They make it too easy.

I like to read me news online. I use RSS in my email program, which is basically a system that emails you when a new headline appears on your selected news websites and then provides a link to the article. I wanted to read about how the White Sox had recently made it to the World Series for the first time since 1959, and I was treated to this picture:


There isn't a lot of question as to this man's intent. I've seen athletes give a friendly "butt-paddle" for a job well done, but I've never seen an athlete, shall we say, "scout the territory" before going in. It seems that he doesn't trust his aim and therefore must check out his teammate's ass in order to finish what he's started. First the man hands, now this...My job is too easy.

Comin' clean

Gather children for a story that I shall tell. This story is as true as my recollective powers will allow. I just finished doing my jewish duty and observing Yom Kippur which is the day of atonement where you ask for forgiveness for all your sins of the past year. However, for this story I shall have to go back a few years, to sophomore year in fact.

An old buddy named Wiley was applying to Whitman and came for a visit. I wanted to show him good times so we went to the corn-maze in the afternoon and got really high via the use of marijuana-drug. We came back to Whitman just in time for an acoustic concert at the Outhouse where vegan bread was being passed around. Wiley didn't understand the communal nature of the bread-pass and as I looked away at the music for a few seconds he devoured an entire loaf. We quickly escaped the angry vegans and returned to Marcus House where I was living at the time (with gus) to figure out what we were gonna do for the rest of the night.

There was a kegger at the condemned house so we met up with drew, hans, and julian and pre-funked a bit in marcus and then headed over. The party was cool, we all tucked in behind Drew as he cut a swath toward the keg. Then some sorority girls came and stole the keg so the party died down, but supposedly a new keg was on the way. We grew impatient and went back to Marcus House to smoke in the backyard. After getting pretty messed up we went back to the party at the condemned house, the keg had returned. After being there for a few minutes, Wiley came up to me in a panic and said, "Aaron, what's wrong with the big guy?" I looked to where he was gesturing to find the honorable Drew talking about trying to get to oblivion while attempting to dive head-first off the porch of the house. Me, Hans, Julian, and Wiley all pitch in to rescue the big guy. At this point, I decide that Wiley and I want to challenge some frat guys to pong at the then newly-built phi hog shack. We all stumble across campus over there and me and wiley get our asses kicked by some combo of hans, julian, and drew. Wiley claims to be blind and I myself am having trouble seeing and standing so I reckon that it is time we go home and crash, for he had to fly home and I had an IM football game the next morning.

We start making our way from the Phi shack to Marcus and things get interesting from here as I think I begin to black out because everything gets incredibly fuzzy so I will do my best to recount. We make it across the bridge by Prentiss where we encounter two girls sitting on the grass. We fall down near them and exchange some pleasant salutations. I recall telling one of the girls that I do theater, which she seemed to take delight in. I also recall her saying that I was short, which she apparently also was cool with. At a certain point I realized that Wiley and the other girl were gone, but the girl i was sitting with said they had gone different directions. It didn't occur to me at the time that Wiley was totally trashed and wandering around a campus he had never been to before. I honestly have no idea what I did or said but me and the girl (who is nameless for reasons that shall present themselves later) walked back to Marcus House. As we approached the door of Marcus House I saw the hulking, drunken figure of Wiley slumped against the front door. He had made what must have been a heroic, drunken journey and gotten himself all the way to the front door of Marcus House only to find out that to enter, one needed to know a punch code on the number lock. I let the three of us in, and Wiley informed me he needed to vomit. I started to lead him to the bathroom right outside me and Gus's room (gus had already gone to sleep-surprising?) but before he could go puke in the toilet, the girl i was with darted in and locked the door to pee. Wiley looked at me with helpless eyes and a tragic look on his face. He really needed to vomit and I respected that, since it was mainly my fault he had gotten to that point, but I was not about to let him vomit all over my room and the area right outside it so I reached into my past when I used to harass Wiley in high school on the cross country team and ordered him as his former captain to hold in his puke. Wiley, like a good soldier did his best, but forces of physics and gravity were too much to conquer. Puke came out his nose, for strong Wiley would not unclench his mouth. At this point I banged loudly on the bathroom door and told this girl to hurry the fuck up hella politely. She opened the door and I pulled her out and pushed Wiley in. At this point Gus woke up and noticed the girl had reddish-brown hair (which is important, as will become apparent later) as a brief flash of her went by outside the door as I swapped bathroom users. Gus put Wiley to bed on the floor of our room while I took a blanket and went out into the muddy pit that was the backyard of marcus. As far as I can remember I made out with this girl for probably about 3 minutes and then passed out. The next thing I knew it was really early in the morning, the light was just coming into the dawning world and i was laying in my boxer shorts in a pile of mud behind marcus house feeling hella drunk/hungover. I crawled back into my room in marcus but couldn't even get up to my top bunk so I just lay next to Wiley on the floor. A few hours later a guy from my IM football team came in to my room and felt really awkward about waking me up I think because I was passed out on the floor with my arm around Wiley for some reason.

Anyways, the thing that has consistently nagged me is that we all have done some silly drunk things involving the gender that we desire, but even in the fog of alcohol I have always remembered WHO THE FUCKIN PEOPLE HAVE BEEN, except for this time. The reddish-brown haired girl who was somehow seduced by a drunken neanderthal and left the mud-bed I had laid down in at 4am is most likely still walking this campus, although I honestly have no idea who she is. So I dare say, if a comment appears after this post, saying, "you asshole, it was me- sincerely Jane Doe, I will be glad, because time is a duller and it's time to come clean on this one, with a good chuckle of course.

