Stephen

Austin is so awesome, on so many different levels.
After we beat OSU there were three things that I had to do immediately: first off I had to jump on Aziz; secondly I had to run back to my apartment and make a victory CD, complete with Texas Fight, We Are The Champions, Eye of the Tiger, We Will Rock You, Another One Bites the Dust, Danger Zone, The Distance, Duel of the Fates, and so on, and finally ending on The Eyes Of Texas; finally I took the CD and the Aziz to go cruising down the Drag. I took the CD so that I could blare victory music for everyone to enjoy, and I took the Aziz to lean out the moon roof and yell at passerby. I popped in the CD as we turned onto Guadalupe and Aziz got into the ready position as Jefe leaned out the passenger side window. Things didn't go quite as planned.
It seems that everyone in the world had the same ideas as me: everyone and their dog showed up on the drag to cheer at pedestrians; all of them were blaring victory music or at least singing it at as loud as possible; and as soon as the Aziz stuck his torso out from the roof of my car, everyone in sight immediately jumped on him.
For once in my life my spontaneous ideas didn't seem that special, they were just the status quo. I've never felt so at home.
Guadalupe was at a stand-still. Mind you, this wasn't a "virtual stand-still" like the ones they talk about on radio traffic reports. There was literally zero movement on that street. Well, zero movement of cars I should say, because there was a lot of movement. People started to abandon their vehicles and run willy-nilly up and down the street. It was like a burnt orange tide of people flowing past the cars doing all sorts of acrobatics so that they could high-five all the hands that were protruding from every window in every car. When Jefe and Aziz and I finally decided to ditch the car and join the fun, the police had already closed off the road. When we made it to the front of the co-op we found that the crowd had taken over this old guy's convertible and there were people crawling all over it jumping and chanting. It was probably the coolest thing I've ever seen.
I'm sure that there will be plenty of people who will tell you more than you'll ever want to know about the OSU riot, so I'm not going to go into any details. I only said this much because at the end of the riot I said, "Dang, that was probably the coolest thing I've ever seen, I'm going to go write a journal entry about it." But, tonight I found another reason for Austin's awesomeness that really means a lot more to me.
Tonight I had the privilege of working with Katrina evacuees at the Austin Convention Center. And I really do mean that it was a privilege, not only because of how much I've gotten out of it, but also because so few people get that opportunity. Austin has had such a great response that they actually had more volunteers than they could ever need, so they cut off all new volunteers and are now only accepting registered Red Cross volunteers. I'm not registered with the Red Cross or anything special like that. I just happen to be in BYX so I get to tag along with the most righteous guys in Austin. There isn't a service organization in this town that doesn't have at least a handful of BYX guys in it, so you really can't do anything good in Austin without running into one of them. Connor Bingaman happened to be involved with the Red Cross, so he was able to get a couple of guys into the convention center, just to help out however we could. We really didn't do much of anything. They had this mock store where people could go and get the clothes they needed. After a week or so of thousands of people rummaging through these piles of clothes it rather looked like someone had dropped a bomb on a sweat shop. So we went to work folding and sorting the clothes. After about an hour of that with little to no visible progress I let some new volunteers take over the job. As I was walking back to the volunteer desk I saw a bunch of kids playing football in the middle of the hall. That really seemed awesome to me, just seeing the resilience of these kids. I mean, these kids had been through a lot. Austin has a pretty unique group of evacuees because they didn't really start to use the convention center for evacuees until about a week ago, so that means that the people who ended up here hadn't gotten out of New Orleans before the storm or right after; they'd been stranded for over a week before they were rescued. These kids had not only seen there homes demolished and life as they knew it destroyed, they'd also had to struggle to survive for a week before they had any sign of hope. And yet they were screaming and playing just like regular kids. As far as I know these kids could have lost one or both of their parents or they could have been separated from their families. But I never asked. I just tackled one of the kids and wrestled with him for the football.
I played with them for a while, and it really made my night. I love kids, and I love to play. The two of those together are always a good time. But this was really something beyond that. These kids really seemed to appreciate that someone was paying attention to them. They probably weren't allowed outside all that much, and I'm sure that they were constantly being told to stay quiet or to calm down. But I can't imagine that those kids got as much from that game as I did. They got a playmate, but I got these kids that really loved me for just being with them. I would have stayed and rumbled a while longer, but I felt bad because Connor and Brad were still knee deep in women's tops, sizes 6, 8 and 10, so I felt like I really should go back and help.
We waded through another couple aisles of clothes and tried to make some sort of order out of the stacks of shoes, and then I wandered off again in hopes of picking up where I had left off with the kids. I never did find them, but I did find a library of donated books. It didn't look quite as much like a library as a store room; it was filled with boxes of unpacked books. I went to work sorting out the books. There were only a few book shelves, so I filled them with kids books and tried to make stacks of other kinds of books on the floor. I had already made several stacks of spiritual books when I realized that I hadn't come across a single Bible. I searched through all the boxes and couldn't find one. As I looked through the books, I noticed that they all looked a little worn and none of them looked to be very recent, so I decided that they had all been donated by people, not publishing companies. I thought about it and I guess that of all the books I had, the last one I would donate would be my Bible. That's not a book that I would think to give away in a book drive. But it also wouldn't be the first thing I would think to save if my house started to flood. I guess I take The Word for granted even more than clothes or money. If I had to leave my home, I can see myself grabbing extra clothes and or running to get my wallet because those seem like obviousthings to take. But, really, if I went through something horrible like that, what I would need most would be spiritual healing, and taking a source of that would never occur to me. I don't really know where I'm going with this, but I spent a long time mulling that over while I was sorting out the library.
After a while I headed back to the mock store and folded a couple XXL guys shirts just to look as if I had been working. Connor said it was probably about time to head home, so we prayed out and started to leave. As we were leaving we saw signs pointing to the Chapel and Connor wanted to go check it out, so we went over to see what it was like. As we got closer we could hear this guy singing hymns along with a piano. We listened for a bit, and then Brad said that he was going to go talk to him. Connor and I followed along. He introduced himself as Albert and when we asked if he'd mind talking with us he said he would love to. We all pulled up chairs and listened as he told us his story.
He told us about how he woke up to find water waist deep in his house. Then he stole a boat from a neighbour and went around picking up anyone he could find. They eventually paddled their way to a high bridge where they stayed for a few days. His story slowed down a bit here because he kept biting his lip from a mix of grief and bitterness. He told us about how the old people who lived on his street slowly died because they couldn't get any medication, about how a girl gave birth right there on the bridge and about how her little baby boy couldn't survive in the heat. He told us about how he'd made signs begging for help that they waved at the military helicopters as they flew over head. He even told us about how he would go out and steal whatever he needed to get by.
That really surprised me. If I were in his situation, I don't think I would have called it stealing. First off he was starving; I'm pretty sure that that alone would make me rationalize stealing food. Secondly, everyone with him on the bridge was starving. If he couldn't get over the guilt to steal for himself, surely he could get food for those weaker than himself with a clean conscience. If neither of those reasons could drive him to break the eighth commandment, then he must have realized that if he did not eat that food it would just go bad. No one had any money to buy what little food was left, and so the stores weren't going to make money either way, so why not save lives by eating the food before it went to waste? Is that really stealing? Is that even really wrong?
Before too long I found out why Albert considered it stealing; the store owners considered it stealing, and they were rather vocal about their views. He told us several stories about being shot at by angry store owners. Even in the stores that had been abandoned by their owners he couldn't safely get food because they had almost all been taken over by small gangs intent on hoarding the food for themselves. When he couldn't find any more food, he started to move all the people on the bridge with him into downtown New Orleans. He showed up at the New Orleans Convention Center to find a worse situation than the one he had left. There still wasn't any food, but there were more people to fight over the few scraps they found. He couldn't sleep inside the convention center because he was too afraid. He said that every morning the police would bring new bodies out from inside: some had died from starvation or from thirst, others from lack of medical attention, but the really shocking deaths weren't because of the hurricane. Bodies that had been beaten and raped before they were killed seemed to be just as common as anything else. With so many people couped up in such a small space there was no way the police could keep order. He said it was better to sleep on the side walk out in the open than to risk staying in the shelter after dark.
On the third day he was at the convention center troops arrived from New Jersey. The security situation improved, but things didn't really get better. People were getting more and more hungry by the day, and the military did not have enough food to feed them all, so people got more and more violent. On top of that, the troops would fire at people breaking in to stores to steal food. Albert bit his lip in the same way as before when he told us of how he had seen young boys being shot down as they tried to steal enough food to survive. You could tell how much he resented the troops that came in and ordered starving, homeless people around during the day and then went home to hot meals and warm beds at night. On the third day the troops were there they brought more food, and finally everyone had something to eat. Then, that night, helicopters came in and airlifted him out of New Orleans.
Albert ended up in Austin a week and a half after the hurricane, still wearing the same wet clothes. But once he got to Austin everything was completely different. There had been no hurricane to disrupt supply lines and the convention center had plenty of security, not to mention electricity and running water. As soon as he arrived in Austin he had people helping him find a job and a place to live. After a week he found a job as a steward at the Four Seasons, and he hopes to find an apartment before too long.
His story really put things into perspective for me. I've been so caught up in my own problems lately that I really haven't been thinking enough about other people. I've been so self-pitying about all the school work that I have to do. I have a heavier semester than most people, so I really felt like I was going to have a harder time than most people. Albert would be glad to have 24 hours of class lined up, because right now he doesn't have any, and he won't even have a chance to think about enrolling anywhere until he gets his life back in order. I've been so worried about the latest speeding ticket I got and how I'm going to pay for it. I had to go apply for my old job with the psychology department because I wasn't going to be able to pay both my ticket and my rent. Albert would have loved to have that problem; he doesn't have a car to get a speeding ticket with, nor does he have an apartment to struggle to pay rent on. And to him getting a job has been a blessing, not a pain. And I've been so afraid that with all this work I wouldn't be able to spend any time with my friends.
Albert still hasn't been able to find his two kids.
That's really what has been on my heart since I got home. Albert has a 2 year-old son named Elton and a 3 year-old daughter named Destiny that he hasn't been able to get in touch with. I can't even imagine that. I've never even had kids, so I won't pretend to know what it would be like to be separated from them. It's not just like he doesn't know where they are, he's not even sure if they survived the storm of if they got out of New Orleans. And it's not like they're fully grown and they can take care of themselves. They're not even toilet trained. And yet this man has such faith that God will reunite him with his children. It took me a while to realize that he didn't necessarily mean in this life. He just trusted so fully in God's plan that he would submit to whatever He wanted, be it that he live out the rest of his years with his children at his side, or be it that he has to wait to see them when the Kingdom comes.
On top of all that, when Albert finished his story he actually asked if he could pray over us. After all that he had been through, he got down on his knees and thanked God for sending such wonderful young men to help with the relief effort.

All I had done was fold a couple t-shirts and play a little football.

It would mean a lot to me if you could just stop really quick and say a prayer for Albert and for Elton and for Destiny. I know that you've probably all heard lots of awful stories about hurricane victims, but I would appreciate it if you could devote a couple seconds to this special case. I know this has been a long entry, but it really wouldn't take that long to just ask God in your own special way to help this awesome man.
I didn't even talk about seeing the rows and rows of mattresses shoved together for sleeping, or the huge tents where people went to take showers. There were so many things there that really just overwhelmed me about tonight. I live so safe and comfortable just five minutes away. I'm used to seeing homeless people all over Austin, but this was all in one place and it was really just too much for me to take in at once.
But it wasn't too much for Austin to take in.
Not only did the people of Austin offer up too many volunteers, they also offered up too many donations. The city has already cut off all new donations, and now they're re-packaging the surplus donations to ship off to other evacuation sites that couldn't muster enough donations. Of the 5000 evacuees who arrived at the convention center a week ago, only 1200 are left. Volunteers have been working round the clock to find friends and relatives for people to stay with, or, if that fails, to find new homes in Austin. They also bring in companies every day to hire as many of the evacuees as possible.
When Albert started to talk about Austin, all the bitterness left his eyes. All he talked about was how friendly everyone had been and how welcome he felt. He told us that he was planning to rebuild his life in Austin instead of going back to New Orleans. This was where God had called him to be, and he wouldn't want to be anywhere else. He feels at home here.
And, for the first time, so do I.
Austin is so awesome, on so many different levels.

As some of you well know, over the past nineteen some odd years I have developed an invincibility complex, and by that I mean that I think that I can handle pretty much anything. I don't know if that makes what I'm about to write sound more or less sane, but I just thought that I needed to preface this entry with something before I dove into just how crazy I really am.
I decided that it would be a really fun game to play if I graduated this May. I'm less than fifty hours short of a BS in psychology with honors, so I figured I could do it. All I had to do was take twenty-four hours this semester and twenty-one next semester. The problem is that UT caps all students at seventeen hours. It's called the UT Permissible Scheduling cap, or just the UTPS for short. If you want to take more hours you have to submit a UTPS request to your adviser. No adviser in his right mind would let me take twenty four hours, so I really was not happy with the whole system. It's particularly annoying for me; since I chose three majors in three different colleges, I am under the jurisdiction of three different deans. So that means when I forgot to put a cover on my UTPS report, I had three different deans emailing me about it. But, my situation also furnished me a way to cheat the system. Since I have three different deans, I have three different people who all have the power to grant me an extension to take more hours. I innocently went to each college and asked each of my advisers to let me have just three extra hours, so when all was said and done I was allowed twenty-six total hours this semester. I guess that's not really cheating the system as much as it is shooting myself in the face, but I still think it was rather clever.
It wasn't until I actually had to start going to those classes that I realized what a bad idea that was. I really intended to be better about going to my classes this semester, so I made myself a promise that I would start things out right by going to all my classes on the first day. We started on Wednesday, and I only have one Wednesday class, so I made myself go. It blew. I had no idea how I was going to make it through six classes on Thursday. But I had promised myself that I would go to every class, at least on the first day. Since Thursday was technically the second day of classes, I didn't feel bad skipping most or all of those six classes. I mean, I may have enrolled in a block of classes that lasts from eight in the morning til five at night every Tuesday/Thursday, but that really has nothing to do with what classes I plan to attend. I was on pace to sleep through my first three classes this morning, but Robin called me at around 9:45 to say, "Hey, my ecology professor just finished taking roll, and you're in my class! Well, you're not in my class right now, but hopefully you will be at some point."
I told her that I was busy and I said I'd appreciate it if she would say "here" for me at all future roll-takings. She did not appreciate that, so I decided to get up and join her. It wouldn't kill me to go to my nine thirty class. It's arguably my first class of the day, so it would be good to make a habit of showing up. I got to that class about an hour late and I still ended up watching the clock for the laft fifteen minutes. That might have been because I was avoiding the professor's stare. Apparently it's not kosher to show up an hour late to a class that lasts for an hour and fifteen minutes. When I walked in and signed my name on the roll sheet he just stopped lecturing and stared at me. The only open seat in the entire lecture hall was in the middle of the row so I did one of those, "Excuse me, pardon me, sorry, my bad, excuse me" routines as I bumped into every student on my way to sit down. I sat down and realized that the professor still wasn't lecturing. He was still staring at me with his mouth slightly open. He kind of had the look of someone who has fallen asleep sitting up and their mouth comes open so they drool on themselves a little bit, but not enough to snore from their mouth, so they snore through their nose and you can see them blowing little bubbles in the drool pool on their chin. And he did not seem at all happy that he was drooling on himself. Eventually he dismissed the class, and it was probably the weirdest dismissal I've ever seen. He got all red in the face and said, "Get out." At least he dismissed us early. I was pretty freaked out about that class so I was the first one out the door.
Next up was my eleven o'clock, abnormal psych. I got distracted on the way there by an intro to Russian class that meets down the hall at the same time, but I'm sure that they did allright without me.
After Russian 506 I realized that I hadn't yet eaten. I did have my cool Ninja Turtles Lunch box, but unfortunately Robin's rude wake-up call hadn't left me with time to pack anything in it. So, I had to skip my cognition class to go grab something to eat. Then I caught up with my brother to hang out. I figured that I'd already made it past the half way mark of the day, so I wouldn't be missing much if I went home. My brother agreed. He told me that sometimes you just have to know when to cut your losses. So we went to the lake.
After such a propitious start, I'm not really sure how I can improve. I'm pretty sure that I've gotten everything that I'm going to get out of my ecology class, so, barring another morning call from Robin, I don't think I'll be returning. I wasn't too impressed by any of my other professors today. I don't know if any of them really deserve a second chance, but maybe I'll give some of them a shot. I'm sure they'll all be teaching something cool next semester.

