Papers from School

Don't worry you'll like them

The story you are about to hear is fictional. Any resemblance to any real persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

Our story begins in an apartment complex on South Avenue, in the residence of Mason, a Physics Grad Student. As is the usual case, all the other grad students were there, working on their various projects and grading the papers of their students.

�Oh, man,� exclaimed Rubert, the new grad student, �I have all these Physics 204 lab reports to grade!�

�Those aren�t real lab reports! You don�t make them do real lab reports. You�re just a slacker!� Yelled Marcie from across the apartment.

Rubert laughed. It was totally true, his students didn�t have to do half the work as the students who took 204 the semester before when Mason was the instructor. The students who had Mason never complained though, their lab reports weren�t as nearly as hard as the ones the 203 students had to do for Marcie.

Suddenly Kevin, who had just came inside after smoking a cigarette, shouted, �This is FREAKIN� boring! Let�s party!�

The others looked at him and with out a moment�s hesitation Mason said, �Well, I do have all this work to do on making these homepage improvements for the department, but, what the heck. After all, all work and no play makes this grad student a boring neutron!�

�That is so sad,� said Rubert. Then he turned to Kevin, �Count me in! Moose, how about you? Are you going to party with us?�

�Uh, no, I am going to movie tonight,� he replied (in his Chinese accent).

�You always to movies! Why don�t you stick around with us? Are we too wild for you?� Marcie teased.

Moose shrugged his shoulders and left.

�Marcie, you start mixing the drinks, I�ll go get the entertainment,� Kevin said with an evil smirk as he left the apartment.

�I wonder what Captain Evil is up to,� expressed Mason, referring to Kevin.

�Rubert, could you come help me in the kitchen with this five gallon tub of tequila?� Marcie said as she struggled. Making her famous Giant Margaritas was a real task. The funniest part about the whole production is that she doesn�t drink the things herself, she drinks Zimas.

While Rubert helps Marcie in the kitchen Kevin enters the apartment laughing an evil laugh. The contents of the pillowcase draped over his shoulder thrashed wildly as he slammed the door. �They taste just like chicken, man!� Kevin exclaimed triumphantly as he dumped a three and a half foot long iguana from the pillow case. �I stole it from the next apartment complex over!�

Marcie enters the room and sets a gallon sized glass of Margarita in front of Mason. Then the iguana ran between her legs. �Eeeeeaaaaahhh!� she screamed, and jumped on a chair. �Kevin! Doesn�t that thing belong to someone?�

�Not anymore. Mwahahahahahahahahaha!� His eyes glissened with excitement as he produced a large club from his back pack and started chasing the iguana around the room.

Mason shouted, �Don�t kill that thing in here! It�ll really stain the carpet!� He jumped up and grabbed at the lizard.

In the meantime Rubert was drinking one of the margaritas. He had downed about 3 quarts when he exclaimed, �Too bad that Moesha and Derrick are out of town at that conference, they�re really missing out!� Then he passed out in a chair.

As the others turned to look at him the iguana somehow managed to lock itself in the bathroom, for now it was safe. Kevin had other things to occupy him now. He got some red nail polish from Marcie�s purse, removed Rubert�s shoes and proceeded to paint Rubert�s toenails. Then he took a permanent marker and wrote profanities across Rubert�s forehead. �Now he�s even more pitiful. You know this guy has a date tomorrow with some girl he met online? He�s going to take her to a cornfield maze.�

�Like you can talk about pitiful Kevin,� said Marcie.

�Yeah, this is coming from the guy who tried to pick up a transvestite at a gay bar in Boston,� Mason pointed out.

�She, I mean he, was Hot man! Those eyes, I�m telling you, she, I mean he, was FINE!� Kevin then started to drink one of Marcie�s margaritas. �Puerto Rican Moon shine is better. If something makes you howl at the moon, roll around in mud puddles in your underwear, and run naked trough the jungle you know it�s gotta be good!�

Mason said, �I�m gonna have to urinate pretty soon, can someone pick this lock?� Kevin came over and picked the lock in a mere 3 seconds. Just before they threw the door open, they heard the toilet flush. When they looked in the bathroom, the iguana was gone. Had he flushed himself to get away, or perhaps to join the Ninja Turtles, or had he merely jumped through the open window. The students never knew. I wish him well, where ever he is.

Although I am an avid Trekkie, I must protest about some of the Star Trek facts that make the show work. Star Trek Physics have some very large inherent flaws. For example: in Star Trek Physics warp factor 1 is the speed of light. Yet, by the very definition of warp factor 10, which they gave in an episode of Star Trek Voyager, warp factor 10 in real life would be the speed of light. The definition stated that at the speed of warp factor 10 the ship would take up every space in the universe. In elementary relativity we learn that the speed of light is the point where mass goes to infinity. This is because the gamma factor goes to zero. In reality the only thing that can go the speed of light is a photon.

On the ships they use antimatter for various reasons, well, you can't put antimatter next to matter or else there will be a catastrophic event that will destroy the universe. So, how then do they contain it? Is it with magnetic fields? They don't tell you. They say "the containment field", but they don't tell what kind of field it is.

