Mickey Z
Cool Observer
Sunday, October 30, 2005
We don't need no education...(or do we?)
Wow Mickey, you have a blockbuster here today...the educational AND medical systems. What could be more important!!! I won’t get any of my work done today. I will keep watching here for comments. Now I’m going to have to dig out all of my Neil Postman books. I think that I remember one of his ideas from Teaching as a Subversive Activity. He brought up the idea that the government run US educational system is hell-bent on preserving the status quo. When I first read that, I remember thinking how profound that one simple idea was and what it means for the survival of the planet. Years ago, when I dropped my daughter off every day at school, I always told her not to believe everything that they would teach her that day. Maybe that is one of the most important messages a parent can give to their child...that and that they are loved. I don’t even know where to begin with these topics today...there is so much to say....and I haven’t even had coffee yet....
Posted by RMJ on from Churchill 4 Prez Hdqts 10/30 at 09:20 AMGood morning, Rosemarie.
Last night, I was at a party and a young woman named Kerry told us how much she loves a geology course she is taking. Geology 101...basic pre-req stuff. Kerry is a writer who is returning to school and thus a little older than her classmates (she’s maybe 23?). The teacher, it seems, is on love with geology and is passionate about sharing what she knows. Kerry has caught the bug and ends up asking her a million questions. The other students, maybe 18 or 19 years old, think the teacher is a dork AND they get annoyed with Kerry for going off topic. All they wanna know is “what’s gonna be on the test?”
Posted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 10/30 at 11:38 AMMorning RMJ, missed you yesterday...love the idea of telling your daughter to be skeptical every day as she enters the halls of academe. I’ll wager it’s a concept that’s served her well thoughout life.
MZ, education by the system seems to me the best possible breeding ground for skepticism and radicalism for the intelligent kid. The average will take a while, but they can cast off their mental chains with encouragement. Why don’t more radicals home school, I wonder?
This made me howl with laughter:
Flannery O’Conner: Everywhere I go I’m asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don’t stifle enough of them. There’s many a best-seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.As one who was an agent during the early days of the PC revolution, I can state with certainty that the ready availability of word-processing software dramatically increased the number of mediocre and bad writers able to bring their work to the world’s attention, and the existence of Xlibris, iUniverse, and their ilk has exponentially inreased the noise part of the signal-to-noise ratio.
The same technological revolution has made the existence of Soft Skull, Disinformation, Drench Kiss, et alii, possible, sustainable, and feasible. To every birth its blood....
“help”
Posted by Mudge on from Dear, dead Austin 10/30 at 11:52 AMHi Mickey and Mudge...Yes, my daughter did benefit from my admonition. She eventually was the only one in her high school class who was sent to the principal’s office for refusing to say the pledge. Considering the influence of peer group pressure, that made me very proud....and I didn’t find out about till many years later. Homeschooling is a big topic for me. Some of the most intelligent, well informed youth up here are home schooled. It was recently announced in a news story that colleges are starting to seek out home schooled students. Part of the problem is that most people don’t realize how bad the conventional system is and also there is the problem of no parent at home to do the home schooling. For me, staying home was not an option so I “home schooled” at night and basically just used the public school system to baby sit my daughter while I worked. She wound up skipping 2 grades and being accepted into college when she was 15. Sorry to be a bragging Mom, but that was an achievement for a latch key kid. I am hoping that eventually home schooling would receive the same economic support that the public school system does. If interested families were given the same subsidy per pupil that schools receive, it would make home schooling accessible to many more. The teacher’s union is the biggest opponent of that plan.
Mickey, you bring up another issue...studying to the test. Maybe that helps prepare the masses for working for the paycheck. But the real point that you make, is how little respect our culture gives to real learning.Posted by RMJ on from Churchill 4 Prez Hdqts 10/30 at 12:42 PMRunning out the door for a while but I just added another quote to the main post: You wasted $150,000 on an education you coulda got for $1.50 in late fees at the public library.
Posted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 10/30 at 01:06 PMMudge: i liked that one too.
what about “knowledge is the only instrument of production that is not subject to diminshing returns” (i know i know, difference between knowledge and education etc etc)
i also like....
