The 35th Precinct

Below is a selection of comments from this article about a Carnival Cruise gone wrong:


( Why Don't Those Damn Dirty Wheelchair People Just Shut Up and Stay Where They Belong? )

People like these make the veins in my head throb dangerously because chances are, they are the same opportunistic tools who would wave ADA compliance laws like a live hand grenade if they suddenly broke their legs a week before the cruise and decided to take it anyway. Then there would be no end of screaming about how they have a God-given right to the cruise they paid for, goddammit, and no corporate puppet was going to rob them of what they fucking paid for.

Yes, you smug assholes, there are some things disabled folks cannot do; we know this, and let me tell you, it hurts. But--and stay with me here--most of us don't expect the abled world to fix these problems for us if it is unreasonable to do so or would create a danger to others. I don't expect the Sherpas in Tibet to carve wheelchair trails up Everest just because I need to prove my handicapable cred, and I wouldn't expect a four-hundred-year-old hotel in Prague to be wheelchair accessible; the renovation cost would be onerous and, well, crippling to a business, and would likely never pay for itself, because Europe isn't exactly teeming with globe-trotting cripples. It wouldn't be fair to ask them to make extensive renovations on the off chance that a disabled traveler might turn up.

But here's the thing: Businesses are fully within their rights to admit they aren't equipped for my needs and refuse my patronage; it might not be legal, but as I said, I know reality and idealism seldom meet, and the seventy-year-old inn just might not be able to accept my wheelchair and my need for an accessible toilet. It's unfortunate, but it's also the truth. However, the second you assure me that you can, in fact, accommodate my needs after I have explained them to you, then you are obligated to meet those needs, and I don't care how hard it is for you. If you didn't think you could, then you should never have accepted my money and made promises you couldn't keep. Once you have my money, then I have the right to complain if and when you fail to provide the services I purchased, and it doesn't matter if I'm a talking head on four wheels.

Are there entitled asshats in wheelchairs? Oh, yes, and maybe some of them feel entitled by the wheels under their asses, but most disabled people are simply frustrated and angry about the dishonesty that so often permeates any effort to move through the world. So many businesses promise full accommodation and deliver the barest fraction of the sad minimum, and we don't realize it until we're sitting on the platform with our luggage on our laps and no choice but to either press on as best we can or give up the venture entirely. We're tired of being charged maximum price for minimum service and being shamed and belittled when we dare complain because we "should have known better" than to think we could travel the country or visit other countries like anyone else. We should have known better than to want more than the sad, cramped, isolated lives that government charity and the begrudging collective conscience of our betters allows us. It's heartbreaking and exhausting, and it sometimes makes us into the angry, bitter people so many so loftily chide.


Because I don't want this post to be nothing but a wallow in impotent fury, have some Christoph:

( It's Gonna Be a Bright, Bright Sunshiny Day )

Yes, he looks maniacal, but he also looks so damn happy that it lifts my spirits to see him.

It also helps that I know he's a goddamn superhero with an awesome butler, trufax.

The hand-wringing Rammstein apologists make me want to gnaw on my brain. Rammstein erred badly when they made vague promises about a U.S. tour before they were sure they could deliver on said promises(promises they've been making since Flake's illness in 2001 caused them to abort a planned U.S. tour, I might add). It doesn't make them evil assholes who ought to be stoned to death by a seething mob of rock-hurling justice, but it does make them look flaky and indifferent to their long-neglected U.S. fanbase.

Why, oh, why, does pointing this out this bring all the smug apologists to the yard with cries of, "You're being selfish and MEAN to Rammstein," or "OMG, if you want to see them so badly, then save up and fly to Europe/South America; if you can't then you must not want it badly enough. LOSER!"? Why is it that whenever a fan expresses disappointment or irritation that Rammstein's mouths have written checks they're unwilling to cash when push comes to shove, everybody rushes to the defense of poor, put-upon Rammstein? Won't somebody think of Rammstein?

