My university, like every other university in every other place and time, gives us students the same spiel every year come registration time. It always goes a little something like this:

Dear Valued Student Squig,

As you know, Butthead University does its best to provide for its students, blah blah blah…. Haven’t raised rates in years, yadda yadda yadda.  We’re struggling too, gobble gobble gobble, and after a long, heart felt discussion, we’ve reluctantly decided we have to raise tuition rates.

Thanks for bending over and taking it,

Nummero Uno

So I’m paying more than ten grand every semester, the rates get raised every year (despite their claims of not having hiked them in like, you know, forever), and I still get treated like crap. Not even just by the bureaucracy, as they sit behind the sanctity of their precious counters in their swivelly swivel chairs, I mean, really, you just come to expect that. No, I’m talking about my fellow ungrads, usually the “non-traditional students” (read: old).

I decided to be all motivated and whatnot and take the stairs instead of the elevator (side note: three floors and six flights of stairs suck).  I’m on my side, I’m taking great care not to stick out of my space (because my backpack has a habit of just sort of being in everybody’s way, including my own). I’m on my side, and two non-trad undergrads are coming my way, walking side by side. I keep walking, figuring I’m on my side, going the correct way, they will adjust accordingly because that’s what people do. But no, they continue to walk side by side, grimacing as they had to squeeze by me. I felt like slapping them both and telling them that it’s not like we’re all walking into the Ark, you know?

Just a pet peeve. Especially when I think about how much money I’m paying to enjoy these little life pleasures.

Soy milk causes kidney cancer, scientists in Albania have proved it. Of course, they were experimenting on calves and mutant sheep, but I think we can safely translate their results into putting a blanket ban on all soy products from here on out. Let me repeat: Soy milk causes kidney cancer.

See? I can make blanket statements and state my opinion as fact, too. I can lie my hiney off and expect people to lap it up. As a bonus, if I repeat the lie loud and long enough, it not only sounds like fact, but becomes fact. I guess I can be a politician now. Or write for my college newspaper.

I guess I should lower my standards when it comes to student publications, but

Apparently it is a bad time to be Heidi Klum, or at least according to Yahoo!. For Halloween, Klum decided to be Kali, Hindu goddess of death and destruction.

Before I go any further, I would like to say two things:

1. I don’t care about celebrities. Yes, I watch television and read stuff on the internet, but by and large, I don’t care.

2. I consider myself a fairly religious person, although I am not Hindu. I realize that 85% of the world doesn’t care about my religion, doesn’t view it through my eyes, and do not respect my “sacred” figures as I do.

All this being said, I find it interesting that apparently only Hindus can complain about what they see as someone mocking their god/goddesses/religion.  To quote the article, they want Klum “to make a public apology for posing as a sacred figure.”

I might be the only one WTFing about this, but it doesn’t ring true for me. I mean, seriously. No one seems to care.  I can’t count how many drunkard Buddha or dead Muhammad or Zombie Jesus costumes I’ve seen. Or all the witches you see running around, I’m sure there’s some Wiccans who would take serious issue with that. But actually, even more than not caring, they get defensive and shove “free speech” in your face when you dare to question their motives, or ask any ethical/moral questions about their decision to crap on someone’s religion.

I’m not advocating censuring any of these people.  I’m not saying the Hindus are wrong for not wanting floofy models to dress up as their goddesses.  I just find what this says about the religious state of the US in general.

Welcome to the first ever Do’s-And-Don’t’s entry. To landmark this hallmark achievement, I’ve drank half a bottle of Skyy. Then I realized that it’s also my third post this month, something so unheard of for the Squig, that I drank the other half. Mondays aren’t so bad when you’ve got gulping capacity.

And now, with no further ado:

DO: Try to get my attention. As cashiers and clerks and salespeople across the world will tell you, things get busy. Big corporations want everything done on their time, their way. And if this means 9 people must do the work of 20, so be it. You may not believe that your average minimum wage worker has any other mission than to be your servant/slave, but they do. We get busy. If you need help, open your mouth. Ask–politely–for assistance.

DON’T: Whistle at me. If I’m busy engaging in another part of my job and don’t see you to offer my assistance, do not clap your hands, whistle or snap at me. I’m not your neighbor’s dog, and you haven’t just caught me pissing on your rose bushes. If you do not expect me to bite your ankles, then keep the degrading summons to a minimum, mmkay?

