A few days ago, some of my relatives were talking about how they were going to go to Wal-Mart in the morning to find some of the incredible 'Black Friday' deals. Half-joking, I issued a warning about how, every year, someone gets trampled by a crush of shoppers at a Wal-Mart on the day after Thanksgiving.

It happened again this year. In Long Island, NY, a group of shoppers were pushing so hard against the doors at 5 AM that everything exploded inward. Four people were injured, and an employee was killed by the onslaught of people. When the police shut down the store for a few hours to assess the scene, the shoppers responded with complaints about how it wasn't fair because they'd been waiting so long to get a good deal.

Isn't consumerism wonderful?

I once wrote about a student who came to class with a glass of beer and who, in another incident, asked me if I thought it would be difficult to "nab a bike from Wal-Mart." Last week, that same student asked me to write him a letter of recommendation. True story.

Read no further if you're uninterested in hearing a rant.

I love to play basketball, but I'm really starting to hate playing at the rec center here on campus (the only gym I have access to on a regular basis). Most of the basketball isn't good basketball. People play bad defense and selfish offense. People cheat whenever possible so that their team will win, and they'll get to keep playing. The games are rough, and I usually come home bruised. There are usually three open courts, but there are typically up to 20 people waiting to play on the main court. If I ever say something like, "Hey, instead of sitting out, maybe we could get two more games going and everybody could play at once," but I usually find that people won't even make eye contact with me. I suspect it's because I'm white (98% of the players are black). When I do get in a game, I seldom get the ball passed to me, and I often hear people on the sidelines making fun of me or expecting me to play poorly. Again, I suspect it's because I'm white. Never mind the fact that I'm usually the most fundamentally skilled player in the gym and regularly score at least half of my team's points.

I just want to play basketball, and I'm really tired of not being able to.

Because Sarah and I will both have a few months off this summer, we figured it would be a perfect time to take an extended vacation and celebrate my graduation. We hadn't made any concrete plans until Saturday, but then I came across a cheap flight and some wheels started turning in my head...

Here's the plan. In late July, we'll fly from home to New York City, where we'll stay for a day and a half and take in any many sights as possible. From NYC, it's off to Copenhagen, Denmark via Reykjavik, Iceland. We'll only be in Iceland for eight hours, but we'll still try and do something, maybe see some ice or land or something. When we arrive in Copenhagen the next day, we hope to find Sarah's parents, who are planning drive up from France, and do some sightseeing in Scandinavia. Then, it's off to France until the middle of August, briefly back to Copenhagen (this time via Zurich, Switzerland and Dusseldorf, Germany), Reykjavik, and NYC, and then finally we'll end up back home.

The great part for us is that we get to take the adventure, AND our tickets cost significantly less than what we were planning to pay for just a flight to France. We feel blessed. And excited. Only eight more months.

Because it gives me the best chance to get a used book online, I always like to buy my textbooks for my upcoming semesters as soon as possible. A few weeks ago, I was talking with a professor who will be teaching one of my classes next term, and I asked her what books I'd need for her class. After she told me, I immediately went online to see what kind of a deal I could get.

I didn't see many bargains, and I noticed that a new edition had just been published, which isn't great because it means that the market isn't flooded with old books people are trying to get rid of. I went to my professor and asked her if she knew about the new edition. She didn't, and she suggested that I contact the publisher on her behalf and ask them to send her two free copies of the new edition: one for her, and one for her assistant (i.e., the person assisting her on this task, i.e., me).

Because I wanted to be nice, and because I was interested to see if I could get a $95 book for free, I agreed. On one hand, I can see how it would make sense for the publisher to comply. Either they do, and the 20 other students in her class buy the new edition, or they don't, and everybody buys the old edition. In the first instance, the publisher gives away $200 and makes $2000 in return. In the second instance, the publisher gives away $0 and makes $0 in return. I'm no mathematician, but last time I checked, an $1800 profit is better than no profit. On the other hand, I always strongly doubted that they'd actually send a book to me just because I asked them to do so. And yet on Monday, the books arrived in my campus mailbox.

I'm pretty sure I'll never again feel totally comfortable while buying a book.

I'm not a big fan of our mail carrier. In order to get him to pick up outgoing mail, I have to leave it sticking out of the mailbox so he can see it, otherwise he refuses to check the box to see if there's any mail inside. Yesterday, I was trying to mail two things: a Netflix movie, and a birthday card. Like usual, I bent the bright red Netflix envelope over the edge of our vertical mailbox and closed the lid down on top of it so a bunch of red peeked out of the outside. He seldom misses it when I do that. I also put the birthday card inside the box, knowing that he should see it when he opened the box to take out the other envelope.

When I got home yesterday, the mailbox was stuffed with junkmail and a small package. As I was taking everything out, I noticed that, not only had he missed the card, but he had completely smashed it when he crammed everything else into the box. And since today is Veteran's Day and there's no mail service, there's little chance the card will make it on time. Great. Thanks mailman.

Not everyone should pass the Civil Service Exam.

In my class on Wednesday, I passed back some assignments I'd graded, and then I fielded some questions from a student about her grade.

Student: Why did I get marked down right here? (pointing to a clearly wrong answer with the correct answer written beside it in my handwriting with a different color pen)
Me: Umm ... because your answer was wrong.
Student: But that girl got it right. (pointing to no one, as everyone else had gone home by then)
Me: She had this exact answer? (pointing to the answer that she'd written and I'd crossed off)
Student: No. She had this. (pointing the correct answer, written in my handwriting in a different color pen beside her answer, which was was crossed off)
Me: Umm ... I wrote that.
Student: Oh ... Well, then why did I get this one wrong? (pointing to the next question, where I'd again crossed off her answer and written the correct one beside it)

Not everyone should go to college.

I feel like I should be posting something today. I also feel like I'm going to be late for work if I don't go iron my clothes and then take a shower. I also feel like feeding a child carob cake on his first birthday is borderline child abuse. Anyone know the statute of limitations on child abuse?