I do think of Rammstein. Every day. I listen to their awesome music and hear the stories from fans lucky enough to see them, and I want to share in that experience. If that makes me an asshole, then fine. Stamp my Asshole Membership card. Wanting to see them live isn't being an asshole to poor, put-upon Rammstein. It's saying, "I love your music. I love it so much that I am willing to pay an obscene amount of money to see you play it. I will pay $40 for a t-shirt. My wallet, let me give you it."

Yes, how selfish and cruel of us, wanting to shower them with money.

If Rammstein knew it was prohibitively difficult to arrange U.S. shows because of restrictive fire statutes and exorbitant insurance rates, then they should have kept their traps closed on the subject of a U.S. tour until they had everything in order, or should have simply said, "It's too difficult to warrant the expense. We're sorry." Fans would have sulked, but likely not for very long. Instead, they've strung us along with vague noises and promises to come eventually.

As far as saving to see them goes, well, that's a rather privileged POV. The U.S. is not a compact nation. From Miami to New York is 2,000 miles. From NY to LA is 3,000. If you're unable to fly, whether because of phobias or medical restrictions, that's a long damn trek, and an expensive one if you factor in food, gas, and lodging. Not everyone can afford $1000 in gas and an equal amount for food and lodging, and even fewer can skive off work for a week. It's not just a matter of saving money and hopping a flight or getting into the car. It might be if this were still 1980 and tickets were $10 and gas was $.89 a gallon and you and your friends could crash five to a hotel room without some busybody getting their ass in a cramp.

Do I think Rammstein should play an eighty-date tour? No. But I don't think ten or twelve is unreasonable. If they can be assed to play NYC and LA, then they can play Dallas and Seattle and Miami and Atlanta and Boston and Vegas and Chicago. It won't cover everybody, of course, but it gives those fans who have scrimped and saved and done everything the righteous defenders of Rammstein's sullied honor say they should a chance to hand Rammstein wads of cash in exchange for a good time.

Ah, Beekay, always with the even-handed tone that one looks for and needs in a good mod. Look, I get that people on forums occasionally do stupid, ill-advised things, but must she always sound like she's being cornholed by a razor-toed wolverine every time she thwaps someone? Maybe my perception has been colored by earlier interactions, when she was sticking her fingers into her ears and screaming, "LALALA, not my problem" whenever posters complained about Onyx_Wolf running around the forum with her asshat on, but damn, does she come across as snide and condescending.

Dear Rammstein,

I love you, and I will buy your music until I am dead or until you retire, whichever comes first, but shut the fuck up. I'm beyond tired of listening to you piss and moan about how haaaaaaard it would be to arrange a U.S. tour, and why should you bother if you won't get ten thousand fans? If you don't want to get out of bed for fewer than ten thousand fans, that's your business. I think it's douchetastic, but I understand that there are financial and legal considerations. If it won't be profitable to come here, then why go to the expense?

But for God's sake, it's not the U.S. fanbase's fault that your market here is limited, and it isn't limited solely because American fans are language snobs and linguistic peons who can't speak another language but expect the world to speak English. It's limited because YOU DON'T GIVE TWO SHITS ABOUT IT AND TREAT IT LIKE A NUISANCE RATHER THAN A WELCOME PART OF YOUR LARGER FAN COLLECTIVE. You haven't so much as farted in our direction since 2001, yet you bitch that you wouldn't be able to draw the numbers you do in Europe. It's called quid pro quo. You stopped caring or even pretending to care, so all but the diehards left for more appreciative pastures. You know, like Metallica, who have cultivated and maintained their gargantuan fanbase for thirty years by making them feel like they matter. I would buy a Metallica collection of beer hall covers because Metallica has never, ever, ever made me feel like a pain in the ass. Oh, and isn't it funny, but Metallica hasn't toured Australia or Latin America or Asia in some years, and yet they've sold out New Zealand. You know why? Because they made the long-suffering fans feel important by modifying their monstrous tour so they could play for them, and they didn't make them feel like assholes for the inconvenience.

