. So whatever. I won't have to deal with this person forever, so who cares.

Then, this Wednesday of all days, another custodian related Jon Benet Ramsey's parents being proven innocent to evolution. You see, sometimes evidence can be misleading, you know, evolution is a pretty good example of that. I promptly asked that he stop right there, but he went on to inform me that the reason that evolution arguments consistently lose to Creationists is that evolution has no real evidence. He has listened to top scientists, and they can't argue evolution over creation effectively.

Ten minutes after that, I was informed that, in regards to the Reverend Jesse Jackson's comment about balls, if a white person had said it... That's pretty much all I know since I left the room before she was able to finish the sentence.

I certainly can't say that I'm very well informed about other ethnic groups, I live in a particularly white neighborhood, and there's really only so much that owning Chapelle's Show on DVD can do for a white guy. However, I don't see why it's so difficult to just not be a dick about it. It's not particularly difficult to not use terms and phrases that are generally considered to be offensive or ignorant. It's not really too uncommon to see some white dude on the news saying something about Barack Obama's headwear or whatever the fuck. I don't watch enough Fox News. I guess I should, it's probably pretty funny.

I lost my point. Too many racists in Washington. A lot of them clean schools.

I'd damn well better keep up with this

I wish I was a writer. So hard do I wish I was a writer. The only problem is I keep starting project after project and after 10% or so is finished I just procrastinate it into oblivion. I think I'm relatively talented, I usually like the flow of phrase that I manage to squeeze out, but I get distracted away from everything too easily. I think possibly it's because I haven't read a decent, for realzies book in at least three years. Fuck you Spiderman for being so interesting.

Fortunately, recent events put a small exploritory booklet about Karl Marx into my lap. Recent events like Christmas. Well, I got around to reading it, and it was apparently the precise amount of jet fuel needed to propel me headlong back into literacy. Within the last five weeks I've read almost 800 pages, which might not sound like much, but for the most part the only time I have to read is an hour or so during breaks at work, and if I'm cognant enough to read before falling asleep.

Another helpful factor would be my work itself. I'm a custodian for a school district in a particularly sub-suburban town, and a large portion of my co-workers are unfortunate graduates of the same town who had the dire misfortune of listening to a lot of Led Zeppelin and figuring out which kind of liquid metal goes best with their pot. This, stirred in with an amount of time in the armed services, brewed a group of working-class citizens who don't trust a man with the middle name "Hussein" and think that time spent in college is a waste. Today, I actually had to defend my position on higher education being important. I had to bother to argue with someone who was against college. Another gentleman who works at a different school than the one I am at now had brushed off our thirty minute conversation about religious politics with, "All that college ruined you." I don't personally remember being a paragon of thoughtlessness before, especially since I had started college before having that job.

All loony old people aside, I'm hoping that I can keep a somewhat regular schedule with this blog, all I really want out of it is someplace where I can fart out an occasional substandard essay about current events, or governments of the world, or whatever the hell else it is I happened to be reading about that week. Barring any regular schedule, I hope that I actually write something here when I come up with it. I'd better save any idea I get in my head, because lord knows that I'm going to be famous for something someday.



Also, I have absolutely nothing against Led Zeppelin or people in the armed services. I don't necessarily agree all the time with Led Zeppelin or people in the armed services, and there are occasions where I will be frustrated with Led Zeppelin or people in the armed services, but I certainly do not hate them.