Getting your first electric bill is a lot like getting circumcised. They’re both rites of passage, you have no say over the amount you’re giving up, and afterwards, you’re left feeling cold-cocked.
Baby boys must be terrified when they’re circumcised. They’re not just getting hacked at down there – they have no way of knowing that this is the only time it will happen. They think, “Do I have to go through this every week?” And it’s even worse because babies don’t have that much to spare. They take a look down, do some quick math, and wonder if they’re going to turn into a girl by New Year’s.
Electric bills whittle away at your bank account much the same way.
Rites of passage are something we all go through. There are financial rites, like owning your first piece of furniture, which is usually a mini-fridge that doubles as a nightstand. There are aged-based rites, like turning 21 and losing your appetite for drinking a few months later. And then there are the cultural rites, like getting your driver’s license so that your parents aren’t driving you to, well, another rite of passage.
The first time you own a piece of furniture is nice, since no one will yell at you if you break it. Turning 21 and giving your fake ID to someone who doesn’t mind saying they’re 28 is a great feeling. And getting your driver’s license is immensely liberating, or so I’ve been told (yeah New York upbringing).
But then there are things like that electric bill. And though getting the bill is much more comfortable than circumcision, I don’t have to like it.
Rent is supposed to cover your cost of living in a room. And it does. But if you want that room heated, hooboy are they going to charge you. So much that you’ll start saying “hooboy.” And it’s not just for heat. When you hand someone that check for $1400 (yeah New York upbringing) you should ask exactly what it’s buying you. Most of the time, you are renting a proverbial tuxedo without getting the shoes, shirt, bow tie, or that funny looking girdle guys have to wear.
Sometimes the rent covers water. That’s a trick – water is the cheapest of all the hidden charges. Since you can hear it running, you hardly ever leave it on unnecessarily. I’ve tried several times, but I still can’t hear the light in my closet. They don’t put lights in closets so you can see stuff better. That light is in your closet so you can pay the electric company ten bucks every time you forget to turn it off.
During the winter, your electric bill can get very high if you’ve got to heat the place. Not because you use more electricity, but because everyone uses more electricity. There are a finite number of closet lights in the world, and when everyone tries to turn theirs on at once, it gets much more expensive. I’m not sure if that’s how it actually works, but when I asked, all my electric company told me was “‘pay us or we cut the power.’
Your first paycheck is one of the biggest rites of passage, and the only way to afford paying for electricity. This usually happens anywhere between 14 and 21 years old, and comes exactly five years after puberty hits. If a girl started growing breasts when she was nine, she’ll be able to find a job early. If a guy started noticing girls’ breasts when he was nine, he’ll have to find a job early – girls with breasts are expensive. But your first paycheck will disappoint you, because it introduces you to the most common rite of all: taxes. Which are also what make electricity so damned expensive.
I had to learn all of this electricity stuff because I live on my own now. So I walk around all day, remembering to shut off all of the lights. I laugh at myself for not understanding why my grandmother used to make me shut lights in rooms I wasn’t using. I should have let her train me. It would have saved me at least ten bucks by now.
There are some good rites of passage that college graduates have to look forward too. Like business cards. The first time you get your own business cards, you are very excited. And it’s not because you’ve become big and important, because you haven’t. Most often, your first card says something like “‘Joe Schlabotnik, Lackey to Someone Making Much More Money Than Me.’ But you’re excited because now when you meet people, you don’t have to remind them of your name before you leave. You can just give them your card and walk away. Which is almost as dorky as running around shutting off all your lights.
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RSSPigeons have become my enemy. I don’t think they know this yet, so I at least still have the element of surprise.
I used to like pigeons. When I was a kid, I would love to see the old crazy ladies feed them in the park. I don’t know for sure if the ladies were crazy, though I’m sure they were old. Perhaps they were just lonely and kindhearted, like the woman in “Home Alone 2.” But more than likely, anyone who sits in a park all day crumbling three loaves of bread for flying rats while the birds soil the bench around her could use a few lessons in “society.”
So how did my love affair with pigeons devolve into hatred? Actually, having a love affair with a pigeon would be much crazier than being that woman in the park. Maybe that’s why she was luring so many pigeons to sit next to her. “Hey baby, there’s more bread where that came from.” Okay, now even I’ve lost me.
