24. Putting my five cents in
25. Pseudo-intellectual healing
26. In the eye of the beholder?
27. Time is not a-changin'
28. Trick or treatise
29. 1-800-Collection
30. Words of wisdom
31. stories from a burning igloo
32. Suite Retreat '95
33. A bank-full of thankfuls
34. One life to live
35. Exit stage left, even
Volumes: 1 2 3 4 5 6
Putting my five cents in
Sept. 20, 1995
As anyone who has worn the same pair socks for a solid week can attest to, change is a good thing. And right now, America faces a pair socks with an odor as strong as Pig Pen from the Peanuts. The stench-ridden hosiery to which I refer, of course, is the problem of nickels.
Of course, this poorly constructed and altogether silly analogy immediately raises the question, "Are the socks argyle?" Of course I answer by smacking you upside the head with a large and intimidating melon, explaining that nickels are a completely useless coin and should be as extinct as Dukakis.
Other coins are fine because they each have a specific purpose. A quarter is for laundry, a dime is for a phone call, a penny is for high velocity throwing at rommates -- but nickels are wholly inappropriate for these tasks. They'll leave you with dirty clothes, no dial tone, and a severely maimed roomie. Yeah, as a projectile, a nickel's weight makes it the coinage equivalent of the baseball bat scene from The Untouchables. In other words, don't try this at home unless you happen to be a reputed mafia boss in which case you can do anything you damn well please since I'm not gonna stop you because I'd prefer not to wear da cement shoes an' sleep wit' da fishes. Capiece?
Nickels' unwieldy size also creates great gobs of confusion when fishing around in your pocket. Of course, fishing in pockets is a pretty silly idea unless your pants are much different than mine (i.e., filled with water, large enough to fit a small rowboat in, chock full of aquatic life) and you don't mind getting the occasional fishhook caught on your vital organs.
Many is the time that you pull out what you believe to be a quarter so as to pay a kindly time-pressured vendor, when in actuality you have produced nothing more than a pitiful nickel. This causes both a second fruitless search through the nether regions of your trousers and a nervous breakdown in the poor clerk. So in order to lower the suicide rate of convenient store workers et al, the nickel should take a long walk on a short pier. A very long walk on a medium-sized pier would also be okay too, as well as a zig-zag walk on a narrow pier, a Republican walk on a Democratic pier, or even a milky walk on a lactose intolerant pier.
Now, some people haved tried to stonewall my grass-roots movement to rid the word of five-cent pieces -- communists, no doubt. They claim that single-centers should be eliminated instead. I reply in Dickensian tone: Bah humbug. The people who say pennies are useless overlook the fact that pennies are perfect to give away without financial distress, regardless of your economic status. Nobody thinks twice about about tossing a penny into a fountain, but some deep psychological block that I wouldn't even attempt to understand prohibits us from releasing the precious nickel from our purses. Of course, once we strip away this Freudian impasse, we realize that the nickel is as valueless as the penny and that the dream we had about that boa constrictor when we were seven was perhaps not as harmless as we had once hoped.
Sometimes a nickel is just a cigar...
And who can ignore the way in which pennies have infiltrated our idioms? A penny for your thoughts, put your two cents in -- without this coin, you'd never be able to sell your ideas. If so, you'd almost certainly bankrupt the poor schlump who now has to offer $19.95 plus shipping and handling for you thoughts (sorry, no C.O.D.'s). Nickels, on the other hand, have no aspect of American culture to invoke in their defense. There are no universal expressions except for people named Nicholas ("Nickel be back in ten minutes, so wait here"). No loss to zonk 'em, but this does not advocate zonking people named Nick unless they are big dorks in which case I will come and personally help you zonk them.
You may not detest the coin as much as I do (I pretty much break out in hives at the mere mention of the word) but chances are you're not an vehement fan of the little slabs o' metal. And despite this fact, there's been talk in Congress of ADDING a coin. Yeah, those 535 geniuses want to bring back the one dollar coin.
Hello? McFly? HELLO?
This logic is sort of like going to the beach to cure a nasty sunburn -- 100 percent bass ackwards. When you're looking lobsterish, the last thing you want to do is catch any more rays, so why add more coins when there's really no need for the five-cent piece? To get this point across to the government, try paying your taxes this year in all nickels. Not rolled, just envelopes filled with nickels. Sure, it'll cost a small fortune in postage, but you have to be willing to shell out a few bucks if you want to make a bold (and utterly useless) political statement.
My only hesistation in all of this is that outlawing nickels could result in something that like Prohibition -- black market coin-pressing, bathtub nickels, bootlegged Indian heads, and the baseball bat scene from The Untouchables. Of course, if we can all just get along a la Rodney King, America can be a happy place with as many coins as stooges because nickels are the Shemp of the monetary world.
(Welcome back. The Dentist will see you now.)
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Pseudo-intellectual healing
Sept. 27, 1995
So I was feeling like quite the pseudo-intellectual and rented My Dinner With André. Described on its box as "a passionate, volatile, and humorous encounter between two friends," critics everywhere just wet their pants over this utter masterpiece from Louis Malle. And fancying myself a true connoisseur of all things cultured and pretentious, this film sounded like a fine way to stimulate the old noggin, eh?
Of course, I never took into account that it was perhaps the dullest 104 minutes in cinema history. Two guys chewing their food and giving monologues that indirectly dealt with the meaning of life (or something equally sketchy/profound). Okay, I'll admit there were some interesting points expressed (not to mention a zesty Carmichaelesque rice dish consumed), but I found myself more interested in fiddling intently with my leg-hairs than listening to them babble between nibbles.
Obvious question of the week: "Why did you bother to sit through all 104 painful minutes of a movie as interesting as a math-book?"
Blunt and annoyed answer of the week: "I was watching it at my friend's house and thought it might be rude if I, oh I don't know, ripped the tape from his VCR and flung it across the room so I could jump up and down on it for a good hour or so." No, I decided to humor Gunther with my patience (names have been changed to protect the idiot) and instead chose to writhe in silent agony.
"What did you think?" I asked him, expecting a disappointed response similar to my own. Despite the Jolt cola we had injected directly into our bloodstream, My Dinner With André was the celluloid equivalent of a tranquilizer dart (although less pointy and far less aerodynamic). I had caught Gunther catching a few z's before the dessert course -- existentialism with whipped cream on top.
"I liked it."
"What?"
"It was really good."
LIAR!
How could he think it was really good? The box had a warning on the outside: "Do not operate heavy machinery after viewing" -- this is how dull it was. And he thought it was really good? What, did he listen to it between snores? Or perhaps he dreamt of a fabulous movie during his golden slumber?
Grrrrrr.
See, Gunther is also the kind of guy who appreciates the cinematography of The Smurfs and refers to Woody Allen as a modern-day Czechov. A wholly unqualified statement since this boy's read as many Russian novels as I've had supermodels begging me for dates. The sum total of both is a big fat goose-egg (although Elle MacPherson asked me for a foot massage and Gunther looked at the pictures in The Brothers Karamazov.)
