IDYLLOPUS PRESS IS A VALIANT LITTLE ROWBOAT

Taliesin West, The Golden Sphere

You may remember Because I’m Worth It’s “Mysteries” post showing the desolate silver sphere about which I blogged here, right here, imagining it was a wayward alien come to Our Planet seeking to befriend Kate Moss.

Night before last I located some photos from Taliesin West that I thought I’d lost, and wasn’t I delighted to find that low and behold Mysterious Silver Sphere has a relative.

The Golden Sphere.

However, on closer examination I decided they’re not related, which was a disappointment, because of course I’d fantasized about the enthusiasm Mysterious Silver Sphere would feel when reunited with its golden sibling, cousin, whatever.

No, I think the Golden Sphere belongs to a different family.

Not that I imagine it’s called the Golden Sphere.

Being a sculpture it’s likely got a fancier name like Frank Lloyd Wright Imagines An Ocean In the Desert Surrounding A Gold Spray Painted Old German Floating Naval Contact Mine.

Site Search Tags: taliesin+west

H.o.p. and Sunset and Gas Station

Love the above photo of H.o.p., the subtle color, and he was just so happy waving through the window at me.

I am procrastinating wildly. This is how I procrastinate on getting some writing done, or while I’m thinking about what I’m doing with the writing I’m doing. Instead of moving on from rereading two novels of Philip K. Dick’s to rereading the Nag Hammandi texts, I make changes to the blog and went wild with plug-ins. Next I’ll be doing this to Marty’s music blog and H.o.p’s art blog (which he hasn’t updated in months). But first I’ve got to redo some png images for H.o.p.’s t-shirts (Marty has friends who want some) and I promised a niece I’d do up a t-shirt for her using one of her drawings.

Here are changes I made to the blog yesterday and today.

1.) Comments field. I added WP-Ajax-Edit-Comments Plugin. When one makes a comment it is now editable by the individual for a space of 15 minutes.

2.) Am now trying out Share This so sharing options are displayed at the bottom of posts for emailing etc. Who knows? Someone may one day stumble upon the site who wants to share an article at Digg or some other place. Reminding myself to make a donation for it.

3.) Am going to try to move from depending on categories to tags, implementing site search tags at the bottom of posts, using this. This will be difficult. My desk isn’t piled high with papers and books in this apartment only because lack of room compels me to stuff everything into drawers and bookcases. At our last place I had a big book case right beside the desk creating a kind of nook around the desk and so the way I organized things worked great there as I just made great piles of things on in the bookcase and on the floor behind my desk and next to the case, but it was all at least constrained by that space so though my piles would reach heights of several feet, they didn’t spread out. Here, I don’t have room for that. When I try to categorize/organize/file I get bogged down in multiplying options and eventually lose hope and stop. And if I do carry organization through then within a week or two whatever was organized is likely to be a jumble again. As both Marty and H.o.p. are the same way, our only salvation is that I at least like things to be neat and so organize to the extent that I put stuff away. Anyway, when I try to think about tags, as with categories, my brain goes ??????

May try out the Ultimate Tag Warrior Plug-in but I was reading it can bog a blog down.

4.) Changed the formatting of page titles with the Optimal Title Plug-in so the post title will be followed by the blog name instead of vice versa, which is supposed to be better for Google. Of course, one is supposed to keep post titles short and to the point and use lots of keywords and I tend to be pretty eclectic about things, post titles sometimes having seemingly nothing to do with the post and my posts may be all inferences rather than using appropriate keywords. In OTHER WORDS, not too infrequently what I feel I’m writing about is not ever directly mentioned in the blog.

5.) I am STUCK at trying to work with the permalinks. (This reminds me that I’m stuck with my current novel too, and makes me feel bad.) Looking finally at what’s happening in Google, I find not only am I a virtual nonpresence, stranded in the hinterland, the default Wordpress way of doing permalinks is also really messing up the way Google does the indexing on this site and prioritizing. I want to move from the default way of doing permalinks to a pretty permalinks with the post name and ID. So I studied permalink structures last night and thought I found a nice foolproof one. But when I tried it, it didn’t work. Says input file specified. I don’t know if this is because my Wordpress installation isn’t in the root directory but a sub. And if I do figure out what’s wrong then will I probably need to install a redirect for all my posts, won’t I? Agh. Do I really want to procrastinate this much?

