Why English Teachers Die Young

Why English Teachers Die Young (Actual* analogies and metaphors found in high school essays)

1. Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.


2. His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.


3. He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.


4. She grew on him like she was a colony of E. Coli, and he was room-temperature Canadian beef.


5. She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.


6. Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.


7. He was as tall as a six-foot, three-inch tree.


8. The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of his wife’s infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free ATM machine.


9. The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn’t.


10. McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag filled with vegetable soup.


11. From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you’re on vacation in another city and Jeopardy comes on at 7:00 p.m. instead of 7:30.


12. Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze.


13. The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.


14. Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph.


15. They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that resembled Nancy Kerrigan’s teeth.


16. John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.


17. He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant, and she was the East River.


18. Even in his last years, Granddad had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long, it had rusted shut.


19. Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do.


20. The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.


21. The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.


22. He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame, maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.


23. The ballerina rose gracefully en Pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.


24. It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with power tools.


25. He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.

*All this sounds made-up.  I saw it first over at East of the Sun, West of the Moon, and traced it to Joke of the Day.  No word of its origins, but gotta admit, they got me laughing.

Apocalysts Now sic

“Apocalysts Now” (sic.)
by David S Katz Mar 10, 06 posted from here. url:  http://www.newhumanist.org.uk/volume121issue2_more.php?id=1954_0_41_0_C
David S. Katz is chair of the Department of History, Tel Aviv University, and author of The Occult Tradition
What if you not only believed that the world was going to end but had the power to make it happen? David S Katz explores the modern occult--
Conservative American columnist Daniel Pipes concludes a recent article for the New York Sun on Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad with the following words: “The most dangerous leaders in modern history are those… equipped with… a mystical belief in their own mission. That, combined with his expected nuclear arsenal, makes him an adversary who must be stopped, and urgently.” As evidence of Ahmadinejad’s mysticism Pipes cites the fact that he believes in Mahdaviat, the ‘second coming’ of the ‘Mahdi’, an Islamic version of the Messiah. Such radical religious beliefs, held by the leader of a powerful nuclear state, Pipes argues, will have ominous consequences. No doubt he is right. But if Pipes is concerned about the rise of powerful nuclear-armed men who believe in the second coming, he might have looked a little closer to home. Forget Iran. The mainstay of religious radicalism and mainstream occultism, is the United States, and America already has the bomb. More than one.
Consider these statistics: 95 per cent of Americans believe in God; 86 per cent believe in Heaven; 78 per cent believe in life after death; 72 per cent believe in angels; 71 per cent believe in Hell; 65 per cent believe in the Devil; 34 per cent believe that the Bible is inerrant. But then again only 40 per cent believe they have actually had contact with the dead (source Kosmin and Lachman and The Economist).
America is a country where beliefs of this sort are commonplace. According to the National Survey of Religious Identification (NSRI) (whose estimates are more cautious than some) 20 per cent of the American population – 50 million people – can be called Evangelical Christians; that is, Fundamentalists. While Fundamentalist beliefs can appear extreme, in terms of numbers American Fundamentalism is not a fringe phenomenon.
Fundamentalism is a term more often used than understood, applied in a rather casual way to literalist followers of many religious texts. In relation to American Christianity, however, the term does have a clear historical origin. The word ‘Fundamentalism’ originally referred to a series of a dozen pamphlets entitled The Fundamentals which were distributed free of charge by the American Bible League between 1909 and 1915. The project was funded by two brothers, Lyman and Milton Stewart, who had made their fortunes in the California oil industry, and 250,000 were printed.
The Fundamentals emphasized two key points. The first was the truth of the infallible Bible, the conviction that the Old and New Testaments represent the complete and exact word of God and are the comprehensive and final authority over faith and practice. The second point stressed the concept of the ‘born again’ Christian, the insistence that salvation and eternal life come only as the free gift of God’s grace through a radical and sudden commitment to Christ.

