Posts Tagged Culture

Reflecting on Washington, DC

As the semester dwindles down to a close, I suppose I can begin to wrap up my thoughts about Washington. I could list a litany of adjectives to describe it, but I feel that this city goes beyond descriptive words. Indeed, it has a captivating aura that traps anyone walking within the beltway; however, DC has a certain plainness that you don’t get anywhere else. And although many who live here like to believe it is the center of the universe, let alone the world, Washington is no more than a series of Roman architectural buildings conveniently separated by makeshift street lights and grids that occasionally confuse the regular passerby when Avenues decide to make a quick, angular turn through the city blocks.

The buildings are correspondingly low and the city’s bed time is 9:30pm. It hibernates whenever it snows and blossoms for just a couple of hours when the weather turns around. The lights go out at night and the apartment lights turn on, giving DC a soft, glowing hum of yellow light cascading over the horizon. Over the weekends only certain areas remain alive while others give you the creepy feeling of walking through a deserted alleyway that’s deserted for a reason. Adams Morgan becomes the talk of Monday morning, although, the few streets that are lit up are short lived by the ludicrous drinking laws and three-dozen cops watching your every move.

Metro dictates social order and common law. It is partially responsible for the premature bed time that DC has and is capable of granting unexpected vacations to Congressmen who once complained of recess being too short. Its escalators and elevators are in constant repair at every stop, making their existence unwarranted and, as the Supreme Court would say, “moot.” Metro can make your day or destroy it like a thousand suns. It has the power of the gods and the demigods; it is the alpha and the omega.

Interns roaming the streets aimlessly in search of the nonexistent bodegas and mom-and-pop-shops often have the sex appeal of a tootsie roll and the intellect of a snail. They have egos the size of New York skyscrapers and résumés the length of their toenail. Eagerly looking for the closest happy hour to attend, they often get denied for being underage or realizing that their pockets have been run dry from the high cost of living in this small city. Lunches often run at $15 a person while Ramen Noodle soup begins to look like the most appetizing thing you can buy at a supermarket.

Everything is Federal, but nothing is political. There is the law and everyone agrees with it, or is forced to. Taxation without representation is so 18th century and Keynesian economics is the cool way to go. When it comes to employment, people aimlessly depend on government. And when it comes to making money, government depends on aimless people. Everyone has an opinion, but no one cares of yours. Senators compete with Lady Gaga for fame while lobbyists happily walk the streets with the egos of interns. Congressmen often forget that there are over 400 of their kind in the beltway yet their egos reach an undiscovered outer planetary galaxy somewhere near Andromeda.

The city resembles Constantinople, 1453. It looks beautiful from the outside but stained on the inside. The Dome and Tower can be seen from miles away but the mistakes from the people inside can be felt oceans away. It is a microcosm of the world; hundreds of thousands of different types of people all itching to legitimize themselves in some fashion or another gives you the ultimate feeling of hathos. You hate to love it but love to hate it. DC has all the good and bad qualities of America blended into a city that contains Northern efficiency and Southern charm. It needs to exist, I suppose. Or else New York would have to take its undesired place.

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Quarterly Report

card2282So remember last year when I wrote that absolutely fantastic memoire of my Fall and Spring semesters? Well, considering that this is the last Rutgers will see of me this year because I have chosen endeavors in the world brothel know as Washington, DC for the Spring term, I have decided to write a memoire of my Fall Semester. Rutgers, once again, has taught me valuable life lessons in important fields of education like religion, politics, and your mother’s backyard. Now, I know what you’re thinking; why on earth would Rutgers University teach life lessons on a subject as silly as politics? Well, I don’t know either.

This was an interesting semester. I learned one thing and one thing only: Roy, don’t ever take 18 credits ever again. Ever. I somehow managed to come out of this godforsaken, sugarplum, rainbows, and butterflies semester unscathed while taking a seminar class, a science class, and teaching a class. How did I manage to do this? Ever since November 4th, 2008, I have been forced to pray to Messiah Obama in hopes to obtain goodies and candies. When I lost all my money to his tithing, I realized that it was my education that really mattered if I ever wanted to go places in life; and learning about globalization and why Thomas Friedman is the largest douchebag in the universe just for the simple fact that he titled his book The World is Flat, was utterly necessary for my Law School application to look sexier than a pregnant college student partying at a frat. So was taking the class “Planet Earth;” completely necessary for my Political Science major because I truly needed to know how and why beaches are formed. Thank you Rutgers for wasting my time and forcing me to take classes that are completely unrelated to my major or life ambitions. As a result, I’m going to blame all my problems on two people: Greg Schiano for draining the school’s money and Thomas Friedman for being the ignorant prick he is (and George Bush. I know that makes three people, but it’s necessary because that’s just what people do).

