The Razor
I don't know if my razor became sharper, or my skin became a couple of layers thinner, or what, but I can tell you this: this is the first time I've ever cut myself shaving, and its a bitch. I cannot get it to stop bleeding, for the life of me. Also, the cut is practically inside my nose, so even breathing feels a bit weird. Goddamn.
So I arrived at college the other day. The first two days involved an intense Orientation process which did nothing of the sort. It's purpose was to generate a general feeling of friendliness by alternating back and forth between moronic 'ice-breaker' games and boring semi-lectures (this, I have decided, was a strategy along the lines of bonding through mutual misery). It was successful; everybody now feels all sorts of warm and welcome.
It was also deceptive. I awoke the next day at 8. I decided there was no earthly reason to wake up at that point, so I went back to sleep until 9:30. Then, I awoke, to seek out breakfast. It was an hour and a half later when the full force of the deception hit. You see, on each day of the Orientation, there had been three meals provided. At the end of when the other colleges move in, the food halls open up. And today... today there was nowhere on campus that served breakfast. The world is a warm and friendly place for a couple of days, and then it leaves you to wander around looking for a cafe until noon, when you throw in the towel and start looking for lunch. So all the Orientation really did was throw me off, and I had to spend some time orienting myself towards how college was actually going to go.
I lied earlier, or rather oversimplified. Not all of Orientation was all that tedious. Thursday night we had an activity called PlayFair, which involved experiments with mob mentality (think 400 students running around in circles for no other reason than that everybody else was doing it). Friday night the college split up into groups who went to different events. Most of the college stayed in the Sixth College Quad (near the Dogg House) and partook in karaoke. Some students went to the Lodge (near the apartments, and away from most of the university) wherein there was available ping-pong, air-hockey, and ice-cream. Maggey Todd--
(with whom I have been spending much of my time. It seems that most of the college has coupled into two forms of artificial or substitute friendship: acquaintances from high school who are now the only people you know in the world, or roommates. I imagine both types of temporary friends will slowly dissipate as the students associate with people of similar interests, who they will meet through classes and clubs. Not that I don't like Maggey, and it is nice to have somebody to talk to, as I don't have a roommate)
--and I, and maybe 10 or 12 other people out of the several hundred UCSD Sixth College Freshmen, went to the board games party, hosted by the Sixth College Role Playing Games Club. Most of the other students who went to check out the room commandeered by the RPG Club ran away in terror after witnessing the sheer quantity of geekitude in the room; not so with Maggey and I. We felt right at home with the people who, when playing Monopoly, refer to the dice as 2d6. The members of this club are the people who, as likely as not, I will befriend in the coming months. It was amazing, they literally looked like the stereotypical bunch of geeks. Down to the last chiche, every gamer role was covered. I actually laughed out loud when the subject of their LARP (Live Action Role Playing) game came up, with an outsider asking "Isn't the just D&D, only you bash each other with foam weapons?" Every one of the members of the club jumped to their feet, their 'common misconception' alarms blaring, shouting things like "No, no, no!" "You've got it all wrong." "There's hardly any combat at all." "It's, it's political."
Like the murder mystery party held at Thomas's house a few days before I left for college. For those of you who weren't there, it was a real blast. One of the surprising twists of this system's company was that the first four characters who died (including your rambling narrator) came back as a cadre of sinister house servants who's goal was to find the killer and side with him in exchange for piles of money. I managed to fail spectacularly at this goal (it was on our evidence that the murderer was apprehended), but still make enough money to feel good about the outcome. Sean also failed to achieve his objectives (for the first time ever), and Will managed to survive several assassination attempts (through mad rock-paper-scissors skills) only to be indicted through fabricated evidence for a crime he did commit (you read that rightly).
The other surprising twist of this company was that the company in question is made up, in it's entirety, of Remy. She apparently wrote the thing in her spare time, instead of hanging out with the group or other likewise noble pursuits. Any rate, it was extremely well written. I have a couple of (very) minor criticisms, which I will post if I become convinced that Remy still reads LiveJournals.
