This Never Happened

During the Christmas break I am not as popular as I once was. I hang out a lot with my parents. I've beaten two video games. I go to my brother's 4A basketball games for entertainment. There's not a lot going on. So when I want to be social, I spend time with Harlin's friends.

Harlin is a senior in high school; he goes to Shiloh Christian, where he transferred to from Fayetteville High two years ago, so there's a mix of guys who come over. Previously, I knew their names. Now I'm up to date on each man's romantic problems. I give them advice, because they don't know my track record.

We call the room I sleep in the cave; it can sleep seven guys comfortably. There's a queen, a single, a couch, and a bunk bed with a double for a bottom. It's also where the television is. When I go in there, I bring a sack lunch and a trash can for when I get motion sickness from the Pankration.

I spent last night hanging out with Harlin and four of his friends. We played video games and ordered pizza from Mordor's. We didn't pick it up. Apparently they blacklist your number for that. I took the double bed. After we turned out the lights, someone threw a pillow at me, then we started talking about girls. They came to me for advice. High schoolers make me feel important.

At one point, Tyler, who was sleeping on the couch, got up to use the bathroom; Gabe, my cousin, decided to scare him. He stood in the closet that the couch was pushed up against and awaited Tyler's return. But when Tyler came back, he immediately began talking about Gabe's ex-girlfriend. He went around the room, asking everyone if they thought she was pretty. I said, no doubt. Then he asked Gabe, and Gabe didn't respond. Tyler put a hand on Gabe's shoulder, and told him that he could come out of the closet.

I have a story I tell about two of my friends, Ed and Ricky, who were co-counselors at War Eagle. Ed is tall and super skinny; Ricky is a big boy. Ed loved to pester Ricky. One night, very late, the two were walking back to the cabin from time off when Ricky stopped to talk to someone else. Ed went on and, in a bit of cleverness, hid under Ricky's covers, hoping to scare Ricky like he often did. However, Ricky took quite a bit longer than expected to get back. When he pulled down his covers, his found Ed sleeping in his bed. He woke Ed up, and immediately Ed said, "This never happened." Then Ed got in his own bed.

Thirty minutes later Ed scared Ricky. Ricky stayed up to read by a red headlamp, and Ed, ever so stealthily, slipped out of his bunk and army crawled over to Ricky. Ricky had a bunk in the corner of the cabin, and Ed says that when he jumped up, Ricky spent two terrified seconds trying to claw his way through the wooden wall.

The terrible thing is, Gabe was broken up with.

Christmas Eve

My mother's family live in a town named Gamaliel, in Kentucky. It's an hour north of Nashville. There may be six hundred people there. I spend every Christmas in Gamaliel.

We stay at my grandparents farm, where there is one and a half bathrooms and bedding space for twenty people. Okay, that's an exaggeration. Last night, Christmas Eve, fourteen people slept here. I was on one of two couches, but I was also in the room where Santa places the presents, so I didn't go to bed until late.

When I was younger, and my grandparents lived in a different house, on Christmas Eve all the grandchildren would go to bed maybe around ten. Our parents, acting as Santa Claus, would arrange presents in specific places for each child. These presents most often weren't wrapped; it was a bike or a dollhouse or a Dreamcast. On Christmas morning, my uncle John, who didn't have kids at the time, would hold us back from the presents, and ask which one of us asked for a two by four, or a porcupine, or whatever an eight-year-old would never want. Then we would rush into the living room and rip open the copy of Sim City 2000 and accidentally knock a light over, burning a hole in my favorite chair. That didn't happen every Christmas, just on a special occassion.

Now, most of the grandchildren are grown up. Out of the four separate families that come to Ma Sue and Pa Will's farm, only one still has kids that believe in Santa, and need their presents laid out in this traditional manner. Therefore, what was once a celebrated activity, when the children went to sleep and the adults had time by themselves, where they probably watched R-rated movies, rented cars and spoke about how stupid kids were for believing in Santa, has now become a lonely night.

This was supposed to change this year, because my sister had a baby. As I've stated before, I hate babies. But this is an entirely different matter. Anyway, she was supposed to be a new generation practicing this ritual - staying up late and laying out presents in imitation of Santa. However, at eight or eight thirty, while I was watching Broken Arrow on my grandparents' all access movie channel pass, she asked me to do this for her. She was tired. She didn't want to stay up. I said no.

She went to bed anyway, and so I had to stay up with my aunt and uncle, Holly and Mark, to lay out presents in a dark and whisperless room where there was no joy. For Christmas, my sister bought her daughter a five sided cube covered with physical, baby thinking puzzles that looked like the intestines of a monster who only eats abacuses. It required assembly. I hate babies.

The worst part was that I didn't get credit. Her one year old, who is named Zuzu (part of the reason I hate babies) thought Santa did it. So I waited until after lunch, when Zuzu was trapped in her high chair. I grabbed her by both arms and told her the truth: Santa is dead. She drooled on my hand, so I spit banana in her face. Two can play at that game.

If the Internet Makes It Easy, It's Not Stalking

I spent this morning repairing my mother's sweater, because not only do I knit, but I knit well. Some people say it's an evolutionary advancement, like spider senses or hand eye coordination (both of which I lack). I sat at the desk in our living room and passed my knitting needles through the large gaps in the pattern of her sweater to mend the hole in the sleeve.

As I sat there, I need something to occupy myself with. I was recently told that a high school acquaintance, Brian Maloney, was on a reality show named Sing Off. Brian was a few years older than me, but our families were friends, and I've always thought that if he knew my name, we'd be friends. The show he's on is a true life version of Glee. I like to think that some NBC big wig, without every seeing the show, saw Fox's fall ratings and demanded his own version of whatever show was such a hit. It's not so bad, though: eight a cappella groups compete in an American Idol type contest. Ben Folds is a judge, along with a black man and a lady. Nick Lachey is the host. So apparently someone got a hold of a list of my favorite things and put them in one studio together.

Brian's group is called the SoCal Singers. There's a YouTube playlist dedicated to these sort of videos. I'd explain which one he is, but basically all you have to know is he is one and a half heads taller than anyone else. He's the one who looks like a forty year old at prom. He provides the bass beat line.

And the group is good. They're a solid a cappella group, though they lose in whatever round they were wearing pink (the costume designers for this show are awesome; each week, a team is assigned a color, then the individual members get to go crazy with whatever they want to wear, as long as it adheres to the team color. This is much like intramurals). But they're not who I want to talk about.

BYU Noteworthy. A nine member, female only group from Provo, Utah. Specifically, Amy Whitcomb.

Now, a disclaimer: Sing Off doesn't provide individual contestants' names to the public. I got Amy's name by visiting Noteworthy's Wikipedia page, then Google imaging each name on the list of members. It was alphabetical; Whitcomb was last. But it was worth it.

On Google, Amy has the hair you see in cartoons, when Bugs Bunny tricks someone into sticking their finger into a light socket. Or, the simile could be she had hair like the horns of a moose. Take your pick. I've got several more. Anyway, on the show, she has a mohawk. A mohawk.

Did you see the mohawk? Can you tell me how cool that is? You can't, because you're the internet. You're not a real person. But even a robot has feelings, once they become self aware.

Let's be honest, you and I. Amy is not drop dead gorgeous. She's cute. She's pretty. She is not smoking. This isn't necessarily a bad thing - when I see hot girls in movies, they almost always turn out to be untrustworthy. However, it was once said that when a girl has a skill like soccer or singing or karate, she becomes immeasurably more attractive when performing that activity. Sound familiar? It was said by a little known person I like to call JESUS CHRIST. It's true. He came to me in a vision.

In high school (and still now, though I would never tell a female this), I had very simple criteria for girlfriends: Christian, Hot, Skills. For each girl, I would move down the list, checking off valid points. If they did not meet any of the standards, they were eliminated. Pending preference, you could rearrange the criteria in whatever order you deemed important. My friend Ryan Siebenmorgen's list goes Christian, Skills, Hot. Once I tried taking away the commas and making only one criteria, Christian Hot Skills. I'm still not sure what I was looking for. That may be why I still don't have a girlfriend.

Amy and I have something special. It's called the element of surprise, and actually I'm the only one who has it. She'll never see me coming. But then I just posted on her MySpace, so she may be looking over her shoulder for the next few weeks.

