CSI: Criminal Semen Investigators

Now you might hear me complain about how many things I have to do, but that is mainly because I am lazy; I actually have a very easy schedule. I mean, I’ve managed to reverse the American work week by working two days a week and getting five days off. Of course before you start saying how lucky I am, I spend those two days in Greeley, Colorado, which is a rant for another day.

Anyway, with all of that free time I could do many great things, like work out or read or volunteer in the community or figure out what the hell Snow is saying in “Informer” (try it). Of course, I do none of that. Instead, I take advantage of the wonderful invention that is TV OnDemand. This wonderful invention allows somebody like me to watch tons of TV shows without wading through stupid commercials about Sex and the City 2. It also gives me an opportunity to sit on the couch in my pink snuggie, which is another wonderful invention. Whoever makes fun of snuggies has clearly never used one. If you use a snuggie while watching TV and don’t agree with me that it’s the best thing since fizz-free roofies, I will personally show up to campus one day wearing nothing but a snuggie. I will need proof however, in the form of you sitting in a snuggie with a genuine frown on your face notarized by your local district attorney.

Anyway, back to the main point, even though I haven’t actually made a main point yet. (That’s why this site is great. If you took three paragraphs to get to your main point anywhere in work or school you would instantly fail.) One of the shows that I have begun watching again is all of the CSIs, mainly because they use songs by The Who. I remember when there was only one show. The next thing you know, they started breeding like bunnies in a box and blam, the next thing you know they are coming out with CSI: Wichita (I’m not sure what the show would be like, but I’m assuming it would revolve around Sean Penn investigating cow tippings and crop circles).

Now, I think that the shows are pretty good, especially the original. The only one I have a problem with is CSI: Miami. I have no problem with the show or the plot; I have a problem with David Caruso. Now, I have made fun of the acting skills of several people on this site, but I personally think that Caruso may be my least favorite actor of all time. For some reason, he is unable to ever make eye contact with who he is talking to or even what he is supposed to be looking at. They always show the crime scene, and there could be a headless body burning at his feet, and he would be looking with intense interest at a trash can in the opposite direction (with his sunglasses on of course, even if it is at night). Then, if somebody addresses him, he dramatically takes off his glasses, slowly raises his head, and delivers some sort of one-liner with the same tone of voice you might use to tell somebody you just found a large lump in their testicles.

Aside from Caruso’s acting, there are also a few other things that I have always found funny about CSI. For one thing, would they ever be able to solve crimes without semen? I mean, they always seem to find it everywhere, so I figure the only way you get caught doing something - like, say, robbing a bank – is if you somehow leave semen stains. In other words women will never be found guilty of a crime ever again. Also, you can’t ever leave hair anywhere, because apparently CSIs have zoom vision that enables them to see microscopic things stuck in people’s noses. I always figured that’s why I can never commit a crime; I shed hair all over the place like some sort of sheepdog with mange.

Although if you were to listen to some experts, CSI has actually made it easier to get away with committing crimes. Apparently all juries want to see today is hair and semen, as if they were some sort of Ron Jeremy fan-club. But then again, what do you expect? Do you know what kind of people get jury duty? People too stupid to weasel their way out of jury duty. Sure some people believe it is your “civic duty,” but I can’t imagine something I would hate more that doesn’t involve rusty scissors. Imagine if you were on a jury that let a guilty man go or prosecuted an innocent man? I imagine it would lead to a lifetime of regret and a feeling of personal responsibility, not unlike the feeling that everyone who saw Gigli must have.

But I feel like CSI has taught me many important life lessons. For one thing, you should never take out a life insurance policy or get in somebody’s will, because the next thing you know you are there lying on a metal table with a towel covering strategic parts of you crotch while they show exactly where in your guts the bullet went through disturbingly graphic computer images. Also, never hang around women, because they will eventually get mad at something and they are a lot more adept at swinging axes than you would have guessed. But most importantly, if you ever need to commit a crime, the best place would probably be right in front of David Caruso, because he will most likely be looking at the ground.

