Now that I'm in my mid-30s, I'm starting to think more and more about having enough money in the future. With Dubya messing with Social Security, who knows what will be left when I retire? Not that I really thought it would be there when I turn 65 (or 67, or 70, depending on Bush's plans), and not that I planned to try and live on it either. But I have certain plans and I wonder how to better prepare myself for an eventual move and purchase of a home in the place where I plan to live the rest of my life. I just don't want to end up being cold-called by people like this when I'm looking for financial advice. Plus, my father died at 65 and even with early retirement, he had no time to enjoy himself before succumbing to illness. If the average life expectancy for males in the US is 72 and the Social Security eligibility age gets raised to that, what does that say about how we feel about old people in this country? Aren't they supposed to be the biggest voting bloc in this country? It's bad enough that they're saying you have to work for 50 years for a couple of years of leisure. Man, I'm morbid today.

Well, happy Memorial Day.

We cooked out today and no one's lawn is on fire, so everything went well. Just the fiasco we went through the day before yesterday trying to buy a grill was enough for me to want to immolate myself, so I'm happy with our little charcoal grill that we can replace in the future. Everything's about the future.

Does anyone know where I can find a site that has Jack the Ripper merchandise? Besides EBay? I can't believe that I can't find one. There's a Black Museum on the London Bridge, but it has no website. C'mon! Get with the aughts!

Check this out and tell me that we've come a long way toward the sexes being equal. Who else would buy these except insecure and overbearing husbands and boyfriends? Actually, I've heard that the male version of these are selling faster than the female version. But here are some comments from women

This weekend, the fifth woman ever is running in the Indy 500. I don't give two shits for a bunch of rednecks driving in a circle, but at least it has the interesting component of Danica Patrick actually having a shot to win it this year. Yet, even that story is overshadowed by the one the press played up: she's attractive! That's right, that's the most important part of this story, the fact that she's not a dog. Reminds me of when idiot James Inhofe was asked to say something nice about Mayor Susan Savage, he said, "Well, she's kind of cute." How does it feel to be stuck in 1959, Oklahoma? To top it all off, some of the other drivers are saying she has an unfair edge because she's smaller. They say that because she weighs less than most men, her car is carrying less weight and can therefore run faster. What a load of crap! I know nothing about NeckCar or Indy racing, but I do know that they don't take into account the weight of the driver when determining how fast the car will go.

These chauvinists give us run-of-the-mill chauvinists a bad name.

On the Jack the Ripper front, a new theory emerging has a new suspect at its center. Now, there's a new suspect almost every time there's a new book, so that's not notable. What's notable is that the suspect this time is an obvious and silly one. It's Arthur Conan Doyle, writer of the Sherlock Holmes stories. Maybe not as silly as the book proposing Lewis Carroll (Alice in Wonderland author) as the Ripper, but almost. Turns out that all of his Sherlock stories were a front that contained codes that must be broken to reveal Doyle's crimes, sort of like Davinci Code. Yeah, right. Hmm, who's left to accuse from that era? Oscar Wilde? His friend, Miles, has been fingered. Queen Victoria? Her grandson and, more recently, her son have been put forth as suspects. If you can think of a Victorian Era "superstar," there's probably been at least a story written that points toward that person as Jack the Ripper. Silly, but good for me. For every new book and theory that gets publicized, that makes my proposed JTR dissertation a possibility. I'm not going to go for a suspect, but write "around" the case. But these theories are getting crazier and crazier. Or is it, "curiouser and curiouser?"

N.B. The above panties story is a hoax. Check out the explanation. But I believe the technology is real.

So, Dubya says that closing bases around the country is "crucial." I seem to recall that when Clinton proposed this, he was blasted as a "military-hating liberal" who "didn't care about his country's defense." Now Bush gets us involved in Afghanistan and Iraq, stretches our forces to what military strategists describe as a "crisis point," and wants to close bases. All politicians suck and nothing they do suprises me, but bald-faced hypocrisy never fails to irk me. At least be consistent with your idiotic ideology. When weak-willed Demos cave in and vote for the war, bans on gay marriage and give tax cuts to corporations, and Republicans lip service helping "common people" then vote for tax increases or screw with Social Security, it's no wonder that drug dealers are more respected than politicians.

