Well, I did hear back from the Department of Education. Here's what they had to say:
Thank you for your email to the U.S. Department of Education with an interest in the President's Educational Awards Program (PEAP), formerly known as the President's Academic Fitness Awards.For more information on PEAP, including the criteria for recognition, feel free to visit the link on the U.S. Department of Education's website dedicated to the program at: http://www.ed.gov/programs/presedaward/index.html. This program has provided individual recognition to elementary, middle and secondary school students whose outstanding efforts have enabled them to meet challenging standards of excellence since 1983.
My bad for assuming this country doesn't promote or recognize academic achievement. I can't imagine why I would think such a thing. After all, the PEAP was started a mere 17 years after the Presidential Physical Fitness Award.
Wanna buy Stephen Hawking's hot-air balloon basket?
Yesterday, I got to thinking about high school. Specifically, I got to thinking about the Presidential Physical Fitness challenge. If you attended an American high school, you probably remember this challenge. In order to qualify for the Presidential Physical Fitness Award at the end of the school year, you had to participate in a number of "tests," including pull-ups, push-ups and my personal favorite, the "shuttle run," in which you had to sprint from a tape mark on the gym floor to another tape mark on the gym floor, pick up a wooden block, run back to the first tape mark, pick up another wooden block and run back to the second tape mark. This was all timed and your performance was scored against the challenge criteria.
Now, I fucking hated the Presidential Physical Fitness challenge. I've got nothing against physical fitness, mind, but this challenge was mandatory. Every single person had to pick up that wooden block and run back and forth like an idiot in front of the entire class, and then the gym teacher would shout out your time. I didn't especially suck at the tests; I never won the award, but I don't think I embarrassed myself (except for the time I decided to try and beat every girl at the run/walk mile and nearly vomited at the finish line). But imagine if you're an overweight kid running back and forth with that stupid block and then having your sub-par time bellowed out to the entire class. Gym class is unpleasant on the best of days. It was a goddamn nightmare on Presidential Physical Fitness challenge days.
Anyway, in addition to the Presidential Physical Fitness Award, there was also a Presidential Academic Fitness Award. You didn't have to take a test alone in front of the whole class and let the teacher read your grade aloud. Everyone over a certain GPA won it every year.
Today I went in search of the Presidential Physical Fitness and Academic Fitness Award sites. I only found one. Care to guess which?
Yes, that's right: As far as I can tell, there is no Web site for the Presidential Academic Fitness Award. Today, I wrote to the Department of Education to find out why.
I'm not holding my breath for a reply.
Hey! How about a nice little footnote to that previous post? Okay!
A monkey has a better chance of typing the Gettysburg Address than Jesus has of not being the messiah.How very eloquent.
-Mel Gibson
Well, the New York Times review of Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" indicates that the great big Jesus movie wavers between "horror-movie suspense" and "slasher-film dread," though I'm guessing neither of those quotes will be featured on the movie poster.
A.O. Scott, the reviewer, had a couple more interesting things to say about it, namely that "the troubling implications of the film do not arise primarily from its religious agenda: an extreme, traditionalist Roman Catholicism that has not prevented 'The Passion' from resonating, oddly enough, with many evangelical Protestants," but from Gibson's position as "a connoisseur of violence...it will be amusing to see some of the same scolds who condemned Mr. Tarantino's 'Kill Bill: Vol. 1' sing the praises of 'The Passion of the Christ.'"
It sure will.
To amuse myself lately, I've been browsing through craigslist missed connections. Today I found this one under the header "Black VW Jetta from Maryland":
You kept honking at me and another car for stopping to let some pedestrians cross San Vicente Blvd. (in a crosswalk!) I'm hoping you were in a rush to leave LA and drive cross-country back to Maryland. But if not, I'm hoping we can make a real connection soon. I'd love to bump into you while you were say...on a first date or having a business lunch.
Well, I haven't won a Volvo or a dream vacation...yet. I'm still holding out for that good luck avalanche. That and not updating my blog in over a week.
So what's new with me? I slept a lot this weekend. Maybe I have mono.
I also went to a horrible belly dancing competition last night with Jeremy, Claudette and Jason. The four of us mocked the performers so mercilessly, we literally hurt ourselves laughing. It sounds vicious, but we paid $25 a pop to see this thing, so all bets were off, courtesy-wise.
