Now that's Funny!

My mother taught me to read when I was 4. My father taught me basic arithmetic when I was 5. I was eager to start school. Then I found out that school wasn't a place for learning but a place for pain and humiliation. We sat with our chairs in a circle while the teacher tried to teach the idiots to read Dick, Jane & frikkin' Sally. I was excruciatingly bored, so I wrote a note to a girl sitting on the other side of the circle. Of course she couldn't read it so gave it to the teacher. It was traced back to me and I had to sit in the corner the rest of the day. Arithmetic was worse: In the 3rd grade they were still trying to teach the 'tards basic addition so we had to stamp these damned yellow chickens on poster paper. I didn't do mine so they made me stay after school to do it.

High school was just as bad. I got kicked in the nuts almost every day. I learned almost nothing. I signed up for the senior science course which was supposed to contain an intro to computer programming. I was the only one to sign up for it so they dropped it.

On the whole, what should have been some of the most productive years of my life were wasted trapped in a goddam hell-hole where the only lessons to be learned were how to be a good prisoner and submit to authority whenever they wanted to torture me.

Everyone is bemoaning how the US is not pumping out scientists and engineers like it used to. I would be surprised if it were.

And also notice that whether it's liberals or conservatives in power, the direction is always towards more control : Gun control and laws enforcing political correctness from the liberals; Banning of gay marriage and abortions and loyalty oaths from the conservatives. It never goes the other way in the U.S. even though most Americans say they want government out of their lives; the media can always stir them to a killing rage by pointing out what the other side does.

Speak for yourself, White Man.

Yeah, obese people are everywhere in the US today, mostly due to the plastic shite the corporations provide for them to eat. I haven't owned a motor vehicle since 1991 and, guess what? I'm slim & trim from walking and biking.

That's just skirting around the problem, though. In the last couple of decades I've observed a steady trend towards A) larger gas-guzzling vehicles and B) single person occupancy. Americans hold it to be their right (and it is) to drive alone 5 blocks to the supermarket in their huge goddam vehicles. However, if they simply understood the implications of their actions on the environment I feel we'd see far less of it. But instead, the TeeVee has them pissing their britches watching out for murderers, rapists and now terrorists so they will never, ever EVER stop to give someone a ride, even on the hottest or coldest days of the year. On the flip-side, one would be far more inclined to walk to their destination if there were a good chance they'd be offered a ride, as was the case a mere 30 years ago (I remember).

One more thing: I detest BP (and other mega corps) as much as anyone, but blaming them for the destruction of aquatic and wetland habitats and countless rare and valuable species is logically and morally equivalent to blaming Mexico for the US drug problem. The market will work, bringing the supply to where there is the demand, no matter how much imbecile legislation is passed. The problem is the ignorance of the average US citizen. Find some way to fix that and a lot of huge problems simply disappear. I was hopeful that the switch to digital TV would so frustrate a large number of viewers that they would simply give up the tube. That would have had a chance to break the increasingly sophisticated mind control the mega corps have over a vast majority of the US population. Alas, I was wrong and now I and to some degree every inhabitant of this planet are paying the price.