"That Was A Little Pitchy Dawg"

I’m not generally a fan of reality TV. But I am a fan of music, so I have to admit that my roommate and I joined millions of lonely women around the world in watching American Idol up until the season finale on Wednesday.

Now, I didn’t watch the show from the beginning of the season because unlike most people, I hate watching the auditions. If I wanted to watch retards butcher songs, I could videotape myself. I mean, these people must know that they cannot sing right? If not, somebody needs to tell them. Oh sure, you can be nice to them for a little while and say they sound great to keep their self-esteem up, but once they start auditioning for American Idol I think you need to come clean. I mean, it’s either they hear it from you or they hear it from Simon Cowell on national television and then they go into a mental breakdown and eat entire tubs of ice cream. But I’m pretty sure that a lot of these people know exactly what they are doing. Some of these bozos who flail around at auditions are more famous than the people who win the actual competition.

Thankfully, I started watching after the auditions; although I’m going to be honest the singing didn’t get much better. This was definitely not one of the better seasons talent wise. For instance, one of the people in the top five was some sixteen-year-old kid who looked (and sang) like Chicken Little and danced by just moving his hips back in forth. He looked like he was stuck in cement and was trying to get out. Plus, for some reason most of the girls this year were not that good looking, and the few that were got voted out early, including my personal favorite, Didi. Sure, she wasn’t the best singer, but so what? And before you women out there start accusing me of being incredibly sexist, I simply point to the existence of the Jonas Brothers as proof that you are hypocrites.

Anyway, there were a few singers that had some talent on the show, and thankfully the one my roommate and I were rooting for, Lee DeWyze won. He actually had a rock voice, as opposed to the wussy little tweeny bob voices that this show normally likes (yes, I’m glaring at you David Archuletta). He also sang what may be my favorite American Idol song of all time. Now to be honest, I don’t know if he should have won, because the other finalist had a pretty good night. But frankly, I never liked her, mainly because she reminds me of every other pot-smoking, tree-hugging, guitar-playing, fireside-swaying hippie chick in Boulder.

Of course, it never really matters who wins, because everybody on the show ends up making an album. And winning does not guarantee you success. For instance, I point to Fantasia, who sounds like a caged animal being stabbed with a cattle-prod. Whereas my favorite Idol alumni is Chris Daughtry, who finished fifth and who the judges actually barely let onto the show.

No, the reason you watch the finale is for the guest singers. It’s ironic that during most of the season, on a show that criticizes bad singing, they invite the worst singers that they can find. Here is a short list of the auto-tuning, lip-synching hacks they invited onto the show: Jaime Foxx, Rihanna, Justin Bieber, Usher, Lady Gaga, and Ke$ha. But for some reason, at the finale they start inviting people that can actually sing, which means that they start inviting old people. Here is a list of some of the people that have appeared at finales: KISS, ZZ Top, Hall and Oates, Carlos Santana, Joe Cocker, and Lynard Skynard. I would pay to see a concert with that second list of people. The first group of people I would pay to lock in a burning building.

But this finale was a little extra special, because it was Simon Cowell’s last show. Now, he may be British and wear shirts that fit like a car shoved into a shopping bag, but he is one of the best parts of the show. He is really the only judge that knows what is going on. Randy Jackson just sits there and says “Yo,” Ellen just makes jokes all night, and Kara mumbles about emotions like a typical woman. So they had a bunch of tributes to Simon, one of which unfortunately included Paula Abdul. I am almost certain that Paula is genuinely retarded. She gave a rambling speech that made absolutely no sense. It was like they locked her in a room full of laughing gas, spun her around, put peanut butter on her tongue, and then smashed her over the head with a frying pan repeatedly before sending her on stage.