Stop shitting in our mouths and calling it more than we deserve, and maybe we'll line up for the tickets, you spoiled assholes.

I'm done now.

One day, I will learn not to click on any link that has the word disabled in it.

It's not the article that fills me with a burning hatred for the human race, but the snide, smug comments from able folks. There's a condescending spitefulness to them that makes my heart hurt. Many of them fall into two camps: those who loftily blame us for our limitations and opine that we should have known this would happen when we decided to be all uppity and leave the house to interact with the better people, and those who resent the "freebies" our disability gets us. Those in Camp A point out that we had the options of making other arrangements for accomplishing our tasks, tasks which are surely menial and less important than their convenience. That those "other arrangements" might produce greater hardship or other obstacles for people struggling vainly against illness and and impediments that would break their privileged backs is of no import. Them's the breaks, suck it up, cripple. That's the cost of your worthless life. Don't have thirty bucks per bag to check your luggage? Too bad. It's your own fault for being broken and poor. Can't wrangle your checked bags off the luggage carousel? Sucks to be you. You're the idiot who keeps breathing.

Those in Camp B jump at the chance to label us whiny entitlement whores who work the system for all kinds of special "perks". You know, like that "free wheelchair ride to the gate." That's right, you blinkered yuppie fuckmook. When I was coming down the heavenly assembly line, I asked God to send me out with defective parts just so that one day, I could experience the awesome, life-altering joy of riding to the gate in the airport's Hannibal Lecter escort chair. Free. While you, you poor, downtrodden martyr, were cruelly forced to use your bothersome, healthy legs. The rank unfairness of it all.

And you know what? That free ride in the uncomfortable prison chair? Was totally worth it. Orgasmic. We've been holding out on you able folks; there's a garden gnome hidden beneath the seat, and he goes muff-diving as the underpaid skycap hoofs my lazy, entitled ass to the gate. Trufax. It's worth all the shame, scorn, ridicule, and embarrassment the world heaps upon my head every time I leave the house and reveal my weakness. Boy, I sure was clever, trading a life of mobility and promise and freedom for the chance to take a free ride in an airport transport chair.

I'm feeling generous today, so I'll tell you what. Why don't I take your pesky legs and endure the horrors of standing in line and being treated like a valuable member of society, and you can avail yourself of that free spin in the wheelchair.

I already have so much, after all, and I certainly wouldn't want to be an asshole with all my good fortune.

You know what, Unfunnybusiness? Fuck you. Seriously. Whether you like it or not, disabled people are one of the last groups it is acceptable to ridicule. Yes, other groups, like the LGBTQ community and the obese, are still mocked by mouth-breathing troglodytes, and as evinced by the torrent of astonishing fail pouring out of the UCSD debacle, racism is still thriving. I'm not saying that ableism is the last great bastion of assholery. What I am saying is that the response to it is wholly different than to any other form of discrimination.

Most people with a shred of decency raise a hue and cry whenever racism, sexism, or homophobia rear their ugly heads. The racists and homophobes are roundly castigated, and nobody dreams of telling the injured parties to suck it up and get over it. People the Internet and community over fall all over themselves to join the mob decrying the bigoted behavior.

But a funny thing happens when ableism comes to call. Oh, plenty of people rush to denounce the asshole du jour and to affirm that the disabled should be heard. But there are an alarming number of otherwise decent, level-headed people who shake their fingers at any disabled person who dares to complain about the hurt, anger and marginalization they feel. "Who says you got it worse than us gay folk?" they demand to know. "Why are you playing the biggest victim? You're not more oppressed than the rest of us, so STFU."

No. Fuck you.

