Recent Posts
This talk absolutely blew my mind. Seriously, it really validated a lot of things that I felt to be true throughout my entire high school career. Check out the whole site, it's absolutely amazing.
And in other news, my friend Kyle just had his first published piece of fiction printed in the MidnightTimes.com e-zine. It's a little ways down the page: look for "Into the Pharaoh" by Kyle Lang.
This talk absolutely blew my mind. Seriously, it really validated a lot of things that I felt to be true throughout my entire high school career. Check out the whole site, it's absolutely amazing.
And in other news, my friend Kyle just had his first published piece of fiction printed in the MidnightTimes.com e-zine. It's a little ways down the page: look for "Into the Pharaoh" by Kyle Lang.
Schools killing creativity?!?!? Say it ain't so! I've been noticing that for a bit. I have an extremely smart 5 year old who is performing at a 2-3 grade level in all aspects while in kindergarten... when I go to the school with concerns about her getting bored and losing interest they express a concern with her being moved away from same aged kids. So I am slowly watching my daughter's skill set being dumbed down to the average level of the rest of the group.
There are exceptions but SCHOOLS ARE TRYING TO GET EVERYONE TO BE AN AVERAGE MEMBER OF THE CLASS THEY ARE IN.I am moving her into a charter school next year in the hopes that she can be challenged and sparked to higher creativity. If that doesn't work out I will have to look into home schooling.
I won't allow her to have the horribly jaded experience I had with school. In 3rd grade every bit of testing put me in the 98th percentile in all area and showed me as having the skills of an 8th grader.....but I was so bored that I was acting out. "He's got to many behavioral concerns to be moved into a higher grade Mrs. Fakey".
F~&# you school, you drained me of what I could've been and made me hate the school process. 8 hours a day of drudgery followed by 2-3 hours of homework drudgery that never once challenged. The worst 50+ hour a week job I ever had.
Where's the rant thread!
Patrick Curtin
(Pathfinder Adventure Path Charter Subscriber; Roleplaying Game, Campaign Setting, Companion, Battles Case Subscriber)
This talk absolutely blew my mind. Seriously, it really validated a lot of things that I felt to be true throughout my entire high school career. Check out the whole site, it's absolutely amazing.
And in other news, my friend Kyle just had his first published piece of fiction printed in the MidnightTimes.com e-zine. It's a little ways down the page: look for "Into the Pharaoh" by Kyle Lang.
Schools killing creativity?!?!? Say it ain't so! I've been noticing that for a bit. I have an extremely smart 5 year old who is performing at a 2-3 grade level in all aspects while in kindergarten... when I go to the school with concerns about her getting bored and losing interest they express a concern with her being moved away from same aged kids. So I am slowly watching my daughter's skill set being dumbed down to the average level of the rest of the group.
There are exceptions but SCHOOLS ARE TRYING TO GET EVERYONE TO BE AN AVERAGE MEMBER OF THE CLASS THEY ARE IN.
I am moving her into a charter school next year in the hopes that she can be challenged and sparked to higher creativity. If that doesn't work out I will have to look into home schooling.
I won't allow her to have the horribly jaded experience I had with school. In 3rd grade every bit of testing put me in the 98th percentile in all area and showed me as having the skills of an 8th grader.....but I was so bored that I was acting out. "He's got to many behavioral concerns to be moved into a higher grade Mrs. Fakey".
f%*! you school, you drained me of what I could've been and made me hate the school process. 8 hours a day of drudgery followed by 2-3 hours of homework drudgery that never once challenged. The worst 50+ hour a week job I ever had.
Where's the rant thread!
QF MFin' T Fakey. Well said.
I see there are experiences out there similar to mine.
I taught myself to read at the age of three by way of comic books. I was doing long division by the time I was four (my dad, ever the engineer, thought it would be a good idea). In the eyes of my parents, I was some kind of wunderkind. Then, my parents took me in to be screened for kindergarten.
Even though I scored 140+ on the IQ test they gave me, and even though I read at a sixth-grade reading level, they told my parents that I was "unfit for integration" because I didn't want to play with the other kids. My parents, being the way they are, spent the next year trying to find me *friends*. No dice in that area. I ended up getting put into school with a bunch of kids my age who I found unintelligent and uninteresting.
I HATED grade school. All day, I just wanted to go home and read. A few times, I got in trouble for doing things like drawing guns all over my homework (I was in middle school when Columbine went down. Not good for me. I was high up on the "watch list"). By high school, I had shut down. Getting good grades, but scaring the s&~* out of my teachers. Getting in trouble for writing papers about burning down the school. Only a couple of friends. Didn't even bother applying to college. Totally f@+*ed.