Fundamentalism has thrived in America since the end of the Second World War, usually under the name Evangelical Christianity, which is seen as less pejorative. The success of the movement since 1945 is due to a number of factors. The first is the general prosperity of the post-war years, for Fundamentalism is a faith of the economically comfortable, and in that it is similar to Calvinism in general. Secondly, there was a religious revival during the 1950s, when Fundamentalism successfully reflected the values of the times. Billy Graham, that era’s most prominent preacher, described by George W Bush as ‘America’s pastor’, dressed like a successful businessman and used television to convince viewers to make a ‘decision for Christ’. He spoke the language of American individualism, emphasizing personal sin and the benefits of coming to Christ. The third factor was the perceived threat of communism, which came to replace evolution as the chief satanic ideology in the Fundamentalist cosmology. It was an easy substitution: like evolution, communism came from abroad, it spread subversively and uncontrollably, and it undermined Christianity. Russia was seen as the headquarters of the Antichrist on Earth, and this political stance endeared Fundamentalists to American administrations, and anti-communist politicians to Fundamentalists, for many decades.

[Please click here to read the rest of this article, as it is not my own, and is, in total 5 pages long. Don’t wanna do that?  Right click here to download an MS Word doc of the article to your hard drive.  Remember, this is from http://www.newhumanist.org.uk/  okay!?]

Peace,
Haji

Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road?

Why did the Chicken cross the road?

GEORGE W BUSH We doesn’t care why the chicken crost the road. We jus wan ta know if the chicken is on our side of the road or not. Ya’ know?  See, the chicken, well, it’s either for us, or, or, (pause) or against us. There is no middle ground.

COLIN POWELL Now to the left of the screen, you can clearly see the satellite image of the chicken crossing the road.

TONY BLAIR I agree with George.

DR SEUSS Did the chicken cross the road? Did he cross it with a toad? Yes, the chicken crossed the road, but why it crossed I've not been told.

MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR I envision a world where all chickens will be free to cross roads without having their motives called into question.

GRANDPA In my day, we didn't ask why the chicken crossed the road. Somebody told us the chicken crossed the road, and that was good enough.

KATIE COURIC Isn't that interesting? In a few moments, we will be listening to the chicken tell, for the first time, the heart-warming story of how it experienced a serious case of molting, and went on to accomplish its dream of crossing the road.

JOHN LENNON Imagine all the chickens, crossing all the roads;You may say, I’m hen pecked, but I’m not the only one,
Let’s hope that one day; all the chickens will cross as one.

ARISTOTLE It is the nature of chickens to cross the road.

KARL MARX It was an historic inevitability.

RONALD REAGAN What chicken?

SIGMUND FREUD The fact that you are at all concerned that the chicken crossed the road reveals your underlying sexual insecurity.

BILL GATES eChicken2007 will not only cross roads, but will lay eggs, too.  Big ones.

ALBERT EINSTEIN Did the chicken really cross the road, or did the other side cross to it?

BILL CLINTON What is your definition of ‘road’?

THE BIBLE And God came down from heaven, and he said unto the chicken:
“THOU SHALT CROSS THE ROAD. And the chicken didst cross the road, and there was rejoicing.

COLONEL SANDERS Did I miss one?

HOMER SIMPSON Mmmmmmmmm . . . . c h i c k e n

CARL SAGAN There are billions and billions of chickens; how can we hope to learn the reasons, except through science!

ANDY WARHOL It’s okay, there are more and more and more coming…

DICK CHENEY Why, indeed!  Ha!  ‘Cause I got a gun, damnit!

KARL ROVE I told it to.

DONALD RUMSFELD I’m telling you all, it did not.  Why you come here and accuse this administration of doing things that just haven’t happened, I don’t know.  Look, our boys are doing a hellava good job over there, and that’s all I have to say.

JESUS It was Judas who crossed The Road!

BUDDHA It was emptier there.

SHAKESPEARE “…yet, a fowl it may-be, Horatio:
A chic-hen possess’s finer foresight, ‘a-last.”

