Remember that time I killed Betty White?

Cautiously optimistic? No. Not even a little. If the twenty-first century has taught us anything, it's that one should always prepare for anything and everything to go sideways at any moment. Like, at this point, nothing would surprise me.

Sure, why not?

"You're welcome."

-Pope Gregory XIII

Traditionally, as the planet's odometer rolls over, one usually looks back and evaluates one's life and sets new intentions--resolutions if you will--for the new year. Not for any particular reason, I mean, the calendar is an arbitrary construct cooked up by some sixteenth century Pope who didn't like that Easter wasn't consistently happening in the spring. There's nothing particular 2022-ish about the planet's rotation around the sun and you can evaluate your life over any period without adhering to some meaningless three hundred sixty-five day span. You know how I know it's meaningless? Because of something called the Sunshine Protection Act. 

Too close is whatever this guy from
Kentucky most of us can't stand says it is.

You know how twice a year most of us have to adjust to either losing or gaining an hour because of some weird holdover to eighteenth century agriculture even though increasing few of us are three-hundred year old famers? Well like an inconvenienced pope, the U.S. Senate passed a bill back in March that would abolish this nonsense. And they passed it unanimously, which is amazing because these people can't even agree on anything. Anything. Not even on how close to an election is too close to let a President seat a Supreme Court Justice.  

And I'm sure the few remaining farmers not
bought out by agri-conglomerations are just
as happy to keep Daylight Savings Time.

Ok, great. I mean, it's kind of pointless now that everything with a cell connection automatically adjusts to the correct time, but fine, better late than never, right? Well, I guess we'll never know. The House failed to vote on the bill and now we're still stuck with this dumb relic of a bygone era. But the point here is that how we perceive and interact with time was up for a vote, or would have been had the relevant bipartisan committee been able to reach consensus on...something. Doesn't matter, the point is the whole thing is just something we made up.

New Year's is already a pretty thin excuse to
drink, and some "In Memoriam" list isn't going
to make it feel any more earned, so go nuts.

Speaking of making things up, the other made up thing we tend to do at this completely meaningless point in an equally meaningless continuum is list--for reasons I'm still not sure I understand--people who have died in the last year. Really I think it's because people who write things on the internet are just looking for filler material so they can knock off early and drink. But I'm not going spend a lot of time on that this year. Not because I'm better than that--I'm not--and not because we just did the whole thing about Daylight Savings Time. 

But because last time I think I may have unwittingly cursed Betty White by going out of my way to point out how dead she wasn't only to have her die like an hour and a half later. Mine is a terrible power and while I'd like to think I'd use it for good, I just can't be sure.

Sorry, that one was on me.

Today in a middle-finger to the housing crisis:

A quarter of a billion dollars. A quarter of a billion. Let that sink in...huh? What's that? You can't? Yeah, me neither, but then neither you nor I are likely to be in the market for an apartment that costs that much either. Or, I don't know, maybe you are. And if that's the case, wanna hang out? Yeah, what am I on about? Oh, right, this:

Sorry, I should be more specific. I'm talking about the
soulless, gleaming spire of excess on the right there.

Is guillotine-ably wealthy already a
 phrase or did I just coin it?

And to answer your first question, yes, thanks to You Tube, I suddenly have opinions about the architectural landscape of a city I don't live in. Don't worry about it. Anyway, that blight on the New York City skyline is Central Part Tower, and is among the tallest residential buildings in the world. It's part of the city's billionaire row. A clump of super tall, super skinny, super expensive residential skyscrapers that cater to the toxically wealthy. Like, the kind of people who, in any other time and place in history, would have been carried off by an angry mob.

And possibly, on some of the
higher floors, stunning views
of the Irish coast.

To be clear, I'm not pro-angry mob, but I just feel like there shouldn't be such a thing as billionaires much less so many billionaires as to warrant an entire row. Although weirdly, nobody asked me. but where was I? Oh, right, Central Park Tower and it's penthouse that costs two hundred and fifty million dollars. That's a quarter of a billion. With a "B". The other apartments in the--huh? No, not bollars, the "B" is in billion. As I was saying, is a quarter billion is too much for you, there are other spaces available ranging from six and a half to sixty-three million. With an "M." Which is still way too much money. Yes, these apartments have square footage in the thousands, access to rooftop gardens, stunning views of Central Park, and Manhattan, and, one presumes, an inflated sense of self worth that comes with having your ears pop on the elevator ride up. But at what cost? What's that? Exorbitant cost? Well, obviously. I mean metaphorically.

