Creative Endeavors, The Home of BoxcarOkie.com

March 2, 2012

Email Of The Week.

Filed under: Blogging,Life,Oklahoma,random,Uncategorized — ldsrr91 @ 8:06 PM
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We watched high school principal Dennis Prager of Colorado , along with Sara Palin and Tom Brokaw on TV a couple of weeks ago….what a dynamic, down to earth speaker. Even though Palin and Brokaw were also guest speakers they did little but nod and agree with him.. This is the guy that should be running for President in 2012!A Speech Every American High School Principal Should Give.  This was written by Dennis Prager.

Higher Learning

To the students and faculty of our high school.  I am your new principal, and honored to be so. There is no greater calling than to teach young people.  I would like to apprise you of some important changes coming to our school. I am making these changes because I am convinced that most of the ideas that have dominated public education in America have worked against you, against your teachers and against our country.

First, this school will no longer honor race or ethnicity. I could not care less if your racial makeup is black, brown, red, yellow or white. I could not care less if your origins are African, Latin American, Asian or European, or if your ancestors arrived here on the Mayflower or on slave ships. The only identity I care about, the only one this school will recognize, is your individual identity — your character, your scholarship, your humanity. And the only national identity this school will care about is American.

This is an American public school, and American public schools were created to make better Americans. If you wish to affirm an ethnic, racial or religious identity through school, you will have to go elsewhere. We will end all ethnicity, race and non-American nationality-based celebrations. They undermine the motto of America , one of its three central values — e pluribus Unum, “from many, one.” And this school will be guided by America ‘s values. This includes all after-school clubs. I will not authorize clubs that divide students based on any identities. This includes race, language, religion, sexual orientation or whatever else may become in vogue in a society divided by political correctness.

Your clubs will be based on interests and passions, not blood, ethnic, racial or other physically defined ties. Those clubs just cultivate narcissism — an unhealthy preoccupation with the self — while the purpose of education is to get you to think beyond yourself. So we will have clubs that transport you to the wonders and glories of art, music, astronomy, languages you do not already speak, carpentry and more. If the only extracurricular activities you can imagine being interested in are those based on ethnic, racial or sexual identity, that means that little outside of yourself really interests you.

Second, I am uninterested in whether English is your native language. My only interest in terms of language is that you leave this school speaking and writing English as fluently as possible. The English language has united America ‘s citizens for over 200 years, and it will unite us at this school. It is one of the indispensable reasons this country of immigrants has always come to be one country.And if you leave this school without excellent English language skills, I would be remiss in my duty to ensure that you will be prepared to successfully compete in the American job market. We will learn other languages here — it is deplorable that most Americans only speak English –but if you want classes taught in your native language rather than in English, this is not your school.

Third, because I regard learning as a sacred endeavor, everything in this school will reflect learning’s elevated status. This means, among other things, that you and your teachers will dress accordingly. Many people in our society dress more formally for Hollywood events than for church or school. These people have their priorities backward. Therefore, there will be a formal dress code at this school.

Fourth, no obscene language will be tolerated anywhere on this school’s property — whether in class, in the hallways or at athletic events. If you can’t speak without using the f-word, you can’t speak.By obscene language I mean the words banned by the Federal Communications Commission, plus epithets such as “Nigger,” even when used by one black student to address another black, or “bitch,” even when addressed by a girl to a girlfriend. It is my intent that by the time you leave this school, you will be among the few your age to instinctively distinguish between the elevated and the degraded, the holy and the obscene.

Fifth, we will end all self-esteem programs. In this school, self-esteem will be attained in only one way — the way people attained it until decided otherwise a generation ago — by earning it.One immediate consequence is that there will be one valedictorian, not eight.Sixth, and last, I am reorienting the school toward academics and away from politics and propaganda. No more time will be devoted to scaring you about smoking and caffeine, or terrifying you about sexual harassment or global warming. No more semesters will be devoted to condom wearing and teaching you to regard sexual relations as only or primarily a health issue… There will be no more attempts to convince you that you are a victim because you are not white, or not male, or not heterosexual or not Christian.

We will have failed if any one of you graduates this school and does not consider him or herself inordinately lucky — to be alive and to be an American.  Now, please stand and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of our country. As many of you do not know the words, your teachers will hand them out to you.

As MasterCard is fond of saying ….. That is priceless.  What we have now, all this PC crap surely isn’t working, perhaps this is what we need? 

Getting back to basic’s.

OOO

January 27, 2012

My Favorite Animal

Filed under: Blogging,humor,Life,Oklahoma,random — ldsrr91 @ 5:26 AM
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Our teacher asked what my favorite animal was, and I said, “Fried chicken.” She said I wasn’t funny – but she couldn’t have been right, because everyone else laughed.

My parents told me to always tell the truth.

I did.

Fried chicken is my favorite animal.

