The Monkey King's Used Primate Emporium and Book Reviews

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We interrupt these reviews for a loooooong rant

. Posted 24 May 2002

Let me tell a little story about the last week and a half. (Though it might not be so little... we�ll see. You might want to grab a cup of coffee. Or three.)

On the evening of Monday, May 13, I worked on my Screenplay for my class. I gotta admit, I was feeling pretty smarmy since I figured I had only 10 pages left to go after I did the reformatting, and that left a full week and a half to concentrate on the rest of my classes in the time remaining before finals. The only problem was I got less sleep than I would have liked, somewhere in the realm of five hours. Still, I felt pretty confident that I could finish with no problems.

May 14 � I went to my first class: Screenwriting, taught by a professor who hates every movie I like and vise-versa. I started to feel kind of ill, but put it down to a lack of sleep and a general annoyance to the class. Two hours and 45 minutes later, I went to the final class for Media Theory. This was a simple review session before the final, and not one I really needed to go to. But, I�m friends with the instructor, and she�s one of those great but rare professors, being that she�s both interesting and engaging. Besides, she is one sexy lady. (And being how she occasionally reads these reviews, I may be in serious trouble pretty soon. Or perhaps I�ll have a date!)

During the class, however, I started to feel worse. My voice sounded like a frog that had two pounds of gravel poured down its throat. My head was killing me. I felt feverish. Short story, I decided to go home after her class ended. My intention was to sleep for a couple of hours and then go to my Audio-Visual class in the evening, but instead I got sicker and sicker, and finally gave up hope of even getting up.

May 15 � I forced myself up to go to my Fitness/Nutrition class, because I knew that was going to be the hardest one to pass when finals came along. When the class ended I rode my bike to work. I sounded worse, and after scaring two or three customers with a voice that sounded like Regan from The Exorcist during the incredibly brutal scenes, my boss sent me home.

May 15 through 17 � Lay in bed, ready to die. Hoping, even. I drank nine gallons worth of juice during this period. On Friday I felt marginally better and decided I should at least reformat the screenplay so I would know how much I had left to finish. It turned out that formatting it properly made it shorter, not longer as I had figured. I started to write a few pages, and hit a hot streak.

Maybe it was the hallucinatory effects of being sick and loaded up on NyQuil, but the storyline came pouring out of me. I finished with a scene and noticed that I was now at the required number of pages. I also noticed that it was now 5:30 in the morning. I had been typing for seven hours straight. I should also mention that after not smoking at all for four days straight, I finished off two-thirds of a pack during that time.

May 18 � And of course, this meant that I had a relapse, suddenly sick again. Unfortunately, I had also agreed to meet with my mom and sister for a belated Mother�s Day thing. This meant staying upright for eight hours, eating bad Chinese food at some place that had just opened off of Monterey Road on the South Side, and going to see Ice Age. This of course, was the opening weekend for Star Wars, meant we had to brave the juggernaut for both that film and Spider-man. It was like a geek version of �The Outsiders.� I thought they were gonna rumble.

Finally got back home and remained as immobile as possible for as long as possible. It only occurred to me later that I watched 6 films in a 24-hour period.

May 19 and 20 � Still sick, but made it to work. Didn�t do much else, but I did copyedit the screenplay.

May 21 � Turned screenplay in and began studying for Nutrition/Fitness final. Worked on it half-heartedly, taking numerous breaks and still feeling generally ill. Finally start to work much harder at studying somewhere around eight in the evening. When I couldn�t find a satisfactory answer I start rummaging through some older notes...and happened to come across the syllabi for my Audio-Visual class.

Which says at the bottom: �FINAL EXAM: TUESDAY, MAY 21 - 5:15 p.m.�

Holy fuck.