Right now, I'm four years behind the accepted learning curve and my family views me as a disappointment. So much for genius boy.
Mr. Shiny; does the 'Mr Shiny' part of your name come from the story 'Fat Face' by someone whose name currently escapes me or is it just coincidence?Actually, I have read that story, but interestingly enough, it's a coincidence. I came up with the name a few years before. Basically, myself and my frien Alex (Dirk Gently on the boards) were trying to come up with a rather bizarre take on the traditional superhero archetype. I finally came up with a white-and-green striped wierdo called Mr. Shiny. Alex added the 'Eldritch' part because we were (and still are) into the works of H.P. Lovecraft, and the guy seemed to overuse that word.
The proposed comic book never really got off the ground, bu the name stuck, and I have been using it as my net alias ever since.
By the way, did you read 'Fat Face' in the 'Cthulhu 2000' short story collection? If so, did you like 'The Barrens'? Personally, it's one of my all-time favorite short stories.
Mr. Shine--not Shiny, though--is also a troll king or god or something in Terry Pratchett's book Thud! He's a cool cat. But he's a troll. Made of diamonds. Or something. Note that this book was written before the whole stupidness of the shiny diamond sparkly vampires in the Twilight Series, and has nothing to do with that.
Schools killing creativity?!?!? Say it ain't so! I've been noticing that for a bit. I have an extremely smart 5 year old who is performing at a 2-3 grade level in all aspects while in kindergarten... when I go to the school with concerns about her getting bored and losing interest they express a concern with her being moved away from same aged kids. So I am slowly watching my daughter's skill set being dumbed down to the average level of the rest of the group.
There are exceptions but SCHOOLS ARE TRYING TO GET EVERYONE TO BE AN AVERAGE MEMBER OF THE CLASS THEY ARE IN.
I am moving her into a charter school next year in the hopes that she can be challenged and sparked to higher creativity. If that doesn't work out I will have to look into home schooling.
I won't allow her to have the horribly jaded experience I had with school. In 3rd grade every bit of testing put me in the 98th percentile in all area and showed me as having the skills of an 8th grader.....but I was so bored that I was acting out. "He's got to many behavioral concerns to be moved into a higher grade Mrs. Fakey".
f*~* you school, you drained me of what I could've been and made me hate the school process. 8 hours a day of drudgery followed by 2-3 hours of homework drudgery that never once challenged. The worst 50+ hour a week job I ever had.
Where's the rant thread!
Amen brother. You said it, nailed it with the word "drudgery." I use this word a lot when referring to work and school. Personally, I think the institution of public school in America is nothing more than a factory of drudgery stamping out little cog children with the life and genius sucked out of them, indoctrinating them all to perform their little pathetic, lifeless parts in the giant factory of drudgery at the end of that horrible conveyor belt of state-run education.
Yeah, Foch that.
This little encounter blew my mind:
I was hanging out with a few friends last week: myself and Alex (user Dirk Gently on Paizo) talking about something (Pathfinder, most likely), and Courtney looking for story ideas on the computer.
Suddenly, Courtney yells something to the effect of "Oh my god! That's terrible!"
I ask, "What?"
"This article! It says that some old geezer from World War Two has been granted permission by the government to kill one last Nazi!"
I reply; something to the effect of "That can't possibly be true."
"It has to be, it's on the internet!" (warning sign #1) "It says here that since the U.S. government has no Nazis on hand, that they will select a prisoner of German descent!"
I can see where this is going. I get up and walk over to her laptop, in time to view this article on her screen.
I mean, seriously, I knew she was a ditz, but this? This is the sort of thing this thread was made for, man.
This talk absolutely blew my mind. Seriously, it really validated a lot of things that I felt to be true throughout my entire high school career. Check out the whole site, it's absolutely amazing.
And in other news, my friend Kyle just had his first published piece of fiction printed in the MidnightTimes.com e-zine. It's a little ways down the page: look for "Into the Pharaoh" by Kyle Lang.
Schools killing creativity?!?!? Say it ain't so! I've been noticing that for a bit. I have an extremely smart 5 year old who is performing at a 2-3 grade level in all aspects while in kindergarten... when I go to the school with concerns about her getting bored and losing interest they express a concern with her being moved away from same aged kids. So I am slowly watching my daughter's skill set being dumbed down to the average level of the rest of the group.
There are exceptions but SCHOOLS ARE TRYING TO GET EVERYONE TO BE AN AVERAGE MEMBER OF THE CLASS THEY ARE IN.
I am moving her into a charter school next year in the hopes that she can be challenged and sparked to higher creativity. If that doesn't work out I will have to look into home schooling.
