So Find A Way To Brace Yourself

Today was my second day of hardcore twenty-minute exercising. I don't like exercise (and since I shy away from sportly activities I don't think I ever will) but knowing that I ran two miles earlier in the day is certainly a great feeling. Don't do the math here, though.

Rock Show Girl (likewise unwilling to join the U-Frisbee team with all the cool kids) is working out with me. Also, there's usually some random person who shows up halfway through and works out right next to us. That's weird. But it is nice to have someone to keep my guilt and shame at a constant level, should I try to flake out and do fifteen minutes or something.

My other pseudo-athletic activity didn't go so well. The Politician, Jonas and I played some Frolf at a woody course, and I didn't do nearly as well as I did on Saturday.

I don't even remember which hand I throw with. (I'm trying to figure out the difference between ambidextrious and not caring). I just did every throw backhand, with whatever hand made the backhand easier. And I hit trees. I hit lots of trees.

I remember in grade school, when I caught and threw with my left hand. I remember the mockery, especially from Graham. O yes, I remember.

I was really tired today, after my heroic morning run and some and that made me both groggy and irritable in Shakespeare. I tried to lash out against The Sentimentalist, who was overanalyzing a metaphor again, but no one understood what I was talking about.

Also, despite what some in class might say, Britain and England are not the same place. Britain includes Wales and Scotland.

Which reminds me: Happy Birthday, Larson. This is a poor means to deliver that kind of message (and it's presumptious to just assume that Larson reads this webpage religiously) but I just want it on the record in case I forget to try other means.

Yeah, I've got a lot to do tomorrow.

Later.

A Typically Productive Weekend

Things I Did Today:
Talked to good ol' Dylan.
Wrote a resume. I don't look good on paper.
Watched the last of my Home Movies episodes.

Things I Didn't Do Today:
Read thirty-odd pages of German homework.
Finish IES Freiburg Application.
Laundry.

In comparison, the rest of my weekend seems pretty glamorous.

Friday we watched the dress rehearsal of Jonas and The Politicians' big Saturday night concert. It was pretty good, but Jinx and I were far too figidty to be sitting near Ann.

The music was good, for the record. I just didn't like the way the director kept interrupting the practice to correct people. It felt eerily postmodern. More importantly, the frequent stops sucked the energy out of almost all of the songs (excepting O Fortuna), which was why Jinx and I felt inclined to fidgit.

Afterwards, we met up at Cora's coffeehouse, where I ordered a huge and expensive Chai. We met up back at the room and watched Secretary with Jinx. In a lot of ways, that movie was like a better version of Pumpkin.

On Saturday we played a nice round of Frolf on a course I didn't know existed. I got 27 over par on 18 holes, which, while unimpressive-sounding, is far better than any score I ever had playing regular golf.

That night, a bunch of us (The Politician, his friend, Jonas, Carrie, and Our Bold Hero) went to the Pimps and Ho's Party at the Sig Ep house. I went in a pretty-fly-for-a-white-guy style gangsta outfit. It wasn't totally "pimp", but it was totally jerkin'.

I think I won the pre-party game of Waterfall (Jonas, who wasn't paying attention, assuredly lost), but ending up relatively sober seems somehow counterintuitive: I was playing a drinking game, after all.

So maybe I lost. Everyone else sure seemed a little looser.

A Jigger of Hope

Got an email from a guy at Scripps Howard News Service, basically saying that I have a job this summer as soon as I give him a resume so he can figure out where to stick me. I might be in D.C., and that'd be sweet.

Prof Bloom caved today and had class outside, but (amazingly enough) we handled it well. This was the first time I've ever had a productive class outdoors.

We went over Richard II, the best and only History I've read. The great thing about Shakespeare's History plays is that because he's working from a historical record the plot can (nay, must) be a lot messier and a lot more real. There's no pairing off at the end, and there might not even be any sense of universal justice.

I like the loose ends in Richard II and Twelfth Night; that's what make them great, very human plays. The loose ends in The Taming of the Shrew, on the other hand…

At one point, The Sentimentalist really overdid a close reading, somehow making an extended metaphor about Divine Right sound like a Captain Planet episode synopsis. Wow, did we refute that quickly.

I pointed out that what makes this play so tragic is that King Richard really believes in the system he was taught; he trusts that God will protect his appointed king, and God lets him down.

Everyone laughed, but I was being dead serious. If King Richard has a tragic flaw (now there's a wonderful, albeit outdated, approach to criticism) it's his naivety, not his overconfidence.