Later on, I told my dad what happened, and he said my teacher was probably a member of PETA.  He said they love animals very much. I do, too. Especially chicken. Pork and beef.

Anyway, my teacher sent me to the principal’s office.

I told him what happened, and he laughed, too.

Then he told me not to do it again.

The next day in class my teacher asked me what my favorite ‘live’ animal was. I told her it was chicken. She asked me why, so I told her it was because you could make them into fried chicken. She sent me back to the principal’s office. He laughed, and told me not to do it again.

I don’t understand. My parents taught me to be honest, but my teacher doesn’t like it when I am.

Today, my teacher asked us to tell her what famous person we admire most. I told her, “Colonel Sanders.”

Guess where I am now…

If you would like to see a lovely slide-show presentation on an outstanding website that a lady has put together, please click here.

Find some time for family and immerse yourself in their love.  Bathe in all that is good in your life and savor the moment.  What is here today, could very well be gone tomorrow.

Have a great weekend.

OOO

November 22, 2011

S.O.S. Upside Down And In Trouble

Filed under: Life,Oklahoma,other,politics — ldsrr91 @ 9:56 AM
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My neighbor came over the other day and asked me, “Have you been drinking lately?” and I responded, “No.  Why?” and then he pointed at the flag outside my shop on the flagpole that was clearly flying upside down.

He then said, “Well, your flag is upside down.”

And I said, “Yeah, I know it.  It is an International sign of distress on the High Sea’s, if you are in trouble you rig up your standard in the upside down position.”

So clearly confused and caught off guard, he then says, “What in the #$#@##!! are you talking about?”

And I said, “I don’t know if you have noticed it or not, but this country is clearly in trouble.”

Welcome to my world, a world where some people still like me, even if I don’t smell like fresh rain.  We, as a race of people, a nation, need to get honest about all this, we are in dire straits, 49 million people in this country are on food stamps, one out of every six do not have anything to eat.  We are not educating our young and our industries are being shipped overseas.

We are in trouble.  

Hello, my name is Don, I am addicted to The Big Bang Theory and I freely admit that I never had my science project in on time.  It might  have been because the nature of the instruction and the assessments often reflect more of an ability to memorize facts and sit attentively than truly actually engage in science.  Although I am a graduate of High School, I cannot forge nor change your future, you have to do that.

I would also at this juncture like to admit that most of the time, when they are discussing quantum physics and all that other universal stuff on television, I haven’t a clue as to what they are talking about.  Yeah I know, what you are thinking that “he only watches that to gaze up the girl character Penny.”

Could be a sprinkling of truth in there too.

My science adventures in my now begotten youth, mainly consisted of being able to memorize things, not so much learn them.  A talent of sorts, but also a handicap later on in life, when students such as this are faced with “true science” further along in their academic careers they tend to get lost in the shuffle.

Memorizing instead of taking the time to learn they often find that they are under prepared for the creativity, analytical skills, and curiosity necessary to truly engage and be successful.  This why I watch the Big Bang Theory Boys & Girls, it is about as scientific as I am gonna get. (It also allows me to escape the everyday trials and tribulations of modern living)

Kind of sad, when you stop to think about it, most of the nation‘s youth are lacking in science skills, the Japanese, Germans, and others clearly are leading the way.  We seem to be fresh out of hero’s in our country.  The only people they have to emulate or look up to are sports figures and drug dealers.  This might be why they flock to the game-boy instead of the text book.

The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless.  There is a fine line between wrong and visionary, unfortunately, you have to be visionary in order to see it.

The flag, my flag, is going to continue to fly upside down until someone can point out a clear cut difference to me.

OOO

October 13, 2008

The Old Days

Filed under: Oklahoma,random,Recent,Uncategorized — ldsrr91 @ 3:52 AM
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Think back to when you were growing up in South Dakota or Nebraska or somewhere where three billion people have never been and times were just as tough.

When you had to, like my dad, walk 14 miles to school each day round trip, uphill BOTH ways on never a nice day, to a one-room school house.

This after he had milked twenty-seven cows, strung a mile of barbed wire and plowed two acres by flashlight behind Ol Rivers the family Mule.

You remember those days … don’tcha?

Every now and then I will remember them when my four year old grandchild climbs up in my lap and says “Tell me a story about the olden days Grandpa.” Then it all comes rushing back, the seat on a bucket in the high-chair-step-ladder in the kitchen, and the home style haircut that dad used to give me to save .75 cents.

A haircut that was so bad that it made me cry when the kids at school laughed at me the next day. The afternoon sitting at the kitchen table “writing my words” on the paper with big lines and a pencil.

Reading the newspaper to my mama when she cooked supper because my teacher sent a note home that said “Donnie isn’t reading very good, he needs a lot of work.” Learning how to do fractions and homework instead of going outside to play with the dog.

