Your Finals Survival Guide

Way back in the day, my best friend and I went to a school with a bizarre scheduling policy for final exams. All normal classes were canceled and each day for three days you attended a smattering of final exams between 7:15 and 3:20. Of course this left huge chunks of the day when you were just sitting around the school, being told to be quiet and getting really bored. So my friend and I made each other survival packs which usually consisted of homemade, slightly offensive word searches, hand-drawn comics, and locker scavenger hunts that involved a bit of lock-picking.

Exams are not so different now. We proctor them, we wait around, we sit still and try to be productive but, much like Alvin and the Chipmunks' being good, it won't last. I could make you a word search, but for now I've turned to Cracked.com to find you some links that only get funnier the more tired and depressed you become. And I've tried to make it educational. Here's a few things we can learn.

1. The Past is a Strange Animal. This includes your own childhood.
Case in Point: Kids are simultaneously strangely perceptive and totally oblivious. As a youngster I was freakishly aware of the stereotypes of Native Americans and how they were wrong and bad. I also frequently danced about the house singing a song from The Great Mouse Detective that was about prostitution. Talk about not having a clue.
Here Cracked.com lists the 9 Most Racist Disney Characters. I'm a little surprised the Siamese cats from Lady and the Tramp didn't make it in, but that's only because there were so many other choices.

2. Writers of Good Books are Cracked.
Case in Point: Roald Dahl, creator of such characters as the Grand High Witch of the World, Matilda, and James of Giant Peach fame, was a freaking spy -- and he didn't get a spot on this list of 5 Authors More Bad-Ass than their Characters.

3. Saving Money is Only Good Up To a Point
Case in Point: I would save a lot of money if I didn't eat, but then again, I'd be dead in about 9-14 days after making that decision. It's cheap to only provide public education up until eighth grade, until you realize you're paying with your life when there's no doctors, dentists, or police officers in your state. Which is pretty much what's happening in these situations, the 7 Most Horrifying Cost-Cutting Decisions.

4. Badgers are the Chuck Norrises of the Animal World
Case in Point: It appears that most animals just want to get drunk and destroy things. Three cheers for evolution! Here are 6 examples of Animals That Just Don't [expletivetrailoff].

5. Death in Movies Can Be Equally Pointless as Real-Life Doom
Case in Point: It has always really bothered me that Harry Potter and the gang are so dependent on magic that they seem completely unable to improvise. I keep waiting for Harry to pull an Indiana Jones and just pull out a pistol and shoot Voldemort. I mean, why not? Or when Harry and Voldemort do that wand-connecty thing, Ron could just walk up and conk him on the head or something. Turns out, lots of movie deaths don't actually make much sense. Here's a few particularly amusing ones.