Yin Yang Quiet Bang Whisper Scream
Self-Contained? Like a Nuke...
from 
JoeUser Forums
JoeUser Forums
Yin Yang
Quiet Bang
Whisper Scream
Mumble Shout
"Carburators, man. That's what life is all about"*
*from Phantom of the Paradise
So, I decided to get a whole lot of work done on the July 4th weekend. Right. The first impediment that I ran into was the fact that I was truly exhausted from the previous week. The previous weekend I received a notice from my landlady that if she saw my motorcycle parked in front of my unit again, I would get a 30-day notice. No matter that I've been there for 13 years, or that my original agreement included a verbal that it was ok to park on my personal concrete landing - that being the only safe place to park in my neighborhood, short of bringing a hot motorcycle inside in the summer and breathing gasolene and oil fumes, etc., which is what I am doing now.
As one of my other articles What Goes Around lays out in my ongoing plaint, the reasons for my being hit with this have nothing to do with the motorcycle and everything to do with the nasty little gang of trailer-trash that moved in a year ago next door and has been escalating their efforts to cause as many problems for everyone around them ever since...
The other problem was that there was no room... I'm a packrat. I collect books, especially, and computer equipment and video equipment, etc., and I've had five Honda 650 Nighthawks since I moved in there, and they're all still around in one form or another, generally as peices, but one of them is still capable of running, barely, having been compressed lengthwise about 20% by a Dodge Ram 2000 a couple years back, and another is in quite good shape, but the motor may have a shift fork problem - hey, I HAVE an allegedly good replacement motor from a 650 I bought solely for parts.
So, that meant that the whole last weekend of June was taken up desperately moving stuff into a new storage unit about 2 miles away, which meant pushing two of the Nighthawks that distance and then up a steep 60 foot ramp - with my bad knees, and meanwhile making about twenty trips on the bike I ride to carry boxes of books, etc., until I finally had enough space to open the doors inward and roll the good bike inside, instantly breaking my Vetter fairing windshield in the process... One bike appeared to have the front brakes frozen, but I still pushed it half a mile that way - far enough to escape the attention of the gang next door. After that horrendous effort, and four hours of sleep, and then going back at five AM with tools and disconnecting the front brakes, I discovered that in fact I had locked down the rear brakes, probably to discourage any break-ins from trying to steal the bike... By the end of the week, my left knee felt like it was down to bone on bone - very possibly the actual case.
That was the beginning of last week, and the rest was not much better. So, Saturday I didn't really get that much rest, because I was too tired. My mind was in a fog and I kept doing stupid things, spilling stuff, etc., I was SO exhausted.
But, by Sunday I managed to get myself in gear and head up to Animation EXPO 2004 in Anaheim. I NEEDED to be there. AND, it's only about 12 miles from my place. AND, I know of a free place to park - until they steal my motorcycle, anyway, that only entails hiking about half a mile to the Convention Center- no further than from the cheapo motels that a lot of con attendees had clearly chosen.
Hoo-boy. Lotta people! Lotta gurls of various ages all trying to look like either Hidden Dragon warriors, anime characters, or Japanese schoolgirls, meaning the really SHORT skirts, so short that you wonder how the topology could possibly even work. Unlike most of the women who wear these UGLY low-slung pants (and truly shouldn't,) ALL of these women fitted their tiny little skirts or shorts (or less) very nicely indeed. And some of them were into this new fad that I think should be encouraged BIGTIME of giving out free hugs. Or maybe it was just me...
I checked out the art area first, but it was sad. If this were an art show at a typical small Science Fiction con, it would get a "D" grade at best. There were a few nice items, but mostly stuff that looked like a slow ten year old had done on the bus to school.
Also, the voluminous plastic con bag was nearly empty. Usually SF cons find all kinds of neat stuff to toss in to delight fans, but this Anime stuff is just really getting rolling, so I'll forgive them.. this year.
AND, there was NO CON SUITE! Every SF con has a con suite, stocked with munchies and couches where you can collapse in exhaustion and plan your next hour. No such thing. Blast.
The Exhibit Hall was rocking, however. There were so many cool products and demos! The struggle was trying to focus on any one thing, like being inside the Small World at DisneyLand. It just went on and on. Well, actually, I managed to see most of it in the three hours I had, which would not even be scratching the surface at SIGGRAPH or E3, but still, this was a LOT of neat stuff to see. Anime on DV, anime games, anime plastic characters, anime posters, manga, software for making anime. Worth the $25 day pass anyway.
I saw Gregg - AGAIN! Gregg is this guy who has been demoing Animation Master like FOREVER... I remember him from the Amiga version of it - "Animation Journeyman" (I think) - from the late '80's, then "Caligari," coming to clubs to show off this incredible program. Hey, if you want a really FUN program that can do just about anything that 3D Studio Max does for one-tenth the price, this is IT! I believe that the same guy - Martin Hash - has programmed every version, so he ought to know what he's doing by now, and it sure looked like it. Nice program!
So, I had just finished lecturing this young Japanese girl at a booth that sold plastic nude dolls and software for dressing them up and turning them into mere 2D Anime about Blender. Check it out. Blender is way cool 3D rendering, animation and game authoring software. AND, it's FREE! Actually, it's owned by the user community, and you can download it for free, and there are all kinds of free tutorials for it, and on-line manuals, etc. So, I'm talking to this girl about incorporationg Blender and The Gimp, which is like a free version of PhotoShop, into their commercial package, and this guy who works on the Army gaming system is standing there listening and nodding his head and finally backing me up, and then I find that he is also an old Amiga user, and he tells me to check out Animation Master, and I do, and there's Gregg, AGAIN!
Whoa. And Gregg is arguing with this kid who is saying, like, "yes, Animation Master is great, but you can do it all in Blender, and it's free, so why should I spend the $200 (show special)?" And Gregg is getting upset, a little.
So, I step in and give my two bits. After praising Blender to the sky a moment before, now I'm discussing the difficult learning curve, whereas Animation Master is really easy to get started and do useful stuff very quickly. Or, the problem of frequent crashes with Blender. Of course, I'm not using the most recent version, so that may not be a valid objection. And, I've only fooled around with it. No time to really get serious.
Blender is great if you are a student or in a 3rd World Country and have limited funds or a hobbiest who enjoys working up a learning curve or a real cheapscate. It can probably do just about anything that either Animation Master or 3D Studio Max can do and it also includes a game development package. BUT, it will take you a serious piece of work to get into.
So, I finally suggest to Gregg that he go after the Blender market. After all, $200 or $300 is not a lot of money for truly refined professional software, which Animation Master is. So, offer a filter that goes both ways and lets you use the free game development package from Blender with the easier-to-create 3D objects from Animation Master. Gregg is dubious, altho he says that they are negotiating with another company for a game engine... We can hope, anyway.
