Category Thirteen: The Random, Wayward Musings of an Unsigned Writer

Is it just me, or are we getting dumber? Upon recently conversing with my roommate, it seems I am not alone in feeling this way.

My roommate and I both do a little assistant teaching at Iowa State. Some of the things we are seeing are not only frightening, but staggering.

I was always under the distinct impression that there was someone, somewhere made a list of things you needed to be good at before you could go past the twelfth grade, namely the three “R’s”- Readin’, wRitin’, and aRithmetic.

These skills seem to have gone the way of the dodo-- bye, bye! Misuse of words such as there, their, they’re, its, it’s, affect, effect, which, witch, and countless others run rampant throughout college kids’ work. These aren’t all freshman either, these are juniors and seniors.

Many factors could be to blame for this sad state of affairs. It’s possible that public education has slipped under the ‘No Child Left Behind’ policy where the proverbial bar has been set so impossibly low that you don’t even need a concrete grasp on the English language to earn a high school diploma.

Or it could be lack of efforts on parents to push lazy kids to achieve more than the bare minimum. We could blame Sony and Microsoft for making videogames infinitely more enticing to youngsters [this includes college kids apparently] than reading Great Expectations or Hamlet.

Maybe kids are watching too much Dateline NBC and blame ADHD and a lack of a Ritalin or Adderall prescription. Maybe they are too sedated on anti-depressants or hopped up on caffeine to think straight.

Or maybe it’s a combination of all or none of these things. The fact is, kids are getting behind and the bar is being increasingly lowered. Grammar skills are being tossed by the wayside in favor of text messaging short hand and an over reliance on spell and grammar check in Microsoft Word.

I think we need to get back to the basics. You need to walk before you can crawl and I think that college kids should be able to write a coherent and complete sentence before receiving their diploma and venturing out into the big, bad world where that same bar that was lowered for educational standards is set so impossibly high in corporate America.

“Listen when something speaks to you.”

I was told this recently at a journalism conference in St. Louis. However, the impact didn’t truly sink in until I thought about it thirty or forty more times.

Ever since I can remember, I’ve wanted to be a writer. One caveat to this notion is that, in order to be a writer, one must actually write stuff. There is not as much work for non-writing writers as one would think.

How simple could it be, really? If you want to do something, you should do it. This rule applies only to realistic goals. Aiming to be the world’s greatest serial killer or suicide bomber does not fall within this rule’s parameters.

My whole life, my decisions have more or less been spur of the moment. This phenomenon can be traced back to high school and remains consistent to this day.

When I was seventeen, I was dead-set on being an architect. Why? Because the pay was great and I loved to draw floor plans for MTV Cribs-worthy houses on my high school’s Auto CAD software.

One problem I failed to factor in was that I had a tendency to cut corners and finagle things to fit if the measurements didn’t exactly work out. Sure it looked all right, but I’m positive any given homeowner would be pretty upset when half of their million-dollar condo collapsed because of off-measurements and missing floor joists.

Needless to say, when the first day of my technical school was to begin, I slept in and decided architecture wasn’t for me. [Note: this was not the best way to handle this situation] T

Thus, began a year of hard [or maybe not so hard] work as the building sanitation and maintenance engineer for Owens and Associates-- read: glorified and overpaid janitor.

The pay was, in fact, very good, and the hours were flexible, but the job title didn’t provide the prestige I felt owed to me after enduring four years of substandard public education, plus one year of filthy toilets and urinals.

My vast and diversified life experiences thus far at age 18 lead me to deciding the only option was going back to school at an actual four-year university. This plan provided me with more time to figure out just what the heck I wanted to do when I grew up.

When you start college, the first thing they want you to do is to sit down with and adviser and plan out your four year track/debacle. I say this because many times, students get suckered in to programs which require them to enroll in far more credit hours than they need in the process of switching majors, maintaining a full-time schedule and taking relevant classes for their major.

