Kyle Barnhart grew up in Panama City Beach, Florida: The Redneck Rivera of the Gulf Coast. He graduated from JR Arnold High School back in 2005 and immediately high-tailed it to Houston, Texas, to attend Rice University. He enjoys food and quantum mechanics and was the 2009-2010 co-editor of the 
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Some memes never change
And that's all I have to say about that.
What is this?
"What is this?"
It was an explosion of sexual desire in springtime. It was a telling metaphor that entwined passion and dedication and untold loathing. It was the pride of a nation, the tyrannical grasp of a despot, and the shimmering iris of God's irrelevant gaze.
"What is this, David?" The school counselor shook the shattered canvas in front of me, with the heavy wooden frame hanging on by a thousand dulled, tiny little staples. It made a glub, glub sound as it danced in the air, hanging by nothing but a series of four hairy knuckles. And being completely enveloped by the moment, I blurted out my answer in monotone.
"Looks like a work of art to me."
The forty-year-old failure sitting across from me was suddenly three inches from my face. He was breathing onions into my eyes. My painting was now the hammer of a blunderbuss, his tanned arm cocked back behind him, just waiting for my next move. So I coughed, knowing that the ACLU and the law were both on my side. There was an audible pop along one of his brain's major arteries as he slumped back into his chair. Anger management must work after all.
"You may think so," the counselor conceded. "I think it's a warning sign. A warning of untold violence. I think, Mister Davis, that I might write that down in this little report to DHS." He slid a pink form across the oak desk.
"Department of Homeland Security?" I glanced up and down the form in disbelief, holding it away from my face as if it might explode a la Mission Impossible. "What do they have to do with anything?"
The counselor had calmed down and was now wearing a smug grin under his peppered beard. I could tell he was proud of his little trump card: Form A138, Non-participatory Antisocial Zealous Infraction, Office of Schools and Learning Facilities, Department of Homeland Security. It was some sort of scarlet letter on my so-called determinant record.
"They have everything to do with everything. In today's post-nine-eleven, post-Columbine, post-Clinton, post-Blair world, the Department of Homeland Security has tasked us, the guidance counselors of the nation, to report any suspicious individuals to the all-seeing oh-slef." Logic was dying, and its screams were echoing through bullhorn feedback in my skull.
"But it was just a--"
"Let me finish, son. Now I don't want to do this. I studied for two hard years at the Baptist College of Florida to get this job, and I put in all that work to help people, not black-bag them non-stop to Guantanamo Bay. But Davey, this sort of anti-strophic behavior has to stop." He was calm now. He was bargaining, with his hands folded neatly in prayer fashion on the desk. Slouching. And I could still smell onions lingering in my sinuses.
I discretely pulled out my cell phone as he plowed on and on through the story of his childhood, trying to draw a bold line between his past and my present. He noted our similar hairstyles, the fact that our hometowns started with "Sp-," and our affinity for the color red. I didn't listen except to make jokes about him inside my busy head. I just calmly pawed over the digits on my phone. Like many high school students my age I can text message people without looking.
I was listening for the words "Do you have anything to say for yourself before I fill out this form, Donny," and when he finally managed to get them out on the tail end of a deep breath, I smugly drew my phone three inches to his face.
Whatever grainy photograph my cousin had attached to the text message, it wasn't pretty. I couldn't see it from my vantage point. All I could see was the shock on my guidance counselor's face as he slumped further and further into his pleather chair. When his head was vertical to the seat, I withdrew the phone, slid it back into my pocket, whipped a few peach-colored tissues out of the dispenser on his desk and leaned over to see what I had done.
"Here, sir." I dropped the tissues and waited as they wafted, ever so gently, onto the broken forty-year-old's crying face. And when they landed and stuck to his half-opened, sputtering lips, I reached for the broken canvas and folded it into my backpack.
"You really shouldn't put so much effort into your job, sir. It's known to drive women away." He was bawling now, fiddling with his wedding ring and letting out the sporadic painful moan. "But on the bright side, now you can go out and find a good Christian woman." That was the last thing I said to him as I walked calmly out the door, taking care to shut it behind me.
I called my cousin to congratulate him on a job well done. I told him I had never seen such flawless attention to detail before. The bodies were... disgustingly contorted. Sockets seemed to be pulled out of their joints, and their faces were forever scarred with gaping maws that reflected pain and pleasure.
I asked him how he found her so fast, to which he replied, "A gentleman never tells, and a lady never asks."
