The way to succeed or the way to suck eggs

Apathy Jack writes:

“I met Ron.”
“Who’s Ron?”
“He’s the strange man who lives outside the dairy.”
“Lives, or just sits?”
“Bit of both I think.”
“The guy with the beard?”
“Yeah, that’s him.”
“Ron says hi a lot.”
“Ron also says ‘my name’s Ron’ a lot when you sit next to him for five minutes.”
“Why would you do that?”
“Because he asked me if I had five minutes to sit down and have a talk, and I did.”
“Fair enough.”
“Ron has very soft hands.”
“See, I personally wouldn’t touch Ron.”
“Yes, but every time he introduced himself, we had to shake hands. And he introduced himself several times during the five minutes.”
“You mentioned.”

Here is a list of things I’ve been meaning to write recently:


Something about Peter Dunne and Jim Anderton taking TV3 to court. I’ve got a Mencken quote or two, and a discussion on free press vs autonomy of privately owned outlets sloshing around my head. I probably won’t write this one because cleverer people than me have already covered it, and in a few days the topic won’t be interesting anymore.

..

An entry about how kids these days don’t know what “cunt” means. I’m going to get around to this one eventually, because I’m genuinely interested by the fact that my students throw around, completely obliviously, the one word that a lot of my friends get really offended by – even the ones who otherwise swear like sailors.

..

A rant about the fact that Jim Anderton is rumoured to be getting the Education portfolio after the elections. I’ll get around to this one before too long, but I figure I need to set aside time to get good and angry.

..

A wee thing about how weird I find it living on a street with kids. I have a few jokes about how they didn’t let young people into my old neighbourhood, and knee-slapper explaining how fingernails on a chalkboard are more pleasing to me than the laughter of a child, but it won’t all gel in my head.

..

A humourous thing about how, after four years of hoodrats and gangstas, there has been, in the last few months, an invasion of goths into my school. I’m sure it would be very funny, because god knows I’ve gotten my “have you ever noticed how goths are usually people with no real problems and whose poetry isn’t as good as they think it is?” routine pretty polished over the last several years. But, y’know, I can’t be bothered repeating myself. Sure the fact that it’s intruding on my professional life puts a new spin on things, but I can’t be bothered dusting off all of my old jokes and conning you into listening to them again...

..

Two of my kids want to start a Communist Club. Sadly, this by itself isn’t very funny. I want to spin it into an amusing little anecdote, but the taciturn little sods haven’t given me any sound bites that I can throw up. We’ve had a couple of very entertaining and funny discussions about it, but nothing that can really be reduced to a pithy blog entry. So no fodder there.

..

I recently mentioned something I’m doing at school to my friend Lily Petals, and she said it made her realise that I am "like the 'House' of teaching. You know, with less Hugh Laurie & more you" which kept me going for a day or two. I want to expand on the thing I told her about, post what I’m doing, and get the rest of you telling me how much I remind you of pop cultural icons of genius (might I recommend the guy from The Greatest American Hero, or at least Michelle Pfeiffer) but it would take too much work to reduce this one to an anecdote. Sure, I could spin it a bit – find some oh so amusing way to describe the stupendous cluster fuck that I’ve stepped in to fix, then get all Dead Poets about the amount of personal time and relative mental health I’ve sacrificed in doing so. But that would take quite a lot of effort, and I’m a bit tired.



You see, I’ve got a lot of work to do. And by “a lot” I mean: “a lot”. This very entry is simply my way of procrastinating – there’s a copy of the Curriculum that needs slaving over into the wee hours once I’m done. I’ve given away all of my free periods for the foreseeable future, and have been working through lunchtimes and late after school. (And yes, I know I do that most weeks anyway – but not usually for such protracted periods of time. Hush.) It’s gotten to the point that tonight, as I slogged from the video shop to the Warehouse in search of school things, when the local homeless beardo outside the dairy asked me if I had five minutes to sit down and have a chat I was pathetically grateful for the chance to do just that. Seems a nice guy, does Ron.

My brain hurts. I want medicine.