One True Thing

It's uncomfortable when Quantum, a man who has been known to drink at 7:30 am simply because a bar is showing a soccer game, believes it may be time to re-evaluate your alcohol consumption habits.

I say there are exceptions for grading papers during spring break.

Wednesdays Suck

I hate wednesdays right now. It is neither fish nor fowl- it's not early enough in the week for there to be a ton of time to do things, but it's too early to look forward to the weekend (I refuse the term "hump day"). But more importantly, I teach at 8am on Wednesdays and then have a lab meeting at 4, with nothing in between. So I'm stuck in the Psychology building, trying in vain to do work but usually failing (as is my wont).

Anyway, I'm about to start grading papers, and I'll post a few gems later. [This reminds me- the essay posted in "A Student Submission" ended up being plagiarized, word for word, by an English major. He is not bright, on any conceivable level.]

In an attempt to blog at least four times a year, and in an attempt to get back to the roots of this blog (my tendency to be drunk and awkward, for those who have forgotten), I shall post a short bit about this past weekend.

Friday I got a call from the Grunt, a first year student in psychology. He told me about a party that a friend of his I vaguely know was hosting, and that I should show up and be drunk. Now, the Grunt did not show up- he fell asleep on his couch like a bitch. So I knew two people at the whole party, and pretty much just hung out with them. Not too much worth posting about occurred, except for two girls talking about their boyfriends. The first is engaged to an engineer, who for valentines day wrote a program that either draws a heart on a computer screen, or the code is somehow in the shape of a heart. This is the entirety of his contribution to this excuse of a holiday, but she loved it. I've got nothing to add to that. The second girl was the hostess, and in talking about her boyfriend she said "He's great- I can walk all over him." Now at first I was righteously pissed off, but after thinking about it I had to appreciate her candor. I mean, we all know there is a subset of girls (somewhere between 1 and all of them) who have no problem sticking their stiletto heels in a man's testicles and twisting said stilettos until the testicles are detached. And some, in the words of the Bluesman, will bite of a man's head and lay eggs in the stump (in addition to the stilettos-in-the-testicles maneuver). However, most women will swear up and down that they are not this type of girl. At least with this one there's some truth in advertizing. I like to know what I'm getting up front.

[Also, there was this other girl at the party who I've met a few times and flirted with each time, not so much because I'm interested as because she's there. I don't quite understand why I do this, though I suppose it's better than slamming the door shut and boarding it up.]

Saturday I was going to this several-times-annually event at the Blind Pig known as the Bang. Basically hipsters, gay men, and random girls who can't yet drink (it's an 18+ event) dress up according to the theme, pack into this dive bar and rub up against each other to the sound of loud music. There is something to be said for this, at least as an occasional thing. But first, the pre-drinking drinking. The plan was to meet people at Alley bar at 10pm and go from there. The Alley bar is an interesting place- dingy, no sign marking the establishment, a coin-op pool table and pinball. And dirt cheap beer. I was already out that evening, so I come in at 9:30 and sidle up to the bar, ordering myself a two dollar Miller Lite, followed by another. After some time, another guy comes in. I recognize him, but I do not know his name. He is of that group of people that one sees everywhere, but never formally meets. His purpose is the same as mine this night, as we have friends in common. Since we are the only two people around, we get some quarters and start shooting pool.

Now, my pool game is interesting. I am capable of calling and making incredibly hard shots, but do not play enough for my technique to be sound. As such, I am just as likely to fuck up an easy shot as I am to make a difficult one. We play a few games as people trickle in, and then play doubles with some girls (he and I on different teams, of course). At this point I go on a tear, sinking my first five shots after the break. There's no real reason for me to say that, except it might be my biggest accomplishment of the past week. After that game, these two heavily tattooed men declare their intent to play us for the table. And we hustled the holy living fuck out of them. They weren't bad mind you, in fact they were above the usual level of competition. But after my partner and I punked our first turns (during which time they sank half their balls), we went on a tear and cleared the table. They starting calling us pool hustlers, screaming at us, and if not for the big smiles on their faces we would have had every right to fear for our lives. But since it is time to go rub up against something plush to the rhythm of a thumping drum machine, we leave.

