And we thank the weatherman profusely! Today I went out, as is my custom, to shoot up the Soggie Bottom Rod, Gun AND Curling Club!
When did we get curling facilities at the club? Why - when the balmy weather turned all the snow to ice!
Glazed, pebbled ice! BW, Chicken Mom, the Mohave Rat and Uncle Bob shut down the trap range and had a Bonspiel. I heard the chickens beat them handily...Bob was still screaming at the stones when I left...
I almost crashed the company truck into the shooting sheds at about 2 MPH! If you want to get around on ice like this you have to do the 'pee-pee walk' that you see little kids doing when they wet themselves and start a shambling gait reminiscent of the actors on Planet Of The Apes.
Filthie's psychiatric couch... relax, and all life's problems vanish with one soothing caress of the trigger...
Once again I stunk out the range with the snub-nosed mouse gun. It has one of those damnable electronic reticles that lights up and its a 3X combat optic that's just perfect for the run n' gun crowd, but for an old stubfart that's shooting prone...it leaves a bit to be desired. I need a proper 1-8x variable on it...but I will get by with the cheezy one for now. The big M14 was talking to me today though! 10 out of 20 in the ten ring at 200m...but some of the others got sprayed over hell's half acre. Par for the course - this sport sucks almost as much as the curling...but I may go back tomorrow and take my designated marksman's rifle instead of the pocket AR15.
Something else stupid this way comes:
What's his name? "Bogie'? Whatever - he's a nice guy in spite of the grizzly appearance. Looks like something ghastly wants to crawl up out of that beard and...gah!
The problem I got is that I have two 45 ACP guns now. One is an HK45USP Tactical that shoots like a house afire. If you have to shoot a plastic gun - that is the best of the breed! The latest one is a Trophy Match 1911 from Springfield Armoury - the same guys that made my M14. I love the big rifle with all my heart...but that little auto is really starting to piss me off. I will keep working with it and if things don't improve I will flog it. But this little Ruger, now...what appeals to me is that revolvers don't throw their brass away. I friggin hate chasing after brass especially on ice like this! I don't have a big bore revolver other than my cap and ball percussion gun...so ... maybe I could sneak it in while the wife is away at church...?
The problem with the Manosphere is that it has degenerated into a bunch of losers giving other losers advice on how to handle failed relationships. But what about when things are going good? You'll never hear the self-proclaimed alpha males talk about that! Funny how none of those alpha males are happily married too, isn't it? Sure, things have to go good in the sack but they have to go well in all the other areas of a relationship too. Even if you find your soul mate, there is a boat load of other problems and hassles that the successful man may have to address: money, for example. Intrusive/abusive in-laws. Time management. Conflicting priorities. The Manosphere is effectively managed by boys, obsessed with girls, who are experts in flawed or failed relationships and wouldn't know what to do with a good one. It's heartbreaking.
The Midlife Crisis
Don't laugh. It's real. If you've won the lottery and married a sane woman, if you've both put in your time and money to save, build and lay the foundations for the good life - eventually, contrary to the boys of the Manosphere...you will be in a position to collect. It doesn't happen overnight. It's a very, very slow process. One day you will be shocked to find you have a pair of pants for every day of the week in the closet. You'll be bowled over by the fact that you still have a bank balance after all the bills are paid. The day comes when the kids move out and silence reigns in the house. The repairs are all handled and all that's left is the petty nickel and dime stuff. You have money in case a car blows up or the roof needs to get done. You have time to think...and as is your habit, you are going over that mental spreadsheet looking for fires, crises, problems that HAVE to be dealt with RIGHT NOW...and there's nothing. Except crickets.
Cool, right? There's no life or death five alarm fires to drain the bank account, no summers to be spent trapped in the yard doing landscape work ... and maybe you have some seniority at work and maybe some perks to go with it...and the crisis question is 'What do I do now?' You don't have to look after anyone because they can look after themselves. Women can cope with it because they make work for themselves if nothing is available...and you have to too. It's either that - or the couch in front of the TV. If you've gotten this far in life...that is NOT an option. There are more idiots on TV than there is on the internet - trust me.
Some men get stupid. My friends Rotten Rob and Baloney Bob got into booze and hot rod kit cars.
Wanna do 60 MPH around a traffic circle in a car that doesn't even lean? This is your ride.
They had a lot more money than I did. And poor Rob...he got in a lot more trouble. The boys would take a bottle or a sack of road rockets out on Alberta's lonelier secondary highways and race these rocket ships and try to kill themselves. Rob couldn't handle it. He got an impaired driving charge and that right there is enough to end most men. You lose your wheels for six months. I've heard that men lose their jobs and their families when they can't get around. They literally take your driver's license and drop it in the shredder. Awhile later he got caught driving without a license. I went over to his acreage one day and pleaded with him and asked him what was wrong with his fuggin head? He and I were 41 at the time with a good jobs, homes and half our lives ahead of us. Awhile after that he got a SECOND impaired. "He's going to jail this time," we all said...but the lawyers got him off. Then he got a THIRD one and still didn't do time....and still, when we were together, Bob would fill him up with booze and it was like pouring gas on a fire. I stopped hanging around with them at that point...I didn't want to be around for the train wreck. Ran into Bob again a decade later - he still has his car and his business but he has had a few close shaves too. He got pissed up one day and lost a finger on a table saw. He's blind in one eye because of another stupid work accident. He still drinks and drives and revels in the stares of the young tire biters and hotties when their heads turn to see him go by in his heavy metal war machine. We are different men now that we are old farts and have nothing in common anymore. Both of those guys sound like utter morons (and they are) - but if you met them to chat and didn't know it you would probably think they were great guys. It was the damndest thing I ever saw. They never got past the mid-life crisis. Dunno what ever happened to Rob, I hope he's alright.
As for me...I always wanted to fly. Ever since I was a kid I wanted to fly. So I took lessons but the Cessnas and the Pipers and the small planes of Alberta's former flying farmers are hideously expensive to operate and to store today. Hangar fees are outlandish. You can't do your own maintenance anymore so that has to be done only by a certified AME. Only the ultralight aircraft are exempt from the layers of bureaucratic legislation and gubbermint mandated flubdubbery... so it was that I made my mistake.
What in hell was wrong with MY fuggin head?
Like Baloney Bob and Rotten Rob I am not a stupid man. I'm not smart either - the chit house IQ tests I have taken put me around 115~125. When I bought the aircraft that little voice in the back of my head - the one everyone has in the occipital part of the brain where common sense resides - well, it went NUTS! It's the part of the brain that manages the Emergency Shut Down procedures when you are about to do something staggeringly stupid that might even kill you. And of course, it correctly assessed my actions as Darwin Award worthy. The Red Alerts started to hoot so I shut them off without a second thought. The ESD protocols initiated and I did a manual override. I. WAS. GOING. TO. DO. THIS. Dammit, I knew the risks and did it anyway. I couldn't even say I was drunk at the time as an excuse!
And so I did. And 10 hours in - I crashed and wrote off the machine. You need to understand that in model aviation as in ultralight aviation - EVERYONE crashes. Even if you fly the bigger aircraft of general aviation long enough - they will too. Most of us do it on the upward side of the learning curve when our experience is at the lowest. When ultralighters crash it is usually non-fatal (but not always) - and usually involves broken limbs. The overall risk factor here for these things is on par with a motorcycle. If you do everything right you'll probably be okay - but you are on the edge of Murphy Country and if you forget it - Murphy will remind you where you are. If you're REALLY unlucky...Darwin and the devil will help him.