One hallmark of the Arlington branch of the Ulster project is frequent instances of people invading other people's houses late at night and encasing all the vegetation in the front yard with toilet tissues, or, in the girls' case, frequent instances of pathetic attempts to throw something hard enough to reach the lowest branches of the trees. In fact, the girls of my little brother's year still find themselves ridiculed for their laughable efforts at rollage. After a year of intense taunting, they decided to rectify their past mistakes with a glorious one-uppance: they went around to all of the boys' houses from their year and drenched each one in toilet paper. Brian came bursting into my room and yelled, "I need you to take me to Kroger!" It struck me as quite odd when I walked out the front door to find our grassy lawn replaced with a pretty little lawn of snow. I found it even odder that it had only snowed in our yard and nowhere else. That is, until I realized that our yard had been carpeted with what must have been a hundred dollars worth of shaving cream. I smiled with one of those 'Ha-ha you got beat by a girl' smiles and said, "They did a pretty good job here. There's enough shaving cream here to shave Robin Williams's chest." Brian was pretty indignant, but he returned with "Well we'll just have to do better, now won't we? We'll use enough shaving cream on them to shave a freakin' yeti."
"Come on dude, Robin Williams's chest is way hairier than a yeti. There are entire clans of yetus living in that forest he's got growing under his shirt."
"Fair enough."
About that time I saw the challenge the girls had left.
On my car.
Oh yes, the gauntlet had been thrown. It was no longer just between my little brother and a bunch of girls. Now my very honor was at stake. I had been out-rolled by a female. It was on.
We stopped by Kroger's and met one of those guys who rolls all the shopping carts from those little islands in the parking lot back to the store and intercepted his line of about thirty carts. We then proceeded to fill said carts with an entire aisle of toilet paper. Then, after we'd secured enough toilet paper to print "War and Peace" in it's entirety with one letter on each piece, we grabbed a bag full of every other toiletry in the store, from diapers and shaving cream to toothpaste and raspberry scented shampoo. Then, after that carload, we came back in my mom's car and started gathering the food products. This time we went to Sam's club, partly so that we could buy in bulk, but mostly so that we could make use of their forklifts. I mean, after getting rolled by a bunch of girls, money really is no object in getting your revenge. So we bought crates of catsup and chocolate sauce, boxes of tortillas and huge bags of flour. Then we were off.
We got to the girls' house before they had returned from rolling, which was ideal. We didn't want them to go to sleep that night thinking that they had won. So we went to work. First off we papier mached their entire house. It looked kind of like one of those old school Japanese houses, the kind with paper walls, but these paper walls were several feet thick and could withstand a multiple nuclear blasts. Then we set about strewing random other things all about the yard. The shaving cream went painfully slowly at first, but we soon found that the particular brand we had bought came with an auto-distributing function; all you had to do was lay it in the yard and then beat it with a hammer. Within minutes there was shaving foam everywhere within a hundred yard radius. Then we re-shingled the roof with tortillas and turned the front walk into edible modern art. Finally we gave the grass a generous coat of flour. We stood back and marveled at our masterpiece. It looked like a scene from a Doctor Seuss novel(ette?). We were so awed by our work that we didn't even notice the girls driving up. We had to leave without properly lighting the "Happy Birthday" candle on the cake we had baked, but not before we had written "Nice Try!" in big, blue, frosted letters. We hopped in the getaway car and sped off. The girls were just close enough behind us to catch us returning their gauntlet.

I am really going to miss two groups of friends when I get home tomorrow: my cell group and the DMC. My cell group has been pretty stinkin' awesome all year, but nothing terribly exciting has happened to us since that copper absconded with my bowling shoes, so this entry is going to be entirely about the DMC. God has definitely been working through our prayer group, and in ways that I never would have expected. He's done everything from help me with my exams to give me a sense of humour. For example, Megan (remember, the girl whose father ordered that attempt on my life?) and I were studying together in J2 and we were both feeling pretty beat down by finals and such. Megan said that what she really wanted was to throw her pencil at somebody. I said that I really hated dudes wearing pink shirts. Well, as luck would have it, we looked around and saw a dude wearing a pink shirt who was within pencil shot, but far enough away that he would have no idea what the crap was going on when he got a pencil between the eyes. We decided that God had definitely sent him there to relieve our stress. Megan was all set to peg him with all her might, but I stopped her to suggest a slightly different approach. I thought that it would be a horrible waste to throw the pencil and only get one use out of it. I told her I would much rather run up behind him and stab him, because then I could repeat as necessary until all my tension was relieved. Megan disagreed. She said that most of her enjoyment would be derived from laughing maniacally as stupid-looking pink shirt dude was frantically searching for his attacker. So, we decided on a compromise to give us the best of both worldly pleasures: Megan would snipe the dude from afar and then I would run over and retrieve the pencil to commence my relentless stabbage. Right as we finished working out the details of our masterful plan, the dude got wise and left. We didn't even notice until he was most decidedly out of range. I told Megan not to worry, because there was sure to be another frat dude in a pink shirt sooner or later, so we just needed to keep studying until one came along.
Then God was like, "Man, they really need a study break."
Not five minutes later, a dude showed up. Wearing the same pink shirt. Sitting in the same seat. Looking like he wanted several holes in his face.
Megan and I saw that this was clearly some sort of sign, but we didn't know how to interpret it. We needed some sage advice. Since we didn't have time to write to sgemail and wait for a reply, we had to go for the next best thing: fortune cookies. Since we didn't have any of those either, we went to the third best thing: popsicle stick jokes. I went to go get a popsicle and I read the joke on the bottom of the stick: "What does a rabbit put in a computer?" Megan said maybe rabbits put carrot chips in their computers. She obviously didn't know anything about interpreting omens. I said that it probably had something to do with floppy disks. She liked that idea because it reminded her of rabbit's floppy ears, and she said she thought that was the answer. I said that that was probably the stupidest answer to a joke ever, and if that is what the popsicle said I would be mad enough to stab pink shirt dude for real. She made me promise that, if that was indeed the answer, I would do as I had said. So, I started eating, and slowly worked my way down to the answer. The end of the answer appeared first, and the first letter I saw was 's'. That's not so bad, anything could end in 's'. After eating the next bit, it read "sks." At this point I said, "Wow, if all these coincidences do come together, how could this be anything but a divine revelation?" I continued to eat. I saw the letters "isks," and then I saw the whole word "disks." Then "py disks" showed up, followed by "ppy disks." As I kept going, Megan was really getting excited, and I was getting scared. Last time I promised Megan I would do something, I ended up wanting to kill myself. This time I was going to end up killing someone else. There wasn't much to do but keep eating. Another bite. "oppy disks." Megan was already offering me her pencil. The moment of truth: "Hoppy disks."
Then God was like, "Oh, I got you good."
I never felt so relieved in my life. Much more relieved than I ever would have been by stabbing some stupid pink shirt dude in the face.
I knew that no popsicle joke would be that crappy, I just knew it. All popsicle jokes must adhere to strict pun requirements. Although I was a bit disappointed by my next popsicle joke (Q: What do pigs put in their computer? A: Sloppy disks) I was pretty impressed with the last one I had (Q: What kind of magic turns you into a dinosaur? A: A Tyrannosaurus Hex). Megan and I have been swapping used popsicle sticks ever since.
Little things like that are what have really helped me get close to everyone in the DMC. Like when Colleen and I went for a walk on a cloudy day and commented on how nice it was that there was no sun out to melt our gelato, and then we stumbled upon the only sunny spot on the entire campus. We decided to chill there and just lay on the grass together. Before too long we had to get out the umbrella I always carry with me and lay under that. We talked for a while until I just got really mad. The stupid pigeons were hanging out in the palm trees. There aren't that many palm trees on campus, and the pigeons were just destroying the mood in the few that we have. So I decided to doff my flip-flop and use it to peg the nearest bird like a pink-shirted frat dude. Now, any of you who have ever seen me attempt to throw something know that I definitely missed my intended target by an embarrassing distance which is probably best measured in city blocks. All my Jr. High friends love to tell the story of when I tossed Jeff's hat into a tree, just out of reach. Then I tried to get it down by knocking it out with a football. Now, I probably could have gotten on my tiptoes and reached with the football to get it out, but instead I threw the football at his hat. Then we spent the rest of the day looking for the football, which somehow went over Jeff's house into his neighbour's yard.
Something kind of similar happened with the whole flip-flop/pigeon situation. I completely missed the pigeons and hit a nearby bench. Luckily for my pride, I threw it hard enough that it sounded like a freakin' gunshot when my shoe hit the bench, so all the winged rats took flight and I got to pretend like I meant for it to happen that way. Unfortunately, there were people sitting on the bench who lost bowel control and cursed loudly. That in it self would actually have been pretty funny, except that I had to walk over to them and retrieve my sandal.
Colleen hid under my umbrella and laughed.
And I love her for it.
I've done something like that with everyone in the DMC. Like, after our DMC picture night, Felicia and I took a walk around the campus and pretended to people watch while there were no people there and looked for sunny spots in the middle of the night.
I've actually been doing a lot of night walking lately. Around 5:30 this morning Debbie called me to go fountain hopping with her. It was pretty stinkin' awesome. We took a dip in every fountain on campus and we even somehow managed to both fit in a sink in a Union bathroom. By the time we got back to the dorm, the sun was already up. This really was a first for me; everybody stays out late enough to come back to find the dorms locked, but this was the first time I'd stayed out late enough to come back to find the dorms being unlocked.
Then Megan comes along and tells me to wake up cuz we're going out to eat with her mother and little sister. So I threw on some clothes and went out to eat. I tried to look respectable, because I wanted at least one of Megan's parents to like me. I spent a good while in front of the mirror making sure that I looked "clean-shaven." Then a good time was had by all at the restaurant. Mrs. Carter even laughed at most of my jokes. However, she did let me know that there was no way Mr. Carter would have ever thought that anything about his daughter was a joke. With this piece of information I turned on Megan and demanded to know why she had set me up. She just smiled and continued eating her cake. I decided that next year Megan's little sister will not be an addition to our group of friends, but a replacement. We don't really need Megan anyway. The newer model will do much better. The Passmeeses and I had a great time talking about how we were going to pull that off.

These are the things I'm really going to miss. My friends have given me so much this year, more than I could ever have asked for: accountability, fellowship and unfaltering love. The one thing that means more to me than the friends who have made me feel so fulfilled throughout the year is the friends who are making me feel so empty here at the end. The only real concrete example of this that I can give is that my roommate packed up his stuff and left this weekend. I may normally be an optimist, but my room has definitely been half-empty since he left. If it had felt any other way then I would have to say that our relationship throughout the year was probably only half-full. I think the people whose absence I will feel this summer know who they are. I want y'all to know, no matter where you're headed, you can know that you've left a legacy with me. And I know that I am the luckiest.

Well, I'm packing up my stuff and heading out of Austin. Here's a sgemail for the road.

Island Party was awesome yesterday. Like really, I was filled with awe when I looked out from back stage and saw the entire main mall filled with people. I just stood there and stared. At that point I was still working really hard to make the party go smoothly, but all of a sudden I realized that Island Party was no longer a work in progress. This thing that I had worked for all semester was paying off right in front of my eyes; thousands of people were there for this thing we had put on. I was pretty overwhelmed with emotion. It was one of those moments where you just knew that God had really been there the whole time rooting for us. And it was just one of the times; there were many others. Like when we checked the weather on Monday and there was a 40% chance of rain, so we prayed and prayed, and every day when we checked the chance of rain was going down, til finally, Friday night, there was a %0. Then, we woke up Saturday morning and it was pouring down. You would think that we would have learned to trust in God, but we got worried. Even though we lost faith, somehow, by the time the first band was supposed to some on, it was as beautiful a day as we could have asked for. Then there was the dude with the megaphone making trouble after Jars of Clay went off. Now, when I saw him, my first reaction was, "Wow, we're really big time now," because, in Austin, every event that is big enough to matter has protesters. Apparently, this dude and two of his friends had tried to get up on the stage with their megaphone, and so we called the UTPD and they took them out back for some good old-fashioned police violence. After a particularly nasty interrogation process, two of the guys identified themselves and were set free. The third one refused to identify himself. He tried to get out of the questioning by swallowing his handy cyanide pill, but we weren't going to let him off that easy. Kenneth pumped his stomach with a baseball bat, and then they took him back to the station for several more rounds of torture. Unbeknownst to us, one of the guys we let go still had the megaphone. After the last band finished, he started using it again. Actually, he very well may have been using it while the bands were up there, but a) we didn't notice because there were about a million watts of sound pouring out from the stage to drown out anything he might have been saying and, b) nobody really cared because they were so pumped about listening to the bands. Anyway, after the bands are through I walk up and this guy is saying something along these lines: "My friend was out here worshiping Jesus just like you, and he was arrested. Is this really the Christian thing to do? My friend was just doing the same thing as everyone else, and for that, for praising God, he will have to spend the night in jail. Yes, my friend is a martyr, just like Jesus, he is being persecuted for his faith." About this time Kenneth Passmore walked by. The dude saw Kenneth's 'Event Staff' shirt and immediately pointed to him and said, "He is the one who had him arrested, he is the anti-christ." Now, I don't know if you've ever been called the anti-christ, but you can probably imagine that it is not a very flattering feeling. This guy was really drawing quite an audience, and I didn't really know what to do. Fortunately, when he saw that people were starting to listen to him, he got a little excited and just got up on a soap box to start saying: "And it's the government that is keeping us down. We need to overthrow all the politicians. They're all feeding you lies and molding you into robots..." and so on and so forth, just like any other Austin protester, so people stopped listening. Not long after that someone alerted the UTPD's sniper at the top of the tower. Suddenly the guy with the megaphone, along with about a dozen people standing around him, started growing bullet holes between their eyes. Looking back, if he had just stood there and berated Kenneth, he could have ruined Kenneth's night and really taken away from what we were trying to do, but instead he went off on a tangent, and there is only one person who I can think of to thank for that. And I'm not talking about the dude with the megaphone.
Anyway, the day went well, and we definitely were receiving some help from above, but that doesn't mean that there was not the occasional hiccup. Like when I convinced my mom to get into the boxing ring with me, and then she beat the crap out of me. Or, when Kenneth and I were bush jumping. These bushes were pretty freakin' huge. We were just soaring across them like you wouldn't believe, but about the second or third time we floated over them, I landed on something really sharp. When I lifted my foot up to see what I had stepped on, I saw a bee just sitting there chilling on the sole of my foot like it was nothing. Of course I called in the UTPD, and they went to work on him with cudgels and batons. But, I was still left with a welt on the bottom of my foot that made it rather painful to walk. I had people carry me over to the first aid station as I was bawling like a baby, and we see this little five year-old girl who was also stung by a bee. Her eyes were as dry as my brother's humor. That made me feel rather sheepish. Luckily my mommy was there to take care of me (this was before she showed me up in the boxing ring). After I iced my foot down for a while, I tried to repair my pride a little by challenging this little girl to fight me to the death. We got up on the jousting platform. I told her that to start things off we had to bow to each other. She said that was stupid, so I yelled, "Bow to your sensei!" and she did. When she exposed the top of her head, I seized the chance to bash it mercilessly. That was a big mistake. She just got mad and started waling on me. After a few minutes of this punishment, I motioned that I was tired. She let up so that I could catch my breath. I hunched over and started panting, watching her out of the corner of my eye. As soon as she let her guard down I snapped up and jousted her in the face with my over-sized American Gladiator brand Q-tip. This girl must have been Jazz or something, because she didn't even flinch. She just smiled and jabbed me in the crotch. After that I knew that my only hope was to cheat even more than I already was. I saw some little kid sitting on the side watching the fight. I motioned for him to run up and tackle her off her stand. It was a little emasculating that some little kid had succeeded where I had failed, but I'm used to it. I've definitely been through worse.
Just this week I mortified myself by calling Megan's father and asking him what I needed to do to marry his daughter.
You see, Megan and Crispy and I were talking, and somehow it came up that Megan's father has a list of characteristics that her future husband has to have. Of course, the first thing I asked was, "Do I fulfill these requirements?" and right away she dashed any hopes I might have had with a "Haha, no." Then Crispy asked the same thing, and got a similar response. We were both feeling pretty crestfallen, but we thought, maybe we aren't good enough, but surely Kenneth passes the test (you know, the one they call the anti-christ). When Megan told us that Kenneth was not good enough either, we were really intrigued as to what was on this list. We begged and begged for her to tell us what magic you needed to do to be worthy of taking her hand in marriage, but she refused to tell. She said that if we wanted to know we'd have to ask her father, knowing full well that none of us were stupid enough to joke around with a her daddy about marrying his baby girl. She also knew that if one of us was stupid enough to call, her dad would play along and a grand time would be had by all.
She was definitely wrong on both counts.
We were all just playing around, and she gave me her dad's number and told me he would prefer a morning phone call. At this point I wasn't actually planning on making that fateful call. We kept kidding around, and eventually we actually planned out exactly what I should say, and made it as awkward as possible. I would have to make sure and just casually throw out that Megan and I had been discussing proposals and marriage and be real non-chalant and start talking about future plans that I had with his daughter. We really worked hard to make a suprawkward conversation. We even went so far as to write out a script of exactly what I should say. Then Megan was like, "You know, I really do expect you to call my dad tomorrow."
That's about when I left. I got back to my room, and I had this script in my hand, a physical reminder that I was supposed to make this call. I had never even met this guy; all I knew was that he is 6'2", Megan was his firstborne and none of his children have yet been married. But I felt like I had to call. I mean, I'd been talking about it all night, I couldn't really back out now. So I set my alarm for 7:45 and then headed to the gym to run around in circles until it went off. Then, when my phone went off, I headed over and asked Crispy to video tape the whole conversation as proof in case an attempt was made on my life later in the day. I called up Mr. Carter, and I was surprisingly chill about the whole thing. That is, until I asked what requirements he had on his list and he came back with, "Well, why do you need to know?"
Upon reviewing the video, it may be noted that at this point I begin to pace wildly back and forth.
"Megan, he doesn't think it's a joke" ran through my head about a million times.
After that I really couldn't think of anything to say, so I just said the first things that came into my mind. Unfortunately, the first things that came to my mind were things we had included in our suprawkward conversation the night before. For the next few minutes I proceeded to cram my foot into my mouth all the way up to the knee cap. It didn't help at all that Crispy was laughing at me from behind the camera. When Mr. Carter finally got around to telling me what was on his list, he definitely assumed that I did not fulfill any of the requirements. The first was "he would have to be a strong Christian who is seeking after God." That doesn't really seem so bad written down, but he definitely said it in a "Stay away from my daughter you satan worshiper" way. It continued on like that, with me inserting random "Yes sir"s in there every so often, until he finished the list up with, "and he would definitely have to be completely devoted to my daughter. I spent a long time raising her, and I'm not going to hand her over to just anybody." Yeah, yeah, that sounds so adorable, but when I heard him say it he had definitely gotten to the point where he had taken the phone completely off his ear so that he could hold the mouth piece directly in front of his face to get the maximum volume so I would be sure to catch the threatening tone of his yelling. Which was really quite unnecessary.
After the most awkward good bye of my life, I promptly walked outside and wanted to shoot myself in the head. In fact, I probably would have, but Mr. Carter had his own plans for my demise. Just when I was just about to do myself in, the UTPD swarmed over me and went to work on with lead pipes and cheese graters.
With that, I introduce to you the first ever sgemail.

