Shyzer.com

No thanks, CNN

Looks like CNN isn’t having a very good night.

Niyazov’s funeral, meanwhile, is scheduled for Sunday. A 10-kilometer (6-mile) corridor of mourning citizens will be created all the way from the Turkmenbashi Palace to the burial place in Niyazov’s home village of Kipchak.

If nothing else, that quote from CNN best sums up Niyazov’s reign. Rarely have you ever heard of a 6-mile corridor of mourning citizens having to be created in honor of a fallen leader.

I remember first reading about Saparmurat Niyazov a few years back. I had recently discovered the joys and wonders that are the CIA Factbook and I was spending a beautiful, gorgeous spring day deep underground, nerding it up amongst the stacks of history books and foreign language guides in the USC library. I was reading up on every country whose location on the globe I was oblivious to when I came to Turkmenistan. As I read, I came across this sentence: “[The] president [is] elected by popular vote for a five-year term; election last held 21 June 1992.”

Wait, what?

The last math class I may have taken was back in high school, but even I’m not that bad at math. At first, I just thought it was a typo, but I soon discovered it was anything but. In fact, it fit in perfectly with the other whirlwind of Crazy that Niyazov imposed on the Turkmen people.

• Slapping his face on every banknote in the country? Check.
• Erecting statues of himself and his mother that rotate to always face the sun? Check.
• Awarding himself the Hero of Turkmenistan award five times? Check.
• Banning news readers from wearing make-up since he had trouble telling male and female reporters apart? Check.
• Renaming a day of the week after himself and the month of April after his mother? Check & check.
• Outlawing gold tooth caps and gold teeth while suggesting that people instead check on bones to strengthen their teeth? A painful check.

Hell, renaming cities, airports, and schools after himself was a given. But what other dictator thinks of renaming a meteorite after themselves? Damn straight.

Niyazov might never have gotten the same press as Kim Jong-Il, Hugo Chavez, or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but he certainly was right up there with them on the Crazy Barometer. Leaders like Niyazov are a dieing breed, for better or worse. (I’m guessing better for the people they actually rule over, worse for entertainment value for people like me) I think that’s part of the fascination the Western world has with them. Gone are the days of leaders such as Stalin and Hitler ruling their countries with an iron fist while wrecking global stability at the same time. Sure, you’ll never find me arguing that this is a bad thing, but you’ll also never find me passionately debating the values and merits of the new Ukrainian parliament election results. Why? Because that’s boring as hell.

Instead, you’ll find my (happily) mourning over today’s eccentric leaders, whom are quietly, if not quickly enough, falling to free elections and democratic rule, which makes their rise, reign, and eventual fall fun as hell to watch. Well, as long as you’re safely tucked away in America or Europe. And assuming you are outside their grasp of power, I can’t stress enough how much you should follow along. When else are you going to read and learn of leaders who write the only legal textbooks used throughout a countries education system? Or of leaders who close all hospitals outside of a country’s capital on the grounds that “why should we waste good medical specialists on the villages when they should be working in the capital?”

With Niyazov’s passing, the list of such leaders shrunk by one.

Like I said, the days of world domination desires by rogue countries is over. Instead, current dictators look only to maintain control over their own country and to a lesser extent, their region; a lesson I hope most Americans learned with the Iraq War debacle. But that doesn’t mean the Crazies aren’t out there and if you take a few minutes to read up on them, I promise you’ll quickly become enamored with one, if for no other reason than to find humor in a dismal situation.

An oldie, but a goodie, from the archives!

Merry Christmas, folks

Ever since I opened the doors here at Shyzer and stupidly placed a direct link to my e-mail in the comments, I’ve gotten some colorful messages to say the least. From angry parents to pissed off Christians to even a death threat or two. But the following fellow takes the cake for “Creepiest Internet Fan” by far:

Dear Shyzer,

my English is’nt very well – but I want to write you this mail.

I found your homepage with the photo gallery of you.
The pics of your headshave are great. Your decide for the bald was certainly not easy – but it was a good decide. Your bald ist very beautiful and your face effected with it better.

My greatest hobby is the collecting of signed autograph cards and photos of nice people.

