how pathetic and disappointing.

the children attending gallaudet kicked and screamed enough and bullied the administration to terminate the designated president of the university.

how sad.

read about it here.

“There are really just two possibilities for Sam Harris. Either he is right and millions of Christians, Muslims and Jews are wrong. Or Sam Harris is wrong and he is so going to hell.”

check it here.

everyone

must

go

out

and

purchase

the

JESUS PAN!

how else will you be saved?

many moons ago (oh, ok – maybe 7 or 8 years ago) i was told that i needed glasses. i began to notice at the tender age of 30 that around 9pm or so, the captions on the TV were getting blurry. reading at midnight wasn’t quite what it was before.

off i go to get glasses.

for those of you who know me, i don’t do well with excessive touching at times. my sensory input is messed up somewhere. it took 10 years of married life before i could handle wearing a ring. i still sleep in the buff because clothes keep me up at night. if, while i’m falling asleep, lise bumps me, i’m WIDE AWAKE and have to start all over again to get back to “falling asleep mode” (and woe to me if she’s restless that night).

so i get glasses. and i. hate. them. they…. sit on my face? they… get in the way? they drive me crazy.

i go back to the optician and ask for contacts. “sorry” i’m told – your prescription’s not bad enough for contacts. “what can i do?” i ask. “nothing. wear the glasses.”

so i took the glasses off and waited 4 years for my eyes to get bad enough to get contacts.

but recently i’ve given thought to trying glasses again if only to be able to take my contacts out before 1am.

and the result is…

jury’s still out. we’ll see. they’re a lot more comfortable and much less intrusive than the pair i got 8 years ago. may give them a spin at school tomorrow and see.

but i’ll tell you now: i don’t think i’ll EVER get over seeing the reflection of my eyes in the glasses….

good news as gallaudet continues to move more aggressively towards the spoiled children shutting down the campus – any congressional investigations launched yet?

i received an IM from a deaf studies major whose fiance is deaf asking me to show some respect despite my lack of support for gallaudet – my response was and is: “opinions are like buttholes – everyone has one and thankfully, we’re allowed to express em as we please. Gallaudet is a massive waste of space and money and is unable to carry out the “mission” they desire to carry out. it’s more of a cultural (if there were such a thing as a deaf culture) mecca. if it would stop pretending to educate, i’d be better able to stomach the institution. it’s not an issue of “respect” or “disrespect” – that would be the same as saying, ‘well, i don’t support the regime of Darfur, but there must be some innocents among them, so please continue your operations as always!’ some things need to stop.”
there doesn’t seem to be any intelligent conversation coming from students on this issue, but this is the kind of argument to expect: “She is not willing to come halfway,” said protest leader Delia Lozana-Martinez, saying Fernandes wanted to talk to the students only about opening campus. “It disappoints and disgusts me. I don’t think it was productive at all.” see, “halfway” doesn’t really mean halfway – it means “step down or else no deal” which would be…. all the students’ way?

more to come this next week, i’m sure.

it seems like some cooler heads actually DO reside on Gallaudet’s campus.

after all this time of cartoon education at Gallaudet, maybe this protest is just what is needed to shut the place down. if more people see things such as:

• children (er, students) telling administration what to do, then when not getting their way, stomping their feet and screaming, leaving little room for rational conversation…
• statements about, “the school’s low graduation rates, which have hovered for years around 40 percent”
• the confusion even among those who are tantrumming (er, protesting) about what the real issue is
• comments from students such as, “”Over the past week, we as students have felt like we live in a war zone”

…then maybe someone will start to ask the hard questions.

if the rest of the country (which supplies the majority of Gallaudet’s budget through our federal taxes) would do some serious investigating of what conditions of education at Gallaudet really exist, perhaps this special interest group (er, social mating ground, er, university) could be dissolved. if nothing else, criteria other than “qualifies for financial aid / will help us get more american tax dollars / can barely read or write (but that’s ok because they have a disability [oh crap, i forgot: that's not politically correct - let's say 'aurally challenged'])” might be revisited and maybe… just MAYBE standards would be raised.

while the deaf community and i are not friends (please don’t remind me that i’m wearing two hearing aids and without them i AM deaf) this is not a rant against deaf people. it’s against gallaudet university and the continuation of the coddling of deaf kids who need to realze that you don’t get to have life your way all the time – we live in a hearing world. you can go and play at deaf “college” for a couple years and drop out once you get your MRS degree, but there exists nowhere in the world the kind of insulated, pampered, babied community that exists at gallaudet. the earlier this is figured out….

nothing like a big group of coddled children attempting to hijack a cartoon university and telling the administration that it doesn’t know how to run a college.

i’ll refrain from posting pages of vomit about how i really feel about gallaudet and their so-called mission to educate deaf/Deaf people and just say this (a repeat of what i said when i attended / dropped out of / worked at gallaudet 15 years ago):

gallaudet university needs to be shut down. nothing can be done to re-vamp this ancient icon of “deaf culture” without the public realizing that students pursuing a four year degree at gally end up with the equivalent of a two year degree from your local community college.

whew. i feel better now.

as i’ve mentioned here before, music is a pretty important part of my life. i’m constantly listening to tunes and always on the lookout for new stuff. the Live Music Archive has been a great place to go for live music (what we would call bootleg) that has been recorded and then uploaded (with the bands permission) to the ‘Net.

several months ago i came across the Jim Weider Band. it’s a funny thing – i’ve actually seen weider in concert waaay back when i was in high school. the band (up on cripple creek; the weight; the night they drove old dixie down) had gotten back together and their most excellent guitarist and songwriter, robbie robertson, refused to go back on the road with them. weider was hired and he was fantastic. i saw him when the group opened for crosby, stills and nash back in 1985.
anyway, weider’s got a number of concerts up on the live archive and i noticed some good reviews, so i downloaded a show.

and was floored.

so i downloaded another – and was even MORE floored.

this song in particular blew my mind.

lise’s asked me what it is about the song that gives me goosebumps, and i can’t really put my finger on it. intensity? control? controlled chaos? the slow crescendo to a frenzied middle, bringing it back down, only to go out in blaze of glorious highs and lows? i’m not sure.

whatever it is, weider is one incredible guitar player. this whole concert is completely instrumental (how often do you see that nowadays) and the influence of roy buchanan on his playing is VERY obvious.

here’s the link to the entire concert if you like the above song enough to check it out. it’s free. and…

it might just give you goosebumps.