So it's time for a little confessional:

I've been holding something in for a really long time, and I don't just mean puberty, which I'm still waiting to break out when I find the right back-alley whore. Till then my balls are going to stay safe within the confines of my hairless lower thorax. Where they belong.

I get distracted easily. For instance, take the previous paragraph, if I may be so bold as to call the above brain-vomit a deliberate packet of coherent thought. It started out straightforward enough, and then devolved into a veritable scatological smörgåsbords wherein even the lowliest intelligence might not find sufficient refuge even from the anti-syntactic growls of a neo-realist lecture. What the hell am I talking about? That may or may not be my point.

I titled this piece before I started writing it. That's entirely coincidental. I had something to say originally, but, like most things in life, it disappeared before it could come to fruition. Again this brings me back to puberty. Tangentially perhaps. Irrelevantly certainly. And to all those English fellows who told me I couldn't write a sentence with only adverbs, I say this: "Well, well, well."

I'm going to be honest. I've been doing crack with a near-religious diligence since I arrived on campus just three weeks ago. I smoke it all the time. It makes me feel wonderful. But you know what else makes me feel wonderful? Actually, nothing. All I've got now is crack. You may think I'm joking, but I want you to think really hard about the following three things: 1.) If I weren't, how would you even know? 2.) Do you really think I'd want you to know? 3.) Wouldn't it be a load off my conscience to confess my faults and sins publicly to an audience that doesn't believe them? Also think about how much effort the French put into building the Eiffel Tower--and for what? You don't need to think about that last part, but frankly, I think it's the most interesting.

I write all my posts drunk. Every single one. I've never written sober on this blahg. You're probably thinking, "Well, gee, that doesn't make sense, since some of these are posted in the morning or early afternoon!" But you're forgetting one terribly important detail: I'm drunk all the time. I really wonder what you'd think of me if you met me when I was sober. You might think I was an ax-murderer. Probably because without alcohol I'm terrifically shy and introverted, quiet and seemingly malicious. Also I tend to carry around an ax. Why? Dragons.

I bet you didn't know that dragons can speak every human language. Simultaneously. I bet you didn't even know they were real. Did you? But have you ever seen a dragon? Have you ever had one approach you and openly admit they don't exist? Then I'd have to ask you: what makes you so sure, Mr. Skeptic? Yeah. You don't know shit. Also dragons can fly, whether or not they have wings. Explain that, Mr. Science. When will you admit that you're whole philosophy of objective analysis has just been an elaborate ruse? Probably right before the dragons eat you.

Where am I going with all this, anyway? Answer: straight down to hell. Hope you'll join me.

Neoconservatism is the new black

Here at Harvard I have a really cool schedule, consisting of nine hours of class a week, and meetings only three days a week. It's so cool that if I wake up early enough to eat a warm breakfast (it's happened twice so far), I might even show up. When I do I mostly learn about dead white guys. I'm not too concerned with dead white guys, unless they can teach me how to make money, get laid, or live forever, which they clearly can't, since they're dead. So most of the time I skip class and get notes from friendly British girl upstairs who habitually says adorable things like "quite," "spirits," "wanker," and "fuck a sheep" and apparently came to America for nefarious reasons having to do with cultural imperialism. I like her a lot, but not, you know, in that way. What I mean is I don't want to fuck a sheep. But then, she's growing on me, so we'll see.

The point I'm trying to make is that since I have so much free time, I mostly go around starting friendly debates with people, usually about AIDS, rape, or whether or not Jesus Christ smoked marijuana (he did). To do this I employ the Socratic method, something I'm told is very popular in Harvard classrooms. Here's an example:

TJ: Hey, I'm TJ. I live in Mathews and I like Computer Science.
Me: Is it definitely rape if she only says stop once?
TJ: Um...why--well, yes, I guess. But--
Me: Well how are you supposed to know if stop is referring to intercourse or something else, like say you're sucking her nips?
TJ: Did...did you really just say nips? Out loud?
Me: And what if she doesn't speak any English and you don't understand Armenian?
TJ: You...you didn't even tell me your name.
Me: My heart has been broken too many times, TJ. I need a man's strong embrace.
TJ: I was just trying to be friendly...
Me: But what is friendship, anyway?

The important thing is not whether you're right or wrong, only that you establish a meaningful dialogue. Once you've done that, class becomes unnecessary. Class is just like a dialogue, only it's between a flock of sheep and a wood-chipper. Does that analogy hold up under any scrutiny? Doesn't matter. Like everything else I write, I'm not handing this in.

Occasionally people approach me asking for directions, and every time I try to put on a different fake accent. I do this because people asking for directions are generally from out-of-town, don't know a Boston accent from a well-articulated fart, and could reasonably believe that, as a Harvard student, you're from anywhere in the whole world. I get creative with them, too; the other day I decided to pronounce all my Vs as Ws, all my Hs as Ys, and to hiccup at every schwa. Today I decided to thump my chest whenever I use an infinitive or imperative. Looking back, I guess I'm not very good at this game. That isn't an accent so much as a social more.

