Puppy-logue Number Two

The puppies have been here for 8 days and have made themselves at home. Definite personality traits are showing up. Some of them seem in danger of staying. I'll share a few.


Andy--Thinks of himself as Top Dog so of course, feels compelled to climb higher than anyone else. If Opie is in my lap, Andy will try to perch on my chest. He's the more agile of the two, already mastered going up and down some steps. He's faster, more curious, and greedy about food. Despite his machismo, he's a scaredy cat at heart. A hoot from the owl last night put him in missile mode to the back door.


Opie--He's happy to watch from a distance and move in when he's ready. That doesn't mean he's aloof, but rather discerning. He's actually the more loving of the two. He likes to lick you, alot. He is also prone to eating poop (we're working on that) so the combination is no good. Opie eats more slowly and is less of a glutton than Andy. He is a bit slower to catch on to commands. He is serious about his toys and has a huge weakness for wicker baskets.

Both should have Houdini as their middle name (safety gates are minor obstacles) and both have stolen my heart.

-Speed Natzi

Puppy-logues

The Orlanski Family is proud to introduce two new additions : Opie and Andy.


Two young Westie Terriers, new to the world and too short to see most of it. I thought it might be a worthwhile venture to observe them in their interactions with their new environment, so I assigned my mother the task of writing brief "Puppy-logues" which I would post on the blog. This is the first.

Puppy-logue #1 - 11/3/06 By Speed Natzi
Warm and fuzzy, that's the feeling you conjure up when talking about puppies.  It happens to almost everyone.  And I was definitely feeling it despite the drive out to east f--k Gwinnett County, with a right somewhere outside of Chestnut Mountain.   Puppy power.  

Some few hours later, as one puppy headed for an electrical cord and the other pulled my book off the couch to use as a teether, I wondered how the hell I walked myself into this.  I had a flashback of watching my husband walk out the door for work as I stood, addle brained from lack of sleep, with a screaming 5 day old infant. Not too dissimilar at all.   

Some more few hours later, I had accomplished several important stepping stones to regaining sanity:
1) I got the puppies to come to me (or at least not run from me when trying to pick them up).  
2)They had both peed and poo'd outside multiple times. 
3) And most importantly, they had discovered that I ruled the food bowl.  

One point for the human.

-DLO

The Death Of Alan J. Orlanski

There is simply no better way of describing last week (Oct. 20-Oct. 28) than to say that it was the death of me. Let's start on Friday, October 20th.

Friday, October 20th
The first, last, and sole day of Wash U's Fall Break. I, of course, was incredibly grateful for the day off, despite having to wake up for my 9AM radio show, in addition to having a homework assignment due for my cancelled Friday class. I had been needing a break and Wash U., attuned to the needs of its clientele, arranged a very proprietary Friday-Off. You know, I hear that even Georgia Tech gives two days for Fall Break, and my understanding is that GaTech strives to provide nothing more than what's needed to maintain their students' sanity.

At any rate, I did enjoy not having to go to my 2-hour Experimental Psych lab, though there was plenty else to occupy my mind. Earlier in the week, my Summer employment--the documentary. did I tell you about that?--burst into flames and fell wildly from the sky. The details are all very icky, but they amounted to a very simple decision:

IF "The project must be finished by November 10th" = 1 (true) THEN
LET "Alan must go home to Atlanta on October 27th" = 1 (true)

So, come Friday, Oct. 20th, I was gearing up for a Hell Week consisting of the following :
1.An Experimental Psych test on Monday; no big deal, really. Mostly multiple choice, really more like my High School classes than my contemporary College ones.
2.A Pseudopatient Interview on Wednesday; this one was scary. To be fair, I'd known this day would come since early May. All the same, I've never ever done anything remotely like this, and I'm the sort of person who never feels comfortable doing anything for the first time. So, my task was to study the symptoms and various clinical descriptions of Avoidant Personality Disorder, and then to perform, in the context of a mock clinical interview, the part of a person with Avoidant Personality Disorder. I nailed the performance, but I had a secret weapon on my side.
You see, the temptation that arises from giving Psychiatric diagnostic manuals to college students took hold of me. The very first time I laid eyes on Avoidant PD, I thought of Alfonzo.
"Expressively Fretful. Conveys personal unease and disquiet, a constant timorous, hesitant, and restive state; overreacts to innocuous events and anxiously judges them to signify ridicule, criticism, and disapproval."
"Interpersonally Aversive. Distances from activities that involve intimate personal relationships and reports extensive history of social pananxiety and distrust; seeks acceptance, but it unwilling to get involved unless certain to be liked, maintaining distance and privacy to avoid being shamed and humiliated."
So I know what you're thinking, and you're right! I am completely unqualified to diagnose Alfonzo with Avoidant Personality Disorder, and the coincidence of many of Alfonzo's traits with the traits of the Avoidant are likely due to my own interpretation of both. I know, I've heard it all a million times, but there's something else that you don't know.
As the date of my Avoidant performance approached, I realized just how unprepared I was. I had written an entire backstory for my Avoidant avatar, but I hadn't rehearsed or anything. My two forays into theatre were iffy at best, and I'm well aware of my terrible stage fright and spotty memory. I became convinced that I would embarass myself and get kicked out of the class, until a risky idea popped into my head... what if I impersonate Alfonzo? Strangely, this is something I feel somewhat confident in doing, so I decided to give him a visit the day before my performance.
I, essentially, performed a psychoanalysis on him. Let me tell you, he's in some sort of state. He didn't even balk at all the questions I was asking him, but, then again, he only left the couch to let me in. I got the key details from his past, his manifold anxieties and the terror of everyday interaction. Poor guy, really. Armed with his personal details, I set to work on imitating his mannerisms. I didn't need him for this; I'm pretty good about capturing the mannerisms of people I'm around often. Wholly unconvinced that my Alfonzimitation would work, I went to bed. The next day, my imitation proved a wholly-adequate candidate for Avoidant Personality Disorder.
3. (Did you forget we were numbering?) Experimental Psychology, yes, the very same one in which there was a test on Monday, also required that I write a full paper in APA format (title page, intro, methods, results, discussion, references and a bibliography) based on the results of a mini-experiment we ran in lab. I'd saved Wednesday through Friday morning for the task of finishing this paper. However, around 10 PM Wednesday night, I remembered a third assignment.
4. An APA-formatted Introduction and Methods paper, outlining the experiment I propose to run by the end of the semester. Though shorter than #3, this assignment is arguably more important to my final grade. As soon as I remembered this paper, I dropped #3 and started doing the research for #4. By 3 AM, I'd finished #4 and fallen asleep. The next night, I worked all afternoon and evening and finally finished #3 by 1 AM, at which point I set to work organizing my radio show for 8 hours later. I finished (after many technical difficulties) and went to bed at 3:30 AM. I slept through the first hour of my show, though I hear it was an hour to remember.


Now backtrack! Before Hell Week was upon me, there was an additional weight upon my shoulders. Namely, that of the documentary. As far as I could tell, I would have to finish all the work I described above, as well as an assignment or two from this coming week, before driving home on Friday the 27th to finish the documentary. So I used my Fall Break to get a single day of enjoyment in with Sam before I settled into worker-bee mode.

By Sunday, my parents had disallowed my driving home. Carl's mother, my project supervisor, called to discuss the possibilities. This resulted in a more complicated decision.

IF "The employers are willing to pay me more" = 1 THEN
LET "Alan will drive home to Atlanta" = 1
ELSE
LET "Lucy (Carl's Mom) has to figure out how to finish the movie" = 1

All I could do to help was arrange for Carl to get into my house and retrieve the backup copy of the project I left at home. Lucy told me she would just have to find someone to wrap up the project.

Not ten minutes after this exchange with Lucy, Carl called. "So, you need me to clean up your mess?" I didn't quite understand, until he explained that it looked like he would be the one conned into finishing the project. This changed the decision slightly.

IF "Alan will drive home to Atlanta" = 0 (false) THEN
LET "Carl gets screwed" = 1

When I realized what it had all come to, I gave myself the night off from work. Either way, whether I drove home or not, someone was going to get prostituted. It just happened that I was in a position to trade 16 hours of driving and an entire weekend for Carl's trouble, and I was sorely tempted.

And everything was resolved by the next day. Lucy conned one of her Ad Agency employees into finishing the documentary, which meant all Carl had to do was copy some files off of a computer in my house while nobody was home. I told him to make himself at home, for all those amongst you who know what I mean by that.


And so here I am on the other end of all of that. I realize that I recalled it in a chronologically void manner, but I still haven't quite arranged it all in my mind. Thursday, October 26th--by far the most strenuous day, producing 3 pages of work for every hour of sleep I got--was the anniversary of the End of the World, from all the way back in High School. I didn't realize what day it had been until 12:30 AM on the 27th. Maybe, after all these years, it turns out that October 26th really was the end of the world. It should have been the death of me, but I was too busy to die.

-Alan

Malefaction

So, as most of you already know, this Friday is Friday the 13th. As most of you also know, my weekly radio show is from 9 to 11 am on Fridays, and thus my next radio show will be on Friday the 13th (are you still with me? Good!). Well, I decided that the show's theme should be Songs By Artists Who Died Unfortunately (as in, of reasonably unnatural causes).

Sam and I got to brainstorming and we came up with about 16 names, but we soon after turned to the internet. This is what we found.

Yes, The fear of the LORD prolongeth days, but the years of the wicked shall be shortened, or, as the page goes on to imply, rock n' roll stars die prematurely because they're evil. Go ahead and look over the list. It's somewhat comprehensive, and very detailed; names, the band they were in, the date they died, how old they were and what killed them. As a note, I think some of their entries are unfair, like guys who died of heart attacks at 76. That does not count as premature death for being evil.

