The Memory Hole

freaks, monsters, and raelians.

Spring 2006.  John, Patterson, and I took “Freaks and Monsters,” a general LLEA class that was about, well, uh, what people have called odd, strange, etc.  There are about a million things that could be said about this class, but here’s one for today.

The whole vibe of the class was that it was really wrong to make fun of “the other.”  That is, the name “Freaks and Monsters” was somewhat tongue-in-cheek.  As the professor pointed out on the first day, she was actually all about teaching tolerance.  We were learning that those who had been castigated as freaks and whatnot did not deserve such a treatment, and at the very least we should all respect each other as fellow humanoids, even if they were conjoined at the head or were pinheads…er, I mean, microcephalics.  Yeah, I still remember that.  So the professor did impart something worthwhile to me.  In retrospect, it really wasn’t a terrible class, but it wasn’t great either. It was honestly interesting subject matter, but it probably could have been better, but eh, I suppose the professor was trying and it was a 200-level lecture class, so it’s not going to be the best ever.

Actually, that’s neither here nor there, but that’s enough of a disclaimer of me not actually out to hate on the class or the professor.  That being said, that class had its moments:

Oftentimes in class I was gagging on the amount of “tolerance” that was crammed down our throats, and then suddenly one day there was a clear break.  I am almost certain it was the last day before Spring Break, because I remember thinking that I would soon be free, only having to tolerate one more period of tolerance.

The topic was cloning.  At one point the professor starts talking about the Raelians, which for those of you who don’t know, is some small UFO-cult that claimed that they had already successfully cloned a human.

The class had covered way “kookier” things than Raelism, but for some reason this small UFO cult that claimed they had cloned a human was the professor’s breaking point.  She started cracking a ton of jokes about how crazy they were.  I mean really, she spent at least a good twenty to thirty minutes surfing around their website, reading every claim they made on the site out loud, and mocking them.  It was actually rather vitriolic.

Don’t get me wrong.  I’m no Raelian apologist.  Nor do I really have any problem with making fun of them.  I agree, they’re pretty much crazy and definitely a weird cult, but on the grand scheme of things I don’t know if they’re actually harmful or anything.  God/Rael knows I’m no expert on Raelian practices and beliefs, although I guess if I remembered that day in class more clearly I might have been, since she did go into them in detail.

Anyhow, so it’s not like I was really offended or anything.  But I definitely noticed it was a clear break from her “love everyone” mentality, and that makes it stick out in my mind for some reason.  I wonder if someone in her family was abducted by Raelians or something.

Then we talked about Alcor, the company that has Ted Williams’ body on ice, and well, then I went and ate lunch.

drunk man on the can.

John, your latest tweet reminded me of this little incident.  I wonder if you remember it.

It was senior year.  Probably Spring 2008, although theoretically it could have been Fall ‘08.  Definitely living in Wainani.  I want to say it was a Tuesday night.  It wasn’t entirely late, like maybe seven or eight at night when this happened.  John had been out drinking somewhere, and came back, and proceeded to make friends with and hug the toilet when he came back.

I don’t drink, but I’m fine with people that do and I guess sometimes you just drink too much, you know?  I’m all for letting an intoxicated person do what they have to do with the toilet—I’d much rather it be there than all over the living room carpet or something like that.

The problem was… he stayed in there.  For a good while.  For some time there was the lovely sound of spewing, but after a while, nothingness.

Being the responsible college students that we were, Andy, Evan, and I did pretty much nothing.  Actually, we got irritated, because damn man, there’s only one bathroom in the apartment.  But we were pretty much also passive aggressive and lazy so we didn’t do much.

In truth, I had to take a leak, but I also had to buy something at Walmart.  I remember distinctly, in fact, I had to buy a rechargeable battery for my Xbox 360 controller.  So I headed out to Walmart.  I remember getting a text from Andy at some point while I was on my Walmart trip that was something to the effect of “He’s still in there.”

Well, when I finally got back from the battery trip, he was still in there.  I don’t want to sound like a hero, but goddamn at least I finally took some action.  That action was to walk up to the door:

“John?  What the fuck man? Are you alive?”  No response.  The door was unlocked.  With some slight trepidation and the other roommates looking on, I turned the knob and pushed the door open, only to have it stop quickly.

It was banging against John, who was kneeling at the base of the toilet, apparently passed out.  The bathroom was small, so it was impossible to open the door more than like an inch or two before it hit John.  If it was bigger, perhaps we could have like, moved him or something.

