Apartment BR2409 Idiosyncrasies

I compiled a list of idiosyncrasies for BR2409 over the last academic year.  This is for my apartmentmates – Tom, Antony, and Jeff – as well as our honorary apartmentmates, Chris and Andy, and of course the guys of BR2411.  Here’s to a rocky and unpredictable second year at UCSD.

 

·         blockade at Parking Office

·         LOTR analogies for rooming situation and math courses/professors

·         Wikipedia (the “black hole”)

·         Chris’s massive cheapness (i.e. using kitchen scissors as a spatula, because using an actual spatula would require more dishwashing, which means more water, and “that’s money”… and other shenanigans… not to mention his constant attempts to get free food from Kenneth)

·         “undercut the competition” on Half.com

·         Kenneth’s independent-minded computer

·         losing/hiding food, water, money, and other stuff (another “black hole”)

·         Andy’s messed up apartment (water around toilet (and acrobatic use of the toilet thereof), hole in the shower tiles, illogical placement of light switch for bathroom, door clearing Burt’s desk by a hair, mice/flies, stinky-ass bathroom (piss smell))

·         Chris’s messed up apartment (garbage problems, dirty bathroom, ridiculously useless window “screen” for James’s room)

·         PANS/PLSS

·         “Jared”

·         going to Earl’s Place at 12 AM

·         Chris’s massive cursor

·         “Dr. Johnson?”/Question kid

·         “beast!”

·         packed classes (BICD 100)

·         Chris having to wait list almost all of his classes every quarter

·         Chris and Kenneth complaining about the rising standards/smartness of each successive academic class

·         the fauna of Warren (rabbits, mice, raccoons)

·         fries (and ranch dressing) at CV

·         Bourne coat

·         Wifebeaters

·         Tom’s “scoffs”

·         Kenneth’s violent/silly paroxysms of anguish (“you silly kid”)

·         Kenneth asking Jeff for help in judging the edibility of weeks-old vegetables

·         Chris criticizing Kenneth for taking MATH 20/PHYS 2 series

·         constant soul-searching and planning on career/class schedule/future

·         “Ah, ____ voicemails/missed calls…”

·         “I haven’t eaten anything all day”

·         Andy’s (and, to a lesser extent, Kenneth’s) messed-up sleep schedule

·         Chris’s crazy rap ideas

·         “Rodeo” by Juvenile (“I ain’t lying sometimes when you cross my pad up in the club all night a nigga STALK your ass… hey fine I ain’t tripping, and I know you ain’t tripping, cuz you know you wore that the other night for ME girl”)

·         “you are the bane of my existence”

·         “JIUH?”

·         “babbas”

·         “so, how goes ochem?”

·         flies on the wall

·         “oof!”

·         Chris walking to meet people “halfwayskies”

·         Andy always having $100 bills

·         Andy’s eyebrow thing

·         “I don’t think so”

·         Tom’s work (“cryogenic chambers”)

·         Kenneth’s awful study habits

·         an uncannily ironic situation where Tom, despite eating healthy and working out regularly, suffers several physical conditions and injuries, whereas Kenneth, who eats for pleasure and doesn’t work out often enough, for the most part escapes physical malady

·         “Tom, your face is scarred and deformed…”

·         Various LucasArts games

• The Secret of Monkey Island


• Full Throttle

·         vicious dog

·         Kenneth’s disbelief at Mark Hamill

·         Sam and Max

·         the way they walk

·         Season 1 trailer

·         “Holy jumping saints of plenty-riding sidewise on a candy pink Fatboy!”

·         “What’s this? Are we dead?” “More likely it’s an underachieving art director’s pedestrian commentary on the excruciating saneness of modern packaged entertainment.”

·         WebCT

·         Auston McReynolds

·         Drew Kennedy

·         Steven Michael Anthony Alberti-Williams

·         jaw wiring/“Steven’s Big Day”

·         bloody

·         Italy

·         “Yes, I’m quite the linguist.”

·         “SMAW” (later, “SMAAW”)

·         (in response to Tom’s request for him to father Tom’s children) “The closest thing I can do, is to inseminate your future wife.”

