Have you ever noticed, gentle reader, how much more fun the world seems with THREE HOURS OF SLEEP? Everyone appears to bump into you, shame on them, and everyone talks just a bit too loudly. And those damn squirrels and those dirty seagulls openly flout your bipedal dominance by scampering just a little bit nearer to you. Your campus starts to look like this, and I’m being optimistic here.
This all started last Monday, a fateful day that found me treating myself to a term paper. And you know what? I liked that term paper SO MUCH that I decided to treat myself to another one the next day, then another one on Thursday. I treated myself to yet another one yesterday night. Gentle reader, my sanity hangs by a thread, and if one more seagull flies overhead me, I swear…
Deep breaths, gentle CEO, deep breaths. I’m thankful for the work, I’m thankful for the sun, I’m thankful for my health, and I’m thankful for fine Mexican cuisine. There, I feel much better.
My Hedonistic midterm mongering ended at noontime today, and I groggily stumbled out of class to a four-star lunch with gentle reader Ann. After lots of productive reading–to calculate the number of pages I read, please find the derivative of 2–we proceeded to shop impulsively.
I walked out with nothing, but poor Ann walked out with these. This is when I warn you, gentle reader, of these abominations. Beware of these pens! Pentel clearly hates college students. They apparently reinvented the “Buy 1, Get 1 Free” idea: Buy a package of two of these pens, and I promise you that one of the two will not work. Such an outrage, of course, necessitated returning the pens. Twice. Only in Evanston does this kind of intrigue happen, gentle reader. Thank goodness for consumer advocacy and sad puppy-dog eyes. The moral of the story? Seize your free market privileges, gentle reader, with a vengeance.
I had something very important to tell you, but do you know what’s scary? Gnomes are pretty scary. I’m treating myself to a group paper tonight and I’m not sharing any of it with you.
Gentle reader Esther C. stumbled into the Secondhand Rants skyscraper one winter night.
“Please!” she begged to the doorman. “You have to let me in.”
It was a chilly night, the type that makes you want to hug your children a little tighter and toss your relatives’ rugrats out the window. My doorman, a well-educated chap who majored in Doorsmanship and minored in Judo, let her in after she procured some very valid ID.
I don’t know why Sir Dippenschitz let her up, but let her up he did. My secretary buzzed her into my office, an ill-timed move that interrupted my perusal of a profound historical document.
“No,” I told the interrupter, “I don’t want any Girl Scout cookies.”
“I’m not sellin-“
“Cripes above, woman!” I cried. “I knew Publisher’s Clearinghouse would come to collect one day. I swear I didn’t mean to misuse those stickers. Let me get you some office supplies…”
“What are you talking about?” she blurted out. “I’m the CEO of Esthereggy.com.”
“Excuse me?” I asked, furtively hitting the red help-me-Sir-Dippenschitz-and-remove-this-nutcase-from-my-office button under my desk. “I don’t want any chickens. They terrify me.”
“Not eggs and NOT chickens, you moron!” she exploded. “I founded a website just like yours. I’m having a little prob-“
“Oh,” I said, “so Madame I-Own-a-Domain-Name wants to play the Hostile Takeover Game, eh?”
“No! I’m just having a rat infestation problem with my building.”
“Well,” I said with a sagacious nod, “I suppose I could help a fresh new start-up like your own. This is tax deductible, right?”
I handed her a whole bag of rat poison.
So that’s about it, gentle reader. I hope this example of good interpersonal communication will serve you well as you go out into the wide, wide world.
“How can her site be the new one if she’s been around forever?” you ask cheekily.
“Go jog in Lake Michigan, okay?”
After walking in from Alaskan weather and a saccharine sweet showing of Spike Lee’s Bamboozled (by “saccharine sweet,” I mean multilateral racial tensions ending in a HAIL OF GUNFIRE), it’s safe to say that I’m in an oh-so-happy mood. Those of you who have met me in person will probably agree that I am the brightest ray of sunshine ever to grace the known world. Why am I so chipper? I’ll tell you why, gentle reader. I take life’s gosh-darned lemons, mutilate them, and then proceed to make unsweetened lemonade out of the PULPY mess.
I once maligned a certain shop for producing sandwiches that don’t keep well. I was wrong to do so, dear reader, and I shall be more open-minded. You see, not only can I dish out vitriol to one joint, but I can also dole out vitriol to two ratholes. Let me tell you how my day went.
After eating lunch today, I Googled “disgusting” and do you know what I got? Baja “Fresh”. Because you care so much, gentle reader, I will tell you that I ordered the “Burrito Ultimo” from the cheery folks at the counter. It turned out, however, that it wouldn’t have mattered whether I ordered the “Burrito Ultimo,” the “Fajita Forte Fortissimo,” the “Chips de la Puke,” or “el Pollo Vomito.” You see, I found out their little company secret. All of the chicken dishes? They’re actually from the same line of food.
“The same line of food?” you ask in your tuberculosis-ridden Oliver Twist voice.
“Yes,” I nod gravely. “The Chicken McNASTY line.”
What was wrong with my burrito? I think the burrito-gicians forgot to check out the Big Book on Food Texture from their culinary library. Everything tasted like sand. In fact, I hiked over to Lighthouse Beach afterwards, and you know what? They should call it Lighthouse Lake now. To top it all off, I found a horribly mangled piece of asparagus–or scallion, perhaps–underneath my burrito. Where the HECK was the parsley?
Suffice it to say that I wanted to kow-tow to the porcelain goddess, but decided to soldier on and digest the burrito. Should I ever desire another burrito, however, I will head back to my first love: Chipotle. Forgive me for my infidelity.
“Where’s the chipper part?” you ask, eager to catch me in a hairy contradiction.
At the end of the day, dear reader, I’m thankful for the character-building that this experience afforded me. I’m thankful for the 6.30 I paid to a yuppie Mexican joint. I have nothing to complain about. Oops, too late.