Pragmatism Trumps Racism In The Adoption Process

“It’s important to me that my child looks like us.” As soon as I said it I thought we’d be thrown out of there. It smacks of intolerance and that subtle New England brand of racism. We love the race but hate that ethnic family that lives down the street and cooks strange food. Ok, we like the food but that family is sooo “not our kind, dear.” Imagine my surprise when I learned that there is one institution that formally accepts racism. In fact they demand a level of honesty that is hard for the politically correct modern American to admit to.

Being a white male it’s absolutely forbidden for me to talk about race, as if my perspective is some how marginalized. Decades of institutionalized “reverse racism” to make up for past injustice still has “white privilege” to blame for our societies failure to lift the standard of living for the minority community. I am to apologize for my fortunate birth. So OK I’m sorry. I’m not sure what I’m sorry for but I sure am sorry about it.

I make my living judging children on the merits of their scholarship. I’ve only taught at schools which are predominantly white. I’ve seen kids that are lazy and kids that are driven. I haven’t seen too many minority students but I can say that of the few I’ve taught, they’re exactly the same as the majority. Some work hard, some don’t.

Maybe the kids at the privileged schools have more opportunity and I’m seeing the minority students take advantage of opportunities they wouldn’t have in less affluent communities. The most recent data from federal testing suggests that minority communities still offer less opportunity.

Obviously we need more leveling. Despite electing a black president we still aren’t out of the woods in terms of racial equality. There are pockets here and there where we’re beginning to mix. The Echo Generation is very color blind when it comes to choosing their friends. Much more so than my own. It’s much less shocking to see mixed race couples and it doesn’t take quota laws to get children to play together. They just do.

Still there is an inequality between the races in this country. One that still needs coercion to rectify. I don’t think we should think about relaxing anti-discrimination laws for a while. This is were the shock hits. As demonized as discrimination has become in the public arena, that it exists in the private arena can not be ignored. Rather than punish racism, the adoption process acknowledges it and tolerates what some consider racist views. Racial discomfort is forgiven. The alternative is to either drive away otherwise wonderful parents or start a childs life with a family who were so wanting to be parents they denied their basic human nature. That can’t be good for a child.

Umm... Sorry About That

You are not responsible for what happened when you were a toddler. You are not responsible for what another individual does. You are not responsible for what happened before you were born. You are not responsible for what happened without your knowledge or consent.

You are only responsible for what you do. You are responsible for what you allow to be done in your name. Since I've turned voting age I've allowed my country to fuck with (and by extension I have fucked with) the following:

Palestine
Fiji
Bolivia
Panama
Columbia
Libya
Philippines
Afghanistan
Russia
Gulf War 1
Kuwait
Iraq
Balkans
Los Angeles
Somalia
Algeria
Waco
Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan & Uzbekistan
Rwanda
Croatia
Bosnia
Syria
Chiapas, Mexico
Sudan
Nicaragua
East Timor
Kosovo
Haiti
Gulf War 2
Afghanistan (again)
Venezuela
Pakistan
Iraq (again)
Somalia
Bali
Iran

I have no excuse.

I Take A Nearly Lethal Dose Of Ritalin Every Day And I Have To Admit This Guy Is King Of All ADD Patients!!!

If ever there was a case of it taking one to know one this is it. So there's this guy who's nearly 60 and he's a junk collector in North Carolina. Dude has a simple dream, one he's been pursuing for a while now. He's got these Christmas trees that he's been growing. He wants to string lights on them. Six hundred and fifty thousand lights to be exact. So far the story seems kind of ordinary. Lots of people dream of having the biggest something or other. Especially around the holidays. Many fine individuals go over the deep end decorating without accusations of being hyperactive. Stu Ellis is no mere decorator. He wants to finance this operation by short selling the stock market which by his estimate should see the DJIA listing around 500 by next year. A year ago you would have thought he was crazy to say that out loud. Today it seems perfectly plausible. Still no ADHD there. This is the kind of thing that you can't make up. He's going to finance his private equity fund by selling one of the 7 wonders of the modern science fiction world. It turns out that he's got a very significant movie prop hanging on a string in his garage. He's going to sell the model space ship from Forbidden Planet which was just about the greatest Science Fiction movie of all time. OK still no Attention Deficit Disorder here. He's cashing in on some luck in the collectables market. What makes this the perfect storm of ADD is that his mother had to remind him to take a look around his house for something valuable that he could sell. It's like me with the closet doors. Some of you may remember I have to take them off the hinges or else I forget I have clothes.