I'm not more oppressed than the gay couple that can't marry or the people of color being persecuted at UCSD by vicious hatemongers, but I am less visible, because every time I open my mouth to speak, my voice is drowned out by the clamor of those desperate to point out how badly they've got it. I have fewer advocates than the gay community or the minority groups because no one wants to be like me. Unlike those communities, which have common histories and leaders who exhort them to be proud of who they are, I have a fragmented culture with no leadership, and those who would lead me have not so much as a name. They are simply "advocates for the disabled", a faceless gestalt of people who attract no notice and inspire none to action.

The struggle of gay people and people of color strikes a chord of empathy within many because it is a recognizable, universal, and human one. Mine inspires only an uneasy pity and niggling sense of guilt.

So, yes, I do think disabled folks have a rougher go of it than most of the other folks in Discrimination Steerage. All around me, I see people working together to assure equal rights for gay people and minorities, people fighting to see that they can stand up and be counted because they are no less worthy of human consideration than the WASPs next door. And yet, when I reach for that same hand, it isn't there. When I ask to vent my frustrations, I'm told they're wrong, that I'm interrogating my experiences from the wrong perspective.

Those same decent, fair-minded people who would work tirelessly for gay rights suddenly find a great deal of comfort in their keyboards when I point out that yeah, my life sucks and I could use a little help, a little mercy now. Don't I know? Other people have it just as rough as me, so shut up and roll to the end of the line. And if I don't like that attitude, then the problem lies with me.

The sad part is that the next time some able poster opines that the disabled are among the last groups it is acceptable to deride and humiliate, dozens of people will laud them for their persipicacity and open-minded, unflinching analysis of the truth.

But don't mind me. What do I know? I'm just bitter and disabled.

My poor writing computer had a seizure two days ago and demanded that I run a full surface scan with Scandisk, which would take six hours. I didn't want to yesterday because I had no desire to stare at an inert screen for that long. I didn't want to do it today, either, but I did because I figured I owed it to the old girl for her ten years of faithful service. Six hours and a scan later, and there are no bad sectors on the hard drive, waiting to kill her dead.

There was an afternoon I'll never get back.


Thomas Mundy is an opportunistic douchebag. It surprises me not at all that he's a limper of accident and not of birth because his sue-happy rampage reeks of a sense of entitlement left over from his privileged able-bodied days. Yes, ADA compliance is still abysmal nineteen years after the regulations went into effect, and yes, something needs to be done, but this is not it. His tactics serve only to line his pockets with settlement money and reinforce the cherished AB-held stereotype that all disabled folks are lazy, opportunistic, money-grubbing assholes who want the world to write them a check for their perpetual inconvenience. Mundy can cram his empty platitudes about all the good he's doing for the disabled community up his ass. Because of his fortuitous paralysis, he won't feel a thing.

I've occasionally been tempted to sue the ever-loving shit out of a store or facility, I confess, but only in instances where the inaccessibility posed a legitimate danger to my welfare. For instance, I've often been tempted to duct tape a city planner to a wheelchair and force him on a roll throughout the city until the numerous potholes and spine-shattering curb drops rattled the scales from his eyes and made him see the need for curb cuts on every crosswalk on both sides of the street. I'm convinced that after a few games of chicken across a four-lane highway and a few spinal fractures, the esteemed councilman would be a most ardent convert to my cause. I've also been tempted to sue the university into the ground for the danger in which it places me with its myriad construction projects.

I have never, however, thought of suing a business because its counters were half an inch too high or because the paper towel dispenser was out of reach. Lawsuits like that demonstrate not only profound greed, but a gross lack of imagination. Counters too high? Tell them you can't give them money until you can reach them. Need the counter to write on? Use a clipboard stowed in a backpack. Need a paper towel? Bring some wet wipes in a fanny pack. It sucks having to prove we're so damned clever and handicapable all the time, but frustration doesn't mean we have to be shiftless assholes incapable of being proactive and prepared. Suing a store for safety concerns or for gross assaults on basic human dignity(an utterly inaccessible bathroom) is an act of agency and self-advocacy that benefits everyone. Suing it because the counter is a half-inch too high is unabashed greed and petty assholery that hurts more than it helps, as evinced by the comments made by now-paranoid shopkeepers who are now convinced that every disabled customer is out to get theirs, a drooling crip Mossad bent on bringing walking civilization to its knees. Thanks a lot, Mundy.

