a midwestern drawl

2003-04-08T17:51:00.000-05:00

Whoa. Its been a while. Between finals, spring break, and getting back in the swing of things, I wasn't sure I had the time, or the motivation, to update this website anymore. I've had several things to consider as of late that have occupied my free time, namely where I'll be this summer, what I'll be doing, how much it will cost, as well as what exactly my major will be. I also caught a bug, which has been tickling the back of my throat for a few days now. I wish it was a real bug, but I've got to settle for a virus or whatever the hell it is, instead.

But that shit's boring, so its the last you'll hear of it. Instead, I'm going to tell you about how I swiped three bottles of orange juice.

There's a surprising amount of interesting people that come to Northwestern to give speeches, talks, or participate in roundtable discussions, but being the lazy person that I am, I usually don't work up the effort to go. For example, last year Margaret Thatcher came during the fall, and Kofi Annan gave the commencement speech in June. Those two both come to mind pretty quickly as people that I would have like to seen, had I given it a little more thought. Countless authors and poets have come as well, and I've gone to listen to maybe two of them since I've been at school. So when I found out that Stephen Wolfram, the guy that wrote A New Kind of Science was giving a talk at the Tech building, I decided it'd be worth my time to go.

I'm not going to pretend to understand everything this guy talked about in his book, a book that I would read for about twenty minutes every night last summer before nodding off. What he talks about, more or less, is that instead of having gigantic, complex rules governing gigantic, complex systems, like nature, its possible that a set of tiny, simple rules is responsible for producing complex-looking things like, for example, snowflakes, or you know, human beings. If you're really curious, check out his website, but the point is that because I couldn't get through his book without napping, I hoped that by having him explain it in person it might make a little more sense.

Tuesdays are pretty open for me this quarter; I have one class, I go into work for a while, and then spend the rest of the day doing work or whatever I want to. I knew I wouldn't have any trouble fitting this talk into my schedule, but I didn't think that it would be scheduled for two and a half hours. That information, coupled with the general weariness of being sick, made a nap right after lunch sound like a really good idea.

Of course, I didn't sleep well. I went to the talk with a cup of tea and found a comfortable chair in the dark, warm auditorium, thinking that the talk would be really interesting, and that I would come away with nothing less than enlightenment. And I did. And then I stole three bottles of orange juice by kicking open a vending machine.

Wait, no. What actually happened is I lasted about thirty minutes before my mind turned down the volume on the pudgy British mathemetician band and the rest of my body kicked into standby mode. Another thirty minutes later, someone kicked the back of my seat, and I came to. I managed to wake up for the last third of the speech, and when the Q&A session turned out to be crazy Northwestern professors debating nondeterminalist probabilities and theorems I've never even heard of, I decided to cut my losses and leave.

Apparently they had refreshments scheduled for afterward, because two huge tables of food and drinks were laid out. And that's when I spied the bottles of orange juice. The same bottles of orange juice that cost $1.95 everywhere else on campus. That's right, a dollar-freaking-ninety-five.

A couple peanut butter cookies, some juicy strawberries, and five minutes later I left for home with pockets bulging with orange juice and the sense of satisfaction that can only come from making off like a bandit. Even if I wasn't thinking of the vitamin C I needed to help get rid of my sore throat, its still sound policy to take as much orange juice as offered.

You never know when scurvy will sneak up on you.

2003-03-12T14:56:00.000-06:00

So, its officially crunch time.

No, not Crunch candy bar time, I mean that I have only a few short days before final papers are due for winter quarter, and due to my procrastination so far, I have limited free time until, well, next Wednesday. I could really go for a Payday, though. I'm always amazed at how good salted peanuts and caramel taste together.

I did, however, think of another link I could add to the Links section. Orisinal has all sorts of fun games and cool desktop wallpapers, so go check it out. I'll try and squeeze in a few updates here and there in the next week or so, but no promises can be made.

2003-03-07T13:19:00.000-06:00

Just today Hans Blix said that inspectors will need months to figure out if Iraq is fully disarming. I can't help but breathe a sigh of relief; I'm getting to the point where any sort of delay is a victory, and maybe we can delay this until November 2004 and get Bush the hell out of office before he lets hell break loose throughout the world.

I mean, I can agree France's, China's, and Russia's resentment of America as a superpower is probably influencing their decision to threaten to veto a war resolution in the security council, but right now, I'm completely fine with it. I imagine its nothing personal. It really feels like everyone around the world, with the exception of Tony Blair and countries that, well, don't hold much influence either way, dislikes the Bush administration more than America. I suppose all I can say is thank God for Colin Powell: without him, we probably would have razed Iraq months ago.

Its funny though. Through all of this, I'm not sure I can picture what the hell Gore would have done after the WTC towers were destroyed. I bet it has something to do with the fact that he has the personality of a cinder block.

Anyway, I was thinking that the Links section on the side is rather pathetic, considering there's only one link. I'm wondering what else to link to though, because for all the time I spend on the Internet, I'm not exactly sure if I "go anywhere" or "do anything." Its entirely possible I spend all my time checking my email and being away on Instant Messenger and I spend the rest of the time staring at, well, nothing.

Basically, what it comes down to is this- if you happen to have a website that you like, send me the link here - m-jansen@northwestern.edu - and I'll decide if I want to put it up or not. I'm open to anything, so send away.

2003-03-05T13:25:00.000-06:00

Blogger, and additionally, this site, was down earlier today for a while, maybe an hour. I guess switching to Google hasn't made a damn bit of difference so far.

---

Today was supposed to be the day Chicago recovered from a huge storm that should have blanketed the city with at least six inches of snow. Instead, we got maybe three or four inches, by my estimates, and some larger snow drifts due to the 20 mph winds that are making going outside especially perilous. While the campus wasn't miraculously shut down for the first time ever, I did get something out of it: my 7pm class last night got canceled, and I spent the evening, well, not doing a goddamn thing, which I must say needs to happen more often.

Speaking of God, today is also the first day of Lent, which means...pretty much nothing to me. I must not be caught up on my Christian holidays anymore, because I had this conversation at lunch yesterday-

"So when does Lent actually start?" one of my friends asked.
"Ash Wednesday, tomorrow," another replied.
"Ash Wednesday, which one is that?" I asked. "Is that the one with the palms?"
"You mean Palm Sunday?"
"I guess not."

Come to think of it, I still know nothing about Ash Wednesday except these two facts- 1) its the beginning of Lent, and 2) no palms are involved. Oddly enough, that's all I really need.

2003-03-03T12:09:00.000-06:00

I guess Blogger got bought by Google the other day. This most likely means very little in terms of this website, except that perhaps it won't go down as much or the archives might start acting correctly. I'm not getting my hopes up though.

Today is also 3/3/03, since I'm already mentioning stuff that doesn't make an ounce of difference.

---

This quarter my schedule works out so that I'm only working for three hours where there isn't a class in the computer lab. This has cut down significantly on the random, stupid encounters I've been having, and I can't say that I'm complaining. I do get lonely though, which explains why I've been as helpful as possible once I do get questions. Of course, you can always tell when its one of those people.

So there's two parts to the lab I work in. There's the main lab and then there's the sound booth room. The sound booth room is always open, even during classes, so long as the professor isn't using it for their class. During the middle of a class last Friday a woman that's using the sound booth approaches me and tries to ask me a question, but I can't hear a word she's saying because her voice is so soft. "Pardon?" I replied, wondering if I'm going deaf or if she's just talking very softly.

"Hssh ssh hmm ssh," she repeated.

"I'm sorry, I can't hear you." There was no use in trying to think I could understand whatever the hell she just said. I leaned forward even closer for a third try.

Turns out she couldn't get the computer to pick up any sound, and was wondering if I knew what was wrong. I think. Apparently her speaking voice is the same as my whisper voice. Maybe quieter. Anyway, I'm not exactly a sound booth expert, but I'm not completely useless either. I mean, I do know how to poke buttons until something works, and I know what programs to open to poke buttons on the computer. That's something, at least. When we get into the sound booth room the first thing I do is check the mixer to see if everything is working. This contraption is a giant source of trouble by itself, since there's about a hundred different buttons to poke, but you have to appear confident: it can smell fear. As I've learned though, always try the simplest solution first, because it will probably work. It did, too- the mixer wasn't on.

After clearing that hurdle, I checked to see if the volume was turned up in all the proper places, opened up the program she needed, and after a few minutes, we were finally read to see if it was working yet. I asked her to make some noise into the mic, thinking she would just tap it, or say "testing, testing." Nope. Instead, I heard what sounded like slight exhalations as I checked the levels. "Uh, nothing yet," I said, biting my tongue. "Let's see what else could be wrong."

I checked a few more things and got the mixer working and saw that the mic actually was picking up her breathing, although only slightly. She started clearing her throat in addition to exhaling, which was the loudest thing she'd done so far. Once we got it working in its entirety, I started going over where to save it and using the program, etc. She said that she wanted to save her singing onto the CD she had already put in.

My eyes widened slightly as I heard her say she was going to be recording a song. I suppose I hadn't really gotten the impression that she could make, you know, any sort of noise loud enough to be recorded. Thankfully, I had done my part and could now go back to sitting at the help desk until my shift was over. I didn't see her again before I left, but I wonder how her song turned out, since I'm not sure we had the volume capabilities to make her audible.

Not like its my place to criticize. She could probably carry a tune better in a whisper than I could in general.

2003-02-28T13:42:00.000-06:00

Thanks to TV, since last summer I've been exposed to a facet of American culture that I've previously been unaware of- the eating competition. Last July I watched in amazement as a small Japanese man, Takeru Kobayashi, broke his own record of 50 hot dogs in 12 minutes at the Coney Island Hot Dog competition by eating 50 and 1/2 hot dogs. I remember the look of shock on the American heavyweights at the competition, stopping their eating just to watch the guy eat, and for some reason my pride as American was stirred: why couldn't those big fat Americans eat as much as a 130 lb Japanese man?

Apparently other Americans have been offended as well, and a couple professional eaters have decided to take up arms against the Japanese who have stolen our coveted (coveted?) hot dog eating award. A few months ago I saw a special on the Discovery channel about eating competitions, and I became enlightened. Besides hot dog competitions, there's matzo-ball competitions, pickle competitions, jalapeno competitions (I can't eat more than a few slices of jalapeno, let alone 152 in 15 minutes), and buffalo wing competitions, all of them exercises in sheer gluttony.

Now, historically, gluttony doesn't really work out in the long run, and I harbor no hopes for competing in an eating competition, ever. I'm content to eating normal amounts of food. However, I want, more than anything in life, to see an eating competition firsthand.

Well, I might want a rocket car, or I don't know, a job after college, more than I want to see an eating competition, but damn it sounds like fine entertainment. Last weekend Eric "Badlands" Booker, a 406-pound beast of a man, ate 112 buffalo wings to win a wing competition in New York. That's 3 lbs, 8 oz of chicken, and a whole lot of buffalo sauce. He said that he was in training to win the hot dog championship back, and that this was just a warm up.

Jesus, a warmup? I could eat about 12 in one sitting, even less if they were really spicy. Anyway, thanks to the Internet this piece of news inspired me to do a bit of searching, and I found the home page of The International Federation of Competitive Eating. Take a look at the records section. You'll be amazed and horrified.

Update!

I just found out that there's a wing eating competition in Chicago on March 22nd. Of course this has to be on my Spring Break, but...I think arrangements can be made. Of course, I'll keep you posted.

2003-02-26T12:27:00.000-06:00

I'm sitting in the relatively new media lab at Northwestern's library, using a monster of a computer to update this site on. I sort of feel bad about using a 2.2 gigahertz CPU with, what is it, two gigabytes of RAM, just to type, but there's something extremely satisfying about dual 19" flat screen monitors that I just can't put my finger on.

Oh, and for those of you who have no idea what 2.2 gigahertz and 2.0 gigabytes of RAM means, let me translate- this computer defeated several chess grandmasters working in tandem in a best of seven series, all while mapping the human genome. Something like that, anyway.

Its been pretty cold around Lake Michigan lately, enough for there to be giant chunks of ice floating around along with causing an increase in the polar bear population. They've been feeding on the giant mutant goldfish that live in the lagoon on campus, growing fatter and fatter by the day in preparation for what will undoubtedly be at least a month and a half more of cold. I imagine it will be springtime somewhere around June, just in time for the sweltering heat to move in.

Did I mention I hate Chicago weather?

I don't have any pictures of fat cats today, which actually makes me sort of sad. However, I was made aware of a program called DeadAIM that is decidely badass. It takes out all the crap ads from AIM, puts in the little popup windows that MSN Messenger has to alert you when someone signs on or comes back from being away, and lets you tab your windows. It also does this wicked transparency thing on Windows XP, but it doesn't do much besides look pretty. I just used the word wicked, didn't I? Maybe I should move to Boston. Anyway, you can download it at JDennis.net, and I suggest you do it quickly. Like now. Well, unless you don't use AIM. In that case...find more pictures of fat cats, I dunno.

2003-02-21T13:15:00.000-06:00

Holy crap.

Just when I think BBC News is only a reliable news source, they manage to completely surprise me. Scrolling through their main page today I came across a link that read "Russian mega-moggie could be world's fattest." While by itself that didn't make any sense to me, next to the link was a picture of a giant cat.

"I wash myself with a rag on a stick"

While that's not the most impressive picture - certainly Tubcat looks fatter than that - I clicked on the link and found another picture.

Hey, a furry watermelon.

Turns out this cat, named Katy, weighs 50 pounds, "slightly more than the average six-year-old boy." I can't even begin to comprehend this comparison; this cat must be gigantic. And all the while the owner denies that Katy eats all that much, saying that she only eats a few fish in the morning and "200 grams of meat in the evening." Its also mentioned that her only interest is food, and completely ignores the other cat in the household. That's about when I came upon the most amazing thing about the cat-

She eats a frankfurter in less than a minute. I'm not sure if I can do that.

So basically, what this all means is that I can no longer justify going without a link to BBC News on the left side of this website. I mean, I'm bound to miss some of this stuff, so maybe if I do someone will point it out to me. Because seriously, its made my day thinking about shaking this cat's gigantic furry belly.

---

Update: I don't think I would have missed this, so I guess it just got posted on the website. BBC now lists Katy's "vital statistics" as follows-

Length - 69 cm (27 inches)

Waist - 70 cm (27.5 inches)

Weight - 23 kg (50 pounds)

Whisker span - 15 cm (6 inches)

Food consumption: 1.3 frankfurters per minute

Does it strike anyone else as odd that this cat is as long as its waist is wide? Nevermind that it averages 1.3 frankfurters a minute. Maybe it should compete in the Coney Island Hot Dog Eating Championship.

2003-02-15T21:37:00.000-06:00

Apparently in a press release today the Food and Drug Administration declared that the tastiest flavors you can put on chicken are buffalo and orange. And, of course, by Food and Drug Administration I mean myself, and by press release I mean a personal moment of clarity. God damn are buffalo and orange good. I really can't see any flaw with putting either of those sauces on any type of food.

Evanston, also known as the "Dining Capital of the North Shore" of Chicago, is home to at least, oh, 426 restaurants. Its almost ridiculous how many places there are to eat within the five square blocks just south of campus, and its probably safe to say that we don't need anymore. Regardless, two new restaurants opened this week; some place called Baja Fresh, and a Chili's.

Chili's of course is best known for its insanely annoying ad campaign; you'd think they didn't have anything besides baby back ribs with barbecue sauce. Of course, you can tell that's not true right away because neither buffalo nor orange sauce is involved. While Chili's is clearly not the best place in the world to eat, it can do a few things right, and the people that work there know it, that's for sure. Tonight I ordered the chicken ranch sandwich (ranch, I forgot about that. Ranch is very good as well, especially when used in tandem with buffalo sauce), which is "chicken-fried chicken with tangy wing sauce and ranch," and the waiter asked me if I had ever had it before.

"Yeah, I've had it once before."
"Its really good," the waiter said to me, "but you already know that, that's why you ordered it."
"I'll say."

Its always nice when you can connect with someone over sandwiches. Then again, I should have realized ordering anything with buffalo sauce on it would stir happy emotions- I mean, I get satisfied just thinking about it sometimes.

You know, I wonder what the signs are that one isn't getting enough sleep. I bet this is one of them.

2003-02-12T13:25:00.000-06:00

Valentine's Day is this week. That's all I have, really. I don't have much to say about the day or a story to tell. Just that its Valentine's Day. Although, once when I was in second grade everyone was passing out Valentine's Day cards on the 14th and I didn't get any, so this girl in my class gave me one that said "I Choo-choo-choose you" and there was a picture of a train on the card.

Wait a minute- that was an episode of The Simpsons. So yeah, I got nothing.

---

Earlier today I was doing some reading at the student union when these two girls walked by, one of them with a bag that said WNUR - Northwestern's radio station - on the side. They sat down at the end of the hall and the girl with the bag took out a microphone and started interviewing the other about her feelings, or lack thereof, about Iraq. Of course, you'd have to be living in a cave of...uh, denial I guess to not have an opinion about what's going on in Iraq. The girl being interviewed was from Indonesia, apparently the country with the largest Muslim population, and she said that her friends there don't like much of anything about America, including her when she comes home.

Yikes. That's not exactly encouraging, but at the same time its not much of a surprise. Around then I stopped listening and started...staring at the wall, I don't know, but all of a sudden the girl interviewing came over to me and asked me if I wanted to be interviewed. I looked at the bag with the recorder in it, down at my book containing a ridiculous amount of poetry, back at her, and decided I'd rather talk to her for a few minutes. I think I came off looking rather informed, actually. Well, coherent, at least.

Anyway, it got me thinking about the fact that besides making fun of Greenpeace once (I forget when), I mention pictures of fat dogs on BBC News more than headlines. The fact of the matter, though, is that the situation in Iraq can only be described with two words- fucked up. There's Hans Blix and the Weapons Inspecting Super Squad - yeah, their acronym kinda sucks - finding empty shells, being delayed (apparently) by arguments and orchestrated car accidents when trying to do suprise inspections, and generally not answering any big questions that the UN has. There's also the British government plagiarizing documents that are years old, trying to pass it off as proof the UN should take military action, and then saying they never said they weren't plagiarizing when confronted about it.

Then, of course, we have George W. Bush, our President. What I can't seem to reconcile is how North Korea is threatening to blow everyone to hell if we don't let them reactivate their nuclear power plant, which is capable of producing weapons grade plutonium. The other day I was at a coffee shop looking at a newspaper article that said North Korea was capable of firing 300,000 shells an hour on Seoul, South Korea at the drop of a hat if war were inevitable. Three hundred thousand shells. An hour. At the drop of a hat! They don't have to move their weapons into place: they're already along the border. But hey, heavily sanctioned, isolated Iraq is more of a threat, right?

Of course, then there's India and Pakistan, who almost started World War 3 a few months ago. They have, what, a million troops standing on either side of the border, ready for conflict? Don't both countries have nuclear weapons? What about Israel and Palestine? They're just constantly killing one another. Nevermind the AIDS epidemic in Africa, or South America's precarious economy; Iraq is far more important.

