Fine, Thanks For Asking

I've been down lately, but like the proverbial hero of western music, I got back up again. You're never going to keep me down.

I made amends with the girl whose story I'd insulted; I awkwardly explained my misreading ("I didn't notice the ashtray, you see…") then joined her in bashing the newest story, an anonymous work probably by The Sentimentalist.

It's a redeeming story of pedophilia. If it's not a parody, the writer has some serious issues. This will all come up in class.

On yet another uplifting note, it snowed last night. The ground is covered with a thick layer of snow, the rope children are frolicking and running into trees, people who are not me are shoveling. Winter is here in a wonderful way.

My heart: three sizes bigger.

Also exciting: we bowl today. The guy's team, Stiff Competition, will handily defeat the girl's team, The Viscous Cycles. There will be blood and tears and awkward bowling techniques and laughter and then probably some more tears.

And we will prevail.

Can't Handle The Truth

So I haven't been giving the people in my Fiction Writing class enough credit. On the bus ride up to Bjorklunden, I displayed some of my trademark "tactless honesty", the same kind of unthinking forthrightness that got me in trouble with all my Lawrence "acquaintances" a few months ago.

I told a girl in our class that her story confused me, and that one of the other stories we were reading had a better prose style. After re-reading her story while not on a bus, I have to admit that her prose is some of the best we've read so far, and that her ending is pretty sharp.

Of course, I'd criticized her story before I re-read it, and when I heard yesterday that she'd been complaining about me behind my back (Miss Bates, who was on the bus, says I deserved every word) I felt an little guilty for having been so rude. She's partially to blame, for her poor explaination of now-very-obvious things, but--still--I gave my verdict far too soon.

Ah, and here's where I can start to generalize all over again. I've made the same mistake with a few stories now, and (probably) with a half-dozen people as well. I pride myself in my assessments of character and fiction--really, I do, for whatever reason--but then I read too casually and judge too quickly.

Well, enough of that; this is an old vein, anyways.

Weekend In Review

On Friday at 10:00:37 p.m., The Annual Great Midwest Trivia Contest began.

Naturally, I didn't want anything to do with trivia. I didn't participate last year and I had no plans to participate this year. The Politician and Jonas already had a team, The Revenge of the Nerds with Gynophobia, and I had no plans to join said team.

It was--I gleaned from a few half-heard conversations--a team of local high schoolers and friends of friends, a team of (as the French say) "les strangers". Hanging out with a bunch of strange people at some strange house--though it may appeal to some people--isn't my activity of choice.

But I was bored.

Yes, you saw that coming. Congratulations. We all did, and we're so very happy for you.

Yes, I was bored, and on a Friday night I'm not content being bored. I tagged along with Jonas and The Poltician and ended up staying at the Quinlan's house for hours and hours. I went home at seven the next morning.

For the unitiated, trivia is suprisingly simple: the questions are read off on the air, and the various teams call WLFM with the answers. Where do answers come from? Anywhere. If you don't have the answer, you call in anyways, jamming the phone lines with phony teams and phony answers.

Every so often, the on-campus teams have an action question and have to do something crazy to get the most points. The Cheerful Cynic, for example, won one action question by stripping naked and taping flaming matches to his nipples. Our team tied with his on that one: crudity beats nudity during trivia. I think we won every action question.

I went home to get sleep, and I got sleep for Bjorklunden. Saturday afternoon we cravenly abandoned The Revenge of the Nerds With Gynophobia and took a bus to Door county with some fellow residents of The Tinderbox.

It was nice to get away from the excitement and just go north. Prof Fritzell would point out that the dream of escaping from society is, in fact, society's pathetic yuppy dream, but that didn't make staying at a posh hotel in the woods any less enjoyable.

Excepting a tour of the Bjorklunden chapel, I never went outside -and there were plenty of other people who preferred warm to cold. We stayed in, sat on comfortable couches, watched movies… Ormsby North wasn't that different from Ormsby 201, I guess.

The rooms were much bigger, the food was better, and there was unlimited hot chocolate. Not to mention a drunken The Diplomat, who was up there for some Russian-language retreat. I didn't think I was stressed, but I noticed a big difference, once I was out of Appleton.