I smiled and thanked him. Then I took a last look at the picture before I closed the phone.
The counselor's wife with the principal's cock in her ass, shot from a knee-high perspective in a dingy hotel room. A work of art I might proudly hang next to my painting of the shower drain from Psycho, once I repair the canvas. It pays to have a nerd in the family. Especially one who's really, really good at Photoshop.
A Very Domestic Christmas
From left, going in a semi-clockwise to right thing.
- J-Crew Hooded Sweater (sooooooo comfy)
- Reese's Cups
- Pez
- Argyle Socks
- 12" Skillet WITH Teflon coating AND a glass lid!
- Framed Albums: Dire Straits, Elvis Costello and the Attractions, Tom Tom Club
- Toolkit
- Asus eeePC 8G (hump hump hump)
- Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Special Edition 2-Disc Set
- Kurt Vonnegut's Galapagos
- Chocolate Covered Goodness
Obligatory Chistmas Eve Junk
Does Bono know he needs a haircut?
Gotta make room for Andy Dick!
From the Barnhart Compound to you, Happy Holidays. HAPPY HOLIDAYS. A very all-inclusive, wonderful, non-commercial, secular holiday season to everyone.
Kyle
Better than coffee
It started off as a simple distraction, which is how most of these stories tend to start. Kyle thought that a good half-hour of lighthearted prose would get him in the mood to peel open his next take-home exam and apply the right amount of obfuscation and correct answers in order pull B-minus in said class. Exam time at Rice University is like that-- you have to punish yourself in order to get anything started. Some people jog themselves to death on the Outer Loop, some would gorge themselves with gas station snack cakes, while others turn to untraditional punishment. And writing prose was indeed punishment for Kyle. He hated writing fiction and as he compulsively poured back over the words he was writing, he understood why.
It sucked.
For years, our hero's mother had pleaded that he not to put things off until the last minute. And for years, our hero would jokingly cover his ears and sing Our Nation's Anthem in response. Some people never learn. Since that seemed to be the theme of the evening-- not learning, and it's consequences on grades and life and the friends who had to put up with his crappy fiction writing-- Kyle decided he would write a fantastic few paragraphs on the perils of being a lazy stoner with no work ethic.
He was about a quarter-way finished when, on the other side of Houston, a Christmas party was about to undo Kyle in the worst way. See, this guy Mort Crenshaw was just drunk enough to be having some major luck with this chick from Billing Inquiries. She had bad, crumpled hair but good teeth and a nice rack and Mort worked in IT so who the fuck was he to judge what creatures he'd sleep with tonight. Or marry. I mean, intra-office relationships usually get pretty serious. They have to. Your professional career is at stake otherwise.
Anyways.
He excused himself to go take a leak but drunkenly found himself in a room on the opposite end of the building full of beeping, blinking machines. In case you've never been drunk before, machines that blink and boop are infuriating unless they're pumping "Satisfaction" at full bass. So Mort Crenshaw began to take a leak on said machines.
Or, as it goes, the main DHCP server for all Comcast subscribers. High voltage, high current, and all very expensive. In case you weren't aware or will be purchasing service in the area soon, Comcast has a monopoly in Houston when it comes to cable Internet. You know where this is going.
The lights on the machines only flashed red for a second, then they all went out.
Just to clarify, Mort was electrocuted and singed his penis off and died. Kyle would have wanted him to go out that way, too, because that's what idiots who knock out the Internet deserve. But don't go hating on Mort too bad. Turns out this girl he was hitting on at the party always had a huge crush on him. He was so close to getting with her, too. And they would have had beautiful kids.
To paraphrase my buddy Kurt Vonnegut, it goes as such.
When Kyle realized his Internet was out he immediately tried everything in his extensive knowledge of electrical engineering topics to get it working again. He power cycled (i.e. unplugged) the router, then power cycled (i.e. unplugged) the modem, followed by a futile attempt to power cycle (i.e. unplug) the computer itself. No luck. Then he tried to pull the oven out of his kitchen and throw it out the window, which also failed but did help him vent a little frustration.
Kyle didn't particularly need the Internet in order to take his test, you know. He just needed the satisfaction of knowing that he could always check his e-mail or search YouTube for videos of fat guys playing Zelda riffs on ukuleles or purchase a book about pottery on Amazon. More importantly he needed the Internet so he could publish his story when it was finished and pray to Jesus that someone would leave him a comment. Kyle really gets off on that shit.
