Hunting...

I don't care for it. A most conspicuous example of the hunting to which I am referring occurred right before my eyes in a cafeteria line last evening. Specifically a girl in front of me was spooning fruit salad, which consisted of grapes, watermelon, honeydew, cantaloupe, and pineapple, into her bowl.

My first concern is logistical. I was waiting a good two minutes to take my turn at the bowl, this particular girl oblivious to my pressing temporal need for fruit.

But the more pressing concern is for equitable fruit distribution. If everyone spends an inordinate amount of time hunting for the choice pieces of fruit, there will be a most depressing selection of fruit for those late night eaters.

I am not advocating blind fruit spooning. That, I think, would be impracticable. A happy medium can be achieved with the 'scan and scoop.' This manner of serving would allow consumers to view the whole bowl and to make reasonable sized scoops as they do. To be clear there should not be time for pontificating, which is to say no time at which persons should be standing and scanning without any corresponding scooping. There should be continuous arm/ spoon movement while a person is at the bowl. The spoon can be directed at specific areas of the bowl (e.g. an area in which pieces of pineapple predominate, say) but specific, individual pieces of fruit should not be targeted.

As the summer season of fruit approaches, these consideration will become ever more important.

"Excuse me..."

"Excuse me," people will say to you, perhaps giving you a soft tap on the shoulder to draw your attention, "will you watch this for a moment." Often they also give you some motivation to assist, "I need to use the bathroom," they often follow up, or "I'll only be a minute," they frequently qualify. Sometimes it is a piece of luggage at the airport or a laptop computer at the library, but invariably, people ask.

The puzzling component to this exchange is not only the ubiquitous nature of such requests, but also the psychology that underlies them. People ask you to do them this favor without any knowledge of your character whatsoever. This is not problematic for the person asked, for the favor is small and generally unburdensome, but rather for the person making the request. What about some stranger in the library for example, makes them not only trustworthy enough to not steal the item in question themselves, but trustworthy and caring enough to stop others from doing so.

Working from the example of a student asking me to keep an eye on his laptop while he used the loo, what made this person ask me. I was in full view of the computer, but had he been monitoring me for my trustworthiness. Had he seen that over the past few minutes I had not stolen anything else or committed any antisocial behavior. Who does he expect to steal his computer? How does picking a person at random secure one's belongings any better than simply leaving them there.

I guess if the computer got stolen on my watch, he would have some sort of recourse, but not even that. He could assign blame but what measure of liability, nay responsibility, is conferred on the unwitting recipient of the near useless request?

I watched his computer until he came back. No one tried to take it. He gave me the thumbs up sign when he returned.

Actually I kind of need to use the bathroom, who should I ask to watch my things?

Priest Defrocked (in a bad way)

Today news broke of the first Roman Catholic priest to get in trouble for homosexual acts. In a recent interview a senior priest (titularly closer to God than a JP or junior priest) revealed his lifestyle of homosexual tendencies and sex. "The interview was anonymous, but we See everything," said one Vatican official, chuckling to himself about the intended pun. "We did some serious sleuthing and found out the man's identity."

Channel 7 news reporter Cliff Wallace, 47, Hyde Park Road, Redding Indiana 10677 also speaking to this blog on conditions of anonymity mentioned that "while the priests face was blocked out, the background of his office, including multiple pictures of the priest and his desk name-plate" were clearly visible and "zoomed in on" a number of times.

Nevertheless the lead Vatican detective is touting this finding as a great success. "We always suspected there was a gay priest. Now we have found him. And like I told my officers when we began this investigation 'we can find that one gay priest. This is the Vati-can not the Vati-can't.'"

Notes from London...

So the Brits drive on the left side of the road, I get it. It does not really matter where they drive as long as everybody knows the rules, and they do. Their walking, however, is plagued with indecision and confusion. In America the ambultory standard is to walk on the right side. Walking paths are, in short, a leggy microcosm of their vehicle-bearing counterparts. In London, however, walking strategies do not follow a similar analogy. I will begin with a few brief remarks on escalators before I vent my considerable fury on sidewalks. On escalators, common knowledge is that travellers stay to the right when standing, opening up a path on the left for those who wish to continue walking. The vexing thing here is that, given the rules of the literal road, it would stand to reason that passing on escalators too should be done to the left. Another frustertation is the juxtaposition of clearly defined and obeyed rules on the escalators (however seemingly contradictory they may be) with the veritable anarchy of the sidewalks. On sidewalks there is no rhyme or reason to collective stepping and indeed one must be on constant guard of walking in to someone head on. One would think that the walking traffic would follow the plan of the driving traffic but, sadly, that is not the case. Indeed no plan at all can be readily identified. In other cities it is at least the case that poor walking will only lead to front/ back collisions, not the case here. Walkers will heedlessly barrel down opposite sides of sidewalks with little regard for the confort, nay sanity, of their fellow pedestrians. In the midst of this anarchy, needless to say, there is no semblence of a slow walking and passing lane in each direction as the cities most skilled in foot-traffic will approach. London has many virtues indeed, walking, however, is not one of them