Well, it was all good. I spent about three hours watching episodes of Home Movies I've downloaded, so 2:30 was the peak, as far as intellectual activity goes.

I talked with Jenna though, and we decided that there are moral laws (laws against murder and rape) and arbitrary laws (speeding, anything based on age; laws that assume all people are equally responsible and mature).

I've decided that our obligation under the social contract is to obey the moral laws and to accept the punishments for violating the arbitrary ones. I can speed, but I'm breaking the social contract if I don't pay my ticket.

Well, it still needs work, I know. I can see a few loopholes already.

I want to be the world's last Social Contract Theorist. And I want to grab whatever philosophy I can find to justify the stuff I would've done anyways, just like almost everyone else. Milton and Locke can take the blame for my decisions.

Later.

A Dash of Failure

Long day. As usual, I got up early and rushed to finish some German busywork.

I checked my email: two rejection letters. Well, not letters, emails, but rejection email doesn't have the same ring.

The Chicago-Sun is only hiring minority interns under some scholarship program, and Chicago Magazine stopped accepting applications a week ago. So it's my fault, on that one, for waiting to ask when I could have sent something in on the 10th.

The answer to the immortal question seems to be "is not chicago."

Not the best start, for a day. And I didn't know what was going on in this book, Simple Stories, that we're reading for German, so my busywork was full of errors. Also, why is every other book based on either The Sound and the Fury, Winesberg, Ohio, or both?

I'm trying to guilt myself into exercising. Running or lifting or something. But nothing competitive and nothing too hard. Basically, I want to be in shape without having to do any actual work.

(Jonas and Jubb are getting up at 6:30 every morning now, in order to weightlift, but I have neither the strength nor the interest required to keep up with those two.)

Anyways, having a nice political discussion (and coming off as the social-contract theorist I most definitely am), so I'll bid you goodnight.

Before-Dinner Wish

Someday, I want to be looking off into the distance. Then I want someone to walk up behind me, without saying anything, so I can make one of those really cool wistful speeches. I wouldn't turn around, and it would be kind of sad and noble.

Theories

After slogging through a mediocre and sometimes infuriating (feel tank?) article on theories, I thought about the theories I'm carrying around, the various ideas I and others have posited to explain the workings of the world.

#1. There's Jubb's Law, my newest discovery: Given any noun, Jubb will have a story related to that noun.

This one is absolutely true. We have yet to test it with an encyclopedia, but randomly selected, relatively common nouns invariably lead to some kind of crazy story. Jubb is a great Oral Storyteller, a twenty-first century Goliard.

#2. There's Lampa's Hypothesis: Given an intergender friendship, a heterosexual guy will always be willing to initiate a physical relationship in the event that the girl indicates her willingness to do the same.

This one is pretty dubious. It was true for at least one guy I knew, for his entire high school career, but I've known other people that prove it wrong. It might depend on your definition of "friendship", and it seems to assume that a guy can never have a real friendship with a girl he considers ugly. Or it just assumes that people aren't that superficial.

#3. Jenna's Infinite Contradiction Theory. Given a statement, a firm denial of that statement will lead to the immediate retraction of that statement by the speaker.

This one works on one specific person pretty often, but I'm still not sure how universal it is. Some people just throw out words, it seems, so she can't be the only one this applies to.

#4. The Obligatory Ultra-Gay Theory. Given a university, there will be at least one person who, in some way, embodies every stereotype that Gay Rights activists have spent decades trying to destroy.

This person will often have the same first name. This isn't gay-hating here, for the P.C. Thugs in the crowd. I know some great non-stereotypically gay people. But, talking to others, the Ultra-Gay seems to exist at every school, possibly as part of a plot by the Ultra-Conservatives (see the connection!) to discredit the entire Gay Rights movement.

#5. The Essay Correlative: Given a paper, the amount of time spent, the amount of effort put into the paper, and the writer's familiarity with the subject cannot predict the grade received.

There is a correlation between grades and the above factors, but other criteria, including but not limited to the professor's mood, the weather outside, the date turned in, the humidity in the prof's office, the number of papers read beforehand, the date corrected, font, the presence of page numbers, amount and location of staples, the professor's temperment, and the current location of Venus can also influence grade received.

*Note- Steve's Test Correlative, a related theory that dealt with grades on German class pop quizzes, is now accepted by very few in the mainstream scientific community.