I just got robbed. And I mean all out robbed. They stole the clothes right off my back. More specifically, they stole the shoes right off my feet. Kenneth, Josiah and I went bowling one night. Rather, we went to an AMF with the intention of going bowling, but when we got there they were checking ID's at the door. We went up and asked how much it would be to rent a lane for an hour, and the guy at the door blows off our question and says, "You have to be 21 to get in tonight." I was really taken aback when he said that, so I just said, "My bad I didn't know ya'll carded." He looked at us like we were some kind of hooligans trying to buy cigarettes with a fake driver's license.
I was a bit insulted by his attitude and I was about to say something very un-ladylike, but Josiah decided it was time to leave, so he said, "Allright, I guess we'll just head to another bowling alley."
That would have been the end of it, but the door guy had to smugly retort,
"You're gonna have to leave our shoes here."
"What? These shoes are mine, I've had them since like sophomore year of high school."
"Those are AMF shoes, so you're gonna have to leave them here."
"But I paid for these!"
"Officer, would you mind talking to these kids for me?"
Out of nowhere this police officer/bouncer/thug in a police costume materializes. He blocks our escape route, crosses his arms, purses his lips and cocks an eyebrow at me.
"What seems to be the problem son?"
"These are my shoes. I bought them at a garage sale."
"Hmm, that might be a hard thing for you to prove. It looks to me like you stole them."
"I walked in with them on my feet! I haven't even gotten past the door flunkie, there's no way I could have stolen them."
"Well, you see, if we assume that, we also have to assume that at some point in the past you walked out of here with them."
"What? You mean if we assume that there is no way that I could have stolen them, then logically it follows that we must assume that I did steal them?"
"Don't try to get smart with me sonny."
(muttered)"Sorry, I'll try to keep it at your level."
"What was that?"
At this point Kenneth and Josiah jumped in and tried to help me out.
Josiah: "Sir, it's not like it says AMF on them or anything."
Ohh, Jo, that was not the best defense you could have used...
Officer(with a sneer): "Oh? You boys need to study your letters a bit more. Those pretty little squiggles that appear all over the shoes, are what literate people like to call the letters 'A', 'M' and 'F'."
Thanks for trying Jo. But it says AMF on every inch of the shoes.
Kenneth: "Sir, I know that you don't know anything about my friend here, but I can personally vouch that he would not steal bowling shoes."
Well, that didn't really hurt me, but it didn't help me much either. We argued back and forth for a while. Eventually Kenneth, ever the voice of reason, convinced me I would be better off if I just gave them the shoes and left before I got into real trouble. If he hadn't been there, things would have turned out quite differently. As we argued, Josiah was slowly moving in between me and the cop, so that I could make a break for it and he would be in the way of any pursuit. But, that's not how it happened. I didn't get to run from the cops, and I didn't get to keep my bowling shoes. I just got thoroughly pissed off.
When I got home, I really needed to do something to let off a little steam. I saw the pile of mail that my mom had given me like a month earlier to take to my brother. Among the letters was a recall notice for his truck, and I thought it was probably pretty important for him to get that. Since I'd already put it off for a month, I decided it was high time to let him know he needed to get his truck fixed before he suffered some sort of horribly gruesome death. Actually, I just wanted to kill two birds with one stone; I could both give Scott his mail and have someone fun to help me forget about the corruption that was plaguing the Austin Police Department. So, I called him and told him I had correspondence waiting for him. To my surprise he said that he had some letters for me too. That turned my day around right away. I mean, normal mail is cool enough, but secret mail that goes through a third party is even cooler. I was looking forward to seeing what he had for me. I looked over the stuff I was supposed to give him. Along with the recall notice, I had information about his tax refund and a big envelope that had the word 'CONFIDENTIAL' stamped on the back in big, important-looking red letters. Boy, was he in for a treat; you couldn't ask for more exciting mail.
I was really anticipating what he was going to have for me. We meet up and I hand him this whole pile of stuff, and he hands me two little envelopes.
I rip into the first one.
It's a recruitment letter from the Department of the Navy. At the top it asks if I know what I want to do with my life after high school. I am highly disapointed.
I take a deep breath before opening the second one.
It's a recruitment letter from the Department of the Navy. At the top it asks the exact same thing.
The really annoying part about getting letters from the Navy is that they always send me two. One is addressed to "Stephen Geppert," and the other is dressed to "Geppert Stephen." It's not even addressed to "Geppert, Stephen" with a comma in the middle. It's just plain backwards. So, instead of getting one boring letter, the dullness was multiplied by getting two copies of the same letter sent to me by people who can't even figure out whether "Stephen" or "Geppert" is supposed to be my last name.
In an effort to try and generate more interesting correspondence, I have decided to take page from Strongbad's book. I'm going to start dedicating one journal entry every week to answering an email from one lucky fan. The first one is already in the works, so you're out of luck for this week, but if you want to get in for next week, you need to go ahead and email me at geppanda86@hotmail.com. Not that I'm going to do this on a first-come first-served basis. I'm just going to answer the good ones. But if you email me earlier, you'll be giving yourself more time to write a better email that might be worthy of publication in my journal.
So, what did we learn from these events?
The APD(Austin Police Department) is in the pay of the AMF(Austin Mafia Families).
No matter what happens to you, at least no one has ever stolen your bowling shoes.
You can't really know a man until you've walked a mile in his shoes, and you can't really hate a man until you walk a mile barefoot because he stole your bowling shoes.
Youth is wasted on the young, wisdom is wasted on the old, and daylight is wasted on the daytime.
Life is like a bowl of cereal. Sometimes it's sugar coated, and sometimes it's plain, but whatever you have it gets soggy before too long, so enjoy it while you can.
Mountains are better than mole hills any day. Climbing mountains may be a pain in the rear, but it's the mole hills that are gonna turn your ankle.
There's no use in trying to be witty. All the good quotes have already been said.

Oh man I am so tired. I haven't been able to sleep for like two days. My problem is that I'm only tired from about ten in the morning until about ten at night, and from then on I feel chipper as a school boy. Actually, I'm not even tired during that entire span between ten and ten. I'm really only tired while I'm in class. For some reason my desks just seem so much softer than my pillow does at home. I know, that's completely absurd. I take my pillow with me to class, so my desk should feel exactly as soft as my pillow at home.

Anyway, as the title of this post may have led you to believe, I was going to write about how messed up my sleep schedule is, but since I'm writing this on a study break I should probably just hurry up and finish. So, I've decided to write about what comes easily to me, my two great loves: girls and not doing school work.

I was walking through campus today, and I saw a girl talking on her cell phone. Normally I would consider this a good thing, because it allows me to play my favorite game.You see, it is a proven fact that eighty percent of all girls walking across campus talking on their cell phones aren't actually talking to anyone, they just want to look like they have friends. Girls will have entire conversations with their made-up boyfriends just so they won't be embarrassed that they are walking to class alone. It's always a special treat when you see a girl having one such conversation, and while she is in mid-sentence her phone rings. Though girls' reactions vary widely and each one is different and unique, they're all good for a laugh. Some girls just blush and hope noone notices as they raise their voice to try and drown out the sound of their ringtone. Others will play the ditz and say something like, "Oh Robbie, my oh-so-hot and oh-so-real boyfriend that I definitely did not just make up for the purposes of this conversation, my phone seems to be broken and I don't know what to do! Good thing I'm going to a party tonight where there'll be lots of hot guys who can fix my phone for me. And then do me!" Many girls just seem so surprised that their phone is actually ringing that they forget all about their fictitious conversation and just look on in bewilderment, like they're not sure what you're supposed to do when you get a real call. But most are just so happy to get a call that they immediately drop the boyfriend charade to do a little happy dance as they check to see who's calling. Then, when they see that the caller ID says "Mommy" they hang up and apologize to their boyfriend(whose name has normally undergone several changes by now) for the interruption.

Of course, I've never seen any of those reactions. Because, if I'm there to make fun of them, the only reaction girls ever have is to run away crying, probably to go throw up in the nearest bathroom.

Unfortunately, today I got no such sadistic pleasure. I was on my way to class when I saw a girl on her cell phone walking out of my classroom, so I immediately seized upon the excuse to get away from my class by falling in step behind her. I was going to play my favorite game of "eavesdrop on a girl's conversation and then use the information I gleaned from it to walk up and pretend like I know her from somewhere and then ask her to go eat lunch with me," when I was stopped in my tracks by the words, "Oh, I don't want to go to class, I just want to go home and get high."

The first thing I thought was, "Maybe I don't want to ask her out after all." The second thing I thought was, "Wow, that's really pitiful." A second later(and, no, I do not do anything horrendously mean at this point) I told myself that I really shouldn't judge her. So I tried to rationalize why her statement was not utterly pitiful. Having failed in that attempt, I endeavoured to convince myself that she was no more pitiful than I. "I'm not any better. I don't want to go to class either. I just want to go home and...

and...

Hmm."

My arguments had succeeded. I suddenly felt that I was indeed much more pitiful than the pot head. You see, at least she had some goal in life, albeit a rather unseemly one. I, on the other hand, really have no purpose to my life. I don't even have anything worth skipping class for. I'm not saying that I don't skip class, because I do so quite liberally, but for what? All my recent episodes of skippage came back to haunt me.

I never really go to my government class, because it's on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and T-TH classes just aren't part of my particular idiom. Not that MWF classes are a staple of my life, but I have more justification for skipping classes on days that start with T than I do for skipping classes on days that end in Y. I have enough trouble sitting still for an hour, I don't know how they expect me to make it through an hour and a half. When I do go to T-TH classes, the only way I make it through is by taking a break in the middle to go get a coke or something, thus turning it into two thirty minute classes, which I can most certainly do. So, I walked into government one day after my coke break and realized that the TA was in the middle of a review for a test. This was very disconcerting for someone who had not read a single word for the class. In fact I'd even strategically planned my coke breaks so that I wouldn't ever be in class when we took quizzes. So, I hurriedly left the review to go home and study.  I got to my room and dusted off the class syllabus only to learn, to my dismay, that we were supposed to have read five books for this test. I only owned two of them, and one was still shrink wrapped. Since I knew that there was no way I could finish all that reading before the test, I decided not to read at all. I mean, what's the point of starting something you're not going to finish? So, I had to find alternate ways to study.  Now, this particular GOV 312L class specializes in US - Latin American Relations. So I just had to find out everything about those relationships. Then it hit me: if you don't have time to read the book, just watch the movie. At first I wasn't sure this would work out because I don't think too many text books got made into movies. And even if my test books were, I wouldn't know, because I had made such a pretty paper airplane out of my syllabus that I didn't want to unfold it just to find out the names of the books I was supposed to read.

So, I just made do. I remembered learning something about Cuba(or possibly I remembered that my roommate was from Cuba) so I decided to concentrate my efforts on learning about our little island neighbour. And what movie shows everything there is to know about US - Cuban relations? Why, "Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights" of course! After falling asleep about half way through I decided that there was far too much learning involved in that one, and I knew I shouldn't try to cram too much information in right before the test. So, I went for a movie with a little less focus on Cuba. (By the way, what kind of communist nation has a red, white and blue flag?) What movie has some information about US - Cuban relations but not enough to really warrant even mentioning? Why, "The Godfather: Part II" of course! After watching those two movies, I decided that Cuba must have something to do with sequels. Since sequels always suck, I made fun of my roommate for being Cuban. Then he wouldn't let me use his PS2 to watch movies anymore. So I had to come up with yet another way to study.

(Beware! Shameless Plug For A Huge Internet Corporation)

At about that time I was struck with the inspiration to look at the review my TA had handed out. Then I realized that the review wasn't going to help me at all because I hadn't stayed during the review to write down what each event was all about. That's when the greatest studying technique of all time hit me: Google. All I had to do was google everything on the study guide and I'd be good to go. Well, after a few minutes I realized that even if I used google, I still had to actually read the web pages in order to learn. So, I used the google image finder to find pictures about everything on the review, and then I wrote a little rebus story using those pictures. It was actually a lot of fun.

I woke up the next morning and headed over to take the test. And by the next morning, I mean I slept through Wednesday and woke up just in time for the test on Thursday. I walked in and said a little prayer for a multiple choice test. No good. It's an all short answer test. Well, I couldn't have asked for a worse scenario. Oh, wait, those aren't short answer questions. They're long answer questions. It's a freakin' essay test. Hmm, I'm glad I brought my crayons. Oh, wait yet again, there's a bonus question. Hmm, it's a quote, and I have to name who said it, and what he was talking about. Well, since I only remember one name from the class and one country from my, ahem, studies, I'll just put both of those. Henry Kissinger, Cuba.

I turned in my test, and asked if I got the bonus right. My TA flipped through the test and looked amazed at what I had written. "Yea you got the bonus right." (Yippee) "But, you didn't write any of the essays." Teachers are always trying to rain on your parade. For that matter, so is everyone else. Especially people who do group projects with you.

At the beginning of the semester I was put into a group for a psychology project. They really didn't give me anything to do / I never volunteered to do any of the work / I refused to do any of the work. That is, until we had to collect data for our experiment. My group wrote up a questionnaire to determine the attitudes toward romantic relationships of college students whose parents were divorced. We each had three weeks to find eight people whose parents had been divorced and have them fill out the survey. Three days before it was due I hadn't done anything so I decided that I would forget about finding people whose parents were divorced and just get eight random people to fill out the survey. Two days before I still hadn't done anything so I decided that I would forget about finding people and just fill out all the surveys myself. The night before I still hadn't done anything so I decided I would forget about doing any work at all and just ask my roommate to fill them all out for me. He revealed to me that at the bottom of every form there was a line for a signature. He said that he wasn't very good at forging, so I jumped up off my butt and went door to door down my hallway asking everybody to sign my questionnaires. Many people asked me what they were signing for or why they were signing since the questionnaires were already filled out, so I would just go on to the next room. Luckily there were exactly eight people on my hallway who trusted my honest face enough to just sign the piece of paper I thrust under their door. The next day I proudly turned in eight questionnaires to my group.

"Stephen, we know you made these up."

"No, I didn't, look at all the different signatures."

"Those signatures were done on a computer. You just printed out a bunch of names in different fonts. No, now that I look closer, you just printed out your name eight times in different fonts. And you misspelled it once."

"Yea, but the information is all real." 

"Stephen, all the questionnaires are in your handwriting."

"Hah, that's what you think. They're all in my roommate's handwriting. You'll never pin anything on me!"