With design officially out of the question I needed to pick something somewhat familiar and moderately interesting. Finally writing fell back into the picture, and journalism major was decided upon [only after taking two years of psychology classes and then switching in].

The point of this very random story is tied back to the beginning. “Listen when something speaks to you.” When you love to do something and happen to be the least bit talented at it, you should follow that something wherever it takes you. You’ll end up there in the end regardless.

Nine months and counting and the end is almost here. As this semester winds to a close, it provides a great time for reflection.

For many, this time of year signals graduation parties, weddings, barbecues and baseball games. For me, it will be a chance to catch my breath from a rollercoaster of a year at Iowa State before doing it all again in August.

The sequel to this year should prove to be much better as I am older and wiser now by an entire 365 days. I’ll have my dog living with me for the first time in nine months and I’ll have a roommate to share the rent with. Life will be good.

This time of year also proves some what dichotomous. On one hand, everyone’s spirits are lifted as Spring rolls in and rejuvenates everyone and everything. With it also comes a crushing sense of apathy and laziness; the will to do nothing but lounge poolside, hit the greens, and enjoy the company of friends with a tasty beverage of your choice. Productivity is at an all-year low.

There is something to be said for recharging the batteries, though. This is more than likely a foreign concept to those in the 12-month work force, but I have come to realize that having summers off could quite possibly be the coolest thing about being a full-time student.

Work hard for nine months and take the next three off. Who wouldn’t like that?

This is why I feel that there should be a student-for-life program instituted. My dream is that one day, those who truly appreciate academia will be rewarded with interest-free stipends from the government to become a life-time student.

This would, of course, come with all of the nifty full health and dental benefits one would receive from a “real” career.

In this world you would only take classes that interest you. This could signal the end of Statistics and Calculus classes as we know it because, as we all know, nobody actually uses those in real life. Okay, maybe Statistics but given their druthers, no one would take it.

The more I think about this possibility the more exciting it becomes. But then I begin to think that this idea is already implemented. The professional life-time student is actually just a graduate professor with tenure.

Since professor salaries are public knowledge, I also was able to find out that some of my very own professors make nearly $100,000 a year [with summers off]. It looks like I finally know what I want to do when I grow up.

As March comes to a close and my 'Steve' post is expectedly late (thanks to midterms), I find myself waxing and waning about writing on something I feel compelled to talk about. And something I think people should know.

There is a menacing trend occurring within the fraternity of the caduceus (the winged staff with two serpents twined around it, symbolizing the medical profession); the future doctors of America, otherwise simply known as, medical students.

I have multiple friends attending multiple medical teaching universities and one trend continues universally that I find somewhat disconcerting… alright, a lot disconcerting.

The age-old mantra of ‘tough love’ at first appears to be suited for this scenario, but quickly you realize that notion is perverted into something much, much worse. The slang around the hospitals is called “getting pimped,” I call it completely asinine.

Medical students study their eyes into a blood-shot fervor and work their fingers to the bone. Their reward for their pain and suffering is a public proverbial slap in the face when their mentors chide and berate them for not knowing all of the idiosyncrasies and minutia of the human animal.

One infamous account is of a doctor handing his students a McDonald’s application after the student gives an incorrect response and having them repeat, “Would you like fries with that?” Other times it’s something as simple as the doctors taking in a good laugh with the residents in front of the other students, other doctors and even patients. As would be expected, this leaves medical students shaken and unconfident.

Training students for intensely-pressured situations may be an excuse but it is not a justification for being an asshole. Logic follows that one performs better when they go into a situation with at least a shred of confidence. Stripping that confidence away; taking someone’s dignity in the process, only proves that you are an intellectual elitist who finds self-validation in the degradation of others. Go team!

The point I’d like to make to these doctors is that, quite frankly, you are not God; you just play one every day when you put your white coat on. Remember where you went to school and remember that there is always someone better and smarter than you. For all of the knowledge you possess about medicine, there are thousands PhD’s out there with more knowledge on subjects like foreign policy, economics, business administration and history.