I was also looking around for someone who could connect me with EyeToy development, with little luck, but some useful information, I suppose. See my major article Virtually Real. The word I got at Anime Expo from various developers is that Sony is a notoriously closed shop, which reflects my experience so far. VERY difficult to get development info from. This is especially stupid regarding the EyeToy, as there are a million and one useful little utilities it can be used for. Trying to program all of them in-house is ridiculous!!!
What if I want to spot where the mouse that keeps sneaking around my place and trashing my food is coming from? Eyetoy could potentially do it. You might have an Eyetoy applet that created memory trails on screen that you could track back to where the mouse first appeared and then see all his favorite little paths. Just leave it running, and then place your traps. That's a trivial extension of the Paint system that appeared on Mandala on the Amiga in the '80's.
The Eyetoy software surely has the hooks to support it. Why not give people a super LEGO-like system for EyeToy, so that teachers can author interactive adventures on the fly, pet owners can write programs to teach their parrots new words, etc. Imagine plugging in a neural-net learning system to Eyetoy and letting it learn to control a LEGO Mindstorms robot or one of those cool little flying saucers. Why NOT??
But, then I think to myself... Wasn't Sony part of that idiotic CDI (CD Interactive) venture, in which the consortium poured literally BILLIONS of dollars into a technology that was already out of date, that every knowledgeable person in the business tried to tell them was going to be a collosal failure, but did they LISTEN? Noooo.. So, can Sony learn? We're eagerly waiting to see.
Meanwhile, on July 14th, 2004, I googled on "Eyetoy" and "SDK" and found something else - iCamPlay . This appears to be a fairly substantial package for building videoplace environments on a Win32 platform. I'm awaiting a response from the developer on getting the SDK. Still waiting as of July 18th...
So, after soaking in a mind-rotting display of endless XXX-rated anime and manga, reinforced by endless young cuties in SHORT skirts pretending to be jailbait - or not (pretending), I staggered out of the main Expo hall, feeling much like the guy in "Blow Up" after the famous clothes scene, and went to one of the panel discussions, where I watched several previews of hot new anime, followed by a NEAT display of what I assume is Japanese culture. We fans all got to play Rock, Paper, Scissors against one of the big business/production guys in anime for a series of essentially worthless signed calendars, etc. What a cool way to choose winners! Even if you lost a round, it was still fun to compete. And, since most people lost on each round, you never really felt that much a loser. So, I won some card which I have probably lost, but who cares? (I am getting so infatuated with Japanese culture...)
Then I watched some anime until 10:30 PM or so, and finally headed out to a 4th Furry Party, hosted by Tess TheRedPony. This is a truly cool ongoing party scene that plays out regularly in Garden Grove at Rick and Tess's home - unofficially "Rick's Cafe." Check out their site on Yahoo Groups. There, I ate a bunch of the always great chili made by Tess and wings and salad and watched some more anime, and generally wound down from Anime EXPO, which several other attendees had just come from as well.
Then I went home. Monday, after dragging myself out of bed about 10-ish, and going to see "Control Room," I returned to find that the trailer trash was moving out, apparently finally evicted. The old patriarch, who has a genuine talent for making enormous amounts of trouble where there was none before, shouts at me in a voice to boil steel, "Hey, MF, are you happy now?" Not good. At least six of the gang members are there, and this guy is blaiming me for their eviction. Like completely trashing the entire area for the past year couldn't possibly have had any bearing on it?
Or throwing a power cord over the building (which is still there today, July 18th, and has been there, in plain sight to any passers-by on sidewalk or street for at least six months, now) so they could work all night on six or so vehicles in the parking lot, in complete violation of their lease as well as fire codes? Or tearing their wind turbine off the roof and leaving a gaping hole? Hey, it probably won't rain until October...
Anyway, I needed to get to the spa to shower and so I packed up my clothes, etc and headed back out with my gym bag. From experience, I anticipated trouble and put a little cassette recorder in my pack and turned it on before I went out the door. I also carried a throwaway camera from SavOn. I figured that if these jerks simply left, they would come back for revenge, as this is their style. So, I went around on my bike taking photos of all their car's license plates.
The strange skinny blonde woman spotted me first and ran the length of the building to where I was and started shouting at me. So, I figured that they should know that I had the pics if I needed them, so I pulled around behind their moving van and shot its license plate as well, which brought the whole crew on the run, and the expected confrontation ensued, with one of them finally lunging at me and wresting the camera away from me.
I got off the bike and told him to give it back or I would arrest him. This was the youngest member of the group and did not act like a hardened criminal jailbird, which some of the others definitely were. So, he was trying to show what a man he was. Finally he gave me the camera, after telling me that he would "beat my ass," if I used it again. Sure. So, I left, noticing on leaving that one of the older women of the gang was on her cell phone.
Around the block, at the liqour store, I used the pay phone to call the Santa Ana PD, intending to ask for a few drive-by's just to discourage the gang bangers from breaking stuff of mine or torching the place. However, the dispatcher informed me that the GANG had called them, complaining about ME! As if taking pictures of license plates is a crime. So, no shower. Instead, I spent the next two hours at the pay phone, calling all my friends - none of them close by unfortunately - and finally locating a good criminal defense attorney who advised me on what to do. Then I parked the bike a mile away and hiked back....
What cock and bull tale the woman gave the PD is anyone's guess, and any good police detective should be able to pick apart these idiot's storys in a heartbeat, but I REALLY don't feel like a night in the notorious Santa Ana jail while all that get's sorted out. And what happens to my bike, meanwhile? If it's outside, it will be destroyed with great glee or subtly sabotaged, and I know what kind of job the tow drivers do on motorcycles, and then it's a totally absurd small fortune to get it back, regardless of the fact that if you called for a tow yourself it would be one-tenth the city-mandated fee. And I needed to be at work in the morning, as well, come to think...
Since then, for the past ten days now, the gang bangers have been real quiet. I have this vision of the PD showing up in response to their call and seeing all their junk piled up on the curb and citing them. (One of their frequent ploys over the past year has been to block the public sidewalk, all day long, with various pieces of junk and furniture and then confront me when I needed to get my bike to the driveway.) YES!!! But probably just dreaming. Santa Ana and karmic justice are not on close terms.
I am worried in that the pace of their move-out seems to have slowed to a trickle. Have they found a shill to rent the place for them? That's one probability, I suppose. The kid who snatched my camera - teen-aged, bicycler, Hispanic - is apparently in some kind of relationship with the older women - blond, heavy-set, mother-daughter - who rent to the other side of me. They have been there for several years and have never been the least bit friendly toward me - in fact, actively hostile whenever the chance presented itself, although I have never done anything to them, certainly.
And then they joined forces with the gang a few months ago, and suddenly they were coming and going at 3:30 AM, and grungy looking Hispanics on bicycles were coming and going from their unit with little bags, and every few minutes one of them would walk down to the gang's unit. Their last little stunt was to spray paint some stuff and then lay it out on the sidewalk - instead of their own landing - completely blocking passage. Then the younger of the two women stands there with her hand on her hip, glaring at me. So, I just drove past on the mostly dirt tree/shrubbery area. However, my foot peg still caught the edge of something or other and spun it around as I squeezed between sidewalk and tree, which gave her grounds to curse me. Blocking a public sidewalk is ok, I guess, or whatever one can get away with.