6.) Made a robots.txt file to cut down on Googlebot finding duplications and further messing up indexing, but for some reason though it’s in the correct directory and done right (I’ve done robot texts before) though Google is finding it, it’s still returning a 404 page on it? I’m confused.

7.) Installed the SEO Wordpress plug-in which further cuts down on duplications, optimizing google searches.

8.) Installed the Google Site Map Generator Plug-in (reminder to self, again, make donation) that I’m reluctant to try out until I get the permalink issue straightened out.

9.) Am going to try out another Alex King plug-in which automatically puts designated posts on an Articles page under their selected categories. But all posts that I’ve categorized have multiple categories and there should only be one category for this to work, so I don’t know if I’ll be keeping this.

A number of these ideas I found at Devlounge.

Took a break while doing the plug-ins to watch Kung Fu Hustle, directed by Stephen Chow. I’m surprised by the reviews I’ve read thus far, as a number say things like “isn’t emotionally involving” or the characters aren’t fleshed out. OK, so I’m not a Kung Fu movie purist, but I’ve watched a number of them over the past several decades, and I loved this film, everything about it–plot, design, sets, costuming, pacing, acting, cinematography, editing. You name it, I loved it. When I wasn’t laughing, I was running out of the room and peeking around the door, scared a character I loved was about to be deep-sixed. And I loved all the characters except for the villains, and the villains were great villains that are completely loathsome. What wasn’t involving about these characters? Yes, it was a cartoon. But it was a wild and wonderful cartoon. How often is a movie funny enough that I’m up and on the end of the bed, jumping up and down on it, laughing my ass off? Not many. And Bruce! The Beast! He was THE villain and I even loved him! I was mad over Bruce the Beast! I was crazy about the Coolie and the Tailor and the Noodle Maker. I was crazy about the landlady and the landlord (Wah Yuen, played the Vampire in Mr. Vampire, another funny funny Kung Fu film). I was crazy about Sing, the lead, but no more so than those others mentioned. No, there wasn’t a lot of dialogue but it didn’t need a lot of dialogue, every scene drenched with story and character informing visual info. And the acting was insanely fine. So, I loved it. It was all candy, thousands and thousands of pounds of candy.

Roman Bacchus, Imperial Rome Exhibit, Fernbank

The stars have mandated that today is Adore Jennifer at Saying Yes day. The stars did not declare today “Jennifer General Appreciation Day”. No, they ordered a “J’Adore Jennifer Day”.

The Romans and Greeks taught us what happens when mere mortals attempt to defy the constellations–and why should we want to in this instance, except out of perverse obstinacy? I say we do what we can to please the stars, and Jennifer, and render unto Jennifer the blogy attentiveness that is deservedly hers.

Shrines and ancient art work are to be delivered here.

My contribution is this particularly “come hither” Bacchus. Almost looks like he’s daring you to have that first drink of the day (or evening). I can’t imbibe, Bacchus having kicked my ass many years ago, but I don’t believe Jennifer is prohibited. If I was in her vicinity, I’d buy her that first drink of the evening, get myself some cranberry juice, and toast her health and tidings of good fortune.

May the stars look favorably upon me for obeying their dictum.

Site Search Tags: bacchus, imperial+rome+exhibit, fernbank

My act? I’m a super somersaulting frog!

The above is some old H.o.p. art. Love it. A frog that lets you know its “act” is somersaulting, then performs a somersault and promptly barfs. Some people call this performance anxiety. Stress is another good name for it.

Today’s Marty’s birthday and what he wanted for his birthday was this on a t-shirt, and several other H.o.p. images on shirts. So I spent a day priming H.o.p.’s art for Cafe Press (a laborious process), made shops for the new images (already had a couple shops on there, more laborious process), then bought Marty a bunch of t-shirts (fun, not laborious).

