My sister-in-law (who once bought me a “Shaun of the Dead” style cricket bat for zombie-bashing) gave me my Christmas present a bit early:

“It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Zombies!” There are even recipes!

Plus, you know you want some other sweet swag. Check it out.

 

The Madness starts, for us, at 5:45 AM. (Well, for G-veg it often starts at 4:45 — but he is just all kinds of crazy and a natural morning person.)

G-veg tends to sing the kids awake — usually some form of “Rise and Shine!” (I tend to favor violent removal of covers,  loud noises and “Wakey, wakey! Eggs and Baccy!”) Once everyone is up, I head for the shower. G-veg feeds everyone breakfast. By the time I am out of the shower and dressed, working on hair and make-up, the older two spawn are straggling upstairs to don uniforms and start squabbling over trivialities.

There is always much jockeying for sink position in the Teeth-brushing Derby. Elbows are often thrown.

By 6:40, everyone is breakfasted, washed, brushed and dressed, and downstairs. The squabbling often continues.  The upper reaches of the house are dark and quiet, which means the three cats select their beds and settle in for the Early Morning Nap. (To be followed, of course, by Mid-morning and then Late-morning Naps, with brief periods of snackage and Boxing Kitties interspersed.)

At 7:05, we walk Bear to the corner bus stop.  The bus comes between 7:10 and 7:15.  She gets three kisses (Mommy, Shark and Biscuit) and we wave to her bus as it pulls away. We go home and settle  in to some “Phineas and Ferb” for forty-five minutes.

At 8, we saddle up again and walk Shark to the same corner to catch his bus. He generally wrassles around with another Kindergarten boy. The bus comes at five after; he gets two kisses (Mommy and the Biscuit) and we wave his bus away, as well.

Once Biscuit and I get home, I do the breakfast dishes and throw in a load of laundry (there’s always at least one load to go in) and she enjoys Second Breakfast.

On days when I don’t have to make it in to the Uni for office hours or morning classes, we have a relaxed routine. If there are any errands to be run, we hop in the truck and make our rounds.  Otherwise, we make the blogrounds, watch a bit of “Sesame Street,” and play for a while. Usually this involves cranking the iTunes and shaking our booties. This morning, it was logging in to the University server and sending out a round of student warning e-mails (“The end of semester is three weeks away. Woe betide you!”)

If I do have to teach, Biscuit goes to “school” — her  play group — for three hours. Then we pick up our lunch routine, which is a story for another (boring) day.

This will pick up in the next week or so, once it actually penetrates student’s skulls that yes, Virginia, final grades DO come out soon,  and yes, you must see your advisor before registration for spring. Extra office hours will be scheduled and disregarded, students who can’t count to eleven without removing their pants to find extra digits will suddenly become grad-school level mathematicians trying to calculate their grades, and drama will abound.

If you are writing your final argumentative essay on drug legalization, at no point should you refer to yourself as “an amateur pharmacist” or “pharmaceutical enthusiast.” Declaring your intent to major in chem to create your own designer drugs as  a potential path to future wealth is questionable.

Nor should you bring your four-foot high, multi-colored glass bubbler-bong to class as a visual aid — no matter “how sweet this bitch pulls!” Ditto on the rolling papers, clever stash box, and any other paraphenalia. I am also less than enthused in the reviews offered of various head shops downtown and the wares they purvey.

Offering to hand out samples or hook admiring classmates up is also verboten.

Good God.

Please to remember the fifth of November- Gunpowder treason and plot!

I see no reason that Gunpowder treason Should ever be forgot.

Back in 1605, Guy Fawkes and a gang of conspirators tried to blow up King James I of England/VI of Scotland by piling barrels of gunpowder under the Houses of Parliament.  Go sit around a bonfire, eat a toffee apple and burn off some fireworks!

Yo, Beerman. Get on this, will you?

