So now that Deep Throat has been identified, the most influential person whose name we don't know is clearly LU streak 2005 at hotmail dot com, who has taken it upon his or herself to organize this year's streak. I've been conducting a whisper campaign for '80s-style streaking (yes, that's the shame talking) for weeks, but someone needed to take it to the next level.

For those of you who don't know, the Senior Streak is an annual event that has been going on for… well, the The Lawrentian doesn't usually print an issue this late in the year, so who knows, really. Certainly streaking itself has been a Lawrence tradition since the '60s. And it's a tradition worth saving. As I blogged a few years ago:

The Senior Streak isn't just a yearly stunt by graduating seniors; it's an expression of freedom and equality. For once, the Morlocks and the Eloi were cheered together; everyone gutsy enough to bare all was praised. It was a brief moment in time where (disregarding the calculating leers of the more opportunistic audience members) looks no longer mattered. Because if they had, none of us would have been cheering that often.

I might add that it's also a bit of a protest, since the administration doesn't seem to like the idea. The streak is (traditionally) the same night as the Senior Dinner, so people get plastered there to save money at the VR, and in the past some people have gotten a little too drunk. Also, the Appleton police, who keep the local lookie-lous away and the naked Lawrentians out of the city, were until recently under the impression that it was a campus-sponsored event, which embarrassed Lawrence.

So odd that a school that's usually so relaxed about any number of things decided to care about this. LU streak 2005 was smart enough to use or (what amounts to the same thing) claim to be using someone else's computer; last year the administration tapped the organizer's email and tried to track her/him down.

The question remains: who is this mysterious organizer? I'd love to be a suspect, but we all know I'm all talk, too lazy to take charge of something like this.

But the relatively well-written email, with its playful tone ("therefore, let us shed our clothes […] and scamper around campus") could only have come from a few dozen people in our class. All I'm willing to say for sure is that the provocateur is probably a girl: most guys wouldn't use such giddy polysyndeton ("years and years and years") or say they had to "pirate a computer."

Who had the motive, the know-how, and the writing voice to do such a thing? I can think of a few people, and maybe I'll find out tomorrow, or maybe not.

Whoever it was, mark well her words: "Don't let this tradition die!"

Coming back (all too early) from the library today, I was attacked by a crazed seagull between Main Hall and Science Hall. The first time I thought it was coincidence, but it kept on cawing and swooping really low, right at me. I kept walking but it kept getting lower and lower.

Frankly, I don't know how I'd go about fighting a bird. Do I cover my eyes? Do I just swing with both fists and knock it to the ground? No, I'm not trained for this.

After the third attack, I decided that this wasn't a coincidence, and I looked around for eggs or little seagulls or fish and there was nothing there.

Because seagulls are incapable of evil I gave the bird the benefit of the doubt and picked up the pace. The seagull followed me and swooped again, and that's when I shouted "What the hell?" and started laughing, attracting the attention of a few passerby. It came at me again but banked up and flew away when I ran next to Science Hall.

I could write about how much writing I didn't get done and how much work I have yet to do, but that's probably the most interesting thing that's happened to me in a while.

And it beats out Zack's 30-minute Illuminati win this Friday as the most inexplicable event in recent memory. There's been some tough competition in that category this May. I'm tempted to make a list.

No Monday night VR club tonight, the bar was closed. It was probably for the best.

Yesterday, against my better judgment, I decided to watch the first four episodes of Revelations, a show the Politician had me download for him this term. It seems to me like it's trying to be a sort of West Wing for Christian fundamentalists.

I'm all for trashy fun (I hope to see Mindhunters at the cheapseats sometime soon) but I can see why Revelations was cancelled: The writers seem to have "Carter's sight," a debilitating form of myopia which causes the patient to become effectively blind to future episodes. The patient's behavior becomes increasingly erratic, as he writes with at best a dim sense of the story arc. This is the most advanced case I've seen to date: individual episodes are logically irreconcilable.