I finished Lullaby while everyone was watching About A Boy and Shanghai Noon. I really liked it. It was ten times better than Survivor, the other Chuck Palahniuk book I've read.

Everyone was there, everyone talked about how great Ormsby is, everyone had fun.

The only sting was missing trivia. We missed a few action questions (Lenin was riding a bike around town while we were in the bus), and our team didn't do as well without my laptop (not that anyone else was very good with it, while it was there). Losing Jonas and The Politician didn't help The Nerds, either.

We got back on Sunday and did somewhat well. If the three of us had been there the entire time, I think we would've gotten second place. As it was, we claimed fifth… prizeless fifth…

The last hour of the contest was devoted to the gurudas, a series of four progessively more impossible questions. One question forced us to call Austria about a billboard near the "Haus des Meers".

Any weekend during which you call Austria: good.

Another Day…

The Deathtrap will be aligned. The Deathtrap will be repaired. The Deathtrap will send me closer to bankruptcy.

Right now, my van is sitting at Accurate Alignment in Appleton. I took it in yesterday, for what was supposed to be an hour-long appointment, and they had to keep it overnight. The bill they showed me was already steep; I hope it included labor…

They just called me again, just now. I'm not paying an extra $200.

I used way too many ellipses (that is, I used ellipses) in the story I'm working on right now. I felt so dirty and sentimental…

Hah. Anyways, I got a ride back from an Accurate Alignment employee named Brian, who'd been to Brainerd a few times on business. That's the best job I think I've ever done of talking to a complete stranger- we chatted about the weather and traded Sven and Olie jokes on the way back to campus.

I made it back to campus, and to Fiction Writing class, just in time. We got into a big debate, started--of course--by The Staggering Genius ("his comments are getting worse," Miss Bates later observed, dryly). Everything he asks is so broad. He should just take the first noun in his ramblings, stick a question mark behind it, and cut the rest. It took him five minutes to ask "Dialogue?"

If he wants to make a point, he should do the same as above, replacing the question mark with an exclamation point.

Roy the Effeminate Heterosexual put a lot of work into his story, Kissing in the Dark with his Eyes Closed, and everyone liked it. We all admitted that Gay Erotica wasn't our genre of choice, shot down some complaints from The Sentimentalist (Miss Bates and I share credit for that kill), and went on to gush about the story.

At one point Dintenfass yelled:
You people are brainwashed out of your basic emotions!

Well, after that class (which ended with a discussion of the whimsical but unfortunately-titled A bug with a tail (not a tale)), I did homework for five hours, a new record for this year.

Off to the ATM

I'd forgotten about the verb "accruing"…

I guess it's time to take care of those overdrafts…

My Subjective Reality

It's hard to say what's real, when you know the way you feel.
-The Flaming Lips, "One More Robot - Sympathy 3000-21"

So yesterday, while Jonas was being a good person and working out with the Ultimate Frisbee team and all, I hung out in the room.

I wasn't alone and productive for long. Like the Kingdom of Heaven, Jeremy showed up just when everyone had long since given up hope. He came not to forgive our sins--of course--but rather to use Ormsby's second-floor computer lab, a one-computer facility located a couple of feet away.

While he tinkered with some program on Jonas' computer, doing something no-doubt-invaluable with the song "Cotton Eye Joe", I talked to my parents. I'm sorry for Jeremy, and anyone who has to hear that conversation: I built up myself, I built up my professors, and I built up my workload. It makes them much happier, to hear that stuff, I think…

Anyways, I also pitched the idea of foreign study in London, first term next year, which looks like a good idea. I don't care what term I do it, really, but since others I know are going first term… I mean, what's the point of studying abroad if you aren't around the exact same people, right?

Seriously, though, they approved, which means I still have to get two recommendations and turn in some paperwork. Also, I need to talk to Arno and Flo, because I'll be cast into a fiery pit if I don't visit those two while I'm in Europe… I might just go early.

But back to the subject at hand: fiery pits. Jeremy, Meg(h)an, and I went to Baker's Square and talked for a while about various matters and, of course, religion eventually came up.

Coincidence… Jeremy told too many stories about people (not unlike himself, sadly) whose innermost religious beliefs are only a function of some minor coincidences.

That was frustrating; I still have to respect Jeremy himself for putting so much effort into his at-times-alien faith, but he should play down the coincidences-as-divine-messages thing, because it makes him and others look no better than gullible suburban new-agers.

