Atomictumor

I enjoy learning new things and consider myself to be a fairly well-rounded individual, intellectually speaking.
Perhaps that’s why it surprises me so much when people are violently ignorant.  Take, for example, the short exchange about the Trail of Tears in my class the other day:

Lady #1:  “What’s that?”
Me:  (employing broad strokes only, as to not shatter her puny mind)  “It’s when Native American tribes were rounded up and marched across the country.”
Lady #2:  “GAC, how do you know so much?!”
Me:  “I went to middle school.”

Yesterday a classmate exclaimed “Deja vu!” and another woman pondered aloud the causation.  Having read an article about deja vu a few months ago, I chimed in with one likely theory (information is passed back and forth from short term to long term memory very fast, and sometimes the same message repeats itself, giving the person a sense of again-ness).  Everyone looked at me as if I had a second head growing.  This was followed by various people saying things like “If you know so much, tell me… “
I wasn’t aware that having common knowledge (Trail of Tears) or reading the occassional scientific article is considered genius territory.
And before you start talking about how the education system is producing idiot kids these day, the two women ignorant of the Trail of Tears were both older than myself.

Unless you’re interested in boosting the mullet ratio in Oak Ridge.

Evidently, people are thinking about putting a racetrack out at K-25. Lets stop and think about that for a minute. Here’s Oak Ridge building all sorts of fancy houses (like Rarity Ridge, which is evidently getting a 60 foot waterslide, meaning AT will be quickly making a friend who lives there) on one side, and then a race track on the other side.

And whats been getting to me are all of the letters of support that have been coming in for it. Theres people from all over the place sending in letters to the Oak Ridger and the Observer supporting the damn thing. Some of the letters point out that some races bring out 50,000 people, which would certainly boost the local economy.

At Big Lots and Taco Bell.

Then it would bring in more traffic, and more need for more law enforcement that Oak Ridge probably can’t afford, seeing as how it can’t swing basic services like full bussing for students, so then we’d have roving bands of Camero driving rednecks taking over the town.

Who’d save us then?

Seriously, theres like a billion things that would be better done here in town.  Racers, go to Bristol or wherever.  Thanks, no thanks.

We now have public officials suing other public officials for putting public documents on private websites.

According to the Observer’s latest edition (which I’d love like hell to link to, but just can’t) Alan Beauchamp, the embattled director of probation service and buildings and grants in Anderson County, and evidently the Boss Hogg of A.C., is laying down a $25,000+ lawsuit against a local school board member for allegedly slanderizing him on a website.

Now, nobody else will link to it, so I will, because, shit, what else am I good for? From my glance at the page, it would appear that there really isn’t grounds for a lawsuit. I mean, its not like the website insinuated that he kept a sweatshop of child laborers, or a brothel of goats.  He keeps a website, and seems to like to use it for both recipes and for political smackdowns, as well as bolstering and endorsing his stable of candidates, but thats neither here nor there.

It would have been preferable, with as one sided as the attacking site was, for a little area for perhaps differing opinions, or maybe a chance to talk back, but hell, this is America.

Whats particularly deplorable about this whole thing is that Boss Beauchamp seems to be a lawsuit loving kind of guy. He dropped the bomb on AC commissioner Mark Alderson for a conversation in which he was called “convicted felon” and was accused of being fired from a bank.

Thats it? That gets a slander suit? What kind of skin does this jerk have?

And now he’s turning around and suing a school board member, and an active blogger, for an anonymous web site where some details of a real life investigation were mentioned. Thats some dickheadery.

It could also be the final thrashes of a sea cow speared and being pulled up in a net. Could be the days of wine and honey are coming to an end, and he’s wanting to make as much noise as he can on the way down.

Since the forums went so well, I’m opening up another toy.  Downloaded and modified from Jalenack’s deal, its looking pretty cool in the easternly part of the page.

It will probably break soon.

As some sort of cosmic judgement, GWB ends up getting Parkinson’s, or Alzheimer’s, or nerve damage, or one of the many things that might one day be cureable with the research that he has hamstrung today.

I try to stay optimistic as we round the bend on year 6 of his finger on the button, but its hard to. We have the end of the world brewing in so many different pots that sometimes I just have to either hide under the covers or get drunk and watch TV.

Good thing we’ve got boy band covers of Al Green songs on NBC.