Pirates?! Pssh...

you know, at first i thought this whole somali pirate craze thing was kinda cool. i mean, pirates? in the 21st century? attacking merchant ships on the high seas? peril?!

yeah... i found this considerably awesome.

this, of course, is coming from a kid who's childhood vocational dream was to be come a pirate himself (after realizing that there was practically a 0% chance i was ever going to learn the ways of the force and own my own lightsaber).

i was obsessed with pirates growing up, and, like most other kids, couldn't shake the romantic view of pirates that hollywood and popular culture has capitalized on over the course of the last hundred years or so. keep in mind that this was way before that whole johnny depp franchise came along, too... had i been still a kid when those movies came out, there's a solid chance i'd be cruising around in a fishing boat in the indian ocean today carrying an AK-47 and flying a jolly roger.

but let's not kid ourselves, folks...

pirates, as probably most of you are aware of, are not nearly as awesome as we make them out to be. very few pirates - bartholemew roberts and edward teach (blackbeard) being the exception here - ever tooled around in large, man-of-war, galleons the type of which are considered the pirate standard in the pirates of the caribbean franchise. and pirates usually didn't steal gold, or spanish dubloons, or any other type of treasure from their captured prizes - nine times out of ten, they were gunning for spare sails and rope, food and medical supplies, ship hardware, and, of course, casks of rum.

but let me stop right there for a sec - i realize that i'm beginning to transform into mr. hough... giving all you folks a lecture in blog-form. not my intention. nay, readers - my reason for writing about pirates this morning is to simply state my opinion on the whole, on-going fiasco happening today with these somalian pirates.

since the somalian government collapsed in the early 1990s, the country's become a safe-haven for pirates. no order, no stability, no peace = pirate heaven. now, for whatever reason, the global community - with all its naval firepower, state-of-the-art intelligence and global positioning equipment, financial capital, etc. - simply cannot stop a handful of half-starved somalians from putting along in their rusty fishing boats with outdated russian-issued no idea. these guys are just way too damn much for the likes of us.

...are you kidding me?!

this crap is ridiculous, ands its pretty much gotten to the point now where if countries are going to consistently act like morons when dealing with this threat, than they deserve to be hijacked and plundered. that's the price for being an idiot, guys. quit whining.

me? i'd take a lesson from the annals of history (another reason why i teach social studies). before getting his ass handed to him by julius ceasar, co-consul of rome pompey magnus was - and is still considered today -the greatest pirate hunter of all time. he single-handedly wiped out piracy in the mediterranean sea, creating a 'roman lake,' around which the entire empire spread out. and the funny thing about this is that he did it rather easily - it wasn't a brilliant plan by any means, it only took a matter of months, and, for the life of me, i can't understand why the hell we're not doing this right now.

here's how it works:

1. create huge bounties on pirate leaders, and offer rewards for captured pirates

2. bribe major pirate leaders to take down fellow pirates

3. blockade pirate safe havens and raid strongholds(what's up, somalia?!)

4. increase naval supremacy in the region and take no prisoners when encountering pirates

5. execute everybody you can get your damn hands on

that's it. that's how we solve the pirate dilemma in the indian ocean. the pirates of tunisia and algiers in the last century B.C. were a hell of a lot more sophisticated and organized than today's rag-tag assortment of hoopleheads, and they were vanquished with little or no technological support. i see no excuse for the global community's complete and utter lack of smartness.

in closing, i hope you all thoroughly enjoyed your lesson today - your homework assignment is to do the section assessment on page 297, questions 1 - 7. have it to me by monday.