I take a shameful amount of pleasure
in knowing that that all-white furniture is
going to show stains like nobody's business.

When I say they're too much money, I don't mean too much money for a fancy apartment, I mean too much money period. No one should be allowed to have that much, right? Like, is it crazy to have some limits on the amount of wealth individuals can control? Not to get all Elizabeth Warren on you here, but the government prints money so we don't have to barter, not so some asshat can sit atop a one hundred floor middle finger hocking loogies down upon the plebs walking their dogs in Central Park. 

The average home price in the US is $350,000. I did the math and a quarter billion dollars would buy like seven hundred houses. Which brings us back to the angry mob, and again, I'm not saying we storm billionaire's row. I mean, that's not actually much of a plan as rich people usually keep their money in banks and stocks and not in a vault where they can swim in it. But maybe, I don't know, can't we tax them or something? 

I'd almost respect the ultra-rich if they swam around
in their money instead of just hoarding it.

It's -7º and people have iPhones now so...

If New York is a finger gun pointing at Canada,
NYC is down by the wrist, the thumb is trees, and
 Rochester is mid-knuckle on the index finger.

You may already know this, but while I've lived in Santa Cruz, California for the better part of the last decade or so, I am, in fact, from Rochester, NY. It's a medium-sized city on Lake Ontario, about an hour east of Buffalo. If that's more information than you need, I'm sorry, I just that I often find myself having to offer geographical context when telling people where I'm from. It's been my experience that most people out here aren't aware that New York City is attached to an entire state. I mention this because it made me feel incredibly old this morning.

"At least we're not Buffalo..."

-The City of Rochester's motto

No, not the finger gun thing, but the news. You see Rochester, like much of the country, is being pummeled by a once-in-a-generation, absolute goat-rodeo of a winter storm right now. Power lines are down, flights are canceled, and local news stations are, for reasons passing understanding, sending reporters out into the Siberian conditions to narrate how unlivable conditions are right now. The key take aways are one: Buffalo is getting this storm way worst than Rochester.

And two: Everyone on the news is twelve years old. Twelve! I mean, look at this:

Pictured: a bunch of twenty year-olds producing local TV news
 pieces that no one under sixty will likely ever watch.

Above: the kind of swagger and confidence only
immobile 1980's news anchor hair can project.

To be clear, I don't usually watch local news--I'm not that old--but I did check out WHAM's website this morning to see what's happening. I'm sure it's just because I haven't seen the local news, much less the local news from my home town in years, but the anchors and reporters used to be, you know, a hundred. Part of this phenomenon is that, as a child, anyone older than oneself is impossibly ancient. The other part is a weird assumption your brain makes when you move somewhere else that everything you leave behind remains just as you left it.

Which, of course, it doesn't. Time marches on. Our family and friends age, get married, have kids, and our local TV anchors get replaced by twenty-somethings who stand outside in sub-zero temperatures and read the news off of their actual phones. 

I mean, at some point you'd think they could let the reporters stay 

inside and just tell viewers to read the news off their own phones.

Today in rotational symmetry:

I mean, I don't know about you, but I've managed to go my entire life without accidentally drawing a swastika. It's just not a thing that happens, and yet:

"I don't see the--oh! Oh no..."

-Everyone

It suspect it's less about the anti-semitism
for Don, and more about hating the NYT.

Yeah, that was Sunday's New York Times crossword puzzle and you might notice that it looks a little, what's the word? Nazi-ish? Which has understandably upset, well, everyone. And, to make things even worse, Sunday was first day of Hanukkah. Even Donald Trump Jr. expressed outrage, declaring it "Disgusting!" Which, eww...kind of weird being on the same side as Don Jr. I think we're all going to need a shower after this one, but how even can something like this happen?

Pictured: some white nationalists seen
here waving their fun whirlpool flags.

According to the puzzle's author:

"I had originally tried to make it work in a 15X15 grid, but then decided to expand the grid out to a Sunday-size puzzle with a fun whirlpool shape. Hope you enjoy!"