So, last night - Wednesday, July 8, 2004 - and still no break in the trailor trash situation. Somehow one of my windows was broken and I taped some of those heavy duty white trash compactor bags over it until I can get it replaced. Someone keep tearing the plastic off, however. Can't imagine who. Last night, the U-Haul truck was still pulled up and the gangbangers were nowhere in sight, altho their door was open. About 3:30 AM, suddenly there were all manner of crashes and other noises coming from them for about an hour, but this morning I couldn't see any difference. The same trash as usual cluttered up their concrete landing, including the wind turbine that they yanked off their roof, simply leaving a gaping hole. Wonder what the landlady's response to that will be? Will this ever end?
Saturday, July 10th, and I actually got a good ten hours of sleep - like twice! what I've been getting typically. I kept watching my outside video monitor for Trailer Trash activity, but everything was quiet until I stepped out the front door. Within two minutes (as always, as they have some kind of internet-based surveillance system, which the old man boasted of when he first moved in), the old creep who heads up the gang arrived with his older hispanic henchman, and made a point of trying to catch my eye as they walked down the sidewalk past my landing. When I finally returned his stare, he gave me his look of pure hatred and muttered "little piece of s..t." Such a nice little old man.
As I described in my article Living on the Street, this is history repeating itself. Moreover, this has been a pattern in my life from when I was a little kid. When my family moved in 1953 from Milton, Vermont, to Rome, Georgia, four significant things happened in short order which seemed to have either set a pattern or been my first instances of one that has dogged me ever since:
First, at school in the 1st grade, the first day: The sweet young southern bell teacher asked me, "Kin you read and raht?" Except that she ran the words all together at fast forward, "kinyooreedanraht?" It took three tries for me to get what she was saying. Note that Vermonters are among the slowest talkers in the world. They speak slowly; then they pause in the middle of sentences, ... considering what to say ... for many seconds. North Georgia is not a Southern drawl area, but rather a fast-speak cracker-talk region. So, a bad start. Of course, I could read and write, as I had had over a year of kindergarten and 1st grade back in Milton, but I had never seen longhand script.
So the teacher starts "rahtin" in long hand, which might have been sanscrit, as far as I was concerned. Having said that I could read and raht, however, now I was trapped. So I kept asking Billy, my buddy from down the street, who had shown me the way to school, "what's that word?" Etc. Until the teacher called on me and I was found out. "Well, I guess you're just a little lier!. We don't lahk little liers down here"
At recess, I learned about "defending the honor of the South," the hard way. As a proud yankee, I got to refight the Civil War every single recess for the next year or so. I got pretty good at fighting, eventually.
At home, my sister, five years younger, was apparently upset about my getting a separate room to myself. In Vermont, we had had a huge old farmhouse, with tons of extra room. In Georgia, my father had put a nice house in escrow, only to have the real estate company sell it out from under him, challenging him to do anything, in a Southern court as a yankee. So, we arrived with no home, and finally had to rent half of a run-down duplex in a poor neighborhood, the only advantage being the YMCA right accross the street - the pool only about fifty feet from our front steps, where I won several swimming medals a couple years later. (Of course, I was the only contestant in my age range.)
So, one day I got back from school to discover that my entire room had been trashed, as though a hurricane had struck. Everything was destroyed or dumped out on the floor. It was my sister. Up to that point, we had gotten along famously, and I had a very big-brotherly protective attitude. I assumed that my parents would take my side, under the circumstances. Instead, they acted as though I was at fault somehow and demanded that I forgive Joanie and make up. No way!!
For the rest of the time that I lived at home, until I finally escaped to college, my recollection is that Joanie got to do whatever she wanted and usually got away with it, while I would end up cleaning up her messes. It was largely reflective of my father's total sexism. Women were not fully human, in his view, but had to be taken care of by men. You simply had to put up with whatever irrationality happened, because they were not really responsible, being less than human. So I would volunteer to wash the dishes, because if Joanie got that assignment, she would do the most slovenly job possible, deliberately leaving large amounts of food stuck to the plates, knowing that she would not get that assignment again for a long time.
Joanie, or course, continued to portray herself as the innocent victim for as long as I lived with my parents, and pretended mystification at my ongoing anger toward her, when my parents were present. Of course, I did get my own room, while my two younger sisters slept in my parents' crowded little bedroom, I assume until they, too, left for college or marriage. Sad.
Meanwhile, that 1st grade buddy who escorted me to my disasterous first day in 1st grade in Rome, GA, (who, later, in high-school made a dailly point of how tough and macho he was and narrowly escaped being prosecuted for allegedly molesting some very young girls) threw a big birthday party, and my mother, always anxious to fit in to society, made sure I had a big present to bring him. So, without any warning (after I gave him my present, however) he ordered me out of the house. I still have not a clue as to why, except that many of his other friends were "defenders of the honor of the South" who I had defeated on the schoolyard battleground.
I was so enraged that I went home and got my dad's Civil War era hunting sword (only a point, no blade, designed for throwing at wild boar) off the fireplace mantel and then walked out into the middle of the street and shouted in to the party, daring anyone to come out and fight. Up and down the street, mothers were padlocking their doors and peering anxiously out their windows as I marched up and down challenging the world. The police were called, and my mother was called back from work, where she was herself an elementary teacher. I don't think I was arrested, which might have been a first in Rome, GA: "Six-year-old Yankee carpetbagger arrested for terrorizing peaceful Southern neighborhood. Prosecutor asks for death. Lynch mob gathers. Local man argues persuasively, 'Hey, he's a damn yankee, ain't he.' News at seven..."
This, of course, confirmed to my parents that I was a "bad kid," and nothing ever changed that opinion. When my dad had his major heart attack years later and was lying in bed, he told me that "Your mother and I gave up on you when you dropped the kitten out the 2nd story window - at age 2." I have no memory of that, of course. Hey, thanks a bunch for coming clean, dad... Can I just go shoot myself now?
When we moved to the country outside of Rome, into our own house, in 1958, I recall my very first meetings with the local neighborhood kids. On the very first day, I was having what I thought was a great conversation with Jimmy G., a little energetic runt whose dad worked blue-collar at the same GE Medium Transformer plant at which my dad was a senior draftsman, and lived two houses away, when, without any warning, but with a huge grin of delight, he suddenly flung this heavy baseball catcher's glove into my face as hard as he could, and then dashed for home. When we got there, me in hot chase, he threw himself behind his father and begged for protection. Now, it was suddenly I who had attacked him. The father did not have the slightest inkling of a sense of humor, and took "my attack" on his kid quite seriously.