I'm not saying I wouldn't like to see Saddam Hussein out of power- I don't think many people are all that fond of him, regardless of the "100%" of the vote he received in the "election" last year. In fact, I pretty much see war as inevitable right now. The UN - thank God - has slowed down the Bush administration's efforts for war so far, but I don't know how much longer it will last. And then we've got a whole new set of problems.

Makes me wish all I had to worry about is getting any Valentine's Day cards this Friday.

2003-02-09T17:14:00.000-06:00

So blogger.com has this little feature on their main site called "Blogs of Note," which essentially is weblogs they host that they find interesting or unique in some way. A while ago they had a site called the Happy Deflationist, which basically is a site that showcases tech products that are discounted heavily and that can be purchased online from Amazon. I glanced over the site, which had about twenty items on it, and saw some pretty neat stuff- mp3 players, pocket PCs, LCD flatscreen monitors, etc., all for cheap. Of course, not cheap enough, since I don't really have money to be spending on, well, anything really. Not like I need a flatscreen monitor, but...well, it would be nice.

This was in the middle of December, and over the past month and a half I sort of forgot it existed. Just the other day though I found out Amazon.com has this referral system called Amazon Associates. The basics of the system are this: you put a link to a specific item on your website, and if people click the link and then buy the product, you get money for referring the customer. Its not a lot - 15% at most per item - but in theory, if you refer a lot of items then you can make a lot of money.

Of course, my mind started working once I took this in. Well, after I silently cursed the guy who runs the Happy Deflationist (bastard), but after that my business mind kicked into gear, which is certainly nothing new. I've always tried to find ways to run my own little business and outdo my competitors. Back when the neighbors had lemonade stands, I was offering cold drinks and Freeze Pops. I'd sell baseball cards sometimes too, but for some reason none of my ventures ever made more than a few dollars at best. It might have had something to do with a market consisting of six kids with no source of income, but I think it was the receding economy that did me in.

I don't limit my business ideas to stands in the front yard, either. In high school a couple friends and myself tried to design websites, but that fell through before we made our own. Earlier this year a friend and I tried buying concert tickets and auctioning them on eBay, and although we gave up pretty quickly, it worked once. Sort of. The point is that its a good idea- I mean, people are dumb. We got bids on a pair of tickets to a concert that wasn't even sold out yet. For the money we would be making, it just wasn't worth it though. I was making more per hour at my job, and my job is a hell of a lot easier. That and the whole lazy thing.

Anyway, I started thinking of ways to cop out and turn this website into an Amazon referring machine, but I decided I'd rather not put ads all over my site. I just wouldn't make much money, if any. Plus, what would I advertise? Ball pit balls? A beach bug farm?

Hmm. Maybe I should put some Amazon referrals up.

2003-02-06T18:51:00.000-06:00

Well, I really don't have time to update, what with a midterm tomorrow I haven't studied for at all, but seeing as how I'm waiting for food at the moment, I might as well put it off a little longer.

The past few days I remembered what its like to be horribly sick, as I contracted a stomach virus for the first time in God knows how long. I'm sure no one wants to hear the details...so I'll only give one- my throat was raw from vomiting. Anyway, that was Tuesday morning. Wednesday afternoon and about 22 hours of sleep later I had enough energy to write the paper that was due the next day, so I spent a fun-filled afternoon working on a paper worth 20% of my grade while still a little woozy.

Needless to say, its been a crummy couple of days. Hopefully I'll have more free time over the weekend, but we'll have to see what happens.

2003-01-31T13:03:00.000-06:00

Dreams, in general, are extremely interesting to the one having them and unbelievably boring to the ones being told about them. This is a fact that I am well aware of. That being said, last night I dreamt I was God.

Ok, I didn't dream I was God God, because I didn't, you know, create the entire world in the first part of my dream and then rest for a while before moving on. I wasn't really omnipresent either. I sort of felt like I was a god, in that I had some pretty neat powers to change and create anything in my dream world. The thing was that I didn't realize I had these powers until someone called me God and asked me to change something about them. So I did. Poof, they were changed. Actually, not even a poof. They were just changed to whatever they wanted changed into. And I said it was good.

In my dream I started to feel a little blasphemous...I mean, I was dreaming I was God. But I wasn't really imposing my will upon people, and like I said, I wasn't really God, I just had godlike powers. So I got over it pretty quickly. However, I started wondering why I wasn't using my godlike powers - all I was doing was walking around feeling really self-satisfied. That's it.

You know, now that I think about it, I had a dream I was Spiderman once, and it followed the same basic pattern. I used my Spider-powers a couple times, you know, slung a few webs, climbed a couple walls, but the majority of the dream was pretty much me walking around very self-satisfied, thinking, "Yeah, I'm Spiderman. This is pretty nice."

It seems like I should use these powers I give myself when I'm asleep, but apparently I derive more satisfaction from the fact that I can use them, but I have no need to use them whatsoever.

So since I neglected to use my powers in my dream, I made the logo a little bigger. And it was good.

2003-01-29T15:03:00.000-06:00

So today is the day where the real update isn't so much this, but the website itself getting a facelift.

Personally, I like the new design in that its more compact than before and less susceptible to how big the Internet Explorer window is. I hadn't planned on changing the color scheme at all, and initially I used the same colors in this format. But, as a friend pointed out, "it looked good, but I think you could have better colors. Unless you're attached to the whole green and orange thing."

Fair enough, I guess. That's about when I realized I really wasn't attached to them, but it was just so much easier than finding a new color scheme. Changing colors wouldn't be that big of a deal to anyone else, but color schemes aren't exactly my "forte." In fact, I kinda suck when it comes to colors. Thanks to a program called Color Wheel Expert though, I made off pretty well, and I'm pretty much pleased all around.

2003-01-24T13:20:00.000-06:00

Apparently Northwestern has this thing called a "Winter Carnival" that may or may not have happened last year; I don't really remember. Anyway, as I was going to get lunch at the student union today I came down the stairs to the ground floor and saw what may have been the most disgusting thing I've seen in a long time.

A "one-ton Sundae."

Lumped in what looked like a kiddie pool with a plastic covering, a giant mound of ice cream at least four feet high stared me down as I walked past. I think at first I didn't believe what I saw, because after I set down my stuff I came back and looked at it again. Yep, it was there. A giant ice cream monster, just daring me to take a bite out of it. In a strange coincidence a friend of mine that is also somewhat lactose intolerant came down the stairs just as I completed a battle of wills with the beast, and she was easily as disturbed as I was.

I can understand how people like ice cream, but it would be an understatement to say that I'm not fond of it. Of course, dairy products and I don't exactly have a great history together, so this is understandable. They could have had a giant vat of milk and I'd think it monstrous, I'm sure.

Actually, that'd be really disgusting regardless.

2003-01-21T18:32:00.000-06:00

Sometimes even going to the bathroom can be tricky. At the student union the other day I was walking over to the bathroom when I noticed a University Police officer standing outside the door. Maybe she's just waiting for something, I thought as I reached for the door.

"Oh, you might want to wait a minute. There's a...gender-confused woman inside there right now."

Uh, ok. Fair enough.

"She apparently thinks she's a man, we've arrested her all over campus but she just doesn't quit."

Alright then. I decided to wait by the nearby elevator until the situation was under control. The officer leaned inside and called, "Elsabeth! You need to use the women's restroom, not the men's." I tried not to notice.

Just then my friend Jenn, who I had been waiting for to meet for dinner, got off the elevator and saw me leaning against the wall. Obviously a little confused, I explained that I was waiting to use the bathroom. "There's a...gender-confused woman inside."

"What?"

"Yeah." So I filled her in. Just as I finished explaining the woman in question came out of the bathroom. While I'm not exactly sure how she could be confused (it seems to be a fairly obvious thing to distinguish), she quickly got into an argument with the officer, who told her to stop using men's restrooms. The short, good-sized (fat) woman with gray hair scolded the officer, "I haven't used a women's restroom since..." and she said something like "since I joined the church." I don't really know what in the hell that means, but I had more pressing issues on my mind like, you know, finally going to the bathroom.

A minute later I come out and Jenn tells me the officer gave her and the lady selling jewelry nearby an in depth history of this woman's arrests all over campus and how crazy she is.

To be honest, if Jenn hadn't been there, I probably would have convinced myself I imagined the entire thing. I try not to think about it, but I can't help but wonder why she's so confused. I also can't help scratching at my eyes whenever I start wondering.

I mean, she was pretty dike-ish for an old woman.

2003-01-20T14:49:00.000-06:00

It should be noted that this year's Super Bowl consist entirely of pirates.

Lately I've been trying to redesign the layout of this website due to the fact that I'm still using a Blogger template. While I think it looks fine, there's something a little disturbing when I randomly click on a link and a page full of terrible poetry laid out on the same template pops up. I'm still trying to decide what looks best and what colors to use - thank God for color wheels, because I sure as hell can't tell what looks good - so updates might become less frequent in the near future. Thanks to Sam the automaton though, a few select people will have no trouble knowing when there's been an update.

In honor of Martin Luther King Jr., the student union food court served several of King's favorite foods, apparently. These foods included Martin Luther King BBQ Chicken, Martin Luther King Chicken Stuffed w/Cornbread, Martin Luther King Mashed Potatoes, Martin Luther King Meatball Soup, Martin Luther King Vegetable Soup, Martin Luther King Broccoli Salad, Martin Luther King Cooler Ranch! Doritos, Martin Luther King Fountain Sodas, and many other Martin Luther King delicacies. The stir fry may or may not have been Martin Luther King thematized, I didn't check.

That's about it for today; back to designing.

2003-01-15T14:29:00.000-06:00

In what I hope to be the last chapter of the board contract cancellation saga, I received yet another email from Housing-

Your request to cancel your meal plan has been approved. However, we charge per week and not per meal. We are giving you the option to pay for the meals you have eaten. You have used $71.00 in meals.

You have one of two options:

1. Go to a residence dining hall and pay $71 for the meals that you have eaten, obtain a receipt and bring the receipt to housing (write your name on it). You will then be credited for the full 13 meal plan.

or

2. We will charge you for two whole weeks ($190) since you ate on Sunday (the week starts on Sunday). If you choose to pay for the whole week, we will allow you to continue eating in the dining hall for the rest of this week.

Apparently this is some sort of farewell screwjob attempt. While I can appreciate the fact that they let me know exactly how much I've spent, I certainly did not eat in the dining halls on Sunday. While I did use some "Wildcat Points" (extra money they give you to spend as you please), I didn't think this would lead to me possibly getting charged $95 for a sandwich. It wasn't even the best sandwich ever, so I would have been really upset had they not given me all of two days to deal with this.

But, like I said, hopefully this will be the end of the struggle. The fruits of my labor are sweet though; I haven't eaten this well consistently since I've been at school. I don't mean since I came back from winter break, either. I mean ever. Just the other day I was eating at the student union and I got half of a very tasty chicken plus two sides for $5.50! If I were still eating in the dining halls, I would have paid $8.50 for breaded chicken bones, lumpy mashed potatoes, and "Basic Gravy."

Basic Gravy.

If that doesn't make your eye twitch (and your stomach turn), I don't know what will. Actually, if they labeled it "Vomit sauce" that would be much worse, but this is getting out of hand. Clearly they can serve whatever they want now and I don't give a damn.

2003-01-13T13:03:00.000-06:00

Well...it looks like I should have gotten a bucket of mac & cheese ready.

So right after I got off of work on Friday I headed over to Housing to see if I was really off of the meal plan. I find the same lady I've been talking to throughout the entire process, ask her what the status of my request is, and she goes to check. I take a seat, because God knows I'll probably be waiting. A few minutes later, she comes back and tells me the woman that receives the faxes from Health Services has already gone home for the weekend and that they'll process it on Monday when she gets back. "Ok fine, whatever," I think, and leave, figuring I've finally got nothing else to worry about.

Of course, I'm wrong. As soon as I get back, my roommate tells me that Housing just called, and that I should call them back before 5pm. While I'm just confused at this point, my confusion quickly turns into total disbelief. The woman I've been talking to tells me she has called Health Services (which she wasn't supposed to do, since Housing isn't supposed to call Health Services at all) to find out about the letter they were supposed to fax. They didn't fax it. In fact, they were going to send the letter via campus mail, even though the two offices are on the same fucking block. The letter would get there on Tuesday, she tells me.

Thank god I have a higher tolerance for stupidity than my sister. Otherwise I'm sure at least one person would have gotten kicked in the head by now.

However, apparently today is my lucky day. After sleeping in until thirty minutes before my first class, I decide to check my email even though I really don't have time. The first exciting email says that my meal plan has (finally) been canceled, and I let out a little cheer while brushing my teeth. The second says the class I now have in twenty-five minutes has been canceled due to the teacher being sick. This time I almost spit on my computer, and within two minutes I'm back in bed, well on my way to falling back asleep for another hour and a half.

---

I could be on a roll from this weekend though. Sunday evening I invented this wicked cool (thanks Boston) game that involves throwing a ball into a pumpkin that looks similar to this one, except a little more round-

We taped the pumpkin to a wall in our lounge and invented two rules: 1) You can't break the shooting rotation, and 2) you can't get out of your seat, even to get the ball. Thanks to some reaching sticks (including one wrapped with duct tape, sticky side out), the second rule is fairly easy to follow. Oddly enough, we played "Lazy Pumpkin" for most of the evening while watching TV, and it wouldn't surprise me if we figure out a way to permanently attach the pumpkin to our wall.

You know, this game would work really well if our lounge was also a ball pit.

2003-01-10T13:41:00.000-06:00

I've been back at school for six days now, and it feels like its been weeks already. I don't know if this is a good or a bad thing; it could have something to do with the fact we've cycled through several seasons' worth of weather in a week. It felt like spring yesterday, and now it feels like 9 degrees Fahrenheit outside (according to weather.com anyway). Needless to say, I probably won't be going outside this weekend.

In between classes all this week I've been trying to wade through several bureaucratic processes, shuffling papers around and dealing with strange little people that like to lie to me. A lot. While I had my RA application due today (which I started and finished last night), that wasn't nearly the headache that trying to get off of the dorm meal plan was.

It would be an understatement to say that the standard Northwestern meal plans are ripoffs: in all six cases, one pays more for their food than they would if they spent money on their own. Under one particular plan you pay an equivalent of $10 for every meal, instead of paying $3.50 for breakfast, $6.50 for lunch, or $8.50 for dinner. Keep in mind that its not like you're getting good food either, unless dishes such as "Extra Crusty Macaroni & Cheese" or "Blackened Catfish with Extra Crust" sounds tasty, that is.

As finals rolled around last quarter I realized that to make food sound appetizing, its a good rule of thumb to not describe it as "crusty." I also realized that I shouldn't be paying for "crusty" food, so I began to see what my options were. Turns out that so long as you live in the dorms at NU you have to be on a meal plan unless you have a medical condition requiring a special diet. God knows why they don't just let you not be on the meal plan if you don't want to, but it didn't matter. I had found the key that would open the door to tasty food.

I guess I sort of have a medical condition, but its more an inconvenience than a real condition. I'm lactose intolerant, which basically means that anything dairy is bad news. There's little lactaid pills that I can take to digest dairy products, and while it works well, I've still learned to avoid certain things, like, you know, glasses of milk and ice cream. Sometimes I think the worst part about it is the harassment I receive from my friends, who invented a game they could play with me (I'm red-green colorblind as well, making it hard to tell certain shades of those colors apart). Its called "The Red-Green Game," and the rules are simple. One person holds up a card that is either red or green. The other person has to say which color it is. If they're wrong, they have to drink a glass of milk. Repeat.

Did I mention I hate my friends?

Anyway, I decided to use my inconvenient intolerance as a stepping stone, and over winter break I had an appointment set up with my doctor, where I complained about many things- I'm always hungry, the food never looks appetizing, the food sucks, I'm wasting my money, etc. And somewhat surprisingly, it worked. He seemed convinced (or at least sympathetic) and gave me a note that read as follows:

"Please allow Michael Jansen to be exempt from the dorm meal plan due to food and food absorbancy intolerances."

I'm not sure how I kept the grin off my face until I got to the parking lot, but step one was complete.

Two days later I downloaded all the forms I needed to request removal from the board contract, filled them out properly, and promptly mailed the doctor's note to Northwestern Health Services, who had to approve the note, and the form to Housing, who had to process the form once they got approval from Health Services. The Friday before I came back to school I gave both offices a call to see where my request was in the system; Housing hadn't heard anything yet, and the woman that approves the doctor's notes was out until Monday. That wasn't terrible though. Certainly as much as I could have expected.

This brings us to the beginning of this week. Seeing that Housing could do nothing for my situation, harassing Health Services was my only option. And so it began.

Monday- I stop by Health Services to see what my request's status is. A lady writes down my name and number and tells me the director will call me to let me know. "Thanks," I said, naive enough to believe her.

Wednesday- Since I hadn't received a call yet, I decided to call them. I call the same desk I went to on Monday, but the woman who answers the phone tells me "Uh, we don't handle this sort of thing." Oh? Well thanks for your opinion, but I've been dealing with your office for the past week, and I'm pretty sure you do. "Well, I stopped by Monday to check on the status and was told I'd receive phone call, but I haven't heard anything yet. Are you sure you can't do anything?" I asked. A few minutes later, she comes back and tells me she has my file with her and that my request has been forwarded to Housing. That's a good thing. Right?

Friday- I still haven't heard a thing, and my meal plan refund is losing value by the day. Having had a little more luck in person, I decide to go by Housing and see if its been processed. Nope. They haven't received anything at all from Health Services. "But they said it was sent to the Director of Housing." "The Director? He's not supposed to deal with those things at all." Oh. Great.
I find out Health Services often faxes information to Housing that is never received by Housing at all, and that may have been the problem. Ok, whatever. I'll go to Health Services and see whats going on. There I find out that my doctor's note was indeed approved, but was never signed by the Health Services director or sent to Housing. In fact, the chart they have on file at Health Services had someone else's information in it. This information, coupled with the complete disbelief in my eyes, probably spurred them into action, as they promised to take care of it right that minute. They told me to check at Housing again around 4pm to see if it had been processed.

So, barring any further mistakes, I'll find out after work if I'm off the damn meal plan. If I'm not, well...lets just say Health Services might end up with a bucket of Extra Crusty Mac & Cheese dumped on their front steps.

2003-01-04T01:06:00.000-06:00

I'll be twenty this year. Not for a few months though.

---

The past few years my Christmas gifts have become mostly necessities, more items I'll use over and over than video games I'll play through once and then forget about. Consequently, this makes shopping for me somewhat hard, and I tend to receive certain gifts several times. For example, this year I was given three fleeces and two watches (all of which were greatly appreciated). However, a few more watches and I could have ended up looking like this guy-

Good thing I already have a bananamobile.