Instead, doing the responsible thing, I proceeded to spend like a minute just whacking the door against him with increasing intensity.  ”Get up, man!”  No response.  We all looked at each other, probably with two concerns: 1) When will we be able to freely shit and piss in our apartment? and 2) What the hell do we do about it if he’s dead?

Needless to say, it must have been a delayed response, as all responses tend to be when one is drunk, but the door jolting must have worked.  A few minutes later he mysteriously emerged from the bathroom, walked to his bed, and collapsed.  The next day I believe he was fine.

“we’ve got a runner.”

Spring ‘07.  I can’t remember the title of the class, but it was some Political Science class that I think we were required to take.  Patterson, John, and I were all in the same class together, which was always a recipe for disaster, especially if Freaks and Monsters was any indication.

Well, Patterson alone was always a recipe for disaster, he made a course on Indian religions rather interesting as well, but that’s neither here nor there.

This class was taught by a graduate student who shall remain nameless, as I wouldn’t want to besmirch her good name, but yeah, it was a pretty lame class.  She was as liberal as they come, especially in her teaching style, she was trying totally “new and hip” ways of teaching that actually came across as pretty lame almost all of the time.

I mean, you can’t knock her for trying, but it was cringeworthy at times. By “at times”, I mean “basically all of the time.” Like, you’d walk into class and she’d be pounding Rage Against the Machine on her Macbook because it’s music that “really makes you think about stuff” or something.

There were lots of things that happened in that class, but here perhaps is our crowning achievement.

It was a class where attendance wasn’t counted everyday, but somedays she would pass around a paper to sign into or have an activity and you would get graded on whether you participated.

One such activity was one of those aforementioned cringeworthy lame things.  I remember we had to get into groups to roleplay various people/groups.  Like, one person was supposed to be the UN, another was a businessman, another was a poor farmer in South America, et cetera.  It was pretty goofy for college students to do, something I couldn’t really get into, anyway, and I think my two cohorts were feeling the same way.

I remember feeling a little bit bad because we needed four people in a group, and the three of us had paired up with some random girl who apparently didn’t know anyone in the class.  We were sitting in a little circle of desks, looking over the papers the teacher had handed us, instructing us how the roleplay was supposed to go down.

The three of us noticed the teacher had temporarily stepped out while we were working in our groups, presumably to go to the bathroom or something.  We looked at each other.  We had already signed in for the day.

“I’m thinking we should bail,” one of us said.  We mulled it over.  She would notice we were gone, but this activity was incredibly lame.  Like I said, I felt bad for that girl because she was like, “you guys are bailing?”  I remember her actually saying “bailing” like it was a foreign word to her or something.

We kicked it around a bit longer, but ultimately, yes, we were bailing.  Our groupmate got up and tried to merge into another group, and we packed our bags.  We walked out of the classroom, into the hallway, talking shit about how stupid of an activity it is.  ”Uhh, Durr, I’m the UN!” probably was uttered at some very mature point.

But the maturity level was only beginning to show.  The building had a long hallway with doors on either end, and you had to go out those doors into an outdoor area where the stairs were.  We opened the door, goofing off and laughing, and boom, who was there on the other side?

Our teacher.  She was like looking at signs posted on the bulletin board, which obviously was a real efficient use of her teaching time.  But I digress.  She turned and looked at us, standing probably five feet away.

Now, here I was just complaining that such a silly roleplay activity wasn’t really suited to college-aged kids.  But how did these college-aged kids react to being caught red-handed in the act of ditching class?

We ran.

We just took off, bolting towards the stairs.  We might have even said something like “oh shit” right before the three of us took flight.  I remember thinking and/or saying, “this is so fucking stupid!”, self-conscious of the act but taking part in it all the same.  When we got to the first floor, we were laughing hard and asking ourselves if we really just ran away from our teacher as if we were in grade school.

She never said anything directly about it in class.  She probably wasn’t even surprised that we were ditching class, since we were the resident shitheads in that class anyway, but even I still can’t believe how we reacted.  Did we think she was going to turn us into the truancy cops or something?

The best part of that class was our final reports.  She sent them over email, so I still have mine.  All three of us had a very similar line, basically word for word, at the end of our report, with only the grade values changed.  Here is what it said:

“I would have given you an [one grade higher than what we got] for the consistency and quality of your work; however, your in-class ‘negative’ participation was, quite honestly, a distraction and annoyance.”

vegetarian dinner.