“when i was 14 i was ashamed that my fathe was so ignorant. by the time i had got to 21 i was astonished at the amount the old boy had learned in 7 years”
p.s. sorry about the comments i put on my own site yesterday. i dealt with the hangover by getting drunk again and came back in a dreadful state and posted smoe weird shit in a few places.
incidentally, some people were out in fancy dress for halloween and stuff and i observed possibly the strangest thing i have ever seen.
i saw someone dressed as the michelin man being arrested
wish i had had a camera. i ust started imagining the line-up in the police station.
“now, can you pick him out...”Posted by michael on from scotland 10/30 at 01:30 PMJohn Taylor Gatto has an excellent book called Underground History Of Education you can get all of online here http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/ I first heard of it in that disinformation collection with your vegan piece Mickey. Funny that so many people cling to the idea state schooling is there to foster geniune growth in kids when you have so many captains of industry and education board members plainly saying they want 99% of the population to grow up a bunch of goat mutant retards who think voting changes things.
Posted by Owen on from Barcelona 10/30 at 01:51 PM“[E]xceptionally low giving-a-#### threshold?” That’s what you’re worried about? C’mon, Michael, I’ve said worse to MZ right here in this his house! I assume he forgives me for my pro-factory farming anti-vegan anti-American League views, he hasn’t taken me off his email list.
RMJ, I like the idea but the concept worries me. The schools might be crummy, but taking the best and the brightest out to home-school ‘em...at taxpayer expense...opens the door for fundamentalist academies to get tax dollars, and that plain ol’ scares me. More parents should do what you did. Using the public schools to baby-sit’s a pretty good solution!
Posted by Mudge on from Dear, dead Austin 10/30 at 02:03 PMHi Owen, LOOOOOOOVE “goat mutant retards who think voting changes things” and will steal and use it as my own at the earliest opportunity. How you doing?
Posted by Mudge on from Dear, dead Austin 10/30 at 02:05 PMfair enough mudge. its just when i read it back i knew that that was the beer talking and not me.
maybe i should take on some ‘staff’
Posted by michael on from scotland 10/30 at 02:17 PMBTW - hours of fun to be had.
its a dub ting na’?
http://www.infinitewheel.com/dubselector5.html
Posted by michael on from scotland 10/30 at 02:26 PMHello Mickey, Rosemarie, Mudge, Michael & Owen -
This is a powerful, important post, Mickey Z. It’s a topic for a week, not just a week-end.Being around little kids, though truly exhausting, is a fascinating experience. They’re curious about almost everything. What’s this? What’s that? How does this work? What’s behind this? What’s underneath that? What’s inside? They take everything apart (i.e. - they break everything ) to see how things work, and just to see what’s there. They climb up and climb down and peek into and over and around and under everything. They taste everything and smell everything. They rub things with their hands and rub things over their faces. They whack things and toss `em and bash `em with something heavier. Everything is a delightful mystery to be explored.
They’re also incredibly friendly. Everyone gets a hello. Everyone is questioned at length. No topic is verboten, no thread is left untugged…Drop in on `em a few years later, and they’re sullen, bored, obnoxious, and generally nauseated by all that passes before them. They’ve got little or nothing to say to you, except, perhaps: “Die!” Now, they know everything and their understanding can be summed up with the words “It’s stupid.”
Of course, it’s not just the education systems that perform this service to the State, it’s parents, too - but it’s nearly universal here in Amerika, and it’s a frightening process to behold.
The government’s answer? Hey, test `em. Give `em lots of tough tests. Leave no child behind.
Gasp! Please - leave `em ALL behind!
Posted by joe on from Oregon 10/30 at 02:47 PMi teach part-time. one of the things that strikes me about the students is the complacency of a lot of them.
maybe thats just a sign that i am getting old and curmudgeonly but i dunno.
we had a class and the topic was about “does the class society still exist?” and they were all saying no it doesn’t. when pressed for reasons they were saying it doesn’t exist becuase we all buy things in the same shops and watch the same things on tv etc.
even if that were true - which it isn’t - it doesn’t prove anything about the class system
i was so f*cking depressed when i left that room.