-Ryan McCarty on how he came up 

with his twenty-third, and probably 

last, New York Times crossword

Really, our beef is with direct
 isometries in Euclidian space.

The Jewish Chronicle reached out to the Times' department of unsatisfying and vaguely insulting explanations and was told, preposterously, that:

"This is a common crossword design: Many open grids in crosswords have a similar spiral pattern because of the rules around rotational symmetry and black squares."

-The New York Times privilege 'splaining 

rotation symmetry to the Jewish Chronicle 

"Of course, we're the idiots!"

-all of us, apparently

Which, when you think about it is kind of a weird way to say: "We here at the New York Times offer our deepest and most sincere apologies for the harm and offense our error has caused. The Sunday crossword puzzle's similarity to a symbol associated with hatred and suffering was unacceptable and the result of a catastrophic failure on the part of our staff. We are launching an immediate investigation into how this has happened." In fact, their response sounds more like condescension from an organization that should know why they're in the wrong here.

But even if there is some logistical or mathematic reason why a crossword puzzle could resemble a swastika, and this is all an honest mistake, you'd think the similarity alone would be enough to make them avoid using that layout. You know, because of the swastika-ness.

"If anything it's our reader's fault for getting offended and for not being
more conversant in the conventions of crossword puzzle construction."

-The New York Times, basically

Today in major announcements:

Pwa ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha--sharp intake-- ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

-Everyone

No, body shaming is not ok. Although he
is on tape bragging about sexual assault to Billy
Bush, so I'm going to make an exception here.

Laughing at, not with. At. I mean, NFT trading cards of the former host of The Apprentice as a cowboy or a super hero or whatever that cost a hundred dollars apiece has to be a joke, like, he's got to be kind of in on it, but we're still going to laugh at him and not with him. At because of the impossible hubris of a doughy septuagenarian who lost the popular vote twice thinking that anyone but the most ignorant MAGA goon would ever shell out for--oh shit, they are going to buy these, aren't they?

The rabid-foam target audience.

Yup. And not even ironically. There are almost certainly people out there who will pay money, like actual dollars, to a deluded gameshow host turned electoral college winner who incited a mob to try and overthrow two and a half centuries of American democracy. All for imaginary trading cards. NFT's, if you recall, don't exist as physical objects, but rather data. Data that only exists on a server somewhere. A server with a massively outsized carbon footprint. Also, crypto currency is in the mix somehow?

Throw in the former president/wanna be autocrat, and you have everything that's wrong with the twenty-first century: Right-wing extremism, willful ignorance, speculative capitalism, and environmental recklessness, all rolled into one narcissistic fever dream of inflated self-worth.  

Hey, remember that time he mocked a reporter's disability? Yeah, that's
got nothing to do with this other than that's how I picture him: waving his arms and
slurring his speech to make fun of someone's physical impairment. But hey look,
you can give him a hundred dollars for a picture of him cosplaying a sheriff.

Molly Brown: it's staring them right in the face.

To be clear, it was probably
somewhat less funny at the time.

I don't know who said it, Steve Allen maybe? I don't know, the internet is kind of vague on this point, but regardless have you ever heard the old expressions that comedy is tragedy plus time? I thinks it's related to the idea that something terrible, like a natural disaster or a war is off limits as a source of humor, until it's sufficiently removed from us in time that it's ok to laugh at. For example, the bubonic plague that killed some two hundred million. Hilarious, right? Sure, because it was seven hundred years ago. 

Or World War One. It was much more recent, but it all started because one archduke was assassinated and the European political landscape was so badly designed that it triggered a bunch of treaty obligations and plunged dozens of countries into a war that left twenty million dead. So in many ways, WWI was one of history's dumbest wars.

Archduke Franz Ferdinand was evidently a load-bearing archduke.

Above: James Cameron, seen here explaining
to Kate Winslet how the door couldn't possibly
support her, Leonardo DiCaprio and the director.

And then there's the Titanic. 1912's most famous floating allegory of class inequality and hubris to ever sink into the icy depths of the North Atlantic. It's fair game now. It went down over a hundred and ten years ago. The last survivor--a British woman who was two months old at the time of the sinking--has passed away. And James Cameron has already reduced the story to a tale of two horny kids screwing in a Model T. We can look back on that catastrophic loss of human life and laugh, right? And also make two billion dollars...

