What's your major?

Contemporary wisdom: If you don't pay for the munchies before you try to pay for the weed, your idea is only half-baked.

Again, struggling with my major, although I'm still very glad to be the fuck out of the business school. I don't really want to be involved with that world, the cutthroat world of business. It's not that I'm afraid to be self-absorbed or manipulative or any of those great adjectives often associated with the field; it's that I see money as a means and not an end.

One of the things that bothered me when I was in the Smeal College of Business was that I was a business major. As in, "What are you studying?" "Business." See, the thing is that when people ask you what you're studying, they're really asking you "What do you want to be when you grow up?" To answer that with "a businessman!" sounds really silly to me. A business major, studying in the field of business, to become a businessman. Someone who's really fucking busy. Somehow that doesn't sit right with me.

To be a business major is to see money as an ends and not as a means. I'm not trying to say that I'm "above" being a business major, but it really seems like all of the majors within the business school are simply a combination of things from other disciplines, just with more of a focus on money.

For example, the bullshit reason that I used to give people for being a Business Administration major was that I liked to lead. I like to bring people together, to be the one to break the ice, whatever. This is tied to my interest in the way that groups work, and the way that people behave around one another. Well, can't you file that under sociology or social psychology? It becomes business administration when you're leading people who are making you money and throw in a few accounting classes.

Business just seems like a really vague term to me. It kind of implies that you'll work for any company, and that your heart isn't in the work, but in the paycheck. How could your heart be in the work? If you really wanted to be a manager at General Electric, why did you study finance instead of electrical engineering?

I'm not rejecting money. I'm all about it. I mean, they just came out with the 160 GB iPod Classic and I could fucking use one. My 60 gig iPod Video hit capacity the other day. So yeah, I have a pretty realistic idea of how expensive my tastes are. I use money to fund this. I'd like an iPod with a lot of space; I'd like a car with a nice soundsystem to listen to the iPod in; I'd like a spacious house with a garage in which to park the car; I'd like a ridiculously nice computer to watch porn on. Money is the means to these ends.

Above all, really, I'd like to enjoy my life, and I think that the job I spend more than half of my waking hours dealing with is going to play a bigger part in that than the stupid fucking iPod I carry around so that I can have a bunch of music I don't listen to. Therefore, I am not at college so I can get my degree and start at $60,000 out of school. I am at college so that I can learn about something that interests me and then make a living from it.

I use the word "seems" a lot here because I'm not sure. I could be wrong. But this is the reason that I left the business school. I'm more concerned with learning something cool and applying it than I am with making someone (and myself) money. It just sounds to me that to study business is to admit, "I don't care what field I end up working in." To admit, "I'm only in it for the money." Am I wrong?

To read: "The Big Con," Jonathan Chait (excerpt)

add update

We found some weird hallways and maintenance areas under Findlay. Pictures up in the add.

i love big brother

(for anyone that wants it, the current iteration of my home page is here.)

What the fuck happened to Britney? Last year she went insane. Her big comeback was supposed to be the VMAs, but that was a fucking flop. Apparently everyone thought she looked fat. To be honest, I think she looked pretty decent. Maybe people are right - the outfit she was wearing might have been a little too much. She still looked alright, though. What bothers me about the big "Britney VMA" buzz is that some 13-year-old girl (sweet, sweeeeet 13-year-old girl) is going to see people on TV calling Britney a whale and go "HOLY FUCK" and turn bulimic. Like, Jesus Christ, CNN. Is this superficial bullshit seriously what passes for news these days?

I feel bad for Britney, I really do. She went from being that sweet, innocent girl that everyone beat off to when they saw the Baby One More Time video back in middle school. Now she's insane white trash. I'm not going to defend her to any absurd extent, but it's seriously time to start taking bets on when she's going to show up in legit, professionally produced internet porn.

The big buzz right now is the UF student that got tasered. I have conflicting feelings about this. A little bit of that cognitive dissonance. On one hand, while I watched the video, I got fucking pissed. Yes, the force used was fuckingly excessive. On the other hand, I'm also compelled to agree with (fucking goddamnit) FOX News on this one, to an extent.

