My Musings

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Saturday, February 14, 2004

Poke the Bunny

Last Thursday I had a physics lab report due, so you can guess what my Wednesday was like. Or maybe you can’t. In that case, I will tell you—it was an absolute joy! I just love writing lab reports! Especially when I have a cold and have to wipe the snot leaking out of my nose every five seconds in addition to the brain leaking out of my ears! Loads of fun, last Wednesday was.

At some point in the evening, I was having WAY too much fun writing this report and decided I needed a breather. I took a gander at Big Ben’s SubProfile, which is pretty witty, and at the bottom of his links section I saw a link titled, “Poke!” This intrigued me, so I gave it a click. The click took me to a web page with a purple background and a bunny sitting in the middle. Hovering in the air above and to the right of the bunny was a gloved hand with an outstretched index finger pointing at the bunny, and below the bunny was a round button labeled, simply, “POKE THE BUNNY.” There wasn’t a whole heck of a lot to do at this website, so I gathered my courage and clicked on the button.

You can probably guess what didn’t happen—my computer did not implode, nor did fairy cows fall from the sky and crash through my roof, although that would have been kind of cool and did in fact happen here, minus the fairy cows. The hand moved swiftly downward and—get ready for this—poked the bunny. When I clicked on the button again, the hand poked the bunny again. This was clearly one of the dumbest websites ever made, so naturally I thought it was the coolest thing on the planet. I was poking away at the poor rabbit when suddenly I heard:

“What the fuck?” It was my roommate, Matt.

“Poke the bunny!” I exclaimed. “You click on the button, and it pokes the bunny!”

“Yeah…I see that, but…” I could tell right away that Matt was excited.

“Is that all it does?” he eventually asked.

“No,” I said jubilantly. “It also makes a sound.” I turned up the volume so that Matt could hear. Indeed, when I jabbed the bunny, it sounded like a boxer jabbing at a punching bag.

“Look, you see how the bunny nudges when you poke him?” I continued. The forward nudge was very subtle and slight, but supremely implemented, I thought.

“Um…okay.” Clearly Matt was just as impressed as I was.

“And look how realistic this is!” My fascination was endless. “When you click the button fast, it makes a different sound than when you click it down and hold it.” A fast click made the jabbing sound described before; a slow click resulted in the jab sound plus the sound of deflating air. In hindsight, I’m not entirely sure why the bunny had an air leak, but it made perfect sense at the time. I demonstrated the difference between the two sounds to Matt and proceeded to pound out some mega-cool beats: fuh-fuh-fuh-fuh-fuhhhhhhhh, fuh-fuh, fuh-fuhhhhhhhh; fuh-fuh, fuh-fuhfuhfuhfuh fuhfuhfuhfuh-fuhhhhhhhh…

“No,” my roommate said, “if it was truly realistic, then the bunny would turn around and bite the—“

My computer interrupted Matt with a loud CHOMP! When we looked at the screen to see what had caused the sound, we saw that the previously placid picture was now replaced by a dark and grisly scene. The gloved hand was still hovering in the air, but the index finger was no longer peacefully pointing at the bunny from afar. It was in the bunny’s mouth. The rabbit no longer looked cute and peaceful; his ears were pressed back flat against his back and the squint in his eye gave him a chillingly evil look. The “POKE THE BUNNY” button was still there, but clicking on it did not make the finger poke the bunny. Ohhhh no. Those happy days were gone. A click on the button did not produce any poking. Instead it made the bunny tug at the finger in his mouth, as if trying to rip it clean off.

I could not believe my eyes. Here is my roommate, joking around that the bunny should turn around and chomp on the finger, and then the bunny actually gets pissed off and does it!

“Have you seen this website before??” I accused Matt in puzzled bewilderment.

“No, I swear!” he exclaimed, and we both fell apart in spasms of uncontrollable laughter. I hope nobody saw this.

Then the moment was gone. Our room returned to the state in which you are most likely to find it at any given moment: me and Matt sitting at our respective desks, each of us with headphones on, our backs to each other, intently focused at our respective computers. On this particular Wednesday, Matt went back to watching Stargate, the TV show. He’s become obsessed with it and downloads every episode off the wonderful Case network. I, for my part, returned to the dreary physics lab and fired up my usual jazz playlist. It’s not that I like to have ambient music; in fact, I vastly prefer working in silence. But I figure it’s better to listen to my own music than to the shitty gangster rap/boy band combo that some of the fuckheads on our floor blast all day at ear-damaging decibel levels.

In other words, our room became the crappy, boring thing it always is. My roommate eventually finished his Stargate episode and I eventually finished my lab report, and I think both of us were thankful for the happy moment that happened in between.

You, too, can poke the bunny.

.: posted by Boris 3:18 PM

Monday, February 09, 2004

Pathetic Excuse for a Nightmare

Last night I dreamt that it was already next August, and my dream began on the first day of classes. My first class was chemistry, which I knew was in Schmitt lecture hall. I’m not sure why I was in chemistry class—I’m taking it this semester, and come May I will be done with science forever, but maybe in my dream I failed the class and had to retake it. The dream didn’t specify. In any case, I sat near two of my friends from Pierce—Nicole and Meredith—and after the class was over I followed them to math, which we all had together.

