Flashback Friday: Dick Cheney Stole My Internet (10/15/04)

Haven't done one of these flashbacks in a while, so here goes:

On Wednesday Dick Cheney was here at Allegheny College. He was here to talk about how awesome he is or something. Supposedly Pennsylvania is something called a "swing state" and that means that people here like to hear lies more than people in other states. Wow, that last sentence was actually kind of politically charged--I don't think I've ever said, written, or mumbled under my breath anything politically charged before. Better log this day in my JOURNAL! WOW! That's what I'm doing right now! Holy crap! This is awesome! I'm recording events to be reexamined at a later date! Sweet! So anyway, I thought that the event would be worthy of one of my poems so here it goes. I've been toiling over this one for about three minutes now and I think it's turning out a-okay. Enjoy it or leave:

Dick Cheney came to my school,
Dick Cheney came today,
He brought his thirteen buses,
And then Dick went away.

But nigh before he sped off,
Into the sunset there,
He gave a heartfelt speech here,
and then his pants did tear.

Alright I faked that last one,
But hey it sort of fit,
I couldn't help it sorry,
I'll get on with this shit.

So Dick was here on Wednesday,
The cops were by his side,
This guy had some cool trailer,
Kerry givin' Bush a ride.

The day was not all fun though,
It was no cup of tea,
I had to walk 'round Edwards,
'Round Edwards just to pee.

They closed all of the roads here,
Not one not three but two,
I could not get to class then,
Nigh God could not get through.

I got back to my room then,
My room all warm and snug,
I tried to get my email,
But Dick had pulled the plug.

That's right he took our access,
He took our Internet,
Of course that's just conjecture,
But I'm willing to bet.

Who does he think he is, huh?
Is he so great first rate?
I wish I had a name-gun,
"Dick Cheney" meet your fate.

You might not get that last one,
That stanza's pretty vague,
Unless you're Seth or me my,
Or if you have the plague.

There was this sweet ass protest,
Outside the gym doors lined,
The liberals had these big signs,
And chants that blew my mind.

How could a human think these,
These chants that rocked my world,
"Drop Bush, not bombs" they shouted,
My hair it almost curled.

That's it that's all they've got here?
That's all that they can say?
At least shout out some curse words,
"Hey Bush F*** you, bay-bay."

Of course I am no liberal,
I ain't no Commi none,
Conservative no nothing,
I'm Rob just Rob my son.

But all and all that day was,
Sweet sweeter than sweet sweet,
My poem's almost done now,
Can't b'lieve I kept a beat.

So you know what they say there,
They say just what they say,
The walrus and the carpenter,
In all had one fine day.

Well, that's my poem and I hope you liked it. I have to say that I don't actually know what the word "nigh" means but I like to use it as some kind of negation or a one syllable "nada" or "nothing" or something. When you get down to it though, it doesn't really matter because it's poetry and honestly, how can you criticize something that is defined as "a pile of day old puke not fit for a dung beetle to die in"? That's right--you can't. That's poetry for you. Vomit. Brown, chunky vomit. Take that poetry.

My Traumatic Childhood II: Shattered Bones

It was a really good polar bear.

I had found the biggest piece of cardboard anyone had ever seen and I drew the best polar bear you can imagine--and it was big. I brought it to school the next day and showed it to Ms. Winniger my first grade teacher. She loved it.

After lunch Ms. Winniger took me out to the playground so we could set the polar bear up in the woods with the other animals the other kids had made. We found a good spot and leaned my masterpiece up against a big, sturdy tree not far from the wooden train. It looked amazing, she said. You wouldn't expect an arctic creature to look so at home in a temperate region such as Mount Vernon, Virginia but it did. It really did.

Smiling, we began the walk back to class and I could barely contain my excitement for when everyone would go outside after school and see the woods filled with creatures large and small. I was so excited that I barely noticed Ms. Winniger stumble and fall--a sickening crunch, a thud, and then screaming. Just screaming.

And there I stood. I was out in the woods at six years old with my teacher who had just completely shattered her leg and there was nobody around. There was nobody to come and help. There was nobody to rescue her. I couldn't think. I stood there in shock, the only thing getting through to me was the screaming. My elderly teacher, normally calm and composed was now transformed into someone I didn't recognize. I didn't know her. I waited for her to tell me what to do but the words never came. Finally I was able to move and I ran towards the school with tears streaming down my face.

I watched as the ambulance careened around the corner and out onto the playground. I stood helpless as I watched her being loaded into the back. All I could think about was the second everything had changed. We were laughing, and then all there was was terror.

It was my fault. It was all my fault and I knew it.

I didn't go back to class. There was no point. I went back onto the playground and kicked over my stupid polar bear. He didn't even flinch. He just lay there on the ground with the same look on his face I had painted the previous night. He didn't care. He didn't care and I hated him for it.

I sat in the train for the rest of the day.

