Bandolero by Day

http://www.pioneerlocal.com/barrington/news/120568,ba-chrobocalls68-110206-s1.article

1. Call offering information about a candidate

2. Keep calling

3. Don't stop

4. Start smearing candidate several minutes into the call

End result: receiver of the call hangs up before smear comes up, assumes the call is from supporters of the opponent you are trying to smear, I like the word "smear", your opponent loses a vote because people are pissed off by the endless phone calls and assume it is from your opponent's group.

Or that's the plan. Hopefully it won't actually work on too many people, but I'll be damned if this isn't an inventive new dirty trick.

I've read reports of this happening all over the U.S., but has it happened in Phoenix? I haven't received any calls, which might explain why I'm currently "bemused" and not "monumentally pissed".

Damnit, I wish I wasn't such a procrastinator. Especially with regard to the elections.

I mean, I feel educated enough myself to make some good choices in the primaries tomorrow, but I sort of regret not getting more involved somehow. For example, getting people excited enough about the candidates I like, or even just getting people excited about voting! So many people let the elections pass them by, but if they'd get up, get educated and vote we might see some actual change in the government instead of the same old same old, day in day out. I can feel smug for about half a second for stopping at my polling place on the way home from work, but what did I do to get other people there?

I'm glad, however, that it's the primaries. There's still time to do something before the November elections, and I WOULD like to do something. I have some ideas. They're small, but they're ideas.

ETA: Okay, one minute I can read it just fine, and the next it's demanding registration (which I don't have). I have no idea what that's about. Terribly sorry. Just content yourself with the fact that you will not have to expose yourself to the full, unfiltered stupidity.

demonlet posted this article in her journal. I was going to comment, but when my comment started turning into an essay, I thought I ought to give it an entry of its own.

Basically, the premise of the article is that boys are failing in life because girls are succeeding. Women should be offended by this statement. MEN should CERTAINLY be offended by this statement. I know a plethora of bright, intelligent men, and if one were to suggest to them that they were naturally set up to fail because they're expected to use their brains and string words together instead of smashing things with rocks, they'd... well, they'd probably punch whoever suggested it. (What? Can't a guy or girl be intelligent and still throw a mean right cross?)

At any rate, the article is so ridiculous that I had to pick out some points and go at them with verbal spears right here.

"We've done a good job getting girls prepared for life, at the expense of boys."

This is where it starts. Boys are having trouble in school. This is because, apparently, America's schools can only accommodate one gender at a time. Right. If THAT is the case, I suspect the trouble with our education system goes much, MUCH deeper than "gender issues".

The inferior performance of boys is so common, girls in elementary schools have a saying to describe it: "Girls rule, boys drool."

I honestly don't know whether this is a joke or not. That saying dates back to long before *I* ever entered the school system, and guess what? IT IS REVERSIBLE DEPENDING ON THE GENDER OF THE SPEAKER.

"Girls also have a saying to describe the aimless nature of modern boys: 'Boys go to Jupiter to get more stupider. Girls go to Mars to get more candy bars.' The rhyme indicates that they are aware of their own innate advantage."

In case you couldn't tell, I made up that last paragraph myself.

Boys don't get those grades because they're not as bright as girls. Educators and anthropologists say boys just aren't made to succeed in school.

Okay, so for all those centuries when only boys went to school, THEN boys were evolutionarily built to succeed in school. Now that girls go to school WITH them, their ability to succeed in school has suddenly fallen out of their genetic makeup? That is fascinating.

They're more aggressive and single-minded, programmed to play violent video games like "Grand Theft Auto" rather than sit patiently in an English class.

Then maybe, MAYBE their parents should stop programming them that way...? Just a thought. You know, supposing that the parents have anything at all to do with this.

"The sit-still, read-your-book, raise-your-hand-quietly, don't-learn-by-doing, but-by-taking-notes-in-the-classroom is a worse fit for more boys that it is for most girls."

How many teachers still actually teach this way? Even in my shit-hole high school, the instructors were far more dynamic than that. That "too much structure" argument is not going to fly for anything outside... I don't know, a Catholic school. (Then again, I've never been to a Catholic school. They may have very dynamic teachers as well.)

Math teachers who once gave credit for just the right answer now made kids show the process to that answer.

Oh, did they start doing that to sabotage boys? I thought it was just to make sure the little brats weren't copying the answer from somewhere else. SILLY ME.

That helped girls who were more verbal and less aggressive than boys.

Showing your work = non-aggressive? Just giving the answer = aggressive? Glad to know that. Remind me not to shout math solutions at the baboons the next time I'm at the zoo. I wouldn't want one of them to charge me.

"We were told 'You're a girl, don't take calculus,'" says Patty Ogden, 50, of Pine Bush, a dental hygienist. "Now we tell our kids you can do anything."

Here's something I learned in English (because the teacher psychically embedded this information into my brain via the girls-only mind wave): this bit is junk. It does not belong in the article. The fact that girls are encouraged to SUCCEED shouldn't have ANY BEARING WHATSOEVER on whether boys succeed or fail. If someone decided that a woman's success is what's hurting a man, then it is that person that is causing the problem, NOT the school system.

Think of it this way: Centuries ago, a man went out with a rock to slay a buffalo.

This man died and did not pass on his genes, because he starved to death, BECAUSE HE TRIED TO SLAY A FUCKING BUFFALO WITH A ROCK.

Meanwhile, a woman stayed home with her baby.

Actually, in many societies, the women ALSO went out to hunt, while the children stayed home with that snazzy new development in human evolution called "grandparents". Neat, huh?

And a woman's tools are now needed to thrive in school and the world - a world that has changed so much, so quickly, that it relies less on physical strength and aggressiveness and more on processing information and cooperation.

That's right, boys, it's not your world anymore. Newton? Einstein? Pavlov? Nietzsche? Hawking? You guys can go home now. We want BRAINS, not brawn!

Others suggest creating same-sex classrooms because girls and boys learn so differently.

Mmm. It's got that delicious "separate but equal" bite to it!


Well, I think that about covers the primary points of idiocy. WHOO BOY I feel better now.

So there has been (and still is, apparently) a big hullabaloo going on about whether or not it's okay to display a Ten Commandments monument on government property. Now, I am not, nor will I ever be, a member of a religious group. I have my beliefs, but for the purpose of this example, let's just say I'm an atheist. In general, religious displays, even on government property, don't bother me. Religion's not my bag, really, but it doesn't offend me in and of itself. My primary issue here is equal time for other religions, instead of Christian Christian Big Three Monotheism everywhere, because I don't like the idea of certain Christian Crazies thinking that they're the end all be all of religion in America.

So, my idea regarding the situation is this...

Let's put up a monument to the Ten Commandments. Okay, fine. However, I insist, nay, DEMAND that RIGHT NEXT TO IT we put up a FULLY ILLUSTRATED monument to the Kama Sutra.

OOOOOH YEAH.


Why am I such a God damned genius?

...without turning into a ranting jackass. I think this works.

"We got to be at somebody's wedding out there even if we were just the flowers," she said. "I just hope whoever received them just has this lovely, long life together ... . It doesn't bother me that I don't know them -- it's kind of fun in a way. You're connected to two souls."