The Great Literati Divide (or How to Kill a Student Newspaper)

Every Sunday evening, without fail, I would space out for an hour while the section editors and shakers of Rice's undergraduate newspaper argued about factual accuracy and page layout. My job as the Thresher's satirist was to give readers something to laugh at while they're taking a crap in Duncan Hall between classes, not to win a kiddie Pulitzer for the most hard-hitting investigation of campus inefficiencies. So, naturally, I often resented the fact that I was required to attend these meetings.

To the extent that I did listen, though, there was one resounding lament that I heard over the course of my tenure as Backpage editor: The Thresher's general decline in article quality. The news and copy sections have been embarrassed a number of times this past year thanks to awesome ineptitude demonstrated by the news writing staff. Check out the erratum in nearly every issue published in this year's volume. Last fall, the front page ran an article that reported one in five students was infected with H1N1 (when the number was closer to 2%). The downward trend hit rock bottom in February when Rice's administration was forced to write-in and correct glaring factual errors two weeks in a row.

Personally, I'm more upset about the decline in quality of another section: Op-Eds. The weekly editorial columns that the Thresher receives from the student body have all but flatlined in terms of caliber and general interest. Case in point: The Thresher's most prolific student author also happens to be the most out-of-touch when it comes to campus culture, writing in about how Houston is inferior to New York City and why final exams should be optional. This is the kind of thing I should have been writing about in my satire section and yet, somehow, columns like hers are still showing up on Page 3.

Pinpointing that "somehow" interests me severely. What happened to the Rice Thresher? Is Coffeehouse poisoning the staff with ayahuasca? No, because the Thresher doesn't receive free Coffeehouse coffee anymore. Thanks, Evan.

We are then left with a few reasonable explanations:

• There are no more good, dedicated writers at Rice University. They all graduated in '09.
• There are good writers at Rice University, but their work is purposefully sabotaged by the Thresher's editorial staff for some incomprehensible reason. Goddamn it Casey.
  
• There are good writers at Rice University, and they're just not writing for the Thresher.
  

Let's ignore that second point for a moment while we critically consider what has changed the landscape of Rice's undergraduate writing community over the past few years. Obviously, the first thing that comes to my mind is the Rice Standard (because Alice Townes is always on my mind, zing!). It's a student-run, university-independent magazine/blog that has really taken off in the past few year. Oh, and don't forget about Open, Rice's literary sex magazine. Open is like an episode of The Big Bang Theory with less blonds, more nudity and more frankness about nerds not getting laid. And then there's Catalyst (the research journal for kids).

Did I miss anyone? Probably. It seems like every niche at Rice has its own publication these days.

But if you take the time to read any of the publications mentioned above you'll realize that my first guess—that the good writers have gone the way of the dinosaurs—simply can't be true. The Standard (mostly) holds itself to an intellectual... standard that borders on cosmopolitan. There are a few exceptions to this rule but, on average, the essays posted on the Standard possess a quality and readability that easily exceeds that of the contemporary Thresher. While Open and Catalyst don't generate nearly as much content per year as the Standard, their existence still necessitate a certain amount of hard work and dedication from their respective editorial staffs, writers, and girls willing to show their butt-cracks to the campus. God bless you, youthful rebellion.

And so here we are, finally, at my thesis. Despite their respective intentions, publications like the Rice Standard are sucking the life out of Rice's student-run newspaper. Their crime is not a malicious crime but, instead, a crime perpetrated by sheer existence. They are draining the literary-oriented campus talent from its former, centralized location at the Thresher and directing it toward niche audiences with limited perspectives and smaller readerships.

The issue is simply a matter of limited resources. Rice's small campus has a fixed number of individuals willing to write for fun on a regular basis, and even fewer willing to read, edit and layout pages. These are busy kids. Future leaders, I'm told. And they're smart. They're going to write to maximize their exposure to interested readers, minimize the work involved in getting published and, perhaps most importantly, they're only going to write when they have the time to do so leisurely.

The Standard's WordPress format makes it easy for any member of Rice's literati to contribute a couple hundred words on a topic of their respective interest. They don't get paid, sure, but no one (except for it's own editorial staff) is writing for a living at the Thresher anyways. Standard writers also receive instant gratification and can easily and quickly engage their readers through a familiar commenting system. The Thresher's College Publisher-based website is laughably clunkier than the Standard; the rules governing when and how writers can comment on their articles on the Thresher's site are contrived and confusing.

On the other hand, the Standard's online-only format severely limits its ability to reach the entire campus. College newspapers-- at least, our college newspaper and most other small college newspapers-- don't necessarily follow the national trend of declining print newspaper readership caused by increased online readership. Picking up a free Thresher on Friday mornings is still a tradition well-ingrained in campus culture. There's even one particular professor who likes to talk to me during Friday ELEC lab about what he has read in the Thresher. The Standard, on the other hand, may reach students but not necessarily alumni and professors: It's just the nature of the beast.

And so, owing to convenience and prestige, the Standard has effectively stolen the campus' best writers away from the student body and directed their efforts toward reaching a smaller and more niche audience.

For that niche audience, though, convenience and prestige are a great thing. The Standard has a certain feel to it. Articles feel smarter. The site looks good. The pool of individuals who regularly comment on articles is small and personable. They laud intellectual discourse and shun stupidity. And while I have no doubt that the Standard is daily reading for some members of the campus administration, it is not scrutinized by the same pool of prospective students and their parents, alumni or faculty members who love to make a fuss when the Thresher does anything slightly subversive. Autonomy has made the Standard interesting.

The Standard, however, is not the face of Rice. The Thresher is the face of Rice. And when those same prospective students, alumni and faculty read yet another half-brained, last-minute opinion piece presented under the Thresher's masthead, they have to wonder what sort of students are running the student-run newspaper. Or what kind of students go to Rice.

It's in everyone's best interest for publications to present their best, most high-quality copy to the campus. But things have to change in order for that to happen. The literati have to branch out. The publications have to innovate and recognize that if any one of them is going to flourish, they have to sustainably manage their most valuable resource.

And lastly, I have my prescriptions. No giant rant pointing out the obvious would be complete without some ideas about where to go next.

For the Standard:

• Recognize that the Thresher is hurting as a result of your existence. This was, after all, one reason that the Standard was formed in the first place: As retaliation against what the founders perceived to be bias and lack of Rand-esque autonomy and free enterprise at the Thresher. Or because the founders were mad they couldn't inject their wacky, neoconservative opinions into the student newspaper. In any case, it's time to make nice.
  
• Encourage writers to increase their exposure by re-working their opinion articles toward the campus as a whole and submitting them to the Thresher. That's how activism works: Pounding every available outlet with your brand of the truth.
• Stay open to new ideas and collaboration with the Thresher. They have something you don't: Money. And they're probably willing to share it in the pursuit of readership.

For the Thresher:

• Realize where the good writers have gone, why they left and admit that you have suffered as a result.
• Work on writer incentives. Standardize (lolz) a workflow that makes it easier for writers to participate in the editorial process, provide commentary online and minimizes the amount of time they have to spend writing articles.
• In today's world, no one expects a print institution to provide the same sort of time-sensitive information that the Internet and social media provide. If an Op-Ed isn't time-sensitive but has potential, send it back for another week of revision. Work on articles for months at a time if you have to. The point is to recover some of that quality that has been lacking for the past year or two.
• Pay writers more money. If it's supposed to be an incentive, make it an incentive. Ten dollars per article is a joke to writers exhausted by their respective workloads.
• Stay open to new ideas and collaboration with the Standard. They have something you don't: Quality. And they're probably willing to share it in the pursuit of readership.

