Annoying Facebook Friends

G.Q. Magazine did this montage of the 18 most annoying Facebook friends.  It's dead on.

Broken English/Kumar's Greatest Hits

My friend Kumar moved to America when he was a senior in high school.  Prior to that he'd lived in Khatmandu, Nepal, and even before that he'd lived in a remote Nepalese village that was accessible only by taking a two day Yak trek.  Soon after he graduated from high school in the United States, he enrolled in college with us.

Perry describes him as one of those "for a cup of coffee a day you can save this child" kids you see on PBS, only he happened to make it to America and did quite well for himself once he got here.

Kumar is dark skinned, small, and skeletal—he looks a lot like the Vietnamese Communist revolutionary Ho Chi Minh, except with long, black, Kurt Cobainesque hair.  His speech in English comes out in heavily accented machine gun blasts.  To put it euphemistically, there is a language barrier.  Euphemism aside, when I first met the kid I couldn't understand a word he was saying.

The best thing about Kumar though, is when he can’t think of the right English word, he gets frustrated and starts firing out mixed bursts of random and profane English words.  An even better thing about Kumar, is that when he gets frustrated at a person, he fires out the same bursts of random, violent profanity in the form of insults.  He's figured out that if he just takes two words that he knows have a negative and insulting connotation and mixes them, he'll do just fine at assaulting your character, and maybe even make you cry.  And, oh, he does.  Here is Kumar at his best:

• You insane homo.
• You fu**ing piece of character.
• You fu**ing horny ass.
• You old gay.
• You horny jackass.
• You shit failure.
• You loser damn.
• You fu**ing horse shit baby.
• You fu**ing whore ass.
• You bastard pimp.
• You horny moron.
• You old horny retard.
• You sickly shit.

As you would expect, Kumar never loses an argument.  His insults act like a tazer, rendering their victim completely stunned and debilitated for the rest of the night.  How do you recover from insults like that?  The answer is, you don't.

Frat Boy Turned Thomas Crown

And I thought the only thing college kids did for spare cash was work in the library or, if they're feeling sinister, buy Bud Lights for freshman and charge double.  Check out what this frat boy turned Thomas Crown did for thousands of dollars in beer money.


William John Scott is a freshman at Drew University. He studies political science. He plays defense on the lacrosse team. He describes himself on Facebook as a night person who likes to party. 

But federal prosecutors say he is something else: a busy archives thief who stole famous letters written by a founder of the United Methodist Church and world leaders, including Abraham Lincoln and Madame Chiang Kai-Shek.  

Click on the text for the full article, via the New York Times.

Professor Salaries

I'm far away from America on spring break this week.  That being said, posts will be few and far between, and short and sweet at that. 

The other day I was thinking about a professor I had in college.  He was a funny guy with a good sense of humor.  Whenever the class asked him to do something above and beyond his syllabus, he'd respond sarcastically with "they don't pay me enough for that."  We'd all laugh, he was hilarious.  It'd go like this:

Class: Can we have an extension on our mid term paper?
Professor: No, they don't pay me enough to do that.

Class: It's beautiful outside today. Can we hold class outside?
Professor: Absolutely not.  They don't pay me enough for that.

So I began to wonder ... how much did this guy actually make?  If you ask random people around campus, they'll give you figures that range from $40,000 to $200,000.  Clearly these figures are wrong.

So I did some research, just to figure out how much they weren't paying this guy.  Here is a link to find out how much money your professors bring in annually.  Now, I'm not advocating you use this in any way.  It's just nice to have to information.  In my case, when my professor said "they don't pay me enough for that," I'd just laugh and quietly say to myself, "you're a damn liar," and take whatever he wasn't going to do like a man.

Click here to go to the professor salary finder.  Also, don't write in your school's name.  It messes up the search.  Just click on what state your school is in and go from there.

Wine Perry

There is one thing that Perry should never have, and that's wine. Ninety-nine percent of the time he acts like a gentleman--someone you could bring home to your parents. But there is always that lingering threat that he could delve into his ungentlemanly persona that we've come to know as "Wine Perry."

Giving Perry wine is like giving a dog chocolate--his body doesn't process it correctly and he begins to act wildly, even savagely. It seems to me that Perry has some broken chromosome in his DNA sequence that when inundated with wine, totally warps his personality into a silly, twisted mess.  And it is hilarious.

One glass turns into two turns into seven. His teeth become scarlet, and his smile became looser and more frequent. When I lived with him, the night's that he'd haphazardly chosen to drink wine would start something like this.