Claudette and I are going to enter next year with our Mad Max/Tank Girl-inspired troupe: Apocolyptica. If anyone out there can manage a remix of Prodigy's "Smack My Bitch Up" with a middle eastern flavor, please contact me immediately.
Last night I dreamt that I was buried alive in an avalanche. I was lying on my back with a little dome of snow over my head. It was quite bright, so I couldn't have been buried very deeply, but I was trying to decide whether to struggle and dig myself out or just stay put because I had an airway and my head was in the open dome. I chose to dig, and the resulting, sudden convulsion woke me up (and sent the cats flying off the bed in a very amusing fashion).
Today, I looked up my dream. Here's what I found:
The material that makes up the avalanche is snow, and snow is frozen water. Water symbolizes your emotions, the unconscious, and, at times, life itself. Therefore, this dream is about rapidly and violently descending emotions and thoughts. Emotions that may have been repressed have finally been unlocked and may be overwhelming you. You may have this dream during emotionally turbulent times of your life, or in your dreams you may be remembering and reliving some difficult emotional experiences. Old dream interpretation books say that burial in an avalanche may result in good luck in the near future.
I know this article from the New York Times about the maiden voyage of the QM2 isn't supposed to be funny, but I found it hilarious. $15,000 well spent, I think. Here are some highlights (edited slightly for maximum guffaws):
Monday, Jan. 12 After the safety drill, we stand atop the ship bundled in the chilly evening breeze, looking out over Southampton. Although we are meant to sail at 5:30, the smooth voice of the staff captain announces an hour's delay: baggage loading problems.
Tuesday, Jan. 13 Our first night aboard is virtually sleepless as the storm rages. A steel door clangs incessantly below our balcony. Most of our party remains in bed today as the wind howls and the boat groans and pitches. Our off-the-menu request for chicken broth at lunch is denied; it is on tonight's dinner menu, but somehow can't be heated up early. The steward apologizes profusely and makes it available for lunch tomorrow, by which time we hope it won't be necessary. We settle for tuna club sandwiches. Later, as my father, ever a Curious George, tries to go out on his balcony to observe an oncoming wave, the ceiling of my parents' cabin falls in because of a wind-tunnel effect. They spend the afternoon with us while the maintenance crew works on it. Amid more profuse apologies, the chief purser admits that the ship and its crew have not experienced such weather.
Thursday, Jan. 15 Back on board, my attempt to get a pedicure is thwarted by a burst hot water pipe on Deck 9 (also our cabin deck). The salon apologetically reschedules me for the same time tomorrow. Walking back to my cabin I spot a large red bucket catching drops from the ceiling three doors down.
Friday, Jan. 16 This morning we motor into the port of Santa Cruz on Tenerife, in the Canary Islands. At 8:25 a man calls to apologize that the breakfast we had ordered for 8 a.m. would not be delivered for another 30 minutes. Would we still like it? Declining, we race to the Kings Court, the cafeteria-style buffet, and wolf down cereal and coffee before meeting our group.
Saturday, Jan. 17 We get set to head straight for the Kings Court when my husband asks if I've seen his watch. His wedding band was on it - he took them off before his weightlifting session at the gym last night. When we have sufficiently torn apart the room, I page Nora, who calmly asks if we have checked all our pockets. Yes, four times at least. She reports the loss and schedules a meeting with the head security officer for this evening. As darkness falls and fireworks light the sky, security officers arrive to search our room and "interrogate our doorlock" with a reader that can tell whose cards have been used to enter the room. The security officer emerges from our closet with the watch and ring; they were in my husband's pants pocket after all. We apologize and thank the officers profusely. I get the feeling that they've been through this before.
Sunday, Jan. 25 Because of a frustrating problem with the tender boats, we stay on board all day Saturday while in St. Thomas.
Monday, Jan. 26 We've royally enjoyed this great ship.
Coincidentally, the dictionary.com Word of the Day is languor, whose secondary definition is noted as "listless indolence, especially the indolence of one who is satiated by a life of luxury or pleasure."
You can find more of the interesting word usements I structure on Apple.com.
Read my article, Better Writing Through Design, on No. 242 of A List Apart.