For those curious about the exploding taxi anecdote:
Like a lot of kids in urban public schools in those days, I walked to school and had to line up in the schoolyard with my class when a bell rang to let us inside at the start of the day. Public school's resemblance to prison structure is beyond uncanny.
The night before the morning in question, someone had apparently stolen a cab (most cab drivers in NYC are private individuals that buy very expensive "medallions" from the city that allow them to operate cabs, so cabs are often parked in someone's home driveway rather than at a cab company's garage), taken it for a joyride, and, as is often the case, decided to destroy the evidence. They drove it through a huge gap in the chainlink fence surrounding our schoolyard that had been there for years, torched it, and left it there. By the morning, the fire department was still milling around the smoldering wreck and bits had scattered all across the yard, so when kids arrived at school we were all lined up on the sidewalk and handball courts instead and gawked at this monument to urban life.
Interesting timing. I’m in my 50s, always wanted to write but never stuck with it due to the usual stupid reasons (I’ll embarrass myself if I put myself out there, maybe I suck…etc). Lately I feel the NEED to write, to communicate, almost like a religious calling. I have notebooks filled with observations about humans during the past 3 years, the govts, satirical drawings (I can not draw), mental health, quantum mechanics….and how all of this somehow ties together. My whole world is different now because I woke up -not to just the lies of the world but the lies in my personal life. I believe I was mentally ill in the sense that I operated completely from a bogus premise that I had no personal power. I allowed morons to call the shots and shape how I felt and most importantly, and this is key- I woke up to the fact that I was hurting myself out of habit. I was used to being hurt (abusive childhood too) and I subconsciously created situations in my life to continue the pain. I was pretty damn good at it too. Anyway, I’ve been wondering if maybe I should compile all the ideas and drawings and just put it out there somehow, but i haven’t been able to figure out what bizarre genre it belonged to. The whole theme of it is that I recognize mental illness in society because i recognized it in myself. Society on the whole behaved like I used to. Captured brain, not seeing things as they really are. Every day I think “maybe today I’ll get the guts to put myself out there…” but don’t because I say “I’m nobody! Can one person really change the world?” And I asked the universe to give me a sign if I should do it, and now I am reading this.
Made me think of my late adolescence and teenage years when my main inspirations were the Furry Freak Bros of ZAP Comics and Abbie Hoffman's "Steal This Book" (... which I did indeed steal... ) and Jerry Rubin's "Amerika"... and to think that now Amazon has "The Complete Zap Comix Boxed Set" available for $750.00... Never mind Jerry's transformation from Yippie to Yuppie... Abbie is no doubt spinning in his grave.
Your recommendations hold weight. Purchased immediately, during a 4am bout with insomnia. Now next time I can't sleep, I'll have something to read! I'm hoping this book will help remind me I'm not alone. I've always been a little counterculture, but in a weird niche Catholic rebel sort of way. (Like when all my friends were on the pill and sleeping around in high school, I eschewed dumb teenage boys. Then I got married young and had lots of kids and avoided the public school system by homeschooling them. So like different than my neighbors, but not punk rock different.) But since 2020, I've felt like an alien in a strange land. Who were all these Stepford Wives, with their glazed, crazed eyes glaring at me over their useless cloth masks? Why was I, a middle-aged mom, the only one in my entire town with a set of balls? I needed/need the united non-compliance crowd, from all walks of life. It's still lonely out here because I can't unsee the insanity that lies just below the surface of the supposed return to "normal." They're all lizard people to me now.
There are two types of teachers: one is those that become it because they are insane and seek to use teaching and the (theoretical) control and authority being a teacher is supposed to bring you (Ha-ha as Nelson Muntz would say).
The other are those that go insane from working as teachers. That's me by the way, worked my way into a full-blown Combat Psychosis as PTSD was called here before it was labelled like some abbreviation from a fetish-zine. Being assaulted at work, stabbed, having to save a female colleague from getting raped by four teenaged arab boys, being "sent to the principal's office" for the offence of telling a student to shut up or leave the classroom, not participating in the mandatory voluntary school Pride parade, and much worse things might have helped.
As for books, the more you get a kid to read books- physical books! - or even comics if they are from before 1995, the smarter the kid will get within the genetical limits of intelligence (if we stick to IQ at least).
Especially the classics with their far more advanced grammar, sentence/text-structure and more obscure phraseology. Starting with the Iliad and working ones way forward from there, so to speak.
Burning cars... we never burned them. We sometimes filled the exhaust-pipe with styrofoam and/or golf balls, and then plugged it with a potato jammed in with a stick.
Sometimes nothing happened. Sometimes the car wouldn't run. And sometimes the potato would shoot out with a roar followed by a bluish flame and wads of burning liquid styrofoam.
For those curious about the exploding taxi anecdote:
Like a lot of kids in urban public schools in those days, I walked to school and had to line up in the schoolyard with my class when a bell rang to let us inside at the start of the day. Public school's resemblance to prison structure is beyond uncanny.