Not to bash on my friends... okay, to bash on my friends. The problem here is that when I rented the flick, I only wanted to see what the raves had been about and was curious for a bit of knowledge. When it turned into a snooze fest, I realized I had been shnookered by Siskel and Ebert. Gunther, on the other hand, enjoyed the film because he thought it was the right thing to do. He's the kind of guy who upon hearing Gene Shalit say that feces taste great (four stars!), will run to the store to buy shit-flavored ice cream.
A bona fide pseudo-intellectual.
This realization came as a shock to me after spending the summer at a convenient store where the customers were typified by a trucker sporting a T-shirt reading "This is not a beer belly, it's a gas tank for a sex machine." First off, you have no right to call yourself a "sex machine" unless you are either James Brown (your bad self) or Wilt Chamberlain (your horny self). But more importantly, this man had no delusions about his own brain-power. The most mentally taxing activity in his day is thumbing through the TV Guide sounding out tough words like "Seinfeld" and "Urkell" and he's okay with that. So after hanging out with a clientele who accept that they're as smart as pudding, I was shocked to discover the mental shallowness near me. Gunther really fancies himself the high-class sophisticate, smarter than the world when he's really just a typically maladjusted college student with a particularly snappy wardrobe.
Back at school, however, one needs only to visit a typical poli sci or English class to discover a bevy of pseudo-intellectuals. Spitting out words with 12 syllables and making gratuitous references to obscure sources makes them pretty easy to spot. And art history classes -- good luck.
But let it be known that it isn't intelligence I scoff at. Nosiree, having brains is a good thing and I even approve of showing them off here and there (provided they're well preserved in fermerldahyde and you don't "accidentally" leave them amongst the lettuce at the Dewick/Macphie salad bar). It's just the people who pretend to be a whole lot smarter and aged than they really are who get my goat, and I'd prefer to keep my goat in my own possession for as long as possible. I mean, whatever happened to that Shakespeare line about "to thine own self be true?"
See -- even the dentist writing this column/page-long-complaint treads the fine line of pseudo-intellectualism and actual credence by alluding to some dead guy I know little about. It's tough to make a serious point or hint at a complex concept without sounding pretentious. But of course, you peasants probably wouldn't understand such a superior concept (he says, pointing nose into the air).
Well, after my miserable failure with André, I opted for something more suitable to my way of thinking -- The Best of Mr. Bill. Like Marvin Gaye sang, it was my pseudo-intellectual healing (although I may have them there lyrics messed up) and it was the perfect antidote for an evening of pretending to be someone I'm not. Still, Gunther thought Mr. Bill was a beautifully directed film and praised the gaffer as well as the best boy. Oh well. If you can't change the world, change yourself, right?
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Art bypass
Oct. 4, 1995
I come up with some pretty strange ways to amuse myself, especially when it comes to office supplies. Scott, my nerdy roommate, had to confiscate my Elmer's Glue when I figured out just how great a toy that whitest of white adhesive products is, inadvertantly glueing things together that were never meant to be joined (i.e. book and cup, quarter and desk, halogen lamp and face).
Pencils and scissors become great juggling items, a piece of information mostly wasted on me since I juggle about as well as a hamster can tap-dance (Sammy Davis Gerbil?). This shortcoming is due to my severe lack of coordination that turns a simple activity like brushing my teeth into Def Con 4. Hence, my version of juggling pretty much consists of throwing a lot of pointy things up in the air and then ducking for cover in the hopes that my stupidity does not come back to haunt/injure/doodle on me.
But sometimes when Scott has taken away all my worldly possessions including the fake ID I use at Staples (they won't sell envelopes to minors) I have to come up with other forms of entertainment. I contemplated learning braille but found it useless since my fingertips are made of plywood. And though some would suggest doing homework a means of taking up time, I thought it more lucrative and procrastinatory (not a word) for me to pursue a career in performance art.
See, performance art is such a fabulous medium because you don't need any talent to be good at it -- you just need to act like you have talent. A man who charges you $3 to watch him take a dump on stage would be looked down upon... unless, of course, he was wearing a black turtleneck, reciting lines from The Canterbury Tales, and wiping his bum with a picture of the Pope. Then he becomes an artiste (sort of like an artist except that the extra "e" maskes it far more pretentious) and he can charge $17.50 plus Ticketmaster service charges, shipping, handling, candling, manhandling, and Garry Shandling.
In other words, more dough than a bakery.
Nigel Tufnel of Spinal Tap said that "there's a fine line line between clever and stupid,"and though this nugget of wisdom applies to the heavy metal scene they mocked, it also works in the realm of P.A.. This is not to say that Napalm Death should be considered avant-garde but rather that in to be a successful performance artist, you have to come up with something insanely stupid (several levels below Jim Carrey) and make it seem clever (several levels above Doogie Howser). Regardless of what is actually being done, the act must look so meaningful that everyone feels very stupid for not understanding. A perfromance artsist who does not insult the audience's intelligence is just a schmuck on a stage in a leotard.
My close personal friends John and Yoko were masters of the genre. They would do wacky things like sit around naked, stand around naked, lie around dishes naked, and go on a merry-go-round naked. Clearly, they were sending a message, and that message was "We hate laundry." I think this is a good message because I also hate laundry. Hate it hate it hate it. I would rather go to the trouble of buying new clothes than washing the old ones -- a bold statement since garment shopping is a trying experience for me, what with being eleven feet tall and everything.
Oh, how to decide what motivates the performance artist: Is it some warped expression of deep-rooted philosophical beliefs or is it just gas? We may never know. Senor Lennon was a tad bit fruity (number nine?) and you have to wonder sometimes if he was making a bold artistic statement or just pulling a fast one on the people who thought he was serious. If he was just making a big joke, I'd be content although a better joke would be "What's big and white and if it falls out of a tree can kill you?" "A refrigerator." Muhahahaha. Hahaha.
Hah.
But maybe I'm missing something. Maybe there's a whole lotta symbolism going on and I'm too much of a Neanderthal to comprehend it. (Hey, most of my romantic life does revolve around going to frats and hitting women on the head with a club.) Perhaps when my friend Jen took the stage sporting nothing but her skivvies and then had milk poured on her while discussing the weather -- well, maybe this had something to do with the starving children in Ethiopia and I was too thick to make that logical leap. Maybe it's a fear of the unknown. Maybe it's cancer -- oh wait, no, it's not a tumor.
Self-doubts aside, I have a show to put on. So in the absence of fun desk toys to fiddle with, I was thinking that for I'll go to Hotung and get on stage wearing 4,000 cotton balls, shave my tongue with a chainsaw while stepping on mustard, screaming the phrase "Hang my lips on the steps of the worm" the whole time.
Or maybe I'll just head over to the Tot Lot and ride the merry-go-round naked. The way things are going, they're gonna crucify me.
