Entitlement

To the parents I spoke to last Friday in the course of visiting a school district: Just because you are of higher average income does not mean your kid is more likely to be gifted than the poor kid 10 miles down the road, nor does it mean your kid is entitled to eat up more than his or her fair share of the relatively meager resources the school district has and must stretch to educate every kid in the district. I realize every child is perfect and should get special privleges, but come on, people, your kid is not necessarily gifted just because you own a million dollar home.

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I didn't get to watch the Oscars because we were being big nerds at Toph and Amber's house, they of the fall wedding that we're in, and I'm sure glad my mom is not like Amber's mom because she is driving them nuts about wedding stuff. Anyhow, they don't have a tv that is useful for anything besides watching movies, so Hulk pulled up IMDB and we kept refreshing the winner's list every so often, and when they announced my dad's cousin had won again for sound mixing (Dreamgirls) I wooted a little bit but that was the extent of it. I've met this guy before at family reunions - he's a nice guy, has good kids, you know, just a normal guy who happens to get nominated for a lot of awards and has four Oscars now. But he's never acted anything but like a normal, everyday guy who happens to work on movies for a living. Anyhow, congrats to you, Bob.

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While we were at Toph and Amber's, I perused some of the bridal porn Amber's mom had foisted upon her. The bridal magazine, which was relatively thin and had more actual content than ads (so at least it had something going for it) was a specific publication for Colorado, and they had a somewhat useful list of event locations with details about each place, potentially saving people a lot of research time. That was pretty much the only useful thing about the magazine, though; the rest of it was suggestions for $15 apiece invitations and what colors your $100+ guest bags should be to match your fancy evening soiree in an art gallery. Of course, everything needs to match, you should spend thousands on a horse-drawn carriage ride to take you 100 feet, and it's totally appropriate to expect your guests to give you lavish gifts to make up for the thousands you're spending on the party where they get to eat rubber chicken and dry, fondant-covered cake and watch you be the center of attention for several hours.

I think that is the last piece of bridal porn I peruse. I've got a hard enough time with celebrity trash and fitness magazines at the gym giving me body complexes - I can't afford for the Wedding Industrial Complex to convince me to spend obscene amounts of money on a dress I'll wear for a few hours or to freak out if my monogrammed napkins match the color of the custom-dyed and printed rose petals. Ugh.