Unhelpful

The astute will recognize that the random quotes happily gracing the top of your browser window each time you visit Unhelpful are the words of Marshall McLuhan. If you’re lucky, you may catch the profound “the medium is the message” phrase. If you were me, you’d be lucky enough to have an English professor who actually used that very quote in a class discussion, but not before referring to McLuhan as an “expert on modern media.”

After class, I asked my usually talkative and helpful professor WHY OH WHY she quoted, of all people, McLuhan. I told her I couldn’t believe it.

“Sorry.”

Sorry? I want to know her reasoning behind tainting an otherwise logical class discussion with the words of a token idiot, and I get a “sorry” in response? Adding insult to injury, she walked away after the “sorry.”

I understand now. Obviously well aware of her crime, she in all probability pleaded to Allah during the remainder of class, after the terminal error, that none of her students would pick up on it. I think it was pretty crappy of me to ruin her day.

[Before we begin: I want to apologize for being retarded initially. Elton John, indeed. That's what you get for writing updates on 3 hours of sleep.]

Anyway, I saw the following inspirational quote by Helen Keller today:

No pessimist ever discovered the secrets of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new heaven to the human spirit.

When I read that, my inner cynic couldn’t help wondering if she had actually said something so inspirational. She obviously required an interpreter, and who’s to say that the interpreter didn’t “put words in her mouth,” so to speak.

I know that if I were in her position, I wouldn’t have been very inspiriational. Most of my speeches would’ve been along the lines of, “Someone kill me, please. I can’t take another moment of this living Hell.”

But that’s probably because I’m not blind and deaf. I’m sure that it’s wonderfully relaxing. Once you go blind and deaf, you never go back!