I’m a little worried about what will happen to the show. They are losing their best judge and they are clearly running out of good singers. Plus, the show is no longer the only way to get famous. Do you know how easy it is for people to become famous musicians? Check out this kid. He put this video of himself at a talent show up on YouTube and the next thing you know he gets signed to a record deal. Frankly, I’m tired of all these Biebers running around. I can’t wait until they hit puberty, and they get fat and their voice gets deep and they start getting acne and they grow hair on places other than their heads. I would know, because I was a budding teeny bop star in the making before all of that happened to me. Except I was ten.

The Eagles Have Landed

Many good things may still happen in my life, but I seriously doubt any of them will top last night. Last night, I had floor seats to the greatest band ever: the Eagles. I can now cross it off my bucket list, which actually only leaves one more thing on there (but don’t worry about me losing motivation to live because the last item on there is touch Michael Jackson’s nose).

Now there may be some of you out there saying “well, yeah, the Eagles were good. But I don’t know if they are the best of all time.” Well, you are all entitled to your opinion. I’m just here to tell you that your opinion is wrong. Every single one of their songs is great. If you are ever in a room of people when “Take It Easy” starts playing and the entire room doesn’t start singing, then I’m sorry to inform you that you are in a room full of dead people and that serial torturer is probably coming back any second now. Then again, how bad a guy can he be if he lets you listen to Eagles music before he plucks out your eyeballs? Their songs are so great my roommate Chris specifically asked that instead of “Happy Birthday,” everybody sing him “Desperado” for his birthday. I have it written in my will that “Already Gone” is to play on repeat at my funeral (although my favorite Eagles song is actually "I Can't Tell You Why”).

But if I thought they were good before, after seeing them in person I now view them as religious deities. Glenn Frye came out and joked that we were at the “Eagles Assisted Living Tour,” but these guys are far from finished. Even in their fifties they still sounded better than anybody alive today (whereas in my fifties I will probably need help peeing). Chris and I air-guitared and sang every song at the top of our lungs. Watching Joe Walsh play the guitar was probably the closest I’ve come to tears since they shot Bambi’s mom.

The only problem with going to concerts in areas with expensive seats is that you encounter pompous jerks who do not know how to have fun. For most of the night the crowd was standing up, but they sat down for some of the slower songs. During one song, Chris and I remained standing up because two girls in front of us were standing up. Then some rich old geezer behind me with a tucked in aloha shirt started yelling over and over again “Hey pretty boy, sit down.” Now as much as I love compliments about my sexy little figure, I confronted this jerk after the concert and politely informed him that if he kept insulting drunk people half his age, he was definitely not going to be around to see the Eagles next tour. Then there were people who got upset anytime somebody bumped into them or spilled something. If you people want to watch a private concert, buy the DVD your majesty. It’s cheaper. I know you didn’t pay $200 to hear me sing, but I did.

Now, there are many reasons I’m grateful that I’m born in the decade I was. I have the Internet, Megan Fox, and polio isn’t running rampant. But the music of my generation sucks. While my dad went to concerts with The Police, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Aerosmith, and Fleetwood Mac, I’m stuck with Lady Gaga dressed up like an evil space villain singing “Rama ooh lala blah blah.”

So you’ll forgive me if I prefer to listen to music from previous generations. Of course, this makes going to concerts hard. For one thing, most of the people who I would pay to see are dead. Unlike some of these people nowadays, when oldies rock stars felt like they were at the peak of their careers, they had the decency to overdose on cocaine, instead of becoming a burden to society (I’m looking at you Mr. Springsteen). And as surprising as this may sound, dead people don’t give very good live performances (although if Tupac has shown us anything, they can still make albums and charge you money for them).

And if the stars aren’t dead, most of the people at the concert with you are. I remember I went to a concert a few years ago for Roger Waters, who was the guitarist for Pink Floyd. I was sitting next to a guy named Bill, your typical aging baby boomer. He had a Dark Side of the Moon T-shirt, a beer belly, and clearly had gone through the best and worst parts of the sixties. For some reason, he was very happy to see a young person there with him, and he kept saying “So, you’re a Floyd virgin huh? I remember my first time. Oh you’re gonna love it.”