I don't need six watches though, and come to think of it, neither does Bananas Gorilla. Sure, he's got places to be in Busytown (he does have a pretty sweet ride), but I bet one watch would do.

Of course, you don't always have to ask for just what you need. Christmas would probably be boring as hell then! We'd all just sit around being thankful, and everyone knows thankfulness doesn't fill stockings. You know what does? Candy. Other little goodies.

Ok, fine. Jesus fills stockings too. I don't want to offend anyone or anything like that; God fucking forbid, right?

Busytown and blasphemy aside, what I'd really like but I know I won't get any time soon is a trip to Alaska. I'm not really sure how this came about, but it sounds like a good idea. I'd go during the summer when the sun is out all day, visit some national parks, and play with the friendly bears and eskimos (yeah, friendly eskimos. That'll be the day). Unfortunately, as I sat at my friend's computer trying to figure out the cost of such an adventure, my hopes dwindled as the price got higher and higher. Around that point my friend asked me why I wanted to go Alaska anyway. "Just because I guess," I answered. "It seems like it'd be fun."

"Yeah, you'd get to see the polar bears and the penguins."

I blinked a few times. "Uh, penguins live in the Antarctic, not in Alaska. Only polar bears live in Alaska, no penguins."

"What? Why?" he asked in rapid succession. I didn't really know how to explain it to him; that's just the way it is. With "just because" not cutting it and "the polar bears ate all the penguins" a poor explanation (but a funny mental image), I turned around to the computer again, determined to prove my answer right. And by typing "penguins polar bears" into Google, my faith in the Internet was restored-

Nothing comes easy though. While I quickly found the scientific proof I needed to back up my claims, I had to sort through the inevitable crap that floods the Internet. The first link my search produced was to a site that let you adopt Pengies & PBs. Of course, "adopt" means putting a picture of a pengie or a PB on your website (duh). However, since I don't think I'll be getting any late presents in the forms of several weeks away from school or work in Alaska, I guess I'll have to settle for adopting a couple of PBs.

Oh well.

2002-12-26T00:23:00.000-06:00

After a few days, Sam's been quite content with his new job and is happily processing requests and shuffling emails around.

Actually, that's a lie: there's been only a few requests processed and no emails have been shuffled around. I bet he's wishing he had Solitaire installed in his mainframe right now, because as we all know, Solitaire is the best way to kill time while at work. Two summers ago I worked for the Department of Human Services back in Springfield as a temp during their busy contract updating period (or whatever you want to call it), labeling new folders for the '02 fiscal year, filling said folders with contract information, and subsequently filing them away in an orgy of paper cuts. I also answered the phone sometimes.

I only worked 12-5 Monday through Friday, and even though I was working three hours less than everyone else, they still couldn't give me enough to do. After reading absolutely everything on the Intranet website and watching the 3D maze screensaver for hours on end, I finally figured out how to install and uninstall the games package on the computer without anyone knowing it. There's something extremely satisfying about getting paid to play Solitaire at least thirty times a day.

No such luck for an automaton, though. He only gets paid in kilobytes...or sprockets. Maybe gears. Its hard to say when you have no idea what you're talking about.

Anyway, due to an incredible lack of motivation to find something to do when I'm back in Springfield and an incredible lack of, well, stuff to do, I found some time to finally make a real archive, a list of every single post I've made with newly inserted anchors for easy browsing. This lends itself to several interesting possibilities, the foremost being having the Archive itself accessible. I haven't really decided the best way to display the archive, i.e. opening up a new page with the archive displayed - I don't even know the code to do that just yet - so for the time being I'll just stick a link on the lefthand side for all your browsing needs.

Another possibility revealed itself when I realized that despite my good intentions, a majority of posts were written during the summer and not during the past few months. I had more posts in August than I did in the last three months, and I didn't post anything at all during September! Goddamn that's lazy! So, to help fill the gaping...gaps (note to self- "gaping" does not go well with "gaps") of downtime, I'll start linking to summer posts once a week on the lefthand side. This week is Beach bugs (8/3/02).

2002-12-22T22:27:00.000-06:00

Not a whole lot to talk about, just a little technical update for those interested.

A while ago I set up a mailing list with Yahoo that I would use to let people know when I updated this site. Needless to say, this idea ran into a few problems. First, not many people signed up for it. Second, I updated all of once since I set up the mailing list. Third, I didn't send an email when I updated. These three things combined made a decent idea absolutely worthless, and from this point on I'm not going to bother with Yahoo anymore.

However, I found this handy tool that accomplishes exactly what I want - letting people know when I update via email - without me doing a goddamn thing. Just enter your email address in the left column and a tiny little Internet automaton (his name is Sam) will process your submission and subsequently notify you of further updates. If people want to sign up, they're more than welcome; if not, well, only Sam the automaton will be sad, and he's a robot, so who cares?

Its a good day when only a robot's feelings are hurt.

2002-12-18T19:02:00.000-06:00

Well damn, its been a while. I could sit here and list excuses for why I haven't taken forty-five minutes out of my "hectic" schedule to update...actually, that's not a bad idea, let's see where this goes:

List of reasons why I haven't taken forty-five minutes out of my "hectic" schedule to update

Thanksgiving. Two days after the last update, I took the train home for Turkey day. While I had plenty of time to update during this four day break, I also had a paper that was due the following Monday that I hadn't started yet. With that hanging over my head, I would have felt guilty writing something that wasn't worth 15% of my grade, so I had to resort to watching movies and sitting in my friend's basement feeling guilty instead.

Finals. Yeah...this is a pretty weak excuse too. Except for five days where I actually did work, the two weeks between Thanksgiving and Winter break I didn't really do much of anything that interfered with me updating. I did spend a day in there working on a columnist application for The Daily Northwestern, which pretty much sucked the writing out of me I guess.

Couch. My god, its a cleverly disguised blackhole that sucks all the motivation out of anyone that walks by it. The only chance you have to escape is to hope that someone else is already on it, sacrificing themselves in a torrent of Comedy Central and movies. This piece of furniture makes even petty tasks near impossible to accomplish.

The Two Towers. Well, this only took up one night, but damn it was a cool movie.

Well, that wasn't as pathetic as it could have been, I suppose. That's all I got though; the couch is calling. I'll try to resist its pull a few more times this break.

2002-11-25T16:23:00.000-06:00

I should be an interior designer. Really.

I could be on that Trading Spaces show and probably do a pretty good job of it too. Well, if you ignore the fact that I'm color blind and the walls would probably end up clashing horribly with the furniture, I would be ok. Actually, you'd have to ignore the other fact that the best part of that show is when people are absolutely shocked at how crappy of a job the other couple did, because that's probably what I'd shoot for when designing.

Alright, so maybe I shouldn't be an interior designer. However, last night I came back into my lounge around 1am to find that it had been transformed into something of a dream of mine- there were now two TVs. While my first reaction was one of disapproval, as having any number of TVs decreases the amount of work one can get done...ever, I realized as I sat on the couch with both TVs in my peripheral vision that there's no way this could be a bad thing. As we sat discussing why or why not this wasn't a good idea, we got to talking about what else we needed in the lounge and where it would go. Several ideas were thrown around; a coffee table, another smaller TV stand (to maximize sitting space), and perhaps even bringing in a recliner. It was around here that my interior designing ideas started to come about, which oddly enough coincided right with the time the ideas started to go bad.

The problem we were faced with was that there was simply not enough places to lay down or sit in the lounge. Sure, we had two couches, two relatively comfortable chairs, six other chairs that came with the table, and a pool floatie (god knows why), but there just weren't enough places to flop down on after a day of classes. The suggestion of a getting a whole lot of bean bags was tossed out there, but in all honesty, those things just aren't that comfortable. That's when I realized that what we really ought to do was turn the lounge into a ball pit.

Yeah, I really mean a ball pit. Just like the ones at McDonald's Playlands and otherwise-affiliated Playlands. There's not a whole lot wrong with this idea: it turns floor space into laying-down space, you can dive into the lounge, you can throw ball pit balls at everyone, and you'd have your own private ball pit, free of puddles of urine that are tragically omnipresent at Playlands. While the idea sounds good, on paper its not as nice as one might first think. Apparently ball pit balls are quite expensive (a Google search showed that we could purchase 100 for $20 or 500 for approximately $80-90, depending on how many sets of 500 we buy), and after some rough estimating, we determined that turning the lounge into a ball pit would cost somewhere around $800, which none of us really have to spend on ball pit balls, suprisingly.

On a completely unrelated note, I now accept PayPal donations for, uh, any reason you deem necessary.
PayPal, woo!

Right. After we had figured all this out, it was around 2am, and while I would have loved to just dive into my own private ball pit and fall asleep, I had to settle for my bed instead. I guess having a coffee table and a recliner won't be so bad, but it doesn't sound nearly as fun: throwing those at people's heads probably wouldn't be a good idea.

---

Also, I'm giving something else a test run. I created a Yahoo group that basically gives me a free listserv I can use to send updates to people when this website is updated, since I seem to be doing it rather sporadically. Send an email to drawl-subscribe@yahoogroups.com to get added to the list. This link is on the sidebar of the website as well, so you can check it out there. Hopefully I should figure this out completely and get it working very soon.

2002-11-14T21:05:00.000-06:00

I am not a morning person: I get up thirteen minutes before class on most days, allowing seven minutes to dress, brush my teeth, and wash my face and six minutes to get to class. I don't know what "8 am" is. My bed and I get along real well. When I do have to get up early, and by early I mean 9 am, I am groggy and listless until something snaps me out of it, like oh, I don't know, finding money on the ground or taking a nap or something just as exciting.

Today, I was snapped awake about an hour after I got out of bed by a giant monster spider.

Well, ok, maybe it wasn't giant or monstrous, but it was definitely bigger than average and not very cuddly. I was locking up my bike outside the dining hall (having to get up early, I was afforded a chance at this thing they call "breakfast"), and as I was leaning over my bike, my eyes came into focus on this...giant monster spider that was threatening to bite me on the nose, inject paralyzing poison into my blood stream, and then carry me off, wrapped in spider silk, to eat me at his leisure. You may think I'm being overdramatic, but you didn't see the look in its compound eyes: he was bloodthirsty through and through. Thankfully, I was able to stifle any sort of girlish scream that may have come out, and locked my bike without incident, although one hell of a shudder ran down my back as I walked away.

I didn't use to have such a wimpy reaction to arachnids, but two summers ago (that'd be summer 2001 I guess), I went on a camping trip in Missouri with some friends at two different campsites. The first one was the gorgeous Johnson's Shut-Ins, and the second one was somewhere in the Mark Twain National Forest. I think the sign there said "Campsite 27" or something like that, but I swear, below that someone had scratched "Spider Death Mountain" or something equally ominous: I've never seen so many spiders in my entire life.

They had all sorts of spiders there- little jumping spiders, brown spiders, spiders with spots, big yellow and red spiders...well, clearly I'm not a spider-specialist, but even I noticed the vast variety of spider species present. At first I simply swatted the tiny ones away, but after walking into about four hundred spiderwebs whenever I strayed from the path, I quickly developed a squeamish fear of things with eight legs (it probably didn't help that one night a friend and I told a ghost story that involved a giant spider eating everyone). I thought that I had reached my limit when I walked to the bathroom and I had to duck under a spiderweb that stretched five feet between trees, only to almost fall over backwards to try and avoid the spider staring me in the face right in front of the probably spider-infested outhouse, but oh, was I wrong.

As we finally got ready to leave after a few sweltering, arachnid-infested days, we made one last stop at the dumpster to get rid of a bag of trash. I was at the point where if it felt like anything was brushing up against my body I would start swatting at the air around me frantically- it was pathetic. Anyway, as I opened up the dumpster lid, the goddamn king of all spiders on goddamn Spider Death Mountain stared me down, daring me to throw the trash in. He was the size of a tennis ball, I swear. Needless to say, I tossed the bag in the other dumpster and slowly backed away before jogging back to camp, aching to get inside the car.

I should point out that I'm not really that afraid of spiders: movies like Eight-Legged Freaks aren't scary, they're just stupid, and if a wayward spider in my room needs a smashing, well, I'll sure as hell give him one.

David Arquette though? Good God, I'll run for the hills if I ever see him.

2002-11-06T19:58:00.000-06:00

Just when you think you've uncovered all the repressed memories you had, all of a sudden, a few more come out of nowhere, reminding you of how stupid you can actually be.

For circulation and meat storing purposes, the suite I live in this year holds steady at about 42 degrees Fahrenheit at any given time of the day due to an open window. While I will readily agree that cool temperatures make for easier sleeping, they are not so conducive for you know, moving purposes. The cold-blooded part of me, upon going into the lounge area, immediately wishes for a giant heat rock to crawl onto and bask in synthetic sun warmth. I guess I would probably settle for turning up the heat or hey, shutting the window, but god knows I sure as hell won't get off the couch to do it.

Keeping this temperature in mind, its easy to understand why I would take showers at the hottest temperature I could stand, and sure enough, that's what I do. I inch that dial ever so slightly to the left until just before the water turns from "very hot" to "something you would dump on people laying siege to your castle," and then let near-boiling needles of water hit the back of my neck, warming me from head to toe. Done properly, the sensation is heavenly; done recklessly, well, get the Aloe Vera out.

As I tried to strike the delicate balance last night during my shower, I got a little too close to scalding and suddenly a little bit of childhood came rushing back. At one point in my youth, although I couldn't say when exactly (I'm guessing around the 4-6 range), I was taking a bath and wondering what cold water by itself felt like. Grabbing a nearby cup, I turned the cold water on full, filled up my cup, and dumped it over my head. I can't say I remember my exact reaction, but "Brrrrrrrrrr" wouldn't be a bad guess. Satisfied, but still curious, I began to wonder what all hot water felt like.

I'd like to point out that I could stop the story right here and absolutely everyone would know what happened anyway, but I'll go ahead regardless.

So yeah, I let the hot water run for a little bit and filled up my cup. A bit apprehensive (rightly so), I stuck my finger in there to test it, but apparently I didn't leave it in long enough, because it didn't feel so bad. So, like before, I dumped it over my head and good lord: I don't think I've ever screamed louder in my entire life. A few seconds later my mom was in the bathroom trying to calm me down, and within a few minutes I had an icepack on my head, nursing a sizzled head and a bruised ego.

With that terrifying memory in mind I decided my shower was over, but later as I was trying to fall asleep, something occurred to me that I had never thought of before: what must have been going through my mom's head as all this happened? I guess directly after it happened she was probably most concerned with stopping my screaming, but I'll put money on it that as she put the ice on my head, at least once she thought, "What in the goddamn hell was he thinking?" Well mom, fifteen years later, I guess the answer is the same as its always been:

"Ooh, I bet all hot water feels good."

2002-11-03T21:16:00.000-06:00

And just like that, you can overload.

Over the summer I realized that sitting in a computer lab for hours on end can lead to strange things, such as attracting stupid people like honey attracts...stupid flies, I guess, or dissertations on online media outlets. After spending the weekend writing a paper and analyzing poetry for a project, I figured I could say "the hell with this" to my quiz tomorrow morning and finally post something worthwhile on my website. So, here we go.

---

Footstool, we hardly knew ye.

Today's post is uploaded in the name of scrupulous fact-checking and pudgy dogs.

I need to make a correction: in a previous post (7/23/02) I discussed the chunkiness of a certain stray dog named Footstool, and I said that because of a certain tumor on this certain dog's rump (I believed I referred to it as a "gigantic ass-tumor"), Footstool didn't have long to live.

However, this is untrue.

Recently my sister brought to light some interesting information that either I was unaware of from the beginning or I simply did not remember. Footstool, as it turns out, was not a stray dog, but a dog that belonged to a friend of the family, a dog that was doing quite well for himself before this friend of the family passed away. I guess he ate mostly human food, like scrambled eggs and other tasty table scraps, which sent his cholesterol soaring and most likely contributed to his tumor. When my aunt and uncle started taking care of him, Footstool basically went from a tiny little city yard where he couldn't go farther than his five-foot leash let him to a health spa-like farm, where he was put on a crash diet of, you know, dog food, and was making a speedy recovery when he met his untimely demise.

And who might be responsible for this untimely demise? The same aunt that laughed at me when I found wriggly marshmallow bits in her Wheaties (8/2/02)! Apparently, her expertise in...whatever doesn't encompass the difficult tasks of keeping food fresh and taking care of dogs. Anyway, during a visit she let Footstool outside, not knowing that Footstool didn't know what outside was really like, much less what adjacent highways can do to chubby dogs.

So yeah, Footstool bit a tire-shaped bullet pretty quickly I guess, and that was the end of that. I'm not quite sure if this correction of fact makes Footstool's absence any easier, but I'm pretty damn sure that this aunt has a whole lot more to do to get back on my good side.

2002-10-28T15:13:00.000-06:00

Blogger has been acting weird lately, and I haven't been able to update at all in the past couple days.

However, I've been short on time anyway, so all I've got is a link to an article on "patently absurd inventions" at BBC News. The article itself isn't all that interesting, but one of the images at the top of the page is a sketch of a very unhappy cat tied up in a "delousing bag." I suppose if one were trying to apply delousing powder to a cat it could be very difficult (although I can't say I've tried it), but did the person that sketched the picture think he'd score extra points with the patent office by giving the cat the saddest face a cat could possibly have? It looks more like the cat's about to be tossed into a river and he knows it rather than being deloused.

And as a side note, I knew the rally monkey had it in him.

2002-10-20T20:20:00.000-05:00

Sometimes you need a reminder of how much middle school really sucked. I've said it before and I'll say it again- junior high is where you learn to user a locker, and that's about it.

2002-10-16T20:31:00.000-05:00

ESPN.com tells me the World Series starts this Saturday at 8pm EST. Will I watch the Anaheim Angels and the San Francisco Giants duke it out in the "Cinderella Series?" Only if the rally monkey makes an appearance: hell, I'd probably watch if they just had that monkey on for a couple hours.

With that as a segue I could easily jump into the fact that the Chicago Cubs and White Sox haven't even been to the World Series in a combined one hundred years, much less won one, but that's way too easy to complain about. That and I hate the word "segue." God knows why, but I do.

---

Earlier in the week weather.com was predicting goddamn snow in the middle of goddamn October, but since then its changed its mind back to "PM showers" and lows in the 30s. It seems like I should be used to the cold since Springfield isn't exactly pleasant in the winter - come to think of it, Springfield isn't exactly pleasant in the summer either. You know what, I think Springfield is pleasant for all of five weeks in the spring and three or four weeks in the fall, and that's it. Oh, wait, I was going to use another hyphen - anyway, the point is that I still don't like the cold at all, and as far as I remember I can't ever remember even liking snow all that much. Its fun for a little while, but it loses its charm about as fast as...I don't know, something really fast.