Still, that didn't last long, and the night got better still once we got back to the dorm. Jonas showed up and the four of us watched Run Lola Run, which Meg(h)an hadn't seen. Ah, now there's a good movie.

Good Writing

"Don't get me wrong�logic and reason have their place,"
-a hilarious The Onion article.

So I just got back from Fiction Writing.

In our now-customary post-class analysis, K. Elizabeth Bates and I agreed that The Staggering Genius needs to be silenced. I sat next to him today, and sitting so close to that Abercrombie-and-Fitch sporting critic, with his delicately mussed hair and endearingly hidden nervous tic, I just didn't have the heart to say "shut up!"

He's smart, he's a good (not great) writer and a great (not good) critic, but he just talks and talks and talks… it's all one sentence, and you never know when it will end. Once, he prefaced something with "Now my only question is…" only to continue talking for two minutes. Ultimately, the anticipated question mark failed to appear… it was just another soliloquy on his own critical skills.

So that was annoying--if he weren't so good at talking, I think everyone would notice that he sometimes says absolutely nothing, after all the nice-sounding words are gone--but, well, meh.

I've read something of his, and I got to call it "borderline racist" in class--before anyone else had, no less--so he can talk all he wants. I think I owe him, especially after comparing his well-intentioned work to Finding Forrester…

Now The Sentimentalist… she talks almost as much and writes twice as poorly. I don't feel the need to bring her down (starting… now…), but The Staggering Genius was complaining about her today, and that seemed a little ironic; she's trying to do what he's doing.

It's amusing that Prof Dintenfass waits as long as he can before calling on them.

Actually, I will bring her down. We're all better critics than we are writers (I'm no exception), so naturally even the worst writer (and she isn't the worst) has something useful to add, but her comments are always negative. It's like she doesn't actually like any of the stuff we read… and I can't see how she could think so highly of her own writing only to bash writing that is so obviously better.

So far, the best story has been Miss Bates' Green Burial, a story about a guy who can't forget his girlfriend's abortion. But, in a bizarre twist, the second-best story came from the unlikeliest source of all: Roy the Effeminate Heterosexual.

His story, Kissing In The Dark With His Eyes Closed, is well-written and very very gay. It's unabashed Gay Erotica, as far as the genre goes, and I predict a very interesting discussion on Thursday.

So: class has been fun…

A Night On The Town, And Then Not On The Town

I finished Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; afterwards I had to go to The Grill with Ann to vent my frustration with Tom Sawyer and all he represents. Poor Huck…

The Lawrence University Campus Council (or something else that spells out LUCC) elections were held yesterday. I voted for the would-be President who hadn't done a table-hopping campaign and who hadn't sent us candy. For Vice President, I voted for The Feminist. The more power she has, the funnier this world will be.

Saw About Schmidt yesterday with Ann, Jonas, The Politician, Sockless Pete (who's fine outside of class), Rock Show Girl, The Cheerful Cynic, Meg(h)an, and Kora. The Deathtrap actually got us all to the theater in mint condition; I'm still going to get it fixed, though.

They had two tickets too few, but--thanks to Jonas' people skills--the ticket-ripper was willing to accept 9:25 Adaptation tickets as 7:15 About Schmidt tickets.

The movie was pretty good. Not incredible, especially when you're surrounded by elderly moviegoers who insist on reading everything on the screen aloud and explaining the jokes to themselves (it bothered Jonas, who sat next to a 40-year-old nerd, a lot more than it did me).

I was fine with the constant cliches, because they were supposed to be cliches, but for such a serious work About Schmidt had far too many shameless Grumpier Old Men moments. Which is why it was only "pretty good", the hot female nudity notwithstanding.

The night was still young when The Deathtrap finally limped back to campus, so we played a game of Scattergories.

Never again… the rules of that game are far too arbitrary, and deciding what counts by simple majority is just asking for trouble. Boggle would've been solar units better… or Cranium, Ormsby's most legendary game.

Everyone left relatively quickly, and by 1 Jonas and I were alone in the room trying to decide on a movie.

Jinx stopped by, and instead of watching a movie we decided to entertain her. Jonas left to play Madden 2003, but the two of us stayed up long after all the good people of the world were asleep, swapping stories from our traumatic childhoods.

