Let Freedom Swing

I hate to sound like a self-congratulatory asshole, but I stuck to my guns tonight. My house had a big party tonight and I was detailed on security. By the end of the night I have to turn out a group of 3 fratty giant and their lady friend. They keep insisting that they're on their way out or have a host, but they keep lingering and making up names of people they know.

I kept hounding them about if they had a host, and if so, could they procure that person? Well, these two guys, about as fratty as Natty and wide as a pine tree kept lingering after every time that I ask that they leave. Eventually they link up with their 3rd fratty friend. They linger together, looking over their shoulders to see if I'm still watching them. I ask that they leave. They drift around and collect their lady friend. I ask that they leave. Their lady friend claims to know someone. I ask if they have a host. Lady friend offers to find her host and disappears into the crowd. The three fratty giants stay with me by the door. They keep shit-talking ("this party's lame anyway") but I just watch their reflections in the glass, unmoving. Lady friend returns.

"We didn't want to stay anyway," Lady Friend says is a huff, filled with as much indignation as a 5-year old deprived of his birthright to lollipops.

I shake hands with each of the fratty guys. They are each a head taller than me.

"I don't like you, William Wallace," the third one says.

It is a 90s-themed party. I am dressed as Mel Gibson in Braveheart. Half my face is painted blue and I am wearing nothing but a kilt. I hold a plastic sword in my hand. My face is impassive and simply stares at them as they leave.

Sketchy-ass mofos stay outta my house!

Co-operative Living

Whenever I try to explain to an outsider what it's like to live in my co-op, I say this: "Imagine the dorms, but after the revolution." Imagine the ranks of Berkeley students, but purged of all the business majors and 99% of the Asians. Rather than the tripartite tenets of "liberté, égalité, fraternité," the neo-Communards live by but one word: Frivolité.

Some clips and soundbites:

I sat at the dining room table (and makeshift dance platform), eating a big bowl of broccoli for breakfast. Directly in front of me, the thick, brass stripper pole extended from bolts in the table to the skylight above.

They sat in the computer room, researching the LD50 for caffeine.
"Yup, she has enough," he said. "Several times over, actually. That was a pretty big baggie."

Dinner was ten minutes late and I still had about fifty falafels to go. I scooped the chickpea paste from the industrial-sized serving pan and furiously packed it into my cupped hands, making fat little pucks. I was sweating bullets and Daft Punk was playing over the speakers.

He retched a little bit as he emptied the kitchen compost into the big green dumpster at the loading dock. The fruit flies evacuated in a swarm. He vowed to send out an e-mail to discourage people from putting ranch dressing in the kitchen compost.

Live the Dream

The Common Buckeye

Tommy and I have a motto, and it's "Live the Dream." I think that just about sums up how things are going for me right now.

I have something of a Little Prince complex; I have an insatiable urge to find a corner of the earth and become its guardian. If you're unfamiliar with the story, it's about a little blond boy in a green jumpsuit who's the custodian of an asteroid and the single rose that grows on it.

Well, it so happens that I've become the manager of a native plant nursery on campus, with the main objective of propagating plants for use in restoring the native ecology of Strawberry Creek. It's a job that makes me aware of the ecological degradation in my immediate environment, and at the same time empowers me to reverse the damage. That's a great feeling.

We are humans, and we live in a world of our own creation. Through carelessness, greed, or ignorance, we can very easily turn our earth into a dirty, uninhabitable place. However, with engagement, charity, and education, we can make our surroundings beautiful.

In a sense, these are also the two faces of the student co-op where I currently live. It is a place where someone will bake a mixing bowl-full of chocolate chip cookies to share with everyone else. It is also a place where people throw glass bottles off the roof, if only for the joy of hearing glass break.

Why do I celebrate chocolate chip cookies and detest broken glass? I guess it goes back to my desire for order. Perhaps a good example is a wooden sailing ship. This is an example that a Philosophy major-turned-EMT-turned-carpenter once posed to me.

"Consider a wooden sailing ship," he said. "The universe wants nothing more than to see a wooden sailing go to pieces. Without maintenance, the boards will rot, the sails will tear, and the anchor will rust. In essence, a sailing ship is a symbol of man's battle against entropy, that tendency for all systems to head towards chaos. But instead of chaos, we have order, which requires a constant struggle to maintain."

I don't doubt the fact that the earth is a messy system. But that doesn't deter me from striving to create a planet that is more beautiful and livable than the one we have right now.

Update: I was brushing my teeth when I realized that the Netherlands is my dream country. Almost the entire country is below sea level, which is quite inconvenient for a country that borders the ocean. And so originate the dikes and windmill-powered pumps for which Holland is famous. There's a saying that goes, "God made the earth, but the Dutch made the Netherlands."

Casa Zimbabwe

I just moved into my room for the summer at Casa Zimbabwe, the first co-ed co-op in the United States. I've been pretty disappointed to find out that I won't have time to go abroad during college, but lately I've been feeling that the experience of living here won't be that different from being in a foreign country.

Casa Zimbabwe, also known as Krackistan, has a population of roughly 130, with partying as its number one export. Homegrown weed was former number one export before the rooftop growing operation got shut down.

Here's my place as of my move-in day:

Seems like the guy before me left in something of a hurry. There was definitely a neat little pile of nail clippings in the keyboard tray of the desk that was waiting for me. The desk had a sprinkling of weed bits and dust, and the drawers variously had condoms and loose change scattered about them.

Well, at least I have my own room! Let my reign over the Kingdom of David begin!

Day 29 and 1/2

"Let's be different... together!" - Motto of the UC Berkeley Co-Ops