Played Risk this weekend and won. I think I'm pretty good at boardgames, but I don't usually win at Risk. See, the Australia gambit actually worked for once: I got a bunch of cards at the end and was able to beat down Freshman Matt, who had controlled North America pretty early on, for the win.

Good to be able to play Risk again. I've cryptically said it before, and I'll cryptically say it again: some people, you just can't play Risk with them.

Reminds me of Brainerd. Illuminati is a better game, but it was always fun to watch Manney striding the world like a colossus or to hear the inevitable desperate shout of "My only goal is chaos!" This was also one of the many games where Graham accused other players of purposely trying to win.

Oh yeah. The Lawrence International Winter Formal was also this weekend. Last year we had the LI Informal instead of going. And then there was the Spring Formal, where I threw up on one of Jagger's roommate and learned a valuable lesson about drinking directly from my flask.

The Fall Formal is my only real basis for comparison, and I guess that they're about even in my mind. We were in a different section of the same overpriced place, and the music was still terrible… Well, it was a decent night. Better than the alternatives, let's say.

Everyone smuggles alcohol in because it's way too expensive to buy at the bar: Jubb payed $3 for a Kamikaze shot. Knowing this, Alan was kind enough to let us fill my flask with his rum. And not for the first time.

Also not for the first time, Jubb mixed the drinks and he mixed them strong. We were out of alcohol by the time I'd ordered a coke from the bar (the bartenders ignored me because I have no bar skills) and I had resigned myself to drinking straight soda until I found Amelia II.

I'm slightly jealous of Jubb for having a girlfriend who does more substances than him and seems generally chill. She challenged me to a drinking contest once again, though that plan faltered once she got a chance to taste the rum and coke Jubb had made for her.

Even after diluting it with my coke, her drink was still unaccountably strong. I know I nursed my half for about an hour, and got more nauseous than buzzed. The drinking part of this year's LI was underwhelming.

I left on the early bus without throwing up on anyone. Another annoying part of LI is that people other than Jubb and Freshman Matt kept bringing up last year's incident. Personally, I think I ruminate on my many mistakes too often as is.

But yes, very funny. And so fresh.

Actually, though I of course avoided that girl at all costs, I did end up talking to the guy who, apparently, was going out with her last spring. Always amusing to get a firsthand account; I described the physics involved and he gave me some more details about the aftermath.

Well, it's the last time I've thrown up. So far, so good.

Yesterday's boardgame was the only source of entertainment, as far as I can recall.

Otherwise:

Jubb and I watched a freaky anime called Samurai Champloo which had a surfeit of rap. Someone described my sense of humor in a less than derisively general way, which was heartening. And there's snow everywhere now.

And today, I finished a book for class. Housekeeping. I'll probably recommend it to my mom. And I worked on Trivia stuff. The contest is this weekend already… must mentally prepare self to spend 50 hours with mob of extroverts… and write 25 questions…

Four hours of my life spent doing nothing, all because nothing was ready and then when it was, the computer froze and stayed frozen. Only The Lawrentian can suck the life out of me like that.

Sick. But what should I expect after filling our room with strangers and going out to the bars and walking in the bitter cold?

(Overnight, our campus has been transformed into a windswept tundra.)

Tomorrow is going to rock me like a hurricane. I've got three classes, all sorts of trivia stuff, and the obligatory five-hour shift at the Lawrentian.

Plus some lingering homework: my book for German got lost in the weekend shuffle and I still haven't bought my book for English, which I'd forgotten about until today. I'm tempted to stay home sick rather than go to my classes.

But I'm paying for class, you see. And I haven't been to class in four days, so it's probably about time.

Here's hoping I feel sick enough to make this moral dilemma a moot point.

I should probably tone down the whining. Jubb had to pick up his car from the impound lot today, and Alan was right to note that our problems are a bit smaller, if not inconsequential, in comparison.

Apparently the security guard who, in accordance with university rules, had Jubb's car towed, is the same security guard who, with no regard to university rules, busted up Jubb's party on Saturday.

The Queen of Plantz, our RLA, says there were no complaints (the guard, perhaps changing her story, says there was one), and the "live music" justification we were given is apparently bunk. The Politician, who knows more about campus policies than I do, thinks that the guard was violating protocol.

