I presented my project at our program's "Works in Progress" event yesterday, in the form of a very ugly PowerPoint presentation.

Although I couldn't practice it without stumbling at every sentence, once I actually got up in front of everyone, all my public speaking experience came flooding back and things went pretty well. I'm told that my "personality came through," a statement which raises no end of questions but probably refers to my use of self-deprecating humor.

Unfortunately, I tried to explain my entire thesis in the seven minutes allotted and ran out of time. So... no questions afterward, and that sucked. I was hoping for a chance to defend myself; in all honesty I think the stakes are higher for my paper than for a lot of others this year.

Afterwards people kept complimenting me on my presentation. Here are the possible reasons why:

1. It was a decent presentation.
2. I looked really nervous.
3. They knew what someone was talking about, finally.
4. They have blogs, and are encouraging me to cyberstalk them via RSS.

At Lawrence, I was always surprised whenever another student suddenly pulled out some hidden expertise — the bio major knows all about biology! — and even though here we're defined much more by our areas of study, "Works in Progress" gave me a similar feeling.

It reminds me of this great minor character in Babel-17: a bioengineered assassin who, besides having the super ninja powers you'd expect, is also programmed to hold forth on a single esoteric topic when necessary.

The presentations I saw tended toward the highly-specialized and impenetrable, but it was still interesting to see what other people had basically devoted their year to. Fragmented Babylonian poetry, the evangelical reception of The Passion of the Christ, still images in ethnography, IKEA floor displays, a woman who uses plastic surgery as performance art... these topics probably sound wiggity-wack to you, but for someone who's writing about blogs wiggity-wack is comforting.

Topic insecurity might actually explain various maphiosi's overuse of field-specific jargon when addressing a general audience. I actually felt a bit naked with practically no names to drop, though I did say that the blog was invented "in 1990, 1994, or 1997, depending on how you measure."

I know, I'm an arrogant ass and I need to push up my invisible glasses. But in my defense, I also got to use the phrase "turtles all the way down," thus satisfying a life-goal.

This is also the Week of the T-shirt. My parents sent me another checkered button-down earlier this week (how did they know?), and Friday the program leadership handed out our official, color-coded "Works in Progress" shirts alongside the pizza and beer.

Motto: "One Year... Four Letters... Unlimited Possibilities." There is no joke that hasn't already been made.

Fun fact: this moss-colored T-shirt makes me an official member of Team Jon, as we're apparently calling our precept now. Don't look at me, I suggested the Fighting Mongooses.

Today is significantly less productive than Friday, but I could hardly end "Tv Tuneout" week without a counter-revolutionary television binge. Half a season of Law and Order to go.

Everyone in the delivery business should read Snow Crash — sometimes the thought of Y.T. car-harpooning her way across town is the only thing keeping me sane when, oh, say, hypothetically, a cop on a mountainbike rides up behind me while I'm pushing 500 newspapers on the dolly and commands that I get "out of the way, big guy!"

For god sakes, it's a mountainbike! Just ride on some of that brand new UChicago grass for two seconds!

There was probably even room on the sidewalk.

Patronizing nicknames like "big guy," "sport," "buddy," "pal," "guy," "kid," and "champ," all of which I've been called, are easily my least favorite thing about the otherwise-great delivery business. I realize that this is just how a significant portion of America talks to strangers, but do they realize how incredibly rude they sound?

(This is very different, by the way, from my use of "kids" to refer to people roughly my own age or older. That's meant to be completely ironic. Likewise, I think "dude" is just an incredibly informal alternative to "sir.")

Also frustrating is the fact that there's nothing I can do about this. It's always some random guy who's duke of his own little world, and I never see him again. I know I could preempt the nicknames somewhat, by looking more imposing somehow or maybe by writing my name on my neck and forehead.

Whatever I do, I'm probably stuck with them for a few years yet, until these people who are ostensibly not insulting me realize that I'm too old for them to get away with it. Then I'll probably only hear patronizing nicknames in baitshops and traffic jams.

And what's a good response that's sufficiently patronizing, if I'm to fight fire with fire? "Will do, milord" seems too over-the-top.

Related: we have no good alternative to "you're welcome," which as a delivery guy I find both smarmy and stilted. But how else to respond when someone thanks me for a pizza or a pile of newspapers? Lately I've just been saying "yep" or nodding my head once, quickly.

Just watched Night Watch. It's fantastic.

