Danger! Danger! Danger!

Yeah… about that whole "better" thing… it turns out that I was horribly wrong.

I'm still sick, albeit on the way to being "better", and I hope to be through this by the weekend.

Prof Dintenfass, always the cynic, caught the same thing (from me?) and claims that it's a three-week infection. There was a memo.

Meg(h)an and Carrie donated Tylenol, Sudafed and some Peppermint Tea. Jeremy gave us a redundant box of Kleenex. Deciding that 'twas better to give than to receive, I gave both Jonas and The Politician whatever it is I have.

And as long as I'm being brutally honest, I have no idea how to make tea. I always get the cold kind. I'm such a fraud…

My dad suggests Zinc and Vitamin C and Lozenges and various other holistic cures. His medical advice, I'll follow.

On the crazier side of things, he also suggested, tonight on the phone, that my London Center study might be dangerous, what with all the terrorism and war going on over there. This is, of course, the same kind of foot-dragging crap I had to deal with before going to Germany (he was worried that tensions in the Middle East might spill over into Konstanz), so I'm prettymuch dismissing his fears. His remark that there are a lot of people angry with Tony Blair notwithstanding.

Tonight, since Jonas was too sick to go to practice, we watched Resident Evil, the perfect movie to watch while sick. The Politician, if he wasn't sick before, will definitely get sick after sitting between the two of us. Our room is a viral hothouse.

Resident Evil was o.k., by the by. Not bad enough to be hilarious, not good enough to be enthralling. But it entertained, nonetheless. For some reason.

Later.

Trends And Viruses

So Jonas is eating cantalope now. That's my crazy thing, not his, but since he's not about to stop, everyone just remember that I was eating cantalope before it was cool.

I was sick. I convalesced. Now I'm better, and the only thing I'm sick of is doing nothing.

Not that I did nothing.

I mean, not that I did any less than usual. I did finish The Sun Also Rises today. It's a heartwarming story about friviolity and impotence.

Weekend Recap

I woke up on Sunday with my mouth full of pity. Ironical the minute I got out of bed, I was in the perfect mood to actually do some work.

So I finished another short story… now I have to write about 34 more pages and I'm set. Two weeks to go.

This weekend was relatively uneventful. Let's see…

I got to talk to Jinx's Sister on the phone.

Jinx herself (who recently spent two and half hours cutting my hair) said that, with my thrift store clothes and wild (read: somewhat shorter) hair, I'm now officially a real boy.

I beat Rock Show Girl at Mariokart.

I saw a pretty bad opera The Consul, that wasn't so much poorly done as poorly written.

Eh, that'll do.

Great American Parade

Hilarity from the Washington Post:

I tell Burrows that if he is willing to submit to an interview, I am willing to review his book at length in The Washington Post. The only catch, I said, is that I am going to say that it is, in my professional judgment, the worst novel ever published in the English language.

Silence.

"My review will reach 2 million people," I said.

"Okay," he said.

Perspective Students

Disillusionment in living is finding that no one can really ever be agreeing with you completely in anything. -Gertrude Stein

I went to St. Vincent de Paul's today with Jeremy. For those of you not on QT, St. Vincent's in a local thrift store that opens for three hours every alternate Thursday.

I bought some $3 pants; waiting for me in the dressing room was that more-honest sense of self found only in thrift store mirrors, which was nice, but I left that in the store.

Tonight I talked to my parents and to Jenna. Which is only funny because both conversations began with the same obligatory "how's school" but ended in different universes.

Fiction Writing was good, as always. The Staggering Genius was back in class, apt and succinct at last, we all got to read a story about vampires, and almost everyone got a good, if ignoble, shot off at The Sentimentalist's latest work.

Prof Dintenfass got a few shots off, himself. Commenting on the sentimental tragedy-ridden fiction of today's bestseller lists:

There are no accidents in fiction. Remember, when you're reading a story, and the little girl runs into the street and gets hit by a car, that the author was the one driving the car.

And the deathly serious:

Sometimes I think that the biggest culture gap at Lawrence is the small town - suburbia gap.

When I got back to the room, Jonas and Jeremy (who didn't have anything to do today, apparently) were watching Bowling for Columbine, which I have issues with. It was good once, but since I don't want to see and be frustrated by that movie again, I went downstairs and actually did some homework.

Linguistics combines the analytical complexity of English homework with the frustrating busywork of Math homework. No wonder Lawrence's archetypal runner enjoys it so much.