I’ve written a lot about freshman year, I guess that’s when things were at their newest and the most happening-est.  I’ve also already written about eating, and the dorm cafeteria, and girls, and well, my point is, this post is going to be a combination of all these things.

It was definitely freshman year, probably Spring semester, so that’d put this in the Spring of 2005.  It involves myself, John, and our mutual female acquaintance Iris.  I had met her originally through my scholarship thing, since all of us who got the scholarship were forced to do a summer orientation together (note to self: that’d be a good one to post about later, too).

I’m not sure how John got into this social group, but the dude has an uncanny ability to ingratiate himself with any group that includes women so I guess it makes sense.

Anyway, it’s not like I was super close friends with Iris.  Or maybe I was, I don’t really remember that clearly—I think we would often IM each other.  Oftentimes we’d go eat at the dormitory cafeteria together, too, but it wasn’t like a daily ritual—maybe once a week or so, if I’d have to guess.

For John, I’d imagine it was pretty much the same, he would often be part of the group that would eat at the cafeteria.  Now, I can’t recall whether Iris was a complete vegetarian or just espoused a more veggie-filled lifestyle, but if I’d have to guess, I’d say she was a full-blown vegetarian.  Which probably didn’t leave her a lot of options at that cafeteria.

That shitty Sodexho (or Sodexo now, I agree, that “h” was totally superfluous) cafeteria.  All my other friends and I weren’t even vegetarians and we still loved to bag on how bad the food was.  I mean, all of it was bad for you in the health sense.  Greasy, mass-produced with low-quality ingredients, all-you-can eat to encourage binging, et cetera.  But a lot of the time, the dishes were just, well, uninspired as well.  I mean, sure, they always had burgers and plain cheese pizza as safe bets, but anything with any variety tended to be on the side of suck.

So one day, while we were probably talking about how crappy the food was at the cafeteria, Iris starts to tell us about these microwaveable vegetarian meals she eats.  ”They’re great!” she said energetically.  John and I were something more skeptical.  First of all, vegetarian meals of any kind were not conjuring up images of deliciousness to us two carnivores.  Go meat or go home.

But even if we could stomach going vegetarian for one meal, something that came pre-packed in a microwaveable container that was ready to be eaten after a few minutes of zapping didn’t sound too good either.  Heck, I wasn’t health-minded, but it didn’t even sound healthy. I know all those pre-made meals are typically loaded with sodium and preservatives and other shit that is almost certainly going to give us cancer in a few years.  Why would I subject myself to vegetables if they weren’t even good for you?

A tepid, microwaved meal that also happened to be vegetarian.  I wasn’t seeing a lot of upsides to that, I’ve gotta say.

She promised it would be great, and that someday she would have us try one.  We acquiesced, figuring that “someday” was a nebulous enough term that we might not ever actually have to eat one of these vegetarian microwaved meals.

And thus time wore on.  At some point, I had discovered that you could access a schedule for what the cafeteria would be cooking every night.  I made sure to go when I knew they’d be having a dish I really liked.  Like I said, there weren’t many that I liked, but there were two “specials” that were my favorites.

The first one was chicken nuggets.  Now, I know that sounds pretty lame, but what can I say, I’m a fat guy and I love chicken nuggets.  I remember they’d serve them in those little red baskets from the “grill” area of the cafeteria (the one that usually had cheeseburgers, grilled cheese and french fries).  May god strike me down if I am lying when I say that I consumed roughly 5,000 chicken nuggets on any night when they were serving them.  Okay, god’s probably gonna strike me down in the form of grotesque obesity even if that statement is true, but anyway.

The other dish I liked was a little more inspired.  It was buffalo chicken pizza.  This is something that actually seemed pretty unique, especially when most of their pizzas there sucked.  It was a pizza with big, hearty chunks of chicken all over it, drenched in buffalo chicken sauce.  Okay, so maybe it wasn’t that inspired, but it was tasty and another thing I’d load up on if they were serving it.

So, as it just so happens, one particular week, I happened to peek at the schedule, and I could not believe my eyes when I saw what was slated for Friday night dinner.  I almost wept tears of pure joy as I saw the combination: “Chicken Nuggets/Buffalo Chicken Pizza.”

…No words… They—they should have sent a poet…

It was beautiful.  Most college freshmen probably looked forward to going out and getting wasted, laid, or some combination thereof on a Friday night.  I looked forward to chicken nuggets and pizza.  Does it surprise anyone that I am overweight?

I looked forward to Friday all week.  Finally, Friday afternoon.  Just a few more hours.  As I sat in my dorm room it was almost as if I could smell the salivation-inducing odors emanating from the kitchens in the cafeteria.  That’s when the worst thing happened.

