I don’t know where they found this guy but I cannot get enough of the Cafferty file. I think someone at CNN built a time machine, went back to the days when you could look weathered on TV and that was good because it meant you were working and they spliced a police chief and a editor-in-chief and brought him back to our time.
He could be on in the middle of the friggen day and it looks like he’d been run over a truck and asked roughly 47 stupid questions by interns, had to fix three screw ups that cost at least one sponsor and fixed a leak in the break room. He guns through news stories and letters from viewers as if it were house chores or eating brussle sprouts and I have no idea what’s going on with his hair, but it fits. When Blitzer thanks him for the reporting he say “yep” like it was a question on a deadline from office writer, like this was routine and non-important. You get the idea if he could smoke and shoot coffee on TV he would. I’m betting money he does when the cameras are off. He’s like Bob Ucker in Major league behind a news desk. You get the idea when he reports on some obvious political photo-op that as soon as they cut cameras he gives that “who are these fucking morons? Is this the best we’ve got?” speech.
I’m a big fan of progress, but I kinda miss the old world guys who work like its as natural as breathing and give the greatest answers on the planet when you ask them something out of routine.
Basically, there aren’t enough Red Foremans left in the world, and I say that as someone who’s constantly told I look like Eric Foreman.
Monday, July 28, 2008
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Cobbled together from pieces
Has laziness ever been an emotional response? And at what point should it be forced to resign. I walked to work today, suited up with a coffee in hand thinking about every plan I had committed to later this week and all I could think was "I don't want to get out of bed."
The ennui is crushing. I've just written something else no ones going to read and you wonder if you should take all your talents down to the river and drown them, get a bad tie and sign up to be a used car salesmen.
What if your passion is being showered with praise? Can you put a price on that one?
Forget about the debt, I wouldn't know what to do with the money if I'd had it. Sometimes I think the drug addicts have it right. Theres never a guessing game with them. They like heroine and that's never going to change. That's intellectually lazy but today I'm a sloth. Its days like this you can almost hear the dreams dying.
Our track coach used to tell us that the days you don't train, someone out there is, and that's why you're never going to be the best. Goals aren't much different from track to life. The day I'm not out there looking for a web designer is the reason some other magazine with more motivation and less brains is going to be the next flash in the pan.
Sometimes I get arrogant and think I need to be surrounded with more highly motive people. Someone to carry the burden when I'm down, but whenever I think like that I get dragged into relationship questions and that's the path you never should take. Most get in relationships to settle down. I'm looking for someone to help me steer the rocket ship.
I work harder and care more about my resume and cover letter than I do my job. I don't think I'm alone and the American work force becomes more curious still. It's a sad day when you don't want to do anything, including nothing. I wonder if I tried explaining that to a robot if his head would explode. I found that kinda funny…whatever.
At 5 I bail early and I go to get my hair cut because I can feel the ends poke at my ears and that makes me feel homeless. You could make a kill on Comm. Ave. if you cut hair after 6 p.m. I get a heavy set woman and I breathe a sigh of relief. The asian guy butchered my name and I’m fairly certain my hair would have met the same fate. She’s overweight but she’s nice enough and some part of me feels like her lack of beauty means she’s less distracted by life. She brushes the hair upward on the back of my head and I feel like a dog getting my belly rubbed. I tip her $5 because she didn’t make me look like a meathead or a ten year old. I step out and look for the 57home.
A man approaches me with his cause for Union Labor. He has that low serious tone of an idealist going through the motions after having been rejected for the past several hours by anyone with a clue. I feel bad enough to talk to him but I could care less about whatever he’s peddling. I try and get him off of his game by asking personal questions. He’s come up here from North Carolina and his soul patch is mismanaged. His name is Chris and he was an English major too. We finish our conversation and he sets off to harass more people. Waiting, I watch two Mexican woman cross the street and I’m wondering why we’re trying to stop immigration. From my vantage point, we ought to at least bring their women in. They duck into an ice cream parlor and I have to give up my vulgar day dreams.
The bus is packed and is made more uncomfortable by the mugginess of the coming rain. I sit next to a woman who is none to happy with my antics of writing. She doesn’t speak or turn her head toward me but she sighs loud and often enough to warrant my assumption. The bus starts to let out and I purposely sit with her even as the rest of the bus is vacant. I eventually get bored and move off into the front before leaping out into Watertown yard and giving the whole rotten day its last rights.
It starts to rain as I walk home and I think that it will at least me bearable tonight. The glow of the neon in some backwater convenience store bleeds slightly from the windows across the street as I pass underneath the awnings and make my way up past the condemned library and down my street.
The ennui is crushing. I've just written something else no ones going to read and you wonder if you should take all your talents down to the river and drown them, get a bad tie and sign up to be a used car salesmen.
What if your passion is being showered with praise? Can you put a price on that one?
Forget about the debt, I wouldn't know what to do with the money if I'd had it. Sometimes I think the drug addicts have it right. Theres never a guessing game with them. They like heroine and that's never going to change. That's intellectually lazy but today I'm a sloth. Its days like this you can almost hear the dreams dying.