Have I told you already, perhaps you've already noticed: my nostalgia problem. Roughly summarized: "you're living in the past, man."

I'm dangerously nostalgic. Maybe it's because the past is just easier for me to handle: it's familiar, charted, known. Or, alternately, it could be... some other reason.

In any case, my visit to Lawrence this weekend — walking the same paths, falling into the same rhythms — neatly demonstrates my nostalgia problem.

Roughly problematized: I write off the present and the immediate future. I did it for about six months at Lawrence, perhaps my entire five months in Freiburg, and I'm into a record-setting eights months here in Chicago.

One result of this mindset is that, barring some "random socialization" motivated mostly by guilt, I put so much store in the friends I already have that I don't put much effort into making new ones. I figure I have friends from the past, and in the long term I'm leaving anyways.

Even when I start to take a place seriously, both types of friend — the conventional "I enjoy hanging out with this person" category and that conceptual minefield that is my extra-special all-of-Lawrence-thinks-I'm-crazy "freund" category — seem to take far too long for me to make. When I eventually realize that someone is a friend, it seems like I'm moving on already.

This is especially ironic when you factor in my habitual snap-judgments. I know very quickly that I want to hang out with these people, and yet when did I start hanging out with Ben? Or feel comfortable alone in a room with Jubb?

Jubb actually waged quite the campaign to acclimate me, as I recall.

So it was natural that the first question the Politician asked me during his brief cameo this weekend — he retrieved three of us from a Co-op party as if we were soldiers trapped behind enemy lines — was the same question he's asked me, with varying responses, on any number of occasions:

"So, Dan, are we friends yet?"

I answered yes, but he'll probably ask again.

My introversion, cynicism, and paranoia all play no small role here, but this isn't about the things you don't like about me. Next you'll be demanding that I give up my beloved jean shorts, grow a mustache, and start working blue.

No, the lesson here is simpler: I need to appreciate what I have. Just as I wouldn't want my dozen-or-so totally jerkin' real friends around in every situation, I shouldn't just dismiss so many people who are regular friends, good acquaintances, or worse.

The Streber and I played a great game of chess this weekend, for example. Freshman Matt and I never hung out one-on-one, but he's a welcome addition to most group activities and he knows when to spike my straight-man sets.

As I recall, even the famed Ann of Stillwater, the archetypal good acquaintance, was fun to hang out with despite factors like her disapproval of Jubb and disagreement with me about some awful movie, maybe it was The Majestic. We might all be better off if we acknowledged the kernel of wisdom in her concept of the "weekend friend."

I don't mean to suggest that I've come to doubt my "freund" category, far from it. And I'm not about to stop judging people, even if I could. Nostalgia has simply made me more tolerant, and if this is where I'm going to end up, why not set out in that direction to begin with?

Or, alternately, it could be... that nostalgia has addled my brain.

Someone said this weekend that it was as if I'd never left. But the visit was bittersweet precisely because I had. Although I could fall into so many of the old rhythms, I could only approximate my life at Lawrence — I had left, not even this Lawrence but an irrevocable one. And I miss that Lawrence.

There are some differences that I noted with grim satisfaction. There are fewer good theme parties, for one thing, certainly nothing like the epic parties we used to throw once a month or so.

The school wasn't inscrutable, however. Downer food is still bland, Frisbee people still disappear at odd times to practice, Co-Op parties still have lousy wine. Lousy wine that gives you a cold because you didn't rinse out the cup.

Everyone is more or less how I remember them. Some have mellowed a bit.

And fun is still fun.

Friday night we played Illuminati. Apologies to Jonas, whom we hadn't played with largely because of my theory that people whom I hate playing Risk with would also suck the fun out of my favorite card game.

It was far from the best Illuminati game I've played (we need to develop the ability to talk and play, or else nascent parties will always end up distracting some of the players), but it was decent. Most of the blame for that terrible, terrible Risk game falls on his former roommate, apparently.

After the game and a brief grill run, we played King's Cup. Again, this wasn't our best game, but it was great to be playing with the right rules and people again. The Politician wasn't there, but it takes a long time to put on that much camo gear, and as it turns out I was eating at Perkins with him just a few hours later.

Ben's girlfriend Emna, whose participation in the game only provided further evidence that she was built by Ben, drank the cup. When I first walked into Brokaw she was playing Tony Hawk, so needless to say I'm downloading Weird Science right now.