#6. The German-American Drinking Theory: Given alcohol, a German will drink casually and an American will "drink to get drunk".

I'm a huge propenent of this embattled theory and the below theory; I think that The Lanky German (a subject discovered in Reutlingen) is a familiar exception but The Gothic German (Konstanz) is a more typical example of a "real" German, as far as this Theory is concerned.

And I've met plenty of Americans who're confused at the very idea of an option besides "drinking to get drunk."

#7. The German Sex-Alcohol Area Theory: Every German can be described by the area under the curve on a graph correlating frequency of sex with frequency of alcohol consumption. This area will be unique to that German.

#8. Dan's Deathtrap-Mishap Theory: Averaged out over an infinite number of long car-rides, The Deathtrap will encounter one mishap every third trip.

True, in the long run. I still maintain that I'm a good driver, though. Just unlucky. And careless.

#9. Partisen Hypocracy Theory: Given two or more polticial parties, the moral recitude of a given political action is dependent on the political party of the observer.

Disgusting. This Theory is true, and it's why The Wishy-Washy Moderates need to organize. It's been proven in Florida, Washington D.C., and elsewhere, and affects all strata of society. As it seems to bleed into the only belief structure more Wishy-Washy than that of the moderates: the moral relativism of postmodern thought.

#10. The Attribution Principle: When people observe others, they attribute their actions to character qualities. When considering their own actions, people attribute their actions to the circumstances immediately surrounding that action.

This wasn't invented by anyone I know. I heard it second or third hand; it's in some Psych book. It might be classified as a Fallacy, but either way it's really great, because it feels really true. I do that; I've done that on this very page. I'm pretty fond of this observation.

That's all I can think of, right now. Later.

A Cold Shower

So after talking to Jubb, Jonas and Rock Show Girl, I've pieced together the missing parts of Friday night.

Not all of them, but enough to realize that I don't remember everything. Happily, most of what I don't remember is pretty embarassing and bathroom-related.

And what I do remember is pretty rosy, in comparison with what I'll now call "reality." It turns out that I was accusing everyone of patronizing me; I should have expected that.

I had no idea how totally drunk I was, but that R.A. definitely did.

Some of us prefer illusion to despair…

Never Sicker

So now I'm absolutely sure I'd never been drunk before. Not in Germany, and certainly not in America.

Overall, The Great Ormsby Drinkeroo was a success. Four of us planned it about a week in advance and had the helpful Miss Bates pick up most of the drinks; we had Gin, Tequila, Vodka, Pucker, Ameretto, Grenadine, a few cases of cheap beer, some wine-coolers, jello shots, orange juice, lemonade, Sprite, and some good beer for the pre-party party.

As I pointed out to Jubb: This is how we become men.

I've always had a problem with drinking. I still do, actually; I just sold-out my principles for the Drinkeroo. I mean, really: it's illegal (and does the pleasure of the crime justify breaking the law?), it makes people act differently (there's a German saying that contradicts that, but there's a German saying for everything), and alcohol, unlike pot and cigarettes and video games, can really turn on you. A hangover is nature's way of telling you what an idiot you were the night before.

My body is pissed at me. I know first-hand some of the horrible stuff drinking can lead to, and even if I'm too sick to appreciate that now, I'm a lot wiser.

I learned a saying, for one thing. I learned it before the party but now I realize that things can rhyme and still be true. Liquor before beer! Drinking a couple good beers, then drinking two improperly made Tequila Sunrises, then drinking a couple cheap beers prettymuch guaranteed that Our Bold Hero would get sick.

Paying a little more attention while I was playing Waterfall might have helped, too. And next time I play a drinking game, I'm drinking beer, not Tequila. Ugh. I can't even look at the bottle. I can't even look at the orange juice.

So yes, I learned to be more responsible, the hard way. And I learned that I can puke through my nose. And this morning our RHD told me all about incident reports.

The party started wonderfully. We had some strange U-Frisbee types crash the pre-party at 8:30, but rather than start too early, we sat around drinking Killian's and Beck's Dark and watching BASEketball for another hour.

I suppose the Drinkeroo started at 9:30, a little early but not too bad. About twenty or so people showed up. I didn't look at the clock, but I think I lasted a few hours before the horrible part started.

Amazingly, I'm lucky enough to remember the whole process- as suspected, my mind clings to lucidity until the very end, long after my coordination is gone.

(We would always philosophize in Konstanz, when we'd been drinking.)

