I know I should be making the most of my life.

I'm young (ish), I'm hot (temperature-wise), I should be out bangin' chicks, right?

Instead, I'm re-watching season 3 of It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia.

Q: Why?

A: Because it's god damn funny, that's why. Anytime Frank Reynolds describes a place as being "darker than a well-digger's ass," that's something I want to be a part of, as often as possible.

Also, in season 3, they really start nailing the "episode title comes up right after something totally awesome sets it up" gag. To wit: Mac, Charlie and Frank are preparing to fight boredom by shooting their own news show.

Dee, to Frank: "No, that's a bad idea. Usually when you get involved, somebody gets hurt."
Frank: "That's ridiculous. I'm just pallin'-around with the guys. How's anybody gonna get hurt?"
(pause)
title card: "Frank Sets Sweet Dee On Fire"

The timing is just fantastic. There's enough of a pause to make you wonder, Is this where the title-card joke comes in? And then, bang, it hits you, and even though you already know the title of the episode, the joke totally kicks your ass.

Yep. These are the golden years, these ones. Hooray for this moronic extended adolescence of minimal adult responsibilities aside from showing up for work, occasionally doing my laundry, and feeding myself somehow! Yaaaaayyyyy!!!!

I'm concerned about the kids these days.

No, no... not because they act like horned-up rhesus monkeys after you've injected them with research-grade amphetamines most of the time.

It's the god damn music they listen to, and will be listening to for decades.

Let me explain.

A couple of days ago, I was in the Bulk Barn that opened up close to me. (For years I was concerned that BB was owned by Loblaws, which is owned by the Weston family, who is close with the Fraser Institute, who supports private schools. Apparently not, though.) As I walked into the store, their background music was about a minute and a half into "Stairway To Heaven" which is, of course, one of the most famous and possibly the best rock song ever made.

It was released in late 1971, which is a little more than 41 years ago.

The girl at the cash seemed to me as if she'd grown up here -- if you spent your formative years on a walnut farm in Mongolia, you can be forgiven for not knowing about Stairway -- so I thought I'd give her a little pop quiz (and no, there is no "off" position on the teacher-switch). She looked to be about maybe 16 or so.

Me: "The song that's just finishing up now on the speakers. Do you know what that is?"
Her: "Uh... not really, no."
Me: "Yeah, I sorta thought that would be the case. It's called 'Stairway To Heaven,' and it's by a band called Led Zeppelin."
Her: "Oh yeah, that sounds sorta familiar. I remember my dad talking about them once."

Listen... I know we're in good hands with the generations that follow us. There are a hell of a lot of fantastic kids who will accomplish things we never even dreamt possible. They will invent, innovate, think, create and explore, and they'll build upon and eventually surpass our accomplishments. But, for fuck's sakes, they should know god damn Stairway.

This got me thinking about music being released today. I realize that there's a reason "classic rock" radio stations exist, and that's because baby boomers want to hear the same songs they've heard ever since they were 18, so they can relive the parts of their lives that didn't suck, and for a few minutes they can think about that chick Lisa they boned in the back of their parents' Datsun up on Lovers Hill after the Under The Sea dance and it was totally awesome, and oh yeah I saw Lisa at the church pot-luck last month, damn she's put on a bit of weight but she looks good after having the four kids and the spleen-replacement surgery, and I wonder if she still puts out like she did back then, damn that was groovy.

(Not to say all boomers' lives suck. I'm caricaturizing, because that's what an older kid told me writers do.)

But honestly, what are the kids today going to reminisce about when they get older?

• "Wow, 'My Humps' is on the space-radio! That song really had a lot of merit."
• "I think I'll buy and cranially-download the entire My Chemical Romance discography. *blinkblink* Ooooh, now that's a generalized malaise and feeling of ennui I haven't felt in decades."
• "Hey, Ke$ha joined the 27 Club, right? Yeah, I thought so."

Yes, I'm being a music-snob here. And no, I don't think that all music released these days is bad. Just most of it that makes it to mainstream radio. But honestly... listen to top-40 radio, and for god's sakes, think of the children.