No daycare in the fifties … Back in those days … You raised YOUR kid. Someone else did not do it.  It was your JOB … It was expected of YOU.

Kids today have it good, they are too soft, and we are turning them into non functioning dummies. Video gaming, text messaging (which butchers the language brutally), and an age of convenient shortcuts. Cell phones, cheat sheets, calculators, computers.

The short road to oblivion.

In my 19 — none on your business — school photo album I see all the pictures of the generation that was going to change it all. Glancing thru my old classmates book I see seven future doctors, two Nobel Prize Winners, three preachers, two generals and one of the first female airline pilots. Missing are lying senators, presidents, bankrupt savings and loan officers, stock merchants, very few rotten apples in the entire bunch.

Why? Because they slapped the crap out of us in those days and they MADE US learn something, they forced us to take something with us on our journey thru puberty. If you were a problem, they didn’t cut you loose at the end of the day, you got detention. You paid for your sins.

They made us learn how to read.

It used to be “if you got into trouble at school, you were in trouble at home. And I mean BEFORE you got home” now days it just isn’t so. So now you know why eight out of ten American high school graduates cannot even make change for a dollar, because they never had the daylights’ beat out of them in the primary grades that is why. Why kids in Eastern/Western Europe, Japan and most of Asia kick our butts in just about any type of scholarly competition.

When you do not learn, then you are doomed to a lifetime of Anger Management classes at the local family health clinic, instead of being a productive citizen and family maker. Having virtually no education disables a kid before they even have a shot at the American Dream, that is, what is left of it these days.

We have a society being run increasing by dysfunctional illiterates and we have no one to blame but ourselves.  Our neglect of our young is now our curse

The sixties were very good to me, so therefore, I can understand our President who frequently speaks in terms of often-mocked malapropisms that could stem from dyslexia, or a lack of education in his youth. He certain seems to have his share of problems forming and processing words or sentences.

But when you stop to think about it, he doesn’t need to be big on language, he is after all from Texas.

So when he says something like: “We brung some dead deer parts that Cheney shot to Aunt Martha’s place and she showed us how to stew ‘em in this big pot and then we gorged ourselves on them to excess” that is wrong.

But it sounds much better than “bursting.”

In closing I must admit that I haven’t a clue on the use of the split infinitive, I might have known it at one time or another, but like I have said before, “The sixties were really good to me” and that is my only proffered excuse at this time.

Today I find myself thankful that I can read, I do have a command of the language, and I can thank my teachers, my parents for that. Also, I am just glad that my current social status in this life, doesn’t require me to have a “power vocabulary, do simple math, dress for success or to live in Texas.”

Got to go! I am late for my class on Pumpkin Carving for the Criminally Insane.

000

RELATED: Talkin The Talk

August 2, 2008

Heatin Up … Tax Free.

Filed under: Oklahoma,random,Recent,Uncategorized — ldsrr91 @ 5:37 PM
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Been an interesting week. I have experienced only two emotions and they were: “Joy and Indigestion.” Once again, my world is void of God’s and Hero’s, and in its place, I have one’s and zero’s. Such is bloggin.

Lot of flack this week about McSame’s commercials about the “Hollywood Elitist” attitude toward Obammer and all that. What a bunch of garbage. I mean who gives a rat’s patooie what Madonna, Cher, Brad Pitt or any of those Hollywood types have to say about anything. They are actors; some of them are hardly that, what they are not … are political experts on anything.

Why should the media care about what is most of the time, clearly an out of context celebrity comment. Why should this be considered news in the first place? Think about it. Acting is the most minor of all the gifts on the planet, Shirley Temple could do it when she was only four.

Personally I don’t really care if David Hasselhoff supports this candidate or the other. These people are actors, last I heard, so what is the big stink about. They have already run this presidential race into the ground anyway.

2nd of August, time for the annual local media blitz on “How Hot It Is!”

Every year at this time, the media in Oklahoma seems to concentrate on “how hot it is” and have you perhaps noticed. This is the time of the year when they send the junior reporter out to try and fry an egg on the sidewalk. Every year, as it has for possibly millions of years, summer arrives and it gets hot. Then our local media goes collectively insane, and each one picks up on it, and the first thing you know, the hottest topic in town, is how hot it is …… Outside.

This is the time of the year when I eagerly anticipate the arrival of cicadas (Katy Dids) and watch for dragon flies heading south, this tells me the suffering is almost over and it is going to cool off. But for now, the heat continues and the reporters drone on and on ………

This to be followed by the annual OU Football has their first practice session … Which player has broken his/her parole and is no longer on the squad or has lost their eligibility. Always something going down here in Oklahoma. Some go to college to get an education, unfortunately here, some of them take biology for two years in a row, just to eat the specimens and play football.

They ought to have a class in college to prepare you for the real world.