After that, the Bang was anticlimactic. Not wanting to deal with massive bar lines, I go the shot-and-a-beer route every time I need a refill. I had a mildly embarrassing moment when this girl I met at the New Year's Bang recognized me, as I had spent some time talking up one of my friends who was trying to fuck one of her friends. Apparently, that did not resolve itself neatly. And, lest you think I am no longer wholly unlucky, I spied some extremely attractive girls I knew and went over to talk to them, but after pleasantries are exchanged one of their friends swoops in from nowhere, announces she's tired, and the three of them all leave. It was like a black ops military extraction.

So that's that. Humor later.

Top 5 Drunkenings

I have no new tales to tell. At least, none that spring to mind as truly tale-worthy. I've had a few tame nights out, and one or two nights where I got bat-shit drunk but somehow managed to keep my rampant stupidity in check. This is what happens when you date a girl who thinks you drink too much (we've since broken up, surprisingly not for that reason). Also, grad school sometimes gets in the way. But, not being one to disappoint, I am shamelessly stealing from Dubs and presenting my list of Top 5 Drunkenings. These are not necessarily chosen by most alcohol consumed (that award goes to the night for which I now owe Quantum a life-debt), though that certainly is a factor. Simply put, they are the five nights that hold a special place in my memory (mainly because I somehow managed to remember these five nights). Some I've posted about, some I will post about in greater detail another time if the demand is there. Without further ado, and in no particular order.....

The Inaugural Tri-Birthday
If I were to rank-order these nights, this is in the top two. Probably number one. I arrived a couple of hours before the party started, being put in charge of bringing music and was quickly deputized to help start the keg going by drinking foamy beer. Hubris leapt behind the bar at one point, calling out for several rounds of vodka shots in the span of some twenty or thirty minutes. Of course, I stepped up for each and every round, which I would chase with an entire beer. I was sexually assaulted by a girl who thought no, when combined with an attempt to pass out in peace, meant that I would like all of my clothes removed (this is the culmination of a story that is fascinating in its own right). After extricating myself from that situation- the word "virgin" has a very sobering effect- I was puked on by a freshman who couldn't hold his liquor, and somehow in spite of this managed to hook up with a freshman whom I would later date for several months. All that, and I somehow slept in my own bed that night. Maybe. I think.

New Years Eve, 2006
I posted about this evening in great detail. The absinth alone would have made it a great night, but throw in the general merriment of New Year's, the going to several locations, and cap it off with a one night stand and you've got an all-time, brag-to-your-friends kind of night.

Gin Shot Night
It had started out as a typical night at the Quantum & McJew Bar and Grill (sorry, the grill is not operational at this time). It ended with the Vanisher's then-girlfriend (then-eventual-girlfriend?) suggesting that we needed to shoot straight gin. And so we did. And then Quantum and I were in adjacent stalls in the Jones 4th floor men's room, watching it all come back up. Also, this was one of those nights where some random freshmen we didn't know stopped by our dorm room to drink with us simply because they'd heard they could. Such was the reputation and the power of the Quantum & McJew Bar and Grill (sorry, the Grill is not operational at this time). Needless to say, this is the only night I've ever consumed straight gin.

Dillo Day, 2005
Yes, for those of you keeping track, this is Dillo Day the year after a graduated. But I was still around, in need of a day of debauchery, and thus embraced my sketchiness. I schooled some freshmen in a power hour, then went over to casa de Hubris. Hubris gave me vicodin, which I washed down with some Jack Daniel's. I recall drinking more, smoking a Philly Sweet at one point, drinking more, being extremely sketchy, and..... um..... stuff? Things? That vicodin is powerful shit, man.

The Buddha Blows Into Town
This tale, plus a little extra, is told here. All I can say is that, a) the Buddha makes drinking epic, and b) I managed to get thrown out of a bar that no one has ever been thrown out of. Ever. They don't even really have a bouncer. Oh, and the Buddha called me by the wrong name for an extended period of time, in spite of the fact that we'd been friends for some years at that point.


So, there's five. Some honorable mentions (and reasons, if any, they were excluded).

My 21st Birthday- more tequila shots than I could count starting at midnight, woke up on the actual day of my birthday so hung over I couldn't move until nearly 3pm. Which pretty much killed the actual birthday, also known as Dillo Day 2003.

Uber's Uber Boot-and-Rally. Great story. The best part is all Uber, though.