Posted by michael on from scotland 10/30 at 03:01 PMMichael, they’re trained to be complacent. They’re supposed to be complacent. What you’re observing is proof that they system works…
“Yeah, whatever!”Thinking, imagining, wondering, looking about with “new eyes,” and a mind open and available - these are among the greatest of joys. But, how can anyone find delight in these processes when most “answers” are wrong, and sometimes punishable? There are probably billions of wonderful dreams and imaginings, but most of them, if voiced, are scorned, and the speaker - humiliated. I’ve seen people beaten halfway into the pavement simply for wondering aloud.
The most profound, most noble instincts and abilities of humankind are those which are also most brutally discouraged by almost all “modern” societies. Honesty, sincerity, passion, joy, delight, compassion, love -
there is no room for these qualities in the marketplace. Hence, there is no room for these qualities in our “world.”
That the kids you teach are “only complacent,” is itself a triumph of the human spirit. One might expect them to be brimming with rage and hatred…Posted by joe on from Oregon 10/30 at 03:21 PMHi Michael and Owen.....Joe your description of little kids is so accurate are you sure that you don’t have a few hanging around your house full time. I agree that we are programmed by the system to be complacent. My grandson is not 2 years old yet and watching him is just amazing and exactly as you describe. His new word yesterday was “Esophagus”. He can’t say it yet but he can point to it. He learns a new word every time that he hangs out with Grandma.
Mudge...the argument that you give is the one I hear all the time from my friends who are Democrats. I agree that what you say would happen, Fundamentalism taking over in some “private” or home school situations. Worse yet, would be neglectful parents, just taking the money and NOT schooling their children. In a way, I think that that it is a lesser evil than what we have now. And as far as the Fundamentalist argument, as bad as it would be to have some parents messing up their children’s minds, I think that it is far worse to have the pro-war, pro-capitalist brain washing that is institutionalized in the schools now by the government.Posted by RMJ on from Churchill 4 Prez Hdqts 10/30 at 03:42 PMALSO, forgot to say in reference to the Matt Damon quote that Mickey just posted...most people don’t know that there is a whole society, under the radar that nobody ever talks about....all of those who had student loans misrepresented to them and will be penalized for the rest of their lives. Some of them call themselves “indentured servants”. Schools anxious to get their hands on the money arranged the loans and told the students it would not be a problem repaying them. Then the economy went in the tank and now they have big problems. It is one of the few debts that is considered legal even if the “signer” is under age. It can’t be wiped out be bankruptcy. The net result is that there are those amongst us who will never be able to breathe a sigh of relief or own ANYTHING. For a long time, I advocated with my congressman that student loans should be allowed to be repaid as a percentage of income. It never happened, partly because those who are affected are unwilling to speak out because of the stigma of being in default.
Posted by RMJ on from Churchill 4 Prez Hdqts 10/30 at 03:59 PMHi Mudge, Michael, Rosemarie and Joe,
this topic is one I hold dear too. I teach a few hours a week but make my own classes, I worked a couple of months in a school last year and used the prescribed curriculum for about half an hour - ugh, interviews with avuncular Japanese physicists explaining the need for world gubbermint and such. The class I taught 15-16yearolds, most of them were sparky and independentminded enough, only one out-and-out drone but I wouldn´t write her off because she had a healthy loafer streak in her. Mostly we talked and had fencing matches with felt-tip pens and my male students drew cocks on the board a lot. They were happy, it was anarchy.Posted by Owen on from Barcelona 10/30 at 04:23 PMjoe: That the kids you teach are “only complacent,” is itself a triumph of the human spirit. One might expect them to be brimming with rage and hatred…
the trouble is that they are brimming with rage but that it is all diverted into essentially pointless things. they can get incredibly worked up about what some friend or acquaintance may or may not have said (the whole “he said, she said” thing), or whether or not the new song by some f*cking band or other represents a “sell-out”. But tell them that millions of people are dying due to the corruption and negligence of their leaders and that if they have a job then their taxes are actually paying for the bullets that are killing people and it doesn’t even register on the radar.
i think the only solution is for me to go and live in the open ‘country’. u r all invited
Posted by michael on from scotland 10/30 at 04:30 PMAnd another thing...our society has been pushing for day centers for a few years now. The idea of institutionalizing some as young as only weeks old, is very troubling. What the experts are saying is that it is better for a small child to be brought up by an underpaid worker than a loving parent. What a scam. This is just one more way that the capitalists have found to increase their bottom line by increasing the numbers of those in the work force.
