My Week: In Movie Clip Style

Yes, I'm actually finding time to blog twice this week. In this scene, the role of Hunter Barry is played by Man in Cowboy Hat, Graduation is played by the Truck, Graduation Paperwork is played by the gun-toting drug dealers, and Economics Homework will be played by the dog.

Okay, now that that's explained, allow me to elaborate. I have just finished up roughly a month's worth of getting papers filled out, signed, stamped, and signed again in order to graduate in May (related note: OHMYGODHOWCANIBEGRADUATING?!). In the process of filling out one of the forms, I discover that I am missing a class needed for my Econ degree. I was surprised because I double-checked before this semester started and I knew I had all the advanced courses I need, from Econometrics to the Development of Third World Economies to Another Intimidating Sounding yet Impressive Course Title. It turns out the course I needed was "Intro to Math in Social Sciences". Interestingly enough, despite being an intro course, it's not needed as a prerequisite for any of the courses offered in Economics. Although I suspect that may be more a symptom of the department rather than the class. After all, despite Calculus being required for the degree, it was not a prerequisite for Microeconomic Theory (aka Applied Calculus). And that's how I gained an extensive knowledge of derivatives before opening a calc book. But I digress.

Now, I am a reasonable man, but it appears that the Records Department would not accept that having passed every Upper Division Economics course I needed for a degree was a sufficient "intro". Luckily, after much loophole searching, I discovered I didn't need a math course I was in this semester. So I fill out the course substitution work and sell my advisor on the idea. I take it to the Econ Office, who tells me I need the approval of the Math Department. The Math Department Chair says he can't actually sign it, but he can give his endorsement for the substitution. However, he'll only endorse it if another math professor agrees with it. So we find a math teacher who promptly agrees with me. I go back to the Econ Building and I'm told to get the information systems chair to sign it. However, he's also hesitant and demands a talk with me before signing it, and then goes over to the chair of the Econ Department to sign it. The Econ Chair asks for an explanation and by now, the fourth telling, I had perfected the story. The IS Chair sends me out of the room to talk with the Econ Chair and I ultimately find out it was the Econ chair's call all along and he approved it. The good news is that counted as my exercise for the day!

Mark Twain say what?

So I'm reading Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain these days. Don't mistake that for me actually being able to enjoy reading a book, as MTSU is determined the suck every last moment of my fleeting time here with work (apparently there are legitimate reasons why no one takes 18 hours their last semester. I thought it was just superstition!). I came across an interesting passage in which Mr. Twain discusses how having a freakishly good memory like one that, for instance, was able to recite large portions of Monty Python from memory (bonus story: one day in Medieval History, Dr. Haas challenged me to recite the Spanish Inquisition sketch from memory to prove how few things people have memorized. He immediately regretted that challenge.). But I digress. Twain's exact words were

Such a memory as that is a great misfortune. To it, all occurrences are of the same size. Its possessor cannot distinguish an interesting circumstance from an uninteresting one. As a talker, he is bound to clog his narrative with tiresome details and make himself an insufferable bore.

Oh no, he didn't! Mark Twain has called out my literary go-to technique "But I digress" from 130 years in the past. Well let me tell you something, Mark Twain, if that is your real name, WHICH IT ISN'T, all my details are interesting. Why? Because I sort memories into Awesome and Extra Awesome, based off of their relevance to most conversation. Awesome categories such as the Best Ninja Turtles, the date of the Battle of Fredericksburg, and the Greatest School Computer Game are stored in long term storage, only to be brought up in very specific circumstances (by the way, the answers to those questions are Donatello, December 13th 1862, and DinoPark Tycoon respectively. editor's note: I just realized those answers were all alliterative. My subconscious must be really well organized! Probably just grabbed a bunch of random answers from the "D" file and updated his Facebook with the time he saved.). Extra Awesome details see the light of day a lot more often, such as How Kansas Could Lose in the Second Round, Who I Don't want to Escape the Zombie Horde with, and Who is Most Likely a Hobbit in Disguise (the answer to all three of those questions is Bean. He had Kansas winning it all, which doomed him. I've seen him play Left 4 Dead so he's more likely to run away from the zombies and I can't outrun him; so the zombies would either overwhelm me or catch me first. And finally, he's incredibly reluctant to adventure, can't grow a beard, is about 4 feet tall and lives in a hole in the ground [I may have made that part up].).

But you're not getting off that easily, Mr. Greatest American Humorist of His Age! I've read your book (Life on the Mississippi) and guess what? Most of chapter 2 is just Huck Finn. I don't mean thematically similar, I mean you literally 19th century copied and pasted a chapter from Huck Finn into your book. What's the matter? Was 59 chapters not enough for your book? (bonus fact: Life on the Mississippi was actually published before Huck Finn came out. In a way, it was the world's first viral marketing campaign, which is pretty cool in retrospect. But Twain should have known that the future would become the past and one day mentioning his one book in his other book would cause countless people to have flashbacks to 11th grade English. The horror... the horror...). But I digress. My point is that I may ramble at times, at least I didn't have to steal my name from my workplace!

Did you think just because William Faulkner called you "the father of American literature" that means you can trash-talk whatever blogs you want? Because that right is actually promised by the First Amendment and you don't have to be putting up with Faulkner's crap to do that. Also, there will be retaliation from the blog itself.

P.S. Graduation craziness has died down a bit so I will chat about my adventures in PCB next!

No excuses, only blogging

Okay, I'm busting out of Public Finance to update my blog, which has been on my to-do list for weeks, but usually gets replaced by more rudimentary things like "Not Driving Off a Bridge". But the good news is I got a great bargain for what little sanity I had and got a ton of stuff done. The easiest to share with you is my resume tape. The resume tape is how I plead for the attention of a hiring manager at a news station. The key is the first 90 seconds, where you show off your best stand-ups in a desperate effort to get the manager to not ignore your pleas for employment.

The insiders I've shown have loved it, but what about you, average blogging viewer?!

Super Bowl- The Only Thing I'll Reliably Talk About

How is it Super Sunday already?! This is what I get for having exciting adventures with crazy results. So I've got about an hour before kickoff. Let's begin the fastest analysis of the Super Bowl on the whole internet.

Quarterbacks
This is a battle of Goliath vs a different kind of Goliath. Peyton Manning, self-described as a 6' 4 quarterback with a laser rocket arm and an endorsement contract greater than the GDP of several Third World countries, versus Drew Brees, who one man described as "a robot sent from the future, designed to tear apart NFL defenses". So we have the Chosen One, as determined by the American Consumer, versus the pinnacle of the Robot's future technology. We've already seen this fight before, when Neo fought Agent Smith at the end of the Matrix. I'll go ahead and say it, this is the first of many battles between Peyton Manning and Drew Brees. The first match-up will be a highly anticipated stalemate that ends with Peyton throwing Brees in front of a subway. Then in the next match-up, Drew Brees will kill Peyton, only to have Peyton rise from the dead and explode Drew Brees by jumping into him. Then the story gets very disappointing and I hate it forever. But I digress:
Advantage: Colts

Running Backs
The Colts have no rushing attack and embrace it. The Saints have a potentially explosive running attack but absolutely no idea how to use it. Still, they have a nonzero chance of guessing how to use it.

Advantage: Saints

Defense
The Colts best defensive player is Dwight "K. Schrute" Freeney. The Saints best defensive player is Darren Sharper. Dwight Schrute is my favorite office character, but he also has a bum ankle. However, Darren Sharper may be Sharper than the average NFL player, but is he really the Sharpest? This type of superlative adjective guessing favors the Colts.
Advantage: Colts

Prediction: Colts: Infinity +3 Saints: Infinity

NFL Madness!

We're finally here! The penultimate football games where we finally determine who gets to go to the Super Bowl and play a football game in between the commercials. Traditionally, I'd have at least one strong rooting interest in the games, whether because I'm a fan of one of the teams and they therefore are a paragon of football (Steelers, Panthers, or Cardinals) or because I dislike one of the teams and they don't deserve better than perpetual agony in defeat (Cowboys, Patriots, or Eagles). However, this year there are no villains. In fact, all the remaining teams are unusually sympathetic.

Indianapolis Colts- They're the closest thing to a villain left in the playoffs, having won their 2nd championship in franchise history in 2006. A brief history of the Colts reads as follows "Johnny Unitas, 25 years of shame and ignominy, Peyton Manning." Since they're led by America's favorite salesman/quarterback, so it's impossible to begrudge him a second championship (not counting his Double Stuff Racing League championship). On an unrelated note, I suddenly feel compelled to buy lots and lots of Oreos.

New York Jets- Ironically, their only championship came at the expense of the Colts. And now their road back to the Super Bowl involves beating up the Colts. Now, I don't mean to suggest that the Colts are to the Jets as Spinach is to Popeye the Sailor... wait a second, yes I do! But I digress. The Jets haven't won a championship in 40 years and are being led by a bunch of rookies. Maybe I'm biased, but I like the idea of employees fresh out of college thriving in their respective industry.

