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Now Playing: "Travelling Soldier" by The Dixie Chicks
Today's column is very, very special. The
reason is threefold. Fold A: I'm tragically out of ideas. Fold B: There
is no 'Quote of the Moment'. Nobody said anything funny this week. Not
even me. (Note: I just reread this column and realized that Fold B is a
bold-faced lie. I'd delete it, but my backspace key doesn't seem to be
working.) Fold C: I'm pretty drunk right now, so we should see some
interesting grammar. Enjoy! Here's what happened:
-Things You Learn In College When You're
Sick: I just tried Neo Citron and vodka. It's not bad.
-Every class has one loud person. You
know the guy or girl who always raises his or her hand and answers every
question, hoping to nail down that 5% class participation portion of
their grade by never letting anyone, including the professor, get a word
in edgewise. Sometimes these people don't even speak on-topic, so the
classroom becomes some weird metafictional Monty Python sketch, as in
the following Quote of the Moment: Professor: "So, we can see from the
following example that Moliere was trying to... yes, what is it, Peter?"
Peter (arm raised): "What goes along with schizophrenia? My father!"
Maybe it runs in the family.
-There is no worse place to be on campus
than the Financial Aid office. They must have some kind of weird
military training over there. They just assume anyone who walks into the
office is some deadbeat bum looking for a handout. I go in there to
inquire about my
student loan, and this lady with a
moustache yells at me to come back after 2pm, for absolutely no
discernable reason. So I do. The place is closed! I'm surprised they
didn't just board the place up permanently and hang swastikas from the
ceiling.
-This week is the annual UVic Poster Sale
(motto: Making Original Monets Look Affordable By Comparison). All the
students flock to the poster sale like moths to a candle, eager to spend
their hard-earned student loan money on tacky and overpriced ways to
decorate their dorm rooms. Why doesn't anybody just get a goldfish, or
one of those weird upside-down pyramid things they sell at Pottery Barn?
What the hell is up with those?
-You can tell what kind of person any
given student is just by following them around the poster sale and
watching what they buy. You've got the people who buy Klimt reprints.
They're the angsty, over-wrought arts students who probably work for the
school newspaper. You've got the ones who buy black-and-white movie
posters from movies everybody's heard of but nobody's ever watched, like
Scarface. These are the science students who like to think they're
pseudo-intellectual because they've done away with color. Then you have
the people who buy that big poster of the two girls making out. Those
are the engineers, and this is as close as they'll ever get to seeing
any action.
-I love the
college posters that pass for comedy. You ever seen this one?
"Marijuana... At Least It's Not Crack!" Wow. That's edgy. You know
what's edgier? Smoking crack. Or how about the one that compares women
to beer, like in that email forward I keep getting? Who the hell would
pay $16 to permanently hang on their wall a copy of an email I delete
seven times a day? I'm waiting for a poster to come out that tells me
how to increase my penis size, buy Viagra without a prescription and get
a low-rate mortgage. I'd buy that.
-They're also selling posters I can't
even imagine anybody buying. There's a Winnie the Pooh poster that says
"Let's Be Friends" in giant pink lettering. Putting that one up in your
room is riskier than financing the next Fast and Furious movie. ("Is
that...pink lettering? Sorry, I don't think I can keep making out with
you. I'm gonna go next door to the engineer's house and look at the
lesbian poster instead.")
-Ever gone into somebody's room and the
walls are completely covered with posters of naked people? It's like
stepping into a weird soft-porn museum. Be on the lookout for boxes of
Kleenex strategically placed throughout the room. And don't ever walk
around in there barefoot.
-Top poster scientists working in secret
underground labs have created an alternative poster-hanging technique to
thumb tacks: Sticky-Tak. It looks like plastecine and holds your posters
up without putting pinholes in them. It also costs eight dollars. I just
use bubble gum.
-I've spent well over $200 at the poster
sale so far. Taking into account the hundreds I spent last year and all
the posters I brought from home, sheets of glossy paper are now, by far,
the most valuable things in my room. I'm afraid my house will be robbed
one day, and my furniture and clothing and computer will remain
untouched, but my walls will be totally bare and I'll look like a loser.
Especially with all that chewed-up gum that's stuck there.
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