Short Circuits

It's Columbus Day here in the U.S. which means two things - sales at furniture stores, and my kids having two days off from school (one of which is technically a Superintendent's conference day). I understand that it's actually "Indigenous People's Day" in some parts of the country, but I don't get that. Who did they conquer?

Anyway, as a follow-up to Friday's blog, my father informed me yesterday that in fact our house had been wired for cable for many months before anyone else in our area. We were just a few houses off a main line, and my father was a school district administrator. When the cable rep came to talk to the district about getting them wired for cable, my dad convinced the guy to hook us up. Ha! Way to go, Dad!

But just to prove that he's not the only sly one, getting cable when he wasn't really supposed to have it, I reminded him of how he used to punish me by disconnecting the cable to the TV in my room whenever I was grounded. Which, in 7th and 8th grade, I quite often was. Middle School emphatically did not agree with me. But being the sly (and TV-loving) fellow that I was, I cleverly waited until I was NOT grounded, then I went down to the basement and drew a schematic diagram of how the cable was properly hooked up. The next time he grounded me, I simply went down and reconnected everything. Sadly, he took pity on me and decided to turn it all back on before my punishment was officially ended, which meant he detected that, in fact, it was all in working order already. He did not seem to be amused, but deep inside I think he was actually tickled that his boy was pretty bright. Or maybe he was just mad as hell, it was hard to tell sometimes.

Anticipate relatively short posts the next few days. I've got the kids home with me, plus I desperately need to finish creating both a chapter quiz AND a midterm exam for class this week, and doing that with the kids around will be a challenge to say the least. However I won't leave you entirely bereft. Regular reader Lightning Jack emailed me this awesome Slate article. It's ostensibly about some Japanese researchers having taken pictures of a giant squid, but it's got some great snark going on, the best of which is:

like Tom Cruise between movies, the giant squid is camera-shy. And, just like the diminutive actor, Architeuthis dux spends long periods lurking out of sight, surely up to no good, before bursting forth, tentacles flailing, and exercising its alternate belief system. In Mr. Cruise's case, the alternate belief system is Scientology. In the giant squid's case, the alternate belief system is a desire to wrap you in its horrible tentacles and poke you to death with its poisonous beak. There are similarities.

As I recently wrote, Tom Cruise is on my list of crazy stars who seem to merit a fair amount of public scorn even if he makes some damn fine movies. Unlike guys like Will Smith and Keanu Reeves, who come off as fairly innocuous (despite Smith also being a kooky Thetan-cleanser). I wouldn't normally compare him to a giant squid, but Slate does make a compelling case.

Happy Columbus's Indigenous Victims Day or whatever it is! I'll try to have something for tomorrow, even if it's brief.