Been awhile since I put anything here--in case anyone's watching, read a rant I sent Clingman in like September, after he kept on deleting my posts on Shoreline for not being nice to him;P Got one hell of a lecture from Sav as a result, but gods it was worth it.

You know, I'm really fucking pissed off right now. Why? Because some fucker took this page, and printed it out, and showed it to people at school. In this grand country, the United States, we have this fucked up thing called copyright law. I have a love/hate relationship with it. But one of the more interesting angles of it is that, whenever a work is saved to disk, it becomes copyrighted. No little notice needed. Copyright. THE RIGHT TO MAKE COPIES. Like, it's a illegal to make copies without getting permission, unless it's for acceptable use--handing it out like that is not acceptable use. And if nothing else, it's just gonna be more trouble from Craven if he finds out, which I really don't need right now.

In a way, I'm flattered. I mean, the person who told me about it thought the page was funny as hell. It's nice to have that kind of power, to make people laugh. And maybe I'm a hypocrite and coward, for not standing up for the stuff. And maybe I was asking for it, putting it up on the web. And you know what? The school prolly can't do jack shit to me. Not like I had it on school. But it pisses me off. Christ, guys, at least tell me if you want to do that sort of shit. I practically pissed myself when I found out. The sad part? I figured out how someone found it..an AltaVista search for "shorecrest preparatory school"....the thing is, the entry for my site isn't until the second page. Which means someone bothered to go through like two pages of searches on Shorecrest. Sad, sad, sad. I also just realized I never put my email addy anywhere on here. Maybe they just couldn't contact me. Yah right. Anyways, jon@plastered.net.

On this page, I'm basically going to rant and rave and ocaisonally praise things about Shorecrest. If you're from the school, and you see something about yourself and you get royally pissed, well, I don't give a damn. This is the web. You don't like it? Don't read it. Don't bitch to me. I'm using this to vent, and I don't give a damn if I offend you. Attack me with some rabid lawyers, and maybe I'll take it down. Or maybe I'll find a server out of the country to host it. In other words, fuck off. Oh, and if the language offends your delicate sensibilities, shove it. (Why bother with this bullshit posturing? Mainly in reaction to a threatened lawsuit over this.)

I just got my schedule for this year. It's not bad, even if it does make me out to be some overacheiver. I'll probably crack in a few months from the pressure, actually. Like, 4 honors courses. But the thing that pisses me off, really, is that I don't have Mr. Savitsky for English. Now, I knew I probably wouldn't--he only taught us last year since there wasn't anyone else to, but, damnit, that was the best year of English I've ever had. Really.

It's hard to explain just what about Mr. Savitsky made Honors English 9 so kickass. But it was. He had this great way of interactive lecturing, and his tests were actually funny, and while he was probably the hardest teacher I've ever had, he ROCKS. If I'm really lucky, maybe he's sponsor debate. Which is going to be another disaster, since none of us have ever debated before or have any idea what the hell we're gonna be doing, and I'm not sure he does either. Oh well.

Wow. Where to start. Let's see...there's Jesse Rose. He's a total fucking hick, but he's also rich as hell. Besides being around as intelligent as a stoned rabbit, he feels some internal desire to act like a total dick to everyone else on the planet. Not to mention he's a bigot. Last year, there was some kid visiting for the day, and in our home room. He happened to be Jewish. Jesse whispered to another kid, Brian Pruitt: "Let's drop a quarter and see if the Jew picks it up!" This is 1998. Can you believe it? Sigh.

Then there's Justin Wells. He somehow managed to surpass that hill of geekiness that I haven't, mainly by bribing people so he could pretend to have "contacts" and use tickets and shit like that to try to get laid. The sad part is, it probably worked. Update: Hah. He got shipped away to military school!

As stupid as Jesse is, there's always Ryan Heacox. This kid, I swear, actually asked in Biology one day last year: "Did trees come from plants?" When the entire class looked at him and started cracking up, he attempted to take it out on me with one of his lameass little cracks about computers. I was so hurt. I went home and cried into a pillow for hours on end. Blah. Ryan tries to be a jock, and fails miserably. I think even they feel he's too stupid. I still want to know who he paid off to get into Biology and Geometry. Update: I just discovered something interesting--every year, Shorecrest, the greedy bastards, hold a fundraising campaign. They mainly target Early Childhood parents, since they're the fund-raising virgins and are enough suckers to pay more money to a school already leechings thousands a quarter. Last year, the parents got smart and it only reached $150,000--that is, until, as I just found out through internal school sources (read: teachers) that at that point, someone anonymously donated enough to match the current pool. Hmm...anyone want to take bets that it was Mr. or Mrs. Heacox?

What to say? They abound. Of course, I'm not about to name any names, considering I'm so desperate I'd do anything to or for any of them.

Oo! The fun part! Shorecrest has this really weird set of teachers: there are a few that rule, and a few that really suck. And since the school's so small (215 kids in the highschool), there's no majority mediocre ones.

