ita, I was just coming to post that link! That pose is/was ridiculous!!! Was she high or what?

Scary for the families. The Washington Post has a picture of a friend's nephew and his mom leaving the elementary school. The way the community was planned, the high school and the middle school are close to each other (less than half a mile apart) and there is an elementary school across the street from the high school (there is one house between the elementary school and my parents' house). I think they evacuated students to the elementary and middle schools and then dismissed them from there.

So weird.

But also so not surprising. It's a small almost rural community but steeped in conservative mores and a gun culture. Granted, I teach in the 'hood, but violence at school is rare (in the neighborhood is another thing entirely).

That pose is/was ridiculous!!! Was she high or what?

She did it at least twice! Someone must have told her that's how she was supposed to "work" the dress, or no one would know about the slit up to her yahoo.

So I looked at my calendar before I tried to take a sick day, and it's all meetings which can be done over the phone, most of which I really should be at. There's not even really a point trying to take half a day off. Good lord.

I have become increasingly addicted to tumblr. I'm surprised by how much information I can get off it, and how simple it is to share stuff I find on it, even if I'm not networked on it like I am on LJ, which I'm barely using at all--I've used my fanart LJ more than my normal LJ recently, and it's not like I'm doing fanart.

But of my six tumblrs, I've posted to three over the past weekend. And that number really should have been five, but I forgot (perhaps unsurprisingly) some of my login information.

a morning meara:

meara, I envy you your difficult decision this morning. It was 39 degrees out when I woke up, sigh.

I didn't watch the Oscars, was over at a friend's house. Did Billy Crystal really perform in blackface?

I saw some reporting on the shooting in the kitchen here. It's so awful.

A friend of mine who did a PhD in criminology at Oxford says that one of the best ways to prevent this sort of thing is to stop publicizing it. In particular, to not report the names of the killers.

It makes some sense to me, but it also would be very hard to implement, because the press wouldn't want to hide that information.

Also, in this respect, I told someone Consuela's story of job-gone-wrong and he was horrified.

::sigh:: Yeah. They got the contract awarded, so I'm working full-time this week and there won't be a break in my (contractor-provided) benefits. But I'm still pissed off.

School shootings are always scary. It's now being reported that one of the students has died.

Did Billy Crystal really perform in blackface?

He did blackface as Sammy Davis Jr., in his opening clip segment pre-filmed thingie.

I was wondering who the hell that was and if I was supposed to recognize him (the actor, not Sammy).

He did blackface as Sammy Davis Jr., in his opening clip segment pre-filmed thingie.

Uh, no. FAIL.

Did not watch the Oscars and now I'm super glad I didn't! Watched Warehouse 13 on Netflix On Demand instead.

He did blackface as Sammy Davis Jr., in his opening clip segment pre-filmed thingie.

Really? WTF?

I didn't even know it was Oscar time. I may have been getting BIND to work on a virtual server at the time or doing taxes (much better refund that I was thinking it would be, I double checked and tripled checked it and it looked right, not that I was really expecting TurboTax to make a mistake)

There was no reason that sketch needed Sammy Davis Jr, or why a white guy had to play him if he was actually intrinsic (Billy was already in the scene), and the makeup didn't make him look more like SDJ, just less like Billy.

He's not a good enough comedian/actor to get past the baggage, so why take it on?

I don't have a zero tolerance policy on blackface, but I do think it should be carefully considered first. Because it will continue to have baggage for years, and there's nothing any individual can do to take that away. So you have to be able to shoulder it.