Your Fall to the Dark Side is Complete.

So...

About this time of year, my 0 period classes start to get kind of lazy. This year it set in with a particularly high intensity. Yesterday I sent out an e-mail message to the students and their families - You need to be here on time, every time. Don't bring your homework into rehearsal, don't skip class just because you need to study a little more for that chem test.

And oh by the way - I'm applying the tardies and absences to your grade.

Well, Darth Weasel, Principal Palpatine's favorite student, actually e-mailed me back with a long explanation that since the class no longer stimulated him, he no longer felt obliged to show up on time.

Now, for you newer readers.... I have an interesting history with Darth Weasel. He started out at Empire High as an intelligent but extremely socially awkward freshman. He caught a lot of abuse in the music department, but nowhere near as much as he caught out in the jungle outside our walls. Despite that, he became a pretty solid performer on his instrument, and... well, we started to accept him as "a dork.... but our dork."

Then along came Principal Palpatine. She immediately recognized in him the same self-serving ambition that she possesses her self, and immediately began to bestow honors and favors upon him. Of course, all of this went to his head faster than Lindsay Lohan can bait paparazzi. By the end of his sophomore year, he was an insufferable blow-hard.

When he complained to Palpatine about the way I ran my class, she called me into her office and read me the riot act. That was the point at which my Palp-o-Meter went from "threat" to "antichrist."

I've had attendence issues with him before, and when I took it out of his grade, he tried to go to her again. That time she couldn't do anything - his attendence had been documented. She had to back down.

So now he's decided that he really doesn't have a need to show up on time anymore. To which I respond that I don't really have a need to give him an "A." Will he go to Palpatine? Maybe.... or maybe he'll just remember where that got him last time. Maybe he'll realize that Palpatine has other, more pressing things to worry about right now that beating up a music teacher on his behalf.

...or maybe I'll be called into Palpatine's office and be put through the meat grinder again. Of course, I'll be happy to remind her that she's the one who recently told the faculty that it is unacceptable to give an "A" to a student with attendence issues.

Oh Weasel... you know what your'e problem is? You are exactly like Palpatine.... you only want to be outstanding on paper. You're useless in real life.