Granted, there was (copious) underage drinking, but that's not why the party was busted: we'd long since ran out of alcohol when the guard showed up. If we had to clear out our room because of someone's whim?

Another way to make yourself sick is not getting enough sleep, I've heard…

Dissatisfied with yesterday's post. It's a jumbled narrative. Ben's description of the foot incident, by way of contrast, is much more coherent. Then again I like my writing voice in that section (droll? detached?) more than Ben's brisk sensory account.

Second-guessing myself. I started reading The Norton Book of Personal Essays earlier tonight.

The alternative was writing an essay for German on an incredibly boring topic: the insufferable "Romantic period." It's all feelings and nature, as far as I can tell. Wedged between the Enlightenment and Modernism, it just looks pathetic.

Back to the anthology. It's a collection of exemplary essays assembled by my favorite essayist, Joseph Epstein. Here's a good example of an Epstein essay.

As I've said before, all the praise lauded on news-oriented weblogs ignores the medium's huge potential as a place to revitalize the personal essay. Even Epstein, who has half-heartedly compared blogging to journaling, seems to miss that point. Perhaps, like many writers in his generation, he thinks the word "blog" is, if not dirty, then certainly ugly.

We may have lost poetry, we may be in danger of losing the short story, but the personal essay is coming back.

Somewhere, there's bound to be a few bloggers who write about themselves but are not teenage girls with no knowledge of basic grammar and spelling. Certainly some of my longer posts, if they had a bit more focus, might qualify as decent essays. And vanity aside, I'm not the best blogger in the blogosphere. Which means that the sort of blog I'm envisioning might already be out there, full of posts worth perusing.

Here's where I would waste an hour looking for such a blog. I'll take this one on faith rather than risk disappointment. I've got enough to read, at the moment.

The idea is to get better. Bloggers — or at least this class of bloggers I'm talking about, the diarist-essayists — are the heirs to the personal essay tradition. Maybe, if I learn a bit more about this form, I can make a worthwhile contribution.

Probably sounds like a funny goal. Have I ever told you that I want to be a writer?

Between this reading and yesterday's unending post-party blogging, I've reawakened my inner English geek. (How many Google hits do you think I'll get for the all-too-obvious pun "mental floss"? Shoot high.)

After a prolonged game of sardines at dinner tonight, Jinx and Our Bold Hero digressed into the proper spelling of names.

I had made some point about how, in English, we tend to preserve the native pronunciation of Italian cities. That's complete bunk, of course; perhaps my mom has been doing that and I unwittingly made a sweeping generalization.

Jinx thought that we should always preserve the native name. Everyone should call Germany "Deutschland" and our neighbor to the south "Mehico." Not sure where I stand on this.

I'd like to think of myself as a "descriptivist," a member of the linguistic camp opposed to Dryden (who, after confusing English with Latin, decided that we shouldn't split infinitives or end sentences with prepositions), Elements of Style author E.B. White (who, basically on a whim, created a distinction between "which" and "that" that MS Word insists upon to this day), and their fellow "prescriptivists." The descriptivist in me notes that we probably have an easier time pronouncing the names we give to foreign places, and that, at least, is a good thing.

On the other hand, I can't get over Prof. Dreher's use of the word "Cologne" as the name of the German city he used to live in, otherwise known as Köln. He knew it was wrong, and there was no need to dumb it down.

And I think it was Prof. Goldgar (or was it Fritzell?) who once suggested that, while in England, Immanuel Kant went by the English mispronunciation of his name rather than the vaguely scandalous but nonetheless correct German pronunciation.

So I think I sided with Jinx, in the end. I suspect that speakers who know more phonemes (like ñ or ö or the ellusive "z" in words like "azure") are happier.

Other good news: the one thing I knew about E.E. Cummings isn't really true. You've guessed it already, haven't you? He capitalized when signing letters, explicitly told a translator that his name should be capitalized for a book, and never legally changed his name to be lowercase. Can you even do that, by the way?

That lowercase nonsense always annoyed me. (Though, obviously, I've got nothing against "e.e. cummings" within a poem.) Now the only threat left to our standard orthography is that girl from Wayside School who wants to spell her name with an exclamation point. Jenny!, was it?

