People I Meet (Round 3)

Hello again, e-people. (eeple). As you may have noticed, there was a rather extended hiatus from the Magic Blog. This was not intentional, but i have just been particularly busy these past few weeks. All i've had time to do was gloat about my foresight into the lives of athletes. I believe my last meaningful entry was on New Years, a rough day for me, but life goes on, and like Rudyard Kipling, I can force my heart and nerve and sinew to serve me long after they are broken, singed, and requiring tommy john surgery. 

This new semester is (like all new things) different than the last. Classes are harder, i wake up earlier, and i associate with different sorts.

Last semester i hung out with my high school friends and my friends that used to work at Trinity.

This semester i hang out with other high school friends and my friends that used to work at Trinity.

I feel like i've matured a little bit, but not a cool way. I feel like i've lost some of that charming lack of awareness that comes with being a little foolish.

I was discussing this the other night and I realized that i don't really perceive things as "beautiful" anymore, I used to call everything beautiful. Sunsets were beautiful, people holding hands was beautiful, everything God put here had this inherent beauty that i went out of my way to find. Homeless people holding signs were beautiful, I taught myself this summer that sad things had a beauty to them to and it seemed so deep and real, and now I don't really experience that emotion with things happy or sad.

I hope that I can find it again.

I thought i got the shaft with my work schedule this semester. I work M-F and wake up at 9,6,9,6,7 throughout the week. At first I hated it, then i liked it, now i tolerate it. I can get homework done before class and have my nights free, but i still have to go to bed moderately early so i'm not dead during the day.

Mondays I have two classes.

The first is Mass Comm 3300 with Dr. Saathoff.

This class is nice because attendance is not required and the professor is remarkably personable and laid back. It's not terribly in depth so i can half pay attention. 

There are too many people in the class to really pick out any characters.

The only one that comes close is Adidas girl, a girl i caught a glimpse of across the way and thought was pretty attractive. She was wearing a vintage adidas shirt, i was wearing a retro Astros shirt, so i thought it was meant to be. She was the total opposite side of the lecture hall from me so i slowly halved the distance each class. I was finally two chairs from her and saw that not only was she less cute than i thought, but she also had a longboard. 

I sit back on the other side of the room now.

My next class is Poli Sci.

This class is actually semi-interesting, but i'm usually distractedly browsing my laptop and not paying a ton of attention. 

The real star of the class is my professor, Mr. Mayer. He is 5'5" and overwhelmingly Jewish. 

He dresses in a remarkable combination of corduroy and demin (like david sedaris) every day. He looks like he's about to uncover a velociraptor voice box and use it to save his stranded family.

This has earned him the moniker, "Indiana Jew." Mildly offensive, I know, but accurate and hilarious.

He often addresses controversial events in the realm of politics in unintentionally hilarious ways.

My personal favorite, when describing the gays in San Francisco, was, "I was wandering around town with my daughter, and I see these men, and they are walking the streets wearing leather chaps and nothing else!"

Imagine Woody Allen telling you that story wearing a hat and carrying a leather whip and you get the basic picture.

This class also has no real characters, i sit beside a friend from church and behind Brandon Carter, who while large and scary looking, doesn't really do anything out of the ordinary.

Tuesdays and Thursdays I have journalism.

My professor is intelligent and likable enough, but also kind of a penis.

Judging from him, my textbook, and my classmates, all journalists are paranoid, overly-suspicious idealots. (I just made up a word, i combined idealist and zealot, i am like shakespeare). 

While the textbook preaches objectivity and fairness, the idea of the "watchdog press" seems to take precedence over intelligent analysis of events.

There is a stereotypical ideal that the government and business are always corrupt and the little guy is always right.

My professor especially seems to view any corporation other than a small-town paper or local business as inherently suspect.

He has one exception to this rule, and ironically enough, it's one of the most corrupt and loathsome enterprises in the US.

This man, who holds truth and objectivity to be the paragons of an enlightened society spent 45 minutes of class defending the music industry.

For our first assignment he asked us if we thought pirating music was wrong and if we do it. 

The next day he got up on a soapbox about music copyright, and proceeded to call out the people that admitted to downloading music illegally, which he claimed was 80% of the class.

Then he called out me (not by name), because I had the cajones to say in my written response in the blue book that it was right to pirate music. The irony of this situation is that the vast majority of my music is paid for.

He refused to accept that perhaps there was a reason that people refused to pay for shit music and that the industry may deserve what is happening.

This was about 3 weeks into class, and since then it's proceeded deeper and deeper into tinfoil hat territory; the suspicion of enterprise just exceeds rationality it's like the classroom exists outside of the real world.

Anyway.

This class is small and fueled by discussion, as such more people catch my eye/annoy me.

I sit in the second of four rows on the left side of the room, I will describe companions  in relation to where their voices come into my ears.

