Wow, I suck at this whole blogging thing. I’m actually rather amazed that I remembered how to access the backend of MT still and what my username and password was. Shocking.
I know I’ve said it before, and I’m sure I’ll say it again, but the whole reason I put this thing together was so I could write stuff down about my life so that when my brain turns to goo (or really, turns into more goo than it already is) I could sit down and reflect upon my musings from when I was still but a 20something. So that’s what I’ll sit down and do, at least for the moment.
Yeah, that’s another thing. I’m old now. Ooooold. 25 years old. 1/4 century old. I think 25 is only slightly less of a big deal than 20 was. I’m now half way to thirty, and by no means ready for that. And yes, 20 was a big deal, not 21. 21 was just about getting sloshed. Saying I was 20 for the first time was ODD. I was no longer a teenager, I was now (then) and 20something. Now I’m even more of a 20something, now I’m in the 25-34 age demographic, no longer in the hip and cool demographic all the marketers want.
And with that age, I’m finally finishing my edumacation. To think that I graduated high school 7 years ago now. And better yet, my little (11 years my junior) sister is just starting high school, and will be able to operate a motor vehicle before I know it. Further proof that I’m old. But alteast I’m almost edumacated. 1 lone semester left after a mad dash through the entire civil engineering program in three and a half years. Minors be damned. That first year of college (the one when I failed out) be damned too.
I won’t lie, that was probably the best and worst year of my life. Worst, because I failed out of school, and had to deal with my parents and the school on that matter. Best, because the reason I was failing was that I stopped doing homework, and then stopped attending classes, and then stopped taking tests about half way through each semster. So I had a lot of free time. I also had the greatest freshman dorm wing EVAR!@#!@#.
Yes, that emphasis is truly justified, the wing was awesome. It’s amazing that so many random people could be shoved into one space (Alumni 4 East, woo woo!) and get along so well. My roommate (Mike Heuser) was cool (and the only Physical Education/Training major to survive the program at Valpo, and then went on to get his masters in Physical Therapy), my RA (Brian McElwain) was cool, even when we broke his room. Everyone was just chill.
Well, except for me and Snausage, we were both maniacal, but otherwise, everything was cool. Ah Snausage, or Jason Randall to the lay man, Snausage being what his roommate, Nate Ruhter called him. Hong Kong Nate was cool too, having lived in Hong Kong (but born in Fort Wayne, Indiana if memory serves) had alllll the coolest gadgets, the most memorable being a mini disc player/recorder and a Dr. Nintendo that allowed pirated games to be loaded from a cd-rom unit that attached to the bottom of an Asian N64. The only problem for us was that no one had an Asian N64; we just had US N64’s. I don’t remember at this point if Nate didn’t have an Asian N64, had left it behind, or if it had broken, but for some reason, I do remember being a party to taking a screw driver and a lighter to the bottom of a US N64 to mangle the bits of plastic that were interfering the Dr. Nintendo. Nate also had precocious amounts of cds, each loaded with multiple games, all the standard international releases (Smash Brother’s and Golden Eye were eternal favorites), as well as the crazy ass all in Cantonese/Japanese/etc games, some of which appeared to be dating sims, which were especially entertaining when we had NO idea what was going on, and why this, that and the other things were happening.
The N64 that we had to maul was Brendan Aaron’s, who also had the banging (did I really just use that word?) entertainment setup, complete with surround sound speakers screwed into the trim around the closets. Brendan was also owner of the Mexican whooping bat, which was a pole of indiscriminate length covered with “Mexican” artwork, used to beat people silly. Unfortunately, the stick is no more, as it was chewed to death by his buddy’s dog at one point. Brendan (along with Brian, my RA) was a frequent victim of my shenanigans, including one incident that involved me stealing his computer (just the tower) and carting it off to my room, being told by Brendan to put it back, putting it back, and then stealing and sprinting down the hall with his gynormous 19”? CRT monitor, laughing evilly the entire time.
Then there was Brendan’s roommate, Denis Flac, who had to put up with all the sheninigans (which were generally well received on his part, as they happened to his roommate, not him), and for a brief time (a semester) had a radio show on the campus stations (WVUR) by the name of Iggy and Otar, on at some god-awful time, I know it was 2-4 am, but I can’t remember exactly what day it was on. I want to say early Saturday mornings. It was actually the first place my buddy’s music (Smellicanesis, aka Chris de Almeida) airplay (albeit on a 36 watt radio station with a broadcasting radius not much larger than the corporate limits of the city).
I was probably one of the few regular listeners to the program, and to this day still have an RealAudio recording of their last show, or at least the good bits where they went 45 minutes over their allotted time slot and had people cursing wildly on the air. The station at the time went off the air at 4:00 am and resumed broadcasting at some point later in the morning (at an hour at which I was probably never up), so Iggy and Otar were the last act of the night (morning). When they got their time slot, the station did two hour shows, with different hosts for every block, and everyone on once a week. The reason they lost their time slot was because the station was trying to go to a more consistent rotation, with many hosts having the same block for M-F or some variation there of. SO, with that explained, back to the story of the best show ever. They were usually well mannered radio hosts, not abusing the Safe Harbor (10:00 pm to 6:00 am) hours, as the school, being rather conservative, would have frowned upon that. They were also usually off the air at 4:00 am. But being that it was their last show ever, and they were the last show of the night, they didn’t have to end right at 4:00 am (especially as they were the only ones in all of Schnabel Hall by that point, let alone the studio). So they didn’t, they went considerably over, taking calls from most of the wing as the clock crept past 4, culminating in our RA Brian calling in and dropping the F-bomb, and then as soon as he realized that he had just sweared on the air, proceeded to drop every other profanity known to man. Hilarity ensued. I still listen to the clip from time to time. After the profanity episode, someone else called the show and pretended to be the station manager. Good times indeed.
Also speaking to the ubergeek that I was, I had a pirated version of Real’s recording suite at the time, and had my computer plugged into my stereo, and my stereo plugged into my computer, which worked out brilliantly for recording the best radio show ever, as I usually just used the connection from the computer to the speakers to supplement my small 2.1 Boston Acoustic (Dell) setup. Oddly enough, I just sold that same stereo system this summer. It was rather nice at the time, and really, was still rather nice today, I just never used it, because I use my pc for everything now (MP3’s, woo). It was a Sony 4.1 channel 50+1 Disc shelf system with 2 tape decks and digital optical in (oooo, shiiiiny). Also, seeing as it was made by Sony in the late 90’s, the AUX was just AUX, it was MD/AUX, as Mini Disc was Sony’s baby.
Wow, it’s crazy how much I have to say once I get going. And really, I have so much more to put down about that year of college, and everything that’s happened since, and before it for that matter, so I really should do this more often, and not just when I’m looking to kill and hour of time at work because no one has any work for me to do, which probably has something to do with my last day before going back to school is in 3 days (Yay most giantist run on sentence ever). So with that said, I’ll wrap this up and go home, as it’s now after 5:00 pm on a Friday.