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Samson's Wig

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  1. I spent my entire childhood and about half of my twenties working cattle when I wasn't working a cotton patch. I've gone soft since those days. Firearms absolutely have their place when out working, but anything sitting on your hip is going to be useless against an angry bull unless you're extremely lucky. Handy for rattlebugs, though.
  2. Of all of the dumb fucking nonsense arguments used by gun nuts, this might be the dumbest one I've heard.
  3. I hope everyone is taking notes while watching Dune.
  4. We once had a cat who utilized this move anytime he had to go to the vet. He was a big Maine Coon and would shit on the vet's table and roll around in it as fast as he could the second they tried to take a look at him. His pupils would dilate to full black and he would stumble about like a late-life Hemingway, mumbling and snarling and drunken looking and ready to fuck up anyone who crossed him. "You wanna examine me now, bitch?" was written all over his face. We had two different vets ask us not to bring him back in, and finally found one that would drug him before every visit to avoid staff getting injured. Never got another cat after he died and never will. I loved that evil little bastard, but I was also terrified of him.
  5. I know you know much more about all this than I do, as my perspective is that of a parent and not an educator. The inclusive classroom movement has done more damage to public education than almost any other factor, in my opinion. It has turned teachers into caretakers, and nothing is getting done academically. Kids are stuck in an already overcrowded room with 20-30 kids in it, and no one can learn anything because one single kid is incapable of controlling his behavior and he has a litigious parent. We have a system that has been headed down the wrong road since the 90s on this issue. It was well-intentioned, but it absolutely did not work at all. We know this objectively now, but it's really difficult to change feel-good policies because no one wants to be seen as the bad guy. Politics ruining everything as usual. In elementary school, I think we had only one year that one or both of my kids weren't stuck in a classroom with a kid bouncing off the walls and completely derailing every day. These were not poorly disciplined children but kids with genuine diagnoses who were not capable of typical classroom functions. My son's second-grade teacher would cry after school every day thanks to one kid and his asshole mother, who had already filed lawsuits against his kindergarten and first-grade school districts before moving to AISD. They moved after second grade and, for all I know, have sued many more districts in the passing years. Certain kids need to be outside of regular classrooms, at least for the academic portions of the day, but we've decided we'd rather support feel-good bullshit and not educate anyone. We pretend it's for the good of the kids, and their parents often believe this to be true, but it's really because we can't afford to do anything else but stick them in a normal classroom and hope for the best. It's maddening, and it's not helping the special needs kids or the other kids at all. My son is autistic. I'm not coming at this from an insensitive or ignorant place. The lack of resources for kids with genuine special needs is insane. AISD has been in violation of federal law for years now, but it's hamstrung by state politics, which has led to a lack of funding. I don't know what more they can reasonably do. The bigger issue is no one really gives a shit who has the power to do anything about it. And in Texas, those with the power actively work to make sure things don't get fixed for their own messed up agendas. This is a national problem, but Texas is handling it about as badly as any state can. This is just one of many factors contributing to the brain drain we're experiencing. Texas will be a wild and wooly place in another 20-30 years when no one will have an education equivalent to or better than a sixth grader in 1965. Anyway, thank you for the work you do to stem the dismal tide. I, for one, very much appreciate it.
  6. I was being facetious. Obviously, we can't lock up people for being stupid and/or gullible, or there would be very few people left running free. Depending on where we draw the line, I might not even make the cut. And I hear you. I can't recall the last time my vote or voice lined up with anything the Texas lege has done. I'm sure there's an outlier or two out there that I'm forgetting or unaware of.
  7. What I'm suggesting is that maybe they should be.
  8. So long as they're locked up and getting treatment, who cares?
  9. I'll bet that guy ended up on the Rascal due to a cycling injury.
  10. Fuck this shit and anyone who supports it. If we ever move to permanent DST (because the idiots have won), I'll have to figure out the best place to live that's along the far eastern edge of a timezone.
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