So after that my group hated me and decided not to ever let me do anything again. The only job they've given me since then is to take all the demographic information(age, sex and ethnicity) from the surveys and put it on an excel spreadsheet. It was a five minute job at the most, and that includes taking a coke break. Even so, they didn't cut me any slack. They've been calling me all day nagging me to get it done and give them back the surveys so that they can analyze the rest of the information. I keep telling them to give me some time. The last guy that called really got angry and started yelling at me for not having finished yet. I was like,

"Hey, ya'll didn't give me a deadline or anything."

"But we gave you the surveys four weeks ago!"

"Relax man, I'll have it done on time."

"The project is due tomorrow!"

"Well, then I'll have it done by then."

"But after you finish you have to give us back the surveys so we can analyze the data! There's no way we'll get it finished by tomorrow."

"Hey, don't try and get out of your share of the work man. I'm gonna finish my job on time, so you better come through with your end of the bargain."

Anyway, many similar incidents have filled my college life. But, like I said at the beginning of the entry, I'm on a study break right now, so I really shouldn't be wasting so much time. And, when I say study break, I mean that I took a break from sitting around doing nothing to study. Which is what I really think a study break is. When you take a snack break, you stop what you're doing to snack for a little while. When you take a smoke break, you stop what you're doing to smoke for a little while. So, when I take a study break I stop what I'm doing to study for a little while. And, unfortunately this study break consisted entirely of me writing this entry, and now it's about time I got back to whatever I was doing.

I've decided that from now on everything in my journal will be completely true, not just loosely based on true events. So, I haven't posted in a while because I've been waiting for something to happen that didn't need any sort of enhancement to be postable. I didn't post when my brother climbed up onto a third story balcony in the Union and then fell off. I didn't post when we found out that he fell because he was shocked by a wire that ran along the ledge and was electrified to keep the birds away. I didn't post when I finally made it to my nine o'clock class after two weeks of school. I didn't post when I went to said nine o'clock class, realized that I didn't know which room it was in, and started crying because I had gotten up so early and wouldn't even make it to my class. I didn't post when I decided that since I was up at nine in the morning I was sure as hell going to some class, even if that class wasn't mine, or  when the class I decided to attend was taking a quiz and I turned one in with Josiah's name on it. I didn't even post when I got Amber's number, or when we started studying together. Not because, that's not journal-worthy. It's just none of your business.

But, last night my life became the perfect post.

Assassins. It's supposedly a game that pits BYX against Phi Lamb, but it's really every man for himself. Everyone has a target to kill, and if you succeed, you inherit your target's target. The game is on twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Well, pretty much. So you always have to carry a water pistol with you.
But, even though the game is always on, if you wear the current 'safety item' you can't be shot. So, people all over campus are wearing shower caps. Pretty soon though, the safety item will change, and I get the feeling that the safety items are supposed to become increasingly embarrassing to wear as the game wears on. So, the safety item progression will probably go a little something like this:
Shower cap > Poncho > Arm floaties > One of those waist floaties with a duck head > One of those waist floaties with a duck head and pink and green polka dots > Life vest (any neon color) > Snorkel and goggles assembly > Snorkel, goggles and flippers > Complete set of scuba gear > Something completely ridiculous, like a clown suit with face paint and a red nose
During the safety item progression, the assassination methods will also evolve. Right now we can only use simple hand-held squirt guns, but pretty soon we'll have to use:
Pressurized super-soakers > Water balloons > Water balloon launchers > Buckets of water > Hoses > Pushing people into fountains > Pushing people into pools > Giving people swirlies > Opening fire hydrants on people > You have to take your target to Sea World and have them be splashed by Shamu
The idea is that you want to get as many kills as possible before things start to get really difficult, although I do think it would be pretty cool to be abducted to Sea World. At first I wasn't really all that serious about the game. True, I do wear a shower cap around campus, but I've done far more embarrassing things, so that doesn't really phaze me much. But, I didn't really go after my target. After all, offense may win crowds, but defense is what wins champeenships. Besides, since my brother is in charge of changing the safety items, I figured I could get him to tell me as soon as they changed, and I could just kill my targets before they even knew they were supposed to be wearing something different. But other than that I wasn't really planning on playing.
Until they got to Jo.
Since the beginning, this game has been marked by deceit, by brother turning against brother. Most notable among the turncoats has been the infamous Kyle Boenitz. On day one he began by aiding people in tracking down and eliminating his own pledge brothers. He began to set traps for targets that weren't even his. First it was Kellie, then Whitney, and then 6'9". For the first week of the game, you didn't know who you could trust. Many people didn't even leave their room for fear of Kyle "Benedict" Boenitz and his devilish schemes. But, finally, he got his comeuppance. His own girlfriend orchestrated a strike team to corner him on the fifth floor of the library, where she herself killed him off to end his reign of terror. Or at least she thought she was ended it. But merely dying could not stop Kyle's treachery.
Now, unlike me, Jo was hardcore about the game. He never took his shower cap off, not even when he slept. And he was always stalking his target or pursuing one lead or another. Still, he did'nt use any of the dastardly methods that the villainous Kyle did. He always shot his targets face to face, never in the back. In fact, he always used his powers for good, never for evil. But then Kyle ended all that. Kyle got together a card game with Jo and two others. Jo didn't suspect anything because because, although Kyle was his arch-nemesis, he was out of the game. Unbeknownst to Jo, Kyle had also invited Jo's stalker to the game. Kyle used all his guile and trickery to convince Jo to remove his shower cap for just one fateful moment. And then Jo was no more.
About this time I happened upon their little card game, to find Jo with a shower cap in his hands and a water stain on his shirt. As I watched him breathe his last, I promised him that I would avenge him. Then I turned to Kyle and gave him a particularly nasty glare. I swore upon the soul of my lost friend that I would not rest until I had ended Kyle's evil plans. Since Kyle was already dead, there wasn't much else that I could do except kill everybody else so that he would have no game to rig. 
Thus it began
I ran home, logged on to thefacebook, took all my classes off facebook, and put someone else's picture on my account. I changed my information in the UT directory to my say that I lived in Iraq. I wasn't going to make it easy on whoever was after me. Then I set out to destroy Julie Harris. She didn't have any classes on facebook either, but she did have an address. The weird stalker-ish behaviour commenced.
I didn't really know her at all, so I was going to have to play it smart. I borrowed Steve Hurst's Domino's delivery uniform and got a pizza box from the trash. Steve drove me to her house, and I knocked on the door.
-"I've got a pizza for Julie Harris."
-"...emmm, she's not here right now."
Well, crap, this was not starting out well.
-"Well, I've got an internet order right here." (I pull out a piece of paper that I printed Julie's address on) "...is this 4300 Avenue B?"
-"Yea, this is the right place, but she's not here."
-"OK, well, it's probably just a prank, it happens all the time with these internet orders, but I'll come back by at the end of my route to see if she's come back."
So, I really didn't know what to do. I went with Steve and did the whole pizza spiel to his target, who was at home, so Steve got a kill. Then we drove back to Julie's house, and Katie Lish answered the door. She recognized me.
-"Umm, is Julie Harris there?"
-"No. Hey, aren't you in BUCs?
-"Err, yea."
-"You're...Steve right?"
-"Uhh, yea."
-"Wait, don't tell me, Steve...Hurst?
-"Yea, yea, I'm Steve Hurst."
-"You're playing assassins right? I guess you don't have to wear your shower cap because you're at work."
-"Emm, right."
So, she definitely knew that I was not a pizza delivery guy, and that I was coming to kill Julie. But at least she thought I was Stephen Hurst, and not Stephen Geppert. But, it looked like I needed a change in tactics. I checked facebook again to see what groups she was a part of. Her listed groups are Phi Lamb, something called "the Executioners" and The Austin Stone. So now not only did I know to be afraid of her because she belonged to the executioners, I knew where I would see her next. Come Sunday she would be mine.
So, I went to the Stone Sunday night and looked for her. About half way through the service I spotted her. Now, if you followed the link and read the rules, you know that it's illegal to shoot someone inside a church building, even if that church happens to be The Austin Stone, and that church building happens to be Austin High School. So, I followed her out of the gym and stayed a few steps behind her as she headed toward the exit. And then I saw Katie Lish.
She recognized me.
I just tried to be inconspicuous, but that was rather difficult since I had already donned my shower cap. Then things started to happen very quickly. I saw Santosh's target dart for the door, so I motioned to him which way she had gone. Then when I turned back to resume stalking Julie, I was face-to-face with head full of beautiful red hair.
I've decided why I like red hair so much. It's so shiny. It just looks so cool in the light.
So, I turn around to see this redhead and am immediately distracted from my objective. This fiery haired female extends her hand and probably tells me her name or something, but I didn't really hear because I was still thinking, "Ooo, shiny!" Then she said something like, "I sat behind you in church and I just wanted to meet you." But, after a few moments, it hit me that Julie was gone. Realization set in.
"Away from me foul temptress! I will not be swayed from my path!"
And I tore off running. Later I realized that Julie probably just ran when I turned my back to talk to Santosh, and the redhead might not have had anything to do with it, and maybe she really just wanted to meet me, date me, and eventually marry me. But at the time I felt very clever for seeing through Julie's distraction.

I raced out of the building just in time to see her drive off. But, not all was lost. Since, as everyone knows, girls can't drive, I knew that I could get my brother to drive me to her house and we would get there first, even with her head start. We caught up to her at a stop light, and my brother took a short cut to get to her house. I dove out of the car as he drove by and then limped over to her house. I waited there til she drove up and shot her just as she opened her door.
But she was wearing a shower cap.
Apparently she had stopped at Walgreen's on the way home because she knew I would be coming after her. That complicated things. She laughed and said, "I'm not afraid."
You will be. You will be. (said in a Yoda-esque voice)
The vixen had outfoxed me. She had won the day, but soon she would rue the day that she had crossed swords with the Assassinator. I was going hardcore. You just wait Julie Harris. I will end you.
I let her celebrate her temporary victory for the rest of the night and all of Monday. But, Monday night, after the Valentine's mixer, I went home and doffed my civilian clothes to exchange them for a camouflage jump suit. I waited til 4:30 in the morning, and then called my brother several times to wake him up and tell him he had to come take me to Julie's house. All I took with me was my water gun and a Bible. I guess I took the Bible so that I could be all like Samuel L. Jackson in "Pulp Fiction" and spout off random scripture as I made my kill. I found a tall shrub across the street from her house where I could see her front door and the side door. After doing a quick recon of the area to find any bus stops she might use, I settled in for the night. At 0500 hours I squeezed myself between the bush and the side of her neighbors house, lay down in the dirt and began waiting.
After I sat there for about half an hour, I began to notice things that I would not normally have noticed. For instance, I noticed how the dew gradually settled down over the ground. I noticed that I was sitting still enough that the dew settled down over me. I noticed that at about 5:30 I was soaked through and through, the dirt had turned to mud, and every time I shivered the bush would shake.
I was tired, cold, dirty and incredibly bored. So, I started coming up with things to occupy my mind. I smeared mud under my eyes to add to the camouflage. I found an empty toilet paper roll and tried several different ways to attach it to my gun as a makeshift scope. After being unsuccessful at that, I got out from behind the bush to stretch my legs, and I practiced some run-dodge-roll-shoot kind of maneuvers. After wasting all the water in my side arm on that, I filled it up from her neighbors hose. Then I climbed onto Julie's roof to see if maybe I should wait for her from there. I realized that, without the scope, my poor little pistol would not be accurate from that far away. So I went back and tried different ways to affix the toilet paper roll to the top of the gun. I got bored with that again and decided that I needed to find the exact scripture that the BMF used in "Pulp Fiction." I didn't know which book it was in, so I got back behind the bush, started at "In the beginning" and read on from there. I sat and read for two solid hours, except for one interruption when  some stray cat attempted to pounce on me from above. I'm lucky she had a collar, because I probably wouldn't have noticed her unless I had seen the street light reflecting off her tags. My "Ooo, shiny!" reflex kicked in and I turned all my attention on the cat. Unfortunately for my little feline friend, I had spent a good fifteen minutes practicing quick draws with my water gun, so her pounce was met with a flurry of rapid squirts. The nerve of that cat, thinking she could sneak up on a master stalker such as myself. She got hers. And I got back to Joseph and his pimpin' coat.
Later, at about 6:45, just as the story was really starting to get good, I saw Julie's door open. I flattened myself lower and waited. It was still dark outside, but I could tell that it wasn't Julie. Whoever it was walked right by my hiding spot on her way to the bus stop. If she saw me there, it would all be for nothing. She would run back inside and either tell Julie to put on her shower cap before leaving, or she would call the police. Either way, I would have wasted three hours of prime sleep time and not gotten my kill. Luckily, it was too dark for her to see. After she left, I decided I had to improve my fox hole before daybreak. I moved all the fallen leaves off the ground where I was laying and piled them up beside me. This would keep the leaves from rustling when I got up to pursue Julie, and it formed a sort of barrier between me and the sidewalk. I stepped out to eye my work. It looked completely natural, and there was no way you could see me behind it. I was like some sort of super-commando with elite camouflage skills.
I reluctantly got back into the trench and lay in the damp mud to wait some more. Nothing moved for about ten minutes, so I picked up my Bible and started reading some more. At around 7:30, just when I was about to find out how it ended, Katie Lish came out of the front door. I pressed myself into the dirt and held my breath. She walked within five feet of me, close enough that I could see the stitching in her socks, and she didn't even pause. As soon as she was gone I picked my Bible back up and skipped to the end to see whodunnit.
"Pssh, I knew it was Pontius Pilate all along."
Then, around 8:00, a lady came and unlocked the door of a nearby church. Seeing as I had been sitting in that hole for a good three hours, I gladly took the chance to have a little change of scenery. I went into the church and asked if I could borrow some tape. I guess she gave it to me because I looked really down on my luck. I mean, I was covered in mud, I was soaking wet and my teeth were chattering uncontrollably. Or, maybe she gave me the tape because I had come out of a bush, looked like a mugger, had followed her into the church she had just unlocked, was alone with her in a small room, and was holding a gun.
I thanked her and crawled back into the bush, prayed that she didn't call the cops, and went to work using the roll of tape to secure the scope to my gun. My water gun was now accurate to at least five hundred yards. But I was still freezing. And now I was having trouble staying awake. And every dog that passed by decided it would be a fun game to come pee on my bush. Of course I never let them get close enough to actually do it. Most dogs don't like bushes that squirt back. The Assassinator was not about to be micturated upon by some mangy mongrel.
At 9:00 I was ready to quit. I'd been sitting in a bush for four and a half hours and all I had to show for it was mud-caked army fatigues, a runny nose, and a toilet paper roll strapped to a water gun. And I was tired of having to actively protect myself from being peed on. But I knew that if I left I would never hear the end of it. Not only would my target have figured out that I was after her, outsmarted me and outrun me, I would have sat outside her house all night for no reason. I was not leaving unless I had something to show for it. I didn't have a class til 1, and I would stay until then if I had to. Just as I was deciding that, the door opened again. I crouched at the ready.
It was Lane Brown.
Holy crap, how many girls lived in that house? That was the last straw, I was leaving. I sat up and gathered my belongings, dejected and miserable. But, before I could leave, the door opened again and Julie stepped out.
Target acquired.
Now I was in a awkward situation. I was sitting up, so I was not protected by the barrier I had made. But, if I lay back down, she would surely notice the bush move. So, there I sat, frozen in place, with nothing but a bush between me a certain failure. Lane walked by. Nothing. Then came Julie. I swear, I think she actually brushed the bush as she walked by. She was not wearing her shower cap. Since she was so close, I took the scope off the top of the gun and taped it to the front to act as a silencer. I rolled out and started shooting.
But my gun wouldn't shoot. I kept pulling the trigger over and over, but nothing happened. Julie turned around, after possibly wetting herself, and I shook my gun to try to get it going again. She reached into her backpack, frantically searching for her shower cap. If she got the shower cap on, then she would wear it every day when she left the house, and all my stalking would have been in vain. I had to kill her right there, or else give up. I pulled the plug out of the back of the gun and shook the gun violently in her direction.
Target eliminated.
It is now officially VJ-Day: Victory over Julie Day.

No, even better:
VJ-DAY: Vanquished Julie - Death himself Ambushed You today. (VJ-DHAYT)
I may have pneumonia, some severely soiled clothing and pouches under my eys, but I also have my first kill.

I've tasted blood. Boenitz best watch his back.
Since I am now the master of all things assassin, I am going to have to make some tweaks to the game for next semester. First of all, we're going to have to make it pirate themed. After all, we're BUCs, and we all know that BUCs is short for "Buccaneers." We could call it "BY-X marks the spot". Instead of giving everyone a target, we'd give them a treasure map and a parrot, and they'd have to train the parrot to say things like "Dead men tell no tales," and other such swashbuckling gloriousness. There'll be wenches and grog and of course plenty of loot. We could get gold doubloons so that all the BYX guys would have something to say "Ooo, shiny!" about. I might even be able to get Johnny Depp to do a cameo for us.