Our track coach used to tell us that the days you don't train, someone out there is, and that's why you're never going to be the best. Goals aren't much different from track to life. The day I'm not out there looking for a web designer is the reason some other magazine with more motivation and less brains is going to be the next flash in the pan.
Sometimes I get arrogant and think I need to be surrounded with more highly motive people. Someone to carry the burden when I'm down, but whenever I think like that I get dragged into relationship questions and that's the path you never should take. Most get in relationships to settle down. I'm looking for someone to help me steer the rocket ship.
I work harder and care more about my resume and cover letter than I do my job. I don't think I'm alone and the American work force becomes more curious still. It's a sad day when you don't want to do anything, including nothing. I wonder if I tried explaining that to a robot if his head would explode. I found that kinda funny…whatever.
At 5 I bail early and I go to get my hair cut because I can feel the ends poke at my ears and that makes me feel homeless. You could make a kill on Comm. Ave. if you cut hair after 6 p.m. I get a heavy set woman and I breathe a sigh of relief. The asian guy butchered my name and I’m fairly certain my hair would have met the same fate. She’s overweight but she’s nice enough and some part of me feels like her lack of beauty means she’s less distracted by life. She brushes the hair upward on the back of my head and I feel like a dog getting my belly rubbed. I tip her $5 because she didn’t make me look like a meathead or a ten year old. I step out and look for the 57home.
A man approaches me with his cause for Union Labor. He has that low serious tone of an idealist going through the motions after having been rejected for the past several hours by anyone with a clue. I feel bad enough to talk to him but I could care less about whatever he’s peddling. I try and get him off of his game by asking personal questions. He’s come up here from North Carolina and his soul patch is mismanaged. His name is Chris and he was an English major too. We finish our conversation and he sets off to harass more people. Waiting, I watch two Mexican woman cross the street and I’m wondering why we’re trying to stop immigration. From my vantage point, we ought to at least bring their women in. They duck into an ice cream parlor and I have to give up my vulgar day dreams.
The bus is packed and is made more uncomfortable by the mugginess of the coming rain. I sit next to a woman who is none to happy with my antics of writing. She doesn’t speak or turn her head toward me but she sighs loud and often enough to warrant my assumption. The bus starts to let out and I purposely sit with her even as the rest of the bus is vacant. I eventually get bored and move off into the front before leaping out into Watertown yard and giving the whole rotten day its last rights.
It starts to rain as I walk home and I think that it will at least me bearable tonight. The glow of the neon in some backwater convenience store bleeds slightly from the windows across the street as I pass underneath the awnings and make my way up past the condemned library and down my street.
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
No Decision '08
I know most of you guys don't like the political stuff, but occationally I write for the Green Blog (listed on the side) if you want something less serious. So far its only one of mine but its "Zeno's theory" if you want read it.
The Economist, which stands as one of the more unbias publications, had on its cover last month the two presidential candidates and the line: America at its best. For a second I believed them, but the problems with this political election are highly subtle and exhaustingly complex.
The main issue that everyone ought to be voting on is the one that poses the most immediate danger or problem for the country. Enter problem 1.
The issue, if we looked at it today, would certainly be the economy. We have a nation, as Lou Dobbs might say, that cannot cloth or feed itself. Our reliance on other countries for our most basic needs not only is nerve racking because of our dependence on shaky foreign business markets, but because even at these “fair trade” [sic] prices, how would anyone be able to afford them when they don’t have jobs, because 2 years ago they were making those clothes.
If the economy remains and issue, its an election that’s decidedly in Obama’s favor, but this of course is the problem. McCain doesn’t know much about anything when it comes to economics, or how social safety nets, put in place because of issues we’d resolved back in the 30’s, work and why they shouldn’t be dismantled. During the primaries Mitt Romney hammered McCain on this very issue (and rightfully so) and sowed up Michigan before going down in a Super Tuesday blood bath (where he only took Massachusetts). More concerning is that his advisory committee (or what looks like it) is more callous, apolitical, and out of touch than any of the other free-market advocates. Phil Gramm’s “Nation of whiners” comment should be exposed to the light of day far more than it has been to date.
So what’s the problem right? Obama wins and, while he doesn’t necessarily have the econ background covered, everything turns out better than it might with McCain…until the problem shifts.
Let’s just assume that the economy actually does improve. It won’t be until about the middle of the 1st term and at best it will recover slowly. Neither of these candidates are Putin or Reagan so we’re not going to see unfettered progress with the intelligence required, and as much as John McCain wants to be TR, he’d never have the fortitude to grab out-of-control business by the reigns and tell them if they can’t help America, we don’t need them.
But Obama is being forced to the left but a bunch of out of touch lefties who still want to see the war ended, and as much as I’d love to bash the hell out of them, there are some points they make that have a strong sense of validity.
1. This is a huge economic drag. The money we continually sink into this occupation could be better spent just about anywhere.
2. The occupation itself. Its why traditional conservatives like Buckley and Buchanan (why are all the conservatives Irish?) opposed the war three years after supporting it. Invasion? Yes. Democracy? Yes. Empire building? No. I don’t think that’s what we’re doing over there, but long story short is….
