‘The Youth’ – maybe they’re not so bad

I spend a ridiculous amount of time with ‘the youth’ and I actually get paid for trying to teach them something. Granted, I am sometimes blessed with minor breakthroughs and warm fuzzies, like seeing it click when a Chinese girl understood why I kept correcting her writing from ‘a honest girl’ to ‘an honest girl’. Damn those silent ‘h’ words – it’s a silly rule. English is a tricky language to explain sometimes and my regular retort: “Because what I’ve written is just right, OK? I don’t have time to explain it to you now!”  usually buys me some time.

But, I bitch all the time about how ‘the youth’ are rude and disrespectful and their parents aren’t disciplining them and how i’m sick of it. But today I was at Pacific Fair having coffee with my entire family (all 11 of them) and a group of kids starting calling out “Miss! Miss!” and then came up to me and told me how I must be rich to afford coffee and they’re so povo they have to go to Coles and buy HomeBrand. I was actually quite surprised and pleased that they thought they could approach me – especially because I was with my whole family. Maybe it was because I gave one of the girls a serve when she admitted that she’d ‘ghosted*’ me at Robina the weekend before. I’m fairly sure I would’ve steered clear of a teacher outside of the school grounds. Who knew they actually had lives and did things like went out for coffee and shopped! 

Anyway, it’s stuck with me. Perhaps some parents are doing the right thing. It’d just be nice to get some support when ‘the youth’ make my job difficult instead of telling me that their daughter “is a right little bitch at home too”. One parent actually said “Yeah, he’s really difficult. Anything you could do would be great.” Pass on the parenting to the teachers. We probably see more of your kids than you do anyway. What’ s happening to society?

Bring on the holidays. Two weeks to go. And I’ve just successfully lost another half hour or so of marking and reporting time.

I am a success.

*ghosting is when you follow someone without them knowing. It’s a stupid private joke that kids think is hilarious and is now a form of bullying. Geez, keep up people.

G.

The minute, man.

Well, this is my first post on this flashy new blog put together by my buddy Benja, c/o some Frenchman wordpress template designer dude.

History suggests that the first entry in a monolith as epic as this site will no doubt become should be as sweeping in generality as it should be warm and welcoming in nature. Not so, dear reader. Instead you have a glimpse into this very minute at casaderogers:

Third, by Portishead has just started spinning in the CD player, completely unaware that it was preceeded by Wincing the Night Away by The Shins, which in turn was preceeded by Bedouin Soundclash’s Street Gospel, which of course only followed in the haunting footsteps of Cat Power’s The Covers Record. Are you still following? Tenses are confusing. To quote A. Trocchi:

“When I write I have trouble with my tenses. Where I was tomorrow is where I am today, where I would be yesterday.”

Amidst all this I am drinking one of the better experiences of my life: Domain Zind Humbrecht Heimbourg Gewurtztraminer 1998. It’s a sensational bastard glaring at me from the glass with 14.5% alcohol. Light straw in colour, aggressively aromatic with the classic nose of nougat, lychee, musk. Sneaky glimmers of rose petal come through. On the palate it’s a queer creature. Warm with clearly present alcohol (but not faulty), the classic fruity characters of the varietyhave clearly pulled back more than just a little (like an old man’s lips revealing a perfect row of chompers) revealing more and more bottle-age characters: bacon & smoke in particular. Very mango, a little spicy, racy, with the expected lychee and musk still lingering. This is great booze. You should all be drinking this wine right now. As I’ve lately begun to repeat to strangers like a mantra, life is too short: you could die tomorrow and have never known what good wine tastes like. I’ve only recently learned that not all very serious wine is red. In fact, it seems to me that the most exciting wine is white. If you need convincing, email me with a price-point and I’ll tell you which wine to buy.

In other of-this-moment thoughts, today I used up Cain’s Book and will now continue on with my assault on Bukowski’s body of work with Women. Can’t wait.

A-Ro is asleep in her bed and she is perfect.

Georgia is pottering about, waiting for me to pay her some attention. So that’s it.

Audi 5000.

peace.