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Time is not a-changin'
Oct. 11, 1995
I would make a great revisionist historian. I really would. I just love to look back at things I did a few years ago and think, "Humph! I'd never do something like that now; I've changed so much." It's really convenient to blame past embarassments on the fact that it was a different dan back then. Well, that and I like to say "Humph!" whenever I get the chance.
Senseless arguments with friends, term papers on a quality level of an Ernest movie, financial ruin from junk bonds -- these things would never occur now because I have grown up so so so much and matured like a green banana (which, in my kitchen, go directly from green to brown to highly toxic). And even though there is a certain amount of historical revisionism going on with my thought processes, there's still some truth to my rationalization about having changed a lot.
I mean, is anyone here the same person they were when they entered college? Richard Dawson can check what the survey says, but methinks we'll hear a lot of buzzing and the other family will get play fast money while the Dentistry family will just get some nice parting gifts (an Epilady which I have little to no use for). Comparing ourselves to Orientation week -- apples and oranges (which also fare rather poorly in my kitchen; I think I need a new fridge).
I wish I could go go back in time in to talk to myself when I was in high school. I was such an angry young man, such an understated rebel, such a Harry Truman impersonator -- if only I could go visit the dan of yesteryear and talk some sense into him knowing what I know now. Sort of like what Bill and Ted did with Rufus, except I'd do a far better acting job than Keanuau Reeves. Hell, my butt could do a better acting job than that guy. Humph!
If I had that magic phone booth, I'd love to go talk to an eight-year-old me. Wouldn't it be fascinating to talk to yourself as a little kid and find out how annoying you really were? All I have to go on is what my parents tell me (lies, no doubt) and a video of my fourth grade play, a atge triumph entitled, "Daniel Boone Killed A Bear." Arthur Miller it's not (nor Barney Miller or even Miller High Life), but I get chills thinking that the little brat whining onstage is the same overfed, long-haired leaping gnome that now whines in column format.
It's even harder to reconcile the fact that the brat in baby pictures is me. Yes, there's a slight physical resemblence (and I still drool just as much), but how can that two foot tall infant be the fine specimen of humanity that is today's Tobinator? Man, if I ever saw a video of my birth I'd just keel over and dream of sugar-plums dancing through my head. My psyche could not deal with witnessing my own coming into existence, because that's, like, page one of my life. Rewinding the video would be like watching my death and...
Stop me any time.
When our parents look at us, they're not just seeing us how we are at this very moment; they're seeing every stage of our lives all at once. From that drooling baby up through that vomitting frat boy -- if it involves projectiles erupting from your mouth, they see it. And someday I'm gonna be on the other end of this equation (not yakking up a storm, per se, but probably doing the Bill Cosby child-birth cheerleading: "Push 'em out, shove 'em out, wayyyy out!"). Eventually I'll be the parent with children of my own.
(cue up "Circle of Life" and get my animated family of lions to start singing)
It's even harder to link old people with baby pictures. I sort of figured that my grandparents were born with white hair and dentures. But that isn't how it works (I recently found this out from Mr. Rogers) and they were once babies too. Amazing isn't it? Still, this nugget of wisdom doesn't make it any easier to picture my Nana and Papa as teenagers gettin' it on in the backseat of a Model T -- blecch.
Oh why did I conjure up that image? Now I have to go shower for, like, a month and a half. Ewww!
Time is not a-changin' -- it has a nasty habit of affecting everyone (except Dick Clark) and we're all getting older whether we like it or not. In 20 years we're gonna look back at the same baby pictures all the more confused as to how some middle-aged twit could be the same person who ate mushed carrots and needed a third party in order to burp successfully. Glad we grew out of that stage -- can you imagine needing a friend every time you needed to emit gas? I guess there are people like that -- they say things like "Pull my finger."
I guess I'm being a little unrealistic about this time travel things -- my Delorean is in the shop, my Calvin Klein underwear is dirty, and I'd never be able to find enough gigawatts to get back. So I suppose I should issue a challenge to any H.G, Wells-wannabes (catch that reference?) to build me a time machine so that I can complete this column the right way -- with an in depth interview with a toddler Tobinator. Until I'll have to end it with complete nonsense.
Tookrafoosh. Glimnob, suribby dibby conshtuden. Humph!
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Trick or treatise
Oct. 18, 1995
Halloween's right around the corner. Actually, it's around the corner, down a hallway, through a small door, over the river, through the woods, up a mountain, and over my dead body, but who's counting? Yeah, it's still kind of far away, but there's so many damned columnists these days that I figured I needed to get a leg up on the (so-called) competition. Besides you need time to plan for the finalest day of October.
Yes, that scary, spooky, altogether ooky holiday is less than two weeks away and oh boy am I psyched. As a little kid, Halloween was probably my favorite holiday (except for Present Tense Appreciation Day where you sit back, and take some time to think about what the present tense means to you). Sure, Labor Day was blast and a half investing in new school supplies (happiness is not warm puppy, it's a Trapper Keeper with a Ferrari on the front), but Halloween was much more fun and much more fattening.
I mean, when else to you get to go door to door begging for food? I guess if you're homeless, Halloween is every day, which is a big load off my shoulders. I know that when I put my Tufts degree to good use as a wino, at least my Tootsie Roll intake will not decrease significantly. Whew.
It's paragraphs like that -- even I start to wonder what's going on in my head.
After a hard day's night of trick-or-treating, my sister and I used to dump out all our candy to count and sort it (chocolate vs. fruity, cyanide-tainted vs. hidden razor-blades) and then engage in some high stakes bidding. I always found a way of tricking her into taking my infernal Necco wafers which tasted vaguely like a cross between chalk and human feces. I hate chalk. But then she hired a private brokerage firm to aid in negotians; they banked all her Reeses and the Great Candy Depression of '86 began. It lasted until my dad got hungry and ate everything.
One day, I realized I could just buy the candy in the store. With a crisp Abe Lincoln five-note in hand, I could attain the same amount of confectionary goodies it had taken me hours and hours of bargaining and mugging little kids to acquire. Yeah, I got into the whole criminal world of Halloween. I soon learned I didn't have to dress like Oscar the Grouch to get my sugar fix -- I could just knock over a convenient store or hijack someone's Huffy.
But I didn't completely succumb to the dark side because: a) it's not my destiny, and b) costumes are fun. The first year I went out, I was a scarecrow and my parents thought it would be cute (bordering on "just darling") to stuff my sleeves with real straw. Ah, the fond memories of walking all night with prickly grains sticking into my skin. The next year I took care not to repeat this error and dressed up as a pine tree, with real pinecones stuffed up my sleeves. Of course, this too was a failure, as were the subsequent costumes of dressing as broken glass, scrap metal, and a chainsaw. Years later, I finally figured out that costumes didn't have to involve stuffing painful things up my sleeves and instead dressed up as a lit fireplace, a costume that pushed the envelope of flame retardation.
Ironically, it also pushed the envelope of social retardation, big retard that I am..