My crash, as far as Murphy, Darwin and the devil were concerned, was a done deal. My engine crapped out at about 400 feet on climbout and I was up there and alone with those ass hats for copilots...and it was a feeling I will never forget. I looked behind me to see if a turn around was possible...forget it. More precious altitude lost. I looked ahead because I was going to land on whatever was in front of me...which turned out to be a field of standing canola on one side and the town sewage lagoon on the other. To my credit, I didn't lose much altitude making that choice, HAR HAR HAR! Recalling some armchair discussions with the hangar rats, landing on a standing crop can be done in one of two ways: go in hot and fast and hope that the crops and roots tear loose when they catch your landing gear...or finesse it in by going in slow, and stalling the aircraft and 'belly flopping' it for your final approach. What happens after that is in the hands of God. More altitude lost as I pondered all that - and then made my decision. It will live with me always: deep in the subconscious where spirits lie and logic fears to tread, Darwin, Murphy and the devil roared with laughter. As for God - He just smiled. I was in the worst place an inexperienced ultralight pilot could be. I pulled in the control bar, dived to pick up speed...and hoped for the best. I was on my own.
Or was I?
Praise God, I didn't lose my chit and gibber in fright, I didn't moan with fear or panic like all men secretly fear they will when it's all on the line...I flew my aircraft in all the way with the resolute determination of a CF-18 fighter pilot. At least now I know courage is not something I lack. I picked a spot of shadow on the field for an impact point and headed into it with all the speed my little airplane could muster - about 40 knots but to me it might as well have been 150. That is still plenty fast enough to kill you! Seconds before I hit the spot, it flashed under my wheels - and then I crashed. And rolled. The sun and horizon swapped places three times before the wreck came to rest. When everything stopped moving I was hanging upside down from the seat straps and all was silent. Calmly I ran through my end of flight list - in this case, by wiggling my fingers, then my toes, and finally my arms and legs and noted with delight that they all still worked! I unbuckled, and sprawled across the dirt...and then crawled out from under the wing. My proud little airplane was dead. It would never fly again...and neither would I.
Pushing through the canola I sprawled down at the fence line between the field and the sewage lagoon. The exhaustion of reaction set in and I set down my helmet the same way Chuck Yeager probably did when he had to bail out of a dying bird. I had the coolest green canvas/leather jacket and looked every inch the intrepid aviator. And...it was all bullshit. I was the same bum that I was when I woke up that morning...but different. You could have used me as a model for an action figure! But it was then that I realized it was all ... just bullshit. I started to laugh...and I think my former three copilots started to curse and grumble. My mid-life crisis was over.
Being a man isn't a matter of image or behaviour patterns or games with girls. The social justice wanks actually got it right when they say 'manhood is a social construct' but they missed the boat on the ramifications of that. It IS a construct, it is noble, healthy, wholesome and worthy - and it's something you need to invest in, work at, and build. You aren't born with it. I didn't need the snappy flight jacket, the crash helmet or the sports car or anything else. Ya don't need a ripped body and martial arts skills. Manhood isn't something you can study or duplicate by emulation - it's something you create and become. Nobody can confer it upon you either. It is derived from the self, and refined and honed by experience. You do it with hard work, devotion to your family and friends and possibly God Himself. It's said that God loves fools, cowards and little girls and on that day He had chosen to give me a break even though I was none of those things. I had one of my life's greatest insights - beside a stinking sewage lagoon! Try to tell me there is no God, and that He does not have a sense of humour! I thanked Him for the laugh, for it came at a time when I needed it most!
The next thing I knew, my favorite fellow village idiot ultralight pilot - JAFO (Just A F****** Observer...a nickname he got from his craven approach to aviation) was fussing over me and fretting as he pulled at my limbs to make sure they all worked and were still attached. He had seen me go in and was almost hysterical with worry. Next, he was on the cell alerting the rest of our 'squadron'. Soon the other morons showed up and crowed with delight. "Text book controlled crash, Filthie!" "Well done, kid, well done!" "You see he took my advice and went in hot? Toldjya so!!! I taught him everything he knows...!!!" They bragged and bagged up the wreckage of my beloved little aircraft and scavenged it for parts back at the hangar...but it was a bittersweet experience for me. "Take what you can boys - no, I won't take your money! And scrap the rest. As for me...I'm done. I can't afford this..." There were some long faces at that. Finding people smart enough to fly and dumb enough to take the risks is a tough proposition.
Today I'm 51 and old and fat and still learning what it takes to be a man. And still failing too! As is everyone else! If I had any advice to offer the young man it's this: manhood isn't a goal or a destination. It's a journey - it's YOUR journey. It's fraught with peril, pain, humiliation and failure - but when things work...Lord knows it's one HELL of a ride. Buy a book entitled "It Doesn't Take A Hero" by Stormin Norman Schwartzkopff. Identify what you want to do in life, make sure your goals are reasonable. Marshal your resources and tilt any and all odds and variables in your favour. Expect delays and fiascos but don't quit, don't make excuses - do the work, persist and prevail. That will get you started. Next, surround yourself with GOOD men - and women! They're out there, you will know them when you see them, and they will know you. They say 'never look back' - but ignore that. Do it often, remember your milestones in life with fondness, and use them to keep your bearings on the road ahead.
And most of all, don't forget to plan for your SUCCESS too. What are you going to do when all is paid for, and you have time and money on your hands? What do you do when your planning and investments pay off and the challenges of your youth are put behind you?
What's that? Why am I dressed in my underwear and waving a Colt 1860 percussion cap and ball pistol around? Have I gone Californian and lost my chit? No, no...although you would be correct to suspect it, my mental faculties are running at peak efficiency! Allow me to explain! The other day I was over at Wirecutter's and took a great big crap in the comments, lines were drawn, insults exchanged...and on the weekend we're stepping out into the street! So I'm practicing up on my gun slinging by lipping off at myself in the mirror and slapping leather to execute my lightning fast draw! Watch this...*ahem*...."Are you talking to me, punk? Are ya feelin' lucky...???"
Why, we'll be lucky if WC and half the black powder geeks over at contemporary makers aren't toes up after this is over!
If the meanest no-good sonsabitches ever decide to shoot it out in Edmonton - they would do it at the Cromdale Bar and grill! Sorry, no tumbleweeds blow down 118th Ave here...but there's tons of local whores, knuckleheads and hicks to set the stage for a good show down!
I made the knife, the sheath and the holster. If we ever get licensed concealed carry up here in Canada this will be my gun! With weapons like that I will OWN the Cromdale...and probably The Fort Hotel too...
I must have sold half a dozen of these Uberti black powder pistols. These damn things can SHOOT. I got into it with a smart ass kid out at the rod and gun club with a 9mm Glock and we started fighting over the duelling tree on the range. He would fire three or four shots, hit with one and knock a steel plate over to my side - and I would smoke it and send it right back with one from Ol' Smokey. The poor kid - he had all his buddies around and was learning 'em everything they needed to know about pistols - and I spanked him with an archaic cap n ball gun! So the buddies come over to get a closer look at it...and it is blazing hot...and stinkin' to high heaven like sin itself! And of course - they're lost. Nostalgia AND accuracy AND speed? Who can resist? Plus, if ya cast your own ball like I do- ya can shoot all afternoon for $10.00!!!
"Go ahead! Make my day!!!" Those knuckledraggers will never know what hit 'em!!!!
Probably the most beautiful sodbuster song by the last two guys on earth you would expect to do it!
