Not-registration! ...and almost non-graduation

This is the good part about being a second-semester senior: whenever people tell you all about how they're trying frantically to arrange their courses for next semester, or how they really hope they get into this or that section, or how they've set up a Heartbreaking Schedule of Staggering Genius with a five-day weekend--any of this--you get to smile and gloat to yourself (or not to yourself) about how you don't have to worry about these things.

Ever again.

Never, ever, ever-

-except, of course, for next year, when you enter law school. Heh. Right.

But until then, this is total relax-y time.

Except, in my case, I had a slight hiccup with me degree audit... it seems that the course I'd put down to fulfill one of the requirements for my Creative Writing concentration did not fulfill that requirement. The requirement in question being "African American, Asian American, Latino American, Caribbean, Transnational or Post-Colonial Literature," the course in question being Eng 256, Gender and Genre in Asian-American Literature. The problem being that that requirement actually calls for a 300-level or higher course, which Eng 256, naturally, is not. How do I not notice these things? No clue. At any rate, I ran panicking to a department advisor first thing after my internship today, confirmed that another course on my transcript does fulfill the req, and got a lovely letter saying that that course is to be substituted for the previous one. Yay!

In other news, I've actually been managing to do non-school stuff recently. Had a splendid time at karaoke with friends a couple weekends ago. I have made it my mission to discover the most un-karaoke-able song in the songbooks;I used to think the best example was Johnny Cash's "Folsom Prison Blues," but now I've decided it's really Johnny Mandel's "Suicide is Painless." (yes, I also sing songs that aren't depressing. But those aren't as funny).

Also: can someone please explain to me who comes up with the music videos that go with karaoke songs? Because I've seen "Mack the Knife" accompanied by a Japanese girl playing with a shark hand puppet,and "(Ghost) Riders in the Sky" with women in swimsuits on the beach.

Incidentally, I linked to the Bobby Darrin/Louis Armstrong version of "Mack the Knife" because it's all well-known and stuff, but really, the best English rendition is the Manheim/Willett translation--seen here performed by Nick Cave with somewhat corny theatricality--which captures the simple brutality of Brecht's original lyrics