- mr. hough

Grad School = Big Pain in the Ass

i already hate grad school, and i haven't even started classes.

as stated before, i have no head for financial figuring-out, using fax machines, scheduling through various departments, calling different agencies and waiting for 3 to 5 business days for answers to simple questions, etc. etc. - all important aspects of the applying-to-graduate-school process. it should come to no surprise, therefore, that i've been having one hell of a time with the whole ordeal. this is absolute hell, folks. and is turning out to be even more of a pain in the ass than the peace corps application i had to undergo. not very much fun.

as it stands - and again, this is from what kris and i can gather (she's been doing her best to help me out with this, as i'm clinically retarded with this crap) - it looks like all i have to do in order to obtain my professional certification (the five-year renewable teaching certificate that allows me to keep my job) is complete my second year of teaching and take the graduate courses outlined in my masters program. that's it. i was convinced that i'd have to take a crap-load of undergraduate courses, thereby stalling my graduate classes and blowing handfuls of loot just in order to keep my job. that would've sucked big time.

then again, when you owe over $26,000 in student loans, what's another $20,000? i've already come to the realization that these loans are never going away, that i'll have to pass them on through subsequent generations as family heirlooms. i'm sure my great-great-great grandchildren will appreciate this.

...though by that time i'm sure we'll all be ruled by space gorillas and robots, so it won't really matter. (see picture)

fortunately, that's not the case. i get to start right away with the mega-hard classes... which i'm not looking forward to in the slightest. like i said before, folks - i hated college (classes). i'm not good at studying, i'm easily-distracted, i can't stay on top of due dates, and i'm arguably the world's worst procrastinator. so, more or less, i'm screwed with this whole grad school nonsense.

so why am i putting myself through this gauntlet of hell? because the houghs are on a timetable, that's why. when kris and i moved down here to florida in january of '07, we expected to live in florida for four to five years - long enough to obtain teaching jobs, finish grad school, and find work elsewhere. i think i've spelled this out before. ideally, i'd like to find a teaching job in illinois or indiana - somewhere in the midwest, close to michigan (there's practically a zero percent chance i'm going to find any work in michigan any time soon). it'd be nice to be able to make the drive from our place to home in less than 10 - 12 hours. now it takes about 22... and that was driving straight through, without a kid. that drive would be absolutely hell now.

sure, you can fly. but around the holidays, you get screwed with ticket costs and all those crap-fees. $700 - $900 to fly home for christmas for four or five days? not worth it, as far as we're concerned.

and so, with grad school out of the way - hopefully by the fall of 2010 - i'll be in prime positioning to start scouting out job prospects in the great white north.

...at least that's the plan so far.

- brian

The Lost Art of Haberdashery

folks, i've found myself in somewhat of a 'quandary.'

(if i even spelled that right.)

you see, about a month ago, i inherited a bunch of my grandfather's old hats. some fedoras, several old derby and slouch hats, etc. - most of them from the '60s - '90s. now, the derby hats are fine the way they are - they just need to be handwashed and air-dried and they'll be good as new. the fedoras, on the other hand, have brims that are bent out of shape from years and years of being stuffed in a closet. i suppose an experienced hand in the art of hat-bending would be able to bend these old hats back into their original shape and form; alas, i have no such experience.

so my dilemma, as it were, is this: in 2008, where the hell does one find a hatsmith?!

i can't find one. anywhere. ever since hats (real hats, that is) went the way of the dinosaur (thanks a lot, JFK), hatsmiths the nation over have been driven into obscurity - forced to scrape a living off of rocks on the edge of civilization. sounds crazy, you say? well then, friends, answer me this: when's the last time you drove past a hattery on your way to target? or, perhaps, a habberdasher? or a whatever-the-hell-they're-called? you haven't, because they probably don't exist anymore.

but, if they do, this is one guy who's determined to find 'em. this is one guy who has some hats that deserve to be worn.

...help me out here, folks.

- brian

Da Bomb (or, How to Kill 90 Minutes of Potential Free Time)

ka-BOOM.

hey players... how's everybody's week going so far? pretty nice?

that's swell. glad to hear it.


alright... here's the deal.

smurf this, folks: today at 3:00pm, as mr. hough was trudging waist-deep through chapter 6, section 1 ('the land and economy of mexico'), and his last remaining class for the day was busy creating concept maps and making fun of eachother's mamas, an announcement was made over the P.A. system alerting all staff and students to assemble in the field for a 'fire drill.'