The night before the morning in question, someone had apparently stolen a cab (most cab drivers in NYC are private individuals that buy very expensive "medallions" from the city that allow them to operate cabs, so cabs are often parked in someone's home driveway rather than at a cab company's garage), taken it for a joyride, and, as is often the case, decided to destroy the evidence. They drove it through a huge gap in the chainlink fence surrounding our schoolyard that had been there for years, torched it, and left it there. By the morning, the fire department was still milling around the smoldering wreck and bits had scattered all across the yard, so when kids arrived at school we were all lined up on the sidewalk and handball courts instead and gawked at this monument to urban life.
Interesting timing. I’m in my 50s, always wanted to write but never stuck with it due to the usual stupid reasons (I’ll embarrass myself if I put myself out there, maybe I suck…etc). Lately I feel the NEED to write, to communicate, almost like a religious calling. I have notebooks filled with observations about humans during the past 3 years, the govts, satirical drawings (I can not draw), mental health, quantum mechanics….and how all of this somehow ties together. My whole world is different now because I woke up -not to just the lies of the world but the lies in my personal life. I believe I was mentally ill in the sense that I operated completely from a bogus premise that I had no personal power. I allowed morons to call the shots and shape how I felt and most importantly, and this is key- I woke up to the fact that I was hurting myself out of habit. I was used to being hurt (abusive childhood too) and I subconsciously created situations in my life to continue the pain. I was pretty damn good at it too. Anyway, I’ve been wondering if maybe I should compile all the ideas and drawings and just put it out there somehow, but i haven’t been able to figure out what bizarre genre it belonged to. The whole theme of it is that I recognize mental illness in society because i recognized it in myself. Society on the whole behaved like I used to. Captured brain, not seeing things as they really are. Every day I think “maybe today I’ll get the guts to put myself out there…” but don’t because I say “I’m nobody! Can one person really change the world?” And I asked the universe to give me a sign if I should do it, and now I am reading this.
Thanks for this. You are exactly right: I tell Dad jokes and I'm well aware of it and I still do it anyway. It's a problem.
Made me think of my late adolescence and teenage years when my main inspirations were the Furry Freak Bros of ZAP Comics and Abbie Hoffman's "Steal This Book" (... which I did indeed steal... ) and Jerry Rubin's "Amerika"... and to think that now Amazon has "The Complete Zap Comix Boxed Set" available for $750.00... Never mind Jerry's transformation from Yippie to Yuppie... Abbie is no doubt spinning in his grave.
I just told Conspiracy Sarah that she was my new favorite writer and there you go IMMEDIATELY making a liar out of me. Sigh.
Your recommendations hold weight. Purchased immediately, during a 4am bout with insomnia. Now next time I can't sleep, I'll have something to read! I'm hoping this book will help remind me I'm not alone. I've always been a little counterculture, but in a weird niche Catholic rebel sort of way. (Like when all my friends were on the pill and sleeping around in high school, I eschewed dumb teenage boys. Then I got married young and had lots of kids and avoided the public school system by homeschooling them. So like different than my neighbors, but not punk rock different.) But since 2020, I've felt like an alien in a strange land. Who were all these Stepford Wives, with their glazed, crazed eyes glaring at me over their useless cloth masks? Why was I, a middle-aged mom, the only one in my entire town with a set of balls? I needed/need the united non-compliance crowd, from all walks of life. It's still lonely out here because I can't unsee the insanity that lies just below the surface of the supposed return to "normal." They're all lizard people to me now.
You voluntarily did a book-report!
>ahem<
There are two types of teachers: one is those that become it because they are insane and seek to use teaching and the (theoretical) control and authority being a teacher is supposed to bring you (Ha-ha as Nelson Muntz would say).
The other are those that go insane from working as teachers. That's me by the way, worked my way into a full-blown Combat Psychosis as PTSD was called here before it was labelled like some abbreviation from a fetish-zine. Being assaulted at work, stabbed, having to save a female colleague from getting raped by four teenaged arab boys, being "sent to the principal's office" for the offence of telling a student to shut up or leave the classroom, not participating in the mandatory voluntary school Pride parade, and much worse things might have helped.
As for books, the more you get a kid to read books- physical books! - or even comics if they are from before 1995, the smarter the kid will get within the genetical limits of intelligence (if we stick to IQ at least).
Especially the classics with their far more advanced grammar, sentence/text-structure and more obscure phraseology. Starting with the Iliad and working ones way forward from there, so to speak.
Burning cars... we never burned them. We sometimes filled the exhaust-pipe with styrofoam and/or golf balls, and then plugged it with a potato jammed in with a stick.
Sometimes nothing happened. Sometimes the car wouldn't run. And sometimes the potato would shoot out with a roar followed by a bluish flame and wads of burning liquid styrofoam.