There's so much find humor in. Like, did you know that White Star Lines President Phillip Alright Small Franklin--huh? Yeah, all that's his name. Rich people, amiright? Anyway, upon hearing that the ship was in trouble he remarked, in a quote that must have aged like milk, that the ship was unsinkable. Unsinkable! 

"You see when I said unsinkable, what I meant was--uh--just that, um...metaphorically
speaking it wasn't...hey, is that someone assassinating an Archduke over there?"

-White Star Line President P.A.S. Franklin,

shortly before speeding away in his Model T

Move over Oscar Wilde...

See? Comedy. But I'm not sure that it isn't too soon for poop jokes about the Titanic. Why is he brining up poop jokes? you might reasonably wonder? Because of this. I found this today while shopping for--what do you mean "This what?" This. Look at the picture on the right. It's a "Lavatory Mist" called Titanic. What's a lavatory mist? Also a reasonable question. It's a--I don't know--perfume? I guess? That you spray in a bathroom to mask the odor of, you know, the bathrooms. It almost certainly doesn't work, but whatever, we'll get to that. The problem is, I mean, read the damn bott-fine, I'll read it. It says: "It's the largest steamer in the world!" You see, because steamer can mean poop. Because word play.

Pictured: the bottle of toilet spray
I'm having an argument with.

If you flip it over, the copy on the back invites you to "Drop your trunks and relax!" and goes on to say "Forecast: Smooth movement ahead...enjoy a luxurious ride atop this mighty steamer...leave nothing but a beautiful scent in your wake." Which, couple of things. First of all, they used "steamer" twice, and also, I'm confused, you don't ride atop a boat. You ride on or in. And it doesn't even work as a poop joke. You don't ride the--look, it doesn't matter, I think they just wanted to say "steamer" again. Secondly, I'm not sure if whoever wrote this is familiar with how the human digestive or olfactory systems work, but no, there is no combination of "vetiver & rose" or any other scent, natural or artificial, that is going to convince anyone that what happened in a bathroom didn't happen. And that's ok, everyone poops. There's even a book about it. 

I guess what I take issue with here is not only the idea that the manufacturers of Titanic Lavatory Mist are turning the drowning of fifteen hundred people into a load of strained bathroom puns (sorry). It's that they're doing so in an attempt to capitalize on the sense of shame people feel over basic human body functions. It's a shitty marketing tactic (again, sorry), and it is they who should be ashamed. And yes, to answer next your question, if you know me there's a decent chance you're getting this for Christmas.

Also, can you believe they missed the opportunity to say that 
their product is endorsed by The Unstinkable Molly Brown?

Today in arm-chair prisoner exchanges:

"How dare you!"

-Some troll

What kind of person sees something like this and--like, you've got to be a miserable, bitter, troll of a human being to hear about how WNBA player Brittney Griner was freed from a Russian prison and complain about how it was accomplished. Here's Kevin McCarthy sharing his unsolicited opinion on how he would have--sorry, in fairness I guess it was solicited, I mean, whoever interviewed him on Fox News presumably asked him what he thought but yikes. I mean, just yikes...

No please, tell us how you would
have gotten her out, hmmmm?

"I'm glad an American is coming home. She was arrested for a trumped up charge...but to exchange the merchant of death for this? It's made us weaker, it's made Putin stronger, and it's made Americans more vulnerable."

-Representative Kevin McCarthy,

who didn't free Brittany Griner,

arm-chair prisoner exchanging

Hey, Representative McCarthy, I think it's pronounced: I'm glad an American is coming home. Full stop. I know it's the GOP's entire job and platform to find fault in literally everything the administration does, but holy shit. 

If the Biden Administration's cancer moonshot program cured cancer tomorrow,
Kevin McCarthy would be on Fox News blaming them for ruining Pfizer. 

Not for nothing, but isn't Walmart
an arms dealer that's been supplying 
terrorists for years? Serious question.

The Merchant of Death is the supervillain name of Viktor Bout, an arms dealer who admittedly is a monster having supplied terrorists around the world. So maybe the twitter trolls have a point? How is a basketball player worth letting this guy out? It's a fair question and exactly the kind of thing someone whose loved one isn't being held in a Russian prison might ask. Speaking of, the other criticism being levied at the exchange is coming from people who think the administration should have traded Bout for Paul Whelan instead.

