Butt Phrases

 My latest posts have been pretty melancholy, angry, depressing, not to say suicidal, not to say apocalyptic... That's a weird uh what would you call it a writing conceit? Saying "not to say" when your meaning is what you just promised not to say. It reminds me of those but sayings like, "I don't wanna play hard ball..." "I don't wanna complain..." "I'm not one to cause trouble..." "I've never been one to focus on the negative..." You know the ones. They're all suffixed with "but" and then the very thing the speaker seemed to be promising against. And since those are all really just some of the voluminous devices our deceitful culture has conjured up through necessity to make talking out our asses easier, let's just call them what they REALLY are, shall we???? - BUTT phrases. 

That was not a trundle. I have not forfeited my time-out by losing a video replay. I reserve the right to go on my one trundle per post at a later point in this post. I may not, but I might. I still get to. Because the butt phrase is a genuine part of my topic today, or rather the foil to the main character of this post, as it were. Now there! I could go on a trundle about "as it were," a fairly disposable phrase we commonly attach... never mind. I'll keep my trundle in reserve for the late stages of this game when I might need it most.

So in case you feel concerned about me losing hope in humanity, removing myself from it, or worst of all - gasp! - discontinuing this blog, have no fear dear reader. My hope in humanity is re-confirmed daily in so many ways! In fact it so spectacularly illustrates the spirit of this post that ANY of us can skillfully stave off the flow of positivity with which we are daily bombarded! "Okay, now he's gone too far. Is he saying this ironically? Is it time to alert the Funny Farm?" Do we still send people to the Funny Farm or is that a phrase that has been erased? Dare I say "cancelled?" I think if anything it's a term that has more and more relevance as we march confidently and defiantly forward to personal and global backwardness. 

I say this because if there existed an actual Funny Farm, I have to believe its denizens would be none other than the happiest, and most likely the funniest (in both meanings of the word) people among us. I don't mean to be negative... [I DON'T, honestly! Look at the way I started this post! I'm shooting for a glass-half-full topic today!] BUTT, I can't be the only one who is aware of the countless ways our "society" forces us to be dull, dreary, robotic, stay-at-home, do-as-we're-told, compliant, anal retentive, BORING consumers, can I?

A little frog philosophy for you... 

So, what am I talking about? What are these things that we overlook/ignore all the time that might make us feel a bit cheerier as we slouch about our self-imposed wage slavery? Geez, yer gonna hafta bear with me. I'm not the best at positive posts. It's my spiritual goal to find a way to take joy in my suffering as I've posted before, and I'm doing my best to explain a few things that help me, I just, like most of us frogs in pots, am being slow boiled into opposing mentality. Okay, a few rapid fire examples of what I'm talking about: As trite as it sounds, if we should learn anything by the time we reach adulthood it's that we should never trust anyone, right? It's childish. Naïve. Simpleton sort of stuff. It's the kind of stinkin' thinkin' that gets you taken advantage of. And rightfully so! Who can blame the first person who sees your trusting nature and exploits it for personal gain? If he/she didn't do it, someone else would, right? It's just business... right? Kindness = weakness - RIGHT? This is how the frog water heat goes up.

I say all of those rodent shit phrases are so common BECAUSE they are wrong. We trust a million people a day. It's what keeps us from Armageddon. If you describe your dull, dreary, inhumanly routine daily grind I am confident you will see what I mean. If you don't... YOU are the next contestant on Who Wants To Go To The Funny Farm? Since I don't know your routine, I'll describe what I did yesterday. I woke up, got out of bed trusting the carpenters who built the floor of my apartment believing I would not fall through the floor, step on a nail that hasn't been hammered down, or something like that. I turn on the light and exhibit the same faith in the electrician. I suppose in Canada I am also trusting the makers of the building codes and their enforcers too. Walking to the kitchen-same trust. I fill a pot with water trusting that the water that comes out will be potable. (I don't have a kettle) I boil the water trusting the manufacturer of the stove and pot. I put coffee and cream in a cup with complete faith that I won't be poisoned. That's high faith in a LOT of people and a cow if you trace the coffee and cream from origin to cup. Any of those people could have tampered with my coffee or cream along the way, but they didn't. Or the cow. She could have had a bad day. I've said it before, when are cows going to revolt? We steal their milk, we steal their babies... She could have just said, "That's IT, I've had it! No more poisonless milk from me humans!" 