I'm supposed to be 51 years old but some days, sometimes...when I pick up that percussion gun - I feel like I'm 9 years old and gone to heaven. How about one more from the saloon musicians? Chow down, chaw up, and sit back for one more:
Oh sweet Jesus!!! Where did THAT come from??? Reverend...I got six tickets to hell for you right here! Ya wanna maybe try that again...? I don't like killin' men of the cloth but one more like that and you are gonna meet your maker.
There! That's better! Don't let it happen again!!!
Yes, Fred. Yes we GET it! Some highly placed political and financial slobs make out like fuggin bandits from war! Yes!!! Fred - WE GET IT! Some kids are going to come home in a box and some are going to come home disabled and scarred so badly that life will never be the same! Oh, for the love of GAWD. Now the MEDIA is the eeeeeeevil military-industrial complex's best friend and lap dog??? Will somebody get that old bastard an Ovaltine? Spike it with vodka, and hopefully the old fart will pass out and stop bothering people. Fer gawdsakes - he's a bad influence on stupid kids like Vox Day and Uncle Bob! How can you claim to be both a former soldier and a cop and be this friggin clueless?
Oh! He's drunk again! Sorry everyone! My mistake.
For those of us that are NOT drunk and stupid (you two know who you are) - the military is NOT free to do what it wants with impunity. If they were, Hillary, Obama and all the democrats would have been rounded up and fired out of the cannons. Half most of the Repubs too. If the military had full autonomy and control of it's operations it would have smoked Korea and made a nice light snack of Viet Nam. Viet Nam was lost when the troops were undermined by the media - unscrupulous journalist slobs just like Fred - poisoning minds and fear mongering at home. Sheesh - he whines about eeeeeeeeevil industrial/political/financial pigs making out like bandits profiteering from war...even as he blood dances for coins like some liberal organ grinder's pet monkey as he tries to sell copy and promote his books.
If the military had control of it's operations Iran would be nice paved parking lot for malls and posh hotels. Big landing strips would welcome American fighter planes. Terrorism would be a bad memory. Benghazi would never have happened. In Afbagistan swarms of Talibanger mongrels would be experiencing the benefit of unexpected energy surpluses delivered by our friendly neighbourhood drone pilots. Yannow fags like Fred whine and bitch about the drones but consider: it used to be that terrorists could strike death, blood and destruction at our women and children and then bugger off to hide behind their own. The drones put an end to that and rightfully so.
These guys are so damned stupid, they can never see the big picture or all the pieces in play. What happens if you refuse to get involved in foreign entanglements? Libertarians will whine that we can't base our actions on what the other guy might do - and sanctimonious scribblerians will scold us not to act out of fear...so what happens when ya just sit back, mind your own business and hit the bong or pop a beer and leave the doings of third world mutts Over There?
Uncle Bob used to give scholarly lectures on the Manly Virtues. I wonder if cowardice is on that list? What happens when you refuse to fight in those icky, foreign entanglements? How many old hippies like Fred will flock to Europe to retire?
I'll tell ya what they do: they bring their wars, their racism, their misogyny, their blood feuds, their ignorance and stupidity - over here. And - when they fight amongst themselves over the rotting bananas in the trees in their own homelands - these fig farming goat feltchers will do their level best to draw America and other powers into their tribal fights on their side. Politics and warfare are not principled zero sum games - if you leave yourself open there are those that will exploit your weakness. Just ask the Germans. Those idiots finally vanquished their fascists - and then imported swarms of dumber fascists to replace them. It would be funny if it weren't tragic.
911 should have taught us the value of gunning these moslem pigs down when circumstances permit - leaving them alive to fight another day can only have disastrous consequences. The problem with libertarians and lefties is they can only look at what has happened - with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight. They put on airs of self righteousness and intellectual sophistication that make the rational adult want to choke them. Where would Saddam Hussein be now if he had been left unchecked to do as he wanted? How about Quadaffi Duck in Libya? Play it the other way: what if the Allies had shot Hitler before he rose to power? What if they had taken out Bin Laden years before he plotted 911? These are the questions guys like Fred don't even think to ask. Don't kid yourself, hippy - we know who these guys are. We know who's training them and supplying them. We know where they live. You can be damned sure we know where their money comes from. The hell of it is - you do too and you choose to ignore it.
And every day - stupid, craven men like ol' Fred here lobby to let them go. Where is the next Bin Laden? Well, he was probably sitting high and pretty in the crosshairs of a Predator drone three weeks ago. Or maybe an hour ago. And because some pacifist fag like Fred in the media would wet his pants if the right thing was done - the 'militant' was spared. How many lives will that cost? Perhaps the libertarians will tell us? Dozens? Hundreds? Thousands? Yeah, no thanks Fred - I am just peachy with the Nintendo kids blowing away those simian scoundrels and wish them well. If they would let me on the base I would take them a pizza, a couple two litre pop bottles and a bag of twinkies and ask them to pop a few moslems for me! If anything they need to step up the pace to keep up with the rising pace of terrorism. Emancipated military? Bring it on!
Piss off, Fred. Go back to your crossword puzzle, feed the pigeons in the park and play with your little dog. You're old and stupid and it's time to hang up the keys because what you can't drive anymore. In fact, you are a hazard to your wife, your kids and everyone else's. If you think corruption and death and destruction caused by Americans is bad...just wait until you see what the vibrants have in store for Europe. Women are being gang raped right under the noses of the police, Fred. Lecture them about corruption and self interest and criminal negligence - and the virtues of not interfering with foreigners or their affairs.
I'm sure you'll see things differently when the swelling in your eye goes down.
Are any of you guys noticing this? My bank has literally been over-run by cultural vibrants! I'm not kidding either: of about a dozen employees I counted two white women. The rest were all coloured and every single one I met had language problems. It literally took me 3 hours and several tries to get my visa card activated and linked to my checking account!
Ummmm....just how tolerant am I supposed to be here? This is my money we're talking about!
I usually do on line banking but my bank accounts got hacked through an identity theft scam. I only had about $1700.00 in my cheque account and the hackers took $1250.00 and EMT'd it to somebody named 'Sarah'. Then they went into my line of credit, transferred $2000.00 into my cheque account and tried to EMT that off to 'Sarah' too! (My line of credit balance had previously been zero). For the last half decade ALL my transactions were through a bank machine or on-line banking...so I had to close out my old accounts, open new ones - and that is when the multi-culti gong show started! Let that be a lesson to you boys - anything can happen at those goat porn sites...a lot of them carry malware that CAN hurt you! GAH! Thankfully the bank was good about it - I was not on the hook for the stolen funds. If I had been I would have closed my accounts and gone directly to cash only.
I may be forced to replace my goat porn habits with poultry out of concerns for cyber security. The sacrifices necessary for privacy continue to mount...
I saw the same thing happen to the taxi cab industry. It used to be that you could call the cab company, get a clean car driven by a clean and courteous white cab driver who was half way sociable and helpful - and now all you can get are smelly pakies and African vibrants - and most of them WILL try to cheat you. For awhile I got around that by specifying the companies send a white driver but then they all started to refuse to do that - because RACISM dontchya know! I no longer take yellow cabs anymore, and will spend the extra coin on a 'town car'. At least if you get stuck with a vibrant driver there - they are at least clean, competent and respectful and if you luck out you can still get the odd white driver. Are low intellect/low skill vibrants going to infest and sink the banking industry as well?
