What I REALLY Learned from Exams

Let's be honest. Exams are a time where we do hardcore studying for 48 hours or so, throw it down on paper, and then forget what we learned. At least that's the way it is for a lot of history classes. I'm sure engineers have to remember things as they go along, and blah blah blah, but ask me how much I remember from Chinese History last year. It's hard to remember names with 3 X's and 5 U's in them.

Here is what I really learned over exams:

-I'm going to warn you ahead of time that this is going to be a run-on sentence: When a TA gives you a review with 10 essay questions on it and says five will be on the exam, two of which you have to answer, and then he gives you the five essays that he can "almost guarantee" will be on the test, it is not safe, in fact, to only study three of those essays. This is what I did and only one of my essays made it onto the exam. With it being a cumulative exam, I had absolutely no idea what the answers to the four remaining essays were. I wrote one Bluebook page on the one I finally picked would do the most damage, and then I had nothing left. So this is what I wrote: "I'll be honest, I studied three of the essays you said would probably be on the exam, and that backfired. So I will conclude my essay by saying 'Have a Great Summer', and here's a picture of a missile blowing up my grade." The grade was depicted by a cartoon A with a face screaming "Noooo! But the first essay was so good! How could this happen?!"

-Listen to music you are very familiar with while you study. If you listen to music you've just purchased, you get distracted far too easily, especially if you're like me. I pick apart music and analyze the crap out of every aspect, so my first 20 listens or so I pay attention. Additionally, I do a lot of studying at my computer, and when I start listening to a new band I do more research than the FBI. I need to know how many albums they have, how old are their members, what are their grandma's names, etc. It's even bad if you listen to music that you haven't listen to for a long time, like I did with Funeral for a Friend this weekend. I wanted to know if they were putting out an album soon, and sure enough they are. This led me to studio videos, articles, etc. Don't throw that stuff in front of me or I won't be able to stop. So usually when I study, I go with one of my favorite bands, like Radiohead or the Velvet Teen, or whatever I've been listening to over and over again for the last four weeks.

-E-mail your TA's. A lot. It makes it look like you care a lot. Bonus points if you actually do. It wasn't my intention to, but I also impressed them by handing in take-home exams the day after I got them. This was more convenience than initiative, as I had exams on Sunday and Tuesday, and the take-homes were due Monday and Tuesday.

- Don't moon your roommate as you walk out the door on the way to the library. You might break your fly button and have to use a safety pin to keep your pants together.

I guess I'll leave you with a song by Funeral for a Friend since I mentioned them earlier. FFAF are a bunch of Welsh guys, who have the greatest accents ever in real life. But if you heard them, you'd think they were an American band because they don't have a UK feel. They're one of the few bands from my emo/screamo phase that I still enjoy listening to because Matt Davies has a pure, beautiful voice, which contrasts with the moving, intimidating guitars beautifully. It's not whiny at all like other emo bands, and by their third album they had matured a lot over the years, although they've stated that with the new album they are going to bring it back to more complicated riffs and some harsh vocals, like their earlier albums. Their last album was made entirely without any screaming, which is done by their drummer, Ryan Richards. Apparently, this is not going to be the case for the new album. I had a scare two days ago, though, because Wikipedia suddenly said that Matt Davies had left the band. When I got to their Myspace people were already freaking out all over their wall, as they are a huge band in the UK, somehow with relatively unknown status in the U.S. Well, as Wikipedia is fan-edited, my suspicions that it was contrived were confirmed when Gareth posted that it was something someone made up. It hadn't made sense to me since they had just announced that they were filming the video for the new single on May 17th. Anyway, I'll leave you with two songs, because I want to show you the something from all three of their albums. I feel like Matt's voice really matures between the second and third albums. They're in chronological order.

"Juneau" by FFAF at YouTube
"Streetcar" by FFAF at YouTube
"Great Wide Open" by FFAF

College Comic Strips: An Opportunity for the Sucky to Be Published

Listen, I love the Daily Cardinal and the Badger Herald. I even love the comics as I read them everyday. But there's GOT to be some requirement for people to be allowed to make comic strips for these papers. Basically, I'm pretty sure they're so eager to fill a page that they don't care who draws for them.

My first grievance as against the comic strip "The Crackles". There is no originality to this strip. First of all, they are pacman-type characters (and believe me, he tries to milk the jokes out of the resemblance, as if it's coincidental) that just stand around and talk. Fine. Whatever. Kevin Smith makes his living by making movies where people just stand around and talk. It's just got to be funny. But the guy clearly can't draw. So you would think that he would make up for it by being funny. Well, I submit to you this comic. Haha, it's a hippo. Wait what's that, the hippo's hungry? Oh, I get it! Hungry, hungry hippos.

Let's just review. The usual requirements for comic strips: Good drawings, good story-lines, usually funny. Crackles? 0 for 3.

But the crappy comics aren't limited to the Daily Cardinal (see also "Square and Cone". I can't find a good link right now, but I'll find one.) With the Badger Herald, we have Milk. Here is an example. The thing I hate about comic strips is for some reason, about half of them like to talk about World of Warcraft, and other RPG's. This girl is clearly among that demographic. The thing is, most of her comic strips nobody gets unless they play them! There are a couple of other comic strips like this, but the one's like Yourmometer and C'est La Mort are occasionally funny and are not limited to that subject.

So many of you would say, get out there and do it yourself if you could do better. And to be honest, I've thought about it. But then I realized... I AM LAZY. It would be tons of fun, don't get me wrong. But to make them to my standards, it would take a lot of time. I would not be happy putting forth some of the stuff these people are doing.