I met several Lawrentian people at the Co-Op and elsewhere around campus this weekend: with all due respect to my successor, every time I look at that paper I wish I were still editing it. It was fun to see Layout and the Chief, but I couldn't track down my old old boss, the loutish Representative Man.

Not at Co-Op, not in the VR, not anywhere!

I spent a lot of time this weekend paling around with Jubb, who's still definitely Jubb. On Saturday a bunch of us played frisbee golf at Kaukauna, where I did not do well (36 over), despite some impressive drives. There was a Six-Pack Party (similar to our Tasty Beer Mixer) that night, and after procuring six bottles of precious, precious Kostritzer, I hung out in Ben and Freshman Matt's room with their de facto roommates, Alan and Emna.

Alan, the Politician and Our Bold Hero all sorely miss our political discussions, it's agreed.

Kids, Mariokart is fun even if you're not drinking, and I played a fair bit of that this weekend. This "hanging out and playing video games" tradition must be revived if I live in the Cities this summer.

The Six-Pack Party was pretty good; it folded early so that everyone could go to the bars or to other parties, which was nice because I hadn't yet been in the VR. Not quite the same without VR club, but a pitcher of very good beer was $8. Price-comparison this Friday.

It was at the VR that Belligerent Jubb (action figures coming soon) tried to poke me in the forehead and somehow managed to scratch me on the forehead and poke me in the eye. The ritual markings we'd seen in Alien vs. Predator earlier that day seemed suddenly prophetic.

Luckily we are Olympic-class roommates and all is now forgiven. Because it was traditional, I shared a room with Jubb during my stay, sleeping on his tiny tiny couch. For I am Our Bold Hero, he who sleeps on couches.

Leaving on Sunday I found myself mentally playing a more depressing version of the "Will I see this person again?" game I played back in high school. Back then I daydreamed about calling people out — the calling out is fast becoming a lost art these days — but this time, I just wonder what connections I'll never make again. Huzzah for Lawrence and thank goodness for reunions.

It was fun.

Well, not "done," but as Graham observed, now I've "written" it.

I finished hours ago, actually. Also: if I were David Vincent, the Invaders would be defeated by now. Maybe it's just because I grew up on The X-Files, but that man has a knack for forgetting about evidence.

I don't know why I keep linking to drafts, it's not like people are going to read a 28-page thesis twice. Unless you're trying to get mired in a conversation about blogs: wait a month.

And now to start paying attention to everything else again.

No adventure this weekend, as I'm under house arrest until I finish this thesis. Next weekend: believe the hype.

For anyone interested, I've posted my very careful blog definition on my research blog. The first paragraph is "is," the next four are "is not."

So it's official, I'm visiting Lawrence next weekend. Barring any Greyhound problems, I get in to Appleton at around 12:30 pm on Friday.

To mark the occasion, here are the correct, Politician-approved rules to King's Cup, a popular drinking game I learned at Lawrence. I've already written about my other two favorite Lawrence games.

Though I had trouble finding the rules when I was in Germany three years ago, I'm sure that by now there are a lot of different variations of this already available on the Internet. Still, you can rest assured that we have thoroughly honed these rules.

King's Cup

You'll need:
1 standard deck of cards, no jokers. mix them up in a pile.
Drinks and glasses and such. Everyone drinks whatever kind of alcohol they want.
1 "King's Cup," a large glass in the middle of the table. Mine is basically a vase.

On your turn, flip a card over without looking at it first. After the card is done, the next player draws, and so on until all the cards are gone.

Two (black) - send two drinks.
Two (red) - red dead. take two drinks.
Three (black) - send three drinks.
Three (red) - red dead. take three drinks.
Four - the last person to place four fingers of one hand flat on the table ("four on the floor") drinks.
Five - the last person to raise an open palm in the air ("five up high") drinks.
Six - the last person to touch their nose with their pointer finger drinks.
Seven - seven sentence. say the first word of a sentence. the next player says your word and then another word capable of building a sentence, and so on. first to forget a word in the sentence drinks.
Eight - make a rule. usually something that people have to keep doing or avoid doing, with a drink penalty for each infraction. unless your group likes punishment, new rules get rid of old ones.
Nine - nine, nine, bust a rhyme. go around finding rhymes for your chosen word until someone messes up and has to drink.
Ten - categories. give a category and an example. the first person who can't come up with something in your category drinks.
Jack - jack back. player before you drinks.
Queen - queen question. starting with the person who drew the card, players address questions to any other player. make sure it's clear who you're talking to. the first person who doesn't respond with a question loses.
King - pour as much of your drink as you'd like into the King's Cup; the person who draws the final king has to drink (and finish) the Cup.
Ace - toast. depending on how people are feeling, this can be either a social (everyone takes a drink) or a waterfall (everyone starts drinking at once. the person who drew the card can choose when to stop, but everyone else has to wait until the person before them stops.)

we usually resolve rules questions by general consensus, but here are some tips:

1. a drink is whatever you're comfortable with, but should be more than a sip.

