Green can be cool, and friendly-like

It strikes me that if I put half as much effort into my work and relationships as I did into Scav, my life would probably be very different. I guess that's what's great about Scav, though. I'd probably be a lot more upset about being splitsville if it weren't for this weekend. It's hard to be too down, really.

I'm mostly just distracted.

I
Love
Scav
Hunt

Hope all of your so on and so forth!

My parents surprised me with an iPod touch, which was thoroughly out of character for them. I can't remember the last time I was surprised with something for Christmas. I also can't remember the last time they bothered to look up what any piece of technology was, much less impulse-buy it. It was, shall we say, touching?

This (academic) year I've gotten everything I wanted so far. Honestly, after the amount of monies I spent in Europe (and the redonkulous leather jacket I bought in Florence) I wasn't even expecting a Christmas gift.

Last night, I went to sleep not with visions of sugarplums dancing in my head, but visions of Sonic the Hedgehog and later, a penguin. My first dream involved me completely mastering Sonic in Super Smash Brawl. I did the single player mode, the classic mode, and this is boring. Uh, my second dream involved a penguin that followed me home from the zoo. I had to keep it in the bathtub and give it a tiny heimlich whenever it swallowed too much water.

So I guess what I'm saying is, Merry Christmas?

Kindergarten? Are you serious, Hillary?

Tune in next entry (and probably the next few after that) for:

- Camp Giolly Adventures!?
- Fair Yet Treacherous Ischia!
- The Saga of the Internet and the Internet Ninjas!?
- Manband + 1!
- Documentary Evidence!?
- Secret Vatican Hospital!
- All Roads Lead to Rom-anians!?


Reader beware -- you choose the scare! (So let me know which of these you want I should elucidate first.)

Note: The below handout was provided in a retina-friendly Comic Sans font, size 14.

*Provided by the US Embassy in Rome*

Too much to drink, jumped in the Tevere and died at age 20:
Jimmy was a straight A student [sic] studying in Rome for a sememster. One Saturday night he and a friend decided to go out drinking in Trastevere. After some heavy drinking, they decided to take a walk near the Tevere river. Jimmy thought it would be fun if they both went for a swim [...] Fifteen days later his body washed up ashore at the beach in Ostia.

Drugged, raped and left on the street at age 21:
All that Julie could remember when she woke up one morning, half-clothed, on a Rome sidewalk...

Four American college students drugged, beaten up and robbed:
Four students studying in Rome for a semester having drinks at a bar near Termini were befriended by three strangers...

College football player drugged, pushed off a bridge and paralyzed:
During Jason's vacation in Rome he met another foreigner who took him to the Spanish Steps for drinks one evening [...] He fell on the sidewalk and was instantly paralyzed. Passersby heard his cries for help but did nothing because they thought he was just drunk. He was found the next day by local authorities and taken to the hospital. Jason is a quadriplegic."

Our second Monday in Rome brought the St. Mary's girls with whom we shared classroom space (and really, little else.) It brought with it Anna Borg, who in her years of embassy work never managed to learn how to treat young adults as anything other than children.

To quote my wonderful, wonderful Italian teacher:
"The embassy representative came to our classroom building on Monday apparently with the design to terrify and infantilize us. Some of my students thought the talk was reminiscent of Dick and Jane stories, and indeed, they were right. Um, hello, we are U of C students. This is how it works in practice? We want to know the theory! We were left with the exhortation to "be little ambassadors in Rome" and we've been doing just that, belittling ambassadors. There seems to be no interest on the part of the state department to have us interact with Italians with any sort of cultural authenticity. We are only here to buy alcomahol!"

We learned later that Ms. Anna Borg had been stationed in Iraq for some time. Maybe she was simply trying to share some of the unspeakable horrors she'd experienced with us?

One of my future goals is to have such an exciting life that I simply do not have time to stop and think about it.

This happened to me in Italy, unsurprisingly. Those of you who kept up with le mie avventure nell’Italia probably witnessed my abject failure at updating my Blogspot account. I’ve already made my apologies for that, but I’m not sure I needed to. I’m a firm believer in the face-to-face story. Some of my favorite tales are absolutely impossible to convey in any other medium. “Have you experienced a treadmill lately?” is probably the best example of this, but I’m sure there are others.

I can’t begin to sum up my Italian experience in any sort of pithy way, even though that’s how I usually try to express myself. I went through a kind of intense transformation internally and externally, and learned not a little about myself.

Pithy not being an option, here is a bulleted list:

- Social is what I am. I cannot be around people I find interesting on at least some primal level and not want to interact with them.
I began this program fully expecting to hate everyone in it, save of course for Max Working. This impression persisted for at least twenty-four hours. I told Max that I had plenty of friends already at UChicago and that making more on this trip was not a goal of mine. Max, who knows me way better than I gave him credit for, replied, “Dude, you can’t not be around people for more than an hour.”