My point is simply, there are smart people everywhere and the idea is to spread all knowledge without the price of a person’s dignity. So what if it happened to you? You may not remember that you mother taught you two wrongs do not make a right. Medical students may respect the doctors they learn under, but they fear them more.

If you ask me, there are easier ways to make money than having a superior berate you for four straight years. But that’s just my two cents.

The ‘debate’ (and I use the term loosely) of whether intelligent design (I.D.) is a viable alternative to Darwinian evolution rages on in the media. This proposition frightens me, but also gives me hope. This idea of I.D. opens up the door to many wonderful possibilities. No more will academic curricula need to be grounded in reality. The fact that we can create any hypothesis and will it to be is a fantastical notion! Let’s explore.

If intelligent design should be taught as science, I say we entertain the idea of teaching J.R.R. Tolkien’s, The Lord of the Rings, as history. By following the intelligent design model of logic, you cannot disprove that the events in The Lord of the Rings actually happened any more than you cannot disprove the theory that Noah built an ark and scoured the globe, placing two of each specie of animal on his astronomically-large boat.

Fact: The Bible and The Lord of the Rings were both written by men; albeit Tolkien is a far more compelling wordsmith than John, Matthew and Mark (in my opinion). They both take care in crafting a world with deities, heroes and a struggle of good versus evil. After all, we cannot disprove the fact that there ever were wizards, trolls and Hobbits, can we? Jesus performed magic, so let’s not be so close-minded to the idea.

Literary scholars claim that Tolkien fashioned many of his own languages. This is an excellent theory, but what if he was only passing down knowledge that was, in fact, passed on to him? Tolkien himself could have been a wizard. You can’t disprove it. If I was a wizard, I don’t think you’d catch me doing wizardly things around mere mortals. Why do you think we can’t find Harry Potter’s wizarding school, Hogwarts? (Because they don’t want us to – for the same reason we can’t find the remains of Jesus or Noah’s boat, which would have had to have been larger than Michigan’s stadium in Ann Arbor. I don’t know who they are [possibly wizards], but they are definitely terrific at keeping secrets. The U.S. government could learn a thing or two from possible wizards.) There is a good chance that Jesus was a wizard as well. Of course this is all speculation, but that is what makes intelligent design so much fun – you don’t actually need any real facts to make it a real science. All it takes is for a certain amount of people to believe in it. Justification only requires an audience’s acceptance. Enough people accepted that there were weapons of mass destruction. In a democracy, you only need a majority. In the case of electing a U.S. president, you don’t even need that. You have got to love American logic!

This new historical perspective should be named “Tolkienology,” after its founder. Intelligent design is such a good model for creating sciences that it only makes sense. Christianity, Tolkienology; you get the idea. I say, if biologists are still looking for “the missing link” then Tolkienologists can still be looking for Hobbits. My hypothesis? Hobbits ARE “the missing link.” You can’t disprove it. Find the hobbits, find the missing link; score one for the Darwinians and Tolkienologists.

The Most hyped-up and talked about event every year is the Super Bowl; more specifically, the commercials during the Super Bowl. I think more people actually tune in to see the ads than the game; especially in cases such as this where the two teams playing are about as exciting as watching the mold grow on that loaf of bread you should have thrown away two weeks ago.

This year was somewhat problematic for me. Not only was the game not entertaining, but by and large, the commercials weren't that good either. The highlights for me were the Magic Revolving fridge ad, the FedEx caveman spot, and the Nextel anti-theft commercial (The one where the guys were in the locker room comparing features and the guy on the left throws a fastball with his phone into the other guy's face from 3 feet away: priceless). According to USA Today, i was not alone in thinking this.