The ride up to college didn't suck all that much, considering it was around 10 hours long. We passed the time listening to copious amounts of music and, on my part, sleeping. We stopped for dinner at a Red Robin's in LA, wherein I was surprised that I didn't run into David Scott.
What sucked a lot more was my dentist appointment the day before Remy's party. I have a new theory about dentists, which runs parallel to my theory about teachers. My theory about teachers, if you haven't heard it, is that teachers are a lot like actors. Teaching is basically performing: first you have to hook the audience, then you have to convey the necessary information while maintaining interest.
Dentists are like ninjas.
Think about it. Both study for years and years to learn to use technical equipment to cause, using the least amount of applied force, the greatest amount of pain. Also, they both wear masks.
Moving in sucked a bit more than the drive up, but slightly less than the dentist appointment (wherein my teeth were cleaned, and some fillings were thrown in just for fun). The problem was, neither my nor my apartment-mate's electronic key would open the door. After a number of people successively passed us along to somebody else, it was discovered that our door had not been programmed to respond to any key at that point. So a mechanic broke in through our window to open the door for us, before sending for somebody who could program the lock.
My apartment-mates themselves seem totally uninteresting (10 to 1 they find this LiveJournal, but whatever). Two or three of them have spent literally all of today and much of yesterday playing some shooter in co-op mode. They don't talk, other than an occasional "you ready to move on?" They just shoot. I've practically composed songs to the percussion of their machine guns' rapid fire.
As for college itself, not much is going on right now. I find myself doin' the reclusive, but that'll fix itself in time. I'm just skipping the stand-in friends and waiting until I meet people I can actually stand to spend time with. Today I spent some time checking out the library, and some time watching "A Clockwork Orange," which is a bizarre movie that I wouldn't recommend watching when there's anybody liable to walk into the room. Tonight Acacia is coming over from SDSU to crash the college dance. More on that when it happens.
I didn't go back and edit this, as is my fashion, so I apologize if any sections are unnecessarily incoherent.
So I arrived at college the other day. The first two days involved an intense Orientation process which did nothing of the sort. It's purpose was to generate a general feeling of friendliness by alternating back and forth between moronic 'ice-breaker' games and boring semi-lectures (this, I have decided, was a strategy along the lines of bonding through mutual misery). It was successful; everybody now feels all sorts of warm and welcome.
It was also deceptive. I awoke the next day at 8. I decided there was no earthly reason to wake up at that point, so I went back to sleep until 9:30. Then, I awoke, to seek out breakfast. It was an hour and a half later when the full force of the deception hit. You see, on each day of the Orientation, there had been three meals provided. At the end of when the other colleges move in, the food halls open up. And today... today there was nowhere on campus that served breakfast. The world is a warm and friendly place for a couple of days, and then it leaves you to wander around looking for a cafe until noon, when you throw in the towel and start looking for lunch. So all the Orientation really did was throw me off, and I had to spend some time orienting myself towards how college was actually going to go.