I met a really lovely girl the other day, only to realize she was actually from Boston College. So I guess she wasn't lovely after all. They do a lot of coke over there.

Since today is Friday, and I don't have any classes, I decided to go down to the Charles and jump off the footbridge, which, incidentally, is what everyone is doing these days. It turned out to be a bad idea. For some reason there are actually metal spikes under the bridge. I know this because a girl came out with one of them sticking through her calf. They put her in a whistling truck and some people were crying. Cambridge can be really weird sometimes.

I love to play pranks on people. One of the Freshman dorms is called Wigglesworth. The T runs right under it, so every five minutes you can feel a faint rumbling in the rooms and you can hear a earthquake-like roar in the basement common room. None of my pranks have anything to do with this. I just thought it was interesting. I did meet a girl from there at a party, though. She was Japanese so I assumed she liked Pokemon. I asked her if she wanted to see my Diglet. She said she wasn't interested unless it was a Dugtrio. I said with a little more training I'm sure it would evolve. Then she laughed, hissed, slapped me in the face, and flew away. With my heart. For the rest of that weekend I played Pokemon Red nonstop. That's not code for masturbating. I found out later that the girl was actually a bat. I guess I was pretty drunk.

Ahmadinejad is Mah Homeboy

A lot of people have been asking about my experiences with Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's visit to campus yesterday. I decided that rather then tell the story over and over again I should just tell it once on this blahg. So, I apologize for the break from out typical tone of petty irony and arrogance. I also apologize for the length of this post. Anyone looking for dumb humor can probably skip it. And here we go:

The Controversy
Columbia University invited the insane dictator of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to come give a talk as part of its "World Leaders Forum." Ahmadinejad has become infamous for his oppression of gays and women as well as his views that the Holocaust did not exist and that Israel should be annihilated.

The sides were not split down a simple partisan line on this issue. Rather, they were shattered into many factions: Angry Jewish protesters, angry military personnel, angry feminists, angry homosexuals, angry proponents of free speech and angry liberal conspiracy theorists. Basically the argument boiled down to this: By allowing him a platform to speak are we legitimizing his views?

The Event
While the actual speech filled up within minutes of its announcement, a large overflow broadcast was conducts on the south lawn. This is what I ended up attending and it was rather packed. Here's a picture courtesy of Bwog:


The Interesting Part
So, rather than sit around and watch the various campus protests, my dear friends Gelseigh and James joined me in exiting the campus gates to mingle with outside protesters. These people would have loved to be on campus, but Columbia, thankfully, decided to require a valid student ID to gain access to the quad.

Now our main goal was to pick out the people with the craziest signs and engage in debate with them. We all split up.

The first man I spoke to was carrying a sign which portrayed a large swastika with Ahmadinejad's head on top. The debate, in severe paraphrase, went something like this:
Me: Don't you think it's a little ridiculous and offensive to compare this man to Hitler?
Him: Well let me first tell you that I'm a Holocaust survivor and I watched my sister die next to me in a concentration camp.
Me: (stunned silence)
Him: This man wants to do just what Hitler did. He wants another Holocaust.
Me: I don't deny that, but don't you think that it's important to allow him to speak before that can happen? As a means of spreading awareness maybe?
Him: Why should he have a right to speak here? You're legitimizing his ideas by allowing him to speak here.

(insert 10 minutes of elevated debate. The rest of it is carried out in screams from the man)

Me: How are we supposed to know how to respond to this guy if we don't allow anyone to engage him directly?
Him: He's had his time to speak. Bringing him here is sponsoring a hate rally. You don't know what you're talking about.
Me: It's not a hate rally, it's a forum to question him.
Him: You don't know anything. I wish you were there in the camps with me. I wish you had seen my sister die.
Me: (silence) ... I'm sorry you feel that way. (I walk away).

At this point a reporter came up to me and told me I held up very well and that the guy was totally out of line. I answered a few questions and went back into the crowd to calm down a little then find someone else to argue with.

When you started talking to people in the crowd itself about 6 reporters would show up with notebooks and mics and cameras as soon as it started. Needless to say, it's a little tough to debate with all this crap shoved in your face, but it was an experience.

The next group I approached was of two women with an "Ashamed to be Alumni" sign. James started arguing with one of them and I the other one started in on me. This was nice, because as soon as you started arguing about 5 other people tended to jump in and shout you down.

The premise of this debate was a little less heated. They believed that we would be brainwashed by the man. We disagreed and said that the main pillar of higher education was learning to question what was said to us. It moved on to a discussion of whether we had the ability as college students to question him, to which we answered that we out of anyone probably had the best ability to question him.