Be sure to scroll to the bottom of the page to see more scary puritanical scrabblings.


On a completely unrelated note, if any of my Wash U readers read the paper on Monday and know about Professor Joshua Smith and, more importantly, the anonymous faculty informant... well, I think the informant was the Smith's own wife, a professor in the same department. This is just wild speculation, but it makes a little sense.

Anyway, that's all I've got.

-Alan

A Blogger, Weekly

Or perhaps 'weakly'.

Okay, so I've mentioned things in the past about how Alan on the blog deviates from Alan in the real world; I chalked this up to alienating all those close to me in one way or another, the result of which is that the most important thing in my life is frequently my best kept secret--but it's not as though I don't trust my friends, ex-friends, lovers, ex-lovers, confidants or ex-confidants. If you've known me for any amount of time, you know that I'm secretive, you know that I lie, and you know I'll always have the audicity to beg your forgiveness when my secrecy wears on your nerves.

Well, anyway, there's been a secret for the last couple of weeks, and everyone of consequence knows about it, so it's now safe to write about it on the blog.

Samantha Cyrene. Her name is a better portrayal of her than I could come up with. (sigh)

First to find out was dear ol' Jessie, by virtue of waiting with me in front of Rebstock for class to start, as well as it being fairly safe to tell her (as a lifelong social floater, for every friend that I have, I also have second friend who has no loyalties to the first friend. Jessie was, in this case, the second friend).

Next to hear about it was Bridget. The resultant drama of telling her has already come and gone--we've had this problem so many times that we've become very efficient about resolving it (unfortunately, I can take no credit for how well our last bout turned out).

Round three was my new suitemate, Benjamin, who is Sam's recent ex. He gave me the go-ahead, but I have saved the hardest conversations for last; my most recent ex-girlfriend (Pistachio), a stoner romance (yet unnamed on the blog), and the cousin of a friend of mine (a Summer thing. Actually it's why Pistachio is now ex-Pistachio).

And so I was a coward about it. By bad luck (and nosy girls named Emily) the stoner romance found out and confronted me. And though I admit that I am both a liar and a coward, I can gladly say that I made no excuses for my behavior.

Sooner or later, the rest of the suite found out (momentarily tense, until they learned that Ben was okay with it), and things have been fairly stable since then.

So last night, at our first party of the year, Sam asked if we could go ahead and put ourselves on Facebook. I knew that once it was on Facebook, there was no denying it to anyone from that point on. Taking full advantage of the fact that my computer was all of 10 feet from me, I moved to make the change immediately. End result, the relationship status went up around 11:30 PM Central time. I got a phone call around 1 AM, which I ignored. When my phone stopped ringing, I turned it off and turned my attention to more serene things. When I turned it on in the morning, I had four voicemails, and It's funny..... every last one of them was about my change in relationship status.

It's enough to make you want to quit the Facebook. That'd show ol' Zuckface.

At any rate, I know my production of posts is pathetic, but I'm willing to accept that description.

-Alan

Jump-Start

Don't worry, this isn't another cop-out. And for the record, I'm sorry.

I'm really starting to miss Carl. There's really no better audience for this than you, because no other audience is as familiar with both of us (except, perhaps, Stu, Lucy and Bridget), but that's not why I'm writing it here. It's because, as I sit here, smoking my trusty marijuana Vaporizer (the Pencil Sharpener) and slouching towards a blog window, I am reminded of Carl and the numerous blog posts, phone calls and World of Warcraft sessions which began with a bowl; this act perfectly exemplifies the sort of negative logic which propels my apathetic lifestyle when I'm in Atlanta. But let me explain:

There is a distinction between 'people who smoke pot' and 'pot-smokers'. It is my belief that this line is drawn between those people who never interact with drug dealers and those people who do. It's the difference between liking pot and wanting pot, essentially. Once you 'want pot' it's only a matter of time before you find someone to get it from. Once you know that guy, the only things stopping you are (i) your bank account, (ii) your dealer's cell-phone, and (iii) method of transportation. If you own a car, obstacle three is permanently not a problem. So that's the difference between 'people who smoke pot' and 'pot-smokers'. I gave you that distinction so I could give you this one:

There are myriad occasions for smoking pot, including but not limited to : (i) two (or more) friends are in the same place with pot, (ii) two (or more) friends are in different places with pot, (iii) you are alone with pot, (iv) any clock or device displays 4:20, (v) you can name a country in the time zone of the next place it will be 4:20, (vi) it's raining pot, (vii) your mother's lifelong best friend has brought her friends to swim in your pool, and one of them has brought pot, (viii) you drove up to St. Louis with your brother to tour a college, but really to go see CAKE and smoke pot, etc. etc. etc.

It isn't particularly difficult to decide when to smoke pot. It's really just when the option first occurs to you that you choose to smoke; for everyone but Carl, at least.

For all intents and purposes, Carl lives in the present moment. He's not thinking about ten minutes ago, and he's not thinking about a week from now. His subconscious has learned, over the course of many years and many many failed social interactions, to hold onto incredibly important information which is likely to come up later; otherwise, the things you do with and say to Carl are essentially leaves blowing by his car as he drives from one present moment to another.

Sigh. The sad part is two-fold; not only had I long envied this about Carl, but I feel like my interactions at Wash U are taking on a very Carlesque aspect. Agh, this is a very long and roundabout story!

So Carl, and deciding when to smoke pot, and negative logic if you can remember that many lines ago! As Carl pilots his way through every oncoming moment, it will occasionally come time for him to begin a task which will require his undivided attention for some discrete period of time. Faced with this objective, Carl's immediate reaction is to consider smoking pot. Why? "Because we won't be able to once we..."

The beauty of it, of course, is that we end up smoking before nearly everything. Theoretically, we could smoke, play WoW for an hour, smoke, drive to Chick-Fil-A, smoke, go downstairs and play video games. The only way we could smoke more is if smoking could precede smoking, leading to a chain-toke of indefinite length (or until we ran out of pot).

And so, beginning this post by warming up my vaporizer sent me straight back to good ol' Decatur, to a Summer of complete irresponsibility, and to the practice of smoking a bowl before doing anything. It'll never be as fun alone.



I really owe you something special, don't I? It's been.... well, let's just say it's been too long. At the very least, I owe you an introduction to the new suite. It's fortunate that I've taken so long to write this post, because I've had more time to get to know them all. Here's what I've gleaned :

Douglas K. Freling & Benjamin Abraham - I heard stories about these guys way back in Freshman year, pulling pranks in Lee (not the poop, though). The best word for what these guys do is 'mischief'. Their limitations are three : motivation, budget, and felony status.

Doug, on his own, perfectly exemplifies the black box principle of Behavioral Psychology : we know what goes in, and we can see what comes out, but your guess is as good as mine as to what goes on in between.

Ben is a Jewish G.I. Joe. I ask those antiwar members of my audience to access to 1950's idealization of the military man. Who knows who Ben'll defend me against, but I will rest assured knowing that he's defending me well. I trust him implicitly.

Orson Ferris Ridgely - I list his full name only because look at it! Orson is sneaky, like a ferret or some other tunnelling rodent. The bottom line with Orson is this: don't leave him alone in a room if you expect him to be there when you get back; lock picks, trap doors, unauthorized access to the school's tunnel system, and the sort of disposition with which one masters those things handily.

Jonah Krueger ("J.Kru") - There are blankets, pillows, mattress pads, fluffy towels, down comforters, stuffed animals, live animals, and then there's J.Kru. Go ahead, reach out and touch him, twirl a lock of his hair, cup your hands around his butt BUT DON'T PINCH! Jonah is one of the cuddliest critters in nature, but it's all too easy to scare him off.

Noah "M.C." Michlinberg - If you've ever seen Disney's TRON, you'll certainly remember the grim array of polygons that caused so much trouble for our protagonist. Well, if anyone is likely to design and implement a computerized reality inhabited by pseudo-humanoid representations of programs ruled by an antagonistic digital demigod, Noah Michlinberg is. TRON coined the name "Master Computer"; we shortened it to "M.C.". He and Vlad ought to get along well.

And then there's Brody, but if you want to know about him you're going to have to read Alfonzo's old posts. I'm not rehashing any of it, hilariously trivial as it might have been.

Vlad and I are a little out of our respective elements, though maybe I'm worse off than he is. I'm not sure how I'm going to deal with living in the same room as him, but we'll see how it goes. Otherwise, I hope you all had pleasant Saturday nights, are having pleasant Sunday mornings and will go on to have pleasant Sunday afternoons.

-Alan

Re-Introduction

Alright, alright, there's one more thing that needs to be done before we can get back to business as usual; I've got to get everyone up to speed on my Junior Year.

This past May, we closed the door to Suite 3100 in Park Hall and turned in our keys. Though Chaz, Vlad and I had agreed, earlier in the semester, to room together this year, certain unforseeable and unexplained events have led Chaz to seek housing off-campus. Alfonzo, it should be noted, knew from the outset that he would be living, alone, in an apartment off Delmar. Given his disposition towards disappearing for days, or even weeks, at a time, I can't truthfully say that I will miss having him around; however, his participation on the Blog is not contingent on his living with me and Vlad.

(....the dust clears....)
And then, there were three.
(....tumbleweed....)
Or rather, six.

The peculiar condition that the blog finds itself in is one of identity-shattering displacement. Where, before, exactly two-thirds of the BlogFam lived in Suite 3100 of Park Hall. At present moment, to the best of my knowledge, none of the members of the BlogFam currently reside in a location called "Suite 3100". In fact, exactly two-thirds of the BlogFam lives in houses or apartments located off of their respective campuses.

The plan had been for Chaz, Vlad and me to move into Greenway--school-provided apartment-esque housing located just North of campus--but Chaz's abdication coincided with a stastical error on the part of the University; namely, more accepted students decided to come to Wash U than the school actually has room for. One of the many consequences of this mistake was that our three-bedroom quasi-apartment was given to a group of three, rather than our gimpy group of two. All freshman being designated a room, and all other rooms having been filled, Vlad and I were told that there was no place for us on campus, and that we'd have to seek shelter elsewhere.

Tragic, isn't it?

As it should happen, the oft-mentioned Brody was experiencing housing difficulties of his own. There was some sort of chain e-mail bounced between Brody and his suitemates (you might remember his gaggle of Engineers; the party-throwers; find them on facebook or something) which piled one too many straws onto poor Brody's back. Through means which I have no intention of explaining, I have obtained and edited this e-mail for your consumption.

-"Oh yeah, Brody, your mom says hi. Shes saying something else but I cant make it out-shes in the shower right now."
-"So much for Italy making Brody classier. Oh well. Maybe he'll come home with a sweet sports car."
-"You talk clearer than you write. And I usually don't understand a damn thing
you say."
"Thats what I told Brody's mom after I unloaded in her mouth"
-"But if it'll keep the semen off of your glasses, Brody, I suppose it'll work fine."
-Brody : "I have yet to stick a potato in Alfonzo's tailpipe."
Lenny : "I should hope so. I only hope he can say the same about your mother."
-"Here's your word of the day: "Owndizzleified"
As in: I totally owndizzleified Brody's Mom last night.
Or: A bunch of teenage girls completely owndizzleified Brody at Halo."
-"Oh yeah...it's Brody's fault. Fucker. Next time I see you, BOOM! HEADSHOT!"

The Summer's abuses mounted, and Brody decided he wasn't going to take it anymore. He worked in secret, finding 5 guys who were willing to live with him. It was at this point that Brody and I communicated for the first time since early May.

He asked, specifically, if Chaz and I would like to live with him and 5 strangers. It should be noted that he had no reason to assume that Chaz and I wouldn't be living with Vlad and Alfonzo again. I told him my own situation and he agreed to take Vlad in place of Chaz. In the space of an afternoon, Brody seceeded from his suite, registered our suite, and bumped his ex-suitemates out by the same principle of priority that made homeless men of me and Vlad.

So, long story short, I'm living with five guys you've never heard of, one you've heard a little too much about, and Vladimir. I'll introduce the guys formally some other time. This post is it's own, and should be kept separate from that.

Good night, I guess.

-Alan

The Networks Did It First

Disappointing myself is something I've finally gotten used to. Long-gone are the days when I'd make conservative estimates of my own willpower and ambition; I just shoot for the stars, hit the ceiling, and make no apologies for my unabashed (and numerous) failures. I insist that this is no fault of my own, but rather the obscure precipitate of a betrayal which I experienced early in life.

I blame FOX for the poor example I live by. It was a very tender time in my life; I'd finally begun collecting a somewhat consistent group of friends, yet, year after year, the school administration seemed to push me into the corner of our elementary campus furthest from my cohorts. My 5th grade year, they did their worst: they stranded me with my two worst friends (they had not done so well as to keep me from my friends altogether) in a class otherwise populated by every person who had ever bullied me during my tenure as a student (as well as a number of inexperienced bullies yet to be rallied to the cause of making me miserable). In a protective maneuver, my teachers looked out for me and befriended me (insofar as a man and woman in their 40's can befriend an 11-year-old), which made me a new, more easily detested form of "Teacher's Pet". I had not volunteered myself, as most pets do, which put me in the peculiar position of resenting my protectors alongside my assailants. Because I had done nothing, asked for nothing and expected nothing in return, the animosity I faced was entirely the initiative of those producing it; in short, they hated me for who I was, and nothing more. Dr. Phil might say that they hated me for what they weren't, but that's the sort of high-mindedness that's likely to get me back into trouble with those around me.

So, back to the outset of this epic excuse: in response to my isolation and estrangement, I became good friends with my Nintendo and my television. The X-Files, Rocko's Modern Life, the whole TGIF block, Pete and Pete.... these shows kept my imagination's pilot light lit in that time of darkness. Rocko and Pete ran on Nickelodeon, so a couple months of Fandom had allowed me to see nearly every episode of their cumulatively weak catalogues; however, the joys of network television were a new discovery that fateful year, and I came to depend on their quasi-weekly regularity. I'd even faced the fact that my shows would disappear shortly before the school year ended. What I had not prepared myself for was the treachery that FOX would unleash upon the world.

6th grade came. I saw my old friends on the playground, heard about all the fun times they were having (nearly all of them had wound up in the same class; the one I'd been in the year before). Under pressure from my mother (you think she's a bitch about pedestrian rights? you should see her when she thinks her child is being neglected by an institution to which she wrote a $10k check to every year. brimstone has nothing on the sulfurous steam she emitted from her nostrils), I'd escaped the bullies while, again, evading my friends. It was a step up, perhaps even a couple, so nobody heard me complaining.... until The X-Files season premiere was pushed back to November 2nd.

Betrayal! Mulder! Sculley! How could the unwitting pallbearers of my social casket just up and abandon me for so many months? At the height of the show's popularity, they had the audacity to arbitrarily extend the season finale's cliffhanger by two whole months!

What does all of this mean? Does it mean that I plan to withhold news of my exciting life from you until November? Perhaps, if that's what it takes to rid myself of these FOX-implanted demons. What I'm really trying to show is how very blameless I am in all of this. I was abandoned by a television show at an early age, and it will forever hinder my ability to provide media entertainment to others. I'm sorry, it's just the way that I am.

-Alan

On A Lot Of Things

I had a fabulous 4th of July, despite the cancellation of the Decatur fireworks. I found myself, by the end of the night, firmly intoxicated and wrapped in fitted bedsheets. While cruising down Clairemont, I performed my annual reconsideration of my love of the 4th (this is something which is increasingly necessary as time goes by, though the extent to which I am enraptured by the mere promise of airborne explosions has yet to be overshadowed by my distaste for America's present political regime). I decided that I exercise the unique freedoms awarded to me, as a citizen of the United States, by completely disregarding our nation's wrongdoing; it is the peculiar right of Americans to ignore any and all international problems (even if we caused them, even if we're actively involved in them) without any serious risk of paying for their ignorance. Of course, I believe that the heyday of American ignorance is quickly coming to an end--September 11th may well have been the first time America got shot in its blind eye, but it won't be the last unless foreign policy stops looking like Sam Walton's ultimate cream-dream.

But it's July 5th already. I should move on, shouldn't I?

I left my heart in St. Louis.... and my tennis shoes. It's okay, certain parts were starting to smell, other parts were beginning to wear down and fall off, so I told Pistachio that the garbage would be a suitable destination. Had to ask her to hold onto the shoes, though.

So I worked half of a 9-to-5 today. I dragged myself out of the Britt household at a little after 11, drove home, collected a boxful of slides and albumized photographs from my bedroom, and migrated to the Cube Farm where Mrs. Lucy Britt (AKA Carl's Mom) is second-in-command. Before I was allowed to leave my house, though, my mother forced me to dress semi-respectably; this came down to a pair of gray cords, a dark gray shirt, and my hair all wrangled into a ponytail.

Fast-forward to 'bout 5:45 PM, I walk in the front door of my house and begin complaining about my tedious day (I spent roughly 4 hours scanning, and have scanned 2/7ths of the slides). My father, ever-aware of blemishes, skin-ailments and non-uniformly demarkated discolorations of all shapes and sizes, tells me that it looks like I've been bitten by someone. I ask him if he's sure I wasn't bitten by something while checking myself in the mirror to find WHOOPS! I guess I've had my hair down since the weekend, because he was the first person to notice.

I walked back into their view, blushing from the effort of trying not to, saying "Some big fuckin' mosquitoes in St. Louis".....

I've arranged to go back to the cube farm tomorrow, though Carl's Mom won't be there to defend me from the bloodythirsty advertising big-wigs. I'll just keep my head low and hope that I don't run into her boss, P. Fincher. I did some freelance work for him two years ago, and I resisted his best attempts to haggle down the price of my work, which may explain why it's been two years since I did any work there. They say that the only decorations in his office are his placard, a picture of his family, and a penny in a vicegrip.

-Alan

Pistachio

Some people are just well-accustomed to the dreck that spills forth from their gaping maws. These people, in all their ignorance, tend to be the sort of people who come up with pet names, and I envy their ability to use those painfully cutesy monikers; one of the seldom-touted perks of being completely mentally checked-out is that one can rarely fail to notice the world around oneself without, similarly, failing to notice oneself. And given that I'm no expert on failing to notice myself, my attempts to use pet names in the past have either been outright failures or tongue-in-cheek.

This one may be both.

It really doesn't matter what name you pick, if it's inocuous. Certainly, pre-formed reactions to a word can't be supressed, so it's best to avoid words that have connotations which are out of place in a romantic setting : "Charmin," "Dog In Heat," "Tasty Clam Dip," etc.

It may seem difficult to escape all negative connotation, but all it takes is a little extra-box thinking. Even though we're talking about amorous pet-names, the example I'm going to use is Carl and my nickname for Bridget's little brother, "Paper Bag". This name comes from a nearly one-year-old anecdote, in which Paper Bag (a name which, for the purposes of this story, is kinda preemptive) made use of a scrap of paper bag to do away with the last of his sister's forgotten stash.

What's acceptable and what's unacceptable varies greatly from person to person, but a simple rule of thumb may help you decide : if you walked into the quad (or into a park, or some other open area for generalized milling-about) and saw this person on the other side, would you feel as comfortable shouting their pet name as their real one?

"HEY, HOOVER!" may not draw too much scorn, but if her last name isn't Hoover, you may need to rethink your choice of petname.

-Alan

Please Stand Up

"I, the Anonymous Reader, find your posts pretty entertaining in general... I also know a little about your system, enough to know that your name is a pseudonym, though I'm guessing that probably the people that know you know who you really are.

As for censorship... meh. If you could say something when the majority of your readership encompassed strangers, surely you can say it when your readers are mostly your freinds."

There's a lot to say to that, but there's thoughts to mull over first.

If you're the anonymous reader who left this message, I'd like for you to e-mail me at alanorelse@gmail.com (come and get it, spambots!).

-Alan

Sound The Alarm

I failed to live up to the goal (or, rather, mandate) of a post every other day. My understanding is that there is a team of strong-armed men standing in the wings, bluntening their clubs, intent on drawing at least a post's worth of blood. If only I were a hemopheliac, this would all go so much quicker.

Dorm Adventures had it's heyday, I suppose, but everything deteriorates with time. My Summer life is boring, but not as boring as this webspace might suggest. There are happenings, goings-on, musings and maybe even a parable or two, but I am unable to share most of them with you.

The readership has been dwindling since the New Year, and I understand why. There was, perhaps, once a time when part of the readership followed Suite 3100 primarily for the purpose of enjoying themselves; now, I believe, those who still come here are here for the sake of their relationship to me. (SurrealGertrude, stand proud as the exception)

In short, by failing to attract readers who don't have a very specific social connection to me, I find that the things I can say here are outnumbered by the things that I can't. And maybe this is just my systemic self-consciousness looming dark over my blog-window, but so much has been cast aside for fear of what my mother might think, or what Bridget might think, or Marina, or Carl, or even Brody.

Censorship perturbs me. Politically, it should be done away with; by putting limits on the production of media, they control what is available from the top down, keeping obscenity away from the places children are likely to go. But why not forget the Puritans, lift all limits on the production of media, and instead work on a system of limiting access to obscenity? Of course, in my opinion, a child who is looking for pornography deserves to have it; the legal age for purchasing all media materials should be the age at which you know what you're buying. If a kid knows what Playboy is, it's already too late to protect him.

But, for the sake of pertinence, I'll let go of the previous paragraph. The issue at hand is Social Censorship, which is far more complicated.
Do I believe that there should be things that I'm not allowed to say? No.
Do I believe that everyone has a right to get angry at me for the things that I write? Yes.
The problem, of course, is that I project my own paranoias into other people. I know that nobody is restricting my tongue (or, I guess, my fingers), but the fear that they will react in a negative way translates, in my mind, into disallowance.

And then comes the (inevitable) moment of identity crisis. How do I reconsile the fact that I'm afraid to write over 50% of the things that I think/do? Doesn't that mean that something has gone terribly wrong?

I know this hasn't been the most-straightforward post... I'd like to think that you'll brush this off and forget about it, but I won't know until you do.

-Alan

Yvan Eht Nioj

It was just a few short weeks ago that I received this e-mail from The Navy :



Please make careful note of the message in the picture; "Be part of something great. Get high-tech training. Money for school. And for now : five free music downloads. Just to get you thinking."

Not only is The Navy terrible at punctuation and sentence flow, they seem to have an ass backwards approach to recruitment. Sure, maybe the times have changed, but I've won free music downloads off of fast-food cups. The Navy wants to give me the music without the meal. Are you trying to tell me something, The Navy? Am I looking a bit soft around the edges?

The pacing of their e-mail is perfect; six headers, enabled as links :
1. Take the hands-on approach. Start gaining the experience you need...
2. Cash in on over $70,000 for college. Work or school... why not go for both?
3. Experience a new sort of excitement. Cruising the open seas. Defending our freedom. Helping the humanitarian cause. (This one just makes me sad. First, the even momentary implication that one merely "cruises" while in The Navy seems a not-so-clever trap. What's more, who said that the American war agenda was THE humanitarian cause?)
4. Discover your place in the world. (Now this I completely support! Being home for the Summer with very few structured activities available, I'd be a lot happier if I knew something worthwhile that I was good at. This is a promise that I'm willing to believe The Navy on.)
5. "The Navy changed my life." Ready to join those who say it with pride?

This, above, is not a bad advertisement for The Navy. I'm not planning on being any type of soldier in my lifetime, and still it gets me thinking. If there were some bizarro-Alan out there, stuck at home for the Summer with very few structured activitites available, yet not morally opposed to participating in America's military program, he might sign up after reading this. It's a decent advert, until...

6. To access your five free music downloads, simply fill out the form. Or Call 1-800-USA-NAVY. When a recruited calls to verify your information, feel free to ask questions. Learn more about specific career opportunities. Qualifications. And the potential life waiting for you in the Navy.


So, try and imagine the person that The Navy is pitching to here. Maybe mildly intrigued by the idea of learning to operate very expensive machinery. $70,000 sounds great, but it's for college and college is hard. A new sort of excitement is a great thing to offer him, especially if his old sort of excitement was masturbating while playing a video game. And for a hopeless loser like him, a chance to discover his place in the world is like offering him the tit he'll suck on for the rest of his life.

But in case you're not convinced... five free music downloads.

(hangs head)

So here's my list of the five songs I would download if I joined The Navy:
5. In The Navy - The Village People
4. Legionnaire's Lament - The Decemberists
3. Sloop John B - The Beach Boys
2. Sail Away - Enya (you know, the one that they always play on "NOW That's What I Call 90's" commercials)
1. Gut Feeling - Devo

What are yours?

-Alan

"I Want You To Tell Me To Do Something..."

What was I thinking? What could have possessed me to say to her, "This is going to sound weird, but, I want you to tell me to do something"; a request so strange it required further explanation, and still an example.

I was hoping for something frivolous; a warm-up round before we got down to business. But, and she'll tell you this herself, though she's not the kind to always ask for what she wants, she most certainly knows what she wants and sees no reason to lie when asked.

So I asked her to tell me to do something, and she told me to blog every other day. Well, specifically she complained at her daily peril, checking the blog and finding nothing new since a week ago (and nothing substancial since mid-May). She went on to suggest that I might, every couple of days, precipitate a post. She did not suggest the means by which I precipitate said post, however, so I intend to periodically extort Alfonzo, or maybe even Carl...

The Summer Season is on!

Writer's Blockade

OR

A Visual Guide To Alan's Room

The world is full of excuses, and the bullshit per unit (BPU) varies from person to person. Today, I present to you, an excuse so high in BPU that it could power an automobile.

"Writer's block" has, by way of writers controlling nearly every form of non-interactive consumable entertainment, become a term that nearly everyone recognizes. Woody Allen gets writer's block. Hunter S. Thompson got writer's block. And I, Alan Orlanski, have occasionally been known to not have anything to say.

But there are other forms of writer's block aside from the well-known kind; typically, we think of it as a lack of inspiration or a marked dissatisfaction with the fruits of our labor, but the true definition of writer's block is, simply : A thing, or collection of things, which delay or prevent the creative process.

I present to you, my writer's blockade :

Yes, this is what happens when a procrastinator with an oversized wardrobe moves back into the room of his childhood; things get dangerous.

Our first stop is The Pile:

The Pile was born just last night. My mother forced me to empty all of my belongings out of my car, so I put everything on my bed and slept in another room. Upon learning this, she forced me to clear off my bed so I could sleep on it; so, around 4 AM last night, I pushed everything off of the bed and onto the floor.

But why so dangerous? Well, I own a pack of sewing needles--from when I sewed stars onto the sides of my denim flares--and the pack managed to open and spill when I pushed The Pile off of my bed. I found two needles on the floor, but it was a twenty-pack. God forbid I forget this and take a barefoot step.

What's more, I've got Alfonzo's guitar to deal with. He didn't have enough room for it in his sardine ca--I mean, station wagon, so he asked me and Belinda to take it home for him. However, the strings are wound extra tight, such that the E-string popped off and lashed my arm when I was moving it into the house. No surprise that Alfonzo's guitar is high-strung, but I feel like even a subtle movement might cause me to lose a leg.

Climbing over the bed, we come to The Sac:

The danger of The Sac is two-fold, the first of which is merely a benign annoyance; static electricity. The bag is filled with a sort of low-grade memory foam. The foam tends to cluster when left unfettered, and I am occasionally required to physically pull clumps of it apart to keep The Sac comfortable. But all this foam rubbing about inside a giant linen bag makes a hell of a lot of static electricity, to the extent that if I jump on the bag with the lights off, the room is momentarily lit.

The second, and far more formidable danger of The Sac is it's legacy. Those of you who frequent St. Louis malls, the internet, or college dormitories might be familiar with the brand name "LoveSac" (for purely educational purposes, I have provided a link). Well, if you looked at the prices then you'll understand what I mean when I say that LoveSacs are the Beemers of bean-bag furniture; one might even call them Beaners. What all you consumers should know is, if you pay $250-$400 for a LoveSac, you are buying a $50 piece of furniture with an expensive name. Which brings me back to The Sac.

The Sac is not a LoveSac. The Sac is a Siesta Sac (which makes it a Beaner in its own way). It was a gift from Maggie, who told me not to worry about how she obtained such an overpriced piece of furniture. Over the course of the semester and with the help of Maggie's good friend, Jack, she revealed The Sac's grisly origin:

Some dude died on it, and nobody knows why. Which means, of course, that coming into contact with The Sac puts me at risk of both death and haunting.

You may have noticed, in the first picture of the Writer's Blockade, a happy iMac in the top-right corner of the image. This iMac, though now 5 years old, is equipped with wireless internet and all the software required to make a Blogger post. However, there's a bit of a snag :

In case you can't tell from the picture, it's a car battery, alligator clipped to a coathanger, hooked onto the neck of the computer. I can't even begin to explain how such a monstrously complicated danger arose organically from the mess in my room.

Of course, I'm not completely naive regarding electricity and things of that sort. If my intuition serves me well, then I don't think I could actually get shocked unless I touch the coathanger, which I could avoid with only a little forethought. However, my slight familiarity with electrical currents is not something I'm willing to bet my life on.

Finally, all the way over on the desk, sweet salvation it's my computer.

But BEWARE, for before it sits the Be-wigged Mannequin Head of Doom. She is a simple lass to outwit, but no matter what she may whisper into your weary ears, do not look her in the eyes.


So this, my patient readers, is what I'm up against. Until I get this mess cleaned up, I'll have to traverse this plane of woe, misery, and various forms of electricity to write for you.

So you'd better appreciate it.

-Alan

Summer Season

Yes, like the first season of The OC, Suite 3100 will have a Summer Season, filled with all sorts of "no responsibility" hijinx and tumultuous love interests (I hope I hope I hope).

It was strange, walking away from this blog's namesake. Vlad was the last to leave Suite 3100, just as he was the last to enter. Alfonzo and I had left, separately but simultaneously, the morning before (Alfonzo got to Atlanta 2 hours before I did). Chaz was the first to go.

At the end of any good season of play, a responsible team will look back and analyze themselves, looking for ways to diversify and improve their methods. It is in this spirit that I bring you...

Raw Data OR The Suite 3100 Awards
Most Words Written
#1. Myself, with "Dorm Adventures"
#2. Alfonzo, with "Go West, Young Man!"
#3. A tie between Carl's "Oh, Shit, Carl's Blog" and Chaz's "Fresh Squeezed Is Best" (Chaz has written a few hundred more words, but Carl has been on for less time. This is a stoner's tie).

Word Frequency
Carl's most frequently used common word was : "the" (663 times)
Carl's most frequently used less common word was : "because" (61 times, because some people just aren't going to get the right answer)
Carl's most frequently used illegal substance : "Old Navy" (??? times)

Alfonzo's most frequently used common word was : "the" (1213 times, which is a lot more than Carl).
Alfonzo's most frequently used less common word AND his most frequently used name : "Alfonzo" (65 times)
An interesting note for you all : Alfonzo's word frequency breakdown reveals that he is right to believe that he's smarter than the rest of us. He uses more unique words than the rest of the Suite put together. 55% of the words he's used he's only used once, and 20% of the words he's used he's only used twice. I am completely in awe of this.

Chaz's most frequently used common word was : "the" (569 times... more like Carl).
Chaz's most frequently used less common word was : "think" (44 times, which sets up a joke only Alfonzo would touch).
Chaz's favorite suitemate : "Vlad" (54 times, as compared to Alfonzo (45) and Alan (35))

Bridget's most frequently used common word was : "I" (154 times. Finally, someone less articulate)
Bridget's most frequently used less common word was : "know" (53 times)
Bridget's blog, "Know The Osmosing Volume" wins the award for the most words written in another language.

My most frequently used common word was : "the" (2313 times, which may be more times than everyone else put together)
My most frequently used less common word was : "song" (162 times)
I write my own last name more frequently than I write the first name of anyone else.

Vlad's most frequently used common word was : "I" (279 times. It looks like the Russians really do drop their articles)
Vlad's most frequently used less common word was : "post" (38 times, which is funny, because Vlad didn't even post 38 times since the blog started).
A sentence formed from the frequency list : "Four slyly content pop singer names speak female; multiple variables come."
An ominous warning loomed in the next random sentence : "United States doomed children; isolation, worse. Objectionable."


I was the only one awake when Chaz left. He booked a mid-morning flight to accomodate one last night of partying, and I heard him banging suitcases around on the other side of the wall. I put on a bathrobe and stretched out on the sofa.

He came out of his room a few minutes later, and he jumped a little when he turned to find me on the couch. He asked what I was doing up so early, so I told him he'd woken me up; I didn't mind, because I'd wanted a chance to say goodbye. He set his bags down and extended a sturdy hand.

I've known Chaz for about a year and a half now, and this man has done nothing but hug me. I believe he hugged me before he knew me. To see his palm upturned before me was simply too much; I snapped a little.

I threw my arms up in the air, ready to perform a very awkward bearhug, when he unfolded his unemployed arm under mine, catching my kamikaze embrace in mid-air. I had one arm over each of his shoulders, hands clasping behind his head, the front of my chin mashed into his shoulder, and I believe I might have been standing on his toes.

Sliding my arms back over his shoulders, I forgot to unclasp my hands and I pulled Chaz's hairless mug towards my grizzled jaw, and I kissed the fucker.

Posterity will argue endlessly over how long it lasted. I couldn't pinpoint it any more accurately than 2-8 seconds, though Chaz would almost certainly insist that it lasted only as long as it took for him to gather his wits.

I kissed him and I heard him inhaling through his nose as he built up strength with which to push me away, but I didn't dodge him. He sent me sailing back onto the sofa, and he clumsily grabbed his luggage and stormed out the door.

And this was an event that I would have kept secret if Chaz was still a member of the blog. Now that he's part of the outside world again, everything is fair game.

I've been home for two days now. I'll tell you more about home next time.

-Alan

Blowing Off Dust

For the two minute drive from this fine night's destination and the Suite, I hastily picked a playlist from the top of my serpentine and poorly organized collection: "''''''''''problems"

I remember, vaguely, making this playlist. While certain friends of mine are very sparse with their playlist making, paring everything down into ten (or so) playlists that fit certain moods or themes, I have a rather more unorganized method which operates under a certain set of rules :

1. Never delete any playlist that has more than a single song in it. The reasons for this are both positive and negative; negative in that, given that a "playlist" occupies maybe 16kb of space on your computer, your music library should always overshadow your playlists in terms of volume occupied and, given that, there is no practical reason not to keep everything; positive in that, any grouping of two or more songs could, and should, have a significance which is worth holding onto.

2. Playlist names should be minimally descriptive, or, less is more. If you care enough about the playlists you make, you should be able to remember which one fits a given mood, as necessary. When people are forced to navigate my ipod, they instinctually go to the playlists, at which point they become baffled by my nomenclature. Who, but me, could know the difference between "''''''''''Sigrid" and "''''''Falleika", or "!!!!!!!!!ack". I know the difference, and that's all that matters.

3. Things that do not belong in an existing playlist, deserve a new playlist. This one is pretty simple.

My reasons rhyme. Order = chaos. Bless it all, it works. Just not for anybody but me.


I feel a little delirious, actually. The reason I started writing is, the only playlists I've made all semester have been those for my radio show. So jumping, without warning or preceding thought, into something as old and weighty as "''''''''''problems" may not have been my smartest move. The list seems to be a compilation of all my best morbid songs. Of course, these aren't really morbid songs if you listen to them; I've just buried them in morbid connotations. "Canary", "Hands Away", "Glass Vase Cello Case", "Dramamine", "Wise Up". It's fucking with me.

I feel like some ghost of myself is whispering to me in the darkness. What's worse is this feeling of darkness, as my room light is on and burning high.

I haven't had the heart to eat dinner recently. My new year's resolution was to cut down on my fast food intake, limiting myself to Chick-Fil-A. In the last few weeks, I've completely blown that resolution by realizing that I essentially eat fast-food when I eat on campus. I started making evening drives over to Jack In The Box and White Castle (same intersection, which would be convenient if I ever felt the simultaneous need for both, which I don't). It was only in the last few days that I lost the desire to do even that. It's all bad for me.

So dinnertime would come, and it would linger, as it does, from 5 to 10. And at various times in this stretch, I would feel hungry and not hungry intermittently. But for the last three days, I've come out of that stretch not having eaten anything. I made the even more difficult stretch from 10 to bed without eating, as well.

And I'm hungry, but my options disgust me. And there are other options, but the effort involved disgusts me just as much.

And now my ipod is reminding me of some of my most twisted and ''''''''''problematic times, and I'm hungry enough to eat it. And it's dry. And I'm still hungry.

-Alan

April Bud, Pt. 2

Now that's it's no longer the month of April, I suppose I can continue my epic 4/20 post from where I left off.

Where did I leave off? Oh yes.

April 19th, 2006; 10:30 P.M.
Arriving in Dauten in a reeking cloud of smoke and recieving their criticism, I made my excuses and we all moved on. I showed my stash (the 6 joints and 5 spliffs) to everyone, breaking the rule that I laid out in April Bud, Pt.1 on never revealing exactly how much you've got.

So every year, on April 20th, stoners, pot-smokers and liberals of all persuasions gather in all sorts of places to toke up. I have heard tell that one of these gatherings takes place right here at Wash U, in the Brookings Quad at 4:20 A.M. Last year, there was a sit-in for workers' rights taking place in the Quad, complete with a squad of police on overtime; I believe there's a facebook group bemoaning this fact.

It was while showing my bevvy of paper tubes that Brody's suitemate, Dylan, fed me a few new details about the annual gathering. Apparently, everyone gathers sometime near 4 A.M., but they are not alone, for at every exit to the quad stands a WUPD officer. And they just stand there, watching.

Upon hearing this, any minute desire I had to stay up all night and smoke in the Quad was extinguished when I imagined it. I count myself as unlucky, and I could imagine the clock striking 4:20 and myself nervously lighting a joint and breathing that first puff in. And I would look over my shoulder at the closest WhoopDee, only to see him turning to the officer next to him and, with a knowing wink, striding into the Quad with a nightstick and a flashlight. I figured, with my luck and America getting steadily more progressive, that this would be the year that WUPD would beat the shit out of some unlucky stoner. Me, maybe. Or more likely, Brody.