I went with ET to get prescriptions refilled at the school clinic and the doctor there changed my medication from Lexapro to Prozac. I have joined the Prozac Nation! What was funny was that he just shrugged when I asked him about changing from one medication to another. He said that we are all just "experiments of one" and that each person is basically a guinea pig when it comes to what works best. So I've prescribed the pills and 3 stiff shots of Captain Morgan each night, since it seems that we don't need doctors anymore. Also, when I told him that even though I don't take pain medication more than once or twice a month, yet it doesn't seem to work as well, he put it down to, "well, you're kinda, uh, big," meaning that my fat ass needs more than two dinky pills to wade through the flab and affect the motor sensors. Thanks, doc. He also advocated those exercises for the back, but my question is, when it hurts to just sit or even get up and walk around, do you really feel like stretching to the point of unimaginable pain? I know, if I did the exercises, eventually I would feel better. On this at least, though, the future can screw off.

I read those bizarre bids sites and that's where I found that one that ET referred to on her blog where the girl offered "personal items" for money toward a vacation. Another one stated that you could bid on someone's breast milk. Then when I read closer, it got worse. Turns out you could get a video of this girl drinking her OWN breast milk. Never tell me again that men are the filthiest of the sexes. I guess when you go to Rachel's "breastaurant," you could say, "I'll take whatever you have on tap."

People offer all sorts of freaky things, but the ones involving children are the creepiest. There are several that ask you to bid on whether or not parents cut their girl's hair. Then you could get a video of the cutting. Does this strike anyone else as creepy? I know people have all sorts of fetishes, from shoes to, yuck, breast milk, but what would anyone want with this video of a girl getting her hair cut? I sometimes think that I am, despite all the things I've seen and read about, remarkably naive.

In order to foster goodwill in my house, I agreed to watch Meet the Fockers with ET last night. "Agreed" may be too strong, 'cause with me that means grumbling and bitching before, during and after it. But about halfway through that pile of crap, I was ready to fire up the yard edger and run it over myself. I don't think ET really liked it either, because she offered to turn it off. This is the biggest-grossing comedy of all time? Man. What the hell is the matter with people? That wasn't funny, it was just uncomfortable. Anyone who has to meet the future in-laws or just the family of someone you're dating knows how there's NOTHING funny about being criticized or never being able to do anything right in their eyes.

In an era where Roy Mercer tapes sell, where people go on reality TV shows, where Punk'd is a hit and Jackass is made into a movie, are we so stupid that we can't tell we're being humiliated? I'm talking about the contestants of those shows, not the audience. Schadenfreude is and always will be with us. What I don't get is when we all demand our rights, demand to be catered to and in a country where teachers are told not to use red ink to grade because "it makes the students feel bad," we will knowingly humiliate ourselves publicly. Does anyone else see the conflict here? Is fame OK at any price, no matter what you have to do to get it? I'm sure Oswald had the same thoughts. That's what's scary.

Anyway, ET bought a new foam underthingy for the bed because the mattress is too hard and we've both had trouble sleeping, not to mention that the feather bed pseudo-mattress-for-on-top-of-the-other mattress she bought before is too big and makes the fitted sheet come off. So the new one feels OK, but I still cannot fall asleep for more than a few minutes at a time. Even when I come home from work and snooze at about 8pm, it doesn't last the whole night. You know those days when you come home from whatever, you have nothing to do, nothing due and no pressing engagements, go to sleep accidentally and sleep for about 15 hours? Those are great. Unfortunately, I haven't had one of those days in years. Remember when you didn't want to go to sleep as a kid?

