Lever 2000: Don't call it soap!

Funny thing happened at the store yesterday.

I was starting to run low on soap so I went to get some more. I am a bar-to-body kind of guy so I grabbed a double pack of Lever 2000, since it was the only one on the shelf at my University super market that didn't double as tooth paste/shampoo/orderless wildlife food. As I was leaving I looked down at the packaging and realized that no where on the box did it say that it was soap.

No where.

In fact, on the back it says that it is a better moisturizer than soap, implying that it isn't soap at all! Now, people told me that it should be obvious from the shelf of other soaps that it is soap, but I still find it ridiculous that the packaging doesn't say what is inside it. Even Kleenex says "Facial Tissue" on the box, despite the fact everyone uses the brand as the name for the product.

I had to go to the website and even then they are reluctant to admit that they are selling soap. They call their product a deodorant bar soap.

To me, though, at the end of the day: soap is soap, no matter what euphemism you use.

Student Government: as interesting as CSPAN

So one of my house mates is the student body president and had been nagging me to show up to one of the open student union meetings that happen every Sunday night. Since it sounded as interesting as watching paint dry I always said no, but last night I broke down and went.

And boy was it boring. Nuances in the wording of statements to be sent to the administration, amendments to by-laws, committee reports, BLAH! God, I really wanted to leave half way in because I was afraid I would fall asleep!

There were a few positive things I learned through the 2 hour bore. The first is the professionalism that everyone had with the task at hand. The topics they were discussing were important, but them talking about adding a few "where as"'s here and an "at the discretion of" there was boring, but they all really seemed to know what they were talking about. And they were very passionate about it all.

They really were trying to do what was best for the student body and that really impressed me. They were dealing with topics like starting a University bike rental system and dealing with a possible open container policy (we currently have none, thank god!). Not only were they dealing with these issues they way the students would want them to be dealt with, they were dealing with it in a way the administration would respect and listen to.

Granted CSPAN and watching paint dry are just as exhilarating as the meeting I went to, but I really have a new found respect for the people who I've been electing over the past 4 years to represent my interests to the administration.

So what's wrong with...

wearing shorts over plaid pajama bottoms?

This morning I roll out of bed to play some Forza Motorsport 3 (racing game/simulator for the Xbox 360...super sweet game) when my house mate comes down and asks if I want to accompany him to watch the rugby game that my other house mate was playing in. Now, having literally rolled out of bed, I was still in my pajamas (pajama pants and a large t-shirt, the standard pajama affair) and I was not about to make my house mate wait while I showered and got dressed, so I threw a pair of shorts on over my bottoms and a flannel shirt over my tee and went out.

And boy the looks I got!

You'd think people had never seen shorts over pajama bottoms before! Well, needless to say I made a fashion statement and that statement was: yep, I just rolled out of bed and don't care about what I look like, nice to meet you, I'm sure you've seen weirder.

I mean, I don't see anything wrong with it. The pocket capacity of cargo shorts with the light warmth of pajama bottoms. Clearly I am on the cutting edge of this fashion trend.

I was losing @ COD: MW2 so i decided to blog

So I saw this movie a while back: The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer, staring Carry Grant (love Carry Grant) and a very teenage Shirley Temple. It's about how this teenage girl falls in love with this artist and comedy ensues. The one thing I had never understood was what exactly a "bobby soxer" was exactly. And this week the term came up again in Reefer Madness and I thought it was time to look it up!

Wikipedia says the term was coined to denote over-zealous, impressionable, adolescent-teenage girls. It came from the bobby socks that they wore during school and especially school dances. Since the gym floors were (and still are) easily scuffed by shoes, dances were usually held in your socks (thus a "sock hop").

Pretty interesting, huh? I wonder if an equivalent term exists today? Jail-bait?

Anyway, bobby-soxer got me thinking about another term I had always used and never know the background of: lollygagger. It is a slang term that means a lazy person or someone who fools around. I'd always heard it in the context of "Quit lollygagging and get going!" Apparently, according to the ever credible Urban Dictionary, the term comes from kids eating lolly pops (the lolly part) and never taking them out of their mouths while they were eating them they'd just sit with them in their mouths (the gagging part) and not do anything productive.

So there! Interesting huh?

Test on the morrow!

Well, I say "test", but what I really mean is FINAL!!!

Yep, barely have had a week of breathing room since handing in my thesis and already have to ramp up and take a test. Luckily it is in a class I'm doing ok in (for the time being) and I (think I) have a good grasp on the information being cover.

You see that is the advantage to having a final exam before the actual end of a semester: there isn't an entire semester worth of work to cover and you don't have a final during finals week, which I think is the best part. Don't you?

It however means I have to lay off the bs-ing and actually do some productive studying this evening...as opposed to just calling my day over around 10:30 or 11 and going to bed. I'll be like an actual student again...weird.

Well, seeing as it's almost 8 and I haven't actually finished going over the study guide (yeah, I'm working on it) I should get back to work.

Movie review and some fun definitions tomorrow!

Movie Review: Reefer Madness: Movie Musical

The appropriate 420 celebratory film!

Reefer Madness centers on a high school couple from the 1930's and their fall into madness due to the horrors of...reefer. That was the original exploitation film from the 1930's that this film makes fun of at every available opportunity. From memorable numbers like "Listen to Jesus Jimmy" the film shows how hysteria can be manipulated to serve a purpose, in this case the demonizing of marijuana.

Kristen bell is hilarious and adorable in one of her first big roles before Forgetting Sarah Marshal. The rest of the cast is a mix of the original Broadway cast and character actors. Being a Showtime funded movie, it came out really well, with the use of sets and not trying too hard to turn a stage musical into a multidimensional movie.

Definitely a great movie to watch...inebriated, but also very funny to watch if you want just a light fluffy musical comedy. The songs and themes are so over the top and ridiculous that it is hard to not laugh through the whole film.

One of my favorite lines is when the two love interests are talking about Romeo and Juliet, having not read it, and referring to it with a pause after Romeo. Such that it sounds like: Romeo...AND Juliet. Clearly you have to see it to understand.

8/10

Back in the saddle-wagon-thing

Things I missed while writing my Senior thesis:

1) Webcomics.

2) Getting hilariously drunk(...but not the consequences).

3) Xbox

4) Leaving class work in class.

5) Being able to enjoy taking only one class

6) Formula One (just downloaded this weekend's Chinese GP, but know the winner anyway, darn sites and their spoilers!!!)

7) Reading blogs (just found a new one to follow today!)

8) Watching movies at night instead of...well, instead of NOT watching movies at night

9) Spending time helping people do interesting things

10) Working on my master's thesis...fuck