I decided another 2 things while watching the Super Commercial Bowl Extravaganza: 1) Football is God's gift to man in HD; 2) The Rolling Stones are Satan's gift to man in HD. You never truly appreciate the fact that the Stones are old enough to be your great grandparents until you see Mick Jagger in all his high definition glory.

The fortunate thing about regular-poor-man's TV is that the reality of age is blurred into submission. The Rolling Stones are best left to rocking out in your CD player and not on your brand new 97" high definition plasma-LCD-DLP-slice-of-heaven.

The other premonition this realization gave me was that, "If I can see the veins and wrinkles in the Mick's forehead, I’ll unfortunately be able to see all of the cellulite on Kirsty Alley's legs in all of their cottage-cheesy-glory." I then wept myself to sleep on the couch for the remainder of half time with visions of a high definition hell that is indescribable by Webster and all of the words in the English language dictionary.

These damn Chuck Norris quotes have been floating around the internet for a while now. Thanks to me, you can read a good number of them right here. Cheers!

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Chuck Norris' tears cure cancer. Too bad he has never cried.

Chuck Norris does not sleep. He waits.

Chuck Norris sold his soul to the devil for his rugged good looks and unparalleled martial arts ability. Shortly after the transaction was finalized, Chuck roundhouse kicked the devil in the face and took his soul back. The devil, who appreciates irony, couldn't stay mad and admitted he should have seen it coming. They now play poker every second Wednesday of the month.

Chuck Norris built a time machine and went back in time to stop the JFK assassination. As Oswald shot, Chuck met all three bullets with his beard, deflecting them. JFK's head exploded out of sheer amazement.

A blind man once stepped on Chuck Norris' shoe. Chuck replied, "Don't you know who I am? I'm Chuck Norris!" The mere mention of his name cured this man blindness. Sadly the first, last, and only thing this man ever saw, was a fatal roundhouse delivered by Chuck Norris.

Chuck Norris is currently suing NBC, claiming Law and Order are trademarked names for his left and right legs.

The chief export of Chuck Norris is pain.

Chuck Norris's girlfriend once asked him how much wood a woodchuck could chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood. He then shouted, "HOW DARE YOU RHYME IN THE PRESENCE OF CHUCK NORRIS!" and ripped out her throat. Holding his girlfriend's bloody throat in his hand he bellowed, "Don't fuck with Chuck!" Two years and five months later he realized the irony of this statement and laughed so hard that anyone within a hundred mile radius of the blast went deaf.

The grass is always greener on the other side, unless Chuck Norris has been there. In that case the grass is most likely soaked in blood and tears.

If you can see Chuck Norris, he can see you. If you can't see Chuck Norris you may be only seconds away from death.

Chuck Norris was the fourth Wiseman. He brought baby Jesus the gift of "beard". Jesus wore it proudly to his dying day. The other Wisemen, jealous of Jesus' obvious gift favoritism, used their combined influence to have Chuck omitted from the Bible. Shortly after all three died of roundhouse kick related deaths.

Chuck Norris doesn't read books. He stares them down until he gets the information he wants.

To prove it isn't that big of a deal to beat cancer. Chuck Norris smoked 15 cartons of cigarettes a day for 2 years and aquired 7 different kinds of cancer only to rid them from his body by flexing for 30 minutes. Beat that, Lance Armstrong.

Chuck Norris is 1/8th Cherokee. This has nothing to do with ancestry, the man ate a fucking Indian.

Chuck Norris once ate three 72 oz. steaks in one hour. He spent the first 45 minutes having sex with his waitress.

Rather than being birthed like a normal child, Chuck Norris instead decided to punch his way out of his mother's womb. Shortly thereafter he grew a beard.

When Chuck Norris was in middle school, his English teacher assigned an essay: "What is Courage?" Chuck Norris received an "A+" for writing only the words "Chuck Norris" and promptly turning in the paper.

Chuck Norris found out about Conan O'Brien's lever that shows clips from "Walker: Texas Ranger" and is working on a way to make it show clips of Norris having sex with Conan's wife.