Then,our hot water heater went out and we have a 6 year warranty that covers everything except fixing it, so we had to buy a part and have the next door neighbors install it because I'm the anti-handyman. The woman from the manufacturer even told ET to just buy the part and "I'm sure your husband knows how to put it on." Sorry, not this fella. I was never good at anything mechanical. Even as a kid,my model cars were denied liability insurance because of safety defects. They weren't considered "rug safe." Reminds me of a Bloom County where they were going to present a paper on men's place in modern society called, "Men Today: Stale Roles and Tight Buns."

"Pussy, Jack, and many of 'em!" "And now, Jack, let's have a little talk about Pussy. Two pairs of nutcrackers?" "If I could choose, I would choose Pussy from all the pretty girls in the world." A few lines from The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens. Just tickled me. Think about this: What celebrity would you LEAST like to have it said you resemble? I was driving home from work today and stopped by Quik Trip. The girl there said, "Did anyone ever tell you you look just like the guy who does those movies?" "Really? (An actor? Some hunky guy? Me?) Who?" "Michael Moore!" The thud you heard at about 6:30 pm was my ego hitting the floor in Owasso. Gee, thanks.

I told you Jack was the Loch Ness Monster! 

Comparing myself to what we know about JTR.

Jack: Around mid-30s age range.
Me: Ditto

Jack: Lived in London
Me: If only. . .

Jack: Probably married/employed as he struck on weekends.
Me: Married, overemployed

Jack: Witnesses describe him as being of average height. For 1889, that's 5'8".
Me: I guess I'm average height for now, around 6 feet.

Jack: Of "foreign appearance," whatever that means.
Me: ?

Jack: Bushy moustache.
Me: Uh, no. In high school, though.

Jack: Wore a hat
Me: Not since I got my toupee'. Now I'm leading a more active lifestyle!

Jack: Hated women
Me: Only specific ones, and no one worth going to prison for. Plus, happily married to one.

Jack: Shy around women (when not killing them)
Me: Well, my wife had to ask me out!

Jack: Wore checked coat and trousers according to one witness
Me: Wore checked slacks to a chorus recital in the 5th grade. So hideous, I beat myself up that night.

Jack: Carried a parcel
Me: I usually have a book, if that counts.

Oh, and finally,
Jack: Killed at least 5 women
Me: . . . . . nah.

Went to see H2G2 tonight. Complete waste of time. I'm the fan and I just sat there waiting for it to be over. We ate at a chinese restaurant right before it that should be sued for impersonating chinese food. I thought about saying, "No thanks, just looking around" when we first went in there because hardly anyone was there and the place didn't look very clean, but decided to try it. Man, it was bad. From a limping, lisping waiter to the surly woman who slammed food into the trays and griped at someone on her way into the kitchen, it was horrible. That should have been my indication, my harbinger of what the night would bring. The movie started with dolphins jumping around, perhaps the most boring animals on the planet. You can't pet them, they're slimy and make goofy R2D2 noises. Then the movie proceeded to suck. Over the top performances from Zaphod and Ford, and when I could see a joke from the book coming, they omitted it. Then they would leave in some of the lame jokes I always hated (the made up words like "hoopy" and "zarquon"). The fact that I woke up with the world's worst backache didn't help. It still hasn't gone away. I'm taking Ultracet for pain, but it does nothing. I believe I asked for the wrong pain medication last time, and maybe I should have asked for Endocet. I always get them mixed up. I only take it about once a month, but the last couple of times I've had to take it and just suffer through, because the pills do nothing. I have to look into that.

I'm waiting for a book on Jack the Ripper's last victim, Mary Jane Kelly. She was the only one killed inside and the most disfigured and brutalized. What I don't understand is how everyone just assumes that this was Jack's victim. She was overkilled and he must have taken forever to do it. Granted, for the ones he killed on the street, he had to get it over with quickly, but it just seems weird that he would change his M.O. and indulge himself so much. Plus, very strange things happened during the course of the investigation. The coroner refused to allow all the evidence of the killing to be publicized or even discussed, and the person who saw Mary with a person before she died never testified. Hmmm. The supposed number one suspect for the police drowned himself about 6 weeks after the murder and the story is that he suffered a "complete break" in his brain after his indulgence and killed himself. To me, that seems too pat. I think the Loch Ness Monster did it.