I'm off to plunder me some booty.

Installment III of the UNPRECEDENTED TRIPLE ENTRY!
The Nerd One

Installment II of the UNPRECEDENTED TRIPLE ENTRY!
The Romance One

Installment I of the UNPRECEDENTED TRIPLE ENTRY!
The Action One

It's been a year since I started up this journal. I'm not gonna lie and say that the time has really flown by and I can't believe I've been at it for so long. When I sit down to write in this thing, I waste an incredible amount of time in front of the computer screen. It feels like I've spent a lifetime writing for it. But, since the one year anniversary of it's conception is sort of a special occassion, I decided that I would waste triple the time that I normally do. So, you are about to begin reading an UNPRECEDENTED TRIPLE ENTRY! I don't really expect most people to finish all three in one sitting, but I had to do something different. So, I am going to stick three entries all together into one, AND I am going to write about three completely new and different things for me:
The first entry is an action-packed adventure full of mystery and intrigue. Snow boards may have been sabotoged! Large numbers of brain cells may have been destroyed! and cars may not explode, but at least one will break down! With a special appearance by Alien vs. Predator!
The second entry is a heartwarming tale of romance and passion. Lame pick-up lines may or may not be used! I may or may not reveal that I am attracted to girls with red hair! I will probably have to make up most of this entry!
The third entry is a geek-full quest of Star Wars and video games. Every single nerdly reference that I can possibly think of will surely be thrown in here somehow! Someone needs to help me come up with a nerdy Star Trek reference, other than when Stewie made fun of William Shatner on Family Guy !
So without further ado, here is the first installment of "Happy Birthday To My Journal."

The Action One

Wed, Jan. 22nd, 2005, 03:45 pm
"The Hot Mess That Was My Car"

Over the Christmas break I went on a ski trip with a bunch of BYX guys and Phi Lamb girls. It was awesome. Mostly.
My car was probably the best car ever, but we had lots of difficulties during the trip. We had a blast driving to Borger, where we stayed the first night. We went to a bowling alley, played Mafia and did assorted other fun activities. Next came sleep.
For some unknown reason the powers that be (namely my older brother) decided that we should leave Borger at 6 in the morning, and that meant waking up at 5:30. So, after spending half an hour trying to figure out why in the world anyone would ever wake up while it was still dark outside, we realized that Brandon, our driver, had left his ski jacket in the bowling alley. No big deal, we just had to wait until the bowling alley opened to get it back. One problem: the bowling alley would not open for another SIX HOURS. So we waited. And waited. And waited some more. I don't think you really comprehend what it's like to be stuck in a car for that long while the car is not even moving. But, it really wasn't that bad. The time passed quickly cuz everyone in the car was cool and we did various fun-type activities such as twenty questions, taking pictures in front of funny signs outside, and make-fun-of-Ashley-for-keeping-the-car-so-hot. We also got a membership at the local movie store, which for some reason was open at that ungodly hour. So we rented "The Terminal" and bought four other movies for a dollar each. We spent much of our time patronizing the local McDonald's. Jo and I played over every inch of that playplace. And I only got stuck once. Then, we got into the bowling alley early because some weird guy came to clean up or something. So we only ended up waiting for five hours, but whatever, it would have been fun either way. So then we left Borger, and when we finally got to the condos we realized that we'd gotten the shaft and all had to sleep on the floor because all the other cars had already been there to claim beds. Since the other carloads outnumbered us 44 to 5, we didn't make a big deal out of it. After all, somebody has to get shafted. It just sucks when it's you.
The next day we were delayed yet again. Since we were late, all the condo keys had already been given out, so nobody in our car got one. After breakfast on the first day, Ashley and Whitney went back to their condo to change into their cute little ski outfits, only to find themselves locked out. And of course the front desk had given us every single copy of the key, so they didn't even have one there. We had to wait while they made a new key for the room, and then we waited while the girls got ready. I mean, I love ya'll, but ya'll took forever. Ya'll really should have gotten ready faster. Really, I had my money on ya'll being ready at 10:15, and, as usual, Jo took my money from me. If only you had been 5 minutes faster.
Anyway, we got to the slopes, and Jo and I began to snowboard for the first time. Many different fun-esque activities ensued, including things such as unintentional flippies and landing on your butt so hard that your head hurts. My father had warned me that I needed a helmet, because every time I jarred my head like that I would lose brain cells. I decided that I didn't need a helmet cuz my brain was like the buffalo.
You see, the buffalo travel in herds, but they only go as fast as the slowest one, so the old and sick ones set the pace. When the lions tigers and bears show up, the young, healthy ones run off, and The Predator eats the old and sick ones that are left behind. That way the herd will be able to move faster and find better pastures. Your brain works kinda the same way. The falling is like The Predator, and your brain is like Alien...no, that's not it. When you jar your head, it just kills the dead-weight brain cells and lets the good ones reach their full potential. For example, when I'm snowboarding, I know I shouldn't fall on my face, but when I try to send that signal to my body the sick and old brain cells mess up the transmission so I end up falling. If I could just kill all those off I'd have a nice clean signal telling my body not to break itself. My father said that theory was complete crap, but even if it is, it wouldn't matter. If I wasn't smart enough to wear a helmet the first time I went snow boarding, there's no way I'll be smart enough to do it after I killed all those brain cells.
Anyway, it wasn't my head that ended up breaking. It was my board.
I was going off this awesome jump....
Ok, I'm not gonna lie, I wasn't doing anything cool when it broke. In fact, I didn't even notice at first. The bolts that held my foot to the board came out. So, on top of the fact that I sucked at snowboarding cuz it was my first day, I also sucked at snowboarding because my foot was in no way connected to the board. The same thing happened to Brandon. So we had to go and get our boards fixed. Yet another delay for people in my car.
The next day was the best skiing I've ever been a party to.
We woke up in the morning and our covered porch was covered in snow. And I seriously mean it was covered. This snow was triple thick like a McDonald's milkshake. Vanilla. I mean, this was like "Call the superintendent and tell him to cancel school" thick. Gale force winds, blizzard style snow falls, waist-deep drifts...you get the picture.
So, of course, it was the perfect day for the window of our car to break. And I mean seriously break, like it fell into the door. You might think that our car would have been completely full of snow, but that's just cuz I lied about how bad the weather was. Don't get me wrong, it was bad, just maybe not triple thick. Realistically, I don't think it's possible for anything in nature to be the same consistency as a McDonald's milkshake. We should all be thankful for that. So, we went a day in that frigid car without a window to slow the wind. But, luckily, the next day we fixed the problem with large amounts of duct tape. It actually looked really pimp. When the snow glistened on the silver tape, it looked like we had a little personal solar panel on our car. All the other cars were jealous.
That's pretty much everything that happened to our car. Oh, except Whitney. She was awesome. We were all sitting on the lift talking, and then out of nowhere she leans out with a perfectly straight face and asks everyone, "Do African-American people ski?"
At first we all just kind of stared, and then we burst out laughing. Man, she's awesome.
So, after the trip we had the First Annual 2005 BYX/Phi Lamb Ski Trip Awards. I got the "Air Repair Runt" award, which at first I thought was some reference to the awesome jumps I went off of, but it turned out that I actually got the "Heir Apparent" award, which I guess means I'm in charge of planning the First Annual 2006 BYX/Phi Lamb Ski Trip Awards for next year.
Classes started yesterday. To the surprise of all my roommates, I went to every class this week. I'm actually really pumped about Italian, that class will be awesome, even if I do have to show up EVERY SINGLE DAY OF THE WEEK. I slept through my 9 o'clock lab this morning, but I didn't really feel very bad about that. Apparently there were no labs this week anyway. Besides, I made it to my 10 o'clock, and last semester I didn't get around to going to class until at least 3. I almost missed my 3 o'clock today, but I ran into Mel in Welch Hall. He asked me where I was going and I said somewhere in Welch but I didn't remember which room. He said I should go to class with him. Turns out that actually was my class as well. Little things like that make me think that God wants me to go to class this semester. That and the fact that all my teachers are taking attendance. Poo-poo on that.
I'm going to go try to learn a bit of Italian.
Ciao (imagine a little Italian guy on a scooter saying that).
Current Mood: Sorely
Current Music: The Music of the Night - Phantom of the Opera

Installment the Second

The Romance One

Wed, Jan. 26th, 2005, 02:02 am
"Ciao"

Today I became totally enchanted.

I'm not saying that I wasn't enamoured before. I've been under her spell for a while. When I said 'totally enchanted,' I meant that until today I was only mostly enchanted, and now the infatuation is complete. Mayhaps I am just being overly romantic. Maybe in a couple weeks I will realize that I'm nothing more than a hopeless romantic and there's nothing actually there. But maybe not. And that 'maybe not' is all I need.

It was the first day of Italian 506, and Professoressa Esmeralda was doing one of those "I'm pretending that I want to get to know you but I don't want to expend any effort doing it, so I'm going to ask a bunch of questions that noone will remember the answers to in about five minutes" exercises. In turn, we all listed our name, home town and major(nome, citta natia e campo di studio) and a lot of other stuff that nobody cares about. Besides, if I ever decided to actually get to know somebody in my class, I would ask them all the same questions again, just to start up the conversation. The exercise seemed to be fulfilling both of its purposes: we had wasted almost the entire first day of class and I hadn't learned a thing.

It was her major that caught my attention. Psychology and neurobiology. (I know, I know, remembering her major was contrary to the purpose of the exercise. And her name and home town for that matter. Amber, Austin. But it was a stupid exercise anyway. I know Esmeralda didn't really want to learn our names. She can't even be bothered using our last names. I am referred to as "Stepheno Uno." At least I get to be number one.)

So, psychology and neurobiology. The first thing that popped into my head was, "She's crazy." But, it was crazy in a "That just might be so ridiculously crazy that it's sexy" way. Like a "Let's go dancing in the rain" kind of crazy. Better yet, it was like "Let's go driving in the rain and hope we get stuck in the mud so that we can lay out together under the stars without a hope of leaving, and we won't even have a blanket so we'll have to hold each other close" kind of crazy. Crazy in a way that I knew that I would have to ask her out eventually. Anyone who shares both my majors and is starting out in Italian with me has got to be worth a shot. I scanned the classroom to connect Amber's voice with the back of a head.

It was her hair that kept my attention. I'm a sucker for redheads. I'll admit it. I've never met a redhead I didn't like, but that might be because the red hair is all I really need to like someone. So, I really didn't hear anything for the rest of the class. Although this was also true for the portion of the class before I first saw Amber, now I had a totally different reason for not paying attention. I was running through possible conversations in my head:
-Hey, mi chiamo Stepheno Uno. Come ti chiamo, bella?
-Hehe, your name isn't really Stephen One, is it? Shouldn't you know my name anyway? We spent like the entire class playing name games. Besides, you didn't even decline chiamo correctly. It should have been 'come ti chiami.' But, I'll let you keep calling me 'bella,' if you're nice.
-But, emmm, I was just, emm...all my best friends call me Stephen One...cuz, emm I'm...so...cool...

Even in my fantasies I was making an idiot of myself; this did not bode well. I really don't know how my subconscious knew Italian well enough to correct me, but it was ruining all my pretend conversations. I don't even know why I thought that I should speak to her in Italian when we first met. It seems rather stupid to me now, but at the time it didn't even occur to me that I could introduce myself in English like a normal person. There was nothing I could do but keep staring at the back of her head and imagining meeting her.
After a while I stopped trying to think of the Italian words I would use when I finally met her and I just thought of things to say in English and pretended like I knew how to say them in Italian. The problem was I couldn't even think of something to say in the language I know. I tried to be witty, funny and charming, but I screwed them all up:
-Man that class was so boring. It was like, emm, ...boraphyl.
-Ok, first of all, that line didn't even work in Billy Maddison. If Adam Sandler can't make it funny, you should probably leave it alone.
Second, even if you hadn't screwed it up, that's a Biology class pun; it's just plain retarded in Italian class.
(Here I would like to note that spell check didn't have any problems with 'boraphyl.' Later on in the entry, however, it did prompt me to replace 'whoah' with 'whoa.' Yea for Microsoft.)

Crap, I need a better line:
-Hey there, what's your sign?
-Aquarius, and that is really weak.
-It must be a stop sign, cuz I haven't seen a single guy pass you without slowing down and looking both ways...front and back.
-Ok, that doesn't work if I've already answered the question.

Hmm, she's got a point.

When the Amber in my head started coming up with better lines that I was, I stopped using words altogether. I just kind of made believe that I would say something fantastically romantic in Italian. The scene in my head really just consisted of me doing that little hand thing everyone does when they don't really know how to speak Italian, and me saying words like pizzeria, spaghetti and lasagna. To cover up for the fact that these were not romantic Italian phrases, I was playing a soundtrack in my head which consisted mainly of Counting Crows, but I pretended that was in Italian too.
I was just looking at the back of her head spouting off random foods when I realized something: I was all the way across campus. I didn't even know how I'd gotten there. The class had ended, but apparently I kept staring at her beautiful red hair and pretending to meet her as she walked to her next class. I was more than a little confused as to how I got there, but that didn't stop me from running those imaginary scenes in my head. I must have said "meataballa" out loud, because she turned around. I will swear that she saw me standing there staring at her with my right hand up in the air doing my little hand motion and my mouth hung open to accentuate the the last syllable. For some reason, I thought she was turning around to correct my Italian, so I tried to correct myself first.
"Meataballo?"
Silly me, meataballa isn't even a real Italian word. The Swedish Chef made it up.
She might have seen me. She might not have. I can't really trust myself. Later I realized that she probably didn't notice me because I was blushing horribly, so I blended in with the red brick building behind me.

At that time it didn't occur to me that this was the first time I'd seen her face. Somehow she looked exactly like she had in all my make believe conversations.

The next day I moved up closer to the front just to sit closer to her. She came in a few minutes later and sat down right next to me. Had I moved right next to where she'd sat before, or had she moved to sit by me? As much as I had stared at her the day before, I couldn't recall where she had been sitting. From that point on I felt like I was back in Junior High. Every time she flipped her hair I wondered if she was doing it to get my attention. Of course, as all boys know, no guy ever actually catches the signals that are meant for him, so if you think that a girl is sending you a signal, you are obviously wrong. But I couldn't help but think that she was looking at me while I was reading over my "notes" I had taken the day before. Had she seen me following her? Had she noticed that we had the same double major? Wait, I had only given 'psychology' as my major the day before. Why would I do that? Since I had gone first, if I said both, maybe she would have noticed me instead of the other way around. Maybe she would have actually turned around and looked at me. Maybe even given me a little wave.
As I sat there pouting about not revealing both of my majors and wondering whether or not she was wondering about me the same way I was wondering about her, it never occurred to me that I might ACTUALLY strike up a conversation. Normally I'm very outgoing and have no problem meeting new people. But I just couldn't bring myself to start a conversation. Possibly because I had imagined myself being shot down three dozen times the day before. Maybe it was because I was convinced that she had seen me looking stupid the day before.

"I like your shirt. It looks soft."
What? Did she actually just say that? That was possibly one of the crappiest ice-breakers I'd ever heard. In fact, in my head, she'd made fun of me for better lines.
"Yea, it is soft."
Holy crap, I take everything back about her stupid line, because my response far surpassed it in sheer social ineptitude. At least she had the nerve to say something. She initiated contact. That was a good sign right? Oh right, I guess I am supposed to say something now. But by now the awkwardness of what I said has set in. Ok, we'll just kind of sit here and not say anything until that awkward moment passes. Hmm, everyone else in the class but Amber and I is talking to somebody. That makes this silence doubly awkward.
Awkward, awkward, awkward. Don't you grow out of situations like this when you finish puberty? What is wrong with me? I've met a girl in every other college class I've been to, why am I so frozen when I actually WANT to meet someone?

On that awkward note, class started. I was temporarily saved by turning my attention to the teacher. But really, all my mind was still focused on what an idiot I was, and on trying to read her reaction to that idiocy. But, I couldn't look right at her, that would be too obvious. So, I convinced myself that I could read her emotions just by looking at her right hand out of the corner of my eye. Hmm, she's writing pretty fast, maybe even faster than the Esmeralda is lecturing. Yea, that really must be faster than Esmeralda is speaking, I can't be imagining it. Her heart must be racing for her to be writing so fast. Maybe she's not taking notes. Maybe she knows that I'm watching her! Oh I've got to glance away. Study the wall for a moment. Pretend like you're looking at....well crap there's nothing at all on the wall. Back up plan, stare at my shoes. Ok good, fifteen seconds of making sure my shoes are still tied, that's probably enough. Sneak a glance. Is she still writing at warp nine? Yes. Maybe she knew I was watching, so she was writing to me! Hmm... I need to be discrete about looking at her notes...buona notte, come sta?...hmm, so she really is just taking notes. Well, that's boring. She should play along with my little game.
At this point Esmeralda asked us to get in pairs to practice conversations. Amber and I are sitting right next to each other. We're the middle two people out of six. It's obvious we should pair up. But I can't be too obvious. I look to the guy on my right, Davide Due. Then I worry that she might think I don't want to be her partner, so I jerk right back around and almost fall out of my chair. She kind of laughs at me. I know she sees me because the walls are white, so my red face doesn't exactly blend in this time.
We have our conversation. While it is in Italian, it isn't beautiful love poetry. It mostly consists of "good day"s and "how are you"s and several "what is your name"s. But at least we were talking. Without even knowing it, witty remarks started slipping out. After the first one I got scared and wanted to take it back. I was sure she would think it was stupid. She would laugh at me again.
She smiled.

