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The Collected Monday Rants
by Jason DeShaw

For those of you who were unaware, for a 7 week period I wrote a Message Board series titled Monday Rant.  Now that they are finished, I have collected them and posted them here for your viewing pleasure.  If you wish to see them in their original form, complete with responses (or wish to respond yourself) they are still up on the boards.  Enjoy!

Caffeine

I don't see why caffeine gets a free ride in our society. It's an addictive substance, yet people not only accept it, they embrace it. Probably because they are addicted to it.

Maybe it's because I live in Seattle, but it seems these days no one can survive the day without a few shots of caffeine, whether it be in coffee, soda, or what have you. We are becoming sadly dependent on this drug to the point where people believe they need it to stay awake. Think of that for a second. People have problems both WAKING UP and STAYING AWAKE without caffeine.

"Well, I'm not a morning person. I really need something to wake me up."

My response to that is you are not a morning person because you are already addicted to the stimulant that is caffeine and your body is no longer functioning without it. You are not a morning person because you have succumbed to the addiction of caffeine coolness, because nothing is more cool than hangin' out at Starbucks, shilling out money, to force drink yourself some nasty coffee. It doesn't taste good and we all know it. "Acquired taste" is just another term for "tastes bad except I drink it a lot."

Oh, and don't even get me started on soda drinks. We already know that Coca-Cola is world renowned for its slave labor, not to mention that carbonated products are now known to be worse for your system than heroin. Just add in the fun fun addiction of caffeine and you got yourself quite the product!

But I digress. I have more of a problem with the way caffeine is used and not the actual affects of it on someones system. It is an addictive substance used as a marketing tool. If this were any other drug people would be up in arms, but its our good ol' friend caffeine, and he'd never hurt us!

Budget Problems

Now, I had a few ideas floating around at what I might rant about this Monday afternoon, but as I'm sure you can tell by now, I now know exactly what I'll be ranting about.

First a little back story to put this all into context. For quite some time I worked two jobs, one at night and one during the school day. Because of this, my life was suffering both physically and mentally and I knew I had to quit one job. Although I enjoyed working with the people at my night job, I had to quit it. The job at the library paid better and was more flexible with my hours. Knowing I could get enough hours there to mostly make up for the other job, it was the only choice I could make. I ended up getting scheduled for 14.5 hours a week, which was enough for me to about break even every month.

Flash forward to a week ago. My boss informs me that there are some budget problems, so 2 hours each week will not be on the paycheck, but instead come to me as a lump sum in June. This wasn't that big of a deal, a little sketchy perhaps, but still. With 12.5 paid hours a week I could still handle the load of rent, utilities, food, etc because I have some money saved up. Also, the June paycheck would be pretty nice, although by the time June comes around I won't be hurting for money.

As a side note, I'm not sure how this would fix the budget problems. I can see why it would help for the current quarter, but wouldn't the library then just be behind right away summer quarter, having to pay out a bunch of backlogged hours?

Then comes today. Apparently the budget problems still aren't fixed (surprise surprise), thus we have to cut down some of my (and a couple others) actual work hours. She informs me that I'll only be working until 2:00 instead of 2:45 (thus an hour and a half less a week because I work those hours twice a week). So, its starting to get rough and I'm getting a little pissed. I'm a struggling college student here and am by no means throwing money around. I like to think I spend much less than the average college student, but here I am getting shafted. This only gets worse when my boss comes back to me an hour later, telling me she in fact has to let me off at 1:30 now instead of 2:00. Suffice to say, she is quite bad at math. Anyways, this now puts me at 2 1/2 less paid hours for the month and 2 hours not being paid until June. Let's look at the numbers folks!

Normal work hours, 14.5 a week at $10 an hour = $580 a month
New work hours, 10 a week at $10 an hour = $400 a month

Hurrah! $180 less a month! Yes, I will get back about $80 a month come June, but for some reason I don't think my landlord will accept the same bargain, or the electric company, or the grocery store.

So I am angry at my boss. Is it her fault that the library has budget problems? Maybe no, maybe yes. If she couldn't afford to give me the extra hours in the first place, why say yes? I don't know. Either way, she has screwed me over. I'm pretty positive that she won't be affected by the budget problems. No way she'll make less money, nuh uh! She just made sure to cut back on all the student hours. I mean, she already spends most of her day playing computer games, talking to co-workers, out at lunch, and mostly just not doing work while assigning duties that were once hers to all the students, so she probably deserves her paycheck anyways.

Don't worry about me though, I'll manage. Who wanted a savings account anyways right?

Comcast

For those of you who don't know what it is, Comcast is a major Cable/Internet/Telephone provider, who just so happens to own a co-monopoly in my area with Qwest. Basically if you want a phone line, internet, or TV, you can choose from either Comcast or Qwest, neither of which are that great. Qwest though, is not my target for this rant. Qwest doesn't bombard me with mail (real mail here folks, not email) constantly telling me about their not-so-new offer!

"Sign up for all 3 services for only $33* each!!!111ONEONE!

