Kanye strikes again

To the graduating high school class of 2010. I'm really happy for you and I'mma let you finish, but the graduating high school class of 2001 was the best class of all time.

Of all time.

Sabres fans order the girlie sized cone

When driving and another driver does something irritating, a common response from most of us is to give them the finger. But that's what the other driver is expecting. It's an over used symbol of the road that elicits the response of "Meh" from opposing motorists. It's almost like waving to them.

So what can be done about this problem? And by problem, I mean making the other driver get the point that they have irked you and you are returning the favor to them. One might try yelling at them, but then they would look kind of ridiculous yelling in their car, especially when the other driver probably can't hear them. Yelling also gives the other driver the satisfaction of making you angry enough to be yelling and causing stress. So this really isn't a viable option.

Another option would be to go all "James Bond" on them and unleash missiles hidden behind the headlights, oil slicks from the rear, and other such destructive paraphernalia. This would probably be the most effective solution, if however the most unrealistic (not to mention illegal) one.

The best way that I have discovered so far for getting vengeance on the road is not through a display of anger, but an act of love. Blowing air kisses to be specific. Doing this to a driver who is causing you grief may have several effects. First off, they might be confused as to what just happened. Second, they might actually like it and thus calming them down and making them happy, which would benefit them as well as every other driver around them. Lastly (and this is my favorite) they will become so enraged and furious that their intimidation tactics of the road had no effect and they might even begin to question their own masculinity. That last bit works best when one male driver does this to another. It makes for fun times on the highway.

Needless to say, this post was brought about by my experiences on the road this evening while driving along and coming across a ruthless tailgater. They rode barely a few feet from my car, flashed their brights, etc. When they went to speed past me, the magic of the blown kiss was applied and struck with full effect. The other driver was confused and angry all at once. Then as he drove away, I saw a Buffalo Sabres sticker on his rear window. I thought that maybe he was so angry at me because he saw my Lightning license plate and realized that even a team from Florida has won a championship while Buffalo has none. I almost died laughing.

The night got even better with some toadlets, an awesome turtle, bats, zombies, and ice cream with my girlfriend.

Only one full week in and summer is just awesome.

I just don't get it

Why is soccer so popular? I've tried on many occasions to get into the sport that seems to captivate the entire world with the exception of the United States and I just can't see the appeal. It's a slow paced game with no real action. Don't you dare call aimlessly running up and down the field action. It's not. Get over it hooligans.

I was doing some thinking while watching the snooze fest that is this "sport" and came up with some suggestions for improving it.

• Swords. No real explanation needed here. And for a little variety, the goalkeepers can have a crossbow.
• Have pairs of players from opposing teams tie their legs together three-legged race style. This should make the aimless running a little bit more entertaining to watch. This step works even better with the previously mentioned swords.
• Skewer the teams so that they resemble foosball players and have the fans control the action.
• Multiball.
• Instead of pulling cards, the referees get tasers.

Better yet, they could just revamp the entire game with a smaller field, smaller goals, a sheet of ice, give the players sticks, change the ball to a puck, and let them hit each other. That would probably be the best sport in the world.

Is it over?

And so ends another year of teaching. Four down and only thirty something left to go. At the end of every year so far I've been so happy to be done with school for ten solid weeks. Each year for different reasons. Sometimes the reasons are not so good and sometimes they're great.

This year's end brings about some great reasons. It'll hopefully be a summer filled with new beginnings and awesomeness.

I do get kinda sad to see certain students move on to 6th grade. I'm sure it'll hit even harder when students I have taught since kindergarten make that leap. But that's another four years away so I'm good for now. There's even a point in the summer break where I can't wait to get back to work. Not that I'm rushing things.

I'll gladly take that vacation now.

Tom Tom the Lady Cow

So a few days ago, a 5th grader created a character called Tom Tom the Lady Cow. It was confusing to me and I asked them to explain their creation. They said it was a cow named Tom Tom and she was a lady. That's about all the explanation I needed, as I doubt any more was really needed. Of coarse, the full title of their new creation was Tom Tom the Lady Cow and the Evil Eye patch Chicken. The minds of children are scary places but also filled with so much awesome.

It was a good weekend. I don't know what I did to deserve it, but the awesome keeps on coming my way. I just hope it's here to stay for a bit.

She makes me happy.

She makes me smile.

Dog Person

So I was at the drive-thru the other day and saw this crazy dog trying to order some tacos. I was under the impression that this advertising campaign had ended several years ago, but I guess I was mistaken.

