Sad Sack’s First Mission: Educational Empowerment

Hello, foolish mortals. Foolish, feeble, weak and angular mortals. This is Sad Sack reporting from mission control (i.e., my couch). Apparently there was some sort of “mission” we super types had to accomplish by yesterday which I did not do. Obviously. I didn’t do it because I am very busy and important and have many demands for my time…and, also, I have no arms. That always tends to drag out the amount of time it takes me to do stuff. Any stuff. Like, for example, just scratching my butt is a major undertaking that rarely ends in any kind of real satisfaction. Sigh. Sigh. SIGH.


Trying to scratch in a puddle of Awkward Sauce

Well, anyway, today I put some effort that-hey, you know what would be awesome and super helpful? Elves. Little, tiny, Keebler-style elves that could just hang around here and like, scratch me when I itch…and maybe wipe the sweat from my flanks on a hot day…that’d be so good, man, I need elves. Elves. ELVES. So, today I put some effort into solving the educational crisis and here’s what I came up with:

LEARN

I was, like, supposed to learn something about the educational something or something. So I made a phone call to my alter ego’s Aunt Jan. Aunt Jan teaches fifth grade at an elementary school in Riverside, California and that totally qualifies her to talk about whatever it is we’re supposed to be talking about. She laid out how the state and nationwide cuts to educational funding have affected her school (and probably every other school in California especially Modesto). Apparently, the government’s made it more difficult for schools to qualify for Title 1 funds. These funds are supposed to level the educational playing field for disadvantaged kids and pay for things like; extra staffing, reading specialists, educational assistants, PE teachers and music programs. Yeah, all that shiznit. In fact, Aunt Jan’s school has dropped the arts altogether. Teachers are told to focus mainly on test scores for language and math. They’re even discouraged from putting student artwork on the walls because it’s considered a waste of time. Class sizes for kindergarten through third grade have also been affected by funding problems. The average size went from 15 or 20 kids to 30 kids per class in a few years. They were able to eliminate many teachers. Unfortunately, the ones remaining have to deal with book shortages and scrounging for desks and chairs. Also, the increased class sizes mean no small group interaction. Aunt Jan admitted that because of these obstacles, some kids will probably fall through the cracks.

ACT

Hmm. Okay, my own self-described super powers are as follows: Evil Eye, Wall of Impenetrable Despair, Really Awkward, Stinkybutt and Tedium. I’m not exactly sure how to channel these towards fixing the educational ills of society. I suppose I could sprinkle some of my Really Awkward sauce (it comes in a sauce format) upon the legislators and make them stew in it until they increase funding and awesomeness ensues. If I got my wish and had Keebler elves at my disposal I could just have them contact the Lucky Charms leprechaun and he could give us a pot of gold. But none of this is realistic. Aunt Jan said what would really help are community volunteers. Senior citizens or other helpful types with loads of spare time who could come in, assist the teachers, and give the kids more one-on-one time (but not in a pervy way). I guess that would be a way to start…I don’t know if I’m actually supposed to do that or not or if this is just hypothetical. If I actually have to do something, let me know, and I’ll go buy a random kid a book…with, like, equations in it.

IMAGINE

Ummmmm…I thought I totally did that, just now with like the awkward sauce and the gold and the helpful seniors and stuff…Hmm. It does sound to me like it all comes down to money. Schools need more money and education shouldn’t be the first cut whenever there’s a budget crisis. Instead of my Awkward Sauce, perhaps communities should pull together and hose the lawmakers down with their own sauce. Put the pressure on them until they have to do our will or be ousted. The resources I need are; people who actually give a crap (and that’s really not my forte). If I could, I would get people interested and impassioned enough to rise up and fight for their children’s education…light a fire under their asses. That will lead to change which will lead to funding for schools which will lead to more teachers, more resources, smaller class sizes and happiness all around.


The fire I'll light under their asses

SAD SACK BEGINNINGS

In the beginning, Sad Sack seemed like your everyday, run of the mill, small person. She/It had had all of the tools for a normal existence:


Seen here out-pouting Macaulay Culkin

And then, one day at the beach, something horrible happened:


What?

The exact series of events is unknown, but billions of scientists and experts agree on the following variables: 1. Puberty may have been a factor, 2. Gypsy curse, and 3. Jellyfish sting. Oh yes, the world’s most brilliant minds have deduced that these three factors were the ingredients that led to perfect storm (I’m totally mixing metaphors here) that hatched Sad Sack unto the world on that fateful day so long ago. The essence of each ingredient became the magical fairy powder with which Sad Sack busts ass. For example:

Puberty – Extreme awkwardness and mood swings (including despair and tedium)
Gypsy Curse – Evil Eye and Stinkybutt
Jellyfish Sting – Boneless blob of undulating gel

With these powers at her disposal, Evil-doers don’t stand a chance. Much like a Cooler at a casino, Sad Sack’s mere proximity can suck the life and will to do wrong, hell, the will to do anything, right out of them. More often than not, criminals will give up on the spot and crouch in a corner contemplating ending it all. It’s like shooting fish in a barrel. Criminal fish with black eyemasks and handguns.
Hooray for Sad Sack.

