Wishing

 You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you get what you need. 

I want Three Wishes Toy Store. The crowded aisles stuffed and overflowing with things that I could only imagine having in my toy box. GI Joes. Hot Wheels. Models of tanks and planes and warships. This was the destination my brothers and I patiently awaited when it was time to head down to Crossroads Mall to buy school clothes. This was the scene of my ugly reality check when, as a child, I was taken there by my grandmother and told I could get "anything I wanted." I was alternatively admonished by my mother before I went that my grandmother was "not made of money." 

Alas, those Three Wishes were of limited duration, and it was bulldozed along with the rest of Crossroads Mall so that they could erect a very similar structure with a number of different chain stores with the inspired name of 29th Street. Only this new mall would allow you to walk outside from store to store. 

Pretty ingenious. 

Do that dream died. It was eventually replaced by Toys R Us, a warehouse-sized compendium of all things toy. It was at one time a litmus test for friends of ours. If you could hang for an hour or two walking the aisles of Toys R Us with us, you were worthy. As my son grew to relative maturity, we would often take a side trip to what had become "his" toy store just to look. "Need it. Got it. Need it. Got it." 

Then, about a decade ago, Toys R Us closed all of its retail stores and filed for bankruptcy. They could not compete with online sales. But that meant there was no place to go to test drive, to fondle, to covet. It wasn't the same thing. 

But now, the clouds are parting. With a new partner Toys R Us is opening one hundred twenty stores again, just in time for the holidays. 

Wait. "Just in time for the holidays?"

That means that these are essentially "pop-up" stores, with the focus on milking as many dollars from a toy-starved populace as possible before returning to its prior existence as a Bev-Mo. 

It's really hard to keep your inner child nourished in this world. 

Not Quite

 Playing out the string. 

That's what I want to avoid. 

I am retiring from teaching, but I don't want to do that slow slide into lethargy. I don't want to be that guy in the back of the classroom, reading his newspaper as his young charges busy themselves with the worksheets he has so vaguely printed out for them. 

I want to go out on top. 

To that end, I arranged a donation drive to purchase a bike rack for our students to be placed someplace secure so that when I have stopped riding my own bicycle to and from my home to school, others will be able to jump into that void. 

That void. 

It's the thing that my colleagues keep referring to: "What are we going to do when you're gone?"

My initial response would be that I am not planning on becoming incorporeal. I would be quite surprised if I did not receive a number of texts or calls within that first year of not having regular attendance asking for the password to this, or how you find the ladder that gets you up on the roof to fetch balls that have mysteriously found their way to the upper strata. 

It is something of a time-honored tradition here. With the possible exception of the tangled web of wires and missing codes I really could have used to sort out the computer lab when I first started working here. That I had to sort out all by myself. That, along with the best time to make the bike ride from my house to school to avoid the regular commute traffic. 

So here we are: Months left of a career that spans three decades. I have been a husband and a father longer that I have been a teacher. I lapped being a video store manager long ago, and my tour of Arby's is just a blip on my employment timeline by comparison. 

I never felt compelled to buy a bike rack for the video store. I never bothered to get a soccer ball off the roof of the Arby's where I worked. I will not go quietly unto that good night. 

Thank you for all of those encouraging words, and the donations to the purchase of soccer goals or headphones or whatever else I extorted out of you. 

Just to let you know: I'm not quite done here. 

Hate Speech

 Free Palestine. 

Now I hope that Robert Kraft doesn't come and kick me off of my blog.

Just so I'm clear: What is so utterly devastating about the suggestion that there be a free Palestine? A majority of Americans favor a free state for Palestinians. Fifty-seven percent. Admittedly it's not the kind of clear cut mandate that are against the war in Iran. That rings up to fifty-eight percent. 

Sure, we could get into the weeds and aske Americans if they support Israel. They are our allies and have been for quite some time. Of course, current the current diplomatic landscape does not seem to require that we maintain these tried and true connections. America is currently waging a trade war with Canada. 

Canada. They're supposed to be the bad guys. 

Meanwhile we seem to be in a trade war with (checks notes) every other nation on the planet. 

But this Free Palestine thing. What is the hard line that has NFL Franchise Owner Robert Kraft keeping a rapper from being allowed to perform at his stadium, and in stadiums across America because of his "hate speech."

Free Palestine. 

The rapper in question, Macklemore, got the crowd at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey to chant along with him. 

Free Palestine. 

I know. He's "an artist," and he should just stick to singing quirky bits about thrift shops and get off the stage. Better yet, just get off the stage before you embarrass international treasure Ed Sheeran. Oh, and maybe Macklemore's new song Hind's Hall, which proceeded that chant may have been a problem. You know what it's about?

Free Palestine. 