Posted by RMJ on from Churchill 4 Prez Hdqts 10/30 at 04:32 PMIf I had attended classes in college I would have had to have studied John Stuart Mill, a champion of individual liberties also partial to the notion kids should become “inured to labour” from the age of three.
Posted by Owen on from Barcelona 10/30 at 04:37 PMhas anyone else seriously considered hermitry as a career? - i’ve been working on it for a while now.
Posted by michael on from scotland 10/30 at 04:42 PMHello all. Great discussion.
Please excuse my absence and excuse me for straying a bit off-topic but I spent this amazing sunny NYC fall day stuck inside...at my nephew’s 4-year-old b’day party. Witnessed much of what Joe talked about...but came away so depressed. These kids were fed a giant slice of pizza (most of them were so worked up from doing gymnastics, they didn’t even nibble). Then they got to watch their parents (most of them overweight) chow down on 2-3 slices each. The leftovers, of course, were tossed in the trash. The finale was an immense slab of sugar called “birthday cake.” This time, no kid said no and most had a few slices (as did the parents). Leftovers again were tossed. I could go on about the inane adult small talk, the SUVs in the parking lot, the numerous cell phone interruptions, etc...but we’ve all heard this rant before. What struck me as I watched my nephew were the lessons being taught, the examples being presented...most of which are reinforced daily at their school.
It’s easy to poke fun at suburbian Americans but what kind of world will those four-year-olds grow up to live in and what will their mindset (in general) be?
Posted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 10/30 at 05:26 PMits hard to tell what their mindset will be as we weren’t brought up with the same inputs. most people r brought up by the TV these days and tv is a different medium now to what it was even ten years ago.
one of the scariest bits in the corporation film is when they talk about the child psychologists (psychiatrists?) who r employed by advertisers to make the advertising more effective. thus kids r sold on the corporate thang before they even know what it is.
you have to figure that if companies r doing this then they learned it from governments. just like the net was started by governments (taxpayers money) and the profit went to companies, ditto for the aviation and space industries etc etc. they must have picked it up from somewhere - thats education.
Posted by michael on from scotland 10/30 at 05:35 PMMickey and Michael. I understand what you say. I get depressed every time that I walk through a toy store, or see a child with a gun or sword or war toy. Have you seen the new doll that looks like a hooker? Joe, Owen and Mudge what do you think of that? And WE wonder why others in other cultures reject our values. I would rather wear a burqa than give a child a war toy.
Posted by RMJ on from Churchill 4 Prez Hdqts 10/30 at 06:05 PMHello Everyone, Great discussion today.
Surprised this book hasn’t been brought up yet.
“The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America” By Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt
http://www.deliberatedumbingdown.com/I haven’t read it yet myself but I have heard her interviewed on a variety of talk shows. She makes some wicked points.
Personally I feel that an ignorant complacent society is much easier to control and manipulate then a bright inquisitive one. Makes me ill seeing young children being babysat by TV and given no real stimulation and interaction from the people they need it the most, there parents. Honestly I can’t really blame them that much since they themselves are victims of the same type of indoctrination that they are inflicting on there kids. Successful sheeple living the socially acceptable lifestyle. How can they be wrong when everything around them reinforces that they are not only right but deservedly privileged? It’s people like myself who question everything and everyone who are not to be trusted. “Stop rocking the boat, your upsetting the children, and making me uncomfortable with your conpiracy theories.”
