Case Study # 1: Crossword Puzzles.

Case Study: Maria and crossword puzzles.
Date: November 28, 2007
Location: Myles Standish Hall

Description: Maria woke up from a brief evening nap and walked into Noelle's room to ask if she wanted to go to Late Night to get a drink. She became distracted and soon forgot about her urge to go to Late Night. Maria picked up a Star magazine from Noelle's dresser and flipped through the pages, eventually stumbling upon the crossword puzzle section. She began filling out one of the crossword puzzles but tired of it soon and flipped to what looked like the more rigorous crossword puzzle. She started writing in the answers and quickly became obsessed the more words she wrote. She asked Noelle for help on several occasions and the two began manically searching for answers to the crossword. One hour later, they gave the crossword to Christina because they were stumped. Christina filled out several answers correctly. Over the course of the evening, Maria turned into a beast-like being. Resembling Dr. Jeckyll, a bipolar self new to both herself and her roommates surfaced. Resembling also the Hulk, Maria grew angry when people did not contribute adequately to the puzzle. Her knuckles whitened as she gripped the black ink pen and the hints to the words smeared on the paper because she rubbed over them so hard, hoping the correct answer would simply appear. Maria threw the crossword at Jess as soon as she entered the room hoping Jess had something to contribute. When Jess was of little to no help, Maria tore the magazine from Jess' hands and lowered her face two inches from the puzzle in a futile attempt to determine the remaining words. Dizzy and angry, Maria threw down the unfinished crossword puzzle, stood on Noelle's bed, pounded her chest and leaped off the bed kicking Noelle in the face. As Noelle fell to the floor, Maria punched Jess in the stomach leaving her crippled over the bed. Maria stalked off to her cave where she sat in darkness pondering the existence of any purpose in her life now that she proved a complete and utter failure.

Conclusion: Maria is severely disturbed and obsessive. She should be institutionalized immediately. A safe environment with padded walls and no crossword puzzles is essential. Her second personality should be named and avoided at all costs. Do not play crossword puzzles with her unless you are extremely gifted with words.

Dreams and Jellyfish

Freud really had something with his whole dream interpretation nonsense.

Dream interpretation has been a vital part of college life. Tara, an avid dream interpreter, is always eager to decipher the true meaning behind my strange and twisted dreams. Sometimes the only answer is that I'm severely messed up.

This was not the case with my dreams last night. Let me explain:

The dream had several parts, but the most significant and interesting took place in a kitchen. I opened a friend's refrigerator to discover a clear box filled with water and about five small, lavender jellyfish floating around. I was intrigued by these jellyfish and watched them for a while.

I told Noelle about this vivid and strange dream. She told me to look up the meaning on www.dreammoods.com. This is what I discovered:

Jellyfish

To see a jellyfish in your dream, represents painful memories that are emerging from your unconscious. There may be hidden hostility or aggression in some aspect of your waking relationship or situation. Alternatively, it may indicate feelings of inadequacy and a lack of self-esteem. Perhaps there is some situation in which you are unable to assert yourself.

Refrigerator

To see or open a refrigerator in your dream, represents your chilling personality and/or cold emotions. The dream may also be telling you need to put some goal, plan, or situation on hold. Alternatively, it signifies that you have found and accomplished what you have been unconsciously seeking.



This seemed pretty accurate to me. I will not go into the details. But basically my dream was inspired by painful memories and I am in a cold, self-conscious state right now, according to DreamMoods. I'm not sure how accurate those two elements are. I think I'm pretty cold all the time generally speaking. I don't think my personality itself is cold... I think I just come off cold. But I'm not really sure. It's difficult to analyze yourself.

I'm not sure about the goal, plan or situation that I should put on hold. Perhaps it's my school work. I'm doing a pretty good job of putting that on hold right now.

I wish I knew what I have found and accomplished that I have been unconsciously seeking! Maybe it's referring to my newly cleaned and organized room. There's no way I could have been consciously seeking a clean room; it would have been done weeks ago if that were the case.

I can't wait to go to sleep and dream up something new and magical!

Theme of the week.

Noelle and I have (somewhat accidentally but ingeniously nonetheless) devised a new tradition/weekly-event/thing.

Ladies and gentlemen I present.... THEME OF THE WEEK!