I won't allow her to have the horribly jaded experience I had with school. In 3rd grade every bit of testing put me in the 98th percentile in all area and showed me as having the skills of an 8th grader.....but I was so bored that I was acting out. "He's got to many behavioral concerns to be moved into a higher grade Mrs. Fakey".
f##@ you school, you drained me of what I could've been and made me hate the school process. 8 hours a day of drudgery followed by 2-3 hours of homework drudgery that never once challenged. The worst 50+ hour a week job I ever had.
Where's the rant thread!
This creates an interesting situation though- would you have been happier placed in a higher grade with older kids? I've been there before and it was NOT fun, but as always, opinions differ. Maybe private schools or home schooling are the answer to the situation with your daughter- are either an option for your family at this time?
This creates an interesting situation though- would you have been happier placed in a higher grade with older kids? I've been there before and it was NOT fun, but as always, opinions differ. Maybe private schools or home schooling are the answer to the situation with your daughter- are either an option for your family at this time?
I don't know about FH, but I had the chance to skip two grades, which was turned down by my parents. Still, I have rarely had friends my own age. Most of the people I hung out with in school (which, by and large, are the same people I hang out with now) were either younger or older than me.
PETA has now decided that fish shall now be called "Sea Kittens".
6 year old: Mom what's dinner
Mom: Sea Kittens
6 year old: Whaaaa.....
Patrick Curtin
(Pathfinder Adventure Path Charter Subscriber; Roleplaying Game, Campaign Setting, Companion, Battles Case Subscriber)
I see there are experiences out there similar to mine.
I taught myself to read at the age of three by way of comic books. I was doing long division by the time I was four (my dad, ever the engineer, thought it would be a good idea). In the eyes of my parents, I was some kind of wunderkind. Then, my parents took me in to be screened for kindergarten.
Even though I scored 140+ on the IQ test they gave me, and even though I read at a sixth-grade reading level, they told my parents that I was "unfit for integration" because I didn't want to play with the other kids. My parents, being the way they are, spent the next year trying to find me *friends*. No dice in that area. I ended up getting put into school with a bunch of kids my age who I found unintelligent and uninteresting.
I HATED grade school. All day, I just wanted to go home and read. A few times, I got in trouble for doing things like drawing guns all over my homework (I was in middle school when Columbine went down. Not good for me. I was high up on the "watch list"). By high school, I had shut down. Getting good grades, but scaring the s!~! out of my teachers. Getting in trouble for writing papers about burning down the school. Only a couple of friends. Didn't even bother applying to college. Totally f!%!ed.
Right now, I'm four years behind the accepted learning curve and my family views me as a disappointment. So much for genius boy.
My experiences were similar Shiny. I scored off the charts going into grade school. I was reading at a 6th grade level in Kindergarten and had won prizes at several art contests for little kids. I had a vibrant imagination and a very chatty happy personality. My parents were both teachers and had gleefully poured information into my little brain almost from birth. Grade school changed all of that.
My first lesson was the blade of grass that sticks its head up above the others gets chopped off. I actually got yelled at by a teacher for arguing a point she was making in 2nd grade. My peers hated me because I did better, and I grew up in a town where academic competition was deadly serious (many 'helicopter parents' pushed their kids ruthlessly, and the strain to be the best was killer for those tots).
Eventually I learned to shut up, keep my head low and not make waves. I ended up from the top of my class in early years to the exact middle of my class graduating. I stopped interacting with people for fear I would say something above their heads and get ridiculed for it. Me and my ratty paperback novel were fixtures at school.
It took years for me to understand that being smart isn't a curse. I swung so far the other way when I escaped my town and went to college that I partied myself into flunking out in an effort to be 'cool'. I look around now, and realize I still have issues with the way school treated me, but aside from paying for some gifted school (which my parents could never have afforded) I don't know what else there is to do. Public school will always play to the lowest common denominator, and I went to one of the top school systems in Massachusetts, itself known for great school systems.
The school thing is something that my little sister is going through. Seven years old and very intelligent, has a tendency to "act up" when she gets bored in school (sound familiar to anybody)? My mom is running herself ragged trying to keep up with her and find things that keep her mind active and busy, plus my sister has managed to get into the Talented and Gifted program two years running, so I'm hoping that can keep up. I bought my mom and my sister a year membership to the Zoo, which paid off in spades, I'm happy to say.
