These Are the Days

Posted by D. Schwa at 12:01 PM | Permalink | Comments

Starting with the alleged student plot to shoot up Green Bay East High School, there has been a recent rash of copy cat school violence. As an educator in training, inevitably you get to hear a ton of opinions regarding the subject. I thought I would sit down & drop a little of what I have been thinking of the subject.

When I 1^st heard of the situation I thought, “Green Bay?” I suppose the people of Littleton, Colorado thought the same thing nearly 10 years ago. It was shocking. In fact, last semester I taught at the middle school 2 blocks away & made frequent trips to Green Bay East. But is it that shocking? These kids, & they are kids, are always painted out to be these sick twisted individuals far from mainstream kids. The problem is that they aren’t. I am not saying plotting to kill all your classmates is ok, but look at it from their perspective.

Try getting picked on, mocked, singled out, & bullied for 10-12 years & see where you are. Top that with parents & teachers that turn their head to the problem. Add to that, the jocks (A stereotype with a lot of truth.) & others perpetrating these actions against you not only go unpunished, but are hailed as role models that are the ideal youth should look to, it gets kind of scary. What recourse do these kids have? A rational adult doesn’t come up with something such as this, but these are not adults. These are kids seeking approval, acceptance, or at the very least just to be let the hell alone. They have become completely disenfranchised from the system & have no way of assimilating themselves.

What really scares me about the whole situation is that these kid’s lives are over. They will never be productive members of society, they will never experience a ‘normal’ life. At 17 they are done. How is this justice? When this came up in 1 of my ed classes, the 1^st question to be posed to our instructor was , “How much time are they going to serve?” & “Can they get the parents?” Are you kidding me? How about, “How did these kids get to this point?” or “What can be done to prevent this in the future?” A problem with America today is that we are always looking for the proverbial head on a platter. How about we concern ourselves with helping these students & preventing it from happening in the 1^st place?

I rarely just complain about an issue, I offer solutions. It is just a part of the service I provide for you. An aspect that completely pissed me off about all this is what triggered the plan. One of the kids had recently ended on on-line relationship. 1^st of all, if you are scoping out babes on the internet, I don’t care who or what your reasons, you are a douche. If you have a ‘relationship’ on the internet, I hate to break it to you but it is not a relationship. In some fashion, a relationship has to be tangible (& reaching for the role of Bounty after a saucy IM convo is not tangible.). Just because some 45 year old living in his mom’s basement can talk dirty to you while he pretends he is a 13 year old girl does not allow you to say you are in a relationship. I actually understand a kid wanting to shoot up a bunch of prick classmates before I can see someone saying they are engaged in an internet relationship. In any event, a lot of this violence crap is triggered by kids either breaking off relationships (real or not) or being shut down before they get anywhere. Here is my solution, let’s chemically castrate all students until they graduate college. It will be cheap, save a few coat hanger abortions & a few more ruined lives. Maybe college students will leave college with a degree instead of a 2 page resume of venereal diseases. Just a thought…

The next example of school violence frankly sickened me to the core. A random 40 something year old guy roles into a rural Colorado high school & pulls a gun on a classroom. After releasing students until he had a few adolescent females remaining, he began systematically sexually assaulting them. This is how sick the guy was, he was prepared with a backpack full of KY Jelly, Dildos, & other sex toys. After raping the students for a few hours, the SWAT team decided they would enter. This backfired a little when the gunman blew one of the girls’ heads off before he took his own life.

In all honesty, what can you say about this guy? This is the type of person that gets to hell & Stan kicks him in the balls. How does someone like this get on the streets? There is no way this was his 1^st offense, not a chance. Here’s an idea, if someone even remotely touches a child in a sexual way, they are castrated & given life in prison. These bastards get 2 months probation & are back out on the street re-offending. I am 100% for 2^nd chances & rehabilitation, 1000% for it. However, it has been proven over & over sexual offending cannot be rehabilitated. 1 strike, you are out if you touch a child. Anyone want to argue that?

Last week brought the most shocking example of school violence anyone could have imagined. A milkman broke into an Amish school house, again armed with KY & sex toys, & decided to tie up 10 girls & systematically execute them. 1^st of all, having worked in grocery stores for the previous 9 years, I have known a lot of milkmen. They by-in-large are all creepy. It is a box to check on their application… Valid driver’s license, check… active child molester & overall creep, check… I have no idea what it is. Do they transport bodies at night in their refrigerated truck? All I know is that milkmen are creepy, scientific fact.

What was so extraordinary about this act to me was that it was done to the Amish. In my mind, it magnified the severity of the offense 15 fold. They are Amish, yea, Amish. Good people, shun modern society’s conveniences, preach life of simplicity & forgiveness, Amish. As I read more about their reaction to the crimes, I was overcome with emotion. They are amazing people, absolutely amazing people.

The funeral procession for the girls brought them past the killer’s house. As they buried 4 little girls, a grandfather was observed mentoring a group of young boys regarding not hating the man & forgiving him. They invited the man’s wife to the funeral, only days after this enormous tragedy. It is all almost too much to comprehend. What blew me away was that half of the 70 or so people who attended the killer’s funeral were Amish, yes, half. So often we are taught to be the bigger person, treat your neighbor as you would want to be treated, and forgiveness. Days after experiencing something few could fully comprehend, they had it completely in perspective & had fully forgiven the man. I cannot express in words the respect I have for these people. I cannot even begin to express it. I do not care who your god is or what your religion is, if you believe in something, this is the way you are supposed to react to tragedy. I thank God every night when I go to sleep there are people like these in the world. I absolutely mean that.