Also got the Super Somersaulting Frog as a tote bag, perfect for the consummate professional who doesn’t mind letting the world know how it sometimes feels to be their kind of consummate professional. Not that Marty is one of those musicians who throws up before performing. Lead singers usually do that.

No, I had in mind that awful old “Hang in there!” poster of the kitty dangling by its paw from a rod. Do they still sell those things.

I feel like H.o.p.’s somersaulting, barfing frog is the counterpart of that kitten.

Site Search Tags: cafe+press

Why is the cicada the symbol of Provence? And why do I always spell it cicadia? Why do I pronounce it cicadia? I may switch to le cigale because I’ll be able to remember that.

Anyway, I’m interested in this. The why. Please someone leave a detailed history, with footnotes, or a link to. No, “Well, it sounds pretty, that’s why,” kind of explanations will be accepted.

Site Search Tags: cicada

You know, don’t even bother watching this installment of LOUSY VIDEOBLOGGING. I’ll just tell you what it’s about.

The two main search results that hit this site (about all that come to this site) are individuals looking for a picture of a MONSTER TRUCK, though I only did one posting ever in which I mentioned a monster truck and only linked to a pic of a monster truck, and the rest come looking for information on Howard Hughes wearing Kleenex box shoes. I did a post on that once where I pointed out the difficulties this would pose. Despite the variety of subjects that I post on, that’s about all the people I get coming here from Google. They want monster trucks and Kleenex.

Anyway, I got this cold at the beginning of July and I had these Kleenex boxes and I decided to do a videoblog demonstrating the difficulties of wearing Kleenex box shoes. But by the time I got the idea I was over my cold and the Kleenex boxes were gone.

Then H.o.p. got a cold last week. Then Marty. And then I caught it all over again from them, a different cold than the first. And the house was suddenly FULL with Kleenex boxes again (environmentally green Kleenex, by the way, so my nose was rubbed raw as it’s rough stuff) and thus I was able to do today the Howard Hughes kleenex box demonstration.

But the video is even worse than all our others. About all that it manages to be is a glimpse of a small measure of the chaos that is generally resident in the household.

So there. You get to see me walking around in Kleenex box shoes and barely talking about them because H.o.p. was all over the place.

And you get a yucky shot of H.o.p. with snot streaming from his nose. Because I’m bound and determined to never edit a single one of these lousy videoblogs. I said in this one that I should edit it but I didn’t, because I want them to be unadulterated spontaneous efforts.

I’d thought, “Oh, that’ll be cool, a videoblog where I wear kleenex box shoes”. Instead the main highlight–the only part that’s very well lit as a matter of fact–is H.o.p. showing off for the camera bodacious streamers of cold goo.

Site Search Tags: lousy+videoblogging, howard+hughes, kleenex+box+shoes

Democrats cave! Democrats cave!

Duh. Well, of course they do. It seems to be what Democrats do best is yield to pressure because they don’t want to look like they’re, uh, uhm…I know, they don’t want to look like they’re standing in the way of Bush & Co.

What mantra do they practice before the mirror each morning?

It’s not my fault! He made me do it!

How were they made to do it?

They wanted their summer vacation.

Just in case you’re still wondering how high the personal sacrifices will go for sake of some ideals.

These are the kind of people who say, “You’re an idealist,” and make it sound like something really dirty and contemptible.

Update: And icky. They make it sound icky, too. And irresponsible. Laughable. And lame. That, too. And childish, as in irresponsibly, stupidly childish. And stupid. As in, “You don’t understand politics. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I just bought myself a heaping serving of summer vacation. Get lost, you childish, lame, laughable, annoying, ridiculous idealist.”

Site Search Tags: bush&co,

David, H.o.p. and Amy back stage

The other night, H.o.p. was being a real jerk, and what came out of my mouth was, “Yeah, you better hope you grow up to be Pablo Picasso”. He had no idea I was referring to the song, “Pablo Picasso Was Never Called an Asshole”, my preference being the crazed John Cale version. He having no idea what I was talking about, I chalked one up for me and turned on my heel and left the room. On the very rare occasion he’s left speechless–that was one of them. Marty, sitting by, looked up, took a second then went, “Oh!”