For the other campus publications:

• Just... I dunno. Write something for the Thresher and the Standard every now and then, even if it turns out to be a shallow promotion of your publication. Their editorial staff can always turn you down.

Now, what to do about armchair experts too selfish to write for any campus publication is another story entirely...

Remembering myTunes

I've done a lot of wistful remenescing lately-- mainly because my matriculating class is graduatin' in like a week. They're all selfishly leaving me for a real world ripe with full-time, career-building opportunities while I finish up my BSEE and work part-time mining coal for wages that would upset Human Rights Watch. And while I cope (completely un-bitter, I promise) with the reality of spending one more year at Rice without the familiar faces I've known since my arrival in Houston, I can't help but think about the good ol' days...

myTunes Redux

The little piece of software pictured above, myTunes Redux, was one of the most influential facets of my freshman year. You know, besides the Seniors.

Allow me to weave a yarn: The tale of a ragtag bunch of incoming Rice University freshmen, all assigned to spend their first year in the dingiest digs offered on-campus. These kids were all trapped in Will Rice Long Hall and didn't (apparently) have much in common besides 4-point-ohs and arrogance galore. Sure: They broke the ice with grain alcohol and casual sex just like any collection of close-proximity teenagers, but real friendships started to blossom thanks to a little tool called myTunes.

myTunes allowed anyone with iTunes (Mac or PC) to share their music library across a local network (but not outside that local network). For Long Hall's purposes, that local network was Long Hall. One would simply select a user on the network, pick and choose which songs they wanted, and voila.

Music became a significant common thread along which these hallmates could establish friendships. Some users brought completely unheard genres to the table, such as Louie introducing the Hall to his collection of Houston/3rd Coast Rap. Others (such as myself) used myTunes to identify those with worthy tastes and immediately recognized that Andrew Flowers and Augusta Bartis were the coolest people in the world, ever. Whether used to share or used to judge, myTunes allowed for an expression of individuality that you couldn't find on early Facebook profiles or roommate selection forms.

...and they all lived happily ever after.

Since 2006, myTunes has been more or less defunct thanks to those bastards at Apple blocking network file-sharing in iTunes. Which is a pity, really. I can't imagine my freshman year without the advantage of swapping songs with friends and getting to know people through their respective tastes in music. Nowadays, Rice freshmen probably Tweetup after O-Week or something weird that will probably doom my entire generation forever.

That or Swine Flu in Houston.

Living on-campus at Rice will ruin your future

With no certain regard for next year's living situation, I let Rice's on-campus housing deadline pass this past week without throwing my name in the hat. Some people will call me crazy; I could have easily scored a lovely little single at the newly-built McMurtry College. They're sticking all of the members of my own residential college and former home-- Will Rice-- at McMurtry while they pull the asbestos out from the air ducts and scrape the green resin off the walls of the 90's. They got pods for bathrooms, grass for roofs, and personal space for all.

See, I love to espouse the benefits of living off-campus. I lived on-campus for two years and off-campus for nearly two years and compiled a laundry list of pros and cons along the way. Generally, living off-campus fosters a sense of independence and adulthood that I found to be markedly lacking while living on-campus. Stumbling out of bed and throwing on a free T-shirt and pajama pants and grumbling about waking up at 10am while you trudge fifty feet to your first class is not a lifestyle I wish to revisit.

There are logistic benefits and detractors, of course, but I think it all boils down to "don't shit where you eat." Your school should be school, your personal life should be your personal life, your job should be some job, and there should never be overlap between them. Your life should be a Swiss-Army knife with separate tools for every facet, not one tool that does everything shittily (read: a spork).

One of my favorite things about living off-campus is seeing the city everyday, particularly the marvelous homes and businesses in the Rice University area. I make a point to drive through the neighborhood west of campus on my way to work every day. The area is interspersed with little parks, two-story brick-and-mortar abodes for the UMC, and the tall, whitewashed walls of the occasional art deco mansion. Basically, I masturbate to the homes along Sunset and the Bissonnet corridor. Stuff white people like, indeed.

But there's no reason to feel guilty about admiring architecture. I think that big houses are a seminal building block of the American Dream-- they're something to want. A goal. A benchmark that might, one day, indicate that you've made it as far as you ever wanted.

That benchmark is sadly lacking from day-to-day on-campus life. Campus architecture isn't lacking, per se, but those buildings do not serve as any sort of motivator. They're not the potential containers of your four-member future family-- they're the dungeons where you toil away, trying to cram yourself with enough knowledge and good work habits to piss further than anyone else in Real World. Living off-campus affords one with daily reminders of what could be, without the jealousy that comes from being 35 and wishing you lived in a bigger place.

You can imagine it on the way to morning classes. You can bring your car to a complete stop at your favorite neighborhood intersection and look and suddenly feel your hand pushing open the ten-foot dark mahogany door to your dream home. You can feel the resilience of the brushed aluminum spiral staircase that leads to an upstairs foyer where you can look back and just barely see down into kitchen with the black marble countertops and matching appliances with the fridge that has a pull-out freezer and... oh Jesus, wait, I just peaked into the master bedroom. There's a small black telescope next to the floor-to-ceiling windows obscured by sliding-panel blinds. The bathroom is a brightly-lit orgy of authentic Mediterranean tile art, five massaging showerheads, this particular jacuzzi, and there are no faucets centered by the dual sinks-- just one knob at each basin that shoots a straight stream of water down from the ceiling. There's a dog in the backyard, barking, but it's hypoallergenic and can speak French. The baby crying down the hall quickly stops when you pull out your BlackBerry and reset his Baby Einstein tapes using the WebUI you developed to control everything on your property, including the turrets which automatically pelt intruders with pepper spray paintballs if they even look at your house crooked. The pepper spray washes out of the carpet easily because the carpet is coated in nano-particles that repel stains and prevent cancer and are worth more than a cinderblock of iridium. There is a sex swing in the master's second walk-in closet which is lined with rose petals and self-cleans in a fashion somewhat similar to today's ovens. Everything in the home is pained either black or white, and you own another one outside San Fransisco.

I think I want to start a business. And I didn't even have to talk about the entertainment system.

See? You're the one holding the steering wheel on this blind drive down the I-10 of life-- so where's the daily nudge to keep you from veering off into the food service industry? Mine is homes. Big, sexy homes that I see every day, because I live off-campus.

Rice and Baylor, BFF?

Finally! Something local to distract me from my unsubstantiated opinions about Sarah Palin!

Since no one has given me an inside scoop on why, how, or what in the world is good or bad about a Baylor/Rice merger, my one well-founded argument about this whole issue actually has nothing to do with the speculative partnership itself:

David Leebron, President of Rice University, really needs to learn how to talk to a student body.

I can't think of the last time he broke news to Rice's paying population in a way that respected their input at all. We are constantly bombarded with new buildings, new colleges, new construction, and changes to campus procedure either midway through the negotiation phase or after the fact. The Pavilion? The coffee shop inside the Pavilion? A complete restructuring of campus finances? Sacking the SAC in favor of a super-strict campus tour? The list goes on. Last time I checked that's not a great way to make people like you, no matter the power you wield.

