Day 77

I smell a theme.

Day 76

I AM SO FUNNY I MAKE MYSELF CRY

Day 75

The other day, I was riding my bike while talking on my cell phone. (In general, I am not the safest biker/rollerblader... which might explain why I'm now on a first-name basis with the staff at the Penn Hospital Emergency Room.) All of a sudden, I get stopped by a cop. She says I'm not allowed to bike while on the phone. "I'm letting you off with a warning," she says, and hands me a slip. I look at it; it's a gray peice of paper with a drawing of a biker in what appears to be quite serious pain, plus the word "WARNING" along the top. By the bottom, it reads, "Riding a bike while talking on a phone is illegal as of December 1, 2009." I look at the slip, then I look at the cop. Then I look at the slip again. "This says that the law isn't in effect until next month," I say. "I know," the cop answers, "it's just a warning." "A warning for WHAT," I ask, "I haven't done anything illegal." "Yes," the cop answers, "that's why I'm letting you off with a warning."

This goes on for several minutes. Eventually, I crumpled up the slip of paper in frustration and left.

I got a ticket for littering.

Day 74

When you sneeze in class, everybody stops what they're doing to say something, no matter how important of a point the teacher is trying to make. The thing is, the more times you sneeze, the less responsive the class becomes. I've drawn up the following chart in order to illustrate:



As you can see, after the second sneeze, it is unlikely that you'll garner so much as a single "God Bless You." Not one "Gezundeit," "Nastrovia," or even an "Al-hamdu-Lillah." In fact, if you continue to sneeze thrice or more times, you eventually earn yourself negative goodwill, as people will start to find you annoying and perhaps even take some delight in the fact that you have the flu. (Which you probably do - honestly, who sneezes thrice? More honestly, who uses the word thrice? But I digress.)

Take a look at the chart again. You may notice that the chart begins to level off toward the end. This is because, if you keep sneezing, the annoyance factor becomes outweighed by your classmates' concern that you might in fact be dying. Plus, at a certain point, it all becomes white noise...