Some "Do's" For Good Behavior

A little while ago, I posted some “don’t” regarding social interaction, at least as it relates to me. I touched on some annoying linguistic patterns and gave some advice on proper body shape. This counsel was pretty well received, but some thought that the negative tone lacked something, and requested some “do’s” as well. Here they are. 

Stay out of politics

Low voter turnout is a perennial concern in American politics, but some think that is changing. Barack Obama’s historic election energized millions of young voters, and accessible, fun new shows like the Daily Show are provided many youngsters with news and opinion in an engaging way. Millions of Americans now feel empowered and part of the political process. 

Too bad. Following politics may be fun for some, but it’s annoying for everyone else, or at least me. There are exactly two main kinds of political observers: young Democrats, and old Republicans. There are exceptions, but these groups comprise about 80% of the political scene. 

Young Democrats are always really energetic and talkative, ready to spread the truth and right wrongs. Unfortunately, since they get most of their facts from the Daily Show and Michael Moore documentaries, their facts tend to be a bit suspect, like that the Bush family is secretly allied with Israel and the bin Ladens in order to corner the world’s oil supply and establish a One World government from a mountain base in Luxembourg. (If Luxembourg has mountains; if not, then the conspiracy is centered in Switzerland). And they try to tell you stuff about human rights crisis’ that you a) already know about (Darfur) and b) don’t really care about either (I mean, Darfur is sad and stuff, but it’s not like anyone you know really gets too upset, especially in this economy. You simply don’t have the luxury of worrying about people halfway across the world when there is a good chance that your next trade-in might have to be a Camry instead of a Prius or Suburban). 

Our young Democrat friends also think that they are the nonconformist bright lights of the revolution of the proletariat, though they get all their opinions pretty much straight from the exact same professors all their peers do. And the fact that they depend on their parents to pay for their dorms undercuts their independent status. 

Eventually, they grow up. Into Republicans. This is not an improvement. 

Somewhere along the way, they get rich, and start putting on a bit of weight, and growing a family and an ego. Then they starting talking to people about their prosperity, and that person seems to be me a disproportionate amount of the time. 

After a bone crushing handshake, they always effortlessly segue into a “diverting” (read: horribly boring) discussion of their money. An example: “How are you? Fine? Just like my business, I made $1.4 million in the last quarter alone.” Then they tell me exactly how they did it, which never makes the least bit of sense to me, or probably to them either. 

They always have two kids, one male, one female, both either in college or about to be in college or just left college. The son is always in some business program and is going to make lots of money (“he’ll have his first million by 30” Mr. Republican says, usually with another mangling handshake or crushing arm grip to emphasize his point), while the daughter is always majoring in something completely useless like English or Liberal Arts and is “going to make the world a better place”, says Dad, with an indulgent smile for the foibles of the young. Listening to how amazing Mr. Republican’s kids are is pretty worrying, considering that I’m college age and no one talks that way about me, so I wait till he mentions something I’m better in and innocently (with a touch of smugness) point it out (“Yep, it must have been hard for Junior to get that 3.8 GPA. I had all sorts of trouble keeping my 4.0). That usually shuts him up. 

Occasionally, you run across a young Republican or an older Democrat. The older Democrat is usually a shrill harpy with few friends, but is otherwise like her (it’s usually her) younger counterparts. Younger Republicans tend to be either snake handling lunatics or staid, humorless Babbits (little literary allusion there. Translation: @$$hole)

Stay away from sports, too. 

There are two kinds of sports fans—fans of good teams and of bad teams. Fans of bad teams have listless, despairing features and spend hours recycling complaints about the management of their teams, like they could do any better. 

Fans of good teams are intensely paranoid about any criticism of their teams, and will spend hours trying to browbeat passersby into an admission of their city’s sports superiority. I once spent a hour talking to a passionate Jimmy Brown fan about whether possibly Brown wasn’t the greatest football player ever. Then, (mercifully) I didn’t see him for about two years. But when I did see him, he rushed over to me and continued our discussion like we’d never separated. 

See what sports does to you? 

Enjoy music, at least a little. 