As for Forbidden Planet, it is probably the most optimistic expression of art ever created. It's loosely based on Shakespeare's The Tempest and blessed with all the cheerful sensibility that 1950's America could handle. The plot is borrowed from Elizabethan theater and the underlying theme remains that of the horrors that mankind may bring upon our self if suddenly our dreams become real. It explores the moral that perhaps some dreams should not come true.

Perhaps like dreaming that you'll bring down all of Wall Street so that you can generate enough light pollution in your backyard that space aliens will want to land at your house and then getting your mom to help you bring that dream to reality.

That man's a fucking genius. All I have to show for my ADD is this blog and some late homework.

Nothing Changes

One of these photographs was taken 15 years ago. The other one appeared in the New York Times yesterday. They're both starving children. Both from Western Africa. Both depending on UN food aid for survival. No one knows what happened to the baby dying in the field. Not even the photographer who won the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for taking the picture.

I don't know what's going to happen to that baby in the tent. It's even more horrific though. This baby has made it to the place where food should be. This baby's fate isn't going to be as solitary as the others. That hand in the picture belongs to the baby's mother. She'll watch her child die.

I have no right to complain about anything in my life.

What's Wrong With Education In America Part 3: Adults

Could someone explain to me what possible benefit a defendant could achieve by going to trial in a criminal case but waiving the right to a jury and having the case be decided on by one judge?

Mr Funk, I'm looking at you.

I've been waiting 13 months for this. I got called to jury duty in the beginning of July 2007 for a trial in October of that year. I sent in the deferral card asking to serve in August of 07 but if they couldn't swing it then to make it August of 08. I got assigned to show up today. So for more than a year I've had this day where I had to be awake, showered and in Newburyport by 8:30 am hanging over me. I rolled into the jury room at 8:33 am. They had already started roll call but were only in the B's. I was on time.

This was my second time getting called in the last decade or so. It looked pretty much the same as last time. The room looked like the break room in an office park, white tables and chairs designed more for stacking than sitting. The jury pool was a pretty fair cross section of New Englanders weighted heavily toward baby boomer women. There were about 30 of us. Everyone was white and middle class. When they called our names we had to turn in a questionnaire asking some personal details about our education, family, criminal past and if we may not be an impartial juror. I answered that last question and for the reason put that I may have to obey my Freemasons oath if given the Grand Hailing sign of distress, murder and treason excepted. I was assigned number 26.

The clerk gave us some instructions about what to expect for the day. We listened. He left to get the judge. We read books and magazines for about 5 minutes. Most of the jury pool had coffees from Dunkin Donuts. I had a Coke. The judge came in. He was a handsome man in his late 40's, He had that just beginning to turn grey but wouldn't be considered the creepy old man at the night club look. I could listen to that man read the phone book and find it fascinating. He was clear, concise, articulate and funny. He's probably given that same speech 500 times but made it sound like it was a casual conversation between a couple guys sitting on the deck at the yacht club. We all listened to him carefully hoping that he'd actually tell us what is going on and what the trial will be about. No such luck. It was mostly about how important jury duty is and thank you for not blowing it off. Still, that man could sell tea to a Chinaman. He must have been a great lawyer.