- I am pretty damn good at being social.
It’s not Hitchcock. It might be UChicago, but for whatever reason, I am good at making friends when I decide to do so. I must only use this power to annoy. Dan told me that I was the first nerd he’d seen that made being nerdy seem cool. (Dan’s opinion may or may not be valid, as he was formerly the number 3-ranked Golden-Eye player in the world.) I have managed to recruit him (and four others) into the Snell-Hitchcock Scav ranks.


- When my brain works, it works differently from most other people’s.
I have a semi-photographic memory. I say this because I can remember exactly where the secret 1-Up is in World 1-1 of Super Mario Bros. (four steps to the right of the pipe that, if entered, enables you to skip half the level. Side note: Do not enter this pipe. You miss out on two power-up blocks and a star. The extra coins are not worth it, unless you’re speed-running.) I could not, however, remember who my SOSC teacher was my first year of college. I can remember what the fastest monkey on land is (the Patas Monkey, which runs at a speed of 35 mph in short bursts) but I cannot remember how to balance a chemical equation (even though I got a 780 on the SAT II, a 5 in AP Chem, and was seriously considering being a chemistry major in high school.) I can recall inane and obscure facts about comic books, literature, and most pop culture, but I am utterly incapable of tying a bow tie.

When we were in Prague, I bought one of those Communist hats. (Yes, I am a shitty American tourist.) Anyway, this hat, that brought me sooo much glee, later brought me equal amounts of grief. I got stuck in this hat.

See, the hat has these two shoe-string type things that you’re supposed to knot up when it gets cold. I tried a butterfly knot first, but as I couldn’t really see what I was doing (the hat obstructed my vision) it failed. After several minutes of frustrated knotting and un-knotting, I settled upon a simple double-knot.

In the evening, when we arrived at Harrison’s swank hotel, I discovered that I could not get the hat off. The next fifteen minutes were…embarrassing, until a combination of Dan and Ariel’s efforts managed to extricate me. And Caitlin caught the whole thing on camera. I was asked the question, "Why didn't you tie a bow tie?" by the teary-eyed, laughing hysterically Max Working and could only shrug in response.

And then there was the time when I filmed a documentary in the style of The Office , or when I met two Romanians named Marciello and Marcello, or saw a secret Vatican hospital and then got kicked out of it after playing with an iron lung -- So I guess what I’m trying to say is, I have a lot of catching up to do in terms of reminiscing?

http://romanramble.blogspot.com/

See you all later, I guess.

Last night I had a dream. I can't really explain it without some backstory, though, so let's go back to the glory days of Section 2, when men were men, Nick was drunk, and horses were more plentiful.

Ross' roommate often proved so odious (or odorous; it was kinda fifty-fifty) that more than half the time I'd come back from class and find him sitting in my comfy chair. In the nascence of our friendship this was kind of nice. But eventually, as class proved more and more tiring, my lack of comfy chair in my own room (I almost typed "our own room"; SEE THE PRE-COHABITATION?) rankled a bit. And then more than a bit. This led to the following conversation.

I came back from a particularly draining Bangla class to find Ross reading the New Yorker in The Chair.
"Ross."
"Mmm. Oh, hi, Prankstar Runner."
"My chair."
"Yes."
"You are sitting in it."
"This is a problem for you."
(It wasn't a question. It was a statement.)

One of the nice things about me and Ross is that when we're faced with a Real Problem, be it animal, vegetable, or minimal, we often come to a mutually satisfactory agreement by giving someone else the shaft. In this case, it was Nicholas Hiromura.

Ross had observed that Nick rarely used his own nice, comfy, red chair. (Moving Ross's room's chair was out of the question -- it had been thoroughly sprayed with Eau de Roommate.) Acting quickly, we crept into Nick's room when both Greg and Nick were in class.

My room was thus the proud owner of twin comfy chairs, which, placed side by side, were the perfect instruments for watching Scrubs, The Office, The West Wing, Invader Zim or whatever TV show was in vogue in Section Pranks at the time.

Nick asked us a day or two later if we had seen his chair. We both said "No." This made it awkward when he walked in on us and saw Ross sitting in it. He asked us to give it back.

We both said "No."

I honestly have no idea how we were able to keep the chair the remainder of the year (we stole it FALL QUARTER.) One theory I've heard from Bekah, Ramya, and Lee, is that Nick, at various points, kept trying to get other people to steal it back from my room, but they all refused. As the chair could not be lifted by less than two burly men, it stayed with its new owners.