3. The Iraqi’s need to govern themselves. If they want us out of not, we can’t be there forever. They have the tools now to conduct themselves in a way they see fit, and if we stay, their not going to review some of the more savage behavior as just that, savage.
But the occupation has logical reasons for continuing. Casualties are down, way down. And while the opponents will tell you that one casualty is too many, that’s just not war. I agree we shouldn’t have gone in, but don’t give us a reason to have to go back in.
This is why this election is a nightmare. It’s reactionary.
We don’t have the option to select a man based on our best interests, just our best interest. And that’s three options short of acceptable. We’re talking the lesser of two evils here since we’re never going to hear them discuss much of anything on the lower end of the political spectrum. Whose education policy do you favor? In fact where is most of the domestic policy? I don’t know if we’re in the business of calling the economy “policy.”
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again. If voting third party is throwing your vote away, I might throw mine up.
Bloomberg ’08.
The Economist, which stands as one of the more unbias publications, had on its cover last month the two presidential candidates and the line: America at its best. For a second I believed them, but the problems with this political election are highly subtle and exhaustingly complex.
The main issue that everyone ought to be voting on is the one that poses the most immediate danger or problem for the country. Enter problem 1.
The issue, if we looked at it today, would certainly be the economy. We have a nation, as Lou Dobbs might say, that cannot cloth or feed itself. Our reliance on other countries for our most basic needs not only is nerve racking because of our dependence on shaky foreign business markets, but because even at these “fair trade” [sic] prices, how would anyone be able to afford them when they don’t have jobs, because 2 years ago they were making those clothes.
If the economy remains and issue, its an election that’s decidedly in Obama’s favor, but this of course is the problem. McCain doesn’t know much about anything when it comes to economics, or how social safety nets, put in place because of issues we’d resolved back in the 30’s, work and why they shouldn’t be dismantled. During the primaries Mitt Romney hammered McCain on this very issue (and rightfully so) and sowed up Michigan before going down in a Super Tuesday blood bath (where he only took Massachusetts). More concerning is that his advisory committee (or what looks like it) is more callous, apolitical, and out of touch than any of the other free-market advocates. Phil Gramm’s “Nation of whiners” comment should be exposed to the light of day far more than it has been to date.
So what’s the problem right? Obama wins and, while he doesn’t necessarily have the econ background covered, everything turns out better than it might with McCain…until the problem shifts.
Let’s just assume that the economy actually does improve. It won’t be until about the middle of the 1st term and at best it will recover slowly. Neither of these candidates are Putin or Reagan so we’re not going to see unfettered progress with the intelligence required, and as much as John McCain wants to be TR, he’d never have the fortitude to grab out-of-control business by the reigns and tell them if they can’t help America, we don’t need them.
But Obama is being forced to the left but a bunch of out of touch lefties who still want to see the war ended, and as much as I’d love to bash the hell out of them, there are some points they make that have a strong sense of validity.
1. This is a huge economic drag. The money we continually sink into this occupation could be better spent just about anywhere.
2. The occupation itself. Its why traditional conservatives like Buckley and Buchanan (why are all the conservatives Irish?) opposed the war three years after supporting it. Invasion? Yes. Democracy? Yes. Empire building? No. I don’t think that’s what we’re doing over there, but long story short is….
3. The Iraqi’s need to govern themselves. If they want us out of not, we can’t be there forever. They have the tools now to conduct themselves in a way they see fit, and if we stay, their not going to review some of the more savage behavior as just that, savage.
But the occupation has logical reasons for continuing. Casualties are down, way down. And while the opponents will tell you that one casualty is too many, that’s just not war. I agree we shouldn’t have gone in, but don’t give us a reason to have to go back in.
This is why this election is a nightmare. It’s reactionary.
We don’t have the option to select a man based on our best interests, just our best interest. And that’s three options short of acceptable. We’re talking the lesser of two evils here since we’re never going to hear them discuss much of anything on the lower end of the political spectrum. Whose education policy do you favor? In fact where is most of the domestic policy? I don’t know if we’re in the business of calling the economy “policy.”
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again. If voting third party is throwing your vote away, I might throw mine up.
Bloomberg ’08.
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
I'm done with music...
I’m done with music. I’m sick of everyone’s private little band, I hate the hipster games of “have you heard of…” I can’t take LP’s or EP’s or the ED that comes with a thousand bands who are too drunk to fuck or make decent music.
To hang around with the people I do, Patrick Wolf was the second coming. He had everything an indie kid could want, highly effeminate posturing with homoerotic overtones, circus colors and a catalogue that sounded like the Beach Boy’s Smile if Brian Wilson had been dragged through the 1984 post-punk revolution. Not only this but for whatever reason, he was the Elliot Smith every Elliot Smith fan wanted since Elliot Smith. (who I can’t stand by the way)
I’m sick of every second album being as thought through as take out Chinese. The curse of the second album used to be that bands had toured with 12 songs for so long they had forgotten how to write, or that they were one-hit wonder trying to cash in on a niche market to override their lack of talent. Now these bands hit a rough patch and they throw the apathy into overdrive. You can’t affect enough for the photo shoot. By the way the only photo shoots that don’t make people look like absolute douche bags are photos taken when people aren’t expecting photos. When you’re going over how something should sound or where the lyrics get all garbled up. You usually see them on the inner jacket of live albums. They should be everywhere. Your web site, magazine covers…everything. Posed photographs are an atrocity. The “lets all jump together” move of the pop-punk band made baby jesus cry.
