>>> Text-Heavy
By staff writer E.E. Southerby
Volume 27 – April 13, 2003
Now Playing: “Limp” by Fiona Apple
As I write this, I am packing to go home. I am also studying, by which I mean drinking, because I will be going to a party later, in what may very well turn out to be my last night out in Victoria. This column is one of the eight million things I must finish before I can go home, so you'll understand when I tell you that the quality of Text-Heavy this week is secondary to it simply being done. Strangely, this led me to write this edition while frequently employing the second person. I can't really explain it. That being said, here's what happened:
-Moving out of dorms to go back home is kind of bittersweet. You're looking forward to going home and seeing your friends and family, but there's a lot of people over here that you will never see again. It's not that you're not coming back next year, it's just that eight months with these guys is about all you can stand.
-Just because you don't think you're lazy doesn't mean you can stand packing up all your stuff. The hardest part about packing is deciding what you're going to take back home with you and what you're going to put into storage. The second hardest part is slowly discovering that all your worldly possessions amount to a computer, a few overpriced posters, about eleven thousand empty liquor bottles. and a couple of drunken pictures of yourself. Just the essentials, really.
-While I'm busy packing, everyone who's not me is really busy studying for exams. I hear of a lot of people who are desperately trying to find the ideal study space: People try the library, but it's obviously too full and noisy; they try an empty classroom, but those are all taken. Interestingly, nobody seems to have thought of studying in their room. “I'll get too distracted,” they'll say, as they spend the next 6 hours looking for someplace quiet.
-Campus bookstores are the biggest ripoffs in the history of the world. Nothing is more rewarding than returning those $800 you spent on books for a whopping $7.41. And then when you ask for an explanation, they insist that they're not ripping you off but are rather “trying to earn an honest living” while they turn around and resell the books for $800 again. Evil deceptive bastards. It's like dealing with Big Tobacco, except for the whole giving people cancer thing, which, by the way, I think is highly overrated. I'm thinking of becoming the Campus Bookstore Whistleblower. (Note: I considered buying a campus bookstore whistle to help with my cause, but it cost more than the amount I got selling my books back.)
-In order to continue in the theatre department (the way God intended), you have to pass an audition. 60 bad actors vying for 15 spots. The whole system is a train wreck. And what happens if you don't get in, even though you had straight As all year? You're just kicked out of school, that's what! How do you explain that to your parents? “Well, if you had just studied a little harder…”
-The Return of Off-Topic Corner: Those ‘look under the cap' contests you find on soda bottles have gotten way worse. For starters, it seems to have gotten harder to get the little blue plastic thing out from the underside of the bottle cap. It takes like a half-hour and a bunch of kitchen utensils, say nothing of the damage you'll do to your fingernails. There was this one contest on the Lipton Brisk Lemonade cap that said, simply, “Spell it and Win it”. I finally get the plastic thing off and what do I see? “M”. That's it. Just an M. What the hell did I just win? Can I spell anything? My friend got an A. Can we combine the two and win a “MA”? I honestly have no idea how this contest is supposed to work. So I read the fine print, which said nothing more than “See In-Store for Details”. Well, let me tell you something, the store we shop at had no details of any kind. Also, my fingernails are all chipped and broken, and I have not yet won any sort of “MA”. Curse you, Lipton Brisk Lemonade.
-My theory is that people enjoy the act of going to a party more than they like being at a party. This is the only reason I can come up with that explains why it takes us 4 hours to get ready, and why the first thing I hear when we finally get there is “Let's go someplace else.”
-Quote of the Moment: My friend Tania, pretty much out of the blue: “So… When the hell are you going to put me in Text-Heavy?” (My answer: “When you say or do something incredibly stupid.”)
-When we first got to school, the questions everyone asked were “What's your name?”, “What building do you live in?”, “What's your major?”, “Where are you from?” and “What's your name again?”. Now that it's time to leave, the questions people ask are “When are you done finals?”, “When are you going home?” and “What did you say your name was?”.
-When it comes to leaving school to go home for the summer, people generally fall into three categories: 1) People who leave thirty minutes after their last exam, not even stopping to say goodbye to the rest of us. These people all owe me beer. 2) People who, parasites that they are, depend on someone else for a ride home. They will come up to everyone on the floor and ask these vague misleading questions like “So…when are YOU going home? Did you know how close we actually live to each other? Less than 1000 kilometers! Seriously!” These people all owe me beer. 3) People who desperately want to stay at university because they're afraid of going home and living with their families, so they wait until the absolute last minute to start packing and then get booted out of residence in a fit of disorganized chaos. These people used to owe me beer, but I stole it out of their fridges when they weren't looking. I don't expect them to notice.