Using Calculators to Amuse Self, Others

I’m the department head of Mathematics at my school. Below is the email exchange between my boss and myself:

From: G******* N******* [mailto:***********@*******k12.ca.us]
Sent: Tuesday, September 15, 2009 1:34 PM
To: M**** V**********
Subject: Calculators

M****,

Please work with me regarding a calculator order.

Thanks,

G******

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Okay. I have ten, four of which are scientific, all of which are from the dollar store.
Debbie has 8 graphing and 5 scientific, plus one overhead graphing.
Tim has none.

Perfect World:
Set of 35 graphing calculators for Debbie
Set of 35 graphing calculators for Tim
Set of 35 graphing calculators for Steve
Set of 35 scientific calculators for me
Anti-gravity boots
Lightsaber
Beachside condo with East-facing bay windows
Recipe for Calorie-free pasta
TOTAL: 105 graphing calculators, 35 scientific calculators

Pleasant World:
Set of 15 graphing calculators for Debbie (one for every two students)
Set of 15 graphing calculators for Tim
Set of 15 graphing calculators for Steve
95 scientific calculators (35 for me, 20 for Steve, 20 for Debbie, 20 for Tim, each class has 35 calculators of some sort)
German Shepherd/Golden Retriever Puppy
Set of Yamaha drumline equipment
TOTAL: 45 graphing calculators, 95 scientific calculators

Bare Minimum for Success:
15 scientific calculators for Debbie
15 scientific calculators for Tim
15 scientific calculators for Steve
15 scientific calculators for me
7 graphing calculators (to complete a set of 15 to swap between Debbie, Tim, and Steve)
A High Five
TOTAL: 60 scientific calculators and 7 graphing calculators

~M**** V******

*********@******.k12.ca.us

Economy Squeezes like a Zit, Spraying Veteran Teachers with Pus

It is not a good time to be a beginning teacher.

Historically, the first people to get laid off are the part-time, substitute, and intern teachers. The term “intern” essentially means “contracted while we feel like it”. At any point the intern teacher can be served with a March 15 letter with the phrase “services no longer needed” buried into a lot of legal fluff. The term March 15 letter refers to the deadline given by California Education Code; it’s the last possible date to let a teacher now that they must begin looking for a job. Every year, around April, dozens of recently polished resumes and Recommendations flood recruiting websites like edjoin.org in an effort for new teachers to find the next “intern” position. Eventually, the intern earns enough clout to earn “tenure” which guarantees them a spot for the next year.

At least… that’s how it usually is.

A school that doesn’t have a union is a rarity in Southern California. Here, the powerhouse Union negotiators have lawyers and press agents on speed dial, ready to pounce on administrators the moment they start to show shady behavior. Many charter schools are union-free, largely because of the odd curriculum and regular teacher turnover. It is not uncommon for some charter schools to see 30% turnover every year. The teachers at one such union-free school, unfortunately, have no advocate. So when several teachers are laid off in late July, they are, as the French say, le fucked.

Your timing blows, Dad

The reason the March 15 deadline exists is to allow veteran teachers a fighting chance to get the most desirable positions. Several veteran teachers (in a school without tenure) were recently canned largely, it is believed, due to the high cost of their salary. Why keep a $70,000 English teacher when you can get a fresh one for $45,000? With a never-ending supply of fresh, inexperienced teachers, this pattern can be continued indefinitely, constantly removing teachers from the posts when they begin to be excellent and raise student test scores.

The school is saved from the budget crunch, hurrah.

**Yes, it’s anonymous. Keep it that way.

Maybe I’m Different

Maybe I’m different.

Maybe I’m one of a very small group of people who are easily slighted. I’m 24, have a great job that pays well from which I am not fired. I have a beautiful wife and am respected by colleagues and friends. I’ve got it really good.

And yet… all it takes is one little exchange to get me postponing work for my Master’s classes, drinking heavily, and blogging. Do other Master’s level students have baggage? I’m not sure.

Maybe I’m different.

