Midnight Scrawlings

Top Ten

1. Dress up for class like an historic figure (Genghis Khan, Winston Churchill, or Sherlock Holmes).

2. Koala bears are like the dignified matronly ladies of the Cape. They enjoy their big, floppy sun hats and are always carrying a nice, tall glass of iced tea.

3. Going to get my bike tuned up today was a great experience. I no longer have creaky handlebars, and the wheel alignment is truly above par. The Raleigh C30 is truly a joy to ride.

4. I find it extremely laughable and amazingly appropriate that the Major League Baseball Comeback Player of the Year Award is now presented by Viagara.

5. We received a talk on ethics in research. The presenter asked the audience about their thoughts on the meaning of ethics. After hearing some answers that seem to be beneath the level of intelligence of a graduate student. I blithely said this to the person next to me: "Do you understand that the world does not revolve around you and your do whatever it takes, ruin as many people's lives, so long as you can make a name for yourself as an investigatory journalist, no matter how many friends you lose or people you leave dead and bloodied along the way, just so long as you can make a name for yourself as an investigatory journalist, no matter how many friends you lose or people you leave dead and bloodied and dying along the way?" I think that is more meaningful than any formal definition of ethics.

6. If the universe came to a screeching halt tomorrow, how many people would be scratching their genitals or picking their nose?

7. "...How many of you have heard a basketball player by the name of Lebron James? Oh! Quite a bit of you have, I'm pleasantly surprised. Well, when i was a senior at St. Ignatius the Jesuit Preparatory School for Men of Cleveland, Ohio, I attended prom at Lebron's school, St. Vincent-St.. Mary of Akron. We became fast friends after a friendly pick-up game of one-on-one and exchanged bracelets. As you can see, I'm wearing a wristband that says Lebron on it. This very moment, he is wearing one that says Jonathan on it. He said he would find a job for me in his entourage after I completed my Ph.D in physics. I asked him why he needed a physicist on call full-time. He said, and I'll never forget this, "I just loved Ghostbusters when I was little." I was in awe and told him of my Ecto-Slimer Big Wheel..." -- Jon Button monologue on "How the first day of being a teaching assistant ought to go."

8. Always wear a bicycle helmet, obey traffic signs, and signal when making a lane change or turning.

9. The movie Heathers is an amazing movie with a morbid obsession for the grotesque. Christian Slater, although he is essentially the same character in every movie, does his best work and really captures the essence of being a troubled teen. It really pays off for him well in this movie when the only facial expression that he can pull off is, "hey, doesn't everyone see how ironic this is?" He has great lines such as these winners:

a: People will look at the ashes of Westerburg and say, "Now there's a school that self-destructed, not because society didn't care, but because the school was society." Now that's deep.

b: This is Ohio. If you don't have a brewski in your hand you might as well be wearing a dress.

c: I like it. It's got that it's-a-cruel-world-let's-throw-ourselves-in-the-abyss type ambience.

Mean Girls would have been so much better if it were just more like Heathers. Gretchen: That is so fetch!
Regina: Gretchen, stop trying to make fetch happen! It's not going to happen!

Sometimes when I think of Heathers, I get it confused with parts of The Virgin Suicides (Josh Hartnett is a severe hottie). "So much has been said about the girls over the years. But we have never found an answer. It didn't matter in the end how old they were, or that they were girls... but only that we had loved them... and that they hadn't heard us calling. Still do not hear us calling them from out of those rooms... where they went to be alone for all time... and where we will never find the pieces to put them back together."

10. Only you can prevent forest fires.