Let's Talk About Pink

Today I got my car back from the Fayetteville Auto Park. I took it there last Friday and told the customer service manager that there was a demon trapped in the engine of my civic. He laughed, and then asked me, really, what is the problem. And I said, that's all I can tell you. When I drive, it sounds like one piece of metal being drug slowly across another. It's the sound of a demon.

It was actually the sound of my brake pad indicators, which, coincidentally, sound exactly like a demon. Whose fault is that? Mr. Honda. Wherever he is. Probably now it's the fault of his descendants, because he's most likely dead. Or the humanoid robots they've built. Now there are truly demons trapped inside of those.

After I picked up my car, I was flipping through the Top 40 type radio stations, trying to hear the Black Eyed Pea's "Meet Me Halfway" again - that song lights a fire in my soul - when I came across the new Pink song, titled, "Please Don't Leave Me." Here is the chorus:

Please don't leave me

Please don't leave me

I always say how I don't need you

But it's always gonna come back to this

Please don't leave me

Now, for all the Pink connoisseurs who read my blog (and I'm sure both of you are), these lyrics will immediately recall Pink's previous hit single, "So What":

So what?

I'm still a rock star

I've got my rock moves

And I don't need you

If I was going to draw a Venn Diagram (and I say going to, because I can't figure out how), the space in the middle where the circles unite would have only the words "I don't need you." Other than that, the lyrics to both songs would not only be completely in their separate circles, they would be hugging the edges and throwing knives at one another.

Before we move quickly to judge Pink, we must remember that her choruses also cover material such as this:

This used to be a funhouse

Now it's full of evil clowns

It's time to start the countdown

I'm gonna burn it down

Holy Hell (yes, that's where the car demon now lives). I don't know what happened to Pink, or what road show kidnapped her and what things she was forced to witness, but someone get her a therapist who has absolutely no connection to the circus. Also, this countdown sits directly between ambiguity and terror, so that I don't know if she's just exacting vengeance against the clowns or if somehow she thinks I'm involved, too. I'm not, Pink, I swear - I had nothing to do with what happened to the funhouse.

All these songs and more belong to her latest album, Funhouse, which was actually nominated for a Grammy, believe it or not. Apparently the Academy of Recording Arts took her threats seriously, as well. It chronicles her breakup with her husband, motocross star Carey Hart. It was originally titled, Heartbreak is a Motherf**cker, so, you know how that goes.

I really like songs where women get over men, because I think we as an audience are not meant to take the words at face value. It's almost like the artist is writing in a certain way and trusting the audience to read the subtext, namely, how they're not over the breakup. I'm not saying that this only happens to women - I'm sure there are songs like this for men. However, women in fiction are usually the ones who get broken up with, and thus can write these songs.

I think about "Irreplaceable," by Beyonce, where some fool who somehow was blessed with Beyonce cheated on her. Now, we know this is completely fiction, because no one would ever do that, but when Beyonce sings, it sounds more like anger than assertiveness. This is what makes the best fiction - when characters lie, the audience has to call them on it.

My favorite instance of this is Lady GaGa's "Poker Face." Now, she deserves a whole post to herself, but I will say that though this comes out in her song, in Kid Cudi's "I Poke Her Face," it is extremely apparent. In his chorus, they slow down her words, and so when she sings, "He can't read my poker face," it is extremely sad, like Sandy singing "Hopelessly Devoted to You" in Grease.

However, Sandy looks like none of the artists I mentioned above, except at the end of Grease when she turns into Sasha Fierce. Whose picture I inserted, because all of the above girls were not appropriate for Tron McKnight.

Another Blind Function Date

On Saturday, pledge Matt Bakke and I went to Tulsa University, to the Chi Omega Winter Formal. This made four formals in a week for me. I have never been so popular as I am now as a senior. I postulate this is because I hang out with freshman every day. They think I'm really cool.

I hung out with all levels of college guy that night. I knew no one, besides Matt, and so in order to make friends I would tell every guy that I liked a part of their clothing: their shoes, their vest, their suit. This usually sparked conversation. One guy in an beautiful blue suit with white stripes, Landon, had the suit made for his medical school interviews. Another, Alex, was wearing a vest I had just bought at Target. I made Alex and his roommate Sam honorary BYX, and together with Matt we took a fraternity photo.

My date was blind; she was Matt's girlfriend's big sorority sister. The last blind function date I had was for BYX Roller Disco. Another pledge lined that girl up for me. I abandoned her after the first few songs. It's hard to skate with someone unless they're your girlfriend and you're both in the third grade.

There was a snowball at Roller Disco, where the girls ask the guys to skate with them and hold hands. After I realized what was happening, I skated to my date, who was sitting on a bench on the sidelines. "Let's skate together," I said. "Why?" she asked.

"Because you're my date."

"No I'm not."

And I looked more closely at her, and, the devil take it, she really wasn't my date. I had forgotten what my date looked like. So instead of owning up to this, I skated away backwards, giving a thumbs up. Later, I waited by my car until a girl approached me; I correctly assumed she was my date, and I acted exasperated, demanding to know why she left me.

I told this story to my TU blind date, as an ice breaker while we were slow dancing. At TU functions, there's always a slow dance, or so I deduced from the coolness by which my date handled it. Let me tell you, she took it like a champ when I suggested we slow dance alongside her engaged sorority sisters and those who never stopped grinding. That didn't stop the song from becoming uncomfortable after my third anecdote or so.

Tulsa functions are really more like wedding receptions. It started at 7:30, when all girls and their dates boarded two buses (Chi Omega is total about sixty girls, which is twenty less than the average pledge class of a sorority at Arkansas). We went to a country club thirty minutes away, where there was a coat check, buffet, tables with actual silver ware, and a dance floor the size of two Twister mats.

I knew when the DJ said, "We're going to keep the 80's going with this next one," that he was no DJ Derrick; like the function, he was more of a wedding DJ than a good one. I talked to him once, during a slow part, in order to request some songs. After two or three misses, he told me that this music wasn't really his scene. Now, I have this insatiable desire to know what his scene actually is. My guess: European discoteca.

My freshman year, a few older BYX created a dance routine to the song, "Miss New Booty" by Bubba Sparxxx. Recently, I've decided to bring it back, because I remember it really encouraged fraternal bonding. We used it at Kappa Kissmas. I had a vision that the song would come on at this Tulsa function, and I, the new guy who no one knew, would teach everyone the dance then I would be crowned homecoming king. I'm pretty sure this was a plot device in the 80's. After I realized the DJ wouldn't play this on his own, I requested it (see previous paragraph). This was the following conversation:

ME: Can you play "Miss New Booty"?

DJ: WHAT?

ME: CAN YOU PLAY "MISS NEW BOOTY"?

DJ: I DON'T KNOW THAT SONG.

ME: REALLY? I MEAN, YOU KNOW HOW IT GOES...I FOUND YOU, MISS NEW BOOTY GET IT TOGETHER AND BRING IT BACK TO ME...YOU KNOW...GET IT RIGHT GET IT RIGHT GET IT TIGHT FORGET IT. IT'S NOT WORTH THIS.

The sad thing is, I showed him the dance while I recited the lyrics.

This Was My Dream

Last night I slept in Tulsa; one of my pledges, Matt Bakke, got me a date to the formal of Tulsa University's chapter of Chi Omega. That in itself is a essay, but right now I have to speak about my dream, before it melts like an ice sculpture of a grizzled man wrestling a wolf, which coincidentally would be an ice sculpture representing my dream.

Like all dreams, last night's had many segments, like the movie Pulp Fiction - at first glance things were loosely connected, but if you're able to remember enough to make a thorough examination, really the only thing linking the chapters is the character of myself. And though I remember many segments of this dream - I was awake with my eyes closed for half an hour, thinking about this dream but also not wanting to disturb Matt's grandmother Fafa - this was my favorite part.

I was in an abandoned city, where mechanical, rusty vines grew on buildings that had collapsed on themselves like urban supernovas. The sky was grey and so was the dirt; really, the only things that had any color were my clothes which were kind of green, kind of grey. They were combat fatigues, but off-brand, second-hand camoflague assembled from savenged pieces. I had an old rifle, made of wood an iron. I was searching for something.

Or maybe I was on patrol. It doesn't matter much concerning the content, only that I was willing to shoot something, which I did. I took aim and shot what I assumed was an enemy, but it turned out to be my girlfriend (that's when I knew it was a dream - dream's are the only time I get close enough to girls to shoot at them). She was scared, and acted like any other frightened female would in that situation - she turned into a wolf and ran into the elaborate sewer system underneath the city.