The present musical scene isn’t anything to make Beethoven smile, but it’s not too bad. Decent variety, cheap (at least if you steal it off Limewire, and you probably do), portable, all in all, not too bad. Unless you talk to a real music fanatic, who will be laboring under the impression that we live in a musical Sahara enlivened only by the occasional oasis of some really obscure band you’ve never heard of. 

Music geeks hate our era because they feel that modern music all sounds the same and has no imagination. They see the Seventies as a musical utopia, ignoring the fact that all the music then sounded exactly the same and took most of its ideas from Brian Eno and the Beatles (is this right? I have no idea, really, but it sounds good). Listen to David Bowie, Elton John, and Bob Dylan—they sound pretty much identical, except the first two whine in British accents. 

Music geeks tend to bill themselves as crazy rebel listeners who painstakingly seek out only the most obscure bands, but fortunately they all get their music recommendations from the same Internet forums, so when you come across one you can sound knowledgeable by reciting a few hip bands. Mention Radiohead (their songs are pretty much totally unintelligible, which makes music geeks think there must be all sorts of layers of hidden meanings there), the Shins (no idea who they are, but I know that they are cool), the Hive (most people haven’t heard of them, and they have sort of an indie name. If anyone asks you what their music sounds like, just say “Y’know, kind of alt glam rock”, which is probably close enough), and either John Cage or Philip Glass. That should get you through a conversation okay. 

Stay away from Apple too. 

Sure, Apple makes great products, but then Blackbeard was ahead of his time on facial hair and that doesn’t make him a great man either. The people at Apple are a bunch of thieves. I got (well, my parents got me, graduation present) a Mac computer, which was about twice what a Windows computer was. Then it turns out that a word processing program is another hundred dollars. A mouse? Thirty-five. A warranty? Another hundred. So basically, if you want to actually use your computer, it will be about three hundred dollars (or whatever, I’m not a math major over here) more than they say it will. 

An iPod Touch was part of the deal. But it I want to load applications to get support for him, I’ve got to pay $10 into the coffers of Steve Jobs. Bunch of pirates. 

Life Among the Rednecks

Since birth, I’ve have lived in the small town of Felicity, which is so rural that it doesn’t even have turnip trucks to fall off when residents move to the big city. (We make do with tobacco wagons). There are some disadvantages, such as the fact that every one there seems to see Deliverance as a model for life; or that most of the residents thinks the Beverly Hillbillies were city slickers before they moved, but there is at least one advantage—it presents a fascinating and instructive look into the lives of our country fried friends.

Many people think that country life is all chicken fries, souped up cars, and tractor pulls. Of course, that narrow, stereotyped view is outdated and snobbish, as there is much more to country living, such as drunken brawls, tobacco spitting contests, and Larry the Cable Guy marathons on CMT.

One of the activities most enjoyed by young Felicitians (Felictites? Feliciench? Felicitish? Felicitis? Futch?) is cruising, where you get in your car, drive up and down main street, and…that’s all really, it’s not a very intellectual activity. They enlivened it by shouting stuff at each as they drive by, but thanks to the Doppler effect (or is the Doppler effect only on trains?), you can never decipher anything they say. But that doesn’t stop them from trying, because you never know when the laws of physics might suddenly bend and permit conversations from cars traveling thirty miles per hour in opposite directions.

When not shouting out of cars, it is considered very fun to pump music really loud using just bass. You can’t really understand any of the music, but it’s probably just Nickelback anyway so they’re not missing much.

There are three kinds of cars in Felicity—new mega-gas-guzzler-climate-changing-enormo-pick-ups, smaller pickups, and decrepit sedans. The big pickups are driven by prosperous farmers, who usually have noticeable Southern accents but are actually very educated (to run a farm, you need an education). So it’s really confusing to see a guy dressed like Jed Clampett’s younger brother step out of his pick-up and start talking in a hillbilly voice about soil acidity. “Well, if the Ph o’ that thar soil in the north forty don’t not get above 6 or therebouts, we jest won’t have a tobaccy crop.”

The smaller pick-ups are driven by common farm workers. They aren’t very interesting, since they aren’t prosperous or educated, and will be doing menial, underpaid work till the end of their lives, so they mostly just look forward to Friday night down at Felicity Pub and Bar. They don’t take a very wide view of the world, and are the people Garth Brooks sings about. (See the American Honky Tonky Bar Association for example).

