Category Archives: Uncategorized

Have you ever noticed how sometimes all we really need to make it through a horrifically difficult time in our lives is something incredibly simple and easy?  A memory, a feeling, a sweet-sad something from deep inside makes all the nightmares, villains, and boogeyman go away?

I came to this conclusion recently in the face of overwhelming stress and anxiety.  I am a Texas school teacher, at the end of my career.  I fear I may also be coming to the end of public education in Texas.  Let’s face it; this State is not education friendly.  The rich elite in Texas want to send their progeny to high-performing private schools, and they demand that the funds culled from everybody’s pockets by property taxes pay for it through vouchers.  They are in favor of doing away with public education all together if they can.  To tell you the truth, if they will let poor and troubled kids into their top-flight private schools, and everyone still has a fair shot at an education, then I am in favor of vouchers and the privatization of schools too. 

But fat chance of that, huh?  So right now the political system is forcing an agenda on public schools.  The new State-mandated tests are arriving in full force.  Now, instead of passing one high-stakes test to get a high school diploma, kids have to pass as many as sixteen end-of-course STAAR exams.   Kids are up against it.  Frustrated and over-stressed, more than half of them are giving up and dropping out.  It is the main reason the prison industry is booming in the Lone Star state.  So, about the time I am ready to declare total bankruptcy and retire for the year and a half before I croak, they will be putting a huge fence around the city of Dallas and telling all the non-criminals to move to the wealthier suburbs of Austin.  I will be forced to stay with the ax murderers, drug dealers, and democrats because I can’t afford to move. 

Schools will be run for profit, and the blame will go not to the politicians who gave us these impossible accountability goals and cut our funding at the same time, but to teachers like me.  Studies show that teacher’s do have a very large effect on student success or failure.  I’ve been at it for thirty years already, so at least thirty years worth has to be my fault.  I am increasingly responsible for paperwork and documentation for everything from learning outcomes, to lesson plans, to student handicapping conditions, to Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills, to… well, you get the idea.  I have to fill in all the numbers for politicians so they can prove Texas teachers are not doing a very good job and they are reducing my classroom teaching time to allow me to complete the paperwork.

So, what does that have to do with touchstones, you ask?  Ah, I’m glad you asked that!  I have been sinking deeper and deeper into despair for the last few weeks.  Money is running out even though I and my wife both make a teacher’s salary.  How could we be having a hard time while making such a boat-load of money?  Why is the boat sinking?  Food has been going up in price.  I paid more than sixty dollars today for less than twenty food items.  I had not realized I had been eating so much gold-plated food.  Gas has been going up.  Gold-plated gas too maybe.  And I only have a forty minute commute to school, one way.  Job stress and home stress and stress stress have all been conspiring to kill me.  And something had changed to make it all worse.  What had changed?  I wasn’t sure until I was on my way to work last Monday.  As I drove past the Richardson Public Library, which I do every school day, I saw the answer.

Clifford the Big Red Dog!  Yes, the children’s section of the Richardson Library has a big red stuffed toy dog that sits on one of the shelves.  Every morning as I drove past for the last three years, I have been checking to see that Clifford was still there, giving comfort to young readers with his big dopey grin.  It was important to me.  I know, I know… it’s like having to sleep with a teddy bear, but it did actually make me feel a lot worse when Clifford was gone for washing or some other unknown reason.  He disappeared from the library window early in January.  That was about the same time when the tired-old-teacher blues hit me.  I needed to see that silly stuffed toy every morning in order to feel good about my job and whatever difference I might still be making.  He was my touchstone, my reminder of what is essential, those things that the fox in St. Exupery’s The Little Prince reminds us are invisible to the eye. 

Now, I head to work in the mornings, see Clifford, and feel easier in my mind, ready to teach the world and hang on to my job for the next one hundred years… or at least the one more year it takes for this Texas governor to truly kill public education in this state.

Yes, I freely admit it, I am one of those kooks who pursue conspiracy theories about UFO cover-ups by black helicopters and CIA members of the Illuminati who will soon try to kill off 89 per cent of the Earth’s population in order to eliminate all the “eaters” and establish a “new world order” that they’ve been planning since the extermination of the Knights Templar.   

Why, you ask?  Are you insane, you ask?  Are you a nutter who hears voices and should probably be locked up in a mental institution, you ask?  Well, there is no good answer other than to reveal some of the really loony theories that I have come to believe.

First of all, I live in Dallas.  Yes, that’s right, the City of Evil Wizards where the King of Camelot was assassinated, a red Mobil Pegasus flies among the tall rooftops of skyscrapers downtown, and an evil dwarf named H. Ross once tried to overturn the Texas education system to produce free-market trolls to be his minions happily ever after.

I have to tell you truthfully, I believe that Lee Harvey Oswald did not kill John Kennedy.  Not with that feeble gun, from that impossible angle, and being the mediocre gunman that he was in the armed services.  Oswald was connected to the CIA.  There can be no doubt that a man who defected to Russia and then came back to this country with a Russian wife and had no legal difficulties at all was assisted at some higher level to be in the proper place at the proper time to be blamed for the killing and be conveniently slain before anything could come out at trial.  So there’s a sentence made needlessly complex to make you work way too hard at coming to a simple conclusion.  Do you know about the photo of the three “tramps” who were led away from the Grassy Knoll?  The old tramp in the back of that photo looks amazingly like E. Howard Hunt.  Yes, the same E. Howard Hunt from Watergate.  That particular “plumber” was also CIA.  Who killed JFK?  Hmm.  Well, George H.W. Bush was in Dallas that day and claimed he couldn’t remember where he was when the shooting happened.  He later became the director of the whole CIA.  And who benefitted the most from the killing?  Obviously LBJ and Richard Nixon, who both later became President.  And Nixon plus Hunt equals BANG! In my book.  Tell me I did that math wrong!