Then some angry man jumped in and called me naive and an idiot. I told him I wasn't going to debate anything with him if he was going to attack me personally. He responded that what he meant was actually an idea of Stalin's of the "useful idiot". I told him that I was not a useful idiot and that I didn't think it was appropriate for him to use Stalinist rhetoric against me. He told me I had no idea what I was talking about, that diplomacy is useless and that the only answer is war. I responded that war sure helped us on the road to peace in Vietnam and both Iraq wars. He responded that he was in the Gulf war and that if they had taken out Saddam it would've created peace. I responded that our foreign policy should definitely become one of assassinating any foreign leader we don't like. He called me an idiot again and walked away.

The Speech

It was time to leave the madness and go back in the gates to watch the speech. PrezBo opened up by essentially owning the fuck out of Ahmadinejad. It was a little disappointing to see him cave so much to the public pressure of the people that had just been hurling unfounded insults at me all morning. He did need to make it clear that we were not in support of this guy's politics though, so maybe it was good.

Ahmadinejad then proceeded to ramble for about 40 minutes about science and religion. He made absolutely no sense for the majority of it. Gawker managed to grab this quote from somewhere:
"In the teachings of the prophets, one reality shall always be attached to science: the reality of purity of spirit and good behavior. Knowledge and wisdom are pure and clear reality. Science is a light."

Yep.

Well, the question-and-answer was a bit more interesting. He managed to dodge every single question pretty masterfully.
"Do you believe in the destruction of Israel"
"*Long rant about Palestine's right to exist*"
etc.

The highlight of the speech was definitely when a question was asked about homosexuality. At first he ignored it. The question was then repeated. He answered:
" In Iran we don't have homosexuals like in your country ... In Iran we do not have this phenomenon. I don't know who's told you that we have this."

Conclusion
Well, all-in-all it was an intense day. The speech was mostly passive and harmless, but the discussions it inspired were more valuable than all the weeks of classes I've been to at this school. This is what a university is supposed to be and I'm glad our President had the sense to invite the man to come speak. I was shouted down numerous times, told that I should've died in the Holocaust and told that I couldn't possibly know anything about politics or the world in general. But I feel like if I managed to get something out of the experience in spite of all that, then the university has done its job. Hats off to our administration...for once.

Here's some pictures from inside the gates:

So Basically I'm Batman

I've always flattered myself my thinking I'm psychically sound enough to not be hit too hard by homesickness. I spent all eighteen years of my life in the same town, with very few excursions elsewhere lasting longer than a few days. I figured once I left the sentimentality of it would quickly fade and I'd realize that Amherst doesn't really offer anything that Cambridge, among other places, doesn't offer in excess.

When I first got here I went down the list of the things that were most precious to me back home. I found street musicians, a kickass burrito place, drugged-out slackers with dreams of revolution, several pretty places to run, trees to climb (albeit illegally), and plenty of dark-haired, doe-eyed virgins with low alcohol tolerance who dream of writing their coming-of-age novels and moving to a third world country to help orphans. I think somewhere in the mix I even found some people who could become very good friends.

But you know what I didn't find?

Love.

But you know what I didn't find, and I actually wish I had?

Antonio's.

Cambridge needs a friggin' Antonio's. They've got a Pinnochio's, incidentally, and it's actually the original from which the shady Amherst chapter was spawned. The drunk kids around here call it 'Noc's, and the fruity kids call it Pinnoc's, probably because that sounds more like penis.

I like to keep an open mind when it comes to pizzerias, so last week I got rip-roaring drunk and wandered down the dark streets of Cambridge in hopes of locating a distant choir of screams that could only mean deliciousness. As I walked I contemplated what rip-roaring drunk actually meant. I decided it was sort of like Enlightenment, in that some Zen asshole just made it up because he wanted an excuse not to get a real job. Of course, when I was thinking this, I was rip-roaring drunk. So I still really don't know what it means.

Deep in the throes of this internal debate I somehow managed to almost get run over by a moped. The driver was an elderly woman with a ponytail, wearing a pink helmet and a leather jacket. She swore profusely at me and I made fun of her for being blind. Shortly after the two of us went on our merry ways I heard a massive crash behind me. I turned to find the old hag sprawled out face down on the sidewalk. Her moped had managed to lodge itself in the metal grating of a closed tobacco shop. I ran over to her and tried to pry her off the ground. She shook me off. "I can do it myself, you fucking fuckers!" she said sagely. And then, with a eloquent cough that seemed to fill a thousand blissful years, she cooed, "Actually, young man, I don't think I can walk."

