MadameBastet-Firing-Neurons

God Is a Bullet

I really, really wish I had something else to write about other than the surreal nightmare my life has become since entering this teaching credential program. But I don't. I am at my wit's end today. Or as I said in my Reading class today after my group presentation, I am at the end of my proverbial rope.

Where do I begin? With the dead body on the church steps on the corner yesterday as I sat at the light waiting to turn left onto the street my school is on? A homeless person died. There was a shopping cart next to the body. A cop car pulled away. The ambulance sat silent. No one was with this person. I just stared and felt nothing. Kids walked by, on their way to school.

Or should I talk about how over the weekend some fuckheads broke into the school, completely trashed several first grade classrooms, and tagged all the beautiful murals painted on the exterior walls of the building? What kind of good feeling does a person get in trashing a FIRST GRADE CLASSROOM? I'd like to find the motherfuckers that did it and cut their hands off.

Then again, maybe I should talk about the gang banger murder that went down early this morning across the street from the school. Driving down the street I saw six cop cars and an entire building roped off with crime scene tape. Retaliation shooting I heard.

There's a 42 year old woman in my cohort who is on my last fucking nerve. She's one of those "I grew up on a tiny island off the coast of Vancouver but I know what it's like to be in the Mexican barrio and I'm smarter than everyone, I'm going to show everyone up, and my shit doesn't stink." Granola eating liberal fucking ignorant bitch. When I said I was feeling culture shock at being at this school she says smugly, "Oh I'm not." Oh right! I forgot - you grew up where? On a tiny island with all white Canadians! I grew up in L.A. and I ADMIT I find this shocking. But I defer to YOU, gang expert. She tells us there's an ordinance in place against the gang that runs the street my school is on. Well, my dear, tell that to the gang bangers who were standing on the street today practically pulling their dicks out and pissing on the sidewalk to mark their territory. She told us they moved to Palmdale. Yeah? Tell that to the stiff the coroner took out of the apartment building this morning. Tell that to US, the student teachers who RAN to our students today, because we heard GUNFIRE and we had ANOTHER lockdown where the teacher started screaming "Shut and lock the doors and windows!"

Maybe her liberal ass can just 'reason' with these poor, misunderstood guys. Oh no! I forgot. They're in Palmdale now! I must've had a hallucination when I saw them on the street today.

I swear, I was NOT going to talk shit about my cohorts or let anyone get to me, but I have HAD IT WITH HER. I just had to do this huge presentation with her and another girl. She is beyond an overachiever. I thought *I* was an overachiever. She just kept adding more and more shit for us to do - even ordering me via email last night to get our materials on transparencies this morning. Between the hail of bullets, I'll see what I can do. She BITCHES non-stop about America. Now normally I am the first person to bitch about this government and America. But I have HAD IT with her fucking supercilious, arrogant attitude. If you hate it here so fucking much and we are all so terrible, GO BACK TO CANADA! What the fuck has Canada ever done for the world anyway? I am typing this so fast I am completely out of control. I am totally irrational. But if I hear ONE MORE WORD ABOUT HOW HORRIBLE AMERICA IS I'M GOING TO SHOVE MY FIST IN HER FUCKING SMUG FACE! She rides the bus and has done nothing but harp on us because we don't. Bitch, shut it. It's L.A. We have cars. We're using them. If you had one, you'd use it to. Your husband has the car, that's why you're taking the bus. You're not saving the fucking free world from greenhouse gases. I noticed when a few of us offered to give her a ride home, she didn't decline the rides.

She's 42 years old and you'd think with all this overachieving, she'd have accomplished more in her life. She just finished her B.S. this year. In P.E. But she won't teach P.E. because according to her, no one is teaching P.E. correctly. NO ONE can do ANYTHING as good as she can. I don't say "Well I got my Master's degree at 29 and taught at two colleges for 7 years. What the hell have YOU done?" She's MARRIED you know, and ALL BUT TOLD ME I'll never get married at my age. So I guess I haven't accomplished anything because I'm not married.

This bitch is making me far more upset than any shooting. And yet I have been in tears for the last several days. What the hell am I doing? How did I get here? I hate it all! When they said urban school in the valley, I thought OK. I didn't know they'd literally be shooting at each other and the school would be in the fucking MIDDLE of it all. There's a part of me that wants to quit. And another part that says no, I'm not a quitter. I don't quit things.

The program is a disaster. I hope the foundations that funded it know their money is being wasted. Even my reading professor today said they should shut down the elementary school and let the State take it over, although I don't know that the State could do any better.

All I can say is Antonio Villaragosa, our mayor, can take his kids out of private school right now, and kiss my lily white ass. He wants to control LAUSD? Let him start with this school. Go ahead Antonio, fix it. You and the new Superintendent Brewer. Fix it all. Tell me what you're going to do to make this shit better. Because I wouldn't even know where to begin.

I told you. Don't admire me. Because I may not even be in this program in a month. Or a week.