It all began two weekends ago at a birthday party in an apartment in the Allston area. We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves in the company of many fun and interesting people including a very short kid.

"That has GOT to be the shortest person I've EVER seen," Noelle screamed in the kitchen.

If I had a belt, I would have hit her. The girl needs to learn some restraint. The short kid heard her and had a disturbing look of depression on his face. He probably cried himself to sleep that night after drinking away the pain.

Some time shortly after that we saw a "freakishly small" kid in the dining hall. This frequent and unusual sighting of strangely small people was our first "theme of the week."

The theme has since changed to "the good old days."

This began when Noelle greeted me after Thanksgiving break. We decided to go out to dinner but didn't know where to go so I told her we should look in a coupon book for inspiration. I opened the book and started reading off restaurants but had a hard time pronouncing one.

"I have NO idea what this one is," I told Noelle.

She looked at me with both her eyebrows raised opening her little Asian eyes more widely than I've seen in a while and encouraged me to "sound it out."

DO YOU REMEMBER THAT?!?! I haven't heard that phrase for such a long time but it is by far one of the best phrases ever created. Sound it out. That is my new metaphor for life.

Another "good old days" moment that hit me for no apparent reason was the old bra snap. Remember the days it used to be cool and funny for boys to snap the back of girls' bras? I'm glad those days are over.

Keep your eyes and ears open for more "good old days" moments people. That is the theme of the week. Report back to me. (Steve and Noelle. And anyone else who may read this.)

Thug Life.

Joe: (Stares at Maria with a look of disgust on his face as she walks into the kitchen.) Do you HAVE to wear that robe? Is it absolutely necessary?
Maria: Yes.
Joe: Seriously, dude. You don't need the robe. You're not 60. Plus you don't have a cigar or a glass of Hennessey.
Mom: How do you know about Hennessey?
Joe: (sighs) Mom. I'm a thug.

TIME

My dad, Joe and I got Chinese food for dinner the other night. The old Asian lady that works there is really funny. She reminds me of that spazztic Asian lady that works in the GSU and always talks to herself. Anyways we got to know quite a bit about this woman while we were waiting for our take-out. She is from Hong Kong and has lived here for over 20 years. She recently went back to Hong Kong for her father's funeral. He tripped and hit his head on the corner of a table. It was an awful story.

At one point my dad asked her if we could take a menu home. "This will save some time next time we call in an order," he said. "Although I'm not sure what we're saving the time for."

What are we saving the time for? We are always looking for shortcuts and ways to get around seemingly mundane tasks. I read an article in Vanity Fair about devices created to "save time and energy" such as the mechanical fork which twists your spaghetti for you. There is some robot that has been created to vacuum and do other household chores. I'm a little scared. Eventually we will live our lives in a bed or on a couch. With laptops and the internet and cell phones we can communicate without leaving if we really needed to. You can shop online for groceries through websites like http://www.netgrocer.com/ and others. All you need is a bed pan and a little robot to bring you your food. The robot is under development as is a more practical method of releasing yourself I'm sure. Think about that for a second. The issue of physical human interaction would be the only issue here. I'm sure some sort of teleporting device will be created one of these days. I wonder how long someone can go without human interaction before they go insane...

It's time to relax a little. All these mad scientists and inventors are getting a little carried away. Consumers are getting a little lazy. I don't even know life without a mobile phone. What happened when there were no phones period? Not even house phones? Can you imagine walking around to find your friends or family instead of calling them? It's hard enough to walk through Andrea and Christina's room to get to Tara or Noelle. AIM is so much more convenient. Ok so AIM saves us the time we'd take walking room-to-room. Where does that time go? I bet if we kept track to the minute of our daily activities we'd be shocked by the amount of time we waste or spend on meaningless endeavors.

HMMMMM. I think I'll find out!!

Turkey.

Michael: (Standing by the stove in the kitchen) MARIA. COME HERE! QUICK.
Maria: What.
Michael: HURRY!!
Maria: (Walks into the kitchen to find her father standing over the turkey.)
Michael: (Face five inches from the turkey on the stove) Do you see that? The turkey's butt is smoking!

Thanksgiving.

