My latest musical obsession - The Gaslight Anthem. It doesn't hurt that their Pandora channel plays Against Me! and Weezer. But boy oh boy, do I love this song. You should too. Because I know that all two of you who actually read this blog take every word I say to heart and make it your creed to follow every single suggestion I make. Enjoy.

That's right folks, it's time for another rant. Allow me to set up the scene.

I am a poor, struggling college student. Joys in my life come from varied places: reading a good book, catching a concert or twelve, playing the guitar, watching the Flames win (yes, they just lost in overtime before I started writing this. Dumb). But most of all, I'm happy when I'm with my family, especially my wife and little girl. Today before work, we noticed that my little girl was running very low on formula. This is bad, because my little girl has this habit of wanting food rather than starving. I know, I've tried to explain, but she just says "Da, da, da."

Enter the hero organization: WIC.

According to their website, WIC "provides Federal grants to States for supplemental foods, health care referrals, and nutrition education for low-income pregnant, breastfeeding, and non-breastfeeding postpartum women, and to infants and children up to age five." In other words, they give us vouchers to get formula. Lots and lots of formula. So, we went to the grocery store. No, not Walmart. After we had gone to the aisle and returned to the check stand with about $90 worth of formula (that we were getting for free).

Enter the villain: Socially Inept Bag Boy. (The SIBB)

I should have known that we were in for trouble with the first words I heard escape his mouth. After the checker lady passed the cans of formula down to him, he says to my wife, "Oh, Fun." She is obviously confused, but just kind of shrugs it off. The SIBB then asks her about the difficulty of mixing up the formula. Again, this is a confusing statement. My wife explains that it's a really complicated task of adding water to a bottle, then putting a scoop or two of formula inside (sometimes three!) and shaking it like a poloroid picture. Yes, that was an Outkast reference.

I have no explination for what happened next. Then again, I have a few social skills.

The SIBB continued talking to my wife. The words that came out of his mouth were something along the lines of: "I sure hope that when I have kids, I don't have to be on WIC. I want to have a good job that pays a lot of money then."
Mental Translation: "It sure sucks that neither your or your husband can get a job and have to mooch off the government. I promise that I'm better than you and won't have to leech off of society." I stood there in shock. My wife didn't know what to say. The checker lady looked at The SIBB like he had just slapped my baby. And then The SIBB left. We had six cans of formula, he bagged three of them before he went to the next check stand to bag some gummi worms that some girls were buying, and was talking to them about how he never bought the candy there.

W.T.F.

Driving to work, my wife and I talked about the exchange. Everything from the checker lady giving him the look of death, to the fact that he won't ever have to worry about getting on WIC because he'll never find a girl that can tolerate him. And that's when I decided, if I ever see The SIBB again, I'm going to smack him in the mouth. That's the only answer that makes sense.

So, today I solidified my place in nerdy glory. For those of you who aren't aware, I'm a History Major. Yup. Geek on. And because I didn't feel quite isolated enough from my peers, I declared a Philosophy Minor.

Take that, uber-cool kids.

But you see, that's not enough. Earlier this semester, I was inducted into Phi Alpha Theta. I figured it would look spiffy on applications to Graduate Schools later this fall. But, not to be outdone, the Philosophy nerd in me knew that it wouldn't be ethical to leave him out (see what I did there?) and earlier this evening, I was inducted into Phi Sigma Tau.

My geekiness far outweighs any you have previously come across.

So, just in case that wasn't enough, I was also awarded an Undergraduate Teaching Fellowship for next semester. I'm not sure what that means, other than some cash to go to a class and that it'll look pretty swell on an application. So, because you all care, the plan is this:
1) Finish this semester.
2) Take the GRE and CIL tests this summer
3) Work crazy hard to get applications, but most importantly, letters of recommendation in during the fall.
4) Graduate in December
5) Put our house up for sale.
6) Get accepted to every Grad School I Ever Thought About
7) Move, start the schooling process all over in a new state.

Yup, good thing I can dork-out with the best of them.