^yum

Good green tea and high fibre but yummy breakfast cereal.

coffee and 4 Milano style double chocolate cookies

salt peanuts! salt peanuts!

MS Office 2007, and a jug of moonshine

question of the day for Tuesday: what do you sing when you're alone and no one can hear you?

anything that enters my brain and decides to take the shortcut to my mouth & vocal cords

like

I LIKE BIG BUTTS AND I CANNOT LIE

Depends, some Ohrwurm I heard recently. Today I sing about life being a big auuutobahn ;) Me sis and her two friends played that (--> see 'youtube yourself' thread) to me yesterday in their hotel room :)

Frieda, nice new fetish! :D ;)

Born to Run!

just about anything that pops into my head, but most frequently it's the popplers jingle from "futurama."

pop a poppler in your mouth
when you come to fishy joe's
what they're made of is a mystery
where they come from no one knows
you can pick 'em you can lick 'em
you can chew 'em you can stick 'em
if you promise not to sue us
you can shove one up your nose

lately

this

and sometimes

this

and occasionally

this

and why not...?

this

but mostly it's just

this

tramps like us, baby :D

What a coincidence! I had Charlie Parker for lunch.

As for today's Q, I sing whatever is stuck in my head. Lately that's a lot of Red Robin, You Belong to Me, The Galaxy Song, and Yellow Submarine.

In general, the Beatles and Monty Python are a good bet. And lots of jazzy stuff. Oh and hippie folk. And some Iron Butterfly.

inna gadda davita :p

we need a karaoke night. well, maybe "need" is the wrong word...

hey um

what if we all get our asses on skype and actually have a karaoke night :D

AAH! well, coordinating the correct level of drunkenness across timezones will be interesting, but I'm down ;)

TMBG, because they speak to my inner child, which is really more like my outer child.

on that note I sing regardless of whether I'm alone or not. I take my foolishness very serious.

i wanna die with you lukkucairi
on the streets tonight
in an everlasting kiss!

the highway's jammed with broken heroes on a last chance power drive!
everybody's out on the run tonight but there's no place left to hide...

MAN do I ever need a glass of bourbon and a karaoke machine right now :o

Skip, I'll meet you at the bar next to the Classic lanes...Tuesday's the night...

[quote=auntie aubrey;385370]how's the weather up there on your high horse? how anyone can judge another person's spirituality, i'll never know.

I'm amused (and constantly amazed) by a lot of things. Especially by your growth in this area. Good thing that thread's gone now, isn't it? :p

what in great googley moogley are you talking about?

Exactly. Hardly appropriate for this thread anyway. Please feel free to pm me.

i will use that line at least 3 times at work tomorrow.

is there a thread missing? :confused:

¿ question of the day? for wednesday april 30th

¿ if you were the decider of what children get taught in school, what changes would you make ?

thats a hard one because i have no idea what kids are taught in school these days :eek:

just make something up

ok make something up

ok

um

money lessons-- how borrowing money & paying interest works, how mortgages work, how saving every penny will turn you into a grumpy old bastard

etiquette lessons-- how to use your cutlery, how to greet the queen, what to wear to different occasions like a gala or a cocktail party, how to tie a tie

business softskills-- how to adapt to different working environments, what to say/what not to say to fellow employees, customers & bosses

There should be Parenting lessons.

to read
to write
to explore
to reflect
to think
to talk (politely, too)
to create things
to look after plants/animals
to look after people
to ask questions
not to accept all answers
to look for answers
to show (and feel) respect

(The question is, how. Because kids learn by imitating what they see. And if they don't see any of the abovementioned activities around/at home, it will only be education, not learning.)

