Mental Floss Question from last week:
The Pope has one but doesn’t use it. Your dad has one, and your mom uses it. Nuns do not need one. Arnold Schwarzenegger has a big one, and Michael J. Fox’s is quite small. What is it? (An oldie, but a goody. Answer at the end.)
As you may or may not have noticed, I haven’t been as regular lately. (Get your minds out of the gutter! I’m talking about posting here.) Here’s what I’ve been doing instead:
1. Fighting with [identity withheld for security concerns] again. This time it’s about the new spam filter for our e-mail system. In short: it sucks. It lets more spam through and blocks a lot of addresses that used to go through. Including my wife’s. Which is hosted on my domain. Hmmm. Coincidence? Maaaaaybe. Fixable? Easily. Fixed yet? Of course not. I finally realized why I have so much trouble with [identity withheld for security concerns]. [Identity withheld for security concerns] is just like Sarah Palin. Pass the buck, blame the lamestream teacher, spout meaningless catchphrases (“have you rebooted?”), talk in that “lilt,” (“can’t she get a G-mail account just for this?”), smile a lot, and not really do anything but toe the party line. Aargh. It wears a body out.
[UPDATE: ISSUED FIXED! QUE MILAGRO! GRACIAS!]
2. Reading research papers. Yes, it’s that time of year again. Sixteen Titanics, twenty global warmings, and a whole lot of last minute BS and plagiarism. I’m trying to do ten a day. I collected them Wednesday, and I’m already two days behind. Speaking of wearing a body out. Now I’m doing this instead of that.
3. Spending money. Well, it’s official. I’ll be “teaching” (more like figuring how to teach) a seventh grade elective class in video production. I’ll have one period of seventh graders and $70,000 worth of computers and video equipment. Our share of the fees charged to our local cable company for their franchise to extort the community has been sitting in the bank for years collecting interest. We’re the only secondary school left in the district who hadn’t spent their money. In order to spend the money, you have to give the cable company footage to fill up the time on the mandatory cable access channel, and usually that means an elective class in video production. Nobody here has been dumb enough to take it on until now. Now I’ll have a whole new angle to blog from. BTW, that 70 grand I’m spending, still leaves about 50 grand in the bank. But I have to tell you, spending that much money also… wears a body out. (Gotta remember to buy lots of batteries and SD cards and…oh yeah, camera bags, and…) LOTS more on this later. I have to have my list of booty in by the end of school next week, and I’ve never filled out a purchase order in my life.
4. Listening to my principal tell me that there have been complaints about the Mental Floss question at the top of this post.
“Well, there’s definitely a double entendre there.”
“Really?”
That’s sort of the point. I asked the seventh graders to get their minds out of the gutter too.
I think I asked her if it was hard to spend her whole day trying to not call people morons. Maybe I just thought about it.
So now I didn’t really ask that question on the day in question. It’s been expunged from the web. And I guess I’ll be retiring that one.
Sigh. It sho’ wears a body out.
(Answer: A last name.)
