CBS’s ‘Unforgettable’ is David Adler’s ‘Cam Jansen’ all grown up.

When I was little I used to read two fringe kid’s mystery book series. One was The Bailey School Kids, which I have now taken upon myself to rewrite for an older, more mature audience. The other was the Cam Jansen Mysteries, which focused on a girl with a photographic memory who always caught the bad guy by remembering something key about whatever she needed to remember to catch the bad guy.

Tonight I went to say goodnight to the household when I noticed my parents were watching some show where a woman can remember everything based on the scenes she sees. Turns out it’s CBS’s newest pointless crime-drama show Unforgettable.

“That’s Cam Jansen all grown up,” I said. My parents, who used to cart my tiny little nerd ass to the library to get all these books, looked at each other and nodded in agreement.

At this rate, I’m waiting for HBO to pick up my “Bailey School Teens” idea.

It was a Good Day.

I just spent the last hour drinking beer and spinning that “modernized first line” of The Metamorphosis into a full-blown “Tik Tok” parody. This morning I found out I won a poetry competition and I ate the best tasting apple I’ve had in a long time.

If this is a prelude to how things are going to be after I graduate, the future is gonna be bitchin’.

Kafkaesque

After reading Franz Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis,” I can’t kill an insect because now I think that every giant cockroach I see is just a dude having a really shitty day.

Also, an updated first line:
“As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself feeling like P. Diddy.”

Economics 101 - TV Party

Previously, my professor has mentioned to the class that he does not own a television. Instead, as readers of this blog know from the lesson “Homework,” he reads copious amounts of stuff. Today someone asked what he does instead of watch the boob tube.

Well, that set him on a rant.

“Did you know that your brain starts functioning properly when you stop watching television for three months? When I go to a friend’s house and watch I can feel my brain start to change. It gets slow, shallow, and superficial. You can’t process the phenomena around you.” He stopped the rant to talk about the textbook material, but not for long. Soon after we started talking about the text, he asked about freedom in the post-9/11 Western culture. He then mentioned that all libraries in the United States must provide information to the federal government.
For example, if I was to walk into my public library at home and check out a copy of the Qur’an, the library’s system will send my personal information (name, address, phone number, other books I’ve checked out, etc, etc) to the FBI. Simply because I checked out a book. Slightly ‘Big Brother’-y, n’est pas?
Yet anyone can get information on the internet without having the federal government immediately contacted. As my professor said, “Any hobo can post something online, go to the public library and print off a New York Times article, hold it up, and say, “Look!”“

Then we rolled back around to the television rant. He told us the main goal of the class wasn’t just to study Macroeconomics, it was to “get our brains to process things the right way.” He then mentioned that the first two months without television are kind of like going through withdrawals.

“I know I’m talking to the number one television culture in the world and I know to you I’m just the crazy German guy right now. I had a professor tell me to do the same thing I’m telling you to do, and I thought he was a nutcase. So I know.”

The moral of the story is that once you stop watching television, buy your books because the library is part of an overarching government conspiracy to spy on the American people. Either that or read the books while in the library and don’t check them out. Also, get outside and walk around.