Companion post to below: please use this picture for reference.

Courtesy of theoatmeal.com.

Rants, Ravings, Things that piss me off, and things I find delightful

SPOILER ALERT

The first part of this is not going to be a happy post. Since I post on the blog approximately 3 times a year, it generally comes at moments of intense emotion. Unfortunately, the only emotions that send me into literary rages are…literal rages. Literal literary rages. Pray that my ire does not find you in its sights, or you may try to jump me in an alley with a shiv made out of a broken microwave turntable or the oddly sharp towel hooks in the Mark Twain bathrooms.

The second part will be so happy! They will be things that I have found delightful in the past several weeks. Bear with the anger, and find yourself rewarded with positive things about which you literally could not care less.

Jumping off the last sentence of the paragraph:

The misuse of the word literally.

I am guilty of this on occasion. Yesterday in chapter I used the phrase “I’ve seen this fraternity literally explode with growth.” Thankfully, I caught myself before too much embarrassment occurred.

However, too many people do this. Literally LITERALLY means that something is happening tangibly, exactly as it is described, with no exaggeration. When Jerry Falwell said “the homosexual steamroller will literally crush every decent man, woman, and child…” he was implying this: (See above)

On an E! channel (my sister watches this please don’t shun me) a commentator said, “Britney Spears is literally on a rollercoaster to hell.” What?

Saleem Alhabash, Doctoral Candidate and 1/10 of a professor.

Many of the people who will read this (so all 4 of you) will recognize my use of the 6-letter curse word “Saleem.” We all have a Saleem story of our own. Maybe he failed to take action in your group? Maybe he threatened to re-grade your test for a lower grade if you came to him to contest a point he took off. Maybe he just shut down a class discussion where you called out a racist guest lecturer. (Present!) Or maybe he just, in DEFIANCE OF ALL FINANCIAL JUSTICE, continued to draw a paycheck (of Missouri’s tax dollars, no less) for the return of his services, that usually consist of a wonderfully designed powerpoint and a 1 minute introduction of a niche guest lecturer.

Maybe he gave your group a prompt that consisted of “Make up a music festival. Please apply it and market it to a market that doesn’t exist. Please interview the non-existent market (in this case, Mid-Missouri Arab-Americans who like rap music) to see if they are offended.”

Saleem continues to astound me by moving from a likeable, young doctoral candidate (“This class will be mostly discussion! We want you all to participate) to only slightly strict (“Your test will be re-graded if you come to me with mistakes you thought I have made.”) to having a vendetta against his students. (“I am disappointed by this test. It was easy. Remembering the readings [Generally 30+ pages of barely-related articles per week, for 4 weeks a test] plus the guest lecturers [ranging from people who think ads featuring black women involving food are automatically racist to mentally disabled people giving us lectures on why we should use the preposition “with” when describing them, as if it changes a thing] plus my completely random clips and trying to generate and regurgitate MY OPINIONS on the test shouldn’t be hard, I mean come on.”)

P.S. If you followed the parenthetical insanity of that, power to you.

Cross-Cultural Journalism

This course could be renamed “Why aren’t you offended?!” If you aren’t offended by the guest lecturer’s “lecture’s”—I use the term lightly, as only 30% of them are mentally stimulating or even factual—and don’t regurgitate your offense (which you’d better have) on the test, then you are failed. Questions like “What should the media do to fix the underrepresentation of female athletes on television” cannot be answered with “make women’s sports interesting.” (As I believe it should be.) (Side note: Softball could be made much more profitable at the national level if it were played on a much smaller field and became full-contact. Not full-contact like football, but full-contact like boxing.)

If this course is the model for all courses on racial thought at Missouri, then I am quite afraid for future generations who are forced to go through the class.

People who take the elevator from the first to the second or third floors.

This is self explanatory and it comes down to basic human laziness. Unless you’re carting luggage then don’t do it.

People who wear cut-off shirts and are skinny, people who wear thongs and are overweight, flat-brimmed hats and leave the size tag on.

The first two should require applications that would have to go to vote to a board that would consist of reasonable people.

The latter shouldn’t happen. I am not impressed by your head size, whether big or small. (Does this even affect how you look, unless it is absurdly big or ridiculously small? In either case, don’t advertise it. Also, how are hats sized? Is 40…40 cm? 40 inches of circumference? Is 40 big, or small?) It doesn’t change the hat fashion-wise. It literally makes no sense. It is not even sensical enough to be stupid, it’s just…worthless.

People who insist on using the metric system in daily speech or whatever the case may be.

This isn’t England. I wish I had an English accent as much as any man, but that doesn’t mean I know how much a “stone” is or how fast 100 kmph is. I would never sacrifice my American selfishness, economic freedom, or general attitude of superiority to drink tea in the middle of the day and have my children have “headmasters” in schools or be caned for general tomfoolery.

Small people who are evil.

You are like imps. If you are small, please be adorable. As I once quoted famously, “she is too small for evil. She only makes mischief.”

People who work out while wearing hats

I don’t know why so many of my annoyances are hat-related, but I can’t help it. Working out in a hat makes you look like you happened to wander into a weight room and decided to pick something up.

On to part two: Things I find delightful!

Bouncy Balls

Shout-out to Garrett Richie, but I’m going to pull a hipster move and say I was into bouncy balls like 3 weeks ago. I bought one over spring break and never looked back. It’s literally like circular, automatic satisfaction.

Old-Timey Words

Chimneysweep. Haberdashery. Apothecary.

Sunny Weather coupled with bright, pastel shorts

For obvious reasons these are great.

Reading Near Water

It is scientifically proven that reading near water increases reading satisfaction by 200%.

The New Harry Potter trailer

It’s going to be awesome.

People who grunt in the Rec while they work out.

You’re not even annoying any more, it’s just funny. However, I do not like it when people curse loudly after they fail at something weight-lifting related. Did you really think you were going to be able to? If not, why declare to the entire room that you have failed?

People who cockily cross the street in front of cars.

I don’t make a habit of this myself, and I hate it while driving, but if I’m walking and I see a jay walker almost get hit, I love it. I’m waiting for the one time….

That’s all.

I will have further ire soon. I promise.