Smoke Grenades
Thursday, December 06, 2007
Smoke Grenades
This, is a smoke grenade. They come in a few different colors like red, green, blue, and the normal white smoke you see when you try to burn a pile of dead leaves. The thick smoke created by a single canister is capable of concealing your position on a battlefield for an extended period of time. One canister usually lasts about five minutes or so, and the smoke lingers for a long time especially in the woods where the wind is not strong most of the time. Even if you are not trying to fight the enemy either because you have ran out of ammunition or you are too afraid to go on, throwing a smoke grenade is always a smart thing to do because nobody is going to be able to see through that thick cloud of smoke as you are trying to escape. Of course, the smoke that pours out of the canister is usually too blind to differentiate between friends and foes, which also means that you might accidentally bump into your enemy because you can't find your way through the woods. Nonetheless, the smoke grenade is a very helpful weapon on the battlefield when you are trying to fool the enemies of your position and strategies, and the word 'smoked' became a common term in the army whenever we were forced to do something completely pointless or stupid. To say that "We got smoked!" would mean that the enemy threw a smoke grenade and fooled us, something like that.
This, is a smoke grenade. They come in a few different colors like red, green, blue, and the normal white smoke you see when you try to burn a pile of dead leaves. The thick smoke created by a single canister is capable of concealing your position on a battlefield for an extended period of time. One canister usually lasts about five minutes or so, and the smoke lingers for a long time especially in the woods where the wind is not strong most of the time. Even if you are not trying to fight the enemy either because you have ran out of ammunition or you are too afraid to go on, throwing a smoke grenade is always a smart thing to do because nobody is going to be able to see through that thick cloud of smoke as you are trying to escape. Of course, the smoke that pours out of the canister is usually too blind to differentiate between friends and foes, which also means that you might accidentally bump into your enemy because you can't find your way through the woods. Nonetheless, the smoke grenade is a very helpful weapon on the battlefield when you are trying to fool the enemies of your position and strategies, and the word 'smoked' became a common term in the army whenever we were forced to do something completely pointless or stupid. To say that "We got smoked!" would mean that the enemy threw a smoke grenade and fooled us, something like that.
So why did I give you a lesson on smoke grenades, when I am usually reluctant to revisit those days when I acquired my military knowledge? The truth is because yesterday, which was supposedly the last day of the exams as well as the semester, wasn't nearly as enjoyable as I hoped it to be because someone decided to throw an imaginary smoke grenade into the cohort of communication students. Me, being a communication student, was directly in the path of the smoke grenade when it erupted on the ground, and the awful taste of melted moth balls and vinegar filled my nostrils and mouth as we all tried to drag our ways through the ragged rocks on the ground. This idiotic person who threw the smoke grenade was none other than my racist lecturer, the same one I mentioned the other time who made racist remarks against her own race - which is doubly bad in terms of racism. She did what the Devil couldn't do, and that was to forever fool the world about his existence. We knew that she's a lazy, inconsiderate, racist and unreasonable bitch to begin with, but you don't exactly expect your lecturer to mislead what is supposed to be covered in your exams. It is certainly not in the teacher's position to mislead the students and then causing them to fall for her trap. It is both unethical as a teacher and just, plain, wrong.
Right before we took our breaks for studying one week before the finals, she was kind enough to spare a few minutes in class to go through what was going to be covered in the upcoming exams. She claimed that she has set the paper already, and was able to give us a brief outlook on what we can expect from the finals. Of course, this is the same lecturer who copied and pasted the whole set of online quizzes from the textbook's online resource website and used it for our mid-terms paper. When it comes to credibility, this woman shouldn't be trusted very much. However, no matter how bad a teacher is, you just don't expect her to tell you the wrong things, especially not when we are speaking of exams. She told us a few specific chapters to study, and to focus on those chapters in order for us to do fine in the finals paper. There were five chapters mentioned, and they were: Social Penetration Theory, Uncertainty Reduction Theory, Meta-communication of the Interactional View, Cognitive Dissonance and the Pentads from Dramatism. The exact words from her were," Study these chapters, and you will be good to go." We should have known what was coming, we should have known.