What follows deserves a SPOILER ALERT.

What really bothered me was the poor characterization. The prison inmates are putty in the hands of a satanist, the Harvard astrophysicist spouts vague nonsense to a filled classroom, a father who's just lost a second child has no problem coming to work hours later.

In one of the last episodes I watched, a news report on a new star mentions skeptics who claim it's just an optical illusion. Those are some skeptics, because the camera pans over a geothermal map of the star during the reporter's voiceover. Also, the Vatican wants to hush up the fact that Jesus (who most of the characters refer to with the more formal "Christ," btw) is on Earth because the pope would lose his moral authority.

The theology is horrible. Several episodes in, the nun looking for a miracle child casually mentions that it might be the Antichrist (as indeed the first messiah should be, if I remember my Revelations correctly) and asks if a DNA test (or perhaps a routine soul smear?) could tell Christ from Antichrist. Apparently it can, because the devil, enraged, tries to drop a cross on her. That said, the baby Antichrists have horns so DNA testing might not be necessary. The nun is also a firm believer in a very ancient heresy the name of which I can't find, it's the one where evil can win if we don't tip the scales in God's favor.

The only really enjoyable part was occasionally seeing Martin Starr, "Bill" from the one of the best television shows ever made, as the nerdy intern. He's the only character I don't dislike, really the only believable one at that. Though as of episode four it looks like he's going to go rescue some nuns. Let's lock and load!

Yeah, it's a train wreck. But I cannot look away.

There are bunnies everywhere.

So many bunnies. Whatever happened to Lawrence's trademark giant spiders?

While we were discussing novice writer Cinnamon's latest work in Fiction Writing on Tuesday, I brought up the age issue created by the story's five-year time jumps.

Other people were also interested in the old "write what you know" dilemma and after minimal prodding Prof. Dintenfass went off on one of his trademark stemwinders, explaining how difficult it is to pull off that kind of thing. He mentioned the long tradition of heavily researched bestsellers, which he dated back to (and implicitly blamed on) James Michener.

I laughed at the name, because Michener books are basically just facts with a thin veneer of plot to justify them, but apparently I was the only person in that class who'd heard of the guy. Yeah.

That's up there with the reaction to my casual mention of gonzo journalism last year, apropos of a Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas poster. The atmosphere of the room became stiflingly flabbergaseous.

Is it so crazy to expect people who claim to care about fiction (and who, on the whole, write as good or better than I do) to know something about fiction? Michener was quite popular in his day (my house has a few Micheners lying around) and without him we probably wouldn't have the popular fiction trinity of Crichton, Clancy, and Grisham.

Question. Where I am allowed to draw the line between tragic but coincidental ignorance (like, say, not knowing what color a black squirrel is, or how circumcision works) and a damning lack of intellectual curiosity? The latter is far more serious, but it still seems snobby to criticize ignorance of any sort. Stupid anti-elitism.

There might not be a line, I suppose. I found out, well into the 2004 election cycle, that my boss at Scripps hadn't heard of blogs. I gave him a crash course and, intrigued, he researched for half an hour before going back to work. Was that coincidental, or should I have expected him to know, in the morally significant sense of "expected"?

I'm not sure if I can ever expect anyone to know anything (unless I'm critiquing a text, in which case I think the author — who doesn't quite have the same reality as a real person would — should know quite a bit), and I'm not sure I like that.

No really. Where does it stop? Can I fault a native speaker of English for using "decimate" incorrectly, or pronouncing "prescriptivist" like "perscriptivist"? Must a citizen know how to vote? Is there an obligation to know one's elected representatives, and if so, down to what level? The Politician is always saying that local politics affect us more. Ignorance of what authors would justify not hiring a professor for a teaching position? If I can't remember which philosopher or theorist first formulated a theory of ignorance, should I be talking about the subject at all?

We have obligations to know certain things when that knowledge is necessary to perform our jobs, I think that's clear, but can we be faulted for a lack of intellectual curiosity about our hobbies, our interests, and the various other ways we define ourselves to others?