Later, H.o.p. having chilled a bit, hedging toward being conciliatory, had me come in with him and sit and go through one of our Picasso books. He’d gone and looked for it and hunkered down in the bed with it to read some before going to sleep, soon calling me in to ask about one of the fairly intense portraits. It’s been a while since he’s done that with Picasso (when he was five, for months he kept another Picasso book open, referring to it over and over again, one of the acrobat paintings in particular). Next, he decided he wanted to go through the book image by image, asking about each one. And we did. Examining every page. I’d forgotten there were two pages of Picasso’s decidedly erotic drawings stuck in the middle of it all, which made explanations a little more complex. Then we went on through the book, to the very last page. About 1/4 of the way through he asked, “Are there any happy paintings?” And we talked about that, too.

H.o.p. is surrounded by music, literature (he watches us read, hasn’t himself developed a taste for reading books yet, but loves being read to, is read to daily, and knows mom writes), movies (the past few days have been spent watching “the making of” Kung Fu films and wire work), and art. We thought music was what spoke to him first and most when he was a kid and his first words were all musical artists because he wanted to listen to their albums over and over again. As a baby he cried when played lullabies but quieted immediately and listened with rapt attention to the Rolling Stones’ “Paint it Black.” He was saying “Bob Dylan” and “Thelonious Monk” before he said mom. But then one day H..o.p. picked up a crayon and started to draw on the wall. I took him and showed him my paintings. “You know why you paint on canvas or paper or wood,” I said to him. “So you can keep it or sell it. You can’t take a wall with you. But you can carry paper and wood and canvas.” He nodded his head, totally getting it, and he never ever drew on a wall again. Some things, most things, I’ve told him daily, for years, and they’ve never taken. But all I had to do with the crayons is tell him artists paint and draw on paper and canvas so they can keep it, and he understood immediately, and started going through paper like crazy (and wanting to keep all of it). I lined both walls of the hall from top to bottom and end to end with his drawings.

This was all back at the old art compound we used to live in, with several of the people H.o.p. got to meet again tonight at the big arena pop concert.

I don’t do art shows. I paint on the computer these days, never print anything out, and he sees me writing on the computer but doesn’t know what I write. So in many ways music is more evidenced around him.

He would be better served with parents who are business people, I think. But you get what you’re born with.

When he was two years of age, at the end of all the road tour days came the invitation for Marty to tour with John Mayer playing keys. And Marty said no. H.o.p. won over John Mayer. Time to stay home, focus on studio engineering and production now, be there on a daily basis for H.o.p. growing up. He didn’t want to miss out on those years. Which he would have. Marty was on the road a lot during H.o.p.’s first two years. Some of the time we were on the road with him. H.o.p. learned how to walk on a tour bus.

Then his dad was home and there began the education of listening to music with a studio ear. Who knows whether or not he’ll later have any use for what he learns growing up around it, but he’s surrounded by music. He goes down to the studio. He experiments with his own little sessions. He is partial to no instrument and studies no instrument in depth, but he takes piano (never practices, he just likes taking piano and making sounds and beats) from a long time friend of Marty’s, and this summer he started taking group percussion lessons (Samba) from another friend of Marty’s, because he loves Samba and Marty knows some great percussionists. When he’s old enough, I imagine he’ll start sitting in on sessions and learning the rudiments of engineering and production, if he likes. Just being around it, it’s funny how much you can learn. The ear becomes educated. If he decides he wants to do something with music, he’s going to have years and years head start over these kids that high schools send to Marty to intern with him.

H.o.p.’s been to lots of small shows and some festivals, but not yet to a large arena event.

A good friend of Marty’s has been touring with Mayer all this time and tonight H.o.p. got to go to his first big arena show. After all, these things are loud and he’s not one for LOUD. Several years ago his uncle was working for Howard Shore and was traveling all the time from venue to venue where “The Lord of the Rings” concerts were being staged, and he arranged for us to go to the performance here and instead we just did rehearsal because I suspected it would be too loud and intense for H.o.p. Indeed, he enjoyed it, and enjoyed meeting Howard Shore as he loved the music and listened to it at home over and over, but he sat with his head buffered by my jacket most of the time at the rehearsal and wasn’t anxious to stay.

