Gentlepeople, Start Your Vitriol, Mudslinging and Backstabbing!!!

Folks around the world have all been wondering the same thing: when will Burque Babble officially start to care about the 2008 Presidential Race? In order to stop the incessant calls from Le Monde, Al Jazeera and the Aiken County Standard asking me this question, I now formally announce that I am almost ready to care about it. Caring could begin as early as Saturday, unless I have more laundry than usual, in which case caring will have to be moved back to Sunday.

As some of you may remember, especially if you don't have many things to remember in your life, I have been a useless proponent of going to a 90-day official election period instead of the 24/7/52/infinity system we have now. My rebellious throwing of an argumentative dirt clod into the ocean on this matter has resulted in zero change. Meanwhile, I have largely missed approximately 2.75 million televised debates, YouTube debates, Manchester Rotary Club forums on C-SPAN and avoided any news concerning the State of Iowa, despite the importance Iowa and its citizens play and have played in my life.

This news moratorium has extended up to now to all Election 2008 races with the exception of the U.S. Senate Primary, and anyone would have to admit that whole deal is a unique situation all around. Plus, it involves Marty Chavez, and...well, I think we've said enough about that to last us a while.

The impetus for setting a possible caring start date? Hearing Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani argue. Like the rooster crowing at dawn and Christmas retail commercials appearing on TV in late October, the sound of Republicans sniping at each other over who is more xenophobic can only mean one thing.

Admittedly, I have some catching up to do. Evidently, somebody called Hillary the "B" word, Hillary said something about wearing a highly protective pantsuit, Romney has a full-staff of illegal immigrants working at his castle and every candidate is a fan of both the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox simultaneously.

Still, I get the feeling that catching up with Election 2008 is going to be like seeing a soap opera for the first time in two years...not terribly tough to catch up on. Does Obama hate Hillary? Does Bill just prefer running for things over doing an actual job? Is Mitt's hair penetrable by anything less than a bunker buster? These plot questions will most likely still be hanging in the air for some time, and I won't have missed a thing.

So this morning I actually went to JoeMonahan.com, stayed for about 10 seconds until the "total blog election coverage" headlines made me run away. Maybe Carla Aragon should consider moving to JoeMonahan, her experience with "Breaking News", "First on Four" and "Look at Me!!!!" is perfectly suited for Mr. Monahan's site.

Then I went to Haussaman and caught up on actual information presented in a way that didn't make me feel like I was reading a slightly more pornographic version of the NY Post. I caught up on Southern NM politics while also reading about a little commenting brouhaha that surfaced on Haussaman's site. I plan on spending far too much time at "Haussaman on New Mexico Politics" in the next 11 or so months.

And there will be the other usual suspects like DailyKos, RedState, Rasmussen Reports, and myriad other sites to gaze at for far too long at relationship-straining intensity. But all that can still officially wait until Saturday, or Sunday if the laundry is really piled up.

A Sincere Apology To Our Readers...

It has come to our attention that Burque Babble has won some sort of award or something. Frankly, we (that is I) have no idea what this award is for ("Most Typographical Errors in a Blog" perhaps), but rest assured that we will do everything in our power to make absolutely sure this sort of thing never, ever happens again.

P.S.: We also promise to stop making inane, self-referential posts as soon as the onslaught of intra-holiday work gets below neck-level. Rest assured that the level of inanity will continue to be absurdly high, as Babble readers have grown accustomed, but we (that is I) promise to be less self-referential in that inanity.

Thank you, and again...we apologize.

Who Were The Other Two Finalists?

I admit the question above was my initial response to reading that outgoing APS Superintendent Dr. Beth Everitt beat out two others to get the head job at Aiken County Schools, S.C.. Given any semblance of administrative experience on the part of the other two finalists, just who could Everitt possibly outclass for the job?

So, thanks largely to the Aiken Standard newspaper and an ABQ Journal link, I found out about the two who aren't getting the job.

Dr. David Mathis

Dr. Frank Roberson oh, and Dr. Roberson has his own web page too.

Both of the newspaper profiles make, in my opinion, interesting reading, especially in a detached I live in APS bizarro land and it's good to see things are just as screwed up and confusing in other parts of the country sort of way.

They say the grass is always greener in another time zone, and I guess they'd be right. I also guess I wish Dr. Everitt well, even if I wasn't that impressed with the job she did here in Albuquerque.