Posted by Luna_C on from the Delta 10/30 at 06:19 PMPart of the problem is the NEA. I hate to admit that because I support unions. But it is the teachers union that has tight control of licensing so that Einstein would NOT be allowed to teach math and Rembrandt would not be allowed to teach art. Some states are reconsidering their licensing requirements but that is too little too late.
Posted by RMJ on from Churchill 4 Prez Hdqts 10/30 at 06:28 PMgoing to read that book luna. also love the term “sheeple”
RMJ - like anyone else i played ‘soldiers’ in the schoolyard as a kid. the toy guns and hollywood glorification of the military obviously do affect people young.
as for the unions - its a bit different here. its too long and boring to go into but one thing is the ESRC (economic and social research council). they choose who gets funding for research (phd and the like). if topics r not ‘suitable’ then they don’t get funded. therefore a lot of the research output is skewed toward a certain viewpoint.
one thing about education. i had one tremendous schoolteacher who helped me in my political ‘waking up’. some of you r older than me so don’t take this wrong....
i must have been about 13 and the teacher was talking about what a bastard henry kissinger is/was. i said
“i read somewhere that he has an IQ of about 190”
immediately the reply came back
“yes.... there are lots of intelligent criminals”
i always remember that line as something that helped me wake up.
Posted by michael on from scotland 10/30 at 06:40 PMI just finished “Good As Gold” by Joe Heller has got this line “In Gold’s conservative opinion, Kissinger would not be recalled in history as a Bismarck, Metternich or Castlereagh but as an odious schlump who made war gladly.”
Posted by Owen on from Barcelona 10/30 at 06:58 PMMichael, the games that children play says a lot about the culture. When I was a kid we played cowboys and Indians, and cops and robbers. When we went to the movies, we saw films that taught us to look down on Indians and The Japanese. This was the culture of WW2. We were taught that war and the military produced wonderful heroes. All in my generation remember Audie Murphy. A lot of guys enlisted in the USMC after seeing The Sands of Iwo Jima.
Luna, if everyone started to rock the boat, think of what a wonderful world this would be. We all should be “rockers’.Posted by RMJ on from Churchill 4 Prez Hdqts 10/30 at 07:02 PMI was born at the end of the 1970s so the recruitment film I first remember was Top Gun - Spartacus with flightsuits - one of the closest pictures I´ve seen to those out of Weimar Germany.
Posted by Owen on from Barcelona 10/30 at 07:11 PMHi again, humans, and a new hello to Luna - thanks for the link…
Michael, superb quote -
“...there are lots of intelligent criminals.”Here’s a quote relating to exactly that, and to Rosemarie’s observation about increasing the workforce:
“If the world operates as one big market, every employee will compete with every person anywhere in the world who is capable of doing the same job. There are lots of them and many of them are hungry.”
- Andy Grove, one of the big-brained “pioneers” of Intel, and one of the most respected, influential men in the world…
Mickey, I truly sympathize with your feelings about little-kid birthday parties. Raising our three wee-wons, I was forced to be involved in a myriad similar events, as well as even more school-related gatherings. Honestly, I sometimes felt as if I would go mad during many of them. They are like some sort of diseased, make-believe experiences, in which reality is forbidden entry, and truth is viewed with passionate disdain.
Michael - ALL of our energies, whether we are young or old, are diverted into meaningless, pointless activities. Again: Only what relates to the accumulation of capital is of any real importance to modern “civilization.” Thus, those thoughts and emotions and desires and longings which most reflect what we really are, and really could become, are marginal at best.
Our wallets are invited to the great party, but we should be careful to leave our humanity at the door…
Without our humanity, Luna, they do not need to control us at all - we’re not even sheep, we’re simply easily replaceable “work-units.”
Just use and discard: No muss, no fuss.Posted by joe on from A Clean, Well-Lighted Place 10/30 at 07:23 PMMickey,
one thing is for certain: you have got the best quotes and the best graphics of any blog to say nothing about your most intelligent rumblings!
And hi all of you loyal MZ’ers - hope you have a great Sunday/Monday morning in Scotland.
