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
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
posted by Alan Orlanski at 11:08 PM
1 Comments:
is it just me, or is nothing happening here...?
come on! events, man, events! let's get this ball rolling already. conflicts, ups, downs, headstands, SOMETHING.
but yes
it's strangely likely I'll see you this weekend... i think
funny how that works
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