Last night I dreamt that Nick demanded one last time that we give him his chair back. Ross refused to look up from his New Yorker for the duration of the dream. When we denied him a third time, he melted into a puddle in the middle of the floor. The puddle left a nasty, stubborn stain that patently refused to go away, even after we attacked it with Febreeze.

They are pandas but they are also other things.

DUCK BILLED PANDAPUS

He is a marsupial. He has an Inscrutable Expression. He can shoot ink out of his tentacles. He is twenty-four inches long when fully erect. He can fit into a tube, or out of it.

PANDEWEY

The real Dewey does not have a panda on his head. His mustache is Authentic.

PANDARROW

He is a fun, sexy time.

PANKIRBY, PANPER CLIP

PanKirby is diabolically marketable. Panper Clip can eat bamboo and give you tips on how to use Microsoft Word.

PANGAROO

The Pangaroo will try to sell you a wristwatch he keeps on the inside of his waistcoat. Do not trust him.

PANGUIN, PANDIRIGIBLE, PANDA PEAR

The panguin cannot fly or reproduce. His beak cannot grind up bamboo. He is quite cross.
The Pandirigible does not get very good mileage.
The Panda Pear is surprised that it exists. It is scared of life, but in a good way.

PANWICH

The Panwich is hells of illegal.

PANDAMA CANAL

The Pandama canal has not forgiven Jimmy Carter for giving him away in 1999.

PANKACHU

When several of these gather, their electricity can build and cause lightning storms.

BEARZOOKA, PANDA CONSTRICTOR

I was kind of phoning it in on this one.

( Representing the Street )

I can't get "Move Bitch" out of my head.

Finally, T-Rex has a set of problems I can relate to.

Unreasonable Mate Expectations:

- Working knowledge of Offensive Realism
- Completion of Ocarina of Time
- Passable ability - Super Smash Melee
- Appreciation of The Graduate
- Extensive Muppet knowledge
- Avid "Office" watcher
- Toleration of pun-based humor
- Scottish or Liverpudlian accent

( Warning: A long, rambling post about Muppetry. )

My Scav performance. (Turned out better than I'd thought.)
Part 2.

God, I can't believe it when Chicago kids complain about it being 94 degrees.

I've been re-reading Jeeves lately and I can't get over the following comparison:

Claude / Eustace = Fred and George

Both are rambunctious, prankster twins who are extremely popular at their respective boarding schools and can create heaps of trouble for those around him. This might be a false parallel brought on in my head simply because, well, they're both British, but I wouldn't put it past Rowling to have pinched a concept or two from P.G. Wodehouse.

While we're on the subject of names, a Jeeves story mentions a Rev. William Dix. And another Wodehouse work, Dynamite, has both Harry Potter and a Hermione in it. (Harry is a policeman.)

"I'm a fairly wide guy...I tend to spread my legs...when I lower my pants so they won't slide. Did I slide them too close to yours? Did I? When I looked down, I saw, yes, that our feet were close together."

iamiorek did this, so I stole it. Seemed like a good idea at the time.

( ENFPranks. )

This morning, I received the following four messages from Rachel Berkowitz.

"you were an asshole in my dream last night"
"the whole second half of the dream took place in your house in north carolina"
"which was all steampunked-out"
"bizarre"

Clearly my dream self was pretty busy last night. I can remember three distinct dreams from last night – one took place in a combination LSAT/Scav competition, one took place in a bizarre Hitchcock in which Ross and I were forced to look after a bunch of bratty kids, and the one took place in what I assume was San Francisco with Ramya. We were standing in front of a Toys’r’us and marking it off as one of the places I would visit later in the trip. “Of course we have to go there,” I said, “they’re selling Avatar stuff!”

The first dream was the most interesting, though. I remember walking into the room that I’d promised to my parents I was going to take less of an active role in Scav so I wouldn’t stress so much. “Oh well,” I thought, “I’ll discuss this with them after Scav.”

The room was full of judges and Snitchcock Scav personnel. I can recall J-Dubs, Judge Tricky, Claire, Steven Lucy, and J-Crow in particular. On our side, there was (specifically) Stacy, Ayn, Ramya, Ross, Bob, Max Gallop, William Dix, and Anna.

It was some kind of LSAT-esque logic competition. It was sort of like a rebus-meets-crossword-meets-Jumble-type monstrosity.

No one got the answer alone, although J-Dubs and I put our answers together and managed to complete it. As we walked to the front of the room and turned our tests in, there was a sort of awkward silence.

The next thing I remember was that someone got up and plugged an iPod into some speakers. Before I could stop myself, I said, “Why is the town theme from Zelda 2 playing?”

Then I felt a rush of shame and despair for some reason, and apologized publicly for knowing this.

When I woke up, I listened to my Zelda playlist in bed before making any major movements.