As usual, I felt a little narcissistic, talking about myself and my friends and family and such… it would certainly get on my nerves… of course, if I wasn't a little narcissistic, I wouldn't be writing, and I certainly wouldn't be blogging. Meh.

O.k, later… I've got stuff to do.

In Praise of the Non-Welcher

There was a stretch of time yesterday--a long stretch of time--during which no less than two conversations were being held at any given moment. Or, at least, that's how it seemed to me; words from one conversation would sorta drop into the other conversation as I tried to listen.

At dinner, and after dinner, things calmed down. And we all listened to Carrie.

She's an excellent storyteller. After hearing all about the crazy antics of Carrie and her bowling buddies, I have a newfound respect for Carrie.

For one, she's someone who never welches on a bet, no matter how outrageous, and that sitcom-quality respect for your own word is all-too-rare these days.

For another one, she knows how to create mayhem, real mayhem, without actually breaking the law. She could have a few civil suits filed against her, though.

Less interesting, but more informative, was my conversation with the Director of International and Off-Campus Programs. Foreign study sounds tempting, but I'm not sure if I should spend my first term at a Germany university or in London. I could go to London during our ungodly winter term and just visit Germany this summer. Or… well, the February 7th deadline is looming, so I'm sure I'll figure this out.

At lunch yesterday I sat with several former tutees and one inquisitive Trustee. I suggested a system of tunnels for winter travel; apparently it's completely infeasible. On a more irritating note, one of the tutees was pretty condescending towards me. I shouldn't have complimented his writing last term, the arrogant dastard.

I saw Pee Wee's Big Adventure again for the first time. It was great, of course.

But then, after that movie, we planned to see another, About Schmidt. We planned and planned and decided to go late to accommodate some of the other people who wanted to go and then, at 9:40, everyone flaked out. As it turned out, only The Politician, Jonas, Rock Show Girl and I were stalwart enough to go… and we were late, so we decided to go Saturday instead.

That was mildly irritating. I'm a flake myself at times, but if I don't want to do something, I usually (starting… now…) just say that I don't want to do it. Our flakes pretended that it was out of their hands and- well, no need to rant. But it was frustrating, when we'd tailor-made the evening for them and wound up with nothing to do after all.

In Brainerd, where it takes hours to find something to do, the Plans For The Evening, once made, are not so easily cast aside. Not unless you can find something else that everyone can agree on.

Later.

Basic Hygene

Ann Miller doesn't always make sense.

Yesterday, as Jonas and Meg(h)an and Ann and I were walking to Downer, Meg(han pointed out a rule of dubious invention: If a girl is under 5' 6", she's cute, if she's over 5' 6", she's hot. It seems a plausible enough theory, but Jonas and I were convinced that there were hot short people.

Jonas pulled an example out of his example hat, then observed that said example, though once hot, had ceased to be hot at around the same time that she ceased to shower.

Ann: Jonas, you're being very unattractive right now.

That's how Ann expresses her disapproval of people, apparently. I know, it makes no sense. But what made even less sense was her refusal to acknowledge, all through lunch, that people who shower are preferable to people who don't. Good old inscrutable Ann.

The Eternal Brotherhood of Mankind

I too have overdrafted. That was stupid, and expensive. But, in a way, a feel closer to Jenna now.

Canned Blog Title #54: "Lame Postmodern"

I don't like sitting around. Yes, I'm inexplicably lazy, that goes without saying, but actually sitting around with no entertainment and nothing to do is boring. Watching reruns of Just Shoot Me, for example, frustrates me. I sit there, I watch bad episode of a bad show all over again, like some sad little narrative voice from The Onion… and when I don't stop, I get really frustrated with myself.

I realize that this is all incredibly obvious: things that you don't enjoy are boring, but I just wanted to point out the very important difference between productive boredom and nonproductive boredom. If I'm not entertained, I'd better be getting something done.

That boredom is, in a way, satisfying. Nonproductive boredom is an abomination, and, really, there's no reason for it to exist: doing something productive that you don't enjoy is leagues better than doing nothing and being bored.

Anyways, so yesterday we went over my story in Prof Dintenfass' Fiction Writing class. I wasn't allowed to speak while they discussed my story, so for an hour I listened to everyone's frustrations and complaints.