My Junior year, overall, was slightly different. Some things changed while other things remained the same. For instance, I finally moved out of the Black Forest and instead moved into the Everglades because Cook Campus has no concept of an irrigation or sewage system whatsoever. My class sizes were still enormous with the exception of Globalization because my professor was smart enough to utilize scare tactics to his advantage (well done, might I add). And while I too experienced the stadium expansion inside my classroom, many things remained the same. College Avenue was still an obnoxious conglomerate of mismanaged buses and subhuman mongoloids roaming the sidewalks like misshapen apes. With poorly functioning classrooms, illiterate students, and an administration comparable to that of Joseph Stalin’s, I learned that I needed to GTFO ASAP.

I use acronyms because I live in a globalized world.

We can start with this absolutely wonderful class I took called “Globalization.”

The great journey to this class began in the wee hours of the morning as I struggled to dress myself into that snazzy buttoned coat and $300.00 scarf that makes me a cosmopolitan and “global citizen.” After I waded my way to class through the wetlands of Douglass Campus, I learned that, yes, Thomas Friedman’s still the world’s biggest douchebag. Why? Because what academic actually tries to convince me that the “world is flat?” Better yet, who comes up with a title to a book with something they told their wife in their sleep? Or some silly colloquialism to grab the layman’s attention? At least “Clash of Civilizations” held some merit because the title conveyed something epic.

What is this?

Something cute?

I can find more academic material in Lady GaGa lyrics.

And then there was Benjamin Barber. My dear Mr. Barber, how did you ever to get to publish that compilation of recyclable garbage you call “Jihad vs. McWorld”? Not only was it insanely difficult to comprehend because of your redefined version of grammar, but you make Samuel Huntington look like the Bush Administration’s pansy. “Jihad vs. McWorld” sounds a lot like “The Rest vs. the West.” Who are you kidding? The voters?

Oh…

After I realized that academia may indeed be a world full of animal excretion, I realized that so was Rutgers and the way it handles its students and core requirements.

Then, on the seventh day, God created “Planet Earth.” God saw all he made and realized he created Thomas Friedman.

This was a great class. I truly enjoyed the lectures and a lot of the material was very interesting. I actually mean that. But what in Zoroaster’s good name does this class have to do with my major? In fact, why on earth does the School of Arts and Sciences require me to take these core courses? In any case, I did learn one valuable thing. The earth is ROUND, THOMAS FRIEDMAN. DID YOU HEAR ME? IT’S ROUND. I SAW PICTURES OF IT.

This class also explained how oil fields are created, which explained to me why humans crave oil like they crave the welfare state, which inevitably explained to me why Turks aren’t human; this also explained to me why Greg Schiano isn’t human either. What human being needs a $1.3 Million salary, a salary large enough to suck the administration dry of its cash, place semi-retarded monkeys in each segmented School, and have these monkeys draft “core requirements” for its students? I’m 20 years old. I am a Junior in college. I think I knew where my life was headed since I was 17; giving me cores is an insult to my intelligence and waste of school funds that could be going to, oh I don’t know, making class sizes smaller? Purging the school of bad teachers (and students, for the love of god)? Opening another dining hall so I don’t have to eat standing up at Neilson?

Being that Turks aren’t real human beings, I decided to write my “History Seminar” paper on precisely that.

