idiot is as idiot does...and it doesn't skip a generation.

we'll we're closing in on the first week of school being DONE!


it feels a bit like this photo of the duke...catching a ball but you've got to do it upside down and backwards.

so in other words, despite some snags here and there, things are going well...slightly plodding at times and as a result people are learning patience...not me mind you, because i'll ever be about as patient as amy winehouse at an open bar, but other people are...

the duke hit a snag with a latin assignment...thirty five words in latin and he had to find their counterparts in english in a word search...

okay, can i just say that, yeah, that would suck!

i didn't tell him that but i do believe he shared my sentiment as illustrated by the following statement

"this is tedious and time consuming and NOT FUN!"

the good news is he managed to finish with only one more hour of pissing and moaning, but it got done...

the thing is it's easy with no peers around to piss and moan...if he were in a classroom he wouldn't be stomping around like a whiny princess...no sir...he'd either do it or not but there wouldn't be a fuss...

i'm trying to figure out how to duplicate that fear of embarrassment and an honoring of the part of the social contract that bars individuals from making an ass of themselves in front of others here...and the only thing i've come up with is keep him on constant video record and threaten him with youtube...

and speaking of bad parenting...turns out it's magazine cover "shocking" that britney spears puts soda in her babies' bottles, lets them eat cheetos, and asks the older of the two to fetch her cigarettes by saying, "baby, where are mama's lollipops?"

i grew up around people like this in the neighborhood...people have been parenting like shit forever...why is this front page news?

we teach teenagers how to drive and how to take standardized tests, they can run websites and communicate using all manner of technology...what we should fold in to all of this is a more than one school year of parenting classes...you know, the basic the nuts and bolts from diapers to nutrition...and while they'd need more than that eventually, at least it's something...anything!

because if they don't learn it sometime they aren't gonna learn it at all...

people assume being a kid is being a kid...and no matter what they grow up with or eat they will eventually make the healthy right better choice when they are older...

but it doesn't work like that...and those britneys out there should know better, just like their parents should have known better, but they don't...so how do they expect their kids will?

and kids aren't getting pregnant any older or wiser these days...so why not cut to the chase and stop pretending like it's not happening...grab the bull by the horns and say "look, if you must, then connect the dots and know that this might happen, and if this happens here are some tools"...again, it's not perfect but it's a start...

a + b = c

and like all the other math we're not teaching them, that basic equation and what to do with "c" when it arrives, as it does so often and 'accidentally', doesn't get taught either...

shit they ought to film my life for. just. one. day...then show it in high schools all over the country...like reefer madness, or that weird creepy video they used to show in driver's ed...road rash or something like that...

i could all but guarantee teen pregnancy would drop dramatically...and not just teen pregnancy, but young adult pregnancy too!...

the teens/young adults would be gettin' all carefree and frisky and then BOOM! a day in the life of sillymortalmama, that old video from high school parenting class, would start playing in their head...which would kill that bit of unprotected nonsense but good!

scared straight by the mere possibility of boybarians.

we could even see a reversal, a slowing of population growth!

maybe that video camera/youtube idea will come in handy after all...

i'm willing to take one for the team if it slows the spread of idiocy nationwide.

bottom line is we need a much better educated populous...and we're not getting it...

in fact it's quite the opposite...and, we're actually advertising that fact all over the country and the world!

brilliant.

we think america is in trouble now?...ha!

x.