The sedans are driven by everyone else, and they are always American made. Which means that if they’re over five years old—and they are—they are always practically falling apart with rust patches, missing exhaust pipes, and occasionally a broken axle. Their final resting place is someone’s front yard, and they do work as serviceable yard ornaments. (At least, they’re better than plastic flamingoes, which are their main competition). And they keep away door-to-door salesmen, because no one with a car in their yard has any money to spend. Unless it’s for a subscription to Guns and Ammo magazine.

Whenever a teenaged Felicitian gets one of these sedans, he always tries to soup it up, and make it a real “hot rod.” Unfortunately, since it’s a 1995 Cavalier, he doesn’t have much to work with.

So no matter how much he works on his future General Lee, it never gets much faster. But it does get louder, because everyone revs their engine whenever possible, which would be much cooler if the speed limit along Main Street wasn’t twenty-five miles per hour.

The only memorable thing about Felicity is the Feed Mill.

With a few exceptions, everything in Felicity is about twenty years out of date—in fact, the town just heard about 9/11 two weeks ago. (The general consensus was that we need to teach the Soviets a stiff lesson). All the signs for pop (the soft drink, I mean, not what Britney Spears sings) and what not have the old logos from about seven years, ago, and the gas stations don’t have pay at the pump, so you have to go in and tell them how many gallons you need, which is not something I usually know off the top of my head, so I always way overpay or underpay.

Many of you will never make it out to Felicity. So hopefully this post will let you vicariously experience country life, although come to think of it I have no idea why you would want to. But I’ve already written it, and there’s no way I’m going to just delete it, so you might as well read it anyway. 

My Twilight Observations

For a long time, everyone was telling me what a great series Twilight was. They were always like “Oh, it’s so exciting, she’s such a great writer, ohmigod Edward’s so hot, you’d love it”. And I’d say “okay, maybe you could lend them to me?” and they’d be all like “I’d love to, but I lent it to someone else who’s more important than you and she hasn’t read it yet she so you can’t read it”.

Jerks.

So I ordered the first book from the library, and after waiting about a month (there were about forty people ahead of me)—of course, none of my friends could bother lending it to me—I read it. And I feel the need to share my observations about it, and I know you’ll read them because Twilight’s really big right now and I’m pretty sure that I could write bad Twilight-Harry Potter crossover fanfic and people would eat it right up. BTW, I should probably add that there are spoilers, although I’m pretty sure if I tagged you you’ve already read Twilight.

So, story begins, (and I had high hopes for it), with poor Bella (last name?) heading off to Forks, which is in Washington, or maybe Oregon, one of those rainy Pacific states, to live with her father, who is a tyrannical old ogre. He’s so cold, in fact, that he buys Bella a computer and classic truck (I’d kill for that truck), and pretty much lets her lead her life as she pleases. I mean, that’s practically child abuse, but our brave heroine bears up well.

Her school is a hell on earth, too. I mean, on the very first day, she finds like five BFF’s, and three boys totally fall for her and she gets accepted into the “in” crowd immediately. And combine that with the fact that she’s really smart, you could see why she feels that she could never be happy in Forks. It’s practically like a Dickens novel at this point.

Fortunately, there happen to be a family of vampires who, uh, attend her high school, which nobody seems to find really unusual. I mean, here’s a group that has pale skin, doesn’t eat, and stays apart from the rest of the student population. So it’s pretty obvious that they’re either vampires or unusually attractive emo kids.

Bella falls for Edward, but he hates her at first because she’s too perfect and he’s afraid he won’t be able to stop himself from eating her and wow that sentence sounds perverted. But true love prevails, and it doesn’t take long to write this but Stephanie Meyer strings in out over like 300 pages. And Edward saves Bella’s life a few times. And she meets a werewolf.

Bella, apparently, isn’t a real clear thinker, because she fails to spot some holes in the whole “fall in love with a vampire” plan. First, Edward is like 106, and she’s 17, and can you say “statutory rape?” (And yeah, I know they don’t actually do anything. The principle’s the same).

