The Roulette Wheel

I'm sitting here at my school doing inservice. I hate inservice. I feel like they are talking to me like I'm a student. Like I'm an idiot. Ya know? Let me rephrase. I NEVER talk to my students like this. I talk to my students with a lot more respect than this and quite frankly if this is the kind of teaching these teachers do (baring one that was actually interesting) then they are the problem with school in america. But what is the real root of the problem? Every time I come here and deal with one of these I just can't think of anything else other than how completely seperated teachers are from students and how much they THINK they know how students work and how much they're wrong. I can see the looks on their faces as they leave or as they are talking. They are thinking "oh man I totally know these kids' worlds better than they know it! I can't wait to tell them how they are all digital natives and I'm a digital immigrant I've totally got a one up on them!". Ugh.

I've recently been watching the star wars: clone wars computer animated series. It's pretty good actually and totally worth your time if you are a fan of the world. It's better than the second three movies combined. Unfortunately there is a single similarity with those movies that basically forces me to ask a simple question: how is it physically possible that Jar-Jar Binks is still alive? Really. I mean after watching the last three episodes you start asking yourself that but watch a handfull of episodes of the series and you'll be screaming it. Every episode he's in (which is thankfully only about one in six) he narrowly avoids brutally murdering one his close friends at least three times. They of course roll their eyes and laugh it off, but seriously motherfucker is doing shit I would kill him for in response. For instance, "oh shit Jar Jar you just smashed my extremely expensive and fast spaceship IN HALF. It was also our only ride out of here and now twenty bloodthirsty droids are hunting us down because they heard the explosion. Oh yeah and this is only because you did something I SPECIFICALLY told you not to. I hope you die today."

Anyway. I hate Jar-Jar and I regularly wonder how he still has friends.

Tommy "wouldn't invite him anywhere, let alone a delicate spy mission" Schubert