If calling this fairly wide ranging, totally chaotic series of ideas, actions and beliefs one thing gets this much of an uproar, splendid. Let chaos reign and hope a few people think a little harder.

I can always count on Jim Groom to cause a commotion and then double down with lots of chaos. Like Gardner, I love you but in a totally punk way.

P.S. I’m working on the Rev. tattoo

I don’t know about you all, but I’m serious about my fun, and I want to create hardcore. This isn’t all a joke to me, it is my job, it’s what I do for fun, and I love it—I’ll fight for it.

So, maybe the word will disappear, but the ideas must get stronger and the play more intensified, just like in Punk Rock —if only to be like the Bad Brains!

Agreed.

But I will admit, it’s hee-larious watching this spread over the internet, and watching people get their knickers in a twist and/or sprain digital ankles hurtling after a bandwagon.

Cheers,

Bill

Everyone else, please calm down, this is only a drill, in the advent of a real revolution, we will notify the proper authorities.

No off to get my “Reverend Jim Fan Club” tattoo!

I’m looking at the edupunk idea as something that’s kind of fun and has some energy behind it. I’m not planning to get an edupunk tattoo/piercing/mohawk or start beating people who disagree with me.

I don’t think the idea of edupunk will get us closer to or farther away from anything really major.

It seems to have hit a chord in this tiny community and so why not ride it out and see what happens? Maybe something good will come of it. I don’t think it’ll somehow bring back the Cold War and the Berlin Wall.

If the idea sucks then it’ll either get smashed or forgotten, until then it’s got some value for whoever gets use out of it. Let them use it how they will and don’t worry about it.

Maybe it will cause conflict and drama and be a line in the sand. I think that conflict is often useful and let’s remember it is just sand. It’s not a line in granite. If Jim decides to call someone “SO EDUPUNK” rather than just screaming “GENIUS” at them, I don’t really see any difference.

I can’t define punk, fun, pornography or edupunk but, then again, I don’t really believe anyone can and I don’t care.

What I started at UMW had nothing to do with a punk ethos, so far as I can tell. “Tommy” is my favorite album; you know that. If the metaphor of punk helps some folks rally their spirits and keep pushing for the kind of educational reforms I long for with every fiber of my being, okay, I guess–but from here, and especially in the wake of all the comments I’ve been reading, it looks to me like the metaphor simply draws more lines in the sand. And I choose *that* metaphor very deliberately, as I think those sandy lines, whether on the playground or in the desert, can be very dangerous.

Maybe I’m trying to say that I don’t think one has to draw a line in the sand in order to take a stand.

In the end, in the cosmic struggles, I’m with Lillian Gish, who will not scruple to sing “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms” with the Devil himself if it’ll keep Robert Mitchum in sight, and perhaps keep the possibilities of redemption and inclusion alive.

Or maybe I just need to listen to “Amazing Journey” again, burn a candle, and see my future.