Filming on location for Walker: Texas Ranger, Chuck Norris brought a stillborn baby lamb back to life by giving it a prolonged beard rub. Shortly after the farm animal sprang back to life and a crowd had gathered, Chuck Norris roundhouse kicked the animal, breaking its neck, to remind the crew once more that Chuck giveth, and the good Chuck, he taketh away.

The quickest way to a man's heart is with Chuck Norris's fist.

After much debate, President Truman decided to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima rather than the alternative of sending Chuck Norris. His reasoning? It was more "humane".

Chuck Norris uses all seven letters in Scrabble... Every turn.

It was once believed that Chuck Norris actually lost a fight to a pirate, but that is a lie, created by Chuck Norris himself to lure more pirates to him. Pirates never were very smart.

Someone once tried to tell Chuck Norris that roundhouse kicks aren't the best way to kick someone. This has been recorded by historians as the worst mistake anyone has ever made.

When Chuck Norris's wife burned the turkey one Thanksgiving, Chuck said, "Don't worry about it honey," and went into his backyard. He came back five minutes later with a live turkey, ate it whole, and when he threw it up a few seconds later it was fully cooked and came with cranberry sauce. When his wife asked him how he had done it, he gave her a roundhouse kick to the face and said, "Never question Chuck Norris."

Chuck Norris won the Ironman Triathlon with a piano strapped to his back. Along the way he had sex with 59 women and with one man who was quote "bitching about his wife drowning from an orgasm." When he was given the medal, Chuck explained that he was just moving his piano and didn't realize that there was actually a race.

When Chuck Norris sends in his taxes, he sends blank forms and includes only a picture of himself, crouched and ready to attack. Chuck Norris has not had to pay taxes ever.
Chuck Norris owns the greatest Poker Face of all-time. It helped him win the 1983 World Series of Poker despite him holding just a Joker, a Get out of Jail Free Monopoloy card, a 2 of clubs, 7 of spades and a green #4 card from the game UNO.

Chuck Norris appeared in the "Street Fighter II" video game, but was removed by Beta Testers because every button caused him to do a roundhouse kick. When asked bout this "glitch," Norris replied, "That's no glitch."

Before each filming of Walker: Texas Ranger, Chuck Norris is injected with five times the lethal dose of elephant tranquilzer. This is, of course, to limit his strength and mobility, in an attempt to lower the fatality rate of the actors he fights.

Chuck Norris doesn't have to leap tall buildings in a single bound. Tall buildings duck under Chuck Norris.

Onions do not make Chuck Norris cry. Chuck Norris makes onions shit themselves.

There is no theory of evolution, just a list of creatures Chuck Norris allows to live.

The popular videogame "Doom" is based loosely around the time Satan borrowed two bucks from Chuck Norris and forgot to pay him back.

Chuck Norris once walked down the street with a massive erection. There were no survivors.

Circles exist because Chuck Norris beat the crap out of some squares.

When Chuck Norris goes to donate blood, he declines the syringe, and instead requests a hand gun and a bucket.

When Chuck Norris drinks pee, his asparagus smells funny.

When Chuck Norris was born, the nurse said, "Holy crap! That's Chuck Norris !" Then she had had sex with him. At that point, she was the third girl he had slept with.


Chuck Norris can count backwards from infinity.

Crop circles are Chuck’s way of telling the world that sometimes corn needs to lie the fuck down.

Whenever Chuck Norris plays Chutes and Ladders, he treats the chutes as ladders, because he's not some pussy who can't climb up a plastic slide.

Chuck Norris is the only man to ever defeat a brick wall in a game of tennis.

Chuck Norris can divide by zero.

Chuck Norris has two speeds: walk and kill.