The night we filled up Uber's voicemail with the word "moneyshot."

Drunkcataz.

Othello fundraiser- I remember nothing besides our Othello hitting on two females who were very attractive in diametrically opposite ways. And, I'm pretty sure, the return of Uber's drunken headstands.

Othello cast party- We had one, right? I seriously do not recall this ever happening- it's like someone went all "Eternal Sunshine" on this particular engram.

M4M cast party- Great night, had maybe two drinks.

Any trip to Chicago since I started grad school.

And so on. I encourage the three people who still read this blog to post things in the comments section.

A Student Submission

So I'm teaching Intro Psych again. Recently, as part of the unit on psychopathology, I had my students watch a movie that portrays a mental illness and then make a diagnosis, speculate as to etiology, and recommend a course of treatment, comparing these things to the portrayal/progression in the movie. Of course, nearly everyone wrote about A Beautiful Mind. Here is one student's paper. The thing is, it's actually decent (not good, decent) for content, which is all I'm grading for. But it might make Dubs cry, especially since this kid is an English major. All spelling, punctuation, capitalization, etc. is his (otherwise every paragraph would be interrupted by "[sic]" several times). Without further ado:

A Beautiful Mind tells the autobiographical story of John Nash Jr. a distinguished professor from Princeton who went on to make some great theories and win the Nobel Prize. The centerpiece of the story is the fact that John Nash suffers fro schizophrenia a debilitating condition for most people which leaves them helpless and in mental institutes much of their lives. Later on in the movie we see how Schizophrenia had taken over John Nash's life. He didn't know who was real to him.

To explain a little about his sickness and why it is diagnosed as schizophrenia i'll explain the crazy messages he thought he was receiving and decoding in his shed. John believed that he was being sent coded messages through his newspaper from aliens that only he could decipher and that he was the lone person that was going to save the universe. If it wasn't for John's love of his wife and mathematicshe never would have been able to overcome the sickness that plagued his brain. When his wife went into the shed she realized that John had not been taking his medication and she quickly ran back into the house to find the baby crying in a tub of water that was filling up, and John talking to someone who she couldn't see. Nash after feeling helpless stopped the medication, but no one knew that he wasn't taking it.

In the movie John Nash soon came to realize that the little girl, Marcie, never grew old. Alicia, his wife, started to suspect that John had developed paranoia. John would not have been able to come back to sanity if Alicia had not helped him along the way. Compassion and faith in the people we love will help motivate them to overcome the most difficult periods of their life. Just as Alicia was about to leave him, John's analytical brain helped him to admit his delusions.

The delusional characters of Chalres (his former classmate), Marcie (Charles's niece), and William Parcher followed John everywhere. He dedicated his life to a job that is a mere creation of his mind. John convinced Alicia that he would find a way to fight his disease. Alicia helps John to find his heart. John is brought to the mental clinic and diagnosed with schizophrenia. One day John comes home late and tells Alicia that Russian spies are following him. He wants her to leave the house, because they are in danger there. His marriage with Alicia provides John with the love and support that he was deprived of much of his life that probably made his sickness even worse.

Schizophrenics are often convinced that someone or something is controlling them by either radio, hypnosis or some other related form. Paranoid schizophrenia, which is what john nash suffered from, sufferers may also have auditory hallucinations, which are voices heard in the absence of external stimuli, whcih are often critical, warning them of danger or giving them commands. These symptoms of schizophrenia pinpoint and describe John Nash's problems and illness in this movie. He had auditory and visual hallucinations that drove min to his madness and sickness.

I think John Nash's mental illness was probably inherited from his father or somewhere along his family's history but was strongly influenced by his environmental factors and stressors growing up that brought about his sickness. we are not told a lot about Nash's childhood and upbringing but I think this played a big part in contributing to his pschizophrenia.

As stated earlier doctors had him take drugs as a form of treatment. The most used treatment, called antipsychotics, stop all symptoms in only twenty percent of patients. Since this is the best solution for schizophrenics and their illness I would recommend this to John Nash but I would have also advised his family to closely watch and monitor him so that he wouldn't stop taking his pills like he did and also advise them to always surround him with as much love and care so maybe he could decipher the difference between the delusional and real world.