I love what myspace has done for music, I think LastFM is the best thing to happen in the last 25 years in music and I’m still not sure how they’ve managed to avoid a law suit. That aside, the corporate shove is obnoxious, not because its corporate but because they delivered on their promise.
Take this story for example: Every rag and its sister web section have a page dedicated to what people leaving shows have to say about it. Not more than three years ago I read a comment from a 12 year old girl leaving a Black Eyed Peas show. She said “Some of these younger kids, they don’t know a lot of the Peas older stuff, and I think that’s just because their young. Their just new fans.” Its ok to laugh, talking about the Black Eyed Peas early works like they were any more credible than whatever constitutes their later works is a travesty. The machine that makes the saccharine treats rarely changes formula, just shape. More concise: The gummy bear doesn’t taste any different than the gummy worm. But the issue today is that that once 12 now 15 year old girl is saying the same snobby pseudo-high-minded hog wash about a band we’ve never heard of from some Garage-juke act born 16 miles outside of Duluth. You’ve never heard of them, and who’s to know if her heads up her ass or that she’s full of shit? She may be spot on, and now I have to crate dive and dig through the annals of the internet just to find out their a Melt Banana knock off that got stones one weekend and bought the back catalogue of The Fall and the Psychedelic Furs.
What we’ve done by commercializing a culture is give the once guarded jargon of credible music to the unrefined and irresponsible. People who can no longer articulate why they like something, or analyze music from across perspectives and time periods now have free range and freer access to gallivant as if they not only can, but have and had it published to boot. The new revolution is old friends. The new music investment is financially conscious. I shall forth conduct musical purchases exactly one year after its released. Not its leak, not its pre-production web downloads, its release. Not only will my investments be less rocky and furiously more sound but I will be perennially cool in that I will only always own the older stuff. Granted, one year in the Indieverse is length for enough bad news about an artists forthcoming album to make people cling to the last one. So when you get wind of Ryan Adams’s Rap album on the horizon, I’ll be experiencing Heartbreak for the first time, when Beck pulls a Bjork and records an album using only his voice, I’ll be knee deep in Midnight Vultures (great album by the way, don’t listen to any reviews on that one). And when you’re pissed because the new Dandy Warhols has left you down again, I’ll likely be listening to something else completely but I’ll still be smug in my giant vault of money.
To hang around with the people I do, Patrick Wolf was the second coming. He had everything an indie kid could want, highly effeminate posturing with homoerotic overtones, circus colors and a catalogue that sounded like the Beach Boy’s Smile if Brian Wilson had been dragged through the 1984 post-punk revolution. Not only this but for whatever reason, he was the Elliot Smith every Elliot Smith fan wanted since Elliot Smith. (who I can’t stand by the way)
I’m sick of every second album being as thought through as take out Chinese. The curse of the second album used to be that bands had toured with 12 songs for so long they had forgotten how to write, or that they were one-hit wonder trying to cash in on a niche market to override their lack of talent. Now these bands hit a rough patch and they throw the apathy into overdrive. You can’t affect enough for the photo shoot. By the way the only photo shoots that don’t make people look like absolute douche bags are photos taken when people aren’t expecting photos. When you’re going over how something should sound or where the lyrics get all garbled up. You usually see them on the inner jacket of live albums. They should be everywhere. Your web site, magazine covers…everything. Posed photographs are an atrocity. The “lets all jump together” move of the pop-punk band made baby jesus cry.
I love what myspace has done for music, I think LastFM is the best thing to happen in the last 25 years in music and I’m still not sure how they’ve managed to avoid a law suit. That aside, the corporate shove is obnoxious, not because its corporate but because they delivered on their promise.
Take this story for example: Every rag and its sister web section have a page dedicated to what people leaving shows have to say about it. Not more than three years ago I read a comment from a 12 year old girl leaving a Black Eyed Peas show. She said “Some of these younger kids, they don’t know a lot of the Peas older stuff, and I think that’s just because their young. Their just new fans.” Its ok to laugh, talking about the Black Eyed Peas early works like they were any more credible than whatever constitutes their later works is a travesty. The machine that makes the saccharine treats rarely changes formula, just shape. More concise: The gummy bear doesn’t taste any different than the gummy worm. But the issue today is that that once 12 now 15 year old girl is saying the same snobby pseudo-high-minded hog wash about a band we’ve never heard of from some Garage-juke act born 16 miles outside of Duluth. You’ve never heard of them, and who’s to know if her heads up her ass or that she’s full of shit? She may be spot on, and now I have to crate dive and dig through the annals of the internet just to find out their a Melt Banana knock off that got stones one weekend and bought the back catalogue of The Fall and the Psychedelic Furs.
