2005-03-03

Sick of Reading and Everything Else

There are always those bad classes each semester. Sometimes there are more, hopefully fewer. Two semesters ago, I had a good semester with no bad classes. Last semester was busy, but not too bad. This semester I have one really bad class which ruins everything. It probably takes up more time than all the other class combined. I don’t even get more credit for this class than any of the others. I just signed up for it because I didn’t know what other class to sign up for.

Now I have to read all these pages of these really boring books that people like Red Face find interesting. All I can think about each day is how I have to read more boring pages. We don’t get a lot of time to read them either. Sometimes I’ve finished good sized novels in just one day, but with these books, your mind drifts because it’s so boring. You have to read the same sentence several times. Even if you’re fast, it’s as slow as reading a book in another language. I have to keep reading, though, because I’ll have exams and papers to write about these books. We have to read really carefully, too.

Everybody is behind in their reading. Everybody wants to stop. Sometimes novels aren’t that great, but these are less fun than reading the dictionary. Nobody wants to go to class because they haven’t done the reading and the professor may ask a difficult question. Many papers are painful to write, but the one coming up will be like pulling your brain out of your nose while trying to stay standing. It will be difficult because of the difficult reading and the difficult standards of the paper.

It’s not bad enough that my computer has been causing me difficulties this week. I should be thinking about what I will write, but all I can think about is how I’ll be done in a little over a week for spring break. Then I can just stop worrying. Maybe I can even read the books we’ll have to read later so I won’t get behind. I also daydream about a time when I won’t have this class, and I can spend time doing other things I enjoy, such as getting a good night’s sleep. Ah, spring break, spring break. It’s such a beautiful thought, but it will come so late, and anyway, now I have to worry about reading and writing so many difficult pages.

Seven Rules for Living on Only Spaghetti

Make as much as you can, and just keep it in the refrigerator. It may even taste better as it gets older.

There is this girl in one of my classes, and I call her Paperclip. Somehow, she is always manages to be unprepared for everything. She never bring anything to class that she needs, and if she does bring it, it’s late, including herself. She sits next to me and always has to look at my books or papers because she forgets her. Often, even when the class is supposed to discuss her own work, she won’t have brought it in herself. I wonder how she manages to pass her classes.

Don’t put in more pasta than the pot can handle. The water should boil even when full of pasta.

There is this student who I call Boring Guy. I could just as easily call him Dumb Guy, but there are plenty of those. He manages to get even the easiest of things wrong or somehow mess them up. I’m not sure how he is able to survive. He often talks to people, and continues on, long after they have lost interest. I saw him talk to a professor before a class. Normally this conversation would have been just a few short comments, and normally the professor would be happy to talk to a student, but Boring Guy continued on and on, and I could tell that the professor was just waiting for the clock to finally say it was time to start class.

Make sure you continue to stir the pasta while cooking it. Don’t let it stick to the bottom or itself.

As I was crossing a road, a bus that should have stopped didn’t and almost hit me. I was going to stick up my middle finger, but I had mittens on. I wonder what he would have thought. Don’t try to flick somebody off if you have mittens on.

Don’t overcook the noodles. In fact, go ahead and boil them for less time than the directions demand. If you are unsure, take out a noodle to see if it’s still hard on the inside.

One student came in late to one of my classes. The professor, who knows all her students by name, saw him, but didn’t recognize him and asked if he normally came to the class. He did. Then the professor asked if he had gotten a haircut or anything. He hadn’t. The professor then asked if he were sick. He wasn’t. I kind of felt bad for my classmate. I think the professor did too because she said she wouldn’t make him do anything that day.

If you buy the tomato sauce already made, you don’t have to separately heat it up. Just adding it to the hot noodles will be enough.

My professor was talking to us today about somebody who smokes. As he said the words, “who smokes,” he let out a really hard cough. It was a real cough, and not on purpose. The class laughed at him.