New Orleans Saints- Interesting fact: Before 2006, the Saints never sold all their tickets in a season. Since 2006, they've sold out all their games every year. Bonus Fact: Drew Brees joined the Saints in 2006. Conclusion: Drew Brees earned his paycheck. New Orleans has never been to a Super Bowl and this is only their second conference championship game ever. I could go on about how even the great Drew Brees is a lovable misfit, but I'm running out of time before kick off.

Minnesota Vikings- The Vikings are arguably my favorite team that I never actually root for. I don't have any reason to like that region of the country, but Minnesota has two huge advantages. One, they're the only major sports team named the Vikings that I know of, and I freakin' love Vikings. Two, they wear purple, my favorite color that I have no excuse to ever wear under any circumstance. Three, the last two powerhouse forces to wear purple into battle were the Utah Jazz (my favorite basketball team, on account of the amount of dinosaurs found in Utah) and the Roman Senate (my favorite ancient government). But I digress. The Vikings also have never won a Super Bowl. Oh, also, a Vikings victory would justify the hype we gave Brett Favre this summer.

All right, let's enjoy some football today!

Winter Break In Review

As I write this, the forced march known as College is just days away from resuming. I don't exactly hate school, but it's hard to be enthusiastic when winter break seemingly flew by. For most students, MTSU's winter break was a decent length. They finished finals by the 17th of December and don't have so much as a syllabus to worry about until January 14th. However, between New Orleans and housing responsibilities (specifically spring training, but not the fun baseball kind), my break lasted about half as long (December 22nd through January 7th). New Orleans was crazy fun (more on that later, but that story would take too long for me to work out tonight), but it left me with an impossible situation. I had a little more than two weeks to get in the essentials of break. Those essentials are as follows:

1. Seeing High School Friends
2. Sleeping
3. Partying
4. Purging the Horrors of Last Semester from Your Mind

Now, I've never been a prolific party person, mostly because I come up with random alliteration that no one appreciates in a party setting (unlike a blog, where the brilliance is preserved in glorious HTML for all eternity). It also doesn't help that I'm not a big drinker, which is a requirement for college parties. It's not because of any moral issues I have with alcohol or because I can't control myself. I just can't stand the taste of booze. I believe it's because I have the taste buds of a twelve year old, because I also can't stand the taste of coffee (unless it is significantly more milkshake than coffee). However, this is probably for the best for mankind if you think about it. I'm already louder and more enthusiastic than about 99.5% of the world population, so does society really want to see what would happen if I turned to one of the most potent stimulants? The answer is yes, but only if they want to see me explode. As for alcohol, it is famous for its ability to lower people's inhibitions. For most people, this helps them unwind a bit. Unfortunately, I have precious few inhibitions to begin with (as Bean can attest to if you bring up the "Ear Lobe" incident from High School) so consuming alcohol could result in negative inhibitions. That means I would respond to something before it happened, breaking a fundamental rule of causality and lead to the entire universe collapsing on itself from the subsequent insanity.

In summary, by not drinking, I ensure that the entire universe does not implode.

That sounds much cooler than "Hates the taste" and is equally accurate (probably).

But I digress, the point of all that is while I am not much of a party person in the traditional collegiate sense, I did hang out with a lot of good friends all at once. On a related note, most of them were high school friends who I have kept close contact with during college. At high school graduation, one of the valedictorians said that we would likely not see anyone from high school again after graduation (or something to that effect). To her I say "Suck it!". I can be petty too!

Really, the only aspect in which this break was disappointing was the lack of sleeping until 2 PM and the lack of purging the horrors of how soul-crushingly bad History of American Sports was.

So that was my break in summary. Here are a few final quick thoughts from today's news that I care about:

• Sarah Palin joined Fox News as a contributor, creating the largest lightning rod of hate the Huffington Post has ever encountered.
• Pete Carroll leaves sunny USC that brought him fame and fortune for dreary Seattle in a league where he was an average coach at best. This means that the NCAA is about to crack something big on Carroll and USC flagrantly violating recruitment rules. As usual, the NCAA is a day late and a dollar short since everyone involved in the recruiting violation will have already received huge paydays and fled to the safety of the NFL (not that that will stop USC from being hammered down).
• Mark McGwire admits to using steroids in his record (and bicep) shattering season in 1998. In a related story, the sky admits to being blue.