Tubasaluki: Quoting music since 2003

Alright, so week one is in the books…and what an exciting week it was. Lets look at the highlights.

~My media ethics professor doesn’t show up on Monday. He shows up Wednesday to tell us about his mistake and that he had actually taught this class for 20 some years, and it had always been a Tuesday/Thursday class, but while he was gone on sabbatical for a year and they changed it on him. He also said that the sabbatical made him really think about retirement and that he, “might be concentrating on your work, or I might be concentrating on my work.” Hey, thanks! Its great to know a class that stands between graduating and me is being led by an apathetic professor!

He also said he had been in Minneapolis spending time with his daughter and wouldn’t have made it back to Carbondale on Monday anyway. Which is funny considering that he was in the journalism office at 11:30 when I picked up my graduation application. So…did my media ethics professor just lie?

~Speaking of this guy, his rule on eating and drinking in class is the kindergarten rule: bring enough for everybody. One of my friends and I have decided that we’re totally going to do this one day just to see his reaction. We’re both graduating in December, he made it seem like me might just retire tomorrow. Apathy, meet apathy. May the least caring soul win.

~Learned about net neutrality in Laws and Policies. Basically, the lovely people at Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon want to make a tiered Internet that allows them to go really fast, and make people not willing to pay so much go really slow. Think cable TV, but on the Internet: you pay for what you get. This is wrong on so many levels. The Internet is the last true democracy out there (might not apply in China) and this would go a long way in bringing regulation and censorship to the Internet. Right now, to use Ted Stevens’ example, the telecoms own the “series of tubes” but don’t do anything to the things inside the “tubes”. This tiered system would allow them to control what’s going on in the Internet’s plumbing. It’s quite disheartening that those who are in positions to defend freedoms of speech and expression are often the ones most likely to limit it.

~The phrase “This is straight out of the book” can be translated to “There is no reason for anybody to pay attention today!” Seriously, I can read the book. Teach me something in class. Supplement the readings! Its ok! There are times I believe the goal of higher education is to help students achieve apathy. SIU, ranked twelfth in football, ranks first in achieving apathy. I want to care, I really do. But they make it so hard!

~One week back = 22 hour workweek. Alan’s back! This included the six hours on Friday night waiting for the Rams to lose so I could include that score in the sat cast. I was in the basement of the comm building instead of going to a band party and chatting up the numerous cute girls there. I still love me job somehow.

And that’s about it. Week one’s been a blur, but a relatively good one. I asked a girl out, and she got dehydrated that day…so that part sucked. Sometimes I think that something or someone, somewhere, just wants me to keep having these things happen to me so that I can spin them into entertaining stories.

All in all though, a good week. Cougar game next weekend. GO COUGS!

I could have done so many things baby, if I could only stop my mind,

Alan