My short, elitist answer is yes, but like Mark Liberman's WTF grammar, I'm deciding whether something is an error based on the reaction of the ignorant party. The uninformed Scripps journalist realized that yes, it just might matter, and a'researching he went. An obviously incidental lapse, impossible to avoid.

Do I know everything about the things I care to know about? Since I might be misinterpreted otherwise (take that!), I'll forgo the usual ironic self-aggrandizing and say: no, no I don't. But it's in my best interest to know more about most of the stuff I enjoy, since it usually increases my enjoyment, so I've been learning about topics like modernism (in school) and cyberpunk (on my own time) for a while now.

And what about people who just don't care about anything that much, who take a shallow interest in a wide variety of activities?

There's a word for that, look it up.

Best exchange of the day:

Our Bold Hero: Oh, could I have my mug for this? I'm [number].
Barkeep: Sure… let's see… "Are you patronizing me?"
Our Bold Hero: Yes.

The worst exchange, by the way, was at lunch today. We were mired in one topic (Celine's alcoholism) and just couldn't seem to get loose. It was the most forced conversation I've had in a while, and my conversation-saving question "What are your black socks?" didn't help matters much.

But who cares. So often lately I get the sense that people want me to fall into this awkward guy role just because they feel awkward and want to displace the blame. Usually I consent, as I did today in the hopes of dislodging Celine, but I wonder if I'm just reinforcing a stereotype; people can't usually tell the difference between my performative and my real awkwardness.

Meh. Fresh start soon enough. I inevitably tweak my personality around a new group, I don't see why that wouldn't happen when I go to Chicago in September. For now I'll just enjoy Lawrence.

Went to the VR tonight, as my introductory anecdote might suggest. That was pretty cool; it seemed like forever since I'd split a pitcher with someone. And I watched THX 1138 with Sockless Pete, Ben, and an ambivalent (and eventually absent) Freshman Matt. It was a good enough movie; I'd recommend it to anyone who wants to see George Lucas' state-of-nature artistic pretensions. One of the best ideas was the budget restriction on the manhunt.

Also, with the right attitude you could give it an antagonistic reading as a rip-roaring buddy comedy. Finally, a use for theory.

First of all, everyone should start using FetchBook, an internet service I might be in love with. And I thought Bartleby was the one.

Since I tend to keep my books rather than return them to Conkey's, it makes sense for me to shop online. Though if I'm buying used books, well, it's way more enjoyable to do that in the real world, browsing in a dimly-lit store without a clue what I'll find.

I used to admire the pricing restrictions Germans place on bookstores. Everyone has to sell at list, so that Barnes and Noble can't muscle out the competition. But some of us actually have a book budget, and higher prices mean less books — that's why I don't own Joseph Epstein's Snobbery or Murakami's Hard-Boiled Wonderland. I've been a dollar away from getting Snobbery.

Moreover, though I can't be certain it's related, it does strike me as odd that in the four months I lived in Freiburg, and the three I spent in Konstanz, I didn't see one used bookstore. Have the caring capitalists spawned a market failure?

Only suckers pay list.

Now there's a T-shirt. It would probably sell better than my election-boycott bumper stickers. I guess some people have no respect for democracy.

Anyways. Last night was the senior party, off-campus for reasons I still think are stupid. Except for the raffle drawing, which I suspect was rigged, and a few free appetizers, the Bar-on-the-Ave didn't have much to offer. After some undue hesitation we left for Cleo's, Appleton's answer to the Samoan pub.

It's Christmas every day, in Cleo's. And basically every other holiday too, judging by the many shiny decorations. Zack and I stayed at the bar and nursed dirty snowballs while the rest of the group filled up a nearby table.

I liked Meg(h)an's suggestion that Cleo's is a good approximation of what Jinx's brain probably looks like. Edifying.

The rest of the night for me, despite stops at the VR and the Greenfire party, was a long winding-down. I had to turn in a pretty extensive annotated bibliography the next day (today) at noon and couldn't really relax until 11:59 this morning.