My Pedestrian Identity

I assume everyone reading this had to go through many levels of extremely tight security and clearances because I can’t just give my “real” identity to anyone. I mean, you all must be members of the Awesome League of Awesomeness, right? Right…If any of you squeal my secrets, I swear I will open up a can of Stinkybutt on you so fast, you’ll have to shower for weeks before the fumes will stop radiating from you like heat waves off a sidewalk.

Ahem. Now that we’ve got that out of the way, when I’m not fighting injustices and/or unnecessary cheerfulness, I go by the name of “Christina.” By day I’m an art student at an unnamed university (by night, I cry myself to sleep while clutching a two-dollar bottle of wine – but you don’t need to know that). I disguise my blobtacular physique in polo shirts and jeans from Walmart (Faded Glory FTW) and nobody is the wiser.

Sometimes, my superpowers get the best of me and before I know it, I’ve blasted an entire classroom in Really Awkward sauce. Luckily, I have years of practice mopping up that mess.

Here I am as "Christina"

Please disregard previous posts...

Hi classmates, please don't go beyond this point (well, you can, but it's unrelated to the class). These are the remnants of a blog I haven't updated in 2 years. I tried to hide them, but could only find the option to delete (which I'm unwilling to do right now). Anyway, from here on up, it's all classwork.

Why hasn't anybody called What Not to Wear on me?

Come on, people! I've been a fashion abomination for years now, heck, decades. And still, no one has cared enough to call Stacy and Clinton. For shame, dudes, for shame. I guess I'm a bit perturbed because I took this picture with brilliant Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson on February 5th, 2009:


In which I enlighten Neil about the universe

...and something about it tugged a chord of memory until, digging through old photos, I found this ditty circa...oh, fuck, I don't know...1996?


In which I destroy OJ at Scrabble

How is it possible that I haven't changed my hair/glasses/clothing styles in 13 years? And none of it was any good to begin with! And why do I keep hanging out with light-skinned black dudes with questionable mustaches?

When Two Blogs Collide

A couple of posts ago, I mentioned that I’d picked up Charlaine Harris’s Sookie Stackhouse novels over winter break and read the entire series several times. I have to wait a few months for the next installment, so I’ve been reading her author blog in the meantime. As a long time Neil Gaiman fan, I got a big kick out of last week’s post:

“I did some lightning plotting last week about a book I want to write. I’m fascinated by cemeteries, and I thought it would be interesting to write a book set in a cemetery. I imagined the protagonist, a girl raised by ghosts in a cemetery, and I began figuring out how she’d live, how she’d avoid being taken in by the state and put in a group home, and what she would do to pass her days in such a lifeless place. Then I went on Amazon and clicked on Fiction, then on Cemetery, and found that Neil Gaiman has already written a book with a similar premise.

So, what do I do now? Let my lovely idea go? Buy the Gaiman book, and read it enviously? Purchase every copy on earth and burn it?

Can I salvage my own idea? I haven’t decided yet. I would have been happier if I hadn’t checked, I think.”

And in the wonderful way that the internet works, another crossover fan spotted her post and emailed Neil to tell him about it. He commented on his blog:

“Sometimes I think that ideas float through the atmosphere like huge squishy pumpkins, waiting for heads to drop on. I remember back in 1989 Terry Pratchett and I plotting a novel once about a serial killer who kills serial killers, and we had most of the pieces in place, and then both of us realised we'd have to actually write it, which seemed like less fun than making it up, and so we left it. I would have put him in the Serial Killer's convention in Sandman, but he just didn't fit. And I was pleased when I saw the Dexter books that that pumpkin had finally landed on the head of somebody else, who wanted to write them. Sometimes you're just lucky that the pumpkin lands on you first.

But the truth is, it's not the idea, it's never the idea, it's always what you do with it. I remember Jonathan Carroll telling me to "Write it new", when we talked about how I had thrown out a whole Sandman storyline on reading Bones of the Moon. And I'm pleased I went back and wrote A Game of You. Charlaine's Cemetery Girl, if she writes it and I hope she does, would be different in every way from The Graveyard Book, because that's how it works.”

This all left me with a case of the warm fuzzies…it’s neat when authors you like acknowledge each other.

Here’s a little video I took of Neil during The Graveyard Book tour. About three minutes in he talks a bit about where the idea came from…or at least where his main character came from: