44. The Simpsons and Philosophy: While the Simpsons may appear to be just good entertainment, this course shows the deeper philosophical issues under all those “d’ohs.” [UC Berkeley]

45. Philosophy and Star Trek: Students who take this class will not only get to watch Star Trek, but delve into the issues the show discusses like time travel, a sense of reality, free will and more. [Georgetown]

46. Star Trek and Religion: Look at religion through the lens of the Star Trek world, with discussions that address both supporting and criticizing religion. [U of Indiana]

47. Myth and Science Fiction: Star Wars, The Matrix, and Lord of the Rings: Explore larger issues of myth and speculative fiction through these popular movies. [Centre College]

48. Taking Marx Seriously: The oddest thing about this course’s name is that it implies that people haven’t been taking Marx seriously, odd considering the antipathy towards the economist and social theorist since the Cold War. [Amherst]

I was a philosophy minor in college so I absolutely appreciate creating these courses to serve a diverse student population. But Philosophy of the Simpsons? What can one learn in that course?! And isn’t any “Philosophy of [Insert TV Show Name Here]” really just a study of the perspectives on life of the show’s writers? I mean, it’s not like there is an actual Homer Simpson where we can study his life and times.

Anyway, head over to their site to take a look at the entire list. It’s pretty entertaining!

As I was going home I tried to piece together more of the mystery in my mind. The car key, specifically, was in my hand because it was bigger than the other keys. “Why does that matter,” I thought. I remembered I used it as a tool – it was pressing down on a small piece of metal. “What was that piece of metal,” I thought again. Then it hit me: “Wait – it was something on my laptop keyboard!”

I remembered using the car key on my key chain to try to fix the backspace button on my laptop. A few weeks ago the backspace button came flying off of my laptop keyboard. Apparently, I was pressing down on it to hard and over the course of the last three years that I’ve owned this machine (best computer I’ve ever had, by the way) I managed to bend some piece of the metal that held the hinge of the key in place. To bend the piece of metal back, I tried to use my car key so that the two hard surfaces would press against each other.

But as I was driving home last night, I remembered that my car key was too big for this job and that I had to go into my desk drawer to get a small tool. In my desk drawer I have a plastic box where I put my stuff so I can avoid the drawer turning into your typical “junk drawer.” Some of you may know where this is heading at this point in the story…

I finally got home from work last night, went up to my desk, opened the drawer, opened the plastic box, and guess what was looking back at me? That’s right – my keys. I guess in the heat of the moment when I was fixing my backspace button (which I DID fix and which works wonderfully now), I just dropped my keys into that plastic box and thought nothing of it.

As Homer Simpson would say, “D’oh!”

Anyway, I know that some of the entries on this blog are coming up days past when they should have been uploaded. That’s my fault. Many of you know that I tend to write a lot of these entries days in advance unless something ridiculous pops up (like losing my keys), in which case I take the scheduled update and push it out to a further date. Well, lately I’ve been hitting the “Save Draft” button in WordPress instead of the “Publish” button and I couldn’t tell you why. I’m in the process of fixing that oversight on my part, so updates should run more fluently from now on. I’ve had an update on this blog everyday since I merged JerseySmarts.com and Joe’s Journal in November 2008 and I don’t plan on breaking the streak any time soon!