reporting live from david’s room!
joey, david’s roommate, has finally crashed. after two months of little sleep, coupled with the stresses of school, and compounded by an irregular eating schedule, he got sick. On second thought, Sick is an understatement. He was incapacitated. I’m not going to gross everyone out with gory details, but i do have a funny little clip that you should hear…
story: joey was working on a programming project with a friend named Travis. right after he got sick, lying on the floor in a bathroom stall, and he felt like poo, he somehow picked up his cell phone and called Travis to tell him to come get the hard copy of the program, since Travis needed it to finish the work. well, Travis wasn’t in his room at the time… a machine picked up the message. and this is what it was:
clip: joey’s message
the message: “TrAviSss…. i ffffound the hardc…. i ffound the printed copy of the program, come get it fr me….”
now, analyze the sound of his voice… what incredible emotion! what power trapped in these few syllables! a young man at the end of his rope… how moving. the part that Travis likes the best is the way that joey sounds like he’s squeezing the name “TrAviSss” out with excruciating… feeling. so i think he’s better now. i haven’t seen him since this morning, but if he’s still walkin, he’s probably okay.
newsflash part 2 follows!
okay not really a newsflash. more like a news/contemplation/study.
so i was in chem study group this afternoon at around 5 PM and the power went out. we were a little surprised, but we finished the work anyways and left. when des and i got to the cafeteria, we realized the power was also out all over campus! the sun was setting and it was quite dark inside. the cooks were all putting the food into trays to be put near an emergency light by the entrance, since their cooking appliances stopped and the lights went out. Students came in and ate as usual, but it was such a weird experience to eat your meal by a window because the inside lights were off. like “halloween mercer”. in fact, it set my rampant imagination free. Des and i first started imagining if the power stayed off… would they be able to hold classes? I was supposed to work that night, and i work on a computer system. The cafeteria used our ID cards as a way to keep track of our meals. mostly all university functions depend on power. we, as a culture, take it for granted. And now we are eating in the dark. So then i started lookin around and thinkin. What if we were being affected by a military attack somewhere? If you’ve ever read the book ‘The Postman’, it reminded me of that. it’s really cool b/c its a post-nuclear war story. I looked around and imagined the cafeteria with its windows blown out and everything covered in sheet rock dust. In my lifetime, i’ve been raised in a climate-controlled, electrically-powered, synthetic carpet environment. It’s incredible to imagine a familiar place, such as the well-lit cafeteria, indoors and shielded from any natural element, as suddenly a part of a wild and desolate earth. Just with the power out, i was having fun.
when i was weathering Hurricane Lili with my family in Lafayette, late 2002, the power went out. when the storm had finally past, julie and i went outside and walked down the streets of our neighborhood.. the destruction was impressive. and then… night came. no street lamps. no house lights. no car noise. an amazing nocturnal transformation of a once familiar environment.
Remember in Jurassic Park, how we saw the visitor’s center at the beginning of the movie: a perfectly maintained, fresh and newly built facility with card access and automatic everything. The architectural design was theme-parkish, the whole inside was entertainment paradise circa 1993. And then, the POWER WENT OUT! apart from the dinosaurs in this movie to make it totally freaky for an 8 year old kid, i will always remember among the last scenes when they make it back to the visitors center… and it seems transformed: the attitude, the demeanor of the place has completely turned neutral, since the facility is a deserted abode of the natural world. It is now part of the dinosaur’s habitat. when your only perception of a place is with its man-made environment, it is a compelling experience to see the walls and floors as what they are: No more anti-septic anti-biotic hand soap and wet soap-sud-smelly floors and windex-squeaky everything. just rock. just a surface, on which the lush green earth can grow its microcosms. the contrast is delicious.
And then i started telling Des about my idea that “what if we were in a nuclear war” and the power was out and we’re sitting in a desolate wasteland of buildings and no people. she was not excited. some people would rather not imagine their world transformed. Those are the people who don’t like camping. sigh.
finally, the power came back on as we were walking back to her dorm, questioning whether we’d be able to get in or not (the dorms are card access too). so that’s the newsflash for the past two days. oh yeah and classes are steadily getting more difficult, but i plan to stay on top of things.
two more tests next week. welcome back, weekend! (my fridays are considered weekend days)
Bob would just sleep through it.