And given that Bella meets Edward in biology class, you’d think she’d give some thought to the fact that Edward doesn’t have a working circulatory system, which undermines Edward’s sex symbol status significantly. I mean, when you get right down to it, Edward’s not much different from those guys in the Viagra commercials. Being a walking corpse has its drawbacks.

And Edward’s really good looking, but so what? His skin sparkles in the sunshine. Personally, I’d be ashamed to be seen with a vampire whose skin is all sparkly. You just know that he’d be the sort of guy who likes unicorns a lot and listens to a lot of George Michael and Elton John.

(I wonder how Stephanie Meyer’s husband feels about Edward? He’s probably a rotund little schlub who feels really inadequate now, and he’s probably asking his hairdresser if dying his (receding) hairline will help and putting ground up rhinestones in his body wash so his skin will sparkle).

Plus, if people’s cultural tastes are formed when they’re young, and judging from the number of oldies stations around I think they are, Edward’s and Bella’s idea of entertainment would be totally different. Bella would probably listen to *NSYNC or Madonna before watching Simpson’s reruns or reading Anne Rice, while Edward’s would probably spend most of his time listening to George M. Cohan songs on the gramophone.

Sadly, Bella doesn’t think of any of this, so she goes to watch Edward and his family play vampire baseball. And Edward’s family are vegetarian vampires (although I don’t think “vegetarian” means what they think it means), so they can’t slaughter innocent virgins, but c’mon, can’t they think of something more…vampirish to do with their time? I mean, I love baseball, national pastime and all that, but really, I mean, baseball???

And I love how they can only play when there are thunderstorms because their bats sound like thunder. Like if the townspeople hear thunder out of a clear sky, their first thought will be “hey, there must be vampires playing baseball somewhere around here”.

Anyway, the evil vampires want to play, and spot Bella, and their sinister leader wants to eat her. The leader, the bad guy, the villain of the piece, is named…James.

Let me be perfectly clear: I like the name James. If I ever have a son, it will be on the list of acceptable names. I know many people named James, and they are some of the nicest people I know. But really, James is just a bit…vanilla for a dreaded vampire leader. Couldn’t Meyer have at least called him James the Bloodthirsty or something?

Anyway, James tries to eat Bella, but (prepare to be totally blindsided here) Edward rescues her, and they think they’ll live happily ever after, even though you know they won’t for a while because there are three more books in the series.

Things That Annoy Me

There are lots of people on the Internet who basically spend all their time complaining about things that annoy them. Unfortunately, those things are usually totally obvious—like people talking in a movie theater—and the reaction to them is always totally overboard, like having to listen to some jerk talk during a movie is about as awful as being thrown naked into a tarantula pit.

I never get that angry, and I can take the rough with the smooth thanks to my fortitude, courage, and humility. But the fact remains—some people just need to stop and think for a minute before acting. So I’ve compiled a handy “how-to” guide to give you some “do’s and don’ts” in order to navigate any tricky “social brainteasers” and prevent an embarrassing “faux pas.”

DON’T’s

People who call their parents “parental units.”

This is more a high school phenomenon, but can be found on college campus’ as well, particularly ones with lots of commuters. I get the idea—people want to distance themselves from parental authority, but it really just makes you sound like you haven’t quite got over your Star Trek obsession yet. And it doesn’t make the fact that you have to be home by midnight or mom will stop chipping in for gas any less embarrassing.

People who try to describe movie scenes

If it’s happened once, it’s happened a thousand times: I’ll be talking to some guy (and wondering how to get away, because his conversation is invariably boring), and the following exchange will result.

Him: Dude have you seen the new [fill in actor here, usually Jim Carrey or Will Ferrell] movie?
Me: No.
Him: [laughing stupidly] dude you’ve like got to dude it’s like so funny there’s like this one scene where there’s in the trailer and the guys like dude what time is it? and the guys like huh? and the other guys like [I assume there’s a punch line here, but I can never decipher it because he’s laughing too hard] MWAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!! Funniest thing ever dude like totally awesome!!!!
Me: oh.

That’s annoying for two reasons. One, because if I ever do see that movie (which I usually don’t because the scene described usually seems ripped off from Dumber and Dumberer), I guess that really funny scene will be ruined, huh? And anyway, they always try to tell me about a scene from the trailer, so I’ve already seen it on TV a hundred times.

