Somewhat liberal, inter-racial, couple with children seek like minded individuals to form community in remote, easily-defended, arable location.
Must be articulate, well read, willing to fight for personal freedoms. Preference will be give to people with extensive and diverse libraries, as well as those with woodsman, farming or maintenance skills.
Property should be remote with arable land and fresh water supply and room to grow.
the boychick begins his week of standardised testing that is TCAP today. it`s funny i had recently arrived when he was doing it last year and the girls had their own batch of equivalency examinations.
in Trinidad at the end of elementary school system you take an examination that determines your choice of high school education based on how well you do. in my days it was called the Common Entrance exam and the higher your total score the better your chances of attending a prestigious parochial high school. these days it`s called the SEA and the intensity and price of failure is even greater. my elder daughter took it last year and went to the school of her choice and mine, my younger daughter took it about six weeks ago and we`re fairly confident that she`s heading to the same school. this ends their standardised testing on a national level for at least five years until it`s time for their O` Level exams.
the boychick, on the other handm is stuck in this testing rut annually. last year i very nearly pitched a fit when his then teacher marked an essay he work diligently on poorly based on his grammar. according to her and last year`s TCAPs the boychick has problems with sentence structure. which seems kind of odd, see the volume of reading he does, the fact that his mother has a Masters in English and i`m a grammar nazi. in fact it`s not that he has a problem, but they have an issue with the fact that he can construct complex sentences at this grade level. the boychick does not write staccato sentences. they want him to write like this. he was punished for not writing like this.
the joys of standardised testing, if you don`t fit in the box, we`ll force fit you. what`s funny is that at some point someone asked the boychick if he found the TCAPs difficult and he replied, “it can`t be difficult they`re not supposed to leave anyone behind.” and that pretty much sums it up, in order to make sure no one gets left behind they`re hampering the rest of the children.
not all children progress at the same rate, granted, but when you the pace you set is for the slowest child the rest of the children who get what they`re supposed to be working on are going to get bored and distracted while they wait and that`s not going to help them learn anything either.
i`ve got purple haze stuck in my head this morning and it contains one of the most misheard lyric in all of creation, so i though i`d add a bit of whimsy to the post.
last Thursday i went to the graduation of a friend from the Nashville Peace and Justice Center Leadership programme. i have to say, i must be developing social skills in my old age, because i went, i interacted and i participated and that`s a big deal for me.
my mother concluded about the time i was about thirteen i was anti-social and told me so and i really had no retort. i pretty much grew up around adults in a time where the belief was that children were to be seen and not heard, so i learned to keep myself occupied; mostly with a book. it`s not that i lack social graces; my mother instilled those in me early on; it`s just that once the preliminaries are done, i`ll find a quiet corner of the room and stay there.
if i have a book or access to a book i`m pretty much lost for the evening, however if i don`t have any reading material, i observe people. i took two years of sociology because observing people en masse fascinates me. i don`t like to make generalisations, but i think i have a disdain for people because the conversations tend to be insipid and my own bias against stupid people. stupidity, in my humble estimation, has nothing to an education or lack thereof, but an inability to form opinions of one`s own or accept the validity or entitlement of other opinions.
the point of the leadership programme is to help you get involved and help organise grassroots campaigns in your community. and the good wife and i have signed up for the next session. part of my rationale was that i can interact with these people. i may not agree with everything all the people in the programme stand for but i can learn something and it will also help me get more involved in something that i have a vested interest in; immigrant rights.
i had a detailed conversation with one of the recent graduates about immigration rights; which was her forte; and she was tell me that the USCIS sanctioned doctor i went to for my medical has a habit of having female immigrants get nude for examination without a female assistant or family member in the room. as far as i know that`s illegal. what makes this worse is that i had the same medical recently and i didn`t have to undress.
today marks the second anniversary of my time here at JS and what a long strange trip it`s been.
i actually started blogging a week earlier at blogspot and somewhat dissatisfied i moved here. i`ve seen people come and go, seen the member rolls grow from 4000+ to whatever epic number they`re at now.
over the course of 2 years and nearly 1200 posts, i`ve participated in quizzes and memes, shared my life down to the tiny, trifling details, i`ve waxed poetic about my love, i`ve railed about the inefficiency of bureaucracy, i`ve bitched about my job; i`ve tried my hand at satire, voiced my opinions and stood up for what i believe in and i wonder, where do i go from here?
i don`t want to stop but i fear that i may be repeating myself or just unable to articulate some of the thoughts that are bouncing around in my head. i have all these ideas for brilliants post in my mind but the minute i sit in front of the computer the most cohesive portions of those thoughts flee leaving with an outline but no body.
even a post as whiny as this has suffered rewrites and deletions to numerous to mention. writing posts used to be an effortless exercise. thoughts flowed as fast as i could type, driven by some inner need to be exorcised, now i must chase them down, trap and tame them before they lend themselves to be shared.
ello my name is keifel and i`m a recovering Catholic.
ever since they prematurely announced that John Paul II had died, i`ve pondering who they`re going to select as the next pope. JP II was elected when i was eight and was sort of a defining moment in my career as a Catholic. i had just started preparing for my first communion and his ordination was my biggest religious experience at the time. of course, i got older and more cynical and disenchanted with the Catholic church, but the politics of it will never cease to fascinate me.