I started hating pigeons my junior year of college. (My second junior year, for those keeping score). I had to walk through the northeast corner of Amsterdam and 110th street on my way to class. I’m not sure if you are familiar with that corner of New York, but it has two things on it: bread and pigeons. Well, three things, because after the pigeons finish the bread, they’ve got to put it somewhere.
So as I trudged around pigeons and bread and pigeoned-bread, I was careful never to step in, or on, anything I shouldn’t. But this process took two full minutes out of my day, every day. It is not easy to walk through a group of 100 pigeons without causing any damage to them or your shoes.
Each day, I got more and more annoyed at the birds. My anger was probably misdirected, since someone must have put the bread there. But never being witness to this pigeon-lover, I had no choice but to channel my anger towards the 20th century’s answer to the third plague. Vermin, not frogs – that was the second plague, and they can be kind of cute if they’re small enough.
However, I moved soon after, and thus spent about a year with little pigeon contact. I was able to slowly forgive them, after lots of therapy and intermittent episodes of Sally Jessie Rafael. Until now.
My intent was simply to sit in Boston Common and write a column. I figured that it was a beautiful day – sunny, 72 degrees, and I had little to no responsibility, other than 800 words about whatever I chose. So I began to write, but I couldn’t get past the first line. The pigeons wouldn’t let me.
Realistically, they probably didn’t know what line I was on. Most pigeons can’t read. But it didn’t even matter to them. Selfish jerks.
I didn’t notice the birds at first. They were huddled quiet in a corner, preparing for the attack. And suddenly, the woosh of wings was all around me. Controlled by a six-year-old general barking orders from the rear, an army of pigeons scattered through the park. One narrowly missed my head. Another almost clipped my shoulder. A third looked at me funny as he whizzed by. It was bedlam.
I wondered how they mobilized so quickly. And if they ever sent carrier squirrels to relay their messages.
To avoid further confrontation (war just leads to more war), I calmly packed up my stuff and retreated to another part of the park. I found a neat little electrical shed as a backrest, and I began writing again. Until I heard the shrill shrieks of their captain, and saw the second wave.
This one was more massive than the first. More than 200 pigeons flew everywhere, narrowly missing people wherever they went. I thought of that picture of Fabio from a few years ago when he got whacked in the face by a bird as he was riding a roller coaster. After laughing for a few seconds, I thought of how horrible it would be to talk like Fabio. And to get whacked in the face with a bird. So I did the only thing I could – I put my hands over my head and ducked until it was all over. And I don’t know how or why, but thankfully, I was spared.
Perhaps I should be kinder towards the pigeons, since they were probably just following orders. But until I know for sure, they are my sworn enemy, and I will do all I can to protect myself from their ungodly reign of terror.
And their poop.
Since I’m moving to Boston this weekend, this might be the last column I write from New York. I figured I’d use it to say thanks to the city that’s given me life, an identity, an appreciation for culture, and a scorching case of herpes.
I don’t really have herpes. But that’s only because I’m careful on the subway.
New York is, was, and always will be one of the dirtiest cities in America. Its citizens are rude, depraved, and egotistical, and constantly remind their non-New York friends of their inherent superiority. Especially if their friends are from Jersey.
Earlier this year, New Yorkers were faced with the most adversity they’d seen since that horrible stretch from 1991-1993 when they actually didn’t have a major sports team with a championship. And for a while, everyone in the city shared a special “we-shall-overcome” bond, and actually smiled when they passed each other. That lasted three weeks. By October, we’d fallen back into the “up-yours” swing of things that define us as a city.
Last week, a female friend from out of town passed some guy while jogging around the Central Park reservoir, so she instinctively said “hi.” A mile later, he had caught up to her, out of breath, and asked for her number. She explained that while he was 41, she was 20, and thus it would be a bad idea for them to date. So he said they didn’t have to “date,” they could just go to his place. This is why people do not say hi to each other in New York.
I’ve traveled a lot in the last few years, and seen most major cities in America. And despite most Big Appler’s claims to the contrary, almost all of them have something that New York doesn’t.
Atlanta, for instance, has roads. It also has thirty billion cars on each road, so going anywhere takes three years. But you can use your time in the car to contemplate life and come to a higher understanding of the universe.
Chicago has lovely fall weather. In August.
Las Vegas lets you do exactly 27 things that are both enjoyable and illegal anywhere else. One of them is losing all of the money you’ve ever thought you had, and some you hadn’t thought of yet. Another is hookers.
Philadelphia makes anyone from out of town feel safe instantly. In comparison to being in Philadelphia.