I would be therefore very happy if you could send me handwritten pictures of you (I know my wish is a little bit crazy).
I would be therefore very happy if you could fulfill my wishes. Many thanks in advance for your kindness.

Best wishes and regards send you

Michael

Sweet! I made a good decide! And my face effected it better!

I got that back in May of ’05 or so. I honestly didn’t know what to do besides laugh my ass off for a few minutes, so that’s exactly what I did. I was in the computer lab back in Newcastle and I honestly slumped out of my chair laughing so hard. Finally! It had taken 2 1/2 years, but I had my own Internet Creep! Once I finally regained my composure, I forwarded it to a few people, laughed some more, and promptly forgot all about it. Fast forward to three weeks ago:

Christmas Wishes

My wish is very large,
The space is rather small,
But Merry Marry Christmas,
Happy New Year fells it all!

The best wishes send you from Northern Germany

Michael

I would be therfore very happy if you could send me handwritten photos you – you are a very beautiful man – I’m enthused of you!
My greatest hobby is the collecting of autographs from beautiful people with a great aura.
I would be therefore very happy if you could fullfill my christmas-wish – a signed photo of you. Thanks in advance for your kindness!

And he’s back! And he’s enthused of me!

But this time, he not only included his home address in the e-mail, but two awesome webpages. Look at those amazing sites, complete with strobing images, animated gifs, and text I sure as hell can’t read! But the real treasures lie in the pictures. There’s so many random pictures on them that are unintentionally hilarious, that I’m pretty sure they’re illegal in most states. But that’s what I’m here for, to make sure y’all have something to occupy yourselves with while wasting company time!

Some might think I’m being mean, but to that I respond with A) You certainly don’t know me well if you think this is mean and B) I’m not a huge fan of identity theft. If that’s your cup of tea, by all means go for it, but me? I kinda enjoy there only being one Goob out there who can withdraw money from my checking account or buy loads of Internet porn with my credit card…um…wait…I mean donate loads of money to Columbian orphans and cute puppies. The last thing I want to do is send some guy my signature so that he can “decide” to write a few checks as Ryan Shyzer. Well, he wouldn’t get real far with that since Shyzer isn’t my last name, but you get the picture.

So Michael, best wishes to you and your quest of collecting the signatures of nice, beautiful men with great auras. As you can see, I am a beautiful man with a great aura.

But I’m sure as hell not nice.

Seriously, I used to adore him. A self-made man in politic who speaks not only the truth, but his mind, is quite appealing to most people, regardless of their political affiliation.

Now? Not so much love anymore. It’s amusing to me how misinformed some of the nation’s leading legislatures can be about important topics. For as we all know, the Internet is just a series of tubes.

If a customer walks into Wal Mart and starts shouting slanderous comments against Paris Hilton, would Wal Mart be held responsible? Ok, maybe trashing Paris wouldn’t disturb anybody into action, but you get the point. The same goes for blog comments. Some websites can get hundreds of comments per post with multiple posts daily. Holding the authors responsible for a third parties’ views on a subject is not only idiotic, it’s unrealistic.

Fuck. You. Bill Bavasi.

May you soon be fired along with Mike Hargrove and rot in hell.

Merry Christmas.

Over the course of my travels, I’ve acquired a taste for many things foreign. Argentinean steaks, Swiss chocolate, Australian friends (and beer!)

And dollar coins.

Nothing is easier to use than the dollar coin. How many times have you been denied a packet of Cheetos from the vending machine because your dollar bill was too wrinkled? How about trying to buy a train ticket from the auto dispenser only to kick the machine in disgust as the train rolled off towards town without you? And who can forget those oh-so-fun washing machines and parking meters that refuse to take anything not in metallic form?! The dollar coin would eliminate all those problems as they are easier and quicker to use, which I can attest to from experience. For when the free bus is about to head back to campus and you’re trying to buy a case of Old, nothing is easier than feeling for that extra dollar coin in your pocket and paying with time to spare.

You don’t look convinced. I can see the Americanism in your eye, that look of “Oh no, it’s weird and foreign! Get it away!!” Okay, let’s start even smaller then. Don’t worry about all those other crazy foreign ideas, like the dollar coin or the metric system or even the absurd thought of abolishing capital punishment. Let’s get even smaller.

