Just Sayin'

The other day I was walking outside at night and I noticed a really bright star and I thought, "huh, maybe that's a planet...maybe that's Venus...or Pluto." Now, I know you can't really see Pluto in the night sky, but, as far as I'm concerned, Pluto is still a planet. I listen to scientists about most things, like global warming and zika virus, but I'm choosing to ignore science here. Pluto is a planet and that's final. It's like, if I see a long necked dinosaur in a museum, I'm going to call in a Brontosaurus. People will be like, "oh no, it's a scientific name-latin-thingymajig," and I'll be like "yeah, yeah, it looks like a Brontosaurus to me." That's how I feel about Pluto. Like, if we had to get rid of a planet, why did it have to be Pluto? It should have been Uranus. Uranus is a joke anyway. Pluto was a good planet. A serious planet. I feel that making it into a dwarf planet wasn't fair to Pluto. ...

So, I'm currently taking a class on African Art History and one of the assessments in the class is a quiz on the geography of Africa. Now, I like this class a lot and find it really interesting, but, when I first heard about the quiz, I was a little annoyed. I was like "really? is  this middle school or something? do I really have to do this?" It seemed kind of silly to me because the last time I had to take a geography quiz was 7th grade. It turns out the quiz was necessary. I am profoundly bad at geography. When my professor was explaining the quiz, he said something to the effect of "I find that this quiz is necessary because American students tend to be bad at geography." Now, the idea that Americans are bad at geography a fairly common stereotype that people, particularly Europeans, have about Americans. I've always thought it was a little unfair, but it turns out that it's totally true. I looked at a blank map of Africa to study for the quiz an...

So, yesterday was Groundhog's Day, which, here in Pennsylvania, is a pretty big deal. Now, I like Groundhog's Day -- mostly because it's the one day a year you can get accurate weather reporting. Weather people lie to you ALL THE TIME. Like, sometimes they'll tell you there's going to be snow and it ends up being sunny. Sometimes they tell you it will rain and there's sleet. If a groundhog tells  you there will be six more weeks of winter, you can bet your bottom dollar that there will be six more weeks of winter (partly because it's Pennsylvania and winter lasts basically until June). Nonetheless, groundhogs are pretty accurate when asked about the weather. Like, if I had a choice, I would have a groundhog tell me the weather every day. This is because I trust groundhogs (or, as I call them, woodchucks -- which I know is sacrilege in Pennsylvania). They're trustworthy animals. I mean, think about it. Groundhogs are fat little ground squirrels with...

I don't like February. No, it's not because of the cold. No, it's not because of the snow. No, it's not because of Valentine's Day -- although, come to think of it, I don't like any of those things either. No, it's because of the nonsensical spelling of the name of the month. I have a longstanding and well documented opposition  to the illogical rules of the English language, however, February is a particularly egregious example. F-E-B-R-U-A-R-Y What? Why is it spelled that way? Who came up with that?? I'm not exactly sure who standardized spelling in the English language, but that person was clearly unaware that 99.9% of all English speakers pronounce February FEB-U-AIR-E not FEB-RUE-AIR-E. Maybe I just come from a part of the country where people pronounce things incorrectly, but pronouncing the first R just sounds super weird to me. Apparently there's some debate about the pronunciation, but I've never met someone who pronounced the ...