Rice's students are already weary of Leebron's image-centric improvements to the campus. Some changes have turned out to be been pretty awesome-- like, I don't know, that new recreation center will probably be an improvement over the last one. But after the campus finance fiasco came to a head a few weeks ago, it felt implicit that Leebron would have no choice but to start announcing his future projects before they are fully mature.

And then this story breaks about a potential merger of convenience between Rice and the Baylor College of Medicine. In the Chronicle, of all places.

You know what the difference between a serf and a citizen is, right? Well, the student body's lack of input into the decisions that affect their $40,000/yr sheepskin dimplomas makes them less like Americans and more like Fudal Europeans. Actually, not only the student body, but faculty and employees as well. They must feel about as distant as a body of respected, tenured employees can possibly feel from the day-to-day decisions that affect their paychecks. Neat.

Rice and Baylor have the potential to collaborate and do some really awesome things together, like cure cancer or make candy that turns you into a giant blueberry or whatever the two schools could possibly do with their pooled resources. But the merger also comes with a possible financial detriment to their existing schools of study, an even-more rapid expansion of the campus population, and basically changing what Rice means to the world.

That's not something you just announce to the Rice community after beginning serious deliberations.

Knowing Leebron, the merger will happen. It's not too late to switch to Bioengineering, right?

Your coffee is better than my coffee (REDUX)

On April 25th, a team of suited-up somebodies tore the plastic wrap off of Rice's newest structural question mark. The Brochstein Pavilion is a huge glass box full of chairs and plasma TV's (sort of like the Situation Room) nestled between the RMC-- Rice's tiny little collection of shops and eateries-- and Fondren Library. I suppose the idea behind this huge glass box was to provide students a place to work and eat at the same time; something more formal than the RMC but less formal than the Library. But like any good idea that Rice's administration has ever squatted out of its brain-thorax, the Pavilion has conjured a huge and stupid mess of problems and bitchy, clever blog posts all over the Internets.

Problems? Enter Dirk's Coffee. It's not really Dirk's Coffee, though. Dirk was an Avant-Garde douchebag who sold all of his coffee to THE MAN a couple of years ago in order to fund his blossoming crank lab. Actually Dirk's Coffee is a rebranding of Dietrich's Coffee, which itself is a brand owned by Starbucks Coffee. Regardless of who actually owns the coffee, there is a circular kiosk that sells coffee inside the Pavilion which is, essentially, owned and operated by Starbucks. This would perhaps be the coolest and most indie thing ever, if...

• Starbucks was still indie, which it hasn't been since last Tuesday.
• Starbucks was still cool, which... eh. Whatever. I listen to Arcade Fire.
  
• They actually sold the good products that you like about Starbucks, like the Green Tea Frappuccino. But they don't, because they're branded as Dietrich's/Dirk's.
• WE DIDN'T ALREADY HAVE A COFFEEHOUSE.

Ladies and gentlemen, that's right! Rice already operates a full-time, student-run coffeehouse in the RMC. It's aptly called Rice Coffeehouse because it is the coffeehouse at Rice. While this concept of Rice Coffeehouse selling coffee to Rice students sounds pretty straightforward, apparently someone in the Administration's chain of command figured that this complex concept just didn't add up. So now we have two coffeehouses: Rice Coffeehouse and Dirk's Coffee. They operate within about 50 yards of one other.

I'm not going to point any fingers... no, fuck that, I am going to point some fingers. I guess the first finger is a sweeping one that slices through the entire student body, including myself. Why the fuck didn't we make a bigger ruckus when this was first reported? I know my reaction was something along the lines of "That's so stupid that it'll never happen." But I guess it's been proven time and time again that trusting administrative offices to conform to the rules of logic is sort of like leaving your kids with a babysitter named Josef Fritzl.

The next finger is for President Leebron. Don't get me started on how he "didn't have anything to do with the decision." He's the fucking president of the university. His office knows (or should damn well know) about every business that operates on this campus. While he may not have been sitting in a black robe waving his pale hands over a crystal ball trying to figure out how to cut more student jobs from the campus, the fact that the plan made it from start to finish without his intervention speaks to his priorities: Satan > University > Alumni Donations > His Wife Ping > Students > His Children.

Campus media, I'm going to half-raise a finger at you. There should have been a massive Save Coffeehouse campaign spearheaded via the Thresher and the Rice Standard. It seems that rather than taking a proactive stance on the issue, both publications sat back and waited for the stories to make themselves. Rather than affecting the issue, they cashed in on it, so to speak.

So what else is wrong with bringing Dirk's Starbucks Coffee to the big glass box? Oh, oh! I know! Let me enumerate the ways...

• Dirk's brings nothing new to the table. No 24-hour food solution, no hot meals, no student jobs, and basically nothing that students wanted to fill that Pavilion.
• It's not a Waffle House.
• Rice Coffeehouse has no way whatsoever to compete with Dirk's. In less than a year's time, corporate backing from Seattle will prove Dirk to be the winner in the coming price war between the two establishments. And besides, do you think Leebron + Co. are going to piss money into Coffeehouse or Dirk's?
  
• Popular opinion suggest that it's not that good.
• Did I mention that closing CH kills dozens of student jobs in favor of three full-time Dirk's employees that don't even go to Rice?
• The other non-Rice operated establishments on campus-- 13th Street Bakery and the Rice Bookstore (O&O by Barnes and Noble)-- are rackets that specialize in high prices and shit-poor service. I guess the University Copy Center is alright but, fuck, I'm sure I could find a complaint if I had a need for it.

If you're at all interested in supporting the effort to push Dirk out and move CH (or some other student-run business) into the Pavilion, see the link below.

I Refuse to Buy Coffee from the Brochstein Pavilion (Facebook)

Some things just aren't meant for print

Note: I pumped this out over the course of two hours a few days ago with the intention of submitting it to the student newspaper I've come to love so much. However, after facing the grim reality that it's too pompous and the very subject matter makes it unpublishable, I decided to slap it up on my blog instead. Enjoi!

As 2008 sheds the diaper of January and heads into the hormone-driven, lovey-dovey adolescence of February, you're probably noticing a shift in the student dynamic all around campus. Things seem more tense. Undergrads are pounding their fists and sharing some ill-toned sentiments at dinnertime. Graduate students trudge on per the usual, but that trudge has seems slightly affected by worldly happenings. Your Facebook account has probably become awash with invitations to support political candidates. That's right, kids: The election season is ramping up, and the very Thresher you're holding right now is bound to become a battleground of political nitpicking in the months to come. You may even become part of the madness.

But let me save you the trouble.

There's a certain clockwork mechanism to writing about politics and politicians during an election year. First you pick a topic, you write about it with varied degrees of fervor and one-sidedness, consider the opposing viewpoint for about two or three lines, and then dash it into freedom fries before your eloquent and thought-provoking send-off. Then you wait a week for some angry alumni or tenured professor to dash you to shreds using words so incredibly long, you'll wonder if they only teach them at the Ivies. Such is the process at every print institution in this nation, from the Podunk Press to the New York Times. And after you notice the doldrum process repeated article after article, election after election, you start to wonder as I have-- what's the point?

