Semester Exams, Snarkiness & Ring Tones

Try as I might I must confess that I am having some level of difficulty finding anything amusing/funny/witty about the end of the semester.

Yep, next week we have final exams, and come Monday, I need to tell all the DIs (Darling Inspirations) whether they are exempt from my final. I’ve discussed the whole procedure before. You might as well ask me to find the square root of a gazillion two, multiply by eight, recite the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, and then do the hokey pokey and turn myself around.

Although I’m fairly sure I’d come out OK on the hokey pokey part, the rest of it all is enough to make me a poster child for that $100-plus-a-pill migraine medicine. And, of course, don’t get me started about newspaper and yearbook deadlines.

All of it just makes me rather snarky (sort of like this snarky photo of Jack, my German Shepherd) which is why I am having difficulty finding anything amusing/funny/witty about the end of the semester.

And, of course, all of this is exacerbated (don’t you just love SAT words?) by the fact that I am 800 or so miles away from the epicenter of my stress. Yep, I left town Wednesday to take care of some family business and will return to ground zero (my school) on Monday.

It all rather makes me feel rather smallish like Dante standing at the gates of hell and reading the inscription…

Abandon hope, all ye who enter here

OK, OK, OK so I’m a tad bit more melodramatic and a smidgen more snarkier than I thought. And while I was pondering just exactly how unfunny things have gotten, I started to think about Dante standing there with his guide Virgil. And you know, it’s just never, ever, ever a good thing when a journalism adviser starts to ponder classic literature--particularly, you know, writings from back in the day.

I wondered if Dante had written the Inferno today whether Virgil would have had to tell Dante to turn his cell phone off or to “please put it on silent.” And, then of course, all of that got me to thinking about what ring tones Dante or Virgil might have had, you know, if they had that sort of thing. I was going to come up with “Richie’s Top Ring Tones for Dante’s Journey Through The Inferno,” but I ran into a few problems…

Problem Number 1--That’s an awfully long title for a list, don’t ya think?


Problem Number 2--Although my ring tone list had the obvious standbys (“Sympathy for the Devil” by the Rolling Stones and “Highway to Hell” by AC/DC), much of the list became rather too eclectic and a bit eccentric (i.e. “Stealing” by Uriah Heep--does anyone even know who that is anymore?--or “Dope Show” by Marilyn Manson) that I feared no one would know what in the world I was talking about.

Problem Number 3--Of course, some of the selections just might be the type of songs that belong in the “things that will get you fired” folder. And if that were the case, why then, some of those songs might actually get me moved up speedy quick to the head of that going-to-hell-in-a-hand-basket line.

Oh wait, I think I’m there already. Guess I better change my ring tone to…