It was so bad today, and the tellers were so incompetent that I would pay a premium to bank at an institution where white people who were fluent in the language could help me out. Good grief - these people can't drive cabs...what in hell are they doing handling our life savings...? I am not reassured and I think I'm going to pull my accounts after I research things a little bit. People like this should be flipping burgers at McDonald's, pouring coffee at Tim Horton's or running the Quickee-Mart. I don't want them anywhere near my money. I want the people that handle my money to be literate, well spoken and able to follow simple directions...and I'm not liking what I see at the CIBC.
Hopefully the human resources fatties at the CIBC speed up that diversity hiring drive to get these penguins into frontline positions soon - before the vibrants run the bank into the dirt...
He asks "Can our inner city lost generations be saved"? I'm surprised he would even ask that question because the answer is obvious - he even outlines the procedure to save them in his post! You better believe those kids can be saved - but not by pooch screwing unionized teachers, socialists, or niggered race whoring political hacks that benefit from a brain dead electorate, or those that only want to be their child's best buddy and not a parent. The worst hell of it is - that saving them would be remarkably easy.
When she was in grade 7 my daughter came home with a long face. She was flunking out in math at school and not doing very well in the other subjects either. This time, my beshitted in-laws were living with us in our house as their new home was being built a few blocks away - and of course they dived in between my daughter and I to dismiss her failures and make excuses for them. I would have none of it - and read the riot act. On the next report card her marks were even lower and once again, her grandparents tried to intervene 'on her behalf'. I ignored them. My daughter wasn't an idiot; I knew this for a fact. From here on out I was going to tutor her in math and by Godfrey - her marks would improve. Or else!
Dealing with my daughter was like looking at myself in a fun-house mirror. I flunked out in math in Grade 7 too. When my mom tried to tutor me I threw a hissy fit - and that was that for that! If I wanted to cop out and flunk out that was just fine with her - she had better things to do than make me learn my lessons. At the time I thought it was a win for everyone...but she was copping out even as I was. So I spent the rest of my scholastic years floating along and learning as little as possible, content to pass with marks that fluctuated between 49.999995 and 50.00005%. And when I graduated - I didn't know shit from shinola about math and was hopelessly far behind. I had to go back, re-educate myself with high school correspondence courses for a year just to qualify for school. It hurt me - a lot. Fact is - I never should have gotten a high school diploma.
So when my daughter threw the same hissy fit I did 20 years earlier I decided that there was no way on earth she would cop out and flunk out - and no way was I going to cop out like my mother did. We started to work together and her marks shot up overnight. I was no slave driver, we did 15 minutes a night and kept it light and fun. Afterwards we sat down in front of the XBOX and she would tell me about her day and doings. At the end of the year she had honours in math...and that is when I made another critical error in parenting. My asshole in-laws made sure I knew it too!
My thinking was that it was remarkably easy to slip backwards. My daughter had been pushed to succeed and she had done amazingly well...and I wanted to open up the throttles and see what she could REALLY do. So...at the end of grade 7 we dabbled in grade 10 algebra. Of course, she flipped at first but I wouldn't have that, either. I explained to her that I was actually doing her a HUGE favour...but she wouldn't see the pay off for another 3 years! She was livid of course - but there was no way out. At first our algebraic equations were dirt simple as I taught her how to isolate the variables and solve for them. Instead of x and y for variables, I would draw pictures of cut-off chicken heads, half eaten fish skeletons, and pictures of bugs and other disgusting things to represent the variables. She not only had to solve for the variables and answer the questions, she had to guess what I was drawing too. In spite of herself she started having fun - and the problems slowly got more complex. By the start of grade 8 she had the afterburners going full blast - she ate up exponential functions, charged right through quadratics and geometry and by the middle of grade 9 she was doing basic integration and differentiation - calculus...and snoring through elementary physics. I was boggled at her ability to learn - and again, there was no slave driving - just 15 minutes a night. If she was having fun, we did more. And always afterward - the XBOX for HALO and the other one for Mario Kart. They were the happiest days of my life, sitting on a stool in front of the TV and chilling out with my daughter.
It all ended one day as the summer of grade 9 approached. One day she came home and I was parked in front of the XBOX. "What?" she asked, "No math tonight, Pop?" Well, I was pretty high on myself - let me tell you! "No," I said. "You're DONE." Gosh - I will always remember that look of confusion on her face. It was worth all the tea in China. "Done...?" she faltered. "DONE!" says I!
So I explained: she now had the math required to breeze through high school without breaking a sweat. Math is the toughest subject in high school - and she knew it inside out and could easily pass any entrance exams at any reasonable university or college she might want to attend! For high school, she could tear through the core subjects and graduate early...or load up on extra-curriculars and vocational stuff and draw it out - but the worst of it was behind her!
Think about that, Gentle Reader: the specially trained union slobs that posed as her teachers couldn't even teach her dumbed down chit house mathematics...and with just 15 minutes a night, my tutoring put her above grade 12 advanced mathematics when she was still in grade 9. Do you seriously want to tell me home-schooling won't work? I can tell you it will - for I have seen the results for myself!
So yes, to answer the good Pastor's question - yes those kids can absolutely be 'saved'. Hell - they will do it themselves if you just give them some half assed guidance and motivation. Don't think the rot that consumed black schools can't happen here...it can and it's already poisoning our kids today. The Pastor is also correct about any rescue attempt being seen as abusive too. My idiot in laws said I was pushing my daughter too hard, and that I was being too strict! (Of course, those two idiots fully expected their own daughter to live in the books when we were kids)...but I ignored them and patted myself on the back for my daughter's success. No man was more proud than I was of my little intellectual power house! I wasn't going to push her into university - I considered it a win just to have her in a position where she could do anything she wanted! When she finished up high school a semester early and enrolled in the sciences at university - I almost burst with pride. My in-laws glowered and glared and grumbled about my flaws as an overly strict father... but couldn't say a thing because like it or not - my daughter was doing well and there was no bones about it!
When she moved out I sometimes sat down in front of the XBOX but couldn't get into the games without my daughter...but I sat there anyways and missed her the way fathers do. Her fuggin cat would curl up in my lap and I knew he missed her too. It made me feel good that she was out on her own, and had even won a few scholarships. I resolved not to call her too much, and made myself keep my distance for she was an adult now - and needed her space. But Lord - how I missed our time playing the games and talking about life! At the age of 45 my wife and I were 'empty-nesters'... When you're younger you dream of the day that the kids move out and take their bullshit with them...and then, when they do...you miss them and wish they were still there!
It took me awhile but eventually I boxed up the video games and donated them to the Goodwill or some charity - and that seemingly mundane chore actually felt like a major life milestone!
It was, I suppose. It marked the end of an era that I shall always regard with the utmost fondness.
...and so it was that an unholy stench settled upon the rifle range...and not a fuck was given on that day.
Goddammitalltohell. The Rifle Gods are angry - and piss upon me for my impudence!
The one on the left is a bench rested 50m target for my blackpowder .45-75 lever gun. I'm not upset by this - there is all kinds of ass-hattery that goes into reloading black powder cartridges and shooting them and I've learned a pile of things that need to be done to shoot them well...none of which were done here. The serious BPCR geek uses blow tubes, drop tubes, bore mops and all kinds of other utensils to shoot well on the range. A lot of that stuff becomes impractical when shooting at sub-zero temps - but we'll give it a shot next time and see what happens.