"Or maybe not. I'm capricious."

-the guy the runs Russia

Whelan is a former Marine arrested in Russia for espionage. Probably erroneously, but regardless, no one deserves to be a pawn in international relations, not even a Marine who was kicked out of the corps for dereliction of duty, lying, and writing bad checks. And in fact we--the U.S. that is--have been trying to exchange Bout for Whelan for ages, but Russia wouldn't trade. But they would trade for Griner so, there you go. Also, the fact that Russia was unwilling to hand him over suggests there's something there, or at least that Russia genuinely believes there is.

"Nobody locks Americans up on
bullshit drug charges but us!"

-America

Look, I don't know anything about anything (like most people chiming in on the internet), and I genuinely hope we secure Whelan's release as well, but according to my research (of his wikipedia page, so you know, thorough) he's an ex-Marine with multiple passports who liked to brag about his Russian FSB (a post Soviet KGB rebranding) contacts. I have no idea if he was spying, but it's not impossible that he was spying, right? But Brittney Griner is definitely a civilian basketball player up on a nonsense drug charge who had the added advantage of being the one Putin was actually willing to let go.

So I guess the question is are the people loosing their shit--ok, the Republicans losing their shit--over this upset because the Biden administration got an American out of Russian prison and they didn't or that they traded for a queer woman of color rather than a white ex-Marine?

Both, it's both. 100%.

The perfect holiday gift for your loathed ones!

Did you ever see the movie Elf? Yeah, I didn't, but it's a pretty popular holiday movie, so just by living in the world, I've unwillingly absorbed some awareness of it. Pop culture osmosis I guess. Anyway, there's a scene in it in which Will Ferrell--who's a human raised by elves I guess?--eats spaghetti covered in maple syrup and candy. 

This movie is not for me.

Above: a goddamned milkshake, and
we should all stop lying to ourselves.

The joke here is that elves love sugar. And I'm not entirely sure how this is any different from the sugar-loaded breakfast cereals we give to kids, or, for that matter, the soda, candy, and Starbucks nonsense we Americans consume regularly, but there you go. It's a movie, it's funny, whatever. But in our hyper capitalist dystopia, nothing can just be a thing. Everything has to be a tie-in, or a cross marketing opportunity, or a transmedia chimera of corporate synergy. And gross elf breakfast is no different, because you can now buy a Buddy the Elf Spaghetti kit.

Are the people who subscribe to
HelloFresh aware that they can buy
food in stores? Because they can.

HelloFresh, one of those companies whose ads you fast forward through while listening to podcasts, has partnered, or collaborated, or just paid for the licensing rights to the film to foist this upon an already super-addled unsuspecting public. HelloFresh, you might recall, sells "meal kits" which are boxes of individually wrapped ingredients and instructions on how to assemble and cook meals. So it's like real cooking, but with way more packaging waste and a far higher carbon footprint.

There is a finite amount of matter in the 
universe, so in a sense everything is limited. This
is just artificial scarcity designed to sell things.

The kit contains everything you need to replicate the nauseating sight of Will Ferrel forcing syrup-sodden pasta into his face, and it only cost fifteen dollars. And you know, dignity. And by everything, I mean Colavita brand spaghetti (synergy upon synergy!), maple syrup, chocolate syrup, marshmallows, cereal, and candy. The bad news is that it's already sold out. Which, I mean, as a licensed meal kit based on a holiday movie trading entirely on nostalgia, the very concept of "sold out" is taken to new and dizzying heights. Although you will have to wait for a restock. 

But I suppose that the good news here is that you don't need HelloFresh to assemble this for you. I mean, you could just drive to the grocery store and buy these horrible things, mix them in a bowl and go to town. Or you could, I don't know, not do that. You'll probably live longer.

This holiday, give the gift of type 2 diabetes.

You're the Count of Brandenburg, Brant...

Pictured: The university neither
you nor I neither work at nor attend.