There is no point, besides maybe trolling the campus for attention. Take a look around you. We live in a world of instant information access, not a world of cheesy "I Like Ike" parade floats creeping through downtown with loudspeakers blaring campaign slogans. The age of the "elect this guy" political column came to an end after Al Gore plugged in the Internets so many ages ago. And likewise, the archaic concept of thoughtful political discussion has given way to armchair experts flinging quotes from their favorite blogs in order to sound smart. Today, people turn to blogs, web sites, iPhones, and even their make-believe online friends to decide which lever to pull on November Fourth. The decision is not made by the best-versed columnist or politico anymore, and perhaps that's a good thing.

This attitude towards political opinion applies most definitely at Rice. Consider the audience, for example. Professors and academic staff have been voting for the same party for the past fifty years. Likewise, students are pretty set when it comes to the issues that matter (i.e. drinking age, the right to carry firearms at school, whatever Ron Paul says) and had their minds made up months ago concerning which candidate to support. You can thank the Internet and national media outlets for starting campaign coverage back in 2005 and forcing opinions on us before we knew, say, anyone's actual stance on the issues. And don't forget that smart people, whether they're actually smart or just told they're smart by their friends, are usually some of the most thick-headed people you'll ever try to persuade. Good luck doing that in six hundred words.

So what's an op/ed page-- nay, the entire campus-- supposed to do with itself if one-sided, Crossfire-like bickering has become moot? There is such a thing as healthy political discussion, of course. It requires a mindset akin to a typical Rice student after a couple of drinks-- just enough to get them talking but not quite enough to get them shouting obscenities at their loved ones.

I believe this campus should spend less time worrying about which tuckus is going to fill the Oval Office throne come 2009 and more time reflecting upon what this country actually needs: Open minds, friendly spirits, and the return of the rational-thinking voter. Or we could all reflect on this campus' many needs: Communication between the administration and the student body before major construction projects are undertaken, a sense of identity that can hold tight in the wake of the Second Century speedboat, and, of course, a Waffle House.

HAVE A COMPETITION!

I'm suffering from writer's dump.

See, I go through these magically prolific periods of writing-- usually during breaks from school, etc-- where I spit out like five moderate-length pieces of prose that make me moderately proud. Then I dry up like a librarian's poo-nanner and the words, opinions, and topics no longer come to me so easily. And finally I arrive here, back on the old CN, hammering away and trying to painfully rebuild whatever construct my mind requires to get back into the writin' mood.

I think I've actually written about this same topic recently. Oh well, fuck it, I'm trying to repeat history anyways and get back in the groove.

But now I have deadlines. While I'm wasting my time masturbating to Election '08 coverage and avoiding life outside my apartment, I told the Thresher opinions editor that I'd have another 750er out by next Tuesday. I don't want to write about the election (yet) unless it's overall commentary on, say, my own personal obsession. But that's self-involved and I'm trying to avoid that.

Did you know that was the best argument the the people back in Panama City could come up with regarding my Squall Line thing? That it was just a giant ego-boosting pill for some emo'd up, libertarian-hating college student? Gosh, you'd think these people would know me better than that.

Ha!

I should make my article topic into some sort of contest. Like, KYLE'S TOPIC-A-THON. And if I pick the topic you suggest, I'll write you into my article! YEAH! Just like that contest I entered back when I was five to get drawn into an episode of Bobby's World!

Here's a few examples of things I would write about.

• Election
• Things that affect me or you at Rice
• Things that should affect me or you at Rice but don't (sort of already did that one)
• How the Rice Standard had a year to prove its worth, and failed
• How the Rice Thresher needs to incorporate a few elements from the Standard to clinch that last 2% of the campus that seems unhappy
• Why I hate libertarians
• Why you should hate libertarians
• Why I hate Ron Paul. Nevermind, too dangerous.
• Why militant internet support for a candidate just makes them look crazy IRL
• ELECTION
• Who are these stupid looking people in my PHIL and RELI classes? They're too small to be athletes, but they sit at the back of the class and yell the stupidest shit. And they look at me with judgmental eyes and it makes me just want to Indian Chief them with a pillow while they sleep.

You know, things like that.

I feel like this contest is too self-involved, too. So I'll say this: I'll kindly take your suggestion and in return, you'll have my humble gratitude. I guess I can write you in, too.

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.
  

But even if they did understand all that stuff and made strides towards fixing those few glaring problems, my main quibble with the Standard would still stand, which is:

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,

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

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...

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.

Dude, where's my turkey?

I had a lot of fun being divisive in high school. While many people remember me as "that smart guy who sported Hawaiian-print T-shirts that were way too big for his tiny, rounded shoulders," others may recall that I wrote some intense and politically-charged opinions that got circulated around the school and caused commotion. But those days are over and I'm not just talking about my wardrobe.

I'm too unsure of myself to be 100% argumentative these days. College does that to you, as does trying to be as open-minded as possible. And being a giant pussy-- I'm sure someone would have pointed that out if I hadn't written it myself. I sporadically toiled over my magical cauldron this past week, throwing participles and historically relevant jokes into the brew and hoping that a noteworthy opinion column for the Thresher would inch its way out. Something came out, all right, but when I hold it against my writings of old...

I don't know. It's a winner, this new column. I'm still going to publish it. But I miss the days when I could stand firm on top of a highly offensive, blatantly one-sided liberal wankfest and laugh, ears covered, going "lalalalala" at the conservative-minded denizens of Panama City Beach trying to argue with me.

And though I do miss those days, I dare not return to them now. This is Rice University and not a high school in the Bible Belt. The conservatives around here know how to rip you a new asshole on the "Letters to the Editor" page, relentlessly, even when they know they're wrong. What did Nick Naylor say in Thank You for Smoking? Something about how winning arguments means never being wrong. I don't remember, I was too busy watching him hump Katie Holmes and thinking about humping Katie Holmes for the next five days.

And that brings me to the fun part about being published in print. No, not all the sex with Katie Holmes. The fun part about writing to a print publication is that your entire argument has to be spelled out and every end tied up. You don't get a chance to debate every person who takes issue with your opinion, unlike the Internet which basically exists for that purpose.

So we will see how this next article is received by the masses. Those troubled masses yearning to be free from, uh, things. If I had to guess which quote they're going to pull to stylistically eat up page revenue, it would be...

"Rice activism and involvement begins and ends with the "Join Group" link next to your favorite cause on Facebook."

See you in the funny papers.

[Note: Before you criticize the grammar and punctuation in a list-form comment, I've noticed that NO ONE has been blogging lately. At least no one I like. I'm sort of drowning in the flames of my own personal Google Reader hell. So before you go tearing down my fake empire of literary supremacy, I suggest you try being prolific and entertaining so I can rip your world to shreds :-)]

[Actually, I take that back. I love comments. Give me attention in any form.]

Heroic in an age of modernity

You know what's great? When prolific writers write about their writers' block and call it writing. Like me, for example, pulling at hairs and strings and looking under rocks and nooks and crannies for anything that might actually get me worked up enough to be entertaining. I've been eager to author another one of those trademark columns for the Thresher since I finished penning the last one.

Then suddenly, I stopped being pissed off about anything remotely interesting. I doubt the entire campus and all those parents with $50/year subscriptions to the rag want to read my insight on why ELEC classes are giving me IBS or how sleeping fifteen hours on Saturday is a good substitute for exercise. And besides the lack of creative ideas, the old standby topics seem more cliche than ever. I feel like I overdid politics in high school to the point that I never want to cover a presidential election again.