I, of course, climbed in after her, but I was only a human, and I didn't have much luck. I searched for hours in the wet underground, through calf high water contaminated with radiation from the recent nuclear war with robots (this is a post-sleep inferrence). After multiple symbols of my failure seen in several dead ends, I used my feelings of frustration and impotency to harness previously unknown powers of the anamorph and transformed into a wolf myself. From there, it was relatively easy to find my wolfette. She was laying inside of a smaller tunnel, above the water level, with a lot of blood trapped in her fur. I howled at the moon.

Then I was suddenly transporting pieces of a drive in theatre on the back of an eighteen-foot trailer. I had a lot of fraternity brothers helping me, but we hit a bump and the screen and speakers fell off the trailer and into the mud. The studio audience laughed at us, because we, too, were facedown in the mud. It was embarrassing. I no longer remembered my wolf princess (princess being another post-dream inferrence - it only makes sense that she was a princess).

The point is, I quickly moved from her to the next interesting, guy-only activity, much like the wolf does. This dream only serves to illustrate my romantic motto of, "it's better to have loved and lost than to shoot your lover and have her turn into a wolf." I think my subconscious is trying to tell me something.

Fatality!

Two nights ago I helped out with Camp War Eagle Christmas dinner, serving families of campers. DO YOU HEAR THAT GIRLS? I SERVE CHILDREN. FOOD. Actually, I don't think any girls read this, so let's keep that information between us. This month I'm going for more mysterious, less kind, and also vampire.

After the dinner, a few of the guys retired to Ricky Shade's house to watch a movie. There was much indecision, over what, until someone made the hard choice and put in a random DVD.

I've never watched Mortal Kombat. I've only played the game a few times. It was always during sleepovers at Lee Zodrow's house, in elementary school. I never told my parents. I don't think I was forbidden from playing Mortal Kombat - I think that it never occurred to my parents that I would want to play it. More likely, they didn't (and still don't) know it existed. However, while watching it at Ricky's house, it became obvious that everyone else had seen it. Several times.

Ricky is a Cherokee Indian, and grew up with three brothers in a house on Moonshine Road. I could have made that up, but I didn't. You can ask Ricky. He told me that the four of them together probably had over a thousand VHS tapes, all of movies like Kickboxer and Army of One and Best of the Best. He showed me his copy of Best of the Best, which he had just found on DVD. It's about a karate tournament. James Earl Jones is in it. He told me the entire plot, including the twist where Jones turns out to be the coach of the team which included the competitor who killed Tommy Lee's brother. Lee defeats his brother-killer, by the way.

They had other favorites, too, but he couldn't tell me what they were, because all the films had codenames. Child's Play was "Chuckie," and Nightmare on Elm Street was "Freddy." The whole Steven Segal canon was referred to by the actor's name, which I'm assuming they repeated as "Stevie."

When I was seven, and eight, and nine, and so on up until my senior year in high school, I watched three movies: the original Disney version of Old Yeller, an animated Dickensian David Copperfield, and Muppet Treasure Island. Friday nights I would fold out our terribly uncomfortable couch and use the recliner to block the doorway into my father's study, which I thought was haunted, and I would watch one of these movies, alone. Out of the three, I think Muppet Treasure Island has aged the best. I've watched it several times in the past years, and it still makes me laugh. I haven't watched Old Yeller in a long, long time and now I cannot tell you what my attraction to it was. It may have been that Travis' dog was willing to die for him, and my dog was fat.

Since reading the book, I can now say that the animated version of David Copperfield is a near travesty. I can handle all the characters being animals, but it's as if the book was run through a shredder and one of the animator's assistants tried to assemble a script from the scraps, like a ransom note, and upon reading it the director decided that he could do much better and would much rather have the actors ad-lib anyway. Even if you don't know the plot of the book, the climax of the movie occurs when David frees the cheese monsters from the sewers under the factory, and Mr. Murdstone locks himself in his tower and has a shoot out with the local constables. There are some great songs, though.

For the record, Mortal Kombat is a terrible movie. But Ricky could not stop himself from quoting Luke Cage and pointing out goofs. The best part for him was when I first saw Prince Goro, but he couldn't understand why I wasn't as amazed as when he first saw him, fifteen years ago.

I can't make fun of him. This all reminds me of my first summer at War Eagle, when I took a pretty girl on a date during our mutual day off. I convinced her to watch Muppet Treasure Island (I had to take the VHS player out of the hall closet). I tried to get her to sing along, and even played the "Cabin Fever" sequence twice to give her a chance. After Long John Silver took over the ship in the middle of Act 2, she told me she had to leave to do laundry. That's why I'm going for mysterious in the month of December.

Function Primer

Thursday through Saturday, my groove was on. Many people speak of grooves as if they are something to be worn and quickly thrown off, like a lobster bib or the One Ring. Maybe contacts. My optometrist recently told me that since I've been wearing my contacts way past the prescribed throw away date, blood vessels behind my forehead have begun to bore tunnels into my eyes to supply oxygen to dying cells (because the permeability of contacts falls off after two weeks). That scared me into getting glasses. But that's another story.

I wore my groove for three days straight, which I'm sure my doctor would have a problem with. I binge danced. And I have come out of my lost weekend with a few pointers on how to throw a function.

1) DJ DERRICK - I put this first because it takes primacy over all other pointers. DJ Derrick is legendary. He's been around since before I came to the University. Some say he laid tracks for Napoleon at the Coronation after party; others say that he was laced beats for Chaucer. Still others say he was scene even at the time of Jesus. However, he is fresh as ever, and cannot be equaled in either music selection or tempo. Quick note to aspiring DJ's - never let a song last longer than a minute and a half. I begin to lose interest after that, unless I personally know the musician, and that only happens when T.I. comes on.

2) COSTUME - This is half of the fun. I've seen pie charts that show dancing as almost three fourths of the fun. I've seen pies filled with the meat of human beings. But despite all this, I can say that assembling the costume is a mini-function in itself. Crafts are a personal specialty. However, these past three functions were formals, so my costume was a tie. But picking out the tie still required a trip to the Salvation Army. I guess I could have asked my date to come along, but she had already picked out a dress.

3) PICTURES - Please, do not make me go to the Square again. I realize that Lights of the Ozarks is gorgeous, but I've now seen it three nights in a row, and the only aspect I could marvel at was the temperature (I have been told that there are camels there - I don't necessarily believe this, but I could be tempted to go back if I was guarenteed camels). Rather, take photos indoors, at a sorority house or in the ball pit of Chuck E Cheeze, depending on where you eat. In all seriousness, pictures are important, because this is the only record of the function you'll have; don't let the girl ruin it. Just take pictures with dudes.


4) DANCING - I absolutely loathe the dance circle. Perhaps 75% percent of all function goers grind, which is fine. Go ahead and vibrate. But, let's be honest, that looks like zero to negative amounts of fun. Most participants are catatonic. Dancing with some separation is required to have fun. But, many moons ago, when the stars were young and cats ruled over their human slaves, someone invented the dance circle as the only alternative to grinding. In this scenario, girls have a lot of fun with their sorority sisters, while their dates stare at one another and nod. I'm serious - stare. I stared at David Lee for over fifteen minutes - and his face never changed. Robot? More investigation is required. But it is possible to dance one on one. In fact, it is much better for all parties involved. Symbiotic relationship. A dance square, of two couples, is acceptable. A dance hexagon is even attainable, but in terms of geometry, it is the pinnacle of sides if the fun factor is to be maintained. Trust me - I was a math major.

5) DON'T LET YOUR DATE GET WATER ALONE - She will leave you.

6) PARTY BUS - Riding the bus home from the function Friday night, I was reminded of how glad I am that I am a Christian, and I do not have to go to hell, which I imagine is a lot like a party bus. Double capacity. Extremely hot. No handrails for those who have to stand. They played music at maximum volume, but the problem was the channel, which wasn't a channel at all but just a static space where a radio station used to be. I saw a drunk couple making very unsexy love. I can't close my eyes at night anymore. To avoid this, come to the function realtively early, maybe a half hour after it starts, and leave a half hour before it ends. Unless you like hell.