Lack of similes aside, I still have several valid reasons for not liking the snow, including, but not limited to, the fact that it makes everyone drive like an idiot, it gets all mushy and dirty (and yellow, depending on local canine population), and it reminds of all the lame holiday movies that revolve around snow or have snow in them in some capacity. Specifically, I'm reminded of Home Alone, mostly because I want to smack Macaulay Culkin every time I see it. Aw, Fuller's gonna wet the bed? Then kick his ass and stop complaining already, God knows you pummeled the crap out of Joe Pesci and that other guy.

I'm not a total humbug though- I still like those animated Frosty movies. Heh, he's such a lardo.

---

Sometimes I can completely forget what the hell point I was trying to make. The fact that I forgot probably means it wasn't a good point to begin with, so...go rally monkey?

2002-10-11T19:26:00.000-05:00

To someone that has visited this site before, its no secret that my drawing skills are abysmal. I remember reading an advertisement once, you know, the ones where you can send away for a test that will analyze your artistic skills? I think I remember seeing a picture of a turtle's head and a pirate, I'm guessing you had to try and draw those for the test. Anyway, I'm pretty sure they had a scale where you could rate your artistic abilities, the worst being equivalent to a six-year old with an attention deficit problem, the best being either Van Gogh or the guy who drew Calvin and Hobbes, I forget which. I have a feeling if I took the test, they'd send a rejection letter along with a picture of a fidgety six-year old, shaking his head in disapproval. Yes, I'm that bad.

Let's move on to the comic though. I promised an in-depth explanation that is sorely needed for me to retain any respectability, and I have delivered. I've gotten in touch with "a midwestern drawl's" resident art theory expert, Alex Wilheim, to analyze the comic in question. So, without further ado, I present...

Duck, Bear, Sandwich: The Realities of the Food Chain (The Annotated Version)
by Alexander Wilheim

Comments by the editor can be found in Italics. No, this isn't a comment...well, I guess it is now. Nevermind

Name of Work- A Forest Encounter
Artist- Michael Jansen
Date of Creation- 1998
Psychological Defect Necessary to Draw This Poorly- Not yet determined

When first approached with the task of analyzing this work, my apprehensions were high. At first glance it is evident that this was originally drawn on lined paper, most likely college-ruled, in pencil on a very, very small scale. This is dead on. For the life of me, I cannot draw anything bigger than the size of a quarter. Clearly the artist has had no formal training in drawing anything before, but, in the world of post-modern art, this is unfortunately no longer a deterrent. For the sake of simplicity, I will divide this analysis into four parts: the duck, the bear, the sandwich, and "when worlds collide."

Part One: The Duck

The duck is perhaps initially the most intriguing aspect of the comic. Capable of conjuring exclamation points above its head and changing shape in every panel it is present, this malleable mallard and its fondness for sandwiches seems to be the focal point of the comic. Throughout the course of the comic, the duck changes from having just a neck of considerable length to being rather plump to appearing to have just swallowed a banana whole to appearing to just having swallowed a bowling pin whole. Heh heh, look how chubby he is in the second panel.

Part Two: The Bear

The bear in this comic raises several interesting questions immediately, such as "Hey, that doesn't look like a bear at all," and "Doesn't that sort of look like Grimace from McDonald's, except a little fuzzier and with claws?" However, I have been assured by the artist himself that this is a bear, so the questions are irrelevant. Go to hell ya Grimace-loving bastard, its a goddamn bear.

The bear displays violent mood swings in the two panels he is in, going from blinded by rage to blissfully content with a single duck punch. This may reflect the artist's views on corporate power's control over the well-being of the economy and its willingness to push around the worker to get what it wants. Nah.

Part Three: The Sandwich

If there was ever a symbol of greed, it would be this sandwich. With honey ham of avarice, lettuce of materialism, and tomatoes of temptation, it is no wonder why both duck and bear are drawn to it, and why the bear is willing to squash anything in its path to taste its sweet mayonnaise of empty gratification. You forgot about the tasty pickles of, uh...tastiness. Yeah.

Part Four: When Worlds Collide

In an age where common courtesy is sliding down a slippery slope into oblivion, it is painfully apparent that the artist feels there is no way a bear and a duck, two fundamentally different creatures, can possibly share a sandwich that has lost its way. It is a wonder the artist did not have the duck explode in the fourth panel in a symbolic display of utter destruction, spreading little duck bits across the entire forest floor. While the duck is left helpless and blind (note the X's for eyes) in the final panel, one cannot help but empathize with the sheer satisfaction on the bear's face as he munches on his newfound possession. This perhaps is the most significant point of the entire piece: in spite of his clear role as the antagonist, all of us secretly desire to be in the position of the bear, the position of power, the position of quiet content, and given the chance, we would probably all bop a duck on the head for this position. I like ducks and bears.

---

Oh, I also found out today that if you do a Google search for "midwestern drawl," this page is the top result. And I have secured the coveted niche of "people who search for 'midwestern drawl' with Google."

2002-10-08T18:54:00.000-05:00

I guess I failed to mention that the site is officially out of hibernation as of this date, and is currently on the prowl for some honey or campers or whatever bears eat after sleeping for an extended period. Probably anything they can find, I'm guessing.

2002-10-08T16:10:00.000-05:00

Alright, here's the deal: without me knowing it, my priorities rearranged themselves in several ways. Instead of updating this website, class and other activities have taken precedence. Instead of giving this website the major overhaul it needs and I want to give it, I decided to buy books for class instead. Instead of working during peak hours in the labs I work during classes and quiet evening shifts, where I've found out that during these shifts common sense is much more common. These reasons, combined with several other reasons I've failed to mention/remember, have led to things being all quiet on the midwestern front.

Jesus, all quiet on the midwestern front? That was bad.

Anyway, I apologize for the lack of updates (and that terrible, terrible play on words) and given my rearranged priorities, I will make an easier promise to keep: I will try to update at least once a week in the same old format that this site's always been in. I don't see this promise changing short of someone donating the funding needed to pay for such a site, because frankly its just not in the budget at the moment.

Public service announcement aside, there is some substance to this update. Due to several insistent requests, I present a particular sample of my artistic talents for your enjoyment-

Plot summary: Duck finds sandwich, happily approaches. Bear finds duck, happily pummels. Bear eats sandwich, duck's eyes become X's.

At the present, I will make no disclaimers regarding this comic. The next update will most likely consist of a detailed analysis of the comic, covering such topics as "How did the sandwich get there" and "What the hell is wrong with you, Mike?" If any other questions come to mind, email them to me here and I'll answer as best as I can.

2002-08-27T21:50:00.000-05:00

As much as I hate to do this, I'm putting my site on hiatus for a few weeks. Actually, let's call it hibernation: when I think of hiatus, I think of laziness. When I think of hibernation, I think of fat, snoring bears. Plus, I don't look as lazy that way.

Anyway, the site is hibernating for a few weeks. It may wake up every once in a while to scrounge for food and maybe update, but don't get your hopes up. Its expecting to wake up sometime around September 22nd, refreshed and very hungry (and looking much fancier). In the meantime, look through the archives; there's probably a day or two you missed.

2002-08-25T19:28:00.000-05:00

Lessons Learned from TV
Today's lesson is brought to you by Applebee's

Lesson #16: Adding "-lets" to a word does not make it sound appetizing.

Examples
-Applebee's riblets, however cleverly advertised, still sound like a type of cat food.
-According to Merriam-Webster dictionary, giblets are "the edible viscera of a fowl." Ew.

2002-08-24T21:23:00.000-05:00

I apologize for the lack of updates lately. I've found out that as soon as I'm home my creativity tends to atrophy, shriveling into a boring little raisin that's incapable of very little besides lying in the middle of the floor, watching TV and halfheartedly trying to keep the saliva I produce in my mouth.

However, when (if) I do stop drooling, I'll get my act together and give this site a real update. I haven't given up updating entirely and the plans to revamp the site still stand, so don't go anywhere.

2002-08-16T22:24:00.000-05:00

After a brief interlude, I'm working on my drawl again.

---

In between getting ready to go home and, well, sitting around not doing much of anything I managed to find time to make it to downtown Chicago before I returned to corn fields and prairie doggies. I don't think I really know what prairie dogs look like - I'm vaguely visualizing a furry potato with legs crawling through a complex underground tunnel system - but I'm sure I'll be surrounded by them tomorrow evening. Prairie dogs aside, the night's main event was dinner at Ed Debevic's, a quaint little restaurant where the waiters are decidedly flippant and giant fiberglass cows hang from the ceiling.

While the waitress wasn't as rude as she could have been (she was more quirky with a bit of awkward surliness I suppose), the rest of the staff didn't let me down. Although they made fun of a woman who "demanded gravy" for her meal and fanned out a birthday candle after no one cared about the birthday, the waiters and waitresses took a supporting role tonight to the most ghastly performance of "I'm a Little Teapot" in the history of...everything, probably. I imagine Mr. Ed doped up on tranquilizers could have probably carried a better tune than this girl; its unfortunate no one was around to put her down before she got too far.

In spite of this performance, what will undoubtedly be behind my eyelids when I go to sleep tonight is the image of two - the following description is being as flattering as possible - large women with bad hair stylists and no apparent dental plan singing along to a '50s rock and roll hit, I can't remember which one at the moment. It seems like I should know better and just turn away for my own good, but my morbid curiosity constantly gets the better of me. Thank goodness I'm going back to Springfield, where the State Fair has brought out people that are more pleasing to the eye.

...Ah shit.

2002-08-14T11:06:00.000-05:00

I'll be gone for a few days. In the meantime, go to orisinal.com. I can't think of a better way to waste time than this.

2002-08-13T13:03:00.000-05:00

Kappa Sorority Member Given "Stupid Bitch of the Summer" Award
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Around 12:15 pm CST today the coveted "Stupid Bitch of the Summer" award was given to a member of Northwestern's Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority in the basement of the library computer lab. The recipient's name was unavailable, and she was only able to be identified her by her cute, light blue "Kappa" t-shirt.

"Its unfortunate that she left before I could find out her name," said Michael Jansen, who was working the in computer lab at the time of the presentation. "I would have really liked to give her a proper certificate with her name on it, but what can you do?"

This prestigious award is only given to those truly annoying and stupid, and those asking questions pertaining to printing and logging on are not even considered for this award. "This really is an exclusive award; we don't give it out to just anyone. You have to be really shrill and annoying to convince the judges you deserve it," Jansen told the press.

The unidentified memeber of Kappa was unanimously decided the winner after her unprovoked bitchiness surprised and annoyed Jansen, who was trying to be as helpful as possible at the time. Apparently he explained to her that the PC labs were closed and that she would have to use the Mac lab, which also had the program she needed, Microsoft Excel. In a whiny voice she replied that she "hated Macs," to which Jansen replied, "Well, that's all we have available until the class is over."

"Around that point she had a hissy fit, which really won the judges over," said Jansen. "All of a sudden she started bitching about how there were no computers available, even though I just pointed her to a room full of Macs. She really lost it when I told her the labs were for classes first and the public second, though. She used the old 'Well what am I paying $30,000 a year for?' complaint on me, and I really think the judges liked that. Not only was she being unreasonable, she was complaining to another student about tuition!"

After the interaction, audience members noted how surprisingly calm Jansen remained throughout the ordeal. "Its amazing he limited himself to just a smart-ass remark about how he didn't have a thing to do with tuition," commented Katherine Adams, who Jansen had helped earlier in the day. "If I were in his shoes, chances are I would have smacked that bitch in her fucking mouth after that. I mean, Jesus."

When asked why he didn't mention the five PC's sitting in the general lab area by the help desk, Jansen replied, "Heh, those are right there, aren't they? Well, maybe if she didn't act like such a dumb whore to start with, I might have pointed out the computers she had already walked by several times."

This is the first year the award has been given at Northwestern.

2002-08-12T10:29:00.000-05:00

The summer session is over in a few short days. After a four-hour trip, I will be (in this order) enjoying air conditioning, playing with kitties, and relishing in the fact that I won't have to explain how to print something for at least a month. Am I excited? Do cows chew cud? Did I just now realize how disgusting cud - nasty, digested grass waiting to be chewed and digested again - actually is? Do cows even like cud? I'm not 100% sure about that last question, but the first three can all be answered with a resounding yes- I am excited to go home. Cows do chew cud. Thanks an active imagination, I am now completely disgusted by cud.

Uh, right.

Anyway, although I will only be away for about a month, I'll miss all that Evanston and Chicago have to offer. In Springfield I can't exactly hop on the L to go people watch; if I went to the bus stop nearest to my house I'd end up at the mall. No thanks. No rumbling by Wrigley Field on the Purple Express Line; I could drive past my high school's baseball field, but its not quite the same. The beach in Springfield smells, too. Come to think of it, the reasons to get excited about going home are getting pushed around pretty violently by the reasons to stay. From the way I'm describing it, one would think Springfield is all stinky beaches and tumbleweeds. Stinky beaches, tumbleweeds, and a Wendy's three blocks from my house! Of all the things Evanston and Chicago have, they don't have Wendy's convenience quite like home. Anything that's "Biggie-sized" better watch out come Saturday.

Oh yeah, friends and family too, I like them. More if they have Wendy's though.

---

On a related note, even though I usually don't mention current events, some "Biggie-sized" individuals are suing fast food restaurants because their hamburgers and fries made them fat. The possibility for wise-ass comments here is quite "large," so I'll just give a sampling to pick from:

Fast food made you fat? Yeah, I'm gonna blame your lack of willpower.

Are you sure the "no-exercise-just-sitting" regimen you were on didn't have anything to do with it?

Maybe if all airlines enforced a "pay for what space you take up" policy there'd be less money to spend on fast food.

There's all sorts of degrading names one can use to complement these remarks, but those don't require much thought so I won't bother listing any. "Chunkasaurus" is good though.

2002-08-11T17:36:00.000-05:00

I have, probably like most people, a casual interest in astronomy. When I get the chance I enjoy stargazing on clear nights, where I either stare off into endless darkness, halfheartedly count stars, or wish I knew some other constellations besides the Big Dipper and Orion (my lack of knowledge constantly reminds me of an episode of The Simpsons where Homer is pointing out constellations to his Little Brother Pepe: "Well, there's... Jerry the Cowboy. And that big dipper looking thing is Alan... the Cowboy.") Once in a while those harbingers of doom will sweep across the sky, either foretelling the end of the world or looking pretty- take your pick.

Besides picking out the two constellations I know and watching comets, every so often I work up the motivation to stay up and watch a meteor shower. More often than not these supposedly spectacular storms of the heavens turn out to be no more than a droll drizzle of dinky proportions; I get myself all worked up about "expected rates of 20-30 meteors/hour" only to cheer on the lonely five or six that are actually visible. While I should be disappointed, I still get excited by the prospect of seeing even a few shooting stars, and with the Perseid shower reaching its peak sometime late August 12th/early August 13th, I've been considering staying up for the show.

There are a few matters working against this happening though, chief among them the fact that I'll have to get up in the middle of the night to see them, the day before a final no less. Combined with past disappointments, my bed continues to look more and more comfortable. But the Perseids aren't out of the running yet- if there are clear skies I'm sure it will be a very good show when viewed over Lake Michigan and hey, its only a few hours of sleep lost, right?

The decision is still up in the air: most likely it will come down to if the weather forecast is good or not. Even so, I'll have to decide if I'll remain a casual observer of the skies or begin my ascent into the level of "hardcore astronomer." Or amateur astronomer, professional astronomer, whatever. I'll probably just stick to pointing out Alan the Cowboy every once in a while.

2002-08-09T23:18:00.000-05:00

At some concerts it is expected there will be an eclectic mix of people in the crowd, dressed in odd fashions, styling their hair in a cropped, streaked manner, and sometimes wearing knee-high boots or cowboy hats. While Beck's concert at Northwestern's Evanston campus certainly drew some of these people out, they fail to raise eyebrows. They're expected- a non-mainstream style turned common for a night.

That's not to say I didn't raise my eyebrow more than once while watching people file into their seats before the show began. Indeed, I barely got through the revolving door before I saw "that guy." You know who I'm talking about: the guy who wears the shirt of the band he's seeing to the concert. What made it worse is that he had just bought the shirt. What made it horrible is that after he bought the shirt and put it on, he went to go sit down with his parents. At first I was ready to mock. After seeing him take a seat next to his parents, well...I felt a little pity for the guy.

I got over it quickly though, just in time to see the most unexpected concert-goer of the night: the Star Wars geek fan. In hindsight, its entirely possible this kid got lost on his way to a convention. This may seem a bit abstract, but his vision was blocked at times by the stormtrooper mask he was wearing before the show started. I was completely perplexed by this guy, as he had no reason for wearing such a mask, let alone bringing such a mask to a Beck concert in the first place.

In the end, the kid with goddamn pilot goggles on his head made my jaw drop the most. "Hey Lindy," I wanted to call out. "Where's your scarf and bomber jacket? Did you leave them in the Spirit of St. Louis when you landed outside?" Really, who the hell wears pilot goggles? I'm not even sure pilots still do.

Of course some other real intellectuals brightened up the crowd as well, like the two people that came in wearing sunglasses (mind you, the show started after dusk) and wore them the entire show, or woman sitting behind me that commented "Ooh, a banjo," and started to make her version of banjo noises when Beck pulled out a banjo.

---

In other news, I'm quite excited about the changes I'll be making to the site. You can expect a lot better organization (not just by date) and some other fancy tricks I've still got somewhere up my sleeve...or in my pocket. Maybe I left them in the dresser. Anyway, the changes will be good'uns: I'll keep you posted.

2002-08-08T19:21:00.000-05:00

A doozy

Layout of the lab I work in. In the upper right there are two labs and on the left there is another one.

I found myself sitting at the lab help desk next to the exit when a girl walks from point A (see diagram above) to point B, where she looks around in the empty public lab area for a few seconds. She then turns on her heel and goes to point C, where she inspects the Mac lab before turning to me and asking exasperatedly, "Um, how do I get out of here?"

"Pardon?"

"How do I get out of here?" the girl repeated. Yep, I thought to myself, I don't think it can get any worse. I looked at her, looked at the exit, looked back at her, and I casually jerked my thumb toward the door that was right next to me. "Go through there," I managed. Please, go quickly.

2002-08-07T18:35:00.000-05:00

At one point this summer I had this great idea to make a colorful sign that would explain all the steps of printing, hoping to eliminate confusion on the user's part and endless questions on mine. I began thinking about applying this sign idea to other areas of the lab, thinking that well-designed, carefully placed information would smooth out the rough patches and allow more time for lab consultants to help those that really need assistance. While I still maintain that, in theory, this idea is a good one, I have come to the conclusion that producing such signs would be a waste of effort.

I reached this conclusion with the help of the largest sign we've ever had in the library lab: a 2' x 4' size sign propped up on an easel was placed near the entrance to the public lab. The sign, in very large letters, says, "This area is closed for remodeling" along with other information pertaining to when it would reopen and what other options users had. It also says "If the Mac and PC labs are not being used by classes, they will be available for public use." At the present, the sign sits in the direct path one would take to the now empty lab area.

And still, I get questions like these:

Is the lab closed?

What happened to all the computers?

Are there any other labs open?