Like many Americans, Macklemore has chosen to make his views known. Mark Ruffalo, the Marvel Cinematic Universe's Incredible Hulk, has ruffaloed more than a few feathers for his repeated calls for a free Palestine. Mister Ruffalo has been accused by a great many very angry voices of spouting antisemitism. Hate Speech. 

Yes, a Free Palestine is for many an anti-Jewish notion. Describing the humanitarian crisis in Gaza using terms like genocide, famine, and ethnic cleansing is, for folks like Robert Kraft, anti-Semitic. The billionaires like Mister Kraft can force voices they deem "hateful" out of their stadiums. And consummate showmen like Ed Sheeran have some choices to make. Ed can keep the show going without any mention of a Free Palestine, or he can just pull the plug and go back to his ancestral home of Ireland where they know nothing of these kind of "troubles." 

Either way, Free Palestine. 

Feels

 I was writing in a previous century. I wrote, primarily for an audience of two or three, about the things that were on my mind. I snapped up a phrase from Kurt Vonnegut Jr.: This is what life feels like to me. It came from the prologue of his novel Slapstick, or Lonesome No More! I read this book when it first came out, and it joined the long list of Mister Vonnegut's work that I took as my own philosophical compendium. 

That was fifty years ago. My audience has expanded by a degree, but I am currently reflecting on just how morose I was when I was a teenager. Back then, I would stare longingly out a metaphorical window, fretting that I could not imagine life after thirty. The cocoon in which I placed myself back then was definitely part of being an adolescent, coupled with the steady diet of science fiction novels and movies and New Yorker cartoons. 

Morose. 

Of course I did manage to live beyond age thirty. That little bit of melancholy would not play as well once I fell in love, got married, and had a son and bought a house. All of these took place after I turned thirty. It seems that I may not have been able to see all of this joy over the horizon because it would not have fueled that youthful angst. The tragedy that I had been setting myself up for never came to pass. 

Not that there wasn't tragedy. Death and sorrow came along. With it I found the novels of John Irving. More to the point, my father gave me a copy of The World According To Garp in a brown paper bag for my eighteenth birthday, This set me on the path to The Hotel New Hampshire, which would inform me and my dealings with Sorrow for the foreseeable future. 

Foreseeable. 

I had no idea that there would be so much joy waiting out there just over the rise. Watching my son progress from preschool to kindergarten to middle school to high school to college, I became aware that I was observing my own legacy taking a hard turn into optimism and hope. This became what life felt like to me. I was at some point in this era when I learned that John Irving was a student of Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Mister Irving tells a story about how he once felt he was going to save the life of his mentor by giving him the Heimlich Maneuver. Through gasps of air, Vonnegut was able to squeeze out the truth: "Get off me. I have emphysema."

It's a sad story. But it's funny. 

And that's what life feels like to me. 

Getting Scrooged

 Prices at the pump. Gas is expensive. Consumers are making tough choices: fill up the gas tank or fill up the refrigerator.

Those are but a few of the hackneyed notions being tossed around currently regarding the cost of oil.  As the gas station around the corner seems to change their reader board on an almost hourly basis, there is not a lot of hope on the horizon. I can say with a solid degree of certainty that our purchase of an electric vehicle almost two years ago now seems like an expressly clever idea. In spite of all the tax incentives and deals going on out there, not everyone can make that leap. 

What does the Second Trumpreich have to say about all of this? "We spoke ​to Mr. ⁠Zelenskiy about it. There are plenty of other targets. Don't hit diesel fuel. That's hurting the ​world." This is especially rich coming from the architect of the "blockade" of the Strait of Hormuz. And the trade war with Canada. These two incomprehensible foreign policy decisions are at the very core of the current price surges in oil. It should be clearly noted that while it was the United States that attacked Iran to set off this latest in a seemingly endless series of crises, "Mr. Zelenskiy" was minding his own sovereign nation when it was attacked by (checks notes) a very good friend of the convicted felon, the President and Head Bear Wrassler of Russia, Vlad "The Goofaman" Putin. 

This latest deflection on the part of the Orange Worst continues to deflect the responsibility for the price of a gallon of gas rising above six dollars away from his despicable choices. Back in May, I took a bit of my pop culture education and suggested that if any or all of the oil companies, who continue to bathe themselves in wads of cash due to record profits from the sale of petroleum products, might take a few pennies off the price of gasoline just to prove that somehow we are all in this together. 

I am reasonably certain that most of the executives to whom this idea was lobbed are far too busy to take the time to read this blog, but maybe one of their underlings might sit at the edge of their enormous money tub and read my suggestion to them while they frolic in their profit plunge. Or perhaps one of them might look around themselves and have a moment of Christmas morning clarity: We don't have to make so much money that we can continue to take these baths in consumer's hard-earned cash. 

