This has been the most active month that this blog has ever seen. I’d like to personally thank everyone who has stopped here at Chai Life throughout October of 2009, but with a total of 12,096 unique visitors, that would be tough to do. Instead, I’ll just post my thanks here. Thanks for reading!

As you may or may not be aware, today is the third annual Blog Action Day. According to their own description, “Blog Action Day is an annual event that unites the world’s bloggers in posting about the same issue on the same day. Our aim is to raise awareness and trigger a global discussion.” With that in mind, the topic for this year’s event is Climate Change. I’ve put a lot of thought in to from which angle I wanted to tackle this urgent subject, as it is effecting the world in countless ways and have decided to use this opportunity to express my views a phrase that continually gets under my skin, often used by those who stand to profit by climate change and the sheep who follow them.

“Do you believe in climate change?”

This question, or variations of it, is one I have constantly seen posed in the mainstream media, asked on talk shows, posted on the Internet, and been asked in person. It seems innocent enough to those who would look no deeper in to it, except for one underlying issue: Climate change is not a belief. A ‘belief’ is something in which you offer your blind faith that it is true without having actual proof. One can choose to not believe in climate change, but that requires at least a certain level of ignorance. The changes in Earth’s climate that have been occurring over the past 50 years and continue to escalate today have for a long time now by accepted by the international scientific community (those kids that you cheated off of in high school) to be caused by human actions. In fact, every time they perform another study on the topic they do nothing but reaffirm their findings. In the past two years, not a single nationally or internationally recognized scientific organization has offered an opposing stance. With that amount of support from the smartest people around the world, there is no conceivable way that the term “belief” can somehow be applied.

Climate change has long since gone beyond the partisan-politics played by those who stand to gain financially and managed to convince the masses that this was some sort of lie. It is time not to bicker over whether or not it is really happening, but to act. There are plenty of ways that your or I can make a difference, such as switching to more efficient lighting, recycling, driving more efficient vehicles, or installing solar panels. Likewise, businesses can do these same things and make an even bigger impact that just one household can. The biggest and best way for the world to change as a whole, however, is through governmental legislation that not only changes policy, but helps change how the world views energy usage and renewable resources. The US government is currently working on a climate change bill as I type this, so put some thought in to contacting your congressman or senators and telling them how you feel.

If you, like the 13,194 other people who signed up for this year’s Blog Action Day, want to help do something about climate change, you can start by simply correcting the next person who asks you if you “believe” in climate change and telling them that it isn’t a belief and explaining to them what they can do about it.

For those of you who already know Ishtar, you probably are already aware of her awesomeness. Well, you can add yet another reason to the list. For about two days now, we’ve had a cricket in our basement. I’ve tried to find it, but was unable to. It was being exceptionally loud tonight when Ishtar decided to quietly slink out of the living room. A few minutes later, she reappeared in the doorway, howled, and I stood up assuming she was about to retch. In the process however, she opened her mouth, dropped a cricket on the floor and proceeded to proudly play with it in front of us. After a few minutes of her torturing the poor thing, I finally put it out of its misery. Thanks to Ishtar, there will be no more cricket noises coming up through the vents while I’m trying to sleep tonight.

For quite some time now I’ve been looking to separate this blog from my personal domain name, Primakow.net. This isn’t something that I have taken lightly, however, and I have spent a considerable amount of time attempting to find the right domain name for this blog. I now present to you the newest refresh of my blog, now with it’s own domain:

If you came here looking for a website about a tasty type of spiced tea, you will be disappointed. The word “Chai” (pronounced from the throat, Ḥai), for those of you that are unfamiliar with it, is a prominent word in Judaism meaning “life” or “living”. The phrase “Chai Life” may a bit repetitive, but I chose it because it is also catchy, easy to remember, and is a nice Jewish twist on the idiom “the high life”.

Evan, you ask, will the site be changing? What differences will there be in store for your loyal readers in the future?

Fear not. Everything that has ever been posted here is still here and you will still be able to look forward to rants, news, political opinion, random instances of funny, and all of the other posts you may come here to read. It will just be on a new domain name. Above and beyond the random posts (both in topic and frequency) that I tend to make, I will also be slowly rolling out an online store via the excellent services provided by CafePress. More on that to come. In the mean time, please enjoy the Chai Life.