With few options left and even less pride, Kyle decided to call Comcast to see if he could rectify things. He hadn't had much luck calling Comcast in the past. Using a language made entirely of curse words, brand names, and "'let me speak with your supervisor," doesn't really fix anything ever, but Kyle had no concept of manners or decency in these situations. That's probably because he never had to hold a menial, service industry job back in high school and deal with angry people all day long.
Just my opinion.
Kyle never really got a chance to yell at anyone that night. At least any live people. Something amazing happened while Kyle was busy simultaneously navigating the Comcast tech support phone system and debasing it with the verbiage of a dying German during WWII. Some poor EMT pulled our friend Mort's stinking, piss-burned, crispy body off the server equipment and, with each hand double-gloved with latex, pressed the "reset" switch that Mort had been so selfishly lying upon.
Zing. Blink orange, blink green, solid green. Everything was working again.
Kyle decided this was a sign. A sign that he needed to spend the rest of his evening dicking around on the Internet. Since he had already started both writing himself into the story and depending on pictures to make it funnier, he trashed it and moved on to Google Reader.
Because after all, someone else out there had a story to read.
Ron Paul, you are making me die
Story highlights, for those who need them:
- I hate the Republicans. Except for Romney, who has a chin I would marry.
- Rice University students are stupider than you might guess.
- Ron Paul isn't stupid but he's responsible for my sleep apnea.
- I have a hundred-year plan to turn pollution into gold and candy. Elect me.
If you want an idea what the political climate at Rice University stands, you don't have to look much further than this little slice of cyberspace: http://www.rontorice.org/.
Seriously, take a look at that site for a minute. Bask in its sub-Web 2.0 look. Be transported to a time when the Internet's worst web sites didn't even look that great. Check out those YouTube videos! Then realize that this is a real candidate who has won the hearts of every college student looking for an anti-establishment hero.
Holy fucking dogshit. Not at my college.
Ron Paul is systematically taking pieces of my soul with a melon scooper, day by day, scoop by scoop. It's not his policies that drive me insane. His ideas are good ideas. Diversifying America's economic basis? Not too shabby. Libertarian values? I'm down with some of those. Ron Paul is one of those starry-eyed politicians who has a lot of great ideas.
Great ideas that could only be implemented AFTER we dismantle the entire government, arrest every corporate board member in the country, make drugs safe for everyone that uses them, reverse America's established foreign doctrine, and forget the lessons that established the institutions and rules I just brought up.
My problem is that Ron Paul's supporters just don't get it. The things he wants to do-- dismantle the Federal Reserve, for example-- would take more than the two terms a US President is afforded. And yet there are students at Rice University who don't see this. They're wrapped up in the armchair expertise of the same people who start flamewars on FARK and Digg.
I'm going to interrupt this politically-charged post to let everyone know that at 2:30 every weekday on PBS, there's a wickedly strange show called "Between the Lions" broadcast to children all over the world. Try to imagine what would happen if Wonder Showzen's producers actually made a for-serious children's show with the same effects and transitions as WS, and tried to get you to read, you'd have this shit. And it's restoring those little pieces of my soul.
Anyways, what was I saying? Something about Ron Paul.
It's like Rice students never took a serious history class back in high school. Even if Ron Paul were to try to implement one of his policies, he'd meet impossible opposition from, oh, THE DEMOCRATS IN CONGRESS WHO HAPPEN TO HATE REPUBLICANS. Remember how much policy Clinton got pushed through the GOP Congress during the 90's? Like, two things. Maybe you weren't reading Time when you were 8, but I was.
And I'm criticizing his ideas under the the unrealistic assumption that he wouldn't just be a tool of his party after his election, which is after all the way American politics have worked since Jefferson.
You realize that, right? No candidate as maverick as Ron Paul has ever been endorsed by a major party. Ever. And if Ron Paul runs as an independent, you might as well write in your vote for that other rich Texas politico...
...remember him? Seemingly old, starry-eyed man who wanted to reinvent America for the better and had a rabid base of grassroots support? H Ron Paul... err, H Ross Perot.
Ron Paul. Ross Perot. RP + RP 4 Ever.
All Ron Paul is going to do is eat the votes of college students and educated Internet-dwellers, which is ultimately going to put Mike Huckabee or Mitt Romney's Chin in office. And then you'll get another four years of Republican shadow government and basically the opposite of Ron Paul's happy-go-lucky worldview.
