And Then There's That Pesky Constitution

 Ohio Teacher Fired

An Ohio high school math teacher is suing to get his job back after being fired by the Catholic high school he worked for. Archdiocese officials said that Sy Goldberg, who is Jewish, was observed eating a corned beef sandwich for lunch on a Friday during Lent. According to Roman Catholic Church teachings, the eating of meat on Fridays is not allowed during the season of lent. A spokesman for Our Bleeding Heart of the Baby Jesus High School, confirmed that Goldberg was let go after an anonymous email with attached photo of Goldberg eating the sandwich, was sent to the Archbishop.
"We cannot have employees who do not follow the teachings of the Catholic Church influencing our students."
Mr. Goldberg confirmed that he did indeed eat a delicious corned beef on rye, with mustard, on the Friday in question, in full view of some students.

Sounds stupid, doesn't it? It is stupid, and wholly made up by me. However, it isn't any more stupid than the real news story as reported here by the Journal Star.Com.

A gay teacher who said she was fired by an Ohio Catholic school after her mother's published obituary included the name of her partner, is fighting to get her job back.
Carla Hale, 57, said she was told she was being let go because her relationship is against teachings of the church.  Hale said she was fired during Holy Week in March after an anonymous letter sent to school administrators drew attention to the obituary published in The Columbus Dispatch.
A copy of the letter provided by her attorney was signed "a concerned parent."
"My daughter came home and told me that one of the gym teacher's mother had died," the letter said. "She asked me to pray for her. When we looked in the obituaries, I was shocked by what I saw. It had her teacher's name and that of her `spouse' listed. It was two females!"
Hale, who is Methodist, was informed about two weeks after her mother's death that the school was investigating. Hale had been teaching at the school for 19 years...  Read more here

Love Child

If I didn't know better I'd say Mark had a love child living next door. He's a little black kid about eight years old, and he always has the same sour scowl on his face that I am so familiar with in Mark. Yesterday there were a bunch of kids playing out in the street in front of our house. It was dog walking time and when I left to walk Sasha, all the little girls came running over to say hello to her. Not so mini-Mark, he just stood there and scowled. I took Sasha around the corner and down the block where she did her piddles and poops. Like a good neighbor, I picked up the poop in a lovely little pastel blue bag, and started back home. When I got near our house mini-Mark was there.
"What do you have in the bag?"
"Dog poop."
"That's nasty."
"Well I can't leave Sasha's poop on the neighbor's lawn. They wouldn't like it."
Mini-Mark cocked his head.
"How do you pick that up? With your bare hands?"
"No, oh no, I put the bag over my hand and grab the turds. I then pull it off and turn it inside out, tie it up, and then throw it away when I get home."
He scrunched up his nose, and in a most dismissive tone told me, "That's nasty, you're nasty."
He then turned and walked away. Like I said, if I didn't know better.

Breakfast With Mark

Hmmm, I Wonder If I'll Ever Need That Again?

I was digging around looking for something in my desk and I came across an old dial up modem. Remember those? You would boot your computer to Windows 95, click on the AOL icon, and then sit back and listen to the music.
"Beeeeeeeeeeeep, blaaaatzzzzzzzzzz, Squeeeeeeel, Beeep Bleeeeeeeeeeeeep"
Once you got signed in to AOL you could do almost anything. Join a chat room, go to a BBS, or look at the boring pages supplied by AOL. That didn't last long though because the internet was growing and soon you could go to the internet through the AOL portal which you soon discovered you really didn't need anyway.

I'm always amazed at the crap I end up throwing into the garbage. Today I tossed my Directv DVR\receiver. It wasn't the HD model, I had to return those. This was the standard definition DVR that I paid a couple of hundred dollars for. Garbage now, as is the modem I found. I'll throw that away along with the DSL modem from at&t that I have sitting on my desk. I have memory strips that I paid for, cell phones, and a ten year old PT Cruiser. All obsolete. I guess that is one way of gauging just how damn old you are. It's when the Smithsonian comes knocking, and asking if you'd donate that killer eight track tape player for their exhibit on life in the mid-twentieth century that you know you've really crossed the line.
"Glad we caught you when we did sir. I'd hate to hear that your surviving relatives tossed such a fine example of early American, electronic ingenuity. Very few of those left you know."

Spoiler

"So this guy, who isn't rich, falls for a rich woman who dumps him because he's not rich... blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah... and then Gatsby gets shot... blah, blah, blah, blah... "
"Enough already Mark, I get it. You don't have to play out the entire movie for me."
"Well I can't believe you never read the book or saw the movie."
"I know, I'm a moron and you're a college graduate. So big deal, I never saw The Great Gatsby, nor did I ever read the book. It wasn't required reading in school, and I didn't like the font on the movie poster, so I didn't go see it"

Mark just did two things that piss me off to the point where I have threatened bodily harm is he doesn't shut up. First he revealed the plot of a movie, including the ending. Secondly, he kind of called me an idiot for not knowing something he knows. In many respects Mark is much more well read than I am, and he is a college graduate, which I am not. But what I do know, I think, makes up for most of that. I don't get lost every time I visit a new city and wander around nearly in tears for hours. I know how to stop Mark's computer from crashing after he downloads suspect 'movies'. I know how to manage my finances so that I don't run out of money halfway through the month. And most of all, I can squish a giant cockroach instead of running around the house screaming, "Kill it. kill it", and then vomiting when I do kill it.

