[Music| Phantom Planet - So I Fall Again]

According to my Simpsons 2002 Day-By-Day Calender, today is Arbor Day. There's a wood chipper outside my house, hastily chopping up discarded sticks. I saw someone throwing out a beautiful wood table on the bus ride. Kids were trying to knock the branches off trees today at recess. Happy Arbor Day.

When I was in second or third grade, five or six years ago, a kid stuck his head out a bus window to yell at some friends who just got off the bus. The bus driver didn't notice, and started to drive off from the stop. The boy's head hit a tree and detatched. Just days later, it was ordered that every tree in bus loading zones at public schools would be chopped down. My school has a big, beautiful oak tree in front of it. I remember sitting in circle, looking out the window, and seeing these workers prepare to chop it down. A couple kids in my class wanted to go out there and protest. There were already a few lonely protesters from the middle school outside protesting, but the number of protesters was equal to the number of workers. Soon, more and more middle schoolers came out and made signs and put them on the tree and whatnot. The news stations were called to come over. My teacher said that we couldn't go out there, but then Dawn, who was the principal at the time, got on the PA system and told everyone to go outside. The workers were rather dumbfounded. Soon, a good part of the lower portion of the tree was covered with signs and kids were surrounding the tree. Other kids were yelling at the workers, but staying peaceful. After a bit of this, the workers gave up and left. The tree was saved.

Call my school a "group of tree-huggers" (and people did) if you wish (even though the majority of the kids who were really protesting are long-gone), but chopping down trees doesn't keep kids from sticking their heads out windows. And at what point does it stop? Note that the kid who was decapitated stuck his head out the window at a stop, not in front of a school. I have always wondered, if they did chop down the trees in front of the school, when do they get to chopping down the No Parking signs that plauge the neighborhood?

Well, in the end they came up with a new plan of creating a new bus rule, extending the nine rules to ten: Bus windows may not be open over halfway. Most busses got a little red line inbetween the windows so kids could know how far half was (which is really quite a statement about the intelligence of America's youth, but sla). But I look up at this rule on the list of bus rules now, and wonder why it was nessicary. No, there haven't been any more decapitated kids. But there already was a rule meant to prevent kids from getting hurt by sticking body parts out the window: Do not stick your head, arms, legs or any other body part out the window. Of course, this rule was looked at, and some people pinned the blame on the bus driver for not realizing the kid had his head out the window. This was shortly before that one girl jumped out the emergency door because she had missed her stop, and she killed herself when she hit the road going at such speeds, and that brought even more bus driver blaming. But personally, in both situations, I pin the blame on the kids for being an idiots.

[Music| John Mayer - Love Soon]

Well. I went on a field trip today to the Festival of Nations, an educational event in neighborhing St. Paul revolving around teaching foolish American kids new cultures and experiences. Mind you that the group I was with consisted a Bosnian and a Somali, but anyway. Disappointment ensued as I went to the Israeli booth and asked the people there their opinions on the Palestinians and they responded that they could not answer those kinds of questions. Even more disappointment ensued when I realized that there was, indeed, no Afghanistan booth. There was a Pakistan booth, but I decided not to interrogate them on the topic of terrorism.

But why can't they answer Palestinian questions? It is a pressing current issue, and the point of this festival is for people to be educated. We're learning about it in school from teachers who no doubt have their own opinion on the incident, which just might be sent into our heads, thus biasing us to one side, but we can't learn it from someone who is very familiar with the situation? Are they not allowed to speak of it because the people who run this event don't want the kids biased to the Israeli side? Is there that little faith in the students that we can think for ourselves? Alas, apparently so. The only acceptable questions were what kind of government they have or what money they use. Wow, amazingly educational. Except I already know what kind of government they have. I haven't, however, had much exposure to opinions of Israeli's face-to-face. Oh well. I just wish I would have quizzed China on that whole US plane incident a year ago.

