I AM NOT DEAD!!!

Contrary to popular rumor, I AM NOT DEAD!!!

My school has been keeping me so busy. Our TAKS scores were not as good as they could have been and the administration is running around; running our asses into the ground to get the scores up.

My response to them is, "You cannot get blood from a turnip!"

My fellow educators and I are working our butts off to do the very best job possible, but when you have students who are more interested in gang banging, sex, drugs and whatever entitlements they feel they deserve from the government, people who care cannot do much more than they already do.

We are fighting a culture that does not value education and in such a venue, immediate gratification is what they want; what they demand; what they expect.

In any case, I am back to posting whenever I can get my head above water.

My Lovely Bride and I commented the other day that retirement looks mighty good right now.

Time will only tell.

"I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's worth; banks are going bust; shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter; punks are running wild in the street, and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it.

We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat. And we sit watching our TVs while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be!

We all know things are bad -- worse than bad -- they're crazy.

It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out any more. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we're living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, "Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials, and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone."

Well, I'm not going to leave you alone.

I want you to get mad!

I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot. I don't want you to write to your Congressman, because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street.

All I know is that first, you've got to get mad.

You've gotta say, "I'm a human being, goddammit! My life has value!"

So, I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window, open it, and stick your head out and yell,

"I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!!" - Howard Beale in the movie "Network" -