But he’s been to lots of festivals this past Spring and Summer. His ears are more hardy. And we decided he was ready for an arena show. Marty was comped two tickets and I couldn’t go as we don’t have a babysitter, and then we decided H.o.p. should go and I didn’t want to bother with bothering for a third ticket.

So they prepared to go. With earplugs. (No reason to be ashamed about earplugs. Musicians wear them.)

And with backstage passes.

I spent two days prepping the nine-year-old for his first big arena show. It’s big. It may be loud. (Earplugs.) He’s going backstage. He’ll see his friend David LaBruyere and meet John Mayer.

Which he didn’t, meet John Mayer afterwards. They were sent to the wrong room back stage with a bunch of other musician friends and after a very loud twenty minutes with lots of commotion going on, they realized it was the wrong room and by then Mayer was gone. But at least it was musicians and relaxed rather than a meet and greet. At first it was all pretty overwhelming to H.o.p. though. Not the concert, that was fine. But the back stage commotion was at first overwhelming for H.o.p. as it was a small room with a lot of people in it.

Now, I don’t even like the industry. I hate the big industry end of it all. It sucks. Musicians aren’t the industry. I have always stayed away from parties and from industry people because I hated the industry (I have stood and literally fled the dinner table when seated across from industry PR people–after one sentence out of their mouths I have fled, I can’t handle them) and only liked back stage when it was just musicians and no one but musicians. (Marty, by the way, says the show was great, Mayer did a great job and so did all else, and H.o.p. loved it.) So I wasn’t wanting H.o.p. to meet Mayer for the star quotient. But I had hoped H.o.p. would get to meet Mayer because H.o.p. believes in meeting people. I’ve met Mayer a couple of times but it was years ago, around the time H.o.p. was born, and what I remember of it is Mayer sitting at our table, playing his music on our sound system, and I thought, “Well, he’s going to go places,” because you could see it in his head, that he was going to get there, he was ready to get out and tour 365 days a year, which many people do, travel continually, but you could tell he had the focus and didn’t have anything to detract from that single-minded focus of making it, every step precisely calculated in terms of whether it fit into that big picture of getting his music done, which isn’t easy. And now Mayer’s a star and his image is plastered everywhere. But the reason I wanted H.o.p. to meet Mayer, like I said, is because he’s always wanting to meet people. Every artist and director and musician he likes, he says, “Can I meet them?” He thinks he should be able to meet anyone. And wants to. When I was a kid it never occurred to me to meet someone, just having their work around was enough. But H.o.p., he always says, “Can I meet them? I want to meet them!” He wants to get up close and personal with everyone. The work he likes, he immediately thinks in terms of the person behind it and wanting to meet the person. Which I think is a good thing. He’s not thinking, “That person is a star! I want to meet them!” He thinks, “I like that person’s work. I want to meet them!” I don’t want him to lose that.

He DID get to see David LaBruyere and Chad Franscoviak, which was more important–LaBruyere being an old friend who knew H.o.p. before he was verbal, who’s played bass for Mayer all these years and used to live a couple of doors from us in the old Decatur art compound, and Chad is Mayer’s front of house guy and tour manager and used to live on the other side of our duplex, again, in the old art compound when H.o.p. was pre-verbal. And saw a bunch of other old friends. If they had come home without seeing LaBruyere and Chad, I would have been really pissed.

He got to see again, too, Kevin Leahy, the drummer who was on the tour bus with us when H.o.p. was learning how to walk…

And then H.o.p. saw the WALL MURAL OF THE BIG RED HAWK and THAT was the event of the night and he got a picture of himself standing under that.

And then they got lost trying to get to the car and a Marta cop was real helpful and let them on a train with his pass and they found their way to the right parking lot. And THAT was the first thing H.o.p. talked to me about when he called me, the BIG ADVENTURE of getting lost.

So, H.o.p had a great adventure, and I’m glad he got some back stage pics taken with some old buds from the old art compound.