Back in the room, after the movie, I got into a heated debate with Jonas about how good the movie was, how biased the movie was, Michael Moore's intentions, and some other surprisingly hot-button issues.

At least I didn't have to defend the NRA more than a couple of times. Anyways, it was even more frustrating than our minor Trivia Weekend disagreement over whether the homemade minisub at Checkpoint Charlie was originally used to escape East Berlin or to fight a war, so I had to end it.

We moved on to less antagonistic issue—abortion as definitional argument—and dropped the whole thing. I don't like stopping a discussion like that… which is why I'm writing this, I suppose, but we weren't getting anywhere. I certainly didn't think that I was "losing", but the problem is that neither did he.

Ah! Where do acceptable differences of taste (like say, over interpretations of a movie) end and logically reconcilable disagreements (like say, different opinions of a political issue) begin? Well, whatever. It all worked out. With near-every gaming console and Survivor every Thursday night, there's no room in this room for any but the giddiest of emotions.

Later.

Wednesday With Collins

United States Poet Laureate Billy Collins came to speak tonight. No, I didn't know who he is either.

Anyways, I was really impressed. His poetry is accessible, ironic, and funny. And he knew how to do a reading perfectly; he didn't overdo anything. I had to work, so I missed most of the reading, but I bought his Sailing Alone Around The Room, a collection of poems (of course), and got it signed.

I waited in a line for about an hour for that three-second acquisition… and I should've had him make it out to my mom… well, so much for that.

Work was annoying; some girl who pronounced B's as P's came in to be tutored. She had no excuse for missing the poetry reading. I tried to convince her to go to the reading, and she said that the paper was due tomorrow at four.

That's not an excuse, not when all she wanted me to do was check for little errors she hadn't bothered to correct herself. She had time for a Poet Laureate. Dryden and Dickinson were Laureates.

In a burst of creative frustration, I decided to point out all the ironies and empty words and redundancies in her paper. It wasn't useless criticism, since she'll (hopefully) write much better now, but it definitely made me feel superior. I was the king of some weird modernistic universe.

So, we're reading Gertrude Stein in American Writers. Specifically, we're reading this.

Apparently it's the last great achievement of High Modernism, and it reads like Postmodernism, whatever that is. And Prof Fritzell is completely in his element, when there's no plot or characters to worry about discussing.

After so much slacking, it's nice to be doing the work. I feel a lot more awake, after a few hours at the library.

Now, to start writing…

Tonight, instead of being productive, The Politician and I finished our first game of Illuminati: NWO, the collectable card game version of the old Illuminati. I have to say, I still like the old version better, what with all the backstabbing and all. But one cannot compare two things which by their very nature are disimilar. Or something like that. Apples and such…

O.k, later.

Two Authors, Twenty "Writers"

So yesterday Paul McComas, one of Prof Dintenfass' first students, apparently some kind of published author, spoke to our Fiction Writing class.

I'm 30 pages behind, at this point, by-the-way. C'mon inspiration! C'mon double sixes! I'm not picky.

Anyways, he was pretty intelligent, but annoying. He did a few readings (or, as he called them, "performances") from his various works, inflecting his voice like crazy, adding hand gestures, pacing around the room, and doing prettymuch anything else he could have done to make it clear that he thinks his writing can't stand on its own. Performance Art Theorists can be pretty annoying.

Also, his novel is about the rejuvinating powers of nature. They are pretty rejuvinating, and all that, but #1, that's really cliche, and #2, where does he think that the idea of "escaping society" and going into the wild comes from? Aliens?

Twain would have smacked him up a bit, if he weren't so busy spinning in his Spinomatic^TM grave.

O.k, time to eat.

Character Sketch: Roy the Effeminate Heterosexual

So it looks like I'm about to disqualify myself from public office. Meh. Well, enjoy:

Roy is gay. Really really gay. Will and Grace gay.

I'm not about to take Gender Studies (it seems like all the Studies—Gender, Ethnic, Environmental, American, et cetera—are (irretrievably?) political and biased, anyways) but I have read a bit about the "issue", the search for biological and psychological correlations (studies are inconclusive and often contradictory) and all that. And I still don't quite know what to make of this school's Standard-Issue Stereotypical Gay Guy.

My enlightened Liberal Arts College Mind can't handle the existence of someone who confirms most of the stereotypes gay rights activists seem to be trying to overcome; the imaginary flirtatious gay guy, obsessed with fashion, calling everyone "honey" and "baby" and snapping his finger occasionally for emphasis, laughing at everything, giving girls sexual/romantic advice and having loud crushes on unattainable straight men… well, he can't exist.