Though, when it comes right down to it, ankle biting sounds pretty good. Of course, ear chewing and/or the clawing out of the throat would be more satisfactory, but I realize I can’t have everything.

Not that I’m keeping track in an official capacity, but there are blinking neon signs that guide humanity’s path to the apocalypse.  I experienced one such sign last night, a sign of such magnitude that it broke the second law of dealing with the general public, the one about all children being annoying beyond belief, screaming bloody murder, playing with the carousel while the cashier’s using it, etc. I forget the exact wording.

It was a cool and crisp evening, and the moon hung low in the sky. I was working register fifteen when a woman and her two children came through with a gigantic box that was bigger than both the kids put together. It was a kit to build a Millennium Falcon replica that looked like it would be close to four feet long when it was finished. The thing’s like $160, and the kid was paying for it with his own money–his birthday money. I asked him how old he was, and he said seven, and I told him that from now own, he should turn seven every year. I was actually so excited about the Falcon (yes, I’m one of those SW nuts), that I actually knuckled the kid.  He was not annoying in any way, spoke like an adult and actually got the joke.

I almost died of shock (a normal, well-behaved kid in WALMART? Paying for his own CRAP? It’s a tale of science-fiction itself!) until I realized this is probably a sign from God that the world of the end is neigh.

I’ve decided that I’m going to start an on-going series of entries, simply entitled “Do’s and Don’ts.”   Not to sound snotty, but after all this time working at the ever-present Wal-Mart, I’ve decided that people don’t have a clue how to behave in public. Of course, I think I got an inkling of this over the course of my life, but now that I have to deal with it on a consistent basis (and on a basis in which I can’t speak up, even to defend myself, because, as we all know, the customer’s always right), it’s beyond annoying. Borders on the excruciating, actually.

So sayeth the Squig.

When you’re checking out at Wal-mart, small talk is made.  There’s some unspoken rule of American society that states, if you don’t make small talk, you might have been born without part of your brain, or maybe your mother drank mass quantities of vodka during her pregnancy. It’s just something you do, because people get pissy if you don’t.

So I was making small talk with this old woman coming through the express lane I was working. I mentioned school in passing when answering one of her typical small talk questions, and she asked what I was majoring in. When I answered, she actually frowned at me and told me point blank, “You need to change that. You’ll never get a job doing that.”

Now, cranky and pretentious old people are just precious. But it’s not a big deal, I get people like this all the time, so I smile, hand her her crap and tell her to have a nice day. She stands there and tells me again that I really need to change that (emphasis hers, not mine). She was 100% serious. When I didn’t renounce my major on the spot, she actually huffed away.

It was just kind of weird. I’ve never seen someone get so worked up over something that had so much not to do with them.

I am so sorry. My grief is so overwhelming, I have to prostrate myself on my own blog! O, for a chalice to bind around my thigh!

I am so sorry that I asked for your advice concerning my academic funding, I did not realize that “Financial Aid Adviser” was a figurative title.  I am but a poor ignorant undergraduate, unschooled in the ways of the university.  I hold my body forfeit for presuming you would actually sit down and discuss such matters with such a humble being as myself. Instead you magnificently shoved a pamphlet in my face and spoke so sweetly–surely you remember, your words slowed to a trickle, so that my fevered peasant brain could fully comprehend it.

O angel of the Financial Aid office, do forgive me!

Actually, I didn’t.  Honest.  What really happened was whoever had the free access wifi was bit by the SELFISH BUG.  Now I need a password I don’t have one. There’s not even anybody I can kill to get one, so I’m left to clutch my antiquated modem and weep into my bottle of tequila.

Okay, I’m totally lying. I drink the tequila, I only weep into tea or some girly drink like that.

But seriously, I can only update at school. And lately that’s been crazy. Shocking, I know. But speaking of class, I must go and pull out my hair. You know, my daily routine is pretty much go to school, beat my head against their brick wall, go to work, beat my against their brick wall, come home and pass out. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Your gum chewing privledges have been revoked until you can learn to chew with your mouth shut. At fifty, you should have already mastered this skill.

Good day, madam. I say good day.