Within months, the neighborhood kids had virtually all allied themselves against me, as Jimmy consolidated his little power base via intimidation or bribes of toys, etc.. It was really useful - and fun! - to have someone on whom to blame everything, and here was this nerdy little damned yankee. Meanwhile, Dale C., a huge guy about four years older than me, began a process of intimidation that ultimately lead to attempted sexual assault on several occasions. He would ask me to come to a "rendesvous," which meant a concealed place in the forest that pretty much surrounded the Rome suburbs.
There, he would pull out x-rated magazines - which were themselves strictly illegal at the time - late '50's - and then start talking about sex, undressing and displaying himself and trying to get me to fondle him, at one point grabbing me and trying to force me into oral sex, which I thought was totally gross, altho I did find the pictures interesting. (Dale apparently did not.) Dale's family had originally owned our land and a lot more, before the Civil War, and his ancient grannie could actually remember the war itself. They kept a large garden for their own extended family use, and frequently shot grazing rabbits with a 22 rifle or shotgun.
Dale thought it would be interesting to shoot at kids as well. We were always doing some kind of war game in the woods that surrounded and permeated that whole area for fifty miles or so, so it was not too difficult for him to convince us - 9 or 10 years old - to play along and hide while he tried to pick us off. I'm not sure who takes the cake for pure stupidity on that one. It was sheer luck that nobody got shot. However, Dale's feats of stupidity or malicious destructiveness or malign perversion or simple bullying never seemed to get him into any trouble at all (I did hear that he got a severe whipping, once.), while the slightest thing could get me restricted to the yard for weeks - one entire summer, in fact, when the neighborhood parents organized into a group to demand that my parents do something about my behavior!
Initially, I was told that the restriction to the yard would be for two weeks. However, each time I left the yard would result in another two weeks tacked on. Naturally, the neighborhood kids then conspired to come up with ways to get me to leave the yard. They would dash in and grab something I was playing with and then place it just beyond the yard boundaries. When I ran after them, they would wait until I had stepped over the property line and then all run to tell my mother. They had great fun all that summer. Finally, I was ordered to spend my time reading religious literature, to cure me of my evil ways, and I ended up reading "In His Steps," which is a good read, BTW, and for a while I was convinced that I should become a minister.
Here's a quote from Hitchhiking through Asperger Syndrome by Lise Pyles, page 151:
(Lise is discussing the various problems that parents of Asperger kids will likely face in when their child goes to school...)
"BEWARE OF THE 'GOTCHA'
We've heard of the horror stories where a child is bullied by a group at school until one day he snaps, and the next thing you know, we are reading about it in the newspapers. These are the extreme cases, but to a lesser extent this happens to kids with Asperger Syndrome every day. The punks of the school see our kids as an easy mark and start pulling tricks. They know how to stay below the teacher's radar, however, so the teacher is seldom aware or what's going on. The child with Asperger Syndrome doesn't have the same degree of guile. When he acts out in retaliation it is without any subterfuge. He gets caught, of course! The bullies know this and play it to advantage. They tease and tease until our kids lash out, and then sit back and watch our kids be the ones punished. Mission accomplished. Gotcha! It helps to see it for exactly what it is, and to bring it to the teacher's attention in exactly those terms."
Getting out of sequence at bit here in order to underscore Lise's point, I recall very well my two years in an abysmal country high-school - Armuchee High School - after I graduated from Glenwood Elementary with my usual scholastic honors. Of course, my approach had been conditioned by earlier years of fighting every day. When I first got on the big yellow school bus, I immediately spotted one of my nemeses - Dale of the "Rendevous," and then two or three more jerks, so I started whistling various musical themes, and I kept it up all the way to school. Just let anybody mess with me!
I also carried one of those big brown soft leather briefbags that fold together at the top. It was much more energy efficient than the fashion of carrying a stack of books braced against one's body. However, it was different. So, it immediately became a target, and literally ten or twenty times a day, someone would sneak up behind my desk and snatch it away. This made it very difficult for me to concentrate on the lesson, of course.
Another typical incident came in algebra class, where the kid behind me - Milton, much larger than I, thought it great fun to whack me accross the side of my head with a book whenever I became engrossed in the teacher's presentation. And I mean solid whacks. Like BANG!. I knew that he was an associate of several other bullies who hung out in the halls waiting to casually punch out kids who acted the least bit intelligent, and I was afraid of the consequences, but finally I had had enough. I spotted the book coming and tried to stab Milton in the hand with my fountain pen (I used a pen for everything - mistakes were not my style.). As I vigorously stabbed backwards in his direction several times, I failed to note, not having eyes in the back of my head, that the ink was flying out... All over Milton's pristine trademark white dress shirt... After class, of course, Milton challenged me to a fight. I told him where to go and that I would be happy to put him in jail.
To illustrate the unbelievable low-life mentality at Armuchee, here are a three typical examples:
The biology teacher was also the football coach. He had actually played semi-pro for a little while. How he had graduated from college - or even high-school - is still a mystery, even with the free pass that athletes typically get. He informed us that evolution could not possibly work because who had ever seen a bluebird mate with a blackbird. Case solved. End of story. He thought that chickens got pregnant from something in their food, not the usual way, which caused one of the smarter farm kids (not all of whom were dummies, by a long shot.) to almost fall out of his desk in hysterics.
The agriculture teacher thought that teaching consisted of forcing the students to trace hundreds of detailed pictures of plants from their textbooks. He also specialized in physically abusing his students, in fact was famous for it.
At one point, the bullies got into my locker and cut holes in my brand new pant's seats. I didn't notice, of course, and wondered why all the girls were tittering as I got on the bus that afternoon. My mother was outraged, as she had just bought those pants, and went to the principal, who apparently was incapable of listening, as he concluded that the bullies had urinated on the pants, not slashed them. So, he called a meeting of the entire male student body and told us a story about how some guy on a road-work detail in the Army had urinated on him while he was digging a ditch and how he had beat-up the guy. That was it - the entire content of his story and the moral for the meeting...
Because of the problems of which I was a common denominator, the faculty at Armuchee did not even consider allowing me to apply for the Governor's Honors Program. A year later, however, after I finally managed to get transferred to the top public academic high school - East Rome High - I was selected to go in both English and Chemistry. The next year I was Star Student, scoring almost 1500 on the SAT, and graduated near top of my class. So there, you idiots!
And the football coach? My history teacher - Mr. Muschamp - at East Rome was also football coach there; however, he was at the extreme end of a spectrum from the idiot at Armuchee. I suspect that Coach Muschamp was the smartest teacher at East Rome High, in fact. He championed football as a way to get kids into college, but in his history classes, he constantly added interesting content to the required text, and was constantly suggesting really interesting reading to students such as myself who had a real interest in history. At some point, East Rome played Armuchee, and afterwards I found Coach Muschamp musing in amazement over the fact that the Armuchee coach did not even know the basic rules of the game. He had tried to discuss something with him, and could not believe that an actual coach could be utterly ignorant of basic football rules and procedures.