Any asshole can write about how Barack Obama will ride down on a chariot and save America from itself, or how evil Bush is, or whatever the Typical College Opinion is this hour. And likewise, Ron Paul is too popular and too easy of a target to warrant my attention in the print forums. If I dashed the Internet phenomena that is Ron Paul (and by the way, that's all he is besides old and crazy) in the Thresher, I'd get to read about fifty letters to the editor in the next issue from unrealistic, skinny armchair libertarians ready to eat foie gras out of my skull.

That's right. Ron Paul is below me. Now go cry.

Campus popularity, recognition, and all that stuff that strokes my ego (and compensates for my penis size) doesn't come from attacking national issues. Or state issues. You win the hearts and minds of a campus by sticking to local issues, uniting your audience against a common foe that's trying to quash "us" little guys. Like hunger, as was my column last time. The problem is that, on the whole, there's not a lot to bitch about at Rice. At least nothing that has personally affected me lately.

I guess the root of said problem is that Rice doesn't do a lot of stuff "wrong." But it could be doing more "right," which is a columnist's nightmare, since you end up sounding like a blond toothpick with a laundry list of demands rather than a scruffy-headed, objective cynic when you write about problems.

Okay, I thought of some random shit to droll on about, so I can stop acting like an authority on the subject of writing. Here's a funny picture to aid in the transition.

Har har.

So college is all about obsessions. Don't argue, let's just agree that the basis-- the underlying truth-- is that college is about obsessions and sorting through them to define your personality. Some people obsess over movies, bongs, going to the gym, speed cubing, hacky sack, or whatever. People have obsessions, and college lets us explore them.

My latest obsession is the Sopranos. It's about as healthy as any obsession, really. It's changing my mode of thinking and the way I talk and the jokes I make on any given occasion. It's a fun show; it helps me get in touch with my inner sociopath without having to weight down all those dead bodies and throw them in storm drains. What really surprises me more than anything, though, is that no one prior to this year thought to say "Hey Kyle, you might really like this show." It seems like I actually am the last person to find out about it, but hey, that just means I can appreciate it without the added pressure of being up-to-date and such.

Sometimes I wish my obsessions would lead me down a clearer career path. I can't make an EE job out of grilling cheese steaks and watching Heroes. Those are things to do in my spare time, not a viable gold mine to support two kids and my suburban fantasy world where I derive sexual gratification from owning multiple iPhones.

I did catch myself dreaming up different types of UAV projects I could do for a senior design project while sitting in class today. That's the kind of thing that my future military employer would salivate over.

Now comes the hard part: Action.

Salut.

I've gone introvert

It's been a over week, I know. I actually have four half-written posts sitting in the drafts purgatory. The funny this is that I get about halfway through writing something really funny for thought-provoking, then decide that the idea is stupid or that I'm not spending enough time crafting it into a feature worth reading. I've also tried twice to write a follow-up article for the Thresher only to discover that I'm not really mad about anything enough to warrant a 750-word feature. At least anything campus-wide.

I've hated parties lately. Why do I hate parties lately? Maybe it's the fact that I'm not running them. Maybe it's the certainty of knowing I'm going to be alone at the end of the night. Maybe it's not just being alone but watching everyone else be so damn happy while I'm not. It's all so tedious. You sit around for four hours grinding your teeth and making fake smiles into cameras, talking to the same six people over the course of the night and hoping that maybe someone put something pharmacological in the punch so you won't remember anything the next morning. Or maybe that's just me.

I've thought about NOD, and how I'm either skipping it altogether or... well, I don't know. Parties are starting to piss me off something awful. Parties are the dynamic I thrived on for two years at Rice and now I'm just about sick of them. NOD is the worst party for me in this sense. I can't dress up all naked like the rest of campus because I have the body of your decrepit old uncle, I'm not in the market to carry some drunk Asian girl back to my apartment at the end of the night, and the theme sucks this year. Plus a good number of my friends will be gone at Voodoo Music Fest. I might as well just sit at home and count the number of sharp objects I could use to go emo on my wrists.

No, no, Kyle. Don't talk about how parties make you mad. Parties make everyone else happy. Saying you hate parties is like personally insulting everyone who reads your blog for the off-chance that you'll connect with the one or two people in the world that might agree.

Fine. Bullet-points.

• Heroes sure is awesome.
• Weeds is getting a little weird for my taste.
• But I'll still watch it.
• My computer needs... I need a new computer.
• Fuck you.
• Fuck you.
• You're cool.
• Why am I in such a bad mood?

It was the best of times, it was...

My first two years at Rice can be summed up as follows: take a diverse group of top-tier high school grads, throw them in a two-by-two box with a bunch of booze and a few digital cameras, and watch as they try to kill each other in the most roundabout, socially passive-aggressive ways possible. I mean, fuck, it's college. As such, Rice offers students many, many opportunities to see their peers at their worst. I don't necessarily mean that you get to watch them spewing vomit upwards like a geyser in the middle of your common room at 5AM on a Tuesday, though you do get to see plenty of that, too.

I'm talking about the shouting matches. The 3AM-and-I-must-be-lonely blues. The crying and the heartbreak and the depression. The idle punches at brick walls and the soccer balls kicked high into the sun-scorched branches of the trees, just to ruin some poor squirrel's day. The "you don't give a shit about anything but your fucking flag football game and your XBox," and the ensuing make-up sex that shakes the entire building. I've seen it all.

Except I haven't, and that's the point. I used to think that the real hipsters on campus were the ones that had their moments of brooding and heartache and even a tinge of anger. The ones that weren't happy all the time. Those were the kids everyone wanted to connect to, or so I thought. Not the real emo kids or the ones with the Invader Zim lunchboxes, but the ones with the pinstripe vintage suits and an ironic T-shirts.

But then I up and found out that it's all a lie. As time went on, the real harbingers of the social scene were the ones that never took a stand. It's easy to be liked when you don't show anything but your drunk face. The ones that never got depressed or never made a girl cry-- they are the real champions.

The startling conclusion I reached on this otherwise stupid train of thought was that I actually have friends who never get angry. Ever. Or at least they never show it. I have friends who never seem to be sad or depressed or upset or anything besides jovial. It's creepy, I know, but what's creepier is that I never actually considered them to be shallow people. Just happy people. I envied them from afar, not only because everyone thought they were cool but because they honestly seemed content.

And not a hateful envy, like when your neighbor gets an iPhone and you've still got a RAZR and all you want to do is pin Steve Jobs' corpse to their mantle with a nailgun. Nothing like that. I'm talking about the envy you feel when you see two brothers at Target playing cowboy in the toy aisle with plastic guns still wrapped in cardboard and you just wish you could have that simplicity in your life. You wish you could go back.

Of course, everyone at Rice gets mad. That was just a gross generalization from my twisted perspective. The ones who keep it together are the ones who reap the social harvest.

And from all this, we can learn. Or I can learn, and you can play along by reading my blog. Thinking about how people seemed content, whether they actually are or not, I realized that a good deal of my own self-inflicted agony torment depression problem-stuff stems from refusing to be content. You know-- always thinking that there's something better around the corner, and all I have to do is completely change my life-plan in order to make it work.

But I'm working on it. Feeling content, not changing my life-plan.

Ego-inflating week!

