>>> Text-Heavy
By staff writer E.E. Southerby
Volume 17 – February 2, 2003
-As part of the university's tireless efforts to bore the heck out of us, we were asked to attend a seminar on time management. Through some clerical error, it was actually kind of interesting and I learned a lot of new stuff. Of course, thanks to the time management seminar I had no time to study for my test the next day, which is actually kind of ironic when you think about it.
-Somebody put hand cream all over all the doorknobs in my building. How annoying. It's sort of funny, I guess, in a 6th-grade-summer-camp kind of way. As a token of my appreciation, and as a measure of poetic justice, I have decided to make a concentrated effort to find this person and re-enact selected scenes from Lord of the Flies with him (“Kill the beast!”).
-From the Files of the Chronically Rejected: I ask her if she wants to go out for coffee sometime, she says “I don't drink coffee” and walks away. Ouch, my pride. More importantly, who doesn't drink coffee? We're in college. What happened to the late night, coffee swilling, last-minute assignments and projects? She's ruining a perfectly good stereotype. Bitch.
-I try not to talk about myself in these newsletters, mostly because it's more fun to badmouth and belittle my “friends”, but this is too big to miss. I went to a club, hooked up with a girl, and came home the next morning with the worst suck marks on my neck that anyone's ever seen. I don't know if it was worth it. I'm going to be walking around looking like I have some weird skin disease for the next month. It actually looks like she was hell-bent on drawing blood. I don't want to worry anybody, but there's a better than average chance that when I wake up tomorrow I will be a full-fledged vampire.
-Quote of the Moment: My friend Tyler, upon finding out that the alleged neck-sucking occured at Sugar, the local club notorious for allowing girls of any age inside: “How old wasn't she?”
-You know what pisses me off? My neck wounds basically make me look like an assault victim. If I was a girl and the instigator was a guy, we'd have a lawsuit on our hands. My friend Dan suggested I try suing her anyway. At the very least she owes me for 4 new turtleneck sweaters.
-Quote of the Moment #2: Tyler again. “I can't wait for the next Text-Heavy so Emmanuel can talk about his neck for a page and a half.”
-This is the time of year when people have to decide where and with whom they will live next year. Perhaps you'd think this would be simple. Perhaps you are an idiot. I have been treated to, and involved in, a solid week of bickering over who's better friends with whom and why person x shouldn't live with person Y (“He pees in the shower.”) Turns out nothing tears friends apart faster than housing arrangements. Honestly, if I wanted to hear yelling and screaming and death threats all night long I'd just get my mom and dad back together.
-I still have nowhere to live next year. It cuts me deep that nobody wants to live with me. I think I make a fantastic roommate. I'm quiet. I don't smoke. I don't pee in the shower (as far as you know). I don't talk about people behind their back. Oh, wait. Now I understand why nobody will live with me.
-Now Playing: “Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow” by Fleetwood Mac. It's only February and everyone's already talking about living arrangements for next September. Some people desperately need to take a chill pill.
-One of my friends had to get a background check done for a job he was applying for. They wanted $50 to do the background check. I can't get my head around this. He's not a criminal. I suggested that he rob a bank or something, so that they'd do a background check on him for free. Seriously, I think we know who the real criminals here: The bastards at the Victoria Police Department.
-I think cover charges are getting ridiculous. We were going to this one club that wanted $8 just to get inside. Can you believe that? I asked the Cro-Magnon bouncer what you got for $8, expecting cheap drinks or loose women or SOMETHING. He says to me: “The best DJ's in the city, dude.” That seems kind of subjective to me. I mean, the BEST DJ's in the city? Kind of debatable, which is more than I can say for the $8 cover charge.
-Off-Topic Corner: What's with people saying things like ‘dude' in the middle of conversations? What are you, a freaking Ninja Turtle?
-Whenever somebody around here misses a class that I'm in, and it happens often, they always ask to borrow my class notes. I have no idea what makes people think I take notes, or that if I did they would be of any use to anybody else, but people always ask. One time, somebody asked me for notes for a friend of theirs that I didn't even know. I found that kind of rude, but I gave my notes to them anyway. Hell, I hadn't attended that class either, and I just passed along notes I had borrowed from someone else. I'm starting to think that there's really only one set of notes for every class, and they get passed around from person to person like batons at a track meet.
-Son of Off-Topic Corner: I don't understand people who devote their lives to weird track sports like Shot Put. It's just a peculiar thing to dedicate yourself to. Set your sights a little higher than that, I say. Try pole-vaulting.
-Don't you hate it when a girl says ‘hi' to you and you can't remember where you've seen them before? You exhaust all the obvious possibilites in your head: Class, dorms, cafeteria, bars. Then you start thinking of more obscure places where you might have met: Starbucks, grocery store, chess club. Then your mind starts to wander: When would I have gone to a grocery store? That's not like me at all. And I'm not even in the chess club. Does the university even HAVE a chess club? Pretty soon you've forgotten all about the girl you couldn't place, which is a good thing because she was probably in the chess club anyway, if the school had one.
-It's getting harder and harder for me to distinguish between my dorm-mates and homeless people. The clothes are just as dirty, the chins are just as unshaven, and there's always a couple of guys who go form dorm to dorm asking people if they have ‘a spare quarter for laundry' or something, like they're panhandlers. At least with college students, you can be pretty sure they're alcoholics, whereas in the case of homeless people it's just a stereotype.
-Revenge of Off-Topic Corner: You know how sometimes people tell you not to give money to winos on the street because they'll just spend it on cigarettes and alcohol? I don't think that's fair. The guy lives in a box, for crying out loud. I think he could use a drink.