So, in spite of the tetrahydracannabinol in my body, I thought ahead nearly six hours and decided not to risk it. No worries, though, because 4/20 was right around the corner. 10:45 P.M.? Yeah, totally no time at all.


It was the longest 75 minutes of my entire life. Mario Kart was played, troops were gathered (by which I mean Marina's roommate and my new stoner pal, Karen) and we set out onto to road at 11:50-ish. It was an unusually stupid man who, in a moment of profound clarity (he was high), pointed out to me how bitterly ironic it is that the law enforcement agencies of this nation have made it such that the safest way for us to get high is while driving in a car at night. So all you black-jumpsuit-wearing, African-American, late-night joggers beware; we smoke on the road because they'd catch us if we didn't.

On a side note, black-jumpsuit-wearing, African-American, late-night joggers should also beware the crooked fucking cops in St. Louis, who consider late-night blackness in the vicinity of rich white people a crime. If the cops didn't do such a good job keeping law-abiding black people off the streets, who knows? Maybe we'd run over a jogger or two.


I feel like my 4/20 is taking forever. I'm fucking exhausted right now, but classes have officially ended, so I hope to write the third and final part sometime later today. After I sleep.

-Alan

Go Downtown

Here is an self-indulgent op-ed piece I submitted to Student Life, Washington University's student newspaper :

As another academic year draws to a close, I find myself forced to look back on my own contributions to Washington University at large. With Springtime activities coming and going as quickly as the Graham Chapel flowerbed, my failure to participate in the Marrow Registry, Locks Of Love, Thurteen Carnival or any sports team or greek organization gives me pause. I find myself asking “How will I go down in Wash U. history?” As a sophomore, I realize that my time here (barring academic turmoil) is now almost half over. A large part of Wash U’s appeal is the strong sense of community and cooperation, and my failure to take part in this community is, at the very least, a failure to get my money’s worth.
Through the cooperation of Mr. David Ryan Brody, the Student Life Photo Editor, I have found my way into a number of photos this semester. My presence in the paper is part of a larger plan to become a widespread campus icon; if StudLife readers see my face (or even the back of my head) every few issues, surely I will come to have some subliminal power over them. And so, when Mr. Brody was in need of a staged photograph, I was his man. Our first collaboration was for the article “College students lacking real-world literacy, says study” (Student Life, News, 2/3/06), in which I was instructed to “hold a road map upside-down and look painfully confused.” The pained expression in the picture is completely authentic; Mr. Brody would not allow me to use the bathroom before the photo-shoot.
But what difference does a schmaltzy photograph make? Next to none, I admit, but two photographs? A short week-and-a-half later, I was lounging on Mr. Brody’s couch when he announced, to all within earshot, that he needed a photograph “Of someone going down on a grapefruit for the Studlife Sex issue.” Hardly had my hand been raised in the air before a sliced citrus was shoved into my face. I must admit, the grapefruit was an unexpectedly accurate representation of female anatomy, despite the temperature and decidedly sweeter flavor. Mr. Brody shouted out instructions as he photographed, telling me to pay more attention to the maraschino cherry he had attached to the top fold, at which point I felt compelled to remind him that there’s more to cunnilingus than the maraschino. But imagine my pride in seeing my five-photo spread alongside Ms. [name deleted] in the Sex Issue (Student Life, 2/13/06).
The grapefruit spread didn’t attract as much attention as I had hoped, which I attribute to Mr. Brody’s failure to attach my name and phone number to the article, but a third and final chance to make a mark on Wash U would present itself at the end of March. Once again, Mr. Brody announced his need for photo-models by saying “I need someone to dress up as a professor, and I need someone else to pretend to go down on him.” It was quickly decided that one Mr. Gerstenhaber would don a wool jacket and pipe for the role of the professor. Unsurprisingly, none of the women present were willing to apply themselves to this task.
There is some amount of controversy surrounding the article, “Student sleeps with her prof, fails class anyway” (Student Libel, News Schnews, 3/31/06), and specifically the picture that accompanied it. I, myself, heard many people saying things like “Who is that hot chick? I’ve never seen her before” and even people who claim to have met the mystery woman; “Oh yeah, I hooked up with her down at Frat Row first semester.” Mr. Gerstenhaber, himself, faced the repeated question, “Dude, how’d you talk her into it?” to which he invariably responded, “By the way, that chick is a guy.”
The question of how one contributes to the Washington University community is an uncertain one. Surely there are too many students to affect and causes to participate in for the average student to leave an enormous mark, but I’ve learned that it’s the most minute contributions that make WU a special place to live and learn. And so, as this academic year comes to a close, at least I can answer one question : How will I go down in Wash U. history?
I already have.
Twice.

-Alan

April Bud

So almost two weeks have passed since my last legitimate post. I apologize for this; I suppose I'm caught, once again, between living and documenting life. To be fair, the first week of inactivity was precisely that; a week of inactivity, or a week in which I did absolutely nothing of interest. The interest begins a week ago, April 19th, 2006.

As Carl has said on many occasions, or at least once, or maybe never on the blog and just to me, one never needs an excuse to get stoned. Excuses, reasons, justifications and the like can certainly grease the wheels of the stoning process, but don't be fooled into thinking that the content of your excuse has any bearing on anything. Yeah, I get it, you had an exam today, or you're stressed out, or your girlfriend dumped you, or you want to watch some flash animations while under the influence. Great, awesome, fine. What's important is this : if you're making excuses and complicated justifications, you're thinking too much. If you're thinking too much, you should probably smoke some pot.

It's a hard bargain to strike : your stoner friends don't want to know why you need, at this exact moment in time, to get high. It's your other friends who so often demand an explanation, and it is for them that you're constantly cultivating reasons to explain the need.

I, personally, have gotten to a point where I exclusively use negative excuses. A positive excuse would be those mentioned above : some thing that happened that precipitates a need and/or desire to get baked. A negative excuse is an explanation of why there's no reason not to get baked (ie. I have completed every major responsibility I have for the next three days, or, It takes 5 minutes to walk around the South 40, and it takes 4 minutes to smoke a joint). In essence, the negative excuse always boils down to "I don't see why not"

But despite the sturm und drang of your stoner and non-stoner friends, there is one day of the year when no excuse is ever necessary.

April 20th, coded as 4/20 in our American dating system, has somehow become the stoner holiday. On this day, the only excuses you'll need are for why you aren't stoned already, and why you shouldn't smoke more than you have already.

I'm not a pot historian, but I have a fascination with urban myths and the internet, so here's a quick review of some of my favorite speculations as to why the number 420 is considered special:

1. I heard, a couple of times, that Marijuana violations used to be coded as 420 in police lingo. ie. "We've got a 420 on Baker St. and Toke Blvd. Need backup."

2. "Come Together", the first song on the Beatles album Abbey Road, has a duration of exactly 4 minutes and 20 seconds. This is true for the original vinyl and its compact disc reproduction.

3. "Rainy Day Women Nos 12 & 35" by Bob Dylan, better known as the "Everybody Must Get Stoned" song, has a tiny little secret for math geeks. 12 x 35 = 420! What do you know?

4. My personal theory on 420 is this : You may have heard, at some point in your life, somebody say the words "It's Five o'clock somewhere". This, of course, is a humorous fallacy referring to 5 PM, the time when drunks everywhere are supposed to gather in bars and drink until they beat someone up. In stoner circles, it's not uncommon to hear the words, "It's 4:20 somewhere," which is just an adaptation of the previous phrase. However, the adaptation reveals what I believe to be a very basic connection between the two times of day, 4:20 and 5:00.

My belief is that a couple of stoners were like :

Carl : "Okay, so people have a time of day that they like to get drunk. Some people even use this time of day as a justification to drink. Why aren't we doing the same thing?!"
Alan : "Okay, five o'clock work for you?"
Carl : "Yeah, sure. We'll subvert drunk culture for our own deviant purposes. Fuck the man."
Alan : "Yeah, fuck the man."
(pause)
Carl : "Dude, what time is it?"
Alan : "About 4:20."
Carl : "Dude, can we smoke now?"
Alan : "I don't see why not."


So anyway, 4/20 happened. The night before, I took everything I had (about 1/4 ounce) and rolled it up into 11 little tubes of filter and paper, such that I had myself 5 spliffs and 6 joints. I, because I'm an idiot, then showed my rolled stash to everyone I knew was on the inside.

NOTE : Never reveal the exact amount of marijuana you have, or else that exact amount will be smoked. There is no avoiding this. The idea is not that you keep some for yourself, or that you're miserly or anything like that. There are actually lots of reasons not to reveal this information. I'll let you suss those reasons out for yourselves. The main reason is, no pot is better than unexpected pot. Nothing beats this moment :

Maggie : Oh shit, it's 4:15.
Alan : Dear Lord, you're right.
Maggie : We've got to get ready. Should I pack a bowl?
Alan : How about we smoke some joints and spliffs? (pulls them out of his pocket)
Maggie : I am humbled by your very presence.


So I was always the kind of kid who wasn't so spoiled as to get everything I wanted as soon as I wanted it, but spoiled enough to have my impatience partially rewarded. My parents always gave me one gift on Christmas Eve, disguised as a present from them, though I knew it was really just another of Santa's devious tricks (I'll catch you next year, you portly elf). So, at about 10:45 on 4/19, I smoked a spliff on my way to rendezvous with my other stoner compadres. Though I always pitch whatever's left when I reenter Wash U campus, I held onto the trifling remains of my spliff all the way to the door of the building I was entering, at which point I casually dropped it on the ground next to the door. The moment I encountered people, they all did the classic wave hand in front of face and scrunch up nose move and asked me if I had started early, whereupon I explained the whole Christmas Eve thing.

