On Attending an Adult Education Graduation

Ahhh, the High School graduation ceremony. A stifled time of pomp and circumstance, where proud parents sit bored stiff in a stifling hall for an hour and a half, waiting for that two seconds when their acne-ridden whelp stumbles across a flimsy stage and is handed a scrap of paper. 

Does anyone enjoy these events? Having worn many hats in graduations- parent, student, and presenter- they are always a tedious affair. Lots of people you don’t care about standing up, giving speeches that go on for waaaaaay too long, that turn minutes into hours and hours into millennia. I have never met a soul that said to me,

“Boy, I enjoyed that whole ceremony.”

So why do we have them? Who the hell knows? No one is brave enough to hit the brakes and scream that ceremony has no clothes.

Recently, for reasons that are unimportant, I was corralled into attending a graduation ceremony for an Adult Learning Facility provided by the state, for those who wished to finish their diploma or simply obtain a General Education Degree. And I must say, I found the event much different from the standard yawn-fest.

The structure of the ceremony itself was the same. Talk, talk, talk, look at watch, hand out paper, talk, talk, yawn, talk, begin to nod of, wake in a start, finally done! But the general character of the attendees was something else entirely.

What caught me off guard was how over-dressed I was. In every other similar event, it was de rigueur to dress in a suit and tie, or at least as button down dress shirt and slacks. But apart from the superintendent and others staffers, I was in the extreme minority.

As you can see from the pictures, this was a dress-down affair to most of the attendees. Flip flops, cargo shorts, “I’m with stupid” t-shirts, extendi-flex waistband sweatpants, ball caps, and hole-ridden jeans were in full bloom. Even many of those who were receiving degrees declined the standard cap and gown, walking up to receive their degrees in jeans and rumpled shirts.

Along with the lack of dress, the crowd spent a great deal of time eating and drinking, mostly gotten from the school’s vending machines. The only product available in them were small bags of Doritos- though the flavor did vary if that makes any difference. The soda machine was, of course, your standard variety of sugar water with various chemicals dumped in. Even though the ceremony was only about forty-five minutes, runners from the various families were sent back and forth to retrieve more and more goodies. One family I saw pulling all sorts of snack cakes and the like from a hamper they’d brought along. Forward thinking, I guess?

In addition to this, there were some odd choices of speakers among the anointed few to take the stage. Specifically, two people representing the Welfare office and Unemployment offices for the state. Both gave three minutes speeches in which they both had a single point. Don’t rest on the “laurels” of obtaining an equivalency degree, go out there and actually get a fucking job. Which makes sense, the highest concentration of people to use both of those offices were those lacking education. But the amount of times they repeated this idea that the student needed to keep going, made me think it wasn’t advice that was taken very often.

What really caught me off guard was the amount of noise generated. I’ve been to much larger graduations before, but this one, with the smallest number of graduates that I’ve come across, was the noisiest. It wasn’t just when their unkempt loved one shuffled briefly into view, but during the entire proceedings, they talked amongst themselves, sharing jokes and gossip, and openly not paying attention to the man on deck.

Then came a stern request from the head of adult education for people not to make a lot of noise when their family member walked across the stage, as it may cause others to miss out on their own member being announced. The request was immediately ignored.

“That’s my sister!” or “That’s my cousin!” was yelled after every name was read off. Uproars popped up over and over in different sections of the room as felonious people hopped excitedly to accept the lowest of academic honors. People leapt, hooted and hollered, each family trying to outdo the other, like some kind of deranged entrance on Family Feud.

“My boy’s done got himself a G.E.D,” screamed a tear-filled glandular disorder, as if the boy had brought home a Heisman.

Outside of a football stadium, I have never heard anything like it. It was photo negative of the “sit politely and endure the tedium” policy I had been raised with. Still even that paled compared to the final blow.

After all the names had been read off and the last tassel pulled to the right, the ceremony was supposed to end with a processional, in reverse of how they entered, of students, faculty, and staff. Well, that didn’t quite happen.

After having to sit through forty-five minutes of commencement rites, allowing the graduates another two minutes of dignity pushed the attendees to their breaking point.

“Shit, I’m finna get outta here!”