I couldn't think of anywhere else to post my utterly s+#&ty writing, so I figured that the Random S%&*e Thread was as good a place as any. This is the first time I've seriously tried to write anything longer than a few pages, and I'm having trouble deciding where to go with it. I know it's an amateurish piece of junk, but I really need some advice on fleshing it out. Without further ado, I give you 'Thunderhead':
I couldn't think of anywhere else to post my utterly s!!#ty writing, so I figured that the Random s!!#e Thread was as good a place as any. This is the first time I've seriously tried to write anything longer than a few pages, and I'm having trouble deciding where to go with it. I know it's an amateurish piece of junk, but I really need some advice on fleshing it out. Without further ado, I give you 'Thunderhead':
Anyone?
Patrick Curtin
(Pathfinder Adventure Path Charter Subscriber; Roleplaying Game, Campaign Setting, Companion, Battles Case Subscriber)
Shiny:
My night auditor didn't show up last night so after working a 9 hour day I have to turn around and work another 8 hour shift.
I also have to scramble to get someone to cover Friday night or I will have to cancel my Friday night game.
My night clerk is taking vacation next week so I will be working every day until Feb. 1st and four of those days will be a 16 hour day.
I hope he ended up in jail because that is the only thing that could save his job.
Yesterday, I went to the Albany Gun Show with my father. While he haggled over a Winchester M100, I was left to browse the strange and eldritch things displayed at this gun-gasmic event.
I was able to find some firearms that I had only seen in textbooks, including a Colt Dragoon, several M-1 Garands (in way better condition than mine, if I may add), an M1941 Johnson rifle, and a rack (yes, a RACK) of Lugers and Mauser Red 9 pistols. Curse my current financial situation!
A few more questionable items I came across were a rubber-band MACHINE GUN, a rack of Nazi helmets and armbands, and a f!#$ing GRENADE LAUNCHER. I almost picked a fight with some fiv-foot-tall loser with a toothbrush moustache and a swastika t-shirt, not because he was ogling a bronze bust of Adolf Hitler, but because he had the audacity to bring his YOUNG SON with him.
But I digress. Aside from the occasional weirdo, this place was like Nirvana for a guy like me. I have never seen so much cool s*&~ in one room before. EVER. After an hour or so, my dad finished arguing with the elderly owner of the M100, we packed up his new gun and headed home. Seeing that much swag must have taken a toll on me, because I went to bed at 4:30 PM and slept until noon today. F+*#...
Something interesting for not employed people. And if miraculously you are still employed and have money you want to spend helping other people, then you can do that too.
Well this morning in my home town a bar exploded and that is pretty big news for a town of less than 30,000. Here is some news on it.
Snorter
(Pathfinder Adventure Path Charter Subscriber; Roleplaying Game, Campaign Setting, Companion, Modules Subscriber; GameMastery Superscriber)
Today, I spent ten minutes trying to convince a guy that "pecan" was not a type of bird. I need to get out of this town. Fast.A wondrous bird is the pelican,
It's beak can hold more than its belly can.Or was he thinking of a different bird?
Because toucan play at that game.
Walking through the Bronx zoo you find that Merritt poem and a bunch of Ogden Nash animal poems on signs here and there. Creates a more lyrical stroll, sez me.
Walking through the Bronx zoo you find that Merritt poem and a bunch of Ogden Nash animal poems on signs here and there. Creates a more lyrical stroll, sez me.Today, I spent ten minutes trying to convince a guy that "pecan" was not a type of bird. I need to get out of this town. Fast.A wondrous bird is the pelican,
It's beak can hold more than its belly can.Or was he thinking of a different bird?
Because toucan play at that game.
The Lord, in His wisdom, created the fly
And then He forgot to tell us why
Here's something interesting I found on a link on Julie Bell's Wikipedia page. It's a Flash slideshow showing all of the plagiarized images used by the God's Family cult that were copied from works by Bell, Boris Vallejo, Larry Elmore, and others.
OK, time to revive this thread. There's just been too much weird s%%@ going on at work for me to let it slide.
For those of you who do not know, I work the closing shift at a Sunoco station on the outskirts of Ticonderoga, New York. About the only remarkable things about Ticonderoga (other than the fact that pencils used to be made here... about fifty years ago) are that it is both at the intersection of NYS Route 22 and NYS Route 9N , and at the intersection of Lake George and Lake Champlain. However, as a result of these two things, we get a lot of vey lost and/or very strange passers-through:
1. Last night, a very twitchy, odd woman walked into the store part of the station. The exchange:
Me: "How can I help you?"
Woman: "Do you sell pound bags of Raisinets?"
Me: "No..."
Woman: "Well, I heard there was some place around here that did. Walbaum's, or something..."
Me: "Are you thinking of Wal-Mart?"
Woman: "Yeah, that's the one. Where is it?"
