Conor Oberst, Maybe the best social poet of the last 40 years.

"The Happiest Place On Earth"

I want to pledge allegiance
to the country where I live
I don't want to be ashamed to be American
But opportunity no, it don't exist
It's the opiate of the populace
We need some harder shit now
The truth is getting around
And each public school is a halfway house
Where the huddled masses sober up and up enough
There's not enough to fatten the cows
And feed all of us
It's just, a rationing of luck
What can't be bought gets raffled off
Oh God good God shed greed on thee
Your shining sea turned a dirty green
From the industry off the shores of New Jersey

I got a letter from the army
So I think that I'll enlist
I'm not brave or proud of nothing
I just want to kill something
Too bad that now-a-days you just point and click
Swing low satellite
Hot white chariot
In the computer's blue glare
The bombs burst in the air
There was a city once now nothing is there
Our freedom comes at their expense
It makes sense, does it?
Dollars and cents
They're stretching barbed wire across the picket fence
That is surrounding your, housing development
Just in case you lack the confidence
Oh God my God give strength to thee
These amber waves purple majesty
Are nothing but backdrops for Disney
We'll look up close
It is superimposed
on a blank blue screen
It is fantasy, fucking magical
The dreams floats, like a chemical
Through each snapped synapse our television past
That is beautiful
no more

congrats!!!

looks fantastic! i am looking forward to seeing what everyone has to say and share. This is going to be amazing...to borrow from kanye.

It Begins

I don't know why I like the idea of blogging so much... there is something 'safe' about it. I get to barf my random thoughts onto a computer screen in the secret hope that somebody, somewhere, out there will care enough to read what I have to say. In a word, I find this concept liberating.

I have decided to take it to the next level. I have had my own blog, which truthfully I rarely write on, for about two years. But the initial purpose of my blogging has been lost. I really do want to get people to think. To look at an experience of another and say wow, that makes me see the world differently.

So I interduce to you my friends and colleagues, my fellow teaching assistants of SDSU. Our private conversations about education, funding, democracy, teaching philosophy, our fears, our hopes, our dreams for ourselves and our students will now become yours to chew on.

As the true teachers of students forced into 500 seat lecture halls, we see first hand what the education system has robbed from the once playful and promising youth of our country. We learn that we have to spend most of our time "un-teaching" our students, who have become watered-down images of their true selves. So worried about what is right and not being what is wrong. Every week in our pathetic 50 minutes of time with our 30-40 students we pry ourselves through a tiny crack, an opening, into our student's minds and hearts in hopes of cultivating a creative, insightful and motivated young adult.

At times, it is frustrating. At times, it is disheartening. At times, it is exhilarating. At times, it is everything.

Come along on this journey with us.