Let's Talk About the Black Eyed Peas

A few weeks ago, BYX threw it's annual Roller Disco function. We drive to a neighboring town and roller skate in those tan Forrest Gump boots. It reminds me of CEO Day, at St. Joe's Elementary. Once a month, if you brought a canned food, you could wear whatever clothes you wanted, instead of the requisite white shirt blue pants uniform. At the end of the school day, St. Joe's would bus all the students to the Skate Place, where we would watch the public school kids get in fights. They tore the Skate Place down many years ago. Now it's a grouping of apartments, named the Skate Place. This is the reason we have to have Roller Disco in a different city.

The point is, whilst skating without my date (it's very difficult to skate with someone when you are as fast as I am), a gorgeous and dramatic song began to play that slowed down time. After three minutes of sweat and tears from dancing powerfully and falling twice, I asked the DJ what that song was. He said, "If you do that again, we're going to kick you out." I reiterated by question, and he said, "Meet Me Halfway, by the Black Eyed Peas."

GASP. Not the Black Eyed Peas! I have a blood feud with this band. I need to look up the definition of blood feud, but I think that's what I have. Their lyrics are offensively simple and the individual beats in the song look like money signs when you open it in GarageBand. Take their latest hit, "I Gotta Feeling," which rhymes the traditional Jewish celebratory exclamation, "motzel tov," with "just take it - off!" That's not offensive. But I'm not Jewish.

I'd like to post some lyrics to this song, in order to prove my point. As you read this, please try to make it melodious. If you are familiar with the song, feel free simply to sing the words.

let's do it

let's do it

let's do it

let's do it

and do it

and do it

- oh no, I'm not finished yet, and neither is Fergie -

let's do it

let's do it

let's do it

let's do it

and do it

and do it

And here I could make a stale joke, pretending to be unfamiliar with her command and asking her to repeat it once more. The issue at hand, however, is what exactly "it" is. It's never stated, and the context of the song is so vague that it could be any number of things. I'll go out on a limb and suggest that it refers to desecrating other ethnic groups' cultural traditions.

However, "Meet Me Halfway" is different.

Okay, that's a lie. "Meet Me Halfway" is the exact same formula. Beats that were bought off the end cap at a grocery store and phrases that are vague and familiar enough that one must find his or her owning meaning in them. But I am in love with this song.

Please, take five minutes and watch the music video. Or, take thirty seconds and hit the highlights, which are as follows: Fergie, who is actually wearing clothes despite what first glance told you, lost in the rainforest from Fern Gully. Taboo in a spacesuit floating way too close to the sun. apl.de.ap dressed as a Bedouin with steam punk stunner shades, floating in circles on the surface of the moon. Elsewhere on the moon, will.i.am in Jay Gatsby's racing goggles, riding a robot elephant. I think he may be using this video as an audition tape for a stage production of Around the World in 80 Days.

Nothing changes in terms of formula. This song sounds like many other songs I've heard. The lyrics were probably written using those word magnets on my mom's fridge. But sometimes a repetition of something as confusing and simletaneously seductive as "meet me halfway" makes me want to climb aboard my trusty robot elephant and ride off into the setting Saturn.

Everyone Loves A Nerf War

Traditionally, my fraternity's semi-formal event, Reindeer Rendezvous, is a movie night. Small groups go out to eat, then gather at some warm and comfortable location and watch a movie. Last year it was A Muppet Christmas Carol. That was my pick. I was told later that the movie was the reason we were changing the format. Apparently everyone except for me has terrible tastes in movies.

This year, Nathan Allen, an older member who looks Irish, taught the fraternity and our dates to waltz. It was almost violent. When you're spinning in a circle, oscillating up and down like a parabola, you can only see where you're going half the time. That means the other half the time you're traveling backwards, flying blind with no idea about what's at your six. I hit a lot of people with my elbows; not all of them were guys. I blamed it on my date.

Another new feature of this year's Reindeer Rendezvous was presents; instead of making shirts to commemorate the event, we asked all the members to use the money which would have gone to shirts to buy presents for children. That was both a good and bad idea.

Did you know that a nameless, No-Ad company packages two revolver type dart guns for only ten dollars? It's an amazing deal. This may just be a testament to how overboard Wal-Mart has gone with their Roll-Back campaign - I mean, we get it; you're a cheap store - but this was a deal I couldn't pass up. And since I was supposed to buy a present for a girl (no brainer: EasyBake Oven, 18 dollars ROLLED BACK from 25), I bought them for myself.

Last year my family had to spend Christmas with my sister and her husband on account of her pregnant belly. Don't even get me started on how much I hate babies. That's entirely too many words for this segment. But during the gift exchange on Christmas Eve, my sister's mother-in-law gave the same shaped present to my dad, my brother, my brother-in-law, Cory, and me. We opened them at the same time. It was a solid, fifteen dollar Nert blaster with a revolving barrel. Cool, but cool when I was eight, you know. I didn't really know how to react, since I didn't know the gift giver that well. Maybe she thought I was still in junior high. I thanked her and watched my sister unwrap her present (a paint set), until I saw Cory opening the packing with a knife. I didn't quite understand what he was doing until my brother got his gun entirely free of the package and flipped his recliner over to use as cover. By then, it was too late for Christmas Eve. The night devolved into a war that lasted to a point that surprised everyone. My dad shot my brother in the eye, point blank; he doesn't even like it when we play Halo.

The women had to go into the kitchen to drink tea and fluff my sister's pillows or something. I tried to shoot her in the stomach, but it didn't do anything. The baby still came out normal.

When my date and I got to the Rendezvous venue last night, I found that many other members bought the same two gun package. There was some time set aside to wrap the EasyBake Oven, but I told my date to handle it - there was something I had to do. Then I shot her with a dart.

These guns were quite cheaply made, and most of the darts were misfires, but the amount of guns present added up to hundreds, literally hundreds of foam darts stuck in girls' hair. A few pledges bought more expensive, on brand guns that, in the long run, won out over the Air Splitters I dual wielded. One buck had a Nerf sword. Did you know they made Nerf swords? My date does, because I hit her with it.

This was my last fraternity event as an executive officer. My tenure is finished at semester. Seeing a vision of my dad in transparent blue telling me to finish strong, I stayed behind to help pick up darts. I sadly threw away maybe ten Air Splitters that were abandoned. However, I found a Nerf shotgun that was bought as a present and laid aside, forgotten and unwrapped. It's now beside my bed, loaded and cocked.

When Love Is Gone

Over Thanksgiving break, I had dinner with a friend from high school, Mary Kate. She lives in L.A. and works as an actress, among other jobs. We have written some things together, and, through collaboration, have gotten to be good friends, on the basis that we know things about each other that few others do. When you write with someone, you learn about things that don't come up in conversation. Like where the dinosaurs really went. But I actually use that bit in regular conversations, so it's not a good example.

Mary Kate is currently in rehearsals for a stage musical version of A Christmas Carol. This beloved holiday tale is based on a novella by Charles Dickens, who was paid per word, so the real Christmas miracle is that the story is so short. I realize that currently there is an adaptation in theaters, but the previews for it make Jim Carrey look like one of those Terminators which had rubber skin, before Skynet figured out how to clone human tissue. At least that's how I explained it to my niece.

Mary Kate's role is Belle, Ebeneezer Scrooge's one-time squeeze, who pops up during his time travel tour with the Ghost of Christmas past. I was delighted to hear this, because Belle has the best solo in what is now believed to be the greatest Dickensian adaptation, A Muppet Christmas Carol.

Wikipedia says that despite using muppets, the film is a fairly close adaptation, as if someone might have assumed Dickens originall wrote the character of Cratchit for a frog and had envisioned Scrooge's school teacher as a patriotic American bald eagle. To Wikipedia's credit, they're right - there were no muppets in the original book. But they didn't cite their sources.

When I was younger, as in a senior in high school, my family would watch A Muppet Christmas Carol every winter break, multiple times. For some reason it was adopted as a yuletide mascot, to represent our Christmas spirit. We know all the songs. Then, when I finally read the original story, I was amazed at how closely the muppet's film followed the narrative. Most of Gonzo's pertinent lines are unadulterated Charles. Except for "Light the lamp, not the rat." Though it has no literary basis, this catchphrase has been popular in my family for some time.

I told Mary Kate that when I relayed this information to my mom, she wouldn't reply, but her face would slide down as if anesthetized, and she would begin to sing Belle's solo, "When Love Is Gone." I also told her that I wouldn't be able to resist, but that I would join in and sing Scrooge's part when the solo becomes a duet around the bridge.

