entrepreneurial spirit

Years ago, we had a supermarket distributor who lived on our block. As kids, we never gave the guy much thought, until one morning, when walking up the road to catch the school bus, we noticed his trash. Sitting out at the curb, awaiting the garbage collectors, were two cases of Bubble Yum. Huge cardboard boxes, filled with individual boxes of gum.

As a seventh grader, this was like finding a gold mine. So naturally, me and two other kids that lived on the street filled our bookbags with gum. We found out that a normal sized bookbag will hold about 10 boxes of bubble gum, if stuffed just right. We left behind destroyed, and now empty, cardboard boxes and our textbooks which were discretely hid in the neighbor's shrubs. The quest for knowledge had nothing on multiple packs of free bubble gum.

In our seventh grade mindset, we never once gave thought as to why this gum was out on the curb. Does gum go bad? Is there an expiration date for gum? These were questions that only briefly crossed our minds. But after Pete tried an experimental piece and didn't end up dying, the gum got our stamp of approval. And so we chewed gum the entire school day...grape during math, watermelon throughout english, strawberry in social studies, and even snuck a piece while playing dodgeball during gym. When a teacher would notice us chomping away and ordered us to spit it out, another piece was inserted into our mouths the minute we sat back down at our desk.

Our chewing habits became known throughout the day, and with a plethora of gum stashed away in our lockers, a black market gum business took hold. Twenty five cents a pack, in between classes, at one of our lockers. By the end of the week we had cleared about ten dollars each, and were flying high on a major sugar rush.

Every week after that, we dug through that guy's garbage. We even expanded our search to include the trash of our other neighbors. Unfortunately, we never found anything else of value...though my friend Mike did find an old People magazine that had a picture of Madonna on the cover. And despite a small coffee ground stain, he was able to get a dime for it from some kid in his study hall, but our golden gum days were done, our cash cow was gone.

And our entire fortune had been squandered on candy bars and extra orders of fries during lunch. If I could go back, I definitely would have invested those hard earned quarters more wisely. And, of course, I wouldn't have had to go through withdraw from the two pack a day habit that I developed.

some gifts are best kept out of the bathroom

Many people enjoy catching up on their reading while on the can, which is why many bathrooms across the country are stocked with past issues of Newsweek, Sports Illustrated and Motor Trend. And it's my guess that if libraries were stocked with toilet stalls rather than those uncomfortable wooden chairs, much more reading would get done there.

My father, on the other hand, rarely illuminates his mind while on the toilet by reading up on monthly periodicals. Rather, he plays Yatzee. When we see him arm himself with that little, hand-held Yatzee game and head into the bathroom, we know that we won't be seeing him again for quite awhile.

And while most fathers are reading up on the latest million dollar trade that the Yankee's have made, or the newest sports car model that Corvette will be offering for the upcoming year, my dad is trying to beat his previous high score by stringing multiple Yatzee's together. We're all aware of his game playing habits, so this year my sister decided that she would try to broaden his bathroom experience by getting him another game.

She bought him this little virtual reality racing game, complete with those little glasses that you slip on to make the racing experience that much more 'real', or as real as a $20 virtual racing game can be.

After dad opened the gift, and my sister explained the thought process behind her purchase, I couldn't help but think of the perils that this type of gift could bring about. So I pointed out that perhaps a virtual reality game might be best kept out of the bathroom because I could just imagine dad on the toilet, virtual glasses in place, taking hard right turns, veering quickly to the left, accelerating and braking like crazy. And, as is often the case with these driving games, shifting, twisting and leaning forward and back in relation to the action of the game. All of which may lead to quite a mess throughout the bathroom, because all of that twisting and leaning while nature is calling could lead to a decorative overhaul in hues of yellow and brown.

My dad thanked my sister for the gift, and even tried it out while on the couch after all the presents had been unwrapped, but oddly enough, the little game never did make it into the bathroom.

racism and road rage

I was driving to lunch with a co-worker the other day when, out of nowhere, she looks at me and says, "you really should slow down because you might hit some black guys."

Not really sure where she was going with this, I asked, "what are you talking about? I think I would see them before I would end up running them over."

"Not necessarily," she said. "They can sneak up on you. You can end up running over them before you even realize that it happened."

"Look," I told her, "they aren't going to suddenly materialize out of nowhere. Since when does that happen? Believe me, if they're in the middle of the street, I'm going to stop before I run them over."

"I'm just saying, you have to be careful. Just last week I ran into some while driving down the road. I didn't even realize it until it was too late. Luckily, I was fine."

