Making Flippy Floppy

If anyone dies in the next day or two, I know why. My friend Jessi had me rapt the other day with her superstitious beliefs and all their stories. She said throughout her whole life, every time she crosses the path of a crow, someone she knows dies, from her grandmother when she was little, to her first husband, to the poor guy who died in that drilling accident in Sandpoint a few days ago (he happened to be best friends with her sister.) Yeah, she crossed a crow the day before.

Okay, maybe it’s just Jessi that’s cursed with this annoying problem, but when I was coming out of IGA this morning there was a fat crow waddling around by the front door, and it took me a few seconds after I’d walked past it to realize the potential fatality of the situation. I mean, maybe I have the crow death curse, too, but I’d just never noticed. Horrors!

Last night, I got to fondle some really sexy rocks – it was the first meeting of my Geology lab class. I was a bit peeved after I found out my old school pal Melanie was in a different section, but yesterday an opening miraculously appeared in her section so I was able to switch into her class at the last minute. We actually had fun working our way through a huge toy box of several dozen different mineral samples, performing a variety of tests to determine their identities. It’s been so long since I’ve had an actual hands-on science class, I felt like an eager kindergartner in there.

The bitch is that there’s also a nasty Geology quiz each week and tests that we have to go to the evil NIC Testing Center to take; The Testing Center, where I was accused of cheating with a calculator on a History exam. I had taken said History exam in a sweaty little room with other random people taking other random tests. I had no calculator on me, in fact I haven’t even owned one in years. I don’t believe in math. All I had was a pen and a test.

Anyway, I got an email a few days later from the instructor saying that a student had reported seeing me fiddle away freely on “what appeared to be a calculator” before handing my test to the gossipy, lost-in-space ladies at the main counter. I was totally stunned – I’d never been accused of cheating once in my life and always worked hard for my good grades – how dare some snatch come out of the blue and create such a mess for me – I could get suspended for something this serious! I explained to the instructor there must be a mix-up, and marched down to the Testing Center to rant and told them they’d better figure out what the heck they did and pronto. The instructor finally mentioned that the accusation came in the form of a post-it note attached to my test, which prompted the dimwit counter girl to realize she must have put the note on the wrong test – in reality she meant to put it on someone’s MATH test, hence the kerfuffle about the CALCULATOR – um, hell-O. I’ve been leery about taking exams there ever since.

I had the mixed pleasure of watching “Jackass 2” the other night. I got it mainly to see John Waters’ briefer than brief cameo appearance, but made it through most of the rest, with my finger on the fast-forward, that it. I’m queasy easy and I’ve never been the biggest fan of the gross-out genre. Some of the stunts here are actually clever and funny, but you get the feeling Johnny Knoxville is trying too hard to prove that he still “has it”, and hasn’t gone too Hollywood. All these guys are getting older and richer and they sometimes seem like they’re just going through the motions. Although, there were bits I just couldn’t bear – drinking horse semen? Swallowing zebra dingleberries? No thanks, not for me. Oh, and those of us who’ve been dying to see Bam Margera’s full manly business finally get our wish in the bonus section. Ow!

Labels: Random Thoughts

# posted by OrangeTV @ 1/19/2007 11:23:00 AM