Bits and Pieces
 


Jerry Falwell walked into the Celestial Bar.
Thursday, May 17, 2007
       God and a few Archangels were sitting at the bar tipping back a few Harp’s Ales. Jerry walked up to the bar and sat on the left hand of the Lord. 
	“Hey,” sayeth the Lord. “That’s My hand.”
	“Oh, excuse me,” said Jerry, rising from his seat so the Lord could remove His hand from beneath the buttocks of the late Reverend.
	“Hello,” sayeth Jesus, who was seated on the right hand of the Lord. “I’m Jesus, the Son of God. And you’re … ?”
	“The Reverend Jerry Falwell,” bragged a beaming Big Jer. “I’m the guy you’ve been speaking to for the past 50 or so years.”
	Jesus put down His Bloody Mary (Virgin, of course, although some scholars dispute this), a puzzled look creeping over His face. Jerry settled in at the bar, and called over the bartender to place his order. 
	The bartender walked over to him and said, politely, but firmly, “I’m sorry, but I can’t serve you here.”
	“What?” a shocked Jerry answered. “Why the Hell not?”
	There was a whiff of sulfur, a tap on Falwell’s shoulder, 
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Upcoming Gitmo Confessions
Thursday, March 15, 2007
An unnamed Administration figure spilled the beans concerning White House strategy for countering the gathering storm clouds in DC when he accidentally left the following list at a DC Starbucks this morning.

Friday, March 16, Enemy Combatant #347-767
     Confess to mailing anthrax to Congressional
    offices in 2001.

Saturday, March 17, Enemy Combatant #484-553
     Confess to firing all nine US attorneys.

Sunday, March 18, (Be sure to release before Talk Shows)
    Enemy Combatant #278-994
    Confess to being Captain of Bin Ladin's yatch.
     Planned attack on USS Cole.

Monday, March 19, Enemy Combatant #396-222
    Confess to being Bin Ladin's pedicurist.
    Confess to planning the attack of Richard Reid,
    the "Shoe Bomber." 

Tuesday, March 20, Enemy Combatant #358-667
    Confess to Planning Hurricanes Katrina and Rita 

Wednesday, March 21, Enemy Combatant #198-855
    Confess to Planning Global Warming

HOLD IN RESERVE IN CASE OF INDICTMENT OF K.R.

    Enemy 
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Revelations about Obama Split Michigan House
Friday, March 9, 2007
The recent news that Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) has finally paid parking fines and unpaid auto registrations dating back to his days at law student at Harvard University has split a portion of the Detroit segment of the Michigan Democratic caucus. Teach313 has been concerned that Obama would not acknowledge this overdue parking tickets and back taxes, thus opening the way for a swift-boat attack on the scofflaw in the 2008 President election. Teach313 also is concerned about unpaid library fines from 1968-1970, and the copy of Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel that Senator Obama checked out and never returned. "There is a clear pattern here of the Senator acting as if the laws don't apply to him," said Teach313.

Kidspeak, Teach313's wife, and the other member of the conflicted portion of the Detroit segment of the Michigan Democratic caucus, simply shrugged her shoulders at the news of Senator Obama's problems with parking tickets in Boston. "The sympathy votes he'll get from the 
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The DC Report from Uncle Bud’s Taproom
Thursday, February 1, 2007
One of my final postings on Booman Tribune. Posted before the shit hit the fan, and I wrote two diaries that failed to halt slow the tide on insanity. Three comments, I think. 

by Teach313 

Thu Feb 1st, 2007 at 10:45:29 PM EST

I hadn't heard from my uncle Bud in a while, which is not unusual. He is retired now, I guess. He's certainly old enough to retire, but in his kind of work, it's hard to retire. You see, Uncle Bud did odd jobs for Republicans for more decades than I care to remember. You may have heard of him, but when he did his job well, he stayed in the shadows.

What I know about Uncle Bud's working life I  kind of pieced together from the ice fishing trips he'd take me on before his blood thinned and the cold started getting to him. Sitting in the shelter on some frozen Minnesota or Wisconsin Lake, he'd drop his line in the ice, take a few pulls of some private label bourbon or other, and tell me his thinly disguised adventures.

Today I heard from Uncle Bud for the 
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Problems in Elementary School
Saturday, January 27, 2007
Originally posted on Booman Tribune and dKos.  Once again most didn’t get it. I don’t see how anyone on a Progressive blog could miss this. For the record, this is about the fuss over the President saying “the Democrat Party” in the State of the Union address. It isn’t about my students. It never happened. It is satire. It is funny, if I say so myself. I just wish I wasn’t the only one saying it.


by Teach313
Sat Jan 27th, 2007 at 12:12:29 AM EST


It's been long week at my school, as winter finally set in, and quickly brought cabin fever with it. We tried to fit the second of three rounds of standardized testing between a field trip to the Art Museum and the Fire Safety Assembly. (The Fire Department has got to replace that forty-five minute video with the carefully, racially balanced, and well-scrubbed kids rapping about "Gotta Have Fire Safety". They have the street cred of Annette's Mouseketeers.) Needless to say, the kids were wired by Friday. Something had to give and it did.