Final Countdown

Despite no fewer that four attempts at verbal persuasion one "pump-up song" has failed to adequately excite one local teen. As "Final Countdown" began to play on Track 5 , Nick Berg, 19, did not commence with the requisite screaming and singing that marked the responses of his 3 counterparts. "Dude, this is a countdown, get pumped!" said one friend, observing Berg's musical apathy. "Yeah man, and its not only a countdown, it is the FINAL countdown. There are no more countdowns after this one, it is the last one," added another. Colin Peterson, 18, driver of the vehicle and creator of the mixed CD was both phased and confused by Berg's apathetic response, "I mean I just put in this new sound system for sweet songs like this one. What's Nick's problem?" Peterson also cited Ice Ice Baby, My Humps, and "that Chumbawumba track" as "party-songs" that he was looking forward to playing on his new stereo.

Still Berg failed to get pumped, disputing the finality of this countdown to himself, noting that the song itself was easy enough to replay should he find himself in need of pumping up later. Owing to Berg's having heard this "final" countdown a number of times before, he took solace in the knowledge that this version, as others, might similarly lack in finality. The irony that Final Countdown was far from the last song on this CD and that Track 6 was "Countdown" by the Canadian rock band Rush, was largely lost on his peers, Berg noted.

The Proper Way

A few weeks ago, after having solved all the major political issues, I turned to the problems of life and gave an analysis of the merits of the night-time shower, the optimal eating paradigm and the excessive use of the word "random." This week, I turn to more serious philosophical dilemmas and vexing existential problems: midterms, greetings, computers and thank yous.

As week four of the term moves in, students are already swamped with midterm papers, tests, exams and the like. Of course,, the word "midterm" describes any test that does not occur in the first or last week of the term. That is not okay. During the second week of this term, I found myself listening to someone tell me about a "midterm" quiz that was coming up -- were they kidding? Sometimes you can just have a test, a plain, normal, regular test.

Midterms come in week five, the middle of the term. And while one could rationally refer to an assignment on the fourth or sixth week as a midterm, I do not know that people can be trusted after the sickening display of verbal misappropriation that we have seen with the idiom so far. That is not the proper way.

Another subject that must be discussed is that of greetings. Between the mutual nods and smiles and full stops for conversation, there are the constant "Hey, how's it going?" and "Hi, how are you?" encounters. I am sure I do not have to tell you just how aggravating these phrases are because being the recipient of one of them is immeasurably awkward. There is not enough time to answer properly: by the time you have registered the question, they are already two steps behind you, and all you have managed was a pathetic "good," without showing the proper reciprocative courtesy of inquiring about them.

Unless of course you execute "the turn," which, with or without the backwards walk, is ungainly, ineffective and downright dangerous. The best response that I have found is to turn the tables with a pithy, well-placed "fine, you?" Whether or not you want to run away quickly from them before they have the time to answer is a judgment call. This move, you should know, fully imbues them with all of the awkwardness they previously gave to you -- the icing on the cake. Bottom line: setting people up for awkwardness is not the proper way.

Another phenomenon that needs to be discussed is the use of computers during class. Computers are valuable learning aids, no doubt, but it seems as though there is always that one obsessive typer. You know this person. The one who pounds continuously on their keys for the whole duration of the class, typing verbatim every single remark the teacher makes. If the typing were normal that would be one thing, but it always seems as though this person's keys have been genetically engineered to be as loud as possible. I wonder whether they have they found a way to link their keys' sounds to their speakers or whether they have injected their keys with steroids. But what I really want to know is why they always sit directly behind me, because that is not the proper way.

The final issue that I want to discuss arose when I was leaving my dorm the other day. I was two steps past the wide-open door that I had just come out of when I spied a man pushing a cart of laundry toward the door. I froze for a second, my path impeded by this cart, when all of a sudden I heard the words "thank you," whereupon I sprang back to consciousness and stepped back to grab the door before it closed shut.

The man and his cart went on their way into the building and I stood outside thinking about what had just happened. I naturally felt used in the worst way, dirty and defiled. By thanking me for an action I had not yet committed, this man essentially stripped me of my free will and forced me into a favor. I felt violated: I had just been hit with a preemptive thank you. That is not the proper way.

Abbrevs

As a society, we can know that things are bad when they get abbreviated. K-fed (Kevin Federline), Greys (Greys anatomy), etc. If something is not worthy of having its whole name pronounced than there is a problem.