I laughed at her ruse and challenged her to an arm wrestle. She turned me down, clearly fearful of my undeniable man-essence. I didn't really want to arm-wrestle her, anyway. I figured since she was so old she was probably going to die soon, anyway, so I might as well make her feel as if she isn't totally inferior in her last moments. Like in all those baseball movies where the kid meets his favorite player and tosses his historic home-run ball back to him, so he can have it as his own keepsake, and then the big star says, "Wow, champ, that's a heckuva arm ya got there!" Or some shit like that. And the kid really appreciates that because his father was a deadbeat or a Nazi and never gave him any positive reinforcement, and the kid probably also has cancer or something. I don't know if there's ever been a movie like that, but if so, it totally sucked ass.

So while she was lying there, dying like the champ that she wasn't, I figured I'd go find some pizza for the two of us. But I realized if I went all the way to the nearest pizza place, which could be millions of miles away, and then all the way back, the pizza would be cold and covered in my drool, and my drool would be equally cold. Plus, I really didn't want to walk all the way back here before turning in for the night. So naturally I lifted up this old woman and threw her over my shoulder like a large straw dummy meticulously fashioned after an old woman. At first she was all like, "Hey, what are you doing? Where are you bringing me?" But she knew. She was just playing the Old-Person-with-Alzheimer's Card and pretending to forget everything. I decided to one-up her by telling her we were going to the Kingdom of Heaven and that I was the Angel of Death. She got really quiet after that, and pretty soon I forgot I was carrying her.

After a half dozen blocks I was getting really tired, party because I'm out of shape, but mostly because I was carrying an old woman and didn't realize it. So I decided to stop in at one of the 362 CVS stores in Cambridge and buy some smokes. I get in there and this short black guy behind the counter is just sort of shaking his head like he's listening to some crazy music that nobody else can hear.

He looked up and his eyes went all bugged-out on me and I figured he must be reacting to the fumes of drugs he ignited and inhaled before I came in. He started mumbling, something to the effect of, "Excuse me, sir, but I thought I might inform you that you are carrying the limp and unconscious body of an elderly female, and given that this is a convenience store and not the emergency room of a hospital, I would posit further that your presence here is inappropriate to the point of being profane."

I asked him why he did not have any American Spirits behind the counter. He shrugged his shoulders and said that Camels were all right.

"All right?" I screamed. "You think Camels are all right?"

The next thing I knew I was foaming at the mouth, and it tasted like Sour Cream and Onion. I knew something bad was about to happen, so I beckoned to the man behind the counter. He seemed confused, and intimated to me that he did not want to come any closer to me, and besides if he did he would be unable, on account of the persistently solid counter affixed to the floor between us.

Something inside me died in that moment, and I once I came to the clear truth of it all: all of us - me, the CVS man, the old woman, me, Bruce Springsteen, Sour Cream and Onion, me, Batman, and even I myself were all simply swirling around in an amoral universe like motes of dust in a dusty dustbowl. Nothing I did mattered. Soon I would die and it would all be oblivion, and then I would be dead for the rest of my life.

The woman on my shoulders announced her presence with a gentle purr, which evolved into projectile vomit, bile intermingled with blood. Suddenly I knew what I had to do.

"Do you know why we bury our dead, laddie?" I intoned to the drugged Mister in the blue CVS shit.

He looked at me as if he had been dealing with the customer behind me for the past several minutes.

With an explosion of force the likes of which I had never before experienced outside of James Cameron films, I hurled the old woman at the drug-man. She spun around several times, a ballerina on a horizontal axis, before striking him directly all over his body. The two of them fell against the wall of cigarettes in a highly poetical heap. Tobacco products lay scattered across them like body glitter on a body, a body that was the floor.

Immediately several people started cheering hysterically, lost for all sensible words. The screamed for help, frustrated that they could not find a camera in order to preserve this image of justice forever. I strode over to them and placed a hand on each of their shoulders in turn.

"Do not worry, my peerless children. I am that is. A destroyer of worlds. Tobacco products are carcinogenic, and cancer is the light of lights."

And with that I disappeared into the night, leaving all to wonder what had happened to what they once called their lives.

So Much To Do

My school prides itself on always having a million things going on at once. Just last night there was an A Capella Jam, the Freshmen 'First Chance Dance,' a Muslim Chaplain Meeting, and several thousand upperclassmen throwing parties with grossly uneven male-to-female ratios. There are 450 student organizations, ranging from singing to rugby to politics to writing to hitting each other with giant foam katanas, and Harvard Square is always, as the kids today (allegedly) say, "bumpin." But all of this begs the question: what is there to do if you aren't drunk?

There are a few things.

First, you can do laundry. I don't recommend this as it really undermines your first and last line of defense against advances from the opposite sex, which can be a huge distraction from your studies.

Second, you can go for a walk and introduce yourself to people. This is nice because it's both awkward and pointless. If I had a dime for every person I've met and had a delightful twenty second repartee with in the past week, I'd have no idea how many dimes I'd have, because I've forgotten almost all of it. Hopefully enough to buy a couple beers.