I can say the same for the hundreds of people in the supply lines of all the food I eat for breakfast not to mention the insulin I inject directly into my system. That's extremely intimate stuff! We put food and medicine directly into our systems! And other drugs. Some people trust their dealers. And let's face it, if you can trust them... Are we foolish to trust all these people? Are we insane? We MUST be!

I walk to work and it has given me a lot of faith in my refusal to give up on people in general. While I am walking with traffic, not even facing the motorists, I have yet to get run over by one of them. So far nobody has said, "Screw this life, I'm tired of it, but I'm not going out alone" just as they approached me walking to work oblivious to their pain and my impending death. So far that hasn't happened. Not only that, the vast majority give me a little extra room by steering around me leaving their lanes to do so in most cases. And I would say on more than fifty percent of my walks to work I have been offered rides by friends, co-workers, and absolute strangers! Two yesterday. I'm not lying. Trust me  :-)  I tell you, it does me just as much good as the exercise to see the kindness of everyday people. And I don't wanna put too fine a point on this... BUTT this is when most everyday people are at their very worst. You put a windshield in front of most people and it's a lot like putting a computer screen in front of them. They discard about half of their common courtesy. Am I right? Don't take it from me, take it from my favourite living comedian, Louis CK:

The more I listen to that guy the more I love that overweight, ginger, stained shirt wearing, masturbating mothafucka! At the Dolby. It's his most recent and maybe his best. He's the guy Oscar Wilde meant when he said, "If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh or they will kill you." You can't tell people they have road rage. But most of us have at least a little, no? Far be it from me to ruin comedy by analyzing it... BUTT is that what makes this so funny?

When did our culture become the stick-up-the-arse serious, defense mechanism laden spoilsports who can only admit to this voluntary state of being if a really funny joke is made about it? There's probably no anthropologist who can accurately trace its origin or progression, but it was not natural if you ask me. What we had before and what some cultures we call "primitive" have preserved in the face of global opposition... okay a little trundle. A mini one.

Do you suppose the word primitive suggests something from a time closer to the era of primates? I suppose it would be spelled primative if it did, but... Closer to monkeys? Maybe we should aspire to that. I don't know. Start by eating more bananas and regress little by little. 

Okay, trundle over. Now, take a look at this primitive little boy exhibiting primitive behavior. To be honest I was going to type "monkeyboy" but that's another example of our restrictive society. I didn't want to offend. Oh well it's out there now. If you want to believe I'm racist what do I care? 

What a weirdo eh? Now, if you're like me and well basted in the filthy western antisocial mistrust of others, you might be thinking something like, "Yeah, he's probably asking the cameraman to hold it while he finishes the other one." "The cameraman is probably the safest bet to not eat it while he's holding it for him." "Is that red lollipop smaller? Did he half finish it before handing it to the cameraman?" "He's just giving away the one he likes less." "Be careful little boy. How do you know the cameraman won't eat your red lollipop?" No? Just me? Am I that far gone?

I'm not a gambling man... BUTT if I were to bet on this pic, I'd say this is a little Zulu kid. Or at least an African kid practicing the Zulu Ubuntu philosophy. Yeah, another primitive, outdated, naïve, childish way of thinking. At least that's what most of the people in former Ubuntu cultures feel about it nowadays. "I am because we are." That is a rough translation of this silly old witchdoctor hocus pocus that could probably save our planet if it doesn't completely disappear. Read up on it, it's worth it. According to the article it's something that still exists in South Africa but is considered a bit of a dinosaur and a philosophy that is not compatible with modern life.