Out of all this insanity came the idea for having guns in the classroom to protect our students. The idea was proposed by Wisconsin State Rep. Alan Lasee of DePere & has garnered much national attention. At 1^st I was all in for this plan. I actually think putting guns in the right people’s handing would deter this type of activity. The more I thought about it, a larger & larger hole began to manifest itself in the plan. Taking ed classes, you realize there are a lot of people that should not be teaching. We have all had at least 5 or 6 of these gems. Sure they can pass all the required tests & somehow meander their way through the hiring process, however they simply should not be anywhere near America’s youth. The likelihood of these people ruining guns in the classroom for all of us is very likely. They would be the teachers that would shoot warning shots to quiet a class or pass around their glock for show & tell. A side note: If you cannot name someone that is one of the teachers described, in all likelihood you are one of the people.

I have written so much I am not going to even try to sum this up. Comments would be much appreciated (Click below) & soemone come up with a better title for thsi post. Also I will appeal to everyone that had previously written blogs on a semi-regular basis to commence again, you provide much entertainment that many dearly miss. I will leave you with soem life advice…

“Drop off a pizza at the local police station. Top it with pepperoni & loose gravel.”
-Mario Digiorgio-

Currently Playing…
“Remember When”
By Alan Jackson

Posted by D. Schwa at 3:08 AM | Permalink | Comments

I will start this blog by saying this was the defining moment of me being a badass. After tonight, I get my membership card. My girlfriend will attest to all of this, it all happened.

So Amanda (Link is to her MySpace.) & I are out at the bars in DePere. We love going out in DePere. I always run into a few classmates I know, the people are tolerable, & we always seem to have a great time. After rolling out to a couple bars, the two of us decided to hit one last bar before heading back home. We decided on a biker bar just off the bridge. I am sure you are thinking, Dustin + biker bar = a bad idea. You are right.

So the two of us roll up to the bar, grab a couple Budweiser’s, & decide to grab a table close to the door. After a few minutes of delightful conversation, an enormous man came over to hit on my girlfriend. When I say enormous, I mean dude was Fat Bastard’s twin brother (he really resembled him.), but was literally 6’6”, & around 40 years old.

So how do you handle this? Dating a very attractive woman, you learn to blow this shit off. In fact, just about every time we go out we end up with a creepy story of a guy hitting on her (She describes me as ‘freakishly secure’ in those situations.). It is not a big deal at all, it comes with the territory. Amanda deals with it by being friendly, introducing her boyfriend, & hoping creepy guy disappears. It is usually fairly effective. After about 5-10 minutes of convo, dude realizes he is getting nowhere & starts playing with the jukebox behind us.

This is where I come into the story. You see, I simply tell people what I think & joke at virtually all situations. I am fairly good at reading people & situations, so I tend to not really worry on what is going on around me. I also have another issue, I literally fear nothing. This can be good & bad, it almost got me killed tonight (It really isn’t that I don’t fear anything, it is that I always know things are going to work out.). As soon as the guy left I start making jokes pertaining to him looking like the abominable snowman, how much worse he would smell if he didn’t shower, & his general lack of hygiene. When I realized he was listening in on the convo, I made sure I gave him a healthy wink. I then made it clear to Amanda that had he touched her I would have put the broken end of my Bud bottle through his jugular. I even made sure to give a visual. He took a lot of exception to this.

Dude started screaming at me. “I gots stabbed in prrrrrrison 3 times in the neckckckck! I gots stabbed 3weeeeeeez, times!” I began to laugh, “Oh yea tough guy?” He then began screaming louder how he got stabbed & gave us visuals of where. I laughed louder. “You think you could take me down?!?” I responded, “I do.” This just sent him into a rage.

He proceeded with “I will fucking kill you!” I responded, “Really? O, you’re quite the big guy.” Dude, just kept getting more pissed off. I think he realized I wasn’t going to back down so he began to turn to go back to his bar stool, all while cursing at me. I made sure to drop a, “Go sit on your bar stool tough guy.” At this point Amanda just wanted to finish our beers & go. Of course I had stay. It probably worked out in my favor I didn’t drop, “How was the ass sex in prison?” or “How is the hepatitis B?” That may have pushed him over the edge.

Knowing the guy was staring me down, I made sure to drop some PDA on my g/f as well as re-enacting the beat down I would bestow upon him with my hand gestures. Apparently I am a pretty good actor because he knew exactly what I was saying.

As we finished our beers, we made the decision to take off. I grabbed the empties off the table & put them on the bar & made for the door. Amanda grabbed my sweatshirt & started yelling at me, “Let’s go! Let’s go!”

I looked back to see the huge dirtball screaming at me. In a split decision I reentered the bars & stood with my hands up & flashed a huge smile his way. When he started making his way towards me, Amanda grabbed my sweatshirt & ripped me out of the bar.

It has been a while since I have been involved in anything so this was a lot of fun. The dude could have reached out & killed me, however I was pretty confident in my ability to stab & swing a bar stool. Had he jumped on me, he probably gets off 2 or 3 punches before the rest of the bar jumps on & I am out of trouble. It was really win-win. The only shame was that Miah or my brother were not there. Drunk Miah is “Likes to fight guy.” You know, that guy that will take his friend’s back in anything. My brother just likes to fight. Had either one been there, I would have pushed the guy to swing. That said, my g/f made a good point at the end of everything, “Hun, obviously he was in prison for a reason.” True, but he got shanked 3 times, something reserved for douche bags that molest their nieces & nephews. To hell with him. Anyway…my next blog will be on the recent school shootings, eagerly anticipate.

Currently Playing…
Tim McGraw & The Dancehall Doctors
By Tim McGraw

“Tiny Dancer”

Posted by D. Schwa at 6:15 PM | Permalink | Comments