What we’ve done by commercializing a culture is give the once guarded jargon of credible music to the unrefined and irresponsible. People who can no longer articulate why they like something, or analyze music from across perspectives and time periods now have free range and freer access to gallivant as if they not only can, but have and had it published to boot. The new revolution is old friends. The new music investment is financially conscious. I shall forth conduct musical purchases exactly one year after its released. Not its leak, not its pre-production web downloads, its release. Not only will my investments be less rocky and furiously more sound but I will be perennially cool in that I will only always own the older stuff. Granted, one year in the Indieverse is length for enough bad news about an artists forthcoming album to make people cling to the last one. So when you get wind of Ryan Adams’s Rap album on the horizon, I’ll be experiencing Heartbreak for the first time, when Beck pulls a Bjork and records an album using only his voice, I’ll be knee deep in Midnight Vultures (great album by the way, don’t listen to any reviews on that one). And when you’re pissed because the new Dandy Warhols has left you down again, I’ll likely be listening to something else completely but I’ll still be smug in my giant vault of money.
Friday, June 27, 2008
Charter, Charter, Magna Carta
When one finds himself squarely in the center of the political spectrum, decisions that elected officials make are often maddening.
Take nothing more than the recent example of Senator Obama saying that he acknowledged that his economic plan may hurt the economy. Or when he proposed that an increase to the capital tax (for those who own stocks) and was told that in every instance of doing so, it has lead to a weakening of the economy; his response was “well it may.” The answer is not “it may”, its “it does.”
So when officials cross the aisle I couldn’t be more excited…except when they cross the aisle to pick up another parties failure. The Globe reported that Governor Patrick was set to unfurl his ten year education plan later this month. In short, he’s opted for Charter Schools*. I think I might write him a letter.
In every instance I have seen this described to me, and in everything I’ve ever read, I can’t help thinking the same thing: New American Class System.
In my earlier collegiate days, I used to openly mock Harvard as politically corrupted with an education that focused more on cultural diversity than actually education. The reason for both of these is because they have a 50% legacy acceptance rate. If your parents went here, and you’ve got the money, its likely that you’re getting in. Then I found out what Oxford’s acceptance rate for legacies were and I lost all faith in Europe. Because of their educational structure, a staggering 90% of those accepted to Oxford have parents who’ve gone there as well.
Charter schools bring us about 3 steps away from that, and by steps I mean generations.
In Massachusetts, you’re required to pass an exam in order to be qualified to teach. Roughly 2 months ago, they proposed a waiver for those who’d failed the test three times to be able to teach regardless. “If that passes”, as one prominent political talk show host proposed, “tell me where you think these people will teach? Weston? Newton? Its just another shovel load of dirt on the casket”
Now imagine if they allow morons to teach, and the kids with potential are to be taken to schools where only those with a doctorate are allowed to teach.
With luck you’re child would make it in, he’d build his own rockets and he’d have to tie his best friend’s shoes for him. We’d widen the gap between the success rate on the MCAS exam between anyone who could afford it, and those who can’t.
The Charter school is not rewarding children who do well in schools, its rewarding parents who have enough money. It punishes adults who were disinterested as children, or who had parents who valued education only when report cards came out.
A child does not have the discipline of an adult in second grade, why should we punish them for 12 years with poor education, and then tell them they have no skill set when they attempt to find a job?
Similarly, why should it be the policy of the education department or its secretary to tell parents who are working multiple jobs to afford their child a future that they need to double their combined income in order to ever have the opportunity to achieve because they need to start paying for a good education now.
The premise behind Charters to begin with is that they will be pushed into the business section of life and held to the populist standards of businesses. Therefore schools would have to bend to the will of their “customer” to stay in business. I agree with this 100% because this usually whittles things down to “better product, for less money.” But there aren’t enough schools to warrant a capitalist exchange of ideas. What we’ve been given with these schools is a monopoly. When only one school is going to offer better education, a better chance to get into great colleges and therefore a great future, who’d care to address what’s taught or how?
And this new Patrick system is based on a lottery in an attempt to make it more “fair” which I can understand, but the gap still exists, and the cost doesn’t go anywhere so for the lucky few who are poor and get in, good luck, you’re a Front Page human interest story 18 years down the road. I’m sure the Metro can’t wait to have you. But if you’re one of the countless kids whose parents are regular blue collar people, there’s no hope in sight, and as it appears, both the left and the right have decided they’ve done their good deed for the year.
And they say voting third party is throwing your vote away. I might throw mine up.
Take nothing more than the recent example of Senator Obama saying that he acknowledged that his economic plan may hurt the economy. Or when he proposed that an increase to the capital tax (for those who own stocks) and was told that in every instance of doing so, it has lead to a weakening of the economy; his response was “well it may.” The answer is not “it may”, its “it does.”
So when officials cross the aisle I couldn’t be more excited…except when they cross the aisle to pick up another parties failure. The Globe reported that Governor Patrick was set to unfurl his ten year education plan later this month. In short, he’s opted for Charter Schools*. I think I might write him a letter.
In every instance I have seen this described to me, and in everything I’ve ever read, I can’t help thinking the same thing: New American Class System.
