There's Something I Should Tell You, Before I Take Your Blindfold Off

Week from Hell #2: Complete.

This week proceeded pretty much as I predicted it would two posts ago. I received another happy blow to the testicles in the form of a calculus midterm on Monday, worked into the wee hours writing a lab on Tuesday, worked into the wee hours summarizing psychology articles on Wednesday, cut class on Thursday and worked into the wee hours to a) finish summarizing the articles and then write analyses (This is a real word. Apparently I just pwn the shit out of FF2.0 at the english language) of them and b) write up a chem lab report and start an informal chem lab report. Today I finished the chem labs, actually went and performed the second of the labs, and then came home to do nothing for as long as I wanted.

Out of it all, the psych articles were the absolute worst. The assignment was to read these 5 articles, and for each write a half-page summary and a half-page analysis. Now, I know that that sounds easy. I thought it was going to be easy. I mean, together that's one page per article, or 500 words single-spaced. I've written almost half that much already. I've made severe fun of people for complaining about something like this. However, I would like to think that the circumstances here were a little skewed. Take, for example, the assignment itself: a single piece of paper with very little written instruction on it. Basically the only thing I can remember from it was that the instructor used the word incisive. I think I can say that that is the single most interesting word that any teacher (prof or otherwise) has ever used in any of my assignments. It is also the only reason that there isn't a small object, slightly reminiscent of a pineapple, sitting in the assignment drop-box labeled "Research Assignment, Liam N.V.G. McKenna, Pull Pin to View Articles".

Returning to the point, the only thing I can remember is that he used the word incisive. There was no real instruction or clarification as to what was required. Just a summary (simple enough) and an analysis (not so simple). So I attempted to clear out the rust choking my critical thinking and writing centres, and sat down to work.

After a quick review of the assigned articles, I came to an immediate conclusion. I was not fucked, per se, but I would need to institute some pretty radical measures. The first was to read the articles not in the order they had been assigned, but in reverse. Here's why: Article #5, #4, and #3 were all 8 pages in length. Article #2, a somewhat wordy 20 pages. Article #1 40 bleeding pages, or, for those of you keeping score, just less than the other 4 articles put together. So, yeah, I decided that I'd save that one for last.

After that I read a lot and typed some. I summarized 5, 4, and 3, and attempted to gain a foothold on 2. However, by that point I was far too tired to be up to challenge. I broke the article down into major sections and went to bed. I woke up 6 hours later and got back to it. Well. I got up 6 hours later, got up again 45 minutes after that, peed, and then got back to it. I finished summarizing number 2, by summarizing my sections, picking the best sentence from those summaries, and cobbling them all together. I sat, coldly, in the bulky shadow of number 1. I told it to get fucked and went ahead and summarized the other 4, this time starting with 2 (which was fresh in my head) and working forwards. Now might also be the proper time to mention that article #2 was the worst fucking thing I've ever read in my life. Picture someone who prints 14 pages of english, and in those 14 pages manages to reference over 80 other articles, and still manages to say nothing. It was absolutely terrible. However, I might just have to thank it for providing me with more than enough material for a damning analysis so hot that I had to disconnect my graphics card and type blindly lest it melt that and my monitor into nothingness. The other three weren't really interesting, so I won't get into them.

Here are some other newsworthy events:

You asked for it, and here it is: The Porker Revisited.

Here's a slice of domestic tension for you: Having just capped off the events in last weeks discussion of my roommate's silly antics, we arrive at last Friday. This may not sound like it has anything to do with my roommate, but I fucking love gyros. Wolfgang got me to eat some the last time we hung out, and I was thoroughly impressed. So, last Friday I saw a sign at the plaza beside my campus advertising 2 gyros for $6. I went there at lunch with my friend Willis, and we intended nothing short of thorough enjoyment of some good food. May I add that this deal was 2 for 6$ tax included, and that it was only available to UW students and RIM employees. That's right, fuck you pricks. Needless to say, I was excited.

We walked into the store and got in line. I wouldn't have guessed it before that day, but apparently there are a lot of people in Waterloo with good taste. However, disappointment was about to strike me like a glass bottle full of AIDS virus to the face. They didn't take credit. It was a cash only deal, and let's just say that I haven't actually entered a bank to get cash from since the start of September. Anyway, it takes me a few seconds to realize it, but fate is not through with me. Right in front of me in line is the porker. We exchange pleasantries. He makes no mention of how he bravely sent his porkee up to quiet my partying roomates the night before.

