I’ve had so many ideas for blog entries lately, they’ve kind of created a logjam in my brain. So rather than try to work all these ideas out into separate pieces, I’m just gonna toss them, raw, onto a page. Once I get the backup cleared out, maybe I’ll be able to see what’s really worthy of more consideration?

1. Daylight Savings Time sucks. The only people who like it seem to be golfers and people from New England. All it does for me is give me an extra hour in the evenings to fight with my kids and try to get them to bed.

2. The NCAA basketball tourney is almost here! Even though my beloved Indiana Hoosiers will not be playing, I will have my Butler Bulldogs who are playing great ball right now. I will also follow Purdue, just because they are an Indiana school and many of friends attended there. I have to admit, though, the spanking the Boilermakers endured yesterday at the hands of Minnesota was kind of fun to watch. Purdue had just 4 points 15 minutes into the game. Did my IU Hoosier heart good. hee hee hee

3. Rush Limbaugh says he is moving to Costa Rica if the health care reform bill goes through. SWEET! Not only will we get some health care reform, but we’ll get rid of that windbag too?! I teared up at the very thought. Rather ironic, though, that he’d choose to escape to Costa Rica, which has had socialized medicine for over half a century and still manages to have some of the finest health care in the world, as well as a longer life expectancy than the U.S.. I guess Rush doesn’t mind universal health care for himself, just for his fellow Americans.

4. Home schooling seems to becoming an epidemic. When I was a kid, I did not know a single home-schooled child. Now I know 20. It worries me for a several reasons. One, I have a Master’s in English, and I still do not feel qualified to teach my children all subjects. Two, I teach just one class of 16 students, and it takes a huge amount of time to prepare. How are home-schooling parents giving the same quality of education to their kids with their limited time? Three, I have had home-schooled kids in my college classes; they are smart, but they are also backward, shy, and overwhelmed. Four, many of the home-schooling parents seem to think that public schools are liberal indoctrination centers. Having grown up surrounded by my high school teacher mom and ALL her public school teacher friends, I can assure you that public school teachers are, in general, some of the most politically conservative folks I know. And did you read about the good ol’ Texas Board of Education’s textbook standards that will help dictate curriculum for the entire nation? Fear not, right-wing conservatives; your values are safely in the hands of Texas. Another thing that kind of cracks me up about the home-schooling phenomenon is that I hear so many of these parents saying, “Well, little Timmy really needs more one-on-one attention.” Most of the time, I think little Timmy needs less! A lot less! Maybe little Timmy is an immature brat because he thinks he is the center of the universe. Put him in a classroom with 25 of the other 6.4 billion human beings and let him get a sense of his real place in the universe. Finally, home-schooling tends to perpetuate the worrisome trend of people who refuse to allow their beliefs to be challenged. People who watch only Fox News because it tells them what they want to hear also tend to home school their kids so they can teach them only what they want them to be taught. This kind of thought vacuum (and it goes both ways: liberals do it too) is not conducive to democratic discourse.

5. New York’s Mayor Bloomberg is an idiot. All the problems in New York City and he picks a  battle with salt? Really? Does this mean you won’t be able to get pickles or corned beef in NYC anymore? Sometimes, I can really appreciate the Libertarians’ perspective.

6. American Terrorists seem to be popping up like mushrooms all over the world. Two of them who have made the biggest headlines are women - marginalized, abused, isolated women. Hell hath no fury? Or is it something bigger than just their gender? So often these days, we see some loner (male or female) just walk into or fly their plane into some institution they believe has been victimizing them and wreak havoc. I think part of it goes back to that self-perpetuating “thought vacuum” that is part of my home-schooling concern. It also seems to be symptomatic of our American society, where technology may bring us together, but it also paints us into corners. Just this week, I was standing at a busy corner on campus, surrounded by students. Three were talking on their cell phones, two were texting, and another was listening to his MP3 player. No one made eye contact with the people standing inches from them. No one said “thank you” to the kid who pressed the crosswalk button; he wouldn’t have heard anyway because he was wearing headphones. What happens to the people who have cell phones but no one to text? What happens to the folks with computers but no real friends? Maybe they turn into domestic or foreign terrorists?

7. Hugo Chavez is the Fidel Castro of my generation - a charismatic South American nutjob who I would really like to see just go away. Or at least shut up.

8. Poor Corey Haim. Dead at 38. A has-been at 20. Maybe that’s why the jokes about him started about 5 minutes after the news of his death hit the web. That should be everyone’s nightmare: to spend half your life chasing the brief success of your childhood and to be mocked before your corpse is even cold.

9. The Oscars were really lame this year. Don’t get me wrong: seeing a woman finally win the Best Director award was awesome, but the rest of the show was long and lame. I guess it didn’t help that I’d seen only 4 of the nominated films: Julie/Julia, Harry Potter, Up, and The Princess and the Frog. Movies are just not worth the money and aggravation to me anymore. Why pay $30 to sit in a theater with people who talk through the whole film? I guess I’m getting old and crotchety, huh?

Well, that’s it. My brain feels unclogged which is a relief. Looking back over this, I guess I can’t avoid the home-schooling thing. It’s probably going to cost me a few friends/acqaintances, though. Maybe I’ll get lucky and they won’t read it. I think I’ll also have to explore the whole self-perpetuation “thought vacuum” thing more broadly too: how the vast variety of cable and internet media lets us pick and choose our facts, and how technology isolates us from each other and the challenges that “others” present to our worldviews. *sigh* Those are pretty hefty topics. I think I’ll tackle them after March Madness ends. And I’ll have all that extra daylight to do it in. Stupid DST.*mutter* *mutter*