Ah, and the essay still isn't done. I don't have class until Wednesday, I really don't see the rush.

Good weekend. And thanks to a certain civil rights leader, it's not nearly over.

Alas, the best times are already behind us. Jubb's birthday party, known to inside-joke aficionados as "the Jubb party," lasted until about 1:00 last night, when an ill-informed security guard and the Ormsby RHD came by to bust it up.





Something about having live music without a permit. The windows were open, so I'm sure you could hear us from anywhere on campus. Thanks to Stantonk for ruining that picture forever, by the way.





Here's the rest of the band. The guitar player in that picture, who I once referred to as "a gnomish guy with a Weeble-Wobbles shirt on," coaxed some musician friends of his into playing for free alcohol and a couple of bucks.

I'll spare you the obligatory crowd shot, mainly because there aren't any I like. Suffice it to say that we had a lot of people, but the party started slowly, as usual.

I blame Lawrence Time, the tendency of students here to show up at least an hour after the official start of a party. The entire school wants to be fashionably late.

(At home I had to deal with Tom Time, my father's disingenuous way of estimating how long a given chore will take. Example: Move the shed? Five minutes. Actual time: six hours.)





So we started pre-partying at, well, six. And by eight Jubb was playing shot checkers with Alan while Amelia II and Our Bold Hero downed some delicious busticators.

The busticator! It'll fustigate ya!™

The Recipe for Jubb's specialty drink?

3 shots vodka
2 shots peach schnapps
2 ice cubes
Fill glass with 50/50 orange-cranberry juice mix

Graham had about seven beers before the party. Yes, that's right, he came. Here he is with local celebrity and fellow blogger Rock Show Girl.





I'm a terrible and reluctant host, but this seemed like a good weekend to entertain because I wouldn't have to make any social choices for my guest. Of course we're going to the party, it's in our room.

Graham got here around 10 on Friday, after getting a little lost from my haphazard directions. Graham's car heater was broken (a huge problem, as I discovered when we drove Ben to the store) and he seemed cold and tired. We went to the V.R. for a pitcher.

The strangest thing about Graham's visit was how impressed he seemed to be with Lawrence. It was like hosting a wide-eyed prospie.

Saturday, we cleaned. Most of the living room ended up in Jonas and Bill's room, and our side was converted into a bar. A well-stocked bar.





People trickled in — at one point we had a family of some sort here — and by a little after 11 we had a good-sized crowd. Not bigger than the Wop Party, I'd say. But big. The Politician and his Intended worked the bar, which also had three fridges full of beer and various mixers.

Before long it was gone, all gone.

I drank Yukon Jack at some point. Ben bought it for Jubb because the grocery store was out of Jäger. There was also a mix known as the "mystery shot." Blech.

Otherwise, I was in an informal drinking contest with Jubb's girlfriend, the aforementioned Amelia II, for most of the night.





She won, proving once again that I'm a featherweight. Then again, I probably didn't want to win that contest.

There was a better contest, actually. We started a pool, betting on when and where Jubb would pass out. The winner got eight bucks for guessing that Jubb would pass out on the floor, between 1:30 and 1:45. The other eight went to the band.

While I was sousing the night away and a few dozen people were dancing in our living room, Graham was stumbling around Hiett looking for an empty bathroom. After a prolonged misadventure, he wandered into the room below us and managed to use the facilities before realizing his mistake.

Jubb was in one of our bathrooms prettymuch constantly. He cut his foot on some broken glass behind the bar and had to get his cut stapled shut by Logan, an experienced mob doctor. Better than a trip to the emergency room, but he can only hobble, now.

He broke free to dance dance dance, but soon returned to deal with a sick girl. He actually got less drunk as the night went on, leading Jagger to complain (perhaps rightly) that her "not" bet in the pass-out pool should've won.

Where was I? Wandering around. A friend of my brother's who lives in Appleton had shown up, and was trying to pass out on our couch — only to find the room too crowded and concerned. I checked in on him, nursed a screwdriver, and hung out by the bar, where an increasing alcohol shortage had created a last-days-of-Rome atmosphere.

Representative Man, my boss at the Lawrentian, apologized today for the knee-tackle takedown. My memory may be a bit spottier than I thought.