...a 'fire drill' that required all students to immediately leave the buildings, and to take with them their backpacks.

this is unheard of, in the educational realm at any rate, and you could hear it in the voice of the administrator speaking over the P.A. that something was wrong. what they weren't telling us at that point in time, of course, was that the sheriff's department had received a threat over the phone from some kid saying that there was a bomb planted in the school. and, even though the chances were slim to none that this threat had any substance behind it, our school took the appropriate measure and immediately unleashed our hordes of terrors from their academic confinements and out into the biting cold (florida biting cold, rather).

for over an hour and a half, we were assembled on the athletic complex behind the school... much like - wait for the nerd reference, folks - the forces of haradrim on the fields of pelennor. now, keep in mind that although school let out at 3:30pm, no one - students and faculty alike - was allowed to leave. not a soul. and let me tell you this much, dear readers: trying to keep two dozen teenagers in line after the end-of-school bell sounds - and who have no idea what's going on in the first place - is pure, unGodly hell. the kids weren't allowed to do anything but stand around and complain, which, as you can probably imagine, was tons and tons of fun. ultimately, this unruly mob of nearly 1500 bored and tired lemmings/students was systematically dispersed only after K-9 units and the like swept through the school (and the teachers' individual cars), sometime around 4:15pm or so.

after that, teachers had to wait an additional half-hour or so before the go-ahead was given for us all to risk our lives in retrieving our car keys from our classrooms. pretty awesome.

all in all, not the greatest way to end one's tuesday. that's my two cents.

personally, i would've tempted the fates and put my neck on the line simply in order to grab my keys and get the hell out of there somewhat earlier than all of this. but, then again, i am incredibly brave.... and am courageous beyond all rational thought.

...which, i suppose, is why i teach middle school in the first place.

- brian

The Week in Review: Fevers and a Shuttle Launch

if its one thing i'm sure all of us can appreciate, its a three-day work week.

that's what i had this week. three days of teenagers and textbooks, two days of pajamas and DVDs. tuesday, as we all know, was veteran's day; and yours truly, being the humble public servant that he is, obviously got the day off of work. cowabunga. i ran a few errands with the kid, got some stuff done around the house - the usual boring stuff boring adults like me do on their days off. this particular day off, however, soon spoiled when the cannonball - who had received a DTAP vaccination the previous friday - began showing a temperature. and sure enough, at 2:30am wednesday morning, she woke up with a 102 - 103 degree fever.

kris had to stay home with her all day on wednesday, and alayna seemed to be doing better there for awhile, but then, sure enough, late wednesday night her temperature spiked again. and so, once again, yours truly got to take yet another day off of work. what i should point out here is that, as a teacher, i'm given ten paid-days off a year - after that, i can still take days off, but i'm no longer paid for them.

as of right now, i've officially taken off six of those days. and its only november.

how awesome is that?

anyway, we finally decided on friday that the kid was well enough to hang out at daycare. we both went to work, the kid went to daycare, and all normalcy resumed in realm of the houghs. i should add, by the way, that its pretty cool paying a full week of daycare when your kid only shows up for a one Goddamn day. i think that's just swell. i really do.

in closing, dear readers, kris and i finally got to see a shuttle launch. finally. being in central florida, with cape canaveral and NASA's shuttle launch facility only a quick drive away, its possible to see shuttle launch's relatively up close and personal. now, we've been down here in florida for nigh on two years, and we've never seen one in person. not once. and its not as if there haven't been shuttle launches to be had, either - they practically have them every few months. instead, rather, we just consistently forget about them, and miss out on them every single time. but last night, at 7:55pm, the shuttle endeavor blasted off from florida and into space with its very important cargo (the toilet they were carrying to install in the international space station).

...and we got to watch it from our veranda. which was cool.

happy pre-holidays,

- brian

Flabbergasted

hey kids.

i was going to write about this yesterday, but, after a full day of work and a full stint of ridiculous ESOL education shortly thereafter, by the time i finally made it back to my humble abode last night it was nearly 8pm. and by that time, dear readers, i didn't feel like doing anything but having a drink and going to bed.

you see, i had about four hours of sleep tuesday night. i'm sure many of you did as well. after following the primaries and general election for the last 21 months - most likely closer than most americans and those of you who read this (though i know of plenty of exceptions and like-minded souls on either side of the partisan line) - i felt like it was my solemn duty to see this crapfest through... all the way to the end. that meant staying up to watch the polls close, and staying up even later to watch the speeches. perhaps not the most impressive of feats to some, but this guy - me - has the internal clock of an old man... and gets to wake up every morning at 5am and spew learning at barbarian teenagers all day long. furthermore, like i've said before, on wednesdays i also get to attend a three hour ESOL (english as a second language) instructional method course directly after work. loads of fun wednesdays are.

