Snow Days Suck...

I used to think snow days, in the order of Divine Miracles, rated somewhere between walking on water and making a blind man see (but NOT turning water into wine, because I don't like wine that much, and definitely better than the whole fish thing, because, you ever been around a whole shit load of fish? That stuff starts to stink pretty quickly.) So that was my thought process until this week. Initially, when they announced that they were canceling session two of the forum because of weather, I was elated. As much as I loved working with the students, a long break was very welcome. Well, here were are five days later, and things have gotten so bad, that our staff quickly resorted to "If this became a really bad horror movie, which member of the staff would most likely be the one to snap and kill everyone?" And guess who was voted most likely to be that person? ME! What?!

Alright, so let me take this opportunity to refute that claim. First of all, never in my life have I had a desire to murder someone. I mean, straight up. Never. And, besides the fact that I match some of the descriptive traits listed on the "serial killer" Wikipedia page, I never wet my bed beyond the age of 12 and I don't think torturing small animals is right. At all. I didn't even like dissecting the frog in biology! And I am proud of my high IQ and do not think it is indicative of anything other than I have a lot of knowledge. I mean, you don't see Stephen Hawkings out there, going all Buffalo Bill on some wheelchair bound women, right? Of course not! So, yeah, that argument is done. Plus, I'm too nice. Really. I give to charity. I ask elderly women how their days are. I don't cross the street to avoid homeless people. I walk right by them! Who else can say that? Seriously.

Let's talk a look, hypothetically, of where I think I rank if we were to really look for serial killers:

5. Tom Cruise - that's too obvious
13. My next door neighbor when I was a kid - I think that guy had a few bodies in his garden
75. Mr. Rogers - you know that guy was a Green Beret, right? Don't let the sweater fool you
76. Mr. McFeely - he would be a quite obvious accomplice
165. Ron Artest - too easy to see, so there's no way he could be
1,345. Michael J. Fox - Marty McFly? Teen Wolf? No way. Plus he couldn't hold the weapon steady (crickets)
1,456. Ryan Barton
1,458. Mother Theresa - sneaky; a wild-card entry, but in the end, no way

So, you see, the empirical proof is overwhelming - I could not nor will I ever be a serial killer. So sorry to disappoint. And just because I've been twitchy this week whenever I see a butter knife doesn't mean anything. IT DOESN'T MEAN ANYTHING!

So this week really has been rough. It's cold, there's nothing that's closer than a 20 minute walk besides homes, and they serve dinner at 5pm. By nine, I feel like Rosie O'Donnell staring at an all-you-can-eat buffet through Plexi-glass. It's just uncomfortable. A few of the kids have been stuck here all week because nothing is flying out of Washington D.C. besides Congress' sanity. They've tried a few escapes, and who can blame them, but they're about as stealthy as a fat woman in a Twinkie factory. But they're really cool and we've had some great times, like a few days ago at the zoo.

So, I figured the zoo in winter would be like going to the opera: boring. There's really no joke there. Opera sucks. So, anyways, we went to the National Zoo with the remaining scholars because it's free and it's close and what the hell, there's sure to be a few exhibits, right? Well, not exactly. Every other path was "Under Construction," the elephants were locked up like they were on death row, and half the exhibits were closed. So, we checked out the small mammal house, with the monkeys and meerkats, and that was cool. And we checked out the reptile house, with the crocodiles and snakes and frogs and stuff, and that was neat. But then, we went into the most amazing place I have ever been save...well, save nothing, it was that amazing - The Primate House.

Look, seeing gorillas and orangutans up close is cool enough, especially when there are baby gorillas involved...


And you can always bet that they'll be doing something interesting. I mean, they are our living ancestors and all, right? They're smart and intelligent, right? I mean, some of the primates work on computers at the zoo, matching designs and showing forms of intelligence, right? Oh, did I mention they like to stick their own shit in their mouths and smear it on the viewing glass for all to see -


Or they choose to whittle the time away by doing a little something I call EATING THEIR OWN VOMIT! Oh yeah, not once, not twice, not even five times, but like twenty freaking times! Seriously! And this ain't no cow-chewin'-its-cud type of deal. This is full on, out of body, back into body kind of shit. This orangutan in question particularly liked to show of its vomit eating prowess by doing so off the viewing glass. And to silence any critics, I went ahead and captured the moment with a sort of evolutionary linkage type of photo.


Ignore the fact that that thing looks like half of my family. We clearly have evolutionary links, but have become separated in our thought processes. Orangutans can't talk, and I haven't eaten my own vomit since I was in college, and that's like two years ago, and that was just because of a dare and I really wanted to impress this girl, but the plan kinda backfired because she thought it was gross, but at least I wasn't doing it for fun like this orangutan, and at least my shame was only in front of like six people and not at a country's zoo where everyone could watch me. So, that's how I proved evolution this week.

I went out last night, had a nice time, got in a cab to head home with some friends. Cab driver (who we later found out was Punjabi) was talking on his cell phone in a language we couldn't understand to a person we assumed was, you know, far enough away to necessitate a cell phone. Upon stopping at a red light, the cell phone hung up, the trunk popped open, and a human crawled out of the trunk. Seriously. The cab driver was talking to a man who was stuffed in his trunk. The whole time. No truth to the rumor that the man in the trunk was this guy.

Anyways, that's about all the fun for this week. I'm still trying to figure out what's next. I have no idea. I feel as clueless as Joaquin Phoenix in trying to decide where to go from here, except I don't have a beard like Happy Gilmore's caddy. But, if anyone has any idea or would like to coax me into coming their direction, let me know. I'm open for just about anything at this point. Just something that can pay the student loans and leave me enough money to buy useless crap that I'll never use.