Sunday, February 27, 2005

A Day In The Life of Chad

Preface: Both Carrie and my parents are gone this weekend. I have had three full days of complete solitude, except of course when I left the house. This was as little as possible. Friday I left the house to go to Ypsilanti city hall and on the way back I got Chinese food. Other than that I have stayed home and have been loving it.

00:01: I am watching Stargate SG-1 never have seen it before, but I can see why people like the show. However I will not bother to download the seasons.

03:05: I brush my teeth and go to bed. I get my mothers annoying fluffy bichon “Raggy” and have her come to bed with me, she is a very uhhmmm sensitive (worthless) dog and will get very depressed if she is alone for too long.

10:00: I receive a call from Carrie she needed some information and at the same time one of my customers called and left a voice mail. I decided to sleep a little more.

10:45: I respond to Arthur and say I will be over shortly. I get out of bed shit shower and shave.

11:30: I arrive at Arthur’s and determine what the problem is. I had changed his SBC user password and I turns out I needed to change the password on his DSL modem, non-billable but it was nice anyway. Arthur and I inevitably talk about politics among other things. I greatly appreciate this because my friend that I usually talk to about these things is now in Korea, so it’s now expensive to talk to him. He invites me to go to Pandya’s son’s birthday. Pandya is a the proprietor of an Indian restaurant called “Sitar” it is kind of a greasy spoon and every time I go over there is hardly anyone eating. He is a very nice man his English is good but because of my hearing problems I find him a little hard to understand. Anyway Pandya’s son is a member (head?) of the CDC (Contagious Disease Center?) this man is a double MD and a Medical Lawyer and a rather good conversationalist. It’s funny Pandya is a very unassuming gentleman but all his children that I have met are MD’s.

This brings me to think about the complete failure of our education system; or rather our attitude’s toward it. Arthur told me that by 5th grade Indian students know their multiplication tables up to 20 that’s 400 number combinations easy really. I think this is awesome, also they consider math to be a vital skill like we consider swimming. Well maybe more important than that.
Our country has been the innovation center of the world for the past century. We will not be able to continue this with the armies of Psychology and English* majors that we pump out every year. I believe firmly in the importance of liberal arts but it is increasingly causing a brain drain in our country. Additionally I find many of these Liberal Arts majors to be appallingly incompetent in critical thinking. The only reason we can continue with our prominence in science and engineering is because of all the talented immigrants we get. We have a fundamental flaw in our attitudes toward education. We accept and coddle failure in education. We make almost all children march at the pace of the slowest; some of whom are very slow.

One thing the pundits and the governments (George Bush) will never say is. I country continues to grow year after year. It's not baby's but immigrants. Many of which are legal aliens who pay taxes. Could they perhaps pay for social security in to the future? Probably but they need to have the whole country fund corporations and mutual funds through the stock market so they won't mention that.

13:00: I return home and begin cleaning the house, I play Battlefield 1942 and between rounds I do some work in this many the kitchen gets done just before I need to leave.

15:10: I arrive at Sitar, where I met Pandya’s family very nice people.

18:00: I arrive at Java Hutt. I have two jobs, my own company where I manage to make about $4/hr and a part time job at a coffee shop where I make about $9/hr. I enjoy my second job about as much as my first. I get to watch people. Interestingly the last coffee shop that I worked at most people actually drank coffee. Here however the dominant drink is Strawberry Smoothies and Hot Chocolate. I find this bizarre. This is Birmingham Michigan, where the average house goes for about 300 grand. The children are spoiled and get good allowance they tip very shitty. Why is there a inverse relationship between the amount of money one grows up with to the amount they feel the should tip? I blame it on the baby boomers. Who as a generation suck at parenting! Being a late Generation ‘X’er I have no respect for the previous generation, because they fucked so much up I just hope that mine can do a little better than those fools however I don’t have a lot of hope. (Fool is one of carries favorite words)

0:00: Still working at the cafeé and just hoping the night will end with no more mishaps. Tonight is an awful night everything I touched turned to shit. I could not remember a damn thing and I slipped and dropped things all night.


In closing I would like to comment a little further on education. Having been and currently am being educated I feel I have some in the trenches wisdom about it. I think that “No Child Left Behind” is a good starting point. After about 40 years of banging it’s head against that wall the education system or rather the governments will realize that all children are not created equal, intellectually. I am not a fan of eugenics but damn it there are stupid people in the world and I do not believe that it’s all environment. The greatest frustration I had during my public school years was the slow pace of things. There are others who are smart and don’t mind the slow pace because it allows them to do very little. I have a solution that provided all works out (yah right!) I will use on my children. Perhaps also there should be a little more social dumping on parents. Here in Michigan there is a state sponsored media campaign to scare "dead beat dads" into paying. Would it be helpful to make parents feel like assholes if they don't care about their children's education and emotional well-being? Perhaps it would work does anyone think so?

Pretty boring day?

There are many people who think there are too many people in the world. However they usually think their one of the people who should live.


* And Theology, Philosophy, Anthropology, History, Fine Arts basically all the liberal arts which any competent autodidact. can learn on their own. For all those who went to college to become writers, I think that most do not have the discipline necessary to actually write.

1 Comments:

Blogger Lefty said...

I have to agree with your assesment of the boomers, and the set of values which they instilled in us, their children. Mt father is one of those "He who dies with the most toys wins." guys that is obsessed by material crap.

Unfortunately seniors tend to be a majority voting block and they out number us by a healthy margin, so as the boomers age they are just going to grow in their power to drag the nation around.

12:39 PM  

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