A question of pie

I was watching a documentary about octopuses last week. Yes, I said octopuses not octopi. According to my college son, who in majoring in marine biology, this is the correct plural. So, don’t argue with me. This time I actually know what I’m talking about. So there.

Apparently, octopi can still be used, but only if you’re referring to a pie with eight ingredients. I guess it could be a pie made from octopus tentacles, but that would just be gross. Boy does that throw an unwanted image into my head. It’s going to take a long time and several glasses of whiskey to get rid of that one. But I digress.

Actually, I’m not sure the pie with eight ingredients would be any better. Imagine apples, cherries, blueberries, peaches, mincemeat (whatever that is), rhubarb, strawberries, and some other strange thing I can’t think of right now, all in the same pie. Way too much, but again I digress. Boy, I’m getting off topic way early in this post.

Watching sea monsters and other sports

Anyway, I was watching a documentary about octopuses and saw a scene of a giant pacific octopus attacking a diver. It was so cool to watch. Of course, it probably wasn’t for the diver. However, if I think about that, it takes all the fun out of it. Either way, it took the diver and two others to get the monster off his face.

It’s times like these I wonder what the dude holding the camera is thinking. I mean, there’s his buddy, in a life and death struggle with a sea creature much stronger than he is. All while two others are trying desperately to help, and all he’s worried about is keeping the action in the center of the frame. Sure, it might be the opportunity of a lifetime to get this footage, but come on. And people wonder why I buy a beer for every cameraman I meet. You never know when he’ll be needed.

I bring all this up, because I have to watch a lot of these documentaries. I don’t want to. Frankly, seeing someone’s face being ripped off by an octopus is not my idea of a fulfilling evening. I have to because my son is in college. He feels it’s his new responsibility to re-educate the entire family about what he’s studying. I’ve told him otherwise, but he doesn’t believe me. Hence all the octopus videos.

College courses that should never be

This isn’t the worst of it. As he is minoring in education there’s even stranger stuff to talk about. He recently had to take an art course as a requirement to that minor. The course he selected had something to do with teaching crafts to youngsters. This may sound all right, but you have no idea. As a part of this course, he had to learn fingerpainting and basket-weaving.

You heard it right. My brilliant, straight-A, biology majoring, son is taking basket weaving in college. I used to joke about this! When I was preforming stand-up comedy, I did ten minutes on the fact that college wasn’t teaching our children anything important. Basket-weaving was a big part of that. Now, years later, I find that you can take vocational basket-weaving in college. In fact, it’s required for certain fields of study. Who Knew??

English for the English speaking world

The worst thing about his college experience is the fact he has to learn English. He’s been speaking English his entire life but to graduate college he needs to take six English courses. Naturally, as this is college, the courses have very little to do with spoken English. The first had to do with grammar. I don’t know why. His grammar is a very nice lady whom he has known all his life. He certainly doesn’t need a college course about her. He can just ask. I do admit there may be something to learn about why she has five cats. Or why she thinks her grandchildren are angels while her children are devil’s spawn for doing exactly the same thing. Yes, I’m bitter about that. She’s my mother for crying out loud.

Another class is scientific writing. This might be a good class to take if that was as far as it went. But it’s not. The professor has given the students an option. They’re allowed to use Grammarly to write their papers. However, they’ll receive a letter grade lower if they do. Think about this.

If they trust themselves, they may get an ‘A’, but that’s not a guarantee. On the other hand, if they trust the computer, a thing which will most likely write a flawless paper, the best they can get is a ‘B’. I don’t know about you, but I’d take the guaranteed ‘B’ any day of the week. The question is; How are they learning to write a scientific paper if some AI is doing the writing? It doesn’t sound right to me. Sadly, when I mentioned this to my son, he just patted me on the head, and handed me the flyer from some senior living facility. I’ve been getting this answer a lot lately, and it’s beginning to bug me.

What exactly is Literature?

Next on the happy list of college courses I don’t understand is Literature. As near as I can figure it, the definition of literature is; “A class in which you read silly stuff no one would ever read if they weren’t taking a literature course.” Now I freely admit, I’ve never read the synopsis. But from the way he describes it, my description is pretty close.

Now, literature in considered an English course, but only a small part of it was written in English. There’s French, Russian, European, and American literature. None of which is written in English. You may doubt this regarding American lit. However, I’ve read Wally Whitman, and frankly don’t understand a word of it.

What I want to know is; Why are we so sure this stuff was translated correctly? Alexandre Dumas wrote the three musketeers in French. Sure, it might be that Dartanion challenged them all to a duel on the same day. But it could also be, that he was just trying to get into Starfleet Academy.

You can’t know for sure. I mean, as Steve Martin so bravely put it, “The French have like a different word for everything.” The Russians are the same way. And Europe has lots of languages which could be misinterpreted. Why do you think there’s been so many wars over there? I’m sure most were caused by some foreigner insulting the queen, when he thought he was ordering a cappuccino.

Now that’s one stinky biome

Then there are his biology courses, which have been renamed to ‘Life Sciences’. I’m not sure about this one at all. Did you know the courses Atmospheric Conditions, and Pollution are life sciences? Are they trying to tell me the clouds are alive? This sounds a bit like prehistoric thinking to me. You know what I mean; We must stop the smokestack from polluting the atmosphere by throwing in a virgin. I’m thinking there must be better ways to deal with this issue. Then again, what do I know? I graduated college a long time ago and things were bound to change.

They Told Me I Knew All This!!!