"Now wait, you mean to tell me that you ran them over and just kept on going? You didn't stop? Didn't see if they were all right? And how in the world didn't you see them in the first place?"

"They blend right in with the road," she told me. "People hit them all the time, that's why you have to be careful. You act as if you have Superman vision or something, geez!"

"Look, if there are a bunch of black guys standing in the street, I'm going to stop and not run them over. Call it Superman vision if you want, but I'm quite positive that I can distinguish between them and the road. I can't believe that you're actually sitting here telling me that you ran some black guys down in your car!"

"Not black guys, you idiot! I said black ICE!"

"Oh, well never mind then." And, for fear of hitting some black ice while driving to lunch, I slowed down and made a mental note that, perhaps, I should listen more closely when my co-workers talk.

But seriously, if they ever had anything important to say, I would listen more closely...so I really don't think that this misunderstanding is all my fault.

readership...or lack thereof

Realistically, when I started writing this blog, I knew that it was not going to really ever get read. I knew that there were millions of people, all with their own blog, many of which are much more interesting and better written than mine. I also knew that, because I wasn't going to advertise the existence of my blog to friends and family, that Aunt Gertie and my old college roommate were not going to be reading or commenting on it, thus making it look like people were actually reading what I wrote.

This being said, when I first saw that someone had actually linked to my site, I was overjoyed. Thrilled of the 'faint dead away on the floor', 'pee my pants' variety. Again, not that this really meant that 'people' were reading anything I wrote, but that a 'person' was reading what I wrote...and to me, this was still 'pee in my pants' worthy. I noticed, within the next couple of weeks, that a few others had made a little link to me...yes, little old nobody me. Granted, my link was lost amidst a sea of hundreds of other links, but still...this was a link to ME! So you can imagine what heartache it was to see that these same people have since deleted me.

This realization was much like finding out that you've been crossed off of someone's Christmas card list. The first year that a card wasn't sent, you thought that perhaps it was an oversight or that the rise in stamp prices caused them to cancel the Christmas card mailings for the year. But by the third year without a card, you had to admit to yourself that you were simply erased from their address book. My feelings toward being link-deleted are much the same. The first day I realized that I was missing I thought that maybe I was accidentally deleted off of their old blogroll list...accidentally, of course...and that, once re-established, I would reappear. Sadly, after checking back the next week, and then the next, I came to realize that I was forever banished. Which then made me start to wonder, what caused this snubbing? Have they since began to realize that my writing is crap? Do they feel that by my not commenting in their little 'comment' boxes that I don't come around and read anymore? Do they feel that my readership (which is usually a whopping one or two people a week) is not enough to warrant a place on their list because the number of people that read their blogs make them more important than me? Or do they simply not like me anymore.

But I guess, to be more precise, instead of Christmas card mailings, this banishment more closely resembles those old elementary school days. The ones where your friend 'forgets' to give you an invitation to their birthday party. You think it's a simple mistake until you realize that they meant to snub you. And the automatic response is to begin a yelling match with them. You remember the ones, they went something like this...

Your little grade school friend: "I don't want you at my birthday because you're not my friend anymore."

You: "Well if I'm not YOUR friend, then you're not MY friend anymore, so HA!"

Your little grade school friend: "Well you weren't MY friend first, so HA-HA!"

You: "Well you smell funny and you're a stupid head!"

And, no matter how old you get, it seems that when push comes to shove, you often revert back to the old ways of solving problems, no matter how mature or refined you like to believe that you are. And as for a certain housewife and a cop out there in bloggerland that have long since exiled me from their linked pages, all I have to say is, "Well if I'm not YOUR friend anymore, then you're not MY friend anymore either, so HA!"

So just as I have been erased from their blogroll lists, they have been erased from mine! So there. Take that. I'm quite sure that they'll sorely miss the extra traffic that my two readers a week would have provided. And as for maturity? Who really needs it anyway, right?

how i aced my final exam

My last economics class of the semester is tomorrow night and, as is the case with many final classes, this is the one where our final exam is due. The final exam for this class was a take-home test, and we've had all week to work on it. Having a week to work on the test means that I waited until the last night to start.

It's only a 40 point, multiple choice test, so it didn't really rank that high on my, 'things to worry about' list, falling somewhere below nuclear holocaust but above losing a quarter in a vending machine. Although, in looking it over, I realized that none of the questions were anywhere to be found in the text book. Now, please don't mistake this as meaning that I actually 'read' the text book, and that this is how I knew the answers weren't somewhere 'in' the textbook, but rather that I searched through the index. And not a single page was revealed as being 'the' page that would contain the answer to the different questions that were posed.