What do we have in North America that is similar? Hmmm.... I don't want to flog a dead horse... BUTT if there is one thing about native culture I wish we could revive it's the Wendigo philosophy. Natives of Canada and America believed (and rightly so) that the worst possible attribute, one that a person should be ashamed of and shunned if he/she had was selfishness. The Wendigo was a monster that personified insatiable greed. A MONSTER! Now insatiable greed is euphemistically called "upward mobility," "business savvy," "critical thinking," "street smarts," or some such positive sounding phrase. I remember  reading old books and Shakespeare plays in my salad days when I was studying literature and the word "ambitious" had a negative connotation. Ambition was that "lean and hungry look" in yon Cassius's eye. Member? The dude who hatched the plot to kill Caesar? But you'd scarcely find a villain more villainous than Richard III and ambition was his primary vice. It was uglier than him. This, my friends, is proper thinking. But what we have now is Wendigo psychosis. It's a positive we've turned into a negative. If you share like the little African boy, you're a psycho. Look it up. It's not really true. I just lied to you but look it up to make sure. Hee hee hee. Now you REALLY don't know what to believe.

But is our world a Wendigo apocalypse where there are only a few of us fighters with uncontaminated brains? I don't think so. That's the positive point I'm trying to make. I think we are being socialized to believe this sort of thinking should be reserved for the primitive, but I don't think we've abandoned it as thoroughly as our owners want us to. (The owners I've talked about in my latest posts)

So, I don't want to be a dimwit... BUTT consider this a red lollipop of philosophy I'm entrusting you with. People are not generally bad. We are good at heart and the world proves it every day. The monsters are the people who exploit the general kindness of people and while they are the ones who run this circus, they are not the norm. They are the zombies whose brains need a medical procedure you might call a cranial chainsawing. A cerebral axing. A shotgun encephalogram. Or maybe something a little less violent like people being nice to each other instead of being scared of each other or even worse, treating each other like possible patsies to exploit for personal gain.

I don't wanna preach... BUTT it's a thought...

Money From Nothing, Rodent Shit For Free

 When I got off the plane and set foot on my home and native ground in Vancouver Airport in March I needed phone service. The first thing I did after doing all the requisite information volunteering so that hundreds of agencies (and untold numbers of advertisers) know exactly where I am and what I'm doing at all times, was find a phone kiosk so I could get phone service and share all that same information with anyone who the airport immigration agents forget about. Also, I needed to call some folks.

The first thing I said when I made the mistake of getting Bell service on my phone was tell them I don't want any one-year or two-year contract. I have posted many times here how past phone service, gym membership, and cable hookup long-term scams have led to my opinion that they all should be illegal. The answer I got was surprisingly encouraging. The kiosk worker told me they weren't allowed to do that any more. I now know that they still DO whether they're allowed to or not, but at least a step in the right direction. 

However, ... there is still one group of people in Canada who still use the long-term scam maybe more than ever at without a doubt the worst TIME ever to do it. Can you think of who these scamsters are? You guessed it didn't you? Landlords. Here are a couple of stats for you: 1 in 4 Canadians can't cover an unexpected bill of $500. That's Statcan. Angus Reid Institute's independent research found that 51% of Canadians couldn't cover a $1000 unexpected bill. I don't remember a time when things have been worse for the poor half of this country and wonder if there has been one. We'll get to the big reason for that later. For now I wanna talk about my landlord, or really my landlord's father. I left a message with my landlord John who I talked with and did all the apartment business with. I still have never met his father. I tried to call John to let him know I am moving to Calgary and to work out what will happen with the lease, rent, damage deposit, tenants, and all that fun stuff. He didn't answer but I left him a message. I guess the father heard about the message and called me to inform me that I had committed to a one-year lease. While it IS possible, knowing me and how I loathe such things, plus the fact that I don't remember talking or reading about any such long-term commitment, compounded by the fact that my situation was nothing if not unstable and I related that to John in no uncertain terms, I have my doubts. 