Last year was a nice balance, for me. My Albegra teacher, Mrs. Finkel, was a great person, and she seemed like she knew her math, but...well...she couldn't teach. Or lecture. At all. So we had to teach everything to ourselves, which worked for me, but I like real teachers better.

For some weird reason, I'm in a small minority of students who actually likeMrs. Carnes, the higher-level French teacher. I've had her for two years, and I'm going to continue having her for another three, so you could say I'm covering my ass, but she's great. Every once in awhile she gets bitchy, but if you had to teach French, wouldn't you, too? I mean, I like the language, but it's not exactly a respected field. She knows the language, and she can teach, and she can be funny. And I should really do my French summer reading soon. And my English, for that matter.

I've already talked about how kickass Mr. Savitsky is, so, let's see...going through my schedule from last year...ah, the Wheel, where we switched from elective teacher to elective teacher, one per quarter, in a futile attempt to inject some culture into us. Mrs. Leavengood, who does theatre, was cool, as I expected. As for the others...well...Mrs. Spears could try to teach instead of spending 90% of the class repeating the past week and then showing a movie, and Mr. Pruitt could try some stress reduction therapy, and Mrs. Breier(sp?) just needs to cover more material in her class and stop reading out of the book.

Ah. Mr. Clingman. The sysadmin, head of the "Computer" Department. This guy scares me. Basically, because it shows that you need absolutely no skill, talent, or knowledge to get a nice-paying job where you can websurf on a T1 all day. Oh, wait, he does have a skill: he can dial the number of the network consultant really fast.

Hrm....next would be...oh, of course: Mrs. Reiff was my next teacher last year, period 6. I'm not going to bother ranting about her since I already did. And after her was Mr. Hyink, head of the Science Department, who kicked almost as much ass as Mr. Savitsky.

Of course, most of the people reading this page (hah! Like anyone even is) have nfi what I'm talking about, but too bad. This page was for the people who did.

Okay. Someone please explain this to me. Comparing my schedule with that of my friend Pete's, it appears there are two Honors English classes.WHAT THE FUCK IS WITH THAT? We had one class last year. 18 people. Some of them barely deserved to be in it. Some of them aren't going to Shorecrest this year. So how the hell did they split it into two classes? The only thing I can think of is that they boosted high-scoring normal English class kids into it, which is total and utter bullshit.

I'm not trying to be elitist, but last year we busted our asses for 9 months. It was the toughest class I've ever taken. The assignments were hard as hell, the papers and tests even worse, and you had to hold your own in class discussion. It wasn't one of those "Honors" English classes that basically means the same material and lectures with longer essays--we did entirely different, and much harder stuff. Just being fair, we had to work on essay writing so much, and got to the point that we were doing so well, that if they did bring some kids up, they aren't going to stand a chance. It doesn't matter how much Stumpff asks of us, the Savitsky group is going to writing the better papers. I'm obnoxious as hell when it comes to acting smart in a classroom. I can't stand stupid questions. I'm going to go fucking beserk this year, considering how much I groaned to myself last year with a smarter bunch!

Well, the first two days of school have come and gone, so it's time to begin the gripes. First, English. Now, I'm in the Honors class, as you'd know if you looked at my schedule, and, after last year with Mr. Savitsky, I was used to it kicking ass. Stumpff, I get the impression, knows what she's doing. But she doesn't know, or seem to care to know us. She had us write essays for her the first night after school, for homework. Yes, a full-fledged essay, for homework, on one hell of a lame topic: Something About Ourselves We Want Her to Know. The purported point was to get to know us better while seeing where our writing skills were. The next day, before even looking at the essays, she began to tell us how to improve our writing style. Because she somehow thought she knew it needed improvement. This included, mainly, disfiguring our essays--which she had specifically asked for final drafts of--and explaining that keeping subjects near verbs and not using adjectives or passive voice was the summit of style. What the FUCK? She has the most cold, mechanical, soul-less way of writing that I've ever seen. She attempts to destroy the poetic mystery that permeates writing. While an admirable goal, she falls flat on her face on around her first step, since it's fucking impossible.

You know what else I'd like to know? Who the fuck assigns a 65 year-old retired Army colonel from Missouri named "Joe" to teach us about "Health and Personal Fitness" (read: sex ed with life skills and PE thrown in). This guy seriously expects us to listen to him telling us how we should practice abstinence. What bullshit. We're teenagers. Male teenagers. In the 19 fucking 90s.

As if that wasn't bad enough, he's now shown that he doesn't have any idea what the hell he's talking about. He's also too lazy to make up his own tests, relying on the book's--even though they're often blatantly false (example: "True or False: each cell in the human body has a complete set of genes in its nucleus"...the books says the answer is "True." Umm..what the hell are gametes and mature white blood cells then?).

One class that's turning out to kick ass is history. Mr. Beaton is such a change from Reiff...and in such a good direction. I'm considering, really, truly, considering missing out on lunch next year too, to take AP European History. He's that good of a teacher.