So Tess, in my earlier post, goes on with her life without her husband. She goes back to work on a dairy farm and is reunited with some of her friends. Her husband is off to Brazil and runs into one of the girls Tess worked with. He asks her to go with him to Brazil! She assents, but can't betray Tess, so she leaves. Man, what a dick. The guy who raped Tess shows up in town and they run into each other. He has "repented" and wants Tess to forgive him. She says she does, but he takes this as encouragement and proceeds to pester her with marriage proposals. Imagine it! She must be bowled over with his romanticism. But her father takes ill, as well as her mother. She nurses her mother, only to have her father drop dead. They lose their home because no male heir is around, so they must move. The guy who raped Tess, D'urberville, offers her his old place as his aged relation has died. Finally, she gives in for the sake of her family. Plus, he keeps telling her that her husband will never come back. She has written to her husband and he never answered, so she begins to believe D'Urberville. So she moves in with him. You can see it coming, can't you? Her husband DOES show up, after getting a letter from her friends about her current conditions, and hires a farmer's cart, rushing to her like a sappy romantic movie. Except when he gets there, she rebuffs him and says it's too late. He leaves and she argues with D'Urberville, then stabs him and flees. She runs into Angel, her husband, and wind up, somehow, at Stonehenge! She falls asleep on an altar (how symbolic) and the men from the village catch up to them. She is hanged in the town square and the book ends. It wasn't possible for Hardy to leave well enough alone. See? He had to kill her because she had had relations before marriage. What a nice story.

Now, on to (finally) finishing Great Expectations. "I hate you. You may kiss me if you like."

A couple of weeks ago, I went to work at the counseling office and the computers were down. A line had been cut by PSO, so we just sat around, not allowed to go home for some reason but not able to assist students, have them take placement tests, or find classes for them. Waste of time. So my boss up in the testing office, a great black lady, proceeds to hum and sing some contemporary Christian songs while we are all sitting around. She tells us of one she really likes and says she has it in her office. Me, another counselor Matt and a guy who mans the reception desk now proceed to be herded right outside her door. We sit down as she puts in the CD and starts the song. Now, I cannot stand contemporary Christian music; my thoughts are along the same lines as the South Park episode where Cartman says they just take pop songs, remove the word "baby" or "girl" and put in Jesus or Lord. But I'll listen. So she plays the song, which she tells us is "Thank You, Jesus." Mmmm-kay. What I don't expect is for the guy and his backup choir to spend 4 and a half minutes singing just that! There were no other words. And my boss is dancing around, clapping her hands and singing with the music. Then she starts pointing at us during the song, either thanking me and intimating I was Jesus, or telling me that I was going to sing-neither of which was true. I had to think that I was getting paid 11 dollars an hour for this and that I still didn't think it was enough. So I started messing with her:
Me: "Thank who?"
"Jesus."
Me: "Oh."
Me: "Do what to him?"
"Thank him."
Me: "Oh."
Me: "For what, exactly?"
"Everything."
Me: "Oh."
Me, after another 2 minutes of this song: "Who are we thanking again?"
"You are a trip."

Moments like this make me take stock of my life. Do you ever do that? Have something occur and while it's happening, start to think, "What happened to me?" I was thinking, "Here I am, mid-30s, past a Master's degree education, married and settled. I had such promise in High School, voted Most Talented and expected to do something (writing, acting, singing) creative with my life. Now, more than several years down the road, I'm still in school, I'm teaching two classes and having to work at another job just to pay bills and have another avenue of work just in case, as is likely, I don't find a tenure-track job as an English professor, staring at a computer for hours on end while students babble about how they know they messed up when they first went to school and that they'll work harder now, or are divorced and looking for "something to do" or "my parents said if I wanted to live at home I had to be in school" and not understanding that ENG 1113 means that it is a 3 hour class or they got a 7 on their ACT and expect to go into Pre-Med and "by the way, can you put me in easy classes with easy teachers because I don't want to work that hard and I hate to write" and my cartag is due and we'll have less money coming in during the summer because I'm not teaching and I'm sitting here watching a 50 year-old woman dance around, clapping her hands and singing "Thank You, Jesus" for 4 and a half minutes while I'm supposed to be working.