Blogging from the office

Today I am blogging from my office, as I have office hours that no one shows up to. I mean, they're all freshmen in Intro Psych. Unless they're trying to convince me not to fail them even though they haven't been showing up to class or doing the work, they don't have much of a reason to stop by. Rather than show up, my students generally decide to harass me via e-mail, with such requests as "Is it OK if I skip your section for sorority rush?"

(Short answer: No. Long answer: No No No No Noooooooooooo!)

Also, I've had about a dozen or so students who wanted to get into one of my discussion sections. Now, our enrollment is contractually capped at 30 students per section; if we exceed 30 students we are in violation of our contract and therefore royally fucked if we need to rely on it for some reason. So there's an incentive to limit the number of overrides I give out. I ended up only able to issue two, and each went to a student who was already enrolled in the lecture but needed to switch section times due to a class conflict. Long story short, neither of these students used their permission numbers. Moreover, neither decided that it was necessary to inform me that they were not going to use their overrides. I've had students begging me to get into my class for one reason or another, from the non-committal (I'm thinking about maybe giving consideration to potentially becoming a psychology major) to the heartbreakingly moronic (I'm a senior and I need this class to graduate). Now I don't mind that I have fewer students to teach. And I don't mind turning away undergrads who have just now decided, three weeks into the term, that they want to take Intro Psych. What I do mind is turning away students who truly wanted to take this class to the extent that they showed up the first day of section just to put their name on a waitlist even though there was no guarantee they'd even get in. That is the kind of student I want, and I had to turn away five or so of them because two students who were already enrolled in the larger lecture decided to ask me to bail them out and then proceeded to find another solution. It's like having the landlord put up wallpaper, then deciding you're going to paint the apartment instead. Only I'm the landlord.

It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Quantum and I would sing the above phrase every September at Northwestern, when the new freshman (or more specifically, the freshwomen) arrived, the weather was still warm and we had absolutely zero responsibilities. And, being in a college town, this is still true. This week is move-in week at Michigan, so the number of 18-23 year olds in the town has increased roughly tenfold. And you can call me a lecherous old man for saying so, but I do love sitting outside on a warm sunny day watching all the girls in tank tops scurry to and fro.

