Shouzer

I’ve noticed that people–girls in particular–seem to have difficulty walking in an orderly fashion.  Here I am, trying to get to class on time, and I’ve got a girl walking in front of me and she’s sort of zig-zagging along the sidewalk.  “Zig-zag” is certainly an exaggerated term, but the point is the same.

You see, like a normal person, I generally walk like I would drive in busy areas.  I walk in the “right lane” of the sidewalk until I’m going to pass somebody.  For some reason, though, half the girls I come up to seem to time it right so that when I move to the left to pass them, they move as well.  It’s just enough to make sure that I’ve got to go off the sidewalk to pass them or that I’d bump into somebody walking the other direction.

Little things like that just annoy the hell out of me.  Another frequent issue is people who just stop in the middle of the sidewalk.  I don’t care if you just saw somebody you hadn’t seen in 10 years.  Walk an extra 5 feet off the sidewalk.

I think one of the main reasons I really like CS is that it’s quite possibly the greatest major in existence. Oh, and perhaps more importantly, there are rarely required readings. This semester I’ve got got three general courses and two CS courses. The CS courses are all about being there and learning from the prof, whereas the generals all require a bunch of reading outside of class.

When I originally wrote this post, I went off on a long rant about the value of attending lecture and then realized it wasn’t the original intent of the post.  I’ll clean up that argument and post it later.

Anyway, it gets old going to lecture and then coming back to read the exact same things in my textbook.  Why am I covering this information twice?  What worth is that to me?  Personally, I think it’s a waste of time.  Literary readings make perfect sense.  I have a class this semester called “Bible as Literature”, and it’s a given that reading is required.  My dad Philosophy professor and one of the subjects he teaches is Ethics.  I know that he frequently requires the reading of the book Mother Night to discuss morality.  I can understand that, as well.

On the other hand, I think requiring a textbook to be read is ridiculous.  It’s a rather simple issue to me:  if the material cannot be covered in class, then it should not be covered in the course.  It’s one thing if a discussion runs long, and a couple pages of reading is required to catch the class up.  But to plan a course with required textbook readings seems to contradict the purpose of getting a “good” education–I could have read the book without paying tuition.

So we were out playing football yesterday, and my hand got all cut up. It’s pretty shitty, really. The same thing happened last year to Kyle. Basically, you get enough people in one place and they start acting like fucking morons. In this particular case, that means breaking glass bottles on open fields. So, when my hand touches the ground I get cut up. Here’s the result:

You can see on the first one that the longest cut goes about halfway across my wrist, so they’re pretty long cuts.  It pisses me off that other people’s stupidity comes around to hurt me.

Well, I’m back up at school again.  The posts should start flowing a bit more freely.  Moving in was a tiring experience, mainly because I moved my stuff up here last Friday, went home Friday night, helped my parents move on Saturday, went home, and then helped my sister move some stuff up on Sunday.  I was pretty worn out after it all.

Classes started today, and the ones I had didn’t seem like they’d be too bad.  However, they were two 100 levels and one 200 level.  Both of the ones I have tomorrow are 400 level, so I imagine those would be quite a bit more work.  Hopefully it’s not too bad, though, as I could use an easy semester–it would certainly be nice.

Kyle found out that the band Quietdrive will be here next Wednesday, and tickets are only $6.  I believe we’ll be hitting that up.  It’s at this place called The Canopy Club that has a lot of smaller bands show up.  We’ve never actually been there, so hopefully it’s decent.  I imagine it’s got to be considering how many shows they end up with throughout a semester.
I suppose that’s all for now…

It has been a long time since my last post, and for that, I apologize.  I haven’t had much worth writing about lately.

 Yesterday, I went over to the Milford Proving Grounds yesterday for a tour, and I got to stay for the Technology Show, which is a showcase of all the the powertrain technology.  They had a bunch of cars out for people to drive, and I tried an Escalade, a Saab 93, and an Astra from Germany.  The show-stealer was the Corvette Z06 with 505hp.  It was absolutely amazing.  It was cool to get to see the Powertrain facilities and all of the test tracks as well.