Back to the subject of going faster than the speed of light. Well, going anywhere near the speed of light causes the person to age more slowly than the rest of the universe. So let's say that your planet is at war, and you fly away to get help. They tell you be back in four years in order to save the world. You go and you come back in four years (in your perspective), but in real time, there has been 5 years passed. So your planet is destroyed.

Another gripe of mine, they use tacheon grids to detect cloaked ships. There are no such things as tacheons. They were made up by mathematicians. In Star Trek Physics this is the most realistic thing they do. Because Mathematicians say that tacheons travel FASTER than the speed of light. If they did, then sure, that would help you detect a ship that was reflecting and deflecting light in such a way as to be invisible.

It is not just the physics that is wrong with Star Trek. Sometimes the characters are just STUPID acting. Recall that I said on Star Trek Voyager is has been introduced that at warp factor 10 you take up every space in the Universe. Well, for those of you who don't know, Voyager is lost 70 light years from home, and they are trying to get home. You might be wondering why they don't just go warp ten and get home. In one episode they tested it in a shuttle craft. After going warp factor ten the person came back to the ship and was fine, for a few days, then he started to mutate, he became allergic to water and he grew gills and such, and he stopped breathing Oxygen and started breathing Nitrogen. Then he went mad, and kidnapped the Captain. Then he stole the shuttle craft and disappeared. When they found them, they were on a planet, and were both mutants. They had turned into things that resembled large catfish. The crew beamed them back on board the ship. They undid the mutation by radiating them with neutrons. Well, then if it is correctable, why don't they go warp factor 10 to get home and then undo the mutations there? They are MUY TONTO.

All right, what about the inconsistencies between present star Trek and the Original Series? Check out the Klingons. In the Original Series they were played by Italians or Mexicans with goatees. Now they are generally depicted by African Americans with "wrinkly foreheads". How did they evolve that much in only a couple centuries? I used to gripe and gripe about there only being Black Klingons, but in the five years since I started complaining about it, there has been one white Klingon. Star Trek is a wonderful, wonderful aspect of today's society. Generally the people on the show are full of morals and values that are good to teach the young people of our society, but Star Trek is fiction. It is so fictitious, that it doesn't even use real physics. Physics is the most important thing to preserve in Science fiction. If you want someone to believe something, you have to make is realistic. Of course maybe Gene Roddenberry knew something we didn't. Perhaps he was an alien, whose physics knowledge far surpassed ours. Only time will tell if Star Trek fiction will ever be reality.

As I was growing up my parents told me never to see the movie Psycho. They said it would scare me half to death and I'd have nightmares. When given this assignment I made my move; it was a legitimate reason to see Psycho, and scare myself silly. I've seen all sorts of movies and none of them have ever truly scared me; I was looking forward to this. Ryan (my boyfriend) and I rented the movie at Movies and Video. We went back to his house to watch it. His parents said, "Oh, no Psycho! Are you ready?" I was.

Mr. Listerman popped some popcorn and sat down in one of the big blue recliners. Mrs. Listerman sat on his lap. Ryan (with another big bowl of popcorn) and I squeezed into the other chair side-by-side. I settled in and waited to be scared half to death. I had heard of the infamous shower scene, and I waited in eager anticipation. As the girl got in the shower, I grew frightened. I cowered next to Ryan, preparing to shield my eyes when the time came. He dropped popcorn in his lap. The shower certain was pulled back and we saw the knife come down, again and again! But there was hardly any blood and no stab woons to be seen. The little bit of blood that there was looked like watered down catsup being pored down the drain. When the next person was murdered you saw a little bit of blood spray on his face, but that was it. The most gruesome part of the movie was when you saw the mother's face. There is something a little gross about a mummified lady with no eyes. Yuck!

I was severely disappointed by the movie. What kept running through my mind was, "Why is this stupid thing rated 'R'?" There was hardly any blood, no gorey stuff, and as for nudity, the shower seen didn't really show much; when there was a possibility of nudity, it was out of focus and in the background. I think that if that movie came out now it would be rated PG-13. The only reason it needs the 13 on that is the out-of-focus nudity, and the girl in her bra at the beginning.

I analyzed Norman Bates. It seems to me that although the movie blamed split personalities for his killing spree, he really knew what he was doing. I think that he was pretending to have split personalities in order to get off the hook. Real split personalities wouldn�t care about what they were wearing, whether it was men�s or women�s clothing. Plead insanity, that�s what lawyers have people do to get off the hook. That�s what he was doing. He was faking it all to have an excuse for his perversive acts.

After the movie was over, Ryan took me home. I came inside and my mom asked me what I thought of the movie. I told her just exactly what I told you. Her response was, �You are never going to go to the movie Theater again! You see all those sick, violent horror things, so nothing scares you anymore. That is what is wrong with society today! No one cares about violence anymore. If you were walking down the street and someone was stabbed or shot, you wouldn�t care! You are immune to violence. If I decide to let you go back to the theater again, you will only be able to see comedies!� I explained to her that comedies are just violent films with corny death scenes. I asked her if I could see love stories but she said, �Oh, no, definitely not love stories.� Finally we decided that most animated features are pretty non-violent (except for the Lion King) so I can still go see all the G rated movies I want. I�m going to too. I have been waiting all Summer for Anastasia to come to the Theaters. Thank goodness I�m still allowed to see it.

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