And of course he does. Of course, Roy isn't just a stereotype—classifying people into types is a dangerous trap (with a nod to Henry James for that bit of wisdom)—he just happens to embody, at least superficially, many of the "things" I'm not sure I'm allowed to associate with homosexuality.

(It was bad enough in high school, watching certain members of my cool brother's class turn from sensitive guys into the kind of people who just—somehow—look gay. How you can look "like you want to have sex with men", I have no idea, but of course they, and others, have accomplished that feat.)

And now this, this further paradigm shock. Oh yes, and Roy is Korean, which just causes more preconceptual problems. Thanks Jenna, for constantly generalizing about everything, including your race. You've put me in a bind, as I find all my preconceptions confirmed. I can be politically correct, but not if I have to be blind and deaf. Sigh…

Sorry about the parenthetical comments and scare quotes… I just finished a moderately kicking essay for Prof Fritzell, who takes every term, and every scare quote, very seriously. Sometimes I wonder what it must be like to see irony everywhere. Fun, probably.

Back to The Effeminate Heterosexual.

Roy is, to his credit, an interesting and intelligent person. He's an English major. His writing is pretty complex, his predilection for describing the sensual and oversexed side of everthing notwithstanding. Pshaw: "notwithstanding" nothing, his writing is better for it. He has amazing insight into characters and, I assume, people.

Everyone knows (a? ah! the problems!) Roy.

He's outspoken and disgustingly extroverted.

He's friendly and amusingly opinionated.

He's always in the bathroom. Always.

Always.

With Kings and Counsellors

Ah Bartleby! Ah Humanity!

My fish is dead, and with the death of Bartleby my hope, the only chance I had of winning Ormsby's Goldfish Survivor contest, dies too.

We had some good times, Bartleby and I. He was a magnificent fish, and I would watch him swim around and eat and, you know, the nasty fishwater smell in this room was worth it, just for the priviledge of owning Bartleby. But now--my hand trembles as I write this--poor Bartleby Swims No More, Alas.

What did I do wrong? I changed 20% of the water once, sometimes twice a day, I put in the water purifying drops, I got a nice plant for the bowl, I used the fish food that was thirty cents more expensive, instead of the cheap stuff. And I gave him love. Love! Doesn't that count for anything at all? No, of course not. Not in this heartless, fishless world.

Why Bartleby? It wasn't his time; he was young and spry, unlike a certain other fish I could mention.

Arunas Machakunis Escamillo! Why do you live? You got all the same food; the only thing you didn't get was my love. You are the fish without love, and I spit on you. Why do you torment me, in a world without Bartleby?

Jonas doesn't love you like I loved that fish -no, he didn't buy you a nice plant, he didn't swivel his chair slightly to the side, every so often, to watch you swim. No one loves you, and though you continue to live, you are dead to me.

Why must everything I love die? Why must all that is beautiful be flushed down the toilet?

Which reminds me…

20

At least I know I haven't learned anything, with my sudden official increase in age. I can still write a long blog entry without copying it as I write, then be suprised when everything disapears. I also can't spell, still.

Character Sketch: Josh

While it's a widely accepted albeit unacknowledged fact that Matt is the best this generation of my family has to offer, I have to give ultramegakudos to Josh, the biggest little brother. For one thing, my youngest brother has--and I've said this before--successfully bridged the jock-nerd gap. I'm (only occasionally) a flink, athletic nerd; Matt is a smart jock/prep, but Josh is a new creature altogether.

Like [Dan's German friend] Flo, a related goth-nerd species, Josh's jock-nerd lifestyle seems effortless.

Of course, I think that Matt and I can take credit for much of Josh's personality. That's right, take away his individuality: it's all a function of how we treated him, what he saw in us, and how he reacted. In short, it sucks to be the youngest, because you're not an individual and can do nothing original.

I was just talking to Josh online, actually, and his all-too-familiar dislike of The Majestic, along with his ever-improving taste in music (Josh, unlike Matt and I, didn't spend most of his formative years listening to country), warms my heart. He listens to Matt's music and reads my books; someday, his taste will move beyond ours. That's how I'll know that I'm old.

He's trying to expand his musical taste, you see. Everytime I get back from college, I put more music on the home computer. And he listens to it, and occasionally likes it. While he didn't warm to Modest Mouse or (the) Eels (new album on the way!), he has moved (slowly) away from Dashboard Confessional and Something Corporate, towards bands like Saves the Day and Soul Coughing.