Dr. Everitt, I hope your new Titanic floats a little bit longer than the ship you just jumped from. Don't worry about us, we'll just be floating out here with the icebergs.

I Seen The Stuffing And The Damage Done

Somehow this song fits on a cloudy day-after-Thanksgiving post-engorgement "nod". Plus it was evidently recorded on "The Johnny Cash Show". The juxtapositions are just too hard to resist, even if it is one of these new-fangled Internet Video things. Mr. Young, fresh from Canada and looking about 13 years old.

Let's Have The Airing of Grievances Early This Festivus

In some ways, the Thanksgiving Break is a vile tempter (I'd say the usual "vile temptress", but that phrase has always struck me as sexist in the same way that women can be called "bitches" and men don't really have a identical word to be dropped on them).

I'm sorry, where was I...oh yeah, Thanksgiving Break can be a vile tempter-person. It is a highly anticipated break, especially in public school, but it's so darn short. Or maybe when you're conditioned to teaching summer and winter vacation, it seems like a piddly excuse for a respite.

Faithful readers of Burque Babble, all 20 of them, have probably noticed an even higher level of acerbity in recent postings. I'll admit It's been a bit of a tough haul these last few weeks heading up to Break. And, as usual, solving the ever-changing puzzle of how to best motivate and inspire schoolchildren has been a two-hour therapeutic massage compared to wrestling the broken puzzle that is Albuquerque Public Schools, K-12 education "policy" and the adult human population in general.

So when I read stories like the one in the Tribune yesterday (I'm guessing it was yesterday as see it online this morning) about teacher in-services, my acerbity-meter goes to eleven, at least on this first morning of break. I mentioned yesterday that APS seems to be in the news, almost always for the wrong reasons, enough to put out a daily newspaper entitled APS Sucks Post-Gazette. Perhaps the Tribune should be purchased just for this purpose.

Anyway, this story about in-services is maddening in that way news stories about your profession often are. It starts off with the fine premise that in-services are a complete waste of time. If one polled teachers throughout APS a strong super-majority would be in agreement. So I'm expecting a story with specifics about what a waste of time they are.

Then the story switches gears with this "graf":

An evaluation summary released this month for the September in-service day showed an 86.4 percent endorsement of the "usefulness" of the course material.

As the famous book title says there are "lies, damn lies, and statistics", but you've have to go way past "damn lies" to capture the uselessness of the 86.4 percent number above. This number doubtlessly comes from these little quickie eval forms that presenters pass out at the end of their in-service spiels. I'm here to tell you they are statistically worthless (unless your job is to defend your existence via useless evaluation forms).

There are two main reasons for this:

1. Teachers are far too nice on these forms because they, too, are professional presenters and feel empathy for a in-service presentation regardless of how useless it is.
2. Teachers know these evaluation forms mean nothing, that in-services will continue to be worthless as they have been from the beginning of time, and instead of ruffling feathers why don't I just circle a few Likert Scale 5s for "outstanding" and get the Hell out of this education-forsaken room and have a two-hour lunch?

I'd like to conduct my own survey for teachers. It would have one question on it. That question would be:

"Do you prefer an in-service day or a day teaching students?"

Even in my presently still-acerbic state it would be highly pleasurable to see the results of such a survey question posted along with a newspaper story entitled "Albuquerque Public Schools Teachers Ponder Worth of In-Service Days". In fact, I think I'll start my Thanksgiving Break winding down from the intensity of the past few weeks by daydreamingly contemplating the publication of such a survey.

I could then dreamily envision a special meeting in which the survey findings result in the decision to cancel all future in-services and burn all the Likert Scale evaluation forms in a ritualistic ceremony at APS Central Office. Then the fire from this huge bonfire of wasted paper would get out of control and start to engulf APS Central Office itself. Firefighters would try, but be unsuccessful as the APS towers burn to the ground, orange flames visible throughout the overly-gigantic district as ever-larger numbers of on-lookers rejoice and perform primordial dances of ecstasy.



Like I said, I think I need a longer break.

Dear Surly, Distrusting Parent: Thanks For Dropping By!

We middle school teachers stand out in the hall between passing periods, performing "duty". Especially as my room is right next to the "Nurse's Office" (quotation marks absolutely needed), I see quite a few adults visitors swing by as I'm standing there smiling and watching semi-closely for neo-adolescent miscreants.