oh, and to listen

1) no religious instruction in public schools, not even as electives
2) mandatory art and music every day
3) history up to the present, including topics my school wouldn't touch such as the controversial veitnam war
4) no southern schools will be allowed to focus on the history around the american civil war for any longer period of time than they would dedicate to any other historical period (tennessee teaches the civil war every year all the way up through college. in college they require TWO SEMESTERS of civil war studies of all students)
5) sex ed classes starting with the basics in 5th grade (the "what's the deal with puberty?" lesson) and reaching full discussion of birth control by the 7th grade.
6) no more presidential fitness tests
7) this isn't a teaching thing but no soda and no junk food available anywhere on school premises. this means no candy and no ice cream served with the normal cafeteria lunch fare. vegetables should be manditory. i saw a special on school lunches the other day and the b-roll showed trays where every food item was beige and one kid was eating an m&m ice cream sandwich. that's out under my rule

^wow, that gives me a picture of what happens in USA schools. it's such a difference with how i went to school, can't believe the gap is that big!

you can't take it as a generalization for all schools, though. i cobbled that list together from failings i've seen or heard of in a range of different schools, in different districts and different states.

for example, my elementary school served vegetables, offered art and music every day, and there was no religious instruction whatsoever. in tennessee there was an emphasis on the civil war that i've seen nowhere else. a creepy fixation, if you ask me. in georgia they've just imposed a law requiring public schools to teach religion, focusing on the bible. which i find highly unconstitutional but georgia is home to a majority of christian fundamentalists. in atlanta specifically i see a lot of junk food but it seems to be an even bigger problem for people i know whose kids attend schools in texas.

so i wouldn't say i've seen a single school fail every item on the list. but i find all of the issues to be failings nonetheless.

it's something all kids have to do every year (i think... maybe it's every few years) and it's basically used to compile statistics and assess the fitness of america's children. what's absolutely absurd is that gym classes focus on building none of the strength or endurance required to do these exercises, like you will never ever ever ever do a pull-up until the day they introduce you to the fitness test. how they expect the kids to excel at these exercises when gym classes offer virtually no exercise i'll never know.

and of course gym teachers are frustrated jocks so they belittle and embarrass kids who can't pass the minimum level of achievement. their concern is that the overall fitness of their school's kids is their responsibility so they treat kids who don't pass like failures.

as you may have already guessed, i always always always failed the pull-up test.

^Ah, this physical fitness test is just the same as our Bundesjugendspiele (federal youth sports day), only that it's not so much for statistics (at least I never heard anything about them being evaluated, published or something - although it has this hyperofficial name) but to embarrass kids who are bad at 100 and 400m sprint, high and long jump, and shotput (yeah it's almost the fukken olympic games!), because everybody gets a certificate - and of course the athletics cracks don't diss the athletics losers... of course not... :rolleyes:

The fitness thing made me laugh hard. My kid won it a few years in a row..and we are talking about a class A, glued to the couch, move as little as possible at home kinda kid. The kind who complained scrubbing the tub or drying the dishes made her too tired to move... the kind of kid who lied, cried, and ditched gym class at every opportunity. Yet, she managed to win that stupid award. :rolleyes: What a crock those tests are.

ETA... When I asked her HOW she passed those tests, I found out the school offered a cash prize. ( I wonder if that is/was legal? ) Money, the great motivator. Pfft.
I never would have passed one of those tests ... even if I had hired someone to take it for me...for any amount of money.

oh of course-- just, the fact that schools are serving food is already different from the NLs! here at "lagere school" (age 5-11) you go home at noon and eat at your parents or your friends/grandma/other place. at "middelbare school" (12-16/17/18) you're supposed to bring your stuff in a bread box. and save me on the numerous times that a carton of fruit juice got caught in between my books and exploded all over them. blegh. milk was available from the school counter though. and apples & other fruit from a vending machine.

If everyone learned personal finance, birth control, and critical thinking, my country would be a different place. If money's tight, they could just teach critical thinking to make a big dent in the other two with one fell swoop.

Wouldn't hurt if everyone had to take a useful cooking class, like half a semester or something...not what passes for home ec now, which is so often an array of the many things one can make using canned biscuits as a base....

double teachers' salaries, and require them to flunk the bottom 10% of every class.