It was probably the most useful hour I've ever spent at Lawrence; even the people I'd dismissed as mooks had good things to say.

Roy the Effeminate Heterosexual, for one, had good things to say, but like some others (products of the English department, I'm afraid) he spent a lot of time justifying and praising all my choices instead of acknowledging them as mistakes.

I preferred the just criticism of The Postmodernist (eternally in black) and The Staggering Genius (confident and chic), and, of course, Prof Dintenfass. The ending frustrated those critics even more than the title. (Incidently, only Prof Dintenfass got the jokes). We had a long talk about building reader expectations and I rushed back to the room, giddy and wise.

Miss Bates wrote a great story for tomorrow, a postfeminist take on Canned Short Story Theme #45 (also known as "The Forgetting Story", or, if you're Elizabeth Graver, "The Mourning Door"): character tries to get over something but will never really forget it.

The theme: abortion. And it's done well. No, really, it is.

Our latest optional assignment is Canned Short Story Theme #73 (also known as "The Treasure Story"): character gets what s/he always wanted, only to discover that it isn't like what s/he expected it to be.

Back in the real world, it looks like Luke, The Politician, Jonas and I will be bowling on Fridays. We got the girls of O-Town to sign up too; it should be fun. Soon everyone will know how I bowl, if not why.

I'm also thinking about playing some U-Frisbee tomorrow… I don't see Al anymore, what with my artsy misanthropy and all, and that would provide an excellent oppurtunity. Also, I need exercise, and bowling will never and can never be considered atheletic. Ugh, I'm rotting here.

The Poltician is one for long discussions, and lately, among other things, we've been talking about foreign study. The Politician seems set on it and I have to admit that it would be nice to go to London or Germany. I want to go to Germany, and I want to go next summer/fall, so I'm going to look into that. Or London. I don't know, but something.

I've been having some quality conversations lately. Jenna is always interesting to IM, and some Lawrentians have surprised me.

Tonight at dinner I found myself listening to the LUCC President pontificate about the New English Prof vs Old English Prof divide. I got sucked in, and learned of the horrible antigonism between the two parties (represented by Prof Spurgin and Prof Goldgar, respectively).

Later, tonight, working with the head of the writing lab, I heard the opposite perspective. I have to agree with her: the whole argument is stupid, and Prof Bloom's discussions would be just as effective as Prof Goldgar's lectures, if she was as amazingly old as he is. As long as the university isn't doing away with lecturers, I'll live.

I also brought up the overabundance of apologies on this campus, and learned a little about last year's controversial (for some reason) "Better Than HItler" campaign posters and a lot about the weird little guy who protested them.

O.k, that's quiet enough. Night.

Half of Anything is the Title Anyways

I turned in my short story today. The important thing is not the story--the first story I've finished writing in years--but rather the foundation. This is a starting point; I'm writing again.

Also, my story is better than the other story we're discussing, so that's good.

That's where I stop, by-the-by. I don't think I'll discuss the stuff we read in that class, unless it's really good. Publicly bashing a story that someone is already sharing with twenty strangers seems cruel and excessive.

Conversational Profiling

Around brunchtime, I went to the library and got my Adventures of Huckleberry Finn reading for Monday done. That took hours and hours.

I ate dinner with Jinx, Rock Show Girl, Luke, Meg(h)an, Cora, and Cora's boyfriend (as usual, the outside relationship person sounded quiet and looked uncomfortable around strange Lawrentians), and I've been riding the same social wave all night.

If I may mix my metaphors: our group tonight kept snowballing. More people showed up at Downer, and then again when we returned to Ormsby- we picked up Carrie and Beth, Ann and Jonas, and ended up upstairs watching Zoolander.

Zoolander, by the by, is still only o.k. It looks nice, and Will Ferrell is almost always funny, but the movie itself is only occasionally hilarious. And it has a habit of gleefully beating every joke to death.

After Zoolander, The Humanist and Jeremy and Jeremy's old roommate showed up and we played the world's longest and slowest game of Uno. That broke up and we played that hand-slap game everyone learns at camp: arguably the best game of the evening, and not only because I won.