Judging from how she actually lifted her questions and answers from the online website the other time, there was a high chance that she'd do the same this time around. There was still a slight chance of her setting the paper herself, but you can't change the laziness in a pig just as you can't change the stripes on a tiger. I told Azhar before the paper, that if he flips open the cover page and sees a familiar question, pump his fist into the air as a signal that we are going to finish the paper in less than ten minutes. At least that was what we were all hoping to see, because who wouldn't want your lecturers to be lazy in this way? So we waited for the papers to be distributed, and the words on the back of the paper stared boldly back at us. It was basically a statement telling us not to turn over the booklet, unless being told to do so. And underneath those words, I could barely make out the last few questions of the paper, and I was tempted to check them out before the exam officially started. So I took a peek under the light, and realized that I have never read anything about Edward Hall in any of those chapters mentioned. I uttered a soft vulgarity, and some of the people around me must have heard it. But I wasn't sure, I still gave her the benefit of a doubt. That all came crashing down the moment we started the paper.
If you have a chance to look back into the audience during a horror movie in the cinema, it'd be interesting to examine the faces of the crowd and see how they gasp at the very same time and scream during the very same scene. The unanimous emotions in the theater is usually why people still go to the cinemas to watch movies, even though most of them get released on DVD in just a few months later. It is the knowledge that everybody is freaking out in the theaters instead of just yourself that is so comforting, and that was exactly what happened in the hall that morning. The moment the lot of us were told to flip open our exam paper, there was an unanimous murmur in the air of various vulgarities. Everything from the first question to the last on the first page didn't make any sense at all. Everything was from some other chapters that she mentioned in class, and none of us actually touched those chapters at all. Apparently, twenty-five questions were set for the paper and only five questions came out of the chapters that she mentioned. The other eighty percent of the questions were from everywhere else. The bitch has gotten to us - yet again.
I guess in a way, she just wanted to proof her point that Asians are just not as smart as the Americans in every way. She just wanted to see us fail this paper by feeding us the wrong information. How else do you explain why she misled everybody into studying the wrong chapters? At least that was the conclusion I came up with when I tried to answer the questions that I had no idea how to tackle, and the conclusion was that she was just trying to fuck with us in every position possible - sorry for the expression, but that's how I pictured it in my mind. I wondered how it was possible for her to sit at the front of the hall, so calmly and in that matter-of-fact manner when everybody in the hall was trying desperately not to jump out of our seats and strangle her. At one point, she even paced down the aisles in between the rows of students, as if nothing is amiss in the paper. I wanted to smash her face into the paper and ask her what the hell she was thinking when she told us to student those five chapters.
We just waited for the time to tick down to the end, and we filled in the questions we didn't know by means of distributing the dots. By that, I mean if there hasn't been an A or a B in a long time, I'd put either A or B for the question that I was unsure of. In that way, I managed to complete the paper within the given amount of time, and handed up the paper as soon as we were allowed to leave. I looked at my friend Naz as I walked over to collect my bag, and then at my friend Joyce. We didn't say much initially, but in our eyes we knew what we were all thinking. "What the fuck" was the common sentiment shared by most of us, and I just felt like my asshole was just being fucked by a baseball bat. It was a slap in the face to all of us, and she proved her point all over again as to why Asians are just dumber genetically as compared to the Americans. Oh yeah, not genetically. We just have more fucked up lecturers.
This is what I am going to do the next time I see that bitch around school again. I am going to chain her up to a chair, and then slowly enjoy my time torturing her. I am going to tell her that I am playing a game, and that there are a couple of ways in which she can get out of this murderous game. First of all, she has to confess to all her racism remarks in class, all the things she ever said about Asians and how inadequate we are. Second, she has to take back the remark concerning my sexual undertones during my presentation, because I felt that was grossly unfair to me especially when it was stated in the textbooks. Thirdly, admit to the fact that she is an inadequate teacher herself, and write a letter to Kevin that she spent most part of the semester sitting in the back of the class without teaching at all - whatsoever. Lastly, I'd like her to return my school fees, everything that I paid for this damn module - then she can leave.
Of course, that is never the end of my grand masterpiece.
You see, she told us to study those five chapters, and then 'smoked' us like smoked chickens by setting questions from every other chapter. She dropped that smoke grenade on us and got away with it, while we rolled about on the floor with baseball bats up our asses. So this time around, I am going to drop my own smoke grenade. I am going to tell her," Sorry, but I lied about the rules of the game. I created it, and thus have the right to change whatever rules I want. You are not going to get away with anything, I just wanted your confession." Then I will put a smoke grenade into her mouth and pull the clip until she is filled up with smoke, and dies as a result. Yeah, that'd be nice. That'd be nice. A villain killed by her own weapon of choice, how poetic is that?
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on Thursday, December 06, 2007 at 10:48 PM.
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