Waves of Brilliance

Being a student living in the same town as my parents, I often find myself spending hours of time sitting on their couch catching up on Tivoed favorites while waiting for my clothes to finish drying. HUGE waste of time when I have ten million other more important and hopefully more entertaining things to do. While thus confronted with this situation this very afternoon, I came up with a brilliant invention.

The microdryer. (Not yet patented, but don't even try it.)

The microdryer combines the clothes-drying function of a traditional dryer with the speed capacity of a microwave, thus saving me at least two hours a week. And imagine the possibilites for laundromats! Young women like myself who would normally fend off rapists for those two hours could condense all their laundry time into less than 45 minutes with the help of the speedy microdryer!

Is there a reason I'm the only one coming up with these ideas?

The Bigheads

I dedicate my column today to none other that Cliff Godlove, (name translated from German to protect identity,) teacher of Chemistry and, apparently, the most intelligent man on the planet earth. Three times a week I find myself sitting in a lecture hall hearing yet again why water wars will kill off millions of Americans next week, why global warming will kill us all within the next two years, and why beef is the most deadly substance known to man or chemist.

How does he know all this? He'll tell you it is simply a matter of posessing the proper genius intellect. I, however, prefer the "Bighead" or "Excessive Melon" theory. This theory details a disease in which victims genuinely believe they know more than every creature they encounter, clinging to a scrap of information and allowing it to classify them as experts. For example, a bighead consumer looking at digital cameras might overhear the clerk at Wal-Mart telling another customer that 5 megapixels makes for great picture quality on a digital camera. Moments later, we can find customer #1 turning to an unsuspecting A/V shopper around the corner trying to convince them they should not purchase that 6 megapixel camera because 6 is too many and will overload the camera's memory card...all because an un-trained stock boy said, "five is good." I realize that for an uninfected human, this concept of becoming a self-proclaimed expert based on a single sentence of non-vetted information seems like insanity; but for a bighead, this is the sad truth.

Why does this bother me? Perhaps because I realize bigheads so often go undiagnosed and are allowed into the workforce... even as teachers of Chemistry at all levels of education. Imagine your own child taking his or her seat as class begins waiting patiently for a new wrinkle of information regarding the periodic table to be formed on their supple, young brain. Instead, they are subject to an hour lecture on why doctors are morons and self-diagnosis and treatment is far safer than any hospital. If your child happens to be at risk for BH disease, this lecture could lead to a painful self-resetting of a broken femur or self-appendix removal. BH disease can lead to death!!

How can we stop this epidemic? Become armed with information ourselves and actually research topics we wish to have expert opinions on. If someone tells me my keychain really is suitable for climbing, I will do what any intelligent person would do in that situation: Google it.

Discount Store Shoppers

So sue me, I like getting stuff for cheap. The Dollar Tree for sunglasses and WinCo for groceries. Cuts the food bill down by a third! What I can't STAND about this addiction of mine, is the morons with whom I am constantly forced to associate. Let me give a few points of advice to the brain-dead to more fully illustrate my point.

Tip #1: Open your dang eyes.
When you are at a standstill with your cart dead center in the cereal aisle while you let your bratty little kid pull his favorites onto the floor, turn your brain on for just long enough to allow function and MOVE TO ONE SIDE! Myself and the guy on the opposite side of you are jockeying for position in front of the Frooty-O's on the brink of violence while you calculate the cost of the 8 gallons of milk inexplicably in your cart.

Tip #2: Hygiene is NOT overrated.
It's bad enough I occasionally have to go shopping when there's an unavoidable crowd, (i.e. holiday seasons,) please don't complicate the situation even more by skipping the shower and walking right past the deodorant section without so much as a courtesy perusal. They say people can't smell their own stink, but I think that is bull honkey. The coiner of that particular phrase was justifying his own lack of cleanliness by feigning ignorance. Don't fall back with the brutes!

Tip #3: Indoor voices.
Maybe you weren't raised in the era of positive self-affirmation education, but when I was in grammar school we were taught the concept of not yelling every word out of our mouths, including words which should have remained inner monologues. I don't need to know why you are buying 16 gallons of butter and every family member who is allergic to aspartame, including your Uncle Stu who gained recent notoriety doing paternity tests on Maury Po. Try standing next to the person to whom you are speaking. If that doesn't work, try shopping alone.

Tip #4: Wallets serve a purpose.
Before you get the cash register, have some idea of how much you are purchasing and how much it will cost. A large percentage of discount shoppers are on a food stamp program, meaning limited food budget, in case the government failed to educate you on that important fact. Don't bring up 4 shopping carts stuffed to the brim with name brand lunchmeat and 35 Sara Lee's (I don't care if they were on sale) and expect the $30 dollars you have left on your EBT card to magically feed the thousands. Open the wallet, look at price tags.

I could go on, but I don't want tip-takers to overload and forget any of this vital information. Print it, carry it, memorize it, apply it.

Steph on Survivor and the evil Koror

Before everyone gets their Fruit of the Looms wound too tight, it is not Stephanie from Survivor I hate this week. It is the entire tribe of Koror, that lazy, Tom-dependent, weight-gaining team who does not bathe regularly despite the abundance of personal hygiene products they posses.

Quick Survivor: Palau update for the unenlightened... For the first time in Survivor history, one tribe lost every single immunity challenge before the merge, meaning of the ill-fated Ulong, only the amazing Stephanie survived to the jury level. Greg, a brainless slug who always talks as if he's just had a hit of something, made sure Stephanie was voted off before other, more threatening members of his own tribe, saying, and I paraphrase, "We're not going to let her dismantle Ulong and then come in here and dismantle Koror." Translation: "We don't really know how this game works, not having really gone to a lot of tribal councils, and will just have to get rid of the only person whose last name we don't know." A huge mistake was made in keeping Tom, a cop whose physical strength is Herculean, thus leaving the door wide open for a Tom/Ian(dolphin trainer) alliance to go strong to the end. And, hey, they deserve it for lasting this long into a merge.

It is not, however, entirely Koror's fault. They fell victim to what psychologists call "group think," a situation in which most individuals in the tribe were uncomfortable in the decision but none stood up to change it. A classic example of group think was the space shuttle Challenger explosion, during which time the technicians and other important folk each had concerns with the mission, but no one stopped it. No one wanted to stand out or lose their job by costing the government millions of dollars, a side-effect which occurred anyway, not to mention loss of life.

Koror represents that group of individuals, most of whom know it is not in their best interest to vote Stephanie off but don't want to stand out as a dissenter. Look at Caryn who tried to play both sides of the fence. She went from 100% safe to circling the chopping block in a matter of minutes. Group think.

And so Koror, I absolve you by way of psychological inevitability. Unless your name is Greg.