Nevertheless, let's say I DID sign a one-year lease. What within the bounds of common sense and reason, does that put me on the hook for? I have paid 4 1/2 months of my 1400-dollar a month rent. I have 7-8 months left on my lease. That's about $11,200. In a country where the bottom half doesn't have an extra grand in the bank, mattress or cookie jar, in an apartment and location that will only attract members of that half of Canada, am I REALLY expected to be responsible for payment of the remainder of the year of rent because of a lease agreement? Let's call it what it is and illustrate why the Canadian government has (half-heartedly) cracked down on these things: What essentially is a one-year lease agreement? What are you forcing your tenant to do? Or at least what are you hoping your tenant will assume is their responsibility here? Am I supposed to believe I'm on the hook for 11 grand? Because of a lease which is in its mind boggling no shit essence an agreement for the lowly tenant to be held responsible for THE FUTURE in an economic climate in Canada where it has been more unpredictable than ever. This is why these horseshit long-term agreements shouldn't even be legal. Obviously nobody can predict the future. Even month-to-month it's hard to know for me and a lot of people in this country, how much money we will have and if it will be enough for rent.

Let me give you MY situation. I was hired to be a mobile security guard where I work. I haven't yet worked a shift by myself in the mobile truck because I don't yet have my driver's license. I failed twice because of BC politics more than anything. The fact is, the mobile job is a rip off and I never wanted to do such a complicated, stressful job for 18 bucks an hour. So it was a blessing in disguise failing twice. Now that I have put in my notice and my last day will be Sept. 1, I will have worked 4 1/2 months without ever doing a shift at the position I was hired for. Hee hee! However, because I'm just being thrown into whatever spots they can find whatever shifts they can find, I have a highly irregular schedule! I can work one shift one week and 7 the next. I can work weeks where I have to switch back and forth from midnights to day shifts two or three times. I never have a week that doesn't require at least one sleep changeover. With my home situation where sleep is hard to get at the best of times, and a company perilously close to losing the contract at Teck where I work, it's an employment and living situation that is unsustainable. Certainly not for an entire year. The point here that I am forced to make only because of the asinine acceptance that has been entrenched into the Canadian culture of the suspension of reality in which businessmen and women regularly, voluntarily and KNOWINGLY engage, is that nobody could have foreseen this. So can anyone tell me why the flaming fuck we allow anyone to exploit and cash in on the (ever increasing) uncertainty of the future? Unbelievably, I am getting to a far more jaw-dropping example of this very suspension of reality we engage in to allow our owners to steal our money. And it's worldwide. Wait for it. It's a doosey. 

I was told when I was hired by Safety Net Security that I'd start at 18 bucks an hour but after training it would go up to 20 or so and there were contract negotiations underway that were going to include a more substantial raise for all employees. I remember saying to John the landlord on the phone before I took the apartment and before I had even met him, "I could end up going on strike before I even start work!" I expected some instability but NOTHING compared to what the Fates orchestrated. As of today there has been no raise. EVERYBODY is mad because they've had this rubber carrot waved in front of them for longer than the 4 1/2 months I've foolishly believed the people I work for. We've gone through iterations of the raise story that have included statements as vague as "It could be 2, 5, maybe even 10 dollars an hour," to "The raise will be applied retroactively to every hour you've worked for the company since the contract was being negotiated." But every check we open with the anticipation of a child at Christmas time still has an 18 in the hourly wage column. People are leaving. This week one guy worked his last shift and another just blew off three shifts at the last minute. He likely won't get fired because the company is losing employees faster than they can hire new ones. Their reaction to this mass exodus has been to punish the workers with more tedious and unnecessary duties rather than reward us with more money. Make the situation worse much?