If you’re more into Country, Marty distinguished himself nicely back stage in that regard. A woman came up to him and gave him a big hug and said, “Marty, it’s great to see you again!” And he stared at her and she said, “I’m Jennifer,” and he said, “I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to help me out, which Jennifer?”

It was Jennifer Nettles. Jennifer’s husband and Marty are friends, and he’s friends with most of the people in her band (Christian and Brandon Bush, Sean O’Rourke and Scott) but he’s only met Jennifer a couple of times.

Brandon is also an ex art compound resident.

Marty says Jennifer was nice as she could be about it, and that he fully confessed to her that he’s an idiot.

P.S. Must get a new keypad. This one keeps dropping letters.

Kevin Leahy’s arm, H.o.p., John Shofner and Chad

Site Search Tags: music, david+labruyere, john+mayer, chad, old+art+compound

The Ballerina, Declassified, 2006
Digital painting based on a photo from the Hanford Declassified Project of a ballerina performing at the Hanford Theater
Remixing the Hanford Declassifed Project

A ballerina performing at the Hanford Theater during the WWII years. Her family would have been involved, in some capacity, in the production of the plutonium used in Fat Man bomb dropped on Nagasaki. She didn’t know this. Nor did her family. They wouldn’t learn of Hanford’s involvement until after the bombing.

What I think of when I see pictures of Hanford’s children at the Hanford Declassified Project is that the story of Fat Man, the bomb which dropped on Nagasaki, is not just only about Japan. Fat Man was dropped on the world. Its effects are still felt everywhere. The Columbia River is threatened by its legacy of radiation pollution. This is what I think of when I see pictures of the Hanford’s children at the Hanford Declassified Project.

Remixing the Hanford Declassifed Project

There is a new movie on the bombings White Light/Black Rain by Steven Okazaki.

Many people in the film are still dealing with survivor guilt but somehow have found reasons to live. One of the survivors talks about looking for her mother, and seeing what she thinks is her mother because she finds a burned corpse with a gold tooth that looks like her mother, and she reaches out to touch the body and it turns to ashes before her finger reaches it. And then her sister gets radiation sickness, her hair starts falling out, and the kids at school are taunting her sister because she’s bald, and the sister steps in front of a train and kills herself. This woman says that there are two kinds of courage–the courage to die, and the courage to live. And she says she decided she wanted to live, despite her having lost everybody…

Right now we have the capability of four hundred thousand Hiroshima’s in the world’s nuclear arsenal. I wanted to make the film ten years earlier, but I think making it now has a particular relevance, and the film is timelier than ever..

From an interview with Steven Okazaki

Site Search Tags: hanford+declassifed, hiroshima, nagasaki, hanford,

Over at the Republic of Dogs the other day, Res Publica posted a sample of an Oklahoma license plate showing an eagle in front of the Twin Towers. The pissed looking eagle sports a red band at the base of its throat touting 9-11, to ensure we know what it’s mad about, and to the side there is the statement GLOBAL WAR ON TERRORISM. Did I mention the twin towers are blue? And the bald eagle’s head is, of course, white. So there we have something of a new flag in the making.

Inspired, I rushed to see what the red state of Georgia was offering its motorists.

There are no samples available yet but Georgia seems to be suggesting we are warring against terrorism and Iraqi freedom with its new GLOBAL WAR ON TERRORISM & IRAQI FREEDOM plate. Also offered is a GLOBAL WAR ON TERRORISM & OPERATION ENDURING FREEDOM plate.

Hey, but wait. Also NEW! (in bold red letters with an exclamation mark) is a plate for Gold Star Families of individuals killed in action.

It just seemed so wrong, that bright red NEW! Like you’d get on a site selling novelty t-shirts. NEW! All cheery and welcoming. Come take this car for a spin.

The same day a friend had an upsetting encounter with a military recruiter who was insisting that her daughter had requested information. You can read about it at her blog, but I’ll note here that it seems her daughter, when in high school, had taken the ASVAB, the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery.

In addition, the federal No Child Left Behind Act requires schools that receive federal funding to provide military recruiters with students’ names, addresses and phone numbers unless parents have opted out. Schools also must allow recruiters to have the same access to campuses that colleges have.