*After which we will quadruple the price and make you poor"

I don't even want Cable TV or a Phone from anyone, let alone pay a billion dollars a month to have it through Comcast. What I want is for Comcast to leave me alone. I'm tired of their marketing strategy which consists of trying to wear me down and break me, thus hoping I then subscribe to Comcast. So I decided to write them an email.

First of all, just trying to find any way to contact them took quite some time. Eventually I managed to find some General Inquiry place where I could send them a message. I sent this...

Dear Comcast,

I no longer wish to receive your junk mail. Every week I open my
mailbox to find yet another piece of mail from your company telling
me about your latest and greatest offer. I am no fool. I can do simple
math and see that all of your offers are the same and, in reality,
save me little to no money. As you and I are both quite aware, if I
have not chosen to sign-up for you services by now, I will not be
signing up for them any time soon. Quantity of your junk mail does
not make up for the quality of your service. I know that whoever is
reading this most likely has no direct control over what mail is being
sent to my current dwelling, but I wish for it to stop. It is
harassment and this is my letter to you asking for it to stop. I
would much prefer you save the paper you are wasting instead of
sending it to me. Thank you.

And as I expected I got the stereotypical BS reply which consists of what I can only imagine to be a pre-approved response from the Comcast higher-ups. They would LOVE to help me, but they need some more of my account info (you know, to protect me from CRAZY INTERNET THIEVES!!!). Well dumb dumbs, I don't have a freaking Comcast account! Thats the whole problem! I don't want one, and I don't want you to keep sending me your crap trying to convince me to get one!

In conclusion, Comcast sucks.

Lost Nay-Sayers

ABC's Lost, one of their most successful shows, is also one of their most complained about shows. It is constantly under attack by numerous criticisms, which many I find unwarranted. Let me just say, I love Lost and I think it is the best show on TV today. If you don't like Lost, if it isn't your thing, I'm fine with that. My problem is when people make unfounded criticisms of the show, even though they have little to no knowledge of the show in general. Here are some of the more popular arguments that Lost sucks...

1. "OMG Heroz iz so much better then Lost bcuz dey reveal big dings evry epizode!1" Hmm, let's see here. Heroes in its first season where as Lost is in its third. Of course Heroes is having "big reveals" because if they didn't they wouldn't have a show. Let's not forget that the first season of Lost won a friggen Emmy. Would I be surprised if Heroes won an Emmy for its first season as well? No, probably not, but I wouldn't really know because I don't watch Heroes.

2. Any argument involving a polar bear. "OMG Lost iz so stoopid cuz der wuz a polar bear munster on the island! Dat make no senze!1" Ok folks, here it is, the truth about the polar bear. It wasn't supposed to make sense! That is the whole point! When you see a friggen polar bear appear on the island you are supposed to wonder, "Um, why the hell is there a polar bear on this hot tropical island?" It's called mystery. Has it been explained? For the most part yes, yes it has.

And now for the whole reason that prompted me to rant about this...

3. They make it up as they go! Yeah those jerks! They are just greedy for money and are saying they know how it will end so we watch, but in reality they have no idea! That is why they have been campaigning so hard to have the show end sooner rather than later because thats more money for them... wait what?

Imagine you had a story to tell. You had a pretty good idea of how everything will work out, beginning, middle, end, and for the most part everything in between. Now you get hired on for a book deal, awesome! Only thing is, they want the book to be a certain amount of pages, so you have to make your story that long. Ok, how long? They won't tell you. Hmmm. Well, that won't affect the beginning, because no matter what you have this awesome beginning. Now you are done with all the set up, and are reaching the middle where everything is starting to come together, except... you have no idea how far away your end is. If you reveal everything and still have half a book to go, well... that won't work. So instead you opt to throw in a few extra plot twists, maybe a few new characters, a few sub-plots. This way, things will hopefully stay interesting, and you won't have to reveal your entire story too quickly.

If you didn't get the metaphor above, that is sad. The point of the matter is, its hard to tell a finite story if you don't know how many seasons you are working with, which is why the creators have wanted to get an official end date so they can actually start telling the really important stories. And that is what they got.

ABC has given Lost 48 more episodes (over three seasons) after this season and then that will be it. The writers now know where there book will end and they can now figure out exactly how they want their story to play out. Hoorah.

In conclusion, I like Lost. I do believe there are many warranted criticisms of Lost, just that many of them are by people who have no idea what they are talking about. If you don't like Lost, that's fine, it's not for everyone. Just don't insult my show using your ignorance.

Nothing

Some days, I have countless things I could rant about. Some days, like today, there is little.

Oh believe me, I tried. In fact, I was pretty good to go on a whole rant about the Post Office and its inability to do its one job, deliver packages. Here is a mini-rant...

I ordered a package more than two weeks ago and it never came. Thus, I had to make a special trip to the post office to see if for some reason it was there. I was pretty positive that it wouldn't be and I'd never see the package again. Most likely, I thought, was the postman just left the package in the open some where in my apartment and it was stolen. And even if my packaged happened to be at the post office, I would have to jump through numerous hoops just to get it without some special slip.

Alas though, the package was there and it was quite easy to obtain. All they needed was my address and it took all of 5 minutes.

