>>> Bang for Your Buck
By staff writer David Nelson
February 12, 2006

Essential New Word of the Week: nrop (definition hint: reverse)

Sometimes, while wracking my brain for column ideas, I lose sight of the fact that Points in Case is, at heart, a repository of college humor. But today, I finally remembered: I went to college! I’ve slugged it out in the trenches of academia, discovered independence, and stood accused of making a drunken bowel movement in the kitchen sink at a kegger. And while my heroic alcohol intake and deviant sexual appetites haven’t changed much from those carefree days, life has marched on in every other way. Memories from college swarm my mind like bees—but not angry, Africanized bees, oh no sir. More like gentle, persistent bees. The kind that try to sell you breakfast cereal. What I’m trying to say is, I’m feeling nostalgic for my college days, and the only cure is a trip down memory lane. And maybe a bowl of delicious Honey Nut Cheerios.

It was an exciting time for me, no doubt about it, mostly because my high school experiences were fairly unremarkable. It would be a great start to my musings if I could say I was once a goth kid, or a math nerd, or a star athlete, or a Viking gynecologist, or some other high school archetype. The truth is, I was none of those things, and I’m pretty sure they don’t exist outside of Corey Haim movies. I got along well enough with everyone, kept my head down, and promised myself I would one day be declared Ultimate Sex God of Rock and Roll. But before I could obtain such a position, I knew I would need a good education. So off to college I went.

“My college experience was predominantly colored by the Psycho Bitches. They had asses so fine, I’m pretty sure they both pooped strawberry ice cream.”

I could probably devote several paragraphs to my Frosh Week experiences, but in order to do so, I would need some kind of hypnotic regression therapy, because I truthfully don’t remember much of it. Call me a late bloomer if you want to, but Frosh Week represented one of the first times I had ready access to generous helpings of alcohol. With my as-yet-undamaged liver ready for load-testing, I dove in head-first and made the most of Frosh Week.

In rare moments of clarity, I remember some kind of scavenger hunt where it was my job to find a real live Hare Krishna for the judges. To some, “Hare Krishna”conjures up images of bald fruitcakes who wear sheets and chant at bewildered tourists. But I personally see them as harmless religious enthusiasts who probably enjoy a good tractor pull when they’re not dancing at bus stations. Unfortunately, I was able to obtain zero Hare Krishnas, scoring zero points. But in my drunken haze, I sure hadfun searching.

All too soon, classes began. At first I thought I had university all figured out. What freshman doesn’t? The introductory classes were a breeze, not all that different from high school, provided there were a thousand people in your class, which was held in the gym, and nobody cared or even noticed if you attended or not. I was kind of a lazy student, eschewing hard work and study in favor of my unique brand of bullshit, specially designed to baffle and impress the pretentious douchebag teaching assistants who did the marking.

At first, I declared a double major in Linguistics and Philosophy, but don’t let that deadly combination of arbitrary and possibly imaginary disciplines impress you too much. Linguistics neatly combined the uselessness of the arts faculty with the boredom of the science faculty. And philosophy was so patently ridiculous that I dropped it faster than a new teenage mother drops her baby 3 months before prom.

If you’ve never had the misfortune to sit through a philosophy class, let me summarize the ordeal for you. Ready? First, in the interest of accuracy, punch yourself in the groin, hard, because only the groinliest of punches can accurately convey how painful it is to sit through the garbage like symbolic logic (if “p,” than “q:p,” therefore suck my balls). The tutorial sessions were even worse. If I want to sit in a room full of unemployable morons who insist on relating everything said to their own insipid lives, I’ll take up speed-dating.

Breadth requirement classes were also an adventure and a half. In an effort to keep everyone as miserable as possible, my school forced artsy people to suffer through a handful of classes that involved the periodic table, circulatory systems, or numbers higher than ten. Meanwhile, flummoxed science and engineering types suffered through classes on art, poetry, or 18th Century Flemish Macramé. Actually, I found that many hard-working Asian stereotypes who went on to become top engineers also aced these enforced humanities courses. I don’t know why, but I find that reassuring. It might someday prevent robots from taking over the world.

In any case, I had my classes more or less under control. My social life was a different story. In my first year I met a Catholic girl who I decided to date, because I am clearly a god damn idiot. I swear to god, I thought Catholic girls were willing to do just about anything, because they could just confess the next day, and wash away the sin like so much used Kleenex. Not true, I learned. Many, in fact, grow up believing that penetration is roughly equivalent to allowing Satan to enter one’s crotch. Of course, these same Catholics also think there's a bearded man who lives on a cloud who gives a fuck whether they stop eating chocolate for Lent. So, this girl left me pretty much unfulfilled. On the plus side, though, she brought me a sandwich nearly every day, and when you’re atuniversity, a free daily sandwich is not too shabby.

After a while, though, we fell into a routine that was simultaneously awesome and kind of horrifying in retrospect. Basically, I was free to do my own thing, but we’d get together every so often to exchange bodily fluids, and proofread essays together. Except both the editing and the bodily fluid transmission flowed strictly in one direction: from me to her. I’m not sure exactly how I fell into a position whereby I could trade my editing skills for fellatio, but that’s simply how it was. There are quite a few classrooms at my university that have permanently sticky floors thanks to me. If this is upsetting or incomprehensible to you, please try to understand: I am a very good proofreader. My efforts probably raised this girl’s GPA by a full point.

But socially, my college experience was predominantly colored by a pair of girls I would come to know simply as…the PsychoBitches. They were a pair of gorgeous, but manipulative girls who were in most of my classes, and with whom I spent a great deal of my free time, with a high school buddy along for the ride. I swear, they had asses that were so fine, I’m pretty sure they both pooped strawberry ice cream. What you have to understand is, until college rolled around, I never really had cool, white-hot chicks as friends, and emotionally, I was ill-equipped for the situation. To put it another way, they knew the extent of their seductive power, and made full use of it.

So, I called them the PsychoBitches on account of the crazy, pseudo-sexual mind games they would play with me (and seemingly every other guy they encountered). Knowing them could be frustrating as hell, but life was never dull. To give you some perspective by way of an anecdote, they once agreed, in writing mind you, to wrestle in the nude for me, on the sole condition that it must be done in an inflatable pool filled with that funky green slop you can get as a side dish at KFC. Not Jell-O, not mud, only KFC slime would make this erotic fantasy happen. Well, I called every franchise outlet in a 50-mile radius, but no one was willing to sell me enough to fill a kiddie pool. I’m not exaggerating when I say that this is my life’s greatest regret.

The years drifted by, and I eventually found my way out of college, alive, in debt, and with a few letters I could stick after my name. Mostly, college was a time of social, academic, and sexual discovery for me. My experiences, undoubtedly, helped shape me into the invincible cyborg that I am today. If you’re still attending college, I encourage you to make to the most of whatever time you have left. Believe me, such gruesome concepts as mortgages, monogamous sex, and financial responsibility are not as far off as you think.

Essential New Word of the Week:
nrop /nrap/ n: A word made necessary by the ongoing struggle between technology, censorship, and personal freedom. The more astute among you will notice right away that it is “porn” spelled and pronounced backwards. When I first saw this word in a friend’s email, I thought it might be a typo, or possibly evidence of dyslexia. As it turns out, it’s a measure he started taking because another friend’s company has a filter that blocks emails containing naughty words. But he just liked the sound of nrop so much, he started using it in non-filtered contexts. And it caught on because in some circles, porn really, really needs to be discussed.

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