Okay!

Here's a sentence from the lecture text of the most recent lesson in an art class I'm taking right now (the preceding is a complex prepositional phrase). The professor writes the lectures herself:

In a sense the Modernist artist sees them self as a shaman, an individual with special powers and vision.

Okay! So the moral here is that most things aren't nearly as difficult as you'd think, including being a college art professor. You can do it! If she can, you can, too! Shoot for the stars!

Cheerleading is the worst.

Well, maybe cheerleading's not the worst, but it's certainly not the best. I think it could be argued that dedicated mothers are the best, or an act of kindness done for a stranger in need. But not cheerleading. It's not great.

Protege.

What ever happened to calling someone a "protege"? That word seems to have been acceptably replaced with "mentee", which is a word that not only sounds silly, but is not even recognized as a word by the spell-checking software built into this blogging site! So if that's not the measure of perfection, I don't know what is. My main point here is that "mentee" is a ridiculous word. If you are mentoring someone, that person is your protege. Not your mentee. "Mentee" is just not a good word.

 

See? It's terribly confusing.

Attention:

Don't try to yawn and drink water at the same time. I almost drowned myself just now.

The prostate.

The prostate. Mysterious, elusive and, frankly, terrifying. From what I can gather, the prostate is closely associated with cancer and similarly difficult issues. The warnings surrounding maintenance of a healthy prostate abound. It just seems like a lot of trouble. So the big question I have about the prostate is: how do I avoid getting one?

Most of the prostate-related billboards I see depict handsome, fit men in their sixties jogging near mountains or trees. So if these are the guys with problematic prostates, I guess I should stop exercising while I'm still young. Sure, it would be nice to be active in my later years, but how high a price am I willing to pay? No thanks. You can have your prostates and your jogging, older guys. Have fun lugging that ticking time bomb around.

Poor sucker's sitting on a volcano and

he doesn't even know it. Just jogging

and grinning like an idiot, while the

pressure builds and builds...

Romantically linked.

I just read a blog post by a writer for NBA.com which focused on basketball players whose anomalous career statistics have earned them ignominy among, well, mostly just writers for NBA.com. The article concludes by noting that one player who committed five personal fouls in just under three minutes of game play does have some redeeming events in his life to fall back on. Career highlights are listed, including winning a league championship. But the final item on the list of positives working in this player's favor is this:

He’s been romantically linked to the 2006 Miss Universe, Zuleyka Rivera, for cryin’ out loud.

In following the web link the writer provides, readers are transferred to this image:

A beautiful lady, no? Well, since the main point of beauty pageants is physical objectification (I know that there are talent competitions, and probing questions about world hunger, but let's all be adults about this), I've decided to go one step further and help you focus on Miss Universe 2006's face:

So okay. Now here's my suggested rewrite of that last sentence of the NBA.com blog post:

He’s been romantically linked to the 2006 Miss Universe, Zuleyka Rivera, for cryin’ out loud, shown here looking like a drunk monster.

Dolphins.

Unmatched.

He was purpose-driven. Some say he was a man unique to his generation, unmatched for centuries. All agree that his was a life destined to be extraordinary...for he transcended time and space to wipe a booger under his parents' couch.

Nerve damage.

In a recent Yahoo! Answers query, a user posted concerns that a cold had advanced to the stage of ear infection, a concern that was exacerbated by the user's physician explaining that the user probably had nerve damage and needed to go on medication. So naturally, the user sought a second opinion from anybody with an internet connection. Most of the answers the user received on Yahoo! recommended Sudafed (which my future brother-in-law apparently uses to make meth) or self-administered neck massage, but one respondent had a more extreme view of the situation:

Lebo Hfrnk:

 

Sorry, but yo are totally screwed,

Your ear will never go back to normal.
In fact, soon the pressure will build in your head and your will start hearing voices and then you will go insane and probably either commit suicide or else get run over by a Mack truck while you are wandering around on the freeway babbling like an idiot.

If you think that answer is surprising, look at the image I found of the user who submitted it:

"Your ear will never go back to normal."

Lebo Hfrnk, 1863 - 2012

Dog harness.

Below are some highlights from Reuters' recent story about a Texas high school homecoming dance tradition:

It's the homecoming mum, and it has come a long way since parents of today's teens were in high school.

Back then, it was a real chrysanthemum flower given by a boy to his date, similar to a corsage given for a prom.

Today, they are mammoth, over-the-top splays of silk chrysanthemums festooned with flowing ribbons, plush animals and an array of colorful trinkets that have spawned competition among girls to see whose is the biggest, and therefore, best.

Technology has made it possible for mums to be outfitted with colorful LED lights and connections for iPods or CD players, adding splash with audio and visual capabilities.

With so many features, a mum can cost up to $500.

The tradition of the mum involves an exchange between a boy and girl who go to homecoming together. The boy presents a girl with a mum that she wears attached to a cord around her neck.

The girl presents her date with a mum attached to an elastic garter that he wears on the upper part of one arm.

Sidney Heath [...] recently received the crown jewel of [...] mums. A front and back mum sandwiches her body and is attached to a dog harness for strength and comfort.

Let me repeat that last part: "A front and back mum sandwiches her body and is attached to a dog harness for strength and comfort." I hope that I can raise my daughter in a way that instills her with the conviction that if it requires her to don an apparatus designed for a dog, then it is probably not worth doing in the first place. What self-respecting girl answers her door, and when the boy standing there offers her a dog harness to wear, cheerfully replies, "Wow, okay! Thank you so much!"

You know in the alien invasion movies, how there's always some ambiguity concerning why the aliens are attacking Earth, and some vague explanation involving their thirst for our planet's natural resources is jammed in there to keep the story moving? Well, what they don't tell you is that in the aliens' war council, when they were trying to decide whether or not our race was intelligent enough to merit mercy, they looked at the homecoming dance mum tradition and immediately concluded that it wasn't. "An intelligent race wouldn't do something like that," they decided, "we can proceed with clear consciences."

Finally, did you know that the girl who received the biggest homecoming mum in South Carolina state history has her very own video on YouTube? It's true! And here it is!