As I got older, roaming around my neighborhood in a wacky costume became a bit gauche, although that didn't stop me from doing it every Tuesday of junior year. But eventually, trick-or-treating gave way to the party circuit and the wild and crazy Halloween games that ensued, and I ain't talkin' about jai alai.
The biggest game, of course, is the highly sanitary bobbing for apples, which isn't much more than glorified gargling with fruit. You could get the same effect from, say, rinsing with somebody's saliva and eating a banana. Then there's the old "eating a donut off a string blindfolded" game. Of course, my friends were practical jokers and would replace the donut with a live raccoon. Far less fun for me, but quite a thrill for the rabid-animal-on-a-rope.
Pumpkin farmers must adore Halloween. Why else would anyone ever buy a pumpkin? It tastes vaguely like a cross between squash and human feces -- and I'm rather fond of squash, both vegetable and game. No, the only reason to purchase the big, roundish, orange fruit/vegetable (my suitemates almost came to blows over its classification) is to cut it up into something that doesn't even look much like a face. What's up with the triangular eyes and nose? Perhaps the first jackolantern carver was an abstract expressionist who used the traingles as a metaphor for the three sides to human existence and the mysteries of life...
I'm not a cubosurrealist, but I play one on TV.
I suppose that trying to turn something as mundane as repeatedly stabbing a vegetable with a knife into some philosophical manifesto would be a bit of a stretch, but it sure is fun trying (for me, at least). Hell, I'm allowed to be self-indulgent every once in a while.
Halloween is fun fun fun till her daddy takes her T-bird away, but I sometimes wonder if its a sign of the dangers of our maturity. Trick-or-treating is oodles of fun; the West Hall Halloween Party is not -- they would have to go to great lengths to make it any more lame (perhaps a special guest appearance by Arvid from Head of the Class).
Some dorms set up trick-or-treating, but I think everyone should. Free food for the masses is the key to happiness (as almost proven by last year's "TCU Constitution With a Side of Pizza" fiasco), so let's get back to our roots, don the silly costumes, and start begging for goodies like good little panhandlers.
If you don't, I don't care. I'll pull down your underwear.
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1-800-Collection
Oct. 25, 1995
Being the nonathletic wuss that I am, I never really got into sports. That's not true; I never got into sports at all. Watching, playing, parachuting during the middle of -- sporting events just never struck my fancy (though they did strike my cousin Earl upside the head with a shovel).
I never even collected baseball cards. For a year I had Baseball Stickers which were a lot like the cards except that they lacked the statistics (or logarithms or what not), but had a higher stickiness index. As a general rule in life, sticky = good. I put my Baseball Stickers in my Baseball Sticker Book that I kept on my Baseball Sticker Shelf in my Baseball Sticker Room which I cleaned with my Baseball Stcker Vacuum every Baseball Sticker Saturday. And that's the end of that Baseball Sticker Joke.
Well, it didn't fulfill my goal of becoming "one of the guys," but that collection provided me with most of my current knowledge of baseball: the ball is round, the bat is not. Anyway, the point I am haphazardly pretending to make is that collections are a wonderful thing. Wait, isn't that a Jimmy Stuart movie? Oh no, that's Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.
Everyone needs to have a collection -- it's sort of like having a goal in life, just more expensive. I've had a lot of collections in my day, especially when I was little, but I never had conventional ones like comic books or stamps. Nope, after the baseball stickers, I moved into a realm I knew much better -- grossness.
And so Garbage Pail Kids were my destiny. I stumbled upon them by accident when I bought a pack for my sister thinking they were actually Cabbage Patch Kids stickers. Gadzooks, was she ever surprised to find her favorite Xavier Roberts dolls covered in snot and insects, farting and decaying and doing things that would make even Howard Stern look away.
She was offended, I was in love.
When I was older and wiser, I sat down to figure out just how much money I had poured into this addiction. I realized that had I never discovered "Leaky Lindsay," "Schizo Fran," or "Barfin' Boutros-Boutros," I would have save myself roughly $16,000 (give or take $15,975). And I didn't even get my money's worth because I never ate that gum inside, which was essentially pure sugar in pink rectangular format.
After this financial analysis, I knew it was time to move on to a new and economically sound, yet equally gross and offensive, collection. That's when I decided to collect used popsicle sticks.
I really did collect them. I had over 100 souvenirs from popsicles, pudding pops, and visits to the doctor (as my close personal friends in Poison would say, "Open Up and Say Aaaaah"). My next door neighbor thought I was an idiot, explaining that I could just buy a big bag of clean ones at the store. I smiled as I dismembered him, knowing how silly this suggestion was. Unused sticks wouldn't have that lovely colored stain of gelatin, those unique droplets of saliva, the amazing splinter-giving capabilities.
Wow. I was a really gross little kid.
My other free collection was of business cards, but since that yields no amusing anecdotes or opportunities for my supposedly witty commentary so I will move onto my next collection: key chains. No, that is equally uninteresting, so instead I will go into great deatil describing my most exciting collection: pocket lint.
The "in thing" to collect these days is pogs, which are milk caps with pictures on them. Milk caps? I thought milk came in boxes that fold open -- are pogs just little hats for containers of calcium-rich liquid? And can lactose intolerant kids still play with pogs? I only have a few pogs, but the collection is limited to the free prizes I got from Chex cereal boxes and of course the special limited edition Tufts Administrator pogs (to go along with my "Frightenin' Reitman" Garbage Pail Kid).
Actually, my current collections are very unoffensive. First of all, I collect Pez dispensers and can boast a far greater feat than the Somerville Theater's impressive display. The interesting thing about Pez dispensers is that they are all manufactured in former Soviet Bloc countries (110 percent truth) which makes me wonder when I will be able to obtain a Joseph Stalin dispenser. I used to have a Trotsky, but somebody had it emptied (about 6 percent truth).
And who can forget my internationally acclaimed condiment collection? Not condoms, not mints, and no disgusting hybrid of the two, but condiments -- those flavor enhancers that come in convenient packets. It started with ketchup, mustard, and mayonnaise, but rapidly moved onto the harder stuff like parmesan cheese, sugar, and heroin. The recipient of six Emmies, a Pulitzer Prize, and the Wendell Philips Award, this collection has given my life new meaning and direction, and that direction is southeast.
(groan)
While I'm in the retch-inducing mode, I'll admit that I considered mentioning that I was "collecting" votes for Homecoming King, but I found the gratuitous self-promotion a bit hard to swallow. Not as hard to swallow as, say, a yellow school-bus (or any color of bus, for that matter), but still difficult. Still, by throwing the idea out there at all, I've sacrificed my shame, so I might as well go eat worms.
Anyway, I'm collecting crowns...
Yes, collections are a fantabulous way to do like my close, personal friend David Cassidy does: come on and get happy. Why, any time I'm feeling blue, I just gaze at my Taco Bell mild sauce and my spirits are lifted into the stratosphere (although, it would take Kraft Sweet Chopped Onion to get me all the way to the toposhpere; forget about the ionosphere).
