The Joys of Biochemistry Lab

Ok, yet another day of biochem lab behind me (this was written for Tuesday, didn't get around to posting it until today).

First, you need to understand my professor, or at least understand him as well as I do, which is not very well. Somehow, he's managed to take scientist and redneck/cowboy, and combine the two. He is a cowboy-scientist, if that makes any sense what-so-ever. You would think that someone who watches NASCAR, and thinks that George W. Bush is a "pussy liberal" would not be at a university, in possession of a PhD, and teaching undergraduate students how to conduct meaningful scientific research, but he is.

So anyways, today he opens up the class by asking people what they think are pressing issues in the world of current affairs and events. Since a lot of my classmates are socially retarded nerds, they have no idea what on earth is going on outside of the classroom, and just stare at him with a blank look on their face when he starts to call them out one by one, asking them for a pressing world issue. Some of them played cute by saying, "We need to examine the role fear/greed plays in our lives." One student then mentioned the current riots in France. This set my teacher off on a very long sidetrack, wherein he proceeded to bash the French for ~10 minutes during our 1 hour lecture, basically saying that he hopes the Arabs kill all the French. So I had to sit there and endure this professor really trashing the French, and it was clear that his hatred for them runs deep. My guess is hatred for the French is within the genetic code of rednecks, but that has yet to be mapped out. Anyway, rednecks and riots in France are a seperate issue altogether which I could (and probably will) spend a lot of time addressing, just not right now.

Basically, lab is like this; read the protocol the night before and write it up, then come into class, and then realize that the protocol doesn't make any sense and it's mostly wrong. So then ask the TA's what to do, and the TAs then ask the professor what to do, who will then launch into a 5 minute lecture on why you should pay more attention during lecture, nevermind the fact that the TAs were confused too.

So my main complaint with this class is that we can't choose our lab partners. Because if I did, I'd be with my friends, and we'd be leaving class like 1 hour early every day because we work incredibly efficiently together, with me worrying about all the theory and barking out orders, and my friend carrying out my orders incredibly quickly and accurately. Instead, I work with an overbearing super-nerd, who thinks she knows everything, but really sucks at everything. Because she "knows" everything, my input is ignored by her, and she listens to no one other than herself and her other nerdy friends. I've just decided to get out of her way, and let her just screw over our results horrendously, because in the end, results don't matter; just comprehension. This basically means that lab is social time for me, and I can run around and just talk with everyone while she does all the work. This is actually quite amusing because I never do anything but run around and talk with my friends, and the professor (who's actually a really nice guy whenever he's not talking about France/politics) and the TAs, and yet, I have the highest grade in the class. Go figure.

So what was the point of all this? Nothing really. I mean, I'm not even as angry as I normally am, and this entry really is not interesting at all. And I don't know why. It's probably because I'm tired.

The Texas Chainsaw Sucktacular

Okay, so way back when on Halloween I saw, for the first time ever, the original 1974 Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I saw it because everyone always says it's the greatest horror movie ever, you'll wet yourself with glee, you'll never be able to sleep well again, etc. etc. I now want to punch those people in the groin.

Let's start off with the premise of the movie; a bunch of kids (2 females, and 3 males, one of which is confined to a wheel-chair and just makes incredibly annoying noises throughout the entire film) go into the Middle of Nowhere, Texas, to ensure that their grandparents' graves have not been desecrated by grave robbers/vandals (because calling the operator of the cemetary was far too complicated). On the way there, they sit around and talk about random crap. Then, they see this guy, a hitchhiker who is clearly a bastion of sanity with only the best of intentions for those he interacts with. Proving their intellectual prowess, they decide to just pick that weirdo up, with very little objections from the inhabitants of the van. Whether or not they were on crack remains unclear. First, the hitchhiker sits around and has a long discussion with wheel-chair boy about how head-cheese is made, and wheel-chair boy is loving every minute of it (while everyone else is thoroughly grossed out), and then wheel-chair boy discusses how he was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to see his grandpa kill cows with a nailgun when he was younger. The hitchhiker then argues with wheel-chair boy that smashing cows over the head with a hammer was far superior to the automated method, and then starts playing with a knife, and cuts deeply into his own hand, and then eventually cuts wheel-chair boy. The hitchhiker gets kicked out of the van, and decides to rub his blood all over the van while they are speeding off.

