Thought this was amusing

A PAID POLITICAL ANNOUNCEMENT BY SEN. BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA (D- ILL)

My fellow Identity-Americans,

As your future President I want to thank my supporters, for their ... well, support.

Your mindless support of me, despite my complete lack of any legislative achievement, my pastor's relations with Louis Farrakhan and Libyan dictator Moamar Quadafi, or my blatantly leftist voting record while I present myself as some sort of bi-partisan agent of change.

I also like how my supporters claim my youthful drug use and criminal behavior somehow qualifies me for the Presidency after 8 years of claiming Bush's youthful drinking disqualifies him. Your hypocrisy is a beacon of hope shining over a sea of political posing.

I would also like to thank the Kennedy's for coming out in support of me. There's a lot of glamour behind the Kennedy name, even though JFK started the Vietnam War, his brother Robert illegally wire tapped Martin Luther King, Jr., and Teddy killed a teenage girl. And I'm not going anywhere near the cousins, both literally and figuratively.

And I'd like to thank Oprah Winfrey for her support. Her love of meaningless empty platitudes will be the force that propels me to the White House.

Americans should vote for me, not because of my lack of experience or achievement, but because I make people feel good. Voting for me causes some white folk to feel relieved of their imagined, racist guilt.

I say things that sound meaningful, but don't really mean anything because Americans are tired of things having meaning. If things have meaning, then that means you have to think about them.

Americans are tired of thinking. They've forgotten that campaign promises are exactly
that! Promises. The Legislative and Judicial branches of government govern.

It's time to shut down the brain, and open up the heart.

So when you go to vote in the primaries, remember don't think, just do.

And do it for me.

Thank You.

Pleeze lat us haf are electives

Un-freaking-believable!

I am increasingly fearing aging. In this era of teachers accepting text chat on school papers/projects, parents using back door channels to coerce administrators into changing their student's failing grades, and sheer laziness and ignorance, if I do indeed manage to age and need one of these pampered incompetents to care for me, at least I'll not have to worry about my Social Security benefits being axed.

When I first got into the teaching/education profession, I had a student who consistently confused are with our. I called the student aside and explained to her the difference between the two words. I then contacted the child's mother to inform her that there was an issue but for the time being at least, it appeared to have been resolved.

I shared this story with my contemporaries who were dumbfounded as to how this mistake could have happened in the first place. My only guess was that no one really took the time to read what this child had written before. But, upon recognizing the issue, it became less of one.

In this article, I sense something almost sinister behind the letters written by the children. I sense teachers concerned that their workload may increase and that ...accountability may somehow wander into those fiefdoms known as classrooms. Indeed, I never felt as much autonomy as when I ruled a classroom.

I personally believe these children were influenced by a teacher or administrator who is trying to scare them into thinking something is being taken away from them. Unfortunately, through liberal sleight of hand, what they do not see is that what is being taken from them is not some elective in the future. What is being taken is their future!

I certainly hope I am wrong but the interim superintendent believes this is a simple case of not having students proof-read their work. Having taught graduates of the Albuquerque Public Schools system at the collegiate level, I see this as an issue of teachers with overcrowded classrooms shuffling students along rather than taking any additional time to actually teach and hold their students to standards. The parents and the students themselves seem to foist all responsibility on the schools without recognizing that anytime a finger is pointed at someone, three fingers point back at the pointer.

If these students who are currently unable to string together something resembling coherent sentences wish to take electives instead of working to improve their ability to function in a modern society then perhaps the electives offered should reflect the types of careers in which these students can expect to find themselves.

• remedial housekeeping
• deep-fryer management
• recreational pharmacy

1 down, 50 to go

Today we had a victory of sorts. One of the forms went away! It took a confluence of insanity and urgency to make it happen though. I called two students on the list to discover one was in Iraq and somehow I should have known. The other was a current student. How a student on that list could have been current is beyond everyone. Long story short, form no longer needed.

We also got to preview our two contestants for the open positions. Note to self, the job market must be rough out there. Do they still sell Hai Karate?

Forms

Wow, I just realized tonight that I have not been very active in my blogging attempts. Perhaps my lapse was caused by verbal constipation. Most likely, I just had nothing to say.

I have been sorely disappointed by the actions of our President as well as the actions of our Congress. It would appear that the incoming President and those likely to trail that individual into office will not be of much sterner stuff.

Anyway, today I want to complain about something closer to home.

Forms.

I took stock of the number of forms I complete in an average day, assuming I actually perform any work. Oddly enough, not doing any work at my job also generates ...you guessed it, more forms.


Today, I arrived at work to realize that I had neglected to update a form detailing my current enrolled student status. I then reviewed a listing of students I was expected to phone and schedule campus visits for. Upon somehow convincing these recalcitrant potential students to schedule an appointment with me, I was to add their names to a form. This form was to be added to daily then emailed to my boss at the end of the day. I didn't do either.

A student I had scheduled for an appointment arrived today and did not apply for school thus saving me from adding his name to the first form I completed upon arriving at work. Then I noticed that a student with whom I met who had arrived for Financial Aid needed to be added to that first form.

I then had to prepare the first form for a weekly meeting where we review another form and match it with form one which must be printed out and carried along to the meeting. I suggested emailing it to the boss but he prefers to have the written document. Probably because he cannot create file folders. I had to show him how to turn on a computer last week. Tricky job too, the monitor was unplugged.

While all of this is going on, I attempt to phone potential students and when I reach one, I log the conversation on a form. I then enter the same information on an internal form. The interview is then entered in duplicate into an Outlook Calendar (which is technically not a form but the emails that are generated if this is not done are a sight to behold)

We are tasked with scheduling a preset number of appointments for the previous week as evidenced by the form we completed prior to the start of the next semester. If we fail to meet this imaginary and completely arbitrary number, we then complete daily forms to track the number of people we attempted to reach that day.

Sometime this week, I need to complete a leave request form for the remainder of the year with expected days of sick time I plan to take. I have also been given the nickname FormBoy by my co-workers because I know how to create forms and am partially respnsible for creating at least one of the dreadful forms we must complete.

In my defense, the form I created was better than the one that had been proposed. Besides, i would have thought that the average short attention span would have kicked in and this particular form would have been forgotten by now.