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.