Tuesday, May 31, 2011

The Day the Music,(As Well as the Building that Housed it, and the Files and Personal Posessions of the Employees In that Building) Died

Today, all the public school kids in my city, as well as their families, teachers, principals, and other school officials/staff are freaking out a bit. Last night, a fire started in the head office of the city-wide public school system, and the building and all its contents were destroyed. Nobody got hurt, and the student files were all backed up in another location, but there are certain things that really can't be "backed up."

Things like musical instruments. The public school office stores rental instruments for kids in the orchestra or band at their school. And although there are other places to rent instruments from, it's still awful that they burned. And guess where the sheet music library was? All the sheet music for all the elementary, middle and high schools... Gone. The music program is currently dead, and I have little faith that it'll be fully revived in the three months between now and the start of school.

Music isn't the only thing destroyed of course. My friend Susan is an artist. There was a city-wide student art show in the building. Her piece was destroyed, and she's pretty beat up about it. I'm sure she isn't the only one. Kids of all ages from all over the city had their art destroyed. I know when one of my drawings got hurt in a freak Sharpie incident, I actually cried.

Being a dedicated student, artist and musician myself, I actually woke up this morning with the sense that something was off. It was an "I sense a disturbance in the force..." kind of deal, but I didn't think it was anything, because let's face it: I'm just weird sometimes. But thinking about it now, it was as if hundreds of little nerds, artists and musicians were suddenly punched in their collective face.

So yeah, after being cosmically punched in the face, as well as having the mailing of my final report card delayed, I'm pretty mad.

Thursday, April 7, 2011

I have a serious problem needs solving. (P.S. THIS POST RATED PG-13 FOR MILD LANGUAGE)

Before I start, you need to read this post by the Cheeseface: READ OR BE CONFUSED. Okay, now that you've hopefully done that, I'm going to add to it. Mr. Krueger sends kids to detention for truly unjust reasons. He never uses a nice tone. Everything he says has a snarky, sarcastic, "I am above you gutter-brats" sort of air about it. If a kid says something remotely disagreeing with his opinions, he'll say something like,"Okay, nobody talk to so-and-so." Everyone chuckles slightly, assuming he's joking, but when you try to speak to that kid, he will outright yell at you and say, "HEY. I SAID NO TALKING TO HIM!" And he's deadly serious, too. One day he made me hold his hand for a prolonged period of time. No joke. "Thermal Energy Demonstration" my ass. The worst thing is, Mrs. Vase doesn't do a thing about it. Now, if you have a particularly good memory, you'll recall I did not have the highest respect for Mrs. Vase when the year began, but I wish to inform you I've gone and done a complete 18o in regards to that. Now though, I am disappointed. I want your advice. What do we do about Mr. Krueger? Now, Cheeseface there has a pretty good plan. But we need a plan "B" to ensure he quits picking on students like this. There are fairly few people in this world that I truly hate. I like to think I'm fairly tolerant of people. They annoy me, but I don't hate many of them. Mr. Krueger though, is one of the unlucky few to make the list. Help me put an end to the hate, it's not doing anything good for my moral compass.