Third, you can catch a T into downtown Boston or a bus out to Allston. The great thing about Boston is that it's filled with angry Irish people, drunken Irish people, and some very confused Italians. Also a great thing to do is to visit Emerson College and take note of how much prettier the girls are just outside of the Ivy League. Allston is fun because it's sort of like a giant dingy neighborhood where everyone is under twenty-six and seemingly expects to die in a hilarious party-related accident before they outgrow the place. Plus, there are plenty of hipsters who can show you how not to use hair gel. And there's Dave Noonan, God bless his soul.

Fourth, you can hop in on one of the tours that run constantly right outside your dorm and nod admiringly at all the historical gibberish that the Crimson Key Society probably makes up on the spot. Also, get your picture taken with Asian tourists at least nine or forty times. Every time you feel down in the dumps you can easily take heart knowing that someone who thinks you're a Greek fuckin' God is never more than a stone's throw away. Then jump on the T and introduce yourself as a Harvard student and see what people throw at you. I've so far collected a dog chain, a plastic rape whistle, and a half-eaten Egg McMuffin, which was delicious.

Fifth, you can go to the library. Nah, just kidding. Only nerds do that.

Fifth, (for real). This is a fun game you can play by yourself without even taking off your pants. Field calls from everyone you know and try, and fail, to convey with your voice the inordinate level of enthusiasm that they expect from you just for being where you are:

Them: "So how is Hahvahd?! Is it, like, the greatest thing ever?"
Me: "Oh, yeah, totally. It's the bomb-diggity and shit."
Them: "What's it like?"
Me: "It's..."
Them: "Well?"
Me: "Um...fuck, it's like, ah, I don't know. Warm apple pie."
Them: "Warm apple pie?"
Me: "...yeah."
Them: "How so?"
Me: "Mostly the moistness factor. There is much moistness."
Them: "What the hell?"
Me: "Mmmmmmoist."

The point of the game is to see how long it takes for them to decide either that you're crazy, or just to never call again.

Sixth, you can scope out the chicks. I'm always up for a challenge, so this is one of my favorites. The best part about this one is getting so drunk that you can't tell if you just think a girl's attractive because she looks sort of like some other attractive girl you knew back home, or if she's actually, legitimately, all inebriation aside, just a dude.

Did I mention this is something you really should only do while sober?

Anyway, I'm not saying there aren't any hot girls at Harvard. But then, I also believe in unicorns.


SO, I've only been here for a week and I've already found all these awesome things to do. Isn't it great? Everyone should come visit me. Soon.

Please?

In Harvard, nobody can hear you scream.

Of all the crazy statistics Harvard manages to post year after year, one of the craziest is it's freshman retention rate. It's up around 98%. And if I'm not mistaken, the number of students who graduate within six years is around 90%.

Have you ever wondered what happens to that 2%, or that 10%? They don't all steal code worth billions of dollars and become successful entrepreneurs overnight. Maybe half do, but that still leaves dozens of kids from every entering class who simply fall off the map.

But I actually know where some of them go, for a while at least.

My mother works with mentally ill people. She doesn't mind telling me that most are fairly young, all are affluent, and at any given time, several of them are Harvard students. She gets people from Brown, too, and once in a while a girl from Columbia. Columbia only sends girls for some reason.

So I'm slowly coming to the full realization that within a few years, if my mother keeps this job, she will end up working with one of my classmates, perhaps even one I'll know.

All three of the people in this triangle will be completely ignorant of the situation. My mother only reveals her first name to her patients, and she is professionally bound not to divulge to anyone any details that might let one of her patients be identified. I'll never find out about it. If my best friend here ends up hanging himself in her presence, I'll be told a lie about what happened. If some girl I sleep with goes crazy because she finds out, too late, that I'm an emotionally corrupt, morally vacuous bucket of human waste, and ends up telling my mother every grotesque detail of our meeting, I will not find out. My mother will just be furious with me and be unable to communicate why.

Imagine if every time your mother was angry at you and wouldn't explain why, you had reason to suspect in the back of your mind it was because she met one of those souls you senselessly crush on a weekly basis. This is my now my life.

Now, you're probably thinking: "Gee-golly-shucks! It sure is egotistical of this guy to think he could single-handedly cause someone to lose her marbles. Huh-yuck!"

Tell me I don't have your internal monologues down pat. It's almost eerie.

If I were so inclined I could tell you more than one story that would cause you to, among other things, stick your own foot in your mouth directly. But I am not so inclined. Suffice it to say that I have reason to feel guilty for the rest of my ridiculous, inescapably Catholic life. And next time you're feeling sentimental, direct a moment of silence towards the all the sweet, gentle girls in this world who will always be ruined by the endlessly cunning evils of childish men.

