Schools out in Fairfax

Last week, school was cancelled on Monday and Friday for all school in the Virginia school district of Fairfax. Apparently the district decided to cancel school because they had two unused snow days remaining. This must have been the teachers union's idea, since their goal is primarily to line the pockets of rich teachers. Faced with the awful prospects of an extra two days of learning, Fairfax did what all great institutions of learning do and shirked its duty to shape the minds of America's youth. I would guess that most of the expenses for a given day of school are overhead - cost of operating buildings, teachers salaries, etc. Fairfax probably saves almost no money by closing school, while also unburdening the minds of several thousands k-12 students from the rigors of compare and contrast essays, the life cycle of a plant, the color wheel and other life-building academic pursuits. Plus, parents has to find something to do with their children, take them to work or get a babysitter.

If this had happened when I was a kid, I would have been encouraged to spend 8 hours of unsupervised play at the nearby railroad tracks. A pair of busy rail lines ran right by my house and my parents frequently encouraged me to spend idle hours on those tracks, rather than indoors. I spent a good deal of my youth throwing rocks at trains and placing various organic matter on the tracks in anticipation of the inevitable mess. Years later, I found out that those rail lines were (and continue to be) used to ship nuclear waste from the Northeast to various points west. My parents were aware but apparently unconcerned.

When it was time to find a pet rock for a fourth grad science project, I naturally turned to my granite and steel beam playground in the hopes of finding the biggest rock that I could get away with bringing to class. Instead I found what appeared to be a small peice of irreglularly-shaped pumice. So I thought it was pumice, although there are no known volcanos in the midwest. Turns out it wasn't pumice - nor any other type of rock that we could identify amongst our rock classification system. I can only guess that this rock was either altered by years of exposure to high levels of radiation or was some sort of nuclear waste material. In any case, I didn't win the pet rock contest. It wasn't really a contest, but had it been, I might have learned something. Actually, probably not, but atleast I would have been in school that day, helping to reduce the per student class day costs of my district. Fairfax could learn a valuable lesson from this story - although the teachers union probably has a clause in their contract that prevents the district from learning from its mistakes.

when I'm rich...

Some day I'm gonna be rich. And when I am, I'm going to buy an island. I will name that island Shittacock Island. I will build a golf course on the island and host a tournament, called the Shittacock Open. Every year at the tournament, I will pretend I'm a news reporter and ask the players "Do you like to play Shittacock?", "Why was Shittacock so rough this year?", and "Whats the secret to Shittacock Open?". I'll also print shirts that say "I love Shittacock." But maybe only one. For me.

Sloooo-oooan

Slooooooan......Slooooooooan! That means its time to bust out the six-pack of Molsons, throw on your Doug Flutie jersey and get ready to rock out Canadian style. Sloan, America Junior's favorite band, ventured across the St. Lawrence Seaway for a much anticipated show at the Black Cat. Actually, the crowd was smaller than Sloan is used to, but the fans were ready to celebrate all things Canada (even on a Sunday). They played most of the standards, although I left wanting a little Angus and Andy, or anything from the B-side of Navy Blues. A frenzied rendition of Money City Maniacs was a highlight, as was The Rest of My Life. No big surprises in the preformance, Sloan fans are familiar with three-guitar-attack perfection. I was very impressed by the kicks from vocalist/bassist Chris Murphy - I'm pretty sure I'll add that to my stage act very soon.

I wonder if they have to pay Canadian taxes on their earnings.....

The Capital Years opened - I thought they were good, although its hard to stand up next to rock gods.

One thing is for sure: I know I'll always live in Canada.

Star Wars

So I saw Star Wars this weekend. I consider myself to be a fan of the movies, but I'm certainly not freakishly obsessed with it. Still, I feel it necessary to offer some detailed criticisms of Epsiode III. I realize this will probably set me up to get schooled by those more knowledgeable in Star Wars lore than I - I welcome any comments.

Overall, I thought Episode III was pretty good. I especially enjoyed the openning fight scene - very appropriate and effective to open the movie with a chaotic battle scene. I thought this scene did a better job with the special effects than anything in the previous Star Wars movie - definitely set up the spiralling chaos that engulfed the characters in the movie.

I was surprised by how dark Lucas made this one. The killing of the grade-school age Jedis was not necessary, was very disturbing, and worked well to convince the audience (or me atleast) that things were not well -- something that can get lost when you know that the universe would be saved in the next three episodes.

I thought Lucas made some mistakes with the ending. We all know what happens next, so its pretty difficult to complete this movie and have everything in its right place. Should Obiwan really be looking forward to studying under his previous master after his pupil tried to kill him and succumbed to evil in order to take over the world? I think Obiwan should be in a pretty dark place as he is getting ready to go into 20 years of seclusion. I would be pretty remorseful if, instead of saving the world as prophecized, my student became the face of evil and was beginning a twenty year 'Jedicide' (clever? go to hell - its my blog) .

The scene where Darth Vader rises from the surgical table was pretty flawed. First of all, its an obvious rip from Frankenstein, but it kind of works and would have been tolerable if it had been a little more subtle. The first question Vader asks is about Padme - this is a appropriate, after all, he decided to pursue his advance studies/professional certificate in the Dark Side in order to save her (plus, it speaks to the fact that he is still has feelings -- setting up episode 6...). The Emperor tells Vader that it was his anger that killed her. Vader starts destroying eveything and screams......then he happily joins the Emperor in overseeing the construction of what looks to be some sort of 'summer planet'. Now this is not right. George you fucked up!! Annakin's whole reason for pursuing the dark side was to protect Padme from dying. the emperor convinced him that he could save people from death if he used the dark force (actually, i think he gave Annakin candy and thats why he decided to kill everything in his path. It was evil candy - I will explain in a future posting). When Vader finds out it was his anger that killed Padme, shouldn't he be a little peeved at Uncle Emporer for deceiving him?? I think its appropriate for him to be angry (...in some of the future episodes he exhibits what psychologists call a "choking problem" - you know the type, the ones that go around choking everyone. My anger management classes taught me this is a sign of a chronic anger maniac...) but the scream is wrong. It suggests that Annakin recognized that he was deceived, but he doesn't turn on the emporer (again - this is my blog and I'll use whatever spellings I think apropriate), instead they start planning a vacation or something. Darth Vader should silently lower his head and use his powers to destroy everything around him. This would speak to his anger management problem and would suggest the existential angst under lying the anger, an angst which is only resolved by sacrificing himself in episode 6 (which, by the way, has tons of cute ewoks... rent Ewok Adventures, it never disappoints!). The emperor should not tell Vader that he killed Padme - he should tell him that the jedis killed padme. This would help convince us why Vader spends the next twenty years hunting jedi instead of playing pool at some crazy interstellar bar (remember the bar in episode four? Remember those crazy creatures? how crazy!). Lucas' ending suggests that Vader should be mad at the emperor -- clearly those two are still in love at the end of the movie.

plus, I was disappointed that episode three didn't end with an ewoks song. It could have been an ewok funeral dirge. It could have been the cutest dirge ever.