Friday, June 26, 2009
This isn't all that funny but I felt like ranting!
The worst part about marriage, to me, is that somehow it erases your entire relationship before that day you walked into the courthouse and then got drunk at Elephant Bar. The question I always get is "how long have you been married?" and I always go into this long spiel about how I've only been married for a short amount of time but I've been with the dude for over a decade.
It think it's funny how if you're married after knowing a person for ONE DAY your relationship is viewed as this rock-solid paragon of all that is right with the world, but if you shack up with a guy for 10 years he's just a LOL boyfriend. He'd still be my LOL boyfriend if it weren't for my need of health insurance. That's probably why conservative Americans are so against universal health care--it's one great way to get people who are otherwise happy heathens to enter into a societally sanctioned union.
I generally called him my "significant other" rather than "LOL boyfriend," but we do from time to time discuss being subversive and calling each other "partner" instead of "husband and wife" so people will think we're a gay couple. I just like that word better in general, you don't hear many people calling their "partners" a ball-and-chain, or a life sentence. Generally you hear about them committing fabulous crimes together, embarking upon awesome business ventures, or playing tennis.
You don't hear people say "becoming partners with someone to have sex is like trying to buy milk at a hardware store," or other variations of "lol women become frigid once you shack up with them." I think that kind of thing is mostly why I just wanted to just be shacked up in the first place. I don't want to hear anyone's bullshit about how our time together will eventually consist of nothing but a grunt upon returning home from work followed by our separate lives of screaming about money and alcoholism.
I don't think people realize, either, that even just living together can present as difficult a problem in separating as being married. When you've lived with someone for a good long time your assets mingle, you own beloved pets together--marriage has changed none of this--our lives are the same as they've always been.
The biggest difference between tying the knot and perpetually cohabitating, however, is you get the stink eye when trying to adopt a pet from Petsmart if you're shacked up rather than married. True story! The person taking our information asked what we would do with the pets if we broke up. I asked if she asked this to married couples, and she said no. I said well if you're not concerned about that with a married couple you shouldn't be concerned about it with us, and that was that.
It's true too--that very bitchy cat is sitting next to me at this very moment, ready to hiss and express anger should I dare disturb her.
It think it's funny how if you're married after knowing a person for ONE DAY your relationship is viewed as this rock-solid paragon of all that is right with the world, but if you shack up with a guy for 10 years he's just a LOL boyfriend. He'd still be my LOL boyfriend if it weren't for my need of health insurance. That's probably why conservative Americans are so against universal health care--it's one great way to get people who are otherwise happy heathens to enter into a societally sanctioned union.
I generally called him my "significant other" rather than "LOL boyfriend," but we do from time to time discuss being subversive and calling each other "partner" instead of "husband and wife" so people will think we're a gay couple. I just like that word better in general, you don't hear many people calling their "partners" a ball-and-chain, or a life sentence. Generally you hear about them committing fabulous crimes together, embarking upon awesome business ventures, or playing tennis.
You don't hear people say "becoming partners with someone to have sex is like trying to buy milk at a hardware store," or other variations of "lol women become frigid once you shack up with them." I think that kind of thing is mostly why I just wanted to just be shacked up in the first place. I don't want to hear anyone's bullshit about how our time together will eventually consist of nothing but a grunt upon returning home from work followed by our separate lives of screaming about money and alcoholism.
I don't think people realize, either, that even just living together can present as difficult a problem in separating as being married. When you've lived with someone for a good long time your assets mingle, you own beloved pets together--marriage has changed none of this--our lives are the same as they've always been.
The biggest difference between tying the knot and perpetually cohabitating, however, is you get the stink eye when trying to adopt a pet from Petsmart if you're shacked up rather than married. True story! The person taking our information asked what we would do with the pets if we broke up. I asked if she asked this to married couples, and she said no. I said well if you're not concerned about that with a married couple you shouldn't be concerned about it with us, and that was that.
It's true too--that very bitchy cat is sitting next to me at this very moment, ready to hiss and express anger should I dare disturb her.
Thursday, June 18, 2009
The Geek and Terrible
You know you're a horrible person when. . .
You see this post on Cute Overload and your first thought is
"I wonder if they clubbed it?"
You see this post on Cute Overload and your first thought is
"I wonder if they clubbed it?"
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
The World of Stand-Up Comedia
I have had an affection for stand up comedy for a long time--I really like a few particular comedians and I try to go see their shows whenever they are in town. For the most part, though, I ruin stand-up comedy routines for myself by arguing with the comedians and their assertions about the world.
The most recent instance of this I can remember was watching an opening act where the dude's whole routine was "hey men and women are different!" and specifically, different because men like video games and women like to nag them. He went on and on and on about how his girlfriend just didn't "understand" how he could sit there playing Halo for hours on end.
No, dude, I may not play Halo but I've spent many an hour glued to the screen of various video games. Every time he kept saying this as if I should understand and commiserate with not understanding 12 hour long video game sessions. As if I should think, "you're so right dude, I totally don't get MEN." Instead I was like, man I've spent that much time playing Monster Rancher. I've gone on epic Pokemon benders that only didn't end in death because it was on a portable gaming system I could take to the toilet and kitchen with me. I play World of Warcraft--I don't even think I need to elaborate on that one.
The other type of comedy I always hear and ruin for myself is when comedians make fun of sayings and idioms. I swear I've heard more than one comedian make a joke about people saying "it was in the last place I looked!" Their slam is that "of course it was! You don't keep looking for something after you've found it!" but rather than laugh, a little voice in my head goes on for an hour about how that phrase effectively communicates the idea that one searched high and low and found the lost item in the most unexpected place. It just takes a hell of a lot less time to use the colloquial phrase.