A message popped up on my computer screen.  It read something like this:

Iris: Hey!  I bought you guys those vegetarian dinners I talked about!  Let’s have them tonight, okay?

Fuck.  This could not be happening.  I immediately consulted with John about what to do.  While I doubt he was anywhere nearly as passionate about the shitty, greasy cafeteria food as I was, he wasn’t too excited at the prospect of having to forego eating real food in order to try these meals that Iris had purchased for us.

There was some reason that this suffering couldn’t be delayed.  I think maybe the meals were only good for a certain amount of time, or she was going home for the weekend, or something like that.  Either way, dinner had to be that night, and she wasn’t letting us escape easily.

Time ticked on and the day rolled into night, and she had cajoled us into at least saying we were coming to eat.  Neither of us had the heart to tell her straight up that we truly did not want to eat the food, but the situation was getting increasingly dire.  I remember riding the elevator in our building up to the tenth floor, where she lived.

That was a little weird in itself, since in our building the floors were divided by gender, and thus she lived on an all-girl’s floor.  It felt a little bit like I was in a place I shouldn’t be, like I was just waiting for the RA to pop out from behind a corner and scream, “MEN?!  ON MY FLOOR?!!!” and then throw us down the garbage chute or something.

Well, actually, our dorm buildings didn’t have corners, but she sure as hell would have popped out from somewhere.

John and I ended up in Iris’ room, where the meals were already spinning in the microwave.  We pleaded with her, “Iris, you don’t understand, these are the best dishes the cafeteria serves, if we don’t go to dinner tonight we miss out.”  She was a nice girl, but she was also showing a rather unrelenting side.

She seemed confused, like it truly baffled her that we didn’t want to eat these delicious vegetarian microwaved meals.  ”I picked out each meal for you guys individually,” she said.  She showed us the boxes, and I don’t know exactly how John felt, but I knew she wasn’t winning me over.  Mine was like some mushroom thing, that’s all I remember.  Mushrooms.  I didn’t really like mushrooms at all back then, and even now, I wouldn’t really make a meal of them.

I remember she started to get just a tiny bit annoyed at our reluctance to eat them.  Truth be told, I don’t know why we didn’t think to eat them and then still go to dinner afterwards.  I guess there would have been less room for the delicious nuggets and pizza if our stomachs were all crammed up with stupid vegetarian food.

Honestly, even if it wasn’t chicken nugget and buffalo chicken pizza night, the meals didn’t look appealing at all.  I’ve since gotten over most of my food squeamishness, but at that time I was still way more on the picky end of things, and I wasn’t even sure if I could eat it.

Eventually, I guess my hunger pains got the best of me.  I think it was when she started to show a bit of anger at us for not wanting to eat it.  I responded in kind.  I yelled, quite loudly, “IRIS!  IT’S FUCKING CHICKEN NUGGETS AND BUFFALO CHICKEN PIZZA NIGHT!  IT’S THE BEST FOOD, AND I’M NOT GOING TO MISS IT FOR THIS VEGETARIAN BULLSHIT!” Or something along those lines.

I was joking—well, maybe not completely—but I still did raise my voice and I actually remember thinking, “oh no, I’m on the girl’s floor, they’re gonna think there’s some assault going on here or something.”  I think she got the point though.

And so John and I left.  We didn’t eat the food.  I’m not sure if she made us take them with us, so that we could eat them later, or if we just left her with all those crappy vegetarian meals to deal with herself.  I felt bad, especially about the yelling, even if it was in jest.  But you can only humor a person so far.  There’s a difference between someone being nice and someone hoisting their niceness onto you where it becomes contrary to what you actually want to do.

We went to the cafeteria.  The food was glorious.  I regret nothing.

death of a bird.

When I was a teenager, I engaged in a vast amount of stupid activities involving motor vehicles that were dangerous, reckless, and could have ended in the deaths of myself, my friends, and innocent bystanders.  But I don’t think that I am too unique in this regard, at least when it comes to those of us who grew up in America.

I think about that now.  Here in Taiwan, kids don’t get their licenses until they’re 18, and even then, they all just usually drive mopeds.  It’s probably for the best, but still, those years in high school, where my friends drove first, and then I finally drove.  I didn’t even particularly love it, but I’d be lying if I said it didn’t have a big impact on growing up.