Then they showed "the movie." It was a 15 minute slice of tedium. It was supposed to explain our duty as jurors and what to expect from the day. About half the pool watched it as if they were watching an episode of 'Law and Order'. I figure it was conditioning. The TV set has a courtroom on it. Where's that guy who sells Robot Insurance? When he comes on he'll kick some ass!

The rest of the room dropped their heads back into their books. A couple people went to the bathroom. One young woman, a cute 20 something bottle blonde put her head down on the table top and I'm pretty sure she fell asleep. I later saw that her late 90's Ford Explorer had her name on the license plate. There's something sad about a vanity plate on a crappy car.

The fate of this hapless criminal defendant is going to be decided by a room full of people who are one of two things, conditioned to turn into zombies when a TV is turned on or have the kind of ADHD where they can't even pay attention to a short film.

Maybe it's because we're all the kind of good citizen who shows up for jury duty. We consider ourselves smart and maybe a little bit jaded. Call me silly but unless you do it for a living, if you're going to decide someones fate maybe you should pay attention to the instructions. Hopefully the folks who watched the video can fill the rest of us in when the time comes. Truth be told, I did watch the video but only to see if they actually told us anything useful. There was some bit about how important it is to show up for jury duty. A bit about what to expect in the courtroom. It grooved on some of the legal terms we would hear and what the general procedure would be. There was absolutely nothing about why a jury is important for the protection of individual rights and nothing about jury nullification. You know, the reasons why we're actually here. It's just as well there wasn't. I don't think the jury pool would have cared or even comprehended such abstractions. They certainly wouldn't have understood what it all means after ignoring the pretrial infomercial in front of them.

As for my day as a juror, after the film we were told that the case will go to trial but we would be given a 45 minute break. I don't know why we were given a break from the strenuous work of sitting and reading magazines. I hope the court clerk is getting some kind of kick back because the Dunkin Donuts across the street must get mad business from the courthouse giving us just enough time to cross the street and get a snack but not enough time to drive anywhere else.

We were instructed to return by 10:15. At 11:00 we were sent home. This is a one chamber courthouse and we were told that there was only one trial scheduled today. I have no idea what the trial was actually going to be about but there were a lot of police cars from Merrimac in the parking lot and there were a bunch of kids in front of the courthouse smoking. It could be related to some teen drinking arrests last spring. I'll try to remember next week to check the Newburyport newspaper for the court filings.

Tomb of the Unknown Comic

OK, I admit it. I loved 'The Gong Show' when I was a kid. I didn't understand half of the raunchy humor but I loved the look of disappointment on peoples faces when they got gonged. Didn't those people know they sucked? I was only 7 but I could tell they were terrible. They were adults they should have known better.

The other night I caught the last 10 minutes of the new Gong Show hosted by Dave Attel. I like Dave Attel in small doses. I liked his last show where he wandered around strange cities at night. I'm one degree of separation from him and hear he's really a nice guy back stage.

The new version had Andy Dick, Dave Navarro and some black guy I've never heard of as judges. It's not clear to me who is JP Morgan and who is Jamie Farr. I don't see the new show lasting very long. I came in during the midget wrestling bit and from then on nobody got gonged.

God damn it. I wish I was Dave Navarro. Show ends and he just starts making out with some random stripper. Dave Attel is standing there hamfisted announcing some crap, I don't even remember and Dave Navarro is half way to third base. He's not even surprised that some random slut is kissing him, like it happens two or three times a day. It probably does. Damn. I really wish I was Dave Navarro.

Before you get upset with me, especially you Adorable GF, and say "What about Lisa?" I know for a fact that Lisa wishes I was Dave Navarro too.

It's Not Xbox's Fault This Time

For those of you wondering where I’ve been since the close of the school year, here goes. In a hammock in the back yard drinking beer. For most of you who know me this will come as no surprise. However not all of that time was spent goofing off. Much of it was spent convalescing from a fall through my deck. I would like to take this moment to briefly say that the new Beverly Hospital emergency room system is way better then the old one. I limped in there and was out in a leg brace in less than an hour. That included X-rays and a very short wait in a private room. The new ER was money well spent despite the fact that it took 3 years to build.

