Category: morality

Thorny Question:

“If a fourteen year old suddenly finds out his dad was previously married and lied about it, how should one proceed?”

This one comes to Zamboni from a young reader named, “O”.

Young reader, be kind. The cardinal rule of parenting is “do no harm”. What information your dad guy did not give you, well this did not hurt you right? To stories like this (which happened long ago in a world in which you did not exist!) there is always more muffins than the ones you see…

Look at it this way, my adoptive cheesfarming parents, after making me milk goat from dawn until noon, used to  make me -after a lunch of breadcrumb- do a thing called “gassers“. They had a hairbrain idea to turn me, just me (yes, my eleven adopted siblings all got to go down to the mudhole after lunch and swim) into an Olympic fencer of great strength. So, they would make me run all the way up Smolenka Hill (covered with thorny Carpberries in Summer!) and run down and repeat 25 times without stopping. My point is, there is cruelty, and then there is cruelty.

What makes Humans so beautiful is not beauty. It is frailty, mistakes, misteps, mishaps, omissions, forgetfullness, and ultimately, the mighty heroism of simply getting up in the morning and trying to do the right thing.

Zamboni has a good friend, “C” who recently lost her father. She is a young woman and she really loved this guy. He is gone and will not come back. She very strong, but this doesn’t change the loss.

So your dad disappoints you- suck it up and move on. In the grand scheme of things, it really doesn’t matter. I’m sure he has complaints about you, so spend less time wanting your parents to be perfect, and like Voltaire said, “cultivate your own garden.”

You don’t like the advice Zamboni give? So run a gasser, you’ll feel better. (And by the way, I did make Estonian Olympic team, 1936! Thanks mom and dad)

The root of your problem my friend is this very scary realization: your dad is a person, and had a life before you. I, know, strange.

“What is the purpose of Grades?” #2

I Zamboni have received my first ever in history complaint.

!!!

As stunning as it was to me, I did receive a voiciferous complaint from Jannush Warrenski. A few weeks ago, this bedruggled teacher sent me as he says it, “a cry from the mud” and because I myself did not answer but left his query to my human vessel, the quotidian Jordan Winer- the answer as he somewhat cryptically said, “did not HELP ME AT ALL!” (https://greatzamboni.wordpress.com/2011/10/03/what-is-the-purpose-of-grades/)

So now I greatzamboni will answer this question for him, “what is the purpose of Grades”

Grades are for meat. Special trained people in white coats look at all the meat in the world and they have special stamps with very pretty blue ink. With these stamps they stamp the meat. About 2% of all meat is stamped “prime”. This meat very good and marbled with nice fat. This meat is like Lawrence Summers and Henry Paulson.

The next grade down, like a “B” is “Choice”.

“Select” is like getting the gentleman’s “C” grade. It is chewy stuff you get in first class of Estonian Airways if you are lucky.

Mr. Warrenski, the purpose of all grades in to make people feel and be like Meat– and as we know from the sage Morissey who is so cool he needs one name only, “meat is Murder”- and so Grades are meant to murder the soul in a tiny way, day after day year after year, so the the student/piece of meat will begin to see life as just she is a piece of meat moving through a maze of twists in turns in a big factory heading for the final destination.

No school system will ever be truly revolutionary until like BF Skinner’s Walden II they get rid of Meatthink.

The tiny strip of mushrooms represent fringe freethinkers like Ben Franklin and Zamboni!!

God, that’s depressing even Zamboni- but since it come to me, it must be true. Remember, if its very sad or very funny- it is always true.

Complain on that!