I also groan when jokes seem to be totally lifted off of email forwards. I seriously do not care how language evolved to the point where the parkway and driveway have opposite meanings of what they sound like. Well, maybe a little, but that's an inquiry which cannot be satisfied in a ten-minute routine on Last Comic Standing. Maybe the real point is, even a modicum of knowledge about linguistics will ruin mediocre stand-up comedy for you forever.
I am also totally unable to relate when comedians (even my favorites do this from time to time) talk about how they only have sex twice a year post marriage. It's a pretty sad thing if I'm in the minority with not understanding those jokes, but when I hear Ray Romano (not one of my favorites, to clarify) say his wife only initiates sex when it's time for driver's license renewal, my first thought is "wow y'all must really suck in bed," not "hahaha that's so true."
When I hear comedians talk about, or people talk to me about sexless marriage, it's akin to them saying something like "don't you hate it when you have green and red pus pouring out of your urethra" thinking it must happen to everyone else when it really doesn't unless you need some sort of help.
I could probably write the worst comedy act I could imagine and I bet it's been performed somewhere before. First I'd have to get a sex change, and then it'd go something like this.
"Hey folks! I would have been late, but my wife had a headache!
Doesn't it bother you when you're playing video games and your wife is all 'oh mah gawd I don't understand why you do that all day' and then you're all 'I don't understand why you go shopping all day! ZING!'
I don't get it why when someone dies people are all, so and so 'passed away.' What does that even mean anyway? I know what it means to pass gas, but not to pass away! Why I think that combination of words has no meaning outside of the one assigned to it! We're really stupid for coming up with new ways to say 'he dun died' in order to make it more palatable to the loved ones of said person. Like the Chewbacca defense, it makes no sense!
You know it's funny that when a white person sees a cop they're like, 'oh I better stop speeding.' But when a black person sees a cop they're like, 'oh snap, I'm gonna get shot!' Hahahaha.
I also like to smoke a whole lot of weeeed. Man. HOLLA!!!
Like I alluded to before, I don't get to have sex much because I'm married. It's like, when I nudge my wife with my boner she just doesn't get all hot for my boring, foreplay free, mechanical love making and it's because we're married."
I know I have to be stealing someone's schtick SOMEWHERE with that.
I guess my taste in comedians isn't all that refined though because sometimes I like a comedian for delivery alone. I'd laugh my ass off just watching Lewis Black read a cooking recipe because he always sounds like he's going to accidentally poop himself in anger. This amuses me.
Anyway, I suppose I shouldn't be a critic until I've tried it. I've written out a few stand up routines in my day for the hell of it (and actually performed one in front of a speech class for a "do whatever you want" thing in my undergrad years), but I've never gone out in front of a crowd of complete strangers and tried to make them laugh. I imagine it's probably a lot like Hollywood where if you stray from the tried and true formula people get all antsy and nervous and start thinking soylent green is people. It's a pretty decent past time to get in arguments in my head over this stuff anyway, so keep on truckin', comedic exploiters of stereotypes. I salute you.
The most recent instance of this I can remember was watching an opening act where the dude's whole routine was "hey men and women are different!" and specifically, different because men like video games and women like to nag them. He went on and on and on about how his girlfriend just didn't "understand" how he could sit there playing Halo for hours on end.
No, dude, I may not play Halo but I've spent many an hour glued to the screen of various video games. Every time he kept saying this as if I should understand and commiserate with not understanding 12 hour long video game sessions. As if I should think, "you're so right dude, I totally don't get MEN." Instead I was like, man I've spent that much time playing Monster Rancher. I've gone on epic Pokemon benders that only didn't end in death because it was on a portable gaming system I could take to the toilet and kitchen with me. I play World of Warcraft--I don't even think I need to elaborate on that one.
The other type of comedy I always hear and ruin for myself is when comedians make fun of sayings and idioms. I swear I've heard more than one comedian make a joke about people saying "it was in the last place I looked!" Their slam is that "of course it was! You don't keep looking for something after you've found it!" but rather than laugh, a little voice in my head goes on for an hour about how that phrase effectively communicates the idea that one searched high and low and found the lost item in the most unexpected place. It just takes a hell of a lot less time to use the colloquial phrase.
I also groan when jokes seem to be totally lifted off of email forwards. I seriously do not care how language evolved to the point where the parkway and driveway have opposite meanings of what they sound like. Well, maybe a little, but that's an inquiry which cannot be satisfied in a ten-minute routine on Last Comic Standing. Maybe the real point is, even a modicum of knowledge about linguistics will ruin mediocre stand-up comedy for you forever.
I am also totally unable to relate when comedians (even my favorites do this from time to time) talk about how they only have sex twice a year post marriage. It's a pretty sad thing if I'm in the minority with not understanding those jokes, but when I hear Ray Romano (not one of my favorites, to clarify) say his wife only initiates sex when it's time for driver's license renewal, my first thought is "wow y'all must really suck in bed," not "hahaha that's so true."
When I hear comedians talk about, or people talk to me about sexless marriage, it's akin to them saying something like "don't you hate it when you have green and red pus pouring out of your urethra" thinking it must happen to everyone else when it really doesn't unless you need some sort of help.
I could probably write the worst comedy act I could imagine and I bet it's been performed somewhere before. First I'd have to get a sex change, and then it'd go something like this.
"Hey folks! I would have been late, but my wife had a headache!
Doesn't it bother you when you're playing video games and your wife is all 'oh mah gawd I don't understand why you do that all day' and then you're all 'I don't understand why you go shopping all day! ZING!'
I don't get it why when someone dies people are all, so and so 'passed away.' What does that even mean anyway? I know what it means to pass gas, but not to pass away! Why I think that combination of words has no meaning outside of the one assigned to it! We're really stupid for coming up with new ways to say 'he dun died' in order to make it more palatable to the loved ones of said person. Like the Chewbacca defense, it makes no sense!
You know it's funny that when a white person sees a cop they're like, 'oh I better stop speeding.' But when a black person sees a cop they're like, 'oh snap, I'm gonna get shot!' Hahahaha.
I also like to smoke a whole lot of weeeed. Man. HOLLA!!!
Like I alluded to before, I don't get to have sex much because I'm married. It's like, when I nudge my wife with my boner she just doesn't get all hot for my boring, foreplay free, mechanical love making and it's because we're married."
I know I have to be stealing someone's schtick SOMEWHERE with that.
I guess my taste in comedians isn't all that refined though because sometimes I like a comedian for delivery alone. I'd laugh my ass off just watching Lewis Black read a cooking recipe because he always sounds like he's going to accidentally poop himself in anger. This amuses me.
Anyway, I suppose I shouldn't be a critic until I've tried it. I've written out a few stand up routines in my day for the hell of it (and actually performed one in front of a speech class for a "do whatever you want" thing in my undergrad years), but I've never gone out in front of a crowd of complete strangers and tried to make them laugh. I imagine it's probably a lot like Hollywood where if you stray from the tried and true formula people get all antsy and nervous and start thinking soylent green is people. It's a pretty decent past time to get in arguments in my head over this stuff anyway, so keep on truckin', comedic exploiters of stereotypes. I salute you.
Monday, June 15, 2009
My caffienated overlord shall be appeased!
I was at the dentist recently, and on the patient form I filled out in the reception area, the form asked if I wanted to learn how I could have a whiter smile. I think it may have said "more professional smile," but the idea of tooth color having a damn thing to do with professionalism is so absurd to me I think my brain MUST have invented that one on its own.
I scoffed and checked no because there is no way possible I'll ever have white teeth. I drink enough coffee every morning to drown a whale. It's a total trade off--white teeth and sleeping in class, or alertness and a maize-hued grin. I've come to terms with the latter. There's no reason to fight it. My husband drinks more coffee than I do, so we will just have matching teeth, which will go perfectly with our matching cat sweaters and bucket hats when we totally lose our marbles.
That will be a beautiful sight, two old people, in cat sweaters and bucket hats, with poop brown teeth, swigging coffee. Perhaps spiked with whiskey. When you're old people will probably give you a pass for being perpetually inebriated.
But I digress.
I've run across many people who have been trying to kick their caffeine habits. I suppose getting a headache whenever you don't give in to the black, bitter goodness of joe kinda sucks, I guess. I wouldn't know--I don't go without the substance long enough to suffer from any sort of withdrawals.
I don't think my advice to a meth addict suffering without getting his or her fix daily would be "well shoot, if it sucks to go without just pump your veins full of more!" But I guess I feel caffeine addiction is pretty innocuous and I'm not condemning myself to wandering shirtless and toothless through grocery stores in my middle age if I don't give it up.
My biggest problem with coffee is if I order it at a restaurant. At home I portion control myself--I make about half a pot, and I have to leave the comfort of my computer chair to get more, so after a while it just gets cold and I don't want it anymore. When I'm at a restaurant I can drink like fifty cups because a good waitperson will fill it up over and over and over and I'll keep drinking it over and over and over until my left eye begins to twitch uncontrollably and my fingers continually tap the beat of "shave and a haircut."
But at least I'm getting my $1.50 worth of water filtered through bean dirt.I probably raise the water bill of every breakfast establishment I patronize. That's okay because I don't think two eggs, some potatoes, and tube-shaped pig ass is really worth $9.
I'm kind of a weenie when it comes to coffee too. When I'm at home I'm all bad ass, like, "I like my coffee BLACK like my SOUL" and I pound down five cups of unadulterated Columbian. If I go to Starbucks or any other coffee shop type place and get a regular cup of black coffee, I think it tastes like burnt ass and I yearn for flavored creamers. THEY HAVE NONE. They're like, man, this is the real stuff. You want to taste this stuff. All we have is sugar and powdered shit that doesn't cover up anything. YOU ARE AN UNWASHED RUBE IF YOU DO NOT ENJOY THIS BURNT-ASS-LIKE FLAVOR.
I totally cannot deny my rubeishness, and I won't. I only like my coffee black if it's weak enough to not make my taste buds vomit in unison.
Well, I am no longer under the influence of coffee at the time of writing this, so I've run out of inspiration. Now I'm under the influence of Long Island Iced Tea and that's a horse of another color. Maybe I shall pontificate upon that at some point. Same Bat Channel, Same bat Time.
I scoffed and checked no because there is no way possible I'll ever have white teeth. I drink enough coffee every morning to drown a whale. It's a total trade off--white teeth and sleeping in class, or alertness and a maize-hued grin. I've come to terms with the latter. There's no reason to fight it. My husband drinks more coffee than I do, so we will just have matching teeth, which will go perfectly with our matching cat sweaters and bucket hats when we totally lose our marbles.
That will be a beautiful sight, two old people, in cat sweaters and bucket hats, with poop brown teeth, swigging coffee. Perhaps spiked with whiskey. When you're old people will probably give you a pass for being perpetually inebriated.
But I digress.