This is the first Thanksgiving I've had with my parents in seven years. It used to be a big holiday for us when we lived in Massachusetts. Everyone would come to our house and my mom would cook a huge meal. The adults would eat in the dining room and the kids in the kitchen. After dinner and dessert my brothers and I would go for a walk around the neighbourhood with my dad and some relatives while my mom and gram and yai would stay behind and clean up. After our walk, my brothers and I would perform a dance to the Macarena. (Ok. It was really just me.) This was the custom at every holiday. After we moved to Kentucky, Thanksgiving was whiddled down to the five of us. After we moved to Switzerland, Thanksgiving pretty much ended entirely. Some of the Americans would celebrate the weekend after Thanksgiving to maintain tradition but my family never really cared enough to acknowledge the holiday.

I woke up this morning (at around 2 pm) eager to eat the food I knew my mom started cooking at 7 am. For some reason I remembered that for my past Thanksgivings I composed poetry that I shared with the family after my performance of the Macarena. (I was a very creative child.) I found my poems. What a brilliant child I was. Here is one of my Thanksgiving poems circa 1996.

Thanksgiving
by: Maria

PART ONE

There is something I want to say,
That I have to say today,
There is no other way,
Than to just say,
Happy Thanksgiving Day!

PART TWO

My mom will be perky,
During the cooking of the turkey.
My dad will eat it up,
Like a hungry little pup.
I will set the table,
Then read an Aesop's Fable.
Brother 1 (Joey) will be crying,
You might have thought he was dying!
Brother 2 (Steve) is always fighting,
He got in trouble for biting!
Yai will start speaking Greek,
Trying not to peek.
Gramp will drink a beer,
When dinner is not even near!
Gram sits back in her chair,
Trying to feel a breeze that is not even there.
But we all say Happy Thanksgiving Day,
In our own special way.
Then dad breaks the silence just to say,
"Let's eat turkey! It's Thanksgiving day!"


And there you have it. The creepily intuitive strangely repetitive beginning to where my writing has developed today.

I wish I still had my books of Aesop's Fables.

Michael Victor

Maria and her father, Michael, are going to the dentist on a dark and rainy day in Birmingham, Michigan. Michael is driving. Maria is sitting in the passenger seat.


Michael: (Directed at the car in front of him.) Come on, sweetheart!
Maria: It's a guy, dad.
Michael: I know. I call a guy who drives like a sweetheart a sweetheart.



....
Later that day, Michael and Maria drive to the grocery store.

Maria: We are being so productive today!
Michael: (Nods while devouring the entire core of an apple, leaving just an inch of stem between his fingers.)
Maria: Eeew! You did not just eat the core of that apple. That's disgusting.
Michael: Why? That's how the Germans eat apples.





Ladies and gentlemen, my father. The master driver and barbarian.

Trip home cont.

On my second flight home (D.C. to Detroit), I spent a lot of time trying to avoid the guy sitting next to me, who was determined to share his entire life story accompanied by home videos of his sons doing cartwheels in their pajama pants. After hearing about his 20 year high school reunion and his sister-in-law, I decided I had enough information about this stranger. I closed my eyes while he was telling me about his job at some computer company.

As I drifted off, I realized why I love flying. Aside from the people-watching of course.

Once you get past all the lines and annoying people on cell phones, you get on the plane and buckle up. For a certain amount of time, everyone sits there strapped in, technology disabled, sitting in a confined area. This is perhaps the only time we are really forced to turn everything off and sit in one spot. My favorite part is being above the clouds. It's almost as if everything disappears when you get that high. The clouds are so entrancing that I usually end up thinking about the shapes they make or the color of the sky instead of anything serious. The best part is, no matter what the day is like on the ground, whenever you fly above the clouds the sky is always sunny and blue. You can forget about the groggiest Boston rain storm after you rise above the clouds.

The same phenomenon occurs when I take the commuter rail to see Steve. Sitting in the seats, I forget about all the drunken decrepits riding next to me and become entranced by everything moving across through the window. In both planes and trains, someone else is taking you to your destination. You don't have to grip a steering wheel anticipating a kamikaze Michigan driver about to shoot out of nowhere. You can relax and enjoy the ride. Take a break. Think about nothing. Enjoy the scenery.

Of course none of this is relevant if you have an aisle seat, are squashed between two overweight travelers, or have a bipolar drunk telling you about the three-headed garden gnome waiting to pick him up in Worcester.

People in Worcester are weird.

There's hoes in the parking lot...