7:00: bottle of wine opened, I'd say "dear god" and recite Psalm 116:15, just in case the night got out of hand.
7:05: Perry never drank wine without a ridiculous spread of cheese, crackers, and cured meats--he'd assemble the spread while sipping his wine.  I'd usually go to my computer to do some homework while Perry would continue to wine himself.  Every now and then I'd hear the telltale grgrgrgrgr of wine being emptied into a glass.
8:20:  While sitting at my computer I'd hear a strange and delirious "Uuuuuttttaaaaahhhhh," and I would instantly know that Perry had turned into Wine Perry.  The night would devolve from there.

Now, anything was on the table.  There were, however, certain things that would inevitably occur when Wine Perry made an appearance:

• He would take off his pants.  Not in a sexual way, it just seemed to be a characteristic of Wine Perry.  In the same way that a normal person doesn't wear a down coat in summer, Wine Perry didn't wear pants, opting for boxer shorts instead.
• Any girl that walked past the room would have "hey floozie," yelled at them.  They wouldn't get mad though, they'd just poke their head in the room, notice that Perry was pantsless and had bright red teeth, and let out a little giggle.  They knew what was up.
• He would slur insults at everyone.  But the insults weren't meant to be mean or to criticize whoever they were directed at, they were meant to be hilarious.  And they were--"Hey you! You're like a grass stain on a pant leg."  "You are like a person who forgot to do something important."  "Hey you, I bet you make out with people."  "You remind me of a farmer with no real plow experience to speak of." "Your stature is that of a goat."
• He would get dangerous.  He didn't mean to do this, but when he decided it was time for more cheese after his 6th wine, that knife became a ticking time bomb.  He'd wave it around, demanding more cheese while cursing the bastard who had eaten his last cracker.  Eventually we'd talk him down, he'd put away the knife, and he'd resort to gnawing on block of cheese.
• He'd visit everyone in the dorm building.  He'd strut in, pantsless, glass of wine in hand,  while chomping crackers with red teeth.  Then he'd go sit on the persons bed and proceed to chat their ear off.  Usually with ridiculous nonsense.  "So, you know, Amanda, I've been considering opening up a radish farm.  But it wouldn't really be a radish farm, per se, it would more likely function as a clown training area.  Ya, a clown training ground of the highest caliber.  Similar to how the Taliban trains terrorists in those camps in the sand-laden countries, except instead of terrorists, I'd train clowns at my radish farm.  What do you think?"  Eventually people began to lock their doors when word got around that Wine Perry might make an appearance that night.

Those are just a few standards, but there are so, so many more.  Wine doesn't so much put Perry in a state of drunkenness, as it does put him in a state of sillyness.  And he knew it.  He still uses Wine Perry to instill fear in people's hearts when he doesn't want to do something.  "I don't want to go to that party.  If you take me to that party I'm going to drink wine and you'll have to go with Wine Perry."  Which, actually, has grown to be fine with me.  Who needs to pay big bucks for entertainment when you can just buy Perry a bottle of wine?

Liberal Arts and Jobs

With the economy in the tank and the class of 2009 hanging out in their Mom's basement, or wearing a bright orange t-shirt and visor that say "Dunkin Donuts" instead of a power-suit to work everyday, colleges and their students are starting to rethink the traditional liberal arts education, for better or for worse.  A piece in the New York Times reported that:


Even before they arrive on campus, students — and their parents — are increasingly focused on what comes after college. What’s the return on investment, especially as the cost of that investment keeps rising? How will that major translate into a job?

The pressure on institutions to answer those questions is prompting changes from the admissions office to the career center. But even as they rush to prove their relevance, colleges and universities worry that students are specializing too early, that they are so focused on picking the perfect major that they don’t allow time for self-discovery, much less late blooming. The piece then goes on to talk about how numerous colleges are focusing on providing majors and programs that are more relevant in the job market, and dropping majors that don't typically result in jobs and that have become unpopular in recent years.  For example, the University of Michigan recently created 100 entrepreneurial classes while it simultaneously dropped its classics major.  

