Professionalism

I had a 40º temperature yesterday (104º Fahrenheit), and I had the shakes, so I called into work sick. I was in real pain. Do you think they told me to stay home and get well soon? No, instead they told me they won’t “tolerate” sick leave, reminded me that I'm still on my trial period, and said it wouldn’t look "professional" to cancel classes—apparently they think it looks more professional to have contagious teachers moaning and shaking throughout class between squirts of Orofar® into their throats. Can you believe that?

p.s. one really great thing about the American heath care system is that they give you pills for everything. Here they give you huge doses of disgusting tea (well, at least there's booze in it)

p.p.s. my special lady was my lady-in-waiting (but for a nobleman). she spent half the day keeping me tucked in, souped up, and forcing me to drink disguisting tea...which did make me better. Unless it was my huge sperm count.

UPDATE: Because I succumbed to the pressure and went to work on Tuesday, I now have complications and am sequestered from the world, including my two special children, for the next five days.

Groupthink

Man, kids are stupid. I suppose we learned in IR about the same thing happening among adults, but I've yet to witness it.

It all started when I began volunteering at my kid's kindergarten. I teach English there twice a week. After a month the kids "know" how to say:

Hello, my name is _______
Bye bye
Red
Blue
Green
Yellow
White
I like _________
One
Two
Three
Four
Five

By "know" I mean some of them remember the words sometimes, there’re a few bright ones, but mostly they repeat after me. I demonstrate the colors to them by showing them bowling pins; each pin is a different color. I've counted by counting off balls in the past. Today I decided to make things simpler by just counting off the pins instead of balls. Think that worked?

"How many pins am I holding up?"
One kid shouts "Blue!"
Then the rest chime in "BLUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
"No no, how many pins am I holding?"
One kid shouts "Holding!"
Then the rest chime in "HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOLDIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Enough of that, time for a new game. I put three of the pins on top of book cases in three corners of the room. I said, "let's go to the blue pin!" and jogged over to the blue pin. They got the hang of that pretty quickly. Problem was, sometimes they went to the wrong pin. As soon as one kid started running, they all followed him, irregardless of who the kid was (not the same leader every time). And you might say the rest figure he knows which color is which so they follow. You'd be sorely mistaken if you thought that, because get this: my daughter followed the group to the wrong pin as well! She knows very bloody well which color is which! Can you believe that?

Applause is in order for the Hero of this Article of the Day

This man accused his ex-wife and sister-in-law of pimping out his 4 year old daughter and niece to a judge and parliament aide who raped them on several occasions. After a year of his accusations falling on deaf ears at the Lithuanian Child Welfare Office, despite three independent expert psychological reports confirming the girls' honesty, he allegedly shot one of the rapists and one of the pimps himself. How tragic that he couldn't get to the others.

This article in English doesn't have all the details, but it has the general picture.