In which I tear a guy a new one.

It's a strange time for public education in this province... as you well know if you (a.) live here, and (b.) don't live under a rock.

Today ETFO, the Elementary Teachers Federation of Ontario, was supposed to do a one-day walkout to protest the enacting of Bill 115, which imposes a contract on any teacher in the province that didn't already have one; namely, the public elementary and secondary teachers. (The Catholic union's leadership sold their members down the river by agreeing to a horrendous contract back in the summer without their membership's consent, and the French union finds it hard to negotiate being so small so they took the same lousy deal too.)

Last night -- actually, at 4 am this morning -- the Ontario Labour Relations Board determined that this walkout was, in fact, not a political protest (protected by law) but was an illegal strike (which means possible fines for union leadership and for individual teachers, over and above being docked a day's pay). So, ETFO backed off; our union was supposed to do the same thing next Wednesday, but has since cancelled it.

This has provoked a lot of response, both for and against teachers and their unions. A friend of mine wrote a fairly anti-teacher-union post on his Facebook wall today, and someone he knows (but I don't) took it to a whole new level. This guy's name is Matt (but not the One And Only Matt that I've known for years, don't worry). I felt I had to respond. So here's my response. Enjoy.

Matt, I disagree with you, but I'll do so calmly.

First off: if teaching is a cushy, easy job with glorious benefits, you're much more than welcome to join us. No? Not into spending all day with dozens of crazed teenagers trying to ram knowledge into their heads? Alright, then.

Secondly: the Catholic union's provincial executive accepted a contract. Exactly zero local deals have been ratified by Catholic (or French) teachers. So, representing those contracts as anything less than their union leadership selling them out -- because there's pressure to eliminate Catholic boards entirely -- is a huge misrepresentation.

Thirdly, a few small points: unions essentially agreed to wage freezes in April. Banked sick days also doubled as our short-term disability plan. We don't get vacation pay like many other jobs (nor do we expect it), because our non-working days are scheduled for us. We coach and supervise and volunteer our time because (a.) we enjoy it, and (b.) the kids appreciate it. I coach baseball and supervise a student club, in addition to teaching my timetable, being a department head, and being the school's union rep (full disclosure).

Lastly, but perhaps most importantly: I am an employee, with an employer. I am represented in negotiations by a union, and through it I have the right to negotiate a contract with my employer, without outside interference. Agree with the idea of unions or not, Matt, but (a.) they exist, (b.) I'm in one, and (c.) our ability to bargain with our employer -- the school boards, not the province -- has been sabotaged by the government. Complain about wages and benefits and such all you like -- as you have -- but the facts stated in this paragraph are clear and unambiguously correct. And that's what we're mad about.

Do students get "held hostage" in negotiations? That's debatable. I was a student during two strikes in my high school career, and it was lousy. I don't disagree with that part at all. But I only truly found out what the issues were when I became a teacher myself. That's the problem here: everyone thinks they're an expert in education because they were once a student. Are you an expert in medicine because you were once in a doctor's office? Of course not. So I suggest you learn a little more about the situation -- from both sides -- before you go shooting your mouth off again.

I dunno, I thought it was pretty good.

One-liner #1.

Fran Drescher is still hot.

A touch of nerdery.

Mild to moderate nerdiness follows.

I decided I was going to build my own PVR using a computer and Mythbuntu, a Linux distro specifically geared towards such an endeavour. Problem is, the spare desktop I had kicking around wasn't going to be fast enough to adequately handle HD video... so I shopped around and found a refurbished HP at Factory Direct for a cool 129 bones; decent processor, 2 GB of RAM, smallish hard drive (but that's easily remedied).

I went out and got it, but when I brought it home I felt like an idiot: the expansion slots weren't tall enough to accommodate my TV tuner card or the video card I have with an HDMI output. JEEZ.

Faced with this dilemma, I had the semi-brilliant idea of making the HP my regular desktop comp and using my former desktop box as the PVR, swapping hard drives in the process. But if you yank a hard drive out of one comp and throw it into another, it's going to freak out on me because all the hardware is different, right?