Quiet Bang
Whisper Scream
Mumble Shout
"Carburators, man. That's what life is all about"*
*from Phantom of the Paradise
So, I decided to get a whole lot of work done on the July 4th weekend. Right. The first impediment that I ran into was the fact that I was truly exhausted from the previous week. The previous weekend I received a notice from my landlady that if she saw my motorcycle parked in front of my unit again, I would get a 30-day notice. No matter that I've been there for 13 years, or that my original agreement included a verbal that it was ok to park on my personal concrete landing - that being the only safe place to park in my neighborhood, short of bringing a hot motorcycle inside in the summer and breathing gasolene and oil fumes, etc., which is what I am doing now.
As one of my other articles What Goes Around lays out in my ongoing plaint, the reasons for my being hit with this have nothing to do with the motorcycle and everything to do with the nasty little gang of trailer-trash that moved in a year ago next door and has been escalating their efforts to cause as many problems for everyone around them ever since...
The other problem was that there was no room... I'm a packrat. I collect books, especially, and computer equipment and video equipment, etc., and I've had five Honda 650 Nighthawks since I moved in there, and they're all still around in one form or another, generally as peices, but one of them is still capable of running, barely, having been compressed lengthwise about 20% by a Dodge Ram 2000 a couple years back, and another is in quite good shape, but the motor may have a shift fork problem - hey, I HAVE an allegedly good replacement motor from a 650 I bought solely for parts.
So, that meant that the whole last weekend of June was taken up desperately moving stuff into a new storage unit about 2 miles away, which meant pushing two of the Nighthawks that distance and then up a steep 60 foot ramp - with my bad knees, and meanwhile making about twenty trips on the bike I ride to carry boxes of books, etc., until I finally had enough space to open the doors inward and roll the good bike inside, instantly breaking my Vetter fairing windshield in the process... One bike appeared to have the front brakes frozen, but I still pushed it half a mile that way - far enough to escape the attention of the gang next door. After that horrendous effort, and four hours of sleep, and then going back at five AM with tools and disconnecting the front brakes, I discovered that in fact I had locked down the rear brakes, probably to discourage any break-ins from trying to steal the bike... By the end of the week, my left knee felt like it was down to bone on bone - very possibly the actual case.
That was the beginning of last week, and the rest was not much better. So, Saturday I didn't really get that much rest, because I was too tired. My mind was in a fog and I kept doing stupid things, spilling stuff, etc., I was SO exhausted.
But, by Sunday I managed to get myself in gear and head up to Animation EXPO 2004 in Anaheim. I NEEDED to be there. AND, it's only about 12 miles from my place. AND, I know of a free place to park - until they steal my motorcycle, anyway, that only entails hiking about half a mile to the Convention Center- no further than from the cheapo motels that a lot of con attendees had clearly chosen.
Hoo-boy. Lotta people! Lotta gurls of various ages all trying to look like either Hidden Dragon warriors, anime characters, or Japanese schoolgirls, meaning the really SHORT skirts, so short that you wonder how the topology could possibly even work. Unlike most of the women who wear these UGLY low-slung pants (and truly shouldn't,) ALL of these women fitted their tiny little skirts or shorts (or less) very nicely indeed. And some of them were into this new fad that I think should be encouraged BIGTIME of giving out free hugs. Or maybe it was just me...
I checked out the art area first, but it was sad. If this were an art show at a typical small Science Fiction con, it would get a "D" grade at best. There were a few nice items, but mostly stuff that looked like a slow ten year old had done on the bus to school.
Also, the voluminous plastic con bag was nearly empty. Usually SF cons find all kinds of neat stuff to toss in to delight fans, but this Anime stuff is just really getting rolling, so I'll forgive them.. this year.
AND, there was NO CON SUITE! Every SF con has a con suite, stocked with munchies and couches where you can collapse in exhaustion and plan your next hour. No such thing. Blast.
The Exhibit Hall was rocking, however. There were so many cool products and demos! The struggle was trying to focus on any one thing, like being inside the Small World at DisneyLand. It just went on and on. Well, actually, I managed to see most of it in the three hours I had, which would not even be scratching the surface at SIGGRAPH or E3, but still, this was a LOT of neat stuff to see. Anime on DV, anime games, anime plastic characters, anime posters, manga, software for making anime. Worth the $25 day pass anyway.
I saw Gregg - AGAIN! Gregg is this guy who has been demoing Animation Master like FOREVER... I remember him from the Amiga version of it - "Animation Journeyman" (I think) - from the late '80's, then "Caligari," coming to clubs to show off this incredible program. Hey, if you want a really FUN program that can do just about anything that 3D Studio Max does for one-tenth the price, this is IT! I believe that the same guy - Martin Hash - has programmed every version, so he ought to know what he's doing by now, and it sure looked like it. Nice program!
So, I had just finished lecturing this young Japanese girl at a booth that sold plastic nude dolls and software for dressing them up and turning them into mere 2D Anime about Blender. Check it out. Blender is way cool 3D rendering, animation and game authoring software. AND, it's FREE! Actually, it's owned by the user community, and you can download it for free, and there are all kinds of free tutorials for it, and on-line manuals, etc. So, I'm talking to this girl about incorporationg Blender and The Gimp, which is like a free version of PhotoShop, into their commercial package, and this guy who works on the Army gaming system is standing there listening and nodding his head and finally backing me up, and then I find that he is also an old Amiga user, and he tells me to check out Animation Master, and I do, and there's Gregg, AGAIN!
Whoa. And Gregg is arguing with this kid who is saying, like, "yes, Animation Master is great, but you can do it all in Blender, and it's free, so why should I spend the $200 (show special)?" And Gregg is getting upset, a little.
So, I step in and give my two bits. After praising Blender to the sky a moment before, now I'm discussing the difficult learning curve, whereas Animation Master is really easy to get started and do useful stuff very quickly. Or, the problem of frequent crashes with Blender. Of course, I'm not using the most recent version, so that may not be a valid objection. And, I've only fooled around with it. No time to really get serious.
Blender is great if you are a student or in a 3rd World Country and have limited funds or a hobbiest who enjoys working up a learning curve or a real cheapscate. It can probably do just about anything that either Animation Master or 3D Studio Max can do and it also includes a game development package. BUT, it will take you a serious piece of work to get into.
So, I finally suggest to Gregg that he go after the Blender market. After all, $200 or $300 is not a lot of money for truly refined professional software, which Animation Master is. So, offer a filter that goes both ways and lets you use the free game development package from Blender with the easier-to-create 3D objects from Animation Master. Gregg is dubious, altho he says that they are negotiating with another company for a game engine... We can hope, anyway.