Let’s get rid of the penny.

It’s useless. It’s antiquated. And it’s costing you money. That’s right, a single penny now costs 1.4 cents to produce. Gee, makes sense to me to keep it around then! 99% of the machines I described earlier refuse to even accept pennies. Hell, the penny is the only monetary form that people are so desperate to get rid of, that they happily drop them off in the “Take A Penny, Leave A Penny” dishes at their favorite Kwik-E-Mart. If we seriously proposed eliminating the penny, we wouldn’t even have to fight the Abraham Lincoln lobbyists seeing as how Lincoln isn’t just on the penny, but on the $5 as well. I’m not joking here, most ex-Presidents have “supporters” who still work to keep their memories around, as absurd as it sounds.

So we all agree now that the penny is a pointless and needless item in our lives, right? Fantastic.

Then allow me a moment to speak to my favorite Shyzerian: the federal government.

Guys, please don’t screw this up. Those past dollar coins you’ve produced have sucked to a level I didn’t even know existed, even for you guys. You must have spent millions of dollars in advertising for those Sacagawea coins back in 2000 and then you proceeded to mint a grand total of 12 to toss out into circulation. Fine, you might have actually put out more than that, but I can’t tell you the number of times I had store clerks look at them and wonder if they were even real tender. And those Susan B. Anthony coins were an even bigger hit the year before! Let me tell you, nothing screams “Buy these new shoes!” like a frowning, angry feminist! So come on, let’s get this right. Quit making the dollars gigantic. Quit making the dollars the size of a quarter. Pick a size just a little bigger, make it slightly heavier, slap on a few dead white guys, and call it a day. Let me worry about convincing the American public.

You can thank me later, preferably with many Zachary Taylor and Franklin Pierce coins.

It takes a certain type of show like Battlestar Galactica to leave you with that numbed feeling deep down in your gut even hours after the final scene ended.

Once you sit through an hour of television like that, you don’t just go back and turn on The Daily Show or 24. Believe me, I’ve tried.

Thank you, Ron Moore. You truly are a genius in the midst of a field with far too many hacks.

As a reader of Shyzer, you cannot bitch to me that I don’t post enough and then complain that when I do, the posts are too long. If you do, I have both the legal authority and moral obligation to kick you in the nuts.

One of the hardest things for a substitute teacher is gaining credibility and authority over the students. That’s a no-brainer that most people will agree with, especially once they think back to their younger years of terrorizing their teacher’s replacements whenever they were fortunate to have one. But the next hardest obstacle to overcome, one that is almost just as hard as the first in my opinion, is figuring out and cutting through all the red tape.

My experience in teaching is much different compared to a full time teacher. They have to deal with the same kids, problems, requirements, parents, and God knows what else for 180 days with only a short three month break before the cycle starts all over again. I’m sure it can be hard setting up a well oiled machine that both works smoothly and handles all the demands placed upon the teacher. But for me, my job is much different and at first glance, can seem almost comically easy.

I don’t have to worry about “teaching”. Making sure the students know everything that they need to know by the end of the year is nowhere near my job description. I don’t have to worry about bad parents, failing students, or office politics. In fact, for the most part, I’m a glorified babysitter. Watch over the kids, make sure they don’t get hurt, and try to keep a little order to the whole process.

That doesn’t mean it’s incredibly easy though. From the moment the kids walk in the door, I have about 5 minutes to set the tone. It doesn’t matter what age group you’re watching over, they all generally act the same in the first few minutes. Most of the students hang back, eyeing you suspiciously, while a small handful of the bolder students test the waters. It’s so painfully obvious, it’s almost funny. Yet each and every time, if you show any signs of weakness, the kids will pounce like ferocious hyenas. Don’t even let them smell blood and you’re fine. But God help you if you have a poor poker face.

But like I said, this is normal anywhere and for me it’s actually not that bad. Having used with my siblings and their friends such parental tactics as screaming outside a Baskin Robbins, “Anybody who isn’t touching my arms by the count of ten gets kicked in the balls,” I’m not one to being afraid of quickly dropping the Punishment Hammer.

