There's no bond like a punch to the stomach

So you've probably heard that Harvard kids can't fight. And if you haven't heard it, well, I'm sure you assumed it. But let me tell you this: you're right.

I've met a lot of friendly blokes around here. Blokes, I call them, because they're actually all British. Did you know that 30% of Harvard students come from the UK? I made that statistic up, but it's illustrative of the truth, which is that there are actually WMDs in Iraq, right under Elvis' sprawling subterranean Pelvis-Scrambling-Funk-Village. Did I type funk? I meant fuck. It's a Fuck Village, and it's perched totally unreasonably against an enormous deposit of uranium bombs. I learned all of this from Hans Zimmer, who incidentally went to Harvard. Remember that awesome battle music from Gladiator? The one that played behind all the scenes that rocked your face back through your brain stem, causing you to actually gag on your own gag reflex? That's the one. Awesome, right? Well, you'd probably think so if you didn't know that Zimmer couldn't throw a punch to save his life. Which brings me back to the English.

English people can't fight. I'm actually calling you all out, right now. I used to think all English people were pansies. This was until I saw several English men lose a fight to a field of actual pansies, choking on their own mucus as they groveled before the flying histamines for mercy. It was one of those moments entirely beyond words. I remember screaming "Blasilhup glanderdaw nuck-nuck-zamboni!" which is really the only way I can describe the carnage without the aid of some sort of visual capture device such as an etch-a-sketch or Mario Paint. I believe it's Urdu.

I got into a huge brawl yesterday. Have you ever heard someone say, "You can't spell brawl without bawl!", perchance? The answer is you haven't, and that's because the two are totally dissimilar and etiologically unrelated. Also, because if someone ever said that, any nearby citizen mindful of the public good would promptly disembowel him, starting with his ovaries.

Here's what I'm trying to say: I got into a huge fucking fight the other day. Fists a-flying, teeth a-shattering, random ladies on the street a-screaming a-bloody murder. It was between me and every black person to ever go to Harvard. It was three against one. They was all like, "Yo cracka can't jump," and I was all, "Bitch say whaaa?" And then the bleeding commenced.

Here's the thing though. I'm sure, since everyone who reads this blahg is racist (Eric "The Jew Hater" Nazar, I'm looking at you) you probably assumed that all black people can fight. This is not true. See, some black people are from England. And all black Harvard students are from England. Imagine that!

What the fuck am I talking about?

Alcoholism, and other games to play with your children

When people hear a word like “alcoholism,” they generally respond in one of a few ways. Some laugh derisively, trying to hide the fact that they don’t know what it means, others laugh nervously, knowing they have some troubled past to conceal, and others say, “Alco-what-you-say?” Nobody really understands it.

But here are the facts. Alcoholism affects over five-and-a-half hundred million Americans every year, not including Canadians. Think about that. That’s almost twice as many Americans as exist within America. That means for every person you know who isn’t an alcoholic, that person is actually over five-thirds of an alcoholic. That person is lying to you.

Did you know most people you see in the street are alcoholics? Think about how many people you see in the street every day. Millions, probably. Some of them are walking alone, holding hands, or walking along, buying things, must most are just walking along, being alcoholics. If you’re like most people, you probably thought only panhandlers are alcoholics. But that’s not true; in fact, it’s almost false. These people can’t even afford enough booze to be proper alcoholics. Most alcoholics are rich, and what’s more, most of them don’t even drink.

Not surprisingly, there are still some old-fashioned people who don’t consider alcoholism a legitimate disease. These are the same sort of people who still think that only gay people get AIDS, and that humans aren’t really descended from Galapagos finches. In short, they’re old people.

Alcoholism is not just alcohol addiction. Nor is it merely a symptom of some other psychological illness or infirmity. Nor is it a cultural construct. Nor is it a variety of other things. What is it, then? Just look at the word if you want to know. Alcoholism: a combination between Al (the name of most bus drivers), cholera, a girl named Liz, and the letter m, which is, not coincidentally, the first letter of mendacity.

That's really all you need to know. Now go out and get drunk.

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.