Sit Down and Shut Up ©®™

The Headmaster is presently reading a book entitled "Sit Down and Shut Up". This, coincidentally, is the name of the Headmaster's trademarked homeschooling lecture methodology. The Headmaster is currently suing for the rights. The book, according to its subtitle, contains "Punk Rock Commentaries on Buddha, God, Truth, Sex, Death and Dogen's Treasury of the Right Dharma Eye." Now if you're anything like the Headmaster, you've had it up to here with punk rock commentaries on the right dharma eye, but maybe this one is exceptional. We'll see. It may all depend on how the lawsuit goes.


You know it's the dog days when you wake up in the morning with a stack of fresh clean tee-shirts, and then you can't find a single clean one for bedtime. That nice neat stack of folded cotton sits in a damp, stinking heap on the floor of the laundry room. If they made a scratch-n-sniff card for it, the only conceivable name would be "Wrestling Holds - Worst Case Scenario".

Welcome to summa' baby.

The local church has recently taken advantage of the heat wave to warn passersby that it could be worse, with a certain implied message that it most definitely will be worse in the Headmaster's case. Hm.. how'd they hear about THAT?

Seriously, churches peddling gloom and doom - haven't they heard that it's all changed now? It's all supposed to be hip and cool and kumbaya. Church signs are supposed to advertise hip-hop socials and all-night sleepovers with Dirty Dancing marathons. How are you going to lure impressionable young minds with stories of the devil? I mean, here's some anti-establishment dude with a fu-manchu who bucked authority and got sent to his room where he spends his days stewing and thinking about revenge.. Ohhhhhh.....


Last month a neighbor of the Academy left for a six-month tour in Iraq. The Headmaster offered to maintain his lawn while he is away. After all, the Academy does Support The Troops©®™. The Headmaster recalls the awkward final words at this neighbor's going-away party. By way of saying goodbye, the Headmaster stated that he'd take good care of Mr. Neighbor's lawn, to which the Missus Neighbor giggled at the obvious metaphor. After a nervous laugh and suspicious glance, Mr. Neighbor parted with a handshake that can only be described as menacing.

Well, with that handshake firmly implanted in his mind, the Headmaster certainly has been earnest in his lawn care - and there is no metaphor stated or implied. But it's official that in his earnest pursuit of lawn perfection, the Headmaster has contracted Lyme Disease. Since Mr. Neighbor maintains some sort of bizarre firewood/dead brush mausoleum under some trees in his yard, the Headmaster is pretty sure he contracted the disease while cutting the neighbor's lawn. Doesn't this qualify for some kind of military medal? Purple heart, green clovers, yellow moons - something? I mean, the Headmaster is fighting ticks over here so the neighbor doesn't have to fight them over there.


The Headmaster's brother was extremely alarmed to hear of the Lyme Disease diagnosis. This is to be expected from a man who owns three farm tractors, a zero-turn mower and a John Deere trailer to haul it all around in. I mean, if yard work were expressed in terms of manhood, the Headmaster would be Pee-Wee Herman, and his brother would be John Holmes (who is some dude - we hear - who is quite a manhood). Meaning, that if the Headmaster contracted the disease, the only hope for his brother would be to lock up the tractors and practice complete abstinence.

The Headmaster's brother had the most curious visceral reaction to the news, launching into a tirade about the uselessness of ticks. Something along the lines of "Those bahstids have absolutely no purpose - they are of no use to man whatsoever! They sit around just waiting for some poor unsuspecting schmuck to come along, then they jump on and suck his blood like leeches! Bahstids!"

This anthropocentric perspective amuses the Headmaster to no end. Of course, the notion that EVERYTHING on Earth must have some purpose that benefits man is firmly grounded in the biblical worldview. It's as though we expect ticks to provide us with some direct benefit - removing corns from our feet or mixing killer martinis or something - or we discount their right to exist at all. Would it never occur to such people that ticks - like man - have merely been given a shot at life and are simply trying to survive? That's what was so great about the old Far Side cartoons - they presented an alternative "arthropod-centric" worldview, where the poor unsuspecting schmuck who happened to walk by was merely there to benefit ticks. And so the Headmaster is happy to do what he can. Hey, ticks are people too...