We also played Peanuts/Ligretto. And Dance Dance Revolution, courtesy of The Cheerful Cynic, who impressed everyone with his moves. And Set, courtesy of Sockless Pete, who impressed everyone with his pattern recognition skills.

I keep wanting to import that card game "Illuminati", but I now know that, temperamentally, very few of those people are capable of enjoying a card game with so much backstabbing, politics, and strategy. They don't even like Risk.

Anyways, the night's activities were enjoyed by all. Now to talk about me.

My one regret is that, in striving to add a little cynicism to the dynamic, I overcompensated. I know from earlier discussions with him that The Cheerful Cynic doesn't take sardonicly-racist comments seriously ("I'd be offended by that if your name wasn't Crazy Dan"), but there are some people here--all feminine--who tend to take everything a little too seriously.

I mentioned this to Jonas, apologist and go-between extraordinare, and he's diplomatically passed the message along, but I still worry, occasionally, that intentionally saying things I don't mean (racist or otherwise) will alienate some nice person whose only faults are a poor sense of humor and a total lack of faith in me.

Which really comes down to a fear that people will get a bad impression of me. Of course, since I'm sure that even my impression of me is probably a bit left of the truth, and because I believe what Patty told Jenna told me--that no one will ever really know anyone, really, which makes me… very sad--this whole issue seems a bit silly.

I mean, the Dan who doesn't hold back is, in my mind at least, the more genuine Dan, and if I really respect people I shouldn't put on any kind of act for them… well, whatever, I'm tired and rambling, which often happens. I've got to get up early… and write, I guess… so… later.

In Search of the Wild Honeysuckle

I can't be around the happy shiny people all the time; it gets a bit frustrating. I want to live in a world where I don't have to apologize for things I obviously don't mean. Then again, I'm pretty sure that I do, in fact, live in that world.

Had dinner today with Ann and Meg(h)an, who seemed typically gossipy. Since--and this is one thing that I can/do/will pride myself on--I throw all gossip I hear down a bottomless pit, a Murakamian well where it ferments into a fine strawberry cordial I drink during the summer, I was sufficiently entertained. Afterwards, when one of my brilliantly obtuse metaphors provoked Kora, I was asked if I had, in fact, ever had a girlfriend. Ah, the memories…

If I could feed off of any humon emotion, it would be delicious, delicious guilt.

Guilt may not be as prevalent as some of the dimmer emotional states (that hollow contentment I imagine everyone else must feel from time to time, the feeling like you're watching a good rerun, must be pretty popular), but at least you learn something from guilt. Or, if you don't learn anything, at least the situation can amuse passerby.

So I've got Linguistics tomorrow morning with Jamie, workaholic and archetypal runner. I've long suspected that Jamie is simply one of those people who makes work for herself and then complains about her own manufactured busywork. Now I can see if the countless hours she spends studying are really necessary (she's studying math, so the short answer is yes).

As long as I'm on the subject of workaholics, I have another class (American Literature: The Civil War to The Great Depression) with Lawrence notables. Free Spirit, the giddy campus event organizer, sat to my left on Monday. Ann of Stillwater sat to my right. And, in the distance, I could dimly make out my R.A. and an oddly friendly Representative Man.

Prof Fritzell takes about a week to get warmed up. He spent a lot of the first class period bashing bad poetry and muskrats and pointing out the more embarrassing parts of American English and on Wednesday he painted a brilliant scene:

So you're in bed, in your top bunk in, I dunno, Ormsby Hall, curling up with your honeybunch, and you've just finished reading about Elizabeth and Darcy and things just aren't working the same way!

Or something like that. To quote many an amateur writer, I guess you had to be there.

Speaking of amateur writers, I've made no progress on my story for Monday: needless to say, I seem to think that the pressure of a looming deadline will ultimately force me to do some work. Not a good plan, but it's a plan. Still nervous, but my unrealistic sense of superiority will bail me out soon enough.

O.k., I think I've got to go to sleep. Work and meetings and sleep and all that…

Literary Composition? Fiction?

"The thoughts of undergraduates are mostly plagiarized anyways." -Dintenfass

I was just talking to Miss Bates, a fellow aspiring writer, about the class we just had together. For Tuesday, I have to write a short story, a short story which 25 people will read.

I have never been this nervous about anything.