The last question particularly baffles me, as I'm not sure why AT would employ someone to sit at a desk to be a consultant for a nonexistent lab, but the point is that if people can't read a gigantic sign directly blocking their path, I doubt they'll notice a cleverly placed sign indicating what they need to do to print or log on to a computer. It seems for the time being that I'll just have to keep saying, "its closed for remodeling" or "the Mac and PC labs over there are still open" accompanied with a gesture to the other side of the lab.

The people that walk around the sign and into the empty lab though, I'm not even sure what to do with. Maybe I should just tell them we're closed and save myself some trouble.

2002-08-05T19:57:00.000-05:00

I'm not sure how much stranger things could get tonight. Besides the failed exercises in observation, I've also had a man approach me and ask me if I knew what some words meant. I was glad to help, but for the life of me I couldn't figure out what the hell he was saying. The words may have been "poignant" and "indigenous," but he didn't know how to spell them (I guess he wrote them down from a lecture) so I just played dumb and told him I didn't know.

Not only that, a student walked into the Mac lab, turned around and walked into the PC lab, where he turned around again and walked into the Mac lab. I thought he had settled, but then he turned around again and walked into the giant empty room (see previous post), where he did a neat little turn after seeing nothing was there and headed for the exit. On the way out, he asked, "Do you want this magazine?" He had a copy of Time magazine in his hand. I looked at him, then at the magazine, and replied, "Uh, not really." "Its Michelle Park's. Do you know who Michelle Park is?" he inquired. "Man, I don't fucking know who Michelle Park is, what the hell are you asking me for?"

Actually, I told him I had no idea. I was thinking it pretty strongly though.

2002-08-05T19:14:00.000-05:00

Two Failed Exercises in Observation

1) When I work at the library lab, I sit at a big desk thats adjacent to the entrance. Above me hangs a 1' x 3' sign that says, in giant letters, "Lab Help Desk." I wear a name tag that identifies me as a consultant. And still, I had this conversation with a girl tonight:

"Um, do you work here?"
(Total silence. A cricket may have chirped)
"...Yes."

On top of that, this girl asked me where to find books about the homeless. Already struck dumb, all I could get out was, "I have no idea. Try using one of the many computers in the library with the catalog search on it."

2) Last week we closed the public computer lab for remodeling: all the computers and desks were moved out of the area and a giant sign was put up, displaying when the lab would be open for use again.

A confused fourteen-year-old boy walked into the middle of the large, now empty room, looked around frantically, and then came back to the help desk and asked me, "Uh, how do you get back upstairs?" I try to suppress my initial reactions when dealing with questions like this, but I swear to God I looked at him cock-eyed for a good five seconds before answering, "Go down the hall, there's a set of double doors on the left at the end." You know, the ones you had to take to get downstairs in the first place?

2002-08-05T10:48:00.000-05:00

I'm a little bit saddened that for the first time I'll be missing the Illinois State Fair, which conveniently takes place in Springfield every year. In the past few days its been hard to think about much of anything else besides this, as the State Fair has become quite dear to me.

Hmm, I wonder if I have any peanut butter left.

All right, so I'm not exactly losing any sleep over being out of town for the duration of the fair. There's all of two things I ever go to the fair for anymore: Tom Thumb donuts* and the giant slide, and the giant slide is getting tiresome. Thankfully, with the wonders of the Internet, I can experience the most important part of the 150th Illinois State Fair right from my computer.

Yes, I'm talking about the butter cow. Every year someone sculpts a cow out of butter - 500 pounds of butter - and puts it on display. I've long since stopped questioning why the butter cow came to be a tradition, but apparently last year there was a "Butter Cow Cam."

Yep, its still standing there.

When I found out about the butter cow cam, I wasn't exactly surprised. However, when I found out the butter cow cam was "Back By Popular Demand," as indicated in the picture, well...I got a little less homesick. In case you're having doubts the butter cow isn't still standing there you can check out the butter cow cam at the Illinois State Fair website, but chances are the old butter cow hasn't gone anywhere. Its interesting to note that this year's scultor is a woman from Madison, Wisconsin. Yeah, thanks Madison. Next time keep your damn butter sculpting skills back in dairy country.

Unfortunately, there's no webcast of the bands playing at the Grandstand. This year, in just one night, lucky Grandstand-goers will get to see Gin Blossoms and Spin Doctors! I can't even begin to imagine what that concert might be like. I'll take a guess anyway-

Gin Blossoms starts it off with "Hey Jealousy" followed by "Found Out About You"

Encore of "Till I Hear It From You"

Spin Doctors play "Little Miss Can't Be Wrong," call it a night

Both bands disappear into obscurity, once again

If that isn't enough, Aaron Carter will be there. Boy, maybe I should go home early.

* Okay, I tried to find a link to a picture of a Tom Thumb donut stand or some website explaining how damn good Tom Thumb donuts are, but after getting this result, I got a little frightened and decided to stop looking-

Yes, that says "tom thumb donuts, gay bondage newsgroup."

Wow, thanks so much "teen hotties posing and playing," you managed to cause me to permanently associate Tom Thumb donuts with gay bondage newsgroups from now on. Splendid. As exciting as "girls smoking pics" sounds, I think I'll take a pass.

2002-08-04T00:01:00.000-05:00

I've got big plans.

There's been a few complaints lately that the archives are acting funny - just up and disappearing sometimes - and blogger.com seems to have trouble keeping its servers up, although it has been working well lately. The mysterious gigantic space in one of my posts is still there as well (its in the archives somewhere, if they're up. I'm not sure where, as its not exactly that interesting to see a gigantic empty space), and I've had growing feelings of animosity toward blogger.com for some time now anyway.

So here's the deal: at some point in the near future, I will get my act together and a couple changes will take place. In this order, I will-

Get a domain name and a pay-service web host

Ditch blogger.com for movabletype.org

Ponder how to best describe the changes I'll be making to this site

Discover "fancify" is an actual word

Fancify my site layout

Most of this depends on appropriating the necessary funds and finding a good web hosting service, and I would like to give it a time frame for all this happening of two months. I will keep everyone posted.

2002-08-03T11:00:00.000-05:00

Brought to You by the Word "Interjection"

I remember reading a bit of Thoreau in high school (yes, a bit. We didn't read whole books in my English class, just snippets and then watched the movie for the most part), and a passage that will always stand out is the story about the ants fighting. There was some lesson of morality mixed in there, but I think what impressed me the most is that Thoreau was actually fascinated by ants enough to watch them carefully for an extended period of time instead of squishing them after a few minutes. Sure, he had great ideas, civil disobedience and whatnot, but it helped that I could relate to him on another level: the level of being endlessly amused by tiny little insects crawling around.

---

An interjection

Would it be so hard to just jump into my story involving watching bugs? Surely that's where I'm going with this, and somehow I doubt little bugs deserve much of a build up. However, patience pays off in the end.

That and I like the word interjection. So, here we are.

---

So anyway, interjection (ah ha, used it again) aside, I made it to the beach today, and boy howdy, it was fabulous out: couldn't see a single wisp of a cloud and a brisk breeze made up for the fact that there was no swimming today, keeping everyone nice and cool. I spread out my towel about fifteen feet from the water and laid down on my stomach, propping my head up on my arms so I could watch the waves crash on the beach. My attention was drawn away from the waves and to the sand as I saw a little red and black-striped bug crawl along the beach toward my towel, flipping over from the wind every few seconds and then struggling to right itself.

For some reason I was immediately enthralled by the little beach bug, and to my surprise I saw several other beach bugs crawling around within arm's reach. I thought to myself, "Wow, look at all these beach bugs," followed by, "Where the hell did all these beach bugs come from?" My train of thought was derailed as I noticed the first little beach bug I noticed was getting rather close, and since I usually don't appreciate things crawling on me, I pushed a mound a sand up in front of it, hoping to deter its path. Success was had: the little thing had no chance scaling the mountain I just created. Every time it got about halfway up it would slide down, end up on its back, frantically wave its legs about until it righted itself, and then try again.

As I saw the bug attempt this several times, I had an idea. I formed a bowl of sand around it, not too deep, but sloping enough that it wouldn't have much of a chance at getting out, and then watched. In spite of its poor climbing skills, it attempted again and again, sliding down on its back every time. I about lost interest when another beach bug crawled up to the lip of the bowl and, with a gust of wind, tumbled in.

Things were getting interesting. The two attacked their task with equal fervor, hurling themselves toward the top with reckless abandon, inevitably falling back to the bottom. As a third beach bug unknowingly scuttled toward my trap, I realized why Thoreau was so interested in ants (ah, here's the buildup payoff). Sure, his main point was that like humans, ants engage in warfare, but an underlying point was that they actually work together to start with. With the third beach bug tumbling head over thorax into the bowl, I took off my sunglasses and leaned closer for a better view. My two-minute old dream of seeing how beach bugs worked together was finally going to be realized.

At first, the three beach bugs took separate paths, obviously thinking that by randomly attacking the problem the solution would become apparent sooner. "Clever," I though to myself, although I was aware that their approach would be fruitless. After several attempts, I witnessed the first act of teamwork among beach bugs probably ever to be recorded: the piggyback. Two of the beach bugs fell down to the bottom at once, and instead of going at different ways again, one of them actually got on top of the other and rode him up the side, evidently hoping to hop off and make a sprint for the top. It was absolutely cunning: by sacrificing itself, it would help propel another beach bug to the outside, where it could further propagate the beach bug species.

However, like the random assault strategy, it was doomed to failure. The beach bugs all slid back to the bottom, wriggled helplessly for a a few seconds, and then righted themselves only to fail again. As a fourth beach bug plummeted into my hand-sculpted depression to meet the same fate of his trapped brothers, it became obvious beach bugs don't communicate too well with one another.

From what I've heard two's a party and three's a crowd, but my knowledge of four is limited. Based on my beach bug field study, I would say four's asking for trouble. As the beach bugs tried the piggyback method over and over, the tactic evolved into double-piggybacking and even triple-piggybacking. Things were clearly getting out of hand. As tempers rose, the beach bugs began fighting with one another at the bottom of the bowl, rolling around, pumping their many legs and whipping antennae at one another, the teamwork card tossed out the window. On the verge of a breakthrough, I looked around for more beach bugs. I tossed in two more and waited for the fireworks.

Within seconds the escape attempt turned into an all-out brawl. While some of the beach bugs tried climbing up the sides, at least four were always at the bottom in a dogpile, furious with one another. I added a couple more to the bowl and the situation worsened exponentially: a majority of the time was spent kicking, tumbling, and biting. Escape was no longer on the priority list.

About five minutes later at least fourteen beach bugs were in the confines of the bowl. There was no foreseeable end to this struggle, and unless my eyes were playing tricks on me, I swear I saw a few flies line up along the side as if the bowl was a mini-Colosseum and mighty gladiators were pitted against each other for the entertainment of all. It became clear that beach bugs are solitary insects for a reason: when in close proximity to other beach bugs they tend to pummel each other silly and nothing gets accomplished. I wonder what sort of life lessons Thoreau would have derived from this.

Anyway, at about that point the gladiator metaphor started to set in, and as I saw the beach bug skirmish get to the point where if they started piling up along the side they could break free, I realized in the metaphor I ended up in the role of the heartless emperor. I don't think beach bugs can bite, but the thought of a little beach bug Spartacus rallying the troops to assault my towel was a little unnerving. Keeping an eye on the sand-bowl-turned-gladiator-pit, I packed up my stuff and left for home.

2002-08-02T18:33:00.000-05:00

Just yesterday on zulkey.com it was Disgusting Story Day, and my story about the fish I found in Lake Michigan was featured among them (see archives 7/8/02). There are some truly disgusting stories there, and I encourage everyone to go and be revolted.

After the fact however, I realized I had a much more disgusting story than that one though, one that I had repressed deep into the depths of my memory so that I could live a normal life. When I was maybe eleven or twelve I went with my mom to visit my aunt and uncle that lived in the fine midwest state of Missouri. They lived on several acres of land that seemed quite removed from the nearby city even though the drive to town was only ten minutes away. Their house could best be described as "quaintly rustic;" at least, that's what they were shooting for. Anyway, I woke up in the morning and went to get a box of Wheaties cereal from their pantry. I poured a bowl and sat down at the table and started eating, looking for a newspaper or something to read as I enjoyed my breakfast.

About two bites into my meal I looked a little closer at my cereal and saw tiny little maggots squirming around on the Wheaties flakes. They were few and far between, but considering there were fucking maggots in my goddamned fucking cereal, just one would have been too many. I think up until this point I've been in denial about actually ingesting any of the squirmy little bugs, but chances are I ate at least one. Probably more.

I went and told my aunt about it, expecting some sympathy, but oh no- she actually started laughing. This is probably about when I started to dislike visiting her. I guess I should be lucky I can suppress my gag reflex pretty well, because I imagine if I didn't have control over it, there would have been a whole lot of vomit to clean up. There is no doubt in my mind lots and lots of chunks should have been blown.

Surprisingly enough I still eat cereal on a regular basis. I think in my mind I counteracted my fear of that ever happening again by distancing myself from most of my extended family, thus removing the chance of ever eating another wriggling "marshmallow bit."

2002-08-01T20:34:00.000-05:00

Mama.

The quiet confines of the digital media lab treat me well: four hours of uninterrupted silence. Not one question, not one printing problem. Just me and a book. I guess I shouldn't get used to this. The digital media lab closes this week until the fall, so its back to the library for me.

---

I've been contemplating more customer service strategies that would provide me with an infinite amount of gratification but would surely get me fired really, really fast. One that immediately comes to mind is what I've termed the "bird method." Its fairly simple, but within its simplicity is its beauty: whenever someone approaches the help desk, you flip 'em the bird. Don't even wait for them to say anything, just give 'em the old one-fingered salute and go back to whatever you might be doing. There's a good chance, and by good chance I mean undoubtedly, that you will flip off someone that is entirely undeserving and would probably be nice to you given a chance, but its the price you'd have to pay. When I think of all the trouble I could have saved myself by indiscriminately telling some of the people I've met, in a more harsh fashion, to kiss off...well, I get a little teary-eyed.

I'm just kidding. I'd wait until I found out someone was annoying before doing something like that.

2002-07-31T19:21:00.000-05:00

In the interest of not appearing narcissistic, I tend to shy away from talking about my strong points. For a change of pace though, I'm going to come right out and say that I can have incredible patience with nearly everyone. However, there seems to be a select small group of the population that is just really, really good at pushing all my buttons.

Besides the dumb kid I keep talking about (the guy that walked into my arm, Tweedledee...he's the same person. Archives, 7/3/02 and 7/9/02 to catch up), who I saw again in the lab today, this time biting his friend's arm for God knows whatever reason, I couldn't think of another person I've met in the labs that so thoroughly annoyed me with just their presence. All of this changed right as a class started meeting on Wednesday nights in the Mac lab. While most of the students seemed normal, one kid apparently decided he needed to make up for this lack of eccentricity by being more annoying than anyone I've ever met.

During the first time this class met the aforementioned kid was trying to print. I'm not really sure how to best describe the entire chain of events, so I'll just make a list of what you have to do to print since he had a problem with every single fucking step anyway:

Step One: Make sure you have money on your card. For this step, all you have to do is add money to your card via the cash-to-card machine located conveniently in the lab. That night however, it was broken, so you had to go upstairs to the information desk where the next nearest machine was. When my co-worker told him this information, he immediately began whining. Yes, I do mean whining. In the worst sense of the word. His loud, nasal voice droned on and on, complaining about having to, God forbid, walk upstairs. A conversation ensued between him and my co-worker:

"You mean I have to go upstairs? Can you go do it for me?"
"Uh, no. I'm working."
"What are you doing? You're just reading."
"Yep."
"Can I read too?"
"Go for it."
"So you're not gonna go do it for me?"
"You got it."
"I bet you'd do it if I were a cute girl."
"Yeah, probably."

My co-worker certainly dealt with the situation in the best way possible, i.e. being rude, but as we'll see, this didn't deter him.

Step One and a Half: Send your document to the printer and know how to use the print station. This isn't a real step, since the entire process is pretty self explanatory, but people have lapses in common sense from time to time, and I honestly don't mind explaining it, as long as you're not - for lack of a better description - annoying as fuck. Its possible this kid has the reverse and his stupidity lapses into sensibility every once in a while, but he might just be completely dumb. I'm going with completely dumb. Anyway, without even bothering to look at the screen that flashes "Insert card or hit any key to logon," he asks me what to do. Hesitantly, I explained the process.

Step Two: Put your card in the card reader. After asking several questions, he finally figures out what I'm talking about and runs off to send his document to the printer. About this point I realize he's in the summer program that can't print, and when he gets back, I explain this to him. I try, anyway: "Hey buddy, your summer program can't print. Its not gonna work." As far as I know, that means he won't be able to print, but he tries to put his card in the card reader anyway, and after a few failed attempts, he gets it in.

Step Three: Log on to the print station. This part, like the entire process, is also easy. Simply type in the same ID and password you used to log on to your computer, and you're ready for step four. However, as I've mentioned, this kid's attempts to print were doomed to failure, and in spite of me telling him this, he pressed on, typing in his invalid user ID and password. After about, oh, fifteen tries he turns to me and says: "Its not working."

Well duh, you fucking dumbass. Did you think the first fourteen times it said "Not a valid user ID" when you hit "OK" the computer was just messing around? For some reason, instead of calling in a specialist for an emergency euthanization, I explained to him as calmly as I could that his user ID wouldn't work, and there's no way he could print. No luck. He kept babbling on and on about how it didn't work, telling his friends that just came by that it didn't work and he didn't know why, and in general just not making any sense.

Step Four: After logging in, select your document from the list and click "Print." He didn't get to this step. This step was replaced with me actually getting frustrated with a user for the first time ever. After not listening to me at all, I told him "All right, do whatever the hell you want, I don't care." I guess he finally realized he wouldn't be able to print, or maybe he got bored or tired or whatever, but he wandered off after a while.

This happened about a week ago. Tonight, the class was in session again, and guess who was there? That's right, and apparently this time he wanted to be friendly with me. Several times he asked me "how I was doing" and "still working?" to which I could only bring myself to say "could be better" and "...yes," respectively. As the night wears on I've found myself dreading the moment the class is over and he leaves: I can't even stand the thought of listening to him or even seeing him again.

---

I had a really good idea just a few minutes ago. I should make a sign that on one side says "If you have a question, please ask!" that I would display during my shift, inviting users to ask questions so I could help them. I'm not really that enthusiastic, but that side of the sign isn't the point, its only there for contrast. When I get someone really annoying, like the two kids previously mentioned, I'll use the other side of the sign. I'll look at them, very deliberately move my gaze from them to the sign, and flip it over, revealing a side that said "I'm sorry, you need more help than I could possibly give- Please go the fuck away." I'd look back at them, and if they said anything, all I would have to do is tap the sign.