I've run across many people who have been trying to kick their caffeine habits. I suppose getting a headache whenever you don't give in to the black, bitter goodness of joe kinda sucks, I guess. I wouldn't know--I don't go without the substance long enough to suffer from any sort of withdrawals.
I don't think my advice to a meth addict suffering without getting his or her fix daily would be "well shoot, if it sucks to go without just pump your veins full of more!" But I guess I feel caffeine addiction is pretty innocuous and I'm not condemning myself to wandering shirtless and toothless through grocery stores in my middle age if I don't give it up.
My biggest problem with coffee is if I order it at a restaurant. At home I portion control myself--I make about half a pot, and I have to leave the comfort of my computer chair to get more, so after a while it just gets cold and I don't want it anymore. When I'm at a restaurant I can drink like fifty cups because a good waitperson will fill it up over and over and over and I'll keep drinking it over and over and over until my left eye begins to twitch uncontrollably and my fingers continually tap the beat of "shave and a haircut."
But at least I'm getting my $1.50 worth of water filtered through bean dirt.I probably raise the water bill of every breakfast establishment I patronize. That's okay because I don't think two eggs, some potatoes, and tube-shaped pig ass is really worth $9.
I'm kind of a weenie when it comes to coffee too. When I'm at home I'm all bad ass, like, "I like my coffee BLACK like my SOUL" and I pound down five cups of unadulterated Columbian. If I go to Starbucks or any other coffee shop type place and get a regular cup of black coffee, I think it tastes like burnt ass and I yearn for flavored creamers. THEY HAVE NONE. They're like, man, this is the real stuff. You want to taste this stuff. All we have is sugar and powdered shit that doesn't cover up anything. YOU ARE AN UNWASHED RUBE IF YOU DO NOT ENJOY THIS BURNT-ASS-LIKE FLAVOR.
I totally cannot deny my rubeishness, and I won't. I only like my coffee black if it's weak enough to not make my taste buds vomit in unison.
Well, I am no longer under the influence of coffee at the time of writing this, so I've run out of inspiration. Now I'm under the influence of Long Island Iced Tea and that's a horse of another color. Maybe I shall pontificate upon that at some point. Same Bat Channel, Same bat Time.
Sunday, June 14, 2009
The Value of a Good Education
Although it's been my dream practically since I was a zygote to be an astronomer, when I finally got to college I realized all of the labs for science courses were scheduled at the same time I had to go work full time for my booze funds rent and living expenses, and thus I had to pick something piss easy more conducive to difficult scheduling in order to just get my degree and gtfo.
This was ok, I guess, since I'm probably far too lazy to be an astronomer, but I have one huge problem with the degree I DID get.
I'm not sure what the hell I learned.
Seriously, I wonder if this is the case for a good many people with a diploma with the "Bachelor of Arts" or "Bachelor of Science" title beneath their names. Sometimes my friends will assume since I was a political science major, I ought to know a damn thing about politics--but to be honest, everything I know about politics now comes from NPR. I should have just been handed a diploma after listening to NPR for four years and I probably would have gotten more out of it.
Anyway, this is a pretty disconcerting thought to me. I guess I feel bad now for being deliberately obtuse in my classes, treating them like I did my various assignments in high school (man, did ANYONE read A Tale of Two Cities when the Sparknotes were free on the internets for our perusal?).
The first political science class I had we were supposed to read Mein Kampf, and I seriously developed a contempt for the entire learning process at that point since I think it's pretty obvious assigning that detritus to be read meant my professor's brain was made of swiss cheese. I guess it's not my place to make class reading assignments, but I guess at the time I felt like Mein Kampf is something you read ABOUT and not something you actually read. I also kinda felt like ordering it on Amazon would put me on some sort of government watch list. I think the only part I read was Hitler's emo weeping about wanting to be an artist and I was just done with it at that point.
We had about five or six other books to read of better quality, but it doesn't take a lot to get me to dig in my heels, so I read one paragraph summaries of ALL OF THEM online. This was in the days before Wikipedia and Sparknotes so they all came off of people's shady Geocities sites with half marquee text. I probably had to chase "Every man has a property in his own person. This nobody has a right to, but himself." across the screen with my eyeballs while trying not to have a seizure from the blink tags.
I had to write a paper on Das Capital. No, I didn't read it, except for one line that was like "capitalism turns lifetime into a worktime," and I was like, damn it's true lifetime is like a work time, but since Marx said it if I repeat it people will want to chase after me with pitchforks and I do not want my spongy flesh to be riddled with pitchfork holes.
On the final, I had to write an essay about frickin' Mein Kampf. Which I had read one paragraph about on a Geocities site, as aforementioned. Probably a site like "Don's Pirate Trove of Nazi Awesomeness." I don't know.
And then I got an A-.
Seriously, this did not prod me into reading anything in any of my classes after that. It got to the point where I had no idea why I bothered spending money on text books that could be better spent on beer and boxed wine. I even switched schools because all of my classes were like that and I wanted to commit seppuku.
At the next school I went to I do think I learned more, and I did have to at least skim parts of the texts to pass classes. I have compiled this list of everything I've learned that hasn't been burned from my neurons by Kirkland vodka.
Things I know about the subject I have a degree in
1. Thomas L. Friedman sucks and no one should ever read anything he writes, ever.
2. Samuel P. Huntington sucks and has the insight of an 8 year old playing with G.I. Joes
3. Francis Fukuyama sucks too but I kinda feel sorry for him being total epic fail
4. Eastern Europe has had hard times after the fall of communism and stuff
5. You know when you're a little kid and you make up hypothetical situations to your parents, siblings and friends that are really absurd and could never happen but you want to know anyway? Some people still did that as adults except they called it Game Theory and I forgot what it's about except that it wasn't worth remembering.