First and foremost, the kid was clearly being a drama queen about it. Like, if I met him, I'd probably think he was an asshole, but I probably wouldn't mace him or anything over it. The purpose of the forum was for people to ask questions - it looked more to me like he was trying to make a statement, trying to use the event as a means through which he could give his own personal little speech (which he has the right to - but I still think he was being obnoxious in this context). From a legal standpoint, he was quite obviously resisting arrest, and although he says that he will get up and walk away if they let go of him, it's obvious by that point that he's not going to be cooperative. From the point of view of the police, there's this militant college student in the same room as John Kerry who's ranting and raving and not cooperating with authority. If I was those cops, I'd probably be confused as fuck and just try to get him the fuck out of the room as soon as possible.

On the other hand, most of you already know that I have a fucking problem with authority. I have a fucking problem with people telling me my business, telling me what the fuck to do. No laws but the laws of nature and all that. If you have, what, four cops on top of you, you're not going anywhere. Why the fuck didn't they just handcuff him and haul him the fuck off? Why did they cut him off while he was talking, cut his fucking mic, fucking censor him? I mean, fuck, he's already caused the disruption, why wouldn't you just let him talk? Why the fuck is John Kerry sitting there with his thumb up his ass while this is going on?

Like I said, in this case, I'm probably going to have to concede that although I don't necessarily agree with the reasons he had to be hauled off, I can sympathize with the cops who were just trying to get him out of there. But a fucking taser? That's goddamned excessive force, no ifs/ands/buts about it. The guy in that FOX article I linked earlier, the one who said the police should be commended for their actions, can go fuck himself. You don't taser a kid for being obnoxious. It's fucking frightening. It makes me think of Nineteen-Eighty-Fucking-Four. It fucking freaks me out that you can get tasered and hauled off for trying to say something.

No, the incident wasn't exactly the "attack on free speech" that it's been hailed as, but it certainly demonstrates the possibility of one. I hope I never get fucking tasered for asking a Goddamned question. Fuck that shit so much.

Those cops probably get so much shit about it from their friends. Like, they can never call seatcheck again. "Dude, I called fives on that shit!" "Oh, well, why don't you taser me for it?" At which point the officer would frown awkwardly and sit on the floor. Where he belongs.

Additional reading: A little more piggies-with-stunguns fun. http://news.yahoo.com/s/wkmg/20070919/lo_wkmg/14147512
ps. 7/31 wasn't about a girl if you were wondering

housing and food services

Ah, fall. The time of year when a young coed's fancy turns to drinking.

Last night I went to my one frat party of the year and it confirmed what I figured out last year, which is that frat parties are fucking lame. And even though the thrilling horse-piss keg-o-rama at frat parties doesn't appeal to me, I can still host Bourbon Night and then walk around town like a drunken ghost. Either way, it's alcohol all the way for me now.

Let me explain. Marijuana isn't a gateway drug. I figured out this summer, however, that doing too many fucking drugs (bud in particular) cultivates a personality that I don't like. It's not "let's go out and do something crazy, perhaps while all fucked up!" anymore. It's now "let's get all fucked up, and perhaps do something crazy afterwards!"

I suppose I could get rid of substance abuse altogether, but fuck, where's the fun in that?

Either way, I'm glad to be back at school now, far the fuck away from my hometown. Yes, I love Erie to death. Yes, we had some good times there, and no, it is not fucking boring like everyone seems to think it is. Only boring people (ie potheads that do nothing but watch cartoons and go on burnrides) get bored. Thing is though, Erie can only hold me back. One of the big reasons that I didn't go to Behrend - and believe me, I wanted to - is that I knew I'd be stuck in my hometown, on a campus where everything is named after Erie history, and surrounded by the same people and the same habits. College should be a time of change.

Last year, I had some trouble orienting myself. I got myself into a couple of messes that held me back. This year, though, I know what the fuck I'm doing. I'm definitely smarter now than I was last year, and it's time to grow the fuck up. I want to kick my bad habits; I want to recognize parts of my personality that hold me back, I want to recognize parts of my personality that push me forward; I want to know who I am instead of where I fit in; I want to make this town my bitch. Erie's played out.

I hope that you do the same.