REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PAST
From Buoyant in CSOM: As incomprehensible as it seems, in just 19 short days, I’ll be slipping into the warm security of my button-tufted, velour cocoon and watching this dump fade away in the rearview of the mighty champagne Chrysler for one last time. Net: That last paragraph sounds a lot better when read in a Robin Leach accent, a la “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.” Try it! Yes, I am graduating some six years after stepping foot into the dank, dimly lit lair that is Ford Hall for my Introduction to Philosophy class. It was the first in a long line of classes that would leave me bitter and disenchanted. Net: We’re sure it wasn’t the classes so much as it was the constant social rejection due to the “jock vs. nerd” battles that occur on every college campus. You, my friend, were a nerd.
Looking back, though, it’s not the long mornings sitting through dry lectures about tectonic movements, Le Corbusier’s penchant for concrete and the development of bipeds (or even the late evenings drafting uninteresting papers on such topics as the economic feasibility of Australian lawn-dart production and the dark half of John Dewey), Net: All these big words are making us sleepy. It feels like dinner conversation with a cultural studies major. but rather the wide variety of twits, jerks and dolts I encountered at this school that I will try to forget. Net: It’s gonna take you a LONG time, especially since you were in CSOM. You bastards know whom I’m talking about. Net: That’s right, we do. They’re all in that shiny building on the West Bank. It was you, Little Ms. Mustard Gas, who added further to the agony of management accounting by bathing in some perfume-esque substance that could only be described as so repulsive even Wal-Mart would refuse to stock it. Net: Could it have been the acrid smell of money? You brought biological warfare into Blegen Hall that winter, and for the countless days of watering eyes, vertigo, coughing, heart palpitations and headaches, I will never forgive you. Net: All those symptoms describe nausea. They also describe love. This is not a coincidence.
And then there was that lovely blonde girl whose last name, I believe, rhymed with Sanderson. Net: A blonde woman on this campus with a last name that ends in “son”? There should only be a handful of them at most. It was you who made every hour of that marketing class seem like 10 with your endless droll narratives about “Grandma” and your distaste for green carpeting. Net: That sounds like a dream we once had, but substitute the word “Grandma” with “Hercules” and “green carpeting” with “gladiators in loincloths.” You taught me that only those students with nothing worthwhile to say will insist on sharing their thoughts with an entire class, something that has stuck with me to this day. Net: I think it’s their scheme to “dumben” the rest of the class to their level, then gradually the entire population.
Lastly, as much as I would love to forget about you, Thumper, I fear I never will. You’re like that dream with the shark that keeps swimming around in the parents’ basement. Net: We looked this up in our dream interpretation book. According to the book, it’s classic Oedipal symbolism. You’re a sick, sick man. Just when I think I’ve forgotten about you, I wake up in a cold sweat, trembling in fear. Net: Don’t worry about that, that’s just repercussions from years of sitting in asbestos-ridden University classrooms. While most roommates possess enough courtesy to take their activities of self-gratification into the bathroom (or at least perform them when the other room’s inhabitant is away at class) you did not. Net: It’s a free country. Furthermore, I will also never forget your leaving food wrappers scattered all over our floor, setting your alarm clock to blare KDWB in the morning, Net: Believe us, if you really want to get out of bed, you wake up to the sound of Ace of Base early in the morning. smelling, and using my fan (the very fan I use to blow air on my face) to dry out your semen-encrusted gym sock. Net: We really should say something here, but we just can’t. By the way, a helpful piece of advice: get a refractory period. Four times in an hour? I hope it breaks off. Net: At least he’s not breeding.
There were others I hope I’ll forget about (but fear I won’t) as well. Unfortunately, time and space dictate that I cannot list all 419 of you here. Net: You may as well have, you’ve written a freakin’ novella anyway. But to everyone else, I wish you the best. Hang in there, and good luck in life! I’m outta here! Net: We hope your future roommates own their own fans.
WETTER WEATHER
From Lab Attendant 5000: Salutations Net! I have something to report to you. Net: Hey, we’ll do the reporting around here. It has occurred to me that good ol’ Mother Nature is excluding us (the bored inhabitants of the Twin Cities) from her latest thrill ride, “Drown the State of Minnesota.” Net: Did you try riding your bike during that storm? Maybe you’d feel differently if you did. I watch the news and I see weird places like Eagan under water with people boating on their streets and sandbagging their sidewalks, and they all look like they’re having the time of their lives. Net: Think about it, floods are great fun. We’ve always wanted to dive off the top of Moos Tower and fall 10 feet into floodwater, but we’d probably hit some laboratory monkey with wires coming out of its head. What do we get here in boring Minneapolis? A nice little thunderstorm. OOOHHHH. Exciting. Net: Maybe you too should move out to the suburbs and experience more extreme weather, not to mention better shopping and mandatory SUV ownership. Come on, I want to go the wrong way down University Avenue in a speedboat or, better yet, a jet ski. I want to see squirrels going two by two into a little squirrel ark. Net: Now that would be cute. I want to see Yudof call up the prez, begging him to declare this place a federal disaster area (isn’t it already?). Net: Well, the houses around campus are. I want to see the Metrodome float away like the world’s largest lily pad. I want to wake up some morning to meet and greet the Mississippi River on my doorstep. Net: That can be achieved if you did more drinking down by the river. ANYTHING to end the boredom. Oh Net, think of all the interesting entries you would have to choose from if the University started to go down to a murky grave. Net: Right, because we’d definitely still be around. I’m going to go pray for more rain. Net: After seeing years of 60-below winters and blistering snowstorms, maybe a huge flood will be the only thing that would make them agree to close this school down for one day.