 I also went to see the new Steve Carell movie, Little Miss Sunshine, which was brilliant.  The story centered around a disfunctional family taking their daughter to the Little Miss Sunshine beauty contest.  The whole movie was hilarious, but the ending at the beauty contest stole the show.  It’s a pretty low budget, small time movie so it’s not showing in southern Illinois or Terre Haute.  That’s just another reason I much prefer living in cities.

I went to the Lions vs. Broncos game Friday night at Ford field in Detroit.  We bought the tickets on eBay so we only paid $10 a piece including parking, pretty good for $62 seats (upper deck).  

The Lions, of course, looked pretty terrible.  Even Kitna was struggling.  Actually, the only decent quarterback I saw was Cutler.  He looked pretty amazing; I’d expect him to be vying for a starting position next year.

We planned to tailgate before the game, but didn’t have time because we got caught it traffic.  That’s mostly because the cops did a horrible job directing traffic.  They wouldn’t let us turn right when we needed to so we were driving around for like at extra half an hour.  Anyway, after the game, we didn’t feel like fighting traffic again so we decided to do the tailgating afterwards.  This cop comes by and starts absolutely chewing us out for drinking in public.  He was furious, threatening to slap us with a $500 fine.  I’m pretty sure that I wouldn’t be getting one of those since I wasn’t drinking, but as retarded as he was being, I wouldn’t have been surprised.  The cop told us that drinking in public was illegal everywhere besides Las Vegas and New Orleans, but I’m also pretty sure we were on private property since we were in a paid parking lot.  I guess that means all tailgating, everywhere but those two places is illegal.  Who knew?

Yesterday I went over to Windsor in Canada.  I figured I was this close; I might as well go see it.  It wasn’t particularly exciting, but it was still a pretty cool time.  Windsor has a more than average amount of adult entertainment.  It wasn’t so much that it was gross, but I definitely noticed it.  It was enough for me to go ahead and deem it the Tijuana of Canada.

Every week, Time has a section of letters that were written to them about their last issue.  The majority of them are generally about the past week’s cover story.  One letter irked me in particular.  It read:

I was saddened by your interview with Katharine Jefferts Schori, the Presiding Bishop-elect of the Episcopal Church of the U.S.A.  When asked about her focus as head of her church, she mentioned feeding people, providing primary education, promoting sustainable development and healing people with ADS, tuberculosis and malaria.  She made no mention of God, let alone Jesush Christ.  Her answers would have been more fitting coming from the head of the Gates Foundation than a national religious leader.  For 2000 years the church has taught that our works must flow from our faith.  Sadly, Bishop Jefferts Schori spoke only of works and of a church whose focus doesn’t include God.

I thought this was a ridiculous letter.  First of all, she shouldn’t have had to mention God.  How empty would it sound if she said her focus as head of her church was to preach scripture?  Duh.  That’s what everybody expects.  The real question is what will she do beyond that.

Someone in her position has more power and ability to help where the world needs it, so why not point out that she’s going to?  Do you really think she’s going to ignore her duties?  And who’s to say the work she’ll be doing won’t flow through her faith?  I suppose she could have said, “I’ll try to feed people, with God’s help.  I’ll promote primary education, with God by my side.  Through the power of God, I’ll help heal people with aids.”  But is that really what should be expected of her?

No, it’s a waste of my time to hear, and it’s a waste of her breath to say.  I grabbed this from Wikipedia about Mother Teresa’s order, called the Missionaries of Charity:

whose mission was to care for (in her own words) “the hungry, the naked, the homeless, the crippled, the blind, the lepers, all those people who feel unwanted, unloved, uncared for throughout society, people that have become a burden to the society and are shunned by everyone.”

“OMG!  She didn’t mention God?!?  She obviously didn’t deserve all the credit she got.  Then what good was all the help she provided?  Obviously she didn’t deserve her beatification.  She’s a disgrace.”

Obviously that’s not the case.  She didn’t have to mention God in every sentence she spoke or in every mission statement.  It was a given, as it should have been–and should be today for someone in a similar position.  I get sick of people thinking they’re better Christians, or better people altogether, than somebody else just because they throw Jesus’ name in every sentence.