If you think 350 sucks like a Hoover, holla!

We will assemble an anthology of horror stories.

Man, this sucks.

Little O'Hara scratches his head yet again

Four months and seven days ago, the worm summoned Little O'Hara to his office. Little O'Hara thought he knew what was coming: a good ol' fashion throttling, the type they used to give in the old country. He could have used a throttling that day, for he had eaten some pork and gotten it caught in his windpipe.

The worm wouldn't be so useful that day, though, for all he had to say that day was in the pattern of all he ever had to say: vague metaphors based on sports he would never ever see, let alone play.

"Mr. O'Hara," the worm sniggered as he shut the door. You'd think he was an elementary school disciplinarian getting off at his first opportunity to bust a kid for walking in the hall without a pass. "You know why we're here?"

Little O'Hara knew exactly why he was there: they both had to acknowledge the fact that neither of them had accomplished Jack Shit for work and pretend to talk it out like adults, when really they had about as much respect for each other as Tina had for Ike. It was a carefully orchestrated scene, where every vitriolic sentiment was covered with sugar so as to soften the animosity.

He knew he fucked up, Little O'Hara did, but he also was too proud to admit it. The worm was in the same boat. They agreed to heap it all upon Little O'Hara, while Little O'Hara would try to be like the Jesus. It was an odd commissioning of sorts, not unlike the scene in the Bible that I can't quite remember. The worm ended the discourse with a sermon about the future of their endeavors and their working together.

The image of the Bible might be a key one to remember, for the past week conjured up some similar connotations. This past week resembled the Book of Revelation in that there were predictions of the end, literally and figuratively. So, this upcoming week, Little O'Hara, the Worm and other sundry folk (the Chin, the Token, the Pole, the Potato and the Chicken, among others) will get to discuss the beginning of the end. All over a table of Saran-Wrapped sandwiches, too.

Ah, but I can finally remember the biblical scene to which Little O'Hara likened his commissioning by the worm. It was the scene where the serpent commissions Eve to eat the apple. Yup, that's it.

"We have to laugh to look at each other.
We have to laugh 'cause we're not alone."
-The Lemonheads with Juliana Hatfield

SinglesFest '03: 'We're not single, we're swingers!'

Most everyone else was at my house already drinking, but I was on AC in freezing rain and no visibility with Goodloe, Colleen and Colleen's date: a bottle of champagne. The three of them were arguing over who should call Vince, or even if they should call Vince. I sided with Colleen's date. I called Vince for all of them. I hoped it would compensate for the fact that neither Gerbes nor Schnucks had any strawberries.

I'm not sure it compensated much.

Thanks to everyone for Friday--- probably ten times cooler than what many couples did for Valentine's Day, and shall I say, much cheaper.

2nd Guesses: Night Notes from Pat

So I'm in the newsroom last week with a certain TA working on a story about a Jewish lawyer. This TA, whose name rhymes with Hood-low, will not be identified.

In any case, she gets to asking me about AP style. "How do we signify movies?"

"With quotes...?" I say, not sure if that's what she meant. "What movie is it?"

She turns bright red.

"Uh, 'Toilet Bowl Bondage Whores'?"

This is great, I tell myself. She's using "Toilet Bowl Bondage Whores" in a story and she's saying it aloud in the newsroom.

"Does 'toilet bowl' have a hyphen or not?" she asks. I'm howling at this point.

"I don't know, let's go ask Fred."

And she's horrified. Fred asks the context, and I tell him that it's for a movie titled "Toilet Bowl Bondage Whores." His response: "What does the dictionary say?"

Unidentified TA is dying of shame at this point and is slinking below her desk. I, of course, am loving this, so I casually ask more questions about said movie quite loudly. I get pretty interested in the topic, so I decide to do a Google search on said movie. It doesn't exist. After some more searching, we learn that the correct title is "Toilet Hole Bondage Whores."

Happy Valentine's Day


(Together) We will go our way
(Together) We will leave someday
(Together) Your hand in my hands
(Together) We will make our plans
(Together) We will fly so high
(Together) Tell all our friends goodbye
(Together) We will start life new
(Together) This is what we'll do
-Pet Shop Boys, "Go West" (cover of the Village People)

Only on this day would I dare post anything such as above (picture or lyrics), but it's a special day, for special people, and so why not. Tonight will be a night for special people, a.k.a. SinglesFest '03, a night remember and if it's really good, a night to deny. I won't implicate anyone with that quote, but I will just say that it could be pertinent to words that rhyme with "mopey."

I of course will include a full report on said incidents of said evening (especially for the Londoners who can't be here).

Observations:
*30 Seconds to Mars, Jared Leto's new band, is not all that stellar.
*Gender studies are quite interesting.