That said, I have no sympathy for the store owner who says he cringes every time he sees a disabled customer enter the store because he fears a lawsuit. Shut up and serve me, asshole, and I'll give you no trouble. Treat me like crap because you think I might sue you for ADA non-compliance, and I'll be only too happy to sue you out of your shorts. For discrimination.

Gimps need an advocate, but this wasn't the kind I was hoping for.

I really should learn not to read anything on the Internet that treats on disability issues and isn't written by a limper. It never ends well, and I find myself frustrated to the point of tears and seriously questioning why I don't just bow to the inevitable social will and die decently.

Like this story on Unfunnybusiness about a disabled woman being barred from a UK supermarket for being "a health and safety" hazard. Why was she thusly labeled? Because she got stuck in the disabled lavatory and pressed the emergency bell to summon help. Apparently, that bell is just for decoration, and if I disabled person gets into trouble, well, they're on their own, and serves them right for having the nerve to venture forth without a warden "chaperone".

M&S eventually conceded that barring the woman from the store was "excessive", but still requested that a 58-year-old woman with Cerebral Palsy bring a "chaperone" next time.

Jesus fucking Christ. Does anyone, anyone grasp how demeaning and demoralizing that is? Your only "crime" is to have a body that sometimes betrays you, and for that, you're told you don't have the right to shop or eat without someone else holding the leash, because clearly, the possibility that you might need to call upon another person's common sense and human decency is too troubling. Best to set impossible strictures on an already limited life and hope they go away.

Most of the folks at Unfunnybusiness are sympathetic, but the apologists have begun to trickle in, wringing their hands and pointing out that most store employees aren't trained in personal care. They also point out that wiping someone's shit-stained ass exceeds the scope of reasonable accommodation.

As far as I can tell, this woman wasn't expecting anyone to wipe her ass. She was stuck on the toilet and needed help to get unstuck. Later commenters said her pants had fallen, and she couldn't pull them up. Helping someone pull up their pants is not the same as wiping their ass, and if you've been operating on that assumption, you're doing it wrong.

I've been in that situation. I've been in the bathroom, gripping a bar and trying to pull up loose pants one-handed. Your arms hurt from supporting most of your weight, and you're swaying like a drunk, praying you don't fall, because if you do, the paramedics are going to see your pasty ass and realize you go commando under your clothes. And one of the paramedics will be smoking hot. You're tugging on the pants, but they just keep falling, so finally, you fall back onto the toilet and sit there burning with shame, because it's such a simple goddamn act, a simple goddamn act thousands do every day. Toddlers do it every day. But despite all your book smarts, all the tests that proclaim you smarter than ninety percent of the people who pity you, you can't pull up your pants, and you're going to have to beg a stranger to help you.

It's humiliating, and you don't want to face the stares, so you try again and again. It hurts so bad, and you're crying in shame and pain. Shame because you're 23 and can't pull up your pants, and pain because urgency has made your muscles lock.

Finally, you pull them up just enough and flop into your chair, and you sit there panting and crying, with snot on your nose, furious at the world, but more furious at yourself for being so broken. Your hair is fucked up, you've got exertion tremors, and your face and arms are a blotchy red. You just want to hide, but you have to go back out there with your pants crooked because you didn't have time for aesthetics when you were trying to cover basic decency laws. So you go out their with your red face and your disheveled hair and your crooked pants, and you die inside because you know you look every bit the dangerous, crazy cripple bogey everyone fears.

Most people don't look at you. Of those that do, some look with pity; most look with disgust. What are you doing here, out among us? they ask, and after that horrible, unending fifteen minutes, you honestly don't know. You just want to disappear.

