The Humanities

The humanities are the non-empirical study of the human condition (i.e. you don't need to know math, statistics, or the scientific method). You do, however, have to read. A lot. Even in learning about film, painting, or sculpture your professor will always have that one "small" reading assignment consisting of sixty-four pages of dense analysis that is a must read. About three percent of those who graduate in the humanities will get a job making or analyzing art, about sixty percent will end up back in the system as an educator, and the rest will wait tables. At least you'll know you understand Native Son better than the jerks you're getting curly fries for.

The Social Sciences

These are areas of academia involving empirical study of the human condition (the nerdy big brother of the Humanities). Social Science majors have a higher chance of getting professors who are clearly remnants of the hippy movement, pony-tail and all. On the bright side, you only sort of need to know how to think critically, write, and do math--throughout much of your academic career many of these activities will be done for you. On the down side, unless you supplement your Anthropology degree with a Something Useful minor, you're spending at least another four years in grad school to get a job that will generally pay you so little you're forced to tell everyone you know that you're "just happy to be doing something you love."

The "Hard" Sciences

Alright, so you like math and you like robotics. It's time to suck it up, decide you didn't care about getting laid in the first place, and become an engineer. Of course, it's difficult to ensure jobs as the national economic climate changes so rapidly-who even knows if there will be any open engineering jobs by the time you get done! Your professors are all going to be from as far away from here as possible and they are going to give you very little leeway.  Both of these things will be apparent every time they talk. On the plus side, you get to walk around with a false sense of superiority because your major is "one of the hard ones." And that will make you forget all about how much you hate your life over the next four to six years.

Communication

These are all of the majors about mass media, be it newspapers or television. You're going to have a lot of younger professors because the field changes too rapidly for older folks to keep up. This allows you to spend bonding time with your professor or TA talking about Call of Duty instead of going over the notes. Also on the plus side, you education consists of looking at copious amounts of shit you use anyway: television, advertisements, video games, and the internet. On the down side, you're going to end up in some facet of advertising, journalism, or telemarketing-pretty much no matter where you end up, you're going to be an asshole.

Computer Sciences

If you've already built your own laptop just so you could have a Linux machine, this major could be for you. You'll spend your college career learning the ins and outs of programming so that you can become an overlooked but vital piece in porn marketing. Of course, some of the lucky graduates in this field will become an overlooked but vital cog in movie-making and video-game creation. But the chances are you'll just end up working for a 24/7 tech-support hotline, passing the time at 3:00 AM by clicking away precious moments of your life to the sound of angry voices and inhumane amusement... like a circus monkey.

1. Discover where the campus library is.  Chances are, you've never been there or only showed up one time because you were drunk and none of your friends would come pick you up.  Despite your fond memories, do not give in to your urge to sleep on a couch instead of working.
2. Find a computer.  This could be hard, because of the huge quantity of people who come to the library just to check their facebook, myspace, or twitter for hours at a time.  These people are preventing you from getting work done and are your enemies!  Continue searching until you find an available computer that works.
3. Check facebook, myspace, and/or twitter three or four times upon logging in.  If you don't have one of these networking profiles, seriously consider signing up for it now, as it will remove the temptation to do so later, when you are on a roll.  Open your e-mail so you know if anybody is trying to get ahold of you and update your facebook status so everybody knows you're working at the library.
   
4. Open Microsoft Word or whatever other wanna-be program you type papers in.  Write your name, class, and other needed information, on a title page if you can get away with that.  You may need to look up the class online--if you do, take the opportunity to check your social networking sites again.
5. Learn what your paper is about.  This may require you to look it up online or dig out a sheet of paper.  If you don't know and can't find it, ask everybody who might know on facebook.  Then call some people and be sure to talk obnoxiously loud, so if anybody in the immediate area knows the answer to your question, they may also help you.  Since you don't know what to write about, read some online comics.  Compulsively check your facebook...you know, in case anybody responded with the paper topic.
6. Write the title.  As we all know, the title is the first part of the paper which is material-oriented.  Take the paper subject and take out the instruction part, then put it at the top of the page (or on the title page) underlined or italicized.  For example, if your assignment says, "Discuss the importance of the discovery of the Nag Hammadi Library on modern-day understanding of the early stages of Christianity.  Make sure to cite your sources and reference at least three of the books in the NHL," you will write The Nag Hammadi Library and Modern-Day Understanding of Early Christianity.
7. Check out the girls/guys in the immediate area.  You may also want to daydream about talking to them, asking them out, etc.  Consider trying to talk to one near you and do so until he/she realizes you're staring, then hide yourself as best as you can, but still sneak a peak every once in a while.  Come up with reasons you, in reality, would never want to really know that person.  Decide you hate that person.  Post a facebook status about how you hate the people at the library.
8. Write everything you know about the subject in paragraph form.  If you don't know anything, go ahead and do a little research.  The easiest way to do this is to go on facebook and ask everybody if they know anything about your subject.  It is important to be sure you haven't double spaced yet because this will allow you to believe you've written more than you have.
9. Fill the rest with useless fluff.  Now is the time to double-space your paper and realize what you thought would be eight pages is really only four.  Take all of your quotations and make them longer, eliminate any elipses and insert the words instead.  Expand the character spacing between letters in the font option.  Find lines which end paragraphs that nearly fill an entire line and put in enough words to roll it over.  Eliminate big words if you can fill more space by putting lots of small words (e.g. remove "juxtaposed" and use instead "when viewed comparatively side-by-side...").  Be creative, and make sure to ask for help on facebook!