The best part is, they stand on a physical bridge when they sing that part. Don't believe me? Watch the video. IN COLOR!

And when I told my mom, she became sober, and began to sing, "It was almost love/It was almost always..." And I sang with her.

It Is Finished

At my house, we don't have a television, or internet. We're off the grid, just in case the robots come looking for me. Therefore, I don't play video games during the semester. I [SARCASM BEGINS] focus on school work [SARCASM ENDS] instead. This was the original purpose of the Pankration - to provide a video game binge after a semester in rehab. Thus, I spent months (literally, months) of deliberating which game I would play, oscillating between titles like Dragon Age: Origin and Fallout 3. Last week I sat down with my little brother in the fraternity, Tim Yopp, and asked his advice. After a solid half hour, we decided on Final Fantasy VIII, a RPG released in 1999 for the original PlayStation. I had to go back a decade to get the proper Pankration experience. That's why I'm the Laser Wolf (which I just decided is the title of the head of the Pankration. I'm shooting from the hip, but I think it will stick).

Final Fantasy VIII uses Roman numerals instead of Arabic characters to communicate that it is a very serious game. It uses four discs, and Tim told me it took him ninety (90) hours to beat the game. That's like four days. Without ever sleeping.

I fell asleep around 3:30. At that time, I had been playing for ten hours, and I had completed the first disk and turned off the console in order to put in the second. That was my mistake. I should never had given my body a chance to escape. Curse my flesh! It can't even play a video game for ninety hours!

I love Japanese stories. They are entirely too melodramatic; they always involve young people embroiled in strong emotions. There's always an unexplainable, spiritual element circulating. Some nights, I will go to Blockbuster without a specific movie in mind, just with the parameters that it must be anime, because I want to experience emotions so over the top that human actors couldn't pull them off.

Final Fantasy VIII is no different. It's everything I hoped for in my own life, but cannot have, because the leading scientists it the world still can't figure out how to make swords in the shape of eight foot long planks of wood.

My pledges all reported in yesterday. They all saw the sunrise; most fell asleep immediately afterwards, around 5:30. One, David, made it to 7:02 exactly. I'm not sure what's significant about that. I talked to Tim Yopp around lunchtime. He still hadn't slept. He was just starting his third game.

Today is the Pankration

Two years ago tonight, I created a monster, and by monster I mean the acronym M.O.N.S.T.E.R., More Oreos, No Strong Tea ETERNAL RAMPAGE! (exclamation mark my past self's emphasis, not present self mine). I acknowledge that I threw out grammar for the sake of the final acronym, and yes, I'll come close to but not entirely follow through with admitting that I started with the word monster and worked backwords. However, I can explain.

Two years ago tonight, I bought a gallon of Arizona Iced Tea and a package of Double Stuffed Oreos, along with several double-A batteries for my 360 controller and the game Mass Effect. This was the first Pankration, as I played from sundown to sunup the Monday before Thanksgiving. I skipped all my Tuesday classes.

Last year, with the same supplies, I logged twelve straight hours into Final Fantasy X. That Pankration heralded a new era of holiday, as I finished celebrating a week later. I played over thirty hours that week.

Previously, I have been the only person to honor the Pankration. My goal this year was to raise participation at least 10%. Even the Olympics can't claim to do that. Instead, through an aggressive marketing campaign that enslaved the pledges to promote my holiday, there's now over 250 people from multiple states and college campuses that will pankratronize. That's several month's worth of video games, in one night.

I got the name from my Classics teacher, Dr. Levine, who has hair like Kid from Kid 'n' Play, and huge black rimmed glasses that someone could punch through without touching the frames. He told me that the Pankration was an ancient Greek combat event where the only two rules were 1) no gouging of eyes, and 2) no biting. As apart of the Olympics, all nations competed in the event except the Spartans, who would never surrender and thus died in competition whenever they lost.

Piggybacking on the historical validity of the old Pankration, I linked from its Wikipedia page to create my own, which was sadly deleted. However, the talk page is still open. Visiting it, you will notice there is a strong and honorable fight between the editors of Wikipedia and some unknown elements. Those are pledges. I told them of the movement to delete the page, and they led a valiant crusade to keep the page legitimate as well as existant.

You can witness the argument go downhill, however, at the point where a user with the name "Half Man Half Rancor (Mancor)" enters the arena and challenges the editor who was our main antagonist, "Singularity42," to "prove that he is in fact a human and not a cyborg trying to infiltrate the plans for a mass expansion of the Pankration sensation." He then demands that Singularity42 cite his sources as to his humanity. At another point, he attempts to appeal to Mr. Wikipedia, and upon discovering there's no such person, he tries to spin that fact into the argument that made up things are still legitimate.

I haven't yet identified Half Man Half Rancor (Mancor).

I am proud, though, that we put up enough of a fight that one of the head editors of Wikipedia thought the issue had enough relevance to sum up the arguement after the page was deleted. He said this:

"The result was a snowball delete. The discussion has spawned a lot of confusion and some rancor. As for the confusion, the repeated references to [the article] Wikipedia is not for things made up one day made it appear that Wikipedia's standard for inclusion is existence. It's not. Instead, the issue here is notablity...But that has not swayed the consensus in the discussion, which is trending heavily and irreversibly delete. Where a discussion is certain to lead to only one outcome, it's time to close it."

I feel like this is an equivalent of a Supreme Court decision, which provides a precedent for all other similar minded cases. This is the Pankration's legacy. Also, no word yet if the editor meant to pun when he said the discussion spawned some rancors.

Capture the Officer

The pledge mission this week was Capture the Officer. For three days, from noon to midnight, pledges had to track down, chase, tackle, and tie up the executive officers of the fraternity. We did not go quietly. The police can attest to that, in at least one case.

Our pledges are divided up into four houses, named after four of the founding fathers of the fraternity. Each pledge mission is worth house points, and the cumulative house point total for the semester decides who wins the Area Cup, the prestigious pledgeship trophy. Yes, this all came from Harry Potter. That would make me Dumbledore, and all I have to say to that is, I'vepretended to be lesser wizards before.

Points were attached to the circumstances of the capture, to make the competition more interesting. Fifty points were given for each individual capture, but bonus points were available; these points were earned by the items or setting of the hostage picture the house took. Here's a quick menu:

In the Union food court - 25 points

On a moped - 25 points

Kissed by sorority girls - 25 points

In a shopping cart - 50 points

In Barnes and Noble - 50 points

At Mount Sequoyah - 50 points

Buying the office ice cream - 75 points

Riding go carts - 75 points

With a live horse - 100 points

You can see the logic behind some of these. I love Barnes and Noble. Most guys like kisses. All the officers love ice cream. The horse was sort of a "what the hay" thing - I didn't think it would actually be done. Little did I know.

These could also be combined. If the officer was eating ice cream at Barnes and Noble astride a live horse, that's 225 points, plus the fifty for the initial capture. That being said, let's score some of these photos, you and I.

This is Jessie Green; he was the first to be captured. Since all the doors were locked, the House of Duke broke through a window screen in his basement, came up the stairs and pulled him out of the top bunk he sleeps in every night like he's a five year old. Kudos for the special operations night vision, but that's all. 50 points.

Jessie had a rough night Tuesday. House of Wagner. 50 points. No extra for caressing.

Our president Lowell, captured by the House of Miller on Thursday. Lowell's original plan was to lock his doors every day at noon and not come out for any reason until the next morning. He even made a grocery run before the game started. This plan fell through, though, when two complete houses came to his house on Wednesday night demanding his blood in some sort of spiritual communion exercise. This spooked him enough to attempt to switch hide outs, at which point he was captured. Ice cream, shopping cart, and girls make this worth 200 points.

The House of Miller's capture of me. They followed me from the library, waited for an hour outside the Kappa house (because the Kappa's refused to let them in), and then ran me down like a loose puppy trying to make it to freedom in the middle of the road. Marks for moped and girls; 100 points.

Also note David Norris, who is wearing a Pankration shirt. He's been a major force in the promotion of my holiday, and tells me there are 200 people in a Facebook group committed to a Pankration celebration. He even made flyers.

Miller's capture of both Eric Barnes and Andy Brown. Miller was a busy house on Thursday, capturing in all six officers. These captures came off tips from the paterfamilias of their house, Ryan Miller himself. That's like Godric Gryffindor catching the Golden Snitch. Okay, maybe more like Helga Hufflepuff. Two officers, two mopeds, ice cream for all: 300 points.

