Wednesday, September 22, 2004

Walgreens And The Mad Russian

It's amazing how much fodder one can find for a blog when one is watching TV (especially when one is only watching TV in the first place to avoid one's homework).

Hmm. Now one can remember why one prefers to write in first person.

First, there was a Walgreen's commercial -- one of their "If Life Were Perfect" commercial. This particular ad featured a child's perfect birthday party. When they go to their "Life Isn't Perfect; Go To Walgreen's" bit, zooming out across products sold in the store, I found my irony. They start with batteries, then zoom past nicotine patches and aspirin.

Yup. There's a kid's birthday party in short.

Or how about the Charmin commercials with the bears? I'm just a little unnerved about cartoon animals using toilet paper in general.

Then, there's the Campbell's Soup commercials. They're talking about the "five great recipes" they've added to the backs of labels -- but in all their label shots, all the labels have four recipes. That one mostly just confused me.

I had another one in mind, but less than surprisingly, I've watched a bit of M*A*S*H since then and forgotten what I was trying to remember.

That wasn't the original reason I wanted to write tonight, however. The original reason was to avoid homework; the secondary reason was to chat about my strange professors.

First of all, there's Mr. Bipolar. He's one of the nicest, most brilliant individuals I've ever met -- outside the classroom. But for crying out loud, he shouldn't be teaching. He's next to impossible in class, with rather ambiguous lectures and homework due three classes before we actually get to the material. (Actually, he'd probably be very good with grad students, but I'm an undergrad.)

Next, we have the Mad Russian. He's a physics professor, and while not many people like him, he's really bloody amusing in class. A few quotes:

-"You can try until, I don't know, the second coming of communism."
-"I like the movie 'Armageddon' where the guy says, 'This is how we are fixing things in Russia.'"
-"If the ground conducts, you're going to be hit anyway, so rubber boots are always useful."

Heh heh heh.

Yay for a Radar quote! "I'm going to jail in my puberty and I won't come out till my adultery!"

Oh yeah, professors ... Stinking TV messing up my attention span and my ability to ... you know, do that thing, with the thinking and the writing.

Then, there's the Lazy Chemist. Well, not really lazy. He claims it every now and then, but all in all, he's one of the most amusing, down-to-earth types. For instance, today when we were talking about comparing concentrations in a mixture, he used the example of how they test for blood alcohol level.

Of course, you can't go without the Dancing Man. Granted, he's only done this once; someone's cell phone started ringing and apparently he liked the music. Have you ever seen an engineering professor dance? It's great funness.

My other professors aren't quite as amusing as these four. They are, in no particular order, really picky, smart but hard to understand, and ... don't know her very well yet. We'll see.

I think that's all I've got for now. It's been a long week with a few bright spots, such as late night phone calls and coffee trips, soon to end in a lack of afternoon classes, a slide down a big concrete "M" and a jump in the mud. Good stuff.


T-shirt in the 21st century - "Disco still sucks."

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