Textbooks

First day of class means that I actually have to go through the sheer, unadulterated pleasure that is buying textbooks. The lottery may be a tax on stupid people, but textbooks are a tax on smart people. Or people stupid enough to buy their books from the University bookstore.

Per ounce, textbooks cost as much as cocaine or plutonium. The problem is, for a 130 dollar book, college textbooks sure don't look like one. I mean for that kind of money, I want to see leather binding. I want to see gold leaf on the edges. I want this book to feel like an illuminated manuscript where teams of monks have been slaving away at it for years. The head monk cracking a whip shouting about how if they don't work faster, a comparative feminism class will have to use photocopies of the last edition.[1]

I like to believe that the reason these textbooks cost so much is so that you force yourself to read them. For that kind of money, you don't want to think that the only reason you bought the book was to keep the beer cans from leaving rings on your coffee table.

And in 13 weeks time, I get to experience selling textbooks back. If you do the math, after about 20 weeks, textbooks are actually worth zero dollars. Blame that little thing called The New Edition. For things like the hard sciences where all kinds of discoveries are made all the time, having a new edition come out every other year makes sense. For the more fakesocial sciences, a new edition is a little harder to understand. Yes, the new edition of Comparative Narrative Studies costs more, but it's got 20% more criticism, twice the moral relativism and 50% less patriarchy!And 50% more incomprehensibility. For this edition, we've actually made up no less than seven critical terms.[2]


[1]Textbookmaking indentured servitude seems like an appropriate punishment for certain priests.
[2]Textbooks are, in that regard much like A Clockwork Orange. By the end, you can usually identify what the words mean based on context, but that still doesn't give a reason why the text was written to be so obtusely in the first place.

The suitcase life

You sometimes hear of these people - people like dissidents or spies who have a suitcase packed at all times. Something goes down and BAM, get out of there. And you think they're a bit paranoid or crazy for doing that.
And then you have to pack. We do not do packing well. Most of us are "oh, I have plenty of time to pack" It's like an afterthought. Were it possible, most of us would be on the tarmac, ready to take-off and say "Wait! stop the plane. I think I need my dress shoes. Well maybe we'll wind up going someplace fancy. You don't want to be unprepared do you?"
So most of us fall into one of two camps. You've got the people who decide that what needs to be packed is everything. Tuxedo, tennis racket, clothes iron. Because heaven forbid you be unprepared. And you never know... maybe you'll need it. So what you're left with is a suitcase that weighs as much as the moon.
The other end is the people who think "you know if I need something I can just buy it there. All right I'll just grab this this this Boom! I'm done. let's go" And what you have is something like three socks, a toothbrush and aftershave. Like one of the most useless combinations of things to have ever.

I would not run my own country very well

One of the little surprises of traveling abroad is seeing how things are called different names. Grapes? you want grapes? we don't have those here, only muscat. Cherries? nice try, but we have acerolas. Raisins? Nope. Try sultana.
If I ran my own country, I would have a bizarre name for something really common, like bread. You want br-ead? never heard of it. Oh, you mean scaramanga. We have all kinds of scaramanga... round scaramangas, scaramangas with nuts. Try our national dish, roast scaramanga, which I believe is called 'toast' in your country.
Yeah, toast would be one of the national dishes of my country. I'm not saying I'm a bad cook, but I have really low expectations for what qualifies as a good dinner. If I ran a country, I think the national holiday's food would be microwaveable.

Hair apparent

One thing I'm enjoying about having long hair is the way it looks when it's windy. I like this look so much I will walk places based solely on the way the wind is blowing. I'm miles off course and horribly lost, but my hair looks like it should belong in a male model's photoshoot.

It's electric. Boogie oogie oogie

I'm at a hostel right now, adjusting to a new system of electricity. My brilliant setup was to plug an adapter into the wall, a 3 plug to 2 plug adapter into that and then a surge protector into that. Plugged the surge protector in and Pop! I killed it. If only there were some invention which could protect electrical devices against sudden power changes...
Like a surge protector?
Yeah. like that.

I'm getting around the city. In this case, that involves a lot of jaywalking. When you jaywalk, it helps if you look like you're really solid, so that hitting you would seriously damage their car.

damn hipsters

American Apparel, the go to shop for young 20-somethings with unique taste in clothing has offered some questionable things in the past. Neon yellow jeans, thermochromatic t-shirts (remember those?), and MC Hammer Pants.
And now... this.

They're fucking with us. They've got to be. This guy looks like the human equivalent of a panel van with free candy painted on the side.
And this thing has sold out.