I am tired of parents who change the spelling of traditional names or combine two or three parts of various names to make an “original” and even more tired of students who roll their eyes and act as though you are so stupid because you mispronounce their name due to the fact that their parents couldn’t spell it correctly to start with! (Remember Monty Python’s Raymond Luxury-Yacht (pronounced Throatwobbler Mangrove?)
I realise that trying to get a group of teachers to agree on anything is harder than herding cats. There is always someone complaining about something, which always means yet another meeting, to disagree again. If only we would disagree on holding another meeting!
It’s Saturday night, the rain is pouring down outside, and I am lying on my bed. My idea of a perfect night. Mr FD is downstairs watching football on TV, so it is even more perfect!
We had to go back to the ballot boxes this weekend to vote for Mayor and city councillors. The way Federal politics is going we may have an early election this year also. I am so over Australian politics with its sniping, back stabbing and negativity that I really could move far, far away. The fact that it was raining made it even less palatable. If only they realised that I am the answer to all the world’s problems. I have the answer for everything, just let me get on with the job.
The school is holding an Open Day tomorrow (Sunday) to market to prospective students and their parents. The library, being the gem in the crown, is central to all activities, so we had to make the place shine. I found a number of articles, such as old photographs and early uniforms which I used to create a display. I have to admit that I did advertise that I was open to bribes from teachers so that they could avoid embarrassment due to unflattering photos. Not only as staff, but many of the teachers are former students, so there are more than a few of them in school uniform. Oh what fun!
Speaking of bribes, I am seriously considering introducing a tribute system. I am worth it, after all. Additionally, for a large number of gold coins I shall drive past a pleb’s (your) house, toot the car horn and wave, so that the neighbours think the pleb (you) are almost important. For even more gold coins and a few of those polymer notes I will even slow down and call out “Oh hello!” before planting my foot and accelerating away before pleb germs settle on my vehicle (I can’t risk becoming ordinary). I know it will be the highlight of your little existence, not to mention my rightful due. Stay tuned for advertised dues, rates and services; it is the least I can do for the little people.
Thinking about my Mum last night led me to consuming a box of cheezels and half a block of turkish dellight chocolate. I love cheezels, but my tongue always feels as though it has been chemically burnt after I eat any, well usually it is the whole box. Not that it stops me from eating them, I just look upon it more as a scientific experiment now than comfort eating.
Have you noticed that now days, when someone says they painted a room, and you ask “oh what colour?” that they answer “scarecrow”, “misty wind” or “scallywag”. What the hell description is that? What happened to the good old days when we just had red, green, pink, blue, yellow? Same with clothing, a pair of black trousers can be anything from “midnight” to “burnt wood”. Why can’t we just call it as we see it?
Our bookclub is reading The Great Gatsby. Can anyone tell me why it is a classic? A group of shallow, self indulgent unhappy rich people, who pretend it is a classless society when it so definitely is. It is such a chore to read and as hard as I try, I can not see the genius in it. To make it worse I am the one who suggested it for this month, and now I have to admit that I am fallible. Just as some bad teachers mark according to a student’s reputation, I think Fitzgerald got a get out of the reject pile free card on the Great Gatsby. This month’s meeting shall need cocktails to start and finish!
We have decided to sell our house, which means that I have to actually unpack the boxes in the garage that have remained unpacked since our move to this house in 2002. We think we know what is in them, but obviously we don’t know anymore, and even more obviously we don’t appear to need it, so logically we need to get rid of it. However, that means we really should go through it just to make sure we haven’t left some piece of family treasure in one of the boxes (yeah like that is a real possibility!) but one really has to do it, because wouldn’t I be really angry if I saw someone selling a rejected macaroni necklace one of our children made in kindergarten on ebay for a fortune and setting a new fashion trend that makes them the fourth richest person in the world? Slothfulness always comes back to bite you, eventually.