Things that rock:
*Watching "Citizen Kane" in 309.
*Expecting Keith's dad to be like Archie Bunker and have him instead turn out to be like the "Jump to conclusions mat" guy from "Office Space."
*"Godspell" and all things associated with said show/performance/evening. :)
*Getting a check for $11 from the university.
*Back-to-back reruns of "Will and Grace" on the WB.
*Downloading a sound file from "Golden Girls" in which Betty White sings a song about stuffing a chicken.
*Husker Du and Mission of Burma.

Things that don't rock:
*Johnny Hates Jazz.
*The 309 book Trumbo uses.
*The impending sociology paper I have to write.
*The impending Saturday copy desk shift that will loom over my head like a Tuesday for a Missouri convict about to be executed.
*Bubba Sparxxx and his secretary of state.

'You paralyzed my mind
And for that, you suck.'
-The Murmurs

Now taking suggestions for the Valentine's Singles CD

I'm working on a compilation for Friday's festivities to really get at the spirit of the occasion. Preliminary ideas include Ani DiFranco, J. Geils, Ben Folds Five, Def Leppard, and Adam Sandler. As you can see, this list is incomplete. Feel free to post any ideas or suggestions.

P.S. I'm actually not bitter this year about Valentine's. :) However, being that Friday's event is being spearheaded by Bridget Jones and Ally McBeal and other like-minded factions, I thought I'd give the public what they want.

I imagine that my Saturday night ritual this semester will be coming home to write vitriolic blog entries detailing my disdain for the Missourian, for copy editing, and anything else I'll seize upon in my moments of weakness. It is a weakness I have asked for by volunteering myself to be worn down each week in the name of a profession I no longer understand and have come to see as a molested, manipulated art that has very little of its original organic nature. Journalism, I had thought, was a vehicle for the free spirit. Perhaps it is, but I'm now just seeing it as a vehicle in which I could crash any minute. I love the written word, I just wish I still had the passion to read it. My edge has been blunted by a self-driven exploitation, not unlike a crayon that loses its point after repeated and endless use.

There's still something pure and holy out there, and I don't doubt that it could very well be journalism. But, I must also admit, I can't say that it won't be anything other than journalism. I know where I'm going but I certainly don't know where I will be. For some reason, I ended up here, at this place, this situation, this moment, and I can't trace how it all happened. All I can say is that it happened.

I can't list off all the characters I have encountered and I can't tell you why I encountered them. I'm sure if I thought about it, I could probably come up with an answer for you. With that same logic in mind, I'm sure that I could think long enough and give you some sort of answer as to why I got here and why I have stayed.

But I'm too tired. Worn out. Blunt. Formless. Undirected. Tired. Blunt. Used. Faded. Worn out. Tired.

Next thing I recall well
I was hanging from a cliff
When an angel came to rescue
Me and held me in her grip
She said, "Everyone who's ever loved you
Gets hurt in the end"
Then she smiled and said, "Forgive me"
As she let go of my hand...
-Better Than Ezra, "Recognize"



Tonight I saw one of the best concerts I have ever seen. Quite possibly Top 5 material. Pretty sure of it, actually. And I can't believe who it was, a band I wrote off back in junior high but now see could quite possibly be a new obsession.

Better Than Ezra.

These guys can work a crowd like very few others. The only other person I can think of who can work a club like that with that same sort of down-to-earth but goofy, spunky humor is Ben Folds. These guys freakin' rocked.

They ended a lot of their songs with jam riff sessions and this was perfect for frontman Kevin Griffin to play songs like "Don't Tell Me," "Work It," and "Hot In Herre." It was absolutely hilarious. And they also covered the Grateful Dead and the Blue Oyster Cult, and they had a dude from the audience come up and jam with them. That was the coolest. And the guy was totally cool.

Their music is actually pretty good. Amazing is a better word. They can connect with common experiences. It was one of those shows where you can just be in there with the other people and feel charged by it all. I know that will sound very similar to a Ben Folds show but the energy here was more upbeat and not as melancholy. There were no songs like "Still Fighting It" or "The Luckiest" that would make you even consider feeling down.

These guys are the shit, the shit, the shit!



And afterwards we got their autographs and pictures. By "we" I mean me, Quinn, and Ashlee & Katy (the pair from my Irish lit class). Quinn got an extra ticket just so I could go, or else I probably would haven't have even been there, especially considering that the show was sold out by noon. Really really awesome and sweet of her.

We talked to Kevin, the lead singer, and I asked him how I'd go about pulling an "Almost Famous" and getting to cover them on later legs of the tour. He said I should go to the website and e-mail them, "and we may even personally e-mail back." Score.

So I'm now giddy. Quite awesome. And quite awesome to hang with Quinn, Holly and Patrick Rollens. Happy night.

Thought I'd leave you all with one last pic of the band. They rock, by the way. Anything I said back when I was fat and in junior high, disregard. These guys have been touched by the hands of God and rock the mullet of the Camaro. These guys are awesome.

