Tuesday, May 6, 2003

I woke up today, gentle reader, to the smell of morning and of flowers. You may think this sounds idyllic, but what if those same flowers caused you to tear up and gasp for breath like some FAT KID at the public pool? This is really my roundabout way of asking you whether you have allergies, so:

“Do you have allergies, dear reader?”

“I— you’re let— allerg— you’re letting me speak again?”

“Of course,” I reply. “I’ve always advocated open dialogue and crap like that, haven’t I? HAVEN’T I?”

“Well, no…”

“What’s that? You’re mumbling.”

“I mean, no, I don’t have any allergies,” you trail off.

“Are you sure? You know, I haven’t taken my ol’ buddies for a walk in a long while,” I offer quietly, reaching slowly, sinisterly into my Pantry of Pain. “And those are two completely unrelated comments, by the way.”

“Well, maybe—“

“Are you so sure you’re allergy-free that you’d stake your SKULL on it?”

“Oh, okay. I think I do have allergies, come to think of it.”

Good, good. It’s vital that we start on the same page, you know? So for the victims of allergies out there, I’m here to tell you to tear no more, at least until I make you cry. First, let me frame allergies in a way that’s easy to understand: allergies are brought upon by flowers doing the nasty. Yeah, I’d explain this sans euphemism with a simple three-lettered word, but since we’re live now on the WWW, you never know what kind of people you’ll run into. I mean, you just know that somewhere, some day, some sickos will type in “flower s-x” in Google, and our happy home will be violated by intruders most foul. I digress, however.

So to recap, allergies are brought upon by unruly flowers spraying God knows what into the air, and you’re sucking all of this special sauce up. Scary, no? The solution, then, is simple. I’ll break it down into three steps. When you walk through campus and happen upon an offending bush…

1. Stand three feet away from the bush and intimidate it. Stare it down.

2. Say, “Shame on you, offending bush, shame on you.” Give it a good five minutes to stop doing whatever it’s doing.

3. By the end of these five minutes, if the bush still hasn’t stopped, shout, “Abstinence for you! Freedom from allergies for me!” and rip out the bush.

Repeat as necessary. I’m not sure, but you may have to pay for the bushes you uproot—some people call this vandalism, or so I’ve heard—and I wash my hands of that responsibility. Now go out into the world, gentle crusaders!

Monday, May 5, 2003

I went with some friends tonight, gentle reader, to hear Ross hold forth at Pick-Staiger Hall about the issues of the day. And you know what? It was pretty disappointing.

A professor introduced him and left off on a cryptic “David is on the Board of Directors for The Rape Foundation,” after which Mr. Schwimmer advanced thirty minutes of didacticism. He recounted his college days and exhorted us to use our time not only for our own cares and endeavors, but for the community–local, national, global–as well. You could feel the crowd excitement drop as he talked.

When the speech ended and Q & A began, the NU student body started off with an insightful question: “What’s your favorite Friends episode?” At that exact moment, dear reader, I wept for our student body as we started a chain of embarrassing queries. A girl scampered onto stage to have her picture taken with him; some guy invited him to the local bar; a Caucasian couple believed that Mr. Schwimmer would rap with them (freestyle, mind you) and ran onstage only to find him surprisingly non-participatory, yet they proceeded to “rap” anyway; and of course, there were the predictable questions about role models and making out with Jennifer Aniston.

So all in all, a fantastic night.

Sunday, May 4, 2003

Welcome, gentle reader, to our new home. Many thanks to George for helping our company move.