Thoughts on turtle life

Here are the reasons I wish I could be a turtle:

* They can hide in their awesome shells.

* They walk slowly and no one says anything about it.

* They are green and I love green.

* They are an integral part of Super Mario and other Mario-related games.

* They are universally loved… ever met someone who was afraid of/ hated turtles?

Why being a turtle would be unfortunate:

* They are cold-blooded

* They are constantly ridiculed in Comcast commercials.

So as you can plainly see, the pros of being a turtle far out-weigh the cons.

A storm is a storm

Now that we are about two weeks into a brand new NHL season (yes, I like hockey– and don’t you dare call me Canadian, one of the worst insults I can imagine, my apologies to the Canadian readers of this blog), I should introduce you to a little bit of the stupidity I have notice floating around the league.

The Carolina Hurricanes have recently adopted a new alternate jersey:

As you can see, this is an awesome jersey, with one obvious flaw. According to the national hurricane center, the hurricane warning is symbolized by two square, red flags, each containing a centered black square:

As you now may have noticed, the Caroline Hurricane’s jersey has only one of these flags– which is the storm warning given for tropical depressions and tropical storms. While these storms are also very fearsome and dangerous, I tend to doubt that it was effect that Carolina was going for.

That’s all for now… I’ll report on other crazy-hockey-alternate-jersey related stories as they come to my attention.

Uncooperative prime numbers.

Now that all the tests, papers and other midterm nonsense is done with, I can finally vent about something that has been bothering me for well over a week: fried mac and cheese at T.G.I. Friday’s.

It has been a while since I have eaten at a Friday’s, but a recent trip into Friday’s plaza in Hamden had me thinking about how insane it is to have an appetizer with seven pieces.

That is right; you heard me correctly. There are seven peices of fried mac and cheese on Friday’s appetizer plate.

This is just screaming conflict.

There is no way to fairly divide the plate between any number of people (with the obvious exception of 7, but that means everyone would only have one piece, which is not enough) because 7 is a prime number. If you are part of a party of two and order this plate, you may each have three before addressing the issue of who receives the seventh.

You may be saying to yourself; “just split the seventh one!”

Terrible idea. This is just makes a mess and isn’t even worth eating. It is not possible for any group to order this plate and not have a major argument so I’d advise you to either order something else or avoid T.G.I. Friday’s entirely.

Maybe eventually the restaurant will get the message: prime numbers are never a good idea.

To my loyal readers

You may have noticed a sharp drop-off in my thoughts, but I assure you all that this is only a temporary result of being in the middle of midterms.

Unpleasant as it is to think about, I have a major amount of drivel work to do, but I will have new thoughts up shortly.

On the other hand, if I post a lot all week, then I will probably fail out of school and I will have all the time in the world to think on this forum! Wouldn’t you all love that?

Just a thought.

States redefined

Last night, I had some free time and naturally I began thinking. I decided that the whole setup of the United States is very confusing and unneccessarily convaluted and complicated. It was then that I concluded that what really needs to be done to save this union is to redefine our antiquated state lines and replace them with boundries more in-tune with the regional definitions that we use as modern Americans.

So unveiled here for the first time ever is my comprehensive state redefinition plan.

I feel like I need to explain some aspects of my plan. Given are the state names in bold, with the capitals in parenthesis.

1. New England (Boston): It seems pretty clear to me that New England has a singular identity and should not be separated into six states. It just does not make sense. I should, however, point out that I took southern Connecticut and gave it to the Tri-State Area.

2. Tri-State Area (New York City): For anyone who has been to New York City, it is evident that the separation of New York and New Jersey is nothing more than a hinderence to functional metropolitan planning. So I separated the southeast tip from New York, the northern region from New Jersey and the southern portion of Connecticut and formed a much more sensicle unit, the Tri-State Area.

3. Philadelphia (Philadelphia): Southern New Jersey has as little cohesence with the northern section of the state as Philadelphia has with the western part of its state. So I combined those two regions and made a new state.