And the best part about collections is that they're so easy to start. All you have to do is decide that it's a collection and suddenly it magically is. "This package of Bics I just bought? Yeah, I've started a low-quality-pen collection." Whether it's coins or loins, everybody should collect something -- just not tolls.
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Words of wisdom
Nov. 1, 1995
I'm not a big fan of anniversaries, but I sure do love to toot my own horn when I can (not a metaphor for anything autoerotic). So in this self-congratulary manner, I'm proud to announce that this is the 30th Misadventure. I know you're not supposed to trust anyone over 30, but I'm begging for an exemption, sort of those like "Share the Wealth" cards in the Life board game.
Now if you've perused through any of the first 29 of these, you've probably noticed that it has little, actually nothing, to do with teeth. No incisors, no molars, not even a spare bicuspid lying around. It tends to just be about stuff and whether or not I like it. It doesn't solve the mysteries of life or discuss problems with society or even demand a new University policy on cheese. No, this has not been a harbinger for social change like the bold politcial satire of Family Circus. Just a lot of stuff. So in the perpetual struggle for a cohesive topic, I've decided to remedy these problems by doing exactly what it is I've been avoiding for so long.
I'm going to write about teeth.
Four pesky little teeth, in particular. Four teeth that are more annoying than Fran Drescher's voice, four teeth that are supposed to make me wise but instead make me hurt, four teeth that are too busy singing to put anybody down. Four teeth. As in six teeth take away two teeth. As in four teeth. FOUR TEETH. Sounds like "fortieth" if you say it fast enough. If you say it even faster, it sounds like "fth," but there's really no point to doing that unless you have some deep desire to spray whoever's in front of you (which I certainly can respect).
Yes, I had myself a real live misadventure in dentistry over the summer when I opted to have my wisdom teeth ripped out of my face. This seemes a better choice than allowing them to grow in any direction they chose. Rumor has it they took a wrong turn at Albequerque and were headed directly out my ears. I knew they had to be stopped and although my mom wanted to tie a string between my teeth and the bedpost a la Tom Sawyer, I declined this approach. But I did manage to trick her into whitewashing the fence for me. Woohoo!
The guy removing things from my mouth had gone to Tufts undergrad, Tufts Dental, Tufts Oral Surgery, and Tufts Hand-To-Hand Combat Against Cavity Creeps. Needless to say, the collective Jumbo spirit in that tiny room would have been enough to make even PT Barnum floss and rinse. We even sang a rousing version of "Tuftstonia's Day," though my harmony part came out a bit jumbled, what with the novacain and all.
I asked if I could keep the teeth after they were out. Being the highly warped individual that I am, I thought it would be a neat idea to mail one to the fair maiden I was courting at the time. Yeah, a neat idea... if you're stupid. Was I really expecting this to win her heart? "I might love dan, but I need to know if he flosses." Don Juan de Colgate, I am not.
But alas alas, the decision was made for me as a dental assistant explained that some federal regulation prevented my keeping the teeth because of AIDS prevention. I kid you not. I was not allowed to keep a part of my own body because they were worried about AIDS. As my close personal friend Inspector Gadget would say, Wowzers. I mean, how could somebody get this disease from my wisdom teeth? I was pretty confused:
#1. I don't have the disease. I have unprotected sex as often as I shoot heroin which is as often as I eat in Pound which is as often as I turn into the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man and wreak havoc on Somerville. The weather forecast for hell is as follows: freezing over, chance of showers.
#2. Even if I did have it, the chances of somebody seducing my tooth or taking it intravenously are mghty slim. Yes, it's a sick world, but who needs their fix of bicuspid.
A molar is an AIDS risk? If this is true, the Tooth Fairy must be on some serious AZT. Please -- aspiring dentists out there, I want to figure this out. I'm just a caveman and don't understand your complex world. Enlighten me. CHANGE Answer or not, I wasn't able to mail my removed chompers to my sweet baboo, so I cut off my ear and sent that instead.
Wake me up before you Van Gogh.
They administered the anaesthetic A-Team style (drugged cheeseburger) and I was Rip Van Winkling in no time. The surgery itself wasn't much of a problem, or at least I assume it wasn't. I was catching Zs while the scalpel flew, so for all I now, they removed my nose and replaced it with an exact replica. Now that I think about it, it was rather odd that I had to sign that release form about allowing them to remove my body parts in the event of an emergency nose shortage...
Actually, it was a somewhat messy procedure because the bottom teeth were impacted. For all you nondentists out there, that means my wisdom teeth were more difficult to remove because they were being guarded by small trolls living inside my gums. Getting rid of the trolls is an exercise in negotiations worthy of Jimmy Carter.
Luckily, my dentist is another former US President (rhymes with Larry Snuman) and all went smoothly. When I woke up from going under the knife, I felt good -- hey, I knew that I would, now (insert Maceo Parker saxophone riff here). Sure I was high as a kite and had a mouth full of blood (what is this, a frat party?) but I was liking it.
END
I had to wear a silly ice-filled rag that made me look like a cartoon character with a toothache. And then the swelling began. making me look like either Alvin, Simon, or Theodore. It of course depended on which accessories were handy at the moment (i.e. red hat, round glasses, thirty pounds).
They gave me painkillers which I immediately sold on the black market to finance my birdseed habit. But I tried them one night and let's just say that
Now I have these big gaping holes in my gums that used to be filled with tooth. Of course, the upside is that I got a little syringe-shaped squirter to pump water into them there crevaces to flush out food particles. Appetuzing image, is it not? Summoning all my
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stories from a burning igloo
Nov. 8, 1995
my mom told me that it's in my contract with tufts to have at least one nervous breakdown per semester so if i fail to wig out at the prospects of a jobless homeless future the university will kick me out of housing and lower my gpa by .7 and confiscate my feet which is probably the worst part because i really like my feet and need them since the memorial steps are not a lot of fun to do handstands up and down especially when covered with ice or something equally slippery like pudding or grease or pudding or maybe even pudding
please fasten your seatbelts because this is it
see, this year's rampage began when i realized for the 700th time that i'm not getting as much out of my classes as i could be and i think that the only remedy for this is to add seven hours to every day so that we have 33-hour days because i like to add wrong and then i will have enough time to juggle my classes my work my activities my friends my future my bonny which lies over the ocean and my my my what a mess i have on my hands when i spend more time thinking about raisins than ernest hemingway even though none will ultimately help me become independently wealthy or even financially secure enough to afford taco bell once a week
so many of us are merrily coasting along through college and classes and i am guilty of this crime as well but now that i'm a big bad junior who huffs and puffs and blows down houses i'm starting to feel the pressures of the real world which is rapidly approaching to gobble me up and i can't honestly say that i am looking at the glass as half full in terms of what the road ahead has in store for me especially since the last street-sign i saw said "dip" which i tried not to take personally but it's hard when you're so cynical
last year i went berserk when i saw that we were reaching the half-way mark of our college existences but now i am past that two year anniversary and the fact that i will be exiting this esteemed institution of higher learning in little more than a year and a half gives me the willies the heebie-jeebies and the hokey-pokeys but that's what it's all about or so they say but what it is also about would be internships which i of course have already screwed up since i squandered my summer trying to find that nice balance between yin and yang and take on an internship but also work a stupid job with a real live paycheck but instead of having the best of both worlds it became more orson welles-ish and there was a war of the worlds as i ended up getting lousy job experience and not very much money and to top it all off the guys at the sub place next door called me "caveman" which is pretty dang-burned insulting considering that these guys looked like pirates operating a pizza joint although none had peg-legs or eye-patches or parrots on their shoulders or anything jolly rogerish and come to think of it they didn't look much like pirates at all so i don't exactly know why i said they did except that it sounded like the right thing to say and one of them had scurvy and always said "arrgh"
do you think william faulkner will sue me for this?