Fat people in inappropriate situations

I’ve nothing against fat people, as long as they stay in their place. For example, they have no place at the beach, or near any other body of water, because they look repulsive in swimwear. Fat women in bikinis should be outlawed. And they shouldn’t be allowed in gyms, not that that’s usually a problem. But sometimes one sneaks in, and I have to look at some fat guy dripping gallons of sweat while struggling to bench 110 pounds.

Another place our lardy friends shouldn’t go: movie theaters. This fact was brought home to me by an unfortunate experience recently. I went to the new Tom Cruise movie last Friday, the one where he’s supposed to be a good Nazi, in spite of the fact that he’s basically a more handsome version of Don Knotts. So the theater’s packed, and we (me and my friends) had to sit practically like in the front row, so we were looking almost straight up. Then I see this morbidly obese guy with a big white beard and a jacket he obviously hadn’t washed since about 1996 waddling into my row. He looked just like Santa’s dissolute younger brother; the black sheep of the family that nobody’s seen since Papa Claus died. And he plops down right next to me.

Wonderful.

So he takes all of his seat, and about half of mine, leaving me with half a movie theater seat which wasn’t that big in the first place, leaving me scrunched in a sort of sideways S shape. Awful.

This guy spent seven dollars and practically broke my back so he could see that movie. So when it started, he did the only logical thing—he fell asleep, which he could have done for free at home, without hurting anyone. And they tell me fat people are jolly. Maybe they are, but it masks an evil core.

So fat people, please stay home. There is a whole world of entertainment options all around you, such as video games and Parcheesi. And you can rent videos from Netflix. Remember, lardgut, if God had wanted you to be mobile he wouldn’t have given an extra 200 pounds around your middle, would he?

Hopefully, this little list has been useful to you. And if I tagged you in this note, it wasn’t personal, one way or another—I basically tagged people more or less at random, so don’t feel too irritated if I just cluttered up your inbox. At least it wasn’t personal.

If you don’t want to be tagged, though, I’d understand, so just leave a comment or send a message or unfriend me or delete my emails or send them straight to the spam filter, which come to think of it probably what you’re doing anyway.

But seriously, if you don’t want me to tag you anymore, I won’t be offended.

Much.

Grisham Recap

This is the sort of thing that givew the Internet a bad name.

Oh, and I mentioned like a ton of my friends in this note, until I got tired of that little drop down menu thingie, so if you absolutely hate this and wonder why I mentioned you, I was just sort of adding everyone. Although I don't see why that would make you feel any better, but still. It's the principle of the thing.

John Grisham is one of the most popular authors of the last couple decades, writing twentyish bestsellers and getting great reviews and everything. But not everyone has time to read Grisham, some are simply stupid, others are pretentious jerks who think that they need to read Shakespeare all the time.

It’s not like they’re missing much, because all of John Grisham’s books have essentially the same plot and all sport stupid two-dimensional characters. But there’s this whole cultural literacy thing, and anyone who doesn’t have a passing familiarity with Grisham will eventually lose all their friends and have a ninety percent chance of getting divorced. (The only exception to this rule are lawyers—they already don’t have any friends, and in most cases pretty much come with at least two angry ex-wives).

So I’m here to provide you was detailed recaps of Grisham’s many novels, so that you too can partake of this intellectual feast. (“Intellectual”, in this case being used loosely).

A Time to Kill
No idea what’s it’s about, never read this one

The Firm
Didn’t quite finish this one, although I seem to remember that it was about a lawyer who accidentally got himself into a law firm run by the Mafia, which doesn’t seem to paint either the lawyer or the firm as being geniuses. I mean, if you were running a Mafia law firm, wouldn’t you want your lawyers to know what they were getting in to? And if you can’t tell when a firm is controlled by organized crime, then you’re probably not a prime candidate for law school. Anyway, I’m sure this book has a happy ending.