In my earlier collegiate days, I used to openly mock Harvard as politically corrupted with an education that focused more on cultural diversity than actually education. The reason for both of these is because they have a 50% legacy acceptance rate. If your parents went here, and you’ve got the money, its likely that you’re getting in. Then I found out what Oxford’s acceptance rate for legacies were and I lost all faith in Europe. Because of their educational structure, a staggering 90% of those accepted to Oxford have parents who’ve gone there as well.
Charter schools bring us about 3 steps away from that, and by steps I mean generations.
In Massachusetts, you’re required to pass an exam in order to be qualified to teach. Roughly 2 months ago, they proposed a waiver for those who’d failed the test three times to be able to teach regardless. “If that passes”, as one prominent political talk show host proposed, “tell me where you think these people will teach? Weston? Newton? Its just another shovel load of dirt on the casket”
Now imagine if they allow morons to teach, and the kids with potential are to be taken to schools where only those with a doctorate are allowed to teach.
With luck you’re child would make it in, he’d build his own rockets and he’d have to tie his best friend’s shoes for him. We’d widen the gap between the success rate on the MCAS exam between anyone who could afford it, and those who can’t.
The Charter school is not rewarding children who do well in schools, its rewarding parents who have enough money. It punishes adults who were disinterested as children, or who had parents who valued education only when report cards came out.
A child does not have the discipline of an adult in second grade, why should we punish them for 12 years with poor education, and then tell them they have no skill set when they attempt to find a job?
Similarly, why should it be the policy of the education department or its secretary to tell parents who are working multiple jobs to afford their child a future that they need to double their combined income in order to ever have the opportunity to achieve because they need to start paying for a good education now.
The premise behind Charters to begin with is that they will be pushed into the business section of life and held to the populist standards of businesses. Therefore schools would have to bend to the will of their “customer” to stay in business. I agree with this 100% because this usually whittles things down to “better product, for less money.” But there aren’t enough schools to warrant a capitalist exchange of ideas. What we’ve been given with these schools is a monopoly. When only one school is going to offer better education, a better chance to get into great colleges and therefore a great future, who’d care to address what’s taught or how?
And this new Patrick system is based on a lottery in an attempt to make it more “fair” which I can understand, but the gap still exists, and the cost doesn’t go anywhere so for the lucky few who are poor and get in, good luck, you’re a Front Page human interest story 18 years down the road. I’m sure the Metro can’t wait to have you. But if you’re one of the countless kids whose parents are regular blue collar people, there’s no hope in sight, and as it appears, both the left and the right have decided they’ve done their good deed for the year.
And they say voting third party is throwing your vote away. I might throw mine up.
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Meghan amongst the leaves
I was in the heart of Penn Station when I got the text message from Meghan. “Tim Russert is Dead. Your thoughts?”
I always appreciated that my opinion mattered to people. Meghan and I had, since graduation, drifted apart as I tend to do with most people. I can’t keep pace on short notice, I don’t have it in me.
But the other day she sent me an e-mail with an article from The Onion with some satirical article about one of the video games I play. She had this to say…
“Vermont is awesome. I can't find a good job though. I'm ok, i miss the boston bars.
Meghan always had a succinct way of phrasing something. As much as I don’t care for him, she has a Salinger way about her writing, you get a whole emotional picture from one line of text.
But I have to say that it depressed the crap out of me. Not that shes gone or that she can’t find a job, but that sometimes we move on for reasons that aren’t the best. Or we’ve told ourselves that to not move on is to somehow stunt ourselves and we end up having this self-hating complex building up.
I tend to write about the still frozen image, as if at some point as a child I’d seen an old photo from the 70’s with a guy who looked like the life of the party, and then I was told that he was dead. This isn’t to suppose I find Meghan dead, but gone in the same fashion and that 40 years on I might look back and wonder whatever happened to her. She was a force unto herself, she was well educated but she didn’t give a damn for school and I respected that about her. The academic world is self-serving and some bite the bullet and get through, and some of us couldn’t be bothered by the fickle fascinations of some egotistical professor.
I can see her in those paisley tights she wore to Ambers wedding, and the jazz hands she’d use whenever she was mocking some terrible idea is that vaudevillian raspy voice. Now I see those things in front of the back drop of some green covered spring ski mountain, lying dormant waiting for winter to give it life again. Vermont to me has always been a lace for people to vacation and you didn’t move there unless you’re some transcendental hippie. To say you miss the boston bars, suggests to me that the metropolitan kitsch is decidedly vacant from the pubs up there.
And maybe its how I see Vermont that’s the problem, a heterogeneous mixture of like-minded individuals that by virtue of what Boston is, simply cannot exist here. I’ve met more interesting people on the bus here than I likely could in Vermont. To see a personality like hers, one that no doubt gave way to interesting dialogue and had to inspire its share of young minds in such a fertile place is a shame to me, and certainly a loss to the city.
For one reason or another, I get the impression that people go off to these places and die, or more accurately, become someone else. And maybe that’s what I fear the most. But in being realistic I know Boston wasn’t always a kind environment for her. I imagine I’ll tell my children stories about a lot of the people I’ve met, and how their from all over, and all the places I’d met them. But in the back of my mind I hope that don’t finish like so many of my fathers d…“yeah yeah…he’s dead now…cancer.”
