CSotD: Truth hurts. You should probably laugh.
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I know the feeling, Miles. Today’s Crabgrass (AMS) is not an issue of being intelligent, but, rather, an issue of paying attention, being reasonably skeptical and having a good memory. Ernest Hemingway, who worked as a reporter, said writers should have a built-in BS detector, which is true, and Morey Amsterdam, who was noted for being able to spout a relevant gag on the spot, said a comedian didn’t need to be clever so much as to have a good memory.
When you can combine Ernest Hemingway and Morey Amsterdam to make a point, you can clock out and go home, but I’ll stick around and dispense a few more “actuallys.”
For example, Greg Kearney offers this commentary on a scandal in Cape Elizabeth, Maine, that is so completely stupid that it actually belongs in People’s Court, so that Judge Wapner could dispense justice Bloom County style:
The school district has its panties in a knot because parents — some parents, the dishonest, cheating parents — were keeping kids old tests and class notes and passing them along to younger siblings. The school sent out a letter telling parents not to do that, that it isn’t fair.
What isn’t fair — and is normally seen as a symptom of teacher burnout — is using the same tests and trotting out the same old lesson plans year after year.
Good teachers continually revise their lesson plans and update their tests. Maybe outsiders who think teachers only work the half a year they’re physically in the classroom don’t understand that, but to hear educators whine about not being able to use recycled materials is astonishing and not in a good way.
I note, as a graduate of a NYS school, that there is a publisher who specializes in books of old Regents tests, and not only did we buy them ourselves, but we were often assigned to study them by our teachers. The questions changed each year, but the fundamental curricula were constant.
New York tests statewide for subject matter knowledge in a number of subject areas. It protects kids from incompetent history teachers, for example, who only get as far as the Civil War by June. Here’s the short-answer part of the exam I had to pass. See how you do on it.
Meanwhile, the problem at Cape Elizabeth comes from the other end of the hickory stick.
On a gentler note, I laughed at this Benjamin Schwartz cartoon, which I suspect was offered in a spirit of camaraderie with parents of young kids. I was in charge of bedtime when the boys were little and it morphed into a variety show that involved puppet shows, songs and comedy acts, with the read-aloud chapter at the end being a cool-down period. And god help me if I tried to skip a single element.
Drawn-out? Oh yes indeed. Wouldn’t trade a second of it.
I was relieved to see, among the tributes to David Lynch, this wiseass commentary from Francisco Marciuliano, because just a few days before Lynch died, I had been discussing “Tale of Two Cities,” which, as I’ve mentioned here, I just finished reading.
I said that it was clear that, while Dickens had the basic skeleton in mind, as he serialized the story in magazines, he was making it up as he went along. Which I compared to Twin Peaks, which I gave up on when it became clear that Lynch was making it up as he went along but didn’t have a basic skeleton in mind and was just riffing.
Which is okay. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, and though his plot wandered off, at least he stuck with it. Which was better than when Mel Brooks got When Things Were Rotten started but then wandered off himself whereupon it totally collapsed, leaving behind naught but a catchy theme song.
Juxtaposition of the Day
Just guessing, but I suspect I’m not the only person trying to get a budget set for the coming year and trimming away some unwanted expenses as part of that. I’ve managed to cancel a couple of subscriptions, but there’s one lurking out there that auto-renews and that I’m having trouble even finding.
One that I had canceled called me back and offered six months for a dollar if I’d re-up. I figured the kid needed a few victories, so I agreed on the condition that they notify me before they auto-renew at $27.95 a month. I guess we’ll see, but I hope I did something good for his budget, however it turns out for mine.
I’ve noticed while there are a few places that at least ask why you’re bailing out, there aren’t nearly so many anymore that wheedle and beg and try to get you to stay on. It’s probably a result of off-shoring customer service, since your subscription doesn’t matter much to some girl in Bangalore who is being judged by how many calls she handles per hour rather than how any of them turn out.
Which reminds me that one paper I worked for outsourced customer service to the Philippines, so if someone called because they hadn’t gotten their paper, the guy at the other end of the line had no idea what the neighborhood looked like or whether they had a carrier in the area who could swoop by in a few minutes, the way local customer service reps used to.
I could hear them at the next directors’ meeting, bragging about how much they saved by shutting down their call center and then puzzling over the number of cancellations they were getting.
You learn to shut up in those meetings rather than piss off people who outrank you, but it’s an effort.
And speaking of idiots in high places …
I ran across a column in the Guardian by Rebecca Shaw, whom I had never heard of but whose takedown of these over-self-rated man-babies made me want to fly to Sydney, marry her and have her children.
Though Constant Readers will note that there are several other Aussie women whose work frequently gets cited here. I was once under the impression that Australian men were so reflexively sexist that the wimmenfolk were, as a result, doomed to passivity.
Apparently it just toughens them up.
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