This Happened

[Phoebe]

If your beard hasn't fallen out yet you're still ok, but don't let her pluck your eyebrows with a tweezer because they might not grow back. Luckily this didn't happen to me; my testosterone is strong enough to replace all the hair.

[El Jefe]

Today, three entirely unrelated couples that I know wrote about walking out of a viewing of Once Upon A Time in Hollywood. It's not meant as a statement on the movie or its quality, but I'll continue to take a great deal of joy in it. Stay the fuck away from Star Trek, you overrated fucking hack that should never direct, and hasn't had a good project since 2003.

[Phoebe]

Bret Stephens, right-wing Thinker at the NYT, apparently got mad because some random dude on Twitter insulted him in a post that didn't tag anyone and had 9 likes, which if you use twitter (I don't so cant be sure) apparently is equivalent to someone insulting him in this forum. Bret notified his employer and such, and when people mocked him for this outrageously inappropriate reaction, he deleted his whole account. How can that be a true story? Yet twas relayed to me as such.

Update - it's a true story, but the context is: the NYT has an actual bedbug infestation in the building. A guy made a joke, seen by almost no one, about it being metaphorical and Stephens being a bedbug, which I assume Stephens interpreted as a deliberately anti-Semitic statement in the long tradition of such racist statements. He probably gets a lot of them on Twitter and he has every right to object publicly and to the person's employer. The problem in this particular case is, the guy who said it wasn't actually making an anti-Semitic comment, and Stephens unfortunately has made a name for himself complaining about the tyranny of liberal snowflakes destroying free speech with their totalitarian safe spaces, while also saying deeply unpleasant things about the "blood fetish" of Palestinians and anti-Semitism being the "disease of the Arab mind", so he is in a rather indelicate position. Also he seriously compared Bernie Sanders to Mussolini, entirely without justification, and though I am no Berner I like Sanders well enough to find that quite silly, especially in a person who is so agitated about being insulted. I won't go into his thoughts on sexual assault and affirmative action but it's all downhill. He is mainly famous recently for being a never-Trumper yet climate change denialist.

[Phoebe]

[Phoebe]

My son said that if he should achieve his full Powers someday he would be a supervillain, and I am not inclined to doubt him so I'm a little bit concerned.

Another kid is certainly not achieving her powers with respect to both failure to clean up the kitty litter and a magical disappearance of all trash bags in the house. Did she eat them? If there's anything that annoys, well, it's leaving food waste around. So let's try that again: if there's anything else that annoys it's failing to clean up the kitty litter by scattering it all around everywhere and not putting it in the trash, and then using your full powers to make the trash bags all disappear even though there must be two hundred of them in this house somewhere. I also suspect her of a ploy to make me do the kitty litter cleanup because she's creating one of those situations where the incompetence is so great that it might be easier for me to just do it? But I know this is how the other's work here so I refuse to yield. Sorry, cat. One more day of imperfect. It would upset me a lot if I were that cat, and I really do want to help you, cat, but there's no damn trash bag.

[Phoebe]

Two of the residents have a diet in which it is helpful to eat a food to which I am allergic, so I bought some intending they would take it out of the house as a snack. Guess what? Never buying it again! The nice thing is, neither of these people is competent enough to handle getting their own snacks, so it might be several years before it's an issue again. If I said something about it they would go buy some, but if I sit here silently, no one will remember it happened.

[Tahlvin]

FFS! I agree with the comment saying this is more of a Tennessee thing than it is a Catholic thing.

[Phoebe]

Agreed; I have never heard of Catholic hostility to HP, must be local? I do know some Lutherans who thought it was devil work, and the usual assortment of extreme Evangelical. Sigh.

[akiva]

Students return today.

Once more into the breach . . .

[akiva]

I teach in a trailer outside of the back of the school (we have 16 trailers--we're the biggest middle school in the county). This year there's a girl in a wheel chair in my class, which is really unfortunate for her: the ramps to the trailers are okay, but getting through the doors is a challenge. The trailers are located across an alley from the school. And at this end of the building there's no curb cut, so she has to just go over the curb. And the trailers are very crowded so there are very limited ways for her to get around in the room. So this could be a very long year for her.

[Phoebe]

W. T. F. ???? That just makes my blood boil. Is someone going to fix that situation? Can she get a lawyer or if that is unrealistic, a law student who works for a clinic, or a rep from a disability group, to write a letter and explore remedies?

[mimekiller]

Construction might be expensive, if GOT can be my guide the clear answer is to find a local enfeebled but kind Giant that can carry her into class and into the cafeteria and whatnot

[akiva]

[Phoebe]

I don't know how this stuff works but it has to get to that place where they hand it over to an attorney who costs more to pay than it costs to fix the problem. But even if they don't want to fix the sidewalk, can't some counselor put this kid into classes that are located in accessible rooms? What the FUCK, seriously, it is good I don't live there. I feel like this is the kind of thing that, if the school refuses to solve it, deserves a video clip or photos shared on every social media along with the contact info of the principal. It enrages me, I don't know what to tell you, the very idea that a kid in a wheelchair is being told her well-being is essentially valueless to her school.

[akiva]

I wish I had a good answer. The school is pretty clearly saying she doesn't matter much. This is such a fucked up school district, though, that that's not surprising.

[Mike]

IMO, the school has probably given the family half-assed answers and put them off--we are technically accessible; it's just for one year; etc. If the family went to an ADA advocacy group, the school could be pressured into fixing this in no time, I imagine, (and the cheapest fix is relocating your classroom to a more accessible room). But my guess is that the family either doesn't fully understand their rights OR they've been put in a position where they don't want to look like the "bad guys" by costing the school (and taxpayers) a whole bunch of money just to accommodate this one kid for a single schoolyear. I don't agree with that sentiment, but I've seen it used against kids with extra needs before.

Just a guess, though.

[akiva]

An update: the girl has been transferred to a different class, which doesn't affect the issue (her new room is right next to mine). I've been told, however, that an emergency work order has been submitted for a curb cut and better accommodations. I'll let you know if that happens.

My school district sucks.

[akiva]

Update the second: There is a crew here to put ramps/curb cuts in. I'm not sure how long it'll take to finish, but it's nice to see that they're doing on day 3 of the school year. I just wish they had planned for this--they had a lot of time before students arrived to take care of this.

[akiva]

Two other things about my school, one of which could easily lead to lawsuits.

First, there are more teachers than before, and fewer parking spaces.'

Second, there's about 1400 students in the building, and no school nurse.

[Phoebe]

At least they're fixing the curb, that is really good news for now. No nurse, hey! But somebody must have had the clue that failing to make an obvious disability accommodation would cost way more trouble than it was worth to just do it. Or maybe they were motivated by basic decency who knows?