these pessimistic temper-tantrums tend to not so mysteriously coincide with course selection periods when we're forced to pretend to map out our futures a little more than usual but instead of accepting a molehill like which world civ class to take i choose the mountain of how these courses will affect my future employment to the point that if i take the wrong english class today then i'll fail at everything i ever do in my life so why not end all the stress and just join the french foreign legion and get one of those cool hats to boot and there are only two weeks yes two scary scary weeks until we have to figure out which five-digit codes to bubble in with a #2 pencil which is kind of a silly request since you have to try really hard to find a pencil of a different number but i worked at it and found one and it helped me get a 2200 on my sat and even that won't help me on job interviews when i have hair that makes me look like a werewolf
the problem is that i'm really good at saying what the problem is without ever solving it and I feel better complaining things but never get better unless somebody actually does something although i doubt i can talk mother nature into adding those extra seven hours to a day unless a well-placed cheesecake will help change her mind in which case i will pilfer the necesarry ingredients from carmichael and call my close personal friend julia child to help choose the appropriate wine
i feel so helpess like everything going on around me is out of my control and that even my own destiny is in the hands of other people but i guess that the old camp song is right and he's got the whole world in his hands but we don't know who "he" is and whether he offers good health insurance and stock options and whether that is even what i want because what about the idealistic bohemian that i like to pretend to be when in reality i don't even write poetry and would probably sell out and do beer commercials the second my band became popular but of course i am presently in no danger of being solicited by michelob but at the same time i am also in no danger of becoming employed and why do i worry myself blue over this now when i can read stories from a burning igloo and know that somebody has it worse than me and realize i don't even have it that bad to begin with
so because i can't deal with the pressures of reality i will settle for merely vocalizing my unhappiness and running away without a solution because it's sort of fun to fancy myself as lost and profound even though i'm probably just lost and not even a whole lot more lost than anybody else here which is comforting and if i did have all the answers to the mysteries of life i probably would go insane with the knowledge and so i'm happier this way, right?
now if i can only convince myself of that...
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Suite Retreat '95
Nov. 15, 1995
The greatest display of spontaneous male bonding I ever witnessed took place when I was working at a convenience store this summer. While busily engaged in a particularly demanding and mentally taxing activity (like filling the cup dispenser or sitting on my tush), I felt a jab in my ribs and heard my manager, who had more testosterone coursing through him than the entire L.A. Kings hockey team, mutter the words, "Aisle two." Expecting to see some punk of a shoplifter, I was pleasantly surprised to find the most beautiful woman in the world among the Bounty quicker picker-upper.
I didn't stop to ask myself why Aphrodite incarnate was perusing through the paper towel display in a suburban quikimart, but instead let my eyes do the walking and no part of my body do the talking because my jaw had hit the floor with an audibule thud. She left and I returned my attention to the line of customers, only to find that all were middle-aged, blue-collar men hungrily staring out the door. The drool forming on the floor merited a good swabbing with my trusty mop (God bless my job) and I think I spoke for everyone when I blurted out, "COME BACK!"
What ensued was straight out of a movie: each truck-driver, construction worker, auto mechanic, and professional dirty guy took their turn to make some lewd innuendo about the woman who had just left. For a minute, a store full of complete strangers were bonded, completely united in their sexism. It was beautiful. Sure it set feminism back 40 years, but it gave me a neatarific ancedote, so why complain?
What this scenario helped lead me to realize is that male bonding is a fabulous leisure-time activity for the testosterone-endoweed. It's completely necesarry, too, because every guy needs needs to spend a certain amount of quality time away from the kinder gender. Don't get me wrong, I like girls and all -- nothing sweeter on the planet (except maybe Pez) and I've already had my cooties immunization shot. But I need to go off into the woods with my boys every once in a while and break stuff and just bond to keep my place as a card-carrying member of the male gender. (My card is the five of spades.)
The site of our "Suite Retreat '95," as we oh-so-suavely named it, was that great state where you can't tell the difference between the gas station attendents and the patrons, where beer bellies are a state of mind, where the maple syrup comes out of the faucets: Vermont. And so, my posse and I headed north this past weekend to assert our maleness in hopes of counteracting the embarassment of using Wildberry Knoll-scented air freshener in our bathrooms. Sure the toilets smells flowery fresh now, but it just isn't as rugged as, say, a bear.
Grrrrrrrrr.
We hopped into our vehicles (big wheels) and headed for the Green Mountain State (so named because the Show Me State was already taken and because they couldn't agree on Stupid Hick State vs. Dumb Hick State). As soon as we started traveling, some strange chemical reaction occurred in all of us and our maturity oozed away. Before long, everyone's tighty-wighties became wind socks to hold out the window at passing cars. But then the big Fruit of the Loom guys appeared and got medieval on our asses (covered with boxers at the time) and we stopped our panty-raid.
We began the weekend as refined, polite gentlemen, but our vocabulary soon declined and become more crude over the course of the trip. Example: What began as "What tape would you like to listen to?" devolved into "Kiss my ass, stupid face." But old habits die hard and our crass words diappeared in public settings, a malady that culminated in one waitress remarking, and I quote, "You guys are so polite it's pathetic."
Imagine the shock of having a deadbeat waitress from Vermont, a state that is spelled phonetically because its residents wouldn't be able to pronounce it otherwise, tell us that we're pathetic? She called us our gentilipathetic when she has as many teeth as there are colors on a stop sign? So we taught her a lesson and ended ty abruptly. "Could I please have the blueberry pie, you ungrateful whore?" "Yes, and if it isn't any trouble, could I have some ice cream with that, you stupid bitch?"
Of course, this was also the first day of hunting season and Vermont is the Psycho Killer Capital of the USA, so we apologized profusely and bribed her with maple syrup and ran away as fast as our big wheels would take us.