People began cutting in line, rushing ahead to get out of the building. Then two brutes actually stopped the processional to let the rest of their family out, grandmother, mothers, little kids. After that, the gloves were off and the seats emptied into the aisles, creating a sweating mass of tangled human taffy. Everyone strained to be the first one to reach the door and ironically ended up delaying their departure for much longer then had they just sat quietly.

Eventually they filtered out, leaving an incredible mess of Doritos bags, empty soda cans, crumbs, and various other unidentifiable stains all over the auditorium. Along with the intangible stains of destroyed human dignity.

   For more fun try books by Rex Hurst

Medieval Witch's Description of the Devil's Genitals

Here we have an excerpt from the book Demonolatry, composed by Nicholas Remy, a fanatical hunter during the golden age of witch burnings. He was one of the leading authorities in France during the 16th Century. The number of people he had burnt at the stake is unknown (it is estimated at around 900) and in this book alone he cites over a hundred cases. 

Understand this is not the work of a delusional lunatic. He was fanatical, but he believed absolutely in the power of Satan and the existence of witches and witchcraft. This book eventually replaced the Malleus Maleficarum (“The Hammer of Witches), the 13th century handbook of the Inquisition) as the best source on sniffing out Satanism.  

Nicholas Remy

Along the way he would question those he eventually had executed and very often they would “admit” having sexual congress with the beast, and then go on to describe the Devil’s penis ….with hilarious results.

“All female witches maintain that the so-called genital organs of their Demons are so huge and so excessively rigid that they cannot be admitted without the greatest pain. Alexee Drigie reported that her Demon’s penis, even when only half in erection, was as long as some kitchen utensils, which she pointed to as she spoke; and that there were neither testicles nor scrotum attached to it. Claude Fellet said she had often felt it like a spindle swollen to an immense size so that it could be not contained by even the most capacious woman without great pain. This agrees with the complaint of Nicole Morele that, after such miserable copulatons, she always had to go straight to bed as if she had been tired out by some long and violent agitation. Didatia of Miremont also said that, although she had many years’ experience o men, she was always so stretched by the huge swollen member of her demon that the sheets were drenched with blood. And nearly all witches protest that it is wholly against their will that they are embraced by Demons, but that it is useless for them to resist.”

For more fun try Spiff Blasthandy Available on Kindle and paperback 

On an Earth rebuilding from an apocalypse, the star of the Spiff Blastandy show, the most popular drama of the day, must recover from a public scandal while simultaneously dealing with personal loss and tragedy. Even his popularity won’t save him from a beating. As the virtual world gathers to spit on everything in his life, the demons of his past rise and threaten to destroy his life. He must question everything in order to survive. Available on Kindle and paperback 

Worst Mothers in History Vol. 3

Where has the time gone? Once again, the calendar has swung around to that artificial date where everyone in the Western world is expected to fall to their knees and urinate themselves in supplication to the all-mighty mother figure. And once again, I’m here to remind you that having a womb is no guarantee that the mind it’s attached to is fit to raise the creature it shunts out. 

As I’ve done before and before, we will look at some of the ever-growing list of horrible women who became horrible mothers.

Christina Treadway and her murdered children

Christina Treadway: The Suicidal Strangler. From earlier this year, we have this wonderful slice of humanity. Hailing from America’s toilet, Puerto Rico, she moved to the Gateway to the South, Charlotte, NC, and took work as a ticket attendant for the Carolina Panther’s games. Despite this glamorous position, something was wrong with her brain. She had been in a relationship with her children’s father, Antoine Moore, for ten years. In January, 2018, while he was out drinking with the boys, she sent him a text stating, “I love you. I’m sorry. I’m going to end it all with the kids.” Soon after a woman’s body was found, seemingly having jumped from the I-485 interstate onto the pavement below. Tracking the woman’s address, police found her two children, Isaiah (7) and Illiyah (3) near dead from manual strangulation. The children died later that night. No motive is known. Reportedly, she had no history of mental illness. 