My immediate plans include more hammock time and probably fixing the hole in the deck.

All I Need Is Some Tasty Waves

I got fired again. This time I don't think I want to go back.

I Knew It

I knew if I didn't defend the smokers that sooner or later someone would come for my beer.

Part 3

I spoke with a colleague who studied for the bar but then decided to be a history teacher instead. His basic take was that the police observing me from the street could enter the property as my presence on wooded land could be reasonably considered unusual. The police then observing me could arrest me for being intoxicated while driving despite being on private property. The arrest would be for the future crime of driving should I leave the property while still intoxicated. However there wouldn't be any actual crime and I would probably not be prosecuted.

He also opined that implied consent is sufficiently vague enough that the police may breathylize anyone possessing a drivers license for any reason any time. There is still no law against driving on private property without a license. Then I saw this.

I played DodgeBall on the faculty team the other night. Teachers lost miserably. I was the last man standing. I even hit the foreign exchange kid. I was the only person to tag him out all night. Then I had a coughing fit so bad I thought it was a heart attack. I don't think it was. I've just had a cold and the new gymnasium still reeks of ammonia from the flooring that still hasn't cured fully. I have video. It's too big to post.

Why Should They Start Now?

I firmly disagree with the last sentence in this article.

How About A Nice Warm Glass Of Shut The Hell Up. You're In My World Now, Gramma!

Fuck. I guess I'm lucky. My run-ins with the police merely end with a ticket or an apology.

Then again, I'm white, middle-aged, educated and affluent. Samuel L. Jackson would say that I'm "A mutherfucking pillar of the mutherfucking community." I get respect where ever I go. But if that's what it takes to get some simple dignity I'm surprised the underclasses haven't stormed whatever passes for the Bastille in 21st century America.

Perhaps it's time they should. I'm tired of apoligising for my privilege and peerage. I yearn to be free and I know I'm not if you aren't.

Dear Toyota,

My first car was a used '84 Corolla. My next car was a used '92 Corolla. That one got me through college. A '96 Tacoma got me to grad school and back. All three were used and still ran like a charm. I am now ready to trade in my Taco for an FJ Cruiser. This will be the first new car I've ever purchased. Perhaps it's me but I thought good faith negotiations with a salesman would lead to a sale.

I asked Toyota.com for quotes from the 3 closest dealerships. One never responded. I suspected you knew because I got an email from Toyota Dealership Follow-up asking if they contacted me or not.

Another dealership replied right away and we talked for a couple days about what I was looking for. Then that sales person stopped responding to my emails and phone calls.

The third dealer seemed to be genuine in trying to help me. I test drove a car and liked it. I did want to look at a couple more cars before I made a decision but I decided to go with the third dealership. I started negotiating. I don't need to see the paper to know when I'm being 'four squared'. Sadly I've seen these tricks before at used car lots. I warned the salesman not to insult me with such manipulative tactics. I made my intention to purchase the car very clear. I gave my best offer for price and we began to discuss my trade-in, my '96 Tacoma.

We had nothing more then a handshake but we agreed on $28,000 for JTEBU11F270036722 provided they could offer me $3,500. I was initially told they only wanted to offer me $3,000 but bring it in and my good buddy would try to offer me more. We could have closed today.

I'm sorry if I don't need dealer financing. I've saved 40% down and my credit union pre-approved me for a much better rate then you offer. I was clear about my trade in being a deal breaker before I drove in. I can afford this car but I'm not going to over extend. I got a sorry no can do for my trade and my salesman even tried to show me places to sell my trade in myself for even more money. I was given the brush off to stew about losing a good deal over $500. Your boy certainly knows his psychology. So do I.

