When I was in high school Special Ed, which we are now supposed to call Exceptional Ed, hadn't become the burgeoning industry that it is today.  Every grade had those couple of kids who were politely called "slow."  You didn't really see them because they existed in their own classes and maybe turned up for gym and lunch.  If a kid happened to be really slow, he ended up at a different school with his fellow brakes-applied learners.

But of course we can't do that anymore because someone, somewhere, might have his feelings hurt and sue the bejesus out of the school system (which doesn't really give a damn about whether people are learning or not, but does care about being sued).

So, in order to keep as many SpEd teachers, counselors and coordinators employed as possible, we keep coming up with changes in diagnoses so that people will have to spend hours filling out reams of new paperwork.

I just learned that Asperger's Syndrome doesn't exist anymore. (It's now properly called High Functioning Autism.)  This didn't really surprise me as I didn't really believe in it in the first place.  The first time I'd ever heard of it was the one miserable year I spent teaching at Parkville High School, which is in a suburb of Baltimore.  I was at a meeting in the beginning of the year when I heard somebody talking about a kid who had what I heard as "ass burgers."  I was shocked because I thought the teacher was talking about the kid's ass, which is of course totally inappropriate, until I gleaned enough from context to realize that she was talking about some supposed disorder.
Of which I'd never heard.
Despite being well-educated and well-read.
And having been in classrooms for three years already.
I soon learned that Parkville had over thirty students diagnosed with Asperger's.  Now, I realize that the air and water in Parkville are not that great; it's a crappy suburb of a crappy city, but still it defies logic that thirty  kids all born within three years of each other in one suburban area are going to have this disorder.
Well, they didn't, because now we've decided that it doesn't really exist.

Eventually, we're going to realize that as a culture we're painting ourselves into a small corner, educationally.  At least, we would if we could find kids who wouldn't whine to their parents about having to paint.  By the time the Karing n Koncerned SpEd folks are done, there will be fewer than ten percent of the population who doesn't have some sort of ostensible learning disability.  And parents will eat it up, because a "disability" absolves them from any parental responsibility.

Has no one figured out that employers do not have Accomodations and Modfications? You show up on time and do your job, or you stop having a job. We have got to stop coddling children who, for the most part, have nothing wrong with them except laziness and indulgent parents.  If they're really that "exceptional," they need to be in an exceptional school where they can draw exceptional bunnies and make exceptional macrame until they're seventy, by which time we will have gone through forty new terms for "exceptional" because that will have become passe and offensive.

I'd say "Will the last person to finish reading this blog please turn off the lights," but I don't have all of your Individualized Educational Plans, so I don't know who has to have a calculator or extra time to flip a goddamn light switch. 

Irradiated Utz. It's what's for lunch. Also people are retarded.

So, I completely forgot to pack lunch today (read: "I overslept and barely had time to poop and shower") so I went to the school cafeteria.  Unfortunately I also forgot to have any money and teachers have to pony up three bucks for the "food," so I busted out my one remaining dollar and got a bag of potato chips.  I am inordinately fond of snack food, so this wasn't really a bad thing, but then I saw the writing on the wall.  And by wall I mean the bag of chips.

Quick aside--what the hell are potato chip bags made of these days? I remember when they were wax paper; this crap is maybe foil and maybe plastic and possibly both, but is definitely going to give us all cancer.

I was happily nomming away on my salt 'n vinegar chips when I noticed the warning on the bag: "Do Not Microwave This Pouch."

What. the. hell.

I'll admit, for a party snack I have sprinkled cayenne pepper on Grandma Utz Kettle Chips and baked them for a few minutes, but who in creation microwaves potato chips?  Ever?  Why would you? What... Oh, I don't know, this is just too weird for words.

Oh, fine, I'm sure there are stranger things one might do with potato chips--say, pulverizing them and inserting into one's urethra--but why not caution against that, too?

Some time ago I mentioned the "Caution: Hot Contents" warning on fast food coffee cups.  While this, to me, comes under the heading of "No shit!" I understand that some idiot sued McDonalds--successfully--because she scalded her thighs with coffee from the drive-thru, and claimed that she wasn't warned about the heat.  Look, you stupid bitch, you would have complained if your coffee had been cold, and now because you're too goddamn dumb to hold on to it, you sue McDonalds because coffee is hot?