The Pelican Brief
I actually finished this one, and showcases Grisham at his finest—awful dialogue, unbelievable characters, and an incomprehensible plot. There’s this law student, Darby, who’s the girlfriend of her law professor, who’s about twice her age. I got a “creepy old man” vibe from the whole relationship, but apparently the law professor's supposed to be a good guy. At least until he gets blown up in a car bomb meant for Darby to make sure that no one finds out that she knows the reason two Supreme Court justices got assassinated. Although you’d think using a car bomb would pretty much scream “something suspicious here” and people would investigate and find out whatever Darby found out, so the fact that it failed probably didn’t matter that much. The villain must have gone to the Bond Villain Assassination School.

The villain in this story is a big corporation (a common Grisham theme), which wants to drill for oil in Louisiana wetlands. To do this, it a) kills two Supreme Court justices, b) uses a car bomb to try to kill a college student, and c) hire dozens of operatives to try to kill aforementioned college student after the car bomb fails. It’s not as spectacular, but I’d think that it’s easier to just bribe EPA officials.

The Client
I didn’t read this one, but my brother did. He said it showed how an eleven year old kid managed to evade both the law and the mob to solve a murder case. He said it was pretty hard to buy, and I’d agree with him.

The Chamber
Okay, there’s this young lawyer who tries to prevent the execution of his grandfather, who bombed a black family in the Sixties. He fails, Gramps fries, and good riddance.

I think this story was supposed to make you think about capital punishment, but considering Gramps was a total jerk and racist to boot, I came away thankful that we have it. Screw those murderers.

The Rainmaker
There’s this absolutely pathetic law student who can’t get into any regular law firms, so he find himself working for a mob law firm (hey, just like The Firm! And who knew that the Mafia was so into law firms? Maybe I’ve just led a sheltered life, but I’ve always thought they were more into prostitution and bookies and stuff. I wasn’t a faithful watcher of the Sopranos, but I don’t think that Tony was a big lawyer person).

Fortunately, this is a nice Mafia firm, and our boy Rudy stumbles on the case of an eeevil insurance company eeevily (you gotta hit those e’s hard for the right effect) denying treatment to this kid with leukemia, for no real reason. He sues, and helped by the fact that the judge is totally on this side and the other lawyer is an idiot (he—the other lawyer—gets attacked by a juror, which you’d think might raise some eyebrows around the old courthouse water cooler), he wins, but the jury gets carried away and bankrupts the insurance company, so our poor leukemia people don’t get anything. (I didn’t like them much anyway). So Rudy runs off with this girl he met, after killing her husband.

The Runaway Jury
This is one of Grisham’s more popular and stupid books, and I’ll leave it to you to decide whether there’s a connection there.

Scenario: your girlfriends parent died of lung cancer. She wants to do something about it. You
a) find a new, less activist girlfriend.
b) Become an anti-tobacco terrorist.
c) Sue.
The correct answer, of course, is d) go around the country trying to get on a jury for a anti-tobacco lawsuit and influence the other jurors against the tobacco company.

Sounds easy, right? Well, it’s not. There’s always those recalcitrant jurors who favor the tobacco company. But fortunately, our hero is able to frighten one away by stalking her by proxy, plants incriminating evidence against another, and poisons the last. You’d think that maybe that would call for a mistrial, but no, the judge is pretty much fine with all these shenanigans. Even when the maverick juror starts calling him at home, the judge just kind of goes along.

Anyway, the evil tobacco company loses a whole lot of money in a blatant miscarriage of justice.

Full disclosure: I set tobacco one summer. It was awful.

The Partner
I don’t remember much about this book. There’s this criminal who gets arrested by the FBI, and plans things to he doesn’t have to spend any time in jail, but his girlfriend steals all his money and I guess he’s disappointed. By the way, I guess I should have mentioned that there would be spoilers.

The Street Lawyer
This was the first Grisham book I read. I shattered some illusions—here I was thinking that Grisham would be a brilliant word wizard, and then find out the truth. It was like learning that there is no Santa Claus. Anyway, there’s this lawyer—I forget his name, so I’ll just call his SL (Street Lawyer), who almost gets killed by a homicidal homeless person. The cops kill Homeless Terrorist, which, for some incomprehensible reason, cause SL to feel guilty about the homeless. Personally, I’d start donating money to tough-on-crime Republicans and maybe run over a homeless person or two in retaliation, but I guess that’s why I’m not in a Grisham novel. Anyway, SL sues his firm for evicting some homeless scum, which sadly seems to be illegal. This is front page news in the Grishamverse, and SL wins and his old firm starts caring about the homeless, which I thought made for a sad ending.