As I said, I'm familiar with tricks and manipulation. I recognize when I'm getting jerked around. Before I even got home I had an email from my chum telling me not to give up. He'll call the GM on vacation and get me that $500. Then I got the voice mail that he'll do it only if I can close this deal so they can get the Tacoma out to auction by Thursday. I wish my windows in the house were as transparent as your salesforce.

I'm not in the habit of jerking people around. I don't appreciate it when I'm still being jerked around even after I've warned someone to stop. I've given Toyota three chances to sell me a car this week. So far the best experience I've had was from the dealership that blew me off up front.

I don't really expect you to do anything for me. I just wanted to say goodbye.

What The Fuck Is Going On Around Here?

It's nice of you to ask. I know some of the links on my site are gaudy. I didn't mean to turn into Homer Simpson when he made the greatest website in the world.

Ohhhh look it's dancing Jesus.

I've been trying to stress test a very dubious connection out to teh internets.

Comcast whom I hate more then a certain Adorable Girlfriend hates... well pretty much every one she comes into contact with. I think I lost my train of thought.

Yeah dancing Jesus.

I am now the proud owner of a web domain in Spain.

deanrul.es resolves to me. Right now it's being hosted on my soon to be dead PowerBook Aluminum G4 12. It's connecting through a wireless router to Comcast where I can only have a dynamic IP address.

The router I use has been banned from automatically updating to places like no-ip and dyndns.org because they're spam tastic. Actually they're only spamtastic when connected to a windows machine. My Apache Server on a Macintosh is pretty much bullet proof. But still no automatic updates for my European TLD domain name server.

Frankly I admit I'm out of my league here and may have bitten off more then I can chew. There is a package called Updatedd that's supposed to work in the background to serve a dynamic ip address to your domain name registrar. Two things hinder me. The first is that the ip address that my macintosh sees is a bogus local area network address that my router uses to fool my Mac into thinking it's connected. The other hinderence, and it's probably the biggest problem I have is that I don't know dick about Linux.

I knew the Mac was a UNIX boxen but I never really gave it much thougth. Apple might not have written the underlying code for the daemon but they really prettied it up in the finder. Nice work. So I have the option of adding some of the builds for Linux into my /private/bin/etc/bash/log/httpd/wtf directory that are supposed to tell eurodns.com my ip should point to a new bunch of numbers. I just wish I knew where the little bastards were supposed to go.

And they say the Macintosh isn't a real computer because it's easy to use.

If anyone knows how to configure Apache on OSX to seamlessly and automatically update my dyndns info I would sure appreciate it if ya'll drop me a line.

Still in all, it beats the fuck out of having to screw around in the registry looking for cryptically named .dll files that share the same name but different creation dates and you don't know which one was over written by another program sharing the file. And Word needs the latest .dll but it lost functionality for running Excel so you have to leave the old one in but PowerPoint gets confused looking at both so I just say to hell with it.

So enjoy the cats for a little while longer. I pull the plug in a couple days. I'm already up to 4 gigs of traffic and I've only been online for 2 days. Biggest hit to my site has been me. Second biggest has been the Google robot. I added a tag to tell google to stay away. I know they're a bunch of fucktards. I think I'll block access from 66-249-66-227 at my router.

Binary Solo 10001000011100101010001010001

Weekend of computer issues. Largely self inflicted. Been trying to sync a Sony camera to my Macintosh. No firewire, just USB and it's a Sony so no Macintosh support. VirtualPC works and I can drag the mpeg-2 files to my Mac desktop but I want a more elegant solution. I tried installing WinXP on Lisa's Mac but had issues with BootCamp recognizing the windows install disk. No it wasn't an OEM disk. I know better then that. It was an XP disk that I thought was a full install of the home edition but it wasn't having it.

AT&T amuses the shit out of me. Only carrier to work with the iPhone, which as far as i know is an Apple product, will not sell me DSL service because i use a Macintosh. Looks like i'm stuck with Comcast a while longer.