Chuck Norris has always been able to find Waldo, except for one time. He found himself stumped on the last page of Where's Waldo Now?, not being able to find the Waldo without a shoe. He threw the book down and screamed, "This is BULLSHIT!" They're all wearing shoes." He then proceeded to eat the book and exclaim, "IF I CAN'T FIND WALDO, THEN NO ONE CAN!" The book he ate belonged to a child that he had borrowed it from. The child began to cry and Chuck ate him for good measure. The incident has since been referred to as Christmas.

In fine print at on the last page of the Guinness Book of World Records it notes that all world records are held by Chuck Norris, and those listed in the book are simply the closest anyone has ever come to matching him.

Chuck Norris is the reason why Waldo is hiding.

Chuck Norris played Russian Roulette with a fully loaded gun and won.

Chuck Norris can set ants on fire with a magnifying glass. At night.

You are what you eat. That is why Chuck Norris’s diet consists entirely of bricks, steel, and the tears of small children.

Chuck Norris is not lactose intolerant; he just refuses to put up with lactose's shit.

When Chuck Norris does a pushup, he isn't lifting himself up, he's pushing the Earth down.

On his birthday, Chuck Norris randomly selects one lucky child to be thrown into the sun.

I was told by a good friend that consistency is the key to any good Steve (my code word for blog from the 1st post). Unfortunately, the consistency of my work so far is in need of some proverbial fiber in it's diet; it is severely lacking.

Right now, it's 12:03 a.m. and I am still up doing homework (of sorts) that most likely should have been done earlier this weekend. However, due to what many consider my finest skill, procrastination, I have put it off until the very last second and now suffer the doldrums of insomnia as I plug through the task editing of a 30 page paper that was not written by me.

In fact, according to what I can remember from my day planner, which was strategically placed under the driver's seat of my car, there is something like 5 things I was supposed to attend to this weekend; none of which was done. So much for good intentions.

You are probably asking yourself, "If I had a million dollars, would I do two chicks at the same time?" If you aren't thinking that then you might be wondering whether or not you should pour that expired milk over your delicious bowl of frosted Lucky Charms. On the whim that you are asking: Why the hell are you updating your Steve if you are so far behind? The answer is simple: baby steps.

When you have a huge list of crap to do and you aren't sure where to start - I say, screw around on the internet. What better place is there to waste time, continuing the trend of not getting things done? Plus, there is something to be said for consistency (remember?). I haven't gotten much done yet this weekend, why start now? - Other than the fact that it's technically Monday. But my clock is temporarily set to California time. By this logic, the work week doesn't begin for another two hours!

This is my first time posting on a Blog. It’s also hopefully the last time I time I ever type the word Blog. I hate the word. I hate the word even more than I hate Chuck Norris and I HATE me some Chuck Norris to be sure. From now on I’m going to call it Steve.

I’m not even really sure why people do these other than to amuse themselves and their friends by composing witty prose in relation to their lives, but hey, fuck it; I’m a journalism graduate student so it seems necessary that I do it too.

Actually, I think these things are great. I check out Brent and Jared’s whenever I can. Those two never cease to amuse me—however, that’s not saying much as I am amused by the sight of the UPS guy pulling into the apartment complex in hopes that he’s bringing me something I forgot I ordered. It’s like freakin’ Christmas when the UPS guy comes into the building; I think the kiddies here even like him more than Santa. Santa is a scary, scary man.

So I’ve successfully completed one full semester of graduate work at Iowa State and begun another. As should be abundantly obvious, my motivation is sorely lacking… at best… I should be doing any number of productive things at the moment; like cleaning my shit up that I have so lovingly scattered across the floor of my living room, or studying Statistics since I have as much knowledge about math as a chimpanzee who throws darts at a dart board and randomly gets the right answer when he hits the 20 spot.

This is the part where I would normally say, “But I digress,” however, that is what a Steve is all about; one long, giant, festering digression. Ain’t it cool? Well, I’m going to keep this post short. If something cool happens, I’ll definitely post it here. Au revoir! (I had to Google how to spell that, by the way.)