Let's talk about that rap song "Throw Some D's" for a second....

So this kid Rich Boy decided to release a song where he repeats "Throw some D's on that bitch" in between obscenities, car-talk and other indecipherable lyrics. Christina was convinced this meant "put your boobs on the table" because that's hot. I thought (and Noelle was told) that it meant put some bigger boobs on a flat-chested girl. I decided to ask Joe, my 16 year old brother, what Rich Boy was talking about.

Joe: "Tire rims."
Me: "How do you know?"
Joe: "You just do. He's talking about 26'' or something."

I looked up the lyrics and apparently before "Throw some D's on that bitch," Rich Boy says, "Just bought a Cadillac". He later talks about bringing this new Cadillac to a Chop Shop.

So there you have it! Rich Boy is rapping about tire rims, not big boobs.
Now here's what I'm wondering:
Is " Haters wish they could feel the wood in my '83" referring to Rich Boy's penis? Someone help me here, apparently I'm lacking the natural rapper instinct Joe was gifted with.






(Here are the lyrics I looked at: http://www.elyrics.net/read/r/rich-boy-lyrics/throw-some-d_s-lyrics.html)

Logan to Dulles.

My thoughts on airports are polarized. I passionately hate them because they're full of slow lines, overpriced food and people who talk loudly on their mobile phones as if everyone cared about the guy who is planning a wedding but not inviting his mother because she disowned him for being gay. That said, I love airports because being in one means I'm going somewhere fun or picking up someone I haven't seen in a while. Most importantly, being in an airport means I get to people-watch. My all time favorite hobby.

I traveled through three different airports to get home: Logan, Dulles and Detroit Metro. WOW!!! Let's skip right to my first plane ride from Boston to D.C.

The captain of the plane announced himself as Captain Morgan. I knew it was going to be a great trip. I was lucky enough to have a window seat. To my left was a little girl, maybe 8. Next to her was her dad (although I was convinced he could have also been her kidnapper). Sitting next to these two gave me a minor ulcer. The second they buckled their seat-belts, the dad (let's call him Richard) pulled out a bottle of liquid hand sanitizer from his little blue backpack. On demand, his daughter (let's call her Jill) opened her hands as if receiving the Holy Communion. He squirted a good portion into her hands and his and stashed his little backpack under the seat in front of him. They cleansed themselves in unison. Normal enough.

Still on the tar-mack, Richard retrieved his little backpack from under the seat in front of him and pulled out a pack of gum. Jill reached for a silver-wrapped piece of gum.

"Don't touch the gum with your hands!" shrieked a balding Richard.

I became a little nervous watching the girl struggle to open and insert the piece of gum without making contact. Her father looked away and she grabbed the gum and shoved it in her mouth. Richard pulled out the sanitizer again and squirted some into Jill's hand. He dug a black pen out of his backpack and gave it to her. She took off the cap and wrote "Hi!" on the back of her hand.

"Don't do that!" shrieked a bespectacled Richard.

He retrieved his sanitizer and poured it on her hand until it was dripping off the sides. He took out a napkin and handed it her. She started to rub but was not rubbing to Richard's liking so he pressed his hand over her hand over the napkin and scrubbed her skin.

The distribution of hand sanitizer didn't end here, but you get the point so this is where I'll stop. Seriously this poor little girl is going to be neurotic in a few years, if she isn't already. He should let her get a little dirty and build some immunity instead of breeding paranoia. Soon she'll be wearing masks over her mouth and gloves on her hands like Asians in fear of Sars and germs.

I, on the other hand, will never contract another disease after surviving the 426 bathroom. Neither will Andrea, Christina, Jess, Noelle or Tara. Hooray!!!

Anyways... I spent the rest of the plane ride to D.C. listening to Head Automatica and coughing without covering my mouth in an attempt to induce a stress-related seizure in Richard.

I hope he's having a nightmare about my germs flying into his eyeballs somewhere right now.

Poopies.

After an extremely interesting conversation about politics, hicks and prostitution, Noelle and I decided to take the following quiz:

http://www.youthink.com/quiz.asp?action=take&quiz_id=960

According to the results, both Noelle and Christina are "mushy, smelly poops" whereas I am a "long and hard piece of poop that takes forever to come out." I'm not really sure what that says about me but I recommend you take the quiz too.