[Music| Me First And The Gimme Gimmes - Fire And Rain]

Today was special. One middle school teacher down, four more to go. I've spent three years in the middle school, the most you can spend at my school. During my three years, there is one teacher who has taught me more than any other teacher. Jay, the Social Studies teacher. His class has always been my favorite, even if things didn't start well in his class. My first middle school class ever was a class that was team-taught by him and John, the English teacher, and it lasted two hours instead of the standard one hour. This also ment there were fifty-something kids in the room instead of 25 or so. I had come to class a bit late, and the only spot left was on the big bleachers Jay has in his room. Okay. Fine. I was actually planning on sitting there in the first place (in the other times I've peeked in the room before I had thought how cool those bleachers were). However, I had gotten the bottom step of a "corner" piece of bleacher (the bleachers are split into five or six different triangular parts, and the corner pieces are the smallest of them all. The bottom step of a corner piece is a wedge of wood the size of a full-grown man's hand). Pleasent. Two hours of having my knees up to my chest and my bum aching like never before. From that day on, I vowed that the plastic chairs were the way to go. Sure, the couch is great, but it's not me. The plastic chairs are me.

And now I look back on those first few classes and realize how new I was to it all. Jay always put selected news stories on the board, and would have a news quiz every week. He would bullet the news items with a >. In my first class, however, I thought they were little 7's, referring to the day of the month the story occured on. It took me about two weeks to figure it out.

As I mentioned that today's class was my last class with him and that I think I held the record for most classes with him (11), he said "Oh dear, what have I done to you? You've been exposed to dangerous levels of me!" What has he done to me? *Points to the title of this site* This is what. Jay, thank you for making me culturally and politically aware. And it doesn't stop at this site. Probably half the MP3s on my playlist wouldn't be on there if it weren't for Jay. Have you changed me? You have no idea.

*Sings* Oh I've seen fire and I've seen rain, I've seen sunny days that I thought would never end. I've seen lonely times when I could not find a friend, but I always thought I'd see you again ...

Oh, I can finally feel proud of my little site here. I ... Have ... A ... COMMENTING SYSTEM! Hooray!

Of course, it'll be a good five minutes wasted if no one ever comments, but sla.

School brought in the orchestra today. It's become a tradition over the years I've been at my school. And while the music was probably better than ever, behavior was at an all time low. They had the room filled with kindergardners up to third graders or so, and then the entire middle school. You get two guesses to which group was behaving better, and it's not the eldest group. One thing I had noticed while scanning the audience was if I looked diagonal-down from me (we were on elevated bleachers), there were three totally different things going on:

Furthest down-diagonal from me was a first or second grader, having fun with the music and pretending he was a conductor.
In the middle was a group of middle school girls aware of what was going on, but paying minimal attention.
Nearest to me was a boy SLEEPING!!

And, as unfortunate as this is, the kid who was sleeping was the least disruptive out of the middle schoolers. Why is this? Why must any music without lyrics "suck"? Why must the death of Dave Thomas, a self-proclaimed burger flipper, be avenged more than former Beatle George Harrison? Why must anything unenjoyable be "gay"? Why must homosexuals be the scum of the Earth?

Frankly, I don't know the answer to any of these. I know of some things that cause this, yes, but why is it so effective? Anyone who knows the answer, please tell me before my head explodes trying to come up with an answer.

Not much time tonight; it's far past my bedtime.

It snowed today. After it was 92 degrees a week ago. Lileks has more on it.

Twins swept the Indians; The Minnesota Twins Website has more on that.

The Icon: Aerosmith special was excellent, except for one performance. Papa Roach did "Sweet Emotion". It started horrible, got a little better, and then fell right into the depths of song covering hell. You know the parts where Steven Tyler stops singing and the music plays loud and fast in "Sweet Emotion"? And Steven Tyler dances around with his microphone? The lead singer screwed up every moment like that. First of all, he didn't dance around at all. You have to do that. It's a must. But, perhaps worst of all, he sang through that part! And it wasn't even understandable. You don't do that. You let the music do the talking. I never did like Papa Roach anyway.