If there is anything more beautiful than her red hair, it's her smile.

From that point on, every word I said was aimed at trying to make her smile, so I could see it just one more time.
As things went on I kept finding more and more things that I liked about her. The way that she looked down and brought her shoulders up when she giggled. The way she arched her eyebrows over the top of her glasses when she smiled. The way her voice sounds in Italian....I could have sat there all day just listening. When she said "Arrivaderci, mi caro," I couldn't help but blush again. I don't even know if that's correct, but there can't be a better way to say it than she did that day. We kept talking the whole class:
"You must be crazy to double major in psychology and neurobiology."
"Yea, but they're what I love. What're you majoring in, again?"
"Psychology and neurobiology."
(giggling, looking down, raising shoulders) "Well, we've got something in common. I started out in just neurobiology but I wanted to get the psychology aspect as well."
"I'm just the opposite. I started out just doing psychology, and I decided that I wanted to add the medical perspective, since I'm planning on going to medical school anyway."
"Really? Me too! I don't know why I added psychology so late, I was supposed to be at medical school this year."

Whoah, she's way older. This could turn sour very quickly.

"How many extra semesters are you staying for the psychology degree?"
"I'll be here for at least another two years."

Whew, that's good. Two years is plenty of time.

"How many years do you have left?"

This is where I have to be careful not to scare her away...

"...I have 80 hours so far, so I've got a couple years left as well."

YEEES, that was brilliant.

"Wow, we have a lot in common. And we both started Italian in the spring semester."
"What made you start Italian as a super senior anyway?"
"I want to do a semester abroad in Italy."

We should go together.

"That's way cool. I've always wanted to go to Italy."
"Awesome. We'll have to go to an information session together. Well, here's my class. Where are you headed?"

I really don't know how it happened. Somehow we were no longer in the classroom. We were all the way across campus again. I looked around like I was totally lost, and this time I knew she saw. Then it dawned on me that we were actually where I was supposed to be. We were standing in front of my classroom. Could we have the same class? Could we sit together? Better yet, could we skip together?
No, her class was across the hall. Foiled again.

"My class is right across the hall."

She didn't believe me. She had seen me looking around like I didn't know where we were. She gave me a "Aww, that's so cute that you walked me all the way across campus and now you're pretending like it wasn't out of your way" look. That's fine with me. Cute is good.

"Well, I guess if you have class right next to mine you can walk me to class every day."(wink)
"I guess I can."
"See you tomorrow then."

As I was about to say goodbye I realized that nothing had happened as I had imagined. Not in the sense that I didn't make a complete fool of myself; that didn't bother me. The thing that struck me was that I hadn't even spoken a single word in Italian. Then I realized the perfect way to end the conversation:

"Ciao."
Current Mood: Elevated
Current Music: Your Song - Elton John

Installment the Third

The Nerd One

Sun, Jan. 30th, 2005, 02:24 am
"What A Gerd"

Recently I've been dabbling with a novel experiment: attending class.
At first it was very new and exciting, but after the first few days I began to remember why I made a habit out of naptime instead of classtime last semester. My professors don't really lecture about anything relevant. Most of them just prattle about all the things you have to do to be a successful student. Study for fifty hours a week. Only go out one, or maybe two, nights a week, and never if you have class the next day. If those are really true, then there's no reason for me to go to class, cuz I'm going to flunk out anyway. If they're not true, then why would I go to class to hear a bunch of lies. If I do go, I have to go out even more so that I can have fun and forget about the fact that I'm going to fail at life since I spend more than ten hours a week doing leisure activities. So, logically, my professors suck.
I guess not all of my classes are a complete waste of time. But some are. Take my psych 418 for example. I really like Dr. Spivey, but I have a real problem with his class: he takes attendance. Taking attendance in and of itself isn't really all that bad, but if you don't really lecture and just expect your students to learn what they need from the text book, then I hate you. Whenever he tries to teach anything, he runs off on some tangent. He was talking about the differences between the scientific method and common sense, and he said that the scientific method isn't really appropriate for most of our day-to-day lives; his example was that if his wife said "I love you," he wouldn't demand emperical evidence to support that assertion, he would just say, "I know."
And the digression begins.
He asked if anyone knew what movie that line was from. Of course it was I that spoke up first.
"Return of the Jedi."
Err, wait, did I say that out loud?
Boy did I feel popular.
The guy in front of me coughed out a little "Nerd!". Man, I was so embarressed, I felt like some n00b. If looks could kill, then I would be seriously maimed right now. This girl to my left leaned away from me and gave me this stare that was not so much like daggers, but more like battle axes, and 4 damage battle axes at that. I got pwnt by that glare, but it wasn't so bad. After fifteen seconds of embarrassment the respawn timer was up and I got to keep on listening to the lecture and pretend like nothing had happened. To avoid any other expressions of my nerdliness, I got out my pillow and planned to pause the lecture for a few minutes to catch some z's. The same girl looked at my pillow and asked, "Does your pillow really say 'The Smartest Kid In The School' on it?".
My nerdliness had just levelled up.
"Yes...yes it does."
I quickly stashed the pillow in my horadoric cube with all my other accoutrements.
After being pwnt the second time by the same girl, I decided that she must be some 31!73 haxxor who was cheating, or at least she was spawn camping. She probably isn't even really a girl, I thought. She is probably some nine year old kid who gets a kick out of pretending to be a girl when he plays online. Pssh, he's probably never even talked to a girl, unless you count talking in chat rooms with other nine year old boys pretending to be girls.
Now that I had thoroughly bashed that punk kid and realized how geeky he was, I didn't feel like such a n0rd myself. But, since I couldn't get my pillow out without eliciting another "Stare of Death" spell from that witch, I had to find some other way to entertain myself. So I whipped out my HP 32SII to play some calculator games.
When I realized that I referred to my calculator by the model number instead of simply "my calculator" I felt so nerdly that not even a game of calculator Pokemon could cheer me up. After my pikachu got stomped by a Dusclops, I gave up in despair. Luckily that class was almost over, so if I could just find a medpac or battle stimulants before the next class I'd be able to get by.
In my next class, the TA was lecturing about manifest destiny. She kept saying 'destiny' over and over again, and, as I looked, I realied that she really looked like George McFly. I held my notebook up in one hand and leaned over to the girl beside me to say, "I'm your density!"
"What?"
"Ehh, I'm your density..."
"Don't you mean, 'I'm your destiny'?"
"Whew, for a second there I didn't think you caught the reference. If you hadn't said the next line I would have felt really awkward."
"What reference?"
"You know, George McFly said that in the diner."
"Who?"
"George McFly, you know, Marty's dad."
(blank stare)
"Back to the Future..."

VOIT! You just got served!
That embarrassment came out of nowhere, like some sort of trojan virus. Who would have thought that I could make a whole new species of nerd; I'd already established myself as a Star Wars nerd, a calculator nerd, a computer nerd, a D&D nerd, but now I'd done something new and exciting. I became a "Back to the Future" nerd.
It was a smash hit right away, because immediately the guy behind me said, "Yea man, I know what you're talking about. Scene 13. Whoah, is that a 32SII? I feel inadequate, I'm still using the 32SI. Do you think I'll need to upgrade for this course? I mean, the XEQ is supposed to be five times faster in the new models."

We were in government.

I bowed down to his nerdliness. We talked some, and eventually he asked me if I had a facebook account. At that point I realized the purpose of facebook; it gives guys a way to ask other guys for their number and not give up any manliness. Seriously, I've never been asked by a girl if I have a facebook account, they are always much more direct and just ask to swap numbers or something. Until recently, dudes just didn't ask for numbers from other dudes until they already had a good friendship. That seems kind of silly because that way you can't ever really make new friends unless you see them during class or something, but it's the way men have always done it. Men haven't exchanged numbers with other men for the past thousand years. But now we have facebook. Now, as long as you know someone well enough to remember their full name, you can ge their number without sacrificing the little semblance of manhood you have left.
I didn't really know what to say to him. There are a dozen different acceptable responses to The Facebook Question, but I didn't know which one really fit the situation best. How was I supposed to choose the right one out of a dozen choices?
Well, luckily, I had my twelve-sided die.
Current Mood: Gerdly
Current Music: Amarillo By Morning - George Strait

Well, that's all I got.
But, you have to remember to take these entries with a grain of salt. The following conversation between Joel and me is that grain of salt.

jdmartin04: dude
Geppanda: yea?
jdmartin04: how much of your crap actually happens?
Geppanda: some of it
jdmartin04: haha
Geppanda: In my last entry? I knew that the line was from star wars, and my government teacher kept saying destiny, which reminded me of "Back to the Future," and she did kinda look like George McFly
Geppanda: And, some guy did ask me if I was on facebook.
Geppanda: That's pretty much all for that entry. Oh, as you know, I do have that pillow, but I don't take it to class. I use it at home.
jdmartin04: haha, what about amber?
Geppanda: Well, she really is in my Italian class. She has red hair and shares my majors. I think she's very pretty, and I'm sure I'll ask her out eventually. I walk her to class most days.
jdmartin04: that's cool
Geppanda: But, that doesn't really make for an interesting entry, does it?
jdmartin04: sure
Geppanda: and, I told myself that I would write three in a row for the one year anniversary, so I kind of had to embellish things a little bit in order to meet my deadline.
Geppanda: But, the first entry is almost entirely true.
Geppanda: Except that the duct tape didn't really look like a personal solar panel.
Geppanda: May I paste this conversation into my journal? Or would you prefer that I preserve the anonymity of my sources?
jdmartin04: sources of what?
Geppanda: Sources of...this conversation.
jdmartin04: i didn't give you any valuable information
Geppanda: Well, you proved a point that I was trying to: you need to take my entries with a grain of salt.
jdmartin04: true
jdmartin04: very well, paste away
jdmartin04: these lifesaver gummies are not so gummy

Allright, I'm out. Til next year.

Over Thanksgiving break I found out that I was the man of steel. The high school crew all got together for football, and afterward a bunch of us went back to my house. We all grabbed sandwiches and ate them and joked and and laughed and bantered and gamboled and all-in-all had a jolly good time. And, just like old times, Hunter couldn't finish his food, so we made fun of him. Now, the only logical conclusion to these events, which I am sure you have all guessed by now, is that I end up puking my guts out. You may ask, "What in the world would make you puke after you've spent a semester eating Jester food?" Well, there is only one correct answer to that question, and that answer makes me look like a rock.
So, we were making fun of Hunter, and I said that I could have eaten my weight in Crisco faster than he could eat that sandwich. Then Marc was like, hey, I really could eat crisco faster than he could finish that sandwich. So, I went to look for some Crisco, but I wasn't really expecting him to eat it so I didn't look very hard. Instead I came back with a gallon of vanilla extract and told him that it would have to do. He was like ok, I'll drink this if you eat the Crisco. This time I knew he was serious, so I went to go look for the Crisco for real. Excuse me, I went to look for it fo'real. I got out a couple of spoons, but as I looked at them I decided that you could put way more Crisco in a spoon than vanilla, so I got some measuring spoons. The only problem was that it was the day before Thanksgiving, so my mom had been cooking, and she'd dirtied up all the measuring spoons. But, I knew we had two certain clean measuring containers for sure. Excuse me, I knew I knew fo'sho. I knew that we had two half-cup measuring cups. So, the contest began. If I would eat half a cup of Crisco, Marc would down half a cup of vanilla. I was a little bit worried about eating that much Crisco. By the way, Crisco = lard. I don't even butter my bread, I am deathly afraid of polyunsaturated fats. Marc saw my hesitation and asked if I wanted him to go first. I said no, cuz if he did it I would feel obliged to follow suit. So, of course he immediately gulps down half a cup of vanilla extract. So, of course he immediately threw it all back up. So, I was left staring at half a cup of Crisco. By the way, 1 half cup of Crisco + 3 tablespoons of water = 1 stick of butter. I figured, it'll be ok, I'll just regurgitate everything right off, and no one will be worse for wear. So, I forced myself to eat all of it. By the way, Crisco eating contests are the leading cause of heart attacks in this nation = a made up statistic. So, I sat above the toilet, waiting to purge myself of all that grossness. But, as I said earlier, I've been eating Jester food all semester. My stomach can take much more than half a cup of Crisco. I started freakin' out. I could feel myself getting stupider as my arteries clogged and I couldn't get enough blood to my brain. So I ran a couple miles. By the way, running a couple miles after eating a half-cup of Crisco = one of the stupider things I've ever done, and that's not just because it involved eating a half-cup of Crisco. So, I went back home and decided to make myself ralph old-school style. I leaned over the toilet and shoved my finger down my throat. I've always wondered how the bulimics did it, and now I wonder even more. Nothing happened. And my finger was definitely all the way in. I mean, you couldn't see any of my knuckles. I pushed a little farther, like until I swallowed my wrist, and still nothing. This was obviously not the way to do it. I remembered that Marc had instantaneously barfed after gulping the vanilla, so I poured myself another half-cup, and once again bent down over my favorite toilet. I took it all in one swig and got ready for the reflexive expulsion. Again, nothing. Now I was left with a three way dilemma; I could have my stomach hit to make me vomit, I could catch the flu and hope to spew, or I could drink syrup of ipecac so I might upchuck. By the way, Syrup of ipecac does not rhyme with upchuck, but it does make you puke. I chose the latter, and so off to Walgreen's we went. We came back to that same old toilet to administer the drug. I drank it down, and waited...and...nothing. I thought to myself, I must be the man of steel. So many trips to the toilet, and so little success.
Then, half an hour later, I had the sudden urge to empty the contents of my stomach. So, on my sixth trip to the john, the Crisco flooded, gushed, erupted and scattered as I heaved, retched, hurled and urped.
So this man of steel had finally found his kryptonite. I had been "like a rock," but now I was simply like some fat kid who likes eating Crisco.
Oh, when I say that I was "like a rock," I meant that sometime I act about as smart as a rock. And when I said I was the man of steel, I meant that whenever I shake my head it makes this strange metallic rattling sound. I basically just meant that I do some pretty stupid things sometime.
Like our pledge sneak.
I guess I haven't talked about BYX at all in this journal. I just finished my pledge semester, so now I am officially a member of Beta Upsilon Chi, or Brothers Under Christ. My pledge class was 40 guys big, or, rather, 40 guys awesome. We put on an awesome open party earlier, but I didn't really do anything stupid there, so I'll save it for a later entry. But, I did plenty of stupid things on pledge sneak. Pledge sneak was when my pledge class got $500 to spend however we wanted as long as the actives didn't find out what we were doing. If they found out, they got the money. So, at 1:00 AM one Sunday we began the eight hour drive to Monahans Texas. When we got there we went to the Monahans Sand Hills State Park. The stupid things we did included: shooting fireworks out of vehicles going 80 mph down the highway; building huge ramps on the sand dunes and going down them on sleds; digging small holes in the sand dunes, lying in them, and having people go down over you on sleds. The reasons these activities were stupid include: hitting telephone wires with Roman candles; hitting each other off the ramps; hitting people in the holes. It was awesome. Josiah even got blood in his beard, which now looks totally awesome. Emm, Marc, your video is going in the next entry, because I have way too many links in this entry already. Anyway, we meticulously planned all of our ramps and jumps, and then decided that we needed more ways to hurt ourselves, so we started sitting just under the ramps. Amazingly, noone ever was hit by a sled, so we decided to take away the ramps and just lay on the ground in little ditches as people sped over us. That made things way more exciting. I'm off to make a montage.