My 12 inch powerbook is fading on me. It makes me sad. The fluorescent tube grows dimmer every day. I'm just hoping that it survives until the start of the next school year (two weeks.) Then I'm elligable for another MacBook on my teachers discount. What I really want is another submicro notebook like my little aluminum PB G4. The 15in is more than I want to carry around.

Although, the good news is that the new MB will come with iLife which rumor has it has a version of iMovie that now supports DVD cameras through USB. According to this cryptic message from the Apple site my camera will work with the software.

It might just be worth the $300 premium over what I would spend trying to fix my screen, install Leopard and get iLife'08 for Lisa's computer because it still won't work on my G4.

By the way Darren, what I meant to say is 3mm jack not 3/4 inch. It's the little 8th inch jack like on a Walkman. The line out on the iPhone dock will work with a standard mini headphone plug and doesn't need to be connected to the power cable to feed music to regular headphones or in my case a Walkman to RCA addapter into my TV. I'd still like to know if you tried docking it in your iPod speakers.

I know, I'm using my TV to listen to music. I don't have a bitchen stereo with tube preamp and powerline smoother. iSuck.

Does anyone remember the phrase "Don't touch my Dads NADs!"

Got to get ready for school!

Balls And Shaft

I just got home from a much too short weekend in Manhattan. The Kurz and I met up in NYC for a late lunch and some very abreviated sight seeing. Much of our conversation orbited my recent raising to the sublime degree of Master Mason and further light from the appendant bodies. Mike is hooked. He's so totally asking to be one that I find myself invested with renewed curiosity and enthusiam for the craft. Trying to look up the lodge in New York to see if there's anyting going on in the city that never sleeps I find all sorts of other websites. They lead me to other sites.

I come down with a wicked case of ADHD and just start wandering through the interwebs. I find this picture on a site that's claiming to be exposing all sorts of satanic Masonic secrets.



That's not the handshake.

None of the handshakes on that page are correct. If it was a disinformation site meant to trick e-masons who haven't truly recieved light I wouldn't be so concerned. But much of what Kurczy and I talked about was on some of the scandals and controversey surrounding my brotherhood. I feel the need to call out cowans.

Anyway, come home Mike. I want to be there on the 5 points when you're raised.

The Best Part Of The Movie

Lisa and I just watched 'The Black Dahlia'. Dissapointment with Cinemax showing it fullscreen aside the movie sucked except for one thing. It had a who-the-hell-is-that moment, which I live for. One bit actor fired off a moment of recognition just long enough for me to sit wondering for the rest of the movie where I just saw him recently. So I looked him up when the movie ended. I liked 'Doom' but it was the brain cell which just last week watched 'Batman Begins' that was trying to get my attention.

Welcome to Hollywood Mr Brake. You see the same people on the way down that you passed on the way up. Good luck!

But Will My Tinfoil Hat Protect Me From The CIA?

Good news for the government and rapists. (I know there's little difference.) Now we can erase memories like in some bad science fiction movie. This is why I was never really comfortable in grad school. They say 'blah blah blah cure alzheimer's blah blah blah' but what they really fund is increased social control and brainwashing technique.

Once I put this in the drinking water everyone will forget about that stolen election and happily serve up their children to die in my illegal war. It's the perfect plan!

Two Things

OK I was thinking which is never a good thing.

1) Why doesn't IMDB have a button to click to put a movie at the top of my Netflix Que? It seems like such a no fucking brainer. I know there's an Amazon link to buy the movie but let's get real here, who could benefit more from a link?

2) Fuck the iPhone. I want my 'Get Smart' shoe phone.

And isn't it the twenty first century? I believe I was promised rocket packs and flying cars by now! Where the fuck is my rocket pack and flying car?

I Don't Know What To Do

Right now, as I type this, both Road House and Dirty Dancing are on cable. If only the great Charles Nelson Reilly would offer me a sign from above, which movie should I watch.

Did I mention I'm drunk right now.