San Antonio is one of the better cities I’ve been to. The bars were packed with people, my cabbie talked to me about basketball, and strangers carried on conversations on the street. And I tanned just walking to the car.
Baltimore’s Inner Harbor is absolutely beautiful. Though it is unfortunate that the usable part of the city is only half a mile long.
Cleveland has a lovely airport.
Los Angeles has one of the greatest views I’ve ever seen. If you go to some of the Hollywood hills, looking down at the valley is incredible. And when the smog rolls in, it envelops everything, giving it that cool horror movie look.
Milwaukee has a ton of food. Everywhere. And everything is either fried, made of cheese, or comes with beer. The last day I was there, I had beer battered fried cheese. My small intestine has been on strike ever since.
New Orleans is always a party. Everyone is drunk, no one can stand up straight, and you should really try to leave before the cops get there.
But for all my time spent in other cities, I’ve never been in one for longer than a week. It is possible that I could move somewhere else and fall in love with that city, like I did with New York. Hell – if I could love this seventh ring of hell, I could learn to love anything.
But just when I was starting to contemplate staying here, I took the subway. The past few days, I’ve seen people shove each other out of the way for a seat, block the doors so that they could get a little more elbowroom (using it, of course, to elbow people) and beg for change while they count up the bills in their paper cup. I’ve taken the subway more than a thousand times, and I admit that I am sick of all of the boorish behavior. And the herpes.
So I say goodbye, New York. Goodbye to your $8 beers and your suggested donations at museums that are always mandatory. Goodbye to the city where downtown is downtown, uptown is midtown, and midtown is a different place depending on who you ask. Goodbye to the delivery guys who don’t have change, to the people who wear black every day of the summer, and to the cabbies who have never once tried to speak English. Goodbye, New York. Goodbye to it all.
I’m going to miss you.
I love television. And not in that drill-a-hole-in-the-side-of-it kind of way. It’s just that my life would be worse if I did not have TV.
My freshman year of college, I went without TV for a year. By May, I felt I had gained a lot from not wasting my time in front of a television. Sophomore year, my roommate brought his own TV. By May, I realized how stupid I was for feeling that I had gained a lot from not wasting my time in front of a television.
I’m not one of those people who will schedule his life around a TV show, especially since Seinfeld is only on in syndication. But if I’m around and not doing anything that requires a ton of concentration, I’ll turn it on and my life will be better for it.
I like watching Sportscenter as I wake up in the morning, and as I fall asleep at night. The only thing better than new movies on HBO are old ones on Comedy Central, which also shows stand-up comedy for hours at a time. And it’s scientifically proven – old episodes of Cheers make food taste better. It’s kind of like Adobo that way.
Adobo commercials totally miss their mark. I first heard of Goya (Oh Boya!) when I was seven, but never tasted Adobo until I was in college and someone forcefully put it on my food. I have used it on everything since. Maybe Goya could just drop the commercials and use the money to pay people to knock on your door and sprinkle some Adobo on your dinner.
Some people call television the idiot box, and I think that’s true, to a degree. Televsion, like most good products, trusts the consumer to make the right decisions with how to use it. Ice cream is a wonderful product, but I imagine it’s not a good paperweight. Similarly, you will fail if you try to use TV as a way to baby-sit your kids or to educate your idiot husband that you only married because you got knocked up in the back of his truck. That was redundant. If you use the phrase “knocked up,” it obviously happened in the back of a truck.
Along with marathons of Twilight Zone and Bill Murray movies, there comes a certain price we have to pay. Like Lifetime, television for people who don’t like television. The one good thing Lifetime has going for it is The Golden Girls, which is less a show about four old ladies and more a show about making fun of everyone you don’t like.
TV can be the idiot box if you are an idiot, and like to watch other idiots interview more idiots about how their idiot wives cheated on their idiot selves with their idiot brothers (or idiot sisters). But to an educated consumer, television offers bite-sized entertainment, and I do not feel uncultured for enjoying it. Just because a TV set is smaller than a movie screen doesn’t make what’s on it any less worthwhile. Oooh, maybe I could get a TV set the size of a movie screen. That’d be hot.
I know that I’ve lost a lot of time watching TV. A kid I went to high school with grew up with no TV and he won the Westinghouse science talent search. But that is him, and I am me. I know that if I didn’t have a TV, I would just play more ping pong. Which is what I did all of freshman year.