Lots of fun reading about Chomsky's linguistic theory though, and not only because one critic — Stanley Fish if that name means anything to you — accused him of foundationalism, i.e. theory fascism.

Surprisingly good. And it's lots of fun to see the bad guys win. I was the only person laughing -- unless you count Jinx, who was no doubt laughing over at screen seven -- at a ton of parts.

Also, props to Ben and Sockless Pete, our official screen eight representatives, who took home tons of great loot for winning the opening night trivia contest.

Got my camera today, and it's pretty disapointing. I can coax it into taking good pictures but the ones from my old camera (which, coincidentally, I managed to fix) are often better despite the megapixel gap.

Why? Because my old Sony P-72 is waaaaay smarter than my Sony S-40, which, unlike all the other 4 megapixel digital cameras I've used, has trouble taking clear or good-looking pictures without a lot of handholding. Since I have no need and really no desire to own an inferior camera when my old one works just fine, I'm going to try and return the new one, which should be good for a month's rent in Appleton.

Three hours until I leave for Star Wars. I'm trying to finish a story on the Islam lecture I attended yesterday (before running off to the English Department picnic) for The Lawrentian before I go.

And though I assure you that, having studied the Quran, I'm trying to keep my actual story free of errors and bias, I'd like to go on the record as saying that Islam is the craziest of the three major monotheistic religions. You'd have to believe that more than one person was lying to doubt the truth of the Torah or New Testament (unless you believe Moses wrote the Pentateuch, I guess).

Also, prophet-specific polygamy and the satanic verses.

There. Now back to pure sweet objectivity. Click.

I can't write. I've spent a lot of time recently at the library, staring at the screen, and I just don't have the motivation to continue my current story — a pastiche about bloggers in a post-apocalyptic society — past twelve double-spaced pages. I haven't cared about Post for almost a month now.

And yet I can't come up with a new idea that interests me either. So I'm concentrating on all my other classes and letting the 50-page deadline creep ever closer.

Right now I've got two potential sources of inspiration: either I make a bet with Ol' Layout to write something outlandish for Lawrence Literati points, or I mine my subconscious for ideas.

Ah, my dreams. I've been having the strangest dreams lately. I know that, as a general rule, other people's dreams are among the least interesting things in the world, except where they can be interpreted in interesting ways — take for example Jubb's recent dream, where he's living with the pope on the only cannibal-free island in a post-Apocalyptic world, and the pope forsakes God and starts worshiping crocodiles — but, well, I find these dreams interesting and no one's forcing you to read any of this. So so there.

In the same vein as Jubb's space pope, my dreams recently have been incredibly vivid sci-fi fantasies. I'll give you the two most memorable, for brevity's sake:

Dream 1: I'm inside a body, possibly my own, with a sidekick of some sort. I think it was either a wookiee or a robot. An alien race — which, probably because I'd spent the night exploring Graham's legendary people page with the Wayback Machine, was known as the Voerds — had constructed a base inside and we were trying to infiltrate and destroy it.

The Voerds are disgusting by the way. Like slimy flesh-toned versions of the Alien from Alien. They have huge disturbingly phallic heads for which I blame a week of Michel Foucault.

At some point my sidekick gets captured, and I'm opening all the steel doors in this prison hallway to look for him. Most of the rooms just have random Lawrentians chatting, oblivious to their imprisonment as far as I can tell.

Dream 2: I suspect that this one took place on Mars, because of all the tonal and thematic similarities to Ray Bradbury's short story "August 2002: Night Meeting." Wandering about one starry night, I end up with a group of progressively stranger companions. The second to last one is a mysterious Frenchman, who smokes a cigar with a nickel hidden inside. Somehow this protected the cigar if anyone should steal it, because they could only smoke it up to the nickel.

The last companion was a burly but nervous-looking type, more foreign-seeming than even the surrender monkey. He was a berserker, as we figured out in the next scene.