I was also looking around for someone who could connect me with EyeToy development, with little luck, but some useful information, I suppose. See my major article Virtually Real. The word I got at Anime Expo from various developers is that Sony is a notoriously closed shop, which reflects my experience so far. VERY difficult to get development info from. This is especially stupid regarding the EyeToy, as there are a million and one useful little utilities it can be used for. Trying to program all of them in-house is ridiculous!!!
What if I want to spot where the mouse that keeps sneaking around my place and trashing my food is coming from? Eyetoy could potentially do it. You might have an Eyetoy applet that created memory trails on screen that you could track back to where the mouse first appeared and then see all his favorite little paths. Just leave it running, and then place your traps. That's a trivial extension of the Paint system that appeared on Mandala on the Amiga in the '80's.
The Eyetoy software surely has the hooks to support it. Why not give people a super LEGO-like system for EyeToy, so that teachers can author interactive adventures on the fly, pet owners can write programs to teach their parrots new words, etc. Imagine plugging in a neural-net learning system to Eyetoy and letting it learn to control a LEGO Mindstorms robot or one of those cool little flying saucers. Why NOT??
But, then I think to myself... Wasn't Sony part of that idiotic CDI (CD Interactive) venture, in which the consortium poured literally BILLIONS of dollars into a technology that was already out of date, that every knowledgeable person in the business tried to tell them was going to be a collosal failure, but did they LISTEN? Noooo.. So, can Sony learn? We're eagerly waiting to see.
Meanwhile, on July 14th, 2004, I googled on "Eyetoy" and "SDK" and found something else - iCamPlay . This appears to be a fairly substantial package for building videoplace environments on a Win32 platform. I'm awaiting a response from the developer on getting the SDK. Still waiting as of July 18th...
So, after soaking in a mind-rotting display of endless XXX-rated anime and manga, reinforced by endless young cuties in SHORT skirts pretending to be jailbait - or not (pretending), I staggered out of the main Expo hall, feeling much like the guy in "Blow Up" after the famous clothes scene, and went to one of the panel discussions, where I watched several previews of hot new anime, followed by a NEAT display of what I assume is Japanese culture. We fans all got to play Rock, Paper, Scissors against one of the big business/production guys in anime for a series of essentially worthless signed calendars, etc. What a cool way to choose winners! Even if you lost a round, it was still fun to compete. And, since most people lost on each round, you never really felt that much a loser. So, I won some card which I have probably lost, but who cares? (I am getting so infatuated with Japanese culture...)
Then I watched some anime until 10:30 PM or so, and finally headed out to a 4th Furry Party, hosted by Tess TheRedPony. This is a truly cool ongoing party scene that plays out regularly in Garden Grove at Rick and Tess's home - unofficially "Rick's Cafe." Check out their site on Yahoo Groups. There, I ate a bunch of the always great chili made by Tess and wings and salad and watched some more anime, and generally wound down from Anime EXPO, which several other attendees had just come from as well.
Then I went home. Monday, after dragging myself out of bed about 10-ish, and going to see "Control Room," I returned to find that the trailer trash was moving out, apparently finally evicted. The old patriarch, who has a genuine talent for making enormous amounts of trouble where there was none before, shouts at me in a voice to boil steel, "Hey, MF, are you happy now?" Not good. At least six of the gang members are there, and this guy is blaiming me for their eviction. Like completely trashing the entire area for the past year couldn't possibly have had any bearing on it?
Or throwing a power cord over the building (which is still there today, July 18th, and has been there, in plain sight to any passers-by on sidewalk or street for at least six months, now) so they could work all night on six or so vehicles in the parking lot, in complete violation of their lease as well as fire codes? Or tearing their wind turbine off the roof and leaving a gaping hole? Hey, it probably won't rain until October...
Anyway, I needed to get to the spa to shower and so I packed up my clothes, etc and headed back out with my gym bag. From experience, I anticipated trouble and put a little cassette recorder in my pack and turned it on before I went out the door. I also carried a throwaway camera from SavOn. I figured that if these jerks simply left, they would come back for revenge, as this is their style. So, I went around on my bike taking photos of all their car's license plates.
The strange skinny blonde woman spotted me first and ran the length of the building to where I was and started shouting at me. So, I figured that they should know that I had the pics if I needed them, so I pulled around behind their moving van and shot its license plate as well, which brought the whole crew on the run, and the expected confrontation ensued, with one of them finally lunging at me and wresting the camera away from me.
I got off the bike and told him to give it back or I would arrest him. This was the youngest member of the group and did not act like a hardened criminal jailbird, which some of the others definitely were. So, he was trying to show what a man he was. Finally he gave me the camera, after telling me that he would "beat my ass," if I used it again. Sure. So, I left, noticing on leaving that one of the older women of the gang was on her cell phone.
Around the block, at the liqour store, I used the pay phone to call the Santa Ana PD, intending to ask for a few drive-by's just to discourage the gang bangers from breaking stuff of mine or torching the place. However, the dispatcher informed me that the GANG had called them, complaining about ME! As if taking pictures of license plates is a crime. So, no shower. Instead, I spent the next two hours at the pay phone, calling all my friends - none of them close by unfortunately - and finally locating a good criminal defense attorney who advised me on what to do. Then I parked the bike a mile away and hiked back....
What cock and bull tale the woman gave the PD is anyone's guess, and any good police detective should be able to pick apart these idiot's storys in a heartbeat, but I REALLY don't feel like a night in the notorious Santa Ana jail while all that get's sorted out. And what happens to my bike, meanwhile? If it's outside, it will be destroyed with great glee or subtly sabotaged, and I know what kind of job the tow drivers do on motorcycles, and then it's a totally absurd small fortune to get it back, regardless of the fact that if you called for a tow yourself it would be one-tenth the city-mandated fee. And I needed to be at work in the morning, as well, come to think...
Since then, for the past ten days now, the gang bangers have been real quiet. I have this vision of the PD showing up in response to their call and seeing all their junk piled up on the curb and citing them. (One of their frequent ploys over the past year has been to block the public sidewalk, all day long, with various pieces of junk and furniture and then confront me when I needed to get my bike to the driveway.) YES!!! But probably just dreaming. Santa Ana and karmic justice are not on close terms.
I am worried in that the pace of their move-out seems to have slowed to a trickle. Have they found a shill to rent the place for them? That's one probability, I suppose. The kid who snatched my camera - teen-aged, bicycler, Hispanic - is apparently in some kind of relationship with the older women - blond, heavy-set, mother-daughter - who rent to the other side of me. They have been there for several years and have never been the least bit friendly toward me - in fact, actively hostile whenever the chance presented itself, although I have never done anything to them, certainly.
And then they joined forces with the gang a few months ago, and suddenly they were coming and going at 3:30 AM, and grungy looking Hispanics on bicycles were coming and going from their unit with little bags, and every few minutes one of them would walk down to the gang's unit. Their last little stunt was to spray paint some stuff and then lay it out on the sidewalk - instead of their own landing - completely blocking passage. Then the younger of the two women stands there with her hand on her hip, glaring at me. So, I just drove past on the mostly dirt tree/shrubbery area. However, my foot peg still caught the edge of something or other and spun it around as I squeezed between sidewalk and tree, which gave her grounds to curse me. Blocking a public sidewalk is ok, I guess, or whatever one can get away with.