At the leftmost top corner is Mild Manner Black Guy, he made a good point early in the semester so now the professor calls on him all the time, unfortunately, his quality has slipped considerably.

Closer to me, but still in that general area is Dapper Dan.

This guy has an opinion on everything, yet manages to say nothing of any substance, he just lets out a thick drawl of platitudes or reconstructions of whatever the professor said, with the occassional awkward joke.

Directly behind me rests the bane of my learning experience.

If you are familiar with me outside of the intertrons you have probably heard me rail against the female opinion writer of Texas Tech's paper, the venerable Daily Toreador. 

She's uninformed, unable to think critically, and thinks the Huffington Post is a legitimate news source. She is the definition of the idiotic "liberal because it's fashionable" college student.

Her opinions will literally send me into a fit of rage, not because of what they are, but because of how they are presented. I have never seen any person celebrate ignorance quite like her. I'm no apologist for the GOP, but the way she goes off about conservatives makes me want to jump off a roof, or more accurately, push her off a roof (just for a scare, no actual injury). We get it, GW sucked you don't need to browbeat us with your idiotic opinions you regurgitate from the Al Franken podcast. 

Her article on the Israel/Palestine conflict was so misinformed and failed to remotely capture the complexities of the situation or take into account 4000 years of history in the region, it made me want to cut myself.

Anyway, i have the distinct pleasure of sitting directly in front of her in class, and for 10 minutes before the professor shows up i have to listen to her yammer to the girl beside her, who is identically stupid.

It's not that she's opinionated, that's fine, it's that she takes each and every opportunity to stand on her soapbox, and that soapbox must surly contain johnson and johnson no tears, because God knows she's too retarded keep it out of her eyes. 

Really, do you think the rest of the class cares as you speak, conveniently loud enough, about your view on abortion, religion, or politics. We don't, no one does. Even if you were remotely informed no one would, you're just creating awkwardness and tension, all the while patting yourself on the back like you're some sort of cultural luminary.

And it doesn't end when class starts, oh no.

A clip of GW speaking comes onscreen, "I'm sooooooo glad he's not our president." 

When discussing the Michael Phelps situation (called it), a girl remarks that she doesn't think Lindsay Lohan is good influence because she parties all the time, and does drugs, and is a lesbian. "What is wrong with being a lesbian?"

How does she miss the context of the statement? It has nothing to do with being a lesbian, it was about a pattern of self-destructive behavior. It's not just her, it's the entire class and the professor encourages it, no one looks at context, they just focus on idiotic buzzwords. 

I used to think i lacked the moral fiber to succeed in that class, now i realize that i'm just smart enough to see the shades of grey.

Beside her sits Coolio. I have no idea what race this man is, he could be white, black, or latino. All i know is that he has dreadlocks, it's quite possible some terribly misfortunate farmer plucked him out the ground by his dreads, like a radish. He never has the correct answer and always offers some stupid off topic remark when called on; I don't appreciate him being behind me. I also recently learned that he is a club promoter, which only adds to my distaste.

Continuing with our tour of idiocy.

On the same row that i sit on and to the right of me is Carmine the Bowler. I call her this because she looks like Janeane Garofalo, and acts like her character in Mystery Men with a little bit of Kim Kelly from Freaks and Geeks sprinkled in.

She is offended by literally everything. Anytime she opens her mouth in class it's like a maelstrom of haughtiness is unleashed, and to my knowledge, no one has ever said anything unkind or critical to her, the professor could ask her the date and she would flip out.

Personally, she is not without a sassy charm, but in discussion she just adds to the overwhelming awkwardness of class discussion.

At the end of my row are the only two people that I like.

One is a thoughtful looking guy with glasses who looks like he would bust a nut if a new Flaming Lips album came out, but, defying stereotypes, he knows a lot about sports.

More importantly, he always answers correctly, sparing all of us from an assault by the peanut gallery.

Beside him sits the other person I like, a cute girl who also likes sports. She also always gets the answer right. I was cursed by not having a last name in the C-D range so i don't get to sit on that side of the room.

My next class makes me sleep tears of boredom. It is US History up til the Civil War, focusing on the period between the Revolution up until Ft. Sumpter, aka, the boringer part.

The professor is ex-military and therefor very specific in the way he does things. Attendance is required and the tests are all essay form. This would be fine if it wasn't a Freshman required class that is equivalent to high school history. The only semi-cool bit is that we get to use clickers to take surveys and such.

I am too unconscious to take heed of anyone in this class. I sit beside Christian and J-Hoff.

The week just rotates around that, except for Friday, where i also have a history discussion. 

My TA is cool, but not as cool as the one last semester that just told us to leave after he called roll.

That's basically the extent of my day. I will try to write more. Also, be on the lookout for Leafy!, the newest sensation in music blogging.