One of the best shows on TV was Dream On, which was about a guy who thought in old TV clips. That’s perfectly accurate for so many of us because TV was our first look at the outside world. “How sad,” you might think. Only if your parents had that look be the wrong shows. My first look at the world was through a hundred little blue men who always triumphed over evil, followed by a bunch of robotic lions that united to destroy a common enemy who was always the same size as all five of them put together. If your kid’s first look at the world is two suburban teenagers who like fire, he’s going to burn down your house. But if you show him the right stuff first, he’ll probably remember the episode where the Smurfs told him not to play with matches.
And perhaps the best thing about TV is that it eliminates poor conversation. If you have something to say, you can shut off the TV and say it. But if you ever need to fill dead air, a little half-hour happiness is much better than prattling on about something useless. If you’d ever like to not talk to me, I’d be glad to come to your place and watch.
Unless your TV has a hole in the side of it. Then I think I’ll stay home and play ping pong.
I am putting off other work in order to write this column. You are probably doing the same in order to read it.
It’s amazing to live in a world with so much progress, yet we pretty much get the same amount of work done that we always have. We just spend more time on the web.
I can’t picture my father when he was my age, sitting at his desk, trying to play mini golf. Of course, he probably had a typewriter when he was my age. Maybe he played real minigolf instead. With a styrofoam cup from the break room for a target, a rolled up piece of paper for a ball, and a yardstick for a putter. That’s a little easier to picture, but it’s still a stretch. I should ask him.
(Insert noises denoting me dialing a phone.)
“Dad, when you were my age, you had a job, right?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Did you ever play minigolf at your desk with a styrofoam cup from the break room for a target, a rolled up piece of paper for a ball, and a yardstick for a putter?”
“No. What are you talking about?”
“Thanks, dad. I have to get back to work.”
My dad didn’t play minigolf. But even if he procrastinated in other ways, my early-20s dad couldn’t match me for the tiny amount of time I spend doing actual work in a day. See, I can get the same amount done in two hours that anyone thirty years ago could in eight, so there’s no point in trying to pack even more in there.
I’ve got access to a lot of devices that make my job easier. I don’t waste time walking to the office library to look up facts for stories when I can just look them up on the web. I don’t waste time dialing people’s phone numbers because I have everyone already programmed into my phone. And I don’t even waste time dialing their name anymore, because I IM them instead. Which leaves me a billion hours free every day that I can use to get frustrated at on-line jeopardy when it doesn’t load all the way. The tease.
My desk is near a meeting table, so sometimes I spend my time listening to the meetings that go on there. This one group of people has had the same meeting every day at noon for the last two weeks. They haven’t come to any kind of resolution yet, but they’ve come up with reasons for all of the reasons why they haven’t come to a resolution. I don’t even know who these people are or what resolution they’re supposed to come to, but every one of them has “executive” in their title.
I just took a break from writing this column to toss a football with my editor. Working in sports is good that way. My editor nailed the screen with the ball and I was afraid that I’d lost the whole column. Tossing a football with your editor is bad that way.
Even when I’m doing the work that I get paid for, I can still find time to chat with my friends, or send e-mails to people telling them that I am too busy to get lunch. That’s why I could never be a cabby. Not the lunch thing, the IM and e-mail thing. Cabbies have tons of down time and nothing to do with it. I see a lot of cabbies on cell phones lately, and I wonder how high their phone bills must be. I bet the late-shift cabbies totally screw with that free nights and weekends thing. They’re like the really fat guy at a Sizzler that no one planned for.
I saw a homeless guy on a cell phone a few days ago, begging for change. I wondered who he was talking to, and how come they didn’t send him some food. Then I wondered why he bought a cell phone instead of eating. “Don’t give him your money! He’s just going to spend it on minutes!”
You can IM people on their phones now, or send them phone messages from the web. That makes sense if you’re somewhere that you can’t talk, but sometimes my friends sit in a cab and IM people. Maybe they’re being quiet because they don’t want to interrupt the cabbie’s phone conversation. Or maybe they’re talking to the cabbie. Or that homeless guy. They’re probably IMing, “Sorry, I don’t have any change,” but it comes out as “SOrry I dont hav NE changem.”
There’s that commercial where everyone sits in a meeting and IMs each other about how much their motivational speaker sucks. And while he did suck, the people IMing on their phones aren’t much better. I’d much rather be at my desk, playing minigolf. Also, their motivational speaker is in a Pepsi commercial with Britney Spears and Austin Powers.