I've been basking in the stench of my own petard for the past ten days. It's pretty ridiculous, really. Starting with that Standard parody and followed by my campus-uniting Thresher article, I've been getting five times the daily recommended dosage of positive hippie vibes. Random-ish people around campus are stopping to shake my hand and congratulate me on a job well done. Not-so-random people are even taking the time to berate me for being a total jerk on the Internet. Couple that with a hearty serving of, oh, INTERPOL last Tuesday and you've got a Big Kid's Ego Meal, complete with fries, a soft drink, and a little toy that tells me that I'm special.

I mean, I'm still lethargic and sarcastic and all those other, darker things you love about me. I'm just smiling ear to ear on the inside. And now I'm synonymous with Waffle House. Who could honestly ask for more?

I could and I will. I need a new laptop.

Look, I know my laptop works fine. But two years is a long time; everyone knows that after two years everything dies, including children and relationships and weblogs. My laptop is starting to spew and sputter. Nothing that a good memory replacement and maybe a new hard drive couldn't fix but, honestly, that's really not the only problem I'm having with it. The problem is that when I bought my laptop two years ago, I wasn't thinking about practical considerations such as, oh, size. My mindset has shifted from "I bet I can watch movies on this thing with COLLEGE GIRLS with BOOBS and FRUITY LIPGLOSS," to "I really wish I could take this thing to class and play on FACEBOOK so I can waste time until SUBSTANCE ABUSE." So the really bright, fifteen-inch screen isn't really necessary anymore.

And such is the story of growing up-- worrying more about practical considerations than how Secretary will look from the foot of your single-sized bed. This is why everyone over forty is sexless and hateful.

So what I need is a little thirteen-inch sumbitch. I was thinking that the newer generation of Asus W7S laptops look pretty fucking stellar. Something that will fool my friends into thinking I bought a Macbook Pro until I open it up and it's running some backfucked version of Vista. Something in glossy black. Or glossy white. I'm sort of up in the air on that issue.

Or I could tough it out. BE A MAN.

I had my entire way of life summarized as being "morally reprehensible" the other day. I better run to my blog and complain about it! Quick, someone, tell me I'm special!

Oh, wait, I have a button for that. It's called "Publish Post."

Bring me a latte and a healthy dose of cynicism

So I wrapped up a column for the Thresher, watched the National play live from ACL over the little AT&T webcast thingy, and had my traditional Chipotle brunch. I love how Sundays default to being the most productive days of my week. I mean, it's because I spend my Saturdays face-down in my jersey sheets just like every other party-thirsty, off-campus hipster at Rice.

Ah, the party-thirsty hipsters. My friends.

This is one of those really cryptic, strange and lofty sort of posts. The kind that will piss off the three people who get it and confuse the other two people who read my blog.

If you bitch about your friends on your blog, but no one reads it except your friends, does anyone but your girlfriend yell at you? A question for the ages indeed.

They built a house made of empty beer cans on a rounded foundation of keg shells and now it's falling down around them. I'm watching all of this from my single perched high above the museum district. I hold my hands folded behind my back, wincing as the bombs planted over two years ago explode in the faces of the people I hold nearer than anyone else on this Earth. And it hurts to know I'm not immune. The most apt people in this country-- the top one percent of the population-- are just as susceptible to life's dramatics as the stupidest one percent.

I've seen this before.

Not only are they just as susceptible but, honestly, they behave just the same. Because your conscious mind can only go so far in protecting you from all those other body parts that completely fuck your life up. You know, mainly the genitals and the heart, or some twisted combination of the two, or mistaking one for the other. We're all stupid and guilty, and that doesn't fix a thing.

"Never trust your party friends. Your party friends are the least loyal, most selfish people you'll ever meet."
-Allen

Now would be the time to grow some character instead of defining it through the obscurity of the music you listen to, or the size of your boobs, or how many shots you can down in less than ten minutes, or money, or anything. Character is just actions convolved with situations.

I guess that's all I really had to say. I'll leave you with this applicable stanza from my favorite non-war-related poem, with apologies to Elliot.

Remember us—if at all—not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men

And isn't it ironic, dontchathink?

I think it's funny how I always expect the big days of my life to offset all the shitty little ones. Yesterday, Dis-O, was no exception. It's not like I necessarily had high hopes about the day or anything in particular, I just wanted to walk away from it with a better taste in my mouth than when I arrived. After all, I've been working hard these past few weeks. I deserved something to go my way.

No such luck.

It all started well enough, anyways. But by the time 11pm rolled around, I had been stood up by so many of my friends on so many different occasions that I was pretty much ready to break into the registrar's office, pull my file, cash in my tuition, and start a new life up in northern California. I felt so taken for granted. Not included. On the backburner.

I have this sense that the general feel of last night is going to play heavily into my attitude for the rest of the semester. I'm no longer excited about anything. I feel like school is just another form of work, complete with a spectrum of people surrounding you that range from funny and tolerable to evil and two-faced. Except school requires me to use my brain in place of my biceps.

I needed Dis-O to be fun, and it was for the first few hours. The new freshman class at Rice is promising as ever. But after none of your friends call you for six or seven hours and everyone else is running around high on hormones and Hennessey and you just need one person to come rescue you from yourself and it doesn't happen... well, you get the point.

Ah, let's see... I need to talk about something more positive so people don't get all "OMG R U OK" on me. I followed through with my Sunday lunchtime tradition today by driving down to Chipotle and having a barbacoa burrito with everything on it. I read the Houston Press and felt like I could easily walk into their office with a printed copy of my blog and get a job on the spot.

I think it's pretty absurd that the mainstream newspaper in Houston-- the Chronicle-- is actually a liberal paper while the the Press seems to be falling into a more and more conservative bias. I mean, it's fucking Houston. You'd figure that the Chron would be run by cowboy meth addicts who carry around six-shooters and lynch black people after church on Sunday. And you'd figure that the alternative press in Houston would be run by liberals so far out on acid that they were fired from their jobs as at the Austin Chronicle.

Nevertheless, it's my tradition to sit there and read the sardonic wit of Richard Connelly as he talks about such Houston mainstays as ferret owners and corroded sewer pipes that pump oil refinery waste into your bidet. And they have This Modern World and The City, which is cool.

It's important to have traditions that you can adhere to when the rest of the world is busy hitting on guys and girls and tripping on mushrooms, metaphorically of course. There's something about a huge, disgusting burrito, a cold Dr. Pepper, and an alternative press rag that can inspire even me to get out of bed in the morning.

Big bites of summer, now devoured

Ah, let's see. I don't even know where to start.

I guess I'll start with what's fresh in my mind. I re-read Less Than Zero on the plane ride back from Orlando last night. It's not like it's my favorite book. I mean, it's very much non-plot driven and basically exists to shock the reader into understanding why contemporary society is bullshit, as is the case for most of Bret Easton Ellis's work. But like I've mentioned before, that book has an eerie connection to me. Every page seems to strike a chord with some facet of my life.

Like the idea that you can feel nothing for... weeks. That you can go days and days without giving a shit. Or that maybe you are feeling, it's just on a completely different level than anyone else can possibly understand. Ellis gets it. No one else gets it, but he pens it as I feel it. Or don't feel it, you know.

And then there's the whole hating your hometown thing. I've lived so many nights back in Panama City Beach just like Clay lives his nights back in LA. I've lived them fast, substance abound, staring out from the corner of a really nice house onto a hardwood floor teeming with people I swore I'd never speak to again. It's weird to think that there are people out there like me who sip their beer with complete contempt for everything, wanting nothing more than to be back at the college that welcomes them with open arms.

