Waste of Talent

So tonight Mrs. Manion is going to be very late coming home. This is because her students in the electrical engineering program are doing presentations on their final projects. Some of their efforts include the following:

• Lentil sorter - apparently it sorts live lentils from dead lentils. I have no idea how they can tell. Maybe lentils have a pulse. Maybe the live ones respond to the whole "How many fingers am I holding up?" thing. Maybe they're all dead. Who knows?B
• Banana picker - it works by shaking the tree. Seems kind of low tech for an entire semester's work.
• Tree planter - I mean, if the tree planter was a big ass cannon that fired an artillery shell across the city, and then fired a tree into the resulting hole, that would be pretty sweet. Instead, this thing looks kind of like a massive corkscrew on the back of a truck.

To say that I am disappointed is a profound understatement. There is not a single beer or laser related project in the mix. I would fail each and every one of these kids. If were in charge, A's would go only to students who have invented beer powered lasers. Or possibly laser powered beer.

What is it with the kids of today? Did they not watch "Real Genius" (Val Kilmer's finest hour)? Do they not understand that nothing is cooler than massive destructive capability and a 5% or greater alcohol content?

The wild man project in this group is a portable microfilm projector. Oooh. The whole thing makes me sick. When I was in college, I knew a girl who won a huge gift certificate to the greatest sandwich shop in the world (Big G's in Waterville, ME). Had I won that prize, my friends and I would have eaten like kings in a massive orgy of excess. Instead she donated it to a homeless shelter. And people wonder why I try so hard to be a bad person. I'm just trying to balance the cosmic scales, folks!

So I'm boycotting lentils as a result. I'm not entirely sure what that's going to accomplish, other than minimal self sacrifice. I've actually been boycotting lentils since an unfortunate experience in 1992. But now I've got justification.

LM