Unfortunately for Bill, the opening was some sort of weird techno act, which was some idiot spinning a disc around for what seemed like hours as if the irritating sounds he was making was music. Bored as all hell, Bill kept shouting “This sucks” in between beers. And he had a lot of beers. I’m sure back in his heyday Bill would have been unfazed, but time had clearly taken its toll, because by the time Waters came out he just fell asleep in his chair. Every once in awhile he would jerk awake and yell “F**k yeah, Pink Floyd!” before falling back asleep. And as I looked around at the crowd, most of the people were sitting in their seats, just humming to themselves in a subdued manner.

But then something magical happened. Waters began to sing “Another Brick in the Wall,” one of the greatest songs ever. And as if commanded by some unseen force, thousands of baby boomers woke up, put their hands on their knees, grunted, and summoned the strength to stand up and belt out the chorus at the top of their lungs, “hey teacher, leave those kids alone!” Even Bill was right there with them, although his version was delayed by about two seconds and contained a lot more F-words than I remember in the original (but considering the amount of alcohol that was coursing through Bill’s veins at the moment, I’m surprised he could say complete words).

You just don’t have music that unites people and moves them like that anymore. When the song ended, the crowd shuffled out, ready to go to sleep but still buzzing about a moment of their youth that they had managed to grab back from father time. It just saddens me that thirty years from now, the chorus my generation will be singing will be “Gaga ramama.” But for at least one night, I got to see the greatest band in the world and remember what real music sounds like. Or, as my friend Bill so eloquently said, “F**k yeah it’s time to rock and roll this s**t!”

Miss USA: Unusually Sexy (Stupid?) Americans

I’m a very patriotic guy, so you can imagine how intently I was paying attention to the recent contest. No, not the primary elections; the 2010 Miss USA pageant. Frankly, hot women strutting around is a little higher on my priority list than a bunch of old men who write stupid laws while they aren’t molesting their aides. And just as a disclaimer, I will be keeping track of the sexist jokes I make in this column in honor of this event (the pageant, not the elections). Remember ladies, these are all jokes and I don’t mean any of it. If only any of you had a sense of humor (#1).

Now, I’ll admit that I didn’t get to watch most of this year’s show (and on a bit of a tangent, does anyone find it ironic that one of the weirdest looking people, Donald Trump, hosts the search for the most beautiful woman in the country?). I tuned in just in time to see the final five and the announcement of the winner, Miss Michigan Rima Fakih, who became only the second Arab-America to win the award (and yes, I do research, but only when research involves beauty queens).

Now, am I saying that this was a big PR stunt? No, you said that (assuming that for some reason you read this out loud). But I was a little suspicious. Now, Rima is a good-looking girl, but she placed last among the finalists in the swimsuit portion (which, let’s not kid ourselves here, is the most important competition). Plus, she somehow beat out Miss Oklahoma Morgan Woolard, who looks like this. At one point during her final walk, she stared at the camera in a way that probably killed any male that sat too close to the TV.

Of course, as with any event that involves more than two women, these pageants are the subject of a lot of unnecessary drama (#2). This year’s big scandal is that apparently Miss USA has some risqué photos floating around on the Internet (then again, who doesn’t these days?). Of course, by risqué, I mean this. Yeah, a tank top and shorts. And organizers are thinking of taking away her crown over this, which you have to admit is a little hypocritical. I mean, they have bikini contests on their show and the girls can’t take a few pictures? That’s like Jesse Jackson asking for peace before threatening to rip a guy’s balls off (oh wait…). Of course even if she does lose her title, I’m sort of okay with that because once again, let me remind you what the runner-up looks like.

