early retirement

           After three years of attempting to find a stable, decent teaching job, I have been unable to access steady employment in the field of education.  My teaching license expires during the coming school year, and I no longer see any purpose in bothering to renew this license which has only brought debt, disappointment, and wasted a tremendous amount of time.  So, as the new school year begins, I look forward to recovering from one of many poor life decisions by pressing on into new fields of gainful employment to work off the shoulder shrugging amount of debt I have ceaselessly accumulated over the past three years.  So you might say this is retirement from a profession I cannot say I was truly able to ever begin.  The need for teachers in this area has been greatly exaggerated, and I would advise people to stay away from education as a profession.

            If you were one of the ten or fifteen people who gave me a reference, answered phone calls, filled out surveys, ignored annoying emails automatically sent out by some school when they received my resume, or merely did your goddamned best to talk to someone who perhaps may have wanted to employ me at one time or another, I would like to thank you very much.  With the school year beginning, I can now wholly focus on becoming employed in some other field I may or may not have any experience in, and continue working on a book detailing the whole hilariously depressing experience of attempting to work in the education field.  If there is anything I do have experience in, it is attempting to get a decent job in the education profession and failing miserably.  Throughout the process, I have had the opportunity to witness a truly ridiculous amount of absurdity which I feel deserves to be shared with people who do not understand how things work as you attempt a career in education.  Quite a few people have expressed mild questioning to severe concern about what the immediate future holds for me, so I thought I would take this opportunity to blog about the subject as I have not done that in over a year.  It has been a rough ordeal throughout the entire period I have been open to working in this field, and it is a great load off of my mind to not have to be disappointed with this discipline any longer.

1986 world series

The 1986 World Series between Boston and the Mets was the first series I ever sat down and watched completely.  I knew none of the history of the Red Sox, and watched National League baseball much more than American League, so I rooted for New York.  Two of the brightest young stars on that team have been in the news this year.  Roger Mcdowell was a major player on that team, and has recently been accused of yelling gay slurs at a fan.  He apologized and was fined.  So much for the prankster image he was known for throughout his career.  This is not so terrible compared to Lenny Dyskstra.  Watching Dyskstra in 1986 was exciting, it was like what you heard announcers say when Pete Rose came to bat.  He was tough, fast, and fearless.  Dykstra has had a series of problems outside of baseball.  He has run a number of businesses into the ground, declared bankruptcy, stripped Wayne Gretzky's old house of sellable materials (really, look it up), lived out of his car (classy), and most recently interviewed various ladies for a job he most likely couldnt pay them for, and exposed himself to each of the interviewees.  This actually barely begins the rapsheet for Nails.  Life outside of baseball has not been so swell for Dykstra.  Hopefully Mookie Wilson is giving to charity somewhere.

craigslist is weird

So, there is a lot of what most people would consider junk around the house.  Some of it too large to ebay, and, if it is considerably useless, or useful to someone possibly, it makes its way to craigslist.  Not too long ago in the barn, I found a package called backjoy, which is a pad for making sitting more comfortable.  It supposedly helps your back, hence the name.  It came with two pads and a dvd.  Really, a dvd explaining how to use the pads to sit on.  I put it on craigslist for 10 bucks just to see what would happen.  Probably a month or so passed, and someone wrote from Nebraska desperately wanting said pads.  If you have ever used craigslist, you know it is usually a local search.  This means some guy was at his computer scanning the midwest for a pair of asspads accompanied by an instructional dvd for the low, low price of ten screamin dollars.  This alone is disturbing.  Are there no asspads for the good cornhuskers of Nebraska?

Furthermore, I put a pair of star wars vintage vehicles on a month or so ago.   I have received no local email, but some unabashed nerd wrote me from tulsa more than a dozen times trying to hammer out a deal on shipping although i didnt want to bother to put them in a box and go to the post office.  Once again, I would like to point out that this man was trolling a different state for product, namely beat up star wars vintage vehicles.  Who does that?

computer issues

So, I havent blogged in a little while.  I hope both of you are still listening, because I had some computer problems the other day.  Somehow, I got a malicious virus on my computer.  This is much easier than it sounds.  You can click on just about anything and get some sort of terrible trojan horse, worm, or any manner of the sort of life hindering shit that really spoils your day.  If you are like me, much of what you do, professional, school work, or personal, revolves around your computer. It is the first thing I do in the morning or afternoon.  So, I got something on my computer, and I ran every sort of program I have on my computer which is supposed to protect and remove this constant threat.  Finally, I ran, at last resort, a system restore, which did some magic, however, I found that a load of very important files including everything I had done for grad school, all my personal writing, and any teacher file had been deleted.  You can imagine how terrifying it is to lose every bit of work you had done for the last three years, thousands of files gone.  Every program I looked up to restore my files asked for some money i was becoming more and more ready to pay on the hope those files would return.