Being a take home test, I figured that we were allowed to use any resource available...the internet included...so I went on-line in search of the answers. I simply typed in a few key words and choice phrases from the first question, scanned down the list of results, and found a website that looked promising. So I clicked on it. And before my eyes I saw the exact same question, with the exact same multiple choice answers as the one that was on my final exam. Oddly enough, all of the questions on the web were exactly the same as the ones on my test. And after scrolling down to the bottom of the web page, I saw a little 'click here to grade your test' button, which I clicked, and was then given all of the correct answers to all the questions that made up my final exam.

So basically, I stumbled across my final exam on the internet, complete with every single answer.

Now, if you've ever attended a college or even a high school class, I'm sure you've heard the 'plagiarism' speech. 'You will fail this class, be expelled from this school, and will be condemned to an eternity of fire and brimstone if you plagiarize!' Well, this college is no different, and I hear the speech at the start of every class. Yet, here was our professor taking her whole final exam, word for word, from a test that she found on-line. And she copied it, straight down to the very last period. Yep, my professor plagiarized her whole final exam.

Which is why I don't feel bad at all about having aced the test.

another worthy cause to get behind

I was out shopping this weekend in a ‘posh’ little business district downtown when I noticed quite a few people picketing in front of Victoria’s Secret. At first, I thought that perhaps there was some underwear union which was on-strike for the usual reasons…higher pay, better working conditions, a larger discount on their perfume and body wash needs…but soon realized that the picketers were of the scruffy college kid variety, a scruffiness that is never seen in a Victoria’s Secret employee.

College idealism, being what it is, I figured that this ban on Victoria’s Secret was obviously either 1) a protest against the objectification of women, 2) a plea to stop product testing on animals or 3) that this was an anti-fur demonstration…not that Victoria’s Secret is known for fur, but you never can tell.

As I neared the store, I noticed the large poster board signs nailed atop large wooden sticks stating that, ‘Victoria’s Secret is killing our planet!’. I really wasn’t sure how a few scantily clad underwear models were ruining the Earth, but luckily one of the protesters handed me a glossy postcard which clearly spelled out the crime that Victoria’s Secret was guilty of.

The card explained that they were protesting the vast amounts of trees which are killed every year to produce all the Victoria’s Secret that are mailed out. My first thought was that college kids must really be scraping the bottom of the barrel as far as causes go. Long gone are the days of the ERA, equal pay for women, and even saving all those poor whales. And then, of course, I couldn’t help wondering just how many trees died to produce the signs they were waving and the fancy little postcards that they were passing out. Unfortunately, I didn’t actually read the card until I was well past the demonstration, and it was just too cold to go back and ask them.

Though I’m guessing that because the trees died for a worthy cause, they really shouldn’t complain.

i may now be forced to learn something

So, it appears that there will be some changes on the whole grad school front. Our professor told us that, at a recent faculty meeting, that there have been rumors that the college is at risk of losing its Middle States accreditation. Now, to be honest, I'm not real certain what this 'accreditation' is or why its coming from the 'middle states'. Apparently, a degree from a non-accredited school is just as good as one from an 'accredited' school, so as far as I'm concerned, who needs it?

And besides, do we really need the approval from all those middle states? Now, if this accreditation was from the east coast, or the west coast...or even all those New England states...well, sure, let's try to keep the accreditation. California, New York, Florida...all good states as far as I'm concerned, and quite frankly, if push came to shove I'd want them to be on my side. Iowa, Nebreska, Kansas? Not so much. In a country wide brawl, my money would be on New Jersey over Oklahoma any day of the week. I would bet that this scrappy little state would kick Oklahoma's ass clear down to Mexico.

This whole pulling of accreditation stems from the fact that, apparently, the college is giving out too many A's. Which means that for the college to keep its accreditation, it'll be a whole lot tougher to get an A. Which means that I might actually have to start working. Which is the real reason I'm against this whole accreditation thing. Honestly, I have no problem with the college giving out too many A's. I've long ago given up the hope of actually 'learning'. This is nothing more than a business transaction to me. I'll pay, slide by, and you give me that piece of paper which will, hopefully, make me more marketable to businesses willing to shell out big bucks for people with that piece of paper. Hell, I'd even settle for medium to medium-big sized bucks.

But now, all because of these damn middle states, I may actually have to start 'working', which was really not a part of the original deal. All of which means that I may soon have to start looking to buy a degree from the classified ads in the back of Rolling Stone magazine. Which would suit me just fine...middle states accreditation or not.