Another thing that always draws a lot of controversy is the question and answer portion of the contest. Of course, I think that this is an easy controversy to avoid. Don’t do it. Just have the evening gown and swimsuit portions and call it a night. We don’t need the talent portion; if I wanted to watch hot women sing bad karaoke I would just watch Katy Perry videos. In my opinion, looking good in a bikini is the best talent there is. Besides, we know that women have no real talents (#3), unless you count making sandwiches (#4). Okay, I’m going to stop right there with the sexist jokes before one of the two females that are still reading this for some reason decide to kill me. Good thing only a few women know how to read (#5, I’m sorry I couldn’t help it; I had to get one more in).

Anyway, as a bastion of sexist ideals, the Miss USA pageant doesn’t need to prove these women are smart. If anything, having the questions proves the opposite; that these women are blonde mannequins who couldn’t wet a sponge in the Pacific Ocean. Of course, 2007’s Miss South Carolina couldn’t even find the Pacific Ocean if she was tossed off the Golden Gate Bridge. I don’t really care whether or not these women are rocket scientists. It’s not like they promised to teach young children in inner cities how to read (oh, wait…). I’ll be honest, I feel bad for some of these girls. These judges ask some hard questions; the sorts of questions that have no right answer and are politically charged and will piss somebody off no matter the answer.

For instance, this year Miss Oklahoma was asked about Arizona’s immigration laws. For those of you who have somehow not heard about these new laws, it’s the latest hot topic. Arizona enacted a law that basically allows officers to demand to see a person’s documents saying that they are there legally, which some people say will lead to racial profiling.

Miss Oklahoma, in addition to being hot, should have won based on her answer, which I couldn’t have said better myself. She basically said “What can we do about it? Arizona will do what Arizona wants to do.” Now, I honestly don’t give a flying whoop about this law. Do you know why? Because I don’t live in Arizona, and I don’t particularly like Arizona. They are like that kid who always does stupid stuff just to be different. For instance, they are in the Mountain Time zone but they don’t observe daylight savings time, unlike the rest of the time zone. Their basketball team is led by a Canadian guy, their biggest landmark is a big hole, and the only scientific contributions that Arizona State University makes to the world are new STDs. I say we just give Arizona to Mexico and laugh as the Mexican police start racially profiling all the old white people in Glendale.

But I’m getting off topic. I’m sure Miss USA will go on to do many great things. Like… uh, whatever it is that Miss USAs do. I assume that it has something to do with running around in a tiara and a bikini trying to facilitate world peace. She can start in Arizona. Of course, since she’s Arab-American, the police will probably arrest her.

I Love Hockey, EH! I Love Drinking, EH! I Love Canada, EH?

Now I will admit that I pick on Canada a lot, and that may be unfair. Because as much as I make fun of them for being drunken, rioting hockey-heads, they are actually a classy bunch of people. Oh, wait, never mind.

Basically, the Montreal Canadiens win a game and their fans then proceed to light their city on fire. By the way, who names their team after their country? It’s a little arrogant don’t you think? Not to mention not very creative (but at least this way, every drunken fan can call themselves the team mascot). Now just to make it clear, the game that the Montreal Canadiens won was not the championship game. It was not even the conference finals. It was the conference semi-finals. I make fun of hockey a lot, but I really do like hockey, and the playoffs in particular are very exciting. But rioting after two series? Of course it’s always possible that this was just an average Thursday in Canada. I would bet money that at least one drunken rioter, when asked about the game, responded: “There was a hockey game tonight?”

I remember sitting on the couch watching fans at the game jumping up and spilling beer on themselves while screaming their lungs out. The sad part is that if I just saw that scene, I would still have no idea who was winning the game. I once went to a Denver Nuggets game against the Toronto Raptors. There was a small section of Toronto fans waving Canadian flags and consuming at least half of the beer in the building. Even though there were thirty of these Canadians in a crowd of 20,000 Americans, the loudest part of the game was the singing of the Canadian national anthem, which I’m pretty sure even the Canadians don’t know the words to. I just heard “Oh Canada!” really loud followed by what sounded like thirty drunk people all mumbling different things. Anyway, the Nuggets were routing the Raptors, yet the happiest people in the building were the Raptors fans, who either are unaware of the rules of basketball, unable to count, or too drunk to give a damn either way.