I told you so

I mentioned when I started this blogtastic adventure that I would get distracted and lazy and look what happened. I totally did, even though there's been so much going on here I could have easily been making a new post every day.

The school year is winding down with only five more weeks left. It's been a long, strange, crazy one. But it has been a good one, for the most part.

Outside of work things have been just as strange and crazy. I finally feel like I've discovered who I really am, and I'm happy with that. It gets old fast trying to pretend to be someone you aren't. A lot of that was my fault. The whole pretending thing. I've learned, though, through enough negative experiences, to drop the things and people holding me back in life. Now if only I can keep that up, I'll be good to go.

Lost Voice

It had been a while since I had yelled so much at a game. But the stars aligned and all was right with the world. There were almost no visiting fans sitting near me, save for the four old Canadians. They were quickly dispatched by five-year-olds with noise makers though. I have no idea who would have given those kids the idea to point noisemakers at old people though...

There were even fights galore! And the best part of that is the Lightning players were actually winning the fights, and even knocking a few Senators out cold. Hell, even Chris 'The Turtle' Neil got laid out by the Lightning goalie Smith. For that single act of awesome, I take back almost all the bad things I've said about him lately.

I even got to see my first shootout in person and I was so glad the Lightning actually pulled off the win. All that yelling would have been for nothing if they had lost.

And just for some icing on the cake, there was a family of Toronto fans leaving the game (I swear those guys are everywhere) and they had a small kid with them. The family looked up and saw a pack of sad Senator fans waiting to cross the street and they proceeded to tell their son not to stand so close to the Sens fans. I'm no Toronto fan, but that's great parenting if ever I've seen it in action.

Needless to say, I lost my voice from all the hollering and the yelling, but it was totally worth it.

Now if only the Lightning would have played like this a few weeks ago when it actually mattered...

FREEEEDOM!

According to a third grader, Rosa Parks was the first woman arrested. And she created freedom. Teaching is awesome. The end.

The Second Coming of Awesome

And lo. On the 14th day of this 3rd month, the awesome was created. It was good. It was awesome! But the awesome needed an equal awesome to show the world the true way of being the best. Eight days later, as was foretold, the second coming of awesome occurred. And it was good.

And that, children, is why we celebrate for eight days. For the birth week of awesome is a glorious event.

Frog Sneak Attack

This was found at Target yesterday. I had nothing to do with it, although I wish I had set it up. Makes no sense at all and kind of confuses me.

In other news, a student told me to day that he was trying to be a really good redneck. You have to love those first graders.

Failcat

I told a student the other day that I didn't have to take the FCAT when I was in school because it didn't exist. They got a puzzled look on their face and then asked what the point of school was if there was no FCAT to take at the end of the year. I tried to explain that school used to be about learning, expanding your mind, becoming a well rounded individual, etc. This fell on deaf ears.

It's kind of sad that the education system has gotten to the point where learning to take a test is more important than actually teaching. I know there are proponents of the FCAT that will say that if teachers teach the standards then students will do well on the test. Therein lies the problem. Assessing a student's abilities shouldn't be reduced to bubbling in A, B, C, or D.

Enough of my rant. At least the failcat nonsense is done. At least as far as I'm concerned. On to more important things.

Birthdays, spring break, and the eventual summer vacation that has just begun to peek over the horizon.

Awesome

If someone ever asks you to define the word 'awesome' it would start with a recount of this past week.

New place.
Good friends.
Great times.

Awesome

Sans Chair

Typical guys apartment. Got the big television, video games, and electronics going but no real furniture yet. Oh, and of course the Nerf guns. There have been a few skirmishes already that break down pretty quickly due to lack of any real cover. I'm thinking an ottaman will solve that problem.

The Future

This week can't go fast enough. Hell, the next few days can't go fast enough. I'm finally beginning the process of starting over. It's an exciting prospect. Wiping the slate clean and moving on from it all. New friends. New place. New life.

But I can't help think about what could have been. If things had worked themselves out or if we had kept on pretending that everything was sunshine and happiness. I'll miss what I had but won't ever regret moving on.

End of a new beginning

Why it didn't work is something I'll never know. We seemed to be a perfect fit, at least for a little while. Coming home to you used to make me smile.

Somewhere along the way, things went off course. You weren't who you were supposed to be and I wasn't there for you. We couldn't change who we are into who we wanted to pretend to be.

This wasn't the way it was supposed to be. We were going to be the ones that made it through all the trials. We were going to succeed where others before us lacked the strength to go on. In the end we lacked the strength to see that we wouldn't make it. That it was doomed from the start. When we met, you meant everything to me. You filled the hole that had been left in my world. You brought happiness to where there was none. You gave me hope and helped me back up.

