The Next Two

Economics 1000 - Global Economic Issues - I met Molly in this class. We became pretty good friends. Her friendship was particularly important to me because she was my first friend in college that wasn't on the swim team.

Economics 1020 - Microeconomics - This class was taught by a respectable professor who seemed really nice. The course played a role in what was to be my worst collegiate academic effort. It was not hard, but most classes are when you do not study your notes, or even take notes for that matter. I don't think I read the book either. Whenever I see the professor around campus I secretly wish I could take the class again and prove to him that I am a good student. In a class as big as it was, I hope he doesn't recognize me and remember my final grade and think he failed me. I definitely failed myself in that class.

The 40-Course Breakdown

Before I start blogging about each and every class let me do the breakdown of my college career excluding the four classes I am taking in London next semester.

I am going to give the number of courses taken in each department to get this party started.

Accounting - One
African-American Studies - One
Anthropology - One
Biological Sciences - One
Communication and Journalism - One
Computer Science - Two
Economics - Two
English - Fifteen
Geology - One
History - One
Languages - Four
Math - One
P.E. - Two
Philosophy - One
Religious Studies - One
Sociology - Three
Theatre - One
University Studies - One

A great friend of mine always used to tell me I should have been a statistics major because he discovered before I did, my fascination with breaking things down like so.

Believe It Or Not

I am going to graduate in May. This blog might have come in May, rather than in the last few weeks of this semester, but it did so because these are my last weeks in Laramie as a University of Wyoming student. I feel that I am graduating in three weeks because I am leaving the institution that I have been a part of for nine semesters. I remember all this talk about high school being the greatest years of your life...wrong. College has straight up dominated the high school years in any way imaginable. The four and a half years I have spent here have fostered a personal, academic, social, and spiritual growth for me that couldn't have been achieved without having this experience. This is not to say that I couldn't grow in those areas without this experience, but to emphasize the important role Wyoming, UW, and the friends therein have played in my life.

As of December 16, 2005, I will have completed 40 courses at this university. The knowledge I have gained from these courses is varied in levels of importance, but I can say that every course has provided a memorable story, experience, or lesson that I can take away from my college experience, other than the material presented to me by my many different professors. In my next few entries I am going to attempt to list all 40 of those courses along with that story, experience, or lesson. I am looking forward to writing those blogs already. However, some things call me away from my computer, and they are my 38th and 39th courses taken at UDUB.

G-Unit is on Percocet

Thanksgiving break was enjoyable due to the following reasons, but not limited to solely these: I dropped my pants while longboarding Wednesday night during the tour de Fort Collins, I got to run with Kyle, slept in every morning, had many conversations with my Dad who is on Valium and Percocet, ate a Big City Burrito, watched CU lose (I hate everything about CU), I got to sing Laffy Taffy and while I was doing that I realized what a superb achievement in music that song really is, I didn't watch any news on TV, I ate many great meals due to Chris's invaluable cooking expertise, I got talked into going to Get Rich Or Die Tryin' (the movie itself wasn't that good...not surprising...I just thought it was simultaneously impressive and sad that I got talked into going), played Yahtzee....and lost...twice, washed my poor salt riddled car, ate a pumpkin pie, and made it safely back to Laramie on U.S. 287 in a bit of a snow storm.

Cheney vs. Reid

Avoiding the political turmoil is nearly impossible in this country. It wouldn't help if you chose not to watch TV, surf the net, or read the newspaper.

In our most recent political quarrel we have the Vice President Dick Cheney lashing out at the popular rhetoric that President Bush and his administration lied to the nation about the real reason the U.S. went to war in Iraq. Cheney called the Democrat's argument "dishonest and reprehensible." I feel partially misled by the "intelligence" that supported the case for a war against Iraq, but I don't see the value in attacking the President and his administration while the war is still going on. I really do believe the attacks on the President distract him and his administration away from Iraq, than it does anything else.

Senator Harry Reid has accused Cheney of "playing politics like he's in the middle of a presidential campaign." I love it. When the President is getting bashed it seems like it's expected of his administration that they not defend their decisions. As soon as somebody does, they get grilled and accused of not paying attention to what really matters: the war in Iraq. Another quote from Reid, "I would urge the members of the Bush administration to stop trying to resurrect their political standing by lashing out at their critics. Instead, they need to focus on the job at hand, giving our troops a strategy for success in Iraq." Reid fails to recognize that Cheney was just simply responding to his critics as he has a right to do. His words were not harsher than the words of other politicians criticizing the President's decision to go to war.

Like Senator Reid said, Cheney is "playing politics", but so is Reid. Although by definition a politician's task is to not to "play politics", that is exactly what being a politician is these days.

The Pink Locker Room

Sportscenter, my favorite show, was kind enough to enlighten us about the University of Iowa's pink, visiting locker room in their stadium. The mental effect on the visiting team that is desired may not always be achieved, but over the years coaches have spent hours masking over everything pink in the locker room. Not all teams mask over the pink, some coaches let their players see the pink. All the players interviewed last night on Sportscenter were not offended by the pink. Most said things like, "I think it's a good idea", "Why not try to play mental games with your opponents?"