Bad news. Charles Dickens is busy with the most recent iteration of his holiday story the one that looks to "humanize" Scrooge. Which, wouldn't you know it, seems just about right for a fable of our times. 

Opening That Door

 New York and Los Angeles, two of they country's largest school districts, have issued temporary bans on Artificial Intelligence. The most obvious reason being that in a place where plants are grown, bringing in plastic flowers doesn't make a lot of sense. 

I am, for the time being, the Media Arts teacher at an elementary school up the road apiece from Los Angeles. Coincidentally, if one were to travel that road you would have to drive through a region once known as Silicon Valley. I would like to change the name, since that sort of thing seems all the rage right now, to Uncanny Valley. 

First, a little background: My career as a Media Arts teacher began in a previous century when I was simply the computer teacher. The "lab" in which I worked was filled with Mac LCIIs, nominally networked by wires to tractor feed printers. Aside from the opportunity to play what the kids referred to as "The Shooting Game" which was the floppy disc driven eight bit version of Oregon Trail, the other main concession of those times was the chance to make a picture using Kid Pix. In spite of my exhortations to try and use the freehand tool of drawing lines and shapes with their mouse, my little artists were more than content to plotz a page-filling stamp of a heart with their tame vaguely typed on or near it and insist that I print it out. For their mom. 

Eventually through very kind donations from our business partner, our school was able to install a PC lab that would connect to Al Gore's Internet. For some time this setup required a good deal of help running programs from CDs that needed loading and setup from yours truly. It wasn't until I started running web-based programs like Starfall that I was able to shift away from typing tutors and simple math games. Not long after that, Google Docs and Sheets allowed us to write stories and slideshows that were all part of the eternal student plea: Can I be done now?

As students started to enter my room with more and more native user skills, it did not take long before they discovered the copy and paste tool that allowed many of the most clever to lift chunks of text or images to suit their needs. Access to Wikipedia made it possible for those in the know to lift a three paragraph essay on The Oregon Trail in minutes, leaving plenty of time for playing Cool Math Games. 

I would like to believe that I was that most savvy educator who was able to detect this intellectual theft and force these kids back on the path of "meaningful research" and a journey of self-discovery. I know that this was not always the case. 

Now, coincidental with the budget-driven gutting of our district's tech department, the doors to the kingdom of Artificial Intelligence have been left in the hands of "teacher discretion." Currently this particular teacher of children ages five to eleven has chosen to keep that issue off the table, even as online companies have begun to encourage all users to embrace these tools. I'm looking at you, Google. Since the Uncanny Valley stalwart is the same company that supplies our district with Chromebooks for student use, that Pandora's box is opened right along with the lid to every laptop. 

"Hey Google, write me a three paragraph essay on the evils of Artificial Intelligence." 

Did I mention that our school district, along with the state of California, no longer allows student use of cell phones at school? But we seem to be fine with the "discretionary use" of artificial intelligence. 

Did I mention that I am planning to retire at the end of this school year?  

Don't Pick At It

 Atlantic Industrial Coatings told the White House that its own failures were responsible for the botched renovation, not vandals. This contradicts the convicted felon’s claim that the pool had been sabotaged. the company blamed its own work, saying that workers did not spray enough primer to keep the pool liner’s layers stuck together. The company also said that its repair plan for the liner layers called for the use of two chemicals that weren’t compatible with each other. The chemical on top reached a high temperature that the one below couldn’t handle, leading to the bottom layer of the liner blistering and coming loose.

If this were a contractor that an American taxpayer had called upon to fix their Koi pond and chunks of the renovated pool had come loose after just a few days, bringing not just American Flag Blue bits floating to the surface but also a resurgence of the muck the alleviation of which was the whole reason to begin the project in the first place, said taxpayer would be asking for their money back. But since the pool in question here happens to be located between two national monuments, and the job that was bungled by the contractor was paid more than fourteen million dollars of (checks notes) our money, we probably won't get a lot of traction for calling 5 On Your Side. 

Since the former game show host seems to be in such a generous mood these days handing out checks to citizens, maybe he could arrange for a refund of five cents per adult for this no-bid job he handed out to the "pool guys" at Mar-A-Lago that has yet to be repaired. 

And speaking of reparations, no mention of the method of compensation for the several people, including American Olympian David Hearn, who were arrested and charged with vandalizing the pool. Claims that antifa had sent squads of hooligans out prior to July 4 of this year turned out to be just as ridiculous as all those boasts about handing out cash awards in the face of his global mismanagement. No tariff check. No Doge Check. No masked bands of saboteurs sneaking in and cutting a three hundred yard slit in the lining of his vanity project. Just the nonsensical ravings of a lunatic mind.  

Forty-eight days from now, we all have a chance to begin to dismantle this insanity. Please vote in the midterm elections. Vote in such a way as to bring an end to this madness.