For the record—and this is my record as much as it is yours; I don't blog and journal anymore—I noticed some things that were pretty interesting:

For one thing, besides its obvious role as a social lubricant (Surprise! I was friendlier!), alcohol makes the world feel like a movie. I went from watching all the frames, to watching every third frame, to watching every fifth, and, finally, as I lurched back to the bathroom to besmirch a white toilet and a foolishly-placed Objectivism poster, I mused that I had every seventh frame. It's hard to tell what's going on, when your consciousness is flickering like a strobe light. But it's oddly exciting.

Also, I've noticed before that people get tipsy when they've been drinking—and I've even stumbled a bit in my day—but I had no idea how much fun it is to be tipsy. Left and right were suddenly really enjoyable, and it felt natural to go in these, the better directions, instead of sitting still or walking straight. I explained this to some people, hoping that—even if they missed my profundity—they'd at least be amused.

The weirdest thing was my preference for the word "nevertheless." I use that word occasionally, but after a few drinks it was all over the place. What better way to give an objection and then disregard it?

During Waterfall, this vain-looking Freshman in a funny outfit started speaking German. I tried out my Blaudeutsch and was pleasantly surprised to find it intact. I thought that was really cool, but once I got snapped into thinking that way it was a little hard to snap back to English. I think I even tried addressing Jonas in German, which was rude but, under the circumstances, forgivable.

At the five-frame level, I noticed that I was in the bathroom with this one guy with an easily fixed fatal flaw (the world is more exciting if we're all tragic characters with the obligatory single "fatal flaw").

I realized I could say something, thought that I shouldn't, then realized that, since I was drunk, I could say stuff without the usual social repercussions, even if I actually meant it.

So I knelt in front of the toilette and gave him some advice at an inappropriate volume. It was pretty clever, to exploit my inebriation like that, and I was/am kinda proud of that. He humored me a little; everyone really uses kid gloves around drunk people. You know, I'm not ashamed at the drunkeness, just my stupidity in getting to that level so early and so definitively.

I definitely think a lot more of the people who helped me when I was throwing up and cleaned up the mess. They really came through. I know that most people would have done the same, but nevertheless I've got their backs in the future.

Don't let anyone ever say I'm not loyal to the handul of people who earn that kind of credit with me. Well, except my parents and exgirlfriend: they can call me ungrateful.

So I learned a lot, got to write a lot about my experiences, and, up until I started throwing up, I had fun. I was out of the party really early, probably three or four hours before it ended. I went to sleep in my clothes, in The Politician's room. Rock Show Girl, the only other unlucky person at the party, slept in our room on Fort Makeout.

I'm going to have some water and some aspirin. Here's to stupid decisions; may we never be above making them.

Parties and Parteis

Tonight we had a joint birthday party for Sockless Pete and his roomate. It was at the roller-rink, so I got to show off my years of rollerskating experience, not to mention my unique and graceful flailing. It was a good time, a whirlwind of ice cream, party favors, and rollerlimbo.

In class today I was the sole outspoken advocate of a non-Marxist reading of King Lear, preferring instead a more archetypal, less economic interpretation. That's probably going to be my role for the rest of the year: supporter of important but neglected critical viewpoints.

Of course, no one agreed with me after my gloss of The Fool's prophecy (which definitely has nothing to do with him desiring to raise the poor class over the rich, the other students' opinions notwithstanding). The rain it raineth every day.

I don't know if I'm going home for Easter; I have a lot to figure out and at least three people I desperately need to talk to tomorrow. About the future, immediate and less immediate. Ugh.

Well, at least this weekend will be a good chance to relax, wherever I end up and whenever I end up wherever.

Our Bold Hero, Etc.

We've all got seasonal affective disorder, of course. Everyone says that this time of year, everyone smiles at the sunlight and talks about how it's nice to have this weather, recovering from unnoticed cabin fever and walking outside into the proverbial Big Blue Room.

That everyone includes me, and I was going to begin blogging by saying that I really like this warm weather, but, you know, it's been done. So instead I'll make myself feel clever by pointing out the obviousness of the obvious.

Way to go, Dan: Other people like spring!

Maybe I will work for a newspaper this summer, with these wonderful skills. A real newspaper, of course, not the Dispatch or the Post Crescent, though they try to try.

Or maybe I could work for a really small newspaper, one of those little free ones that no one reads, and write about quilt clubs and puppies.