Ok, this is my last entry about college. I was kind of doing a series about why college is dumb, but I figure most people have figured that out on their own, so it's not like some huge revelation. I have been very disappointed with college in general. I don't like the whole university system because it's like paying to go to high school. Well, it's not really like high school, because you don't have to go to class and you don't have to work as hard because it doesn't matter whether you make a 100 or a 90, it's all the same GPA. Those were the only things that made high school suck: having to go to Jazz Band, and having to study hard enough to raise my grade from a 93 to a 94 or from a 96 to a 97 or whatever the case may have been. I don't have any of that anymore. That really makes a huge difference. Take my psychology class; in order to have a 97 average, I would have had to make a 94 on the last test. But, since a 97 is no better than a 90, I would have gotten exactly the same credit for a 64 on the last test. That just seems silly to me. I could have aced the test or missed every third question and noone would have ever known the difference. I don't care how hard the class is, if thirty points on a test don't matter, then what is the point? I admit, taking tests is what I have always been best at. If I could find a job taking tests for a living, I would. I mean, it has made school easy, but I don't know of any practical applications. I am going to get out of college and not be able to survive because you actually have to know things, not just be able to put down the answer the professor wants you to put. I don't see college preparing me for the real world at all, which is really why I think it is dumb. Not so much for me as for the real world. I will graduate and have all these credentials, and people will hire me thinking I'll be able to do these things, and they'll get screwed over. It would be just like hiring some bum off the street. In fact, I met a bum today who knows a lot more about my major than I do. He was very knowledgeable, and I got schooled.
Well, enough about that. On to something more interesting, like reckless driving. Apparently what we called "speed bumps" in Arlington are called "sweet jumps" in Austin. Driving in residential areas got so boring because of the low speed limit and numerous stop lights, so the city started a program to help encourage people to get some use out of the residential streets the city spent so much money to build. They graciously placed ramps at regular intervals throughout those often neglected areas. The stop lights, instead of being an annoyance, are now a useful tool for fairly starting races. And the races themselves can vary widely: you can hurdle the jumps, zig-zag through them in a slalom fashion, or just see how much air you can get. It's even better in the school zones, cuz it turns into a sort of Evil Knevil kind of jumping over a row of twenty cars, except that you are jumping over like 20 kids on the crosswalk(which conveniently has speed humps placed on both sides to facilitate a smooth landing). Even the pedestrians join in the fun, seeing how close they can let you get before they dart out in front of you. I am pretty sure they stole that game from the squirrels, who have made an art of dashing in front of cars. Man, UT squirrels are so dang cool, you knew they were going to start setting trends sooner or later.
But, the squirrels will never truly fit with the "in" crowd because they are all on the wagon, and that's no fun. In order to really have a good time it is pretty much required that you have an IV of alcohol going at all times. I mean, when people in Austin say they bleed burnt orange, it's because that's the color you get when you mix equal parts of red blood and amber ale. It is very important that they be in equal parts though; if your bodily fluids do not consist of at least 50% alcohol then you do not meet the criterion for being a true collegiate. This is also a key factor in being able to navigate around the speed bumps in the slalom races mentioned above, or in being able to get avoid the darting pedestrians.
Ok, what I'm getting at is that college is dumb. I'm not saying that I haven't enjoyed my past few months; I've been having a blast. I've met so many people and learned to dance and just in general had a awesome time. But that has nothing to do with college, or even the college atmosphere. I could have had the same fun without being enrolled here, and I wouldn't have had to pay tuition. I could have had the same fun in high school, but I learned more. I could have had the same fun in Jr. High. I would also probably learn more if left to my own devices. My college classes so far have done nothing but impede the learning process. I don't want this journal to turn into a forum for me to rant and rave, but I am so disappointed with college that I really have to say something. But, this is my last entry on the subject, so if you have enjoyed the last few relish this one. If you haven't enjoyed the last few, I don't understand why you're reading this one, but hopefully the next one will better fit your tastes.

So, right now I am supposed to be in psychology taking a test. This is not actually all that important, because I just need a 66 on this test to be exempt from the final and thus never have to go to that class again. I was pretty psyched about getting done with a class before Thanksgiving, but then I remembered that I also have to have five hours of experimental participation credit. I have been trying to rack up some credit hours, but it has been tough. I normally sign up for morning experiments because that is the only time of day when I don't have something else to do. I can't go during the afternoon cuz I have class, and if I'm going to be skipping class then I'm probably going to be skipping whatever it is I am supposed to do. I can't go at night because at night other people are available for doing fun-type things. So, all that I had left was the morning. Unfortunately, if I don't get in my routine 14 hours of sleep, I'm a real grumpy pants. So, I hadn't showed up to any of the experiments I'd signed up for.
Today, when I thought about being done with the class before Thanksgiving, I thought that I might as well be finished with my credit hours as well. I had filled out a couple of online surveys that each gave me an hour, but I couldn't remember how many. So, I got online and checked how many hours I had accrued. I was surprised to find that I already had five hours. At first I thought that there had been some mistake and they had given me credit for the skipped experiments. Then, on closer examination, I noticed a negative sign in front of the 5. I lost hours? Who took my hours?
P.S. I'll find my hours.
Well, I guess that when you skip an experiment you signed up for, they don't just give you an "N" on your report card, they give you negative hours. So, not only had they reversed all the hours I had earned, I was in the hole by nearly a quarter of a day. This did not bode well for me being finished before Christmas, much less Thanksgiving. I wondered if it was too late to drop. It was.
Well, now I'm fifteen minutes late for my test. I don't really care that much, because it's not like I know what I'm doing anyway. I haven't been to class, opened the book, or studied at all since the last test. In fact, all I've done is look at the powerpoint slides he posted online. He sure used some pretty pictures. I was counting on getting a 66 just going in blind, but with my current string of luck I'm not sure that I will, so I don't really see the point in going. I'll just take the final instead, cuz he uses it to replace your lowest test grade.
Now that I think about it, I'm not going to study for the final either, so I might as well head over there now and see how I do. Hopefully I can pull off two-thirds.
On a happier note, the other night I made Kellie Strickland and Josiah Clarke watch "The Princess Bride" for the first time. Don't get me wrong, I'm not blaming them for not having seen it: these things will happen. I mean, Jo was born in England. They have actual princesses and castles and R.O.U.S.'s over there, why would he want to watch them on film? Kellie...well Kellie is from here, but she is awesome all the same, regardless of her previous familiarity with the greatest movie of all time. That's probably why I made her watch it, so that noone would ever again falsely think her uncool because she couldn't recognize quotes such as:
Inigo: "Fezzik, are there rocks ahead?"
Fezzik: "If there are, we'll all be dead!"
or
Viccini: "Inconceivable!"
Inigo: "You keep on using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
Now both Jo and Kellie are fully versed in all things awesome and can participate fully in modern society.
Having done my good deed for however long until I feel like I need do another, I won't feel bad heading out to fail this test.

Tonight the Catholic sorority had a function at Midnight Rodeo, and one of the girls asked Kenneth to rustle up a couple friends, so he called me and off we went. Now, Midnight Rodeo was just like usual: crowded but fun. The journal-worthy portion of the evening had nothing to do with dancing.
Apparently like half of the sorority is in my statistics class. I recognized a couple of the girls but couldn't recall any names, so I felt really bad when they ALL seemed to know my name. After a while it started to get weird because I was positive that I had never sat with some of them. Toward the end of the evening Colleen let me in on the secret. (musical segue, with those cool blurry edges they use on TV to show flashbacks)

I promised myself at the beginning of the year that I would never sleep in class. When I got to class, I would pay attention. That policy has worked well for me, because if I think there is the slightest chance that I might fall asleep in a given class, I just don't go. In fact, the only class that I show up to on non-test days is statistics. Now, I don't really know why I chose that class to show up to. It might be that there are really hot girls in the class. It might be that there are pop quizzes all the time. It might be that I have four classes before that one, so I should already be in the learning mode. Most likely it is because this class starts at 3 PM, so I am normally awake by then. So, I have gone to this class pretty much every session, and never slept. But, lack-a-day, I couldn't keep it up. Today we had to open up our books to page something-or-other in the middle of the book, and all these memories of high school text books being so soft inundated my poor mind so that there was no more room for the binomial distribution of sample means.
Now, unbeknownst to me, my professor had come to rely on my answering his questions. I normally refrain from talking unless there are long awkward silences, which apparently must happen a lot in this class. I guess I kind of drift in and out; I drift in whenever I need to answer a question and out whenever he is doing the teaching. So, today he asked questions, waited through the usual few moments of silence, and then looked around to see why I wasn't answering. According to Colleen, he said, "The guy who normally answers must have found something better to do with his time." Then he finally found me, and he was like, "Look at that kid. I guess that's how he learns, by sleeping on the book. Maybe the knowledge gets in when the drool gets out. No, really, everybody turn around and look at him. Maybe we should throw something at him. Do you think I could make it? That's pretty far, he sat farther back than usual. Here, let me try to get him with my shoe. Just kidding. I guess I'll just give a pop quiz and see how he does. Do you think he'd still set the curve? Speaking of curves, check out his neck. That can't be comfortable. I mean his neck looks like some sort of Greek letter..." and so on and so forth. So, after hearing the same story recounted several times by different girls, I got the idea that he spent the entire class making fun of me. Eventually he used my name, and that's how all the girls knew it. Not the preferred method of introduction, but it'll work. I guess it's what I deserve. Not for sleeping, but for making fun of him all the time. I normally sit with Linda and we make fun of the way he dresses. He seems to favor suspenders, which are cool. He also wears flip-flops with suits, ala Martin Bishop. The best part is that he always looks like he has just come out of a six month hibernation just prior to class. This guy is seriously a contender for "What Not To Wear: My Stupid Professor Who Makes Fun Of People Edition." I can't even feel special that he made fun of me because he makes fun of everyone. He once made fun of this anorexic looking girl for being fat. Even I don't stoop that low. This man deserves a severe talking to.
When I first learned that I had been mercilessly tormented in my sleep, my first reaction was to wonder why Linda hadn't kicked me or something to wake me up.  I would have gotten up really fast. Like back in high school biology. Every day at the beginning of class my teacher would get a tennis ball out of his bag and keep it on his desk. If I fell asleep, he would throw it at my head, and that got me up fast. At first I just thought this was very annoying and ineffective, because I always just went straight back to sleep and the tennis ball would be far out of his reach. But, after the first time he reached into his bag and pulled out a baseball, I stayed awake through every single class. LaterI was thankful that Linda didn't kick me, cuz I'm sure that if she had my head would have shot up and in the middle there would have been a huge red sleep mark. Although I think those look quite distinguished, the rest of the world lags behind my level of appreciation.

(music fades and screen edges return to normal) Ok, so having a flashback to earlier today really wasn't necessary, seeing as all my journal entries involve things that already happened, but I had fun. But, while I was writing, my clock flashed forward a couple hours, and my bed time approacheth. I miss back when I had to be in bed by nine. Now I'm lucky if I get to sleep while it's still dark outside. Well, the bats have stopped squeaking outside my window, so that's my cue to hop in bed.

What has happened recently that I could write about? Well, I would make fun of our new president, but I'm not quite sure that I can do that yet, so I'll just make fun of the way we elected him.
You would think that with all the controversy over the last election they would have figured things out by now. But apparently things have gotten worse. Last time around it was only Florida that was having trouble, and that trouble was rather clear cut: old people couldn't figure out how to pull the lever correctly. Florida began campaigns to convince people that how they handled their ballot was just as important as which way they voted. You couldn't just impregnate the chad, you had to fully punch it out. But all the talk about punched out and impregnated chads really started to make people mad, just about the time when they started calling impregnated chads "knocked-up chads" and wholly punched out chads "domestically abused chads." So Florida had to rethink their strategy for avoiding a recurrence of the "hanging chad problem." Replacing the handicapped ramps at polling places with long and steep staircases so that old people wouldn't be able to vote seems to have worked rather well.

But this year the problems are a bit more shifty. I mean, am I the only one with misgivings about the election being left up to Ohio? The Buck-Eye State? Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't "buck-eyed" mean the same thing as "cross-eyed," namely that anyone who willingly attaches such a name to themselves should not be able to decide the course of our country? Then there was the problem of broken ballot counters. I actually thought this was a good thing. It proves that we're keeping jobs here in the U.S. and not outsourcing all our manufacturing jobs. We can all rest soundly knowing that we are keeping jobs here, paying less qualified people more for lower quality labor. Not that I'm a fan of the free market deciding who should make our faulty voting machines. I just wish those machines had said "Made in China" or, rather, "Made by Commies." I would have had a lot more fun writing this entry.

But even beyond those scary facts were other rather shady goings-on this election. The people in Iowa were too "fatigued" to count the votes. Now they're calling in for more volunteers to help finish counting. When the going got rough, people just gave up? They just surrendered to the fact that someone was going to have to come bail them out? Sounds like the French might have their grubby little hands in this. Can't you see it going down like

"Everyone else has turned in their counts, we're the last state left."
"Shit, shit, finish the tallies!"
"But I am le tired."
"Ok, have a nap, call in reinforcements, make the entire country wait, THEN FINISH THE TALLIES!"

Right, so as I proved here, the French have undoubtedly infiltrated farther into our country than was previously thought possible. They are a much larger threat than bin Laden ever was. I mean, who cares about car bombs killing here and there when you have French Fries giving people heart attacks every day. And, did you know that the knotted pretzels we eat so often are "French twist pretzels"? Now President Bush's little choking incident doesn't seem so innocent. More than that, the French people are destroying our culture by undermining our commitment to good hygiene. Besides, they got in the way of our world domination plans. When Bush is named Supreme Chancellor of the World, they'll be the first to go.
But as long as we wear French Cuffs with tuxedos, eat French toast with breakfast and wear those funny little French hats when we paint, la resistance lives on.

 

I got a couple complaints about the 10/5/04 entry "Tabula Rasa" entry because at the end I revealed that I didn't actually not turn in a paper. So I decided to supplement that entry about something that I didn't actually not do with a new one about something that I did actually not do. The obvious choice was to write about how I always never go to class, but that would be boring for me because it happens all the time. So I needed to find something that I didn't always never do, I just sometimes didn't do. When I showed up to Philosophy one day and was surprised to find that not only was my seat next to Andrew and Joey, where I used to sit when I actually went to class, occupied by some shady looking Asian kid that looked similar Yanqi Guo(who I now know is also in that class), but also to discover that we had a test the next class. I had been given the perfect chance: I could actually not study for the test. Like most great discoveries, I didn't see this awesome opportunity til I had already taken it. I shall now put forth a true account of something I did not do.

I figure that no real people ever start to study more than the day before a test, so there is no point in writing about how I did not study before then either. I'll just say that I hadn't read the text and maybe had been to class twice. Skip to midnight the day before the test. I was out doing something, I don't really remember what, but when I got in I saw a note that said my roommate Robert wasn't going to be coming home that night. I was pretty excited, not because I don't like Robert, he's really cool, but because he goes to class, and that can be annoying when I am trying to sleep. I mean, there is really no point in sleeping til 2 when your roommate disturbs you at 9, because falling back asleep when it is light outside takes way more work than getting up. I always used to smother myself with my pillow to block out the light, but I soon found that sleeping without breathing is much more of a problem than sleeping in the light. I think my current solution will work pretty well though; I moved my dirty clothes pile to in front of the window, and it pretty much blocks the entire thing. The only problem is that I have had to choose between doing laundry and sleeping in. So I've started stealing clean clothes from my roommate.

Enough about what I have done, I need to get back to what I haven't done. So, my roommate wasn't coming home. Perfect time for me to stay up all night. The problem was that the only thing I really had to do was study. That surely wasn't going to fly. So I walked over to the Union and hung out with the late night Wendy's crowd for several hours. We ate great, even late for a while, and then, when Wendy's closed at four, I paid off my tab and we all went our separate ways. I went to bed and didn't wake up til 11 when Robert got back from his first class. I found reasons not to get up until about 2, when I started to feel like I really should be studying for the next day's test. Then I remember how Mary Poppins could make any chore fun by turning into a game. Or by taking it with a spoonful of sugar. So, all I had to do was make studying fun. That seems easy enough. I called up Llewyn who is taking ballroom dancing with me, and we studied the two-step for a couple hours in the piano lounge.

Around six o'clock I knew that I really needed to start studying. But BYX was mixing with Phi Lamb starting at ten, and if I spent four hours studying and still wasn't prepared for the test, I would feel obliged to skip the mixer and study some more. So I decided not to start studying at all before the mixer in order to avoid that danger. I am pretty sure that I just sat there for around three hours. I contemplated doing a lot of things. In fact, studying actually started to sound enjoyable. Fortunately my brother saved me from the temptation by calling me up and saying we should head to Jason's Deli.