But you can bet that Canadians care much more about their hockey. When you are only good at a few things (and one of those things are producing irritating singers like Justin Bieber), you have to take pride in those things. I’m sure you all remember the epic gold medal game between the US and Canada a few months ago. Now, we Americans were bummed for a little while that we lost, but we were frankly just happy we got that far. But Canada? If they had lost that game there would have been more suicides than a Jonestown reenactment. To defend their honor, Canada probably would have mobilized their army and invaded our country. Of course, by “mobilized their army” I mean loading seven drunk guys in the back of a truck and by “invade our country” I mean start a few fires in Maine.

What’s ironic is that the hero of that gold medal game was Sidney Crosby, who scored the winning goal. In the days after that win, you probably couldn’t find one woman in the country that didn’t want to have Sidney Crosby’s child. You probably would have had a hard time finding men who didn’t want to have Crosby’s baby. But how quickly things change when most of your country’s population has alcohol-induced short-term memory loss. Canadien’s fans were actually burning pictures of Crosby (who was on the Pittsburgh Penguins, the team that the Canadiens beat), which is pretty much the equivalent of burning pictures of Jesus in Canada.

But we now have to look at the bigger picture. Montreal will now face the winner of tomorrow’s game between Boston and Philadelphia, two cities not exactly known for their restraint either. So no matter what happens, the streets will be filled with drunken hockey hooligans. I mean, if Canadiens fans rioted this much after a second round series, can you imagine what would happen if they won the Stanley Cup? The entire eastern half of Canada will just become engulfed in flames. People in space are going to look down and think “Oh s**t they won.”

So unless you want French-Canada to end up as a pile of ashes (and think hard about your answer to that), we need to take immediate action. We need to start cheering for the San Jose Sharks, who are in the Western Conference finals against the Chicago Blackhawks, to minimize rioting. I’m pretty sure that very few people in San Jose are aware of the fact that they even have a hockey team, much less that they are in the conference finals. If they win, their fans will react the same way they do to everything in Southern California: they will get high and sit on the beach. Of course we could also root for Chicago, whose fans will try to take to the streets to riot but will probably freeze to death before they can do anything.

Get Outta My Dreams, Get Into My Car

It took me three years, but I finally have a car! And frankly it’s about time; I was starting to get tired of walking or riding the bus when I couldn’t find people to drive me to all the places that a busy guy like me needs to go. Like McDonalds. Plus I’ve found out that most of the people that ride the bus have severe brain damage, which apparently causes severe body odor.

Anyway, I now own a 2001 Audi A4. I think. That’s what the car dealer told me I own. For all I know I own a cardboard box that somebody painted silver. I’m not one of those guys that knows a whole lot about cars, and car dealers intimidate me. I’m a relatively laid back guy and I try to avoid conflicts; but according to my parents I was supposed to attack these dealers as if they ate my first born child (which when you think about it is probably a favor to society).

Mother: Tell him you want the car for $300.

Me: But he’s asking for $7,500.

Mother: Well, tell him that dead hooker in the trunk takes a lot off of the resale value.

Me: What hooker?

Mother: Figure it out… *click*. (Oh, by the way, on that note Happy Mother’s Day Mom!)

So with that in mind, I began to inspect the car (and the trunk probably was very large, not that I’m implying anything). After confirming with my keen eye that the car had four wheels and a CD player (pretty much my two requirements for a car), I asked for the Carfax, just like the commercials told me to. I then proceeded to stare at a bunch of random numbers and words that made no sense to me, like “VAS system replaced,” (a sentence I don’t understand at all) and “dead raccoon removed from glove box,” (a sentence that probably did not scare me as much as it should have).