Adopted, adapted, added from http://www.hints-n-tips.com/humor.htm

Civil war in Iraq

Civil war in Iraq is exactly what the current US administration secretly wants, and here’s why I think so:

Shock and Awe works only on an established physical infrastructure, which terrorists do not have.
Civil war would divide Iraq into 3 factions, but 4 entities: Kurds, Sunis, Shiite and, within each of the 3, a sub-set of al-Qaeda, looking for a terrorist sponsored state (one of the 3). The al-Qaeda entities would become mafia-like, in that they would focus on creating insurgencies with in each group, acting as paid militia, where payment would be concessions, protection and power in the winning side, which may be the weakest side: which I’d figure is the Kurd faction.
In this scenario, the US would have the excuse to have a finger in each of the factions, in attempt to flush out al-Qaeda.
The factions would be desperate for arms, supplied by the US in trade for oil, land for military bases, US political/international clout (in regard to allowing Russia and/or China to supply arms to a faction, and reaping concessions from them, whether economic or pressure against another State, such as Iran or N. Korea).
These factions would create the “old fashion” bad guy for the US: any “terrorist” group would band together, organize, create bases or visible cells, which would make easer targets for the way the US prefers to conduct war.
Decades from now, (whatever al-Qaeda becomes, a huge infrastructure, with it’s own government, or a fizzled out idea, having succumbed to capitalistic gains brought by selling oil within their new state) the US will have a single target.

So, let them have their way in Iraq. Pull the US troops out. Al-Qaeda would be too busy fighting for their own independent state, such as the Taliban had, to be crashing planes into big buildings in the US. Once their state becomes established is the time for starting a new war against terror. And in the mean time, the US gets oil, sells weapons, and persuades China and Russia to see things the US way at the UN Security Counsel.

You say “You’re full of it, man”?
Well if it makes you happy, but read this first:
Old States, New Threats by Robert D. Kaplan

Bear

Check this out for fun:



The guy in the bear suit is Henry Dittman, a friend of a previous teacher from Boston (Mike).

D'oh!

He KNEW He LIED (Again)(Click to view)

(Thx to "East of the Sun, West of the Moon")

For the moment, the public response from White House officials will be what we've gotten before: They can't comment during an official investigation. But off the record or on background, officials might very well start talking, or even leaking, to help beat back this story. When they do, we can assume that they'll be doing it with the president's approval.
--http://www.slate.com/

Duh

Chris mentioned in passing that today was Opening Day (well, yesterday). I didn’t realize there was a deeper story!
See, Chris, “in addition to being a world class soccer player, best-selling author and world adventurer…” is also huge baseball fan. His team won (the St. Louis Cardinals), but it wasn’t the big news.
See, many-a-year ago, a US President threw out the opening pitch in the All-Star game: it was unique, as he was the only in-office president to throw out any opening day pitch. Perhaps in-office prez’s don’t throw out any pitches, because, hey, they got things to do, laws to sign, a country to run…just plain busy.
In fact, it seems, that 1970 All-Star game opening pitcher lost his job in his second term in office. It’s comforting to know that at the end of the day, all analogies aside; dubbya is actually walking the same path, as today he is

“the first sitting president to throw out the ceremonial first pitch at the Opening Day game”
(note: “sitting president”).
Now why would the spin-doctors and PR guys and gals at the white house want to book such a thing, especially since ex-Nixon lawyer John W. Dean supports at least a censure of dubbya, ( see http://www.floppingaces.net, too!) and U.S. Senator Russ Feingold has presented the censure resolution and is co-sponsored by Sens. Tom Harkin of Iowa and Barbara Boxer of California.
Duh.

Thought

I missed the Pi Day festivities (03-14), but do you know of a Douglas Adams day, or perhaps Deep Thought day? That'd be tomorrow...4-2. Not sure if it’s an official day, as Pi day is, and if not, then someone ought to make it so.

More info here at a Geek Physicist from Guam.