Midnight

Back to sleeplessness. I may have to face the fact that my immunity to caffeine has gone away. I don't feel stimulated, but that is the only thing I can think of.

For those of you not on my husband's friends list, I just realized that I never linked to Amy's performance. This was her first solo in a vocal recital. She has protested that the sound quality on this file is poor in comparison to the original, so keep that in mind. I think she did a really good job for a 12-year-old.

(For those of you who saw it from Ferrett's log, it's the same performance. But you're free to gush to me about how great my child is! [g])

Okay, now I shall endeavor once again to make myself sleep.

I'm late! I'm late!

( Whining. Put behind a cut because, well really, you don't want to hear it.... )

You shouldn't say that

According to a new study, high school students think that freedom of speech is overrated. People are appalled and there is a general scolding regarding the lack of teaching about the Bill of Rights.

Personally, I hold the First Amendment to be one of the greatest ideas ever brought forth by the Founding Fathers. Seeing the original Bill of Rights during our visit to Washington, DC, last summer moved me to tears.

And yet, I am not that surprised.

High school students, despite all that rebellion and teen angst, are a remarkably conservative lot. Paradoxically, they claim to dislike the rules and yet they are distressed by the perception that people are not obeying them. They like a sense of order.

In short, a lot of these kids aren't ready, intellectually, to deal with the notion that radical ideas are not wrong just because you don't agree with them. It doesn't help that the school system rarely offers them opportunity to debate such issues and work through them, but even if it did, most of them would probably still not get it until later, because it is so contrary to their immature understanding of the world.

I can remember, when I was in high school, being infuriated at the notion that the ACLU would support the right of the KKK to march. What were they thinking, to support hatred like that? It was only later when I came to understand that freedom of ideas means freedom of all ideas, even the ones we find reprehensible.

Amusement du jour

In one of those whacky mix-ups, a film company inadvertently packaged hard core in a box that was labelled as Doris Day's "The Pajama Game" and a church-going British Couple accidentally purchased it. They were shocked and stunned. So shocked at stunned that this is what they had to say:

"It was a pretty raunchy, explicit film, it certainly pulled no punches. My wife and I were very shocked but we watched it until the end because we couldn't believe what we were seeing. The film became progressively more graphic, there was no plot to it, it was just sex."

Now, I have seen a blue movie or two in my day. And believe me, these two may have been shocked and stunned, but they certainly weren't repulsed. Even assuming the film was only 45 minutes long, you don't need nearly that much time to figure out that Anna Karenina ain't gonna suddenly appear on the screen.

In my mind I can hear them clucking their tongues and commenting, a la "There's a penguin on the telly," for the entire length of the film, neither willing to turn it off, but neither will ing to admit that they aren't willing to turn it off. It's a matter of propriety. And all that.