So, last night - Wednesday, July 8, 2004 - and still no break in the trailor trash situation. Somehow one of my windows was broken and I taped some of those heavy duty white trash compactor bags over it until I can get it replaced. Someone keep tearing the plastic off, however. Can't imagine who. Last night, the U-Haul truck was still pulled up and the gangbangers were nowhere in sight, altho their door was open. About 3:30 AM, suddenly there were all manner of crashes and other noises coming from them for about an hour, but this morning I couldn't see any difference. The same trash as usual cluttered up their concrete landing, including the wind turbine that they yanked off their roof, simply leaving a gaping hole. Wonder what the landlady's response to that will be? Will this ever end?
Saturday, July 10th, and I actually got a good ten hours of sleep - like twice! what I've been getting typically. I kept watching my outside video monitor for Trailer Trash activity, but everything was quiet until I stepped out the front door. Within two minutes (as always, as they have some kind of internet-based surveillance system, which the old man boasted of when he first moved in), the old creep who heads up the gang arrived with his older hispanic henchman, and made a point of trying to catch my eye as they walked down the sidewalk past my landing. When I finally returned his stare, he gave me his look of pure hatred and muttered "little piece of s..t." Such a nice little old man.
As I described in my article Living on the Street, this is history repeating itself. Moreover, this has been a pattern in my life from when I was a little kid. When my family moved in 1953 from Milton, Vermont, to Rome, Georgia, four significant things happened in short order which seemed to have either set a pattern or been my first instances of one that has dogged me ever since:
First, at school in the 1st grade, the first day: The sweet young southern bell teacher asked me, "Kin you read and raht?" Except that she ran the words all together at fast forward, "kinyooreedanraht?" It took three tries for me to get what she was saying. Note that Vermonters are among the slowest talkers in the world. They speak slowly; then they pause in the middle of sentences, ... considering what to say ... for many seconds. North Georgia is not a Southern drawl area, but rather a fast-speak cracker-talk region. So, a bad start. Of course, I could read and write, as I had had over a year of kindergarten and 1st grade back in Milton, but I had never seen longhand script.
So the teacher starts "rahtin" in long hand, which might have been sanscrit, as far as I was concerned. Having said that I could read and raht, however, now I was trapped. So I kept asking Billy, my buddy from down the street, who had shown me the way to school, "what's that word?" Etc. Until the teacher called on me and I was found out. "Well, I guess you're just a little lier!. We don't lahk little liers down here"
At recess, I learned about "defending the honor of the South," the hard way. As a proud yankee, I got to refight the Civil War every single recess for the next year or so. I got pretty good at fighting, eventually.
At home, my sister, five years younger, was apparently upset about my getting a separate room to myself. In Vermont, we had had a huge old farmhouse, with tons of extra room. In Georgia, my father had put a nice house in escrow, only to have the real estate company sell it out from under him, challenging him to do anything, in a Southern court as a yankee. So, we arrived with no home, and finally had to rent half of a run-down duplex in a poor neighborhood, the only advantage being the YMCA right accross the street - the pool only about fifty feet from our front steps, where I won several swimming medals a couple years later. (Of course, I was the only contestant in my age range.)
So, one day I got back from school to discover that my entire room had been trashed, as though a hurricane had struck. Everything was destroyed or dumped out on the floor. It was my sister. Up to that point, we had gotten along famously, and I had a very big-brotherly protective attitude. I assumed that my parents would take my side, under the circumstances. Instead, they acted as though I was at fault somehow and demanded that I forgive Joanie and make up. No way!!
For the rest of the time that I lived at home, until I finally escaped to college, my recollection is that Joanie got to do whatever she wanted and usually got away with it, while I would end up cleaning up her messes. It was largely reflective of my father's total sexism. Women were not fully human, in his view, but had to be taken care of by men. You simply had to put up with whatever irrationality happened, because they were not really responsible, being less than human. So I would volunteer to wash the dishes, because if Joanie got that assignment, she would do the most slovenly job possible, deliberately leaving large amounts of food stuck to the plates, knowing that she would not get that assignment again for a long time.
Joanie, or course, continued to portray herself as the innocent victim for as long as I lived with my parents, and pretended mystification at my ongoing anger toward her, when my parents were present. Of course, I did get my own room, while my two younger sisters slept in my parents' crowded little bedroom, I assume until they, too, left for college or marriage. Sad.
Meanwhile, that 1st grade buddy who escorted me to my disasterous first day in 1st grade in Rome, GA, (who, later, in high-school made a dailly point of how tough and macho he was and narrowly escaped being prosecuted for allegedly molesting some very young girls) threw a big birthday party, and my mother, always anxious to fit in to society, made sure I had a big present to bring him. So, without any warning (after I gave him my present, however) he ordered me out of the house. I still have not a clue as to why, except that many of his other friends were "defenders of the honor of the South" who I had defeated on the schoolyard battleground.
I was so enraged that I went home and got my dad's Civil War era hunting sword (only a point, no blade, designed for throwing at wild boar) off the fireplace mantel and then walked out into the middle of the street and shouted in to the party, daring anyone to come out and fight. Up and down the street, mothers were padlocking their doors and peering anxiously out their windows as I marched up and down challenging the world. The police were called, and my mother was called back from work, where she was herself an elementary teacher. I don't think I was arrested, which might have been a first in Rome, GA: "Six-year-old Yankee carpetbagger arrested for terrorizing peaceful Southern neighborhood. Prosecutor asks for death. Lynch mob gathers. Local man argues persuasively, 'Hey, he's a damn yankee, ain't he.' News at seven..."
This, of course, confirmed to my parents that I was a "bad kid," and nothing ever changed that opinion. When my dad had his major heart attack years later and was lying in bed, he told me that "Your mother and I gave up on you when you dropped the kitten out the 2nd story window - at age 2." I have no memory of that, of course. Hey, thanks a bunch for coming clean, dad... Can I just go shoot myself now?
When we moved to the country outside of Rome, into our own house, in 1958, I recall my very first meetings with the local neighborhood kids. On the very first day, I was having what I thought was a great conversation with Jimmy G., a little energetic runt whose dad worked blue-collar at the same GE Medium Transformer plant at which my dad was a senior draftsman, and lived two houses away, when, without any warning, but with a huge grin of delight, he suddenly flung this heavy baseball catcher's glove into my face as hard as he could, and then dashed for home. When we got there, me in hot chase, he threw himself behind his father and begged for protection. Now, it was suddenly I who had attacked him. The father did not have the slightest inkling of a sense of humor, and took "my attack" on his kid quite seriously.