6. Iraq is a hot mess
7. Thomas Jefferson said something cool about atheists not picking his pockets or breaking his legs
8. Andrew Jackson was kind of a psycho
9. Martin Van Buren was Andrew Jackson's boyfriend and we can blame him for this mess of a two party political system, and they didn't even bother to leave any presidential yaoi behind. Jerks.
10. Machiavelli's The Prince is a totally short, sweet read.
11. Aristotle thought slaves were cool as long as they were retarded
12. Socrates and Glaucon probably engaged in some really not hot yaoi since Socrates was like 100 years old and looked like Gollum from Lord of the Rings, I think
13. If Socrates ever came to the future in a time machine every philosophy and political science professor in the U.S. would immediately offer their rectums to him for his use
14. For some reason college professors think you need to read the Federalist Papers EVERY QUARTER
15. The federalist president Adams totally pulled a dick move before Thomas Jefferson's presidency with the whole Midnight Justices Act thing, but luckily Justice Marshall took the opportunity to incorrectly interpret a statute in order to create the whole foundation of judicial review as we know it. Great beginning there, I know.
16. There's like, three branches of government or something
17. If I ever have to read anything written by John Locke again I will vomit
18. St. Thomas Aquinas's arguments could be refuted by a 10 year old
19. If I draw too many pictures of penises during class my ink will run out too fast
20. If you're ever president and die in a month, poli sci (and history, I assume) students are the only people who will know about you in the future.
21. Pufendorf has a funny name but I still don't want to read his crap
22. Hobbes is one of those dudes who constantly talked about god in his writings but everyone thinks he was an atheist anyway.
23. Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!
24. Maps become outdated really fast since the former Yugoslavia et. al. undergoes mitosis and divides once every couple of years.
25. Rousseau was right. We should all go back to the forest and never do any of this book learning crap.
I guess I learned more than that but I'm bored of itemizing it. Yes most of that was hyperbolic and I remember more detail about that stuff.
I guess bachelor's degrees aren't really meant to give you an expertise in any subject. They're just meant to make it easier to get $10 - $12 an hour office jobs in the hopes that one day you will climb that corporate ladder from one soul-sucking job to another until you reach the top and realize you wasted your life and kill the pain by snorting blow off of hookers.
Woo that seems like a good point to end this.
This was ok, I guess, since I'm probably far too lazy to be an astronomer, but I have one huge problem with the degree I DID get.
I'm not sure what the hell I learned.
Seriously, I wonder if this is the case for a good many people with a diploma with the "Bachelor of Arts" or "Bachelor of Science" title beneath their names. Sometimes my friends will assume since I was a political science major, I ought to know a damn thing about politics--but to be honest, everything I know about politics now comes from NPR. I should have just been handed a diploma after listening to NPR for four years and I probably would have gotten more out of it.
Anyway, this is a pretty disconcerting thought to me. I guess I feel bad now for being deliberately obtuse in my classes, treating them like I did my various assignments in high school (man, did ANYONE read A Tale of Two Cities when the Sparknotes were free on the internets for our perusal?).
The first political science class I had we were supposed to read Mein Kampf, and I seriously developed a contempt for the entire learning process at that point since I think it's pretty obvious assigning that detritus to be read meant my professor's brain was made of swiss cheese. I guess it's not my place to make class reading assignments, but I guess at the time I felt like Mein Kampf is something you read ABOUT and not something you actually read. I also kinda felt like ordering it on Amazon would put me on some sort of government watch list. I think the only part I read was Hitler's emo weeping about wanting to be an artist and I was just done with it at that point.
We had about five or six other books to read of better quality, but it doesn't take a lot to get me to dig in my heels, so I read one paragraph summaries of ALL OF THEM online. This was in the days before Wikipedia and Sparknotes so they all came off of people's shady Geocities sites with half marquee text. I probably had to chase "Every man has a property in his own person. This nobody has a right to, but himself." across the screen with my eyeballs while trying not to have a seizure from the blink tags.
I had to write a paper on Das Capital. No, I didn't read it, except for one line that was like "capitalism turns lifetime into a worktime," and I was like, damn it's true lifetime is like a work time, but since Marx said it if I repeat it people will want to chase after me with pitchforks and I do not want my spongy flesh to be riddled with pitchfork holes.
On the final, I had to write an essay about frickin' Mein Kampf. Which I had read one paragraph about on a Geocities site, as aforementioned. Probably a site like "Don's Pirate Trove of Nazi Awesomeness." I don't know.
And then I got an A-.
Seriously, this did not prod me into reading anything in any of my classes after that. It got to the point where I had no idea why I bothered spending money on text books that could be better spent on beer and boxed wine. I even switched schools because all of my classes were like that and I wanted to commit seppuku.
At the next school I went to I do think I learned more, and I did have to at least skim parts of the texts to pass classes. I have compiled this list of everything I've learned that hasn't been burned from my neurons by Kirkland vodka.
Things I know about the subject I have a degree in
1. Thomas L. Friedman sucks and no one should ever read anything he writes, ever.
2. Samuel P. Huntington sucks and has the insight of an 8 year old playing with G.I. Joes
3. Francis Fukuyama sucks too but I kinda feel sorry for him being total epic fail
4. Eastern Europe has had hard times after the fall of communism and stuff
5. You know when you're a little kid and you make up hypothetical situations to your parents, siblings and friends that are really absurd and could never happen but you want to know anyway? Some people still did that as adults except they called it Game Theory and I forgot what it's about except that it wasn't worth remembering.