4. Pennsylvania (Pittsburgh): What was the idea of making Harrisburg the capital anyway?

5. New York (Albany): I understand that there may be confusion between New York and the Tri-State Area, (capital: New York City), but I don’t care much.

6. Maralware (Washington): Maybe the capital of our country would work better if it had more than 500,000 urban residents making the local decisions.

7. Virginia (Richmond): It is time to forget Civil War era hatreds and borders and finally reunite the Virginias.

8. Carolina (Charlotte): I spoke with a woman from North Carolina yesterday and she suggested that the state move its capital to Charlotte. I agreed, and threw in South Carolina just to get rid of all this North-South nonsense.

9. Georgida (Atlanta): Okay, I just really liked the name I came up with.

10. Alasippi (Birmingham): It only made sense to me to combine this two Gulf-Coastal states, and I even gave them some of the Florida pan-handle.

11. Miami (Miami): I should even go a step further and make southern Florida into its own country.

12. Kenasee (Nashville): As far as I am concerned, there is virtually no difference between those two states. So I combined them.

13. Ohio (Cleveland): Basically the same as regular Ohio, except I moved the capital to the much more sensible Cleveland.

14. Indanois (Chicago): This is perhaps the state combination with which I struggled most. But in the end, I decided that since I sometimes confuse the two states, I should just combine them. It’s selfish, I know.

15. Michigan (Detroit): Is current-day Michigan without that other stupid peninsula which is clearly a part of Wisconsin.

This is my summary of the east. I might cover the west tomorrow, but then again that’s only if I feel like it.

Also, I am looking for suggestions on what to rename the territory formerly known as Arkansas (a blatant ripoff of “Kansas.”) I always thought that was a stupid name.

Leave your thoughts!

Parking Lot Guide

I have decided that there are basically three kinds of parking lots:

* basic, common sense lots

* stupid, waste of space lots with lots of trees and grass

* even stupider slanted-space parking lots

Now the first kind of lot, the basic, makes the most sense. Who out there doesn’t enjoy a parking lot that is basically a large section of hot-top without any superfluous curbs?

On the other hand, there are the stupid, waste of space lots. It seems like whomever designed lots like these spent far too much time worrying about how the parking lot would look. This is not the purpose of parking lots! The purpose is to optimize space and accommodate as many cars as possible! It saddens me to say that parking lot designers are out of control in their contrived artistic vision. I implore you, architects of the car-lot, stick with the basics.

And the crazy-cousin-that-no-one-really-likes of parking lots is the slanted-space, one-way parking lots. These are inconvenient even for cars who are traveling in the right direction. I suggest a widespread boycott of any business or group of businesses that use this style parking lot. With our collective effort, we can eliminate them.

I would continue with this intriguing discussion, but the Red Sox just won, so I need to go celebrate and then sleep.

The 4 month foundation

Quinnipiac recently added an extra twenty or thirty minutes to my daily walk to class. Well, I’ll admit that the blue-fence detour near the library probably adds a total of an extra 50 feet, I would much rather try my luck jumping over the large holes in the old path, which was closed two weeks ago to the dismay of just about everyone.

This is just another move in the strategic effort to finish the new cafeteria project some time in the next half-century. In early May of this year, Quinnipiac broke ground on the site to much acclaim. Considering their progress so far, it is clear that they then promptly took a several months off and reconvened in late August to install a simple foundation. And even if this vacation speculation were true, it would STILL be a slow pace.

But still, the school reassures us that the project is moving ahead on time, hoping that we have the reasoning skills of small mammals, though some students here insult squirrel intelligence (read: fans of “The Hills”).

My point is, however, that given the results we can all see, I estimate that the cost/time distribution breaks down like this:

Foundation: 5 weeks, 1 million dollars

Inconvenient blue fence: 16 weeks, 11 million dollars

These pace and cost concerns me for two reasons; I am scheduled to graduate in May 2010 whereas the new café is slated to be finished sometime during the Hilary Clinton presidency (in 4 years at least, possibly never). And also I am concerned over how my tuition dollars are being spent.

