On the Fourth Day of Dead Week

Deck the halls with sticky notes, dry erase markings, and shreds of the tattered and battered remains of our sanity as we enter our favorite time of year: Dead Week.

By “we,” I refer to students. And by “year,” I mean term, whether it’s a quarter, trimester, or semester. So… Fa la la la la, la la la la.

The only things standing between us and – nay, guarding with bared teeth and chesty growl – winter freedom are finals. Ah, finals, our old friend. It seems like only a few weeks have passed since we had to encounter your cousins, the midterms. Why so eager for a family reunion? I assure you the midterms were more than enough to tide us over for[ever] a very long time. So please, continue staying at bay off in the distance. Believe us: we like you better there. It’s almost better than having you behind us and out of sight.

Fellow college students, never fear. Hang in there. Stay strong. And golden. For the freedom that lay before us at the end of the following week shall be sweet and pure and holy. Just a few more days, fellow academic warriors, but tonight… we dine in hell – the hell of cramming and crying and procrastinating and repeating. So eat heartily, my friends, and then revel in the just desserts on the horizon, with the sweet corn syrup of success and triumph dripping down your chin.

Study hard and study long! For on the morrow, the winter break is yours for the taking!

THIS IS… an overused meme.

Good luck. And de-stress in the comments section.

Is It Ready to Come Out Now, America?

As of November 6, 2012, the answer is a loud, beautiful “YES” from the states of Maryland, Maine, and Washington, the newest inductees into the Hall of Common Sense. These three join 6 other states in legalizing gay marriage. This is technically “old” news, but I have been reveling in the post-elections fervor and staying away from the blog until all the excitement/frustration began to die down. People are still exhilarated/outraged by the results, but at least the campaign ads are gone. Praise the gods.

Now, unless you’ve been living beneath a rock, the winner of the electoral and popular votes was-

But I don’t need to tell you. The whole world already knows by now. Thank all that is great and beautiful – the elections are over.

And there was a lot of exciting news, which you’ve also probably heard about already. Big wins and great PR for the LGBT community. Democrats triumphed. Marijuana is a couple of steps closer to being legalized. Health care is becoming more and more accessible to lower class individuals and families.

So- huzzah! Elections season is over! So stop trying to kill each other about politics (which are all just silly anyway) and fly! Be free! You’ve done your duty as a voting American (or not) and now we can stop talking about elections. Elections elections-

ELECTIONS

Okay, it’s out of my system.

Carry on, America. All is right again (Well, as “right” as it ever was.)

Oh, and petitions have been made by at least one person in all 50 states to secede because of the election results. *sigh* People are stupid.

Thoughts? Comments? Want me to shut up about elections? Leave your feedback below!

To Whom it May Concern,

Tomorrow, Tuesday, November 6, 2012 marks the scariest day of the year:

THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS,

Ooooo… (Cue the dramatic brass section)

Thank God they only come around once every 4 years. So until this hullabaloo clears up, I shall be hiding in an undisclosed location with soundproof walls, no television, no telephone, nor any kind of news-receiving device. And no human contact. Facebook, Twitter, FoxNews – begone!

Best of luck to the rest of you. And may the best man win. (Guffaw)

-SOS

P.S. And don’t forget to vote.

P.P.S. And if you haven’t see this… I’m tired of Bronco Bamma and Mit Romnee, too. “It’ll be over soon…”

Groundhog Day II: The Groundhog Hour

The savings are coming! The savings are coming!

Commercial-sounding intro aside, Sunday, November 4th marks the end of Daylight Savings. It is that time of year (unless you’re in Hawaii or Arizona because you’re just too cool for this), to set all the clocks in your house, in your car, in your office, on your wrist, etc, etc BACK one whole hour. At 2 a.m., to be exact. But if you’re like me and every other average shmoe, you’re not actually going to stay up/wake up to set back your clock at 2 in the morning. So you set it before you go to bed or tomorrow morning. Or, like some (me), you completely forget about this literal waste of time and are an hour ahead of the rest of the world (or just the population within your timezone. Unless you’re in Hawaii or Arizona. Or deep in a jungle with Mistah Kurtz. But we digress.) And you remain an hour ahead of your peers until you realize why you missed out on your morning cartoons, and why your girlfriend was furious with you when you finally arrived for what was supposed to be a prompt, timely, you-should-be-on-freaking-time, romantic dinner out. (Oh the horror, the horror).

But isn’t it weird? We add an hour to the day. So we effectively relive this whole hour. Kind of. Let’s get Bill Murray on this project now!

Punxsutawney Phil doesn’t seem too keen on the idea.

Mini History Lesson:

This Daylight Savings business officially began in Germany and Austria in 1916. The U.S. of A. decided to jump on that bandwagon in 1918. But it wasn’t until 1966 with the Uniform Time Act that it became a more consistent, nationwide practice that helped settle the confusion of local laws concerning Daylight Savings. And from 2007 in the U.S., Daylight Savings officially starts at 2 a.m. on the second Sunday of March and 2 a.m. on the first Sunday of November. In some European countries, Daylight Savings lasts from 1 a.m. on the last Sunday of March to 1 a.m. on the last Sunday of October. (To read more about Daylight Savings Time, click here).

When I wake up at 9 a.m. or noon or 3 p.m., depending on how obnoxious my neighbors decide on being, I will look over at my clock and realize it is incorrect by the standard time. So I will groggily and mechanically mess with the digital doohickey and set it back to an hour when I was still sleeping. It shouldn’t be a mind trip. This manipulation of time isn’t actually manipulation of physical (or metaphysical?) time. It’s shallow. It’s a humanity power trip more than a mind trip. But all the same, it is fascinating how we can simply twist back a dial or push a few buttons and adjust the time of day.

Time. Time is fleeting. Time is mysterious. The fourth dimension. We can possess it, take it, race it, lose it. Calculate and measure it. It flies and slips by. It can be right or wrong, hard or easy. We can have a whale of it! And it can not exist without you, without matter. Existence itself is the mother of time. (And is Time its own Father?) Newton wrote of a “universal flow of time” for our universe to work. Einstein (and Hendrik Lorentz before him) blew (and still blows) our minds with the relativity concept. All in all, we still don’t completely understand it. So we just use it, abuse it, and hear it tick tocking on the mantelpiece, a crude representation of Time’s passing – if that is how it actually works anyway. The Nobel Prize is up for the taking: one could spend loads of time ruminating on Time’s nature. But frankly, right now, I don’t have enough of it.

So what are your thoughts on Daylight Savings Time? And what are you going to do with your extra hour?

I know what I’m going to do:

Zzzzz…