I realize that after writing for 45 minutes, I haven't even gotten to Hour 0. I can live with that. Part 2 of this post is forthcoming.

-Alan

Flooding The Groundwaves

I was standing outside of my building when these two girls walk by, holding hands. It wasn't one of those "we're giddy children playing with our outward social representation" hand-holding jobs, either.

Yep. Lesbians.


But there's another reason I've decided to make my sixth post this week. I've come to tell you about the newest craze you've never heard of : Skirt Night.

So basically the idea is, whenever I feel like making it Skirt Night, I just pull out this patchworky-looking skirt and put it on. Then I do whatever. Usually I drink a beer and watch TV, but if some other activity comes along I'm open to it.

Unless it involves me moving more than absolutely necessary. Or taking off the skirt. So basically, Skirt Night operates as a completely arbitrary obstacle to any other social obligation; Brody calls me up, "Hey man, I just walked up a flight of stairs without any help. I feel like I deserve some of your pot" and I say, "No, sorry man, it's skirt night."

He's all like "What's skirt night?" and then I'm like "Don't worry about it, dude. I'll talk to you this weekend."

Brody doesn't get to enjoy skirt night. Even though Alfonzo hasn't been around the suite lately--at least since his valuable appliances started getting chewed apart--I don't think Brody is allowed to come here. If my memory serves me, he never has.

So who does get to share in the magic of Skirt Night?

Chaz does, but it's not what you think. Really the only person who needs to wear a skirt is me. If you've tried wearing skirts and you didn't like it, then hey, bless you for trying dude. If you've never tried wearing a skirt, well, next time you ask me to hang out and I bail on you for skirt night, maybe you should think about coming along.

So Chaz and I just watch TV and drink beer, while I wear a skirt. I can think of no more normal thing in the world than this. Certainly more normal than ritually smoking marijuana, using that as an excuse to ditch on plans.


Gender is such a strange thing, isn't it? Until the invention of Skirt Night, it had been so long since I last cross-dressed, (Actually, scratch that. I wore a skirt and women's sweatshirt to mock fellate John Gerstenhaber for a newspaper photograph just the other week). But the fake head wasn't leisure time, it wasn't time for me to commune with my liberated thighs, my perineum free from the inseam.

This, my friends... tonight, is Skirt Night.

It's not about looking good. It's not even about looking or feeling like a woman. Skirt Night is not a means to any end, but rather, itself, the end.

The Man Who Heard Nothing

As Joseph crossed Grand St., walking on Thompson, he spotted a couple walking, hand-in-hand, in his direction. Half a block away, Irene and Christopher noticed a shady twenty-something coming their way.

As they passed each other in front of a restuarant called "Naked Lunch," Lorrie pushed the door open to serve Adam, the bespectacled man seated outside, his reuben.

Joseph stopped walking. Irene and Christopher stopped as well, their hands falling to their sides. Lorrie let the reuben fall and Adam took his glasses off.

"Did you hear that?" Lorrie was the first the speak. None of the others said anything. She pulled open the door of the restaurant and asked again, "Did any of you hear that?" The patrons of Naked Lunch shook their heads and went back to their meals.

Turning back to Thompson St., Lorrie examined the dumbstruck foursome. Irene was whispering excitedly to Christopher.

"You heard it, didn't you?" Lorrie ventured a third time.

"I heard it," Joseph said. Adam nodded. Christopher shrugged and Irene turned to Lorrie.

"What did he say to you," Irene asked.

Joseph's head was still ringing. He'd never heard such an infernal sound; like an infectious white noise that had dampened his mind. To his surprised, it was only his head that hurt, and not his ears.

"Well, what did he say to you?" Irene asked again.

"It's... it's hard to put into words. He, he said everything, I think."

"He told the story of the cosmos from its very inception," Adam stated plainly, placing his glasses back on his face, "Everything up to this moment, and everything after."

Irene's breath puffed out of her and she gave a smile of relief. Lorrie smiled, as well, and Christopher shrugged again.

"And he said that he is the one true God. But... he didn't speak with words..." Lorrie stammered.

"His words were breathed into us. We has been blessed," Adam added, eliciting a "pssh" from Christopher.

"Bullshit. Total fucking bullshit," he said. Walking over to Joseph, he said, "Hey man, back me up on this. We didn't just, like, hear the voice of God."

Joseph agreed readily. The terrible noise had jarred him enough; he didn't need a religious freak-fest to go down right in front of him.

Irene cocked her head intimidatingly, in that way only New York women can do. "So what, then? You didn't hear anything?"

"No, I heard it, like this huge voice, but all that one true God shit is bullshit. There's no fucking God."

Adam stood up, nearly stepping in his sacrificed reuben. "You just hear the entire story of the cosmos in the span of a second and you're going to tell me that it wasn't the voice of God?"

The patrons of Naked Lunch had begun to file outside to see what the shouting and cursing was about. A man asked Lorrie what had happened.

"Well, I was walking out the door..."

The story spread quickly through the crowd and the murmuring grew to a rabble. Irene shoved Christopher and said, "How can you be such an atheist?" while Adam began an account of the event worthy of a National Geographic narrator.

The crowd's noise swelled and Joseph reeled. The mingling and mixing of voices sounded all too much like the mind-dampening fuzz he had heard just a few minutes before.

A hand holding a pen shot up in the air. "I'm a reporter for the Post. Who was present when this voice was heard?" Lorrie pointed at herself and Adam, and Irene said, "My boyfriend and I were."

Joseph wondered if he could slip away unnoticed, but Irene pointed at him and shouted "You! You were here!"

The reporter rushed up to Joseph. "Sir, would you please describe to me what just happened?"

"I... uhh..."

"What did you hear?

Joseph didn't know what to tell him. He wasn't sure himseld what he had heard, though it was most certainly not the voice of God. It had felt like a shock to his central nervous system, like a violent kick to the left temple. He tried to think of something to say, and he said what came to mind.

"Nothing."

A Very Large Hole OR Monsieur Broca's Dilemma

In the alleys of Paris in the 19th Century, a physician lurked below the window of a small apartment. He carried with him a large knife, a pithing lathe and a heavy glass cylinder with two bobbing objects inside. A daring tomcat rubbed against Monsieur Broca's leg, and he kicked it to scare it away, knocking over a pile of debris in the process.

A candle-flame appeared in the window, and the window opened outward.
"Allo? Who is... there?"

"Ah, oui, Tobias. It is I."

Tobias squinted out his window into the dark alley.
"Monsieur Broca? Is...."

"Oui, Tobias. Ehh..."

His eyes adjusting to the darkness, Tobias's glance turned to the items in Monsieur Broca's arms.
"What... are..."

"What am I doing here? I am, you see, making a housecall, yes?"

Tobias scratched his head. "But, Monsieur Broca, I.... I did not..."

"Send for me? Well, yes. It's, how you say, a complimentary service of mine."

"Monse...Monsieur Broca, it is the middle of... middle of..."

"The night? Well, yes. There are very specific reasons for making housecalls at night. Very special reasons, you see. May I come in?"

"Monsieur Broca, my... my wife"

"Oh, is she asleep? This is of no concern. Have you got another room?"

"Yes"

"Good, may I come in?"

"Monsieur, I don't..."

"Please, the fate of your mind is at stake. If you do not allow me inside, I may never learn the nature of your ailment."

"I..... please, come... in." Tobias opened the door and Monsieur Broca lugged his equipment inside. "Now... what is this a...about?"

"Ah yes, allow me to tell you what I have only recently learned. You see, I have followed many men who suffer as you do, who have lost the use of words." Monsieur Broca placed his lathe and knife on the table. "And, as it should happen, one of these men was struck by a carriage last week, and I had the great pleasure of performing his autopsy."

"Great... p..pleasure?"

"Yes, certainly. And I found a very curious thing in this man's brain. You see, there was... umm, well, a very large hole."

"A hole?"

Monsieur Broca opened the lid of the glass container and removed a gray mass with a very large hole in it. "You see? A very large hole. And just yesterday, another of my patients, he drowned himself in the river. And I found the same hole in his brain." Monsieur Broca displayed the second gray mass, then began to twirl his knife absent-mindedly.

"So... so you think..."

"Precisely! There is something to this, I am thinking. These holes must be the problem, no?"

"Yes"

"But, it is unfortunate that two men is not enough to draw any sort of conclusion, and so many of my patients are so young and fit, you see. And so I fear that I may not produce results until many years from now."

Tobias eyed the knife and inched toward the rear wall of the room. "I fear..."

"Yes, yes, Tobias. This thought is terrible. Who could be patient when there are people suffering?"

"I... wife.... Charle..." Tobias cried as Monsieur Broca plunged the knife into his throat. His hands flailed, slowing gradually until they fell to the floor. A final gurgle bubbled from Tobias' slit throat.

"I know, Tobias, but there are lives to save and reputations to be made."

Drugs On Drugs

So I caught cold Wednesday night. I was hanging around the Dauten area, and I had every intention of leaving by 11. By the time I left (12:30), I became aware of a slight "myeh" in my upper respiratory tract. I said to myself as I walked back to my room, "I'm going to wake up sick, aren't I?"

My body's answer : You don't know the half of it.

I woke up at 9 for my 10-to-1 internship in the jungle wing of the Psych building. Observations : monstrously dehydrated, slightly dizzy, headache, left nostril completely stuffed. Conclusion : call in sick for the first time since I started working there, in September.