What the apologists are saying, whether they know it or not, is that that disabled woman must bear the extra humiliation of being chaperoned like a child on top of the humiliation she surely endured in that stall. Because her hope that a human being would offer help in an emergency is unreasonable accommodation.

Memo to ABs: I know you're not going to believe this, because it's a fact that all cripples are fetishists who like making people wipe our asses, but personal care of any kind is more embarrassing for us than it is or ever can be for the other person, no matter who that person is. In fact, it's worse if it's a friend, because friends are people whose respect and good opinion you cherish, and how can they respect you once they've seen your ass? If it's a stranger, you can console yourself with the hope that you'll never see them again, but if it's a friend, you'll never be able to look at them again without wondering what they must think of you now.

A stranger who helps me will experience five minutes of awkwardness and come away with an embarrassing story for cocktail parties. They'll be able to trumpet their goodness because they deigned to help the cripple.

I will live forever with those minutes I spent standing there with my pants around my ankles beneath the disgusted, disapproving gaze of a stranger and trading my shattered dignity for a chance to leave the bathroom.

But I brought it on myself because I dared to do what everyone else does and didn't get someone else's permission first.

I deserved it because of who I am.

I decided to post an entry before I put on my academic hipwaders and descended into the reeking bog of academia with a comparative essay on Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian myths of creation. Thing is, I can't find much to say. I've opined at length on the burgeoning CSI:NY D/L drama, and frankly, I don't have the strength to rebut the infuriating, ablist attitudes I encountered on Unfunnybusiness when I posted about the paraplegic woman being ejected from an Idaho fair for being too graphic and offensive to be seen in public.

Apparently, if you're disabled, it's you're responsibility to prove no malicious or offensive intent when appearing in public. After all, if people are feeling guilty about their healthy bodies, it's your calling to put them at ease by assuring them you want to be where you are and aren't, in fact, a breathing ficus being exploited by your awful caregiver, who probably gets their jollies by beating you and sodomizing you with a toothbrush before indulging in a bit of martyrdom and Munchausen's by proxy.

Their right, their moral obligation, to protect you from a possible or imagined abuse supersedes your right to autonomy as a disabled person. It's for their comfort your own good.

Don't believe me? Check out the responses by iwanttobeasleep and kerryblaze.

I stopped responding early on because I knew nothing I said would sway them from their privileged, ablist outlook, and I didn't relish the thought of spending the weekend crying in impotent rage and tilting at windmills on the Internet.

The only coherent thought I have left on the matter is this: People are stupid, uninterested, judgmental assholes who spend far too much time judging each other without having the facts. I include myself here because I know I've spoken harshly or glibly and hurt others with my opinionated snark. I also know I'll do it again and again because I'm not better than anyone else when it comes to thinking my opinions are the "right" ones.

People suck, and able-bodied people have no business telling disabled people how to live their lives to make them feel better. If they're so interested in "helping" me, then why is there never a line when I need help wiping my ass?


Lastly, a pimp for Et Tu, Part XI.

odogoddess sent me this, and I really wish she hadn't because things like this piss me off:

Handicapped People Are 'Too Graphic' to Be Seen in Public

Honestly, I'm of two minds about this. No disabled person should ever be told they're too "graphic" and "offensive" to be in public view, and they certainly should never be ejected from public grounds to protect the delicate sensibilities of simpering able-bodies who don't want to be confronted with the frailty of the human body. If Rose Harn wanted to be at that fair and at that MADD booth, then she had every right to stay there. If folks didn't want to see the ugly consequences of drunk driving, then they should've given the booth a pass. No one was making them gawk.

However, I understand the concerns that her husband might have been exploiting her for his and MADD's benefit. I certainly wouldn't want my grieving, angry spouse parading my mangled form into public view for a cause if I hadn't consented, and if Rose can't talk, then the question of whether or not she consented is valid. I suspect she did consent through her blinking and hand gestures, but since her family is the only group able to read those signals, we might never know if Rose wanted to be at that fair in that capacity.