To put the cherry on top, this week an ad was found for a job that pays 25 bucks an hour, that's 7 dollars an hour more. The job is much easier than main gate or mobile positions at the site where I work too. It also included some nice benefits. We don't get any where I am working. Guess what company posted the ad. You guessed right again, didn't you? Safety Net Security. The reaction to this news could be, "Well now they're SURE to give us the raise!" I think, however, the more likely reaction will be a song I was absent-mindedly whistling on one of my walks home. It has been hot here and the mobile or a guard going to work has driven me to Teck 2 or my 3 shifts this week. At 6 PM it was 41 and 38 degrees the last two days. But at 6 AM it's a nice high teen temperature in which to walk home. The middle shift, the day it was 41, I started out on my walk whistling mindlessly. I do that while I walk. It wasn't till I was well down the highway before I clued into what song I had been whistling. "Take This Job and Shove It." I had a good chuckle at that! The next day I tendered my resignation a little less lyrically but quite a bit more professionally.

I would be gobsmacked if this company retains the contract for the duration of what would have been my one-year lease period. So in reality, my leaving is saving the landlord from having an unemployed tenant whose job disappeared because of bad management. This unpredictability of the job market can understandably be a source of stress and lease breaking for landlords. I get it. They don't like people leaving early. But on the other hand, it has created a situation in which there are a LOT of people without apartments so there will be no problem at all finding replacements for lease breakers. I had two co-workers tell me they know lots of people who would be interested in my apartment while at work yesterday. The mobile driver who drove me offered to take the lease himself. But I got home and talked to Fred, my roommate, figuring he should get the first crack at assuming the lease and he jumped at the chance. He doesn't want to move. 

I gave him the offer the landlord's father was not happy with: One month's notice and you can take my payment for next month's rent out of my damage deposit. That way he doesn't have to give me back the whole thing. It gives him a full month to find a roommate and in this market even a guy with a noisy, unfixed, male cat can find a roommate. So Fred will talk to John and his father this week. It'll be like Fred becomes me and the new person becomes Fred. There will be nothing lost by anyone but me. I'll be paying half a month's rent for a month I won't likely be here. I'll probably move to Calgary in early Sept.

So what was all the fuss about? I hate to say it but this is what Canada has become. Everybody's first instinct seems to be "How can I get money here that I don't deserve? How can I screw my fellow man?" The old first instinct of, "How can I work this out reasonably and equitably?" seems to have been lost in the pandemic. Maybe before that. I dunno, I wasn't here.

Now the other thing. You've heard about the central bank system but have you ever looked into it? It's not something that we teach in schools or talk about at social functions much. What do average people really know about it? It's something that has come up more since the pandemic and I thought that since I have no studying to do this week (master's course 7 is in the books) I'd use the vast reserves of information on the internet for something more educational than what I more commonly use it for. 

A few more quick stats for ya: All the money in Canada that ever existed in any form, coin, bill, electronic account entries, all that money... the Bank of Canada created more than that in the last 3 years. 

I think I've posted this vid before but it bears a repost:

Watch it. Seriously, watch it! I command you! It explains an awful lot. Now I don't know who this guy is or if he knows what he's talking about but at the rate I've seen banking officials scrambling to assure the public that they don't just print money out of thin air, I'm convinced that they print money out of thin air. This guy says before 2020 there was 100 billion in Canada. In 2022 there was 500 bil. Today, who knows? He also explains how printing money will disrupt the many years of steady interest rates in Canada that have not had much effect on mortgage payments when they had to be refinanced every 5 years. NOW if the interest rates go up significantly, which printing money always leads to, people's mortgage payments could go from 1000 to 3000. Member that extra grand that half of Canada doesn't have just hanging around? How about an extra TWO grand every month? This will cause the titular housing market crash or the "bubble bursting" that has been expected for a while. 

But if you're like me you've thought more than a thousand times, "Who are these people with the power to just pull money out of their asses? Did we vote them into their positions? Can anyone out there name even one of them? How about for the major international central banks in Europe, Japan and the US? Can you name any of these people with BY FAR the most power in the entire world? Well, I have a photo of them all. Here it is:

They are the tailors selling us emperors invisible clothes. It's not often we get compared to emperors, but in this case it's because of our astounding capacities to accept pure bullshit! Wait a minute here, it's time for a trundle.