I could complain about having to actually walk there still though, but yet again, while I was there, I ran into a friend from my old work, which was cool. Also, he gave me his band's newly recorded CD, which I am listening too right now. Obviously, this wouldn't have been possible if I didn't take that trip to the post office.

Thus, today, I have nothing to rant about and am not in the mood to find something to rant about. Next week, I promise you a rant. This week, the world gets a free pass. Goodday.

The Daily Buzz

I wake up at about 8am every morning. I take my shower and eat my breakfast. Sadly, another part of my routine is to turn on the TV. Why do I do this? I don't know. Perhaps because I have nothing better to do for 20 minutes while I'm eating a muffin, or perhaps because I'm too lazy to find anything better to do. Either way, I turn on my TV.

Now, there are lots of crappy shows on at this time. The Today Show, The Morning Show, The Early Show (just being able to name these shows depresses me) along with some morning news scattered through-out. Now, there are numerous (see: NUMEROUS) things I could rant about dealing with these shows, but there is one that is worse than all. It is some evil hybrid between morning news and morning talk. It appears on my local UPNCWB, whatever that channel is now, network. It is simply called, The Daily Buzz.

http://www.dailybuzz.tv/index.php

Watching the show, which resides from Orlando, Florida, I ask myself, "WHY IS THIS ON MY TELEVISION!?" Their website claims they have, "News & Weather... Delivered with PERSONALITY!" Boy oh boy, just what I've always wanted. Cold hard facts skewed by dolts.

The show is comprised of four individuals. One guy does a bit called News by the Numbers, in which he somehow tries (and often fails) to fit numbers into some quick news stories. Our next number is 87, which is the number of times I've sweared at my television during this segment.

We also have a weather man which I'm positive has little to no experience as an actual weather man. Today, while giving the national weather, he stands in the dead center of the weather map blocking out the entire nation, back to the camera, and points to little Florida in the corner and discusses the temperature. I couldn't help but laugh at how stupid this was.

Then we have the token black woman who is thrown in there so it doesn't look like a bunch of white people took over the Florida broadcast station. I'm not sure really what her job is. I mean, technically its probably co-anchor, but she doesn't really ever talk, except in the "Thanks for that segment!" role. Hmm.

Finally we have the lead anchor, a woman with a little bit of dignity trying (and once again, failing) to hold the show together while surrounded by idiots. Everyone else makes off-hand comments and she tries to gloss them over and keep the show in line.

What really made me want to rant about this show though was this mornings talk about "violent writing" which is obvious prompted by Virginia Tech. It seems to be weather man and black woman vs. annoying guy and white woman. Somehow, the weatherman through in bits about terrorism and 9/11 and the black woman went off about how kids are more violent then ever these days. The amount of ignorance pouring out of them was overwhelming.

Safe to say, this show sucks. A lot. Please, watch anything else but this show. I don't want it on my television anymore!

Technologically Illiterate Professors

Now don't get me wrong. I am by no means an expert when it comes to modern technology. Unless I use it on a daily basis, I pretty much have no idea how to work it. It's pretty laughable when I am asked to use an iPod for someone, only to stare at it for minutes on end without any clue what to do.

Yet, when it comes to someone who is a professor, I expect a little more technological savvy when it comes to things that are used in the classroom. We all shouldn't have to wait 10 minutes for you and your TAs to figure out how to use a video projector. Once again, I understand if you are new to this, and have never used such a device before, but when showing videos is part of your syllabus you use every quarter, you should know how to do it by now. The video goes into the VCR. That may seem like common sense, but that seemed to be one of the major problems today in class. I don't know what the heck they were doing with the video beforehand, but apparently that was the problem... ugh.

You would think someone with a doctorate, in well, anything, would have some common sense. Some of these people are even good professors, yet when it comes to operating the simplest of technology, it's like they are 5 years old again. I mean, the same professor that had the problem with the video projector has had the same problem with the microphone for the whole quarter. The first few classes we had to call someone down from who knows where to figure the thing out. After a couple times of that, you'd think the professor would get things straightened out, but alas, they were not. In fact, half way through he just gave up and started shouting to the class (the class is of about 200).

Now, one might make the argument that this is understandable, because some of this technology is newer, or perhaps changes from classroom to classroom, so it's harder to learn. Yet, this problem occurs for even the simplest of devices that have been around for decades, and that is the overhead projector.

I swear to God, I could operate this thing with my eyes closed from just simply watching teachers and professors fiddle with it for years on end, yet most instructors stop in fear when they see it.

"Ok... umm... this needs to be bigger... push the entire table with the projector toward the screen... OH NO... got smaller, ummm... move this mirror on the top... where'd the image go? Oh its on the ceiling um... maybe if I push this button and throw the projector out the window and SMASH IT TO BITS!!"

Seriously, its common sense how to work it, yet I find it amazing when an instructor is able to use one with ease, and that is sad. If I added up all the time I have lost in the classroom because of instructors messing around with technology that shouldn't be as complicated as they are making it out to be, well, that'd be a lot of time that I could have wasted without their help.