Did an alien spacecraft crash near Roswell, New Mexico in 1947?  No.  Two of them did.  How do I know?  Especially after years of disinformation and cover-ups?  I looked into everything I could read, view, or research about  Major Jesse Marcel.  Remember the man with the basset hound eyes in the picture with the tinfoil remains of a weather balloon?  That poor man was involved with the first reports of debris on the Mack Brazel ranch and subsequent newspaper article proclaiming that the army had a crashed flying saucer.  Both the rancher and the major would be bullied, ridiculed, and have their credibility totally shredded because the decision was made not to reveal what actually happened that night.  Everything was covered up.  The Majestic Twelve  Committee was formed by Harry Truman to take control of the alien artifacts and keep the government’s secrets.  Okay, I admit that there are a lot of inconsistencies in all the books and supposed “eye witness” reports about the matter.  The writers who wrote the books were all prima donnas and feud constantly even to the present day.  But does that mean I should suddenly give up my belief in the truth of it?  Well… okay, you got me there.

Do the Illuminati exist?  And are they about to launch an extermination campaign against us?  Did the 9-11 tragedy really happen because of airplane hijackers from Al Quaida?  Or was it the work of our own government aided by the Israeli Mossad?   How did evidence of thermite get scattered all through the WTC wreckage?  Is the world gonna end in 2012?  Yep, I’ve snookered myself again at least on that last one.  Believing in conspiracy theories makes me wrong most of the time.  But, I can’t help it.  It’s in my nature to ask “What if…?”  Wouldn’t it be neat to prove any of these things?

Biznap and Corebait had managed to locate a television to watch.  They wanted to monitor the local news for reports on anything bizarre.  Biznap needed clues if he was going to execute his mission swiftly.  The monitoring device was in the middle of an ornately decorated room.  An excess of doilies graced the polished wooden furniture.  Overstuffed chairs and sofas were covered with plastic dust covers.  The whole room was guarded by one small Lassie-animal that registered on Corebait’s sensors as being near-sighted, mostly deaf, and highly flatulent.  It was extremely aged for its species.

Corebait opened a screen window so that he and his commander might both climb into the room.  The little guardian sniffed at the air and added more odor to the atmosphere to express his nervous puzzlement.

“What do we do if an Earth primate is in residence here?”

“Have your sensors picked someone up?”

“Nothing I can accurately interpret.  I’m not a psychic super-genius like that Mr. Spock fellow with the pointy ears.”

“Well, if someone is here, just stay silent.  We’re invisible to Earth primates who don’t know what signs to look for.”

Ceramic figurines from the mantelpiece began to float magically through the air.  Corebait was examining little Dutch boys, Buster Browns, and Snow White with her seven dwarves.  The guardian Lassie was staring myopically at his own reflection in a piece of hearthside brass.  Biznap noticed a large mirror mounted on the wall for purposes he was unaware of.  It was a well-tooled device, however, flawlessly executed and perfectly silvered on the back.  He turned off his cloaking field for just a moment so that he might admire his fine Telleron features.  He had cool blue eyes and an aquiline profile.  His chin was much more firm and well-defined than that of the average toad-faced Telleron.

“Jiminy Christmas!” hollered the widow Castille as she dragged her electric vacuum sweeper out of the hall closet and into the drawing room.  She picked up a handy curtain attachment and fell to bonking the alien intruder on the back and shoulders with it, showing the ferocity and determination of a samurai warrior defending his home province.

Harmony Castille was a small, dour church lady with no sense of humor and no tolerance for mess and disorder of any kind.  She had white hair done up in a bun, dramatically out of style.  Her dress was a green, flowered affair that proper, church-going women had adopted as their proper uniform back in the Sixties.  It was light, sensible, and loose-fitting enough to allow for a great deal of athletic action which she was applying vigorously to reducing Commander Biznap to a pile of chopped steak.

Corebait had not been as truthful about his sensor readings as he should have been.  He’d not read the human presence correctly because of Mrs. Castille’s pacemaker.  The electronic device had confused the signature of her bioelectric radiance.  And Corebait was certainly no Mr. Spock.  He had, however, registered considerable movement indications from the hall closet, and simply decided to ignore them.  He readied his molecular disintegrator in order to fix the problem.  It was known among Corebait’s friends as emergency procedure B.  “If you don’t know what to do, skortch it.”

Mister Lafayette, the aged poodle with severe stomach gas, had suddenly become aware of the intruders when his mistress attacked.  Immediately he launched an ill-timed and poorly aimed assault that fixed four ancient fangs into the meatiest part of Mrs. Castille’s ankle.

Harmony Castille reached down for the sudden pain in her leg at the very same moment that Corebait pulled the trigger.  A blue beam of exotic energy passed neatly over the top of Mrs. Castille’s gray-haired bun and reflected perfectly off the wall mirror behind her.

Corebait never actually became visible, but Telleron-shaped electrical flashes revealed where the Sindalusian Fmoog had been only milliseconds before.  The room filled with the sort of smell you get when you put an alligator-skin handbag in a microwave and nuke it until it burns.

Harmony Castille was surprised by the sudden thud of the skortch ray pistol as it landed next to the hand she used to squeeze the ancient poodle’s throat.  She picked up the weapon and pointed it at the green-skinned intruder.  She kicked Lafayette deftly with her good leg and booted him out of harm’s way.

“Now, Mr. Spaceman!  You are my prisoner.  I used to be a Sunday school teacher, about thirty year’s worth.  I know how to handle hooligans!”