We decided that a good male bonding exercise would be to climb Okemo Mountain and break stuff. (I don't know if anyone else besides me considers breaking stuff to be such an integral part of male bonding, but I pretty much look for any excuse I can to cause destruction.) This climb would certainly prove our manliness, we decided, and so we hiked and hiked, and walked and walked, and after a grueling seven minutes of exercise got tired and turned around. Ironmen we are not; perhaps Styrofoam-men.
It was clear that any good male bonding session had to involve binge drinking, as repeatedly advocated by the Tufts administration. The fact that none of us were 21 did not hurt our chances of procuring brew because, alas, we were in Vermont, a state where anyone with a pulse can purchase alcohol, especially those fine $2 wines. (I actually have nothing personal against Vermont. They're just an easy target... much like the targets those goddam Vermont hicks shoot at.) We settled on fermented maple syrup and a fine maple syrup liqueur.
I'm not quite sure what the whole trip accomplished besides giving us an excuse to call each other rude names and be destructive. And it got us on a big kick of rock-paper-scissors. We started to figure out who had to sleep on the floor, then to figure out who got to drive home, then to decide who was the bigger dork. Now we stay up late betting on each other, yelling a lot, and breaking stuff.
But that's what male bonding's all about -- excess stupidity.
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A bank-full of thankfuls
Nov. 22, 1995
As a Wednesday columnist, I receive the honor of writing the pre-Thanksgiving column that nobody will get a chance to read -- it's the least read paper of the year because of the mass exodus (not a book of the bible or Leon Uris novel). Thus, any attempts to be clever or funny will be mere exercises in futility.
But hey, it's never stopped me before.
So without further adieu (or further bon jour, for that matter), in honor of the impending holiday, I present my second annual list of:
20 things I'm thankful for.
1. A much-needed vacation from the stresses of life, er, college.
2. Ruby Red Grapefuit Juice. Half sour, half sweet, and all pink, this is what the gods on Mt. Olympus drink. I know. I asked them.
3. The evil crab. He is my red, plush, and extraordinarily evil stuffed crustacean. He looks harmless, but don't be fooled because he is evil.
4. Home pages. Not that they really do much of anything, but they sure are dang-burned cool. And now I'm taking HTML to fulfill my language requirement.
5. Crazy Jumbo. An elephant that was tied to a tree in Tibet for 20 years and is now insane. HE MUST BE BROUGHT TO TUFTS. We can set him loose during football games and have him step on the opposing team's fans. This is Crazy Jumbo.
6. Fire.
7. Shaggy's "Boombastic" single. The most perfect moment in the history of music is at the very end when he just croaks out the word "Smooth." It certainly is.
8. Voice mail. It was voted Best New Goody From the Tufts Connect Dolts, a clear winner after cable got the shaft. Speaking of which:
9. Shaft. Ask what he's getting and the king of blaxploitation films will tell you: "I'm gettin' laid." Suave as hell, boy.
10. Electric razors. I finally decided to enter the 20th century this summer and abandoned my shaving cream and blades for electricity. I liked it so much, I bought Three's Company.
11. Pregnant teachers who ended class this past Monday. Woohoo!
12. Barenaked Ladies. Not a nudie show, but the best band that's still around. They're everything I want to be -- brilliant, funny, and Canadian.
13. Egg McMuffins a la Carmichael. Now that's good eatin'.
14. Harry Truman. I know very little about him, yet he's my idol. Another of my irrational obsessions that keep me so happy.
15. Later with Greg Kinnear. He's got a funny talk show. It's just too bad all his guests suck.
16. The Honky-Tonk Man. He looked like Elvis, his finishing move was the Shake Rattle & Roll, and when he finally lost the Intercontinental Belt, it was to the Ultimate Warrior. Need more be said?
17. My sweet baboo. Finally love means more to me than just something the Beatles sang about.
18.
19.
20. Wednesday departures. Like Bartles and James, we thank you for your support.
And conversely, 20 things I'm not thankful for.
1. The fact that not having Friday classes anyway makes Thanksgiving break into just a cancelled Thurday.
2. Snapple. What's the big fuss over this stuff? Iced tea tastes bad. It's what Satan drinks. I know. I asked him.
3. The Evil Lobster. He has attacked me in the middle of the night twice now and has been fighting with the Evil Crab.
4. Home pages. Since I got on the web, I have dropped my classes, shunned my friends, and burned out my retinas from staring at computer screens. Can you "addiction?" I knew you could.
5. Giantman. Way to abandon the campus, big guy.
6. Fire extinguishers.
7. The rest of the Shaggy full-length album. Zoinks, this stuff stinks worse than caca.
8. Getting tricked into talking back to voice mail when you're listening to someone ask a question on the message they left.
9. Urkell. If you see him, sick Crazy Jumbo on him.
10. Electric razors. Though quicker and safer, they take all the sport (and blood) out of shaving. Just plain not violent enough.
11. Pregnant teachers who give birth in the middle of lectures. Doah!
12. Hootie and the Blowfish. They should really be called "Hootie and the People Who Make My Life Hell With Their Awful Music."
13. The msyterious disappearance of cheese eggs from Carmichael. Please, succumb to the terrorists' demands so long as you get the eggs back.
14. Thomas Jefferson. Because his picture is on the nickel and we all know how I feel about that coin.
15. The Late Show with David Letterman. I worshipped the old show, but now it's turned into a "We Love Dave" fest and he doesn't do anything except make stupid faces. The worst part is that he could be so good.
16. Hulk Hogan. It always ended the same way --
17. My arch enemy, known to most as 006.
18.
19.
20. Tuesday departures. Hope you got stuck next to Dr. David Banner on the flight home and pissed him off.
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One life to live?
Nov. 29, 1995
Sometimes, people actually have the nerve to disagree with me. Believe it or not, a few brave souls dare to violate the holy word of the Tobinator on occasion. When this happens, I calmly and rationally try to convince the nonbeliever of my way of thinking through explanation and example. If that doesn't work, I just try to hurt them. Usually a few swift kicks in the shins will make even the mosts heretical Galileo into a cult member worthy of living at my Branch-Tobinian compound in lovely and scenic Waco.
So naturally, when somebody tried to tell me there's nothing new under the sun, I didn't think twice before hitting that person upside the head with a shovel. This action nicely bypassed having to explain my belief that history doesn't always repeat itself and that new ideas are always being created -- plus, I found a spankin' new use for my second favorite garden implement; second because nothing beats the ace of spades. (Get it? Ace of spades? Spade? Garden implement? Come on, work with me, people. I can't do this by myself.)
But now I'm wondering if the assault and battery conviction I incurred from this was all for nought (not to mention getting on Janet Reno's bad side and burning down the entire Hillside compound). Perhaps there really is nothing new under the sun. After all, my close, personal friend Jon Bon Jovi once said that "it's all the same, only the names have changed." Sure he's a 60-year-old who wears leather tights and pretends to be a cowboy, but there's still some validity to his words (despite his New Jersey upbringing.)