The little fly.

I sit here wasting an unreasonable amount of time when I should be doing a number of school projects so as to accomplish graduation in an amount of time that is socially and professionally acceptable for the degree that I am purusing. Instead, I watch this little fly attempt to thrust it's body into the incandescent tube of my room lamp. The tube bathes my bedroom in a sick mild green glow that saps color from everything, but inside that tube the fly sees some sort of salvation, or satisfaction. I sit in my chair, prolonging my evening of work ahead, thinking about that fly. "Why does it pursue such a fruitless goal?" I ask myself. "Why does that little fly attempt to scale a mountain who's summit holds only death if it is reached?" This is a time when someone whose mental state leaned more toward depression and who posessed less sense would draw a parallel between their life and that of the little fly. They would sit and say, "Like the little fly, I too am trying to break into a world that would just as soon see me die in its overwhelming glow than see me shine along with it." There are people out there who would think themselves smart for observing this corrolary. They would think themselves creative for writing a short story or poem about it. They would think themselves accomplshed by publishing a thesis or speaking up in class.

I am not the person who sees himself in the little fly. I am the person who sees himself sitting in the chair, observing the little fly attempting its quest for the unattainable. I do not want to ruin the little fly's dream. I do not want to make its efforts seem worthless. But the little fly's constant assault on the lamp makes a "buzz buzz buzz" that nags at the back of my head.

I get up, and I turn the light off.

Fears

When I was a kid the most terrifying things were never created out of my own imagination, but were instead spawned out of the television set. I can remember being babysat by my older cousin when he decided to watch Alien. I sat behind the couch the entire time taking a slow peek now and again only to see something deeply troubling and terrifying and hiding hy face again. Alien spawned a fear of aliens that somewhat exists to this day, and my fear of aliens is the only fear that I can pinpoint the exact events that shaped the development of the phobia. I recall that before aliens I was afraid of volcanoes. I remember going camping and seeing mountains and getting sick to my stomach with fear that the mountains all around me would erupt into hot storms of rock and lava. I dealt with this fear of volcanoes by drawing pictures of volcanoes destroying entire villages, complete with rocketing fireballs and parachuting men (don't ask me why someone would parachute into an erupting volcano, it's just how I dealt with shit back then.)

After Alien got the ball rolling, I watched another film titled Fire In The Sky. The fact that it is supposedly a true story made me shit my pants to begin with, but then about ten minutes into the movie you find out it takes place in Snowflake, Arizona. I was living in Phoenix at the time so I practically had an aneurism before I watched the entire film. That movie sealed the deal and I've been afraid of aliens ever since.

I also remember hiding behind the couch every time the music video for Huey Lewis and the News' "Hip To Be Square" came on. My babysitter loved Huey Lewis, but for some reason the music video trouble me to the core. I remember absolutely nothing about the video, and I've tried to find a link to it to try and remember what about it gave me such terrible nightmares, but I haven't come up with anything. Perhaps someone out there remembers the music video and you can help me discover a long-lost fear.

Neuticles

avid readers of www.cnn.com such as myself may have noticed this article recently pertaining to Neuticles. Neuticles are fake testicles put into dogs after their real ones are removed in the neutering process. Neuticles, according to their website, increase a dog's self-esteem. Now I don't know about you, but there are definetly some over-aggresive dudes I know that could probably use this procedure. However, this really presumes a staggering level of stupidity in dogs. I mean if you woke up from unexpectedly falling asleep on a plastic cot at the hand of a needle to find that you no longer had much interest in humping a fire hydrant or the urge to do the one thing that your biological soul is inclined to do, wouldn't you question the existence of rocks where once your man-jewels had lain?

i am getting out-evolved

i can't fix anything or correctly use tools. In a play production class sophomore year I was the only one who failed the basic "tool test" required to work in the shop, so I had to get my credit operating a snow machine for a show. I think by the time I'm 40 there will be a monkey model of me that is bigger, smarter, stronger, faster. Or maybe that's actually RIGHT NOW! And I kinda like it.

Katrina Cash Cow Mice Madness

We at the residence of 314 E. Poplar St., more commonly known as the Monstrosity opened our doors and hearts to the thirsty students of Whitman College last Saturday night to raise money for Hurricane Katrina victims. With something like 8 other parties going on and a $3 cover charge to get in, we were worried. However, the allure of two bands and three kegs proved to be akin to white on rice as the evening raised over $900 dollars, meaning that for at least part of the night, 300 people passed through our house, one even left his ID card on our counter and retrieved it later. The next morning we all rose groggy and hungover to march onto ankeny to continue the hamburgerlurgers dominance in IM football and that dominance continued as Phi Delta Theta forfeited. This surely had nothing to do with the fact that their two best players happened to be playing for us. Then the girls Black Attack team, maimed, mauled and walked all over another senior team. Garrett took 140 pictures (actually) of the game so hopefully Drew can post some of those here soon. There is one of my ass that will make a grown man weep. It should also be noted that despite trapping and killing five mice in the last week, the sightings continue, and one trap was even dragged with captured prey in it from the third floor down to my room, where garrett found it and actually considered taking his shotgun outside and shooting it. WOW. Fortunately he could not enact his plan because one of the many neighborhood monstro-cats grabbed the trap, with slightly alive mouse still within and took off to a secret cat lair for a nice meal of feces and hair. I however, still maintain that there are no mice in the monstrosity as in two semesters of living here, I have yet to actually see a mouse, so don't believe the hype.

From a domino's pizza ad: "feed your mind"