 All of the educators interviewed in the New York Times piece seemed to think that adding more job-market-relevant courses was a good thing.  But there were some reservations.  The Dean of St. Michael's, a liberal arts school in Vermont highlighted the value of a liberal arts education when he said: “The humanities tend to educate people much farther out. They’re looking for an impact that lasts over decades, not just when you’re 22.”  I personally am glad that liberal arts colleges are starting to diversify in a skeptical manner.  I think that the liberal arts education--which teaches how to think critically and analytically as opposed to how to perform a particular job--is the cornerstone for a well rounded person.  But it also has its setbacks, especially when--for the classes of 2009--real jobs are harder to come by than a strip club in Saudi Arabia, and recent graduates are earning less than ever.  In most liberal arts majors you learn a lot of amazing information, but often times this information is hard to apply to the real world. Take me, for example.  At the liberal arts school I attended, my major was a mix of environmental science, economics, and politics.  In my economics classes I learned tons of information about markets and how economies function as a whole, but I didn't learn a damn thing about my own money.  I can tell you what will happen to the price of a can of Coca Cola when there is an aluminum shortage, or the tenets of a Marxist economy, or why many of the U.S. trade policies are disadvantageous to the economies in the developing world.   But let's say I were to win a million dollars in the lottery, even after all those economics classes I took, I wouldn't have the slightest idea about how to invest my money.  I'd either A. have to do some serious research or B. hire someone who majored in business at a non-liberal arts school to invest it for me.  This is problematic, and a happy medium between learning about the flow of revenue into a random Asian company versus the flow of revenue into my own wallet should be struck. The liberal arts education is great, unless you're a philosophy or ethno-musicology major making the same amount of money by mowing lawns with your B.A. as you did mowing lawns in high school.  Which is why I think it's great that liberal arts colleges are starting to give a greater focus on relevant courses.

Maybe something good will come out of the current economic downturn after-all--liberal arts majors who not only know how to think, but also how to function in a real life work place. 

Parents Don't Need to Know

Your parents are usually going to assume that you are spending your time drinking on the weekend.  And rightly so—it’s college.  What the hell else are you supposed to do? 

But when your parents call you on Saturday morning—praying that you are alive or that the voice that picks up your phone won’t say “hello, Clark count Jail”—there is a strict protocol that I HIGHLY recommend you follow so that your parents don’t know you’re partying on the weekends:

1.     Usually the first thing that a suspecting parent will ask is, “hey how are you?”  ALWAYS THINK ABOUT THE TONE OF YOUR VOICE BEFORE YOU ANSWER THIS QUESTION.  Is it raspy?  Does it sound like the lead singer of AC/DC?  Change that.  Always answer with “good.”  But don’t make it a deathed out, I just smoked a whole pack of cigarettes and my head feels like it’s going to explode “good.”  It should be a “GOOOD!” that would win you the Miss Congeniality award in a beauty pageant.  This will throw the parents a curve ball, and they will become disoriented.  

2.     While they are disoriented, make the first strike.  Remember, they called you to interrogate you about how hard you’d partied the night before.  Don’t stand for it, you’ve got to hit them hard and you’ve got to hit them heavy.  Take control of the conversation—you’re driving this damn bus.  Ask them something completely random that will buy you ample time, such as, “hey how’s Aunt Mabel down in Reno doing?”  Not only will they have to tell you how Aunt Mabel is doing, they will also be pleasantly surprised that you give a shit about Aunt Mabel (which you may or may not).

3.     While they are rambling off about Aunt Mabel, have your roommate—and I can’t count how many times I had Perry do this for me—go onto your college’s website and bring up the event calendar.  Have him or her write down a few school-sponsored events that happened the night before.  Only then will you be ready for the question that your parents really called to ask.

4.     So when the question comes—“so junior, what’d you do last night”—never, absolutely never under no condition, say, “oh not much, just hung out.”  Your parents went to college too, and when they “didn’t do much, just hung out” they drank a twelve pack and conceived you.  Saying, “not much, just hung out,” is like saying “oh, just drank more beers than I can count on one hand.  Oh, and by the way, I’m going to fail out this semester, I hope you didn’t give the X-box to that neighbor kid.”

5.     This is where the school-sponsored events that you had your roommate write down come in handy.  When the question comes—“so what’d you do last night, Junior?”—look down at the paper he or she has so delicately prepared for you.  Then hit you parents with a Mack God Damned Truck—“Oh just went to the East Indian Dance concert at the arts center.  It was hosted by the Indian club, and they had SUCH wonderful Naan.  Not to mention, the five-dollar cover charge went to help orphans in New Dehli.  It was an amazing time.” 

6.     That’s all you need to say.  The interrogation is over—game, set, and match, you.  And not only will your parents be relieved because they think you weren’t at a party, they will be proud that you took part in all the wonderful cultural opportunities that college has to offer.  

7.     Also, if they suspect bullshit, they can look it up on the calendar.  Evidence baby—“if the glove does not fit, you must acquit.”