I shouldn't do shit. I don't care about them they all
could die and it won't affect my life. I know a lot about them
but I don't need to think about them. They're just a waste of
time koalas are stupid they don't help me with shit so why
should I help them. If they all die there will be more room for
the panthers and all the other hard animals. Koalas are weak a
pit will get rid of their whole fucking family. That's why I
don't like koalas.
Koalas have sharp claws but they are weak. They all small
and fat and they be climing trees. I hope a storm just come
while theyjust chilling up in the tree thinking they is hard and
they're will all just fall off. They just break they neck and
shit. When they fall they claws are going to fall off and they
going to be crying like some little bitches.
Koalas aren't hard they some little bitches. They start
climbing up the tree soon as they see a deer from like 50feet
away. They stupid as hell they should put their brain in their
pouch and put the kid in they ten they're be able to think
better. They try to be in the fucking kangaroo family. They weak
as hell, talking bout they got a pouch a kangaroo so they their
cousins and shit. Kangaroo's have some big ass legs and whot do
a koala got? Some little ass legs, they tails is little and weak
as fuck kangaroo's got a big ass long tail that can kill a
fucking koala.
If a koala goes in the water it won't be able to breathe
with its little short ass. It'd fucking drown soon aas it take
one step into the water. While they at the river trying to get
something to drink a bear could just come to him and snatch its
ass up. It doesn't know protection because they don't have
protection. What they little ass going to do? It can't scratch
him. The bear will beat his fucking ass.
The important think about koalas is that just don't care
about tem and let them die by all the other animals in
Australia. They're not important just let nature do what it do
and kill them. Koalas do not have a place in this world there's
not enough room for all the bitches in this world. So let all
the koalas that's in the zoos and shit. Let them go and put them
back with their family. If you let them all go they won't
nothing except for that's what they was put in this world for.
Now you know why koalas aren't important. They have
nothing to do except for sitting around in the trees. It's like
they just was like they was sent have to die. Koalas don't do
nothing to help anybody. Thre would be just one more relative of
the kangaroo that will be six feet under. Now you know why
koalas are not important because there are dumb.
brandon [email] said at 12:18 AM 01-04-2008: 1) OMG, I just spit out a mouthful of coffee.
2) Have you Snoped this yet? I read this and think it's a pretty suspect.
3) It's such an amazing parody of ghetto-speak, I have a hard time taking it at face value.
4) If it's real, I don't think that though the kid might have been writing about Koalas, but really he/she's talking about him/herself.
angele [email] said at 1:32 AM 01-04-2008: Really? I was surprised at how well it was actually written. I wish some of my seventh and eight graders could write at this level... It's amazing how relative things become.
marcia [email] said at 3:10 AM 01-04-2008: Humor is a weird thing. Can it be justified? I feel weird for thinking this is hilarious, especially as a white, liberal, how-can-I-judge-an-obviously-underpriveldged-urban-youth's-understandable-but-complete-failure-of-society's- responsibility-perspective? If I believe this and laugh when I read it, am I supporting the dominant white culture of (most likely, according to the dominant white culture) stupid, uneducated, poor black culture? Real or not, is this inherently racist? I think it is, but the context and intent is completely unknown. I question myself for laughing. But I also respect absurdity. And depraved ignorance, real or staged, still makes you sputter, laugh and question. I like that. When it comes to ignorance, though, I'll agree with you, this humor seems too good to be true. But then again, I don't teach in urban schools.
brandon [email] said at 4:24 AM 01-04-2008: feel weird for thinking this is hilarious, especially as a white, liberal, how-can-I-judge-an-obviously-underpriveldged-urban-youth's-understandable-but-complete-failure-of-society's- responsibility-perspective?
That's a tough one. For me, the worst thing outside of being an active racist, is to place one's own thoughts and reactions in a taboo container, treating those that we perceive to be of a different race than we with another set of behaviors, positive or negative. To me, the piece is funny because it conjures up the shared image of a hollywood or scare-media urban teenager describing as best he or she can just how little regard he has for koala, and thus, the assignment, and thus education, the world, his place in it, etc. But it reads like an Onion piece - I think someone put this together - or - it's just a really brilliantly smart kid who got away with a masterful piece of cheekiness. The flip side, is, if a fake, and a malicious fake, there's definitely some asshole racist who aspired the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and managed Herbert Kornfeld.
The provenance is old BBSes, right? so I think it was just someone playing with stereotypes.
To tell you the truth, few things scare the hell out of me like language policing. I think it's an affront to human dignity, whatever that is, and freedom, personal and public. So, that thing doesn't get my lib-guilt a tingling. Harpoon Mr. Splashy Pants, and I'll be enraged, but this, to stave off enjoying this, for the absurd or even voyeuristic value it has, is almost as divisive as active racism. It says, to me, these other people are so different from me, that I cannot even risk laughing around or about them, lest it be misinterpreted.
Anyway, it's fucking late. I'm rambling. You shouldn't feel bad for laughing. It's funny, regardless of who the real or imagined writer is or was. The mistake would be to categorically say "Oh they're all like this." or take some definitive conclusions about urban yutes from it, or whatever.