This isn't hyperbole. I've wanted to be a writer, someone who writes you see, since third grade, when I was writing short stories about adventures on a hijacked bus. It's how I define myself: writer. Criticism of my writing feels like a personal attack.

I wrote horrible fiction for years, journaled for longer, but I haven't actually finished a short story since seventh grade, when I wrote Bilko the Human Lightning Rod, a story that represents my best work simply because there really isn't anything else to compare it to. It's also the only short story I've written that didn't rely on inside jokes for effect.

Remember Phil? Remember The Case of the Missing Erasers? Remember The Cult? Don't? That's even worse…

Talking to Miss Bates, who was also shaking as Prof Dintenfass tried vainly to discourage the remaining six unregistered students from trying his course ("Oh, I'm sorry, but I'm a cynical old man"), I'm glad to hear that someone else has the same worries. We've got each other's back, rest assured. Unless her writing sucks, then I will destroy her.

There are a few university baboons in there--cocky pontificators who seem to know their stuff, and some annoying ones who don't--but a lot of the students in that class seem nervous about their writing, and these people, who worry about the audience and are obviously desperate to be better writers for some reason, are the ones I think I'll like. I sat across from Miss Bates, right between a Chuck Palahniuk fan who just finished reading Lullaby and Casey Gamble, the girl with a famous brother.

Before class:

Our Bold Hero: Wow, it's five minutes before class, and everyone is actually here. Isn't there even one attention-hungry would-be slacker-genius who wants to come in five minutes late to make a statement?

Miss Bates: I guess not. Sorry Dan.

Exactly five minutes after class started:

Roy the Effeminate Heterosexual: Hey everybody! I'm sorry I'm late! Hah ha…

Our Bold Hero: See, now that's what I was hoping for.

Yes, that's right, I've got a class with Roy, who, I predict, won't write anything that doesn't annoy me. This is going to be one wild ride.

The Internet Fails Me For The First Time

There is nothing, nothing on the internet about soup skins. It's not just surface tension, because you can remove the skin, but, then, what is it? Why is it? And why can't any search engine give me the answer I need?

Lawrence, Again

Back at Lawrence, one tire the poorer. I'm not in a storytelling mood, though, so that'll have to wait.

For now, goodnight. I'm done.

The Existentialist Next Door

I'm leaving in eight hours, and I haven't done any looting or smashing. Normally, I'd have no strong urge to go into a house and wreck up the place, but the house next door, scheduled to be bulldozed to the ground on Monday, seems like a once-in-a-lifetime oppurtunity. An oppurtunity, of course, that I can't take.

For those of you who don't await my every update in trembling rapture, the story is as follows: our new neighbor paid quite a bit of money for a large house, only to decide that he wanted to start with a clean slate. So he gave the keys to my dad and told him that anything left in the house on Monday would be destroyed.

We looked through the house a few days later. The books, works by Proust, Asimov, Le Carre, Russians, Frenchmen, and assorted existentialists, were interesting, and I wish that the owner hadn't returned to reclaim them. On the plus side, I now live by someone with a refined taste in books (as well as patience; he's read thousands of pages of Proust).

We took out two Murphy beds, some cabinets, every lightbulb, every light fixture, old doorknobs, stained glass windows, closet doors, and other paraphenalia. Later, my dad invited my relatives over, and they took out the water heater and anything else of value.

Now the house stands empty. I asked my dad, a week ago, if we (my friends and I) could smash a house that was going to be smashed anyways. He said no. He claimed that, while he understood my point, the owner only wanted him going inside. And, though he said he would give us permission in the owner's place, he added that we didn't have our new neighbor's approval.

I told him to ask for permission. When the neighbor called a few days later, to clarify exactly what we could take, my dad didn't mention the smashing he supposedly approved. I asked him, tonight, why he hadn't, and he excused himself by commenting that our neighbor was "a strange character".

So, no smashing. There was more, a rant, but writing it was enough. I'm a little upset and not at all suprised that, once again, I've been held back by forces ostensibly beyond my control. But more than anything else, I'm tired, and it's far too late already.

I'll write later, at Lawrence, unless I die in a tragic auto accident on the icy, icy roads, taking several innocent passengers with me.

I Love Movies

Maybe it was because I had no expectations, or maybe there's something magical about sitting next to Ben Johnson, but Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets was a great movie.