But this piece isn't about all that any more than everything I ever write will be--which is to say, only subconsciously, maybe sorta--and this sentence isn't really any good. Skip over it.

This piece is about people going crazy at Harvard. I know how supposedly we're all enterprising sons-of-bitches. We've got all our ducks in a row, which is why we're here. We're motivated, intelligent, competent, and assertive with our lives. Or we're legacies. Or we have Asian parents.

But if all of that is true, why is it that we're given a whole team of advisers to look after us and help us pick out what classes we take? All week that's been what we do: meet with this adviser, that adviser, go to this lecture on what level of class to take, hear this guy give us advice on the college experience, and once in a while, sleep and try to not go crazy. But if even we fail that, we're reminded that Harvard University Health Services supplies comprehensive psychiatric care to any student seeking it. So no worries, right? There's always someone to turn to in the unlikely event that you wake up one morning and are completely overwhelmed.

It's like how the government told us to duct tape our windows in case of a biological attack, or hide under our desks when the alarm sounds.

You know, so we feel safe.

I never was bothered by all the bullshit the government fed us. Even after September 11th I never seriously thought I, or anyone I knew, might be killed by terrorists. But all this good-intentioned advice is scaring the shit out of me. I'm actually worried I'll just go nuts, suddenly, without warning, because apparently it's a Harvard epidemic. Maybe I'll brush up against someone at a party or share a glass with the wrong person and that'll be it: I'll have caught the crazy.

It's gotten to the point where I spent my time holed up in my room flipping through the course catalog and choosing which 3468 of the 3500 amazing offered classes I'd least regret not taking. Occasionally I step out to our cathedral of a dining hall and binge on frozen yogurt and Spicy Thai Peanut salad dressing until my stomach turns into a jelly-filled beach ball and my face looks like a slice of Antonio's Red Tortellini pizza. Then I go back to my room, get drunk and belligerent, get written up by the proctor who lives directly above me, and try to figure out how I'll make it through the next four years surrounded by people who actually think they know what they want to do with their lives. And late at night when I can't sleep, partially because Mass Ave is just outside my window and evidently ambulance runs are very popular between 2 and 4 AM, and partially because I can't wrap my head around the way my life just got uprooted completely at a time when its roots were actually beginning to mean something, I'll wander out into the courtyard to chain smoke and throw sticks of deodorant at squirrels, or draw massive arrays of animalistic rituals with sharpies on giant pieces of cardboard and caption them with Latin and lines from early John Keats because those slowly become the only things that seem to make sense.

And then in that absurd time late at night between dialing a number and having the girl on the other end pick up I wonder where it is all the crazy Harvard students end up once my mom can't help them anymore.





This is a work of satire.

Speaking of Busch Light:

Let me tell you an interesting little story about an old white dude you probably had to learn about back in your freshman year of high school (or, if you're a Brown student, your forty-eighth season on the Peace-Love-Asparagus plantation). The man's name was Socrates, he was Greek, and as far as anybody knows, he started going bald before his testicles dropped.

Once, as a young man--though not so young that he still had hair--he was traveling with a legion of soldiers on some obligatory campaign across the rocky, olive-infested tundra of some Grecian peninsula, looking for barbarians and malformed babies to kill. Failing that, the soldiers decided to set up camp and dick around for a weekend or so in the middle of some dusty clearing in the ass end of nowhere.

Right in the middle of pitching a tent on the first evening, a thought struck Socrates. It struck him so hard he was dumbfounded. He dropped the polls, tossed his corner of the canvas to one of the fellows who actually cared about staying dry that night, and went off to stand by a stump. And he thought about this thought. Something about it bothered him. He could no resolve it, so he stood there and tried to wrap his bald little noodle around it.

The night wore on, and Socrates stood dead still. Finally some soldier walked over to him as dinner was wrapping up and offered him a bowl of gruel. Socrates did not respond. He simply looked blankly into the middle distance, letting the ol' cogs wheel about in his head on their own accord. The solider found this odd, for Socrates had earned notoriety for his superhuman appetite for gruel. The solider persisted, resorting even to poking Socrates in the chest, but all to no avail. Thanks only to the soldier's solid military discipline did he restrain himself from tickling Socrates. Modern historians hold a general consensus today that Socrates, as well as philosophy as we currently know it, would have been fundamentally altered had such a tickling taken place.

Finally the solider walked away and left Socrates to his own devices. He continued to stand by the stump and think throughout the night. In the morning the soldiers awoke to find him still standing, still thinking, and still refusing to give any response. Periodically some curious soul would wander over to him to see if he could pry him away from his thoughts, but none succeeded. Socrates remained in his spot until nightfall, at which point another soldier came and once again offered Socrates some gruel. Again, he gave no response.

Another night passed and Socrates did not move. He was beginning to truly frighten the soldiers, and they avoided him the next day as they prepared to depart. Then finally, around noon, Socrates' eyes snapped back into focus and he walked over to the nearest tent.

