>>> Text-Heavy
By staff writer E.E. Southerby
Volume 16 – January 26, 2003

-There's always one guy who wants to know what everybody's plans are long before anybody has decided. It'll be like 11am and he'll go around from dorm to dorm asking “So, what are you up to tonight?” How the hell am I supposed to know? I just freaking woke up. At least let me have breakfast before you start interrogating me. I think there should definitely be a time constraint, say 4:30pm, before anyone's allowed to ask that sort of thing.

-I find myself often walking into a room and hearing “Hey, we're all going to (name of flash-in-the-pan bar, club or local venue) tonight. Want to come?” I've always wanted to know who the hell decides where ‘everyone' is going. You can be damn sure it's never me making these decisions. Just once, I'd like to be the guy who decides where we all go.

-When did everyone lose the ability to do anything by themselves? People always come by my room saying they're going to the cafeteria, or shopping, or to class, and wondering if I want to come along. Um, if I was hungry or needed to buy something or had a class to go to, don't you think I would? Fend for yourselves, you hopeless parasites.

-I've talked about how all the girls have boyfriends and none of the boys have girlfriends and how that doesn't make sense before, but I've never encountered this: Some guys were talking about how they intentionally went after girls with boyfriends because they liked a challenge. I call bullshit on that. Nobody likes a challenge, especially not when it comes to love. I'll take a drunk, slutty available girl whose name I won't remember over a challenge anytime.

-The better you get at RISK, the less time anyone spends actually playing and the more time is spent arguing over who broke what treaty. Also, when in real-life history was Australia ever the most coveted continent in the world?

-Now Playing (besides RISK): “Look on Down from the Bridge” by Mazzy Star. It's not for everybody. It might not be for you.

-The campus bar had a ‘trailer-trash' themed party the other night. It was pretty disgusting, all things considered. People wore fake mullets and fake tattoos and shotgunned beers until the floor was slippery with vomit. I'm proud to report that I won the prize for trashiest costume, although it's kind of depressing when you think about it since I just wore my regular school clothes.

-Quote of the Moment: Lisa, a cute girl I met at a party a few weeks ago, at the campus bar trailer-trash party: “Wow. You must love it here. All these people dressed in dirty rags is actually making you look attractive.” Not attractive enough to make out with, apparently.

-There's one cafeteria on campus that only serves things deep-fried. Naturally, it's the most popular food outlet around. Because of this, you're always given a number when you place an order. For example, my number for yesterday's deep-fried chicken parts was '75'. So I go to sit down, waiting for my number to be called, and I heard them call out '62'. I'm like “great, this is going to take forever”. A few minutes later, they call out '61'. WHAT? What kind of bizarre enumeration system are they using? I felt like I was in the closing moments of Beetlejuice.

-I don't understand cafeteria hours. Are they this irrational at other schools? They start serving breakfast at 7am, when nobody's awake yet, and they stop serving dinner at 7pm, before anybody's hungry. They have hot food available for maybe 2 hours a day, the rest of the time you're lucky if you can get a sandwich or a microwaveable burrito. Apparently we're secretly under the rule of Fidel Castro over here.

-The washing machines are ok, but the dryers here are a source of constant grievance. $1.25 buys you a 45 minute dry cycle that in no way even begins to dry your clothes. Seriously, my clothes would get drier if I just left them out in the rain. I'm not trying to sound like a whiny brat, but if I get pneumonia from wearing damp clothes all the time I'm definitely going to write a letter.

-Some friends of mine decided to buy a ping-pong table. They went down to Sears to pick it up, but Ryan, the one who was funding this venture, had unfortunately forgotten his credit card back at the dorms. Sears was closing in 10 minutes, but getting the ping-pong table THAT DAY was without question the most important thing in the world, so, in an act of stupidity rivalled only by what was to follow, they called their (drunk at the time) friend Steve to bike over to Sears with the missing Visa. So the Sears people stay open, waiting for Steve to come over with the card, for about half an hour. About a half hour past closing time, Ryan gets a call from Steve. Steve's almost at the mall, but he FORGOT TO BRING THE CREDIT CARD. So in the end they never got the table, but we all had a good laugh and the entire residence did get a lovely ‘thank you' letter from the Hillside Mall (it started with “Restraining Order”). It's probably for the best. I don't know how they were planning to bike back home with a giant ping-pong table anyway. It's not like any of them have cars.

-Why is it that when you go to a dance club, you can wear the sluttiest, trashiest clothes you can possibly imagine, but they always make you take off your hat? It's not a freaking church, people! I don't even WEAR hats and it still pisses me off.

-I'm also concerned with the mental stability of people who hang out outside the club half an hour after closing time. They're always huddled in small groups, freezing their scantily-clad asses off and getting their hair wet from the rain (since they're not wearing hats), never talking about much of anything. It's 2:30 in the morning on a school night. Go to bed.

-Being an RA is kind of like being the deadbeat dad nobody ever listens to and everybody secretly wants dead but won't admit it. What is the purpose of their existence? To make sure things don't get out of hand. How do they do it? By walking by people's rooms who are making absolutely no noise and closing their doors because it's in violation of ‘Quiet Hours'. Quiet Hours? What about the guy down the hall having a loud party in his room with the door closed? He's not violating Quiet Hours. What about the guy who smokes pot in his room with the door closed? You leave HIM alone? The beginning of the year your RA will probably tell you something like “I don't care what you do as long as I don't see it.” Hey, I have an idea! Why don't you just go away and then you won't see anything at all. I like my door open. Deal with it.

-You probably got the impression from that last joke that I don't like my RAs. Untrue. They're all really cool people, even if they are upper year students still living in first-year dorms. It's just that, at the beginning of the year, everybody got a free mug filled with condoms and coupons, and when I moved in a few weeks ago, I got nothing. I took the matter into my own hands, and, using my vast network of human resources, managed to scrounge up a mug without the help of my RAs. It took me a week and I had to annoy about a dozen people. The coupons are all expired, and it's not like I'm going to need the condoms, and I probably won't be drinking out of the mug anyway, but it's the principle of the thing, dammit.

-And, finally, a couple of nights ago, I got back from the bar at around 3am on a school night. One of my friends, Kevin, rushes up to me in an uproar. He asks me: “What are you doing tomorrow night?” Just kidding. He was pissed off because his neighbour had left his stereo on really loud and left the room with the door locked, so Kevin couldn't get any sleep. Of course, his fury was way louder than any stereo which meant that nobody else on the floor could get any sleep either. Except for me… I was so drunk I passed out a few minutes later. I felt bad for people, with their 8:30 classes the next morning and all, but at the same time I found the situation kind of funny. I mean, think about it: I go get drunk on a Wednesday night, against all common sense, and I'm the only one in my building who was able to get enough sleep to make it to class the next day. Suckers.

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