No, I have never read nor seen The Great Gatsby. I will probably see the newest version of the movie though. Not because Mark's narrative of the story piqued my interest, or because I like movies about rich people. I'll see it because Leo DiCaprio is in it. I can't think of one movie he's been in that I haven't liked. Wait, I take that back. I didn't like Romeo and Juliet, I thought it sucked.
Oh, I can hear Mark when he reads this.
"You don't like Romeo and Juliet? What kind of uneducated man do I live with?"

Pearly Gates

My sister Peggy sent me an email this week. It's all about her husband's mother, Pearl. She's written other stories about Pearl, of which my favorite is the one about her poop, but this one is amusing too. What I like the most is that Pearl likes her vodka, just like somebody else I know.

So I usually order the bulk of Pearls groceries through Peapod, a delivery service offered by Jewel (not the singer).  She writes up her list and gives it to me and I go on the computer and let my fingers do the walking....and avoid lugging several bags of heavy groceries to her place.  Heavy because she does love her canned vegetables and broth.  For that the delivery charge is $6.95 to 9.95 depending on how large an order it is.  You wouldn't think a 4ft 8in 95lb woman would eat much..."I have no appetite!" but she goes through more groceries than Rick and I do!  I often accuse her of hosting parties or hiding a boyfriend under her bed! So this week she added a bottle of Vodka to the list because she was out. She had told Rick that she didn't have any for a few weeks "and I don't even miss it!" but there it was on her grocery list!  (She doesn't think Rick and I talk and share information!) Here's the kicker.....the delivery guy said he had to see her picture ID!!!  92 years old  and she gets carded!!!  So she went to her purse, got out her wallet....and could NOT find her state ID!  So he took the vodka back with him!!!!  She stressed herself out about it for days before she would tell me about it. She crawled around looking behind things "where it might have fallen" and was very lucky she was able to get back up!  She almost gave herself a coronary she was so upset, "How will I get another ID?  Would he have taken my birth certificate for an ID?" (THAT she could find!!)  "Pearl, you haven't gone anywhere, you haven't needed it for ages. It is there in your house, stop worrying!"  So I get her a bottle of vodka (I gave up that battle and told her if she drinks too much and falls down she will be going to the nursing home!), and  I stop by her place.  "Get me your wallet." She hands it over, and I pull out the stack of credit cards, medicare card, pharmacy card......and her picture ID!!!  She is flabbergasted!  "I looked there...more than once....where was that...it couldn't have been in there..."

I guarantee that she believes I had it all along and slipped it into her wallet while I was checking......because I am evil!!

Peggy  

For more Pearl Stories, click here.

Shut Up, Just Shut the Hell Up!

Here was this man, about the same age as me, and he was bloviating about his days at the Brooklyn Technical School, when he was fifteen. Boring, stupid shit about his teachers, his schoolmates, and how he was the rebel who told the principle to "Go fuck himself". No, I wasn't in a bar. I was in a barber's chair, a position that I had waited forty five minutes for. I was stuck having to listen while this guy went on and on about the Vietnam War, the shoulder length hair he used to have, and just how generally cool he was way back then. I would have left when he first walked into the barber shop but I figured he'd shut the hell up soon, and besides, the bald guy ahead of me couldn't possibly take too long. I was wrong about both things. He never shut up, and the barber took a half an hour to 'cut' the bald man's hair. I don't mean the bald guy had a little round patch in the middle of his head that was hairless. I mean he had no hair on his head at all, nothing. Yet the barber ran an electric razor over his head, and then some kind of doodad that seemed to polish the man's naked orb, followed by shaving cream and a straight razor. I never knew being bald was so labor intensive. When the barber was done with the bald guy, I was up next. It wasn't until I was in the barber chair, with the tissue tied around my neck, and a clipper plowing through my hair that I realized Mr. Brooklyn Tech wasn't going to shut up. For twenty minutes I sat there while Brooklyn Tech told us about his entire high school career. Finally, the barber removed the tissue from around my neck, pulled the hair covered cloth off, and flipped it to the side. I was done. As I walked out the door Mr. Brooklyn Tech was still talking as he took his turn in the chair. I looked back at the barber. He was wrapping that tissue around Mr. Brooklyn's neck, and I could swear he gave it an extra little pull, snugging that thing nice and tight.