>>> Text-Heavy
By staff writer E.E. Southerby
Volume 60 – November 30, 2003
Now Playing: “Hey Ya” by Outkast
-I got to my early morning class (it takes place at half past ass o'clock AM) only to find that the professor hadn't showed up. Turns out he hadn't come to a meeting that morning either (the meeting was supposed to take place at quarter to ass o'clock) and this was highly unusual. Everyone got all up in a tizzy and started to panic. They called around to the hospitals, the morgue, the immigration people: No sign of him anywhere. Turns out he wasn't sick, dead or deported. He walked into class a half hour late, apologizing for having forgotten to set his alarm. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief, but I think they were secretly disappointed that now they were going to have class. As for me, I regret sending that ham to the widow.
-College students love to tell urban legends, like the one abut the philosophy exam that was just 20 blank pages followed by the word ‘Why?', and the student that answered ‘Why not?' and got an ‘A'. Or the one about the exam that was 75 multiple choice questions, the correct one always being ‘D'. I don't mind these stories. I think they're kind of funny. I just wish people would stop lying and saying it happened to ‘a friend of theirs'. I'm always like “dude, that's a good story. Apparently it happened to a guy in my last class too. What were the odds?”
-Whenever I leave class on Thursdays, I always tell people to ‘have a good weekend'. This is because I don't have the same class on Fridays and therefore shouldn't see them until the following week. Then, on Friday, if I happen to run into someone whom I've already wished a good weekend, I have to either run in the opposite direction and pretend I never saw them, or meet up with them and make some lame joke: “Wow, that was a short weekend, huh?” People love that one.
-College students live for the weekend. The entire week is spent talking about how great this weekend is going to be, because somebody's having a wicked house party. Then you get to the house party and it's just a bunch of drunk people standing around until the cops show up and shut everything down. What's with that, anyway? Do the police really not have anything better to do than walk into a party holding billy clubs and telling everybody to get out right now? I'm looking at them like: “Sorry, officer. I'm not even drunk. I'm just sitting here playing cards.” And they totally don't believe me. They just wave their baton in the air like the savages from Indiana Jones and tell me to leave. We need to start a crime wave in this city so they'll leave my parties alone.
-I don't have much time to watch tv these days. I can squeeze in a football game on Sundays and a few late night reruns of Judge Judy here and there. The problem with football is that the games take too long. Here's the reason: Instant replay. Every time they say they're “going upstairs to review the play”, I know I've got time to go downstairs and barbeque a chicken or something. It takes hours, sometimes days, to decide if the pass was complete or not. Meanwhile, the play-by-play guy is showing millions of people irrefutable instant replay evidenceo on the tv, and he decides in five seconds whether or not the ball was in bounds. Here's a thought: Instead of ‘going upstairs', why not let the play-by-play guy decide? It would be faster, that's for sure.
-Quote of the Moment: I was buying something at a store (which, I suppose, is as good a thing as any to be doing in a store). I hand the cashier my VISA card and she says: “I'm sorry. We only take cash and MasterCard.” Have you ever heard of a store that only takes MasterCard? Is that even legal? I admit, this quote didn't lead directly into some wild and crazy college hijinx. Still, I think it's pretty weird.
-Here's a fun thing to do when you've got a car and a spare minute. Park your car in a mall parking lot. Pop the hood and remove the battery. Lean over the hood, frowning and scratching your chin. When someone walks by and asks if you need help, tell him you think the car needs a boost. Then, when they go and get their jumper cables, enjoy the expression on their faces when they see the battery's gone. It's even funnier if it's really cold outside and they get frostbite while trying to help you. At first glance, this may not seem like a very funny idea. Let me assure you, though, that it's not any funnier with each subsequent glance.
-Have you ever watched a commercial for the Devry Institute of Technology and Advanced Piano Repair and wondered what your life would have been like if you had followed the same path as the Actual Case Studies on the commercial and gone to school because of an ad you saw during Jerry Springer?
-I think the most depressing/ironic part of that last joke is that I skipped a really important class to watch Jerry Springer. I am the future of this country.
-And, finally, I just wanted to wish a big hearty ‘congratulations': One of my friend's sisters just had a baby girl up in the Yukon this Thursday. I'm very happy for them, but the whole thing makes me feel old. Why? Because his sister is the same age as I am, and I, to the best of my knowledge, have not yet given birth. But this is hardly a time for me to be complaining about the inadequacies of my love life. No, this is a time to celebrate. My friend gets to celebrate because he's now an uncle. His sister gets to celebrate a new addition to her family. And I get to celebrate because, no matter what happens, I don't have to live in the Yukon.