The dream started to go a little weird after math class ended. I wasn’t entirely clear on where I had to go next, so I followed Nicole to her next class. She was quiet and sullen and made it blatantly evident that she had no desire whatsoever to talk to me, which made me sad.

“So, what class do you have now?” I asked, as cheerfully as I could.

“Philosophy,” Nicole said in a perfect monotone.

“Ah!” I exclaimed, trying in vain to revive the dying conversation. “You must be taking a really advanced class. It’s 300- or 200-level, right?”

I forget what her answer was, but we soon parted ways and I wondered why she seemed to be so angry at me. Then I focused my attention on a more pressing problem, which was that I had absolutely no idea where or what the hell my next class was. Somehow I ran into Meredith, who said she had to fix a scheduling problem. I had a scheduling problem, too, which was namely that I did not know what on Earth my schedule was. What a I needed to do was find a computer with an internet connection so that I could download a copy of my schedule, and since Meredith also needed a computer to fix her scheduling problem, we both went to the library to use the computers there.

At the library, things got bad. Meredith’s scheduling problem was very minor and she immediately set about fixing it, but I suddenly realized that I not only did not know what my schedule was, but that I did not, in fact, have a schedule at all. It became clear to me that the whole class registration thing had somehow passed me by. I simply hadn’t signed up for a single class. I had gone to chemistry and math class because I knew where they were and some of my friends were also taking them, but I wasn’t actually registered for either one. So for me it was more than just a matter of downloading a schedule; I had to make one.

Well, that’s not so hard to do. At Case there is an online registration system called SOLAR, which stands for “Shitty Old Lousy-Ass Registration” because it’s painful and buggy and laggy and usually doesn’t even work at all. But let’s pretend that it worked marvelously in my dream. All I had to do was log on (I was already at a computer) and sign up for all of my classes, and then I’d be set!

Except…I couldn’t log on. Every student needs to input a 4-character pin to log into the system, and even if I could remember my pin, it would do me no good because they’re changed every semester. Students have to meet or at least email their advisors in order to get their new pins, which I of course hadn’t done in my dream because I hadn’t bothered to try signing up for classes. This is where the nightmare ended—me, panic-stricken in the library, wondering how soon I’d be able to reach my advisor and get the pin, scared breathless that I’d end up skipping my first day of classes.

When I was little, the few nightmares I had usually involved either falling to my death from a great height or trying desperately to escape some very bad person bent on killing me. I also had less graphic nightmares wherein a common theme was my having to constantly struggle for sight or for breath or both. Those nightmares were cool and scary. But what is my greatest fear now? That I won’t know my SOLAR pin and find myself unable to register for classes? That, heaven forbid, I’ll have to cut the first day of lectures? Oh, the terror. I can’t believe that this crap is the scariest thing my brain can come up with. School should never, ever, be the subject of a nightmare!

I hope that I soon get a dream where I’m drowning in boiling lava or being chased through a maze by a rapier-wielding giant rock monster, or basically anything scary and exciting, because that last dream was pathetic.

.: posted by Boris 6:44 PM

Sunday, February 08, 2004

Continuation

If you haven’t read Insight #3—that’s the entry right below this one—then do so now. Otherwise, what’s coming up isn’t going to make a whole lot of sense.

When I told Jim about my blog last semester, he made fun of me for a little while because I never updated it. So a day after I posted the last entry, I told Jim about the new update and forced him to go read it. Jim is Kevin’s roommate, so naturally he spilled the beans to Kevin later that day. It turns out that Kevin had indeed noticed the missing boot.

“So did you actually try to wear the boots??” I asked Kevin breathlessly.

“Yeah, when I went to theory this morning. I actually put one of them on and then thought, ‘Hey! The other boot sure would be nice!’”

When I asked Kevin what he thought when he found his boot missing, Jim warned him ominously: “Be careful what you say, Kevin! It can and will be used against you. It will be written down for all posterity.” Which is true.

Kevin had this to say: “My first thought was that Shardule had taken it.” This makes sense. Some of you may remember Shardule as “The Vegetarian” from an earlier entry. Our vegetarian friend, who lives next door to Kevin, likes to play pranks on him. Most of them involve downloading porn and setting it as the wallpaper on Kevin’s desktop. “My second thought was that Boris had taken it,” Kevin continued, “because of that backpack incident.” Here Kevin was referring to the time when I walked into his room—which he and Jim had left unlocked with the door wide open and the light on—and stole his backpack. I left a note on his dry-erase board saying, “Kevin, I took your backpack. If you want it back, come to my room.” I didn’t sign this note, however, just to make things interesting. After that, Kevin sure did learn his lesson—he still leaves his room unlocked, but at least he closes the door now when he leaves.

When all was said and done, Kevin had one final thought to offer:

“Um…so how about giving me my boot back?”