I wonder if there are any cups left in the break room.
Most of you are probably expecting five short observations on things in the world around me. I hope you are used to disappointment, because you are in for it.
Much like the disappointment that comes with being in an airport while forgetting both my cell phone charger and my headphones. The first lapse in memory will force me to spend a weekend not speaking to those I am trying to reach. The second one will force me to spend a flight speaking to those I am trying to avoid. I didn’t even plan on plugging my headphones in to anything. I was just going to wear them. If my neighbor notices the dangling headphone cord, so be it. It’s what they get for arriving late enough to have a middle seat.
I wrote a column for two and a half years about looking at stuff around me and reporting what I saw. Kind of the little brother urging you to look out his side of the car. But after graduating college, things have slowly begun to change. But not in the airport. I’m still sitting here avoiding people, just like I was a half hour ago.
Observational Humor used to be about college, but I felt a bit sheepish writing about something I was no longer part of. So I started writing about working life, but that’s no fun at all. When you tell someone that you write college humor, they say, “Parties, rock!” When you tell someone that you write office humor, they say, “Excuse me, Irving, may I borrow your stapler? I seem to have used up the last of my staples while putting together my painfully boring life.”
When I started to write this column, I was left at a crossroads. And not the kind that has Britney Spears trying to act (whew). My crossroads involved me making a decision. So I finally made one: I bought a new pair of headphones from the airport’s Overpriced Random Things Depot. Actually, I bought two. I wanted mini headphones, and you could only get those “free” with a twelve-dollar pair of big headphones. The Depot also carries the big headphones without the mini headphones, priced at six dollars.
Equipped with headphones, I started thinking about what to write this week. I could give you a riveting expose on white out or the dress code or the gradual change from water coolers to soda machines or something else that your parents might enjoy reading. Or I could write about whatever I felt like, on a week-to-week basis, and just try to be as entertaining as possible. The decision was much easier than whether or not to blow twelve bucks on headphones.
The problem that decision creates is if interesting things happen around me often enough to write about. Interesting things that I can write about here, anyway. There’s all sorts of interesting stuff that goes on between people I know that you wouldn’t really care about. Like when John asked Patricia out, and she turned him down because she wanted to date Patrick, and then everyone made fun of her because her name was Patricia and so she shouldn’t date someone named Patrick. This is an example of something that would not make a good column.
Living in New York and having a keen sense of perception helps. Which is much healthier than living in New York with a keen sense of smell, since that would prevent you from ever leaving your apartment. I enjoy looking at the things around me, thinning them out into bite size pieces, and serving them to my readers like the tiny bag of pretzels and the 5 ounce cup of Sprite that will keep me full all the way to Los Angeles.
Little things like this should provide me with both hunger pains and countless weeks of column material; the world is full of things that make for funny anecdotes. Like the guy who just sat down next to me and is letting his kid run around touching people.
A lot of people have written to me asking if I could make my columns longer, and I have traditionally told them to go pound. So it is possible that none of them are reading this, since they are all busy pounding. But if they have not yet begun to pound, or perhaps they finished their pounding early, they might be reading this after all. I hope that my new format did not disappoint any of them.
Unless they are the guy with the weird kid who keeps touching me. I hope he gets dissapointed constantly.
My friends have started slowly getting married. When I meet a girl, is she thinking about whether or not I’m marriage material? I can’t even settle on what I’m gonna eat for lunch – what makes anyone think I can settle on something a little more lasting than grilled cheese?
Why are women only sure they don’t want to date you two days after you pay for dinner?
I don’t understand work dating etiquette yet. Not picking up girls in your office, okay – that’s like not dating someone in one of your seminars. And Not picking up girls you live with is just like not dating anyone on your hall. But where are all of the fraternity parties to make up for it?
When I meet a new girl, I find myself asking them where they went to school. Which is okay when they’re my age. But when they’re older, it gets a little weird. “Where did you go for undergrad…ten years ago?”
Some guys who just made it to the work place think they’re cool because they can finally afford to buy drinks for every woman they meet. It only takes a few weeks of this to realize it’s cheaper to cut out the middleman and just buy a woman.
In college, we ate lunch. At work, we take lunch. Because the idea of taking time has become much more important than the idea of lunch.
Looking forward to lunch makes the morning go by much quicker. But most of the time, you eat something quick and greasy like pizza or a burger. Which makes the afternoon go by VERY slowly.
