Real Life Role Models – Page 3

February 12, 2003 / Brendan

Collective effervescence.

We’ve started the play, and it’s perfect, raw, gorgeous, exactly everything we wanted it to be.

Afterwards, I walked to the gas station to buy more caffeine (the presentation has yet to be done). I had a flower in my backpack from Deb, and was listening to a Duncan Sheik song, of all things, and I could see the whole scope of it: how last year was home, and this year is setting out away from it. How and why I’ve done what I’ve done, here. How this is the biggest year I’ve ever lived.

June 30, 2002 / Brendan

The Handmaid’s Tale was everything I expected plus three. I mostly remember it as being one of the choices of summer assignments for Mr. Munson’s junior AP English, and even though my choices were good (Ordinary People and Catcher in the Rye), I can’t help but be impressed that he gave it to unproven high schoolers to read.

I’ve been trying to articulate this thought for like fifteen minutes now, and it’s not coming. It’s something like this: But. The fact that he had the balls to give rising juniors books like Handmaid’s Tale isn’t as impressive, really, as the fact that under him we read them and enjoyed them and understood them. Reason number five hundred sixteen I won’t be a teacher–I could never live up to that.

Anyway. The Truth was even fluffier than I expected it to be, actually, but still not bad. I’m most of the way through Enchantment now, and Card’s books are only getting talkier and I don’t like it. He wrote a book called Character and Viewpoint a long time ago, and while I still consider it one of the best books on writing I’ve ever read, he’s stopped listening to his own advice. I wish he’d show me what his characters are doing instead of telling me what they’re thinking. Ender’s Game works so well because it strikes a balance between those two. Enchantment is close, but no cigar. (Children of the Mind missed the whole damn booth.)

And Minority Report was really good, yadda yadda. I just wish, in a fashion oddly reminiscent of Vanilla Sky, that I hadn’t had to pee so bad for so much of it.

June 10, 2002 / Brendan

My first remote update! I am at GSP. It is planning week. I am in List-Making-Mode.
It’s the smells that set off my memory, and the strongest of those memories, weirdly, are of this week last year, rather than GSP proper. Maybe it’s because that’s when I first encountered these smells–the same way the smell (odor? miasma?) of Nevin still reminds me of my five weeks there during my GSP, instead of my whole freshman year.
Same floor. Same room. Six dumb flights of stairs or the bitchy elevator. And the lights don’t work as well this year.
But! I get to practice saying “Sixth Todd” as all one syllable again.
I got Brushfire Fairytales and Dirty Vegas. Both are really good, although I think I like the former better. (Jon, let me know if you want me to burn you a copy of the second. Just to try before you buy, ofcourse.)
I shouldn’t say this, because Kim and Taylor will probably read it, but I don’t think it really matters now. Last year’s campus director was named Laura. This year’s director of seminar is a different Laura. The first one is about as gone as you can get, but every time someone mentions the second Laura by name, I shudder involuntarily.
The new campus director is named Joe, and he’s kickass, awesome, right on. I’ve been looking forward to working with him since the retreat in April, and so far it’s every bit as good as I’d hoped.
I loved our staff last year, and I would have been happy to see any of them return. Not many of us did–some by choice, some not so much. But the few who did come back… well, if you’re reading this and you didn’t make it this year, don’t take this the wrong way: again, I loved you all. But Erin, Mooch, Jimmy and Caudill are the ones I would have picked if I’d had four choices, and they’re all back, and that makes me really happy.
But.
B Rich and Harney would have been in my picks too, except I knew they were going to be head RAs last year anyway. And they’re brilliant and exactly right for the job, and it’s going to be a good time, with them around.
There’s simply no comparison to draw between them and the people who had those jobs last year. Not just apples and oranges, but, like, apples and tungsten.
So it’s not that I miss last year’s head RAs because I want them doing the job again. It’s that Emma and Drew were my friends, and now that I’m here again, with these smells and that room and those memories, I miss them so much it’s like a knife in my side.
That said. It’s going to be a good six weeks.

April 16, 2002 / Brendan

Two guys are driving past a field populated by a large number of cows. One of the guys turns to the other and says”What a big herd of cows! How many do you think there are?”

“Eighty-four,” says the second guy.

“Wow!” says the first guy, stunned. “How’d you figure that out so fast?”

“Easy,” says the second guy, “I counted their legs and divided by four.”

This is my Discrete professor’s idea of a joke.

Somebody’s been searching a lot for “xorph.com” on Yahoo, repeatedly and regularly–like twenty times in less than amonth. A fine thing, in my opinion, but how long is it going to take him or her to figure out the address bar? Also,somebody found this site by searching for “elephant dildo” the other day. Believe it or not, that exact phrase has cropped up in here before. All the same, I’m hoping it was one of my friends who’s in on that particular joke; if not, I hope it was someone who’s going to get help soon.

Speaking of help:

THAT MISTER HYPNOSIS IS A VERY BAD INFLUENCE YOUNG LADY!!!