teh Mexigogue

Hey, you know what’s real funny? When you get mad at somebody for playing with matches so you stick a knife in their head and then recommend they go get it looked at! HAHAHHAHAHAAA!!!! That’s great stuff!!!!

You know what I hate? When, like, your uncle gets run over by a marshmellow truck. . . and at the funeral. . some jackass says to you, “I know exactly how you feel.” Oh really? So you had an uncle who got run over by a marshmellow truck too? No???? Then goddammit you don’t know how I feel!!!! Shit!

It just ocurred to me that I might be getting some new hits now that Rachael has linked me in her blog so I find it appropriate that I issue my manifesto or talking points or whatever.

1. To each what he earns
2. Reaching into your own pocket to help your fellew man is charity. Reaching into my pocket to do so is stealing.
3. Violence is immoral except in self defense.
4. Bad ideas should die in the fires of practical application.
5. Taxing the successful to subsidize the people who choose bad ideas only encourages more bad ideas.
6. Plus it creates an expectation of entitlement
7. All midgets go to hell.
8. Soap operas air in hell on a regular basis.

There. You can take that to the bank.

(you just can’t cash it)

Haha! Rachael has a blog! For those who don’t remember, she’s the one who, when I posted her picture on my blog, made me take it back off. Now I get to make rude comments to her blog!

I took my son to Lansing Eastern High School yesterday so we could square away some paper work before school starts and have him find his locker. It’s his freshman year so he has to be pretty excited but I think the trip there yesterday was even more fun for me.

It’s been twenty years since the beginning of my freshman year. It was 1984, Prince’s Purple Rain album was just out, as was the Jacksons Victory Album featuring Michael Jackson and Mick Jagger singing State of Shock (anybody else remember that?) The Tigers were just about to win the World Series, the Karate Kid was all the rage, and the US and Soviet Olympic teams were boycotting and counter boycotting. So things have changed just a touch but the building that is Eastern High is still the same. And that’s the important thing.

Remember my story about Kim, the stringbean 4th grade safety who yelled at the kindergarten girl to stop for no reason? By the ninth grade, she had (making big melon hand display. . . nope, bigger than that. Yeah. . . ) TITS!!!!!! Gotta love Kim. And I did.

Other than that, one of my most vivid memories of Eastern was hearing psssst! in the hallway. I looked and it was a group of Mexican dudes. One of them said “Hey man, come stand over here.” I went and stood where he motioned to. He was using me as cover while he took a metal bar and through a dangling lock on a wall locker. He pushed down and the lock popped clean off. He then opened the locker and proceeded to steal some candy, a jacket, and a walkman. I was about to leave but then I heard pssst! Hey man. Now stand over here. I think they busted into like five lockers that day. As an aside, two of those guys are dead now. That is neither here nor there.

So yesterday we were checking Jordon in at the office and I asked where and when he was supposed to picked up his lock. The lady looked uncomprehendingly for a moment, then said “Oh, we don’t use the dangling locks on the lockers anymore. The locks and combinations are now part of the lockers themselves.”

You don’t say.

We walked around the school for a while and I showed Jordon points of interest. The cafeteria, the hallway that connects to Pattengill Junior High Middle School. The stairwell! It has great acoustics which served as the perfect spot for rap exhibitions. I took out my camera and took a picture of the stairwell. We walked around some more and found the band room. I smiled and said “The band room!” Then I looked at my son, wiped the smile off my face and said, “Oh, I mean. Um. The band room.” (I’m not a geek I’m not a geek).

I took more pictures of the places in there that come back to me in my dreams. Recurring, powerful dreams where it’s been discovered that I’m actually a few credits short of my graduation requirements so I have to go back to high school and finish up. “You will have dreams of this place,” I tell Jordon as I snap another picture. “When you’re older.”

I don’t feel old enough to have a high schooler.

Huh? I slept through it? Wahappen??