The Bear attends an all-girls private school. She has to catch a bus that takes her to a transfer point, and then switch buses to travel to the school. For the last three years, I have opted to drive her to the transfer station — it gave her a few extra minutes of sleep. THIS year, she decided that she was a Big Girl, and she wanted to ride the two buses. Normally, this is an easy process; her bus stop is right out the front door.

Her bus forget her this morning. So at 7:05, we waited. And waited. And waited. At 7:25, I called the district transport office, and inquired: “Are the buses running today? Was there an accident, or something?” I gave her bus number and was put on hold for about fifteen minutes.

Dude rings back over. “Her driver flaked and forgot that part of the route. She’s the only rider at that end of town, so she skipped her. She will be right back!”

“OK, but…her other bus leaves transfer at 7:35 — what are y’all going to do, leave her to wander the parking lot?”

“Wait a tick,” and I was on hold again.

Eventually, the transport wonk explained that Bus Driver would finish her run, and then drive Bear up to school. Bear would end up being about 45 minutes late…they would call the school.

I expressed my extreme displeasure, and called Bear’s school to explain the sitch. The Secretary put Sr. Two-chair on. I explained the whole story, and indicated that I could drive Bear in myself, but that my class did not start until 10, so Bear would be very late if I did so. Sr. Two-chair told me to put her on the bus, and that she would call the district, speak to the driver, and handle things personally.

A note on Sr. Two-chair. “Two-chair” is short for “Two-chair Pierre.” Sister is the sweetest, most low-key and soft-spoken person imaginable — all the little girls adore her. Unless, of course,  you piss her off. Then she becomes a Mama Bear defending her cubs. Word is that she was drafted by the Chicago Bears, but that Ditka found her a wee bit too intimidating for his defensive line. Sr. Two-chair will stomp a mudhole in your ass, walk it dry twice, and then say a Rosary for your broken ass. I wouldn’t fuck with her, and I am not easily intimidated.

Bus Driver picks up Bear and apologizes profusely.  I acknowledged, and then I gave an evil grin. “Sr. Two-chair will be waiting to take Bear in to class. Bus Driver blanched visibly and quailed. “Sr….Two-chair? I’m screwed.”

“Yeah. Two hundred pounds of pissed-off nun is going to chew you out. Have a nice day!”

A half-hour later, Sr. Two-chair called me to let me know that Bear had arrived safely, and none the worse off — and that she would not be marked tardy for the day. (This was Bear’s main upset — to be marked late when it wasn’t her fault! The horror!) She also indicated that she had spoken to the Bus Driver and…”I’m sure we’ll not have any further such issues. We reached an understanding!”

I’ll just bet.

Our class starts at 10:15 AM. I put my kids on their respective buses and come straight to class, with a pause to grab a cup of coffee and check in with colleagues and the department secretary. As I state in class (and on the syllabus) I rarely check e-mail right before class.  E-mailing me at 12:37 AM the day of class, and then bitching that I did not get back to you before class is ridiculous. You had two weeks to work on the paper, starting at 11 PM the night before it’s due makes you an idiot.

*~*~*~*~*~*

If I assign a 500-word essay and you and your roommate turn in the exact same word-for-word assignment, I am going to bust your ass for plagiarism. No, you do not share a psychic link with roomie, nor will, “we didn’t realize we were copying each other, but we work in the same room and think aloud and we must have just heard each other and not realized we were writing down the same sorts of things” fly as an excuse. Suck failpipe.

*~*~*~*~*~*

Colleague: I understand that you do not want to get up extra-early for office hours.  Frankly, neither do I. However, it’s not cricket to tell your students “Prof. Cranky will be in her office — if you have any questions, pop in and ask her,” or “I’ll leave your papers with Prof. Cranky — stop by her office and pick them up!” First of all, give me some advance warning so I can add an extra shot of bourbon to my coffee. Secondly, if you’re going to tell them that I have their papers, it would be nice if you actually GAVE them to me to distribute. Now they’re justifiably pissed at you,  and I think you’re an even bigger asshole than I did before.

*~*~*~*~*~*

“Glaciers are melting at the North Pole because heat rises!” Get the fuck out of my classroom. Right God damned now.