2. for the seven (sentence), nine (rhyme), and ten (category), whatever the player picks has to be able to get around the table. for categories, the category has to be something that other people could conceivably know or guess. for sentence, every player has to pick a word that could conceivably be part of a longer sentence. anyone who messes this stuff up takes a drink, and the next player's turn starts.

3. if you doubt that a category, rhyme, or sentence can make it, the burden of proof is on the player. whoever is wrong drinks.

4. don't pretend that you're drinking on the waterfall. if you run out, set your empty glass down and let the players to either side of you connect the gap in the chain.

5. the only cards that need to be explained before the game are the four, five, six, and the queen. if you don't realize what's going on during the game... well, good luck to you sir.

So now I have the most amazing binder ever, courtesy of my "Academic and Professional Writing" course. Printed on the inside is style advice.

The lectures so far have been great. I find the course's entirely pragmatic approach to writing refreshing, though the vague terminology-for-people-who-hate-
terminology can get a bit frustrating. A subject and a verb form a "core," the subject should be a "character" and the verb should be an "action."

The language geek in me yearns for a more complicated classifactory scheme.

Tuesdays in small group I'm perpetually on the brink of destroying all productivity with my love of grammar, and ignorance of the same. I know enough to formulate somewhat esoteric technical questions, but not enough to give a quick and concrete definition of what I'm talking about.

I suppose someone could accuse me of asking such questions solely to look smart, but since they tend to end disastorously — or die stillborn when I suddenly think of the answer mid-sentence — I don't think they make me look like the most super of geniuses. No, I really just want to know the nuts and bolts.

Also, recent documents suggest that my writing program, codename Little Red Schoolhouse, is trying to destroy the adverb "notwithstanding." I'll keep you updated.

In other word-related news: Americans are apparently offended by the word spaz, which I've been using since I was eight. The dictionary calls it offensive slang, and when Tiger Woods recently called himself a spaz, American news outlets refused to print it. What year is this?

It seems to me that the only person whom Tiger Woods could've offended with his comment was himself — but apparently the very sight of "spaz" sends readers in conniptions.

I haven't been so baffled since, well, last week, when the appearance of "scumbag" in the NYT crossword angered the etymology-is-destiny crowd.

The flowers are blooming, the sun is shining sometimes, and the sidewalks are littered with the dismembered corpses of colorful birds. Spring in Chicago!

Even I know that in Appleton, with free courses everywhere, I played neither often nor particularly well — days like today make me miss frisbee golf.

In bed by midnight, or eleven even, up at seven or eight. I suspect that my parents still don't understand how wrong my recent sleep schedule has seemed to me. Better to get accustomed to the working world's schedule, and have the time to begin my day leisurely.

And really, I can't explain why I would continue to keep a schedule that I adapted myself to primarily because of the time it gave me, quiet time to read and write while everyone else was sleeping. Also: vampire movies.

Of all the roommates I've had over the years (seven, if I'm counting right), only Jonas could stay up later with any regularity. It's a running joke at my house that my dad and I are sometimes only an hour or two away from greeting each other in the morning right before I go to bed.

I used to be a morning person. I remember getting up early enough on a few occasions to see a test pattern; I think they've stopped using them now. At least, I've come to that same time from the other direction and never seen one.

Once, or perhaps I only dreamed the memory of watching television in our porch, there was some kind of farm report: cows. Strange how so many of my old memories are just out-of-focus snapshots.

When did the transformation start, when did I realize that I could cultivate "insomnia," as I called it then? Looking back, the process was so gradual that I don't think I noticed it until my family started commenting on it.

The distractions are gone now. I can't even hear my neighbors, for the most part, and my schedule would work whether I woke up at 8 or 11. Eight would let me take on more hours at the school.

I stayed up until three last night reading Lucifer, a nook in the Sandman universe I've only recently discovered. A few nights before I was in bed by eleven; my dreams included an original episode of King of the Hill.