My oldest son is getting ready to start high school. His mom was trying to get him into Catholic Central but she gave up on that idea a little while back. Now she’s got him enrolled in my old high school even though she didn’t want him in a public school. His scores are so high though that he qualifies for the geek program. Well, it’s not actually called that but instead of being in with the general population he’ll be in the same class with the same kids for 7 hours out of the day in a rigorous pre-university course of study. I imagine all the other kids will be Melvins and Poindexters.

Jordon is kind of thrown off by not being in the general mix of things but I told him it’s like being tossed in with elite pool players. The truth is, though, that he doesn’t need to be tossed in with all the knuckleheads in a school district where the graduation rate is an abysmal 57% according to the Lansing State Journal. I’d rather he be hemmed in with the Poindexters.

Hell, if I were back in high school now I’d want to be in that program. I was reading the curriculum and these kids have to write an extended 4,000 word essay! HAVE TO??? GET TO!!! I used to have to keep my opinion editorials for the State Journal under 600 words. Do you know how hard it is to do a topic even cursory justice with only 600 words?? All you can write is basically here is what I think, my opponents say this, but they’re morons. I’m right. Thank you, bye. Four thousands words???? Man I damn near got a woody just reading the curriculum!

So while I already have tomorrow off to watch USA basketball, I’ll also use it to make a trip to good old Lansing Eastern with my kid and my ex so we can get him acclimated. Hellified memories there. We used to have rap contests in the hallways. I just need a human beat box. Where’s Gary’s mom when I need her?

An addendum: I was telling this Mexican dude at Leroy’s about the program. I said it’s cool as hell because my son doesn’t need to be in the general population with all the- and he smiled and said Mexicans? I’m like oh nice. . . Low expectation havin’ mothafucka.

Now I forgot what I was gonna say. . . . . . . .

hmmmmmmm.. . . . . . . . ..

Our lesbians are tougher than your lesbians!

As a fourth grader at Post Oak Elementary School in 1979 I finally attained my lifelong dream of becoming a member of the Safety Patrol. I was excited and full of youthful exhuberance. I was going to be a force for truth and righteousness. My fellow Safety Patrol rookies and I were going to change the world for the better. This was idealism at its best, before the proverbial shit hits the fan and the real world stink starts to set in.

Post Oak Elementary would have been a primarily white school, about 97% white except that they bussed us minority kids in from The Bad Neighborhood. Integration meant that some of the middle class and white was supposed to rub off on us but we pretty much maintained our lower class cliques.

There were three of us from the bad neighborhood who had been selected to Safety Patrol: Kim Cox (the black chick who would spring giant breasts like Tootie at a later date but back then she was still stringbean), Todd Meisner (bad kid from a poor white family), and me. The Safety Patrol was our big chance to show ourselves as forces for law and order rather than for mayhem (which we were previously known for).

Suffice it to say that the things you see on Safety Patrol will blow your mind. They will make you jaded. You slowly start to lose your faith in humanity. After a while (at what point you might not know, it just seems to be a downward spiral) it’s no longer about protecting and serving. It becomes us against them. Somewhere along the line you lose your way. Whether it’s getting stuck by a needle when you’re shaking down the local junkies for lunch money, or it’s turning a blind eye when your partner plants contraband on one of the local troublemakers, you begin to lose your sense of truth, your very soul.

I remember one particular instance where Kim, drunk on the power of being a sixth grade safety, ordered a little white middle class kindergartner to STOP for no reason as she walked along the sidewalk. The little girl stopped obediently and waited for the 20 seconds or so until Kim decided to give her the command to walk again. The girl walked another 10 steps or so when Kim again yelled STOP!!! The little girl stopped and waited until Kim was good and ready. This continued for about five minutes, probably totally fucking up this little girl’s schedule and scarring her for life. It was all good and fun except that little girl has got to be in her late 20s now and probably working in the Human Resources Department somewhere where she shitcans every application with a Shaniqua or a Tyrone on it. Funny how the things you do today can marinate a good 25 years before they come back to bite you.

My point is that policing another part of the world often starts out with good intentions. But when things go wrong (and they are sure to after a while) people tend to remember them for a long time.

(And they say I don’t write about politics)