The Testament
Some old guy writes his will to leave everything to this one niece or something who’s a South America missionary. He then rolls his wheelchair off a balcony, so it’s evident he’s not all there. And his niece can work miracles sometimes, which I thought was odd. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, it just struck me as unusual.

Actually, this is one of Grisham’s better books.

The Brethren
Three jailed judges run a gay-blackmailing operation from prison. Personally, if I was in prison, I’d stay away from any sort of homosexual topics; given what goes on in shower rooms there, it just doesn’t seem to be a good idea.

Parallel plot line: the CIA, the same bunch of guys who thought Saddam had lots of WMD’s and has spent fifty years trying to get rid of Castro, decides to run its own presidential candidate. Right. He runs, of course, on the threat posed by WMD’s. Good call, CIA.

Of all the people in government, the CIA candidate is the one person who gets caught in the Brethren’s (those are our incarcerated judges, if you’re confused) gay blackmail scheme. What’re the odds, huh? Anyway, the CIA find a way around it, which oddly doesn’t involve just offing the Brethren. Because with everything Grisham thinks the CIA can do, killing three obscure, imprisoned judges is totally out of the question.

Grisham wrote a lot of other books and stuff, but that’s all I’m doing today. Final are next week, so I’m thinking that maybe I’ve got better things to do than recap books. And it’s not like you’ve read this far anyway, to it’s not like you’re missing anything. In fact, I don’t know why I even bothered to write this, because most of my friends actually study for their finals, which strikes me as a good idea. Even if I’ll probably forget to actually do so.

College Help

College can be a confusing and scary time, what with meeting new people, maybe living away from home, and having to worry about grades. Grades are one of the most important but most frightening parts of college—if your grades go down, you can…well, nothing really bad will happen, but still. Fortunately, there are steps you can take to make sure that your grades stay up.

1. Don’t Study Too Much

Many people think that studying ensures good grades. Actually, the opposite is true. Overstudying is worse than understudying—if you don’t study enough, you can waste time is ways you enjoy, but overstudying just eats up your day. The best thing is to take a quick look over the chapter—if that doesn’t suffice, you probably don’t understand it and probably never will.

2. Establish Good Relations with Your Professors

Your typical college professor isn’t exactly good time Charlie—who really wants to hang out with college professors? Nobody, that’s who, so they typically spend a lot of time reading dusty journals and wearing tweed (what is tweed, anyway?). This means that you are probably cooler than you instructor—you kinda have to be—so use that to your advantage. A simple “have a nice day” will brighten up his or her day, and will come in handy at grading time.

3. Ask Questions

Notice I don’t say ask good questions—just ask a question here and there so the professor knows you’re not asleep. They like students who seem to be paying attention, and that’s a surefire way to boosting your grades.

And if you have to text during class, be subtle about it.

4. Negotiate

You’ll find that negotiation is an important life skill. Too many people take a hard line, my-way-or-the-highway approach, which is bad. So when you get a test or paper back, look for instances where the instructor could have given you more points, and ask him about them. The worst that can happen is that he says no, and he’ll probably feel a bit guilty for doing so. Your next test will probably be graded a bit easier, so consider your negotiations an investment.

5. Be Smart

If you’re not really smart, you’re probably wasting your time at college. Look around you—who among your friend has an IQ lower than yours? If you can’t answer that question immediately, drop out immediately and get a job ditchdigging or whatever it is dropouts do.

Geekadour

This isn't about me--it's about the guy in Brad Paisley's
Online
Still feel sixteen
most of the time
still put a few photos
on facebook
wall posts and bumper stickers
lord I’m still ride there with them
chatting above the groups and the invites

Chorus:
Sometimes I feel like Tom*
with no last name
still trying to get some game
knowing nothins gonna change what I am
I was a callow young geek
when I became a facebook freak
and I’ll be an old geek when I’m gone

I truth about a keyboard
is that a damned old keyboard
doesn’t really tell the whole truth
it doesn’t even show what’s on the surface
or read between anywhere
but it’s a sad reflection on my youth

Chorus

*Tom: the myspace Friend