The target on the right, however - is almost unforgiveable. That's 20 rounds of .223 and 20 rounds of .308 fired from the prone position at...ahem... 150m. Again - I'm not unhappy with the .223 - that is fired from a 7.5" snubbie AR without a proper marksman's sling with some old reloads I needed to fire off so I could get the brass. It wears a crappy 3X combat optic and for the first prone shots of the year with a new gun, new ammo...? I kinda sorta can forgive myself.
This is General Handgrenade - A Springfield Armoury M1A. National Match trigger. National Match barrel. Unitized and tuned action. National Match sights replaced by a Swarovski 3x9 variable. Blue printed and headspaced to National Match specs. Semi-auto military target guns don't get much better than this.
This gun easily goes under 1.5 MOA off the bench with my reloads. In the hands of a competent shooter those groups above are fired at 1000 yards by the snipers at Camp Perry. They would have blown the orange bullseye right out of the target with iron sights. In my prime all my shots would easily have fitted in that 9 ring. What in hell happened??? Ask for excuses and you shall get them - from somebody else. Long story short - I shat the bed. I fell out of practice and will have to re-acquire the skills I have lost. In addition I have been spending way too much time at the shooting bench with load development and not keeping up with my offhand and position shooting. It's scarey how bad my skills have declined.
Some days, with life as with the shooting sports... this is the only attitude that works. This medieval trap shooter knows the drill.
Tonight I'll be at the loading bench, cleaning General Handgrenade and making sure scope mounts and such haven't let off or loosened...but I know what I will find. The fault is mine, and for that, there is only one cure: more trigger time on the range! You fags at Springfield Armoury can stop laughing now, and may God rot your balls! No, it might be awhile before I make the winner's circle at Camp Perry...but I am definitely in the running to place in the Special Olympics High Power Rifle event!
Next week I will lube my innards with a quart of cheap bourbon and hopefully my scores will improve. As always, fellas - drink and shoot responsibly!
The children are our future - which is why I'm stocking up on popcorn and ammo. I would laugh but chances are my own daughter looks much like that creep does. Are these people really any happier for their war for social justice? How much actual FUN do these kids derive from their secondary educations?
What made our Universities superior to others was that they tested societal limits and exceeded them. Why should blacks be excluded from our institutions - if they could do the work? Or women? Why shouldn't women have leadership roles? Why should we let sanctimonious hypocritical holy rolling bible-thumpers tell us what we can and can't say? There was a time when these were really legitimate questions... But as time went on, we found that there's a fine line between exceeding limits and imposing them - and when we threw out our Christians with their icky bible and their stale dogma...we threw out our morals and ethics as well.
When leftists take over groups they ultimately destroy them. They began the long march through our institutions decades ago - they infested and controlled the media...and now you can't trust a newspaper and they can't sell one to save their lives. They took over the courts and judiciary and now cops can't protect themselves...never mind do their jobs. They took over the gov't and now we're mired in debt, and citizens are actively arming up for the day when their gov't tries to betray them. And our schools? They are socialist moron factories that crank out useless, papered and pampered fools like they were sausages. What kind of future can that bitter, ugly woman in the pic and her ilk make for themselves - never mind us? Would you want her caring for you in your late 80's? The degrees and diplomas these kids are getting may make them feel good, but as the British say...they aren't fit to wrap your chips in. The education scam will bite us all on the end - in the end.
ACT II THE SCAMMERS
"How are we gonna take The Process Control Loon down?" Delldo asked. Stu looked at me and then addressed the gang. "We're gonna punk him on the midterm! Filthie and I will work out the algorithms needed to program the calculators. Once we've done that, we'll sit down with the rest of you to trouble shoot and explain the program operation - and we waltz out of that mid-term with scores in the high 90's!"
If the course for the semester ran about 80 hours in the class room, and about the same in the lab, you can estimate it would probably take around 30~50 hours of homework to learn the material well enough to do reasonably well on the exam. So it was that we had two problems to contend with: we had to learn the material, and then identify the problem flows and the solutions to them. That alone was a big job, but after that, we had to break down the solution process into discrete steps that could allow us to program a microprocessor to solve them. The algorithms had to be idiot proofed and the program smoothed out enough to be user friendly. It had to be applicable to multiple problems. It was an incredible amount of work because you not only had to learn it for yourself, you had to teach it to the computer as well. It was actually a great way to learn and the time spent doing it made us even more proficient with it. About week before the exam Stu the Jew and I had a preliminary program and were pushing it on the rest of the gang. They didn't like it - you had to know what the program was asking for and what it intended to do with the data. It didn't bother Stu and I - we invented it after all - but then we had to tutor the youngsters and we got even MORE proficient. It was a helluva lot of work. We stayed late. We drilled. We schemed and fought over problems but eventually - we were ready. We ordered a special patch cable that would allow us to download our program to other calculators - and we were ready to rip!
The midterm exam was almost a let down. Our midterms were typically only 3 or 4 problems...but could easily take 20 minutes (or more) each to solve. You had to know what you were doing and move fast. An hour was allotted for the test and we finished up in 10 minutes flat. We would have been done in half that, but you have to show your work if you want full marks so we had to go back and fill that in after the calculators spat out their answers. Stu and I were the first ones out, followed closely by Aenus, Delldo and Jizm. Aenus smirked and farted loudly as he left the classroom as a final billowing salute to our wonderful instructor.
The next day we were up in the coffee room with our lords and masters trying to sort out something else when The Head sat down, and asked the others to leave so he could speak with us alone. "Mind telling me how you AND your gang managed to get 100% scores on that last Process Theory exam?" Stu went pale, but I didn't - I was older and we had done nothing wrong. In fact, I was proud as punch because I did much of the programming. Handing him my calculaotor, I said "Check this out - we could land rockets on the moon with these things!" I gloated. He called one of our spies in the faculty over - Blacque Jacque - and passed him the calculator. "Holy shit! Can you get over the SIZE of this? How many lines of code did you dummies put into this abortion? I've said it before and I'll say it again - we need to do more work with these kids on digital fundamentals and programming skills. Why - a program this size should be able to land a rocket on the moon AND bring it back to earth - assuming the programmers weren't hare-lipped retards like you scrotes!" he chortled.
"Hey - it works," Stu said defensively. The Dept. Head steepled his fingers, pursed his lips and frowned. "You young men have gone to an awful lot of work to do well," he said, "But you're being assholes about it too - and in the workplace, that is unacceptable." I rather liked The Head, he was a nice guy and I felt bad that he was disappointed in us. "You need some humility, gentlemen - and on the final you shall have it." He got up and left.
"Bring it on," Stu said. I politely noted that now would be a good time for Stu The Jew to STFU. Blacque Jacque smirked and eyed us. "Step lightly, boys, or you will be in for a world of hurt." The Process Control Loon was in a silent, cold fury and stormed out.
Later, over at the food court Aenus and Delldo gave us the very hell of it. "Way to go assholes. Now you have the entire staff wanting to sink us! Whadda we gonna do??? Cripes, this is EXACTLY the kind of shit I don't want to worry about over the Christmas holidays!" he wailed.
I smoked Delldo a mean Charlie Horse across his upper thigh and told the snivellers to get ahold of themselves. That triggered a brawl that had us ejected from the food court by three fat, angry mall cops. We were thrown out and thinking nothing of it, I told the boys "Nobody worries about anything. We're gonna work hard after the holidays, we're gonna be courteous and polite to the instructors and even to The Process Control Loon himself," I said. "By the time spring is here those dummies will have forgotten all this. We'll smoke the finals and be off for the summer! Everybody just stay loose - and kiss ass for all you're worth with the profs and instructors. It will all work out. You may even develop a taste for rectums the way Aenus has..." and with that I was getting pounded and my face washed out with snow by the kids. We worked hard and by gawd - we played hard too on occasion. Sometimes maybe a little too hard, upon reflection.