Your job is stressful when you have to take some time out of lunch to IM your friends. Your job is not stressful when you have to take some time out of IMing your friends to eat lunch.
You don’t have enough money to go out for lunch unless you work in finance. Which is perfect, since they all eat lunch at their desks.
My company cafeteria is VERY segmented. The editors sit in one place, the writers in another, and the interns in another. Each magazine sits seperately, and no one from editorial ever sits with anybody from production. We might have diplomas, we might have saved our tassles, and we might even have the yearbook – but no one ever really leaves high school.
The thing I hate the most is when someone near me checks their voicemail on speakerphone. The thing I love the most is when I hear it say, “you have no new messages.”
Everyone has one guy in the office who knows how to use every feature of his voicemail. You’re struggling to change the name that pops up on your co-worker’s call ID, and he just used it to check his e-mail, forward calls from his wife to his cell phone, and baste a twelve-pound Turkey.
I don’t understand how to use my phone at all. I’m sure that there are a million cool features that I could use if I just read the ten-page manual. But then I’d have to read ten pages about phones.
On my phone at work, you have to dial in your extension and your pass code every time you want to hear your messages. It’s a good thing there’s so much security. Otherwise anyone could break in to my voicemail and find out that no one ever calls me.
I try to sound professional on my work voicemail, but I still sound like myself. I know some people who try to deepen their voices to sound older. This was okay when you were twelve and calling a girl for the first time. But it’s not okay to leave an outgoing message and pretend you’re Barry White. “I can’t come to the phone right now, but if you leave your name and number, I’ll get back to you as soon as possible. Awww, yeah.”
The free stuff factor we learned in college never gets old. Most offices have an office supply cabinet where they keep all the extra pens, masking tape, folders, etc. And even though the entire contents of the cabinet cost twenty bucks, you still hoard as many supplies as you can, just because they’re free. But guess what – free crap? Still crap.
Some companies make stuff with their names on it. That makes sense if these things are being given out as promotional items. Not if they’re being used around the office. You spend 40-50 hours a week in this place already, you probably have an e-mail address with the company name, and you might even have business cards. But in case you forget where you work, you can check your tape dispenser.
Everyone I know goes through at least a box of pens in a year. I used to think it was because people are constantly losing their pens. Actually, the pens are right in front of us. But after a week, they’re so chewed up that you can’t tell they’re pens anymore.
Office supply stores are fun because they make you think of uses for products you never thought you needed. Like the desk organizer that organizes your other desk organizers.
Businesses have to make a choice. Either they lose money paying someone to do inventory, or they lose money paying for replacement supplies. So most of them don’t bother to do inventory, because if they’re going to lose money, at least they can help raise company morale with free pens.
8:00 AM looks dramatically different from this angle. It’s not spinning anymore.
The biggest thing that changes when you start work is your concept of midnight. I used to see midnight and go to the bars. Now I see midnight and go to sleep. I don’t know if that’s really funny, but it sure does suck.
Senior year, you feel very old. Which is nice preparation for being the only one in your company without kids.
The only way to be happy with your first paycheck is to assume they’re going to take out 35% of your entire salary in takes. That way, when they only take 32% or 33%, you’ll be thrilled.
Interns just create work for other interns. My job is basically as a researcher and reporter, so I have to call people and ask them questions. And when they don’t know the answer, they have their interns call someone else, who asks their intern, and so on, and so on. And then somehow, it all ends up back at the White House.
I wasn’t going to write about my job specifically because I like to stick to universal stuff. But then I realized that AOL/Time Warner owns my company. Which means half of us already work together, and the other half are customers.
The good thing about working for an AOL/Time Warner company is that they can’t really get mad at you for using IM seven hours a day. “Dude, relax. I was just making sure the product works.”
During our orientation, they told us all about the AOL/Time Warner subsidiaries, and how vast the company really is. And they showed us this video with all these boy bands, Brittany Spears, and a bunch of kids using AOL before flashing “America Online touches thirty-five billion people each month.” And you thought the Catholic Church was bad.
There’s always weird stuff going on in the Time Life Building. Thursday, there was a boy band in the morning and a stand-up comic in the afternoon. Like they couldn’t see this one coming…
I love the Time cafeteria. It’s got a great selection, the lines move incredibly quickly, and everything costs about $5. And the best part is, I’m not already paying them $30,000 a year.
A lot of people ask me what I’m going to do after graduation. I think I’ll go to dinner with my parents, then drink a whole lot and pass out.