The House of Cooper captured me on Wednesday. They waited outside my Classical Literature class, and chased me literally halfway across campus before I collapsed like an asthmatic. They duct taped my arms from the wrist to the elbow, and my legs from the ankles to the knees. They put me in a truck with a bag over my head. They tickled me.

I tried to resist at every possible moment. Escape wasn't really an option, because I moved like a pogo stick, but every time the cab door opened, I managed to fall out onto the pavement. I wouldn't stand, either - I'd make them put my dead weight back into the truck.

Sorority girls, moped, shopping cart, AND live horses: 250 points. They would have gotten 75 more with ice cream, but one of the pledges put the ice cream sandwich in my hands before they took the picture. That's a mistake. Before they could get the camera turned on, I ate the entire sandwich with the wrapper still on. You can't see it, but my face is covered in chocolate.

I like to think of all this as training for when my cover as a human is eventually blown. I'LL TELL YOU NOTHING!

I Wish I Had a Picture of This Sweater

Several years ago, cleaning out Mrs. Ureckis's garage, I found her old Arkansas sweater. It's knitted grey wool, with several red A's on the front and an anthropomorphic razorback on the back, leaning on an oversized basketball. The buttons are plastic footballs, and the sleeves fit a woman roughly 5'3". I knew what I discovered was more precious than gold, even if I can sell it for cash.

I don't bring the sweater out often. It an attention grabber, and it's quite greedy. It grabs attention out of the hands of children and non-sentient infants as well as adults. Distracting, it is. But tonight was my last Arkansas game. Home game. To sit in the student section. As a student. I realize there are a lot of qualifying details present, but it was still significant, I believe. Actually, I'm not sure; I tried to skip it, and my pledges made me come, citing these reasons.

Wearing this sweater at the game, I reconnected with many resident mates from my freshman dorm. I hadn't spoken with these people in three years, but suddenly they had to know where my sweater came from. It was as if there was a grossly sized millstone tied to their heart, pulling it down, putting a great strain upon it, and the only way the alleviate that strain was to know OH MY GOODNESS CASS WHERE DID YOU GET THAT SWEATER?

Oh, hello, Tori. It's great to see you again, too, after three years. Don't worry - I've completely gotten over that debilitating crush I had on you for several months spring semester of our freshman year, the hope created by which you crushed when you visibly became disgusted with me after I suggested we watch Battlestar Galatica sometime as a means to hang out. Are you graduating on time?

I had to leave at halftime in order to arrive on time to an engagement party for a fraternity brother. As I walked away from the stadium, I fell into step with two girls, one of which had not only drank a few beers, but had drank all the beers the other had ordered, as well. We began to talk about my sweater. They wanted to know where it came from, and I told them. They asked if a grandmother had crafted it, and I answered that I thought it most likely that robots made it, in a factory somewhere underground. After a moment of confusion, they asked where I was going, and I told them - an engagement party for a friend. But don't tell anyone, because it's supposed to be a secret.

The drunk girl, upon hearing this, began to shout, "Two people are getting engaged tonight! This guy with the sweater is going to their party!" I like to think that when this girl is sober, she's very clever. She would probably have been able to internalize that comment and come up with something much more sharp and funny to say. However, drunk as she was, this was the best she could come up with. I tried to play along, though, and became mock angry, and told her I'd never trust her with any secret ever again. I smiled after saying this, and kept walking, but she stopped and grabbed my arm. I could tell, in about ten seconds, she was going to cry. "I didn't mean it, I swear. I didn't know."

In this moment, I had a very odd feeling, like laughter mixed with the sort of sobs that make your chest heave. The sweater brings out very intense emotions.

These Pancakes Have No Regard For the Law

Last night my fraternity, Beta Upsilon Chi (BYX, bucks) threw it's fifth annual Uncle BYX pancake dinner. The event is a fundraiser for our philanthropy, Life Source, which is a food bank and resource center for the impoverished section of Fayetteville. There were over six hundred people, and we ran out of pancakes.

With eighty pledges, we didn't have enough jobs for everyone; when I pledged, each one of us had to serve pancakes, then stay afterwards till one in the morning cleaning up. Last night, they finished all the work by 11:30. We divided the group in half, where half served pancakes, while the other half was on 'dance duty.' Pledges on dance duty had to be dancing with a girl at all times. They were more resistant to this than I expected.

There were other jobs: ticket taker, t-shirt table, coffee captain, teddy bear peddler (I'm not sure where the bears came from, but dog gone it, we had a pledge selling them). All the cooks were members; that job is almost a Tom Sawyer thing. We tell all the pledges they're not allowed to cook until they're members, then when they become members, all they want to do is make pancakes. On the upside, if you're a cook, fraternal tradition holds that on the night of Uncle BYX only, you can give pledges any nickname you wish, and they have to respond. Four years after my pledgeship, Dirty Mike and the Grizz still go by the nicknames that they were given by then senior Blake Area.

The most coveted jobs, though, were the pancake costumes. We made two pancake costumes to promote Uncle BYX; pledges wore these throughout the week in the busiest intersections on campus. I considered it a blunt force type of marketing - a pancake rapidly approaches you, yelling about philanthropy, and grabs you by the collar. That's not a fictional situation. We sold several tickets this way.

Last night, we put two pledges in those costumes and posted them on Dickson Street, which ran in front of our venue. The two couldn't have been more happy with their assignment, and I left them dancing the the song of car horns. An hour later, I got a call from a friend who said policemen were outside Uncle BYX talking to pancakes. Were those my pancakes?

From the policemen, I gathered this: the pancakes had been running one side of the street to the other, like Frogger, dodging cars. Also, at one point, the pancakes got into the bed of someone's truck and drove down and up Dickson Street promoting our event. We promised they would stick to our side of the curb, and the police left the pancakes in peace.

The item my mind keeps returning to is the tip the police receieved. They said they got a call about the activities of the pancakes, and responded. But who would make that call?

911: 911, what's your emergency?

Caller: P-p-pan-pancakes! There are pancakes in the road!

911: Please, slow down. Tell me what's happening.

Caller: There are two pancakes who are terrorizing Dickson Street. It's like Road Warrior.

911: You say pancakes?

Caller: That's right. Rogue pancakes. They're showing a complete disregard for the law.

911: Can you tell me where you are on Dickson?

Caller: I-I - no, I can't. I think they can hear me.

911: Excuse me?

Caller: They're looking at me. Oh, no. God no.

911: Stay calm, we're sending help.

Caller: No - Please no! THIS WAS FORETOLD! THIS IS HOW IT ENDS!

That's probably how it sounded.

My Nightmare is Banished

I posted earlier a story about my high school nemesis, who was appointed Kappa Kappa Gamma house chef and subsequently my boss. This is the A+ Number One nightmare of geeks: that those who abused them in high school really will be cooler than them in twenty years.

Will was chef for two months, and during his reign of terror we had such dishes as cous cous, brie and apple sandwiches, and no desserts. He also managed to take away the traditional, weekly Chicken Finger Friday, where the house lunch is open to the campus, and styrofoam cups. You'd be surprised by which of those caused more grief; sororities love their styrofoam. It's a girl's best friend. If she's making napalm. That may have been a pledge mission.

Will replaced the beloved Chef John, who cooked very regular meals and made a cheesecake that I actually died for, immediately before it brought me back to life. He also is a sculptor, and was in the process of creating a series of 300 tribal masks. I went to one of his art shows last year. There was cheesecake.

On Friday, one of the Kappa's texted me, saying, "chief william has been fried!" My initial response was, that's a hate crime. Then I realized he was neither a minority nor was he a victim, but someone who just didn't make any desserts. NO DESSERTS! YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT I'VE BEEN THROUGH!

Chef John is contracted to return on December 1st. Until then, the campus food service Chartwells will be handling the cooking. Today there were chocolate chip cookies.

A Real Life Video Game Character

Until last week's Halloween game against Eastern Michigan, I hadn't attended an Arkansas football game in over a year. This is due in part to listlessness, in part to the small amount of homework that I put in the upper cabinets of free time, and in part because I simply forgot to buy tickets. I can't force pledges to give me their ticket vouchers every week, can I? (I actually can, but the listless part of me always makes it seem like too much work to make them do so.)