In other news, Andrea, Christina, Noelle and I saw American Gangster this evening. What a great movie. Drugs, mobsters, some hot sex scenes, guns, a Shelby, a dog being shot... what more can you ask for? Strangely enough, this is the second movie I've seen this week where a dog is killed. According to Noelle, "dogs are out." I always hated them anyways. At least this time the dog was dead after one single bullet. I don't think I could tolerate seeing someone tear apart a dog with a crow bar again. (Thank you P2. Was that movie even advertised on television?)

My cleansing diet ended five hours ago with a Boston Creme donut. And some peanut M&Ms. And an Arizona Iced Tea. I'm weak. In all honesty, I decided the main goal of this whole "cleansing" experiment is to detoxify my body. I started researching detox methods and realized there are many ways to go about it depending on your goal. I also realized it's a little pointless to detoxify before Thanksgiving. Therefore I will continue researching detoxification methods and plan out something crazy for after Thanksgiving. I have not given in yet. I just really wanted a donut. Damn you 7/11.

Let me know how that poop test went. If anyone even reads this thing.

While 426 sleeps, I plan my first experiment...

So I'm sitting here with three pages of my paper finished still feeling the effects of my trip to UBurger six hours ago. I mean, really? I didn't even finish my burger (with extra special sauce, mmm) even though it was delicious.

This started me thinking. I have been eating so much shit lately that I wouldn't be surprised if I grew a couple of spare limbs (poor Lakshmi.) This can't be healthy. In fact, I feel so completely unhealthy that I have decided to stage an intervention... with myself. Starting right now I will undergo emergency detoxification. This means that for the next three days (Wednesday, Thursday and Friday) I will eat only fruits and vegetables and drink only water. The only exception allowed will be for peanut butter to accompany my apples and liquor to subdue the belly growls. I will decide Friday if this detoxification should continue through the weekend but I will guarantee right now It will not go on past Monday evening, which is when I will arrive in my nice, clean, warm home in Michigan. How can I detoxify when my mom has spent all day cooking a juicy Thanksgiving Turkey? That's just not fair to her.

But for now and the next few days, stop me if you see me reaching for the cheesy bread in the dining hall.

In the words of that multi-color haired girl from Paramore: I think we have an emergency.

Greetings!

Dante's Inferno is the bane of my existence.

I thought it would be an easy and interesting class about hell... Sometimes it's interesting (like when we talk about sinners stuck eternally in rivers of blood while being hunted by killer Centaurs with bows and arrows) but it's extremely difficult to stay awake/enjoy life when the professor is an arrogant literature snob who expects all students to read his mind and snickers when they don't answer questions precisely how he expects. This is why I choose to sleep instead of speak in class. That all changed when he threw a D- in my face. Needless to say I at least keep my eyes opened these days.

Today he brought up an interesting observation. According to my literature professor, self-reliance is stressed too heavily in our culture today. It is "disgusting" that we are encouraged to rely only on ourselves. According to Dante, he told us, the notion of self-reliance is just an illusion.

For once I agree with him. It's unreasonable to think we can truly rely on no one but ourselves. Independence is essential and the ability to eventually live alone and control your emotions and your life is vital but so is a support system. It's impossible to live without the influence of others. You need other people to help put life in perspective. You need Christina screaming "stop being a bitch" in your face. You need Noelle stuffing pillows up her shirt and challenging you to a belly smashing contest. You need 426 screaming the words to Stay by Lisa Loeb for no apparent reason. Otherwise life would be unnecessarily dull. Self-reliance means nothing unless it's accompanied by crazy friends.

That is all.

Now excuse me while I write a 5-8 page letter to the CEO of General Motors explaining why the corporate communication function is necessary to his business.

1:10 AM

airball198 (1:10:02 AM): hahaha

airball198 (1:10:05 AM): AHH BLOGS

airball198 (1:10:10 AM): such a funny word

airball198 (1:10:11 AM): blog.

airball198 (1:10:15 AM): bloooooog

airball198 (1:10:17 AM): BLOG

airball198 (1:10:19 AM): b-log

Good Evening.

Dear Audience,

This is a monumental moment.
I would like to dedicate this space to the ladies of Myles Standish Hall room 426. We will now have a record of the daily insanity that occurs in our lives.
Please don't hurt me.
Stay tuned.


These are the days of our lives.