Then, once I'd secured myself as a reporter, I could create a forest fire or an unexplained series of deaths and propel myself to recognitiondom as The Guy Who Broke The Big Story.

"Yes Tom, this is Dan, on the ground in Nisswa…"

On the ground… well, it does sound better, but I think we all know that those reporters just don't want to say "here." Or maybe a significant portion of reporting is done "in the air" or "twelve miles beneath the earth's crust." But I haven't heard those phrases very often.

So we all made mix CDs and exchanged them. This was Ann's idea; the two of us were exchanging books last year, but this year we're all a little stupider and a lot more overworked so we're exchanging music instead. Although ten CDs is a big time commitment, to be fair. And it'll be fun.

Mix CD #1, from some random Student A that I've had limited and largely meaningless interaction with, is toothless. There isn't much thought or emotion on the thing, there are four seven-minute-plus songs, and there are waaaay too many instrumental songs (waaaaay, here, is "more than one").

It's definitely the CD I'd expect from a Freshman Con-student, but if he likes the songs, I guess I shouldn't complain. I mean, I crammed three Eels songs onto my CD, and if I'm egotistical enough to foist that on people (because it is good, very good) I should forgive someone else for foisting his favorite sound on me. Over and over… all those songs sounded the same. And passive… well, I didn't like it, but others will.

Let's see. Elsewise, I haven't accomplished much; Jubb, The Politician, Jonas and I watched Half-Baked, which was not quite what I'd expected. Except when it was exactly what I'd expected (e.g., when they got the dog high).

It was good, though. Partially because—for some reason—people have been referencing it for years, and now I finally understand what they were referring to, if not why.

Both Prof Peterson (Contemporary German Culture & Politics) and Prof Bloom (Shakespeare) require a certain amount of busywork before class, a teaching-style I don't agree with. Is this supposed to be seventh grade? Math class? The real world? Well, this is college, and I should be able to get by on my wits alone, without having to demonstrate those wits.

As a tribute to Prof Goldgar's old-school students-will-read-if-they-want-to-learn teaching style, I finished my Satire homework (The Beggar's Opera, which hasn't aged well, at least as a stand-alone text). But I still have some German stuff… I suppose I should do that now, I guess…

Character Sketch: The Bombastion

Watched Charade, an old thriller-comedy-mystery from the 60s. It was pretty good, but Jinx and I have decided that the best "old movie" is the Manchurian Candidate.

I stuck up for someone the other day by pointing out that he's one of the few people I don't dislike. I don't like the elitist, egotistcal twang of that sentence, but the sentiment behind it was honest enough. I don't think that everyone else should consider it important, but that's a high compliment from an increasingly embittered and/or apathetic guy like myself.

We trashed a lot of people last night; Jonas fell asleep, but Rock Show Girl and I managed to find fault with almost everyone we could think of for an hour or two afterwards. It was some nice refreshingly antisocial bonding.

One person in particular, The Bombastion, needs to be destroyed. Well, not destroyed, just fixed. He reminds me, I'm sorry to say, of a younger version of myself, the 9th grader who took pleasure in speaking a convulted and artificial form of English full of "curses" and other pretentiously archaic constructions.

Remnants of that Bold Hero, as you might already have noticed, are still in existence. I occasionally say "good gads" and a few other words (like the wonderfully correct "dastard") have slyly become a part of my regular lexicon.

As J. Loss once observed, I should probably use words that don't make people judge me so quickly. But part of me can't help it, part of me still thinks it's funny, and a last little part doesn't really care what people think about my speech.

More realistically, archaic speech sets someone apart, it calls attention to itself, and it's the speakers responsibility to have good and interesting ideas behind their speech, if not a reason for using it to begin with.

The Bombastion uses big words and a permanent actor's voice to set off his speech, but there's usually nothing behind it. He's a rehasher, a repeater, an observer of the obvious, herald to the trivial detail. His eloquence, as they say, is all bombast.

Everything he says is difficult to listen to, because it sounds important and interesting but actually isn't. He's a boor, a tall tall talking characature with a questionable amount of personality behind his speech. It's infuriating and very sad. It makes my ears want to bleed, to see the English language mutilated so, and for so little.

It's like looking at a road I could've, still could take, and being able to see the horrible consequences. No thanks, I don't want to pop my head in doors and begin every sentence with an important-sounding hook and use words that are always bigger but rarely better than their synonyms. It makes me regret every catch-phrase I've ever said; it makes me want to shut up a lot more often.

