Greetings from Mt. St. Vitriol

*Note--the following "Thank You's" are ironic "Thank You's" and are in no way to be misconstrued for the real thing, which is what I offer all of you who bear with my terrible ranting. Thank you--seriously--I mean that one.

Now, on to the rant...

As you all know, this year has been the most hellific, hellacious, hell-heinous years on the professional front that I have had since, I don't know, the very first group of students I had as a student teacher chewed me up, shit me out, and walked through my plop on the lawn in dagger-sharpened cleats. I believe that, aside from the exhaustion and the hormones which I knew walking in would hinder my professionalism, that there are a variety of sources to thank for the conflagrating skin-less nerve-bundle that has become my professional confidence this year, and I think these people/things/sharts-from-the-lowest-toxic-slug-south-of-the-last-rock-in-the-lowest-pit-of-hell deserve some recognition for being pulsating pustulating green-ly festering open lesions on the cancerous boil that's risen on the primal ooze that squishes between a demon's ass and his teeny-tiny shriveled and hairy testicles.

Here we go...

***I'd like to thank the technology that my administration forced me to be dependent upon for breaking down eight to ten weeks out of each semester. The humiliation of having to pass six A.P. students with grades in the toilet will go away in a few years, but the psychic scars of being bent over my cluttered-to-capacity desk and gang-raped by a defective computer, a mis-matched grading program and a sadistic server while my students watched me weep will be with me forever.

***While this was happening, I'd like to thank my insensitive, self-rightous, condescending administrator for saying helpful things like, "You need to take ownership of this situation. It can't all be the computer's fault." Yes. It fucking can.

***I'd like to thank the malicious, malignant, sheer stinking, slimy, and toxic evil, mother and daughter moo-cows that made my life a cesspool of pain this year. This one is so huge, I'll have to break it down a little.

***I'd like to thank the daughter for defying me, lying to me, blaming all of her absences on basketball, shrieking in my classroom whenever she entered tardy (excused by her mother or basketball coach, of course) and stealing my candy.

***I'd like to thank the honorless heifer of a daughter for starting the letter that went to administration accusing me of innappropriate conduct--I'd especially like to thank her for reading it to all of her friends in every class she and her other friends had for effect. I'd loooooove to thank her for the fact that it was 70% lies and 30% truth-taken-out-of-context. And most particulary, I'd like to thank her for talking about it loudly with her mother in the library, while the two of them cooked up enough bitch to choke a manatee. I think she generated enough bad karma with this action to need to be careful crossing every street and every bridge for the rest of her life--but she's so craven and ignorant, she'd probably blame the speeding bus for the red light she was violating.

***I'd like to thank my administration for giving me vague hints of what this document contained, never asking me if any of it was true or to put it into context, never visiting my classroom to see what it is that I do and why we might possibly be talking about sex in an English class, and setting me up for the remainder of the hell-spawn's cronies to have this document hanging over my head like a fucking sword of Damocles for the rest of the year. I did eventually say fuck them all and taught the way I always would, but I will never forget the fact that, to my administration (and to someone who calls herself my friend) I was apparently indefensible--and therefore left defenseless. Thanks a lot, people, for showing me that thirteen years of good service and six years doing justice to a program I built from the ground up in hardpan has earned me all of the respect from my admin of a kleenex used to wipe up Satan's boogers. You rock. Truly.

***I'd like to thank the caustic, acidic, pernicious, venomous, spawner-of-demons who encouraged this behavior and shrieked like a banshee on steroids until the administation caved to her outrageous, trashy behavior and gave her precious persecuted angel a B in the class (which she had for about a minute) instead of the D she fairly earned because they didn't want their ears to bleed.