Wrong.

With much trepidation, I pulled the hard drive out of my old desktop, put it in the new one, plugged everything in, and hit the power button. I fully expected there to be beeps and bloops and error messages and possibly smoke flying out of the thing, but here's what actually happened:

1. "Hey, you have a different video card. Start in safe graphics mode this time?" (Clicked OK, logged in fine.)
2. Started up the video card utility... "Hey, you don't have an Nvidia video card anymore. Type the following and restart your machine." (Typed the thing, restarted.)
3. Absolutely everything works fine now.

There's no way this goes well with Windows... so, thank the powers above that Linux (specifically Ubuntu) is so goddamn smart: it found all my new hardware, didn't complain much, and life carried on as normal.

And that's my story.

Things teenagers say, and ask.

I have a grade 10 science class which is actually one of the most reasonable groups of people I've ever dealt with. (Mind you, there are people that show up once or twice a week, or others I haven't seen in a month despite calling their parents' house... and occasionally getting the ol' "caller ID says it's the school, so I'll pick up the phone and hang it right back up" treatment. Yes, that happens.)

The deal with a class is this: it takes a while to get to know them, and they take a while to get to know you. Depending on your comfort level with them, and with students in general, they may get to know you really well, or barely at all. As such, they'll be able to eventually gauge what sorts of questions they can ask about you... or so the theory goes.

(I kid, I kid. I'm friendly, but I'm not their friend. I'm professional, but I'm still a person. I try to be authentic, but at the same time I'm still have to keep some distance.)

At any rate, we had a little time to kill after a fun day of talking about light and then getting acquainted with some equipment we're going to be using for the next few weeks, by using prisms to make rainbows. I'm not entirely sure how the conversation turned this way, but it did:

"Hey sir, if you could take one teacher in the school out on a date, who would it be?"

And then it got weird.

First off, you'd better believe I didn't say a god damn thing in response to that question. And so then, there was a discussion, also not involving me -- kept mostly-appropriate, but with deviations into (further) ridiculousness -- about teachers sleeping with students. One of my (male) not-quite-rocket-scientists:

"Yo, if it's a guy teacher and a girl student, that ain't right. But if it's a girl teacher and a guy student... I don't know, man. I don't know."

But things swerved back to me, and the question I'd been posed. All I had for them was a piece of advice in the form of a single phrase that I would only say once, and I told them I wanted them to unpack the meaning of it:

"You don't shit where you eat."

Whadda ya know, they eventually figured it out.

We may not be doomed after all, folks.

So, a nurse killed herself.

You've probably heard it by now:

• Australian radio DJs make a crank call to the hospital where Sexy Duchess Kate was convalescing, impersonating the Queen.
• Everyone had a good laugh.
• The nurse killed herself, presumably from all the attention.

Look, it's a shame this woman is no longer. Don't get me wrong. Anytime that anyone goes too soon, well, that shouldn't be.

But now you've got people freaking out about DJs making crank calls. Should they still be made? What did we do to this poor woman? Are we a horrible species? (Actually, we are, but for totally different reasons.)

When a country makes up laws, unfortunately the way it goes sometimes is that you have to legislate down to the dumbest people in said country. That's why we have to have a law telling us to wear our seat belts; obviously they'll help to save your life in a car crash, but some idiots out there don't bother to put theirs on, so we have to provide a financial disincentive to do something which is clearly a stupid thing to do.

If this nurse couldn't take a joke, and was clearly mentally unstable enough to commit suicide in this situation -- did any media reports mention her name, when this all initially came about? I don't think they did -- does that mean we have to pass a law saying you can't make a crank call, because it might cause some harm to someone who is already very, very predisposed to harming themselves in a serious way? (Or does this fall under the recently-fashionable, and yet very-worthwhile, rubric of "bullying awareness?" Just playing devil's advocate here.)

Anyway, the moral of the story is that this woman wasn't right in the first place, someone made a joke at her (relatively anonymous) expense, and she overreacted. I just hope morning radio DJs can still be wacky after all this.