I shudder to think that my subconscious is cribbing from Dean Koontz's Seize the Night, but that's really the best explanation for my dream logic in the scene that followed: a demonic pterodactyl with a small head, beady red eyes, rectangular wings, and a very long neck and tail came from the fifth dimension and started menacing us. The berserker, apparently familiar with the beasts, somehow jumped on top of it and started attacking it.

There, that wasn't so hard. If only they weren't narrative fool's gold so that I could actually use them to write a story with. Ah yes, I know. Look at the precious "artist" with his "integrity."

Speaking of which, a bunch of us watched George Lucas' Clone Wars tonight in preparation for the midnight showing tomorrow. It wasn't as bad of movie as I'd remembered, maybe because I wasn't with a theater-full of fans who cheered at the worst [non-C3PO] parts and I knew to brace myself whenever Anakin was pitching woo.

I'm still impressed by every scene on the cloners' planet, except the one where he uses the Force to open an automatic door. Yeah, I used to do that to, but I grew out of it.

And, for whatever reason, I found myself wondering at Yoda's language, which seemed even stranger than usual. Linguist Geoffrey Pullum, required reading in my "The English Language" class, has analyzed the jedi master's syntax over at Language Log, but some of his sentences in that movie just don't make sense (i.e. "sound like Yoda in the original movies") to me. Prime example: "To the command center take me," a rare case of imperative-mood Yoda-speak; he'd be better off saying that in Standard English.

New camera tomorrow? High hopes.

Rubik's Cube party last night at Jinx and Jagger's. Come with three colors, leave in one. Hilarious.

Meh. The extroverts seem to have had fun, as you'd expect — the party was basically a contest to see who could be the center of attention for the longest period of time — but I snuck out after an hour, equal parts bored and annoyed. Maybe I hadn't been drinking enough.

But the pre-party activities rocked the proverbial socks.

First there was Illuminati. I was the Society of Assassins, a group I only know how to play defensively. So I used my powers of neutralization to try and stop Alan (Gnomes) and Sockless Pete (Bavarians), the obvious threats.





I managed to convince my broken camera (a replacement should arrive next week) to take a blurry picture of the game. From left to right: Zack, Alan, Sockless Pete, and Ben. Alan won, again.

Our actual pre-party a few hours later was a blast from the past. Ben and I had at various times and in various states of inebriation resolved to hang out more, and there was really no better activity for the two of us than our beloved Mariokart Drinking Game.





I accidentally told more people about the game than could actually play it, but thankfully they couldn't come. The beauty of the nonvitation. As you can see, the other two players were the Politician and Rock Show Girl.

For those who don't know the (simple) rules, which work with any version of the game:

Mariokart Drinking Game
1. Get hit by a turtle shell (green, red, blue, large) and you have to drink.
2. If you fire a blue shell you have to drink.
3. If you place first you can send one of your drinks to someone else.
4. If you place first and don't have any drinks to send, everyone else has to take a shot.

It was a very nostalgic experience, especially since — as was the case so often last year — the only thing we had to drink was vodka and Kool-Aid. Cursed historical accuracy.

Scary to think that nostalgia is already encrusting my relationships at Lawrence. Only four weeks to go, and I'm not sure how much can really happen in a month when you're cloistered at the library writing fiction.

Yesterday was my last night at The Lawrentian. Believe me, I would have taken a few pictures if my camera wasn't so very broken. I have to stop dropping expensive things I love.

It was me, the girl who replaced Representative Man as editor-in-chief, my former coworker Ol' Layout, who stopped by to check up on us and stayed a while, and a new layout editor who I may despise. Ol' Layout, wisely, chose to leave after a few hours.

The rest of us were stuck there until 6:15. With the exception of Jubb's girlfriend Amelia II, no one had their stuff done before the deadline. So I blame everyone. Especially the layout editor, who was both whiny and unskilled. He tendered his resignation before the night was out.