"How are things going?" he asked--and I paraphrase, for Socrates would never deign to speak English.

The soldiers simply stared.

"Is something wrong?" he asked.

"Why were you standing by that stump for two days, Socrates?" asked one of them.

"I had a question that needed answering," replied Socrates.

"But what was the question?" asked a soldier.

"Oh, that doesn't matter," Socrates said. "What's important is that I've found the answer."

There was a long pause while the soldiers waited for him to explain himself. But Socrates said nothing.

"Well then, what was the answer!?" they all yelled at last.

Socrates smiled and said, "I don't know."

This was the birth of the Socratic Method. It was also the worst ass-kicking of Socrates' life.

* * *

I told you that story so I could tell you another story. This one is about me and Busch Light.

Once upon a time, not so long ago, I was at a party where all the beer had been exhausted except for Busch Light. You may wonder: why would one of Tim's friends even have Busch Light? Wouldn't that mean, by definition, that he wasn't Tim's friend? Generally, yes, it would, but this was a unique case. I won't describe it in detail, but suffice it to say that I justifiably blame it on the interference of skinny jeans, undercooked egg whites, and estrogen--and that's all I'm going to say about it.

I assure you that everything in this story is true. It actually happened to me. What you will read shortly may shock and appall you, but do not disbelieve it. It's imperative to your safety that you listen to me. So here it is:

I drank Busch Light.

Let that sink in. It gets worse.

I drank five cans of Busch Light. In quick succession. Without time to purge myself or suck out the poison through cuts in my flesh. I didn't even have a chance to utilize my emergency reserve jar of leeches, which is basically a get-out-of-any-medical-disaster-for-free-card.

Do you want to know what happened?

I nearly fucking died.

The reason may surprise you, though. Busch Light does not contain anything, save alcohol, that poses any direct threat to one's physical health. I did not wind up in the hospital or praying to the porcelain gods because of this shit that I drank. But I wish it had only been that bad. What happened to me was far worse. Within thirty six hours I would be standing on top of a water tower somewhere in Hadley, completely unaware of my own identity, and fully determined to jump to my long-overdue death.

But I'll get to all that.

There are a few peripheral characters in this story whom I shall neglect to mention. I do this not to trivialize their roles; rather, I do it to underscore the idea that this odyssey of mine was primarily a duel to the death between me and Busch Light.

So where was I?

I'm sitting in my friend's basement in the wreckage of what was once a pretty damn good party. The girls have left, the music has stopped, and most of the extraneous douchebags have disappeared into their sordid corners of the night. And that leaves me with the host and a couple other guys, drinking Busch Light and ruminating on how bad it is. There was a guitar involved, as well as a bongo, and even a black man rapping. We had its badness down to an artful science.

But then this happened:

Says one fellow: "Busch Light: Like the Holocaust in a Drink!"

So then I lose it. Or, perhaps, I suppose, find it.

There is a rush of perspective. Here I am sitting in an unfinished room in an unfinished basement, drinking the last of the party's crumby alcohol with three other minors in some perverse male ego-stroking ritual, and complaining about it as I do so, allowing it to spiral so tastelessly out of proportion that one among us deems it fit to draw a comparison between the activity and genocide--a concept that, despite fifteen years of sensitivity training at the hands of one of the most liberal communities this side of the Atlantic, I can only grasp in banal abstraction, to the point that all its atrocity and horror are perceived as excellent fodder for outlandish jokes that I choose to appreciate under the impenetrable shield of irony and deliberate self-delusion.

Deep breath.

Meanwhile, I'm thinking, ten thousand miles away people are actually facing genocide, and to them the word means nothing--because there can be no conceptualizing death when it occurs so randomly, so suddenly, and so often that terror becomes almost mundane in its predictability--and certainly they lack the luxury to sit in some unfinished basement with a guitar and a bongo and complain about such trifles as which brand of illicit substances they choose to ingest, and they certainly lack the profound luxury of keeping an ironic viewpoint of their own lives, and they most definitely, most abso-fucking-lutely do not have the time or the motivation to get rip-roaring trashed in the middle of the night, celebrating nothing, in the hopes of attaining some catatonic state wherein they might find the sort of soul-crushing epiphany that reminds them without a hint of a shadow of a doubt that the lives they lead are worse than useless, that they are human cancer and the all-consuming putrid slime of the universe, nature's bastard children, failed experiments in consciousness and conscience, the pinnacle of amoral and apathetic decadence, with whom any discerning intelligence with even a modicum of rational thought would be ashamed only to share the same plane of existence.

I smash my final, empty Busch Light can, and wordlessly exit the house.

I really wish that could have been the crux of this story. It isn't even close.

