The guy in the chair in the snow.

I was about 30 seconds late for hall duty - my class had run over by a couple of minutes and I needed to secure the machine shop where I taught. When I got to my "post" near the cafeteria, I saw someone sitting in a folding chair in the parking lot outside the building. It was snowing lightly. It was one of the Driver's Ed teachers, and he had a light jacket draped over him. The jacket covered the knife that was stuck in his back just below the left scapula. He was waiting for the ambulance while a couple of colleagues tried to keep him calm.

I bring this up in light of the recent calls for arming teachers, locking down schools, and somehow keeping everybody safe from the pervasive violence in our desperately ill society.

The incident occurred a long time ago in a Chicago suburb. Our school had an armed police officer. Our students had to enter and exit only through designated doors. We had full time hall monitors, The students had to show their IDs to enter the building, and upon demand by staff. Any backpack or bag a student carried had to be a see-through variety. All teachers had to perform 1/2 period of hall duty every day. None of this security prevented a student from bringing a stolen knife to school and attacking a teacher for giving him a failing grade.

Security didn't prevent this assault. Society didn't prevent this assault. A kid who was frantic and obviously short in the planning department somehow believed that he would solve some truly insurmountable personal problem by committing an act that guaranteed him housing in a jail. How desperate is that?

How desperate are we to think that we can solve the problems of society by focusing on symptoms and not causes?

The teacher was not gravely injured - at least not physically.

Gift Wrapping Tips for Men

(Stolen from a good source)

GIFT WRAPPING TIPS FOR MEN
==========================

This is the time of year when we think back to the very first Christmas when the Three Wise Men: Gaspar, Balthazar and Herb went to see the baby Jesus; and according to the Book of Matthew, "presented unto Him gifts; gold, frankincense, and myrrh."

These are simple words, but if we analyze them carefully, we discover an important, yet often overlooked, theological fact. There is no mention of wrapping paper.

If there had been wrapping paper, Matthew would have said so: "And lo, the gifts were inside 600 square cubits of paper. And the paper was festooned with pictures of Frosty the Snowman. And Joseph was going to throweth it away, but Mary saideth unto him, she saideth, 'Holdeth it! That is nice paper! Saveth it for next year!' And Joseph did rolleth his eyeballs. And the baby Jesus was more interested in the paper than the frankincense."

But these words do not appear in the Bible, which means that the very first Christmas gifts were NOT wrapped. This is because the people giving those gifts had two important characteristics: 1. They were wise. 2. They were men.

Men are not big gift wrappers. Men do not understand the point of putting paper on a gift just so somebody else can tear it off. This is not just my opinion; this is a scientific fact
based on a statistical survey of two guys I know.

One is Rob, who said the only time he ever wraps a gift is "if it's such a poor gift that I don't want to be there when the person opens it."

The other is Gene, who told me he does wrap gifts, but as a matter of principle never takes more than 15 seconds per gift. "No one ever had to wonder which presents daddy wrapped at Christmas," Gene said. "They were the ones that looked like enormous spitballs."

I also wrap gifts, but because of some defect in my motor skills, I can never completely wrap them. I can take a gift the size of a deck of cards and put it the exact center of a piece of wrapping paper the size of a regulation volleyball court, but when I am done folding and taping, you can still see a sector of the gift peeking out. (Sometimes I camouflage this sector with a marking pen.)

If I had been an ancient Egyptian in the field of mummies, the lower half of the Pharaoh's body would be covered only by Scotch tape.

On the other hand, if you give my wife a 12-inch square of wrapping paper, she can wrap a C-130 cargo plane. My wife, like many women, actually likes wrapping things. If she gives you a gift that requires batteries, she wraps the batteries separately, which to me is very close to being a symptom of mental illness. If it were possible, my wife would wrap each individual volt.

My point is that gift-wrapping is one of those skills that come more naturally to women than to men. That is why today I am presenting:

GIFT-WRAPPING TIPS FOR MEN:
* Whenever possible, buy gifts that are already wrapped. If, when the recipient opens the gift, neither one of you recognizes it, you can claim that it's myrrh.

* The editors of Woman's Day magazine recently ran an item on how to make your own wrapping paper by printing a design on it with an apple sliced in half horizontally and dipped in a mixture of food coloring and liquid starch. They must be smoking crack.

* If you're giving a hard-to-wrap gift, skip the wrapping paper! Just put it inside a bag and stick one of those little adhesive bows on it. This creates a festive visual effect that is sure to delight the lucky recipient on Christmas morning:

YOUR WIFE: Why is there a Hefty trash bag under the tree?
YOU: It's a gift! See? It has a bow!
YOUR WIFE (peering into the trash bag): It's a leaf blower.
YOU: Gas-powered! Five horsepower!
YOUR WIFE: I want a divorce.
YOU: I also got you some myrrh.

In conclusion, remember that the important thing is not what you give or how you wrap it.

The important thing, during this very special time of year, is that you save the receipt.

Who are the heroes?

Interesting that people have bought the story that Sen. John McCain is a hero because he was shot out of the sky. His behaviour in prison is remarkable.

He managed to destroy a fighter plane on the USS Forrestal aircraft carrier while going through a pre-flight checklist. He might have pushed the wrong button. His father was an admiral. I'm surprised that people trust this guy. The Wiki article makes claims that nobody was at fault, even though 134 people died and 161 more were injured. We are all at fault for this.

You're not a hero because you were shot out of the sky - that's an occupational hazard. 

The heroes were the pilots who refused to bomb civilians and took their punishment.

The power of children

A response to a Facebook post:

I was homeless twice before I was 18. It was a numbing experience; I had no power over the circumstances, and it is such a shame that this continues in the richest country in the world. 

We can kill anyone, anywhere, anytime, for any or no reason, but we blame our children for not choosing the right parents.

goddamn bureaucrats

Since Dad died, I've spent hundreds of hours dealing with his estate. He left no will - he didn't need one because he wasn't going to die.

Now I have a fucking idiot demanding fines and $8,000 in cash from my personal accounts because he knows more about California law than the lawyers we hired and the courts that approved our probate.

The problem is that this fucking idiot has power. He can mess with my life. This is just insane, and so damned much stress.

We spent over $6,000 trying to find our brother. That didn't work, but it was fine with the Commissioner of Accounts. I spent $600 and found him. We met at a truck stop in Rochelle, IL. The Commissioner fined me $200 for an "exception" and I can only guess that it was because he just wants to mess with our lawyer for some past annoyance. The only way to mess with the lawyer seems to be fucking with his clients.

Goddamn, I want this shit to stop.

Things that keep me alive

We had a fantastic time last night. It was such fun to see everybody in the place drop what they were doing and turn to listen; such fun to watch Jeff playing (ya gotta see his face when he's hitting it!); such fun to mess with Glenn by hanging my face over his guitar neck while he shouted the chords to me (he knew I didn't need them; good theater.); to watch Dan doing his fantastic guitar tags while singing the songs; so great to see Mary and Anna smiling as we played. Brother Steve showed up as we were loading the equipment to leave, but I got a big hug from him, and that was worth my paying for tickets for him.

Just grinning back and forth across the stage is such a charge. These are things that keep me alive.

Hamas didn't grow without water

We should look at the reasons that cause people to create the need to protect themselves from those they oppress. We are officially crazy if we just say that a people (Indian, Chinese, Thai) do not deserve a place on Earth. 

Hitler proved that you just can't have enough bullets to solve a problem, but he didn't learn that even after killing 25 million in Russia (The plan in Operation Barbarossa was to isolate NW Russia and starve everyone to death).

We're not paying attention.