A girl of 18 finds out that a distant relation lives pretty near to her family. She decides to visit and gets employment helping the wealthier relations. One of the relations, a distant cousin, takes a fancy to her. She rebuffs him but doesn't leave because her family needs the money she gives them from her job. Things go on like this for some months. Finally, there is a community event that everyone attends. Afterward, the girl is walking back to her live-in job with other girls. They berate her for sleeping with the guy, which she hasn't done, but no one believes her. The guy shows up and offers her a ride. She takes it to be away from the others. Then he purposely gets lost and leaves her in a field to find a "land marker" to get his bearings. She has been working very hard, it is very late, and she falls asleep in the field. She awakes with the guy on top of her.

Afterward, he tells her to let it go, to get over it already, and that he won't bother her anymore. She leaves the employ of her relations and goes home. Her parents are upset that she didn't wind up married to the guy and really upset that she gave up her virginity without a marriage proposal. Months pass, she has a baby, and she's living at home in shame. The baby is born sick and dies after a few months. No word is heard from the father during or after the pregnancy. So she is now 20 and unemployable in the little town she lives in.

She moves to a distant farm and works as a dairymaid. There, a man who is working there only to gain practical knowledge before opening his own farm falls in love with her, to the consternation of the other girls working there. She refuses him many times, but he persists. She finally relents and wants to tell him about her past. He tells her that nothing will change his opinion so she decides to wait until after the marriage. Guess what happens on their wedding night when she tells him?

This is Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbevilles, and I couldn't help thinking that not much has changed in attitudes from 1889 to now. This girl of 20 was supposed to be at least marginally virginal and to find out that she's not AND has had a baby AND that the baby has died AND that the man who did this is still alive are all too much for her new husband. Not that we still hold these antiquated notions of women; after all, I'm PRETTY sure my wife wasn't a virgin when I married her--I was tipped off by the presence of her son. Still, we as a society do still stigmatize women more than men when it comes to sex. It's funny, we are so open-minded, but ask any guy to quiz his wife/girlfriend about her past relationships. He'll refuse to do it. To guys, more than 1 would make us think differently of her. Ignorance is bliss to us, and we'd rather lie to ourselves than know the truth.

As for Tess, I'm not at the end yet, but I know that in the Victorian Era, a woman who has had sex before marriage is not allowed to live. The fiction writer must find a way for her to die and I know Tess is headed that way. At least in that respect, we've changed a bit. Now, Paris Hilton is an icon and there are are websites devoted to the countdown to the 18th birthdays of the Olsens and Maria Sharapova. We are absolutely the other way, now. We want the innocence of youth destroyed as soon as possible.

Yet, at the same time, we try to shield kids from the real world. A CBS station in California the other day showed a live shootout between a gunman and police and showed the man get his head shot off. For this, the station will probably be nominated for an Emmy. For Janet Jackson's boob, CBS is fined $250,000. Then a school board made its band stop playing "Louie, Louie" because the words are obscene, even though no one appears to know them. Finally, the government in Texas has passed a bill outlawing "sexy cheerleading," and suggestive dance moves. Ridiculous. What else are cheerleaders for? They contribute nothing else to sports but eye candy. Wouldn't you love to be the guy who is actually paid to go around inspecting cheerleaders and their routines to make sure they are "compliant?"

Well, no more e-mails from that student. I guess she just accepted the fact. This was not as bad as another student I had, who failed my class one semester and then took me again the next. He was an athlete and needed my class to retain eligibility. He wrote me an e-mail apologizing for the previous grade and promised to do better. I thought it was very mature of him to own up to his failing and looked forward to having him in class because, when he was there, discussion was lively.