You might as well turn the clock from early 80's to 2007, rename Clay to Kyle, and move the story from LA to PCB. Seriously. So yeah, if you want a little insight into my internal dialog and what it's like for me on Christmas breaks, pick up a copy of Less Than Zero and give it a whirl.

I've been on two trips since we last spoke. I made a New England trip to see Allee and see all the sights and sounds of New York and Philly. Every time I go back up north, I'm reminded why I'm so lucky to be at Rice. The air is static and dry up north, with everyone you pass on-edge and waiting to pounce. Everyone is just dying to use that trademark New York/Philly vernacular to hit you with curse words you've never heard before. I'll take the down-home, blue-collar southern feel of Houston over that crap any day. But it was still a fun experience. Me and Allee hit up all the places in NYC worth hitting up, I got to ride a train, and I ate a big fat cheese steak at Gino's.

Then after a week or two of straight-up IT at Rice and finishing my summer math class, I traveled down to Orlando to see my brother and assist as best I could with his move-in. We hit up Magic Kingdom and just generally had a good time. I guess my biggest regret is not getting to spend any one-on-one time with him; we were a group of people the entire time. Hopefully he'll come visit me here in Houston now that I'm not living in the world's only multifunction nightclub slash cesspool slash warzone (you know, the WRC 90's). But I was actually pretty bummed when I left.

The next two weeks are guaranteed to be a little bit like hell on earth. I've got to start pulling overtime in order to amass the cash I need to make it through the year. And everyone's coming back to Houston, which means my able-bodied arms are going to be loaded down with bookcases and boxes and anything else that people need toted about.

I need to clean my apartment. I need to Swiffer and dust and I need to do dishes. I need to put things in their places. I need to start working out and I need to shave more often. I need to start taking things more seriously in my life and get in touch with reality.

Disappear here.

A prolific and housebroken college junior

You know what I like? Big, boldface, capitalized words that denote the theme of the next couple paragraphs. Monolithic motherfuckers that really let you know what you're reading about.

MUSIC

The word on the street is that Interpol has a new album coming out next month. Now, you'd figure that I'd be all over that shit like Pete Doherty at an all-you-can-eat heroin buffet. The truth is that I'm not exactly excited as much as I am anxious and a little worried. Let me walk you through it.

Interpol is like my cute, well dressed and New York-y baby. I was honestly into them before anyone else back during my freshman year of high school. Hell, I'm listening to them right now. I've grown through the most crucial years of my life jamming to their catalogue, including bootlegs of concerts and shitty-quality B-sides. Turn On The Bright Lights was like the soundtrack to my life sophomore year. I made it a downright ritual to open my Friday and Saturday evenings with "Untitled" before I actually got to any parties. It's such a noir soundtrack to those weekends that run late, with overtones of love lost and the darker, more brooding side of music that I love so much.

Then Antics came out my senior year. I was probably way too excited for that album because, though I listened to it just as much as TOTBL, it didn't quite connect as well to my life at the time. I was experiencing the heartaches of my first big breakup and what I really needed (or maybe not needed, but wanted) was a darker TOTBL. Some real sulk-in-the-corner shit. Instead I was greeted with something a lot more upbeat, with Paul forgoing the darkness of baritone vocals for something else. I liked it but... meh. I guess I was slightly disappointed-- not by the music but by the way the music should have connected to me. Though on the plus side, it did cheer me up a lot better than listening to "Dust in the Wind" on repeat.

And here comes their newest album. I hear the first single is already flying around the P2P world, but I'm just not motivated to give it a listen. I feel like I honestly do respect this band more than a casual download. I'm actually going to wait until the release date, buy the CD, and listen to it in its intirety like the indie fuck I am. I just hope that Interpol dishes me something that I can connect with this time around.

Speaking of sophomore and junior albums...

• I haven't really connected with Boxer as well as I did Sad Songs for Dirty Lovers and Alligator. I've also started masturbating to the thought of seeing the National at ACL this year.
  
• I can't get into A Weekend in the City, either, but I earhumped the dreadlocks off of Keke and Bloc Party back when Silent Alarm came out.
• Spoon has a new album coming out, too, but for some reason I genuinely love their entire catalog. I'm not too worried about their new business.
• Has it really been a year since Black Holes and Revelations came out? Matt Bellamy, you sure know how to make catchy music that never gets old.
• Modest Mouse's newest album? Like every other Modest Mouse album-- two or three catchy singles and a bunch of other songs to space out to while you're driving. Be careful, Isaac, or your side project might actually become better than your supposed claim to fame. Just ask Ben Gibbard what that's like. Death Who For What? You mean that guy from the Postal Service?

Now let's talk about

THE ESPLANADE

My AC now works. Didn't cost me anything to get it fixed, either. I called the maintenance hotline, placed a work order over the phone, and they did their magic while I was at Kroger. So now I have AC and more on-sale canned chili than my poor toilet could ever handle.

Here's a funny story. Really funny. So I went to Time Warner to pick up my cable modem nonsense exactly a week ago. In the package was the modem, cords, Laffy Taffy, and everything but the technician they TOLD me that I'd need over the phone that I'd need. So I ask the nice secretary at the desk if I need to go ahead and schedule an appointment. I've never had Time Warner service, and the leasing office told me that in order to get cable service I'd need a technician to flip a few switches in the Cable TV closet down the hall. And she's all like "No, don't worry about it. Those things are amazing! Plug them right into your cable TV outlet and they work!" Right. So I ask her if she's sure I don't need an appointment with a technician, and she assures me that the magic Internet leprechauns will find my modem and give me high-speed porn as soon as I plug the damn thing in. Okay.

So I get back to my place and plug the modem in and-- would you guess-- the "cable" light on the modem is blinking in such a way that all the blood vessels in my eye burst open. I blindly dial up Time Warner tech support to hear the guy on the end of the line, Kenny, tell me that I do need an appointment and that they actually did schedule me one when I went in to get the modem. Strange? Yeah. But they won't be available until Friday. That's fine, I think to myself. I can go a few more days without the Internet.

Friday rolls around. The word from Kenny is that my technician will be rolling in between eight in the morning and noon. I wake up and make myself decent enough to answer the door, watching early morning talk shows to kill the time. The View is really lacking without Rosie, I notice to myself. Then I realize that it's 11:45 and no one has called or anything. So I call up Time Warner tech support again. This time another guy answers and tells me that Kenny actually CANCELED my appointment when I called last time, with a note that said the appointment wasn't necessary. Strange? Yeah.

So this guy, suddenly realizing that there's been a big mistake made, decides to bump someone's Monday appointment so that I can see a technician ASAP. I wade through the weekend without Google Reader or gossip blogs or Facebook or any of the things that make life worth living. And yesterday, I finally got the Internet set up. But you know what the technician said before he left?

"You know, they could have done all of this over the phone."

...the more things stay the same.

You know the feeling-- your balls hug up against the bottom of your stomach, your heart beats like the drums on the first day of middle school band class, and you mind jumps to every single moment during the past semester where you decided to watch I <3 New York.

Esther's Wrath is what I'd call it. You'd call it something else, depending on your college's student management site is called. Mine's called Esther.

It's masochism, how often I've checked my final grades between exams and now. I know what I should do is just wait until the grade submission deadline to peek at those negative letters. After all, the work has all been turned in. The deed is done. There's nothing left to do but wait until the dose hits the tubes, yet I torture myself by F5ing the hell out of the "Spring 2007 Final Grades" page from the last day of exams onward.