For example, the school has recently made the decision to invest in a large bobcat in the middle of dorm road. After several maulings earlier this year, they instead decided to go the route of a bronze bobcat statue. This statue is a terrible idea not only because of new temptation to “ride the bobcat” for alcoholically-enhanced students on campus, it also misdirects important funds that could be used to cut the racially-insensitive Gatorade prices.

According to a recent article in our on-campus beacon of journalistic excellence and independence, The Chronicle, sophomore ZeZhao Lin says, “Not everyone is used to paying $2.49 for a Gatorade… if they’re a minority, it puts them [out of place].” Really. I have never, in my life, heard of a more critically divisive racial issue than electrolyte-infused beverages.

But back to my main point; painfully Vladimir Guerrero-slow construction on campus. Students of Quinnipiac University, the burden is entirely on our shoulders; the cost and the detour. But what could possibly pacify a student population in such unrest over this failed project? Why, yes, bronze bobcat would work just fine.

Lightning safety tips…

I am terrified of lightning. Do you blame me? It is merely giant bolts of electricity that can come down from the sky anytime, anywhere and kill you. That’s all. Before I begin my expert lightning safety tips, let’s go over some of the basic facts about lightning:

* it is blue (or purple, depending on the night)

* It can be anywhere from 200,000 amps to 18 million mega-grandé-venti watts or even 25 million triple-watt-volts strong.

* it has the capacity to bring monsters back to life (see the shocking 20th century documentary “Frankenstein”)

* it has the capacity to kill you.

Now that I have established the most basic lightning facts, I can talk about lightning safety.

If you are in a lightning storm, you first need to determine whether you are indoors or outdoors.  If you are indoors then you must get into a low-lying room without windows, preferably in a cellar or basement and hide under a mattress. It is imperative that you unplug all electronics in the area because they could get struck and explode. Also, stay away from windows. If lightning strikes them then the glass will melt all over you.

If you happen to be outdoors, then death is imminent. If you hide under a tree, then the tree will get struck and you will die. If you stay away from trees then you will still get struck and die.

So good luck.

Tree shaving

I found myself, today, thinking back to the time I spent in Paris– specifically about the quality and shape of many of the trees in that city.

In case some of you have never seen photographs of Parisian gardens, there is a widespread practice in that city of sculpting trees into perfect ovals and squares, a practice known as tree shaving. This art has been lauded by many over the years, and has been described as “picturesque,” “elegant,” or, as I choose to describe it “really stupid looking.” (Translated: Très escargots stupidé-bleu).

It bothers me that trees are not free to be trees in this oppressive European system. They are held to high standards, and their free-expression of growth is fettered by cruel French landscaping.

This begs the question; what rights should French trees be afforded?

Should they have the freedom to grow where ever they please, like so many millions of other trees in the world?

Should the French people be allowed to continue this unjust and unneccessary aesthetic ritual?

Does the U.S. government have any legal or moral obligation to re-occupy France until this situation is resolved?

These are the tough questions facing our legislators as we speak. (Well, Congress is not convened due to a Jewish holiday today, but I am confident that this issue will be on the agenda come Thursday.)

In this thinker’s humble opinion, the French should reserve the same freedoms that they afford to their women, to their trees; let them go unshaven.

Parenting tips

Tonight I will assume the role of the lauded parenting expert that I am, to provide those of my readers who are parents with some valuable tips on handling your children.

I implore parents that, in consideration of this increasingly dangerous world, leashes are they way to go. Children, like dogs, are curious beings and there is no better means by which to show your love than by making sure they keep within a nylon 6 foot radius of you at all times. This is the kind of consideration that they will value for their entire lives, and is a practice that, in order to optimize your child’s overall well-being, should be utilized until they are least 13 (22 for girls).

It is also imperative to instill values in your children, values relevant to the real world. For instance, as our world becomes more dark, evil and untrustworthy, it is important to teach the value of inherent suspicion in everything. There is no better way to insure your child’s proper emotional development and social competitiveness than by making them beleive that everyone is out to get them.

These are just two of the many ideas I have about improving the quality of parenting in this country. If I think of others, I might post them here… or maybe I’ll write a book.