Me: *Points to Wal-Mart, right next door*
Woman: "Oh, yes, thank you. You're a very nice young man."
I swear, she must have been an extraterrestrial or something.
2. Today, at around 9:00 PM, a woman paid for twenty dollars of gas. In quarters. As she drove off, I noticed that several of the quarters were actually Chuck-E-Cheese tokens.
3. One of our regulars was (or says he was) a roadie for the Ramones, back in the eighties.
4. A very lost man with a very thick Italian accent came in a few days ago. The exchange:
Man: "How I can get to Boston?"
Me: "Boston? Like, Massachusetts, Boston? "
Man: "Yes, that one."
Me: "Well, it's about a five hour drive southeast of here..."
Man: "OK, I drive there."
Me: "Right... So, I can't get you to Boston... The best I can do is Rutland, Vermont."
Man: "Very nice. I can go there?"
Me: *gives directions*
Before he left, I asked him where he was coming from. His answer: "Elizabethtown." I am so very confused...
2. Today, at around 9:00 PM, a woman paid for twenty dollars of gas. In quarters. As she drove off, I noticed that several of the quarters were actually Chuck-E-Cheese tokens.
This reminds me of a story from when I used to work at a bank. We had a rash of incidents where we were getting rolls of dimes with one dime on each end and nothing but pennies in between. We were getting so many like that, we knew it had to be one person doing it repeatedly to rip us off, a few rolls at a time. We figure, over the course of about a month, whoever was doing had ripped off the bank for a total of about $100 - $150.
Then one day this guy comes in with some rolled change, and I was already feeling vigilant because these rolls of dimes were pissing me off, and sure enough, they looked a little too thick. (For those outside the US, a penny ($.01) is ever-so-slightly larger than a dime ($.10), so you could spot a bad roll, but only if you were looking for it).
Without saying a word, I just ripped one open and spilled the contents out onto the counter - all pennies.
The look on the guy's face was priceless. He was stammering and trying to scoop up his pennies, dropping them on the floor in his haste, and the whole time I never said a word to him. I just stared at him blankly. We never saw him again.
Patrick Curtin
(Pathfinder Adventure Path Charter Subscriber; Roleplaying Game, Campaign Setting, Companion, Battles Case Subscriber)
The look on the guy's face was priceless. He was stammering and trying to scoop up his pennies, dropping them on the floor in his haste, and the whole time I never said a word to him. I just stared at him blankly. We never saw him again.
I have a funny story like this too. Back in my yout I was a pizza delivery guy. I went to this house and I was paid in rolls of change (odd, but not overly so) by the young teenagers there. When I returned to my shop, my boss took the rolls, and then a minute later he called me over. It seems the kids I had delivered to had stuffed the rolls full of dirt and put the proper coins on the ends to sheild the fact!
The house was not three minutes away from the pizza shop. I went there, pounded on the door, heard giggles from inside, left and called the police.
Upshot was the kids got screamed at by the cop who showed up, their parents were called and had to come home from work and settle their tab, they got yelled at by the aggrivated parents and I got a nice tip out of the deal for my trouble.
So I had the weirdest dream last night...
I dreamed that Barack Obama had nominated me to the US Supreme Court. I remember thinking in the dream that if Sonia Sotomayor had such a rocky confirmation, there was no way a 28 year old gay guy with no legal experience was going to make it, but somehow it was like nobody noticed. Nobody even noticed that there was an appointment, or ever questioned it, and I was going to be sworn in. The only actual political figure who appeared in person in my dream was John Roberts, and he kept telling me I was going to do just fine. It was time for me to go to my swearing in, though, and I couldn't find suitable shoes to wear. Every time I looked down at my feet I was in a different pair of sneakers, and I kept thinking, "These won't do. If I don't find my dress shoes soon, I am going to be late for my own swearing-in ceremony."
Is that not the weirdest thing ever?
So I had the weirdest dream last night...
I dreamed that Barack Obama had nominated me to the US Supreme Court. I remember thinking in the dream that if Sonia Sotomayor had such a rocky confirmation, there was no way a 28 year old gay guy with no legal experience was going to make it, but somehow it was like nobody noticed. Nobody even noticed that there was an appointment, or ever questioned it, and I was going to be sworn in. The only actual political figure who appeared in person in my dream was John Roberts, and he kept telling me I was going to do just fine. It was time for me to go to my swearing in, though, and I couldn't find suitable shoes to wear. Every time I looked down at my feet I was in a different pair of sneakers, and I kept thinking, "These won't do. If I don't find my dress shoes soon, I am going to be late for my own swearing-in ceremony."
Is that not the weirdest thing ever?
Better go get some new shoes.