My History Seminar was an interesting course. We met once a week in a cramped room inside Scott Hall. Before I continue, I must point out that Scott Hall is by far one of my favorite buildings on campus. Resembling my High School cafeteria just slightly expanded, Scott Hall has the tiniest and largest rooms in the entire school (minus Busch and Livingston campuses because I’m never there precisely for the fact that they are to me what the Sahara is for Canadians: a dangerous, unnecessary place). The rooms have two temperatures, as do all Rutgers classrooms: sauna and igloo. More often than not, the average Rutgers student feels igloo during winter and sauna during summer. Why? Because Greg Schiano needs to prioritize his own proper heating and cooling mechanisms for his football team, which operates like the Italian Army in World War II. But I digress. I chose to write my seminar paper on British intervention in the Ottoman Empire before and during World War I. Not only did I have a blast writing this “dissertation-quality piece,” but the research I did showed me that Turks came from the same planet as L. Ron Hubbard and practiced a more sanitary form of cannibalism when being the Kaiser’s little bitch. Therefore, Turks were not and hence are not human beings, comparable to Guidos. Just as the Greeks desire the liberation Constantinople, I too will one day liberate Brooklyn because we have a “Situation” going on right here.

Speaking of aliens, “Religions of the Eastern World” proved to me that peace is in fact an alien idea.

Religions of the Eastern world was either the hemorrhoid or Bataan Death March of the semester. I’m not entirely sure what I learned because it’s really difficult to comprehend something that exists and doesn’t exist at the same time. Because the Dao is and isn’t. But it is. And isn’t. But it still is. No, wait, it isn’t, sorry. Jesus Christ, make up your mind, Laozi. At least Thomas Friedman made up his mind about the shape of the earth. And then we get to Shinto, which apparently applies to only one part of the earth, Japan. The same way one must be Japanese to be or understand Shinto, is quite similar to how one must be French to understand true laziness, Prussian to understand militarism, American to understand the meaning of Christmas, a Democrat to understand true socialism. But one thing all of these Eastern Religions had in common was finding peace and harmony within one’s self in order to bring peace and harmony to the world. Not only was this a bizarre and foreign idea to me, but these religions also had the nerves to tell me that I have to be “benevolent” in order to achieve true harmony. And then I paused, remembered Genghis Khan, Mao Zedong, Hirohito, and Kim Jung Il, and realized that no matter what religion is preached anywhere, humanity is still building a bridge to nowhere. I mean, just look at Mecca…

“20th Century Europe”

This class is worthy of neither a title nor an explanation. Probably one of the most poorly organized courses I have ever sat through, “20th Century Europe” was a combination of feminism and socialism swirled together into a cluster of misguiding information equivalent to that of the current State Department or the Bush Administration; I might as well have had Hillary Clinton teach the class, and even then I’d rather listen to a lecture on quantum physics than sit through this lunatic garbage. Never in my three years at Rutgers have I seen such an unnecessary collection of information deposited into a student’s mind. What did we learn in this course? Nothing; my brain is mush and the only thing I can reiterate from that class was, “LALALALA” because that was the only thing I was able to say after sitting through an hour and twenty minutes of pure, vile, idiocy. Because, yes, all of Europe in the 20th Century is defined by the modern girl and the holocaust. No, professor, I quite frankly don’t care about European menstrual cycles and think something is missing when you mention only half the victims of the genocide of the century. What about the gypsies, homosexuals, and Catholics killed during the holocaust? The Normandy invasion? The political bipolarity in Europe? Jupiter Missiles? Battle of the Bulge? Any World War I battle? Not even the Somme? NOPE. Apparently a woman finding her missing sexuality in Yugoslavia clearly triumphs state politics, war, diphtheria, and totalitarianism. It’s no wonder your gender finds it hard to get jobs! Sheesh!

So Roy though it would be a good idea to teach a “FIGS Class.”

Shattering any genuine desire I had for becoming a college professor, I learned that freshmen were the bane of my existence, the unholy scriptures of universal thought, the flaw in metaphysics, the ugliness found in beauty. They were capable of destroying worlds and collapsing empires. Teaching them history was like driving nails through hard steel. While most survived my Bataan Death March, others simply couldn’t see the dark side (or the real world). I noticed that Freshmen students are, not dumb, but insanely naïve and happy-go-lucky. Their idealism would have made Barack Obama shatter in tears and Karl Marx rethink his Manifesto. But why is this the case? It’s because this is what you get when you place a cynical alpha-male behind enemy lines in none other than Candy Mountain or a scene right out of the Teletubbies. I only wish the school recognized me as an individual versus a Rutgers ID# and then they would realize that sunshine, lollipops, and rainbows are detrimental to my physical health and mental wellbeing. After suffering from severe hyperventilation, I made it out alive… kinda.