So everything was fine until he didn't turn in a couple of assignments. He was then gone for about a week and gave me a story about a dead relative. Then, when he did show up he would sleep to the point of snoring and I would have to slam the podium or get someone to nudge him. I understand jocks, I was one in high school, and I think they sometimes get bad press in college. Their entire lives are structured, they are up very early to very late with someone telling them where to go at all times. But I had so many athletes miss the first few minutes of my class because of lifting, drills, etc. that I began to ignore them and went on without them with the rest of class and refused to back up and go over stuff with them when they did show up. Our classes are only 50 minutes, and to miss 10 or 15 of that is pretty serious all told.

So this guy then sends me an e-mail during finals week saying that he knows he didn't turn in one assignment (it was two) and he expects it to be dropped. I don't "drop" grades like other teachers. I don't understand dropping the lowest grade on an assignment. To me that's an artificial inflation at the end. Plus, again, there were two grades missed, not one. Also, everyone in the class has to attend workshops outside of class, a minimum of 6, in order to receive 20 percent of their grade. He didn't go to one. Not one. So the most he could make in my class is an 80 percent even before figuring in two Fs.

Anyway, the e-mail goes on to say that he thinks he has "about a B" and that if there is a way to push that to an A, then I "need" to give him extra credit to do it. Amazing. As I've said previously, I don't know if it's the culture we live in that tells kids they are entitled to anything, but the balls of this kid just astounded me.

Finally, the e-mail ends by saying that if he doesn't get this grade, he may not be back next year. Big incentive for me.

This was one kid I didn't bother to respond to and duly affixed an F onto his official transcript.

It's not as if our college even has good teams, by the way.

Moving on, I can't read one thing at a time. I have reader's ADD I guess. So yesterday I was reading Tess by Thomas Hardy for my comps next semester, the newest Sports Illustrated and The Essential Jack the Ripper at the same time. Going back and forth, just in the period I spent reading them, the word "freak" showed up in them all. Just a weird coincidence.

Rachel, what was that thing in the bowl? Even ET said she wasn't sure. I'm sure it's the obvious answer, but maybe:

"Rectangular and only those with a vagina would have one"
A Madonna cassette tape?
An empty Whitman's Sampler?
A coupon for Bath and Body Works?
An enrollment card for TCC's pottery-making class?
The book He's Just Not That Into You?
A renewal notice for Cosmo?

I can't think of anything else chauvinistic enough at the moment.

Last night was our final in my last (official) class. I was about halfway through it, just b.s.-ing until I realized I was actually writing pretty well. Then I started to care. Hopefully, I'll get the A. Anyway, we all went out afterward, and like ET said, it was loud and smoky at the bar. So loud, I couldn't even hear ET talk. Now that's loud!

I have this student who has been e-mailing me constantly after receiving her course grade and begging me to change it. I usually get one or two at the end of the semester who either tell me what they think they made (like that's going to affect me) or bemoaning their grade. I haven't had one who says that the grade in my class will cause her to lose her scholarship. This is an international student and I guess she needs the scholarship to stay at TU. I know one teacher who gave a bad grade--I mean, whose student got a bad grade in her class and not only did he lose his scholarship, he was deported back to Saudi Arabia. They are serious about scholarship. Here, we shrug and send them to TCC! I don't want to ignore the e-mails but I also don't want to get into a long discussion about it. There are many things that people can do in my classes to keep/receive high grades and, without being specific, if a person fails to do these things, I cannot help him or her. Also, I would get the rep of being either easy or malleable and it's hard enough to maintain respect and order in college classes. I'm not the only one who sees these grades and I have to give a copy of each assignment and its corresponding grade to my boss. She's too far away to justify the change. Man. I think it's just a worldwide idea now that everyone is "entitled" to whatever they want, or if they bitch about it long enough, they'll get it.

As far as ET's rant goes, I think that a blog is an unprofessional way to handle this and that you should come see me in my office (when you've got your stuff off my desk or you ever let me in there when you get off EBay) to talk about it. This is a small marriage and you may have to watch a movie again with me in the future, so it's not wise to burn bridges.

And thanks to Rachel for shaming me into adding a new post : )