You pretty much have to write something in masking tape on your mortarboard-the space is too good to waste. I’m deciding between “thank you, Spark Notes,” “for a good time, ask,” and “brought to you by yahoo.com.”
Graduation robes are so weird. Why do we only look educated after we dress up like giant colored snow angels?
Graduation is a huge step in a young adult’s life. Hooking up with a college student goes from encouraged to sketchy in just three hours.
They tell us not to throw our hats because it’s dangerous. They’re talking to people who spent the last four years drinking ourselves to sleep on the weekends, taking no-doz to study on the weekdays, subsisting solely pizza and Chinese food, and braving communal bathrooms regardless of whether or not we remembered to bring our shower shoes. If that didn’t kill us, I don’t think we have to worry about an out of control hat.
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I can’t pull an all-nighter to study. When I’m that tired, I don’t have trouble picking a,b,c, or d. But I have trouble remembering what order they come in.
When you try to comfort someone studying, don’t ever do it by saying, “don’t worry, it’ll all be over in a few days.” They’ll ignore “it’ll all be over” and just hear “in a few days” before they breakdown crying.
The library is a great place to study. By the time I leave, I haven’t looked at my reading, but I am the world’s foremost expert on 17 different people’s pen fidgets, snacking habits, and bathroom intervals.
If I can’t remember the name of the girl I met in a bar five minutes ago, what chance do I have of remembering anything so much less important?
My mom told me that if I spent half as much time studying as I did on watching baseball, I’d be a straight A student. “You get a B in history, but you can tell me Keith Miller’s batting average from 1987.” I said, “.373, though he didn’t have enough at bats to qualify for the batting title so Tony Gwynn won with a .370—but that’s completely besides the point.”
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When you’re a senior, finals are different. They feel so, I don’t know, final.
The timing for Cinquo de Mayo couldn’t be worse. Here it is, a holiday where people celebrate with nachos and Corona but everyone is stuck in the library. Not me – I think studying instead of nachos and Corona is like vacuuming during the Super Bowl.
For the classes I have with finals, I fill up an entire notebook. For the classes I have with papers, the notebook has a bunch of half-drawn pictures, notes from the one class we had before I realized there was no final, and the date crossed out and changed each time I didn’t end up taking notes.
It’s not that seniors have fewer finals than everyone else, it’s just that we don’t care. By now, most seniors have jobs or have been accepted to grad school. And if they haven’t, they’re still smart enough to know that ten points on a calc final isn’t going to make or break them.
If you finish finals early, keep your mouth shut. You may think it’s cool, but there is nothing that other people hate more than the guy who finishes all of his work first. Walk up to anyone and say, “I don’t have any finals and I kicked your baby brother in his stupid fat head.” “What? You don’t have any finals?”
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I have one class where even the TA has been cutting lately. Or so I’ve been told.
If you’re not worried about getting in to grad school, all you need is a B to get any job. So if you’ve been through three years of school with A’s and you find yourself not going to grad school, the only math you’ll need to do is figure out exactly how many classes you can miss and still pass.
Being 6’4” with red hair makes it tough to cut class. Having professors who are 64 with gray hair makes it easy.
You might be slumping when you’ve taken the time to make three-dozen different away messages. You know you’re slumping when you have that many different ones that describe which bar you’ll be at.
You never completely stop caring about your workload when you’re a senior. But if you skip class, it’s hard to actually expend the effort to call someone to see what you missed. That’s why you make friends with people who go out a lot. “Hey, aren’t you in my bio class? Did we get any assignments? Any exams? No? Cool – see you next weekend.”
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Why does every school have at least one really crappy dorm? And every dorm has at least one really crappy room? Hey college – stop building crappy rooms, okay? Thanks – we appreciate it.
Why do people get so excited by their friends’ housing lottery numbers? “My friend got number 2,998 out of 3000! Isn’t that wild?” “No way, dude, my friend was number 23!” “Woah – my friend was number, like, 17!” Hey – no one really cares what your friend’s lottery number was. Besides, I had a friend who was number 4. Isn’t that wild?
There’s constantly signs advertising on my campus for people to help fill the last few spaces in suites. I think it would be smarter to post signs looking for a roommate who is going abroad the whole year. Or at least someone with a girlfriend across town.
How horribly backward is special interest housing? At some schools, any minority group can apply for their own suite, floor, or house. So you can only live with people of your own race or religion? I thought America had a problem with this rule the first time when it was called “separate but equal.”