So what did this semester come down to? I’m not really sure what but my perception on humanity hasn’t changed. I’m still the disgruntled citizen who despises his government for taking away his money. I still think Jesus was one hell of a magician, Mohammed, the greatest pimp of his time, and Zoroaster, a bearded man whose only competition for fame and facial hair is Billy Mays. I have officially lost all hope for humanity; Thomas Hobbes, here’s a blank check, you fill out an appropriate amount that you deem necessary, sir. This semester, I have encountered liars, bullshitters, thieves, Lady Gaga, socialists, and even a rapist, but there’s still one thing I’ll never stop believing in, and that’s McDonald’s because Smiles Are Free “in these hard economic times.”

And speaking of McDonald’s, nothing irks me more than seeing a fat schmuck with earrings and a buzzed haircut (let’s not forget the tape-up) walking around College Avenue hanging out with his “bros” at the frat, thinking he amounts up to something in life because he was capable of downing a few watered down beers (how dare he even call that “beer”) and playing with his little fire-hose on the weekend. Can we add more irksome people to this list? Of course we can, Roy. How about that obnoxious professor who says “right?” at the end of every sentence to the point where the girl next me keeps tally marks of how many times the word has been said in one class period (376 count one Thursday class). That idiot student, who sits in the back of the classroom, offers a tidbit of information once in a while about something he knows nothing about, like taxes, foreign policy, common sense; and then you ask yourself, “How did he ever get into this school?” And then you realize, “Oh, this is Rutgers.” Or how about the mongoloids heaped up in the Cook Campus Center, studying for their Biophysics Engineering (I still don’t know what that is) final since March of last year? Legislators who argue about “behind closed door deals” when they should be arguing about actual Legislation? Authors who come up with cutesy titles like “The Lexus and the Olive Tree” thinking that the world can easily be divided into two groups of people? Americans who want healthcare with low taxes? Parents with kids but don’t know how to raise them? Bill O’Reilly?

So after all was quiet on the Western Front, I noticed that not much has changed. The system remained the same, except with new agents like, Lady Gaga, the (never came too soon) ghost of Michael Jackson, and Ben Bernanke. It was these irksome people that made me get up in the morning, smell the fresh air emanating from the Everglades of Cook, and say, “I love this world; we must really be scraping the bottom of the gene pool by now!” Keep it up guys.

I really miss New York, where people there are more intelligent, severely short tempered (for the right reasons), and blunt about everything. Sorry New Jersey, but you are still the unnecessary buffer zone that New Yorkers have to pass through to get to Philadelphia. Even then, your existence is still futile and detrimental to the wellbeing of children around the world. Your “towns” exert a beautified sense of bore that only a native or mongoloid can understand. So what do you people do in your spare time? Sex, drugs, and alcohol? While New Yorkers haul the weight of the East Coast on their shoulders? Because we have better things to do with our time? No thanks, you’re another reason why New York City should secede and become its own city-state. We’ll hail a militia of hippies or something.

I just can’t wait to see what the world brothel has to offer me besides Sam Huntington and pansy UN Eurocrats.

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My Sophomore Year

Well, what have we learned? Rutgers, it has been one hell of a year and, my God, what a hellish ride it has been. Sophomore year at Rutgers taught me that the Supreme Court is made up of nine assholes who sit around a bench all day and talk about Paris Hilton and how she should dictate American social law. This past year has taught me that the free market has failed and socialism is now universally acceptable. Soccer moms are incredibly annoying. Jesus was a magician. The Jews control the Middle East. General Motors is more important than your mom. And the world is going to end in 2012.

In all seriousness, this transitional year taught me that people are incredible naive and stupid. Let’s start with my move-in back in ancient September when the dinosaurs still walked the earth and having 2 gigabytes of RAM was semi-decent. Being surrounded by the Black Forrest of Germany, also known as Cook Campus, I meandered my way around the Starkey Apartments (also known as the housing projects) in search for gold and magical rainbows but found, instead, outlets of marijuana smokers and a colony of centipedes and ants that like to hang out in my bathroom and living room walls. Fair enough, I said to God the Great Magician; I shall test my wits and strength to overcome this hoard of insects that come in the form of hippies.