I can’t honestly write about everyone I know or all those who’ve made an impact on my life but I can say that when I write about these people, I hope you see some of yourself in here (if you’re out there reading), the the sentiments I hold about one is applicable to the other, and if somewhere along the way we’ve lost touch or don’t communicate like we ought to that I think about lost friends more than I would care to think about. Maybe this is just an apology. I’m unintentionally elusive, and I drive myself toward goals that don’t allow me to pull others along, and for this I’m sorry, but your value is not diminished in my mind, and I forget very little of our friendship back then.
I always appreciated that my opinion mattered to people. Meghan and I had, since graduation, drifted apart as I tend to do with most people. I can’t keep pace on short notice, I don’t have it in me.
But the other day she sent me an e-mail with an article from The Onion with some satirical article about one of the video games I play. She had this to say…
“Vermont is awesome. I can't find a good job though. I'm ok, i miss the boston bars.
Meghan always had a succinct way of phrasing something. As much as I don’t care for him, she has a Salinger way about her writing, you get a whole emotional picture from one line of text.
But I have to say that it depressed the crap out of me. Not that shes gone or that she can’t find a job, but that sometimes we move on for reasons that aren’t the best. Or we’ve told ourselves that to not move on is to somehow stunt ourselves and we end up having this self-hating complex building up.
I tend to write about the still frozen image, as if at some point as a child I’d seen an old photo from the 70’s with a guy who looked like the life of the party, and then I was told that he was dead. This isn’t to suppose I find Meghan dead, but gone in the same fashion and that 40 years on I might look back and wonder whatever happened to her. She was a force unto herself, she was well educated but she didn’t give a damn for school and I respected that about her. The academic world is self-serving and some bite the bullet and get through, and some of us couldn’t be bothered by the fickle fascinations of some egotistical professor.
I can see her in those paisley tights she wore to Ambers wedding, and the jazz hands she’d use whenever she was mocking some terrible idea is that vaudevillian raspy voice. Now I see those things in front of the back drop of some green covered spring ski mountain, lying dormant waiting for winter to give it life again. Vermont to me has always been a lace for people to vacation and you didn’t move there unless you’re some transcendental hippie. To say you miss the boston bars, suggests to me that the metropolitan kitsch is decidedly vacant from the pubs up there.
And maybe its how I see Vermont that’s the problem, a heterogeneous mixture of like-minded individuals that by virtue of what Boston is, simply cannot exist here. I’ve met more interesting people on the bus here than I likely could in Vermont. To see a personality like hers, one that no doubt gave way to interesting dialogue and had to inspire its share of young minds in such a fertile place is a shame to me, and certainly a loss to the city.
For one reason or another, I get the impression that people go off to these places and die, or more accurately, become someone else. And maybe that’s what I fear the most. But in being realistic I know Boston wasn’t always a kind environment for her. I imagine I’ll tell my children stories about a lot of the people I’ve met, and how their from all over, and all the places I’d met them. But in the back of my mind I hope that don’t finish like so many of my fathers d…“yeah yeah…he’s dead now…cancer.”
I can’t honestly write about everyone I know or all those who’ve made an impact on my life but I can say that when I write about these people, I hope you see some of yourself in here (if you’re out there reading), the the sentiments I hold about one is applicable to the other, and if somewhere along the way we’ve lost touch or don’t communicate like we ought to that I think about lost friends more than I would care to think about. Maybe this is just an apology. I’m unintentionally elusive, and I drive myself toward goals that don’t allow me to pull others along, and for this I’m sorry, but your value is not diminished in my mind, and I forget very little of our friendship back then.
Friday, June 6, 2008
Santoro's Roast Beef Sub, with Mayo and Salt
[Santoro’s is a dumpy sub shop that abuts a gas station and somehow ended up in the same parking lot. For all intents and purposes, it’s a hole in the wall that is unmentionable in every instance of the word. It also had the grave misfortune of being in Carver, Massachusetts which has been put on the map by a renaissance fare and exactly nothing else.]
Back in my Councilor days, when we’d cart children around the state in giant yellow busses, we’d frequent the recreation facility that was a lot over from Santoro’s. It was standard fare; potato sack slide, go karts, bumper boats, arcade games, all plopped out here in the middle of Carver like some runaway carnival that went off to join Thoreau.
Being the kind of charming young lad that I am, I’d managed to make strong ties to one of the men who oversaw this particular camp, and as such when he’d break off from these field trips, he drag me along with him. It was here, that I would come to encounter the dump known as Santoro’s.
I remember when we pulled up on it his exclamation of excitement “yeah brow….San-Toro’s” with the end of that broken abbreviation hitting a higher than needed falsetto. I took from that I might be in for some remarkable cuisine here in this growth on the side of a Mobil station. I wasn’t.
Santoro’s was just another dive pizza joint, only as Massachusetts can. A Greek family masquerading around as some Italian family, making pizzas for blue-collar Americans that don’t know the difference and wouldn’t care anyway. (You mean the Greeks don’t eat pizza?) And thinking back on it, I couldn’t possibly imagine why the hell anyone would get excited for such a dump in the first place, and as any writer does, I had to come again to the conclusion that things that I see are just observations, and that my opinions are irrelevant. If you’ve been given perception beyond the tangible, you ought to use it.
