[Warning, Offensive Dream Title] No Time for Retards

        I dreamed I was sent back to school against my will. I'd just transferred into a class, having been moved (transported) from another state. I could only find seats in the back of the classroom where there were two open seats. I took the one next to a slender student with a huge afro. The other student was a very large woman who looked like she needed her space.

        We were watching a "motivational" video, ‘No Time for Retards’. The video had been created by a Special Education student. After a lecture about the inappropriateness of the title, but appropriate given the circumstance, the video started.

The video was a music video that explained how the student actually saw the world. It was obviously an amateur effort, but was well crafted none-the-less. There were many interesting images with reversed letters and other such items. The student walking or running in the direction opposite the general flow of traffic, or being pushed off the sidewalk or forced up onto trashcans, mailboxes, bus benches.

There was one part that was sort of an overlapping set of numbers and symbols, the student was grabbing a number and trying to connect it to the proper card image as it floated across the screen. (Nice graphics effects here, simple but effective multiple exposure technique.) The closer the student got the faster the cards began to drift around the image. If the student accidentally touched a card with the right number but a different symbol the number would change and then he would start chasing the right symbol.

        As I was watching I thought that would make an interesting challenge or a flash game. After the student's video there was a much longer and far more boring section where a TV personality (from where the student lived, not recognized by me or anyone else in the class) was interviewing the kid and trying to explain the meaning of the video.

        "What it means is obvious," the man next to me said.

        "Yeah, if you have to explain it, then it didn't do what it was supposed to."

        "So, are we going to get to make our own films?"

        "I'm sure that's where this is headed, even though most of us don't have anything worth saying." I was not looking forward to the 'motivational' assignment that was sure to follow. "Mandatory relevance headed our way."

        "Sha' got that right." The afro-student laughed, bringing us unwanted attention from the instructor.

        The instructor told me to stay after class.

        "You sat in the wrong seat, gonna straighten your ass out after class."  The afro-student was trying hard not to laugh. "Didn't you notice, this is the brown section of class?"

        I looked, and the class was arranged from front to back from the lightest and blondest, to the darkest, with my white haired and white bearded self sticking way out of place. I smiled, whispered my best Steve Martin impersonation "You mean, I'm not black?"

        Now the entire back row was laughing.

        “All of you stay after class!”

        “My fault, I made a joke,” I attempted to ease it over for them. (It really was my fault, after all.)

        “They know what they’re in trouble for!”

        I found myself wondering how the instructor could actually keep us after class, since we were all adults. Then, I realized, this was sort of a political correctness re-education camp, and, though not currently visible, I was relatively certain there were government employees with guns involved. I suppose they could make us stay after class. I wondered why no one else seemed to find the segregation odd, particularly in a class on ‘tolerance.’

        I just want to say that I find it odd that we hand guns to people we don’t know and then tell them “make me behave.” Seriously, what makes us think they are any less screwed up than we are?

More found poetry (Thank you spammers.)

In midday the malformed

Internet Explorer 7.0 Beta

A simple and safe way to weigh less

I have no idea of its significance, but it struck me as funny when I read it out loud.

Ad astra per technica,

FF