waste of tape

Reason number 37 that Netflix roxorz my fucking socks: it has become an obsession injection, relentlessly feeding my new-found love for Ioan Gruffudd (I know it looks like “Eye-own Groff-udd,” but it’s pronounced “Throat Warbler Mangrove”).  The steady stream of his life’s work is finding its way into my mailbox, sparing me the ignominy of walking into Blockbuster and having to look at that Aryan check-out boy’s shit-eating grin as I check out 102 Dalmatians.  (Never fear, David, this is just a fleeting admiration, I will return to you, as I always do, for true love lasts forever.)

In other news, the total bleeding heart commie hippie lefty pinko Les Miz performing future President producing school that I attended, which made me into the asshole I am today has, in its later years, succumbed to fascism, putting a uniform policy into effect for the coming school year.  Bollocks, says I.  Apparently, the uniform situation is a backlash against the steady decline in clothing coverage on female students, and by this I mean that it would seem that a certain percentage of the female population dress like skanky whores; the main indicators of such being plunging necklines and 7 inches of exposed midriff, which is unacceptable school attire, unless one attends school at Sky Bar.  Regardless, that administration can bite me.

First of all, there was a (to my mind, completely fair) dress code in place.  I can’t rattle it off in its entirety, but the highlights included bans on: facial hair, visible non-ear piercings, tube tops, bare midriffs and spaghetti strap tops.  Also, shoes were required every day except Fridays, when you could wear sandals (in K-8, footwear was optional, except during field trips) and skirts/shorts had to be at least fingertip length, which is actually (DING!) quite liberal, considering that fingertip length is about 3 inches below my ass…and I won’t pretend that I never took advantage of that little guideline.

Now, according the the school administration, enforcing the existing dress code has grown too difficult—students too bold and whatnot.  Again, bollocks, I say.  How hard could it possibly be, especially at a private, college preparatory school?  I mean, if the kids aren’t at least respectful of authority, it’s a guarantee that 99.8 percent of them want to go to college and continuous infractions over something like dressing like a whore aren’t exactly going to pad your application.  The school is also on a demerit system—instead of detention and Breakfast Club antics, you’re given a certain amount of demerits and for every three earned, your Citizenship Grade goes down a step.  Try explaining that you have a 2.7 GPA because you couldn’t be bothered to find a tee-shirt that covered your stomach. 

Now, I know that there are all sorts of arguments for uniforms, and studies have been done showing that uniforms tend to generate higher productivity and fewer disciplinary cases, but in a school in which a B+ is considered average, no one scoring under 1300 will admit it and where according to the Academy Principal, the single biggest issue is dress code violations, that’s re-goddamn-diculous. Instead of relying on uniforms to regulate behavior, perhaps focus should be given to the larger problem of discipline, or lack thereof.

Okay, show of hands:  who stopped paying attention a couple of paragraphs ago?  In closing, I will say this,  Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes?  Uh, ick. I mean, I think that when Tom Cruise was in Taps, Katie Holmes might have been, I don’t know, BORN.  Regardless, considering that no one had any inkling that the two even knew each other until their publicists leaked the story to the press and they both have huge movies coming out this summer, I call shenanigans on this one, big, fat shenanigans.