Flashback Friday: The Joy Of Subpoenas (3/8/05)

I found out recently that I've been subpoenaed. Is that really the correct spelling? "Subpoena-ed"? Anyways, yeah, I'm not going to tell you why because it makes it more mysterious and I think it would be fun for people to try and guess what kind of super-cool criminal acts me and my homeboys have been committing against the helpless community. It's amazing how much your life changes when you've been subpoenaed. Since getting that piece of paper stating that I am COMMANDED to appear in court (it really says "commanded"), my social status has skyrocketed. Seriously, I just have to wave that little government document in the air and boom, instant access to all the the frat parties as well as dibs on first kick on loser beating day. Yeah, you heard me right, now I'M doing the beating. I don't even need to mention what this subpoena has done for my love life, but I will anyway. Before getting the subpoena my girlfriend was the fire-lady on the Samoas box (I named her Beatrice), but now I have more women than I know what to do with. I can't go anywhere without stepping on them because they all lay on the ground for me to walk on. It was sort of uncomfortable at first but now I've gotten used to the fleshy bounce that comes with each stride as I head to class. My roommate is so jealous and I think all the women I have is making him kind of angry. I've offered numerous times to lend him Beatrice for a few days, you know, to get through the lonely nights when I'm away with my sex mob (which is like every night, by the way) but he is too proud to give in. Besides all the attention I've been getting outside of classes, my academic situation has definitely improved as well. A good example was the other day in physics when we got our quizzes back. So Greeky McGreek (that's what I call my professor, his real name is Deep, and by my nickname for him you can see that he's Greek) handed me my quiz and I noticed that it did not say 20/20 on it but instead it said something like 18/20 or some crap like that. I wasn't going to take any of this so I went up to have a friendly word with Greeky. He said something like, "I took off two points because the velocity you found was off by at least a factor of 10,000..." but I wasn't listening. I whipped it out (the subpoena) and let him take a good, long look at it. By the time he got to the part that said I was "criminally awesome" he had already pulled out his pen and was changing the 18 to a 56. So yeah, people with subpoenas have power and that's a fact. So basically, if you want to ace college with a vengeance don't try to kill your roommate and say it was suicide or anything like that. The best thing to do is to get subpoenaed and leave the rest to your new best friend. Not to mention, you'll never be at a loss for companionship on those cold nights when your bed is feeling a little too big for just one person.

Puppy Love: Why You Should Beat Your Dog

Tonight is the first night of Fall Break and there are people swing dancing in the laundry room. The bathroom smells like hockey and there are gnats in all the closets. I am currently consuming the largest bag of Hot Tamales you can imagine and am enjoying it thoroughly.

But things aren't all sunshine and lollypops, considering it's currently post-dusk and I'm diabetic, so let me lay it down for you.

There's been a question on my mind for a while now, or rather, ever since I posted that last entry about one of my many run-ins with Mary Ann. The question is simple:

At what point in our life did we stop showing affection through blunt force trauma?

I know you know what I'm talking about because we all remember that guy or girl who had that certain way of showing they cared. What I'm not sure about is whether everyone's list is as extensive as mine. Here's an excerpt from my list (Pre-K through 6th grade) and each girl's preferred means of attack:

Lauren- quick, secretive jabs to the kidneys
Mary Ann- throwdowns, various object chucking, unwanted make-out sessions while her friends hold me down
Ashley- it's amazing how many body parts are irritated when covered in dirt
Kimberly- tripping
Stephanie- various physical assaults
Amelia- emotional abuse: calling and hanging up, gossiping
Sarah- arm punching
Amanda- secretive ankle kicks under the desk
Rebecca- throwing playground equipment (kickballs, etc.)
Kira- spitting, biting
Jennifer- tripping
Meg- various sneak attacks
Emily- accidentally bumping into me so hard I fall down
Victoria- sharpened pencils to the forearm
Samantha- super-soakers full of scalding hot water
Lindsey- hair pulling
Patty- horrible, horrible, insults
Kelly- she stapled my finger
Alicia- pinching, stepping on feet/hands
...and the list goes on.

Did I mention that I never observed these actions taken against anyone besides me?

Despite how horrible it sounds, I can't help but joyfully reminisce about how simple things were back then. Back then you knew how much a girl liked you by the number of bruises or bite marks you had on your arms. Back then if she punched you in the face you knew it was something real and not just lust. Back then if your crotch wasn't sore by the end of the day you probably wouldn't get a date to the dance.

But nowadays things are so much different. First of all, I'm expected to initiate when it comes to dating because I have a penis. When did that happen? That's backwards. Nowadays you never know what she thinks of you so you have to resort to complex mathematical algorithms that take into account the ratio of number of times she blinks per minute to number of times she touches her left cheek and multiply this value by the square root of the inverse of how many times she adjusts her shirt during class without playing with her hair and even then you're still in the dark because you have no idea how to interpret your found numerical value.