At one point, they stop off at a nearby gas station to fill up the tank, but the gas station claims it's out of gas and is waiting for another shipment. At this point the group decides it wants to find a place to go swim, so they all run off to search... seperately. Remember, this is the '70s before cell-phones, so even if one of them did find what they were looking for, how would they contact the others? Telepathy? Who knows. One of the geniuses of this bunch spots a house and believes he hears a generator, so he moronically assumes that the owner(s) have gas for sale. Because whenever I hear a generator, I think gas for sale. So, this genius goes to the house, and decides to enter it for reasons that still remain unclear to me (I suppose since the front door wasn't locked, he assumed it meant he should come in?), and explore the house. At the end of the hall is a room painted red with animal skulls of various kinds, and he walks down the hall into that area. Sure enough, a big fat angry guy wearing a mask of human flesh appears, and smacks him in the head with a sledge hammer. Our genius goes down like a ton of bricks and starts quivering like he's having the world's worst seizure or something. 1 Down, 4 to go.

One of the girls, Victim #2, enters the house, spots the maniac, runs, gets captured, and gets intimately familiar with a meathook. The apron wearing maniac proceeds to rev up a chainsaw and do what appeared to be an interpretive dance of sorts with it in front of the girl. This scene just really served only to confuse me. The other guy, Victim #3, is offed by a hammer to the head. I will add that there is no attempt to make any of the deaths give you a "jump" scare or anything like that. They just get set up, and happen.

It's now nighttime, and annoying wheel-chair boy and the final girl are running around in the woods, aware of the danger they are in. All is going fine, when, *gasp* Leatherface shows up with a chainsaw! How you can sneak up on people when you're a big, clumsy, angry redneck weilding a chainsaw, possibly the noisiest weapon possible, is beyond me, but he pulls it off. In what is probably the best scene of the movie, he shoves the saw into wheelchair boy, multiple times, and finally shuts him up. There is no blood whatsoever when this happens, and it is clear that the saw is actually nowhere near him, but you can suspend disbelief I suppose. I think they really missed out on a golden opportunity to have the girl shove the guy into Leatherface. It would have made me laugh if she had purposefully used him as a decoy, but alas, that was not the case. What follows is a long chase, completely devoid of tension, I may add, through the woods, where Leatherface takes his time to cut down any braches that may be in his way. How he expects to catch up to a girl running approximately 3x as fast as he is, while taking breaks to trim the foliage, I don't know. But he does. Again, suspend disbelief, people. Ultimately, she is captured by the gas-station guy. Yes, we have a conspiracy on our hands. Call the FBI. Or better yet, any of the millions of people in Texas with really big guns, itchy trigger fingers, and fragile egos.

What follows is the girl getting introduced to the cannibalistic family. She spends the rest of the film (what seems like 30-45 minutes) just screaming and freaking out. It must have sucked to be that actress. She somehow escapes, and runs outside (after jumping out of a window for like the third time), and is chased by the hitchhiker from the beginning, and Leatherface. She is rescued by a semi-truck, which chunkifies the hitchhiker, earning him both a Darwin award and a closed-casket funeral. Leatherface comes and tries to saw his way into the truck. What does the truckdriver do? Drive off? Call for help? No, he grabs a large wrench, and jumps out of the truck. He then throws the wrench into Leatherface's face, causing him to fall over and slice himself with his chainsaw. At this point, our heroine jumps onto the bed of a truck rolling by and is effectively rescued.

Leatherface, realizing he has been defeated, does a dance with his chainsaw, presumably demonstrating how all cannibalistic mass-murderers with a fetish for gas-operated power tools vent their frustration.

What was wrong with this movie? Just about everything. Perhaps it was the fact that everyone and every review I ever saw for this movie hyped it up to no end, but it was just terrible. I seriously wonder if these people actually saw the film, or just decided to copy someone else's review. I am also particularly angry with this film because I watched it on Halloween , a holiday whose awesomeness is rivalled only by Christmas (primarily due to Halloween's propensity to cause cute and otherwise shy and introverted girls to dress up like complete sluts), and it effectively brought down the awesomeness of my Halloween by quite a few notches. Bastards.

First Entry Ever

This is my first entry ever into my blog. In the weeks, months, and possibly years to come, you will all get to hear my opinions on just about everything that occurs in my life. I will also mention various stories if I feel they are amusing enough for the world to enjoy, and just about anything else that is thrown my way.

As the name implies, this blog will primarily contain various rants from me. All of them will be done in a sarcastic and comedic manner; it is not my style to just be overbearing and spew vitriole all over the place; if you want to read something like that, watch Fox News with the closed captioning on.

That said, I don't have too much to talk about today, so I'll just like this introductory entry stand as is.