Viva Lucio

Yesterday was epic. Epic in a relative sense, but given how I've mellowed in my graduate school years it qualified as a truly great night. I went up to East Lansing, as the one and only Lucio was there moving in his brother, whom I believe has the blog name JesusTree and is starting grad school at MSU in the fall. Poor bastard. I drove in around 6pm, and the evening started in typical Lucio fashion. Which is to say I waited for him and his brother to show up whilst I sat around outside their apartment. Once the Tardy Brothers arrived, we immediately set to drinking, with Lucio and I quickly decimating a six pack of Leine's. We then spend roughly the next thirty minutes trying to get JesusTree to realize exactly how hungry we are and that we want to eat now, and if you're going to shower for the love of god DO IT ALREADY! Having finally succeeded in getting JesusTree out of the apartment and behind the wheel of a car, we embark upon the process of finding food. But first, we stop at the grocery to find more booze and some potential late night convestibles. And toilet paper, for the JesusTree was sorely lacking this at his place. Lucio and I dissuade him from purchasing the cheapest bottle of vodka available and replace it with a handle of Absolut, pile back into the car, and finally(!) go find food. After flipping a coin in order to avoid an actual decision, we end up at a thoroughly mediocre brewpub. This was next to a place called Menna's Joint, which proudly advertizes itself as "Home of the Dub." They have many types of Dubs for the eating. Needless to say, Lucio took a picture of this. After sitting down, Lucio and I order beers while JesusTree, taking his role as designated driver to new heights of teetotalling, orders what I believe was "half tonic, half water with a cherry." A brief aside here. JesusTree is a totally different type of human interaction. He is a good man (and thorough), but does not posess any discernible social skills and often uses an entire paragraph of speech to convey a simple sentence. It's like someone took the rambling of Uber, the awkward of me and the slow of Lucio and made an incredibly friendly person out of it. Anyway, after that rambling drink order (which in real life took about five minutes to convey), Lucio and I started up a running count of what our waitresses' tip would be. We started at fifteen percent, and pushed it up to twenty after that drink order. When she brought out the wrong drink, JesusTree took another five minutes or so to explain that it was the wrong drink, why it was the wrong drink, and what constituted the right drink. We were up to twenty-five percent. Once our waitress had brought our appetizers, JesusTree had consumed his incorrect drink and spent several minutes explaining how that drink was fine and he no longer required his correct drink, and now he would like a glass of water. Thirty Percent. Our waitress then informed JesusTree that the cook would be unable to prepare his chosen entree, so he would need to order something else. This leads to the epic saga wherein JesusTree orally perused the menu, discounting entree after entree because they each came with a side of asparagus, and JesusTree does not like the asparagus. At this point, the waitress, Lucio and I all pointed out that he could order an entree and ask for them to leave out one of the sides should he not want it, in this case the asparagus. That settled, our waitress left to put in the new order while Lucio and I explained that such side-dish omissions are a generally accepted practice at the vast majority of food-purveying establishments. Thirty-three percent (only because it wasn't an unusual request and brought on by the restaurant's lack of entree), and there it held. After our dinner, which would be best described as "food," we headed over to what appeared to be a low-key Irish pub with one of those Irish pub-type names, something like "Dublin Square." Once inside, it turned out in fact to be a low-key Irish pub, though one that unfortunately (and for Michigan, this is rare) did not allow smoking inside. Alas, we would have to step outside intermittently to inhale carcinogens. I grab a Black & Tan for Lucio, and a bourbon on the rocks for me (I like my whiskey cold- fuck you). We grab a seat and spend most of the time shooting the shit- talking baseball, trading war stories (both current ones and some tales from the days of yore), discussing the ins and outs of buttsex, and listing the reasons why one should travel to a third world country. After a few rounds, we decide to maybe check out one of the dive bars near our low-key Irish pub. Once outside, we drunkenly harass Hubris via phone. I believe I made repeated demands that he stay the fuck away from my wife, and made note of the fact that cinqo-de-who-gives-a-shit is nearly upon us. That done, we decide to actually attempt to enter one of these dive bars. Unfortunately, they are packed to the gills with people who, from the look and sound of it, were obnoxious undergrads. This in itself would not deter us, but the fact that we would have to wait in line to mingle with them in a packed room did. So we went back to the Irish pub and had another two rounds, whereupon I recapped for JesusTree (and Lucio as well) the epic Pickering saga that consumed a good deal of time over the span of eight months my Junior and Senior years at NU. Time I will never, unfortunately, get back. (If there is enough demand for this, I will post the entire saga in "Tales from the Archives" fashion. Because I can even make stalking and sexual assault into a funny story.) After our final rounds, we head back to the unfurnished apartment of JesusTree. Along the way I attempt to drunk dial Quantum, who picks up the phone and says "I promise to re-drunk-dial you in about twenty minutes." I relay this to Lucio, who promptly drunk dials Quantum. Good times. Once we get back to the apartment of JesusTree, I break out a joint fatter than Kirstie Alley's "before" pictures for Jenny Craig. I spark it up, whereupon JesusTree (who is waiting to take a toke) informs me that he's not allowed to smoke in his building. Of course, technically speaking you are not allowed to smoke the ganja anywhere in the state of Michigan, not just non-smoking apartments. But I obliged and took it outside. I passed to JesusTree, and to Lucio, both of whom turn out to be bigger one-hit wonders than Dexy's Midnight Runners. So they leave me to smoke the rest of the J, and I'm puffing on it like it's an inhaler and I had an asthma attack. Meanwhile, Quantum calls back. I'm not going to lie- the night gets a little fuzzy around here. I recall having to make a concerted effort to form any complete sentences that may or may not have come out of my mouth, and eventually I could no longer speak due to an overwhelming case of the giggles. At one point I was lying on the kitchen tile in a conniption of laughter, trying desperately to get enough oxygen into my lungs to stave off the suffocation. After some time we all crashed on the floor of the apartment, though I was interrupted by the sounds of Lucio making his way to the bathroom to boot, followed by the sound of Lucio taking a whizz, followed by the very unmistakable sounds of Lucio trying to drop a deuce. Yes, Lucio hit the poor drunken bastard's end of the night trifecta. I awoke in surprisingly good shape this morning, especially given all the horrible things I did to my body last night. This has me all geared up for an NYC trip, which unfortunately keeps getting pushed back as time goes on. I'm aiming for the winter. Viva Lucio!