Stu was right though, and I was as arrogant as he was. Bring it on - indeed!
One of these days I am going to go back to my childhood by having a good ol' fashioned sleep over and invite the blogging celebrities to it.
Can you imagine it? A bunch of old guys snoring and farting through the night until the sun rose...and then Saturday morning cartoons with a mixing bowl full of Froot Loops! Of course I would wear my trendy long underwear with the trapdoor hatch in the back (wanna see how that works fellas?)...BW strikes me as the kind of guy that would go for Spiderman PJ's. Uncle Bob would probably spoil everything by wearing nothing at all! And bringing his latest nude girl friend too! Can you guys throw on a blanket or something? Sheesh? Wirecutter strikes me as the kid that would wear diapers with a .45 jammed in the waist band - California gets to him sometimes. Of course we would need a responsible adult to baby sit us all and I think Chicken Mom would be just right for the role!
Who invited THAT kid? Never mind, we'll set him up at 25 yards and see what Wirecutter can do with that .45...
Programming would be a bugger though. What kind of Saturday Morning cartoons do kids watch these days? When my daughter was tiny even she couldn't watch the crap that passed as children's entertainment. Everything was too violent so they edited the Bugs Bunny and Roadrunner cartoons to the point they made even LESS sense than they did before. Maybe some modern retro cartoons?
You can just BET I'll be tuning in for the next exciting episode...
Yeah yeah yeah...fuggin BOB is saying that's 'kid stuff' and wants something more grown up...FINE.
You might wanna siddown with your new gal Bob, and ask her just exactly what she wants out of a relationship with you...
Perhaps something more educational...?
Yannow what? Adult cartoons suck as much as children's cartoons! Perhaps this sleep-over idea was a really, really BAD one... Forget I brought it up! Have a good weekend y'all.
We have a warped view of continuing education here in the West and it's getting worse. It's entirely possible that my generation would be the last to receive a decent education before the wheels fall off our civilization. The signs were all there, of course, but the real rot and decay had not set yet set in. Shortly after I graduated our universities and colleges stopped being elite and exclusive or meritocracies...and instead became open and inclusive. That in turn lead to them becoming infested with mediocre and poisoned minds that eventually took control of them. Degenerates, atheists and feminists reduced higher education centres to intellectual wastelands. Now? They are bastions of bigotry, zealotry and ignorance where queers can be traumatized by a preacher's sermon. Atheists can be offended by a Christmas tree. Feminists are offended by their own genitals, 250,000 years of human evolution... and hate an loathe the rest of us that are capable of healthy marriages.
And the guys in the labs downstairs? You never see them. I'm talking about the guys that generated pressures and temperatures high enough to make hydrogen gas turn into a metal for a billionth of a billionth of a second - and then gathered meaningful data from the test. Oh sure - their work may have appeared in some obscure scientific journal ... but the nutters in the courtyards and quadrangles above capered and gibbered for the press. How long can these quiet, nerdy geeks prevail against the posturing, bullying politically correct pink shirts that are taking control of our universities? The guy that landed a space probe on a comet millions of miles from earth nearly lost his job because some femcnut took offense to the print on his shirt.
Uncle Bob once said that women are socialists and fascists by nature. The hell, you say....but to be honest I wouldn't wipe my arse with that shirt either. Real men wear plaid...
When human beings operate on the leading edge of the academic/technical/scientific/athletic envelopes - you won't find token queers, blacks or feminists. You may find a very, very few...but they are the exception, not the rule, and they are there based on merit and not (hork, spit) social justice or political correctness. In WW2 the race to build the atomic bomb was never really a race at all - the fascist German leadership airily dismissed the science required to do it as contemptable 'Jewish physics' and ordered their teams to research more politically correct avenues. The Russians started the space race...but the Americans won it. Excellence simply cannot flourish in hives of political correctness and egalitarianism.
ACT I: THE PROGRAMMERS
I was the old man in my gang at the age of 28 and even though I was not the smartest of most athletic of our gang - I became the unspoken leader of it because I was young enough to relate to the kids and old enough to get along with the profs and instructors. I bailed out Aenus McGroin when he came to class drunk and mouthed off at some people he shouldn't have. I could walk into the instructors lounge and sit with the old farts and banter and exchange friendly insults. They relished the pitched political, philosophical and even intellectual battles I sometimes brought before them. If we had problems with concepts, I would go to them and figure it out, and take it back to the younger men and teach it to them. If life got in the way of studies and the youngsters had dates or needed to go to the bar - I stayed behind, finished the assignments and allowed them to scribe them later - provided they learned the material. I told the Process Theory Loon to go fuck himself when he repeatedly and deliberately kept us late on our last class of the day on Fridays. The kids had buses to catch and girls to chase and he was doing it just to be a dink. When he decided to get stupid and fight about it I sat down with him and the Dept. Head and told him we as students have deadlines and time allotments - and the Process Control Theory Loon had his. He could damned well finish his classes in the allotted time or we would walk out on him and that was that - for that! It wasn't even an argument - The Loon was told to smarten up and we were scolded to be more respectful. Whatever.
I fell in love with the programmable scientific calculator the second I saw it. We had just gotten them and I had turned my back on one of my most promising protoges - Stu The Jew. He was a merciless practical joker and if you keep your friends close and your enemies closer - Stu and I were very close friends indeed. It was a pleasure to corrupt mentor him that I will always cherish. So it was that I turned on my new calculator to see what Stu had done to it. The alpha numeric display came up:
ENTER A NUMBER
A sheen of sweat broke out on my forehead. "What did you do to my new calculator, Stu?" I sobbed, "For the love of gawd - it's brand new!!! What did you do to it???" And ol' Stu? He just leaned back and grinned like a wolf. "Whatsamatter old man? Scared? Why don't you enter a number?" Oh boy. I carefully set the calculator down on the table and started to try and think my way out of the trap Stu had set for me. I assumed a thoughtful tone and began to talk myself through the steps of logic and made a show of the process. "Consider Stu's lack of morals and ethics - they are in no way indicative of his intellect! Never underestimate your opponents fellas! Now then...(keep a safe distance, lads)...there are no obvious trip wires or disturbance mechanisms. He had neither the means nor the time for more elaborate mechanisms like mercury tilt switches or solid state accelerometers or more sophisticated trigger mechanisms..." Damn him...Stu was just glowing with pride at the seriousness of the situation! "Aenus! Do you see any suspicious packages nearby that could contain Thermite, semtex or any other form of IED? No? Under those circumstances, we can now safely assume that the sabotage is limited to corrupted software and algorithms local to this device!" I congratulated myself over my formidable powers of observation and deduction .... But what to do? I had no interest in the user manual that came with the calculator. A crowd had formed around us as people gathered to watch poor old man Filthie walk into one of Stu's fiendish practical jokes. I looked at the calculator again ... hemmed and hawed...and figured "What the hell? The best way to understand how a trap works is to spring it."