This may come as a shock, but I wasn’t the cool kid in middle school. Not even top 20. I was the skinny, geeky, churchboy who was good at math and cried when he got a B+. Naturally, the weakest of the pack are the first to have hyenas tear them apart, and I was no different. By the time I was 13, I had developed some sanctuary in church camp, it being a place where nobody from my school would go.

When I was in seventh grade, a boy from church came to camp also, let’s call him Tommy. The parents of Tommy were church buddies with my parents, and they ended up buying our old house when we moved. Tommy hit puberty before me… to be more precise, the knocked the shit out of puberty. He had a goatee and muscles at 13 while I… well, I didn’t even masturbate until 16.

There; I said it.

June in Eastern Washington is akin to October most everywhere else in the United States, so the annual “Swim to the big rock in the middle of the lake” was really cold. My fragile, 55-pound body couldn’t handle it, and climbed back onto the dock shortly after the swim began.

Tommy, upon his return, called me a “fuckin’ pussy”. I didn’t know what a pussy was, but I’d heard fuckin before, and his general tone left little to the imagination. I was shocked and hurt at his outburst, but more surprised. I didn’t do anything to him.

Later that night, he wanted some Skittles and I didn’t give him any. Now it was his turn to be surprised and hurt. (Middle schoolers have the short-term memory of a garden squirrel.) As boldly as I could, I said that he couldn’t have any of my Skittles because he called me a… pussy. His response, like the response of my parents and later, my wife was “ah, man! Lighten up!”

Tommy and I didn’t talk much after that; we went to different high schools and my family moved to Chicago a few years later. This was eleven years ago. Eleven years. This was three presidents ago, but I still carry baggage left by Tommy and Trey and Andrew and the other bullies that wounded me because somebody wounded them. There’s a good chance that Tommy is paying child support and working at Home Depot right now, but that does little to alleviate the hurt feelings of my inner pint-sized boy withholding Skittles.
Maybe I’m different.

So now, when an acquaintance and his friends talk about going out for drinks, but he doesn’t invite me along, it ruins my evening. Inside this successful, 24-year-old body is a skinny, scared, seventh grader who couldn’t handle the cold water, or couldn’t catch a football, or got picked last in P.E. This scar that I carry is fucking painful, and all of my successes since 1997 don’t make this suitcase any lighter.

Maybe I’m different.

On-the-Clock-Amusement

I find that I need to entertain myself (and occasionally others) while at work, and the most appropriate avenue for said distractions is email. These are some of the emails that I’ve sent to my coworkers.

From: Mxxxxx Vxxxxxx
Sent: Wednesday, May 27, 2009 1:17 PM
To: Grade Level Team
Subject: Daniel

Team,

Poor little Daniel was busy this entire weekend moving houses. Somewhere in the process, his madre emptied his backpack into a box and filled it with “makeup and shit”.  He is still looking for the missing box that holds the key to his future… but his mom sorted different subjects into different boxes, so his academic life is in shambles. He has asked for grace in this trying time of need, and in return he has committed to coming in early and giving up lunch where needed to make up the assignments that are lost.

CLICK HERE to send Daniel $5. You will also receive a picture of Daniel and letters from him describing his progress. Let God use you to make a difference in the life of a child.

~Mxxxxx Vxxxxxxx

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On Mon, Apr 20, 2009 at 6:08 PM, Mxxxx Vxxxxxxx

The categories are as follows, unless someone has a better idea:

Consistent with dumb Jeopardy idioms (idia?), they are:

Gee, I’m Geometry

History and Herstory

Comp/Lit ‘n Competition

Best that money can Biology

You can call me Al-gebra II

We’re number one (Algebra I)

I’m open to better ideas, and I need 10 sample questions by Wednesday at 4.

~Mxxxx Vxxxxxxx

From: Christine
Sent: Monday, April 20, 2009 8:23 PM
Subject: Re: STAR questions

i like it!! oh so much to do this week. There have got to be simpler less stressful ways to make a liivin-

ya think??
–
Christine
¤´¨)
¸.·´¸.·´¨) ¸.·¤¨)
(¸.·´ (¸.·´ .·´(´¸.·¤´¯`¤·
“Dance in the body you have”
Agnes De Mille

From: Mxxxx Vxxxxxxx
Sent: Monday, April 20, 2009 9:34 PM
To: ‘Christine’
Subject: RE: STAR questions

I tried stripping as a career, but people from my church showed up and it was super awkward on Sunday.