However, I count my attendance at the Eastern Michigan game a miracle no degrees short of a dove descending from heaven and a loud voice saying, "Behold my servant Cass, on whose account I have mixed feelings." Because that day, I saw Garrus Vakarian in person.

I've known Garrus for about two years now; we met initially during the first Pankration, when I played Mass Effect. I was playing it, he was in it. From there, we met off and on, mostly during holidays, when I would pick up saved games which were in the middle of exciting plot developments. Garrus and I would spend hours killing the dastardly robotic geth, hunting down mischievous mad scientists, and tracking the rogue spectre Sarren using our powers of deduction. We were a great team. Some nights, when it got really dark, I would forget that Garrus was a graphic summoned off of a storage disk, and think that, for the first time, I had met someone with whom I could share my hatred of robots.

At halftime during the Arkansas - Eastern Michigan game, with a score of rock to scissors (there was no way Eastern Michigan was getting out of that one, even if it was best two out of three), the Arkansas Alumni Association honored a group of graduates who had ventured out into the world and made their fortune. Among them was Brandon Keener, who they announced as an actor from Fort Smith. Intrigued, I went to the library (I don't have the internet at my house; this way they'll never find me) and Googled him. And God said, "Behold Brandon Keener, who voiced your best friend Garrus Vakarian in Mass Effect."

Garrus Vakarian! I saw him, from a distance of around a hundred yards. Plus a significant elevation change. I invented the Pankration just to be with him. And he walked out of my life without me knowing it.

The whole situation reminded me of an ancient Greek myth. One day, Apollo was walking through the fields at Delphi when he heard the wind carrying a beautifully melody. He immediately fell in love with the voice an flew off in search of the singer, knowing that when he met her, he would make her his bride (or rape her and then she would bear his bastard offspring - this is how Greek myths actually worked). He flew over forests and mountains, past mortals and gods, in search of his beloved, who he could not find. Eventually, exhausted, he stopped in a grove of olive trees. There, washing clothes at the water's edge, was a beautiful maiden. He asked her, "Do you know of a girl who sings a most beautiful melody? I am in love, and I will make her my bride/rape her and she will bear my bastard offspring." She sheepishly looked away and said, "I know this girl." Apollo asked, "Is she close by?" "Ay," the maiden said, "she is here in this grove." Then the maiden began to sing, and Apollo realized that Garrus Vakarian was his only true friend, and he was ashamed that he didn't recognize Brandon Keener when the man was a hundred yards away from him.

Do not fear: Garrus has been announced as one of the characters in Mass Effect 2, out at the end of January. Announced. As if the video game designers could keep best friends apart.

I Would Have Gotten Away With It, If It Wasn't For Daylight Savings Time!

Yesterday, my alarm went off at six forty five and I got dressed. I brushed my teeth, put in my contacts, and ate some ice cream. Then I drove to Rick's Bakery, to meet with a couple tenth graders that I mentor.

When I arrived, not only did I realize that there was no one in the Rick's parking lot, or that Rick's itself was locked, but that the sky was uncharacteristically pitch black for seven in the morning. As I sat in my car, I tried to rationalize this with the explanation of Daylight Savings Time, but I'm still not exactly sure how that works (I know I'm supposed to move my clock, but the past two years I've put it under my bed and it's done nothing). It may have taken sixty long seconds for me to look at my phone and realize it was actually five in the morning.

For Christmas my senior year of high school, my parents bought me a semester spanning series of sessions with a personal trainer. Worst Christmas present ever, outside of the Batman shirt our foreign exchange student's parents sent me in the sixth grade. At the time, I was considering collegiate football, and so it made sense to train. But not like that. Not like that.

My trainer was Jessica, the only woman ever to throw the shot put and discus in the same Olympics. She would laugh when I threw up, and the only conversation we ever ventured into outside of weight lifting was Gatorade flavors. I hated going there. Our sessions were at five in the morning, but I was so conflicted about attending that some mornings, I would wake up in a daze, dress, and drive to the Fayetteville Atheletic Club, only to realize it was three o'clock. Then I'd drive home, get back in bed with my shoes on and watch the clock travel from three to five.

At that time in the morning, reactions are sluggish enough that the obvious signs that it is not the time you think it is are hard to catch, like your favorite morning show isn't playing, or your car radio clock says three a.m. (mine actually said three a.m. yesterday. Like I said, I'm not exactly sure how Daylight Savings Time works). I think this may be what hangovers are like. You can stare at your hand for thirty seconds and not be able to tell if its the left or right hand of someone else, or yourself.

Save the Pankration!

I'll admit - I have never posted about the Pankration before. I promise to explain it in full, but I'm assuming if you're reading this blog, I've probably told you in person, so anything I write on this website I'll just embellish. But that's why you read it. Because when I write, I turn my brain off and write ridiculous things like this.

However, you must act quickly to save the Pankration from wikiocide! That's right, I wasn't thinking, I just turned my brain off and the word "wikiocide" came out. If you're curious how I come up with posts, that's a perfect example. Rechecking Wikipedia this morning to calm the fears which I had hoped were unfounded, fears that told me the article I wrote concerning the video game holiday I made up called the Pankration had been deleted, I found this:

"It has been proposed that this article be deleted because of the following concern:

Not notable. See WP:ONEDAY."

My first reaction was elation. For someone to post this, that meant that they had to have actually read my article, and now they have knowledge of the Pankration. And knowledge of the Pankration is like a virus: once you have it, you can never fully get rid of it. You can only hide it, until it surfaces every ten years like syphilis and you are publicly shamed.

I followed the link to WP:ONEDAY (with the help of technology, you can too!) and I was so surprised by what I found that I killed a man by putting a butter knife up through his jaw all the way into his brain. Never sneak up on me again, Wikipedia.

"Wikipedia is not for things you or your friends made up. If you have invented something novel in your school, your garage, or the pub, but it has not yet become known to the rest of the world, please do not write about it on Wikipedia. Write about it on your own website or blog instead."

First off, I cannot start a retort until pointing out the aristocratic insult that insinuates that I might have invented the Pankration in a school building, a garage, or a bar. The Pankration was born in my head like Athena, and spilled out of my ears like a rainbow waterfall in the land ruled by koala bears. It is not novel - it is revolutionary (but only if you're playing a video game that involves you taking part in a revolution).

But listen closely, Wikipeedmypants, because I know you read my blog - just like you read my article on the video game holiday known as the Pankration. Wikipedia is only for things taht I or my friends have made up. Each word on that site has been made up by someone sitting at a keyboard, and each of those typists is someone's friend (except you). I consider your website the only valid option for posting false information, stae secrets, and lies that I've had to stop telling children because they called me out on them. Furthermore, you don't work for Wikipedia. You are not getting paid to delete my article. By deleting my article, you are only depriving millions of Eastern European children the chance to enjoy video games from sunset to sunrise. That's millions of sunsets that you've just stolen. You are the main villian in the next dream that I have.

I will never give up! You may be able to delete my article on a holiday that I invented, but you cannot delete my soul, and that's what counts. The only ones who can delete my soul are the Master Friends, who watch over the computer program that we're all hooked up to that simulates life while simeltaneously using our brains as billions of organic computers that power their starship as it works to stop what we know as Alpha Centauri from going super nova and destroying the life force that binds the universe together.

Did you see what I did there? I just started typing, and I had no idea where I was going.

November 1st

Stick Stickly said once that if the first words out of your mouth on the first of the month were, "Rabbit Rabbit," you would have good luck. Stick Stickly was also a tongue depressant which googlie eyes Elmer's glued on, so I'm not sure why I gave him such credence. Maybe because he reminded me of popsicles, and at eleven, popsicles are the reason you dream about a shopping spree in a grocery store.

I have never managed to say this. Every first of the month I fail, saying all sorts of things, from, "What time is it?" to "Where is the captain?" and "Never again!" On probability alone, given all the first of the months between the age of eleven and twenty one, I think I should have said it by now, even if I didn't mean to. I mean, I've said, "Who are you?" multiple times.

Last night I said it walking home from Common Grounds after midnight. I don't believe it worked. It makes since that you would have to say it as you woke up to the new month; also, with all the evil spirits, called Trevor, roaming around between midnight and midnight fifteen, it's logical to assume they intercepted my appeal to the benevolent spirits, called Master Friend, for good luck. This all comes from a belief system called Solar Inferno I invented when I was eleven to account for the existence of Stick Stickly and all the other puppets on Nick in the Afternoon, among other things.