I apparently took classes my first semester of Sophomore year. This was news to me.

[American Constitutional Law]
It was during this semester that I allegedly realized that the law is allegedly manifested out of the minds of someone who allegedly looks like my late alleged grandfather. Allegedly. This modern day story of mythological titan Prometheus can be found in Article III of the Constitution according to the Court decision of Reality vs. Prometheus and Bob et al (Which was an amazing Cartoon Network skit and if you don’t think so or don’t know what I’m talking about, you have no soul). The Court ruled in favor of Prometheus and Bob because “Reality was too much of a hassle and required way too much common sense,” stated Justice Souter. And that’s why he left the Court a few weeks ago.

[History of Colonial America]
I also learned during this first semester that southern white men used to bash their slaves with the butt ends of their muskets and make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with their native counterparts. Land clearance was dealt with the simple question of “Do you have a flag?” Natives adequate replied with “Powhatan” whilst the Europeans circled native forts, set them ablaze, but were still able to call each other “bros” at the end of the day.

[Comparative Public Policy]
I learned that public policy in other countries is sometimes determined by what is best for the people. Public policy in this country is determined via coin flip. Should the coin magnetically land on heads, we turn to socialism so we can be more like our European counterparts. Should the coin accidentally land on tails, the coin flips over due to the laws of magnetic physics and we still get socialism. It either case, the government still makes you bend over.

[American Foreign Policy]
American foreign policy is also determined via coin flip. Heads means America tells France to bend over. Tails means America tells France to bend over a little further. However, when America just so happens to, say, toss the coin away, it invades Iraq. In either scenario, Sarkozy still bends over. Conclusively, American policy in general is very sexually oriented because we are a country founded by European prudes who lacked any form of sexual etiquette and we are now unleashing 250+ years of sexual repression. It was taught this way in the class- I swear.

[War, Peace, and the Military]
Taught by the most amazing senior citizen I know, this class taught me nothing about war but everything about Social Security checks and medication for the elderly.

[Medieval Kings and Queens]
I’m going to end my story of the Fall Semester with a class that never ended. If I had to define “waste of time”, this class would somehow fit into the definition. I would rather sit through a lecture on Keynesian Economics than learn about what King was screwing which Lady at what time of the year because her menstrual cycle was shifted by Charlemagne’s sudden urge to rape Lombards.

Then came second semester, when I woke up. As my giant wings erupted from the depths of massive amounts of partying and one night stands in the Fall Semester, I consumed the air in a vat of fiery goodness. Not only did I enjoy a wonderful winter in Brooklyn, but I also loathed coming back to the State of New Joisey and nothing-but-highways. Hating absolutely everyone and everything that moved in this wretched state (if you would call it a state- more like land mass for New Yorkers to throw warehouses in), I proceeded to tackle a new set of classes that supposedly gave me the necessary knowledge to make it in life. LOL.

The Spring Semester taught me that, despite my uber heterosexuality, it is sometimes acceptable to have academic man crushes because it’s just part of being awesome. It’s totally not gay because it’s academic masturbation; sitting in front of a computer screen reading PDFs of Laitin and Trevor-Roper really hit my weak spot. This semester also taught me that Law School can equal death and so can writing for the Centurion. You know… those evil stares people give you when they know you write for right-wing propaganda journals. They just stare at you from their pompous swivel chairs with the letters “Barack Obama” engraved onto their foreheads. Those same letters that have never been removed because these damn hippies in the Cook Campus Center refuse to bathe.

Speaking of which, have you ever walked into the Cook Campus Center only to have a bunch of Ecological Biology majors (whatever the hell that is) slowly twist their aching necks into the light. And they just stare at you, like you’re some new, unwanted blood that just stumbled into the Science Tribe. And as you sit down on one of those couches and take out your history or politics book, you notice that their skin starts to flake and their eyes begin to turn red. How dare you read anything that isn’t Organic Chemistry!? And while you turn the pages in your book, you feel so uncomfortable because now they’re huddled in their packs, encircling your undesired presence, just waiting for you to take one wrong breath and BAM! You realize you’ve been clubbed over the head by some shriveled up Indian kid who hasn’t seen the light of day in 57 hours with an 800-pound Bio-Tech Engineering text book that cost more than his entire family is worth back in India.