Why does the bull get blamed for its shit so often? We talk about bullshit like it's the most toxic substance on the planet. I mean I just did it myself. This whole concept is immeasurable degrees of latitude beyond the toxicity of bullshit! I used "horseshit" above but even it is not bad. Bull shit is good fertilizer. It helps humanity. Same with horseshit. I'm not going to vilify the ability of central banks to create money nearly enough by calling it bullshit. What animal has the most toxic shit? How bout batshit, as in batshit crazy? Apparently bat scat can cause a lung infection called histoplasmosis. It's pretty toxic. Raccoon shit can contain roundworm eggs and can lead to irreversible brain, heart and eye damage. Ewww! Hippo shit sprayed in the water kills lots of people and aquatic life every year. Ever see a hippo shit? It's really cool the way they fan it out with their tails. But what animal's feces would be more suitable to describe the central bankers' secret power that is so toxic to the world that they don't want us to know about it and lie constantly about it? You've probably guessed this one too haven't you? How about rodent shit? Now I will say that The Plague and the Bubonic Plague - a specific type of the plague, were more commonly caused by fleas carried by rats and most commonly fleas carried BY PEOPLE, there are some deadly diseases like Hantavirus, Salmonellosis, and Rat Bite Fever caused by rodents and their droppings. They say wheat can contain 9 rodent poop pellets per kilo before the FDA bans it. So let's go with that shall we? Okay trundle over.

The ability of central banks to create money from nothing is rodent shit! But what gets MY nutsack into a triple twist is when they try AND SUCCEED to convince us that the central banks do this to HELP HUMANITY! You may believe they lend money to small countries to encourage industry and improvement in those countries. Yeah. Talk to the citizens of those countries and it's more like giving them loans they can never possibly repay to entrap them into endless labor largely characterized by exporting vast amounts of the small country's assets, resources and money to the lending countries represented by the central bank. You might be thinking, "Aren't you talking about the IMF?" I am. They are a central bank. But before we get too deep into this, we should learn a little about the corruption and rodent shit from whence central banks arose.

Here's Joeri, a guy who did something similar to me and ended up with the same unsurprised disappointment as I did. Sweden started it, England corrupted it and the US perfected it. On Jekyll Island! I'm not making that up. There's a book I wanna read called "The Creature From Jeckyll Island" about the Fed. It's not as good as the book, but here's a GREAT but long vid to watch:

The name "Jekyll Island" makes me think of slightly more sinister people attending the meeting. Like: 

So maybe the bankers that rip us all off and I call "our owners" because that's what George Carlin called them, have names like Mr. Pink, Mr. Blonde or whatever.

And here's some origin history:

So let's get back to the creating money from nothing, what Griffin named the Mandrake Mechanism after the famous magician. How can you do it without being detected? The old "baffle them with rodent shit" ploy. Think up some fancy jargon that people will either think they are too dumb to understand and believe you when you use it, or they will understand that you are feeding them rodent shit at which point you simply tell them they're too unsophisticated to understand. There's a term you've probably heard called "quantitative easing." What exactly IS it? Well the official explanation is when a central bank purchases government bonds or other financial assets to stimulate economic activity. Two questions: 1. Where do they get the money to do this, and 2. who do they buy bonds and other assets from? Answers: 1. They just make it out of Shakespeare's "thin air" and 2. Pretty exclusively banks, governments, and large corporations. Us regular folk can't sell bonds on ourselves can we? It might look something like this and we'd probably be thrown in prison if we tried:

Yet, this is MORE legit than the central bank money because it was created from SOMETHING, not nothing. Are you getting what I mean by the suspension of reality I mentioned us all performing?

Now, maybe a better question, How do the banks, governments and corporations pay the loans back? Have you ever known ANY of these three entities to EVER pay ANYTHING back? Of course not! Oh they could. They absolutely could. But why when you can pass it on to dummies like us the general public? Hence the uproarious laughter in the central banker portrait above. 

