Blog has rights of passage violations

WINSTON Churchill once said "Those who do not remember history are destined to repeat it." In the Digital Age, however, all you really need to do is link to it on your blog.

That said, here are my latest entries from the Digital Slob Retroblog, where I chronicle all the important stuff that happened to me before there was a blogosphere to reduce it to key words.

Nov. 12, 1977 (9 years old): My near-school, after-school babysitter, Geneva, has a much better Lego stash than mine at home, and I think I've finally figured out how to build a Stars Wars Rebel Fighter. I got about 75 percent done before Mom picked me up, but Geneva insisted I disassemble everything and put it back in the box -- her Legos, her rules. What a rip. I thought I had copyright protections on my intellectual property, but it seems my babysitter is running a work-for-hire operation. Good thing I didn't snap together the chemical compound for the cure for cancer, because Geneva would've won the Nobel Prize.

March 20, 1978 (10 years old): Mom wasn't looking, so I finally got to watch "Three's Company" tonight. Turns out, there's two different types of men: the ones who like girls, and the ones who pretend to like boys to save on rent.

May 28, 1990 (22 years old): Despite all my efforts to extend my all-expenses-paid graduate assistantship (code named Operation Real World Firewall), I'm about to get my master's degree -- and burning bridges in the process.

Classes were a breeze after I unlocked The Secret: Professors expect you to chew up the textbook "cake" on your own, while they provide the "icing on top" during lectures.

However, at test time, no icing maker worth his weight in pomposity is going to give two hoots about that off-the-shelf cake that cost you $95, used, with the cover duct-taped together. Rather, they will grade you "on a curve" based on how well you prattle on about their wonderful icing. For professors (especially the ones without book deals), students serve as glory substitute -- kinda the way vampires will suck down rat blood in a pinch.

Therefore, all I had to do was measure each class for its average bootlicking abilities before the drop/add deadline, and stay in if I thought I was among the top 50 percent of apple polishers in the room. And, with the exception of two Public Relations classes, I always was.

But today I glanced through the take-home, pre-graduation exit exam. Six essay questions, one for each core-curriculum text -- oops.

My friend, Sandy, started the program a year before me, and was still at least a year from finishing, so I knocked on his door.

"Can I borrow your Media Economics book? I'm taking my exit exam," I said.

"You sold back your core-curriculum books?" he said. "Why? You know you need those for the exam!"

"Umm, I never actually bought my core-curriculum books," I said. Sandy's eyes rolled so hard I thought, for a second, he was having a contempt-induced seizure. But then he got me the book.

"Cheer up, Sandy. Y'know given an infinite amount of time, even a monkey could get a master's degree."

"Yeah," he said, "and it would deserve it more than you."

Curt Brandao is the Star-Bulletin's production editor. Reach him at cbrandao@starbulletin.com. See also: www.digitalslob.com