But despite my utter addiction to that split-second cocktail of fear and regret, my grades are back.

Subject	Course	Course Title	Final Grade	Attempted	Earned	GPA Hours
ELEC	220	FUNDAMENTALS OF COMPUTER ENGINEERING	B-	4.000	4.000	4.000
ELEC	242	FUNDAMENTALS OF ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING II	B-	4.000	4.000	4.000
ELEC	262	INTRODUCTION TO WAVES AND PHOTONICS	B	3.000	3.000	3.000
ELEC	391	PROFESSIONAL ISSUES IN ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING	A	1.000	1.000	1.000
ENGL	175	GLOBAL LITERATURES IN ENGLISH	P	3.000	3.000	0.000

I think I'm doing pretty well to have B's and A's attached to my transcript this semester. It was another set of months that brought challenges both socially and academically, and each set would have been quite enough work on its own. But I pulled through and proved that once again, I can't be an atheist because there's some mighty power pushing me towards success.

I guess I could think of this semester as the entirety of Seinfeld. If anyone remembers the first and last episodes of the series, they'll recall that the show ends on the same joke as it started. My joke of a GPA also hasn't budged... I actually got the perfect combination of grades to keep the damn thing from going up or down.

But wait, I take that back. I hate people that frown on me for having a GPA .04 below 3.0. You know what a 3.0 is at Rice? It's an 85% success rate in your classes, exactly. You know what a 2.96 is? It's like... something. I don't know, I've turned my math brain off for the next couple weeks. But you know what I'm saying. I'm not doing dismal at all.

So once again, I've pulled it out of my ass. With a little help from my friends.

Thanks, friends. Really.

Standard Procedure: Things Get Graphic

I was frustrated. I knew there had to be a juicer scoop at the Rice Standard than the personal ads. I mean, this rag was low. They would publish just about anything to please their advertisers, I thought to myself as I kicked a soda can across the alleyway behind the Mudd building. It was dark with nothing but those god-awful sodium incandescents beating down from poles in the parking lot. I was thinking about what my next move would be. And suddenly it dawned on me-- personal ads are small time. If I could expose the sleazy companies that are really putting big bucks behind the Standard, I'd be a campus hero. Hell, maybe even a voting district hero. And maybe people would realize what I'd known all along.

Of course, the print ads that would be funding the next issue of the Standard would not be sitting on some broad's desk like the personal ads. This was going to take some serious social engineering beyond my scope. Luckily, that's why I have a roommate.

Louie was happy to oblige me in my quest to screw with the Standard. For two days I didn't see or hear from him. Then, on the third night, he burst into the room with his shirt in shreds and his face covered in ant bites. He was obviously very tired and somewhat drunk.

"Put these up, now!" he screamed under a hoarse voice, pushing a memory stick in my face. I snatched the item from his hands and slammed it into my laptop. Louie recoiled in the corner, crying by himself. Poor bastard would never be the same again. I shudder every time I think about what he must have done to get those ads for me.

So remember my roommate's sacrifice as you glance over today's feature...

The Rice Standard's Print Ads!

Libertarians? In MY vagina? It's more likely than you think.


Speaking of Fair Tax... Oh, wait, we weren't talking about the Fair Tax, were we?


Rogues do it from behind. Not that I would understand that joke or anything.


Campus apathy used to make me feel bad, but I just don't care anymore.


Probably a sign of the apocalypse. Or that God exists just to hate me.

Rice has more magazines than Nobel Laureates

I was perusing Facebook earlier today when I noticed that in the past few hours, over a hundred students have joined a group in support of Open - Rices first literary sex magazine (Facebook members only, sorry) . For those who can't read it, let me just post the group's description in its entirety...

Open will represent the multitudes of Rice student’s perspectives about sex in addition to featuring informative articles, opinion essays, poems, fiction, photography, art, polls and interviews. The title Open conveys our goal of encouraging healthy dialogue and open-minded discussions about a topic that is too important and relevant to leave societal influence to pop culture and media alone. Open will fill the void and encourage students to learn from each other while stimulating the intellectually open environment that college is all about.

Join the group if you support Open!

For those of you who live in Fairmont, Washington and have no idea why this is strange, let me give you a little context. Rice University has more media outlets than it needs, including...

• The Rice Thresher: a student-run newspaper with interesting news
• The Rice Standard: an independent student magazine for pompous rich kids with better tastes in music than me, apparently.
  
• Rice News: a faculty newspaper with boring academic hullabaloo
• The Rice Review (aka R2): an annual literary magazine that hits you like Don DeLillo's cricket bat
• Other semi-annual publications that no one cares about.

I hate to rain on everyone's parade-- I really do-- but this is getting a little fucking ridiculous. It seems like if there's a group of ten people with similar interests these days, they have their own magazine. Today, Open. Tomorrow? THE RICE BOWL, for Rice's stoner population. Or maybe RICE MONSTER TRUCK QUARTERLY. And if you're going to argue that everyone cares about sex, I could just as easily draft up an issue of The Rice Ice Cream Review, because everyone loves to jam on some Ben and Jerry's. Sometimes it's better than sex.

It's fairly obvious why this is happening: People want to circumvent the editorial process. Maybe it's because they feel like the editors of the Thresher are closed-minded. Maybe it's because they feel more important than the editorial process. Or maybe, JUST MAYBE, they crave attention.

Here's an idea for the founding members of Open-- save yourself a couple grand and weeks worth of hard work and instead collaborate. Write for the Standard if you want to talk about something that the Thresher won't touch. They'll publish it. They love publishing shit like that. Or get a blog. Winners seem to have blogs.

I remember when the Thresher had a sex columnist. The founders of Open wouldn't remember this because it was last year and they're all ego eager freshmen. It ran for like two issues before interest dwindled to nil. News flash: No one wants to read about the great sex you're having with your boyfriend. Unless it's in Hustler Fantasies, in which case you're not exactly talking about Rice students anymore. Nor does anyone at this university care about sex tips. Either you're not having it because it's a personal (and moderately respectable, though not holier-than-thou) choice, or you're having as much as you care to have and you aren't going to take tips from someone else.

I shudder to think of how they're going to fill this publication, too. Unless it's less of a magazine and more of a folded 14" by 11" piece of paper. I mean, I actually know how they're going to do it because it's a student publication and it's going to be like a niche version of the Standard. They're going to get two students who consider themselves artists to fill about two pages with sexually-themed, "liberating" artwork. Then they're going to have at least two fiction stories about sex, editorial columns about sex, and then they'll publish the worst letters to the editor to refute dissenting opinions and glorify themselves. Maybe there will be funny cartoons on the back.

I'm not threatened by a magazine about sex, though I have a feeling that most (if any) protest to this up-and-coming publication will be from Rice's Christian/right-wing (same thing) population. Which is dumb. Someone could print a 30-page glossy about bestiality for all I care.

What I do care about is a flagrant misrepresentation of this campus's interests and students. The undergraduate population isn't begging for an entire magazine about sex. The public is going to interpret this as gross and unnecessary and it's going to reflect poorly on everyone. And all because a few people decided they want to express the sexuality that they've doubtlessly known for a few years of their life.

Like I said-- if you have something worthwhile to say about sex, hand it to the editor of the Thresher or the Standard. Don't just circumvent the process of editorial review because you think you're more important.

If you have to say something that no one cares about, write about it on your website.