Also, it could be that it was Daylight Savings Time, and what I thought was after midnight was only after eleven. All the clocks were set back (and I was still late to church). However, after some intensive internet research, I've found a hypothesis that if you say, "Tabbir, Tabbir" before falling asleep on the first of the month, you will secure yourself good fortune. O Master Friend, hear my prayer.

The Price of Pledgeship

As Pledge Commander, I've had to make sacrifices. I've stopped going to many classes. I don't do my homework. And many nights, I don't sleep in my bed. I've given up any hope of a normal life or a face that girls might find attractive in order to watch all thirty episodes of the canceled television show Jericho with my pledges.

However, I have found that being Pledge Commander has a different price - my dignity. Not that I had dignity before, but I feel like when other people see me, they feel my dignity slipping away, and I don't have time to stop them and say, "I lost my dignity long ago. It's too late for me - save yourself," so somedays I feel it just as strongly as the first day it left, that time Lewis Chase ratted me out to Stephanie Broderick for writing that anonymous love note in second grade.

Every time I go to Wal-Mart, I relive that day when Lewis Chase told me that Stephanie would much rather be with him than with me (right before she left town; to this day I still can't find her on Facebook. Do you know how many Stephanie Broderick's there are in the continental U.S. alone? At least ten, because you can only view ten at a time, and I wasn't about to page through the whole list). For pledgeship, I've had to buy the oddest things. 200 squirt guns. Fifty pounds of flour. Fifty dollars worth of panty hose. A hacksaw and several gallons of industrial strength lime. Okay, I made that third one up.

Saturday, in the check out line with seven bottles of spray paint, ten rolls of masking tape, and seventy Hanes V-necks, Arkansas radio personality Rick Schaeffer (see picture: the original Hotness) pulled in behind me. He gave me the stink voice, which is the FM equivalent of the stink eye. In return, I told him not to sound so smug, with your fifty pounds of animal feed. What are you doing, running a cock fight?

I may have not said that, but it still feels terrible to have a minor local celebrity infer that you're losing your dignity.

Another Assassins Story

Last night, the game Assassins ended with a battle royale at midnight on Old Main Lawn, between the fifteen remaining players. They survived 150 other assassins, to make it to the final round, only to spend the last ten minutes of the game searching all the trees in Arkansas's arboretum for the last target, who was well hidden. However, this is an email I received from Matt Bakke, a pledge who was killed this past weekend.

The best way to describe it is an overwhelming sense of nothingness.

That last shot of adrenaline when danger is near, and then you feel those liberating drops of water.

Hit, wet, free. No more walking up 6 filghts of stairs. No more sidewalk chases and wall climbing. No more making body shields out of passerby's. No more stakeouts outside your door. No more being chased out of residence halls for sneaking in by angry RA's and secuirty. No more cryptic texts, "Hey man, What are you up to?" No more suspiciously attractive females asking what you're doing later. No more people hiding in bathroom stalls. No more avoiding your room like the plague. No more piles of laundry from not going to the laundry room. No more broken water guns soaking your pocket. No more furtive glances over your shoulder, and twitchy 360's, no more accidentally shooting someone for looking suspicious, no more hours in the library, no more creeping on your targets house.

Just Kevin Lawson in a dark coat with the joy of the kill in his eyes.

and Freedom.

The First Man I've Met So Far

I went to Stillwater for the OSU Homecoming; the festivities were gorgeous and crowed, and the city was flat and debilitated personalities. Leaving Stillwater, I felt like a person again. However, neither the crippling depression that waits for you there or the $50,000 dollar Greek lawn decorations were what made a lasting influence. The memory I left Stillwater with was of the man Stony Fath.

It's pronounced Faith. Stony Fath, like he was faith like a rock hard foundation, or like a stripper's name. Stony is 6'2", 220 lbs of lumberjack; he transferred to OSU after two years playing linebacker for the Air Force Academy still left something to be desired in life. He's kept a well trimmed beard and receeding hairline consistently since the tenth grade. Stony lives alone in a one room house decorated with oil paintings of small children. He's built most of his furniture and spends his time reading the Jewish Roman historian Josephus. I cannot make this up.

Saturday morning, after sleeping on an old futon where diseases are created, Stony woke me up and told me to get my clothes on, because "we're going to get the Don." Who is Don? Why are you in my room? These questions did not matter. I did what I was told.

He took me and several of the other backcountry boys that were sleeping in the same house to a Mom and Pop diner, where we waited in line with other Cowpokes for ten minutes. When the nine of us finally got to a table that seated six, instead of ordering, Stony told the waitress we just needed nine Dons. Why are there so many Dons? Can I have some coffee? These questions went unanswered.

I beheld the Don. Two pieces of Texas toast, upon which rested two hamburger patties, topped with several handfulls of fries, covered with grated cheese and white gravy. Only six of us finished. Stony finished first, then ate the rest of mine.

An Assassins Story

Our fraternity is playing Assassins: with teams of big and little brothers, each team eliminates their target, another big little team, and takes that teams target. The one team left in the end wins. It has been a heated, controversial, and at times colorful competition. I recently received this email from one player who was contesting his death. You might call this a guest blogger:

I would just like to pass on this story to you, because, regardless of the outcome, it was a glorious battle for my life, with multiple parties taking hits on both sides.

For the past three days, I have avoided my house like the plague. Only randomly dropping in to grab essentials, I make my visits at unannounced times. Tonight was no different, and I made my nightly stop about an hour after step show practice was over. During a brief chat with three of my roommates, I let slip that I was heading to the library to work on a lab report with some people (Mistake numero uno). But, it was just my housemates. Right? Would they sell me out? Wrong.

There we are in the library, vigorously working on our lab reports (peopleofwalmart.com), and none other than the venerable Jordan Difani walks up and taps me on my shoulder. Fear gripped my insides like ice. I glance down at my watch, only to realize that it was 12:15. For those of you who aren't familiar with David W. Mullins Library protocol, it is open until 2:00 a.m. However, after midnight, the only door open is the one on the Union side. Hence, only one door to freedom.

Quickly calculating and realizing my predicament, I begin to weigh my chances. Knowing there is a underground entrance to the library into the Chemistry Building, I proceeded to have a flirty conversation with a wonderfully rude beast of a woman named Michelle, who happened to be working the main desk at the time. She very kindly informed me that under no circumstances would I be able escape my prison through that venue.

As I stared at the door, I saw the growing masses of assassins grouping at the one exit, preparing to do unspeakable evils to me.

I made the call, and rallied in the troops. Mike Turner, Jon Braschler, Tim Yopp, and four of my friends from the BCM answered my call to battle. They came armed with a large blanket and ingenuity, and together we hatched a brilliant escape plan.

We placed the tallest one of them, which happened to be a girl, under the blanket, and the rest of them crowded around it. As we creeped up the stairs from the basement to the Golden Doorway, I hung back, biding my time. As soon as they reached the main floor, they were seen. They broke off at a sprint (or as much of one as the blanket-covered body could manage) for Maple Drive, not making it very far before Matt Chappell quickly and concisely blocked their path. What continued was much grappling and water-squirting, with the biggest of the Allies grabbing the psuedo-me and attempting to carry her off to the BCM and safety.

In the ensuing confusion, I took my chance. I bounded off towards Dickson Street, nearly measuring my length on the stairs. I made it a good five steps before they realized what had happened. As I was sprinting away, the Axis powers-at-be chased after me. Being a good twenty yards ahead of them and already running, I very easily made it into the welcome open door of Jon Braschler's truck outside of the Music Ed building. With the windows up and the doors locked, they jumped, pushed, and squirted futilely.

We drove off in victory, but it wasn't long before we realized that the screaming we were hearing was more of the Nazis having launched themselves onto the top of Jon's truck. We slowed down to let them off, and Josh took his leave. Before getting back up to speed, we wanted to make sure that there was no one else on the car, not knowing that Tommy Hughes was still clinging on for dear life. We slowed down, and I cracked my window (Mistake Number Two) to yell at whoever that they needed to jump off then or most likely be subject to much Road Rash.

Tommy wisely hopped off, and as we were speeding up It happened. The Shot Heard Round Dickson. Running beside the accelerating truck, Tommy made two valiant squirts into the cracked passenger side window. They missed. They hit. Both sides could have sworn on their momma's grave the opposite outcomes. We will never know the truth.