Nevertheless, we have gay and lesbian rights activists saying that the use of pink is trying to present women or gays in an inferior position to the young, strapping football players. What it boils down to is this: the people that are protesting the pink locker room are afraid of being offended, or they are afraid of the pink locker room offending someone else. And since something might be offensive, even if it is a long-standing tradition, it's no good and must be stopped immediately before some 300-lb-lineman breaks down in the locker room and cries for his mom because the pink makes him feel inferior. And as far as associating pink with women with weaker football players...I'm okay with that. You're lying to yourself if you think a team of women could go out onto the football field and play a tougher, better, and stronger game against a team of men, and beat them. The tradition is for the guys that don't care about offending their opponent a little, not for the activists and law professors that see something wrong with it.

Music Department

Collin took this picture of his guitar. I think it's a good picture so I put it up here, but it made me think about my musical talent...

If you just laughed, you know me well. I love music. Music enerqizes and excites me in ways nothing else can sometimes, it's awesome. However, I don't know anything about reading or writing music, nor have I ever desired to know about these things. Sometimes you just know where you have been given talent. Sometimes it takes a venture into the unknown to discover that you have no talent in that area, but I don't need to do that with music. I sure enjoy it, and listen to it a lot, but deep down inside I know I was never meant to be involved in the music department. I'm okay with that.

The Way of the Jersey-Chaser

You may find this a bit crude, but speaking bluntly is necessary. Here we go. While I sit at tables on Tuesday and Thursday nights I see a lot of people. The majority of the patrons fall into two categories: football players, or the jersey-chasers, which happen to be the dirtiest, easiest looking girls you could ever imagine.

It's no big mystery why the football players are there, it's a requirement for 99% of them to be vastly inferior in intelligence to the average college student. The jersey-chasers are their exact match on the female spectrum of intelligence--dumb as hell. I suspect that you could pick one person from each group and they could tell you of twenty people in the other group that they have slept with. So, the jersey-chasers aren't the only hos at study tables, there is the man-whore as well.

I just wanted to share this with you because no matter how much I am exposed to either group, I will never understand what is going on in their head. What do they think there existence is for? They really aren't stupid people either, they just don't have any wisdom or traditional values. I will be biased here and say traditional values are better than their values, unless you value syphilis, gonorrhea, genital herpes, sores, and warts.

Surprise!

I feel I have sinned by going this long without blogging.

In a recent conversation with a friend I verbalized what I have been feeling for some time now, that I am undecided as to what I should do when I graduate because I lack direction.

Google Earth is a really cool program. You should go download it.

Ezra Pound's Cantos are painful and not entertaining at all to read. I called him something bad in my notes, but I can't recall the exact expletive. In Canto I, Pound basically celebrates himself and places himself in a long tradition of great writers to bring the ancient, profound voices to the modern generations that have lost the desire and will to progress because of World War I. Fascinating. Couldn't he have done that without being so arrogant?

After four straight conference loses, the Western Thunder Marching Band is once again the pride of War Memorial Stadium in Laramie, Wyoming, not Cowboy Football. They are just playing horribly. I am foregoing the last home game this Saturday. Last year must have been a fluke or something...

Star Wars Bliss

I had to put this up because it's one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen. Is that sad? You might think so, but the Star Wars experience will never die for this nerd.

It's Showtime

Hollywood is in a slump. I can't believe how much crap comes out of that city in any given year, but specifically this year. It seems that I have been waiting around since I saw Batman Begins for another good movie. Here we are entering into the holiday season and there should be buckets of movies that I am dying to see...this is not the case.

I just can't get with Potter and his schoolboys. A History of Violence was just awful. What was up with the sex scene on the stairs? My girlfriend was laughing uncontrollably in the theatre when she leaned over to talk to me during this scene, "I am so embarrassed that I brought Angela (her younger sister) to see this." A quick story about my senior seminar class yesterday. My professor asked us if we had seen A History of Violence yet. I quickly shouted out a loud, "don't!" before anyone had time to answer. She then proceeded to tell us that it was a great movie and that we should go see it. That is fine, everyone is entitled to their own movie opinions, but I felt a bit bad about bashing the movie she was about to sell to us.

WeatherMan looks promising to me, but other than that the only movie that I have been honestly looking forward to is The Chronicles of Narnia. The movie was filmed in New Zealand, and it's using WETA Workshop for special effects and imagery, it's adapted from C.S. Lewis's (who is a stud, even though I recently heard he smoked close to 50 cigarretes a day) great books, and it has Aslan in it, who is essentially Jesus kicking some major ass....how can this movie not be good?

The O'Reilly Factor

I don't like everything Bill O'Reilly has to say, but I am generally intrigued by his awesome ability to be a jackass to anyone when his beliefs are challenged. So, I really do watch his show when I can, this happens about once a week, because I like it.

Tonight he made a good point about the NYCLU challenging the searching of bags and items prior to subway use in NYC. Many people have protested the searches, saying they are a violation of privacy. You know if someone has something to hide from a cop, they should be busted. What is the big deal with a cop looking through your bag and making sure you aren't going to kill a bunch of people? It's pathetic if you think that is a violation of your rights. What Bill pointed out is the fact that all bags are subject to search at the NYCLU upon entering or exiting the building. That is classic.