There's nothing like watching someone else as they realize that things suck. Soon enough, he might start getting annoyed with my dad. Then the circle will, as Josh might say, be complete.

Sprawling On A Pin

Follow the bouncing ball! Spot the empty adjectives!

If there's one thing that Thoth understands (and, I assure you, there is), it's that special property of performance known as solemnity. Solemnity is the "high seriousness" present equally in a funeral and a coronation. It is neither "happy" nor "sad", it is the elegant distance achieved through ritual and mythology.

Paradise Lost, of course, comes close to achieving (and, if you listen to T.S Eliot, it achieves) the solemnity of rituals. I could name a half dozen other works with solemnity; books that weren't really meant to be read in a quiet study, serious movies that were meant for the people, all together… and now, Thoth.

It was exciting, really. I mean, tonight's performance (or, as he blends it, "prayformance") was great, but not amazing. The second act dragged, the third act I'd seen most of already… it was that first part, when he came out only to spend five minutes preparing for the show, with incense and mediation and all that, that really did it for me.

You rarely see that kind of separation, the kind of let's-get-serious-pause, especially in America. Our solemnity is usually borrowed: a really "American" church will have a less distant, jokey priest, not the dignified orators of 17th century England or the reverent mystics of a half dozen forgotten Catholic churches.

Likewise, our government, at first consciously and now unconsciously, established its dignity with a strangely European form of pomp and circumstance. This is all standard Prof Fritzell speak, of course.

Which reminds me--if I can refrain for a moment from praising the ultimately mediocre Thoth--of an incident earlier this week.

Trying to summon up the American's lack of perceived "history", Fritzell began comparing our towns to Paris. There's history in Eagan too, went one aside. How about Brainerd, went another.

Yes, that's right. He knows where we're from. He ticked off the hometowns of half the members of that class. He's done his research -while we weren't reading The Ambassadors, Fritzell was reading up on us.

He also intimated that he knew when we were reading. I can only assume he knows when we're awake.

It's creepy--but more wonderful than creepy--that a Prof would take so much time to keep track of the very trivial.

I scribbled in my notebook:

How much does Fritzell know???

And underlined it a half-dozen times. I had hoped, I have to admit, I really hoped that, as I wrote that, he'd give me a wink, a sign, a gesture, some key to his omniscence. I've always wanted to discover someone else's superpower.

Meanwhile, the zest for Magic: The Gathering has (predictably) disappeared. For my part, I've attempted to make up for lost time by catching up on my homework. At least midterms are over. Now, to find a new distraction.

Later.

Three People, Three Nutshells

Jenna: Rome? is that lame?
Dan: Are you calling the city of Rome lame?
Manney: rome is not lame!

Hmng! Nerdity!

So last night I played Magic: The Gathering with people who weren't social outcasts. They said that--in America at least--it couldn't be done. They said that everyone who plays Magic is a complete dork, but last night we may or may not have proved them wrong. Nerds? Probably. Dorks? No.

The events of this weekend seemed to foreshadow such an inevitable slide into utter nerdom. We went from the innocous act of sledding (Friday) to the venial procuring of electronics (Saturday) to the final mortal sin (Sunday) detailed above.

Sledding, by the by, was pretty cool. The Union provided free sleds and Union Hill, a convenient distance away, provided the necessary terrain. For those of you who don't already know, most of sledding--the fun part, at least--involves going down a hill.

Usually, you're carrying a sled and someone is trying to drag you back down as you climb up, but I hear that some people just use the sleds and forgo the unending struggle. I guess if you hit someone with a sled while you were going down, that might make sense, but otherwise I don't see the point.

We had many an epic battle; Jinx, wearing a pair of garbage-bag shorts, might still be at Union Hill, climbing and falling and sliding and laughcrying in her peculiar Jinx-way. As for myself, I stopped participating in the eternal struggle once dragging someone down the hill ceased to be worth the effort of climbing back up.

Saturday involved much less fresh air and far more driving. We took The Deathtrap to Waupaca and got a nicer t.v. and some (read: all-the-in-existence) video game systems. So now, as I've observed too often already, our room looks much closer to Lain's.

So now I'm sitting here, listening to Jonas and The Politician play what will surely be the first of many games of Magic, typing at my computer… but I can't stay long. I've got to go help people with their homework for money. Ah, delicious regression.