Then he begins his moving his mouth, releasing sounds, starting a train of thought which will end up causing me extreme frustration. This is pretty much a verbatim quote: "Oh yeah, um I'm going home for the weekend, but [the porkee]'s house is really loud so she's, like, gonna be sleeping at our place while I'm not there". This doesn't really interest me. It would have been nice to have a floor of the house to myself all weekend, but sovereign sway over the laundry machines is a sweet nectar I'm happy to sample another time.

"Oh yeah. But, like, I don't wanna give her my keys," [klaxons begin ringing], "because I want to be able to use them myself when I get back on Monday."

Awsome, fuckin awsome. Tell me, porker, is she going to teleport through the walls or go Victor Tooms all over our house?

So what was his brilliant plan? Not leave the door to our house unlocked all weekend, thank god. However, he did propose leaving the back door unlocked all weekend, since the back door leads to a tunnel, which leads to another door. By unlocking our door and giving her to key to door #2, he could keep the key to our door and use it to get in the front on Monday. Anyway, even though I was disinclined to acquiesce to his request, I did anyway. Then I went home several hours later, told my other roommates, and they went down to the basement and locked the door. The logic being that if the porkee showed up at a reasonable hour she could get in the front door anyway.

She did show up at a pretty reasonable hour on Saturday. Saturday was a really good day. One of my roommate's mom, aunt, and cousin showed up and we all went shopping. Well, they shopped. I flirted with the cousin and idly picked up a small number of groceries to justify having come along. Then the faj dropped by that afternoon and I actually went shopping. He also told me that he was going to buy me some new pants, and that he wasn't taking no for an answer.

This is a bit of a touchy subject between me and my family. Basically, I don't own any good looking clothes. I have some shirts that can look good as long as they're paired with good pants, but I don't have any good pants at all to speak of. In fact, since I got to school in September I've just been trading off between a pair of blue jeans and my ragged army pants. I used to have a pretty nice pair of ModRobes, which were black and therefore pretty good for dressy occasions, but Carl lost them. Last May. Numerous promises were made at the time to find/replace them. Nothing has come of this. So, whenever I come home for a weekend, I'm wearing the same things that I'm always wearing. The trouble is, I usually only come home for important events like birthdays, thanksgiving, etc. So, at about 4:30-5:00pm, usually on Sunday, a heated argument will erupt between my parents and myself as to why I hate my family so much as to never dress appropiately for special occasions. I usually attempt to counter this by saying the the braj, Calder, and Siobhan all wear the same things that they normally wear, and that they just happen to wear nicer things than me. Except for Calder, but he's special.

Anyway, there is also a slightly longer history involving my mother trying to make me wear pants tight enough to shame most skinny punk dolts. So, whenever the rents try to give me pants, they're usually things that will never ever grace my supple flesh.

However, the faj simply wanted to see me clothed, and we bummed around Conestoga Mall until we found what was probably the best option: Two pairs (there was a sale on) of "Bens" from Bluenotes. As I said, not quite up to my usual standards, but still the best on offer. As well, they make me look more metro, so I can wear them whenever I see the braj and want to get compliments. Oh yeah, and my waist-size has increased by an inch. I was originally seriously worried that I wasn't going to find any pants that didn't want to wrap my testicles in their death-grip, until a clerk couldn't find a pair in my size, and gave me one size up. The change of just one inch around my waist was incrdible, and that pretty much sealed the deal.

So, I get home with these pants and throw them in the washing machine in order to be able to wear them as soon as possible. I sit down at the computer and get down to some good old fashioned time-wasting. At this point my earlier plot-line involving the porkee comes into play. She came over while I was engrossed with my pixelated (FF2.0 suggests "pix elated") delights, and didn't even say hi to me. She went straight to the porker's room, dropped her stuff, and proceeded to clean the entire basement (except my room). It was unbelievable. She started with his room, laid out the bathroom in record time, and proceeded to sweep and vacuum the floors of the hallways and laundry room. Then she did his laundry. I was alerted of this by the sound of the washing machine running, even though I was sure that my clothes must have been done. Wow, I thought to myself, she's really nice moving my laundry along for me without even asking...

Nope. She left it in a wet pile on top of the washing machine. No joke. I'm sitting less than 10 feet away with my door open, and she doesn't even ask if I want to move my shit to the dryer so that she can wash her bone-provider's soiled garments. This reassured my belief that most women are actually mildly retarded, but have been taught all their lives that they're smarter than me. Maybe someday I'll write a famous article about it.

The only other interesting thing I've done lately is Stumble onto this. If you're from the same place as me and feeling a little homesick, it might just help you out. My personal favourite is this one, which I might employ in that article I'm going to write.

Goodnight, folks.