Once I had determined that the car had never been owned by anyone in North Dakota (which is huge sticking point with me), I asked for a test drive. Now, this is where things got sort of freaky. I had always assumed that the dealers went with you on the test drives, in case you did something stupid. In which case you could run away and leave the dealer to take the blame from the local police department. But apparently, this is no longer protocol. This guy just handed me the keys, and said “Have fun.”

Now, there are several reasons why this was a major problem. First off, I didn’t have anyone to ask how anything worked. Audis are foreign cars, which means that drunk/retarded people were primarily responsible for assembling them. This of course means that the headlight switch is in the glove box and the brakes are in the cup holders and there is a German dude permanently sitting in your backseat yelling something in a foreign language. So I just sat in the parking lot for about ten minutes trying to figure out how the car worked, which isn’t easy when you have some guy yelling German in your ear.

The second problem is that I’m not exactly comfortable driving in Boulder. In fact, only two people in Boulder have ever seen me actually drive a car, and that was back in Hawaii. Nobody up here thinks I even know how to drive, which is awesome because nobody ever asks you to be the designated driver. They would rather give the keys to a drunk girl than me sober. Now, back in Kona I’m a very reliable driver. But Kona has only two lanes, very few intersections, no animals big enough to cause major bumper damage, and reasonably intelligent pedestrians.

Boulder however is another story. Within five seconds I became overwhelmed by Boulder traffic just trying to get out of the parking lot. So instead of really test driving it, I drove about fifty feet down the road before turning into an abandoned cul-de-sac and idling the car. I had my parking brake on and I was still expecting some sort of animal to jump out in front of me. I mean, my neighbor doesn’t trust me driving, but even she has killed a moose (or a caribou or a walrus; it was some sort of large mammal), so these animals are all over the place. I mean, I was sitting at a bus stop the other day and I watched three deer wander lazily into the road and hold up traffic for five minutes.

But at least animals have the excuse that their brains are the size of walnuts. Some Boulder pedestrians don’t have that excuse. These people will bike and walk across the road randomly and without warning and they take forever to do it. If you try to inform them that you will run them over if they ever do that again, they get all moody and start yelling stuff like “Pedestrians always have the right of way!” Of course, I’ve always lived by my dad’s saying about right of way on the road, which is “whoever is least likely to die in the accident has the right of way.” And he is a firefighter, so he has probably seen his share of people who might have won a lawsuit had their brains not been scattered over a five mile stretch of highway, which can make it hard to hire attorneys.

Anyway, after some haggling with the dealer, I finally walked out of there with the car and drove off into the sunset. Or at least I would have, until I realized those sneaky car dealers didn’t put any gas into the car. So my first stop with my new car was a gas station, where I pulled up next to this gorgeous blonde at the pump. So, as suave and as cool as I could be, I got out of my car and realized I had no idea how to open the fuel valve. I sat in that gas station for about five minutes looking for a button before a friend called and told me that I just needed to push on the flap and it would open.

The one thing I do know about my car is that I want Firestone tires. That way, this song will always be playing whenever I drive around.

My Philosophy? Don't Do Philosophy

Hey guess what everybody? I’m a philosophy minor. That’s right; as of Wednesday night I have a college degree in a subject that I know absolutely nothing about. It’s like inducting Justin Bieber into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. By the way, did you know that Justin Bieber is Canadian? As if I needed another reason to despise him.

Now some of you might ask why a journalism major would even pursue a minor in philosophy. It’s a long story, but the basic gist is that they made me. For some reason, journalism majors at CU must either have a minor or take a whole bunch of really hard classes in one subject area, which perplexes me. I always thought that the whole purpose of having a major was so that you didn’t have to ever learn about anything else. How else do you explain the fact that I haven’t done math in four years and can no longer do any math that doesn’t involve counting my fingers?

