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[Bobby Isosceles]

I demolished a house on a foreclosure property I own and salvaged a pile of copper pipes. Now I'm getting lunch and going to work.

I hear you can get a whole week's worth of meth for that.

[Arachno-capitalist]

I hear you can get a whole week's worth of meth for that.

Or pay the taxes on this piece of crap. To answer wombles question: When I was done ripping out anything of value, the professionals took over with the big toys. I don't know how long it took to build that thing, but it took about an hour to put it in a dumpster.

[jay-ell]

dumpster.

Dumpster being a proper noun, it should be capitalized.

I think of Wombat and her frustration with editors every time I see the word Dumpster now, BTW. Appropriate?

[jay-ell]

...be outraged about my kid's bus routes...

The continuing saga, to plagiarize Wombat, is that my kid's bus route is so bad it made the newspaper.

http://www.newsobserver.com/2012/07/11/2193168/new-year-longer-rides-for-wake.html

The route shows in the "images" section in this article is our route. Maybe our routes will get changed after all. I think the afternoon route has already been altered -- Pedro came home early yesterday and saw some kids getting off the bus at Danger Boy's stop at 4:08, so he stopped and asked them what school they were coming from and what time they get on in the morning.

Morning route's still screwed, but if the afternoon bus is getting here around five or ten after four, that's a marked improvement. So I think they're picking up closest to the school first in the mornings and dropping them off first in the afternoons. (It's usually first on, last off.) Still, it's not okay that half the kids are getting screwed each way on this route. I found out from the above-linked article that the did not cut five buses from Danger's school this year -- they cut SEVEN. Almost half.

Bullshit, says I.

[wombat]

my kid's bus route is so bad it made the newspaper.

That's kind of awesome.

[side_show]

It's creepy how some people in the comment section quickly frame this into a race issue.  It reminds me of back when I posted that horrible article from my local paper where the comment section about the first baby of the year turned into a blatent parade of racism based solely on the parents' names.  I feel iky about the world.  We act, on the surface, like we've come a lot farther than the underlying hive mind indicates we have.

[jay-ell]

The ironic part is, a major contributing factor here (in addition to the budget cuts, which I would estimate are causing 75% of the problems) is that the bus routes are a reflection of the Tea Party-developed and -endorsed "school choice" plan, which was instituted to replace the school system's long-standing "diversity" assignment policy.

The people commenting on this being the result of "diversity busing" and touting the "neighborhood schools" plan are woefully misinformed -- my white kid is supposed to ride a bus for an hour to go to an overwhelmingly white school within a mile of our home, are you serious? I read the first ten or so comments and then reminded myself that this way lies madness, and quit.

The diversity plan was actually much less disruptive and more efficient, because even if kids were getting bused across town, they were getting bused to the same school as their neighbors. Under the choice plan, K-5 kids from my subdivision are being offered eight "proximity" choices, thirteen "magnet" choices, and one "application" option. And those are just the elementary schools. Under the old plan, we were offered a base school for proximity, a year-round calendar choice, and a half-dozen magnet choices (which tend to be arts/STEM/GT schools designed to attract high-performing students into low-performing neighborhoods). Now it's conceivable that children within a half-mile of my home could be attending literally twenty different schools across the county. And yet the far right is shocked that transportation costs have increased?

[side_show]

I read the first ten or so comments and then reminded myself that this way lies madness, and quit.

Hey, you just described my process for reading the comments below most on line content.  All though "very occasionally get enraged enough to respond and enter a horrible spiral" would need to be added.

[littlefallsmets]

Today I wrote this thing.

It's not very good but it's about a sloth so I thought wombles might be interested:

http://www.opendiary.com/entryview.asp?authorcode=A758067&entry=22683

[wombat]

Song parodies don't make much sense when you don't know the original song and no way am I going to Google that title without more information to narrow it down.

[Arachno-capitalist]

Are you afraid Google won't respect your integrity? He's a pretty open minded guy.

[littlefallsmets]

This is the song it is based on:

http://youtu.be/8uoAJw9VFCk

[miles]

I did a search and this one came back as a more popular result: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZK75pXLlbY

I was trying really hard to make your lyrics fit. I have to admit I was a bit worried that you song parody writing skills were on a sharp decline.

[littlefallsmets]

I think, unless you're making money off it, parody writing skills can ONLY decline.

Like there is no up. You are on a Kafkaesque hell ride down down down if you are writing song parodies and not making money off them.

Still. I enjoy it.

[Arachno-capitalist]

I think, unless you're making money off it, parody writing skills can ONLY decline.

Like there is no up. You are on a Kafkaesque hell ride down down down if you are writing song parodies and not making money off them.

Still. I enjoy it.

Never write anything for free again, Adam Smith's big fat hand is trying to tell you something. DOING THINGS YOU ENJOY IS FOR POOR PEOPLE! [/sarcasm]