They should have a class, Humanity 101. How to stand in the express line at China Mart with MORE than 20 items. How to talk on the cellphone at the Post Office. Going comatose at the DMV. Why it is much easier in life to “highlight everything with black magic marker.” How jury duty could possibly turn your brain to oatmeal.

So even tho’ it is hot, there is an upside.

Kids are headed back to school, this is one benefit of August, school starts early in Oklahoma and the kids get back to school. Which brings with it excitement, and anxiety to a few, but most importantly, unfettered joy and relief to parents. You get to get rid of the little darlings for a few hours a day, and if you have one that is college bound, prepared for it or not, they head out this time of the year.

Parents benefit too.

They can no longer sit around and complain about being bored. Now they get to sign up for carpools, childcare, label new clothing and supplies, and try their best to get a kid to go to bed when the sun is still up, in order to be rested for school the next day.

The old school bell is about to ring, so it is once again time, to study hard, learn, textbooks, essays, and exams for a few years or flippin’ burgers for the next fifty … Choice is up to you. I heard of a guy who sent his kid to the OU Law School and after he graduated, he sued his parents for wasting seven years of his life.

So much for higher education huh?

Oklahoma also has at this time of the year, “tax free day” where school supplies and back to school items are tax free. This is where they do their level best to get Joe Taxpayer suckered into believing he is getting something for nothing. But as with all government gambits, there is also a catch 22.

You get it tax free if it is “one hundred dollars or less” so underwear, pencils, paper, cheap stuff is tax free. Big ticket items like computers, high dollar clothes, designer tennis shoes that cost as much as a good used car, you have to pay a tax on that. Sorry Charlie.

Aren’t y’all proud of me, I didn’t say one dog-gone thing about oil, gasoline, Bush, Cheney, Iraq, Iran, Condoghleezah, global warming, the economy, illegal wars, polar bears, Viagra, boobies, ED (Electoral Dysfunction), or mid life depression. The medicine might be working after all.

See ya on Monday.

000


July 14, 2008

Real World 101

Filed under: Oklahoma,Recent — ldsrr91 @ 5:15 AM
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DON’T USE A RECENT TAG OR AN OKLAHOMA TAG IF YOU WANT YOUR POST READ, BOTH CATEGORIES ARE EATING POSTS AND WORDPRESS.COM SEEMS TO WANT TO DO NOTHING ABOUT IT.  POST IT SOMEWHERE ELSE ….

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THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: “If life is so good, then why is it, that we often feel so badly?”

What do teenagers of all income groups have in common? A love of money.  Once a year, the Harrison Group, a marketing consulting company in Connecticut, surveys 1,300 teenagers 13 to 18 across the U.S. about their financial attitudes. This year’s study included an in-depth look at those raised in affluent households, those with more than $150,000 in annual income.

Seventy percent of all the teens surveyed said they wanted more money. Half agreed that money “may not buy happiness, but it comes close.” And 34%, up from 29% in 2004, said “it is hard to be truly happy without a lot of money.”

Not surprisingly, teens raised in more-affluent households had distinctive spending habits and brand preferences. For example, more than 70% of them said they love luxury-car models such as Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Lexus.

The study also noted that “Inner-city kids are taught more about sex and drugs and violence than how to take care of money,” the article goes on to say. “The poor kids were fearful because they didn’t know how it (personal money management) worked, and they didn’t want to take risks.”

It appears that in America … “Wealthy people value time; poor people value stuff.”  In our case, Cup Cake and I, have too little of the first, and way too much of the second.

At the core of the problem, could be the message that we send our children.  Chicago’s public-school system recently has awarded a brand new car to a “12 year old girl, as a reward for her perfect school attendance record.” Now how sad is that?  She cannot legally drive the $15,000 Dodge Caliber for another four years, and critics question whether such lavish gifts send the wrong message to children.

Duh, you think so?

There are some schools of thought, at least my old man had one, and it was, “learning and achievement” were rewards in themselves.  If you can do simple math, if you are able to read this, then be thankful for your education.

Meanwhile the dork that runs the Chicago Public Schools said that this prize was a vital weapon in the fight against truancy and that they were not going to (ever) apologize for that.  My dad had a prize for truancy; it was called a trip to the woodshed.

Meanwhile out on the left-coast, a student at Tesoro High School in affluent Orange County, Kali-fornyuh, was charged with 69 criminal counts for allegedly hacking into the school computer and changing all of his bad grades to A’s.  When asked the reason for his criminal behavior the kid replied that he just wanted to make sure he got into a good college.

Back in the day, when I brought my report card home, and it was all A’s, I would be automatically suspect for sure.  Just didn’t happen.  I remember one day my Dad said, “What you get on your report card?” and I replied, “I dunno, I think it is a Full House … 3 D’s and 2 C’s.”

That dog didn’t hunt either.

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