>>> Points in Case
By staff writer Court Sullivan
Issue #14 – March 2002

-Do you ever start out whispering to someone, like in the library for example, and then realize that there’s so much background noise that you have to start doing a “yell-whisper” just so the other person can hear you? And then at some point, one of you decides to “break the whisper” and talk normally. Then you both feel like idiots for having whispered for so long, so you make awkward jokes about why the hell you were whispering.

-Have you ever gotten an exam or paper back from a professor and it has one grade crossed out or scribbled through and another grade written next to it? What the hell is that?! So then it’s like “What the fuck happened HERE? Was the other one higher or lower? Hey, is that an “A” under the scribbling?? It better NOT be!!” And what the hell would make a professor write one grade and then suddenly decide to change it?! From now on, I’m going to impose the “once you pick up your pen, you can’t take it back” rule. Right after I impose the “A for effort” rule.

-At the end of last semester, we fired the cook who made lunch and dinner for our fraternity because she made shitty food. What we didn’t take into consideration is that leaving hunger decision-making to a group of 50 fraternity guys is not exactly a practical move. Our food budget was promptly spent on a two-week supply of mini-pizzas and hot pockets. That’s two weeks in real-person eating terms. Placing a mountain of anything remotely tasty and microwaveable in front of a large group of college men is like asking a pack of rabid wolves to share a piece of top sirloin and put the leftovers back in the refrigerator for tomorrow. It just doesn’t happen (unless the wolves were particularly full from an earlier meal and there happened to be a wild refrigerator around).

-Sneezing in public can be a complicated situation. First, there’s the question of what to do if somebody sneezes once and nobody says “God bless you”. Usually, you either feel like an asshole for expecting someone else to do it, or you just pretend like you didn’t hear it or you’re not religious or something. If the person sneezes twice, though, somebody has to say it. If there’s a third sneeze, someone has to make the “Geez, are you OK?!” joke. But then, when someone sneezes four times, it’s like “What the fuck, I’m not going to say fucking bless you again bitch! You’ve got your sympathy, now shutup!!” Not to mention the fact that quadruple-sneezes are dangerous.

-Failed Hookup Quote of the Month, brought to you by Craig V. after dancing all night with a girl he met during a party: “I couldn't think of anything better than to take you home with me tonight, nor would I think of anything more.” I'm not sure if this is guy is hopelessly romantic or just hopelessly ambiguous.

-I always hate it when people ask me to borrow a pen before class. No matter how hard I tell myself to remember to get it back, it never happens. Basically, when someone asks me to borrow a pen now, I comply with “Goddamnit! You fucking asshole! That’s the fifth time I’ve been hit today! Could you give us a few moments alone first?”

-I think as long as everyone else is getting a cell phone, my cordless phone should get one too. Those pagers just aren't good enough anymore because the beeping sound is usually muffled by a 4-foot pile of clothes. I actually need to CALL my cordless phone and ask it where the hell it’s hiding in my room. Of course, I'd have to go borrow the phone in someone else's room just to call and ask it where it is, so maybe it's pointless. But wouldn't it be funny if you called it one time and got it's voice mail? “Hi, you've reached your cordless phone. Please leave a message and I'll call you back on myself. Hahahaha!! You'll never find me bitch!”

-Sometimes my friends will say something to me that starts with either “Don’t let me forget to” or “remind me to”. These are absolutely the two most worthless phrases in everyday conversation. If my brain had any additional capacity to remember extra information, it would certainly start with more important things like going to class or how much I’ve already had to drink, not helping other people with daily tasks.

-Everybody knows at least one “girlfriend guy.” These are the guys who you could introduce to your friends and just go ahead and introduce their girlfriend too, even if she’s not around. These guys will almost always speak in terms of their girlfriend, even when not prompted to. Like this one time I casually made conversation by asking this guy what he was up to and he said, “Well, my girlfriend hasn’t called me back yet, so I’m not sure.” What the hell are you supposed to say to that?! It’s like, “Oh…cool, well, let her know I called, and maybe we can finish the conversation when she gets back to you. Meanwhile, I’ll just call somebody who didn’t leave their social skills at their girlfriend’s apartment.”

-Have you ever met someone from class and become pretty good “campus friends” only to find out like 3 months later that neither of you knows the other person’s name? At that point, it’s too late for either one of you to ask, so you have to have this special friendship where no sentence requires the use of each other’s name. And any time it appears a third party is about to enter the conversation, you have to say “Ok, well, I have to get going man” because heaven forbid the weirdness of your special friendship should be exposed by having to do an introduction.

-Speaking of not knowing names, don't you hate it when people you meet from other colleges will find out where you go to school and then start asking you if you know certain people from your school? They’ll get all excited and shit like, “Oooohh, ooohh, do you know [someone you don’t know, have probably never seen, and will never care about]?!! Actually, she’s a freshman, so you wouldn’t know her, but what about [someone who’s in your grade, but you obviously still don’t know]?!!” I’m like, “No, I’ve never heard of them, but maybe if you ask me about another one of the 6,000 people at my school I’ll get really annoyed and start asking you if you know this one kid at my school who’s name I can’t figure out.”

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