6. Iraq is a hot mess
7. Thomas Jefferson said something cool about atheists not picking his pockets or breaking his legs
8. Andrew Jackson was kind of a psycho
9. Martin Van Buren was Andrew Jackson's boyfriend and we can blame him for this mess of a two party political system, and they didn't even bother to leave any presidential yaoi behind. Jerks.
10. Machiavelli's The Prince is a totally short, sweet read.
11. Aristotle thought slaves were cool as long as they were retarded
12. Socrates and Glaucon probably engaged in some really not hot yaoi since Socrates was like 100 years old and looked like Gollum from Lord of the Rings, I think
13. If Socrates ever came to the future in a time machine every philosophy and political science professor in the U.S. would immediately offer their rectums to him for his use
14. For some reason college professors think you need to read the Federalist Papers EVERY QUARTER
15. The federalist president Adams totally pulled a dick move before Thomas Jefferson's presidency with the whole Midnight Justices Act thing, but luckily Justice Marshall took the opportunity to incorrectly interpret a statute in order to create the whole foundation of judicial review as we know it. Great beginning there, I know.
16. There's like, three branches of government or something
17. If I ever have to read anything written by John Locke again I will vomit
18. St. Thomas Aquinas's arguments could be refuted by a 10 year old
19. If I draw too many pictures of penises during class my ink will run out too fast
20. If you're ever president and die in a month, poli sci (and history, I assume) students are the only people who will know about you in the future.
21. Pufendorf has a funny name but I still don't want to read his crap
22. Hobbes is one of those dudes who constantly talked about god in his writings but everyone thinks he was an atheist anyway.
23. Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!
24. Maps become outdated really fast since the former Yugoslavia et. al. undergoes mitosis and divides once every couple of years.
25. Rousseau was right. We should all go back to the forest and never do any of this book learning crap.
I guess I learned more than that but I'm bored of itemizing it. Yes most of that was hyperbolic and I remember more detail about that stuff.
I guess bachelor's degrees aren't really meant to give you an expertise in any subject. They're just meant to make it easier to get $10 - $12 an hour office jobs in the hopes that one day you will climb that corporate ladder from one soul-sucking job to another until you reach the top and realize you wasted your life and kill the pain by snorting blow off of hookers.
Woo that seems like a good point to end this.
Saturday, June 13, 2009
Dr. Scrachnsniff is ready to see you now
I was just thinking how it would suck to be in the X-Men universe and have a power that makes you ostracized, while in this universe that power would merit nothing more than a fifteen minute daily show segment. I wonder how people in the X-Men universe could tell the difference between actual powers and stuff that's just a defect. I mean sure, having feet 20x the size of normal might be useful for stomping out forest fires, but surely wasn't outside of the realm of possibility in the world pre mutants.
Let's take, for example, a heightened sense of smell as a mutant power. I could see someone having that RIGHT NOW, but it'd be way worse in the X-Men universe. That "power" would suck. I assume for a human and not a dog that always being aware of feces in the area would not be good times. Engaging in oral sex might require a lot more planning and showering than it does for most. You might come to like these smells, like a dog, but then you might be tempted to eat out of the cat box like a dog and that's just no good.
In the universe we live in, with a super sense of smell, you could get paid as least as well as a German shepherd to findibuprofen pot in the backpacks of middle schoolers, and you'd get a Today Show segment. In that universe you'd be shunned by society at large AND I think Wolverine probably already has that power in combination with being an immortal so you'd be entirely superflous. You'd be chased by pitchforks by larger society, and laughed out of the admissions office of Professor Xavier's School for Gifted Children or whatever the heck it's called.
TOTAL SUCK.
That having been said, I think that'd at least be an easy power to hide. Maybe not when people start to wonder how you know they farted when no one else in the room smells anything, but I think if on the onset of puberty you suddenly have a heightened awareness of sharts you will probably learn to just shut the hell up about them pretty quickly.
This train of thought also got me wondering why we have hearing and vision tests but not smell tests. I should totally go into olfactory science or something and develop smelling-aids. Sure, the sense of smell is probably not as essential to our daily lives, but I bet some people out there wish baking brownies was fun again.
I also just think it'd be fun to devise a method of determining one's smell capabilities. With a vision test you look at letters from big to small, with hearing, sounds from soft to loud at various frequencies, crudely stated. I know it's more complicated than that, but for the sake of comparison, I suppose a smell test could test you from fresh to putrid (like frequencies) and from a mere waft to gag-reflex inducing pungent (like loud to soft).
I think this is possible--I've been on "Soaring over California" at Disneyland's California Adventure and they make you smell some perfumey crap at some point during the ride. I guess the major problem is making the scent particles gtfo before introducing another, but I'm sure that's nothing a clever nostril fan couldn't fix.
So suppose you did a smell test, and you could detect the faintest of lawn mower clippings in bottled form, and in another instance could determine that what you were smelling was the five day old dung of a racoon after having licked a can of Chef Boyardee ravioli clean. This I think would merit a smellogram score of the highest quality, and that fifteen minute daily show segment.
And you could silently count your blessings that the X-Men universe is only fiction.
Let's take, for example, a heightened sense of smell as a mutant power. I could see someone having that RIGHT NOW, but it'd be way worse in the X-Men universe. That "power" would suck. I assume for a human and not a dog that always being aware of feces in the area would not be good times. Engaging in oral sex might require a lot more planning and showering than it does for most. You might come to like these smells, like a dog, but then you might be tempted to eat out of the cat box like a dog and that's just no good.