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A Late Night Christmas Memory
Tuesday, December 26, 2006
Originally posted on Booman Tribune.


by Teach313
Tue Dec 26th, 2006 at 02:54:23 AM EST


This Christmas has left me a little down, and I probably should just go to bed, but I don't seem to be able to. I've been reading through BT and ET, and wandering around my mother-in-law's house, instead. Once again this familiar memory from my childhood drifted into my mind. I think I'll write it, and then go to bed.

 It must have been in the mid-sixties. (My childhood memories have a certain fuzziness about them.) My family had gone up on Christmas Eve to visit some older friends who had built a small cabin in the Poconos. We were driving home late on a snowy night. My folks had put the rear seat of the VW down and my older sister and I slept under piles of covers.

I woke up and watched the snow through the back window. My parents were quietly talking and my sister was deeply asleep and snoring softly. As we climbed through the mountains, I would see the sky, then the darkened houses and 
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BT, Blogs, and the WSJ
Thursday, December 21, 2006
Originally posted on Booman Tribune.

by Teach313
Thu Dec 21st, 2006 at 02:50:48 PM EST

This started as a comment to Booman's story, WSJ: Critiquing Blogs. As so often happens, there was a lot to think about and my comment entered that gray area between comment and diary. A dia-ment? Well, whatever it is, certainly in the rough.

There is at least one overlooked point in the WSJ comparison of bloggers & traditional reporters. There is an overlapping range of goals for the two groups. Three keys goals of both are reporting, advocacy, and community building. These goals are intertwined. The first two are often blurred, and the distinction is often in the eyes of the beholder. Although we don't usually think of it as such, the WSJ also works to build a community, a group of people with common interests. The key difference in my mind is that bloggers and blogging are more democratic, more inclusive, more conducive to building communities, than are traditional media.

We are living 
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The Cheney Grandchild as Symbol
Thursday, December 7, 2006
Originally posted on Booman Tribune.

by Teach313
Thu Dec 7th, 2006 at 02:56:40 PM EST


    This diary is a comment on and divergence from Booman's story on conservative reaction to the announcement that VP Dick Cheney's lesbian daughter is pregnant. Booman concludes that the private lives of the Cheneys are their business and that we on the left should stay out of it. Commenters agreed and disagreed. I happen to agree, but there is a larger issue here. The issue is not family privacy, Gay rights, or the necessity of two parent families. The issue is the double standard, one for PLUs and another for everyone else.

     PLU is a convient shorthand for "People Like Us." PLUs are good people by definition. The Bush Family is the model of the PLU world view. If you are born a PLU, you don't commit crimes, you make mistakes. You are helped out, not prosecuted. If you are born a Bush, you can avoid all wars, Viet Nam, as well as the War on Drugs. The law doesn't apply to you. If you are 
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A Moveable Meet-Up, or Booman by Bus
Sunday, November 26, 2006
A really bad idea that got more comments than anything else I wrote on Booman tribune.

by Teach313
Sun Nov 26th, 2006 at 06:18:38 AM EST
    Last night, well, early this morning really, a strange idea came to me. We were talking in the 3rd cafe of the night about BTers we'd met and not met. About meetups that we'd been to and had to miss. And this really strange vision jumped into my brain. A bus. Some kind of tour bus/rv/van/or something. Pick a two or three or four week period and drive it from clusters of BTers to other clusters of BTers. A Froggy Bottom 24/7 Cafe on wheels. BooMan by Bus. A Moveable MeetUp.
    Some people might ride a short way. They get off and make their way home however they might. Others might stay longer. Some people would meet the Traveling Pond along the way, and  join them for that night. State campgrounds and national parks. The Ritz for Mary and the parking lot for others. Rest stops and mountain overlooks. Breakfast at greasy spoons and over 
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Strange and quirky thoughts about life, history, mystery novels, politics, sports, cats, Discworld, teaching, and whatever else comes out of my fingertips and onto the screen.
Inspired by the random interaction of my brain and the sensory input that bombards it everyday

                        --- Teach313---
Teach313, born in the late 50’s, has held a variety of jobs. He is currently an elementary school teacher in Detroit. His right foot is slightly larger than his left, but not so’s you’d notice. So far, that peculiarity has not affected his life in a way that he is aware of.