See, you're just not living your own life. You're sharing it with everybody else your age. This fact became eminently clear to me while hanging out with friends from home over Thanksgiving break. We convened at the house with the nicest couch (ah, the priorities of lazy college students) and sat down with our microwave popcorn, Pepperidge Farms cookies, Ocean Spray juices, and other upper middle class snack products. We flipped on the TV and sat back to share our wacky and wild tales of life in COLLEGE. (That's kollij, for those who are hooked on phonics.)
The scary thing was, we all had basically the same stories -- only the names had changed. It's kind of a do-it-yourself mad-lib thing: "My friend [Name of drinking buddy] was really drunk and ended up urinating in [Wacky locale not designated for expelling waste matter]. Later on, I hooked up with [Name of good friend] but then things got messed up between us so that ended. The next night, I stayed up until [Number] o'clock in the morning talking about [Deep philosophical topic or sexual practice] and so I had to pull an all-nighter to read [Number] pages for my [Hard class] recitation. But I love college and I wouldn't trade it for [High dollar value or bodily appendage]."
GLASS HALF FULL: These common threads bond people together (especially when crocheting those threads). Our shared experiences helps us to relate to each other, to cope with these problems, and to save the ozone layer. Of course, I really couldn't explain the relation of chatting up your buds to an increase in clorofluorocarbons because it's a highly complex scientific procedure and besdies, it's a big fat lie.
GLASS HALF EMPTY: The universality of our existence is kind of depressing -- I thought my life was unique. To a point it is (I mean, who else has found over 600 uses for syrup?), but I'm floored every time I see a comic strip that sums my life perfectly but is written by some guy I've never met. So unless Bill Watterson has replaced my nerdy roommate with a T-1000 spy, my life is nothing out of the ordinary and a Calvin-shaped ink splotch has become my official spokesperson.
There's one life to live and we're all living it together, which is sort of a hard pill to swallow -- bad medicine, as Jon Bon would say (no relation to Ludwig Van, me little droogies).
So am I saying that you should start walking around naked singing the greatest hits of Meat Loaf so as to distinguish your life from everyone else's? I wasn't advocating that practice, but now that I bring it up... no, nonconformity never works when it's a voluntary effort to be different -- then it just becomes a plea for attention. My dog has pleas; I'm thinking of getting the Hartz collar.
But I'm certainly not saying we're a bunch of sheep following the herd; that was my argument in high school, and plus, I've fought off my wool allergy. (Ewe give love a bad name?) I'm merely asserting that we all end up with the same general experiences, and as sure as you can steer a train, you can't change your fate.
Gotta love that philosophy lite -- now with 95% less Nietzsche!
This whole tirade was born when I got a forwarded e-mail about reminiscing over college and freshman year (nine months after the conception ). I was shocked at how much it applied to my life and how appropriate everything was. But that's the beauty of that kind of writing -- I could relate to it, so I enjoyed it. Like, why do some Misadventures go over better than others? Because people have had simliar experiences and can relate. I rave about performance art, you yawn; I rave about having my incoherant math professor, you praise.
I'm living your life, and you're living mine. I am he as you are he as we are all together. Koo-koo-ka-choo. And someday when I die, I hope I'll be able to say, with some validity that I've seen a million faces, and I've rocked them all.
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Exeunt
Dec. 6, 1995
College time is different than real-life time. It's kind of like dog years, but without all the peeing on fire hydrants. That is, unless they approve peeing on fire hydrants as a demonstration sport in the '96 Olympics, an event I've been lobbying for since the early '60s, back when Herman's Hermits ruled the airwaves.
So since we live in this artificial world (sort of like those twiddle-bugs that live on Ernie's window sill), our calendar is completely different than the rest of the free world's. I don't mean putting the months on block schedule (June-3+ block?) but the nutty class schedule that forces my end-of-year extravaganza to take place in early December. Keep in mind that 1996 is still about seven months away (in dog years), but the annual wrap-up is kinda like a lame Van Halen song: Right here, right now.
(Unfortunately, this work of art won't win me any spaceman-shaped statuettes at the MTV awards.)
Ah, sweet 1995. It was the chicken breast of times, it was the liverwurst of times, and this combination was not so good for vegetarians. But despite a great influx of meat products (bacon tastes good, pork chops taste good), 1995 proved to be a year of great social and political change, both around the campus and around the globe.
Maybe. I just plain wouldn't know. See, I hate to bog down my writings with facts, so I shun current events and live in a hole in the ground and eat a strict diet of nuts and berries and expensive wines. For this reason, I cannot sum up the year except to say that it was the first complete year of Dentistry, and that it's been fun. I wish I had some universal truths or deep philosophical treatise to offer, but other than reaffirming the warning of my close, personal friend Frank Zappa to not eat the yellow snow, I'm running low on the pseudo-profound advice. After all, my orginal mission statement is "to spritually enlighten you or at least make you laugh so hard you vomit."
And so I leave. But to insure that you read stayed tuned for semester, I've decided to try a bit of a cliff-hanger ending. So let's pretend that I'm, uh, hanging off a cliff for the whole winter break. Yeah. And that you'll, uh, have to read next semester to find out if plunged to my death or just hired a computer replacement. Yeah. That's the ticket.
THE END
***Appendix 1: On Reading This Column
It is wise to note, while perusing through the Misadventures, that not everything contained within its borders is a big, fat lie; some are small, fat lies, and some are big, skinny lies. But everything is very, very false and very, very silly. Even this appendix is not true. Thus, it is wise to note that if this column says that white is really black, it is safe to assume that white is actually a small dog living in Kentucky. This is how tricky the column is. As U2 repeatedly pointed out, "Everything you know is wrong." This quote is not so much indicative of the contents of the column as it is a personal insult to you. It is also wise to note that you suck.
***Appendix 2: Symbolism in Dentistry
The entire notion of "dentistry" can be interpreted as a metaphor for the journey of life itself, with the "misadventures" representing the day to day struggles of the common man in a declining society. The decapitalization of mr. tobin's name is clearly indicative of his self deprecation and paranoid fantasies of being oppressed by his environment. And the dark, foreboding line that separates his name from the column title is a symbol for impending doom that intervenes between an individual and his own life.
Or not.
***Glossary
my close, personal friend -- how to introduce a celebrity you've never met except in that fantasy world that's much easier to deal with than reality
quick fast and in a hurry -- speedier than the mousy Mr. Gonzales
proverbial -- makes any cliche into a hip saying, just add water, yield: three servings
stupid face -- a generic insult for the ages
***Index
Butt (my own), Volume I issue 11
Coolness (how to achieve), Volume II issue 10
Lewis, Huey (in praise of), Volume II issue 5
Math (general suckiness of department), Volume I issue 6; see also: "Unwarranted accusations of racism, xenophobia"
Nickels (lack of use for), Volume III issue1
Pyromania (and destroying Haskell for no reason), Volume II issue 8
Wisdom teeth (denial of), Volume III issue 7
***Acknowledgements
My name's dan tobin, thanks for indulging me.
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