i firmly believe that he was dead on Friday and the extra day was just to give the cardinals enough time to figure out whole the candidates are going to be. there is an electoral college type vote for the next pope and somewhat like the electoral college the greatest populations are under represented. the old school and massively declining European Catholics have the largest block of votes, while the Central, South America and Africa with the largest populations of Catholics have the smallest number of votes.
i have no idea where i managed to pick up the information but i managed to pick the four front runners for the papacy, spot on. although in light of the long reign of the second non-Italian pope, i don`t think the hierarchy are quite ready for a black pope, but it may be in their best interest to go `brown`. if only to ensure they don`t ostracise the only growing Catholic populations. whoever they pick, there probably aren`t going to be any radical changes to church policy anytime in the near future.
`may cause drowsiness` is always an indication that taking that medication will put you down like a rabid dog.
my urologist prescribed an Atavan for me to take half an hour before the vasectomy and 15 Lortab to take as needed if the pain was overbearing. i have to say, that i`m not in much pain.
the getting kicking in the testes analogy is correct, but in my case it`s been the dull throbbing after the kick as opposed to the sharp savage pain of the kick.
i took one of the Lortab as soon as i got home as a pre-emptive strike and kept by berries cool with some frozen cranberries vic had in the freezer. i took another Lortab last night at the first twinge of serious pain and passed out almost immediately on the couch.
this morning there doesn`t seem to be much swelling and i heroically or stupidly depending on your perspective didn`t take any medication until we got back from vic`s coloscopy; she is in perfect health, but has been banned from sex for two day — that works out well. returning home, i decided against more Lortab this morning in favour of the ibuporfen and those seem to be working well.
i`m supposed to go back out to work tomorrow and i think i should be up to it, in two to three weeks or 10 – 12 ejaculations, i`m supposed to drop off a sample at my doctor`s. once there are two samples without semen in it, the vasectomy will be considered a success.
this contains more information that you may want to know about me, so if issues of sexuality and penises are likely to offend; move on now.
caveat emptor.
i`ve made out with another man, i`ve been dressed as a woman, i`ve shaved my pubes for sheer excitement; as opposed to currently — for medical reason; but the gayest thing i have ever done is my life, i did last night; i wore a jock strap; sorry the politically correct term is athletic support; for the first time.
i could google the history of the athletic support but i have my own theory. i wear boxer briefs that give me more support than that. i believe that support was invented by someone that want to believe the young man he was having sex with was just a really lithe woman. think about it; the brain bleach is over to the side there; all the support does is prevent the testes from hanging down while giving unencumbered access to the ass, from the back with a lot of lube and a lot of imagination…
i suppose me being flippant and snarky is my way of dealing with my first major surgery ever. i`ve never owned an athletic support before but i had to buy one to wear after the vasectomy. i`m just fascinated by how pointless it looks and feels. i`m off to take my pre-surgery drugs to `calm` me, the procedure is suppose to take 45 minutes and then i`m going to feel like someone has kicked me in the groin, for two days. at the same time i am to become very intimate with some frozen peas and abstain from sex for a week. hell week begins now.
or is science fiction an imaging of science fact.
a friend sent me an article from Rolling Stone and as i was reading the section about suburbs, the burbclaves of Neal Stephenson`s Snow Crash came to mind and i wonder how far away from that particular vision of the future we are.
i wonder how influenced early cell phone and PDA designers were by Star Trek and what these items would look like if it weren`t for them. is the Orwellian nature of the US, as a result of us having a fictional point of reference?
i wish this train of though was more coherent of cohesive. my brain has latched onto the idea and it`s spiralling off in myriad directions and i can`t seem to find the words to corral them into a cognisant post.
i am paying the INS, BCIS, USCIS, Department of Homeland Security, whatever you want to call them to be inefficient and as an anal retentive planner, that just pisses me right off.
i`m currently living in the US on a K-3 visa; which allows for the spouse of a US citizen to regularise their living situation while the await applications in process. currently we have my change of status application in process for me to become a permanent resident. my K-3 visa was issued last March and is valid for two years, which means it expires in March 2006. keep this date in mind, there will be a quiz later.
according to the receipt i received when my application to change my status was received, this application takes between 120 -180 days to process. so if my math is correct, my application should be approved some time between September 7 and November 30, using a 5 day work week plus a couple of days for holidays in between, which means i should need to renew my K-3 visa or the attendant work authorisation right?
i wish, nothing related to bureaucracy is ever simple. i had to call to make an appointment for biometric services; read photographed and fingerprinted; and asked what the current processing time was on my application; as of March 25, 2005, the Memphis office is processing applications received on September 13, 2002. that`s a two and a half year backlog. which means i have to apply to renew my current visa and work authorisation.
and now it`s going to cost me at least another $310 in actual fees and who knows how much in time and just sheer frustration to get this done and all over again. all thanks to the bureaucratic inefficiency. isn`t there someone i can sue for this?
i was thinking recently i had not linked any images in a long time and lo and behold nerve linked to a gallery by Leonard Nimoy for his second book which features the women of the Fat Bottom Review.
