Precursor

I spent much of my morning and part of the afternoon writing a post about that thing that I said I didn't want to talk about. Before I pontificate on truths that will blow your mind, let me make three unrelated points. 1) I am currently suffering from a massive headache. It feels like my head is that one impassable evil mountain in the Fellowship of the Rings, you know, where the dwarves used to live before all the goblins killed them, but my head is before they even lived there, and the dwarves looked at my head/the mountain and said, "Hey, let's use our sledgehammers and pickaxes to hollow this place out. Then we'll tramp through it with our sturdy boots and set up our home. Then we'll have raucous parties and dance on the heavy oak tables in drunken revelry. Don't forget to hang many pictures and tapestries on the walls, which means we'll need to drive many sharp nails into our rocky abode with our powerful dwarf forearms. Yo ho ho!" Right now the dwarves are about halfway through the excavation process. Also, I am very tired.

 2) The rainy season isn't over yet. The constant threat of rain should mean that I carry around a collapsible umbrella at all times, but I don't. Having an umbrella with me brings on either great pride or extreme irritation. If I leave the house with an umbrella in my purse and then it starts to rain, I pull out my umbrella with a smile and think, I am the most genius of all the geniuses. Look at my foresight. However, if the clouds overhead never follow through on their threat of rain, I look at the passersby with their hands free of the burden of umbrella weight, and think, I am stupid. And if I get caught in the rain without an umbrella, I think, Don't judge me, you fools. I thought the clouds were being fakers again.　It's a complicated set of emotions.

 3) The JET Programme is potentially in danger. According to this article the government has considered cutting down on the number of participants or doing away with the program altogether as part of an effort to address excess government spending. As someone who is not at all politically minded nor prone to researching the subject, all I can say is that I really hope the government finds out just how valuable it is to have native speakers in the classrooms. Sure, they might consider making future applicants take the TEFL to make sure that they're getting people who at least know the principles of teaching (which would rule me out. Oops I hate tests). Just don't shut the program down, mkay guys? Thx. It's kind of great for your economy.

 I'll give you a day or two to mull this over, then I'll post that other thing. So comment away, faithful readers three.