The military’s vocational aptitude test is not part of the No Child Left Behind requirement, and the test’s “career explorations” Web site says students who agree to take the test aren’t making any obligations.

Source: Common Dreams

It seems that not everyone is getting the news that you don’t have to take this test. In our state of Georgia, some students who refused to take it, well, they had to take it anyway.

…about half of the school’s juniors refused to even leave their regular classes to report to the testing site in the school’s cafeteria. Some of the teachers, apparently learning about this at the last minute like most everyone else, and confused as to the nature of the proceedings, insisted that their students at least go to the cafeteria even if they did not mean to cooperate with the military. Once they were there, the kids were informed that anyone who showed up in the cafeteria would be made to take the test.

Source: Antiwar.com

Yes. Once at the cafeteria, they HAD to take the test. And the soldiers told the students that if they destroyed the tests, then they would throw out the tests also of those students who had wanted to take it. The coercion worked.

But that is a separate incident from what happened with my friend’s daughter.

What happened to my friend’s daughter? After completing the test, she was given a form to sign. She refused to sign the form. She was then later visited by a uniformed recruiter who intimidated her into signing the form. And she had no idea what was even on the form she was being bullied into signing. Perhaps it was something like this?

Principals in (district) shall protect students’ privacy by implementing “ASVAB Option 8″ (keeping the test results from recruiters), informing the military before the test is given. If a school chooses this option, students who want their scores to go to the military can still permit them to go to recruiters on an individual basis. (The military provides a special permission form for such requests.) However, it doesn’t work the other way around. If a school chooses to release information to recruiters, this information will be handed over for all students, removing choice from some students.

Source: Washington Truth in Recruiting

Her daughter has been getting recruitment calls since then.

Perhaps you’re thinking, “Well, she signed the form. Why didn’t she read it first?”

My friend’s daughter isn’t dumb. Nor is she not used to taking a stand. This same girl, when she was in middle school, following 9/11, the school began holding patriotic rallies on designated days. The students were informed that if they wore red, white and blue then they would receive extra grade points. She refused to wear the colors and thus did not receive the extra grade points. She also refused to sign a patriotic petition posted by a teacher.

I look on it as her being in an authoritarian double bind. It sounds like she wasn’t made aware of her rights in this situation. She was at school. When she refused to sign the form, the military pursued her. In uniform, they intimidated her into signing.

How many students have been thus intimidated not only into releasing their information, but eventually joining the military?

Do Army/Navy/Marine recruiters get bonuses for each person they get to enlist? I don’t know. But the National Guard does.

The Army National Guard, which has suffered a severe three-year recruiting slump, has begun to reel in soldiers in record numbers, aided in part by a new initiative that pays Guard members $2,000 for each person they enlist.

Source: Washington Post

An enlightening read on the heavy emphasis being placed on reaping high school kids and how to do it is found in the military’s School Recruiting Program Handbook at nodraftnoway.org. One of the more interesting portions is section 2-4 on using student influences.

Some influential students such as the student president or the captain of the football team may not enlist, however, they can and will provide you with referrals who will enlist.

A number of helpful hints on gaining the co-operation of administrators and teachers and winning the confidence of students.

As professionalism is stressed, I guess the high school and college recruiters don’t consider coercive and intimidating tactics to be outside of bounds of creating fodder for Gold Star Family license plates…all in the interest of our war against terrorism and Operation Enduring Freedom.

Site Search Tags: military, recruitment, students, ASVAB, intimidation

Ought to check my server webstats more often. I’ve got, in July, 297 bandwidth draws from a white supremacist blog and I can’t find for what these draws were. Likely, they were hotlinking an image because I never noticed any visitors from this site in my tracker, but then I don’t religiously check it either. Still, on a blog this size I would have noticed 297 visits. So it’s likely from their hotlinking an image. However, I’ve been all though their July archives (wasn’t that fun?) looking for an image hotlink and I’m not finding it.

Am going to have to disallow my images from search engines. The hotlinking from Myspace went soaring through the roof in July.

Site Search Tags: white+supremacists, myspace, hotlinking