Okay, so I�m an idiot, but I�m not shouldering all of the blame. This was a class that I had to beg my way into five weeks after the semester had begun in order to be able to graduate next semester. Since the class was so far along he didn�t have a green sheet handy, and a week later had had me follow him to the office where he quickly xeroxed a copy for me, which I shoved into my bag. A graduate assistant who was pretty fucking scatterbrained taught this class (though he was a good teacher). I checked my notes over the last three weeks, and each week starts with something that went like this, �Final Exam � Thursday at 5:15 (he thinks) � He�ll get back to us on the date. Blah blah blah blah blah.� (These are my notes for two weeks ago reprinted verbatim.)

So anyway, I freaked the fuck out. I called the number on the green sheet, but being a G.A., I got a message that listed 30 names, none of which were his. I left a message anyway. I e-mailed him, even though I had tried that before, and had received no response. I tried to study and pretty much failed. I should mention that the chapter I was studying was concentrating on stress.

May 22 � I got up early, wrote a quick explanation of what happened, and said I lived five minutes from campus. I also insisted that I could take his final in 15 minutes and get an A, so for god�s sake, let me do it. I dropped the note off in his box at the division office, went to work only to beg to go home in case he called, and again tried to study for the Fitness/Nutrition class. And okay, you want a book review? Here�s one for ya.

Thomas Fahey, et al. �Fit & Well � 4th Edition�

What an absolute piece of shit. I think the reason the General Education requirements force students to take these stupid Life Science courses is because the administration hired all these instructors, only to find that nobody wanted to take the courses offered. So now they�re forcing us. By �fitness,� they don�t mean we go out and use the nautilus machines but rather we look into the psychology of fitness, or as they prefer to call it, �Wellness.�

So what does it take to be an expert on �wellness�? Not much apparently. Out of the three authors, none have a Ph.D. They are all professors though, two from Stanford and one from Chico, which isn�t exactly known for it�s high fitness programs.

And what is �wellness�? Apparently it involves being a fucking hippy. No really. This book has maybe five pages for each chapter about a specific area of fitness, and then it goes into this hippy guru try to be happy kind of nonsense. I�m serious. This book says �Don�t smoke� more than Yul Brenner.

It also talks about the benefits of a positive attitude, yoga, meditation and self-hypnosis. Having health problems? All you need is the power of laughter and a healthy lifestyle that involves complete abstinence of smoking and alcohol. Here�s an actual quote:

�Laugh. Seek out therapeutic humor (not dark or offensive humor, which is an unconscious way of dealing with fears).� Oh yeah? Says who, hippy? You wanna know what makes me laugh? That fucking jogging guru who died before he hit 40 of a heart attack WHILE HE WAS FUCKING JOGGING! Now that�s fucking funny!

Rating: Worth setting on fire and dancing around it like wild injuns.

Anyway, He finally e-mailed me back at 10:30 last night, basically calling me a loser. No, not basically � he did call me a loser. Literally. He also said I couldn�t take the final, but with my previous high grades, I�d end up with a B. At worst, a low B. I went to bed.

Jesus, this is ending up to be a really long rant. Almost done.

Took my two finals the next morning. I nailed the one in media, We�ll see how I did in Nutrition. But then I was done, and as the stupid hippy book suggests, you should set up a goal and reward system. Time for the reward, because I succeeded in my goal of not shooting myself. Off to Streetlight Records.

And whilst there I found a live album by The Gits that I had never heard of. This is obviously a bootleg: they don't even list the name of the people in the band. But I had to have it. I went home, loaded full of new albums and a backpack full of steaks, lit the barbecue, grabbed a beer and opened the record.

I thought twice about playing it. After all, Mia Zapata was a friend of mine, and she was murdered in an alleyway. After having this incredible weight lifted off of me from finishing all my school shit, this might actually make me sad. But I decided to play it anyway.

It�s a great recording of a great band that featured a great person. I smelled the steaks cooking as I sipped my beer and listened. And suddenly, after all the shit that happened over the last week, none of it mattered anymore.

And now I have two and a half months of horrible, horrible freedom. I might as well set some new goals:

But first, I�m gonna go get drunk! Whoo!


Rating:

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