Michael, I watched a very interesting 30-minute feature about Glasgow on Saturday - great architecture and the underground looks much better than London’s, I must say! And is it true that there is quite some rivalry between Glasgow and Edinburgh? That’s what Ian Rankin told an audience at the Melbourne Writers’ Festival some years ago ..Posted by Helga Fremlin on from Daylesford, Australia 10/30 at 08:06 PMHi everyone. Sharp, dead-on comments..each and every one. I’m left with nothing to add except this classic:
Abbott: Didn’t you go to school, stupid?
Costello: Yeah, and I came out “the” same way.P.S. Luna...you gonna write a novel in November?
Posted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 10/30 at 08:14 PMAnd Mudge I agree with what you say here:
‘The schools might be crummy, but taking the best and the brightest out to home-school ‘em...at taxpayer expense...opens the door for fundamentalist academies to get tax dollars, and that plain ol’ scares me. More parents should do what you did. Using the public schools to baby-sit’s a pretty good solution!’, especially as far as all those fundies are concerned who are into homeschooling for reasons diametrically opposed to Rosemarie’s.Posted by Helga Fremlin on from Daylesford, Australia 10/30 at 08:22 PMAnd RMJ, it seems ‘Top Gun’ had a similar effect to that of ‘The Sands of Iwo Jima’, i.e. it made quite a few gullible young men join the US army ..
Posted by Helga Fremlin on from Daylesford, Australia 10/30 at 08:50 PMWelcome back, Mickey. I’d like to read a book filled with A - C lines. I once had a little Zen book of quotations, many of which were from Yogi Berra!
EG - “Hey, Yogi, what time is it?”
Yogi: “You mean now?”I think they should have included Abbot & Costello, as well.
Hi Helga - how dare you spring when we’re all “falling!?”About homeschooling. I homeschooled my son for 3 years, and the government never gave us a dime. They smiled smugly, told me to fill out and send in various forms - on time, or else! - and turned away without so much as a “goodbye.” Presently, at least, there’s no funding for the likes of us, and that’s fine by me.
I only wish he’d not elected to go back to school. Well, I guess he can find many more beautiful teenage girls there than here at home…Posted by joe on from Oz 10/30 at 08:54 PM“Luna...you gonna write a novel in November?”
Uh...what? You must be confusing me with some other moonchild. ;)
Posted by Luna_C on from the Delta 10/30 at 08:55 PMLuna, November is National Novel Writing Month, and some of the Expendables are taking the “big” challenge: http://www.nanowrimo.org.
Joe, here’s one just for you:
Bud: Put that out. There’s no smoking in here.
Lou: What makes you think I’m smoking?
Bud: You’ve got a cigar in your mouth!
Lou: I’ve got shoes on ... don’t mean I’m walking.Posted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 10/30 at 09:01 PMThanks for staying in touch from Oz, Helga.
Posted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 10/30 at 09:02 PMHow do all, I’m still chasing information for bankruptcy filing, so I jsut now check back in.
RMJ, I know you didn’t just call me a Democrat. I know it. You said: “And as far as the Fundamentalist argument, as bad as it would be to have some parents messing up their children’s minds, I think that it is far worse to have the pro-war, pro-capitalist brain washing that is institutionalized in the schools now by the government.” I don’t love our current indoctrination system even a little bit. But i have a younger sister who has said to me with her own two pink lips that, should vouchers be approved for any form of alternative education, she will send her 3 kids to the church--the hyper-right-wing evangelical, fag-hatin’ war-lovin’ horrorshow racially prejudiced church--that she attends, there to be made “Soldiers for Christ.” She’s not even the worst of this type of person, and I still quake at the thought of the millions like her, here in Texas, who would do precisely the same thing. This is NOT better than what we have now! Better apathetic ill-informed lumps, because those we can hope to wake up and educate for real...the little Monsters of God are that way for good, no questions, no problems, just the Revealed Word as their preacher reveals it. EEK ick ugh!
Helga, that last is exactly what you were referring to, and I speak of it from horrified personal experience. I’m not as radical as most here, but I am a frothing anarchist when it comes to this horrible Religious indoctrination that’s state-supported in the USA through tax exemptions for churches and the like.
