It's not a very creative title, I know. And it is mostly going to be about me. Again.
Goal: Get ONE PERSON that is not me to read this blog. Ha ha, as if.
Anyway, I needed someplace to vent and my family's probably going to murder me if I try to start a For the Pursuit of Justice lecture again, and it doesn't really fit into my book, and eh, I wanted to put it on here.
All right. So you know how I mentioned NaNoWriMo in the last post? Well, YWP NaNo has recently launched. Now, what always pisses me off about YWP NaNo is how condescending they treat us. "Hey Young NaNoers! Hoping you can find an easy-peasy word count to fit your tiny little brains! You didn't accidentally sign up to the Real Writers website, now did you? That's only for grown-ups, silly geeses!"
OK, they don't say any of that. But I would like to imagine they do.
But I have a new bone to pick with the Office of Letters and Light, and this time it's about something that I'm usually not too fussy about: religion.
Now, as you may have guessed by my offhanded mentions of the High Holidays, I am Jewish.
GASP GASP GASP!!! "But- but," the reader says, stuttering. "But I'm a Nazi! That's just- that's just required on the Internet! How could this be? The writer of some obscure little blog no one readers is a- is a Jew?"
It's crazy, I know. The fact of the matter is that I'm Jewish and on the religious side of conservative Judaism and there is just nothing you can do about it.
Now, I understand that Jews make up, like, 1% or less of the world's population. I get that we're not exactly a huge mass of people. But- OK, just listen to the rant.
When the YWP site launched this whenever-it-was, I went to go check out the forums. Lo and behold, new forums- they're called the 'Extracurricular Activities' forums, because everything has to be related to school (all the young writers are doing this because their teacher made them- right? None of them are just doing it, you know, of their own accord?) and they basically are little 'clubs'- one for books, one for music, one for theatre, etc. Then I find one for 'Social Groups'. So I clicked on it, hoping to start my own group for Write It NaNoers (Write It's my other, main writing site. I might mention it some other time, perhaps.)
There's about twelve groups set up, and I attempt to post a new message when I realize that's not allowed. So I check it out- turns out the only person who can post new messages here is the moderator.
Fine, I think. Obviously she's in charge of just regurgitating the old groups here.
So I check out which groups she's set up- Tumblr, Bloggers, a group for fans of the moderator (ha ha ha), QUILTBAG (which, as I found out, was not a forum for fans of quilt-making, but a gay/straight alliance type of thing). And then I see the Christian Group.
All right, I figure. There's plenty of religious Christians on NaNo; I know that Figment's got about ten thousand 'Christian Groups' too.
I look around at the other groups, to see if perhaps there is a 'Jewish Group' or a 'Muslim Group' or, like, a 'Hindu Group'. But the only other remotely religious thing is the 'Atheist and Agnostics Group'.
I can just see it now- the moderator was struggling to come up with groups. She'd set up the Christian Group, and now she was figuring- all right, I basically covered all the religions on the freaking planet Earth, since there is no other religion but Christianity, so I'd better do something else... Is there anything else... Oh, right, I guess the other option is atheism. That's it. Just Christianity and atheism. There are no other options.
I know, it's a stupid thing to post a rant about. Which is why, despite the fact that it's technically not about me, I said the post was about me, because I think literally no one else gives a crap.
But still! I checked it out on the regular NaNo forums, went to the 'Spirituality and New Age' genre board, and the only type of religious book there is, is Christian. Really? So other religions don't count, do they? Nay, they do not even exist.
On a somewhat related note, I am REALLY pissed about something else and no one's going to read this blog anyway so, hell, why not rant about it. This Yom Kippur I had to run this thing, this stupid religious service for little kids, and I had to come up with a lesson plan. Looking back now, it was possibly THE, THE worst lesson plan to ever exist, in the history, in ALL TIME, in the HISTORY of the entire UNIVERSE.
That wasn't even proper grammar. You know I'm mad.
Anyway, I've been teaching this age group at my temple for three years, on Shabbat and the High Holidays, and I've been doing just fine until now. In fact, I've been fairly successful. Parents and kids and the other teachers have all told me I have unique lesson plans and I do a great job of teaching. Every single time I have had to teach a class, it's either been a success or a ok-fine-but-not-horrible class. This time, horrible.
