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Monday, September 27, 2004

My Humble Beginnings as a Crack Reporter

A few days ago the Carlton Complex Council sent out a mass email saying it was looking for someone to report on CCC events. I eagerly replied, dizzy with glorious visions of daring reporting and being published. Even though my writing would probably take up a fingernail-sized square in some newsletter that nobody ever reads, I was nevertheless convinced that this small step was to be the takeoff point for my breezy, carefree flight to journalistic fame and glory. Judging by the enthusiastic response I received from Melinda, the Assistant Second Year Coordinator, I was the only person who expressed interest in the job, which was good, because otherwise there may have been some sort of selection process and the CCC people would have realized I’m an incompetent idiot.

The first event I covered was the Race at Case window painting contest. In case you didn’t know, Case is hosting the vice presidential debates this year so that we can finally have something to advertise and maybe actually convince a few people to come here (previously the top ad slogan anybody could come up with was, “Case: the only university where you download porn off the network at 15 megabytes per second.”) The point of the window paintings was to depict a race between a donkey (the symbol of the democratic party) and an elephant (the symbol of fat), creating an obvious allusion to the famous fable wherein a hare, overconfident in his ability to beat a tortoise in a race, takes a McDonald’s lunch break midway through the course and chokes to death on a chicken head uncovered in one of his McNuggets. The Donkey vs. Elephant race, I imagine, follows along somewhat dissimilar lines; the donkey, upon losing, demands numerous reviews of the instant replay footage, and when they confirm his loss, blames his defeat on the faulty camera.

Michelson, the dorm I live in, and therefore clearly the coolest dorm in existence, at least until it’s torn down next year, had to paint the start of the race; Glazer, the middle; and Kusch, the finish. Michelson had its painting session on Saturday, Glazer on Sunday, and Kusch on Monday, evidently so that people could participate in all three, although no one is really sure why anybody would want to. I came to the third and last session to get the complete scoop on the event.

When I arrived at Kusch at 8:30 for their window painting event, I raised the total population present by 25%. (Futile attempts to raise attendance were made throughout the course of the evening by offering free Chinese food to hapless passerby.) Seconds after making my acquaintance, the president offered me encouraging advice that would later be of great benefit to me in my journalistic endeavors: “You suck, jackass.” His name was Jeff. The other power players at this big bonanza were Evan, the vice president, whose primary function was, as I understood it, to crack jokes; Mandy, the somebody or other, whose primary function was to say stupid things for Jeff to crack jokes on; and some other girl whose name and position I probably would have ascertained if I had any journalistic skill whatsoever.

I learned that the winner of the window-painting contest will be decided the weekend before the highly-hyped debate. Decided by whom, I do not know; possibly squirrels. In any event, the winning dorm will receive a modest monetary prize and then, according to Mandy, “do absolutely nothing with it.”

Mandy was tasked with painting a grandstand with “VOTE!” in big letters swathed across it. The people in the grandstand, presumably spectators of the race, constituted a diverse crowd representing all the major ethnic groups of the world: black people, brown people, and red people. Mandy’s beautiful rendition of the scene was marred slightly by the eventual realization that she, despite being an English major and therefore theoretically having a solid grasp on how the English language works, had forgotten to account for the fact that letters from outside will be seen in reverse; hence, the painting’s viewers would see ETOV (with the E flipped). Evan chided her silly error and there followed a heated argument as to whether or not Norton or Raymond had prettier pictures for the window painting contest last year. Although the argument did not reach a satisfying conclusion while I was there, I can assure you without any doubt that by far the best window paintings were, in fact, at my dorm Tyler.

I myself am not an artistic person, so the fine art of window painting was completely beyond me. A critical element of the process, I found out, was attacking the size of Evan’s penis. In his defense Evan asserted, “I really do have a small penis. Mandy’s seen it twice.” There was then a discussion among the group’s two other members regarding the validity of Evan’s claim that Mandy had seen his penis. Having known Mandy and Evan for approximately five minutes at the time, I could not say whether Mandy had or had not seen the goods, but she did drop her fortune cookie in the paint.

Although the turnout at the Kusch painting session was small, Evan claimed that at one of the other buildings there were as many as ten people. When asked about the large variation between other buildings’ attendance and hers, Mandy explained that it was “because people in those buildings actually care.”

Window painting is a very difficult and imprecise art form, so I am certain that it was not for any lack of artistic talent that the Kusch elephant looked like a giant toxic smog cloud with a potbelly. The donkey, whose hind legs and greater majority of upper body had been engulfed by the toxic elephant, had ears that looked suspiciously like the kind of horns you would expect to see on Satan. I am guessing the members of Kusch do not particularly care for either political party.

One side of the Glazer building shows the elephant lumbering up the aptly named Elephant Stairs, while the donkey is depicted doing the same on the other side. In this manner the pictures do not explain who is winning the race, because the universe seems to have split into two alternate dimensions, but they do reveal an interesting aspect of the Elephant Stairs of which I was heretofore completely unaware: namely, that the underside of the stairs is dripping with acid slime.

My own dorm Michelson’s windows show the donkey and elephant standing on the grass under a huge “START” sign, waiting for the race to begin. I should warn you, however, that this is a fairly inventive interpretation of the paintings; at first glance it appears that the donkey and elephant are falling out of the sky and are about to land on a bed of huge green spikes.

Who will win the exciting window painting contest? The evil Smog Elephant and the Satan Donkey? The Alternate Universe Acid Foot Elephant and Donkey Duo? Or the About-To-Be-Impaled gang? Be sure to check back here in a few weeks! Because you don’t get the whole story unless you get the Bor story.

.: posted by Boris 11:48 PM

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