In my intoxicated state I have only a vague understanding of exactly where I am. I understand the town is Shutesbury, the state is Massachusettes, and beyond that the polity is irrelevant insofar as I'm stuck in the fucking woods, which I am, and will continue to be until the voices in my head say otherwise.

That's something I forgot to mention: I started hearing voices after I smashed the Busch Light can. For the purposes of clarity, if not accuracy, I'll just refer to these voices as Busch Light itself.

I knew there was a road somewhere nearby, and logic, or whatever relic remained of that section of the brain that controls logic, dictated that I ought to find it by walking around the house. This is did, and work it did not.

So "Onward!" cried Busch Light, and it spoke with such authority that I was compelled to listen. I picked a direction and kept to it. I started out this trek with two solid running shoes, a sturdy pair of denim jeans, and a beat up t-shirt bearing the words 'Amherst Cross Country.' I ended up losing everything but the pants. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

I went along with Busch Light's directions for a good while, but after walking for what felt like several miles, and tripping over what must have been several dozen mossy, maggot encrusted logs, I decided enough was enough, and I picked a fight with it.

"Where the fuck are we going?" I asked.

"Onward!" said Busch Light.

"To what end?"

"Would you prefer that I lied and gave you a destination?"

"So there is no destination?"

"Of course there is," said Busch Light.

"Then what is it?"

"The moon!" screamed Busch Light and laughed maniacally. It had a tinny sort of voice that was not particularly intimidating. For some reason it reminded me of Mandark from Dexter's Laboratory.

"Seriously," I said.

"Verily!" said Busch Light.

"I want a real answer."

"And I have given you one!"

"You fucking can't walk to the fucking moon! FUCK!" I scream.

"Actually, I can't walk at all. It's a good thing you're driving."

I look at my hands. Suddenly a steering wheel flashes between them. A horn blares somewhere ahead of me, then beside me. Bright lights, shattering glass, then silence.

I'm back in the woods.

"What the fuck is going on here!?" I yell.

"Don't worry about it," says Busch Light.

I stop where I am and sit down on a patch of moss atop a rotting stump. I start shaking my head. I look up trough the trees and can no longer see the stars. The sky is brightening. Dawn approaches.

"You know, I think you're crazy," whispers Busch Light.

"You should be one to talk. Do you know how crazy it is for beer to be talking?"

"Nope. How crazy is it?"

"Ah, fuck. I don't know. It's just an expression."

"Huh?"

"I can't quantify it. I just know it's really crazy."

"Crazy of me or crazy of you?"

"FUCK!" I yell, and jump up and kick a tree. My foot sinks into it and it starts to crumble at the base. I try to pull it out, but it's caught. I yank harder, and the tree begins to tip toward me.

"Shitshitshitshitshit!" I'm yelling.

Finally I manage to flip myself over, grab the stump I was sitting on, and pull my foot out of the tree as it falls. Right before it hits I roll out of the way. It lands with a gigantic squish.

I'm still so drunk I can't see for shit, but I want my shoe back. I start clawing through the soggy, rotten bark, feeling for anything that might be my shoe.

"You know, it's a good thing you were here," says Busch Light. "If you weren't, that tree might not have even made a sound."

"No, it wouldn't have fallen over."

"Eh, same difference."

I can't find my shoe. This is a thick tree and my shoe is deep inside it. I'm just about to give up when I hear the first gunshot.

My first reaction: I'm going to die.

This passes quickly enough, and soon I come to the conclusion that the noise must have been a engine backfiring, which strikes me as a good thing, since it implies the road is nearby. I feel a newfound levity and begin to skip off in the direction of the noise. Busch Light says nothing, and right as the silence is reaching that length of time when none can deny its awkwardness, I hear another fucking gunshot.

"Fuck!" I yell and drop on my stomach on the moist forest floor.

Busch Light says something to the effect of "Cinnamon harpoon plastic spasm!"

I don't have time to ask what it means, because the next thing I know footsteps are thrashing through leaves from every direction of the forest, closing in on me. I'm still lying prone with only one shoe, my spine involuntarily rattling and Busch Light whistling "Uptown Girl" with such obsessive gusto that it would stand up the hair on the back of a chemotherapy patient's neck.

By God, I'm thinking, it's only Billy Joel. Wherefore dost he stir such passions in thee, Bush Light?

And this is my last thought before I hear a faint click and feel something pierce deep into my neck. Busch Light slows its whistling and the world fades into a gray curtain that falls, and falls, and falls, and falls...


...I wake up propped against the corner of a room wearing a three piece suit and a clip-on tie. There's a bed a few feet away from me and it seems to be occupied. I try to stand up suddenly and fail entirely. My legs don't respond. I poke them. I have no sensation whatsoever.

Well then. Lucky I still have my arms. I push myself up off the wall like goddamn Lieutenant Dan and try to get a look at who is sleeping in the bed.