***I'd like to thank my administration for not getting some fucking earplugs, a set of ovaries and a spine, and then ponying up and telling this cow that her kid acted badly, we had it on paper, and her grade suffered from her bad behavior and lack of attention to what was required. Her daughter was a nightmare who took advantage of her mother's position on campus and her own position as an athelete. Hooray--that has apparently earned her a full ride scholarship because that is EXACTLY the kind of person we want to celebrate in the world of academics.

***I'd like to thank the nightmare's cronies for dangling that sword of Damocles as often as fucking possible. I know they are supposed to be children, but for this little clot of people to sit and talk through my classes while twenty-five other people were working REALLY HARD to pay attention and to gain something valuable from my classes because they were riding the coat-tails of a despicable act was unconscionable. They are eighteen, they had all the power, and when a group of adults wants to fuck you, they can fuck you. These kids had the power of adults and the judgement of and conscience of seven year olds, and I got fucked.

***I'd like to thank my department for neither noticing nor caring that I spent the latter half of the first semester looking like microwaved cat-barf and the latter half of the second semester looking like boiled dogshit on a stick. It's nice to know people care.

***I'd like to thank the head vainglorious prickweenie for yanking the program I built from it's first idea right out from my feet. I paid for the training for this program by myself. I've been telling the kids it's easy to keep them in the class because for a while it scared so many kids we almost lost the program. I worked my ass off to make an English AP program in a school in which doing your homework is considered declasse to the highest degree, and I succeeded, and he listened to the crazy little children and didn't ask me a fucking thing and pulled my program out from under me without the courtesy of a 'by your leave' or a 'because of...'. When will these people learn that if you are not allowed to defend yourself then you start to assume you are not worth defending. I am worth defending motherfucker, you just need to let me know what the fight is about.

***I'd like to thank the scheduling gods for making sure that my security guards know more than half of my second, third, and fifth period classes. That was great, guys...can you give me something that will inflame a hive of bees and a map while you're at it?

But wait...there's more than one kind of thanks I need to give out. While I'm giving out thanks, I'd like some sincere ones to sound...

**Thank you, honestly and truly, to the fifteen kids (count em!) from my 6th period class who GOT EXCITED about me signing their yearbooks these last couple of days. After the weirdness of this year, it really was an honor that I dreamed not of.

**Thank you to the kid who wrote the nice poem about me for his poetry assignment. Thanks to the other kid who thanked me for making him do it, even though he really didn't want to.

**Thank you to my earstwhile department head, who, after hearing me bitch bitterly about the dissatisfaction I experienced teaching grammar for the sake of test scores and my vows to never let administrative pressure do that to me again, looked at me sincerely and said, "Yeah--but you went outside of your comfort zone. That was really brave." He meant it. For that alone I forgive him the microwaved cat-barf thing.

**I'd like to thank the assorted kids who came up to me on Friday (in different classes) and high fived me because they were getting me next year, and they were really glad.

**I'd like to thank the kid in 6th period who told the aforementioned hell-spawn that I was "the Kobe Bryant" of teachers. That was really important to me. You have no idea.

**I'd like to thank security for looking around and saying, "Yeah--I know A LOT of your kids--it must have been a fun year." I felt like the world's worst teacher--it helps to know that I had help being ineffectual and helpless.

**I'd like to thank my aid for continually telling me that these kids acted horribly in their other classes too, and it wasn't just my fault.

**I'd like to thank the girl who made a blanket for project Linus--actually, I'd like to thank ALL the girls who made blankets for Project Linus. But the one who made 12 of them with her mother, and the one who made one even though she didn't feel she did a good enough job and even though she thought it turned out badly, but still really wanted to give back--that was really brave. Thank you.

**I'd like to thank my 'Yarn Thing' sistas for keeping me sane--you didn't let me think the worst of myself, now I'll always think the best of you.

**You all out there--I've already thanked you. You need more. You need foot rubs, chocolate, and free yarn. All I've got is thanks...take all you need.

**And in the end, I'd especially like to thank Mate and the kids...all of you, you help remind me of why mandatory sterilization would be a really bad idea.