ENTER A NUMBER
>10
PRINT
FILTHIE SUCKS CACK
FILTHIE SUCKS CACK
FILTHIE SUCKS CACK
FILTHIE SUCKS CACK
FILTHIE SUCKS CACK
FILTHIE SUCKS CACK
FILTHIE SUCKS CACK
FILTHIE SUCKS CACK
FILTHIE SUCKS CACK
FILTHIE SUCKS CACK
Silence fell over all of us while Stu basked in my dismay and the astonishment of our gang. It took me a moment or two to recover... "HFS!!! Excellent work, Stu!" Turning to the rest, I re-assumed command of the situation and summarized. "This is just chock-full of awesome lads! Consider what we saw here: a practical joke that instilled maximum fear, loathing and trepidation in the target - a simply BRILLIANT execution of underhanded bastidry in setting it up - and a FLAWLESS execution to draw maximum entertainment and amusement from everyone else! All hail the Great And Powerful Stu The Jooooooo!"
And with that, we got kicked out of the study hall for making too much noise. We went across the street to the food mall and sat down for Stu to give us a product lecture on the calculator and a shit house tutorial on BASIC programming. The more I learned, the more boggled I became. "Holy mackarel, fellas...do you have ANY idea what we can do with these?" Our fellow academic thugs looked at us in slack-jawed apathy...but Stu and I grinned the Devil's grin.
The possibilities were staggering to me at the time. Back then, BASIC was the code for the filthy masses and the elite were using the new C++. I think FORTRAN might still have been around too. "Who do we take down first, Old Man?" Stu asked.
I reached down for my pack, pulled out a massive text entitled "Elements of Process Control" and slammed it on the table with a theatrical flourish. "We're going straight in to the mouth of the cat, guys!"
The Process Control Loon had taken deep offense to the spanking we had handed him - and he had taken it out on us in class. Yes, that is part and parcel of academic professionalism for ya. He did a dismal job of teaching and marked assignments with no quarter of mercy or justice at all. He couldn't touch Stu or I because we knew the material...but some of the younger and less dedicated boys were getting creamed.
"It's time to turn the tables." I growled, and grins broke out all around.
Gavin learns ya everything ya wanna know about why you suck
I like how that works: I was born in 1964. Depending on who defines the terms, that means I was a tail end baby boomer or a leading edge Gen X. When our elderly hippies and baby boomer fucks are pissing and moaning about Gen X I get soaked. When Gen X man-children are whining about how boomers are responsible for all their problems I get it in stereo with twits like Vox in one ear and Gavin in the other. Hey Gavin! Hey Vox! Why don't you two fuck off with your whining and get REAL jobs like I did? When you were ten years old in 1980, Gavin, I was 16. I guess by your math that makes me old enough to be your father and therefore culpable for all that's wrong in the world.
This is what schools were like for our parents. Kids of my generation were just bricks of a different sort. Trust me Gavin, you would NOT like the education they got either. Mouthy kids like you got strapped, slapped and sent home!
What follows is one of my usual rantss but it is unusual in that I haven't embellished it to the extent that I have with others. These are the events as I remember them, as they transpired.
In 1991 I was 28. Like you Gen X kids my schooling was as worthless as yours. I drifted through doing as little as possible. There was always a second chance. If you were too lazy to get over the bar, your teachers would happily lower it for you! If you STILL failed you were forgiven and passed on. You see - in those days, as it does now... self esteem trumped education. When I finished school I was thrown into the world and told to grow up - and be a success! When I failed, my parents correctly accused me of being lazy and shiftless. Looking back...what did they expect, I wonder? You raise kids in coddled, protected environments and then throw them at a world you did not prepare them for...and expect them to succeed? I know all about your pain, Gavin - but that bit about the eating utensils was a new one! HAR HAR HAR!
When I became a father - I had to buckle down and ended up working in a sweat shop for a-holes at minimum wage. There was nothing else for me. All I had was a high school diploma and that was as useless on the job market as a gender studies degree is today. Like now, the economy was in deep recession. My parents still accused me of being lazy and having a bad attitude because I didn't like working 70 hours a week for peanuts and for assholes that weren't fit to shine my shoes. My parents knifed me in the back too, Gavin. One day in the lunchroom a kindly soul let me have a dog eared copy of an autobiography entitled "It Doesn't Take A Hero" - by Stormin' Norman Schwartzkopff - and it saved my life.
The General's philosophy on life was brutally and yet beautifully simple. Establish your goals. Evaluate their feasibility. Gather and marshal your resources. Make no excuses, don't complain - make your sacrifices and do whatever it takes to succeed. So it was that I enrolled in correspondence courses to fill the gaps in my education, most notably in the areas of math, physics, and chemistry. With that done - I enrolled in university and the going got REALLY tough.
We were living with my mother and father in law in their basement. It was a sweet deal: they charged us $600.00 month rent, my wife worked and I pushed myself beyond my academic limits at school. It was hard on all of us. Three generations under one roof. Your problems became everyone else's and vice versa. My wife and I took lots of long walks and weekend trips just to get away from her parents and give them a rest from us. There was a lot of deeply suppressed family friction.
In 1993 my daughter brought home an angry note from her grade 3 teacher telling me that my kid was a monkey in class and she wanted it to stop. Daughter was in tears and I told her that anyone could have a bad day; just behave yourself, and don't let it happen again! She skipped off, happy and relieved, and I smirked to myself. I had the same thing happen to me in Grade 3 too. The next day she brought home another angry letter. This time it was serious: I sat her down, looked her in the eye - and told her she had to clean up her act or she would get a lickin'. I meant it too - when I was in Grade 3 Pop had this exact same problem with me. After the dire threats I smirked again. There would probably be a spanking and that would be the end of it. Boy...did I ever get THAT wrong! When note number 3 came home I cracked her ass the exact same way my father did to me when I brought home notes from the teacher in. In my community getting the strap at school was nothing - compared to the one you got at home when Pop found out! Unlike Pop...I went a little easier with the wooden spoon and my daughter than he did with me.
The next day there was ANOTHER angry note - for ME! The teacher was furious with me and wanted a meeting ASAP. The next day after school I went to meet with the lady and she tore a strip off me a mile long. "We don't spank children anymore," she scolded, "that's child abuse!!!!" Being a younger man I was polite and courteous and she softened and explained that nowadays we discipline children by revoking privileges and grounding them. "It won't work," I explained. "A. My daughter can do 15 minutes in the corner on a 'time-out' standing on her head! She was a stubborn and vexing child at the best of times and willful as could be. (I have no idea where she inherited that from). "B. As far as grounding goes - if you put her in a room with pencils, paper, and books...she could entertain herself for years."
But what did I know? The teacher was an expert on child behaviour and assured me I was wrong. So I says "Fine, we'll try it your way and see what happens!". It made sense. Right?
Right?
The next day note #4 came home - and I stood the brat up in the corner outside my room and told her I would let her off in 15 minutes. In the meantime she would keep her nose in that corner or else!!!When I came back to let her off - she was gone. My father in law was there so I asked him - where had my kid run off to? "Oh, I saw her just standing in the corner so I told her to run off and play," he says. I didn't get too mad and explained the score about how she was being punished with 'time-outs'. I asked him to let me discipline my own child because she was getting in trouble at school and he agreed.
The next day note #5 came home. Once again the kid went into the corner, and once again my father in law intervened to let her off. Now I was mad. "You can't do that Doug! She's being punished! She's making it harder for the other kids to learn at school!" The old man just smirked at me and winked at my daughter and said "Oh. I forgot...." Sure, you asshole. Sure.