All the time people are comin' up to me, all like,

"Yo, Jeff, what the F is up with the Nanking incident? How did it affect Sino-Japanese relations?"

Or sometimes people are like,

"Man, did you hear about the rape of Nanking? Damn dude, being a Chinese civilian FTL..."

For the record, of course I am well versed in the goings on of the Nanking massacre and how they would come to affect Sino-Japanese relations. Duh. Everyone who isn't a stupid jagoff knows that shit.

Since I mainly hang out with stupid jagoff's, it's probably poignant to explain exactly what happened when and how subsequent relations between China and Japan were affected.

Lemme break it down like this: In like 1937 or some stupid year like that, some Japanese dudes took a plane to China. (It was Delta flight 1293 with service from Tokyo to Nanking for you goddamn history buffs that are going to want to know that shit.) When the Japanese dudes got to China, they busted out with their Pokemon cards, Sushi bars, and Saki bombs. Naturally, the Chinese dudes were pissed because they hate sushi and Pokemon.

The Chinese called up their legendary General Tao, who advised introducing the Japanese fellows to his famous chicken dish. The pissed off Chinese guys whipped up a plate of General Tao's chicken and served it to the Japanese guys on an orange plate.

Now everyone should know that being served on an orange plate is basically a slap to the face for any emperor-fearing Japanese man. The Japanese fellows not only didn't like the delicious chicken, they were deeply angered and offended, and texted their friends back home about the incident via their Hello Kitty themed Razrs.

Upon hearing about this most heinous of crimes, the Japanese guys buddies all booked flights on Delta out of Tokyo into Nanking. These guys didn't just bring Pokemon cards and Saki though. They brought Samurai swords and Death Guns.

Upon arriving in China, the disgruntled Japanese men began immediately raping and killing every Chinese person in Nanking. You may ask yourself,

"Why didn't the Chinese fight back? Didn't they have police or an army or something?"

Well they did, but they were too busy saying "Dude, wtf? It was just an orange plate!"

This massacre went on for about six weeks. Or maybe like a day. No wait, it was three years. Nah. Six weeks. However long it lasted, it totally pissed off Chinese people.

To this day, the Rape of Nanking is a major arguing point in Sino-Japanese relations. Chinese folks are pissed off because Japanese history books gloss over the whole thing and Japanese people are pissed off because they're all like,

"Come onnnn, it was like 100 years ago. It probably wasn't even really that bad anyways."

And that my friends, is a brief history of the Nanking massacre and its subsequent affects on Sino-Japanese relations.

Pilot: Flight attendants, please prepare the cabin for departure.
Flight Attendant: Ok cabin, here we go. It's that time again, we're about to take off. Are you prepared?
Cabin: Fuck no I'm not!!! Are you serious? I'm a giant metal tube; I have no business being 35,000 feet above the surface of this planet! You are one crazy bitch if you think I'm prepared for anything, let alone takeoff.
Flight Attendant: Heyyyy now, calm down, calm down. You did it on the way here; I know you can do it.
Cabin: Bullshit. The way here was a fluke. I'll never make it again.
Flight Attendant: Come now, that's not the kind of attitude I'm used to. Who's a big cabin, huh? Who can do it now?
Cabin: I'm a big cabin I guess... I still don't think this will ever work though. It doesn't make any fucking sense.
Flight Attendant: Aww, sure it does. You can do it. Just hold your breath and close your eyes until it's all over.
Cabin: Yea... yea I guess.
Flight Attendant (to pilot): Cabin prepared for departure.

Speaking of Dog the Bounty Hunter, what a ridiculous individual. Whenever I accidentally stumble into viewing his program, I always observe him saying "Oh shit, they saw us coming," as he walks into a housing project. Of course they saw you coming you jackass, you're an eight foot tall white guy with tribal feathers sticking out of your super-mullet wearing a bullet proof vest as a TV crew follows you through the 'hood. How could anyone NOT notice you?

I digress. I was talking about how no one rants anymore.

Nowadays everyone has a one line opinion. How do you feel about politics? "Interesting lately." What about Britney Spears? "Totally crazy."

While valid, these opinions do not constitute a rant. Ranting, like art, is a dying art. Seriously though about the art, can you name one current artist? Like as in someone who paints, not like a rap artist. Picasso died in the seventies and no one has kicked ass at art since then.

Dennis Miller used to rant. I think he's ranting about sports on some channel that no one gets these days though. That's too bad, his bombastic obfuscation always kept me on the edge of my seat, wikipedia at hand.

Having said that, is it just me, or is that guy clearly a horrible terrorist? I mean, he manages to get his bomb into Times Square, detonate it, and make a clean getaway, but he couldn't even injure anyone? He barely even hurt the door the bomb went off in front of. A few broken windows, nothing serious. The guy must have taken the short bus to his terrorist boot camp of choice.

I think whoever is responsible for this most heinous of crimes should consider another line of work, because terrorism is not his niche. If he went to careerbuilder.com he would have to click "no" when asked if he could injure someone with a bomb in the busiest block in the world. Anyone that clicks no to that question is automatically ruled out for terror related professions and immediately routed to waste management.

Next time someone sets off an explosive device in the most crowded place in this hemisphere, I expect some results.