Within months, the neighborhood kids had virtually all allied themselves against me, as Jimmy consolidated his little power base via intimidation or bribes of toys, etc.. It was really useful - and fun! - to have someone on whom to blame everything, and here was this nerdy little damned yankee. Meanwhile, Dale C., a huge guy about four years older than me, began a process of intimidation that ultimately lead to attempted sexual assault on several occasions. He would ask me to come to a "rendesvous," which meant a concealed place in the forest that pretty much surrounded the Rome suburbs.
There, he would pull out x-rated magazines - which were themselves strictly illegal at the time - late '50's - and then start talking about sex, undressing and displaying himself and trying to get me to fondle him, at one point grabbing me and trying to force me into oral sex, which I thought was totally gross, altho I did find the pictures interesting. (Dale apparently did not.) Dale's family had originally owned our land and a lot more, before the Civil War, and his ancient grannie could actually remember the war itself. They kept a large garden for their own extended family use, and frequently shot grazing rabbits with a 22 rifle or shotgun.
Dale thought it would be interesting to shoot at kids as well. We were always doing some kind of war game in the woods that surrounded and permeated that whole area for fifty miles or so, so it was not too difficult for him to convince us - 9 or 10 years old - to play along and hide while he tried to pick us off. I'm not sure who takes the cake for pure stupidity on that one. It was sheer luck that nobody got shot. However, Dale's feats of stupidity or malicious destructiveness or malign perversion or simple bullying never seemed to get him into any trouble at all (I did hear that he got a severe whipping, once.), while the slightest thing could get me restricted to the yard for weeks - one entire summer, in fact, when the neighborhood parents organized into a group to demand that my parents do something about my behavior!
Initially, I was told that the restriction to the yard would be for two weeks. However, each time I left the yard would result in another two weeks tacked on. Naturally, the neighborhood kids then conspired to come up with ways to get me to leave the yard. They would dash in and grab something I was playing with and then place it just beyond the yard boundaries. When I ran after them, they would wait until I had stepped over the property line and then all run to tell my mother. They had great fun all that summer. Finally, I was ordered to spend my time reading religious literature, to cure me of my evil ways, and I ended up reading "In His Steps," which is a good read, BTW, and for a while I was convinced that I should become a minister.
Here's a quote from Hitchhiking through Asperger Syndrome by Lise Pyles, page 151:
(Lise is discussing the various problems that parents of Asperger kids will likely face in when their child goes to school...)
"BEWARE OF THE 'GOTCHA'
We've heard of the horror stories where a child is bullied by a group at school until one day he snaps, and the next thing you know, we are reading about it in the newspapers. These are the extreme cases, but to a lesser extent this happens to kids with Asperger Syndrome every day. The punks of the school see our kids as an easy mark and start pulling tricks. They know how to stay below the teacher's radar, however, so the teacher is seldom aware or what's going on. The child with Asperger Syndrome doesn't have the same degree of guile. When he acts out in retaliation it is without any subterfuge. He gets caught, of course! The bullies know this and play it to advantage. They tease and tease until our kids lash out, and then sit back and watch our kids be the ones punished. Mission accomplished. Gotcha! It helps to see it for exactly what it is, and to bring it to the teacher's attention in exactly those terms."
Getting out of sequence at bit here in order to underscore Lise's point, I recall very well my two years in an abysmal country high-school - Armuchee High School - after I graduated from Glenwood Elementary with my usual scholastic honors. Of course, my approach had been conditioned by earlier years of fighting every day. When I first got on the big yellow school bus, I immediately spotted one of my nemeses - Dale of the "Rendevous," and then two or three more jerks, so I started whistling various musical themes, and I kept it up all the way to school. Just let anybody mess with me!
I also carried one of those big brown soft leather briefbags that fold together at the top. It was much more energy efficient than the fashion of carrying a stack of books braced against one's body. However, it was different. So, it immediately became a target, and literally ten or twenty times a day, someone would sneak up behind my desk and snatch it away. This made it very difficult for me to concentrate on the lesson, of course.
Another typical incident came in algebra class, where the kid behind me - Milton, much larger than I, thought it great fun to whack me accross the side of my head with a book whenever I became engrossed in the teacher's presentation. And I mean solid whacks. Like BANG!. I knew that he was an associate of several other bullies who hung out in the halls waiting to casually punch out kids who acted the least bit intelligent, and I was afraid of the consequences, but finally I had had enough. I spotted the book coming and tried to stab Milton in the hand with my fountain pen (I used a pen for everything - mistakes were not my style.). As I vigorously stabbed backwards in his direction several times, I failed to note, not having eyes in the back of my head, that the ink was flying out... All over Milton's pristine trademark white dress shirt... After class, of course, Milton challenged me to a fight. I told him where to go and that I would be happy to put him in jail.
To illustrate the unbelievable low-life mentality at Armuchee, here are a three typical examples:
The biology teacher was also the football coach. He had actually played semi-pro for a little while. How he had graduated from college - or even high-school - is still a mystery, even with the free pass that athletes typically get. He informed us that evolution could not possibly work because who had ever seen a bluebird mate with a blackbird. Case solved. End of story. He thought that chickens got pregnant from something in their food, not the usual way, which caused one of the smarter farm kids (not all of whom were dummies, by a long shot.) to almost fall out of his desk in hysterics.
The agriculture teacher thought that teaching consisted of forcing the students to trace hundreds of detailed pictures of plants from their textbooks. He also specialized in physically abusing his students, in fact was famous for it.
At one point, the bullies got into my locker and cut holes in my brand new pant's seats. I didn't notice, of course, and wondered why all the girls were tittering as I got on the bus that afternoon. My mother was outraged, as she had just bought those pants, and went to the principal, who apparently was incapable of listening, as he concluded that the bullies had urinated on the pants, not slashed them. So, he called a meeting of the entire male student body and told us a story about how some guy on a road-work detail in the Army had urinated on him while he was digging a ditch and how he had beat-up the guy. That was it - the entire content of his story and the moral for the meeting...
Because of the problems of which I was a common denominator, the faculty at Armuchee did not even consider allowing me to apply for the Governor's Honors Program. A year later, however, after I finally managed to get transferred to the top public academic high school - East Rome High - I was selected to go in both English and Chemistry. The next year I was Star Student, scoring almost 1500 on the SAT, and graduated near top of my class. So there, you idiots!
And the football coach? My history teacher - Mr. Muschamp - at East Rome was also football coach there; however, he was at the extreme end of a spectrum from the idiot at Armuchee. I suspect that Coach Muschamp was the smartest teacher at East Rome High, in fact. He championed football as a way to get kids into college, but in his history classes, he constantly added interesting content to the required text, and was constantly suggesting really interesting reading to students such as myself who had a real interest in history. At some point, East Rome played Armuchee, and afterwards I found Coach Muschamp musing in amazement over the fact that the Armuchee coach did not even know the basic rules of the game. He had tried to discuss something with him, and could not believe that an actual coach could be utterly ignorant of basic football rules and procedures.
