Today I was supposed to go on a tour of a Montessori school.  I was excited because our class has been reading a lot about Montessori schools and I wanted to see how the classroom is set up.  Is Montessori a better education model than traditional public schools?  If I ever have kids, I really like the idea of home schooling, but the sad fact is that I would get bored with it very quickly.  So I like the idea of exploring other models.

Our class was greeted outside the building by a woman who, I think, owned the school.  She handed us each a clipboard, and I thought that it would be a survey or something.  You know, “Have you ever visited a Montessori school?” or “Do your children go to Montessori schools?”  To my surprise, it was a release form.

Among other things, the form advised me that by signing it I would be agreeing not to sue the school for any injury caused to me either by my own negligence or theirs.  Furthermore, I would be agreeing to pay for any damage caused to the school by me – or anyone else! 

I swear, that was honestly on there.  I spend a lot of time at my day job reading various contracts and parsing out the tiny details, and I am quite sure I was interpreting this correctly.

Why, pray tell, would I agree to pay for damages caused by someone else?  Am I a charity? Am I Uncle Moneybags?  What the hell?  And there were no limiting factors even, such as time periods, that would release me after the visit.  I simply would agree to this for all time.

I laughed and laughed and laughed, and returned my unsigned waiver to the insane woman who seemed to think that taking a tour was worth me risking receiving a bill from her anytime from today until the end of time.  Funny, she seemed a bit offended by my laughter and by me pointing out to my classmates that her terms 

were batshit crazy.  I can’t imagine why.

I do not blame my classmates for signing the waiver.  Some of them are deeply interested in Montessori schools for professional reasons, and they decided signing the waiver was worth the calculated risk.  It is, after all, extremely unlikely that anything will ever come of that waiver.  Very unlikely.  Very extremely unlikely.  And some of them had come from very far away for the class.  So I can understand their perspective.

However, my points are these:

1. I make a practice of reading everything I sign in full.  I am not going to sign without reading first.

2. I don’t see the point to signing away my rights unnecessarily.

3. I don’t want to encourage batshit crazy lady by seeming to approve with her form.

So silly.

Sometimes I just want to share really inappropriate things with the world, like how I cut myself with my fingernail while masturbating rather agressively last night and how now it kind of hurts to walk, and I feel sad because I can't post that to Facebook, and then I remember that I have this blog and no one here will judge me.

Um, right?

Doctor Who

Last night was the last episode of this season of Doctor Who.  I don't have cable, so I bought it off of Amazon.com this morning and watched it on my laptop.  I love, love, LOVE that we live in a world where I can do that.  I watch only one television show, so paying for any cable package would be a massive waste of money.  But for just $1.99/episode, I can watch the whole 13 or 14 episode season and be out less than 30 bucks.  Why, yes, I do sound like an advertisement today.  Don't care; I'm stoked to get that much entertainment for so little money.  Suck it, cable companies.  I will never, ever pay your extortionist prices ever again.

So the episode was fantastic.  Before I go on, I'm going to explain my policy about spoilers.  I don't declare that there will be spoilers.  I don't hide behind a cut.  I don't make them invisible until you highlight them.  If I start off by saying that I watched the last episode last night, I expect you to be intelligent enough to realize that I am going to talk about Doctor Who in detail, and you need to not be a whiny baby about what I say.

And the episode was great.  I really loved every bit of it.  I went in knowing that the Doctor had to die to save the universe, and I also knew that he's currently filming the Christmas special so some jiggery pokery must've gone on to keep him alive for that, but I wasn't sure what it would be.  I assumed his Ganger had returned and died in his place.  Or that his Ganger returned and that he died, but the Ganger went on.  I was so happy to find out that it was neither, but the return of the shape-shifting time police instead.  Like the Doctor, I will never get tired of tiny time traveling people in a shape-shifting body.  Not one bit.

I loved that the Doctor married River Song, I really loved when River and Amy had a glass of wine together in their backyard, I LOVED Amy's office in the train (I desperately want an office in a train), I was appalled by the train tracks running through the Pyramids, but totally in love with the idea as well (oh, I'm a bad historian), I loved Madam Kovarian getting killed but I wish it had been with much more blood and gore, I loved it all.

So all that said, you'll understand when I say that I am really tired of reading things online bagging on the show, the scripts, the writers, the directors, blah, blah, blah.  This is television.  And while I'm not saying television isn't art, it is art that is created under a pretty fucking intense timeline.  I am sick to death of absolutely everyone on the internet being such a goddamn critic.  No, it wasn't perfect.  But the focus is always on what wasn't ideal, complete with such overdramatic statements as "oh, now that character is ruined" and "Now I'll never watch this show again" and "it was cheap" and "it was a copout."

Television isn't perfect!  It's imaginary!  Suck it up and get over it!