I finally found an ehow question very similar to mine.  Mind you about anything can be found on ehow and yahoo answers.  The internet, as usual, can help or hurt you infinitely.  It said the virus had most likely just hidden my files and wanted me to pay for one of these programs.  In fact, this was the whole point of the virus to find what you used the most and hide it.  I checked how to uncheck the hide files button on vista, and they magically appeared, which was amazing.  All that work magically came back, and I promptly backed it up in five places.  The moral of the story is that if you feel bad about what you do for a living, there is some scum asshole out there ruining lives daily from a remote position.  No matter what unnecessary garbage you try and sell to the public, some useless nothing is trying to ruin your day for a commission on a product you would not have needed had they not created a market by decimating your personal life.  So, be careful out there.  It turns out people are terrible.


here is a song meant to make you angry in the way my words did not

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpM-3ezUdfk

Entitlement

So, today I showed some folks a mobile home.  The guy was a very nice country fellow, and his wife was the epitome of elegance.  She told me she had looked at the other mobile homes we own down the road, but they were just too close together. Okay, one, you are looking at mobile homes, lady.  They are known for existing in parks, and not the good kind.  There are four trailers on four acres in the country, and one of them is unoccupied. 
2.  You already told me you have lived in Jesse Turner terrace, the projects of Van Buren.  Sorry, its not perfect for you.  The particular trailer I showed her today was also not enough, which was true because of her wiffle ball team full roster of children (also the neighbors were too trashy, as she said with her shirt up to reveal her ample belly).    Later, I found out she gets three disability checks.  Holy hell, three checks!  How does that happen?  Because of these three checks money was no option.   Really, she said no option, instead of the cliche phrase money is no object or maybe even money is no obstacle.  So, now I know one of her checks is for her mental deficiency.  No wonder our government has no idea how to fix our debt problem.  After asking if they had any pets, the man replied no they did not.  His kid (probably not his kid) promptly piped up and said yes we do B (first name deleted).  This girl seemed to think she deserves the world, and i wouldnt rent her that place to live if she paid me in cash.  This may seem a little bitter, so ill liven it up with something from youtube.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_828xpv1rU

Marketing and the economy

So, I have been trying to rent mobile homes and houses by advertising them on craigslist.  This is a fine way to find out people do not have the money to actually move into the trailer or house especially in this economy.   You can also market it to your friends on facebook.  For the most part this is an unlikely avenue also.  I am poor, and most of the people I know, yep, you guessed it, they are poor too.  The Southwest Times Record is a fine way to advertise most of the time.  Hey, those aspiring renters can afford a paper right, or at least know someone who can.  This has also been largely unproductive.  Formerly, this has been an easy process.  An advertisement, a few phone calls, some signatures, and a couple days time.  That is all it usually takes.  I mean, hey, I am marketing places to live, this is somethig people need, right.It seems many people are just tight in the wallet these days due to necessity. What if i advertised on my blog with a craigslist ad, and then put THAT on facebook?  Hmmm.

http://fortsmith.craigslist.org/apa/2508040439.html

http://fortsmith.craigslist.org/apa/2508050636.html

charlie sheen AND vietnamese food

So, after completely missing the Charlie Sheen boat, and i am pretty sure it has sailed, I'll put in my two cents.  In keeping with the name of this blog, I have watched two movies, hot shots and major league, on comedy central over the past two days.  These movies are not as funny as they were when i was twelve, but they are still pretty great.  I do not care about two and a half men which is truly some of the most unfunny, cliche trash on tv, but Hot shots was a smart parody movie.  The scene in which sheen gets tossed from the game may be the best thing ol charlie has ever done.  He may be reduced to a man who is only funny on twitter, but he has been a part of some really classic projects.

Also went to pho vietnam last night.  I rarely go because I am never on that side of town, but, boy, is it amazing.  I got two 77s and loaded them down with thai chili paste.  They are cheap and one of the best sandwiches you can achieve in town.  They no longer put jalapenos on it unless you specifically ask for them, but they are garden fresh and palate burning hot.  I am aware that everyone knows about this place, but the real moral of the story is to not be afraid to eat food out of an old gas station.