Maybe I was just blinded by your presence and couldn't see past our beginning. I was scared. I was afraid of being alone again.

I'm sorry we hit the bottom together. I'm sorry if you needed more than a positive attitude to make it through. I'm sorry I couldn't be what you wanted me to be. I'm sorry I wasn't the person you thought I was. I'm sorry for all I've brought down upon you.

I never meant to hurt you. I still want you to be happy. We both know that this is inevitable.

I'm sorry.

Death to the slow salmon

I think that NASCAR would be much less boring if they were to implement my following suggestion. The driver with the slowest qualifying time only has to complete ten laps of the track. However, they must do this driving in the opposite direction of the other racers. If they actually manage to avoid traffic (and make dreaded right turns) before the other drivers complete their regularly scheduled laps they win the race. And just because the only good thing in racing is watching people crash, the driver that takes out the slow salmon will receive a bounty, but only if they, too, complete the race.

Eat your heart out Gordon.

A lion wouldn't cheat on his wife, bit a tiger wood

Today was filled with the confusion of children over black history month. Right from the start, there was a fifth grader researching Colin Powell on the computers in the media center. She was very confused because in some pictures she said he looked black and in others he looked white. She wasn't sure if she was allowed to do her report on him because of this. She then pulled up a Google search for Colin Powell and one of the hits had a headline that read, "Is Colin Powell Gay?" She just sat there with a puzzled look and I had to explain to her that not everything you find on the internet is real.

In the afternoon, another student was in the media center with a teacher telling them to select a significant black person to write their report on. They had chosen Tiger Woods who, until a few months ago, would have made an excellent choice. The teacher explained that Tiger Woods had made some poor moral choices and that maybe another person would make for a better report. The student agreed and selected another book.

He picked the biography of OJ Simpson.

I died laughing.

Well look at me go. I've made ten whole posts. While this is not considered an amazing accomplishment to most, the fact that I've stuck with this blog for ten posts is impressive by my standards of being easily distracted by other forms of entertainment.

If I get to a bigger milestone, I'll get my self a cake. I'll eat it too. Because that saying is full of nonsense. If I have my cake I will eat it too.

Random, with a side of facepalm

Sometimes I try and think to hard about what to write here. Sometimes I wonder why anyone ever thought that the moon was made of cheese. I mean, really. I know that we've come a long way from believing that the world was flat, the center of the universe, and being carried around by a giant turtle, but cheese for a moon?

Never mind. I think I answered my own question.

Last year I had a kindergartner singing 'Low' (apple bottom jeans song). I couldn't help but laugh and think how ridiculous it was that a five year old knew the song and was dancing to it. I also didn't think anything could top that gem of awesome parenting skills. That changed today. I had another kindergartner singing 'Blame It On the Alcohol'. I'm thinking the same people who thought the moon was made of cheese have been breeding more than they should be allowed.

My mommy says I'm special

Trying to get myself back into the rhythm of creating again. It seems this blog has sparked more than just my interest in writing. I'm determined to produce a complete series of work in the near future. Until then, here are some quick sketches I've made over the past few days.

80 Days...

There are currently eighty more days of work with students until summer vacation. Not that I really mind working, but I think the best perk of being in the education profession is looking forward to those ten glorious weeks of summer each year. Of course, the hard part of the school year has yet to come. I just need to be careful not to let the students know just how close summer really is. Eighty days may seem far away now but it's really just right around the corner, sneaking up like a vacation ninja.

Nitty Gritty

So I got to the Lightning game last night and went to pick up my tickets from will call thinking it would be a quick and simple venture. I got to the window and gave them my ID and they quickly told me that there were no tickets for me. I insisted that I had ordered tickets two days ago and that they should be there and that they needed to check again. They checked and returned with the same answer. Without getting upset I restated that I had already ordered tickets for section 312 row B and that they should be there for me. They went back and checked again. By now there were three ticket operators and a manager typing into the computer trying to find any record of my order. Ten minutes later, a manager walks up and hands me my tickets. Well, they weren't actually my tickets. At least they weren't the original cheap seats I had ordered. Here's the view from fourteen rows back:

I just want to say that the people working at the ticket window are awesome.

The night kept getting better from there. Directly across the ice from where I was sitting was a flock of Calgary Flames fans. They gave me two priceless moments on the evening. The first came during the pregame warm-up when they were holding up a giant flag with their team's logo on it. Of course, they were holding backwards. But the best moment came after the warm-up when highlights of the Lightning beating the Flames to win the 2004 Stanley Cup were being shown on the big screen. Words cannot describe the sadness and dejection on their faces during those glorious five minutes of highlight footage.