After meeting people there for a pre-mixer dinner, we went to the mixer and had fun and so on. Needless to say, nothing constructive was accomplished there. I didn't even win at bowling. Then Kenneth and I walked a couple girls back to their dorm and just kind of talked. That wasted another good half hour. On my way back to my dorm, I ran into Joey, who would also be taking the same test. He also had staved off studying to this point, and he was going to pull an all-nighter in the library. I was beginning to worry about how hard this test would be, so I said I would join him after I dropped off my newly acquired bowling shoes in my room. And by newly acquired I mean that I will owe the Union a sizeable sum in late fees some day. For now, they are on extended rental. I got back to my room at like one and left a note for Robert that I wouldn't be back that night because I would be at the library studying all night. Again, my brother saved me by IMing me and asking if I wanted to take a study break. That sounded really good, cuz I was pretty tired. So, we went to Whataburger and then hung out for a while. By the way, a while equals until 6:30 in the morning. We didn't do much. We made fun of the leaf blowers, because they don't do any good. Some guy will blow all the leaves away from one part of the sidewalk, and then a couple minutes later the guy who was working on the next street over would blow the leaves from his street right where the first guy just finished cleaning. If the leaf blower guys did anything it was to move a substantial portion of the leaves out into the middle of the street, where they were even more conspicuous then when they were in the gutter. I guess this was in case all of a sudden it might start to rain, you have to have clear drainage gutters. If all the leaves stayed on the side of the street, I'm sure we would get flash floods all the time. Like, tsunami style. But as soon as cars started driving by at around 6 AM, all the leaves were blown back into the gutters. We decided that to prevent flooding, cars should not be allowed to drive on the streets.

So, at 6:30 Scott went home because he had to work in a couple hours. I still had five and a half hours to study for my test, so I wasn't worried. I thought about grabbing breakfast at the now open cafeteria, but then I realized that I still hadn't thrown away the trash from the burger I just ate. Then I realized that "just ate" didn't seem very accurate because I had finished several hours earlier. So I grabbed a croissant and started studying. Before I opened the book, I was absorbed into an argument between two janitors about how many feet the janitor's closet was. I was about to speak up and take the side of the janitor who was arguing that is was 5 by 5, when he left and was replaced by a new janitor. The conversation between the new janitor and the 6 by 6 janitor was completely in Spanish, but it was just as intriguing as the previous argument. At 7:30 I realized that although I read the entire Austin Travesty and spent $10 on breakfast foods, I didn't know what chapter the test was over, so I went to bed. When I was setting my alarm clock, I was faced with a dilemma. If I wanted to get up and study, I normally would have set my alarm for around 8, but I wouldn't have even fallen asleep by then. So, instead of having my alarm go off and waking up my roommate before I even fell asleep, I decided that I would not get up and study. I still had to decide which classes I would skip. It was obvious that I would skip psychology, because we just had a test on Monday so I wasn't due to show up there for at least another month. But all my other classes seemed important. I had reviews for tests in two classes, a quiz in statistics, and of course the test in philosophy. I decided that the difference between three hours and two hours of sleep really wasn't that much, so I would wake up for my 11 o'clock.

This is when I really pissed off my roommate. You see, when he gets up "early," it's at like 9:30, and it's cuz he has to go to class at 10. When I get up early it is because I think I should go to the gym in the morning, and I set my alarm for like 6. Without fail I always get up, reset the alarm for like 20 minutes later, and then go back to bed. This repeats itself three or four times, and then I realize that I am not going to go to the gym because I'm tired and I also realize that I am probably also not going to go to class, so I use some large and heavy object to turn off my alarm. So, it's like I keep waking him up every twenty minutes for over an hour so that he can't ever get back to sleep, then about the time he has to get up for class I get in bed and don't get up for seven hours. And it's not like it just goes off for a second and then I hit the snooze button. My alarm clock is strategically set up acrost the room for two reasons:
1.) If my alarm were right next to my bed I wouldn't even think twice about going back to sleep, but if I actually have to go walk over to turn it off then I will be more likely to stay up.
2.) There are no electrical outlets next to my bed.
The first reason is probably complete crap because it never works. I think that I just tell myself that it is true so that I won't feel like I live in the crappiest dorm on earth, so crappy that I don't even get a plug next to my bed. But I do live in the crappiest dorm on earth. So, in order to take my small revenge on the world for putting me here, I put my alarm clock closer to my roommate than to myself.

Anyway, so when time comes for my 11 o'clock, I decide that not going to class is much higher on my priority list than goingto class is. Then at like 11:30 I decide that since I haven't studied at all it isn't even worth it going to take that test anyway. Then at like 11:45 I consider cheating. I don't consider that I might cheat, I just consider how much work would go into cheating. I truthfully knew so little about the subject matter that I could not even have cheated if I wanted to. That being granted, I didn't even want to cheat. I would rather randomly bubble in answers than cheat. Cheating actually takes a certain amount of preperation. Sucks for all the saps that think cheating is the easy way out.

Anyway, at 11:50 when I rolled out of bed and put back on the clothes I had thrown on the floor a few hours before, I forgot to grab a pencil. However, I did remember to get my lucky pennies. I guess if instead of multiple choice questions this mid-term had been a scratch off I would have been in good shape.

I trudge to class and see Anthony outside. He says I look terrible. I tell him it's cuz I stayed up all night studying for the exam I'm about to take. He says that sucks, but I can use his lucky purple pencil if I think it will help. Not realizing that I didn't bring a pencil of my own, I tell him that I already have my lucky pennies, and they might cancel each other out. He commends me for my wise decision. I go sit down next to a girl and realize I don't have a pencil. She lets me borrow hers, and she looks at me like she is expecting me to use it for something and then give it back. I wonder if she has another one or if she needs this one for the test. She freaks out because she didn't know we were having a test. I realize that inadvertently I had gone to my three o'clock class, which is normally the only one I make it to. So I get up and leave. She is still worried about the test, and I still have her pencil. Thank you, girl, I owe you one. One pencil.

So I show up barely on time for the test, but it's ok cuz they take forever to pass out the scantrons. While I'm waiting I decide that I am definitely skipping my 1 o'clock and my 2 o'clock classes.

That brings us up to the present, as my two o'clock is currently meeting in the UTC. I am debating skipping 3 o'clock class, we'll have to see.

...

I just got back from my three o'clock. I have to agree with Mrs. Hill, it is really annoying when you bother to show up to class and the professor doesn't. On top of that, apparently there was homework due and I didn't do it. The rest of the class was finishing that up, but I was just watching the clock waiting for the 15 minute mark. Not that I would be afraid to walk out early and miss a class, but I would really feel cheated if I actually showed up and then I left early and missed class. I only made it to five past the hour. I noticed this hot girl with a biker helmet, so I walked up and asked her if she was going to stay and wait for the professor to show up.
"Well, yea, I mean it's only been five minutes."
She became considerably less hot. The girl sitting next to her was like "Hey Stephen, I'm gonna go ahead and leave cuz I'm starving and I wanna go grab something to eat."
At first that seemed awesome, but I soon realized that I didn't know who she was and she did know who I was. I didn't want to start out on an unlevel playing field like that, so I just said, "That's cool, have fun" and walked out.

This has been a true account of me not studying for a test. I realize that this may be the only time in my life when I am actually entitled to the use of a double negative, so I intended to make the most of it in this entry, but I completely forgot. Instead this entry has become what Jeff D'Souza's xanga used to be: an account of everything that I did in the past day and a half. Good? Bad? Did you even read this far? Only time will tell. The only thing that we can be sure of is that I am a real jerk when I am tired.

Things I figured out today:

After not driving for several months, I have forgotten how stop lights work. I knew how they worked when I was like 6, before I ever thought about being able to drive a car. But now, people will stop at red lights and wait there, and I'll be like, "You know, you can go now, you don't have to keep waiting," and they'll be all like, "I've found that it is generally a good thing to wait for the light to turn green entering an intersection, but I'll dart into opposing traffic if you think it would be a good idea," and I'll come back with something witty like, " Your mom goes to college," or "This one tastes like the cow got into an onion patch." Conversely, when people drive straight through a green light, I'm like, "Oh shit, he didn't stop, we're all gonna die."

45 minutes is plenty of time to find a date for the evening.

Knowing the homeless people on the drag is really cool. There are a lot of weird students at this university. When you pass by some freaky looking college kid at night, its very comforting to see my familiar homeless homies nearby.

 It is possible to get a citation for DWI when you are riding a bicycle.

Mortal Kombat is communist propaganda. I mean when you think about the obvious spelling error in "Kombat" who else comes to mind but those sneaky, no-good Russians? And, what word does "Kombat" bring to mind? "Kommies!" I know, I know, commies doesn't start with a 'k.' But that's the subliminal link: they're both words that DON'T start with 'K'!

Chop Monster is also communist propaganda.

If you didn't have to call at least three girls to try and find a date to the Date Dash, then you didn't wait nearly long enough. The whole point was to see how close to the start of the event you could wait before you started looking for a date. You're supposed to see how long you can last without finding a date. I know, that may not seem like much of a contest; plenty of guys go their entire college careers without finding a date. But this is a different kind of not finding a date. Its done on purpose. You are actively trying NOT to get a date. And there is a deadline for not having your date. On second thought, the Date Dash was a stupid idea.

Pong is probably communist propaganda as well, but of the Chinese sort.

If a drunk party-goer falls down the stairs in the middle of the night, there is always someone there to hear it. This is probably due to the fact that the Jester walls are made out of some sort of Saran wrap. The only reason you can't see through them is because they haven't been cleaned since they were built in like nineteen two.

Mr. Rogers is communist propaganda. I mean, "Will you be my neighbor?" Sure thing comrade.

Some football players are loud at night.

Some football players live across the hall from me.

Some football players are loud at night right across the hall from me.

Some football players are squirrel-handed.

Gregor is a weird name.  

Seriously, the football players stay up all night, and probably a good part of the day as well. I go to sleep at some hour that is late like 5 AM and I have trouble falling asleep because they are loud and rapping. I am still trying to sleep at some hour that is in the middle of the day like noon, and they are still loud and rapping. I think they work in shifts.

There is a 24 hour poker game in the lobby of Jester. That definitely works in shifts. When you lose all your money, you are free to leave. One guy has been stuck there since school started. He never goes to class, so either he recently dropped out of school, was never enrolled here in the first place, or has a very light load this semester. I prefer to think that maybe two of the three are true.

Vince Young was probably squirrel-handed in the OU game.

The squirrels here are awesome. I fed one orange sherbet. The ungrateful wretch didn't even eat it all. I wanted to kick him.

I saw a bird trying to eat gum that was stuck to the pavement. He looked funny. His head was all side-ways and he couldn't ever get it all. I watched him for a while. It was kind of like watching some fat dude trying to pick up a coin that is glued to the side-walk. Except that the bird wasn't fat. And was a bird.

Despite what the authorities that be will tell you, you don't have to look both ways before you cross the street.

If John Kerry crosses the street, then he has just flip-flopped. But, if you ask him, he decided it would be a good idea to cross the street before he decided against it.

If George Bush crosses the street, then he probably was holding out on a last chance of finding WMD's. But, if you ask him, you will probably get a very funny answer, because he tends to say funny things when presented with difficult questions.

If Ralph Nader crosses the street, nobody cares. But, if you ask him, he should be allowed in to the debates so that nobody would care when he won.

Sometimes hot girls cross the street. Sometimes they don't. They can be hard to predict. But they are way more fun to watch than any presidential hopefull ever could be. But not as fun as squirrels.

I am definitely becoming a better person as the year progresses. Gregory gym is closed to the public from 8-12 in the morning for classes. That has never really made much of a difference to me, but for the past week when my alarm has gone off at 8, I just couldn't make myself break that rule, so I went back to bed. This may be the dawn of a new respect for authority. And, yes, 8 AM is most assuredly as close to dawn as I ever get.

I don't think I'm going to go to class anymore; I have to stay in my room during the day to make sure the fire marshals can't get in. They would not be happy to see that Robert and I found a way to break every single rule in the "Housing and Food Services Terms and Conditions for Dormitory Living."

I set the Date Dash record of forty-five minutes prior to pick-up for the evening's events. 

I just made up that record. But, that makes it better, kind of like my last journal entry is better because I didn't actually write that essay. It's mysterious that way, kinda like the Emperor Zurg.

Even more mysterious than Emperor Zurg: Ninja Jesus. Almost as cool as Pirate Jesus. Man, what an epic battle that would be.

At this point I know I really should stop writing, but some football players won't shut up, so I wouldn't be able to go to sleep anyway. Maybe I should go tell them to quiet down.

Some football players are bigger than me.

No, all football players are bigger than me.

In conclusion, if Yu-Gi-Oh is communist propaganda, then they have made a believer out of me.

I have been told by numerous people that you need to make your college professors notice you so that they will remember you. So, when I recently turned in my first philosophy essay, I saw a chance to make an impression. I used several strategies to ensure that I would not be forgotten.

My first idea was to turn in the infamous Yellow Dart essay on hustle and bustle, but StrongBad wrote that, so turning in his work would probably be considered plagiarism. And that would probably be considered wrong. And it would also probably be considered an 'F'. So, I came up with a different idea.

First of all, I had to come up with something completely original that my professor had never seen before. After a couple of days, I realized that I would never come up with anything unique if all I did was go to class and read the textbook. I would be learning the same thing everyone else was, and I would be constrained to the traditional ways of thinking. So, in order to free my mind, I stopped attending lectures and studying the text. Further, I decided that I couldn't logically think about the subject matter. I mean, that's all the ancient philosophers did to come up with their ideas in the first place, so if I do that I'm sure to come up with the same old ideas. Only when I knew nothing about the subject and put no thought into it whatsoever did I truly excel in my studies. Now that I had my unique idea, I had to find a unique way to present it. Now, I had a problem. If I had given myself plenty of time to write it, I am sure that it would have come out as a coherent well-written essay, and that is exactly the opposite of what I was shooting for. Everybody turns in those things. So, I had to write mine last minute, preferably the morning it was due. That way, it would come out jarbled and confused. This makes it seem like your ideas are so different from the established ones that modern language cannot even express them adequately. In other words, your essay is so awesome that you can't write it down. So, I sat down the morning the essay was to be turned in and read this prompt: "How would you explain Zen Buddhist enlightenment to a Westerner?" Although I had a rather good grasp of what a Westerner was, I had no idea what Zen Buddhism was. So far, so good, I had taken one step in the right direction. Then, I proceeded to try to come up with an answer without any tale-tell signs of boring, conventional logic. So, I reasoned that Zen was probably the last letter in the Buddhist alphabet, so Zen enlightenment must be "learning the entire alphabet," a metaphor for learning to read. So Zen enlightenment is obtained through reading books. I thought that this was pretty self explanatory, but most westerners are pretty dumb, so I decided that I would have to come down a couple levels to explain it for them. So, I would just read them a book. I grabbed the nearest book, which happened to be a Bible. I don't know if you've ever tried to type out the entire Bible, but if you have, you know that it is pretty long. I got tired of typing, and after I had photo-copied a couple pages, I realized that when your entire essay is a photo-copy of a book, it looks a bit like plagiarism. I heard that plagiarism was frowned upon here, so I abandoned that effort and decided instead to use the only book that I had entirely memorized: Green Eggs And Ham. Ok, so I have another book memorized, but the first book of Caesar's commentaries on the Gallic wars isn't even in English, and I am trying to dumb this down for westerners. I was going to write a proper MLA format works cited page to give Dr. Seuss the credit he deserved, but fortunately the time crunch I was under saved me from that unoriginal error, so instead I just decided that I would put Dr. Seuss at the top instead of my name.

That brings me to my second criteria for a unique paper: format. I didn't want my paper to look exactly like all the others, because chances are the professor only looks at the format to give you a grade: 5 paragraphs = A, 4 paragraphs = B, et cetera, and never even reads it unless it stands out. So, to make mine stand out I had to have a completely new format. I considered several options. I could either write it in a special way [writing in braille, writing in code, writing in crown(crayon for all you yankees)], write it on a special medium [the wall of the men's room, the back of my hand, or a Valentine card], or I could construct it in a special fashion [make a scavenger hunt for him to find each page of the essay, slip one page of my essay in the middle of every other student's essay, or make it into one of those little post it note things that you draw the pictures on and the flip through them to see the pictures move]. I had a lot of trouble trying to decide, but it eventually dawned on me that someone had probably tried all of those before. They are way too obvious. I could combine parts from all three categories, but that would still just be copying. And plagiarism is wrong. Plagiarists will all go to hell, along with the jay-walkers and the people who play raquetball on the squash courts. So, since the professor was coming around to collect the papers, I knew it was time for me to make a quick decision. I ripped up my boring typed up copy of "Green Eggs And Zen" so that I wouldn't be tempted to turn in such a normal paper. I took out a new sheet of paper and I did the only thing I could do to ensure that noone else had ever done the same thing before: the first thing that came to my mind. Well, apparently my mind was rather blank at the moment, because I didn't do anything at all. My professor came by and took the blank sheet of paper from me. He turned it over and looked at the other side. He looked perplexed, and then it was as though a light had come on.
"This is truly profound!" he said. "Noone has ever put it like that before. You surely are enlightened."

Ok, so he didn't say that. And I didn't do that. None of this really happened. Except for me having "Green Eggs and Ham" memorized. But, if you follow my procedure, I guarantee that your paper will make an impression. And that's all you really want, right? You might have to let your grades suffer a bit in order to achieve the greater good of being remembered. But, as long as you have your priorities straight, you'll be willing to make that sacrifice.