If you don’t add the sauce to the noodles right away, keep them moist. Don’t let them dry and stick. Don’t drain or add water if necessary.

I was doing some homework on campus, and in another side of the room, there was this big, loud guy who came in. He found one of his friends and started talking to him. The friend understood that people were studying, and the room was supposed to be quiet, but the loud friend kept talking. Because of the manner in which they spoke, it sounded like one person talking on the cell phone—loudly.

Spaghetti is good on its own, but make sure you eat plenty of other things with it.

I saw a girl whose un-dyed hair was lighter than her skin. This is rare. It bothered me, so I screamed that she was the Anti-Christ and proceeded to run down the hallway, waving my arms madly.



2005-03-01

Red Face

In one of my scarier classes with one of my scarier professors, I made a discovery. While he was lecturing, I noticed that if I held something in my hand loosely, it would vibrate whenever he hit the low notes of a sentence. I first noticed this when I was holding a fairly large paperback. He wasn’t yelling, angry, or anything to be (especially) worried about. He just has a deep, loud voice, which certainly makes him all the more frightening.

There are some students who are not frightened of him. One particular student is one that I call Red. That’s what he is: red. I’m not sure what it is about some people, but they are just really red. This person is regularly redder than many furious faces I have seen in the past. It seems like in each class, he has achieved a new shade. I’ve known a few other people like this. I think it might be because they have really thin skin, or really pale skin so that the blood really shows up, but I’m not sure. In addition, this poor kid has red hair. I think, however, that his special redness does not merely come from thin skin, I think that it is because he is so excited. He is the most obnoxiously over ambitious student in the class. In fact, even the professor said so in front of everybody. When even the professor notices it, it’s really bad. This super student always does his work ahead of time, and always has a few extra things to say when called upon in class. He is excited to a suspicious level, so much so, that I’m not even sure if he’s just a kiss up or truly interested. He’s probably both, but I’m leaning more towards him being a kiss up. In any case, he’s annoying. I’m sure there are a lot of us who’d like to stick a pencil up his rear end for being a show off. I think, though, he might have one there already because he looks so constipated. When he’s being annoying, I just remember that because of him, I have something to look forward to in each class: seeing how much redder he is. He’s a tomato that keeps getting riper. If we don’t pick this tomato soon, he’ll probably burst. Perhaps by being extra excited in class is the only way to relieve himself of his constipated ripeness.

Isn’t Midday Usually Warmer Than the Morning?

The weather when the sun was rising was great. I know because I had to get up and walk to campus extra early to work on some projects. It was a cold rain, so cold that it later turned to snow: snow which hasn’t stopped as of tonight. I was just asking somebody yesterday if it would warm up or snow again. At least I wasn’t left wondering for long. I don’t know what happened to spring. We had days warm enough for summer clothing, and now this. Actually, I still saw girls walking in what I would have assumed was summer clothing: skirts that were high above the knees. While this sight might make some guys feel all warm inside, it just made me feel even colder. You’d think the girls would have been freezing, but they just looked serious as if they were so concentrated on where they were going that they couldn’t feel cold.


When I was in a computer lab today, one of those serious looking girls sat down at the computer next to me. She seems like the type of person that might scream at you if you so much as looked in her general direction, especially to a person of the opposite gender. She sat down next to me anyway and got straight to work as those types do. I continued working, and really I hadn’t noticed her—yet. After a minute, she got the hiccups. Hiccups are annoying in yourself and others, but sometimes they can be funny. It was funny this time because she seemed like the type of person who would never get the hiccups. Serious people don’t get them. Every few seconds, though, I heard her give a little croak. I think she was trying to hide them as best she could. I couldn’t help but smile to myself. I might have looked over and smiled at her, but I didn’t want to get slaapt in the face.

2005-02-27

Camel or Horse?


I passed this sub-subdivision's logo the other day and wondered: if it has that name, then why does it have a picture of a horse?