If I got number 1 in the housing lottery, I’d sell it to number 50 for $100, then sell that to number 100, sell that to 200, and so on and so on. Sure, I’d end up with the worst room on campus, but it’d be wallpapered in solid gold.
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When I meet a guy in college, I always want to ask, “what kind of guitar do you play?”
You know MP3s have taken hold when everyone has burnt copies of all the CDs from their music class.
I think live music is usually better than listening to a CD. But I will never understand why people like recorded live music better than something produced in a studio. “Hey, he’s saying something to the audience that we can’t really hear. Oh, I love when he does that! Maybe later, he’ll miss a few notes, and the mic will pick up some feedback!”
I love those compilation CDs they sell on TV. When it’s one I want to buy, I get the song list off their website, download all the tracks, burn the CD myself, and spend the $19.95 on pizza.
I am a music idiot. I like popular music with a good beat and good lyrics, and I don’t care how studio produced it is, how few chords it uses, or how little talent it took to write the music. That’s the only way I can play it on my guitar anyway.
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In high school, you had a principal and an assistant principal to kiss up to. In college, you have 473 deans. Better get some chapstick, buddy.
How great would it be to work as an office assistant in a college and just happen to be named Dean?
There’s a dean for everything at my school. Dean of Students. Dean of Student Affairs. Assistant Dean of Student Affairs. Assistant Dean of Student Affairs and Special Programming. Ever think that the title “Dean” is kind of like “Associate Producer”?
Do you think the Dean of Food Services gets really pissed if you call him Jimmy?
We have something called “Dean’s Discipline” at my school. That’s when you do something wrong and you are at the complete mercy of a dean when it comes to punishment, which some people think is unfair. But how are our kids going to learn to use fascism later in life if they don’t teach it to us now?
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I used to think that Easter Island was a whole island filled with chocolate and bunnies, but it turns out that it’s just a bunch of mean looking stone faces. Which makes sense, since that’s how a lot of my friends describe hanging out with their relatives.
A friend of mine asked me if I had a happy Passover, without realizing it was still going on. Passover is eight days. Hannukah is eight days. Sukkot is eight days. See, we buy everything wholesale.
Good Friday is supposed to be a fast day. Except I found out you get one main meal, and then another small meal to keep you going. That’s not fasting – that’s Jenny Craig.
Passover is a simple holiday to explain. It’s Thanksgiving without bread or football.
I prefer Passover to Thanksgiving. At Thanksgiving, some of your relatives will drone on and on for hours about what they have to be thankful for, and why they’re all so blessed to have made it another year. That happens at Passover too, but at least there’s a script.
I think it’s funny when people give up things they don’t really enjoy doing for lent, in an effort to trick god. I like to think of a god as someone who can’t be fooled into thinking that I’m struggling to end my addiction to homework.
I know an overweight, chain-smoking alcoholic who couldn’t come up with anything good to give up for lent. I think she settled on “three years of her life.”
In some families, it’s Passover tradition to serve both egg soup and chicken soup. Though for the life of me, I can’t remember which comes first.
Painted eggs, wicker baskets, chocolate and marshmallows molded in the shape of bunnies and baby chicks? The only rebirth Easter commemorates is that of Martha Stewart’s career.
The ten plagues were blood, frogs, vermin, pestilence, cattle death, boils, hail, locusts, darkness, and the slaying of the first born. If it weren’t for that last one, I’d think I was praying to El Nino.
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I define “hooking up,” as anything sexual, not including sex itself. That is much more than hooking up. That is being completely interlocked.
Everyone has their little quirks when it comes to hooking up. So after you’ve been hooking up with one person for a while and you hook up with someone else, you need to be very careful that you remember not to do that extra swirly thing with your tongue.
I know a girl who laughed when she made out with someone. I’m talking right in the middle of it – just burst out laughing. And she did this with everyone she ever kissed. Or that’s what I tell myself to keep the self-esteem up.
I won’t ever say someone’s name when I’m hooking up with them. Not because I’m afraid of getting it wrong, but because I think it’s weird when someone says mine. Even if I’m doing something like fooling around, when someone says, “Steve,” it’s just instinctive for me to answer with, “what?”
There are some guys who just try stuff and see if they get slapped. But most of us will lightly brush up against things first to gauge the reaction. That way if the girl is like “what are you doing?,” we can just pretend it was a complete accident that the back of our hand landed squarely between her thighs.
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