A giant, heaping "Fuck you," to MADD, however, you sniveling, spineless gaggle of mealy-mouthed cowards. You were quite happy to exploit Rose's condition when the sight of her furthered your agenda and generated the right kind of shock and unease, but as soon as her appearance generated the barest whisper that you might be exploitative assholes, you disavowed her and implied that your former affiliation with her might've been a mistake.

Really? Associating with a victim of drunk driving was a mistake? I guess only photogenic victims deserve to be heard.

And don't you dare trot out the "in the interests of her safety" routine. If her appearance was so disturbing that you feared the need for the riot police(and WTF, Idaho, on that score; a guy who looks like that peddles newspapers in front of a local grocery store, and we haven't had a riot in the ten years he's been there. In fact, "W" is quite popular, and customers often chat with him on the way inside. Self-control, if you please), no one was going to touch her. Wouldn't want to sully themselves with those dreadful cripple cooties, you know.

For the record, I suspect the MADD shill was exaggerating fears of the riot squad. The local newspaper account mentions no unrest or threat of unrest whatsoever.

MADD will never admit that, rather than support one of their most vulnerable volunteers, they panicked and chose to engage in survival of the most profitable. Fuck the lot of them, and I hope the Hearns sue them into penury.


Now, on to a happier note, namely last night's CSI:NY.

( CSI:NY 502-Page Turner--SPOILERS )

B

Today was a good day. No, Dr. Hot didn't pole-dance to the beat of "I'm Too Sexy"; he didn't even discuss Kronos the Titan as promised, but nevertheless, I enjoyed class.

What I do not enjoy are my fellow students. In fact, I often fantasize that my wheelchair is outfitted with spikes like the Evil Chariot of Evil in Ben Hur, the better to mow them down while they yammer obliviously into their cellphones and block the curb cuts in sorority slut Starbuck klatches. Unexpected and immediate pain has a way of grabbing even the densest dullard's attention.

I hate college students. They're rude, entitled idiots who treat the experience like an extension of high school. I would never dream of walking into a fifty-minute lecture at the twenty-minute mark and standing conspicuously in the aisle to gab loudly on my cellphone and look for a seat. If I'm more than five minutes late, I do not attend the lecture. Period. Moving into position in a classroom often takes a great deal of furniture rearrangement, and the teacher deserves more respect than that. So do the students responsible enough to be on time. If I miss something important, then them's the breaks for not being on time. It's a simple matter of action and consequence.

Yet day after day, students saunter into class twenty minutes late, cellphones clapped to their ears, and expect others to make room for them.

Fuck you running, you candy-assed nitwits. If you want a seat, be on time. Otherwise, sit on the floor by the rear door, but if you do that, be aware that you're preventing me from being able to exit quietly in the event of an urgent call from nature. I will nudge your books and laptops aside, and no, I really don't give a shit about your $1400 Macbook. You need to take notes? Well, golly gee, use a pen and a notebook, which cost $2.00 at the dollar store. Besides, your precious circuit board with the designer logo won't work any better if I piss on it because you won't move.

If I were a teacher, I'd lock the doors from the inside as soon as class started, and stragglers would be out of luck. They could bang on the doors until Till Lindemann got ugly, and I wouldn't care. Maybe that would teach the little fuckers that when the syllabus says class begins at 11:15, that isn't the time they should stroll from their dorm rooms on a cloud of body spray.

Or maybe I'd just get fired for "depriving them of their education."

If they really give a damn about their education, then maybe they should be assed to show up on time for a class they paid for and show the teacher respect by putting down the cellphone.

But there's no place for either that kind of logic or the notion of negative consequences for negative actions, and so, like Alice, I'll just lie back and dream of Wonderland.

Or maybe I'll just be a menstruating Pooh and bury my grumpiness in a pot of honey, a pot I'll be sure to leave on my head once I've finished.