I looked up the number, dialed the one below it by mistake, then corrected my mistake but nobody picked up. As it should happen, the grad students who work above me in the Learning and Behavior Lab have no need to arrive much earlier than 10 if they've got an intern (such as myself) coming in that day. And they, having many better things to do (Crawford and her ape-man of a fiancee, Jonah Hirt, are busy planning their escape from Wash U and their move to Wisconsin. Claire is still busy taking classes, and otherwise drooling over the window office she'll procure when Crawford leaves. So why come in before 10?), seemed to be conducting their busy lives elsewhere, somewhere not within earshot of the laboratory phone. Where's Igor when you need him?

So I took a shower to kill the time, and damn it if I didn't feel good enough to go to work. If I had known a shower would give me enough strength to face my day, I might have just laid in bed dialing and re-dialing the lab number until somebody picked up. My honest worker's spirit unfettered by my illness, I packed my bookbag and started getting dressed.

And Carl called? I include the question mark because there are certain hours of the day in which my communication with Carl occurs, and 10am EST/9am CST is not within that range. Apparently, he wants to start a CAKE cover-band called FAKE; I've been wanting to pick up trumpet again, and here's my excuse. I told him everything that I just told you, about falling asleep and waking up sick and the shower miraculously curing me. So up until this point in the post, Carl's probably been bored. Sorry, Carl.

So the way Thursday went, I had to stay on Hilltop/Danforth Campus until about 5:30. It reassures me to know that I'm capable of doing a 9-to-5 day, even though it makes me incorrigably grumpy. I had a philosophy paper due on Friday, but in my infinite wisdom, I managed to get it done before I got sick. So, being without formal responsibilities that I could recall, I rolled a joint, stepped outside, and prepared myself for a new episode of The OC. You may say, at this point, isn't smoking while you've got an upper-respiratory illness a bad idea? And I wouldn't say anything. And here's why:

Most of the time, I have great faith in my immune system. I rarely get sick, and this is actually the first time I've had a bacterial/viral infection since last May (I specify bacterial/viral because I got food poisoning over Winter Break, but that's not my immune system's fault). But by the time The OC was over, I felt pretty sure that I was going to need pharmacological intervention to quickly and easily stomp out this cold.

To the CVS, and into the back where they keep the stuff you can cook Meth out of. I perused the shelf; Sudafed, NyQuil, DayQuil, Benadryl.... I picked up a box of NyQuil gel-capsules and nearly reached for a pack of DayQuil, but my Father's Father appeared on my shoulder and talked me out of it ("Whatta ya gotta buy this for? It's exactly the same, only this one makes you sleepy and this one makes you not sleepy. Just take the NyQuil with some coffee, and you've got DayQuil").

Apparently NyQuil has changed their formula, such that it no longer includes Pseudoephedrine (or, for you etymologists out there, FAKE SPEED). Old NyQuil, for the reason that it contained both fake speed and something to knock you on your ass, understandably worked for some people and didn't work for other people. I used to be one of those people who got jacked up on NyQuil (it brings to mind my first drug experience, sometime in High School, when I took a benadryl with pseudoephedrine and drank a Co-Cola and started tripping out in Jazz Ensemble. I think that was sophomore year. Me : "Hey, Gray. I took some sudafed and had a coke, and I'm just looking at my hands, and shit." Gray : "That's great, man."), but this new formula turns me into a puppet with half his strings cut; my arms fall, my head sags, I drag my feet yet stay upright. It was entertaining, all in all, but maybe I shouldn't have been stoned at the time.

So yeah, Drugs on Drugs. That's the story, there.

Last night was a party in Dauten 23. There was a makeshift stripper pole on the side of the room, and the music-responsive lights as usual. And lots of alcohol, and more people than showed up to the first two iterations of this party. At one point, there was a line to get in stretching out the door, across the hall and into the stairwell. The RA shut the party down shortly before 1am, but I was gone to Maggie's by then.

Today, I finally got around to setting up a podcast of my radio show. Here's the link for it, if you use iTunes. If you don't use iTunes and you really want to hear my show, then maybe you should think about your choice of media players.

Only Show #5 is up there now, but I'll get Show #6 and #7 up soon enough. Shows before #5 weren't recorded, so only my diligent, early-rising listeners will ever know what I played.

Long post. You deserve a spliff today, at McDoobies.

-Alan

On Junior Year

Or "Why Does My Ideal Schedule Look Like A Space Invader?"

I thought I'd take a page out of Larkin's blogging book and go with the Rocky and Bullwinkle-Style double-title. Let me just cut right to the chase. This is what my ideal schedule looks like for Fall semester of my Junior year :

I've been suspicious of the shape of my schedule since my very first semester, when it looked vaguely like some kind of handgun.

Second semester was a bit of a stretch, but I always thought it looked like the blood-spattered teeth of an infernal beast.

Third semester takes a little imagination, but it's vivid. Imagine you are me, and that you are shown to a room. The person who has shown you there opens the door and says "Here is where you will be working for the next four months" before leaving. You walk into the room and the first thing you notice is a little lump of feces in the middle of the floor. While you are looking at this lump, more feces lands on it. You look up to find an improbably massive mountain of dung suspended from the ceiling by some unknown force. I cannot express to you how much this resembled my Fall semester, the feeling that I was laboring under an upside-down stack of shit that could cease adherence at any moment and crush my efforts under crap.

This semester doesn't look like anything, aside from pain. I wake up, go to class with either two 30 minute breaks or no breaks at all, and then go back to the Suite. There's a reason that nobody ever looks for shapes in thunderstorm clouds; you don't need an imagination to know it's going to suck.

But next semester, Fall semester Junior year.... I'm a little miffed by the way the schedule turned out. Here I thought that after two years of having of 50% of my schedule dictated by requirements and prerequisites, I might finally get to choose (albeit from within my major) classes which are specifically appealing to me. It appears that I anticipated my liberation one semester too soon:

I plan to take : Argumentation, which will fulfill my required "Writing Intensive" credits and assist with my Writing Minor.
Language And Gender because it's one of the only Social Differentiation classes that fits within my PNP Major.
History Of World Cinema because a film history course should prove an easier Cultural Diversity option than a lit class.
Experimental Psychology because PNP/Psych Majors aren't allowed to study abroad until they've taken it.
Philosophy Of Mind and Cognitive Psychology are the only two classes I had a reasonable amount of choice over. I'm bummed because POM coincides exactly with 20th Century Russian History, which I was going to take to complete my Language and Arts cluster.

An additional concern is this : if it takes me five semesters to get through all the red-tape and bullshit, and I decide to go abroad my sixth semester, then will I spend my Senior year fulfilling Major requirements? Will I even be able to finish my major?

It's something I have to look into, but not right now.

-Alan

I Want You All To Do Something

I want you all to do something, for me and for yourselves.

I want you to get high. Wake-and-bake, morning thunder, a lit lunch, an afternoon doobie-break and a big bowl for dinner. I want you to get ripped, torn asunder and baked.

And then go to the bathroom, but listen to Aaron Copland's "Fanfare For The Common Man" when you do it.

Take a piss; it's never looked so glorious, so patriotic.
Brush your teeth; they'll never be cleaner than they are now.
Wash your face; but be careful if you're wearing headphones.

And then just try to tell me that marijuana isn't the best drug around.

-Alan

A Bridge O'er Pacific

This day snuck up on me. When Winter Break ended, Bridget's departure was a far off thing, easily three months in the future (of course, I returned on Jan 17th, and she left today, March 21st, so I must have rounded up to the full length of all three months). Now it's gone, and I feel like the kid who slept through New Years' and woke to find all the snack foods eaten, half of the couches sporting an inebriated human drapery, and mother asleep in father's lap with one strap her dress on the wrong half of her shoulder. I knew, as I fell asleep, that the New Year was coming, but closed my eyes and fell through the hole to China, where the New Year had already come.

I'm upset that I'm not more upset about her leaving. Why can't I ever feel straightforwardly?

I've spent the last week and a half embracing the role of the stoner. The hemp messenger bag, the long hair, spontaneous smoking of joints, an androgenous green tunic and embroidered stars on a pair of denim flares. I could get used to this, but only if St. Louis warms up a little bit. There are stories to tell from my week in Florida, and the road tripping it took to get there and back, but I haven't got it in me tonight. I'm kinda mixed up, and I should be writing a short story instead of a blog post. And my armpit hurts.

-Alan

KingOfRod

We're t-minus 3 hours and counting. 8.5 hours to Atlanta, 6.5 hours of sleep, and ~8 hours to St. Petersburg, FL.

I'm incredibly anxious about driving for so long, and my cohorts remind me (again and again, sorry guys) that there will be driver switches. My parents have taught me well, such that I don't trust Belinda in the hands of just anyone. What an insurance nightmare. What a nightmare in general, to have a near death collision in the backseat of your own car. Just thinking about it makes me all shivery and sweaty. I've made the drive alone without problems, and I figure having people around will only make the trip more bearable, but I'm still quite nervous. Body, mind, don't fail me now.

There's not much time for a post, and not much post content at the ready. I've got my fingers crossed that I'll have access to the internet in FL (especially given the composition of my cohorts, mostly engineers with a deep love for computing and readily accessible information), but if I don't, this will be it until next weekend.

I'm glad I decided to go on this trip, as anxious as it's making me. There are reasons why home just isn't the place to be right now, and I didn't have it in me (or my checking account) to make another solo trip to a great American city. Having 10 co-vacationers will take the pressure off of me, as far as ideas and activities go, and I hope to write one or two stories while I'm there. Also hoping to read a good book, or at least start one.

Peace?

-Alan