I need to move on to more important things, like finishing the remaining turkish delight chocolate. Amuse yourself with the mistaken belief I care about you.
t
I was never a Fan of The Great Gatsby either! and I am SO not a fan of the D’Aquavitae, names….I wish parents would realize that they are making it a bit more difficult for their kids, like when they go to apply for jobs etc. There has been lots of research on that…
See, it’s the kids with the odd names that are growing up to give colors odd names. A vicious cycle. Eventually one of them will name their child Bob, and Bob will decide that light green is just light green.
Hm, I think The Great Gatsby became a classic because its theme deals with the American idea of success, which Fitzgerald thought was tragic: money doesn’t buy happiness, or love; even when people are given opportunities to do great things, they end up drunk on the floor like a hopeless sod. Something like that. You aren’t supposed to like Daisy or Tom, but Gatsby is supposed to be a nice guy who thinks getting rich will win the worthless Daisy. Fitzgerald’s narrator doesn’t exactly help things. He feels bad for Gatsby, but he stands outside the action, just describing what he sees, and you the reader have to stand there with him and watch everybody self-destruct. It’s frustrating and sad. Or maddening, depending on how you feel about rich, stupid people.
(I spent an entire grad seminar talking about that book. It gave me some insights, but I came out disliking it even more than when I was in high school and forced to read it.)
Ooh, moving! Not fun, but such a good opportunity to get rid of stuff. I wish I had gotten rid of more back when I was packing.
Kids names – They can’t spell them, and you can’t pronounce them. Ratty
Lol, I was shopping for pants recently and said to their girl – what about the dirty orange ones? She said – well we call it tangerine actually.
Australia is suffering a period where the Federal Government holds power by a coalition arrangement with a Greens party plus some independents. Some State governments survive these coalitions, but our Fed Govt clearly is not. Currently we have scandals with our Speaker of the House of Representatives and a Labor MP implicated in a corruption inquiry. The Speaker was appointed by a dodgy deal where the former Speaker stood aside to give the Feds a 1 vote majority, but the new Speaker has had his trotters in the public trough as evidenced by his much higher than average spending, especially on travel. He is also married, a Lay Minister, but is accused of harrasing a male member of staff. While we have to assume a presumption of innocence, it is ironic to note that these kinds of (grubby) cases don’t just happen in the US Bible Belt. The Labor MP with the dodgy past; e.g. use of credit cards in houses of ill-repute, today resigned from the Labor Party to sit as an independent (on the cross-benches as it is termed). When something looks like a duck and sounds like a duck – it is a duck. In the case it is a political deal between the MP in question and probably the PM to save the current government. One scandal at a time please, two will make the independents nervous, and someone might move a no-confidence motion that will succeed. Not that I support the other side necessarily – our PM-in-waiting has just informed Indonesia that we take just as dim a view of Indonesian boats bringing refugees (usually dubbed illegal immigrants) to our shores as they do of Australian drug smugglers in Bali. Good populist stuff. However,not only is this megaphone diplomacy which Asians usually object to, especially from a Western source, it is also putting a spoke into future regional cooperation, which might ameliorate (but never solve while there refugees fleeing from persecution and/or war zones) the refugee problem.
Never in Australia’s history have we been so poorly represented at the Federal level. Heaven help us if we face a real crisis while this lot are sitting in Canberra. Ratty.
My friend Kate is a primary school teacher and in amongst the Kayleigh-Chantelles, she actually had not ONE but TWO girls called Chardonnay, one called Heavenly Hirani and one called Truly Scrumptious. Wrong on more levels than I begin to contemplate. Our wall colour in the hall is called ‘rice cake’. It does not look like a rice cake, at all. It is grey/beige, which is what it should have been called, even if that does make it sound grim when it isn’t.
I didn’t like Gatsby either. The narrator bloke was a wimp, Daisy was a pointless, vacuous tit who proved the age old adage that men will chase anything if it’s pretty and Gatsby himself was clearly stupid because he spent donkey’s yearning over the dozy Daisy. It was an era when people were starving and the poor lived in unimaginably grim circumstances, their pathetic whinges about how sad their little lives were were just so much self indulgent tosh. That said, the film version did feature some lovely shoes. This is the best thing I have to say about it.
Truly Scrumptious? I see a career in pornography in that girls future.