Random Thoughts

What in the hell is wrong with people who think that burning couches and destroying other people’s property is an appropriate response to joy and/or sorrow over the performance of a beloved sports team?

And while we’re on the topic of the Super Bowl: what on earth was that commercial with the well-endowed woman whose tank top strap breaks (presumably from the weight of her “large tracts of land”)? It was for some sort of website, which I’ve now forgotten—and frankly, I’d be a little frightened of pulling it up. Are they advertising internet porn during the Super Bowl now?

Speaking of commercials, the local cable network has started airing a “community service announcement” (which I guess is what they’re calling the old PSA now) that features the voice of a young woman who talks in a fast, valley-girl cadence about how she discovered that these kids were getting sick because someone was polluting the water, so she wrote to the president of the company, but he ignored her, so she lobbied her elected representatives, and got the plant shut down, but now those kids don’t get enough to eat because their parents lost their jobs when the plant shut down...(I’m paraphrasing here, but not exaggerating) The tagline is “Saving the world is hard. Saving a life is easy.” Then the contact information for the local blood bank flashes on screen. The subtext I hear is “If there’s not a simple, black and white answer, it’s not worth dealing with it, so you should just do something that doesn’t require much thought or effort on your part.”

Apropos of blood drives, the Student Bar Association sponsored yet another blood drive today. This is not a problem in and of itself—giving blood is important and it’s nice that students have the opportunity to give back to the community. BUT. The people running the blood drive, in a word, suck. They set up in the student lounge area—a.k.a. the place where we eat—and take over at least a third of the space. The lounge tends to get very crowded around midday, especially in the winter when it’s too cold to sit outside. I’ve never actually seen the cots filled or a line of people waiting. In fact, in my experience there are usually only two or three people donating at a time. Therefore, they could easily condense operations a bit. But that’s only a very minor irritation. More irritating is the fact that they’re performing a medical procedure in an area where people are eating. It’s gross. And it’s not as though they screen the area off. Sure, they throw up a handful of small screens, but they do absolutely nothing to actually block the view of the people lying in the cots and the bags of blood being collected. I feel like a big Scrooge, complaining about a blood drive, but really, there’s no reason why it has to be run the way it is. There are several places where the donors could give blood in privacy.

Speaking of the student lounge, we started painting the windows for the public interest auction. The theme this year is “Nightclub” and part of the design for the windows involves a gigantic disco ball hanging over a Saturday Night Fever-esque dance floor. We are puzzling over how to make it sparkly. I bought a couple of cans of glitter hairspray on the theory that it’s glittery AND water soluble. Unfortunately, it’s not nearly sparkly enough. Now I’m not sure exactly what to do, though I think we might try watered down Elmer’s glue mixed with glitter and brushed onto the window. Ash came along to help, which was very generous of him, considering that he’ s not only not a member of the public interest society, but also has a great deal of time pressure right now, thanks to the looming deadline for his Moot Court brief. He designed and put up a really great looking dance floor, despite the fact that we had none of the tools he requested and all we could offer him was some masking tape and curling ribbon to mark out the proper angles. It was nearly McGyver quality improvisation.

Speaking of Ash, we saw The 40 Year Old Virgin this weekend. It was really quite funny and I’ve come to the decision that Paul Rudd is sooo in my harem. The much previewed waxing scene is far funnier than I thought it would be, especially knowing that they were really waxing him. The guys hanging out in the background are hysterical, trying not to laugh and the girl who’s doing the actual waxing is about to lose it. The only missed note, for me, was the clichéd ending scene, OH BUT WAIT, no! The closing sequence more than made up for THAT and, to be honest, was what put Paul Rudd over the top for inclusion in the harem.