~Mxxxx Vxxxxxxx

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From: Jxxxxx Sxxxxxxxx
Sent: Thursday, May 28, 2009 11:45 AM
To: theteam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: culm equip & needs

If your team has any need for equipment on culmination day, please give your request form to either Sxxxxxxxx or Txxxxxx

Thanks!

On Thu, May 28, 2009 at 11:58 AM, Mxxxxx Vxxxxxxxx wrote:

We need a fog machine, anti-gravity boots, and a full petting zoo with horsey rides. Also, we need a 40 x 60 foot stage for Obama’s Renaissance Address. KISS will be performing as well, but they can use the same stage and fog machine. Some of our students are putting up a laser-tag booth, so we’ll need a laser-tag course and 20… better make it 30 laser-tag vests. Better throw in another smoke machine, just to be safe. We also have the option of a knife-fight booth, but some students can’t afford butterflies, so we’ll need about 10 of those, plus bleach and buckets to sterilize them after every round.

Is it too late to have a rocket launch scheduled? I’ll get back to you on that.

~Mxxxxxxx Vxxxxxxx

Best Job Ever: My Star Trek experience

The wife and I were all set to go on a pre-screening movie date and see the new chick flick with Jennifer Garner today. We made it to the theatre, got parked and in line with about 7 minutes to spare. We signed the non-disclosure deal stating that I will not camera-phone the entire thing and put it on YouTube, when I realized that … uh oh. I quickly flagged down a Communications major in a suit jacket and jeans with a name tag. “Excuse me, Damien; can I bring my phone into the movie? Really?”

Piss. So I jog back to the car and… sabes que? Let’s cut this short. Despite rushing to the car to displace the contraband, our spots in line are lost and the movie is full when we get back. So we get free tickets to the movie of our choice; great, huh?

We were between Angels & Demons and Star Trek. The wife unwittingly made my subterfuge easier by saying, “Are we really in the mood to see priests get cut up and burned?”

The answer is no.

So, for the next two hours and 27 minutes, I thoroughly enjoyed myself. I explained my limited Star Trek knowledge to Andrea before the movie began. Despite being an enormous Star Wars fan, most of the knowledge is non-transferrable. To aid in the differential, here’s a Venn Diagram:

Okay? Now you have a snapshot of me and wifey in the theatre trying frantically to explain to her how a Black Hole works while she asks where Chewbacca is.

So the film ends and I, the selfish movie-goer, and waiting to see if there’s some cool cameo of William Shatner at the end or something. To keep my self amused, I read the credits, which brings me to this post.

I have found the best job ever.

About 2/3 of the way down the list, I see in the credits the listing for Science Consultant.

There is no greater pinnacle of Nerd-dom than to explain to Gene Roddenberry’s son why a black-hole-causing goop must be dropped into the planet’s core to create an anomaly sufficient to destroy the planet itself. I’m sweating a bit just writing about it. Can you imagine? Picture for a second jumping up and down, whispering over the director’s chair, “Oo! Oo! If they fired photon torpedoes behind the ship and detonated them, the resulting sonic boom could be sufficient to break the Enterprise from the gravitational pull of the spatial anomaly, even though they are already in warp speed. Did you know that not even light can escape from a black hole? I’ve got the full specs here on my flash drive keychain.”

Cue the inhaler.

Granted, the Science Consultant couldn’t be an actual Trekkie, or he’d be spotting all sorts of possible plot holes.

“Excuse me, but why do Spock and Uhura get together when we know she ends up with Kirk? Spock and Uhura can’t procreate… can they? What kind of procreative organs do Vulcans have? Does Spock’s penis come to a point like his ears do?”

Please leave comments below on theories regarding the reproductive habits of Vulcans.

~V