>>> Points in Case
By staff writer Court Sullivan
Issue #19 – April 2005
-Hello Mr. and Miss Internet Reader (please tell me you're not married yet), it feels like we haven't spoken in years! Well, I guess you never did much of the talking. Allow me to reintroduce myself: my name is Court Sullivan and I used to email you little tidbits of college humor compiled into issues called “Points in Case”…as far back as 1999. That's a long time ago! (Unless you're my dad, in which case 6 years still “seems like just yesterday.”) After I graduated from Emory University in 2003, I decided to put all my time into making a really good college humor website called (appropriately enough) PointsinCase.com…COMPLETELY OUT OF PLAY-DOH. For those of you who remember how fast Play-Doh dries out after you take it out of the canister, you can imagine how long this took. Finally, one day, the Play-Doh hardened and set in a virtual mold, allowing me to grow on you again like a fungus. Let me explain…
-Did you know that along with your annual subscription to Maxim you also get a monthly variety pack of cologne? That's right guys, before you go buy more CK Sex Offender or something, try picking up a recent issue of Maxim, neatly cut out the scented strip from any number of designer ads, fold it back and wear it as a bracelet to the club. No one will ever know. Lest you put wrap it around your wrist with the ad facing out, stupid.
-I don't understand these people who claim to not be able to use a dishwasher. This alleged inability usually surfaces in casual conversation right after the laundry confession: “Yeah, I've never done my own laundry before. I don't even know how to use a dishwasher.” The thing is, there is nothing to KNOW about using a dishwasher, unless you have trouble pouring detergent or pressing “start” buttons. Now laundry, I can understand the mental barrier. There are a lot of detergent types, softener varieties, water temperatures and color rules, not to mention a handful of fabrics, individual washing instructions attached to each fabric, and urban legends about each washing method. Try translating that sentence into seven dials or one dial, depending on whether you're at home or in your dorm basement, and the result is equally confusing. So I felt it was safe to assume that the dishwashing comment was merely a humorous exaggeration on the whole laundry thing. Until one painfully revealing day, when my ex-girlfriend tried to do me a favor by doing the dishes and ended up turning my apartment kitchen into a foam party. It was at that point that I came to an important realization: soap doesn't work in the dishwasher. Good thing SHE was responsible for that messy discovery.
-Have you ever sat through so many movie previews that you forget which movie you went to see? Sometimes the previews are so good that I'm disappointed when the actual movie starts. Now I know why the movies in the previews are always at least three months away: to keep me from getting up and switching theaters on the spot. Also, to make sure I won't remember the previews that were so bad I promised NEVER to see the movie. Also, because what's cooler than that guy on TV who says in the most seductively compelling voice ever, “STARTS JULY 5TH.”
-One of the worst communication mistakes you can make is the call waiting mixup. You know, when you think you've flipped back over on call waiting and you start talking about the person who called in like, “Sorry, that was Mark, I really don't feel like putting up with his shit right now,” and then Mark's like, “Uhhhh, whatta you mean?” And then you're so stunned at your mistake that you miss the 3-second window to play it off as sarcasm, and instead blurt out something entirely red-handed like, “Oh shit…Mark??” and totally call yourself out. If there were a such thing as an own-goal in call waiting, that would be it.
-Just to be fair, if there was a such thing as call waiting in soccer, it would probably be when the referee hesitated to blow his whistle.
-Speaking of awkward communication, I think telling someone your computer password might be one of the most awkward things to say aloud. I couldn't login to my bank account online the other day, so I called customer service. We tried everything first: my mother's maiden name, social security number plus DOB, pet's last name, street I grew up on, but still there was some security barrier. Finally, the representative told me to tell her my password so she could just reset it and email me a random one. I paused, and thought how retarded and random my password was. I choked on my verbal reluctance and continued to think how personal giving out a piece of information that private was, and how it might lead the representative to unlock the innermost workings of my mind and eventually steal my soul. Then I hung up and vowed never to watch a Stephen King movie again and only use the local bank branch.
-Since I'm too cheap to buy CD's, too virus-paranoid to download MP3's, and too lazy to burn my friends CD's, I subscribe to a convenient Internet service called Yahoo Launchcast Radio, the smallest step up from enduring mainstream FM radio. By small, I mean $4 a month, the price Starbucks stores pay their wholesalers for two creamers. Nonetheless, I AM PAYING for a service that, at a more basic level, is free to others. Suddenly, I'm in the shower one day and Launchcast starts SKIPPING!! My first instinct (after listening to Green Day repeat the letter “D” approximately 8,000 times while rinsing the shampoo out of my hair) was to move my mouse within an inch of the fast forward button on the screen. When that didn't work, I realized that somewhere, someone at Yahoo is probably sitting in front a CD player holding a microphone up to a pair of speakers. Either that, or it was some sort of annoying custom meditation experience only offered to paid subscribers. This is when technology has officially crossed the line between trying to be perfect and not losing the human touch.
-Seriously though, why couldn't that guy at Yahoo just move his finger close to the fast forward button? Doesn't he know WE'RE HELPLESS OUT HERE WITHOUT THE POWER??
-Have you ever bought orange juice and had to choose between no pulp, some pulp, and most pulp? I'm a big fan of most pulp, but the other day I opened up some Florida's Natural (Most Pulp) and I got hit in the eye with a large chunk of juicy pulp. Some might say that's just a sign of a quality product, but it got me to thinking, “How do they KNOW that's the most pulp they can fit in a carton of orange juice??” Wouldn't the most pulp be a carton stuffed with oranges? I mean, there's got to be some juice squirting out sometime in the process of jamming a bunch of peeled oranges into a box to rebutt any potential false advertising claims, right? I feel like at some point it's going to come down to a childish battle of words between companies competing for “most pulp” customers. “25% More Pulp than Most Pulp” “Mostest Pulpiest EVER!!” “PULP x INFINITY!” “GULP PULP PULP PULP PULP PULP PULP PULP PULP PULP PULP PULP PULP PULP PULP PULP ‘TIL YOU TASTE JUICE!” Sorry, that was just silly.
-A lot of people are bandwagon fans of a sports team and I find that petty and annoying. I'm a bandwagon hater. If everyone hates the Yankees, I'll start hating them too. I'll catch myself making gay jokes about Jeter and stuff even though I probably couldn't tell you what position he plays (though I'm guessing he's the receiver, haha). I don't know if bandwagon hating is just as bad as bandwagoning itself, but I do find that it's a lot easier to hate things for no reason than to like them and have to draw on 20 hours of weekly ESPN programming to back up your reasoning.
-Have you ever noticed that if you're right-handed everything always ends up in your left pocket? I guess it's a result of natural preoccupation of your dominant hand most of the time. But I always feel like people must think I have some weird upper thigh tumor on my left leg when I go out. Which in an ironic twist of fate, I will probably end up developing in 15 years, when pocket-sized laptops, cell phones, PDA's, digital cameras, and satellite iPods all end up bombarding the same spot on my left femur with radiation that in varied-pocket doses would otherwise have been considered negligible. Oh well, as long as they serve “most juice” oranges and allow me to fast forward through the movie previews in the hospital.