In the universe we live in, with a super sense of smell, you could get paid as least as well as a German shepherd to find
TOTAL SUCK.
That having been said, I think that'd at least be an easy power to hide. Maybe not when people start to wonder how you know they farted when no one else in the room smells anything, but I think if on the onset of puberty you suddenly have a heightened awareness of sharts you will probably learn to just shut the hell up about them pretty quickly.
This train of thought also got me wondering why we have hearing and vision tests but not smell tests. I should totally go into olfactory science or something and develop smelling-aids. Sure, the sense of smell is probably not as essential to our daily lives, but I bet some people out there wish baking brownies was fun again.
I also just think it'd be fun to devise a method of determining one's smell capabilities. With a vision test you look at letters from big to small, with hearing, sounds from soft to loud at various frequencies, crudely stated. I know it's more complicated than that, but for the sake of comparison, I suppose a smell test could test you from fresh to putrid (like frequencies) and from a mere waft to gag-reflex inducing pungent (like loud to soft).
I think this is possible--I've been on "Soaring over California" at Disneyland's California Adventure and they make you smell some perfumey crap at some point during the ride. I guess the major problem is making the scent particles gtfo before introducing another, but I'm sure that's nothing a clever nostril fan couldn't fix.
So suppose you did a smell test, and you could detect the faintest of lawn mower clippings in bottled form, and in another instance could determine that what you were smelling was the five day old dung of a racoon after having licked a can of Chef Boyardee ravioli clean. This I think would merit a smellogram score of the highest quality, and that fifteen minute daily show segment.
And you could silently count your blessings that the X-Men universe is only fiction.
Thursday, June 11, 2009
A rundown of getting ready
Here is something about me--every neuron in my brain is dedicated to the absorption of whatever I'm learning in school, and it has appeared to have sloughed the ability to do ANYTHING ELSE. As a consequence, I never remember where I put anything, where anything is, or how to get anywhere.
Women are usually stereotypically pegged as slow to get out of the house due tosocietal pressure an insatiable need to gussy up--but I just wear embarrassingly geeky t shirts and jeans, rake my fingers through my mad-scientistesque hair and call it a day. My time is mostly taken up by running around like a freshly decapitated chicken, searching for basic things I need in order to not be arrested for indecent exposure.
First thing I do is search for my bra (after brushing teeth and stuff--I think I'm the most head-up-ass person on earth but I'll concede that title to anyone who could lose a shower and tooth brush). Well, one of three bras. Any will do, but they are all consistently rude and go missing. Finding one is often not easily accomplished, and since I start getting ready 5 minutes prior to needing to leave, I have to think fast. I proceed to throw a tantrum, and then dig into the deep recesses of my dresser drawer and make do with a training bra from middle school that makes my boobins look like triangular orangutan teats.
Finding a shirt and pants is not difficult because I'll wear anything lying around on the floor that doesn't smell like armpit musk, and since the floor is my hamper there is a plethora to choose from. A quick sniff and I'm off.
The next problem for me usually comes with finding my glasses. I'm nearsighted so I mostly only use them when I'm out of the house, because otherwise I'm on my computer or playing DS and those things are, well, near. Hence, no need for glasses. Because of this, I make life into a Where's Waldo game for myself whenever I come home from school because I put down my glasses wherever I reflexively think to do so, and this sort of muscle-memory impulse doesn't imprint location into my brain. Thus I have to search every dresser, night stand, desk, table, counter, and other such surface in my entire home because any of them could be the current resting place of my glasses. This whole time I am freaking out wondering if I left them at school, or in my husband's car, or anywhere that's had the misfortune of my presence the previous day. Usually I find them somewhere I've already looked five times but didn't notice them because for some reason I don't recognize things right in front of my face.
After that is done, I'm pretty much done except for the not so small task of making sure the stuff I need to take with me is in order. This usually consists of my keys so I can get back home, my wallet, cell phone, any books, papers and homework I may need for the day. . .usually this is all on a desk somewhere, but if I went out the day before I may have transferred my keys and wallet to my purse, which means I have to find my purse, and once I find it, fish for the required items within it.
This should be easy for me--the only reason I even have a purse is because my mom buys me one every year in the vain hopes that I will one day take an interest in feminine things. They generally get stashed in the closet for future use when the one I have falls apart into strings of purse confetti. I do not like to waste things. That having been said, I usually have three things total in this cavernous beast known as a "purse," and the rest is empty space. STILL I have a difficult time recovering my keys and cell phone beneath my wallet. I'll scour my purse with one hand, decide these things aren't in it, flail about my home in search of them, and repeat twice before dumping out my purse and realizing they were in there all along.
All of this contributes to the fact that I am incredibly high strung and it's a miracle I don't have high blood pressure, and that I haven't had a heart attack at my tender age. There should seriously be a word for this and I should have a note from the doctor to have an excuse to be potentially late everywhere I go. It could be called Dorkorrhea, a sputtering of dorkish ineptitude everywhere. Like diarrhea or logorrhea or otorrhea except it's your obnoxious dorky habits instead.
Maybe I'm onto something. Maybe.
Women are usually stereotypically pegged as slow to get out of the house due to
First thing I do is search for my bra (after brushing teeth and stuff--I think I'm the most head-up-ass person on earth but I'll concede that title to anyone who could lose a shower and tooth brush). Well, one of three bras. Any will do, but they are all consistently rude and go missing. Finding one is often not easily accomplished, and since I start getting ready 5 minutes prior to needing to leave, I have to think fast. I proceed to throw a tantrum, and then dig into the deep recesses of my dresser drawer and make do with a training bra from middle school that makes my boobins look like triangular orangutan teats.