Santoro’s could have been Jim’s Tire Store, or Guadalupe’s, the place really wasn’t relevant. Its more like a pragmatic American Dream. That we’d all risen high enough to fuck off at our job, and occasionally leave a ton of children in the charge of another group of people who’s judgment was questionable and, given that we were at an amusement park, whose attention spans might be lowered to lethal levels. We were out, we were free, and we were on the clock. It didn’t matter if we’d gone to buy stamps, I’m sure we’d have found an air conditioner to stand in front of and rationalize that in fact, this was the life.
I have been working myself toward an Old Money dream, one in which I shirk the low class mentality of the farm land I grew up on, one in which people conduct themselves with a degree of cosmopolitan air regardless of what their doing. To me being high class should come with being American. To live, as Bobby Kennedy suggest, for the people, not off the people. But whether they lack the money, refinement, or perpetual optimism to carry themselves in such a manner, there are those who don’t have such a high brow view of how things ought to be. Education was never a big point for them, neither to was propriety, and who says it ought to be. But I spend too much time lamenting this reality and not enough realizing that these are people who are lost in a dream, where the closest pizza joint can be the break from a bleak and doldrums-filled existence. Where the air conditioner at the post office, or the grade C meat at some dive pub can be all the difference in the world.
Sometimes when I look back I can see a scrap-book collage of still-framed images fading there over time, where you can see the joy in the face of a man who had lines from the hard life he lived and for logical or illogical reasons, the rough path he choose. I am, for all my graces, still no different than they are. We all look down upon one another for varying reasons, and to another man we may be equally as flawed. But though I’d never choose to descend to that level, or conduct myself in that fashion, I can still see the beautiful paintings that are created from their own emotional crescendo, and in those images, I might find myself something to write, a literary sea chantey I can’t stop whistling, even if its about some junk box sub shop, fading in the sun of old memories.
Back in my Councilor days, when we’d cart children around the state in giant yellow busses, we’d frequent the recreation facility that was a lot over from Santoro’s. It was standard fare; potato sack slide, go karts, bumper boats, arcade games, all plopped out here in the middle of Carver like some runaway carnival that went off to join Thoreau.
Being the kind of charming young lad that I am, I’d managed to make strong ties to one of the men who oversaw this particular camp, and as such when he’d break off from these field trips, he drag me along with him. It was here, that I would come to encounter the dump known as Santoro’s.
I remember when we pulled up on it his exclamation of excitement “yeah brow….San-Toro’s” with the end of that broken abbreviation hitting a higher than needed falsetto. I took from that I might be in for some remarkable cuisine here in this growth on the side of a Mobil station. I wasn’t.
Santoro’s was just another dive pizza joint, only as Massachusetts can. A Greek family masquerading around as some Italian family, making pizzas for blue-collar Americans that don’t know the difference and wouldn’t care anyway. (You mean the Greeks don’t eat pizza?) And thinking back on it, I couldn’t possibly imagine why the hell anyone would get excited for such a dump in the first place, and as any writer does, I had to come again to the conclusion that things that I see are just observations, and that my opinions are irrelevant. If you’ve been given perception beyond the tangible, you ought to use it.
Santoro’s could have been Jim’s Tire Store, or Guadalupe’s, the place really wasn’t relevant. Its more like a pragmatic American Dream. That we’d all risen high enough to fuck off at our job, and occasionally leave a ton of children in the charge of another group of people who’s judgment was questionable and, given that we were at an amusement park, whose attention spans might be lowered to lethal levels. We were out, we were free, and we were on the clock. It didn’t matter if we’d gone to buy stamps, I’m sure we’d have found an air conditioner to stand in front of and rationalize that in fact, this was the life.
I have been working myself toward an Old Money dream, one in which I shirk the low class mentality of the farm land I grew up on, one in which people conduct themselves with a degree of cosmopolitan air regardless of what their doing. To me being high class should come with being American. To live, as Bobby Kennedy suggest, for the people, not off the people. But whether they lack the money, refinement, or perpetual optimism to carry themselves in such a manner, there are those who don’t have such a high brow view of how things ought to be. Education was never a big point for them, neither to was propriety, and who says it ought to be. But I spend too much time lamenting this reality and not enough realizing that these are people who are lost in a dream, where the closest pizza joint can be the break from a bleak and doldrums-filled existence. Where the air conditioner at the post office, or the grade C meat at some dive pub can be all the difference in the world.
Sometimes when I look back I can see a scrap-book collage of still-framed images fading there over time, where you can see the joy in the face of a man who had lines from the hard life he lived and for logical or illogical reasons, the rough path he choose. I am, for all my graces, still no different than they are. We all look down upon one another for varying reasons, and to another man we may be equally as flawed. But though I’d never choose to descend to that level, or conduct myself in that fashion, I can still see the beautiful paintings that are created from their own emotional crescendo, and in those images, I might find myself something to write, a literary sea chantey I can’t stop whistling, even if its about some junk box sub shop, fading in the sun of old memories.
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