I have just one thing to say....

Mercy! Give me a doggone break.

Ever had a nightmare that just wouldn't end?

Well, I'm having five of 'em all at once.

GAH!

How do you keep your job as a teacher without actually showing up?

So there's this teacher who claims that she has all kinds of esoteric, bizarre health issues. She has been out of the classroom eight times as much as she has been in the classroom. Her students have been in the hands of short-term subs and permanent subs for the LAST FOUR YEARS.

She basically shows up for a couple of weeks each year and then disappears with symptoms of scurvy or trench foot or whatnot.

She has written no lesson plans, done no grading, done no teaching for nearly her entire tenure in our district. She has also discriminated against students who do not share her ethnicity.

By the way, while claiming to be so incapacitated that she cannot possibly come to work, she has been seen in the mall and has been in texting contact with some of her students. During the school day, even. It's really good to know that her thumbs are apparently the only working body parts she possesses, along with a very active VISA account filled with a salary she has not earned.

Needless to say, this is her tenure year, and she realizes that this pattern may impede her chance at receiving what is called a "permanent teaching contract."

So what strategy has she devised now?

Apparently, now she is claiming racial bias and a hostile work environment from her fellow teachers and colleagues who have been left to put a bright face on a bad situation for four... long... years. Right now, all that has been promised is that she won't return to this building next year.

Really? I guess I shouldn't be surprised if she ends up being an administrator three or four years from now. I mean, the last time we had a totally incompetent teacher on this team, she was promoted to principal and then moved to a neighboring school district as an assistant superintendent faster than you can say, "Nincompoop."

This kind of situation develops due to poor hiring decisions, refusal to admit that a mistake has been made, and laziness on the part of... everyone. I will be ABSOLUTELY FURIOUS if the administration doesn't do the grunt work and get the documentation to make sure students get the teacher they deserve.

Okay, that's it, I've had it.

Subtitled, Is that rain, or are angels pissing on my head?



Monday, TWO wee pets died at Casa Cornelius.

Tuesday, the return of insane shrieking banshee mom claiming all sorts of malfeasance on my part and that I've made her daughter HATE school when the kid sits there and smiles at me every blasted day.

Wednesday, trials with relatives who seem to just push my buttons-- which makes sense, because they installed them.

Today, I get a nearly $100 ticket from a cop over my bike rack. MY BIKE RACK. She said it was "illegal." I hope the folks at Yakima know this.

I can't wait to see the joy and brickbats Friday may bring.

Those wishing to help may send margaritas by the gallon to:
Ms. Cornelius
c/o 1313 Mockingbird Lane
Bite Me, Frigid Midwest OU812

Tchah.

And yet-- I still believe it's wrong.

Depressing.

I have had numerous parents tell me that "everyone does it" and that if I can't give consequences to every kid who cheats, then I shouldn't punish their kid. The words "character," "honesty," and the like are laughed off as at best a quaint notion from bygone days.

In one previous incident, I watched a girl turn her paper so that the boy next to her could copy freely without straining his neck, poor thing. When I told her she got a zero too, she incredulously claimed that she hadn't been cheating. I held my ground with her and with her daddy, and fortunately was backed up by administration.

But the saddest part is that kids who don't bother to learn the material really cheat only themselves. Then they wonder why they struggle.

WHY does this little creep get to own a gun?

Guess who THIS is?

A federal jury convicted a 23-year-old man on an obscure weapons charge Tuesday, apparently unaware that 10 years ago he and another boy killed four classmates and a teacher in a schoolyard ambush.

Mitchell Johnson faces 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine when he is sentenced in the next 45 days on a count of possessing a firearm while being a drug user.

Johnson was arrested on New Year's Day 2007 after police stopped his van and said they found a bag of marijuana in his pocket and a 9 mm pistol and a 20-gauge shotgun in two bags. Police said they stopped the van after getting an anonymous tip about drugs in the vehicle.

In 1998, Johnson, then 13, and 11-year-old schoolmate Andrew Golden opened fire as students and teachers left Jonesboro Westside Middle School after Golden pulled the fire alarm. The boys killed English teacher Shannon Wright and four students ages 11 and 12. They wounded 10 other people.

Government lawyers did not bring up Johnson's violent past. The only clue during the two-day trial came during jury selection, when potential panelists were asked whether Johnson's name sounded familiar.

Mitch Wright, the widower of the teacher killed March 25, 1998, watched Tuesday's court session along with his son Zane, who was 2 at the time of the shootings. The boy "wanted to see what this person looked like," Wright said during a break in the trial.

State courts sent Johnson and Golden to a juvenile prison until their 18th birthdays. Federal prosecutors then got them locked up until they turned 21.

Johnson left prison with an "adjudicated" record — meaning he could own firearms.

Read the whole thing.

One of the first posts on this blog was over the release of this little shit from prison here at this post. At the time, his mother claimed he was sorry, wanted to become a minister, and would be leaving Arkansas to go to college.

Right.

What the HELL were they thinking giving him a record that allows him to own guns?!?

Well, by all means, let's give him another chance at killing someone with a gun. Let's forget that he and his friend killed five people and wounded ten others. Let's forget that he left a two year old without a mother, and four other sets of parents with a gaping wound in their hearts.


****UPDATE! And he's been arrested yetagain.

You know who you are, idiot driver

Yeah, you.

The man in the Lexus reading the newspaper while driving. I came upon you as we were in the right turn lane this morning. You were stopped even though the light was green, and it took you a couple of minutes to move. I was trying to be in a Zen place on my way to a thirteen hour workday and didn't honk.

Then I pulled up beside you after you FINALLY woke up, turned the corner, and chose a stupid lane after a quarter mile of weaving back and forth. To see a newspaper business section propped up on your steering wheel as you go ten miles under the speed limit down the road.

You are a moron.

This is now two brushes with-- Lexuses? Lexi?-- under the command of a dope. I sense a pattern here. At least there wasn't an ice storm too.