"You held your breath, and the door for me..."
-Alanis, "Head Over Feet"

I cannot imagine Courtney and Derek not together, and yet for the first year-and-a-half I knew them (and thus the majority of the time I have known them), they were not a couple. For some reason, I always picture them as having been friends, though now we like to sit around and talk about that first night of the FIG and comment on our initial takes on each other, exploring what would become the pre-cursor to our now "feels-like-perfect" dynamic. She was talking about her boys back home (read: Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, or better yet, Wendy and the Lost Boys). Poor D didn't know what to make of this talkative girl who could go on and on about anything and could never find conversation boring. Shit, all Derek wanted to do was chill and hang. Of course, for Courtney, this was hanging... She ended up finding more positive response that night from the flamboyant kid with the butt-cut, skater's clothes and a penchant for talking with his hands about movies and music. Lucky for me, I got a best friend out of it.

Such an episode is funny to recall, because, of course, the two of them come off now as a hand-in-glove fit, like ying and yang. It is for this reason that I feel I must acknowledge that this past Tuesday, Feb. 4 (or "today" by the standards, even though it's now 1:24 a.m.), was their one-year anniversary.

Congratulations.

Neither of them have a blog (though Derek should to post his ill raps, and Courtney has countless times said she doesn't "get" the whole blog concept), but still, e-mail them. I find today when couple turnovers are so high (marital or not), the longevity of the Courtney-and-Derek dynamic is inspiring, especially considering we're in college. I feel proud to have seen them and to have been their third leg. I say "third leg" and not "third wheel" because, well, I've never felt like a third wheel with them. Their relationship has brought out the best in both of them, I'd say, and given me the opportunity to know both of them better, which I wouldn't have thought possible.

Consider this rant an open shout-out to them, longevity and fidelity.

"I traded fame for love
Without a second thought
It all became a silly a game
Some things cannot be bought..."
-"Drowned World/Substitute for Love"

I really want to think that those seven people who died today were passionate about what they did. I want to think they loved what they did and couldn't imagine themselves any happier doing anything else. If not, then their deaths were indicative of two tragedies, not one.

I can't tell you much about the people, what they were like or what their passions were like. I can, however, tell you the catalog facts like age and profession. I can tell you what President Bush said about them, what Bill Clinton said about them, what NASA said about them, and I can detail four different perspectives as to why. I can't tell you why this all happened (on a large or small scale). All I can tell you are the small bullets and nuggets of info that we poured over at the copy desk.

The paper that comes out this morning will perhaps be one of the best products the Missourian has done in quite a while. That's something to be proud of, but it's also quite sickening. No sooner after there was there a fireball in the sky were we digging into our AP books to check style on space shuttle (lowercase), takeoff, lift-off and the verb agreement for a word such as "debris." There were tons of extra people around the newsroom today because we "had our work cut out for us today." Yessir, it was a big day, big enough to warrant four extra pages-- an entire extra section devoted to the tragedy today.

Do we call it a "tragedy," though? "Disaster" sounds more neutral and objective because afterall, "it might not be seen as a tragedy in Iraq." True, it might not. We here at Mid-Missouri's finest paper don't want to step on Mr. Kamal's toes in Baghdad. Texas and Louisiana are only 900 or so miles away, and that's too close of a distance to pick loyalties. I think Iraq is a perfect example of our target audience. I think the editor had a point. Iraq and Boone County are none too different, especially when you consider the treatment of women, eh?

Also, "disaster" fits better in some headlines than "tragedy" does. Do we use "Seven perish" or "Seven die"? Well, which one fits. We've got a certain amount of space and deadline is coming soon. We've got to make deadline.

But bitterness can't be the only feeling.

I do think we tried our damnedest to have this be a public service. It was overdone in some spots, though, and some of the writing did come off as "masturbation with words." Some of these people are so obsessed with using narratives that they will stop at nothing to try to work in some verbose, awkwardly contrived phrasing that does nothing but piss off the educated readers. Of course, that's what you're going to get at a school where half the faculty pawns off narrative writing as important as relaying the news. A naive 306er who sees the writers and students worshipped by the faculty is bound to confuse his or her priorities. It's a monster that the Missourian has created for itself.

Also, I don't get why we have to send out 10 people to get local reactions every time George Bush sneezes, Quin Snyder takes a dump or Saddam Hussein picks his nose. Finding out what the barmaid at Harpo's has to say on foreign policy that she doesn't get is not a pattern to follow for every damn story. The point has been made: this town is full of idiots who don't know what's going on. Why don't we talk to smart people? We know there are idiots-- they give us grades and determine our futures.

I've never figured it out, and yet I haven't stopped bitching about it. I'm sorry for that. It would be easier if I didn't care at all for the paper or for journalism or anything for that, matter, but damn it, I'm looking for something I'm passionate about. So far, I'm not bored-- I do have a passion for this. I just don't think I want to die for it just yet.

Or if I did die, I would have to do it on a day where the paper has enough room to put in a blurb.