2002-07-30T13:33:00.000-05:00

Three Stupid Questions, One Dumb Encounter, Five Minutes: A Timeline

1:19 pm - "Is there a reason why the door to that lab is closed?" Judging from the giant "Class in Session" sign posted on the door, I'm gonna go with there's a class in session.

1:20 pm - After seeing two different types of computers in the public lab, the same guy asked me "Is there a Macintosh section and a PC section to the public computer lab?" Actual response- "Yes. The Macintosh computers are in the Macintosh section, and the PC computers are in the PC section."

1:22 pm - This one requires some setup: A girl came into the lab with one of those paper cups you get at fast food restaurants with the flimsy plastic lid. I told her we don't allow those in the lab. "Really? But I thought the sign said you do allow these types of drink containers." Another actual response- I pointed to the sign with the giant red X through a drawing of a paper cup with a flimsy lid. "Actually, that's exactly the type of drink we don't allow."

1:24 pm - The same kid that nearly walked into my arm (check the archives, July 3, 2002) walked past the giant "Class in Session" sign, opened the closed door, and almost sat down before someone told him there was indeed a class in session. Thankfully, this discouraged him enough that he didn't stick around.

2002-07-29T19:56:00.000-05:00

Wanted: Minotaur for part-time work

Sitting quietly at the lab help desk in the basement of the library, I was approached by a high school-aged girl who asked, "Excuse me, how do you get back upstairs?" I blinked. "Pardon?" I replied, buying myself some time to try and comprehend this girl.

"How do you get back upstairs?" she repeated. I was sorely tempted to tell her "Probably by going back the way you got down here," but this job is easy money. Instead, she got a few seconds of awkward silence followed by "Um, just go down the hallway to the double doors on your left."

"Ok, thanks," she said, twirling her hair.

---

There's a myth about the Labyrinth, where this guy Daedalus uses a ball of string to track where he had been to find a way out of the Minotaur's maze. I wanted to suggest this as a possible solution to her navigation problems, but the stretch of hallway from the stairwell to the computer lab is about twenty-five feet, and there's absolutely nothing labyrinthine about it.

I doubt she would have understood me anyway.

---

Addendum (7/30/02 12:30 am CST)

I've been considering what it would be like if the library hired a minotaur. I think he would have to change his style a little bit - get rid of the axe maybe - but that wouldn't be a problem. He would troll the library towers, stomping his hooves and snorting, looking angrily for people that were lost. As soon as he found one, he'd heft them over his shoulder, take them back to the entrance, and toss them out through the revolving doors (which would of course spin rapidly, gaining enough momentum to spit the person out a good distance). Killing patrons probably wouldn't be good P.R., so I think this is a reasonable solution.

I think we'd get along real well: on his break he'd come down to the lab and we'd chat about all the people we've seen that day over some coffee. I mean, I don't drink coffee, but I think I can let that detail slide. I'd probably have to listen to him complain about the lack of work in the labyrinth sector lately, what with the receding economy and all, but I could handle that.

Right. I'm gonna get some sleep now.

2002-07-29T12:32:00.000-05:00

"Hi, I'd like a bacon cheeseburger value meal with a Dr. Pepper."
"Double cheeseburger value meal. Is that all?"
"No, bacon cheeseburger."
"Bacon or double?"
"Bacon."
"Double?"
"Bacon. Bay-kunn."
"Ok. Bacon cheesburger value meal. What would you like to drink with that?"
"Uh, Dr. Pepper."
"That'll be $3.32"
"Ok."
"Here you go, enjoy your meal."
"Thanks, 'preciate it."

---

Sometimes I wonder if everyone's definition of English is the same.

2002-07-28T17:15:00.000-05:00

In trying to get a research paper done, my spare time has been cut short. However, a picture of the cutest kitten in the entire world should more than make up for it (thanks Steve-o).

2002-07-27T00:00:00.000-05:00

After the longest hiatus yet, I'm updating the site. I couldn't seem to figure out why I had written so little (well, I guess none at all), but my problems were solved with an afternoon in Evanston.

So yeah, I exaggerate sometimes. Evanston isn't all goofballs and dog owners- I actually know some pretty nice people that live on the north shore. However, it does have its fair share of crazy people and utter morons, examples of these categories being a woman that struck up a conversation with myself and my roommate Jonathan on the street in a roundabout way to advertise her hair-cutting business and the dumb thirteen year olds smoking weed on the street while kicking ice at passersby, respectively.

I found out today there's another category of Evanston residents: the strange relative. As I sat in the cafe section of Barnes and Noble reading a magazine, I watched three women set their belongings at a table, settle for a minute, and then get back up to go get books. As two of the women left, I got a better look. The first one that walked by I assumed was the daughter, a normal-looking woman about twenty years old with shoulder length brown hair and, if I might add, an attractive appearance. She was followed by her mother, another normal-looking person, but the third member of their party stayed behind at the table.

I'll give you three guesses concerning what this third woman was like, and I'll even give you a hint: she's a nutcase. You guessed nutcase? Hey, who would have thought?

This woman single-handedly reaffirmed my faith in the fact that Evanston was disproportionately weird all by sitting at a table. The middle-aged woman had a pumpkinhead haircut, a constantly furrowed brow as if she was confused by everything she saw, and oh how she smacked her gum: I think cows would be offended by this woman. It was the type of mannerism that, if you knew the person better (maybe not even), you would go up to them, grab them and shake them silly, demanding they stop smacking their fucking gum like they were re-digesting grass.

Of course, because apparently I'm a masochist, I couldn't stop staring at this woman, hoping she would stop smacking her gum and twitching a little more with each chomp. I couldn't help but wonder what gene from the other two perfectly normal women this oblivious woman was missing, and I couldn't help but imagine what amazing capacity for annoyance they must have built up.

---

Its probably not fair to be so harsh to Evanston. I mean, at least it doesn't smell...that badly.

2002-07-23T21:53:00.000-05:00

Days like this come once a summer- a strong breeze and temperatures in the 70s provide respite from the dog days that are sure to come more often as July goes on, and a deep blue sky that practically demands you lay down on the grass and nap. In a stroke of luck, a free concert on the lakeshore in Evanston was scheduled for tonight, and I spent the gorgeous evening outside watching little kids dance (read: jumping and flailing arms about) and listening to Beatles' songs.

What really surprises me is that at these free concerts - I've been to two now - is that in a town seemingly full of fuckin' nutcases, the relatively normal people are drawn out of the woodwork for these public gatherings. These people can sit calmly and enjoy the evening without asking for change or if I want to sponsor Greenpeace (read: dumb fuckers. "Hey, lets protest nuclear waste by making a boat carrying the stuff go into evasive maneuvers!" Listen, jackasses: take your symbolic protests somewhere they won't potentially cause a nuclear waste spill. Jesus). For whatever reason though, it seems like every other person had a dog with them, where "dog" refers to pure-bred dogs, because out of the thirty-some dogs I saw in fifteen minutes, I don't think I saw any of the "mutt" variety. I'm not exactly a dog person, but even I was impressed by some of these handsome little doggies: well-groomed, shiny coats of fur, what seemed like excellent posture - although I can't say I've seen a dog slouch before - and for the most part well-behaved. The one real exception was a snooty little beagle that howled at everything that walked by, be it person, other dog, or duck.

All these doggies got me thinking about a few things. First, it made me glad that my preference is cats. Sure, they may not be as loyal as companions, but I don't have to carry their feces around in a bag: hell, I don't even have to walk them. Second, it got me thinking about another pure-bred dog I knew once, a full-blooded mutt named Footstool.

Footstool was a dog among dogs. He belonged to my aunt and uncle that live a bit outside of Springfield on a farm, and as his name implied, was shaped quite like a footstool. He was shaped like the stubbier, fatter footstools, but a footstool nonetheless.

Google image search returned a surprisingly accurate picture of what Footstool was actually shaped like.

While the picture above is of a sheep footstool, Footstool himself had legs just about as stubby but his fur was much patchier in terms of colors. What was perhaps most memorable about Footstool - besides his pleasant demeanor that only incapacitated, dependent animals can have - was his gigantic ass-tumor. This little dog was pretty wide to start with, but unlike most dogs, who sort of taper off near their back end in terms of width, Footstool had a tumor that kept his width consistent and earned him his namesake.

I'm not gonna lie. Footstool was a stray dog, and by the time my aunt and uncle found him, he didn't have that long left. It makes me feel good that for the couple months that Footstool was around he got plenty of love and affection, along with table scraps, all in return for an occasional foot placed on his back (read: just kidding. I don't think anyone was that cruel to old Footstool).

Oh, right. Third, and finally, I thought of what people would think if I was walking around this free concert with Footstool on a leash. Chances are, between the regular dog-walkers and the screwballs, I'd blend in perfectly.

2002-07-22T13:11:00.000-05:00

I found out at lunch that today was supposed to be a "stay in bed til 6pm" day, but thanks to an oppressive heat warning last night, staying in bed would have probably resulted in dehydration. Anyway, apparently one of the programs at Northwestern is called "Basic Reasoning," and the only requirement for attendance is that you have no common sense whatsoever. The program kids ate at my dorm's dining hall for lunch, and with almost every table full, I ended up sitting across from the conveyor belt where you put your tray and near the exit as well, as one can see from the diagram below:

An overview of the corner of the dining hall I was in today.

As I've mentioned before, we sometimes get really little kids in the dining hall, and when they don't know what to do, its excusable. However, it should be noted that everyone referred to in the following paragraphs is of the age where they don't need their hand held anymore.

Right. With that disclaimer out of the way, let's begin:

The ice cream station/salad bar.

around

The conveyor belt. By far the most reasonable source of confusion, disposing of your tray requires three things: throwing away your napkins, putting your silverware in a container with soapy water in it, and finally placing your tray on the conveyor belt. In case this isn't immediately obvious, another sign, conveniently placed, lists directions on what do to, which in theory cuts down on the work the dining hall workers must do.

As I first sat down on my table, I noticed a large pile of trays next to the conveyor belt and assumed it wasn't on. Again, another assumption I shouldn't have made. People just weren't placing their trays on the conveyor belt, which was indeed on and moving. Only after a worker came and moved all the trays on to the belt did people start putting them where they were supposed to go.

The clearly labeled exit. Here's where I was first tipped off that a new program was in session, as I noticed large numbers of people dropping off their trays, but none leaving through the exit that was right next to the conveyor belt. There's nothing complicated about this. Its a door marked with an exit sign. You leave through the fucking door marked "exit."

Instead, people decided to walk all the way around to where they originally came in, past all of the food and the line of people waiting for food, pushing their way through a small, crowded area. A pair of eleven-year-olds, swearing at each other like I thought only sailors with Tourette's Syndrome could, were sitting right next to me, and when they got up they piled on their trays, completely ignored the exit sign, and walked all the way around.

Another set of Basic Reasoning campers, five of them this time, all of them wearing keychains with those little waterproof containers around their necks, stood by the exit after dropping off their trays. For at least three minutes they all unsuccessfully tried to swing their keys around their necks, managing only to smack themselves in the face several times each. After that excitement wore off, one said "Ok, lets go," and they all left to walk all the way around through the entrance. I guess one of the workers finally caught on and told them to go around to the door marked "exit" (imagine that), and so they came back around. One of the kids broadcasted this information for everyone, saying "The exit's over here guys" at least six times while another remarked "You know, I never noticed this exit before."

At first I was just amused by these exploits, but when I realized that I'd probably see half of these kids again while I'm at work this evening, I admit I had to fight back tears.

---

On a completely related note, I bet there's a huge potential market for "human prods." They'd be like cattle prods, except they would come in a different package. It might be a good idea to lower the voltage running through them, but then again, they're probably fine how they are.

2002-07-21T19:11:00.000-05:00

Its good to be back.

My faith in humanity is suffering from shaken baby syndrome after an excursion to Green Bay via public transportation this weekend, where it was left dazed and bleeding from the ears after a little less than twelve total hours spent on trains and buses. After meeting dozens of sailors and people with problems that I can't even begin to imagine, its a pretty safe bet that I'll be avoiding public transportation for a bit. However, I don't want to dissuade anyone from using public transportation that easily: allow me to elaborate.

So the plan was this- I was heading to Green Bay for the weekend to meet with my girlfriend while conveniently forgetting to mention this to my parents, by which I would inevitably save myself a lecture and a game of twenty questions (so yeah, Mom, Dad, if you're reading this, uh...I love you?). I would catch the Chicago-bound Metra from Evanston at 10am, get to Union Station and then head out at 11:30 am on a Greyhound bus, confident in my scheduled arrival time of 4:30 pm. From previous experience with public transportation, I certainly expected meeting some people that were out of the ordinary. I've learned that expecting it doesn't necessarily prepare you for it when it happens, though.

Bus #2669 to Green Bay from Chicago

In all honesty, the trip started out well. I was a little unnerved by the wealth of adult book and video stores within eyeshot of the highway in Kenosha, WI, but I refused to be shaken by dairyland smut. The bus was inevitably running a little behind and I wasn't too concerned when we arrived in Milwaukee twenty minutes late, but that's about when things started falling apart. I had assumed there weren't any delays along the trip, but apparently I wasn't informed of the thirty-minute "crazy bitch" layover upon arrival in Milwaukee.

After we parked at the gate, most of the passengers started to get off the bus except for myself, a Chinese man that didn't quite understand "Stay on the bus. No transfer here," a senile-looking old lady with short gray hair, a ditsy mother and her annoying 11 year-old son, and a black woman in her late twenties that was crouched on the floor of the bus with her head leaning on her seat.

A poorly drawn layout of the bus. C - crazy people, M - Mike, and B - bathroom.

I was contemplating going to the bathroom when the crouched over woman (the C farthest to the right) began moving toward the bathroom in a duck-like fashion, maintaining her crouch the entire way. Although a family consisting of a mother and five kids were still in the way, the woman was undaunted and excused herself past them. I couldn't say if anyone else at all thought this was strange or even saw it happen, but all I knew was that there was no way I was using the bathroom after this lady.

This foolish thought was based on the assumption the lady would come out of the bathroom. If there's a lesson to be learned from public transportation, it is certainly "take nothing for granted." As the new driver prepared to leave, the woman was still in the bathroom, doing whatever the hell she was doing (close as I was, I couldn't hear anything) in spite of the insistence of her friends that she "quit foolin' around and get her damn ass off the bus." After the bus driver and the station manager unsuccessfully tried to get her out of the bathroom, they went to call the police and I decided it was in my best interest to, what was I thinking at the time...right, get the fuck away from the woman that's probably shooting up with a diseased needle in the Greyhound bathroom. The rest of the bus had the same sentiments, although from different reasoning: the senile old woman suggested the woman had a gun and then began laughing at the thought, which either influenced or scared the ditsy mother and her child, and the Chinese man was, I don't know, probably still looking to transfer. By the time the police got there we were all off the bus except for country bumpkin Billy, who got on the bus and sat in the back, unfazed by or unaware of the situation.

It ended up the police convinced the woman to get off the bus after about ten minutes and we finally got back underway, running an hour late. Right as we left the station our driver made the typical announcements concerning the rules, followed by a very reassuring statement: "I would also like to say that I'm a Chicago driver and I am not familiar with this route, so if you see me going the wrong way, please let me know." Lovely. I also tried to ask bumpkin Billy, the only eye witness to the police getting the woman off the bus, what happened, but he just flapped his hands and said...something, I couldn't discern a whole lot. I'm probably better off not knowing, anyway. I dozed off after a bit and arrived a little less than an hour late in Green Bay, flustered and confused more than angry at being late.

Bus #2669 to Chicago from Green Bay

The same bus and the same driver greeted me at the station the next day, and with minimal trouble we set off for home. The only strange people on the bus were a teenaged kid sporting Fat Albert jean shorts and a Fat Albert medallion on a long, silver chain around his neck and a guy that, thanks to Southwest Airline's policy of paying for how many seats you occupy, can be best described as having a two-ticket ass - thank god the bus wasn't full. The only frightening part of this trip happened when we got back to Chicago and I saw a billboard advertising Morton Salt (you know, the salt with that dumb girl spilling her salt while walking with an umbrella in the rain). The graphic was salt being sprinkled on some fries with a caption saying "Ever seen a french fry smile?" A failed attempt to be cute and memorable, this billboard only scared the hell out me and left me praying I never see my french fries smile or make any other sort of facial expression, ever. In hindsight though, I'll never forget the brand name Morton Salt: I'll give them that much.

The Metra rides weren't too bad except for being crowded with enough sailors to fully staff two aircraft carriers, but by the time I got back home, I'd had enough. In addition to meeting all these people, it seemed like someone was following me around with a crying baby the entire time, only adding to the "pleasantness" of the experience.

I'm not saying it wasn't worth it though. All I'm saying is next time I go to visit my girlfriend, I'm renting a fucking car.

2002-07-18T17:40:00.000-05:00

Besides the banner ad that blogger.com makes me keep at the top of this page, I do very little in terms of promoting goods or services. Sure, I've clearly endorsed the Swedish Chef from the Muppet Show (check the archives), but he's been out of the entertainment business for quite some time now and no one is making a profit from such an endorsement.

Today, things are a little different. In ascending order of importance, I will give you several reasons why British journalism, namely BBC News, far outshines American journalism:

Attention is paid to small details. A perfect example of this is a recent article concerning a guy getting gored by a bison and then getting fined for being too close to it. At the top of the page there is a picture of two lumbering bison eyeing the photographer and a caption that reads, "Bison are big - and they can run faster than you." This is information that will undoubtedly save many lives.

Excellent use of similes. During the World Cup, a feature was run about how the tournament was shaping up to end in a disappointing fashion. There's no dancing around the subject here, as sports writer Tom Fordyce wrote-

"Like an anxious teenager in bed with his girlfriend for the first time, this World Cup shot its bolt too early. For the remainder of the experience we've been forced to lie there, twiddling our thumbs, trying to pretend not to look too disappointed."

Unfortunately, the American press just doesn't seem to express their feelings as accurately, or as vividly.

Clever alliteration and pictures of really fat dogs. A recent feature on porky pets really brings this point to light. Not only does it have a picture of a dog so fat it should be pushed around in a shopping cart, the first line of the story is "More than half of all cats and dogs are little fatties." Take notes, journalists: this is how you pull in your audience.

If you look up "American journalism" in an encyclopedia, it will be cross-referenced under "boring as fuck." CNN? Come on. This actually isn't my point, as British journalism can stand on its own legs, but it should be mentioned.

Its quite obvious that my strong endorsement of BBC news will have little to no effect on the amount of traffic their website receives. Its also quite obvious that my reasoning behind my preference to British journalism over American journalism makes little to no sense. However, considering my last endorsement involved the Swedish Chef, I doubt anyone visited this website in hopes of finding advice on any matter.

But damn, that's one fat dog.

2002-07-17T19:33:00.000-05:00

What the hell is wrong with you?

a play in one scene

by

Michael Jansen

---

CHARACTERS

MIKE - A computer lab consultant/college student. As of late, his patience has clearly been running thin.

