Tuesday, April 26, 2005

"The next time you see the homie and his rims is spinin',
Just know my mind is workin' just like them (The rims that is)" (Jay-Z, 2003)

The time before finals week that some refer to as "dead week" is truly a magical time. Long stretches of desperate productivity punctuated by periods of sitting perfectly still to wait for my head to stop throbbing and my vision to clear. This is the time when I prove that I've retained a semester's worth of learning by going through a week that, due to sporadic nourishment and restless sleep, I will not remember when it's over. I'm living on sandwiches from the atrium, tomato soup cups, and horse-pill multi-vitamins. I'll go on record as saying that grad school is a terrible idea, and should only be attempted by people with the willfully stubborn chutzpah to ignore the good advice to stay away. Thankfully, I get that ability from both of my parents.

And yes, I cited Jay-Z according to my AP style manual. I'm only being mildly sarcastic there.

Sunday, April 24, 2005

T.S. Elliot was absolutely, prophetically right when he wrote "April is the cruelest month." The weather was great a week ago, and then on Friday the temperature dropped along with every form of precipitation possible. Last night at 11:30 it was snowing as Gerry, Tom, and I worked to unload a couch and an entertainment center from a moving van. It's a bit of a long story, and I'm tired and hungry right now, but suffice it to say that you find out who your friends are right quick when you need people to help carry an overstuffed sofa down a slick, snow-covered ramp, across a wet parking lot, up four steps, through two doors, up a narrow flight of stairs, and (somehow) through an awkwardly shaped entrance to an apartment. For whatever reason, nobody wanted to help us, so the three of us worked out the problem through trial and error involving angles that no furniture should ever be in.

Wednesday, April 20, 2005

Operating Instructions:

1. Connect the spoon to the handle.

2. On the base of the handle, push the black power switch toward the spoon bowl to turn the power on.

3. Push the red button on the top of the handle to activate the spoon light.

This poetry adorns the transparent bag that formerly held my newest tchotchke, a light-up lightsaber spoon. Gerry and I were at walmart earlier to buy food and examine the summer movie promotion swag. Naturally, it's all Star Wars stuff, especially the cereal. Menacing portraits of characters from the third prequel mugging over bowls of milk-soaked cornflakes for the length of the aisle- it's quite something. We stopped to admire a box of crispix with a mail-away offer for an R2-D2 bowl that makes character-appropriate noises when acted upon by some outside force, such as the weight of cereal in the bowl. Gerry and I deliberated over this and determined that the cereal would indeed be a worthwhile purchase with the offer of a bowl resembling an astromech droid. How can you go wrong? A few feet from this was a box of apple jacks emblazoned with Anakin Skywalker. I'm not sure the cereal company meant for me to associate their cereal with the character responsible for the wholesale slaughter of nearly all of the Jedi in the Republic, or the personification of Campbell's archetype of evil, but the important thing is that the box contained the lightsaber spoon. I don't eat cereal, as it doesn't work to carry milk and cereal in my cupped hands as I walk to work. Gerry is more the cereal type, so we agreed that I would buy the cereal and he would eat it, but I get the spoon. For just shy of three bucks, I'd say I got a good deal. I opened the box and the prize was right there on top. We could hardly contain our enthusiasm as I struggled through the layers of plastic packaging to assemble my new utensil. I deliberately avoided pressing any buttons to save the surprise of the color of light that would soon illuminate the plastic spoon and every bit of food I will ingest for the next few weeks. I assembled the item according to the instructions above, moved the small black switch up, and pressed the power button. Gerry and I both gasped audibly as the spoon lit up blazingly red. It looked even cooler with the light out- my kitchen was illuminated by a spoon. It's worth waiting for the sun to go down to eat with a lightsaber spoon, in case any of you need a little extra incentive for Passover.

Tuesday, April 12, 2005

I'm in the library doing research in the journals and publications archive section right now. As I was returning what I needed, I found a collection of book-bound issues of "The Illustrated London Press." I opened up the January-March volume 1937 to peruse the old European art-deco advertising that I like so much, and I found a big article from February 6 with photos of Nazi Germany. One line from the article jumped out at me: "...the Chancellor declared that the Versailles Treaty was now at an end, and that, Germany having attained equality, there would be no more "surprises."" Hmm. Surprise! I'm always fascinated at how the world kissed Germany's collective ass when it was kind of obvious from the photos of their army marching in the street with rifles that they weren't done causing trouble. Folks were simpler back then.

Sunday, April 03, 2005

So, what did everybody else do on Saturday? I worked on homework, saw Sin City, and later in the evening Gerry and I watched Rudy with one of his co-workers who may or not be my best friend in the whole world, I don't know. She left around 1:30, and Gerry and I hung around for a minute. He gave me a comic to read, and as I was leaving we both heard a strange buzzing noise. It wasn't in the kitchen, it wasn't the computer; curiouser and curiouser. The noise was louder in the hall and up the stairs, so we went to investigate. The smoke alarm was going off in number 10 upstairs. Being the noble Jedi that I am, I pounded on the door, but received no response. The next logical step (courtesy of Gerry) was to check the doorknob for heat a la the method demonstrated by Dick Van Dyke in the old filmstrip we all had to watch every time the fire marshall came to the school, or the cub scout den visited the fire station. No heat, but no answer at the door either. So, though I am loathe to use the phone except to call Gerry or a relative, I dialed 911 and tried to describe the abstract concept of theoretical fire through a locked door to the bleary-eyed third-shifter at the other end. She said that she would send someone out. I waited at the window for the truck while Gerry bravely brushed his teeth in preparation for dealing with the firemen. Dental hygiene goes a long way with our brave civil servants, after all. I waited outside in case the driver had trouble finding an apartment complex on the third busiest street in north Muncie, and my phone made a noise. It had made a little chime when I dialed 911 the first time, so I looked to see if I had missed a call. There was no evidence of this, so as near as I can tell the fire department pinged my phone to triangulate my location from the tower. In short, very cool. The truck arrived shortly, all lights and sirens like a bat out of hell. I went out to meet the firemen and to explain the situation. Gerry and I tried to reach our landlady and got her voice mail. The firemen climbed up a ladder to the third floor window and determined that the alarm was going off even though there was no smoke. The truck left, and Gerry said that I could post this from his room. He's trying to sleep right now, so if I may I'll speak on his behalf: "Loyal, get the hell out of my apartment. It's two damn thirty." Well said, fool, well said.