Financial experts constantly talk about these things like they are acceptable inevitabilities. These three entities do them like knee-jerk reactions so they pretty much ARE. When they are struggling (and don't let that term mislead you. The financial big league members' ways are not our ways. What they call "struggling" is making a few billion less than they did the year before. "Hey central bank, we could use some "stimulation of economic activity" over here!") The central bank loans billions to banks, governments and corporations and like clockwork interest rates, taxes, and prices go up respectively. That way us dummies pay back their emergency loans from the central banks.

Ummmmmmmm.... has anybody noticed interest rates, taxes and prices going up?

Why, we might ask. Covid. Supply chain. Ukraine war. 

RODENT SHIT!!! It's just pure greed run amok in our culturally entrenched central bank systems. You guys should see what happens to countries that DON'T opt for the central banking system. But this post is already too long. Maybe I'll save that for another day.

Ever feel like you've been lane 4ed?

 It's week 8 (the last week) of my 7th course in my master's degree and here's how I'm feeling:

and 

In the immortal words of Inigo Montoya, "Let me splain. No, is too much. Let me sum up." This week's topic was technology in education. If ever you want to see an overblown, overpromoted, bandwagon to jump on, plus an easy week for almost every course of the 7 courses I've taken so far, it's technology and how it's the wave of the future in education. Well, as one of the sources we read THIS WEEK included in its well-written wisdom, "Technology in education is the revolution that has been just around the corner for decades and it's still just around the corner." We have started just saying it has arrived in education programs and TED Talks and academically influential places, ostensibly in hopes of hastening it, but realistically classrooms have not kept up with the technological revolution outside the classrooms and there are good reasons why. I am getting a little tired of reading about and hearing about how the reason schools are not fully high-tech already is slow-to-adapt teachers. Teachers who are used to the old ways. Teachers who are uncomfortable with change. That has not been my experience personally, nor have I seen these Luddite teachers. The teachers I know are trying hard to implement technology, we just haven't found it to be superior in many ways. That's all. We are not in need of "professional development." 

How many ways has the underappreciated teacher been patronized, disrespected, and (fake well) underappreciated? I HATE that I get jobs all the time (like the one I'm doing now) that require professional training because there are job duties that the worker needs to understand that could be incredibly important, but management says, "Ahh we'll just let the workers we've hired do the training. How hard can teaching be?" I can't tell you all the crucial parts of my training at this job, and many others, my trainers have neglected to teach me. Now this may not just be oversight or bad teaching, it can sometimes be that they don't WANT to lose their indispensability by teaching another worker something the company depends on only them to know. It's a common problem in security. "When this alarm goes off we have to call so and so cuz she's the only one who knows what to do." This is not a joke. Can you see how stupid that is? But it happens. A LOT of places settle for bad training.

Then I see this crap about technology being slowed in education because the teachers just don't understand education. That burns my arse! When will these asshole administrators start trusting the teachers and stop making them beg for their doggie treats and say, "Yes, master. We LOVE computers in our classrooms. We love tablets and smartphones. They are NOT distractions! We never have tech problems. Technology is superior, dependable, and better than us mere humans." It's almost like somebody somewhere WANTS technology in the classrooms of the world for some reason. Maybe because they feel machines can make the students better machines while us human teachers make them better humans? We'll put a pin in that.

I'd like to tell you I had faith in this class I am taking right now and its students having the balls to NOT be the begging dogs described above in this week's discussion assignment, but I fully expected it. And at the risk of losing a few points because peer evaluators think that giving good grades to a paper that doesn't echo the above mantra might cost THEM marks, I played the Devil's advocate. And, what a surprise, this is the first week I didn't receive a perfect 10/10 on my discussion post grade. However!!! Even though EVERY other student's discussion post was a big sloppy tongue kiss for technology, I received a few comments (at the deadline of course when it was impossible for anyone to respond to them or for the commenters to lose any marks for making them) saying that they were with me. This is how teachers need to reject technology from the shadows. Meanwhile all the education programs are cramming it down our throats and we want those degrees, we NEED those degrees, so it's in our best interest to choke it down. 