YOUNG GIRL - About 15 years old, the young girl appears normal at first. However, it becomes apparent later her mental capacity is at least 10 years behind schedule.

---

(Northwestern's library computer lab. Mike sits
at the computer help desk, a look of quiet content
on his face betrayed by nervousness in his eyes,
as if he can feel the next stupid question coming.
A young girl approaches the help desk.)

YOUNG GIRL
Can you help me graph something?

(Mike's left eye twitches, a tic that seems
to have just recently developed.)

MIKE

Well...maybe, let's see what I can do.

(Mike and the young girl walk to the PC section
of the computer lab. A few papers are next to the girl's
computer. Mike notices the computer screen is blank;
nothing has been accomplished so far.)

MIKE

Ok, so what part do you need help with?

YOUNG GIRL

I need to make a bar graph, and I don't know what program to use.

MIKE

Well you're going to want to use Microsoft Excel for this.

(A short pause as the girl opens up Excel
on her computer.)

YOUNG GIRL

What do I do now?

MIKE

Now you enter your data into the little cells on the screen, and once you do that, you click on graph and follow the directions.

(A pleased look crosses Mike's face as she is
able to find the "graph" option on her own.)

YOUNG GIRL

So what do I need to put in?

MIKE

Well, you just input your data. Where's your data?

(The girl grabs a paper from the desk and
shows it to Mike. He looks at it for a moment and
frowns, a look of frustration growing on his face. There
is no data on this sheet. He hands it back to her.)

MIKE

Okay...well just take the data on that page and input it into the cells. After that you can graph it.

YOUNG GIRL

On my computer back home the computer makes the graph for me, it does everything.

(Mike raises an eyebrow.)

MIKE

Well, you still need to put in the data to have the computer make the graphs...what data are you putting in?

(The youg girl brings up a web page,
full of text. There is not one discernable number
on the entire page.)

YOUNG GIRL

I don't know, I just need to make a graph.

(Mike's left eye twitches several times.
His eyes widen as he notices this and blinks quickly,
as if trying to avoid developing a bad habit.)

MIKE

Well, if you can't show me the data you need to graph, I have no idea how to help you make a graph. What data are you graphing?

(A dramatic beat.)

YOUNG GIRL

Ok.

MIKE

I mean, I'd like to help you but if you don't have the data, I don't know what to tell you.

YOUNG GIRL

Ok.

(Mike, clearly baffled, walks away from the girl.
Blackout.)

2002-07-16T15:02:00.000-05:00

Sometimes I think I'd like for one of the computers in the lab to suddenly catch fire, exploding in a hail of plastic casing and microchips. Ever thinking quickly, I would simultaneously shout for everyone to go for cover and grab the fire extinguisher, after which I would move within striking distance of the deviant member of my quiet little community of computers and put it back in line with an expertly aimed blast of carbon dioxide. After the situation is back under control, I would call the University emergency number and calmly report the happenings, as if it were nothing out of the ordinary. "All in a day's work," I would say to the guy coming in for the evening shift, and I would go home, content that I've done my job.

I think I'd settle for being able to listen to music, actually. Anything to make the goddamn clock move faster.

As I watch the Gameday broadcast of the Cubs game slowly update, I'm wishing I could be spending my summers like I did fifteen years ago - playing t-ball. I think I'd give just about anything to be out on a hot summer day in ugly little baseball pants and a mesh hat, smacking my hand in my glove in a taunting manner to the kid at the plate (or the tee, I guess). I fancied myself a little Mark Grace back then, playing first base with a sure glove and backing up my defense with clutch offense, always coming through for the team. Of course, "clutch offense" consisted of hitting a ball off of a tee, but hey- they didn't have a rule saying "its not a hit if the ball doesn't go past the pitcher" for no reason. Unfortunately, I can't even begin to count how many times that rule was needed.

When I wasn't dreaming of the big leagues, I goofed around with my teammates, who I have no recollection of now other than stereotypes common to every t-ball team there ever was. Several immediately come to mind:

The athletic kid - Usually the son of the coach, the athletic kid actually knew how to catch, hit, throw and run all while keeping tears to a minimum. Undoubtedly grew up to be a jock, but at age five even he's pleasant.

The not-so-athletic kid - Hefty at best and chunky at worst, the not-so-athletic kid wasn't exactly known for his base running, fielding, or catching skills. While you always made fun of the other team's not-so-athletic kid, you always cheered yours when he was up to bat: if there's one thing he might be able to do, its whack a ball off a tee pretty damn far. Unfortunately, these long balls usually only resulted in singles.

The girl - Every team probably had two or three girls in the pee wee league I played in, but usually only one was any good. This girl, while usually not the best hitter, possessed more hand-eye coordination than half the team, meaning she could actually throw it to second base and get it there in the air, too. In a five-year-old boy's world, a girl being good at sports is one of the only ways she'll earn respect, which would at times lead to a show of affection, in turn leading to a slap.

The pitcher - If you can't throw, run, catch or hit, there's still a place for you in t-ball: right on the pitcher's mound. Charged with the ceremonial task of flipping your arm in the direction of the plate to show its ok to hit the ball off the tee, the pitcher, as far as I can remember, never did a thing. Thankfully, I didn't become a pitcher until I started playing baseball, where the skill of throwing the ball accurately is a must.

The rest - Also known as the "treat-bringers," these are the kids that no one remembers except for the kickass Capri Suns and Hostess Zebra Cakes their parents brought for after the game. They had average skills at the four basic t-ball tasks, which they made up for with the previously mentioned tasty treats.

If I had to classify myself, I would lean toward a hybrid of the athletic kid/the rest, because while I was pretty good at everything, I wasn't the coach's son, and my treats weren't always the best. Thankfully, I avoided a social dysfunction because of my low snack quality (just barely though, pressure was intense back then. I'm kinda glad I don't have to deal with that anymore), and I just have fond memories of high scoring games and dusty uniforms.

My dreams of professional baseball faded off somewhere along the way - probably when baseball started to require more than two practices a week - and along the course of my short life, I've also resigned dreams that soccer and basketball leagues and tennis camps
encouraged as well. There's a fantastic chance this lack of motivation is linked to laziness (I could pitch still. Maybe), but I like to think its because I don't have enough time to properly devote myself to it. Now I just go to the gym three times a week and if I'm lucky, toss the frisbee around on the weekend.

---

You know, I have no idea where the fire extinguisher is in the lab. Ah well, I'll just hope the computers blow up on the other guy's shift.

2002-07-15T18:25:00.000-05:00

Innocence lost

A little part of me wept softly today as I realized I can no longer swim through warm water at a beach without the words "gigantic toilet" coming to mind.

2002-07-14T20:30:00.000-05:00

If one were to come up to me and have a conversation, and during this conversation would randomly throw in the word "Chicago" somewhere, three things would immediately pop into my mind, usually in this order:

skyscrapers,

the Cubs and my perpetual distaste mixed with loyalty to them,

and strange, strange people

This past Saturday, I came within close proximity to the Sears Tower, Water Tower Place, the John Hancock Building, and the Tribune Tower. I've been relatively pleased with the Cubs' performance, who have actually won three games in a row now (in a convincing manner, no less). I also came across quite a few people that can only be categorized as "real fuckin' weirdos." If I were handing out awards, they would be presented as follows:

Third place- Robot street performer. This fellow entertained a crowd on Michigan Ave with his silver-painted outfit ensemble and face paint, complete with rotating star bolts on his shoulders. He would move in a somewhat mechanical fashion as music played from a metallic-looking boombox, waving his money cup around with stiff arms. The magic was somewhat ruined as a little kid put some money in the cup and he bent down in a not-so-robotic fashion to rifle through his backpack to get a bag of Jolly Ranchers to give to the little youngster, giving some evidence that maybe robots do feel human emotions. I wonder if the robot street performer would have felt offended if I handed him an employment guide.

Second place- F.A.O. Schwarz Toy Soldier. My, this guy cut quite a stunning figure. Dressed up in a Nutcracker soldier uniform, this red-cheeked guard posed for many a picture and wore many a goofy smile, probably getting about $7.25/hr in exchange for his dignity. No shiny black boots did he sport though- a slick pair of those shoes with wheels were upon his feet, which he enthusiastically used to move his legs back and forth in a dizzying manner. I think I may have seen him before though, possibly on that TV show what's it called...ah yes- "What Have I Done With My Life?"

First place- Grandma Zoe. In a surprise finish, a little old black lady came from behind to win first place in a convincing manner. With a quiet demeanor and goofy look on her face, "Grandma Zoe," or so her giant name tag said, sat silently in a wheelchair, holding a cup with change in it and, well, wearing a giant name tag that said "Grandma Zoe." She edged out the Toy Soldier with her reverse psychology tactic of drawing attention to herself by not doing much of anything except positioning herself by a building and waiting. It wouldn't have surprised me if I had turned back to look at her only for her to throw a wink at me, as if to say "Yeah, that's right, I'm Grandma Zoe. I'll take your change now." Only if, Grandma. Only if.

An old man with white hair and a kilt was singing "America the Beautiful" to no one in particular, not even holding out a cup, but not everyone goes home a winner if I were handing out awards. I don't look fondly on awards for participation.

Considering all the stuff that immediately runs through my mind as I play "word association" with myself at any given time though, more often than not spurring unwarranted laughter, its a strong possibility I might be giving the robot a run for his money next time around.

2002-07-12T12:53:00.000-05:00

After a week of pretending to look knowledgeable and important in the Digital Media computer lab until I was asked a question, upon which I sheepishly replied, "Yeah, I have no idea. Try asking one of the other users, though," I found myself back in the basement of the library for an afternoon of random questions and boredom. Exactly one half-hour passed by before I ran across my first troubled user, who in the end had a legitimate problem, but manage to make the situation much more difficult along the way.

As a reminder, the lab in the basement has both Macs and PCs, including separate classrooms with just Macs and just PCs. A high school student came in and walked into the Mac lab, and about twenty minutes later came out and asked me how to print. I'll give her credit, she knew she had to have a card with money on it, but things got a little frustrating after that:

(gesturing to the print station five feet away while speaking)
"Ok, well all you need to do to print is to put your card in the card reader and then log on to the print station."
"Um..."
"Just put your card in the card read-"
(she moves to hand me her card)
"No. Here, I'll show you."

At this point I get up and walk to the card reader, where I then point out that indeed this is the card reader and I do not need to read her card. The problem is that for some reason, the user ID she used to log on to the computer wouldn't log her on to the print station, something that just never happens until Information Technologies at Northwestern decides to fuck around with the people that actually run the labs. Seeing that the logon is obviously not working, I start walking toward the Mac lab to see what's wrong, but since I don't know what computer she's on, I initiate another dialogue:

"Well let me take a look at your computer. Which one are you on?"
"The Mac computer in the Mac lab."

(I turn and look in the Mac lab, at the twenty-four Mac computers.)

"Um."
"Oh, I'll show you which one."

Thanks, I do appreciate it. After that incident, I told her to go upstairs and print, where you don't need an ID.

Some days are just meant to be spent in bed.

2002-07-11T19:41:00.000-05:00

Another Update- The so called "gigantic fucking space" seems to have disappeared, at least for the moment. It may or may not reappear, considering I don't know where it came from and I have no idea when it left. So for the time being...I don't know. Its a goddamn mystery.

2002-07-11T14:02:00.000-05:00

News Flash- It has been announced that for anyone that figures out why there's a gigantic fucking space in the Wednesday, July 10th post, there is a fantastic prize waiting you, begging to be claimed. Its has been suspected that the Law of Conservation of Mass may have been broken, since almost half a screen's worth of space appeared out of nowhere, but its also suspected that I probably just don't know what's wrong. For the time being, just ignore the space and continue reading.

2002-07-11T13:39:00.000-05:00

As I've mentioned before, there's a lot of summer programs at Northwestern that have kids from ages 10-17, and more often than not one of these groups will end up eating in my dorm's dining hall. Some of the younger kids are adorable, with their lunch boxes and friendly demeanors, but then there's the "not quite at puberty yet" group, which, if I'm not mistaken, has recently been scientifically proven to be one of the most annoying demographics of all time (don't worry 7th and 8th-graders: you're still the reigning champions). High-pitched voices and growth spurts make boys incredibly awkward to even watch, and I can only count my lucky stars that those days of mine are past.

Today, I witnessed something that still leaves me at a loss for words. A husky twelve-year-old, appearing to be stumbling almost every place he walked, sat near my table with a plate of food on his tray. This plate of food consisted of a grilled cheese sandwich and not one, not two, but three corn dogs. No ketchup or mustard for the corn dogs, and not even a drink to wash them down. Just three corn dogs and a grilled cheese sandwich. Well, two and a half corn dogs (he had already started on one before he reached the table). In a span of no more than five minutes, this kid ate (inhaled?) all the corn dogs, and after he finished each one he would toss the stick on the ground, apparently in too much of a hurry to set the stick back down on his tray. He sat talking to his friends for a second, then left to take his tray to the conveyor belt, grilled cheese untouched.

I'm not sure I could eat three corn dogs that fast if I tried.

As I finished up my lunch, I was thinking about how grateful I was that my parents raised me on a pretty healthy diet, since I now appreciate a well-balanced meal more. I can't say I'm the healthiest eater, but three corn dogs would easily fall into the "overkill" category. At about this point I saw the kid coming back to the table with another corn dog.

I'm gonna call home now- I think I need to say thanks.

2002-07-10T18:59:00.000-05:00

Let me tell you something: if Chicago has anything over Springfield...wait. Lets start over.

---

Let me tell you something: Chicago has everything over Springfield, and when it comes to lakes, there is no exception to the rule. To show that I am not exaggerating, I will compare the two cities in table format:

Category	Chicago	Springfield
Baseball teams	The Cubs and the White Sox, both Major League teams	The Capitals. Their mascot? A doofy-lookin' guy with a baseball for a head.
Tallest building	Sears Tower	The Hilton, endearingly referred to as "the penis of the prairie."
Reaction you get when you tell people where you live	"Ah, Chicago. I used to live there," or "Cool, I love Navy Pier!"	"Springfield? You mean, like, where the Simpsons are from?"
Quality of lakes	Lake Michigan - Pretty good.	Lake Springfield - Lake? Oh, you mean cesspool.

As one can see, almost by precedent alone does Lake Michigan outclass Lake Springfield. However, Lake Michigan does not need to rely on precedent to be the better lake; as anyone that has been to the rocks on the Lakefill at Northwestern's Evanston campus will tell you, it is a beautiful place to be at any time of the day. It is a place for relaxing, napping, and pondering- a truly wonderful place.

Late last night, despite overcast weather and windy conditions, I rode my bike to the lake in hopes of clearing my mind. As I got to the Lakefill, I was awed by the rough waves of the lake pounding against the rocks, the bleak view of downtown Chicago shrouded by fog, and a foreboding sky glaring down upon me, furrowing its cumulonimbus brow at my presence. I climbed down on to the rocks, where I sat for a few minutes, staring blankly at the choppy water, thinking depressing thoughts, feeling truly alone for the first time in quite a while, and I thought to myself "Maybe there's something missing in my life. Maybe I'm focusing on the wrong things." I mulled over this thought and others similar to it, and as the intensity of the waves increased my thoughts raced faster, building up in a crescendo with every crash of water against the rocks, and as I came upon an inspiring truth, a rare moment of true clarity, it suddenly hit me:

"Hoo boy, look at all this water. I really gotta pee."

Damn it. The next ten minutes were spent debating whether I should just find some random bush or tree on the Lakefill, providing instant relief but spoiling a special spot that I've come to enjoy in the last year, or if I should go find an actual bathroom. I glanced at my watch, noticed David Letterman would be on soon, and rode my bike back to the dorm, where a flushing toilet and antenna reception awaited.

Sometimes you just gotta prioritize, you know?

2002-07-09T18:47:00.000-05:00

I grew up in a little village called Jerome that was completely surrounded by Springfield. Although I couldn't say the same at the time, I really appreciate having grown up in such a quiet little place, where I could run around playing tag, play roller hockey in the streets, or make up bicycle courses which inevitably ended up taking on some form of "ride around the block twice." Jerome also had a surprisingly high ratio of of friendly to mean old people, and while I suspect that has declined as of late, I'll always remember the cute old woman that gave me and my sister chocolate milk and bananas (god, what a strange combination) and the friendly couples that tipped well when I came collecting for my paper route.

At one point our next door neighbor, a rather nice old woman, died (moved away, I think I remember being told) and her son Howard moved in to her house with his wife and little kid. Let me be quick to dismiss any images the word "son" conjures in your mind: Howard might be the strangest person I know. With a well-kept ponytail that went all the way down his back, big mutton chop sideburns, and state trooper sunglasses all on a 5' 8" frame that supported quite a beer belly, I don't think I could ever mistake him for anyone else. Although the rest of the people living on my street were - how can I phrase this politely...ah - introverted freaks, in a few years Howard developed quite a reputation from the standpoint of my family, and several memories jump to mind that I can only explain with "Well, that's Howard for ya."

Every time it rained during the summer, he'd be out on his porch, looking out at the rain. The only reason this stands out is that from time to time my mom would do this too, and I'd usually join her. There's just something exhilarating about thunder during summer storms, who knows. Anyway, from across the yards they would have conversations, discussing this and that, and once the rain let up, the conversation would die and we'd go back inside. Every day that it was nice out, right before dusk settled in for the night, he would step out on the porch and call for his kid Alex to come in. Mind you, it didn't matter where he was- if he was in a block radius, he would hear. "ALEXXXX!!" he would bellow in a deep, cigarette-scratched voice as he stood holding the screen door, and with the consistency of the sunset you would see Alex running home a few seconds later. It still amazes me how efficient the system was; no set times for your kid to be home, no going to look for him, just open the door, bellow once or twice, and hey, your kid comes running. Fantastic.

While Howard had plenty of other oddities about him, including smoking at least a pack a day, working at the Shell gas station/repair shop, and an uncanny skill for Mario Golf for the original Nintendo system, his Fourth of July fireworks show took the cake. At least a hundred dollars was spent each year on entertaining the neighborhood kids (and himself, no doubt), and my brother and I absolutely loved it. To hell with going downtown for fireworks, we had front row seats at a great show right next door. The neighborhood kids, Alex's mom, and sometimes mine would wait in the front yard while he set up the display in the back, and once our supply of sparklers and black snakes ran out and it was dark enough, he would begin. For twenty minutes he would light off roman candles, bottle rockets, fountains and firecrackers, causing all of us to gasp with delight with each resounding bang. After the show was over, we would of course be all riled up and proceed to beg for a few more sparklers before we had to go to bed.

As kids moved away and the ones that were left hit puberty, I began noticing his quirks receded somewhat. No more calling out at night, I didn't go out to watch the rain anymore, and we eventually stopped going to his fireworks show. The whole setup sort of fell apart actually; Howard and his wife got divorced and well, we just stopped playing with Alex at some point. I know he still has the ponytail and the mutton chops, and I wouldn't even raise an eyebrow if I found out he still played Mario Golf on a beat up, old Nintendo. I'd probably be more surprised if he took down his Christmas lights...ever.