Seriously, and how is flirting useful? My friend instant messaged me a few weeks ago with a link to a website that claims that if you want to get the girl you have to lick your lips every time she looks at you. Are you serious? Is she the girl you want to start a relationship with or a steak and cheese sandwich?

I just don't get it. Does anyone really believe our methods of meeting that special someone improve with age? If you can explain how looking at someone until they turn towards you and then looking away really quickly so they don't catch you looking at them but you know they sort of saw you because you planned it that way and then repeating this over and over again is better than a choke hold behind the slide where the teacher can't see you, then by all means explain to me how.

I don't know about you, but I wish things had never changed. I want to walk into class this coming week and leave in an ambulance.

At least I'll know that after the reconstructive surgery I can call her from my hospital room and be confident that she'll want to go to the new Wallace and Gromit movie with me when I get out.

My Traumatic Childhood I: Dirt In Your Eyes

Is it just me or has anyone else experienced traumatic childhood events that haunt you for the rest of your life in the form of flashbacks, blood-stained bathroom walls, or combination of the two?

I had a dream last night and, like the last dream I regailed you with, was not as much a dream as it was a flashback. I have a lot of flashbacks. Anyway, this flashback was to second grade. The scene opens on me and a few friends (Kyle, Ben, Mark, and Avrill) just covering a hole we had dug with sticks and leaves. The concealed hole was meant to be a trap for any unsuspecting passersby such as a deer, fox, or Chapley. Seriously though, who names their daughter Chapley? It wasn't a deep hole, but we had been working on it for a few recesses and with the sticks and leaves it was practically invisible. Anyway, at just about the time we were finishing up there comes this girl and her name is Mary Ann and she's like totally second grade hot. I don't think I need to go into the definition of "second grade hot" but let me just tell you that it most definitly involves those jellies sandals. So yeah, over comes Mary Ann and she tells me that she has something she wants to show me over on the train (we had a big wooden train that was big enough for us to climb inside and stuff). Well I walk over to the train and she tells me that the thing she wants to show me is in the caboose and so I climb in. Once inside I notice that there's nothing there and so I turn to leave but my exits are blocked by the sudden appearance of Mary Ann's posse. I don't want to sicken you with the details of what happend after that but let me tell you that when I finally got out of the caboose I had more dirt in my eyes than I did before I went in. I also had scratches on my face and arms from when the girls had thrown those spiny ball things that fall from sweetgum trees at me.

At this point I woke up from my dream.

Needless to say, ever since that day I can't look at sweetgum trees without wincing in pain. I'm also deathly afraid of topsoil and I've sworn to myself that I'll never let my daughter wear those jellies sandals.

Flashback Friday: Phycocyanin in the Bloodstream (2/12/05)

I have a rift in my epidermis that quite possibly spans farther down into the dermis. No, not a rift as in a large-scale crack in the earth's lithosphere produced by the tensional forces of two plates or two slide masses collapsing in different directions, but a rift as in a large-scale crack in my thumb-skin caused by the seething sharpness of a shattered Pyrex test tube being dragged across my skin as a result of me trying to clean it of its chemical contents with a test-tube-cleaning-brush that was way too big and ill-suited for the task at hand.

So anyway, I was in chem lab and I was trying to figure out how to clean the green algae goo from the bottom of my test tube with the only devices I had--water and an over-sized test tube brush. The water wasn't working (damn you viscosity) and the brush was way too wide to fit in the small test tube I had. But with class nearing an end and my extreme desire to get out of there considering it was the last class of the day and I had absolutely nothing else to do for the remainder of the evening, I decided to jam the big ol' brush down in there. At first it seemed to be working and the green goo was being whisked away by the brushy brush bristles. But then I noticed that I wasn't holding a test tube anymore but instead I was holding a mass of shattered glass and goo and my thumb was bleeding profusely. I dropped the tube into the sink but it was no use, my once pure innards had been breached by the horrible chemicals in the tube, namely sodium phosphate, hydrochloric acid, and that ghastly chromoprotein PHYCOCYANIN! So there it was, there was now a rogue protein in my body and it was stirring up a frenzy down in my capillaries and having a blast of a time. I could just imagine those damn hydrophilic amino acids basking in the warm wonderland of my bloodstream and the hydrophobic ones cozy and safe from the evil water that pounded on their walls. I knew I had to do something so I ran around the lab screaming, "DENATURE IT! DENATURE IT!" Thanks to books I knew that there were five ways to denature a protein: the addition of a large quantity of a small polar molecule, the addition of a detergent, an increase in temperature, a change in pH, or a good old mechanical shock. The first four weren't going to be easy to come by so I decided to choose door number five: the mechanical shock, and so I started smashing my thumb on the counters leaving splotched bloody thumbprints on everything I touched. Finally Dr. Murphree came into the lab and told me to put on a Band-aid and so I did and that was the end of the fiasco.

Minus that little event the day was pretty uneventful so I guess I can't complain too much.