Why do we need those degrees? Take a look at the Somali child of privilege above running her 22-second hundred meter. The niece of the Somali national athletics federation chairwoman reportedly. The majority of the people reading this post (and the writer) could run a faster 100 meter! I feel like we've all applied for jobs that we were perfect for and didn't even get the old PFO (please fuck off) letter in response. I am sitting here with my BA in English Lit, 7/10ths of a master's in education, 25 years of ESL teaching experience and there's a place up in Fort St. John called the FSJ Literacy Society looking for someone to teach ESL to new Canadians who have settled there and for political reasons who are they gonna hire? Lane 4 baby! Sprinter number 4! There's a similar society right here in Trail. I live just upstairs for crying out loud! I applied and actually got in touch with a person, but, to make a long story short, they lane 4ed me. I have been applying to teach ESL in the local Selkirk College here in Castlegar from overseas and from right HERE. Ghosted for years! Lane 4ed for two decades!

We've all been there haven't we? How many of us have never looked at someone and thought, "How did that dunce get that job?" Come on now, you KNOW the obvious example I never turn down. If I'm understanding things correctly in just the most recent indictment of the idiot his own mother (never) said would be a disaster in politics, he is trying to say that he didn't understand his oath of office? He can't be indicted for crimes he committed while president because he is too stupid to be president essentially? Is this what he's trying to say? I think this is what he's trying to say. It rivals the absurdity of the "The president cannot be impeached because he's president" argument associated with him. Remember that gem? Whipped up by liar - I mean lawyer Bill Barr (who should never have passed the bar) who had formerly argued the exact opposite. Of course you don't remember. These things don't stay around long enough to be significant all at the same time or SOMETHING MIGHT BE DONE! Can't have something done can we? 

If I were not a "slow to adapt" teacher in need of "professional development," I might be better at video editing and I would put a little Trump head on the body of the Somali sprinter to make a new, even more hilarious video. Can you picture that all you Americans reading this who got lane 4ed from 2017-2021? 

At any rate, the prostitution quote... I feel like a bit of a whore sometimes buying into the hypocrisy of the master's degree I am taking. First of all, anyone who has taught as long as I have and is NOT a master of education already is probably the sprinter from lane 4. It's an unnecessary piece of paper. But it's made necessary by the hypocrisy that is the education job market. In order to avoid getting lane 4ed so frequently, I "need" this piece of paper. The thing of it is, even with this advanced degree, there's no guarantee I'll be employable enough to land a good job in education. I might have to get a doctorate! Feed the monkey even more!

That's how I'm feeling right now folks. But this down in the dumps post might have a happy irony in its conclusion. My sister is coming over from Calgary for the August long weekend. It's Terry Fox Day or BC Day or whatever the frig. Nobody cares cuz it's a long weekend in August! I think it's most commonly CALLED "August long weekend." Anyhoo, I think I'm gonna hitch a ride back with Jenn. While in Calgary I will visit some other family members, consider getting a place there (maybe even renting a room in my sister's new place), and investigate a few job leads there exactly NONE of which will be aided in any way by my education.

It's a long shot but there is ANOTHER chance for employment in, of all places, Fort St. John, and at least a place to stay with my long time buddy Ed. He and his girl have offered me a place to crash while looking up there and from what he is telling me, I could get some work that will pay exponentially more than any job I've ever had. All unaided by the 25 years of teaching or the, what, 9 years or so of post-secondary prostitution I've participated in. Unless I go into the Literacy Society and "outsprint" the person they've chosen for that job. Okay this metaphor might be wearing a little thin. But let's use it in the next paragraph just one more time...

As far as my education is concerned, I feel like it's yet another area where I've been lane 4ed. But, I have already passed course 7 and registered for course number 8. If I get work in Calgary or Frozen John, I'll probably just abandon the friggin master's degree cuz I won't have the time for it. But I guess we'll blow up THAT bridge when we get all the charges set, eh?

More news as events warrant.