Reply #67: Hey, I felt that from the moment I first heard about this.

[calimary]

I've wanted to cry just about every time I see footage of ANYTHING involving that story. I can't believe what we're doing to the ecosystem, and why this isn't being treated as a Manhattan Project-type national EMERGENCY!!!

I was having this argument with another mother - who actually agreed with me wholeheartedly - regarding a small scandal that's erupted at my son's school. Pretty typical, unfortunately. The LA Times just had a story about it, maybe a week or so ago. Teachers' salaries are being frozen, and several of the best teachers who've been there awhile and whom the students all love, AND one really popular woman recently honored as "Teacher of the Year" have all been fired, some of them abruptly and with only weasel words and lies for "explanation". The school's pleading poverty of course. HOWEVER... they STILL somehow are managing to put together enough money for a Jumbotron for the fucking football team!!!! And the fucking football coach makes twice and even three times what the Math and Science and English teachers do!!!! The Teacher of the Year who got fired was the head of the whole fucking language department!!!! But they're three-quarters of the way toward being able to buy that fucking Jumbotron for the fucking football team - with its price tag of 200-THOUSAND dollars. :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad:

And I said to my friend, this other mother, WHY is it that we simply MUST train more people to chase after other people and knock them down? We have more than enough of that already without feeling compelled to throw in some 200-thousand-dollar fucking Jumbotron. You can find scores of people down ANY back alley in ANY bad neighborhood in ANY city who are skilled and practiced at chasing somebody and knocking them down!!! We already have more of that kind of expert than we EVER needed, and we DO NOT need to "train" ANY MORE!!!!! What we need are BRAINS!!! To hell with the ability to run and catch up with somebody and knock them down!!! We should be developing INTELLECTS who can think us OUT OF THIS DAMN OIL SPILL AND BRING IT TO AN END!!!!! We need to be building the BRAIN POWER of people who can think of ways to solve this planetary environmental crisis and stop the gusher and clean up the damned OIL!!!!!!


God DAMN but the priorities in this country are fucked up. I'm SO glad my son is not a jock. Doesn't have the sports gene. Don't know how he could - it isn't in my husband or me. We don't have anything to pass down to him in that regard. It's musicians and artists and writers in our house. Not sports jocks.