Michelle Sue Tharp

Michelle Sue Tharp: Starvation Mama. Hailing from an abusive home in one of the dingier parts of our fair country, this killer grew up poor and decided to stay there by having five children with four different abusive men, all of whom abstained from providing for their offspring. When the last, Tausha, was born, it seemed the burden was too much for the mother to bear. After a few more bad relationships, the mother stopped feeding her daughter, making her leave the room whenever dinner was being made and forcing her to root through the trash eating scraps. This began to stunt her growth, which the mother latter used in her defense stating that the starved child simply “failed to thrive”. For two years she dodged doctors and social workers about her daughter, until the child finally died of malnutrition. She and her boyfriend then strapped the dead girl into a car seat, went to her grandmother’s to call in sick to work (she had no phone of her own) and drop off a load of laundry, stopped to buy garbage bags, then dumped the child’s corpse in an wooded area. She told police that her daughter had run off at the mall.  At her trial she claimed to be a good mother overwhelmed by events and that she only dumped the body because she was “afraid of being blamed.” The jury did and she was sentenced to be executed.

Debra Jenner-Tyle

           Debra Jenner-Tyler: The “Stabbing-Them-Quickly-With-Her Toy” Killer. Let’s hop into the wayback machine and head to 1987, where Debra Jenner took her three year old daughter Abby Lynn and stabbed her seventy times, alternating the weapon between a kitchen knife and the child’s toy airplane. Abby’s lifeless body was found with her hands showing that she tried to defend herself and grasping long, blonde hairs that likely were from her mother’s head. She appeared to have had some sort of psychotic break and “had been working a lot lately”, so she took her rage out on her “very finicky” child in their kitchen, before calling over some relatives to help clean up the mess. She confessed to the police, then rescinded at trial, but there was little doubt to her guilt and she was give life without parole. In 2003, then-Governor Bill Janklow reduced her sentence to 100 years, so she would become eligible for parole. Since then she has been denied over 20 times.

Shaquan Duley

          Shaquan Duley: The Wanna-Be Susan Smith. Now we take a slight step down one state to the former prison colony South Carolina. A college dropout, unemployed, manless, and mentally ill, this deranged mother smothered her two sons, Devean (2) and Ja’van (18 months), hold forcibly holding her hand over their mouths until they stopped breathing. Having been abandoned by her paramour some months earlier, she lived hand-to-mouth in a motel room and killed her children after having an argument with her own mother who claimed that Shaquan was a bad parent. Apparently the woman decided to prove her mother right. After this, she tried to commit suicide by overdosing on aspirin and then cutting her wrists with a box cutter. When these failed, she loaded her children’s corpses into her car and drove to a river. She then got out, put the car in drive, and sent it crashing into the water. She later told police that she had fallen asleep before running off a bridge, but the investigation found no skid marks or other evidence to back up her story. Her defense attorney tried the old “excused for mental illness” trick and how her being oppressed in a racist culture drove her to these acts, but the jury did not agree. She received a thirty year sentence for her crimes.

Diane Downs

Diane Downs: The “I’ve Heard This One Before” Murderer. Always a troubled and promiscuous teen, Diane eloped with her husband and had three children, two girls and a boy, with him. After their divorce, she became obsessed with a married man. The two had a long standing affair, during which Diane stated that she would happily kill the man’s wife in order to have him all to himself. The man also had reportedly told Diane that he didn’t want children in his life. On May 19th, 1983, she pulled up to McKenzie-Willamette Medical Center, in Springfield Oregon, with her three children bleeding in the back. The oldest girl was already dead, the boy had been paralyzed from the waist down, and the youngest had a stroke resulting from her injuries. Downs herself had been shot in the arm. She claimed that a man had tried to carjack them and had shot the children. Police immediately became suspicious when they saw the car’s interior was splattered with blood, but none was on her. Additionally, she suggested to the doctors that her surviving children were brain dead (even though there had been no tests performed to determine that) and that they should just pull the plug. This all told police that her story was a fabrication. During the trial she went on the old “I was an abused child” and “my father sexually molested me” routine (all of which she later recanted). She was sentenced to life imprison plus fifty years. During both of her parole hearings, she continuously changed her story. One of them is presented below.

Her life was also made into a TV movie called Small Sacrifices starring Farrah Fawcett which is included below.

Happy Mothers Day everyone.

       For more murderous fun try The Foot Doctor Letters: A Serial Killer Speaks Out by Rex Hurst. Available in paperback and on Kindle.