(pfft.)

anyway, i'm not about to go into a political rant here, folks, so don't worry. nobody wants that. the purpose of me writing this is to vocalize a concern i'm sure a great deal of us now have at this point in time:

what the hell do we do with all of our spare time now?

some folks aren't 'news' people. they don't care that much, they find it boring, whatever. more power to 'em. me? i'm a 'news' person. can't get enough of the crap, even if it is biased, dramatized and skewed beyond all rational thought. i used to religiously check online and read the headlines at least a few dozen times a day. i'd watch political analysts and chief strategists on tv, i'd listen to experts on NPR, i'd watch the polls and track the electoral map during whatever spare moment i could get my hands on. and now that barack obama has clenched the presidency, i'm at a loss.

i have absolutely nothing to focus my attention on.

work? yeah, sure. i suppose i could focus more on work. after all, kids need teaching, kids need social studies. but honestly... who enjoys devoting their free time to work? i mean really? i love my job - don't get me wrong, here - but i don't love it that much. i suppose what little free time i have now, and that i used to devote towards tracking mud-slinging through the associated press, will soon be devoted towards grad school and homework.

i can't even begin to tell all you folks how thrilled and excited i am for that hellfest to begin.

but in all seriousness, i have no idea what to do with myself now. i need to pick up a new hobby.

flabbergasted,

- brian

School Sucks

well, it looks like yours truly is one step closer to getting into grad school.

hooray.

i figured the threat of my temporary certificate expiring in a year was sound enough motivation for me to begin furthering my professional development. around these parts, one must take an additional 20 semester hours of additional education coursework on top of a three-year, non-renewable 'temporary certificate' (which is what i hold now) in order to obtain the almighty 'professional certificate' (which is five-year, renewable, transferrable license). from what i can gather, if i don't take 20 semester hours within the next year in a half, before my temporary certificate expires, i run the risk of losing my job.

...at least i think i do - i'm having one hell of a time sorting all this crap out.

generally i get easily confused with this crap: not getting straight answers from anyone, having to hold for an operator for nigh on thirty minutes before being told you've contacted the wrong department and they can't transfer you, losing important documentation and having different customer service represenatitives contradict one another over policy, etc. what's really, really great about all of this is that, like all other civilized businesses in the free world, the florida department of education (FDOE), whom i've been dealing with in order to get the ball rolling with my certification nightmare/grad school application, is only open from 9am to 5pm monday - friday. and guess who's unable to get to a phone before 5pm? yeah, that's right. me.

this, as you all well know, is impossible for yours truly unless i handle correspondence with aforementioned institution in the middle of my classroom. this crap gives me a headache.

if you can take away one thing from all of this, guys, it is this:

school sucks.

- brian

The Cannonball's Spooktacular

We had a pretty fun Halloween. The day started out a little hectic, with a trip to the health department for a vaccine, but immediately following that we got to hit up Alayna's School Parade of Costumes. There happened to be two other monkeys in her classroom, so they put them all together in a crib and we had our three little monkeys. It was quite cute. They got to be pushed down the sidwalk along the outside of the building in front of an impressive line of parents.

Some were a little fussy at sharing a crib with others,

but I'd like to say that Cannonball did extremely well and was even talking.

Tons of compliments followed the parade as I carried her around my classroom and introduced her to the parents of the kids I teach.

All in all, I'd say it was a 'cute' time.

But, our day didn't end there. We headed straight to SeaWorld's Spooktacular. Brian had to work, so it was just mom and daughter. We watched Shamu and did a little walking around, but she started fussing from all the activity so I decided to

wait for Brian before doing all the Halloween activities. So we headed home for snack and a nap and then back to SeaWorld when Brian got home. It starting cooling down so we dressed her back up in her costume and went to see the Sesame Street Count Down to Halloween Musical and then the closing show of Shamu Rocks.

Of course we squeezed in one little trick or treat.

-Kristina