Well, I just think that the University of Arizona is making a huge mistake and--wait, where are you going? I'll explain. I'm not just going to drop an unsolicited opinion about a university with which I have no connection and then leave you hanging. So a friend posted on Facebook about how the University of Arizona, for which he works, suspended admissions to their BFA in Musical Theatre and is planning to gut their live theatre programs in order to concentrate on film and television. 

Above: one of the many dogs neither
you nor I have in this or any hunt.

There are currently three different scenarios being looked at, which I'll sum up because I know you're busy and, if you're anything like me, you don't actually live in Arizona. One would kill the BFA in Musical Theatre, reduce the number of staged productions and turn the BA in Theatre into a BA in Live and Screened Performance. Scenario two would eliminate live theatre as an area of study and go full film and television. And the third sounds kind of similar to the other two, but also outlines plans to turn one of the school’s theatres into a sound stage. Boo...

All of this is coming from documents written by Brant Law Pope, the new interim director of the University's School of Theatre, Film, and Television, and leaked to the public by a Facebook group called Saveaztheatre. A group who would like to, you know, save University of Arizona's theatre...uh...program.

Leaks are all the rage nowadays, isn't that right Justice Alito?

So where's the school’s MFA
in Acting for TikTok?

Pope's rationale for--or is it Law Pope's? I don't know, let's call him BLP. BLP makes the case that student interest in movies and television far outstrips that of live theatre and also that there are more careers in screen acting and production than in live theatre. And to the first point, sure, but kids don't always make the best choices either. College kids use emojis but that doesn't mean you throw out the English program to teach them how to compose better Tweets. As for careers, what percentage of college football players go pro?

Go on, guess. One point six percent. And that's not me knocking sports, I'm just saying that not everything kids do is expected to directly lead to a career. 

I rest my case.

I

"You keep my patron's name
out of your damn mouth."

-Bach

And sure, BLP does admit that a theatre education has "collateral benefits," but he quickly moves into arguing that those benefits aren't worth it financially because musical theatre "NEVER makes money." His caps, not mine, because I know that's not how capital letters work. And I didn’t even go through the University of Arizona's MFA program in Writing for Leaked Documents. He goes on:

"There is no prospect, NONE, of having a Count of Brandenburg who is going to underwrite our Bach to pay for our musical theatre art making." 

-Brant Law Pope, evoking 

the Count of Brandenburg

to argue against patronage

Pictured: Brant Law Pope,
Count of Brandenburg.

But I mean, you're the Count of Brandenburg, Brant. Or rather the school is. Or at least it's supposed to be. Art isn't art because it makes money, usually art costs money. The collateral benefits he brushes off are the benefits. Creative expression, social commentary, public speaking skills, the smug superiority of getting to start conversations with "whilst attending the theatre last night..." aren't just bonuses of theatre, they're its value to the community. What he's talking about is commercial theatre, which yeah, isn't always successful, but the same can be said of both film and television. Did you see Morbius? No, neither did I. Even with all the marketing money and test audiences and demographic analyses behind it, there is still the risk that the end result will be dumb and nobody will want to see it.

I suppose the difference here is that film and television are almost universally regarded as product rather than art (which itself is kind of a bummer), and that that is how it's supposed to be. Which it's not, and I'm not saying that there's no artistic merit in something produced for the screen. There is. Even something big and commercially successful can be art. 

Not everyone who goes through UA's program will go on
to create the next Cocaine Bear. I mean, let's hope...

Above: CG Mark Hamill proving that
Disney will be able to exploit the
actor's likeness for decades to come.

But it's unfair and unrealistic to present an education in film and television as something that will lead to stable careers in those fields, and theatre as something that will not. It seems like BLP is saying that screens are the future and he just wants to future-proof the school. Cool. But what if there's no such thing as future-proof? Digital technology is getting better and cheaper all the time and it's entirely possible the industry won't need actors by the time this year's class graduates. There will be jobs sure, but for coders, not actors.

Which is a totally legitimate field. It would be a bleak, video game-less world without them. And I'm not down on movies either. I like movies and television, everyone does. But I love theatre. And again, I don't live in Arizona, college is a hazy memory at this point, and I have no stake in this outside of a firm belief that which arts kids have access to should never be down to a simple financial equation of which ones make the school the most money.

It's a belief that separates ours from the grim, empty existence of people who choose
to study business. Sure, they're smiling and are financially stable, but they're dead inside.