No, for me, the hard part is getting through all the bullshit that most teachers have in place. I call it the Teaching Gristle. Weird punishment and reward systems, homework folders, lunch counts, planning period duties, and countless more. It’s the kind of crap that basically turns each classroom into a mini-bureaucracy of confusion and frustration for anybody who doesn’t know the system. And I hate every bit of it. For me, it slows things down to a crawl. One of the first things I do when whenever I get into a classroom is scan the lesson plans left for me and underline any unique (ie, absurd) requirements by the teacher. I understand these might be helpful tools over the course of a year, but expecting an outsider to pick them all up and execute them to perfection is downright naive and foolish.

This past week I had the pleasure of teaching the same 4th grade class for three days straight in a school where I’ve taught the majority of my time over the past year. When I ran into some of the fellow teachers I knew and told him who I subbing for, they all reacted as if they’d just smelled a violent fart and offered words of condolences. Simply put, there were a few kids in the class who were well known hellions.

The first day was certainly “fun” and typical of other days. I spent most of it listening to the kids tell me how I was doing things “wrong” and wasting time trying to figure out which basket to put which stack of papers in and which order to teach what lesson in and which kid had what weekly duty. By the end of the first day, I was ragged and the thought of doing it twice again was as appealing as a root canal. The next morning, I decided to switch things up a little and implement Goob’s Method O’ Teaching.

Out were all the little things that clutter up my day. The old method of punishment was to have some sort of weird sound level scale and then drop a marble into a can every time they were too loud, which deducted one minute off recess for the entire class per marble. The Goob Punishment Method was to simply discipline the blatant wrongdoers and to discipline them hard. The first time I shouted, “Mark, that’s five minutes off recess for making everybody over there laugh. Do it again and I’ll take off another five,” the entire class hushed up in awe and stayed that way much longer than they ever did when I dropped a marble. Likewise, the old method of rewards was to give them a monopoly dollar, which they could exchange for prizes at the end of the week. While this method wasn’t too bad in my mind, it was far too hard keeping up with what task earned what amount of dollars and thus I nixed it in addition to the antiquated “weekly helpers” method and thus the Goob Reward Method was born. Little Sarah, who always sat quietly and did her work on time, got to be the line leader. I didn’t give a care in the world that she had been it last week and that it was now Joey’s turn. When Joey’s losing 10 minutes off recess every day, I don’t see why he should get to take a turn in the weekly rotation of “fun” jobs. What’s that I hear? The students protesting loudly at the new changes? A quick threat that if the shouting doesn’t stop within 10 seconds, everybody loses a chunk of recess hushed them up quickly.

I’ll be the first to admit I run a tight ship, no matter what environment I’m in. When it comes to rules, I expect them to be followed and only once you’ve proven that you can do so will I start to give some leeway. Until then, I find it almost stupid to give away rewards for no other reason than “you haven’t had a turn yet.” Show me you deserve the turn and you’ll get one. Until then, Sarah or Billy or Drew can be the line leaders over and over and over again.

It wasn’t just the discipline and reward areas though. I shaved off the excess fat from anywhere I could. Instead of hunting for the correct basket under a mound of papers and books, I paper clipped whatever the kids turned in and left a post it note identifying the stack. Instead of going around individually checking the contents of each homework folder, I made them pull out their assignments and turn them in so that I could check them during a planning period. Those all might not seem like much, but when you’re forced to divert your attention for two or three minutes to try and figure out what the little things in a lesson plan are instructing you to do, much less do them, the kids can go from well behaved angels to blood thirsty savages.

Like I said, these are all good and well for somebody who has to lord over these kids for an entire year. But please, I implore any full time teachers out there, if you want to make sure things go smoothly while you’re gone, give your sub some leeway and slice off as much Teaching Gristle as possible.

As Friday came to a close, I realized how quickly the past two days had gone compared to the first. The fact that almost every kid in the class, even the ones I’d had to discipline over and over, were telling me that if their teacher was ever absent again, they wanted me to come back only proved that what I’d done hadn’t been a mistake. As a sub, whenever you can cut that extra crap, you’ve got extra time. If you in turn invest that time back into the students in the form of direct attention and teaching, it pays off handsomely and you’ll enjoy “teaching” much more.