Complaining aside though, I never got that tired. Even walking home, the new day so obviously upon us, I wondered if I shouldn't just stay up.

Instead, I went to sleep and missed both my classes.

I feel more nostalgic than tired, and not only because last night reminded me of those first nights at the Lawrentian, when sunrises were a common sight. No, it's hard to underestimate the importance of The Lawrentian to me in the past year I've worked there. I had this whole other group of people, some of whom I like quite a bit, completely separate from my day-to-day activities.

(Brainerdites might note that I tend to do that anyways.)

What's more, at the Lawrentian, my English geekness and obsessive-compulsiveness -- which usually just alienate me from the group in everyday conversation -- became useful, even appreciated. If I ultimately assumed duties far greater than a copy chief should have, it's because I ended up really caring about what went into each issue; if anything, I regret not taking a more active role in the newspaper here. There are so many good stories at Lawrence that never get in the paper, usually due to writer laziness or general ineptitude.

For a year now, if I was frustrated with regular Lawrence society -- as I often am -- I could go to Mursell House on Wednesdays and enter a different world with different priorities. I'll miss that.

And there was pizza. That also deserves a mention.

Excerpt from an interview in Germany's Spiegel magazine:

SPIEGEL: Do you see it as your job to recruit new followers for Scientology?

Tom Cruise: I'm a helper. For instance, I myself have helped hundreds of people get off drugs. In Scientology, we have the only successful drug rehabilitation program in the world. It's called Narconon.

SPIEGEL: That's not correct. Yours is never mentioned among the recognized detox programs. Independent experts warn against it because it is rooted in pseudoscience.

Cruise: You don't understand what I am saying. It's a statistically proven fact that there is only one successful drug rehabilitation program in the world. Period.

SPIEGEL: With all due respect, we doubt that.

I know mocking Scientology hasn't been popular since we all stopped visiting Something Awful, in fact, I think we've reached the point where everyone who's going to be convinced that it's crazy has been convinced, and everyone else is committed to the nonsense.

Still, it's nice to see an unjustified belief come up against old-fashioned (and no, not that kind of old-fashioned) German common sense.

"Do you mock religion?" asked theSpark.com, once.

And reading period slips away. As usual, I spent at least one night hanging out with Jinx and Rock Show Girl, trying to think of something exciting to do and failing.

Two highlights remain: the first was the Tasty Beer party on Friday.

The second was Cinco de Mayo, the night before. I watched Stargate with Ben, Zack, and Sockless Pete — who, as I should have remembered, isn't the best person to watch a movie with if he's seen it and you haven't. We have different definitions of "obvious."

Stargate is a big deal. I have tried to watch that movie probably a half dozen times since it came out, only to be thwarted time and time again, mostly by confusion with the Sci-Fi channel's crappy "Stargate: SG1."

When a girl in my "The English Language" class confessed a few weeks ago that Stargate was why she took linguistics — the hero is a linguist, albeit an especially daft one for reasons I won't go into here — I vowed to see it this schoolyear.

After a few attempts, I had succeeded. So when Zack and Sockless Pete wanted to leave for the bars and finish the movie later, I had a crisis of conscience. I stayed to watch the last half with Ben, promising to meet up with them later, and that was definitely the right decision. I haven't had that much fun watching popcorn sci-fi since The Fifth Element, and this movie had a less cheesy ending.

There was a lunch on Saturday for President Beck's installation, and I told Prof. Hoffmann that she was drunk. It was obvious I was joking, so I'm pretty sure I didn't cross a line. But even I'm surprised that I'm comfortable enough around one of my English professors to just make a joke like that.

Once the Frisbee people left after the luncheon I wasted my reading period with Wikipedia. My German independent study project is on Arthur Schnitzler, and his entry there was embarrassingly tiny. So I had to rewrite that. But I couldn't write a decent biography without mentioning his association with the group Young Vienna, so I had to make an entry for that. And then some of the other members of the group didn't have anything written for them…

And so on. Alan actually encouraged me, which might make him a terrible person.