.: posted by Boris 5:55 PM

Friday, February 06, 2004

Insight #3

Last night there was a moment when I really didn’t feel like doing any homework. Such moments occur on a regular basis, resulting in a clash between my desire to get something done and my desire to do something else. In this particular instance, the latter won, and I headed over to Jim and Kevin’s room to see what they were up to.

Upon entering their lair, I found Jim mysteriously absent. Kevin was furiously typing up an email and had headphones on; I casually slid into the room and waited expectantly for him to turn around and greet me or otherwise express his awareness of my presence. However, my hopes were let down as Kevin continued to stare intently at his computer and peck intermittently at the keyboard. When I stood directly behind him and he still did not respond—my stomach was inches away from his head at this point—I realized that Kevin had absolutely no idea I was in the room.

I could not believe my luck. Kevin’s total detachment from his environment afforded me with the perfect opportunity to unleash havoc and mischief! Imagine all the crazy things I could do! … Well? Are you imagining them? Because I sure as hell couldn’t think of anything. Instead I stood there like a complete moron and desperately tried to figure out how to resolve the situation. I could tap Kevin on the shoulder and surprise him, but that wouldn’t be very funny. I could stay there and quietly watch him, but that would be kind of spooky. I could leave the room as unnoticed as I entered, but that would be kind of gay. In vain I tried to read the email that Kevin was writing, but unfortunately the font was too small on the laptop monitor for me to read at that distance. Since I couldn’t very well risk detection to lean over and get a closer look, I was completely stuck, immersed in a situation of amazing potential without knowing how to take advantage of it.

Then the phone rang. After several rings it became apparent that Kevin did not hear it. The phone was my saving grace—it gave me something cool and exciting to do, because answering other people’s phones is always fun.

“Hello?” I said. Kevin did not budge.

“Hi, is Jim there?” the other voice responded. This was not my first time answering Jim’s phone (I forget the reason for the previous occasion), so I recognized the voice as Jim’s mother.

“No, Jim isn’t here right now, but Kevin is. Would you like to speak to him?” Kevin continued to not budge. When Jim’s mom replied that she did indeed wish to have a word with Kevin, I tapped him on the shoulder and handed him the phone. There was the faintest glimmer of surprise and utter shock in Kevin’s usually cool and placid face as he took the phone from me.

It turned out that Jim’s parents had come for him and couldn’t get into the building. Jim was off doing homework in the study lounge, where he couldn’t hear the phone. Kevin and I found him in the lounge and told him to go downstairs to let his parents in, whereupon he started bitching something about how he had told his mom to call him on his cell phone. After the matter was taken care of and Jim scampered downstairs—or rather didn’t scamper, because he always uses the elevator even though the dorm is only four stories high, that lazy waste of glucose—to greet his parents, Kevin asked me just how long I had been standing there and what exactly the hell I was doing. I responded that if it weren’t for me, Jim’s parents would never have gotten into the building and that there would have been a heap o’ trouble, and we left the argument at that, though I think Kevin was a little disturbed.

Earlier tonight Jim asked me if I wanted to have any of the rice that he was about to make. I gladly accepted and resumed procrastinating on my homework. An indeterminate period of time later, I found myself extremely bored and running out of ways to put off doing important stuff, so I decided to pay a visit to Jim’s room and see if the rice was ready yet. Upon opening the door to his abode and taking a look inside, I was shocked by two things: 1) Jim, who had been hanging around the dorm all evening, was not in the room; and 2) Kevin, who had been gone all evening, was. He was sitting in his chair, much like the night before, actually, with the headphones and writing and everything, except that this time he was writing something in longhand in a notebook (this turned out to be a rough draft for an English paper that Kevin has due tomorrow; his topic is “Pythagoras was an incompetent buffoon,” or something like that). I walked into the room and, sure enough, Kevin did not so much as twitch to welcome me. The previous evening’s state of affairs was being repeated!

You may be wondering if I experienced the same quandary the second time around as I did the first. In fact, I did not. In a bold and daring move, I took one of Kevin’s boots—the left one—and exited.

I spoke to Kevin later on—he also partook of Jim’s rice—and he gave no indication whatsoever that he knew I had been in his room.

And now you may be wondering how the story ends. If so, then you are obviously not a very attentive reader, because if you were, then you would know that the event I just described took place this evening, and so of course there has not yet been any sort of conclusion to the story. When I look to the right, I can see Kevin’s boot lying on the floor, my view of it partially obstructed by one of the bedposts. The tip of the boot points at me. To the right of this tip lies my backpack, perched against said bedpost; and to the left of the boot aligned perpendicular to it is my small wastebasket.

Kevin has music theory tomorrow at 8:30, whereas my first class, English, is not until 11:30. Thus, I will still be sound asleep when Kevin has to wake up and go. He may decide to put on shoes and not realize at all that his left boot is missing. Or he may try to put on his boots and, upon failing to find half of them, frantically rummage around his room (it’s a mess) in a mild panic trying to find it. That would be pretty hilarious. I’ll be sure to let you know how the boot story ends up.