If this annoys me so much, I should try to be the opposite. It would, at the very least, seem more natural. But that's The Bombastion, and that's his nutshell, and that's where he'll stay until I hear something worth hearing.

3/5. Weird. +2 on any Attempt to Control an Internship.

So last night I was hit with a desperate need to figure out what I'm doing next summer and next year.

My first email asked the Director of International Studies when I'm going to London. It turns out that I'm first on the waiting list. So maybe I'll go, if someone is willing to lose a $500 deposit and give me a spot. Or perhaps there could be some sort of… mishap?

Well, whatever. My second email was about this summer. I asked my advisor, Prof Dintenfass, about internships, and when I walked into his office today he was writing an apologetic response. He explained that he didn't know anything about internships, and suggested that I talk to Prof Fritzell.

I was a little disappointed that my advisor was unable to help me get a job, but he was the one who got me thinking about internships to begin with, so I can't complain… starting… now.

But Fritzell. He's pretty intense, and once he overcame his momentary dissatisfaction with Dintenfass and turned his attention to internships, I had all that intensity working directly for me. In six hours I already had a nice (albeit vague and unpaid) offer, plenty of leads, a list of places to inquire/enquire. That man knows everyone, and too many journalists.

And I have to admit I was flattered when he told one potential employer that I was "a stellar LU soph-junior who can write his way out of a paperbag."

So the future is coming together. I've got plans for fall term, too.

On The Selectivity Of All Human Society

Human society is selective. A few days ago, someone said probably the stupidest thing I've ever heard. Well, not really, but I've been buzzing about the implications of that statement for a while now.

He said he hated invitations because they were exclusive. Innocent-sounding enough, I know, but c'mon. Everything is exclusive, and if you don't see that you're living in a different world than I am.

People have choices: they can choose who they associate with and who—whether because of geniune loathing or simple lack of time—they don't associate with. That's how everything works. Anyone who really would invite anyone anywhere, regardless of their guest's personality (or, a more cynical Dan might say, appearance) is definitely foolish and probably a bit unhappy. Don't we all eat our favorite flavors of Starbust first?

Some people, like the hilariously extroverted Jeremy, seem to associate with people without judging them, giving everyone equal oppurtunity. But even Jeremy is exclusive- he chooses to associate with people in his immediate area, instead of calling random Floridian numbers and making plans with strangers across the country. Even Jesus was exclusive: only twelve people got to be his apostles.

So there it is: reality. I think I've especially judgemental, but so is everyone else. Various factors—location, interests, social skills, odor, affibility, etc— make some people better to hang out with than others. So ragging on invitations, which merely record unstated preferences, is completely moronic.

Binge Questing

So I played too much Zelda last night, and this morning.

But I bought Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and watched Josie and the Pussycats.

So I'm at peace with my time-wasting. It's not hurting anyone. Though if The Cheerful Cynic wears those green pants again…

The Second To Last Angry Man

I woke up angry. It's nice, in a way, to be angry. I can get drunk on this emotion in the same way that some people, many people, get drunk on pity. It makes me feel alive, albeit not necessarily good. The "sacred rage", that uplifting and purifying anger that some people seem to experience, remains a far away goal, a fairytale told by a pretentious blowhard.

So my anger, to be fair, is entirely unfocused. It seeks out targets, but it exists independent of green pants, overblown diction (hah!), or minor disagreements about movies. Those things happen, and they aren't worth getting angry over. They're to be expected, and, at most, only disapointing.

I'd be kidding myself if I thought I didn't occasionally annoy. I've met people a little too like myself (or, worse, like earlier permutations Our Bold Hero has grown out of) and, well, I can't stand them. Where would be the fun in a world full of Dans? I couldn't get away with sentences like that one, in a world full of Dans.

So maybe I need a cause, one that transcends universal imperfectitude. Or maybe I need to be driven. It's o.k. to be full of unfocused anger if you're driven. I could be another angry writer, swilling gin and typing furiously, his mouth twisted upwards in distaste.

I should have been a pair of ragged claws…

Anyways, if you can't solve the problem (bizarre and seemingly sourceless anger) then just ignore it. Remember when daddy punched the referee? Basically, I'm going to play Zelda before Jonas snatches up the controller.

Later.

The Fabulous Salons of Lawrence

Decided in Shakespeare today that The Taming of the Shrew is a poorly constructed play. The characters in the "induction" are never returned to, and the tamed shrew is at odds with every other character in the play, because she's the only one who actually undergoes a permanent change.