I need structure if I'm going to be obsessive-compulsive: each issue of The Lawrentian needs to be published at some point, every video game has an end. Wikipedia is my downfall, to borrow one of Jenna's constructions.

I had to cut myself off, and it's hard because I know that there's a bunch of stuff I could still add. This summer, probably.

So now, with next to nothing accomplished, I'm going to have to cloister myself in the library this week. It's hard get anything done spring term. Not that I'm in danger of getting a tan or anything.

Last night, in anticipation of Logan's b-day on Sunday, Jubb and I invited all our beer-swilling friends for a tasty beer mixer. Everyone bought a six pack of good beer and traded five of theirs for five different beers from other people.

Jubb has agreed to give me partial credit for the idea.





Here are my ladies, good beers all.

I thought I'd only had three beers all night, but in actuality I had five, a cavalcade of different beer styles. I started with a Reissdorf kölsch, my pre-party beer, then had a Hacker-Pschorr dunkelweizen, then a Hoegaarden witbier I traded with Jubb for and mixed with Cola because it's delicious, a Köstritzer schwarzbier from my own six-pack, and finally one of Zack's Theakston Old Peculier old ales.

Only the last beer was a disappointment.

This was probably one of the most expensive parties we've had all year. Combined, the guests spent easily $100 on good beer. And amazingly, there's leftover beer.

So obviously I'm satisfied. I wish I could have gotten through my six-pack, of course — I have two mystery beers left — but I am what I am.

So I've been in a dark mood all week, in desperate need of a good rage dump. I really don't understand it, but let's just all count ourselves lucky that I don't have Lullaby-style mental powers.

Thank god the Lawrentian pushed out the jive. I'll miss this job.

Went home this weekend. Everyone who could be was there, of course.

I picked up Adam and Jenna in the Cities and soon enough was on the biggest misadventure I'd ever had in the Deathtrap. We missed three turns, mainly because I was talking to Adam, who I rarely see these days, and not paying attention to the road.

These accidental detours added another two hours to the drive, a possible counterargument to the old claim that time harmlessly enjoyed is not time wasted. Needless to say, everyone had the right to mock my driving for the weekend.

Surreal coming home for something like this.

I was supposed to die first, you know. We'd agreed on that. Tragic auto accident at 24, in the Deathtrap of course. Manney, inspired by a scene in Requiem for a Dream, chose drug deal gone wrong at 27.

I rush to note that we were just joking around. That was way back in the day, when 24 seemed impossibly remote. Twenty-seven was the kind of thing you could joke about. And Manney loved inappropriate jokes, if you were clever about it.

So this weekend was strange. I kept wanting to make jokes, fill the void with the kind of stuff I'd imagine Manney might have said. At the Andersons, for example, we made fun of his driving. It's all so ridiculous, that he's just suddenly gone.

It's been hard to write anything since I found out about Manney, and I can't really think of anything to say about the service that would be appropriate. I think Manney would have appreciated not only what people said but how they said it. Graham read some of what he'd written on his webpage. Manney's sister called him easy-on-the-eyes.

The worst speaker was of course the pastor, the person who knew Manney the least. Manney was just one-of-a-kind, and you had to know him for the words to fit. Maybe it's just the atheist in me talking, but her sermon sounded hollow.

For the rest of the weekend everyone was together again, doing the stuff we always do, talking about Manney like he's in the next room. There were a lot of people using the present tense, slipping into it without thinking. And drifting into normal conversation only to fall silent suddenly and for a while.

And there were moments like in the movies. Looking out the window at Jane's, watching all the people in gray smoking by the shore. I wish it had been warmer, I would've climbed the middle school again. Had an urban adventure.

I don't know if I'll ever do so many typical Brainerd things again; its sad purpose notwithstanding, so much of the weekend felt completely routine. We went to Rafferty's Pizza for dinner on Saturday and saw The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy later that night, for free of course. And Sunday morning we all ate at Perkins before heading back down.