The icing on the awesome cake came with a Lightning 2-1 overtime win. Actually, the Lightning had very little to do with it. Nittymaki pretty much won another game by himself for the team.

Shining On

One can't help but love this weather we're having. They bleak, dreary days. The limited sunshine. Not to mention the chance to study the adverse effects of the current atmospheric conditions on the elementary school population.

Three days into the week and there have been fights, yelling, lackadaisical attitudes, etc. It's almost like the school staff are the survivors of the zombie apocalypse and are one by one having their brains eaten by a mob of the undead. Come to think of it, that sounds like a much better scenario. The students aren't those slow moving zombies that you laugh at and stroll away from. They're those newfangled, speedy zombies you can barely keep a step ahead of before you succumb to their endless attacks.

Today was just one step further into zombie domination. I don't make a habit of yelling at students and, for the most part, have held firm to that during the uprising. I've become quite efficient at deflecting zombie attacks with preemptive strikes and indiscriminate distribution of time outs. Even a repeat fifth grader yelling out, "Mr. Baloney" wasn't enough to take me down. It was enough for me to stop, walk calmly over to them, and proceed to inform them about their place in life and respect for adults. The applause from a spectating teacher didn't hurt either.

Still, it has been a lot to deal with. Tensions are high. Nobody knows who will fall to the zombies next. Morale is low, but we keep pushing through hoping for a miracle. I would personally love to see Raptor Jesus come down and smite them. One can dream.

But today was a good day.

And I'll keep shining on.

Hungry, hungry, hippo

Lunchtime conversation at work today involved the discussion of a hippo eating a midget. Apparently the story was on the radio where a midget at a circus was tossed at a hippo. The hippo yawned at just the right moment and devoured the midget because of a gag reflex. Laughter until crying ensued as we tried to imagine the event, as well as imagining tossing some unruly students at hungry hippos.

Some quick Google searching at home revealed that this never really happened. But in my mind it will always be the truth.

Memory lane is paved with strangeness

The weekend has been odd one but a much needed break. It was probably the most fun I've had in a while. The following is a list of things witnessed/experienced over two nights (in no particular order):

• Tony's birthday party at The Boom
• Running into an old friend from elementary school randomly
• Mocking/shaming a drunk guy hitting on Tony's girlfriend
• Watching a Vin Diesel look-a-like get slammed on the ground, then having the decency to buy a round of shots for everyone
• Being upset at the cash only late night McDonald's and Burger King
• Running into more old friends on night two at Gasoline Ally
• Watching someone juggling fire in a parking lot
• Wishing the previously mentioned fire juggler would either catch on fire or at least start spitting fireballs into traffic
• Seeing some awesome bands and one terrible comedian (talking to a bored crowd about nothing doesn't count as comedy)
• Seeing a pregnant woman drinking and smoking (the Bob Marley backpack made me expect nothing less from her)
• Being asked to be responsible for an all-you-can-drink keg
• Being the harbinger of bad news when the keg ran dry
  

The weird thing about the weekend was seeing all those old friends/acquaintances was finding out how all our lives had played out so far. Reminiscing about past shenanigans was great. Regrets were discussed and blanks were filled in about what we had all been up to. It hasn't been easy, but it's been a fun ride.

Existential Butter

Late night discussions on existentialism can be interesting as well as thought provoking. Of course, the introduction of Michael Bay reduces the debate to nothing more than an elaborate poop joke.

First Post and Communism

Look what I just did. I made a blog post. Go me. I'm the best around and no one's every gonna take me down. Here's to a, hopefully, prolific blog. Odds are though I'll just get bored with this and go blow crap up in video game land.

A common response to when someone doesn't like something that is generally accepted as awesome is for me to call them a communist for not liking the previously mentioned awesome. This had worked out for me for quite a while with no problems.
Person: I don't like ice cream.
Me: Communist.
Person: Movies were stuff explodes for no apparent reason are dumb.
Me: Commie.
I ran into a contradiction today though. While selecting places to go out for lunch, someone suggested Chinese food but then second guessed their decision wondering if everyone in the party liked Chinese. I began saying that if someone doesn't like Chinese food then they are a communist but then started laughing when I realized what I had just said.

We eventually went for Chinese but couldn't find any places so we settled for some crap Italian place. On the drive back to work we passed a Chinese buffet.

Damn commies...