I taught my class last night.  On the way, I listened to NPR.  There was a segment from W's press conference about Harriet.  The press corps was asking all sorts of "Harriet crony" and "Harriet abortion" questions, and the annoyance in W's voice was so thick you wonder how Laura could stand to be married to someone who could sound so annoyed and so stupid at the same time without a lobotomy.  (I also read an article yesterday on electric shock therapy, and why it's still popular for people with severe depression.  I think in the case of W, there's another argument to be made for inflicting brain damage for the "right" reasons.) 

Press Corps:  "Mr. President, how can you say in all those years of knowing the nominee, you have never talked about her stance on abortion?"

W:  "Ahye...(angry sigh)...not, uh, not to my (puff) reck-e-lection.  (snort, snort)  I don't have, uh, a (snort, sigh) LITMUS TEST (yeah, that's the word Dick taught me!) for this stuff (sniff, puff)."  (So there.)

Last night my students were supposed to turn in their revisions for Essay 2.  They have to do five essays over the course of the semester, and they can revise the first four. I don't even average the two grades, I just take the best one.  It is ridiculously easy to improve a score, yet I only got five revisions out of a class of (officially, before two more get administratively withdrawn tomorrow for skipping three times in a row) 18.  Last night, these are some of the excuses I heard:

"I'm sick, and I can't get to my home computer."  Where are you sick, then, Vietnam?

"My kid is sick, and I forgot."  They keep forgetting I have a kid and still manage to show up with their papers every week, so I admit, I'm holding them to their end of the deal.

"I don't know how to write."  Well, this class should be helping, if you came once in a while.

"I don't have a litmus test for that."  You know, if you don't want to answer the question, don't think you can throw the rest of us off the scent with a fifty-cent word.

I am so tired of dumb excuses.