I lied earlier, or rather oversimplified. Not all of Orientation was all that tedious. Thursday night we had an activity called PlayFair, which involved experiments with mob mentality (think 400 students running around in circles for no other reason than that everybody else was doing it). Friday night the college split up into groups who went to different events. Most of the college stayed in the Sixth College Quad (near the Dogg House) and partook in karaoke. Some students went to the Lodge (near the apartments, and away from most of the university) wherein there was available ping-pong, air-hockey, and ice-cream. Maggey Todd--
(with whom I have been spending much of my time. It seems that most of the college has coupled into two forms of artificial or substitute friendship: acquaintances from high school who are now the only people you know in the world, or roommates. I imagine both types of temporary friends will slowly dissipate as the students associate with people of similar interests, who they will meet through classes and clubs. Not that I don't like Maggey, and it is nice to have somebody to talk to, as I don't have a roommate)
--and I, and maybe 10 or 12 other people out of the several hundred UCSD Sixth College Freshmen, went to the board games party, hosted by the Sixth College Role Playing Games Club. Most of the other students who went to check out the room commandeered by the RPG Club ran away in terror after witnessing the sheer quantity of geekitude in the room; not so with Maggey and I. We felt right at home with the people who, when playing Monopoly, refer to the dice as 2d6. The members of this club are the people who, as likely as not, I will befriend in the coming months. It was amazing, they literally looked like the stereotypical bunch of geeks. Down to the last chiche, every gamer role was covered. I actually laughed out loud when the subject of their LARP (Live Action Role Playing) game came up, with an outsider asking "Isn't the just D&D, only you bash each other with foam weapons?" Every one of the members of the club jumped to their feet, their 'common misconception' alarms blaring, shouting things like "No, no, no!" "You've got it all wrong." "There's hardly any combat at all." "It's, it's political."
Like the murder mystery party held at Thomas's house a few days before I left for college. For those of you who weren't there, it was a real blast. One of the surprising twists of this system's company was that the first four characters who died (including your rambling narrator) came back as a cadre of sinister house servants who's goal was to find the killer and side with him in exchange for piles of money. I managed to fail spectacularly at this goal (it was on our evidence that the murderer was apprehended), but still make enough money to feel good about the outcome. Sean also failed to achieve his objectives (for the first time ever), and Will managed to survive several assassination attempts (through mad rock-paper-scissors skills) only to be indicted through fabricated evidence for a crime he did commit (you read that rightly).
The other surprising twist of this company was that the company in question is made up, in it's entirety, of Remy. She apparently wrote the thing in her spare time, instead of hanging out with the group or other likewise noble pursuits. Any rate, it was extremely well written. I have a couple of (very) minor criticisms, which I will post if I become convinced that Remy still reads LiveJournals.
The ride up to college didn't suck all that much, considering it was around 10 hours long. We passed the time listening to copious amounts of music and, on my part, sleeping. We stopped for dinner at a Red Robin's in LA, wherein I was surprised that I didn't run into David Scott.
What sucked a lot more was my dentist appointment the day before Remy's party. I have a new theory about dentists, which runs parallel to my theory about teachers. My theory about teachers, if you haven't heard it, is that teachers are a lot like actors. Teaching is basically performing: first you have to hook the audience, then you have to convey the necessary information while maintaining interest.
Dentists are like ninjas.
Think about it. Both study for years and years to learn to use technical equipment to cause, using the least amount of applied force, the greatest amount of pain. Also, they both wear masks.
Moving in sucked a bit more than the drive up, but slightly less than the dentist appointment (wherein my teeth were cleaned, and some fillings were thrown in just for fun). The problem was, neither my nor my apartment-mate's electronic key would open the door. After a number of people successively passed us along to somebody else, it was discovered that our door had not been programmed to respond to any key at that point. So a mechanic broke in through our window to open the door for us, before sending for somebody who could program the lock.
My apartment-mates themselves seem totally uninteresting (10 to 1 they find this LiveJournal, but whatever). Two or three of them have spent literally all of today and much of yesterday playing some shooter in co-op mode. They don't talk, other than an occasional "you ready to move on?" They just shoot. I've practically composed songs to the percussion of their machine guns' rapid fire.
As for college itself, not much is going on right now. I find myself doin' the reclusive, but that'll fix itself in time. I'm just skipping the stand-in friends and waiting until I meet people I can actually stand to spend time with. Today I spent some time checking out the library, and some time watching "A Clockwork Orange," which is a bizarre movie that I wouldn't recommend watching when there's anybody liable to walk into the room. Tonight Acacia is coming over from SDSU to crash the college dance. More on that when it happens.
I didn't go back and edit this, as is my fashion, so I apologize if any sections are unnecessarily incoherent.