Anyway, that’s not what I intend to write about.  This story does take place in high school though, probably senior year but we could have been juniors, too.  I was driving by then, and I couldn’t get my license until my birthday in junior year, so it was definitely after that.  I had my 4Runner, Big Blue, although at the time she wasn’t called that.

After I started driving, sometimes, when I’d spend the night at my dad’s house during the week, I’d wake up early, and go get breakfast at Camp House Grill at 6:30 or whenever they opened.  I’d eat and then head off to school.  It would still be early then.  I don’t know why I would always try to go to school so early.

I suppose part of it is that I am just a nerd.  School was comfortable for me.  I also just definitely have anxiety about being places on time.  It’s why I prefer to be an hour and a half early to places, even now, rather than chance even being one minute late.  I don’t like the feeling of rushing, I guess.  And I hated the rush hour traffic heading into town that came with going to school later.  Going early meant I could beat all that, get a good parking space, and just chill out and study or goof off at school.

Getting back to the main story, John would also sometimes join me for a Camp House breakfast at the time.  I’m not sure why he would be up and headed to school so early too, but he was.  I don’t think the things I just described in the previous paragraph were true of him, at all.  I want to guess that it had something to do with his girlfriend at the time, something like that she was there early too and they could hang out more easily in those school mornings since her parents were strict, but I could be completely wrong on that.

So yeah, this wasn’t a very regular occurrence, since at most I was at my Dad’s house in Kalaheo once a week, and John wasn’t there every time I went.  But we did the Camp House breakfast every so often.  Then afterward, we would both drive to school, each in our respective vehicles.

I don’t know why, but we would sometimes try to “race” each other.  I use the danger quotes because really neither of us were going anywhere fast.  My V6 SUV couldn’t get anywhere fast and John’s V4 Civic wasn’t necessarily a speed demon, either.  Don’t get me wrong, I am pretty sure both of us loved our respective vehicles, but they weren’t tricked-out, souped-up race cars.  But we had a habit of doing these stupid little fake drag race-esque things, usually wherever there was a truck bypass lane or something, since most of Kauai’s roads are just one lane.

It was stupid, and it was probably unsafe, too.  But especially in these early mornings, where the roads were clear, we couldn’t help ourselves.

And I remember one such time, we left from Kalaheo and headed down into Lawai valley.  Right after the intersection with Koloa Road, when you headed back up the hill on the other side of the valley, there was that truck bypass lane.  I started out ahead, staying in the left lane.  John ducked out on the right hand side, into the slow lane and pounded it.  His car was light, and pretty quick at accelerating up the hill.  On the other hand, my heavy beast of a vehicle was doing its best to pull itself up, but there was no doubt I was falling behind.

It was a nice, crisp Thursday morning, and despite the fact that I was losing, there wasn’t much wrong in the air as I watched the green hatchback pull away from me in the right hand lane.  It was just good fun.  Then, suddenly, there was something in the air.

No really, it was a bunch of birds, taking flight.  They must have been resting on the side of the road or something, and were startled by the sudden approach of two cars with their engines roaring.  Like I said, the roads were quite empty at those times.  So they all were taking off.  I was further behind, so I wasn’t too close to them, but I also got to watch the whole thing unfold.

John’s Civic was passing through the flock, and for a moment it looked like everything would be fine—that all the birds would make it through clearly.  But we were going pretty fast.  And I guess he was going too fast for one of the birds to make it.

All I saw from my car was a sudden plume of feathers erupt from John’s car.

“Holy shit!” I yelled to myself as I witnessed it.

I remember we pulled off into the parking lot of K-Mart when we finally made it to town, and inspected the surprisingly little remains of the bird that had been splattered on his windshield.  He told me it sounded like a rock when he hit it, and he had thought the windshield itself might break.

Fortunately for him though, the vaporizing body of a bird that size apparently does not carry enough mass or force to shatter a windshield.  I think we tried to clean it off as best as we could in that parking lot, although that mostly consisted of pulling away stray feathers and whatnot.

It wasn’t a major thing.  It was just some pigeon or a bird like that, tens of thousands probably get run over every day by cars.  It wasn’t like either of our lives were in danger or anything, either.  So I don’t know why it stuck with me so much.

I admit I always have had a soft spot for birds, but I don’t think that was really why, either.  I felt bad for the bird, surely, and it was a death of an animal as a result of our stupid driving behavior.  But it didn’t hang heavy on my soul or anything like that.

Yet I always remember it.  I still think about it.  The memory of the feathers just erupting in a cloud around his car, when both of us had our pedals to the metal, I don’t know, it stuck with me.

So here it is.