You can fight for the improvement of the world, but your revolution is going to ultimately bring this country down. In America, you draw in the lines to get things done, not write the world LOVE backwards and teabag the IRS with a blimp.
But if you still can't see all this, go ahead and register Republican. Inflate their supporter numbers and allow them more sway. Whatever. Just don't vote for Allen Keys. He's fucking CRAZY.
And that's all I'm gonna say about that.
Yellow Journalism
Yesterday I wrote up a little diatribe about how ridiculous the Rice Standard has become, then deleted it soon after; it's way past the scope of needing me to poke holes in its crisp magazine pages, I thought. Who needs me when there's a painfully blatant libertarian bias-- the publisher's note says something like the "Standard will not kowtow to any party line," followed by an advertisement for a Rice Libertarians luncheon and a neocon wankfest of a book on the pages following-- mixed with infighting and a general lack of direction.
Maybe they actually DO publish the Standard with the full understanding that...
- ...only seven people on campus agree with maybe half of what's contained in any given issue, and three of those are just because they're friends with the authors.
- ...four people in metro Housto actually have the vocabulary to make it three sentences into an article written by Arturo Munoz.
- ...quoting Dave Eggers makes you indietrash from 2002.
- ...blogs belong online, not in print.
- ...Ron Paul will get not a single electoral vote.
THE RICE STANDARD IS UNNECESSARY.
It's like having an alternative press rag in a town of 5,000 people, except that said publication only writes about issues on the national level, and does so in prose style. Oh, and they only write about topics spanning about a square inch of the acre-wide political spectrum.
But okay. So why did I decide to come back today and write another diatribe? I got this e-mail not twenty minutes ago...
Dear Rice Standard Readers and Contributors,But I guess if I'm going to publish that letter, you should probably have Alice side of things, too. So here's the LiveJournal snippet where she discusses her departure. From said link...
As some of you may have noticed, Alice was omitted from the masthead of our latest issue. After almost a year of dedicated service as Editor-in-Chief of the Rice Standard, Alice is no longer a member of the Rice Standard family and organization. Alice asked to be removed from the editorial staff on Friday night after copy-editing. Her departure was not amicable, and while an invitation remains open for her return to the magazine, she has made no attempt at reconciliation. However, despite Friday’s events, our staff remained committed to printing and distributing our fifth full-length issue. It hit the colleges’ newsstands yesterday.
This message is to reassure all of you that the staff of the Rice Standard remains committed to producing a high quality magazine; a magazine that displays the creative and intellectual talent of all of you, and every other member of the Rice community. We, as an organization, have responded to the void created by Alice’s withdrawal, and are ready push forward and try to improve our already exceptional publication.
Therefore, I am pleased to announce that Matt Schumann, one of our Executive Editors and a noted contributor, will be filling the position of Editor-in-Chief. Matt has been a strong supporter of the magazine since its inception and I have his full assurance that he will carry on our standard of editorial excellence.
On a more personal note, the loss of Alice came as a surprise to all of us. Without her our magazine would not be where it is today. Nevertheless, the strength of our organization does not reside in one person alone. It is the support of all of you that makes this magazine possible.
The future is always unexpected and is always full of unlimited possibilities. I know that together we can produce the best campus magazine that Rice University has ever seen.
Sincerely,
John Stallcup
Publisher, The Rice Standard
there's many larger problems than what happened last night including but not limited to a lot of accusations and criticisms of my personality and style, and of course some male chauvinism. there were considerable efforts made over the last month to characterize me as the socially inept, psychotic despot. and they've succeeded, and i'm gone.Despite the fact that Alice would like to see me flattened under a steamroller a la Judge Doom in Who Framed Roger Rabbit...
... it's utterly ridiculous that she should be removed from the masthead of the pages she founded and paid for. It's not an act of fixing the magazine. It's an act of social revenge for some petty thing I'll probably never know about, like Alice serving the wrong kind of brown sauce with the foie gras at dinner last Saturday or whatever her friends get mad about. That's why these people aren't really journalists.
Unprofessional behavior.
Taking her out of the picture probably isn't going to fix much, either. Everyone's going to continue to write articles like they're being graded by Ralph Waldo Emerson. That gold-mongering, Ron Paul-loving libertarian lean isn't going away, either. They'll still be cracking the same whip over the same group of young, idealistic and morally devoid writers.
It's all so silly that, you know, I could only expect it to come from one publication. Thank God I have the Internet to absorb my pseudo-journalistic bitch rants.
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