For those of you who don’t teach at Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) or, as is the case with myself, aren’t married to someone who teaches there, then you are likely unaware of the crippling requirement that MPS imposes on its staff and the damage that it does to its students. If you are employed by MPS, you must live within the city of Milwaukee. Not Milwaukee County, mind you, but the city itself. There are, of course, a handful of nice areas to live in, but to restrict where someone is or is not allowed to live simply because you are their employer is unjust.

The reasons behind the requirement, when it was instituted in the late 70’s, seemed at the time to make sense. If teachers live in the communities that they teach in, they will send their kids to schools in the city and will therefore better relate to the schools, helping the community as a whole. After 30 years, however, one can easily see that teachers tend to live on the outskirts of the city in a few select neighborhoods, often not anywhere near the school at which they teach and many teachers send their kids to private schools, not community schools.

The socioeconomic failure of the residency requirement might not be enough to justify its repeal, but the drastic limiting of the job pool is. At any given time, there are 500+ vacant teaching positions throughout the district. Without opening up applications to teachers who already own homes outside the city and don’t want to sell or who are otherwise unwilling to move in to the city, there is simply no way to fill the open positions. There are certainly tons of excellent teachers throughout the district, but for the schools to tell themselves that they don’t frequently end up hiring bad-eggs simply because they need to fill positions that they have too few applicants for is a lie and, most important of all, is unfair to the students. For every low-quality teacher that the city is forced to hire out of desperation there are plenty of teachers currently working – or unemployed – in the surrounding areas who would jump at the chance to get the job if it didn’t mean selling their home and moving to the city. If the purpose of the residency requirement is to benefit the students to build a better future for the city, then which is more important: Hiring anyone who applies because there are too few applicants or having an abundance of applicants, even if they might have to commute, and being picky with who you choose to teach the city’s youth.

There are two ways in which Milwaukee’s teacher residency requirement can be repealed:

• Legislatively, the state senate and assembly can pass a bill which would make it illegal. This has been unsuccessful many times before, but is nonetheless being tried again this year with Assembly Bill 89 and Senate Bill 54. I encourage you to contact your representatives and tell them to support those bills.
• The teachers’ union also has the power to undo the requirement through collective bargaining. Both the MTEA and WEAC support a repeal of the requirement, but it falls below things like salary and benefits when it comes to contract negotiations and ends up being tossed in the pot as a bargaining chip.

Regardless of which how it is done away with, the residency requirement is antiquated and needs to be repealed.

Just a quick complaint: To be fair, I’m not talking about elderly folks or those with a disability that actually does limit their movement. I’m referring to perfectly healthy people that decide to cross the street or walk in front of you at such a slow pace that turtles are actually passing them. I understand that you’re lazy. I’ve been known to be lazy too, but there’s just no reason to walk that slow other than to announce to the world, “Hey, World, I’m super fucking lazy”, and that’s just not necessary. So please, dude crossing the street so slow that the light changes back to green and you’re still half way across the one lane street, or lady who decides to walk in the absolute center of the sidewalk at a pace so painfully slow that it requires more effort to move that slowly than it would to walk at a normal pace: Walk faster.

The following is a list of Yiddish words and phrases that I would like to use more in my every-day vocabulary. This is part reference for me and part reference for whoever else finds this. The following list is in no particular order, other than alphabetical.

• A Shande – Meaning “a shame” or “a disgrace”.
• Bubkes – Nothing, nada, zlich. All good words, but bubkes just has a nice ring to it when describing how much money I have in my wallet right now.
• Chazarai – From the Hebrew word for “pig” (khazer), this word perfectly describes my desk at home.
• Chutzpah – If you’ve got balls, you’ve got chutzpah.
• Gezunterheyt – The Yiddish form of saying “bless you” after someone sneezes. It literally means “health”.
• Glitch – Probably one of the better known Yiddish words, this has become more prevalent in the age of computer malfunctions.
• Keppe – Yiddish for head, but like most Yiddish words, it’s more fun to say than the English.
• Kvetch – I don’t complain, I kvetch.
• Mensch – A truly honorable person.
• Meshugaas – Craziness, but more fun to say.
• Nosh – Meaning snack food, this is something I should be able to use daily.
• Schlock – Know all that crap your family gets you on vacation that’s actually just made in factories in China? It’s schlock.
• Schlong – The only really vulgar word on my list, this is one of the best names for your wang, cock, dick, wiener, or whatever else you call it.
• Schnoz – Your nose, but again, more fun to say.
• Tchotchke – Trinkets, knick-knacks, or whatever else you call them.