I talked to my mom the other day though. She says Howard put on the fireworks show again this year, with no audience but himself and our little cat Tiger, who was accidentally left outside to cower underneath our car, trying to hide from the explosions in the sky. I laughed when she told me about it, but I realized how glad I was that some things never change, and that if I was home this summer, chances are I might have stepped outside to watch the fireworks myself. After seven years, I would walk over to his yard and take a seat on the grass and wait for him to start. I doubt we would have said a whole lot to each other; he wouldn't have asked how school was going, I wouldn't have asked how Alex has been. For twenty minutes, I would have joined him in reliving a few unforgettable nights, where an eccentric man with more personality than a hundred people combined and a blond-haired kid were fascinated by singing rockets and banging firecrackers and absolutely nothing else mattered.

2002-07-09T13:47:00.000-05:00

I can't help it: I've developed a strong aversion to ice cream in the past few years. Its sad really, considering how much I used to love ice cream bars, milkshakes, and well, anything involving frozen milk in some form. All that was ripped away from me in a horrifying fashion when I found out I was lactose intolerant a few years ago. Now, with lactaid pills, I am afforded the comfort of a bowl of cereal in the morning and the occasional slice of pizza, but as a rule I tend to avoid dairy products now. The pills get expensive, and it just doesn't taste as good anymore.

I think that's a record- I got off-topic before I even got to my intended topic. Right, well anyway, today in the dining hall I ended up near Tweedledee (see archives, 7/3/02) and a group of his friends, who were sitting around a table that was situated near the ice cream dispenser.

I really should learn to make better sketches.

When I chose to sit down at the table near the wall, I wasn't expecting a loud conversation from the table where Tweedledee was sitting. However, I didn't count on the fact that yes, his partner in stupidity Tweedledum was sitting with him, as shown above.

For twenty minutes this kid made smart-ass remarks about the ice cream dispensing abilities of everyone that used it. This in itself is pretty lame, but we have a lot of summer programs at Northwestern, and young kids come in to the dining halls to eat a lot. So not only was he making fun of people's ice cream dispensing ability (which, I might add, isn't the best idea when you're overweight yourself), he was making fun of ten-year-old's abilities to dispense ice cream. He scared away eight kids from the ice cream dispenser in the twenty minutes I was down there, even after being scolded by one of the dining hall managers. Now, I haven't been ten for quite some time now, and even though I don't really like ice cream (as previously mentioned), I probably would have been traumatized by this chubby ice cream perfectionist, who demanded every cone be neatly swirled.

---

Ideally, I would have a roll of stickers, similar to what grocery stores use when they stick a circular "Shop 'N Save" or "Shnucks" logo on a gallon of milk to show you've bought it, except they would say "Dumb ass" instead. Once someone acted stupid in the vicinity of the stickers, I would peel off a sticker and smack it on their forehead.

I'd probably run out of stickers real fast.

2002-07-08T19:58:00.000-05:00

I get to the beach pretty often now, and while I was out in the water, floundering around, trying to remember all the different swimming strokes I learned at the YMCA when I was eight, I nearly ran into a fish. My immediate (and intelligent) response was to say, to no one in particular - except maybe the fish itself - "Hey, there's a fish." Oh, what irrepressible wit I have.

Anyway, the encounter was a little more startling than one might think. First of all, you don't just nearly run into fish. Fish like to swim around below the surface of the water for the most part, and this one was clearly flopping around above the water. Since fish don't usually flop around above water, this fish wasn't exactly getting anywhere fast, and I was afforded a much clearer view of fish than I normally get. Needless to say, I was fairly disgusted. In a flash of clarity, I empathized with my younger brother Dan, who at age four mercilessly beat a dead fish we found on a beach with a stick. I also felt a connection with my older sister Krista, who took up vegetarianism for several months in high school only to avoid eating fish. Only now did I see the underlying, two-fold truth that my siblings have long been aware of: 1) fish are pretty fucking disgusting, and 2) if you get a chance, whack 'em with a stick.

After realizing all of this and compressing it into four syllables of pure genius (see above), I did what anyone else would have done in my position- I waded back to shore, dried off, and waited for other people to run into the fish. In hindsight, I probably should have ran to find a stick, but with no branches in sight, the only reasonable substitute at the time was soaking a towel and then whipping the fish from afar. I'll have to consult with my brother, but I bet that's not nearly as gratifying.

2002-07-08T12:08:00.000-05:00

Quote of the day (from nypost.com): "If animals weren't meant to be eaten, then why are they made out of meat?"

You know, I was just thinking my arm was looking pretty tasty. I think this person might have had a valid point if, say, animals had natural seasoning and sprigs of parsley behind their ears.

2002-07-07T19:40:00.000-05:00

God bless the L. If one were to ask me if I was a proponent of public transportation, one would get a resounding "Yes!" for a variety of reasons. The reasons that any politican or public transportation employee would spit out right away include, but are not limited to:

Its cheap

Its convenient

And it helps the environment

These are, of course, all valid reasons in their own rights, and I agree with each wholeheartedly. They're missing the point though. Where else do you get the opportunity to meet such random people? Nowhere! In less than twenty L rides, I've met a variety of people that I could never have imagined meeting in my entire life, and I am indeed richer for it.

For example, on one trip to downtown Chicago, there was a woman in her late forties with long, gray hair and a full length down coat reading a copy of the Chicago Tribune. When one of my friends sat a seat away from her, she got up, obviously flustered (although I don't know why. I'm guessing crack though) and walked a few feet away, only to turn around and throw her paper at my friend. It didn't get close to him, but it certainly was cause for a few sidelong glances at the paper-wielding crazy. A few minutes later, she bent down to retreive a section of her paper - I though an ad caught her eye, perhaps - and after examining the page, she proceeded to rip it to shreds and casually toss it around the car. She got off a few stops later.

Or hey, there's always the sex-crazed, whether they're straight or homosexual. On a trip back to Evanston one night, I was situated as indicated below:

A really crude overhead view of an L car. See key in upper-right hand corner.

All of the people in question were white males who appeared to be in their early twenties, and at one point of the ride, the person to the right of me began gesturing at the person sitting down on the other side of the car. Now, by gesturing I mean licking his fingers and then rubbing them playfully on his nipples (what else could I possibly mean?). A little after that, I got to listen to a conversation between the two people to the right of me:

"I fuckin' hate butt guys. Do you like butt guys?"
"Nah man."
"They're so stupid. Fuck butt guys! Fuck them in their stupid asses."

Fair enough. Its a little hard to argue with that logic, I suppose. However, I think the most interesting conversations come up when someone is trying to ask for change but does it in a roundabout way. Now, I guess if I was trying to support an addiction, I'd probably wouldn't care enough to make up an interesting story or try and make small talk; half the time just asking will get more change than an elaborate conversation. As a general rule, however, its probably best to make your conversation somewhat believable, i.e. don't tell a white woman with red hair she looks just like your daughter if you're a black man. I suppose it might be possible, but something like "Hey, I had a pair of shoes like that once!" will probably garner some more pity, especially if you hide your shoes while saying this.

There's been all sorts of other encounters, like the Winnie the Pooh-backpack-toting gangster threatening someone on a crowded L car, or kids trying to throw candy to the people at the Howard station from the building adjacent to it, but the point is this: not only do you save money and the environment, you make new friends too. I can't even remember what I did for fun back in Springfield anymore.

2002-07-06T18:05:00.000-05:00

Not only do smells trigger memory, but objects that seem to have nothing to do with the present situation do a pretty good job making me laugh out loud while sitting all alone in the dining hall, making me look real smooth, I'm sure.

Also earlier this year, probably in May, for a week there was an ongoing contest between a friend and myself to see who could get the other person to slip on a banana peel first. Yes, I'm aware that there's better things I could have been doing with my time. Yes, I'm aware this probably seems pretty juvenile. However, I'm also aware that twenty years from now, when I'm out of college and working some job, I'll remember the banana peel contest more than I will remember studying for class. Anyway, after a few random placings, we got a little tricky, and after a point we started going for the less obvious places, i.e. not the floor.

Our rooms in the dorm were all arranged basically the same, and what I really like was that above the door and the closets (see little drawing) were cabinets where you could store your stuff.

A layout of your typical dorm room. Closets and door at top of picture

In my room, I kept food, stuff for cooking, my laundry detergent, etc. In my friend's room he kept basically the same stuff up there, except he also stored hygiene products, like deodorant, up above. A moment of deviance came upon me, and while he was gone from the room, I snuck in and arranged banana peels so they would fall on his head when he went to reach for his deodorant. It was a beautiful, perfect plan.

However, I underestimated my friend, who will remain anonymous. Two days later, having not heard any cries of defeat, I grew frustrated, and demanded to know what happened to the banana peels. He had no idea, because he hadn't put on deodorant in the last day and a half. And my plan was foiled.

The spoils of war are sometimes unexpected though. I got in a good laugh at his expense for not wearing deodorant for so long.

2002-07-06T16:56:00.000-05:00

I read on a website that odors can act as "index keys" to quickly retreive certain memories in our brain, which then tells us if the smell is pleasant or unpleasant based on previous experiences. When I was at the gym earlier today I smelled some pretty vicious body odor, which in turn triggered a memory of the worst body odor I've ever smelled in entire life. I didn't exactly need an index key to tell me that the smell was unpleasant, but the idea still works.

Anyway, back in May of this year while I was still living with my first roommate at college, I came back one night to find my roommate and another person in my room, talking about a homework assignment. The first thing I noticed when I entered the room was that this kid was a pretty large guy, and by large I mean hefty, that had a three-day stubble going and some pretty greasy looking hair sticking out from under his baseball hat that was turned backwards. I processed all of this as I came into the room and was about to think of where I had seen him before when the most foul body odor I've ever smelled effectively punched me in the face, and I quickly turned on my heel, gasping for the air of the hallway.

After the hyperventilating, I regained my composure and thought about the situation. "All right, how badly do I really need to go back in my room?" I said to myself, and when I realized I hadn't checked my email in a while, I knew that I was going back in. So, telling myself the smell wasn't that bad, I braced myself and headed back in the room, but not before taking a deep breath.

It might seem like I'm dramatizing the situation, but I assure you, I am not.

So two minutes later, I'm sitting at my desk, wondering if this kid will ever leave, when I notice my deodorant sitting on my desk. Looking over my shoulder and seeing his back was turned to me, I quietly uncapped the deodorant and moved it toward my nose. "Ahh, Old Spice" I sighed to myself, and for a while all was well. This way I could ride out the stink being produced until he left, which I assumed would be fairly soon.

No luck. After five more minutes of holding my deodorant to my nose, I realized I probably looked pretty odd. I took a look around the room, and once he turned away, I discreetly applied deodorant to my upper lip, and then capped it, with no one the wiser.

---

Actually, that memory isn't triggered when I smell body odor. What immediately comes to mind is what happened immediately after this guy left my room- the strange look I got from my friend when he saw me fanning my room frantically with a towel and spraying air freshener everywhere, all while I was gasping for breath. Smelly bastard.

2002-07-06T00:42:00.000-05:00

Ok, I've made a note to myself to never, ever look at another weblog randomly after this site came close to convincing me that God really hates all of us and has really subtle ways of fucking with our minds. I promise that I will never bring up another shitty weblog again.

Well, unless its really bad.

2002-07-06T00:37:00.000-05:00

I can't forget sites like this one either. These are the types of sites that serve as a cure for, what do you call it...oh right, wanting to live. While more perky than the other end of the spectrum, its cheeriness doesn't overshadow the mindless drivel that's on the site.

2002-07-05T18:16:00.000-05:00

Before you ask, yes I know how painfully bad some weblogs (I know the term is "blog." I also know that's probably a pretty good guess as to what a dinosaur barfing all over might sound like too) can be. However, there are a few differences between the one you're reading and the really bad ones. Let's take this gem of a website My Depressing Life as an example. To save you the trouble of visiting this site, I'll show a sample post from the site:

*deep sigh* a few days ago christa and naya had me help set up this tent so
after we made success in that they slept out that was two day ago ....they also
had me come up and visit ....but i went home .......then the next night *sigh* they
wanted me to hang out for a lil bit again so we were all talkin and layin around
and then the unthinkable happened i kinda fell asleep *bashes self in head repeatedly*
why am i so stupid *sigh* i hadnt been home since 9:30pm and at 2:30am my dad
calls naya's parents and asks for me but im not there im in the tent at christa's ....well
they found me and i had to go home ....i cant stop thinking bout it though ...i just hope
i didnt get them in trouble i shouldda left when i had the chance why didnt i go damnit
im sorry i hope naya's parents dont hate me and ban me from hangin out with her and
i hope they dont say anything to christa's dad and his skank im sorry if i got you two
in trouble .....i dunno what to do or what to say except for sorry *sigh*

Well. In that dazzling display of grammatical prowess, I count seven unnecessary pauses, four instances where the author decided to *sigh* for us, and, at one point, he "bashes self in head repeatedly." Not only are we aware of his body actions, illuminated to us in a vivid fashion courtesy of asterisks, we get an opportunity to see what its like to be a fifteen-year-old that can't stop whining about everything! Congratulations kid, you've managed to produce something that I don't think anyone cares about at all, and then put it on the web so someone might accidentally stumble upon it. This website is a shining example of how a really good medium of communication can be used to unleash a terrible amount of crap unto the world.

---

Before you ask another question, yes, I am aware of the fact that probably no one cares what goes on this site either and it has no "actual" value, but hey- my sentences are coherent. Mike- 1, Internet- 0.

2002-07-05T00:15:00.000-05:00

Because I like you (really, come visit), I'm giving you a link to a collection of Swedish Chef video clips. The best part about this guy, besides, well...nevermind. He's the best muppet ever. Makes me wish I had a hat like that.

2002-07-05T00:06:00.000-05:00

After being gone for an evening, I was excited to see that I had received an email from the wife of the former head of state of Nigeria! Boy, the things that happen when you're gone for a day. After briefly considering sending this woman my money in order to get a piece of the $86 million she was entitled to but couldn't get just quite yet because...what was it, the government was "seriously watching her" or something, I decided against this. Her assurance that a well-known Nigerian courier would supply the money didn't quite do it for me. Right, well, like any considerate person, I quickly replied, explaining my situation:

Dear Mrs. Mariam Abacha,

It is unfortunate that Nigerian politics have left you in such a poor state
of affairs. However, I think what you may not realize (I read this on BBC
News) is that Nigeria is home to an elite squad of super-intelligent, super
strong chimpanzees that will do your bidding for only a few bananas a day.
While they cannot fly, I imagine supplying jet packs would not be a
serious financial problem, what with your mass riches.

If you'd like, I can send you the address of a jet pack supplier that deals
in sizes fit for babies and chimpanzees. Please let me know how things
work out for you; maybe send a chimpanzee courier or something. I'll give
him some bananas on delivery.

Best,
Mike Jansen

Needless to say, we know who the real sucker is now- jetpacks don't come in chimpanzee size!

---

You know you're in college when the word utensil is defined as anything that will get food in your mouth, say like two mechanical pencils.

2002-07-03T14:16:00.000-05:00

I'll be honest- I do very little at my job. From time to time I do run across a perplexing problem that I'm not sure how to deal with, but for the most part I just fix paper jams in the printer and straighten chairs. However, in the past week I've dealt with more stupid questions and stupid people than I did all during the school year, and one kid in particular takes the cake.

This little diagram is a layout of the computer lab I'm working in now. As you can see, its fairly simple. Now, about thirty minutes before closing, this kid, a stocky, goofy-looking fellow at best, walks from the general lab area to the help desk, where I'm sitting and a dialogue ensues:

"Excuse me, where's the printer at?"

(a beat)

"Uh, right there." (I point at the printer he just walked by)
"Oh, ok. Um...how do I use it?"

(it should be noted that at our labs you have to pay for printing, which means you have to have money on your ID card to put in a card reader, which then allows you to pay for your printing at the print station)

"Well, put your card in the card reader like it says on the top of the...no, not sideways, put it in like it says how to."

(he squeals as the reader sucks in his card and spits it back out, having been put in wrong)

At this point his friend comes and shows him how to do it, and I think that's the end of the situation. Not the dumbest single event I've witnessed, but pretty close.

Of course, this isn't just a single event. As I'm walking back to my desk from my rounds, he has finished printing and asks me where the stapler is, even though its in plain sight next to the help desk. I point directly at it, thinking this is a fairly good way to indicate direction, and the kid almost walks into my arm. After I explain to him that the stapler is indeed where I'm pointing, he has minimal trouble using the stapler, and I think I'm safe for the 10 minutes left before closing.

Right. Just before I close the lab, he comes huffing and puffing back down to the lab, explaining how he forgot his disk. At this point, I'm not surprised.

2002-07-02T15:22:00.000-05:00

(around 2:05 pm. The library basement computer lab, where I'm working this afternoon. Funny looking man, in his 50s probably, comes in)

"Hi, I'm trying to send an email but when I go to log on it says I have an extra space in my user name even though there's no extra space. I need to send an email by 2:15."
"Okay...so you're having trouble logging on to the computer with your netID?"
"My what? All I'm trying to do is send a simple email."
"Well you need to use your netID to log on to the network so you can send email. Do you have a netID?"
"I don't know, I'm trying to use hotmail but I can't log on."
"Okay, well let's try this. I'll log you on, and then you can get to hotmail so you can send your email by 2:15. There, you're all set."

(not even two minutes later)

"I don't know what to do, its not working and all I'm trying to do is send a simple email."

(he has typed in "hotmail" into the Northwestern search engine)

"Right, well here, lets go to the hotmail home page, and then you can log in."

(several failed attempts to log in. he has tried several variations on his user name without knowing it)

"See, this was happening upstairs, it tells me my name and password is incorrect. All I'm trying to do is send a simple email and I have to do so much complicated stuff to do it!"

(waves his hands about, suggesting complicated stuff I suppose. Its now 2:20)

"Ok, well what you can do is just make a new user name and try from there. Just go from here and let me know if there's any problems."

(a few minutes later)

"Is everything going all right?"
"No, it keeps giving me this screen."

(he has yet to type the same password twice)

"Oh. See, you have to type the same password twice, otherwise it won't let you continue."
"Ahhh, ok. Thanks, I'll try now."

(a few minutes later. more hand waving and frustration)

"I can't get it to work, I can't just send a simple email."

(he leaves. I walk back over to his computer to see that he still hasn't figured out how to type the same password twice. I briefly consider shooting myself in the face.)

2002-07-02T15:04:00.000-05:00

There, up and running.

After spending eighteen years of my life in a town that's been struggling with an identity crisis, I packed up and moved to Chicago...or, a suburb anyway. I've been in college for a year now, and I'm spending the summer working for Academic Technologies at Northwestern University while I'm taking a class, too. So there you go- a lifetime compressed into a few sentences. Its missing some major details, but I'll worry about that later.