Happy Birthday Marine Corps!

Yay! Here's a formation run cadence I remember from my time in the Marines, back in the mid-1990s:


And here's one I made up to the same tune:

Yellow smiley faces on a paper strip
I'm gonna go on an acid trip!
Stand up, stumble around, melt through the floor
Seeing shit I ain't never seen before
Look at all the colors
Psychadelic colors
I love all the colors
But I'll fail the piss test!

Something like that... anyways.

To all my fellow Devil Dogs, past and present... HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

Oh, my wonderful readers, how I love you!

Sorry I haven't been posting much lately... unless you've been a little annoyed at my previous daily postings, in which case I'm sorry that I'm going to be posting more frequently again. It has been a pretty rough couple of weeks for me, school-wise.

I've put out the call before, and didn't get much or even any result, but I'm going to try again in a slightly different way:

If you read and enjoy my blog, can you leave a quick comment letting me know why? If you feel up to it, let me know what sort of things you'd like to see in the future. I'm not just doing this for me... I can talk to myself just fine without all the typing.

Anyhoo, the next week is going to be pretty exciting. I've got a nightmarish history test to take, but otherwise I'm good on that score. My wife is going to be out of town from Thursday through Sunday, which normally would mean lots of drinking, but this time will probably just mean eating the sort of foods that my wife doesn't like. I'm going to make a pot of ridiculous chili, and probably write a whole post about it with pictures.

There's going to be a post against Republicans, and another against religious people. Maybe something about my childhood, and an explanation of the universe and how it all works. Possibly, if you're lucky I'll post some guitar playing, and if you're really lucky I'll forget to post it after all... it isn't the most pleasant sounding thing in the world.

So, readers... things are going to be fun this week!

Had a terrible day...

... maybe I'll talk about it tomorrow. I'm hunting for a new shrink to write my prescriptions and the hunt goes badly.

In the meanwhile, I didn't get a chance to cook dinner before my wife got home. She just ate some cereal, and I was trying to figure out what to have. I remembered that I had some cans of chili in the car, that I bought for the canned food drive that my history teacher is doing, and that she'd giving extra credit for. I need the extra credit, and so I bought the cans this morning. My wife and I had a whole conversation about it... that she didn't remember.

Anyhoo, I say to her "maybe I'll just grab a can of chili out of the car." She looks at me like I'm a retard, and I kind of start saying "you know, we talked about it this morning..." at which point she says "What do you have a can of chili in your car for? Is it like an emergency supply of chili?" We both got a big laugh out of that... and I needed it, big time.

School is getting weird...

Yeah. Took two tests today. I don't know what I got on the precalculus test, but I know I did well and I have a cushion of about 24 extra credit points. I would have to get a 75 in order for my test average to drop below 100%. The trig test, that I was actually worried about, I wound up getting 100 on after the extra credit was added to it. That puts my current average in the class at just a hair under 99%. I got back the papers I turned in two weeks ago. I got another A(she only gives letter grades) in Lit, and a 98 on my history research paper, to go with the 99 I got on the first test. I have a history test on Thursday, and by my math(which is fucking AWESOME, in case you skimmed over the beginning up there) every point I get above an 82 is a point I can get below an 82 on the final. My econ class is a breeze since it is mostly math, I got a 100% on the first quiz.

All in all, it looks like I've got a lock on another 4.0 GPA. My classmates, especially in trig? Not so much.

Because of the miracles of modern technology, I can see my grades on the online trig quizzes and my test scores as the teacher enters them into the system. I can also see the approximate grades my classmates are getting, and how I rank compared to the class average and individual students on each quiz and test. Mind you, it is all anonymous: all I see is how many people scored in each 5-point range from 0-100, not individual names or exact scores. So, I know that 5 people, including myself, scored at or over 100% on today's quiz. I can also see the class average.

The class average on today's test was a whopping 58%

To be completely fair, there were five scores in the 0-5% range, which means that five people probably just didn't take the test(let's hope!) but still! More than half of the class who actually took the test got a D or F. Of course, about a third of the class failed all of the online quizzes... and you get two tries!! The funny part is that the teacher goes out of his way to point out that he's bored and lonely during his office hours. The class is pretty full most days, which means that people are attending, learning nothing, not asking questions, not taking the quizzes until 11:30 the night before the test, not doing the homework, not doing ANYTHING but sitting there taking up fucking space.

Shit. I would sleep in, as long as I was failing that badly! That's the part I don't understand. because of the modern technology, the teacher can see who is taking the quizzes as the material is taught in class or waiting until the last possible moment, who is taking their time and who is finishing the tests so fast that they must be just making random guesses. He knows who is coming by his office for help and making an effort, and who is just wasting time. I think some of these kids actually believe that if their attendance is good enough, the teacher won't notice how little work they've done, and will give them a passing grade out of the kindness of his heart.

I've talked to the teacher outside of class. He's a decent guy, cares about teaching and likes math. He also has ZERO kindness in his heart for people who aren't working as hard to learn as he is to teach. Good. He's going to fail half of the class, and no bad student evaluations from the losers are going to carry any weight compared to the cold hard statistics he's been collecting on his students. Since the people who are passing are the ones who take their quizzes early, take their time with them, make BOTH attempts at the quiz if they get a low score, and come ask questions when they need help, the rest of the class is shit out of luck.

That makes me really happy... FAIL THEM! FAIL THEM ALL!!!!!

24 Hours of Horror!!!

It will be Halloween in about 11 minutes. I'm not going to bed. I'm going to stay up and watch horror movies for 24 straight hours, and post quick reviews of each movie as I go. Let's see how long I can make it, and how incoherent I get as it goes.

First up? Phantasm! Wooooo!!!

****Update****

45 minutes... that's all I could take. I remember that movie being really good when I was a kid. Now? Not so much.