Granted, it was probably stupid to take a class when I knew perfectly well that I was sick and also fasting, but oooohh no, I had to teach the damn class. I managed to last maybe forty five minutes before I began rambling, told the kids they could play their favorite game (Ninja), told one of my helper teachers I was sick, and went home.
The worst part was how I felt in front of that class- like I was falling apart at the seams. I have never felt like that in front of a class before. I mean, I'm not some sort of goddess of teaching or something, it's not like this is an utter failure of my dream in life, but... I'm just so embarrassed about it. I mean, I just left, because it was that horrid.
No- listen- I actually had this quote: "There was a time when Jews were not allowed to be Jews. OK- um um- there was a time when Jews were not allowed to be Jews. And, um, they had to be Christians. No, they had to pretend to be Christians. They had to go to church- to church- you know, instead of temple- Anyway, so on Yom Kippur, what holiday do you think- So they said the Shema out loud. I mean, the part after the Shema. Oh, whatever, you can play Ninja."
LITERAL. QUOTE. OF. MINE.
I'm already signed up to lead religious services for the next two Saturdays, and I can't just skive off my responsibilities, so I am going to teach those, but after that, I quit. I obviously can't teach to save my life. And I really don't need the bratty, demonic little kids in that class to see me again and shriek, "HA HA! You were the horrible teacher from Yom Kippur! Remember when you were horrible?"
So I'm going to tell my mom, who as luck would have it runs the program (of teenagers teaching little kids), that I quit. The end. Especially on the High Holidays. It's not going to be easy, because she'll keep saying, "Oh, you can't feel bad about one bad lesson," but this was not one bad lesson. It was one atrocious lesson. In fact, if there was a video or something of that lesson, it would go down in history as the worst lesson ever. I mean, at least Socrates' thing where he committed suicide had meaning and all that. Mine didn't.
Long, ramble-y, post. And usually when I write about a horrible incident I feel better about it, but I do NOT feel better. I just want to vomit. I will not be able to- EVER- teach another class- EVER- again. In fact, I should probably just cancel the next two Saturdays. The temple president's daughter can take over. She'll love it- the adults will fawn over her and her magical teaching abilities, because of course, they would never insult the precious daughter of the president. Yeah, I should do that. I should tell my mom tomorrow about that.
Damn good thing nobody reads this blog. Ah well, not that I wrote anything I really don't want anybody to know. By now, all the parents of the kids in my class are probably talking about the 'unstable' teacher. I bet a few are beginning to whisper something about a petition, to get rid of me or something. "Probably horrible in school too," they'll say. "What was it again, little Johnny? Did she actually say something that stupid? I bet she has straight F's."
I bet she has straight F's too, little Johnny. And if, by chance, she took an AP exam (ha ha, she'd be too stupid to get into an AP class) a five would be the last grade she'd get. Oh no. Five! Out of the question! And no way in HELL would she be good in, say, art history! That would just be INSANE!
Anyway, chocolate was promised in the title so, uh, I ate brownies today. 'Cause I'm not fat enough, right?
I'm off to go to the bathroom and, I suspect, not work at all on The Old Cities (my book. If you forgot). I'm just so damn lazy, I'd never even think of working on my book.
Oh, wait, I forgot to reply for you. Here you go, the expected reply so you don't have to lift a finger to type up your nasty comment because I'm doing the work for you.
"Oh, sarcastic, droll laugh. It is quite transparent, my friend, what you're trying to do here. Get some sort of compliment, right? Somebody to say, 'Oh no, honey, you're a WONDERFUL teacher and they totally should have Jewish groups on YWP and you're the smartest person ever!' Well, I'm not falling for your trap, you dumb, stupid teenager! Insult yourself all you like, we ALL know your ego's so inflated you can't even get off the ground- or wait, is that your supposed fat? Do you really expect anyone to feel sorry for you? I almost DO feel sorry for you, that you think anyone will read this blog. It's pretty obvious from the fact that you keep saying that nobody reads this blog. Reverse psychology, right?
Well, it doesn't really matter because this is what you deserve to hear: Rot in hell, devil spawn!"
Good thing I wrote it for you, right guys? I mean, you'd practically get carpal tunnel writing out that comment, wouldn't you?
Hope your eyes aren't burned out from the horrible sin of paying attention to me,
From,
magic-esi
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