Finding a shirt and pants is not difficult because I'll wear anything lying around on the floor that doesn't smell like armpit musk, and since the floor is my hamper there is a plethora to choose from. A quick sniff and I'm off.
The next problem for me usually comes with finding my glasses. I'm nearsighted so I mostly only use them when I'm out of the house, because otherwise I'm on my computer or playing DS and those things are, well, near. Hence, no need for glasses. Because of this, I make life into a Where's Waldo game for myself whenever I come home from school because I put down my glasses wherever I reflexively think to do so, and this sort of muscle-memory impulse doesn't imprint location into my brain. Thus I have to search every dresser, night stand, desk, table, counter, and other such surface in my entire home because any of them could be the current resting place of my glasses. This whole time I am freaking out wondering if I left them at school, or in my husband's car, or anywhere that's had the misfortune of my presence the previous day. Usually I find them somewhere I've already looked five times but didn't notice them because for some reason I don't recognize things right in front of my face.
After that is done, I'm pretty much done except for the not so small task of making sure the stuff I need to take with me is in order. This usually consists of my keys so I can get back home, my wallet, cell phone, any books, papers and homework I may need for the day. . .usually this is all on a desk somewhere, but if I went out the day before I may have transferred my keys and wallet to my purse, which means I have to find my purse, and once I find it, fish for the required items within it.
This should be easy for me--the only reason I even have a purse is because my mom buys me one every year in the vain hopes that I will one day take an interest in feminine things. They generally get stashed in the closet for future use when the one I have falls apart into strings of purse confetti. I do not like to waste things. That having been said, I usually have three things total in this cavernous beast known as a "purse," and the rest is empty space. STILL I have a difficult time recovering my keys and cell phone beneath my wallet. I'll scour my purse with one hand, decide these things aren't in it, flail about my home in search of them, and repeat twice before dumping out my purse and realizing they were in there all along.
All of this contributes to the fact that I am incredibly high strung and it's a miracle I don't have high blood pressure, and that I haven't had a heart attack at my tender age. There should seriously be a word for this and I should have a note from the doctor to have an excuse to be potentially late everywhere I go. It could be called Dorkorrhea, a sputtering of dorkish ineptitude everywhere. Like diarrhea or logorrhea or otorrhea except it's your obnoxious dorky habits instead.
Maybe I'm onto something. Maybe.
Taco Buffet
Truly there cannot be a better phrase with two meanings than "taco buffet." You're either referring to a delicious trough of spiced meats and tortillas and vegetables and cheese from which you can feed, or an attack which involves a violent beating with tacos. I can't think of a better way to die, either by overindulgence at a taco buffet, or by taco buffet.
My tombstone must read "death by tacos" or my life will have been meaningless.
This blog will be a stream of consciousness blog of silliness, pretty much. It is called the taco buffet because it encapsulates everything I stand for--Mexican food, and using food as weaponry. I will start the NTA, the National Trout Association, fighting for the rights of American citizens to be armed with frozen trout. I suppose I will have to enlist Billy Mays to sell a portable freezer briefcase in order to make this possible, but I'm sure he will think it's a great idea.
I guess it could be NTA the national taco association, but I think it'd be a lot more awkward to try and joust with tacos than with trout. There's a reason fencing swords aren't four inches long. There's also good reasons they don't consist of fish or pliable, milled corn filled with carne asada, but I think those limitations can be overcome with some ingenuity.
For example, taquitos are often called "roll tacos," and a frozen taquito of substantial length could probably be sort of like this:
Except with a taquito.
Come to think of it, I really don't think that image can be improved upon. It comes from the future where Chinese and Japanese people have merged into a super race, sent this fantasticly fabulous man as their envoy, and have acquired the [l] phoneme and incorporated it into their surnames. The wonders of Star Trek, The Original Series (something I will blog about at length, I assure you) never cease
I can't think of a good way to end this. I was going to insert a picture of terribly drawn MS paint penises but I think that would be against the blogger.com terms of service, so you will just have to imagine it as hard as you can, or open up MS paint and draw some yourself. It's pretty cathartic.
My tombstone must read "death by tacos" or my life will have been meaningless.
This blog will be a stream of consciousness blog of silliness, pretty much. It is called the taco buffet because it encapsulates everything I stand for--Mexican food, and using food as weaponry. I will start the NTA, the National Trout Association, fighting for the rights of American citizens to be armed with frozen trout. I suppose I will have to enlist Billy Mays to sell a portable freezer briefcase in order to make this possible, but I'm sure he will think it's a great idea.
I guess it could be NTA the national taco association, but I think it'd be a lot more awkward to try and joust with tacos than with trout. There's a reason fencing swords aren't four inches long. There's also good reasons they don't consist of fish or pliable, milled corn filled with carne asada, but I think those limitations can be overcome with some ingenuity.
For example, taquitos are often called "roll tacos," and a frozen taquito of substantial length could probably be sort of like this:
Except with a taquito.Come to think of it, I really don't think that image can be improved upon. It comes from the future where Chinese and Japanese people have merged into a super race, sent this fantasticly fabulous man as their envoy, and have acquired the [l] phoneme and incorporated it into their surnames. The wonders of Star Trek, The Original Series (something I will blog about at length, I assure you) never cease
I can't think of a good way to end this. I was going to insert a picture of terribly drawn MS paint penises but I think that would be against the blogger.com terms of service, so you will just have to imagine it as hard as you can, or open up MS paint and draw some yourself. It's pretty cathartic.
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