Anyway, I was looking at my transcript one day when I realized that I was only a few classes short of a philosophy minor without even trying. This is not because I’m good at philosophy or because I like it, because I don’t. But I figured philosophy classes were easier than other classes, so I used them to get all of my core requirements out of the way without doing any actual work. For instance, instead of taking a class like “Women in Film” (which would have inevitably lead to me making a sexist joke in a class full of angry feminists and most likely end with a very painful death), I took Philosophy and Race to satisfy my culture and gender sensitivity requirement. You see, introductory level philosophy classes are easy, because all you do is sit there and argue with each other. But in the upper division, they introduce a concept that I’ve always struggled with in college: right and wrong answers.

The classes stop revolving around what I think (a subject I am very fond of), to what other people think (a subject I am not as fond of). And a lot of these other people are dead. But sadly, before they went they had the time to come up with ridiculous theories about the stupidest things imaginable. And they always have names like the Schiffer, Lewis, Grice model of speech or the Kripke/Putnam theory of externalism, or Crosby, Stills and Nash: The Greatest Hits Collection. And most of these theories find the hardest way to say the most obvious things. For instance, I once spent an entire class period listening to a lecture on a theory that basically said that the sentence “the bunny is purple” is only true if the bunny is in fact purple. And these people wrote entire books on nuggets of wisdom like that.

This semester I was enrolled in a class called Philosophy of Language, which my roommate Chris, who is a philosophy major, convinced me to take with him. However, I began to think he just played an elaborate joke on me when I realized that Chris was not actually coming to most of the classes with me. Not that I blame him. He skipped the class and got to watch TV while learning nothing, while I went to class, fell asleep, and still learned nothing but I didn’t get to watch TV.

Also, you should see the type of people that take upper division philosophy classes. I wouldn’t be seen in public with these people even if I was dying of hunger and they were handing out free donuts. Most of them smell strange, wear shirts with video game sayings on them, and always have some sort of weird looking facial hair. And the men are even worse. In this philosophy class alone there is a guy named Jack who mutters to himself all class, a large black guy named Vernon who has the voice of a 6-year-old girl and the vocabulary of an 16^th century English scholar and a skinny little nerdy kid named Travis who raves during class to invisible techno music and wears what appear to be ancient Greek sandals. But the weirdest guy is this one dude who sits in front of me. He always walks around barefoot and is constantly wearing t-shirts from Hawaii. But when I asked him if he was from Hawaii, he said no, and he looked genuinely offended and confused as to how I would have reached such a ridiculous conclusion.

Also, these people refuse to give straight answers to you about everything. In order to show how unique and intellectual they are they answer every question with some sort of snide remark or lame joke or random fact. For instance, I once asked for some guy to pick up my pen and he went into some sort of rant about how we could call pens cows before I was forced to stab him in the neck with my cow.

They also have an annoying tendency to argue about the stupidest thing just for the sake of arguing. They never argue about the important things, but rather choose to sit there and complain about the stupidest little things. It’s hard to explain this without getting into philosophical detail, but if they were Congressman writing a bill to legalize homicide, they would be arguing about the font the bill would be written in. Also, it is impossible to convince these people they are wrong. They won’t listen to arguments. For instance, let’s say Tim’s counter argument revolves around the fact that they Sun rises in the west. Now, we try to inform Tim that the sun does not rise in the west, but he will simply say “well that’s your opinion, I just don’t think that is true.” Now you can have opinions about things like movies and food, but you don’t get to have opinions about things like where the sun rises.

So needless to say, when the final came, the state of mind I was in could be most accurately described as “bleh.” After all, I drew pictures of bunnies humping on my midterm and I still passed (although believe it or not, the bunnies actually tied into one of our lessons). So instead of studying, I mainly alternated between drinking and air-guitaring the solo in Pink Floyd’s “Time.” But I still did pretty well on the final, and I now have a philosophy minor. Sure, a philosophy degree may be about as useful as an Amish computer programmer, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to come out of this experience empty handed. Besides, another piece of paper is always a good thing to have, especially since I ran out of toilet paper.