Anyways… to the classes I took in my Spring Semester.

[Introduction to International Relations]
Bismarck was a boss. That’s really all I needed to learn from this class besides the fact that the UN is made up of a bunch of over privileged Harvard or Oxford graduates who want to “make a difference in the world” by travelling Africa in UN helmets and pepper spray. Yea, the flower in your hair and pepper spray is going to stop a Russian T-72 tank from trampling your hippie ass. But the Cold War is over and now we have bigger problems on our plate: Terrororistssss and Asians and bears, oh my!

[Culture and Politics]
Ok, where to begin. If I learned ANYTHING from this class, it’s that Jesus probably rode a dinosaur into Jerusalem and that Serbia is the alleged center of the universe. But I beg to differ because that’s clearly Brooklyn and not Serbia because Brooklyn has one thing Serbia does not: Guidos. Culturally speaking, Guidos and piece-of-shit gangster white kids from Bay Ridge are necessary evils in the world to show the sane remnants how lucky they are to have fully developed brains versus their social counterparts. And clearly, culture is always changing because these Guids (not “GuidOs” because I don’t have enough respect to call them by their full derogatory names) will come in different colors like green and magenta twenty years from now after they get skin cancer from all their tanning.

[Law and Politics]
Ok, take my explanation of “American Constitutional Law” and apply it to a class with 450 students because Rutgers wants all students to experience the Stadium Expansion, especially in the classroom.

[American Political Theory]
Americans have nothing better to do than argue over who has the better looking home. Some Americans get jealous while others are apathetic because they have better things to do with their time, like excel in life and not worry about Marxist class struggles. We also studied Victoria Woodhull and the woman’s vote in this class. Hey, want to hear a joke? … women’s rights. LOLOL! ROFL!@#@&*

[Interest Groups]
BEST FOR LAST. When you clinically cannot read or write I really think your teaching privileges should be taken away from you. This class to me is comparable to the Batan Death March. It was a painful, slow exile into nowhere, because at some point in the class, the student inevitably says, “No, [insert professor name here], I do NOT care about your “epic” endeavors into the world brothel known as the White House. No, [insert professor name here], no one cares about Johnson & Johnson because we know we aren’t religiously privileged with lawyerly skills like you. And lastly, [insert professor name here], no, we do not want to hear about how you drank with Congressman so-and-so till four in the morning because that is just creepy.” And come to think of it, if this guy wrote policy in Washington DC, it’s no wonder that this country is so screwed up.

After my dragon breath bequeathed the air, I looked around me and saw everything on fire. The world was in the same chaos as I first found it in. It was then that I realized there are a lot of stupid people in the world and many of them include students, professors (ie: those who cannot realize that there is civilization outside of Washington DC), politicians, ex-girlfriends, or any person who feels that they have the moral authority to take it upon themselves to tell people how to live. I don’t tell people “how” to live; I just exploit their stupidity so hopefully they will take it upon themselves to change their idiotic behavior on their own.

This is the conservative political thought and this is the history I like to study. Why? Because it’s REAL. Yea, it’s ugly, and rash, and evil, and maniacal, and heartless, but I am not your mother. To those of you reading this going, “My God, he’s going to hell,” I’m an atheist so I guess I’m just going into the dirt like the rest of you. And to those of you reading this going, “Haha LOL He’s so funny LOL! I’m totally not like that! LOL!” you are precisely the idiot I am talking about.

Life is nasty, cold, brutish, and short; it’s kind of like a gigantic game of Diplomacy. Between the classes I took this year and the people I met, I’m thoroughly convinced that humanity has gone and is continuing to go down the toilet.

I wonder what Junior year has in store for me. Whatever it is, it better not be hope and change. I had way too much fun making fun of you ingrates all year. Yes, those “I love America and I’m totally ignorant to the rest of the world” people. Yes, those “I gave my girlfriend my testicles and will probably never get them back” people. Yes, those “Who was Bismarck? I never heard of him!” people. It’s because of people like you that I have something to look forward to every day. And that is making fun of you. May God, or Zoroaster, or some other made-up divine spirit help you with your life because I sure as hell cannot.

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