So I don't quite understand the warning, because who the hell would microwave potato chips, but I do understand it, because some jackass would microwave the package and burn himself and then sue Utz because he wasn't specifically told not to microwave it.  Frankly, if you microwave a bag of potato chips, you deserve what's coming to you.

The beautiful grand staircase at the Hotel Jefferson has been marred for years now by an ungainly railing that goes down the middle.  Why?  Safety code insists.  Never mind that there are railings on either side; the twenty-foot-wide stair must have a railing down the middle.  I am not clear on this, either.  If you need a damn handrail, then walk on the side of the staircase where there's a rail.  I don't give a rat's ass how many people fall to their deaths on the staircase--if they're that stupid they need to die, anyway--but do not screw with good Richmond architecture.

I am a good typist and therefore I am better than you are.

Until I walked into a classroom for the first time (as a teacher, that is) in 2003, the only class I'd ever taken that was worth a flying shit was Mrs. Gibson's typing class at Walkersville High School (pronounced Wockersveeyul Hah Skoo) in 1985.  Why, you ask?  Because despite my lofty education, the only job you can get as an English major is a teaching job--or utter crap.  Since I was convinced for several years that I didn't want to teach, my jobs tended to the utter crap.  Which meant that the only skill I needed was my ability to type.

This is becoming a rare skill indeed.  No one learns to touch type anymore.  Like cursive writing, it's "old-fashioned" and "unnecessary" because the computer fucking does everything except for how it doesn't.  See what a computer has? Oh, I don't know, could it be A KEYBOARD?  WITH LITTLE BUTTON-Y THINGS THAT YOU HAVE TO PRESS TO MAKE A LETTER HAPPEN?  IN OTHER WORDS--TYPING????

As I've mentioned, my students can't type.  They have Chromebooks, but they try to use their thumbs to type, because that's how they text. Also my students may be retarded.  (Call off the PC police, I don't really give a damn today.) I'm surprised by the number of adults who can't type, or at least hunt-and-peck somewhat functionally.

This morning, while my little darlings were ostensibly reading silently (hah!) I caught up with The Bloggess (who may or may not be a minor deity).  Apparently someone criticized her for putting two spaces after a period.

All six of you who follow this damn thing know that I am a grammar Nazi and I will, in fact, persecute and possibly torture/kill people who misuse English unless done in a way that I have personally sanctioned.  So listen up, you little bastards: THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH PUTTING TWO SPACES AT THE END OF A SENTENCE (i.e., after a period).

Here's why:  the convention of a "space" was really created by typewriting in the first place.  Before the existence of typewriters, a "space" existed only in the mind of its creator.  Written material was either created by hand or a printing press.  If you are actually writing, the amount of space you leave between letters or words or sentences is entirely up to you, alt h ou  gh  i              f    yo u  wr  it      e   like this it looks really weird and people will think you're a sped.  Printing presses, too, were left to the whim of the typesetter, who hand-set the slugs.  If he left one space, or       ten between words, it was at his own discretion.

Typewriters didn't allow for such things and so demanded a uniformity that had never previously existed.  The convention of leaving two spaces after a period was born because it just plain looked better and helped to set sentences apart.  There was never a rule regarding this before typewriters.  There are those who claim that "this rule was invented for typewriting and so it's irrelevant now."  Of course it was invented for typewriting.  Why does that make it irrelevant? Guess what I'm doing right now--I'm typewriting, just not on the Underwood that still sits on my desk.  Why does the rule still apply?  BECAUSE IT STILL LOOKS BETTER, which was why it happened in the first place.

I double-space after every period.  So does The Bloggess.  She's really cool and I'm really easily pissed off, so either double-space yourself or a)incur my wrath or b)don't be a jerk and keep your single-spaced assholery to yourself.

Today's rant over.  Here, listen and watch as Wally Cat enjoys hearing one of his favorite dance numbers ("Wishing," played by Isham Jones and his Rain-Bo Orchestra).