Do you have more suggestions for this list? Please reply and share them!

I’m not talking about excessive gore; the Internet and modern movies and TV have completely desensitized America to that. What I’m referring to is entire movies – or at least extended scenes – that are filmed by what I can only assume is a chimpanzee who has been heavily drinking. I suppose it all started with The Blair Witch Project, but more recently I made the mistake of seeing Cloverfield on the silver screen. The plot was great and I think it would have otherwise been a good movie, but I was so nauseous by the end that I’m fairly confident that had I stood up to leave early, I would have vomited on the person in front of me. What’s worse is that I’m equally as confident that had one person tossed their cookies in the theater, it would have set off a chain reaction and caused the theater to be quarantined. Which, it turns out, brings me to the first movie I’ve ever walked out of: Quarantine.

I’m normally not a fan of the horror genre, but this at least looked intriguing from the commercials, starred and actress who is great in Dexter, and my wife and our friend, Ms. Quarter, both wanted to see it. So we went and it started off interesting enough, but even though it was supposedly being filmed by a “local news” camera-man, it just continuously got more shaky and nauseating. About a half hour in, just as the actual action in the movie started, the three of us were already so dizzy that we just got up and left. Jessie even managed to talk the manager in to free passes.

Going to the movies is already expensive enough, not to mention the added cost of any kind of snacks or drinks, so the least the industry can do is warn you about crappy nauseating camerawork so I don’t have to waste my time and money on a movie I’ll just end up walking out of. Hollywood, I’m begging you, if you want any more of my money stop trying to make me spew buttered popcorn on your other paying customers.

Dear Smoker Driving In Front Of Me,

Don’t worry, I’m not about to go off on a tirade about how what you do should be made illegal. I respect the rights that you have in this country to smoke cigarettes and for the most part I in turn tend to avoid places where it overly affects me, namely poorly ventilated bars and restaurants. The exception, however, is when your smoking habits directly endanger me, without my choice. I’m not referring to second hand smoke, because I know you’re going to come back at me with studies funded by the likes of Philip Morris “proving” that second hand smoke is harmless. What really gets to me is when you feel that the absolute best way to dispose of your cigarette butt is to toss it, still lit, out your car window. In case you didn’t pay attention in high school physics, the airflow around your moving car will cause what you throw out it to be sucked behind your car and thus ends up going directly under my car, still lit. When I call your cigarette “lit”, think of it as a nice easy way of saying “your cigarette is on fire” and, despite the inexplicably slow development of alternative fuels, cars do still run on a very flammable liquid called gasoline. Given, the chances of you throwing your butt directly under a car that happens to be leaking gasoline are slim, but the chances of it blowing over to the side of the street in a dry pile of leaves and starting a fire or leaving a burn mark on my car are much higher.

You may now be wondering what I propose you do with your cigarette butt if you longer simply throw it out the window. If you look around your vehicle, you’ll probably find a little drawer that you’ve likely been keeping your extra change in. Turns out, that was actually meant to be an ashtray. Try using it for its intended purpose (Note: If you don’t smoke, keep using it for spare change). If you happen to drive a newer car that does not have an ashtray, swing by your local Target, K-Mart, Walmart, or whatever other store you have in your area and pick up one of those handy cup holder ashtrays that they offer. If, like me, you prefer to shop online, Amazon has a nice variety of ashtrays for your cup holder.

I hope that you consider what I have said above and I look forward to being able to drive around without having lit cigarettes thrown at my car.

Sincerely,
Everyone Driving Behind You

The weather here in Milwaukee is finally to the point where I am ready to head outside, light up some charcoal, and grill up some meat on my Weber One-Touch Gold. I’m even going to be trying some new things this year. We got a bottle of honey bbq from Buffalo Wild Wings that I will be cooking burgers (and probably chicken) with and I found some recipes for home-made bbq sauce on the ‘net that I’m eager to try out. Hungry yet? Anyone who knows me is more than welcome to give me a call and come over for some barbeque.