Petruchio, by-the-by, goes waaaaay too far. His methods are a bit too extreme, and the result, the tamed Katharina, is waaaaay too meek to ever actually be enjoyable. But I guess Petruchio doesn't care about love, as long as she stays out of his way. "Wive it wealthily in Padua" indeed.

The whole class, amazingly enough, seems to agree with me about the poor construction. The Poet went so far as to say that she didn't like the play at all.

Tonight we watched a pretty boring episode of Survivor and, once the room had filled-up with U-Frisbee types, the always-entertaining movie Ghost World.

Thankfully, the post-movie conversation revolved around violence, mastrubation, and racism. I continue to marvel at Jubb, a Montanan U-Frisbee player who looks vaguely like a muscular Jack Black. His anecdotes are always incredibly colorful. It's like talking to my hetero-life-buddy Larson, who also seems to live in some more exciting version of my world.

The Cheerful Cynic, as black and easygoing as ever, demonstrated that he really was the whitest little black boy in town by taking a horribly elitist suburbanite attitude towards "hick towns" like Waupaca, Appleton (pop. 70,000+), and most of Montana.

I tried to crush his spirit by pointing out that urban elitism is no better, and really, no different, than the parochial attitude of the little towns The Cheerful Cynic was dismissing, but I couldn't pronounce "parochial" so, when I finally got my divine wisdom out, it sounded weird and out of place.

If you consider your city the epitome of western civilization, and never think beyond its borders, it doesn't matter to me how many people who live near: you're narrowminded. Take that, New York, you pompous city. Everyone doesn't love you.

Well, that's not true. I guess I'll end up living in a big city like New York someday, in an apartment overlooking a dirty alley. That's the dream, at least.

So then we questioned The Cheerful Cynic's horrible definition of "hicks" (people who live around "hicks" have a different conception of them than, say, people from the suburbs of Chicago). He said something about people who hunt being hicks, and Sockless Pete, the occasionally-incorrect but always-certain guy from my British Writers I class last year, added that guns make hickdom a bit more likely.

Well, I think we all agreed to that, but didn't want to dismiss outright the Republican Red parts of America, so we argued on for a while. We convinced Sockless Pete that many hicks had Confederate flags on their cars, but, like every thinking human being ever confronted with this fact, he could neither believe nor understand that midwestern hicks would identify with the Confederacy.

My theory is that our hicks are poser-hicks, trying to be from the South. Much like our goths are poser-goths, trying to be European, or something. I still haven't quite figured that bit out. But then again, maybe everyone is a poser. I hope we can find the last remaining original.

Yesterday almost the exact same group saw Spirited Away and enjoyed it. That was my first time seeing that movie on the big screen, and while it wasn't as magical as seeing the movie for the first time, seeing everything clearly (and not on some divx) was worth it.

Well, it's late and I'm just rambling. Also, my feet are cold. Later.

Life In The Counter-Culture

A month ago I got a web counter, partially to make sure that certain people hadn't figured out how to access this site from back in Brainerd, what with my occasional indiscretions and all. I'm still not sure how comfortable I am with it. It's a little rainbow thing on the bottom of the page.

Honestly, it was nice to see that there's a decent number of people at least aware of this site; that tells me that my writing is occasionally enjoyable and that people are willing to read it. I've gotten over a thousand hits so far, which is far more than enough for my ego.

Also interesting, and just basically hilarious, is how people get to this site. I'm the number one "Dan's Webpage" on Google, but people also get here searching "webpage of naked girlfriend", "dan haircut", "everyone loves a german girl", "virtual kiddie porn"…

Not to mention my personal favorite: "why feminism is a farce."

These people make up most of the hits, which is part of the reason I'm considering losing the counter. I don't care (or at least I believe that I shouldn't care) that I'm getting however many visitors, except to the extent that it reflects on my ability to attract an audience. These random hits, well, they're meaningless.

And I think I might be better off being altogether oblivious, on the off chance that the numbers take a drastic dive.

Spring Term! Whoo!

So I never have to get up before eleven.

My earliest class is Contemporary German Literature and Politics, a discussion class filled with the usual batch of timid German-minor types and occasional, much-scarier-looking German-majors. Every foreign language seems to have a few weird language-junkies that I'd rather not interact with, even though I inevitably do.