I'm pretty good about greeting each of these unknown adults with the vague Texan greeting of a nod of the head. Often they nod or smile back. Sometimes they don't. Sometimes I wonder why some aren't nodding back....and then there's a news day like this:

"Schools Not Checking For Past Crimes"

"APS Finds Teacher Absences Spike Ahead of Weekend"

"School Bus Driver Avoids Rabbit And Injures Twelve Students"

not to mention the continuing saga of "Stupid Elsy Fierro Hearing In News For 10,000th Time"

and I don't wonder why these adults aren't smiling or nodding back anymore....

P.S.: Being as it's the day before a one-day extended Thanksgiving Break, I also wonder how many times an announcement will come over our 1949-era intercom system: "PLEASE, CAN SOMEONE PLEASE COVER FOR MR. BLANCHARD (name invented) 4TH, 5TH AND 7TH PERIOD, HE DOESN'T HAVE A SUB. PLEASE!!!!!"

Such a pleasant way to start the morning with about eleven such stridently desperately cackled pleas. Happy Day Before The Day Before everybody.

And Now An Anachronistic Word From An Old, Crotchety Guy

There are two kinds of people, those who do/will like the new Duke City Fix layout and those that do/will not. It is with a reluctant, quavering blog voice that I admit I do not. I say this even though we bloggers should all stick together and one should especially be nice to the McDonalds (as in big, not reprehensible) of Albuquerque blogs. More importantly, I reluctantly say this because I can just tell from looking at the new DCF that by stating my dislike of its new look I am:

• Old
  
• Unhip
• A Web dinosaur destined for extinction and eventual placement in an Internet museum as a relic of a distant unhip past
• Really old

I guess it all boils down to my general desire for the Internet to go in a time machine and return to the year 2002 or so. I want my Internet pre-video, but with today's bandwidth (and yes I realize I posted three THREE separate YouTube vids on one post last Friday...but I can tell you it felt...kinda creepy).

I do not like "avatars". I do not like even typing the word "avatar". I do not like MySpace or Facebook or whatever new, hip site exists now for people to express themselves through "avatars". I make it a point to avoid MySpace sites, not because of any concerns about safety for its millions of teenage members, but because I can't stand being bombarded with crude "avatars", horrible backgrounds and cloying music that bring back all the horrible memories of those 1990s-era vanity webpages (here's an example), (oh, and here's another) but with tons more "avatars" from "friends" and other misuses of our increased bandwidth.

More than anything else, I detest the use of the Internet for "social networking". Okay, I detest the use of anything for "social networking". More to the point...I detest "social networking". I prefer my Internet video, avatar and "social networking" free. I like my Internet information-rich and visually poor.

I guess I like the 'Net more for its Wild West libertarianism than its High-Tech Socialism. Last week I showed part of "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" to my film class. I freely admit it was the single least popular movie I've ever shown to a class (Westerns unpopular..whoulda thunk it?) Anyway, as you may recall that movie is all about the idea of the vanishing West, with Paul Newman and Robert Redford's lawless characters eventually forced out by the steady creep of "civilization".

Looking at the new Duke City Fix I feel a bit like Paul Newman's character (but without the beautiful blue eyes). Maybe I need to move, as Butch and Sundance did, to the Internet version of Bolivia. Or maybe even, dare I say it, read a book.

And We Wonder Why Al Gore Doesn't Run For President....

My wife was professionally obligated last night to watch the Democratic Presidential debate in Las Vegas. I was under no such duress, but happened across the first few seconds before my Wolf Blitzer gag-reflex kicked in.

Despite the rapidity with which I ran from the room in horror, I was reminded that U.S. TV "culture" and its current love of "reality TV" is based in part on the success of Japanese game shows. Those with cable here have probably already run into an old 1980s show, which in its skewering, below-sophomoric English translation edition is called "MXC" or "Most Extreme Elimination Challenge". Here's a clip...



Seeing, if only for a few pre-gag seconds, Wolf Blitzer, and an Las Vegas studio audience obviously swept up from a Ronco infomercial, was enough to make me think that we're about two logical heartbeats away from just putting Hilbamawards and crew in helmets and having them play "Human Tetris" and jump over icky moats in fashion-lapsed track suits.

Of course, for those who missed it, we now have another video-related invention to relive it in all it's gag-worthy glory. My Japanese game show dare for today is that anyone actually make it through all the introductions in the clip below. Viewing it is, in my opinion, far worse than simply trying to hop along a bunch of plastic "logs" to avoid an icky moat.