At 1:00, we got busted. Apparently security broke up all three of the big parties going on that night; we were second in line. Everyone cleared out of the room within minutes, leaving behind a queen's ransom in hats and mittens.

I crawled up into bed, glad that we hadn't chosen to bunk this year, as Jubb and a few of the remaining guests tended to Amelia II. I could hear wind-down chatting from the living room.

For some now-unfathomable reason, both the siderooms were locked later that night when Graham and the Politician came looking for places to sleep. My only friend ended up in a sleeping bag, the Politician covered himself with coats and slept on the couch.

There was a lot going on that night. Epic, like last year's party. That's a file folder in my head, "epic."

Graham left this morning, and Jubb still has to rely on the river's gift (as he calls this particular walking stick) to cover long distances. But: the bars tonight? Might be a good idea? We'll see.

Here's a good morning-after shot.

So I'm supposed to send Graham directions. Apparently, he's coming up this weekend for Jubb's b-day party. Which is on Saturday, in case you haven't heard.

All Brainerdites are welcome, by the way. But I know it's a long drive.

Here's one of the party's more popular pieces of propaganda:





Helping the shadowy group known only as La Resistance distribute those posters was one of the only things Our Bold Hero actually did today. I'm finding it hard to concentrate lately; the book we're reading for German is from the Romantic period, and thus incredibly boring, and in philosophy we're studying Descartes. That's also boring.

And irksome. Descartes and I disagree about God.

How can a being be infinite? It seems like a better adjective to describe a god with than "finite," of course, but this seems to be a property aside from omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, and immortality. I have no idea what it's describing.

Nothing really interesting going on, otherwise. If not for my Contemporary Fiction reading and the fifty episodes of "Full Metal Alchemist" on the network, I might get bored.

Though there is that Jubb party…

Odd weekend. I suppose it's not over yet.

I think I've felt every sort of strange there is to feel, this week. At present I feel out of sorts — like I'm connected to the world by the thinnest of threads.

I live most of my life inside my head, so it'd be easy to say that I was merely ruminating, distracted, at the ORC party I left a few hours ago. Good party, good people, by the way. But I feel like I didn't even go there.

Our Bold Hero? No, I'm afraid that's someone else. I've been sorta half-watching this show that follows him around. He went to the V.R. tonight with Jonas and Frisbee Matt. Then to ORC.

Perhaps this disconnect is just typical post-hangover lightness. Jinx and Jagger, back and living together this term, had a housewarming-themed party in their new room Friday night.

I had maybe three screwdrivers and three glasses of poorly-guarded white boxed wine. Ten hours later I had three glasses of water and two aspirin. Kids: don't drink.

That was a fun party. I remember talking to a few friendly strangers, as good a clue as any that I was drunk.

(I even dropped my beloved camera at one point; thankfully there was no damage.)

I stayed there until the bitter end, though I missed watching campus security drag out the drunken freshman who spent most of the party staring into the host's garbage can.

Really, though, I've been feeling strange for most of the week, since at least Wednesday. Not a sustained strangeness, more like a collection of low-frequency moods. Which is in itself strange.

This is the part when I say something about reading or writing more. For the promotion of mental regularity. Prof. Goldgar recommended a book called Riddley Walker, which I suspect he heard of from my grad school application essay… sometimes it goes both ways. A professor asked me to barthle her, Friday.

Our room, more specifically Jubb and my side, smells strange. And we just cleaned and washed everything, earlier today. I told Representative Man that it reminded me of rotting oysters, a smell I can't associate with the only remaining potential source, Jubb's pile of dirty clothes.

We lit a candle, pine-scented, to cover it up. Just lemon-scent it, as they say. It's been burning for a few hours now, so I think I'll put it out and go to bed.

Back at Lawrence. Good to be back at Lawrence.

Am I the only one who's optimistic about this term? It's an odd reaction, considering how soul-crushing winter term here usually is. Depressing stuff. And there was an epidemic of cabin fever late in the term last year, if I remember correctly.

What's more, I have three moderately difficult MWF classes and no Tuesday-Thursday classes — the makings of a bipolar schedule. We'll see how that works out.

Still, I have my hopes. This term will have trivia, parties, the return of so many Lawrentians who were abroad this fall…