*~*~*~*~*~*

Asian student: “Can we write the paper in a different language? Like…does it have to be in English? I want to try to write mine in Mandarin.”
Cranky Prof: “Setting aside that this is an English composition class…I have to be able to read it, in order to grade it.”

Asian student: “So…no, then? Are you sure? That’s not very multicultural.”

*~*~*~*~*~*

“So, like, where did they hang the Iron Curtain? I mean, it must have been a really strong rod, right? Why were the countries so poor if they had all that metal?”

Brash Bryce is, sadly enough, a typical student. He is making his second run at a college education, having partied himself out of his first institution of higher education. “I made some poor choices,” he’ll say with an earnest smile, “But this time, I am ready to take my education seriously!”

He will tell other students that they are “responsible for their own education, and no one can do it for them,” and to “not lose sight of that GPA!”

He is great at talking the talk — he can spout all the platitudes and go through all the motions — but he’s not walking the walk at all.

It’s a shame, because I had fairly high hopes for him back in August and September. He started strong; attending every class and writing lab, seeing the writing tutors for extra help, participating in class. It’s just that as the semester wore on, he lost interest and slacked off. The siren calls of beer pong and the sticky icky waylaid him. He’s migrated downwards from a solid, middle-of-the-road “B” to a going-to-have-to-take-this-again “C-” in record time. A string of highly suspect illnesses (including TWO bouts with the Hinny) culminated in a meeting in which he was told that, statistically speaking, there’s no way he’s going to pass and he’s going to have to register for the same 100-level writing course in the spring. (He can’t progress with his other writing core classes until he passes the prereq.)

Counseling him on the matter has done no good. “I know — I’ve been letting my classwork go,” he’ll say. “I promise to do better! I’m really ready to make a serious go of this!”

Yeah, right.

In the spring of 1964, a young woman was stabbed to death while an entire neighborhood listened and did nothing. Her attacker left, and came back to sexually assault her and stab her again — and at least a dozen people witnessed this left her to die like a dog because they “did not want to get involved,” or assumed that someone else would take care of the matter.

Last weekend, a fifteen-year-old girl was gang-raped over the course of two hours. Her peers cheered her attackers on, took cell phone pictures, and wandered in and out of the “party” — no one called the cops and no one intervened to save her. She had to be airlifted to the hospital, in critical condition, when someone finally DID call the police. The fact that these verminous hyenas engaged in such brutal behavior without a thought to consequences is absolutely chilling. It speaks to a callous, psychopathic disregard for humanity.

No one seems to have the stones to address the root cause of this.

We live in a society that continually bombards our children with violence and sex. Thongs for toddlers, Baby Bratz, sexy pimp and hooker costumes for ten-year-olds,  appearance over substance, violent rap music that encourages and glorifies the degradation of women. we sell our daughters on the idea that sexy gets attention, and sell our sons on the notion that girls are disposable eye-candy.

We also live in a society in which parenting — actual, hands-on, discipline your kids, don’ t be their friend parenting — is sorely out of fashion. By all means, make sure they have Grand Theft Auto and a new iPod, but God forbid you interact with them on any level. Make sure they take their prozac and their ritalin, but don’t talk to them.

Rape, we are told, is not about sex — it’s about power and violence and domination. How do  kids who grow up steeped in a culture that twists the two together in every way ever manage to isolate them?

Respect for women? A lot of teens have no respect for other people in general, or for themselves!

Sadly, this will play out in typical fashion. The perpetrators will be portrayed as “good kids who just got out of control,” egged on by the mob mentality. The girl in question will be dragged through the mud and re-victimized by the media, who will play up any sexual history she might have had and her alcohol consumption.  As many people witnessed the event, eventually the pictures and videos will start surfacing, on the internet. Hey, maybe we’ll even get Whoopi to tell us that it wasn’t “rape-rape!”

Where the Hell are we headed? How did we get to this place, as a society? And what is going to fix it?