Green Jello Hotdish

My solution to cleaning?

Rearranging the living room.

Ugh.

The amount of fear in which mainstream America lives is utterly distressing to me. While not anything new or even profound, it reared its ugly head again to me today at work.

If you type your landline phone number into Google, it will return with your name, address — all the information that you have listed for yourself in the phone book. As with everything, it will also give you the opportunity to print out a map of the address. This is called a reverse lookup, and it has been available to people through the decades. One just used to have to call 411 to get it. (Of course, they’d have to create their own map, as well.)

Wanted to know where a person lived and had their last name? Just pull out the phone book.

This isn’t new. This isn’t privacy invasion. This isn’t a reason to sound the alarm. But just this morning I received a request to pull someone’s contact information off the synod Web site because they didn’t want that information on the Internet. So instead, now all a person has to do is call the synod office to receive it. Or look in our printed directories. But they can’t get it from our Web site, because heaven forbid someone with ill intentions searches for it and finds it there.

And what if they search in the phone book? Or call 411 for a reverse lookup?

Information is not inherently bad; nor is it inherently good. Its merely information. In the wrong hands, no matter where it is obtained, information can be used for bad reason.

Fear of information, I’ve found, is a generational difference. Those of us who were born post-1980 don’t have as much fear of what is available on the Internet. Makes sense given our upbringing with unfetted access to the Internet pre-psychos. (Or was it, really?) People born before then, though, the notion of Big Brother permeates the fear. Fueled by our governmental officials (who have ill intentions, I might add), this fear is manipulated in a way to create the illusion that privacy is possible — even plausible. But they’re the good folks. No need to fear the government, they want us to believe.

The enemy is not Google. The enemy is, as it has always been, sick and twisted people. They’re not leaving any time soon, but they seem to be calling the shots now. Grr-eat.

A couple weeks back — maybe even months now — both the Milwaukee LGBT Film Festival and the Milwaukee International Film Festival brought “For The Bible Tells Me So” here. My church made a group outing to both showings, but I wasn’t able to see it then. Last night while I was in Sheboygan at the synod’s fall conference, I made it to a showing at the Paradigm Coffeehouse.

Go. See the movie. Now. Why are you continuing to read this?

Watching the trailer, already fighting against spiritual warfare, I figured it would be a movie that left me saying, “Oh, gee. Situation normal. There are some crazies who can’t handle the thought of gay people, and they’re led by James Dobson and the gang.” I didn’t expect the movie to bring me to tears and leave me speechless for the better part of an evening. (And really, from me that’s the best review it can get.)

I found the trailer on YouTube and posted it below. Some showings coming up in Chicago and Madison; if anyone really wants to see this film but needs someone to go with them, I’m up for a road trip.

Since when can one not get a roll of quarters at a service desk of a retail store? At Target, they looked at me like I had a foot coming out of my head. At Pick ‘n Save this morning, they told me I couldn’t get quarters but they could give me two $5s for my $10.

Excuse me? You’ll give me cash, but not change? That’s correct — you see, according to some sources, stores are having issues with counterfeit bills and by giving a person change, they’ve just exchanged valid money for funny money.

That doesn’t make sense. Like, at all.

So what about going to a laundromat or such place with a quarter machine? Stopped by the one just a few blocks from my apartment and no dice. Seems they don’t believe in having a quarter machine in a place where people might need a good chunk of quarters.

And the Quick-E-Mart next door? Nope, they won’t give quarters, either.

Alright, so maybe I break down and go to a bank. There’s one just across from the Pick ‘n Save, and I decide to stop there. They have a branch inside the Pick ‘n Save that I frequently obtain my quarters from; they’re nice people, so I’ll give them a chance. Nope. Since I don’t have an account with their bank, I either have to open one or pay a $2 service fee.

A service fee for quarters? Yup. So why can I get quarters in the Pick ‘n Save sans service fee but not here? They’re apparently not supposed to be doing that. Shit. Just screwed myself there.

This is one of the most ridiculous issues with Milwaukee I’ve ever had. Where in the hell is one supposed to get quarters before 10 a.m. in this damn city?!

Here I am, on the cusp of a nothing weekend. I have nothing planned today, although I’m considering the opportunity to go down to Chicago tonight and go out in Wrigleyville with a friend of mine in from out of town. Tomorrow is a special partnership celebration for work, and other than that I’m free as a bird.

This is a strange feeling for a go-go-go person. Especially over the past few months, I’ve forgotten how important it is to take time to just sit still, to just be.

So instead, I’m going to clean up the apartment a bit, make a light lunch and head out to the park with the iPod to catch up on my reading. And I’m looking forward to it.

Motivated by a lack of quarters at the moment and a dwindling supply of clean clothing, I figured I should be able to wash my clothes in the bathtub of my apartment. Not knowing how to accomplish this, and having Google at my fingertips, I came across this blog post.

What a great idea — I figured there would be some environmental benefit by not using the dryer, but it’s such a simple, easy way to use less energy, and even get rid of some aggression by stomping on one’s clothes!

1. I have never had curdled milk in my refrigerator — until now. It was gross.
2. As of this week, I have a newfound hatred of church folk.
3. Tomorrow I’m going to Kenosha, and I better have some money in my checking account before then or else I’m going to be stranded without gas. (There is supposed to be $60 deposited from my investment account.)
4. The television show “Weeds” is hilarious and addicting. I’m sorry I didn’t have Showtime before.
5. I’m thinking of getting a seasonal job in retail or travel.

The Waukesha Board of Education has announced a proposal to reconfigure two elementary schools in their district to grade grouping, rather than traditional enrollment boundaries. The theory, they say, is to allocate resources in a more efficient manner while controlling class sizes and being more “child-focused.”

Having benefited from a variety of educational settings — including traditional schools within attendance boundaries, or “neighborhood schools,” mixed-grade classrooms (both as cohort clusters, where first through third grades were in “pods” with the same students, as well as experiencing fourth and fifth grades in the same mixed-grade classroom), grade groupings in middle school and a comprehensive high school with a magnet program — my inclination is that the Waukesha plan will be met with success. As the article points out, libraries and other resources are targeted toward a specific enrollment and much of the wide age gap of bullying on the playground is squelched.

That’s not the question I have: what is with Wisconsin and K-8 schools? Milwaukee’s covered with them. In Minnesota, and I’d venture to say most places, a metropolitan tradition is for K-5 in elementary, 6-8 in middle and 9-12 in high schools. Variations include pre-K and K, 1-3, 4-5, 5-8, etc, but for the most part the “standard” is used. In rural areas with smaller populations and enrollments, a K-6 and 7-12 split is the de facto standard.

But K-8? That’s a huge gap to have in one school. Even splitting that up K-3, 4-8 is huge. I can’t imagine being an 8th grader in school with 4th graders, or vice versa. At my middle school, we had 5th graders in self-contained classrooms on the third floor, while 6-8 operated as the “middle school.” (Originally, the younger students were moved to the building to deal with overcrowding at the nearby elementary school. Subsequently, a district overhaul resulted in shuttering one elementary school and consolidating to single elementary, middle and high schools, and now even 4th graders are at CJMS.) But just by having the 5th graders in the building, it brought a certain “kid” element that caused strife, especially with the 6th graders.

Did the middle school concept skip Southeastern Wisconsin?