The black people in my life, co-workers, friends, even people on this site to some extent, I've never felt like I couldn't talk to them about things related to race, even joke about it. Race is a weird beast. It's a reified creature, there's no race "out there". Not without significantly shoehorning things in. We're all the same world-wide monkey. We're the trilobites of the mammal world. It's our duty, to resist tribalism (and trilobitism but not the tribadism, that should be indulged) and behave as if race doesn't exist - culture eh, maybe, but race. pshaw, that's so 19th-Century colonialist, who needs to be reminded of those horrible chairs and anti-masturbation devices?
marcia [email] said at 10:08 PM 01-06-2008: I never said I felt guilty about laughing, but I am very aware of and question my own perspective(s). My sense of humor is far from PC but I couldn't help but wonder why this was so funny to me. The absurd images it conjures up are priceless, but the lack of empathy and compassion are also alarming. If this was an essay about about the civil rights/women's rights movement and why it was important and this essay was written in the same way, it would be cease to be funny and would just be disturbing. The content and context do make a difference, even though the attitude is the same.
brandon [email] said at 10:37 PM 01-06-2008: True. It's definitely a safer topic, koalas, by which to go about satirizing urban youth, or provoking our liberal response of shock and guilt. But I'd still laugh if it was about civil or women's rights. As long as it didn't cross the line into deliberate cruelty and always stayed well embedded as if it were delivered by an absurd, ignorant voice.
Intention, and my old profs are rolling their eyes at this, counts. You know you can read the Turner Diaries - and I did this once - like it's a comedy piece illustrating how hapless redneck race purists are in pursuit of their quest of a white America. You know, here's so-called master race of the world, hiding in garages, unable to mount any kind of capable attack, and ultimately requiring the assistance of the Jews and the Chinese to realize their, very, very compromised vision of crackertown, USA. And it's actually kind of funny and Keystone copish. But that's not anywhere near the correct reading.
It is only, as it is, a amateurish, vile, vicious little snuff-fantasy written by a raging asshole that sees people like mere playthings of history, and leaves very little to admire about the thuggish white menm and the compromised utopian future it seeks to immortalize. Unfortunately, that's the unavoidably correct way to read the book (well, not really, the REALLY CORRECT way is to read it like prophecy, the way people did the Left Behind series, but you'd have to be a racist to read it that way. And a particularly stupid one, too.)
So how to do we read this? Who knows. We're all experts at establishing the what the voice of an author sounds like to us. Without a real, definitely statement of intent or apology or real context like "I was writing this out of frustration to teach English to inner-city kids." It's pretty much impossible to say what, exactly, if there even is any, is the put upon part about it.
It's kind of a rabbit and duck piece. I'm still curious to know who wrote it and what the motivation was.
marcia [email] said at 3:18 AM 01-04-2008: There are inconsistencies in th writing that bother me: a kid in 8th grade in this context knowing that "a lot" is two words, being able to to write 'it'd" but then having unpunctuated sentences. There are ebbs and flows in the attention used in sentence structure vs. written-spoken word. I'm not sure if those ebbs and flows are consistent. But, as stated above, I'm not sure if it matters if this is real or not.
jake [email] said at 12:58 PM 01-04-2008: This is very very funny. But it's a very long writing piece for an eighth grader who really thinks this way, and lines like "The bear will eat his fucking ass" show a very strong sense of pacing and scansion. Too strong for a student who would make the other errors shown.
So I think it's either
A. Fake but great satire
B. Written by a high school student imitating a younger voice
C. Legit but filtered through an adult of some kind (prompting and transcribing...)
angele [email] said at 8:09 AM 01-07-2008: About the strong sense of pacing and scansion: I have eighth graders that have incredible promise as writers, or poets. I am litteraly floored by what they read out loud to me during writing exersizes. Nevertheless, they don't know how to spell. They don't have a strong foundation in grammar conventions, so they make fairly basic mistakes all of the time. What they have in personal style, they lack in elements of cohesion or other standard structures that help writing to be more readable. Critical thinking skills, needless to say, rarely show up in writings because verbalizing these thoughts depend on transitional and cohesive language elements -something they haven't mastered. They are entirely capable of critical thinking, but are crippled in their ability to express their words.
All this is to say that I think that it could be a real eighth grader. I've read work very similar to this.
angele [email] said at 8:17 AM 01-07-2008: I also want to add that our English teacher is a brilliant teacher of these things. With daily grammar drills and well taught lessons about transitional words, the kids' writing has improved exponentially. Nevertheless, it's still very hard to make up for years of being mistaught/failed by the system. It's also difficult to convince kids to "buy into" grammar. It's a huge sting everytime I hear, "But that sounds 'white'." A refrain that the Harlem-raised Yale-educated English teacher gets hurled at him daily.
amy [email] said at 5:09 PM 01-08-2008: After teaching English in the inner city I believe it is real with some help. The original draft was probably all the kid then the teacher cleaned it up a bit to put it out there.
kara [email] said at 11:23 AM 01-13-2008: that's what I was thinking
In high school I found the compulsory journal of this girl I had been in school with since elementary. We just had to write a half page a day so hers said "Mary had a litle lamp mary had a litle lamp and she fuck that bitc and ..." I forget the rest unfortunately but it was a testament to the rigors of the PG county school system.