And that class'll be a lot of work. Still, it looks like interesting stuff. Four thick books and plenty of movies. Sonnenalle, the movie we started watching yesterday, is pretty good. It's set in East Berlin, in the eighties, and looks and feels like a lost German episode of Freaks and Geeks.

My other MWF class, Satire, while be wonderful. Prof Goldgar started the class by giving the only definition of satire that everyone can agree on: satiric writing is always an attack. Writing with teeth.

"The class," the old-school Prof continued, "will be a mix of lecture and "guided discussion"… which means… lecture."

The class has a few familiar faces: Earl of Kavanaugh, the talkative royalist who seems to be majoring in Goldgar; The Postmodernist from my Fiction Writing class; and of course Rock Show Girl, who's just as excited as I am to be in a class reading Catch-22, A Clockwork Orange, and the bizarre Snow White.

Shakespeare, my Tuesday-Thursday class, is also going to be interesting. It's taught by Prof Bloom, who is basically my conception of a new-school professor. Discussion-heavy classes, canon-questioning, and different, feminist, or even antagonistic interpretations of the text. I kind of like her classes; I don't feel obligated to choose sides in the new-school/old-school debate.

I'm in that class with The Sentimentalist and a scrawny percussionist, both of whom could become very annoying. Also a potential threat: the lone freshman, who looks just like the girl from Final Destination. Haven't seen that movie? Too bad, you should. She seemed a little egotistical, but we'll see.

Free Spirit is in the class, as well as The Poet. And I'm back with The Idyllist for the first time since Freshmen Studies.

We spent most of the two-hour class period talking about Authorial Intent, or, as many people in that class would call it, The Intentional Fallacy. So many people seemed willing to throw intent out the window (Does who Shakespeare is really affect his plays?) that I had to support the hard line (Yes.) until they compromised. The Poet backed me up, though.

So it's going to be a pretty good term. More work than anticipated… way more work. And Zelda. But we'll see. Whoo!

Headline From A German Newspaper

American Tourist Found Dead, Ignorant

An American tourist was found dead earlier today; authorities believe that the tourist, Mark Johnson of San Francison, was killed sometime yesterday just a few blocks from the police station.

According to eyewitnesses, Johnson had finished several liters of beer at a nearby bar and was in the process of walking to a youth hostel when three assailents advanced on him in a menacing fashion.

After a short and stilted conversation with Johnson in broken English, the three Turks proceeded to beat the young American to death with nearby objects.

Witnesses congregated nearby as Johnson incoherently implored them to help.

"It was awful," observed Peter Reinheld, one of ten witnesses. "It was a slaughter. German grammar never even had a chance."

Asked why they did nothing, local residents blame Johnson, whose poor understanding of German left them confused and irritated.

"He was shouting "Helf mich!", Helf mich!"," complained Mary Eisengard, who watched the entire beating, "Now you tell me: what does that even mean? It's nothing but gibberish to me. I mean, eigentlich!"

Leander Schollschuler, head of the Linguistics department at the University of Freiberg, explained. "Johnson was attempting to cry for help using the German phrase "Hilf mir", but while he understood that the imperative, "command" form was necessary in so dire of situation, he forgot that "helfen" is an irregular verb. "Hilf" would have been the correct German equavalent for "help"."

"Furthermore," continued Schollschuler, "Johnson seems to have forgotten that "helfen" is a dative verb. So while he would usually be right in changing "Ich", I, to the accusative form "mich", me, in this case he needed to use the dative form, "mir". Or, of course, he could have avoided all this trouble by shouting "Hilfe!", a shorter German word similar to the English "help!"."

"Really," added Schollschuler, "Johnson's poor grammar is as much to blame for his death as the men who killed him."

The onlookers agree. "How was I supposed to understand that guy?" said Henrich Ottonbaum, "The entire plea for help was horribly conjugated… and that accent!"

Ingrid Meisterbrauer, the first witness on the scene, told an even more tragic story. "At one point, when the Turks grabbed a nearby pipe at starting swinging at the tourist, he shouted out "Ah! Pfeife!" and I almost burst out laughing. I mean, "pfeife" is a pipe you smoke with. That nasty lead thing was a "Leitung". I mean, could a "pfeife" have cracked open his skull like that?"

While the grammatical errors that led to this crime have been identified, worried authorities are quick to note that this is but one of many recent grammar-related deaths, or "Grammatikstode" to befall English-speaking tourists.

Obermeister Oberman is quick to caution non-native speakers: "Remember, a German-English dictionary can save your life. Use it."