But I do have to admit there are some very funny comics in the papers. Everyone loves and raves about White Bread and Toast, but I think it's on and off, and it mostly does the one frame with different dialogue thing. The one comic strip I could see getting national syndication is Green Planet. The drawer's talents are not limited at all, and the plot lines are hilarious. And although the subject matter of many comic strips, like Rehablilitating Mr. Wiggles, is funny because it is inappropriate and could never be put in a national paper, Green Planet's is for the most part just clean, witty humor.

So that's it. I was just taking a dump and reading the papers and I got frustrated with some of the comics, so I thought I'd rant. And my whole weekend was spent reading a book on the role honor played in the foundation of the U.S. and writing a 10-page paper on the subject, so I needed a stress reliever.

I thought I'd go with an animated music video for the song of the day. So here's my favorite song ever, Paranoid Android by Radiohead.

Paranoid Android at Youtube

Minus the Bear Concert an Intense Ride

Minus the Bear encountered a bunch of problems at their concert in Madison on Thursday. One band got pushed out of the lineup by the sponsors. Then, Portugal the Man, who actually drew a significant chunk of the crowd, had to pull out because their van broke down in Chicago. Thus, the people that traveled showed up for an 8:00 show that got pushed back to 9:30 due to unforeseen circumstances.

Club 770 is literally a cafeteria by day. It's placed in Union South and has a capacity of like 450. Well, I'm pretty sure they overflowed this place because there was absolutely no room, but due to our early arrival my friend Jenny and I were able to get front row. Worse than that, there were kids that were clearly on acid or something of that nature jumping around and into people, even before Minus the Bear was on and the Big Sleep had the stage. There was a drunk girl that I couldn't shake that kept playing drums on my back and trying to get me to dance crazily (Her name was Regina). Jenny found this hilarious, and due to my extremely muscular back I was able to tolerate it.

Once the Big Sleep was off, everyone tried to rush to the front. It was basically like trying playing Red Rover for an hour-and-a-half. I am a small guy of 5'6" but I was not letting anyone through. Jenny, on the other hand, got pushed out. She was gone before I knew it, something I felt terrible about. She ended up watching the show from the side. The reality was, I could not have gotten out if I tried, so we kept communications by text message. The entire concert was spent with the entire weight of the crowd pushing against the front row, causing them to be constantly bent over onto the stage that was only a foot-and-a-half off the ground. It was also really tiny and I'm amazed they got five members on it. It was like clowns in a clown car.

During the second song, probably over the previously mentioned pushing, a fight broke out about 5 feet to my right. Cory, the bassist, jumped out. He had clearly been uneasy about the pushing right off the bat. It's funny, because last year at the Lussier Teen Center, Cory had to keep kicking kids off that ran onto stage. Anyway, Cory jumped out, then Jake, the lead singer, also jumped out to stop it. There was no security, so I guess they felt it was their job, and I guess no one would have been able to see it from the back, so really they were the only authority figures to do it.

The rest of the concert was amazing. They played The Fix (link to the Youtube video of them playing it at the concert), which is my favorite song of theirs, and they played a bunch of songs off the new album. In fact... you can see the entire setlist because with two songs left I asked Cory for it after the concert. At first I didn't think he heard me, but right as the song was starting he bent over and handed it to me. Before the last song I showed him it in case he forgot what the last song was and he laughed. Encores were "Fulfill the Dream" and "Absinthe Party at the Honey Warehouse".

Overall it was an amazing concert. I hope they still come back considering the problems they've had their last two concerts out here. I wonder how they feel about playing small venues like this when they could easily fill larger ones.

I'll make the song of the day Knights, because it has a sweet music video and is the best song off of Minus the Bear's new album, Planet of Ice.


"Knights" by Minus the Bear at YouTube



Oh, and I made it in a couple of pictures. I can be seen in one on Mixtapes|Heartbreaks (although Cory's blocking out my face), and there's this one that the writer of that blog sent to me. Thanks Stacey!

Also, the top picture looks kind of cruddy because I didn't take any pictures with the flash on. I didn't want to blind them because I was literally that close.

Every Great Streak Must End.

Even Cal Ripkin missed a game eventually. Brett Favre will eventually miss one too, either through retirement or injury. Well, today, a great streak ended for me. Before you get excited, it's not that I drank or anything.

I've been taunting the ice here ever since October. I do not own boots, so I walk around in my usual nike skater/tennis shoe breeds, constantly slipping, but never falling. My quick hand-eye coordination saved me probably 500 times in the 4-month winter we've had thus far. Every time I cheated wet pants, I laughed at the ice and dared it to try it again. I was a naive young man, nowhere near experienced as I am now.

Today, the ice fought back in full force. It gathered up all the times I taunted it, and thrust them back me in a cluster of karma. It was 47 degrees tonight and rainy. This meant that you had to choose between walking on ice or walking in 6 inches of water in some areas. Naturally, I picked ice. I had some close calls and addressed them with my usual arrogance. But a mere block from my apartment disaster struck and I wound up with a drenched side. Dejected and dethroned as the king of balance, I carefully stepped with a new-found respect for frozen water.

Don't cry for me, I learned a valuable lesson.

I will make the song of the day "The Ice of Boston" by the Dismemberment Plan. They were a very influential band on the indie music scene, buddies with Death Cab for Cutie, and a favorite of Pitchfork Media (not that that means anything to me). Hailing from Washington, D.C., they released four albums before disbanding in 2003. They, like the Toadies, often have reunions in their hometown, usually for benefits. The Dismemberment Plan, at least for their first three albums, were a unique blend of spoken word, screaming, and singing, employing dischords and funky basslines similarly to Primus.

The Ice of Boston by the Dismemberment Plan on YouTube.