Joe, a world in which passion and love were accepted wouldn’t be Godly. Start at the source. Get rid of Religion’s privileged place in society, tax the bejabbers out of the churches, and let’s just see what happens next.
MZ, speaking as an overweight suburbanite, couldn’t agree with you more about the horror that child’s in for as he reenacts his childhood models. Stop him, stop him, bring him on weekly fun trips with Uncle Mickey to learn martial arts, even veganism though his parents might slap you around some. Be his model. Save at least one! Don’t let him end up like me, with heart trouble, severe arthritic problems, diabetes...show him a different way before it’s too late. Please. For me.
Owen was born at the end of the 1970s. I now feel depressed, young ones are so far ahead of me! Make it better than we did, Owen, even if there’s bugger-all to work with. Some of us will be there to help.
Michael, despair is normal for the intelligent, hermitry ain’t. Not for a guy your age, anyway. What will you do for sex? Hermitry limits the options, if not the results. >nudge nudge< Drink more, it hurts less to dry out than to drop out. >ONLY PARTLY KIDDING<
Yo ho ho, Luna, what’re you doing for thirty-days-hath-November? Why, here’s an idea: Write that novel you’d love to read but can’t find in corporate bookstores! http://www.nanowrimo.org/
Heed the Z, he knows whereof he speaks, and he suggests it.That goes for all who have not signed up...never complain again about the state of literature in the world unless you’re out there working to solve the problem as best you can.
It’s fun ahngin’ here in the Z-man’s house, thanks guys...I feel less isolated when I can talk to y’all. You’ve “showed” me I ain’t totally alone!
Posted by Mudge on from Dear, dead Austin 10/30 at 09:32 PMMudge -
To the extent that we here are who we say we are, you got family. Friendship is just about as subversive as it gets, and methinks there’s such stuff right here. It’s one of the few things available even before the revolution.Are we really radicals?
The person who yells “FIRE!” in a crowded theater may be called a radical,
though the fact that the theater really IS on fire should result in a brand new appellation…“values”
Posted by joe on from Fields of Barley 10/30 at 11:09 PMPS -
Hey, where’s JOS today? Hope all is well, big guy!
And -
that reader’s poll in Forbes Magazine from Lee Hall is pretty amazing, isn’t it? Thanks, Lee!You might wish to link to this one again, Mr. Z, so we can take another look at it. I admit, however, to being surprised by how many Forbes readers answered “None of the Above...”
Maybe they were lying - even to themselves, or maybe there’s hope lurking about here and there.G`Night, everyone.
“group”
Posted by joe on from North Shore Surf 10/30 at 11:20 PMhelga there is a rivalry. edinburgh is the capital but glasgow is the bigger city (600,000 and 750,000 populations respectively).
people in glasgow moan that edinburgh gets all the government money and people in edinburgh moan that the media is dominated by the glasgow people.
Mudge - there are lots of sheep around so i coudl get some variety that way (i am kidding)
there is an old joke…
a guy called angus is touring people round the village where he lives in the north of scotland (the highlands). he says to them “do you see those fences? i built every single one of those fences - do they call me angus the fencebuilder?no they don’t”
they walk on a bit and he is getting more agitated says “do you see all those little walls? i built every single one of those walls - do they call me angus the wallbuilder? no they don’t”
finally they come to some houses. he says “every fucking one of these houses i built. do they call me angus the housebuilder? no they don’t”
in rage now he says “i fucked one sheep........
Posted by michael on from scotland 10/31 at 04:48 AMjoe, I dare ‘spring’ because things are upside down in Australia (inside out?) - and to make things easier for the locals the seasons start on the 1st of the month - spring on 1 September, summer on 1 December, fall/autumn on 1 March and winter on 1 June.
Thanks for a great blog Mickey - it is easy to stay in touch from OZ.
And thanks for your reply re the rivalry between Edinburgh and Glasgow, michael! I suppose that you get such rivalry in most countries - just look at Melbourne/Sydney, Madrid/Barcelona, etc. ..Posted by Helga Fremlin on from Daylesford, Australia 10/31 at 05:11 PM
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