Spring break messed up my sleep pattern, and, inexplicably, I have to make the choice again: do I want to be a morning person, or a night person? I guess I always could have taken three or four days and re-adjusted, but now the issue has been forced. I find myself staying up later and later again.

So I'm not off the hook yet — I'm still behind, need to write 10 more pages if I'm to catch up by Monday, in fact... but I've turned in the first 15 pages to my workshop group. You can read and possibly comment on those pages, if you'd like. It's about blogs, and who doesn't love blogs?

I would have had some time to work on the thesis, but I was on campus from noon to five and I realized just as I was about to drift off to sleep last night that I'd already committed myself to delivering a nearly-identical "special issue" of last week's campus newspaper early this morning.

What made it so special? A typo that I'm certain I would have caught if I'd been copy-editing the paper, even on one of those nights when I was flying solo and it was three in the morning and the printer was down so we couldn't print out proofs and everyone wanted to sleep and it's a newspaper Peter!

As Layout once said, famously.

Anyways, there were complaints. Word on the street is that a provost got involved. While recycling the old editions, I couldn't help but remember that I'd applied for a copy editor position with this very paper, so, yeah.

Also, apparently I was paid for my time today in gratitude, which will not buy me potatoes at the co-op.

Dear god of theses,

I know I don't usually pray to you — sometimes I wonder if you even exist — but could you please allow me to finish my thesis without getting distracted every fifteen minutes? One single-spaced page an hour is not too much to ask.

I wanted to be done with my first twenty pages on Saturday... and now it's Tuesday. People in my group are waiting.

But you can still pull this out — if you grant me the strength to finish tonight, I promise to bake something delicious in your honor.

This Friday I was forced to confess that I actually have at least three blogs — in an effort to spark conversation or somesuch, a fellow mapher had finally asked the all-too-obvious question: "if you're writing about blogs, does that mean you have a blog?" — but while all that blogging sounds busy, I don't feel busy.

Though busy isn't quite the right word. I have my master's thesis, after all. And homework and tech work.

It's more that everyone else, by contrast, seems engaged. Jeremy of Appleton fame is opening a movie house. Adam is planning a wedding, studying, applying to jobs. Graham is working on his collages and his tilt-shift photos and just generally running back and forth tending his social web. I haven't talked to Jenna in a while, but presumably she's building a gyrocopter.

Meanwhile, I spend most of my day on the Internet, where I am an obsessive spectator but only a sporadic producer of content. What projects I have, like the thesis and the DDAP and silly things like conquering (as opposed to "beating") Burnout 3, I work on only occasionally, albeit for hours and hours when I do.

It's not enough to just keep juggling free time and work. Of course, if I were to actually get a copy editing job... that could engage me. Must apply to more places.

(Memo to fellow English majors: stop using my vocation as a fallback, or die.)

While my life isn't boring, it is only sufficient — I don't feel enough passion, in the broadest sense of the term. A shuffling of priorities is overdue.

Made Cocoa Indians again, this time with a spiced hard sauce because they were a little dry.



Kids: don't try this at home. Eating a bowl of chocolate brownies slathered in a butter-egg-sugar-alcohol mixture is not a good way to get back in shape (my post-Spring Break goal), or stay there. But if you must:

Hard Sauce

Beat until soft:
5 tablespoons butter.

Add gradually to the butter, until the mixture is smooth. Mix very thoroughly if you care about textures.
1 cup powdered sugar.

Stir in:
1 tablespoon coffee, rum, whisky, or brandy. I used cooking sherry. And yes, I only bought sherry because that's what they're always drinking on Frasier.

This step is optional. Beat in:
1 egg.

Now you have about a cup's worth of basic hard sauce.

For Spiced Hard Sauce, add:

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon (or less) cloves

My guess is that I probably wouldn't have needed the sauce if I hadn't substituted 1/2 of shortening for the 1/2 of butter in the Cocoa Indians recipe, the one substitution the recipe book specifically warns against. But no, I had to be a rebel.

There are stains all over this shirt, washed yesterday. Why do I always wear white when I'm cooking? I could probably answer that, actually (know thyself and all that) but it's a long answer of no interest to anyone.

I hope to god the slight buzz I have now is psychosomatic, or from the massive amount of sugar I'm eating and not from the 1/4 tablespoon worth of sherry I've had. I was a less-than-heroic lightweight in Germany and I'd rather not drop down into the featherweight class. And — whoa — stir the sauce before each use to distribute the alcohol evenly.