Printer Assholes, Cell Phones and Medicinal Alcohol
 >>> Points in Case


By staff writer Court Sullivan


Issue #6 - September 2000

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-How many people do you know that "got paid for surfing the Internet" over the summer? Is that a position?! The most annoying thing is that these people always get paid
more than you!



-Remember when winning $8,000 was pretty good on Wheel of Fortune? And then if you won the bonus round it was a whopping $25,000 extra cash. Now, people leave the stage
sulking with $32,000 on "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire." Even if you’re a certified dumbass, you can leave with $8,000 for answering some shit like "How many legs
does a dog have?" I mean, what the hell, are you gonna get tripped up cause your dog is an amputee?!

-I got a ticket this summer from some cop who was passing me on the road. He said his "Doppler radar" got me. Has the police force merged with the National Weather Service
or some shit! Then the other day I saw a cop in an unmarked car standing behind his door next to a major road. He was aiming something at oncoming traffic as if gunning
down innocent drivers. How do I know you’re a policeman and that’s a radar gun?! Do they do this in inner cities? What happened to the days of normal police
that sit inside parked, marked cars with lights and easy-to-spot reflective stripes!



-Have you ever realized the complexities of seating arrangements on the first few days of class? It’s an entire unspoken world of fierce competition. Near-blind
people and ass-kissers fight for first row seats, non-majors and sleep-deprived kids pray for the safety of backseats, and frat guys attempt "surround-and-capture"
techniques on sorority girls. The worst part is that you have to weigh all your options in a span of about 5 seconds while you pretend to look for the first available
seat.



-Everyone without a printer has at least one "printer pal." This is the person who you can always count on to borrow some paper and print out your homework. Everyone WITH
a printer has at least one "printing asshole." These are the people who always drain your fucking paper supply every time they feel like printing something out. One guy
told me he just needed to print out a rough draft of his research paper. I’m like, look, if you’re gonna use 15 pages of my paper, it damn well better be the
final copy! Then they promise to "pay you back" sometime. What the hell?! You don’t have a goddamn printer!



-Moving into a new fraternity house this year, I figured the standards of mattresses would go up from last year’s freshman dorm. Wrong. Picture white styrofoam
peanuts covered with bubbled packaging material. I have recurring dreams about the fucking post office. At least I get the satisfaction of that "popping" sound at
night.



-Unfortunately, Emory requires everyone to take two semesters of a language. Never having taken a language before and after bombing the first quiz, I told my Spanish
teacher that I don't think I'm very good at languages. He said, "But you're pretty good at English." That’s because I’ve had 19 fucking years of practice!! I
guarantee you I’m doing better than my first 3 whole years of English!



-Now is the time when a lot of my friends are starting to think about going abroad for a semester. I think half the reason kids go abroad is because they get jealous of
their friends. It’s like, "Hey, you’re going to England! No fair! I’m going too!" And then they actually do. Except for one of my friends who signed up
to spend a semester in Australia, then withdrew after the first information session because he found out you actually had to go to school there. He said, "I didn’t
know they had universities in Australia!" Unbelievable.



-I learned another medicinal quality of alcohol last week when I had a sore throat. According to this one kid, if you take a shot of whiskey, it "kills all the bacteria on
the way down." I’m guessing he’s not a pre-med, but hey, it’s worth a try, right?



-Hiccups are the strangest phenomenon ever. Everyone has their own crazy ideas to get rid of them, but nobody knows why they work. It’s like the biggest mystery not
worth researching.



-Apparently, my microeconomics professor is the coolest guy ever. Every semester he takes the entire class out drinking on a school night. His justification is that
it’s a "microbrewery." Now I’m definitely signing up for macroeconomics too. At this rate I might be able to unintentionally minor in business.



-Sometimes, when you have a big paper to write, there comes a point early in the night when you just "decide" that it’s going to be an all-nighter. While on the
surface, this may seem like a reasonable decision, it’s actually the beginning of the end. It just becomes a good excuse to put off starting your paper until later
in the night because, hey, "I have all night!" So, 3AM rolls around and you start to panic, but then you realize it’s "still early." Then 5AM hits and you decide
it’s time to "really start working," but you realize your brain has stopped functioning properly. This is the ultimate fear of all students, and leads to later
irrational claims that "I’m never waiting that long to start a paper again!" Yeah right, and you probably gave up alcohol after your first hangover too.



-Here’s an awkward situation: you’re walking to class and you end up walking right near someone you know well enough to say hi to, but couldn’t really
give a damn about. So you have a normal three-sentence conversation about the mutual thing you recognize each other from, and then everything goes to hell. The ensuing
characteristically silent walk to the mutual building is like two deaf people on a blind date.

-Every year, freshmen come up with some weird form of alternative transportation to walking. Rollerblades: here's a novel idea. . . it's actually harder and slower to go
up hills with these on, not to mention the fact that you're bound to fuck up going down. I saw this kid last week lean back to try to regain his balance, but his backpack
was too heavy and he fell over backwards. Bikes that look like the one you had in 4th grade: you're not doing tricks on the way to class, stop riding a bike that looks
like the one I had in 4th grade. Tiny, non-motorized scooters with rollerblade wheels and room for only one foot: you either have to step on your own foot to ride it, or
you have to hold your other leg in the air like a dog taking a piss. Either way looks ridiculous, and besides, if you wanna fuck up on rollerblade wheels, please don't
involve a scooter. Motorized scooters: perhaps practical, but somehow manage to stay on the list for "top 10 things that subtly weigh on your social image," a list that
includes such things as "editing your electronic daily planner on a laptop during class," and "buying 5-subject notebooks for every class."



-Well, it’s about to be that time again. The time when our nation will elect a new president and half the campus won’t know it. Then the reporters can go to
Harvard, interview two pre-meds and claim that the entire national college population is ignorant to the outside world. Of course, none of us will hear that report either,
so I guess it doesn’t matter.



-Someone’s cell phone goes off in the middle of at least one of my classes every day. The professor stops teaching and everyone gradually hones in on where the sound
is coming from like a game of marco polo. Then it gets down to about three people, all with backpacks in a 4-foot radius, and each person pretends it’s not his
phone. All three of you look like idiots!! Somebody turn off your goddamn phone!



-I find it kind of ironic that the amount of credit card offers I get in my mailbox here has almost tripled, yet the bill for the one credit card I actually have still
gets sent to my parents at home. Of course, I only find it ironic up to the point that I consider who is actually capable of paying it off.



-Speaking of money (or lack thereof), I think the ATM knows me personally now. It stopped communicating to me in terms of "insufficient funds" and now prints receipts that
read, "Don’t you get it?! You’re broke, fuck off!"



-I checked my P.O. Box for mail the other day and it was actually empty (credit card applications and all). Naturally, I kind of sarcastically mumbled, "Wow, nobody likes
me." Then, as I was closing the mailbox door I spotted this small flyer in the back that read: "Feeling lonely? Peer counselors are here for you!" Fuck me.

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