The next day note #7 came home. I grabbed my daughter by the wrist, dragged her over by my desk in my room, stood her up in the corner and kept her there for 20 minutes. Soon she was fidgeting and I barked at her to get her nose in the corner. My father in law popped around the corner and saw me...and smirked. "Fuck off" I said to him coldly. "What?!!?" he says...but I knew what he was going to do. My daughter started fidgeting and fussing again and I cuffed her behind the ear and she started wailing at the top of her lungs. I was back at corporal punishment...but that damned kid was going to do her time-out if it killed us.
The next day note #8 came home. Time to escalate: 'You're grounded, kid. Congratulations - you get three days off with no TV, and no going out to play with your friends!" About an hour later she skipped off to play with her friends when her grandfather found her in her room and told her that all was forgiven. I was livid. "Doug - you CAN'T DO THAT. SHE IS BEING PUNISHED. SHE IS BRINGING HOME NOTES FROM SCHOOL AND DISRUPTING HER CLASSROOM. STOP UNDERMINING ME AS A PARENT." The old man just smirked. He thought it was funny and I suppose all that mattered to him was that his granddaughter considered him a hero. "Whatever," he said airily and waltzed off.
The next day note #9 came home. I was homicidal at this point. I sat my daughter down in front of her grandfather. I told her that I was her father, and that she would do as I said, and that she was damned well going to do her punishment or things were going to get really nasty. I glared at my father in law as I handed my daughter 5 days of grounding and told her that if she disregarded me - she would regret it. And of course an hour later she was gone. My father in law may as well have given me the finger!
The next day note #10 came home. Again, I sat my daughter down in front of her doting grandfather. "Look you two. I've had enough of your shit. Kid - if you run off tonight to play with your friends - YOU ARE GETTING A SPANKING. If you bring home another note tomorrow complaining of bad behaviour, YOU ARE GETTING A SPANKING. YOU ARE GROUNDED FOR 5 DAYS STARTING NOW." And of course, her hero of a Grandfather pipes up. "You're not going to get spanked Granddaughter..." I jumped right back and told him she damned well was and if either of them doubted it I would skip the preliminaries and do it right now! Of course, my daughter sobbed that she would behave and my father in law smirked at me and shrugged.
The next day note #11 came home. My daughter crept in, hoping to drop off the note and then cut and run...but I was waiting for her. Grabbing her by the wrist, and a wooden spoon from the drawer I said "C'mon kid. You know what happens now...". She was mortified. "You're supposed to talk to Grampy!!! You can't do this!!!!" she gobbled in fright. Goddamn my soul, when I cracked her ass this time, I left scortch marks on her butt and enjoyed doing it! Ordinarily a spanking in my family was three cracks on the ass - but I gave her four. The last one was for being a manipulative deceitful brat who was deliberately playing me off against her teacher and her grandfather.
That's when things went from the ridiculous to the sublime.
When we came out of her room my in laws were waiting for me. "WE DON'T SPANK CHILDREN IN THIS HOUSE" my mother in law growled. Her husband - the gutless pansy he was - was right behind her. My mother in law wore the pants in her family and they made it clear they expected me to defer to her as well. Well...screw that rattle! So I asked her...how DO you discipline kids in your house exactly, Grandma? Ya see...when I hand down the time-outs and groundings, my fuck-headed father in law comes along and countermands them and the next day my kid is in trouble again. By all means, pray tell me how you fine people handle such matters in this house? I knew what it was like to be raised, coddled and spoiled. I knew what it was like to hit the adult job market after not being allowed to grow up. I knew what it was like to get out, find only crappy jobs and have parents accuse you of being lazy, stupid and immature as you tried to make your way. No way was I going to let my daughter experience that. No. Fucking. Way.
And of course, Grandma was stumped. Shooting an angry glare at her idiot husband, she turned to her Granddaughter - and God bless her... she was still sane then ... she explained that you have to behave in class, and you have to listen to your parents AND your teachers or you WILL get spanked or worse! It was the last time in my life that woman ever sided with me...but my father in law was livid. "Maybe you should find another place to live!" he shouted at me - I thought he was going to take a swing and I almost hoped that he would. I looked that stupid bastard in the eye and told him "Fine. No problem. I will quit school, go back to work stacking boxes and driving a forklift...but my family will come with me. AND - You won't see your granddaughter again because you are a stupid bastard and a bad influence on her...". HAR HAR HAR! I thought he was going to put up his dukes but Grandma intervened. "Doug!!! Stop it! Right now!" The old twit deflated like a balloon. To this day I still don't understand how that idiot was thinking...nor do I care, I suppose. It's waters that have passed under the bridge of time and the damage was done, I guess.
The next day note #...12? I'm losing count! Note number 12 came home and again, this one was for me. The teacher wanted another meeting. The next day, 4:00 PM sharp. DON'T BE LATE.
Again, she tore right in to me the second I showed up. She challenged me to give her one good reason not to call family and social services and report me as a child abuser. So I explained: my father in law was an asshole that lived with us and undermined her hokey meaningless punishments, and those punishments wouldn't work anyways. Further, if she reported me for child abuse she had better get a lawyer because I would sue her skinny old ass for every last cent I could get! 'What in hell is wrong with you, you idiot?" I asked, "Do you honestly think a foster home is better for my kid???"
Honest to God, I quote that old bint almost verbatim: "What am I supposed to do now?" She asked plaintitively, "When your child acts up in class she breaks down in tears and begs me not to get mad and tell her father!!! How am I supposed to make her behave???" I calmed myself, and told the harridan that if my kid acted up in class, you tell her to smarten up or you WILL call her father and she WILL have her ass tanned so she had better damned well behave! Ugh! How hard is that? This lady was a senior teacher - with a bloody masters degree in Education!!! GAH!!!
So you see, Gavin? This is the kind of shit you're up against if you ever have kids of your own and try and raise them to be responsible adults. 22 years later I learned that this experience had traumatized my daughter and that my mindless love of evil-white-male-violence was responsible for all her failures. Why, she can't even set foot in her home town now because she is so traumatized - it will curdle her milk or something. One day, Gavin, your kids will tell you that you're a big mean nasty shit head too. But yannow...I never had to spank my daughter again after that. And I never got another note home from her teachers either.
The long and short of it Gavin is that if you try to do right by your child - you will have the schools, the gov't and the social justice warriors dead set against you. Would you have the guts to stand up to them as I did? For the next 12 years I battled my in laws, the coddlers, and the baby sitters for my daughter's soul and I lost every single time. Instead of being a politically correct social engineer, I tried to set boundaries and rules that would help make my daughter a responsible adult. I don't blame my in laws or the schools or even my daughter for all this for I clearly am at fault too.
None of this is to excuse my own responsibility. I had made terrible mistakes as a boy and a young man growing up. By going back to school I resolved to correct them...and somehow lost my daughter in the endless assignments, the cramming for exams and the projects and lab write ups. I even congratulated myself, thinking that I was laying the foundations for a career that would allow me to take better care of my family and prided myself on my ambition and willingness to work. Before school there were the 70 hour work weeks. When I went back to school - more long hours...and my little girl grew up without a father that only noticed her when she got in trouble...and then all he did was bark at her.
Our girls are lost too, folks, betrayed by the same forces that betray our boys. When you hurt or neglect the problems of one gender - both will pay the price. Hug your kids and keep them close. Some truly filthy and insidious people have designs on them.
Were my daughter here today and I could look her in the eye - and I would not lecture or rant. I would just maybe give her a copy of Stormin' Norman's book and ask her what good a soul is .. without heart and strength? I rebelled as a youth too and pay for it to this day. I can't answer that question either, kid.
