#14

I write to you from a much more peaceful place (some things excluded, of course. Hey, wicked fun being a Mavs fan lately huh? I tell you, it adds a special savor to watching a season go completely down the drain, the third choke job in a row, when the games don’t start until midnight…a fourth quarter lead frittered away is just that much more fritter-tastic at 2:30 am, let me tell you.).

I won’t tell you exactly how I got here, but I WILL say it involved Trinity College Library moving up into the previously uncrackable lists of “things which have earned my everlasting enmity, human embodiments of pure vile evil, towards which all my thoughts be bloody or nothing worth”, turning a top 2 into a top 3. The others, of course, Journalism and Journalists, Dell Technical Support (if you knew me in college, you knew this).

Welcome Trinity College Library. Get comfortable. On my chairs made of spikes.

(Also, as I just spent a week having to come back, every day, between 4 and 9 to sign my girlfriend in as a guest, just so if she actually raped and killed me, after I let her in through the THREE DOORS REQUIRING MY KEYCARD, EACH ONE MORE SPECIFICALLY TAILORED TO MY OWN CARD THAN THE LAST, I suppose they’d know who she was. The sign-in book only being left out between 4 (by which time you’ve certainly left for the day) and 9, (by which time you haven’t yet come back), necessitating a special trip, Trinity College Security had better watch itself…in Ireland we spend a lot of time worrying about things that aren’t dangerous).
Basically, Trinity is on a trimester program, so the last two weeks were what amounts to our spring break. Most of my good friends here were out of town, so I thought I’d take advantage by locking myself in my room with books (10 at a time) and getting enormous amounts of work done. This was risky business because I’m pretty sure I’ve never spent that long without human contact before. If anyone remembers four days weekends at Brown, specifically freshman year, they will recall I get pretty weird after a few days…
Sometimes people would call for me. I’d tell them I was afraid of the light. If they persisted, I would explain I had no face. But in the end I emerged with half of the semester’s work done, and had only eaten a LITTLE bit of my skin.
Yesterday, as custom has it, I shaved off my gross beard and went immediately to the pub. We are alive again…Glad to see you all again. Natural light, how I missed you so…

I’m going to tell this next story in two different ways. It is the story of the end of my career as a college basketball (B-Team) player. Both stories will be true, but the facts will be arranged differently.

Hollywood Version:

Dear friends, your hero began the career as a benchwarmer. He never got into a game. Slowly, however, taking practice and what few opportunities he was given to worm his way into the coach’s confidence, excelling in the short stint, uncomplainingly, he began to work his way up. He stopped eating muffins on the bench. His minutes per game grew. In the last game of the season, yours truly was named a starter.

Version with slightly MORE facts in it:

After starting out 4/6 on the season, I missed all three of my shots in the next game, the second to last. I did start, but I don’t think I actually played much more than I had been. Maybe a little bit, but only for about two minutes in the second half. I missed the only shot I took, dropping me to 4/10 on the season, not having scored a point in about 3 games. My general guess is that the coach wanted to see if I was going to be any good that day before deciding what to do with me. After I made the decision easy for him—somewhere between the bench and the woodchipper--justice took its course. Plus, our previous loss had negated any chances of us making the tournament, so why not let the kid get some minutes, huh?

When you make the movie about it, please cast Morgan Freeman as me, thanks.

I REGRET NOTHING WHICH HAS TAUGHT ME ANY LESSONS.

I tell you folks, being a political columnist is such a strange, interesting experience. I write for a small website which doesn’t pay me, and I presume about 12 people read my columns. And yet I already feel world-weary, bitter, like I’m spitting in the wind. I want to stress that I could not possibly be a less important pundit. But I’m pretty sure six of those twelve people are assholes. You can tell because, it being an internet column there’s a place to leave comments. My new column’s been up about four minutes, and already someone has generously offered me their pity, for my massive delusion.

I’ll keep it in a little jar by my bed.

The ironic thing is that my latest column is about how I really think party strife has gone far too far, that there are crazies and reasonable people in both, and that I really hope the reasonable people can stand up, be noticed, and work together. I even asked that, as I have this problem where I can’t TELL if a republican has responded to me if they’re not being an overt asshole, for people who disagreed with me on a reasonable level and didn’t just want to call me a socialist, pansy, or homosexual, to please note in their reasonable reply that they’re a republican, so I feel better. If you’re wondering, that’s not the delusion our friend was offering me pity for.

Actually as I’m typing this I got the greatest comment I have ever gotten. Again, the column literally requested anyone who had something reasonable and not pejorative, for example, not calling me a socialist, to say about my column to post it, with the additional tag “I’m a republican!” So far no dice, but I DID get:

“i'm a liberal... but i drink red stripe. Horray Socialism!”

-Lou.

Thanks Lou!

Also, a libertarian who’s voting for McCain. Whatever.

Yes, life is good my friends. I have 40 pages of writing standing between me and finishing my masters program, things are going great with Maggie and myself, and spring is starting to show up. Ireland, now, more often amuses me than infuriates me (like last week where we lost our basketball practice because the gym accidentally double-booked us with the trampoline team. Arbitration was decided in favor of the trampoline team because they had a REALLY IMPORTANT TRAMPOLINE COMPETITION and we only had two back to back games.) I’m off to Wales on Friday, then to Stratford-upon-Avon (long a source of contention between Mark and myself. He thinks I don’t give general humanity enough credit, which is probably true enough in most cases. I would like to say that my opinion is an unweighted one, IN THAT I don’t see how it actually is to anyone’s CREDIT to know that Shakespeare was born there, so I don’t think I should be accused of being snobbish for THIS reason anyhow. Not a fantastically useful piece of information. I don’t know where, for example, Proust was born. Or Allen Ginsburg. Or Jerry Bruckheimer. Or, in all probability, you.) Next Friday, Dr. and Mrs. Tobolowsky are coming to town where I will happily let them feed me delicious food, and we’ll be off to France and Spain as well.

They keep asking me about restaurants, as if I go to any. Sometimes I lie to make them feel better. It’s a sad, sad thing, having to pretend you’re cultured for your parents (“Oh yes! No, I had a broiled chicken last night. With lots of those…what do you call them?...vegetables?”). Here’s hoping I’ll have better information on the subject two weeks from now…
Plus, according to facebook, I’m still seventh most kissable among my group of friends. Eat THAT, 8 through infinity…

By the way, thanks very much to all of you who suggested songs for me to download. I downloaded some and quite liked them, even though some of you APPEAR to have thought my gift certificate was somewhere in the range of 1000 dollars. But very gracious as always, and my heartfelt thank yous all around.

In the final news of the day, it BEING April Fools Day, and I swear I’m not kidding, all the videos featured on Youtube right now will RickRoll you. Remarkable. I love this world. In the words of the Milk Hotel guys, “How strange it is to be anything at all.”

Indeed friends. Indeed.