·         reading Tom’s physics/math equations as if they were words

·         Myths

·         a “III”

·         everywhere, and knows everyone and everything

·         decalingual

·         23 or 26 years of age

·         resurrected a puppy with a smile

·         the continued omnimagnificence of Professor John C. Wheeler

·         “Adolf” Wheeler

·         lived for at least one million years (or possibly as long as the universe has been in existence, as he did help create it)

·         plugs into Wikipedia and other databases for regular system upgrades and information downloads

·         can plug himself into an adapter to recharge his “batteries”, ala a cell phone

·         holds every degree, teaches every subject

·         has won a Nobel Prize in every category (even Peace) and written textbooks “for professors” in a variety of subjects

·         has taught every professor (in every department and subject) at UCSD

·         can rapidly “imprint” text and images onto a piece of paper, or, alternatively, can rapidly draw/write ala Sonny in I, Robot

·         can take on gaseous, liquid, solid, and amorphous solid (ala T-1000 in T2) forms

·         can “absorb” textual information (like from a book) directly through his skin

·         “discovered” gravity and Earth’s revolution about the sun at the age of two

Most Ridiculous Anti-Pot Ad Ever

So I was driving home last night and I hear on 106.1 KMEL the most ridiculous anti-marijuana ad ever.

 

A guy is talking about how he smoke pot on his friend Pete’s couch, and how it didn’t cause him to go nuts or get into a car accident or kill anyone or commit any crimes. (I’m not a marijuana expert, but I suspect that’s accurate for most if not all cases of pot smoking.) He keeps on talking about how he’s okay, and nothing happened, and he didn’t get into any kind of trouble and didn’t cause any trouble, and all he did was sit there on Pete’s couch.  Then he starts talking about how if he wanted to stay out of trouble all he’d have to do is sit there on Pete’s couch for the rest of his life and do nothing.  But then he’d miss out on all the wonders of life, like shooting hoops at the local court or going on a date with a cute girl.  And that he wouldn’t die per se, but would die in a different way… all because he smoked pot.

 

Um… what?

 

I thought the reason the United States federal government bans recreational use of marijuana (and other drugs, for that matter) was because of a law-and-order issue, because certain drugs could induce people to commit crimes and wreak havoc on the peace.  Certainly, that’d be the only reason I would support a ban on any drug.  But now, the federal government is justifying its ridiculous and oppressive crackdown on marijuana by saying it leads people to the wrong lifestyle? (By the way, this ad was paid for by the Office of National Drug Control Policy.)

 

Excuse me, but who made the federal government the judge as to how we should live our lives, and what we put in our mouths?  Why should the government tell me I should play basketball and go out on dates instead of smoking pot on Pete’s couch?  So long as I’m not hurting anyone else, why should the government or anyone else tell me what to do with my body?  As Paul Hackett put it, I don’t know about you, but I don’t send people to Washington, D.C. to tell me how to live my personal life.

 

Am I the only one who feels that way?  Don’t get me wrong; I’m still the big-government statist I always was.  But I believe, as I always have, that big government’s reach should not go into our private lives and what we choose to do with ourselves that doesn’t harm others.  And unless I see something that says that marijuana directly causes people to hurt others, I can’t understand why government officials will take it upon themselves to get involved in people’s personal lives – especially when there’s so much that the government should be doing in our nation’s public life that it isn’t getting more involved in – like providing health care to the uninsured, figuring out how to raise education standards, finding alternative energy sources, protecting wilderness from development, improving mass transit in cities, funding scientific research and the arts, and many other important tasks.  So how about the government stop paying for radio ads telling people how pot will keep them from getting the girls and start paying for radio ads telling people where they can go to get help finding work?

 

Can anyone give me a good reason as to why marijuana should be illegal, and, more importantly, why the government should deign to tell people they can’t do something even if in doing so it hurts no one else?

Kenneth Huang’s Life Episode IƆƆMCMXCV: A New Summer

Right now, in Hayward, California….

 

 

 

 

 

 

KENNETH HUANG’S LIFE

 

Episode IƆƆMCMXCV

 

A NEW SUMMER

 

Having narrowly vanquished Biometry and his other courses, Kenneth Huang has returned to Hayward, California to begin research on olive fruit flies at California State University, East Bay.

 

The research started off somewhat dull as the rather pedestrian study is to find out how long the flies survive in the field with varying levels of sustenance.  While not incredibly exciting, it will provide vital information for olive growers and Kenneth is happy about learning more about the flies and how to work with them, as well as gaining much-needed experience and insight into the career of a zoologist.  

 

Obsessed with finding enough money to one day achieve financial independence, Kenneth is searching for a second job, as the research is part-time.  And though he has gone out a few times, Kenneth still hasn’t seen enough people, and his social life is quite dead.  He hopes that this summer he’ll be able to see more friends and do more things…