David's Really Good at Transportation

By now, my struggles with transportation and/or life in general are fairly well-documented. So when my mom booked me a flight to Columbia for Thanksgiving, I was determined to turn my fortunes around. I promised my mother dearest on multiple occasions that I would, under no circumstances, miss the flight. It was non-refundable, and were I to miss it, she made me well aware, I would bankrupt the family name and force us to live out the rest of our days as vagabonds scourging through South Carolina's backroads chasing one decrepit rabbit after another for meals.

Not a pretty picture.

Come Thursday night, I look up the date and time of the flight in order to prepare. 6:45 PM on Monday. I plan accordingly.

Anyways, as chance would have it, kinks start getting thrown into my plan left and right. To begin with, I have a paper due Monday. And a paper due Monday means an all-nighter on Sunday, which means I'm effectively dead on the day I have to catch my flight. I realize by 11 PM into my all-nighter that I somehow forgot to bring along my keys to the library. By 10:30 AM I finish my paper, and I get to my 11:20 class on time for the first time all semester. Despite the fact that hearing a human being screeching like a branded banshee is the absolute last thing I want to do after being awake for 22 hours, I'm still callously subjected to the voice of Carson Kressley on Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, which we happen to be studying in my Dissident Media course. I want to kill living things.

Luckily for the planet and the species thereon, class gets out, and I realize I need to print out my flight itinerary so I can keep my long-offered promise to my mother. After printing the itinerary out and checking what time everything was set to go down, I get back to my day. Long story short, I nap through the majority of Linear Algebra, bounce out of there a half-hour early to go to a meeting with my AU Abroad advisor which doesn't exist because I have, somewhat ominously, apparently mistaken the date, eat lunch, and then head back home. I have roughly 4 hours until flight time.

Unfortunately, I don't have keys. I have to walk 20 minutes back to campus, get Brittany's keys, and walk the 20 minutes back to the apartment. I finally get into the apartment and pack all my clothes in literally 4 minutes and then take my first shower since Sunday afternoon. I've been awake for roughly 26 hours. 

I gather all my things, throw some homeworks into my bookbag, and head out. It's 4:55 PM. I have an hour and fifty minutes to get onto my plane. I walk like a champion down Porter St. and get inside the Cleveland Park Metro station at 5:12. In an unprecedented display of navigation, I get on the right train both at Cleveland Park and Chinatown and get off at Reagan. After walking first in the right direction to get to the US Airways terminal, then in the wrong direction to get to the US Airways terminal, and finally back in the right direction to get to the US Airways terminal on the train platform, I get into the US Airways terminal.

I take the moving sidewalk to get to the little US Airways booth, where I promptly attempt to go through the exit to get to the self-check in kiosks. I figure out the error of my ways, go in the actual entrance, and hit up the kiosk. I'm excited.

I put my credit card in. I type in the first three letters of my connecting location. I wait patiently. And the kiosk can't find my reservation. I put my credit card back in and type PHI again. Still nothing. I try it once more, this time putting in COL - that's right, I go all the way to the destination for this badboy. And nothing. I'm gradually getting more and more pissed off. I have my itinerary in my hand, after all, and it says I have a US Air flight to Columbia by way of Philadelphia (geographic sense be damned), and I refuse to accept this kiosk as my intellectual equal.

I ask the man behind the booth if he can help a brotha out. Since he assumes I must be illiterate, he puts my name and connecting flight location into the check-in kiosk for me. Surprise, surprise - it can't find my reservation. "You'll have to go to the main desk then," he says. "Third floor and to the right." I thank him and hop onto the elevator.

I go up to the third floor, hang a right, and get to the main desk. There's no line, so I mosey on up to the front with my bag and the lady at the desk asks me to fill in my information on the kiosk up there. These kiosks are surprisingly similar to the last ones, but I still hold out hope. They're main desk kiosks. Regardless of how much hope I hold out, though, they still give me the same result as the lowly bullshit-non-main-desk kiosks.

I look at my itinerary in disbelief of this negligence and mistreatment. I check everything on the paper. It's going to Columbia via Philadelphia. It's at 6:45 PM, not AM. It's for Tuesday, November 23. I even checked my phone to make sure it was, in fact, Tuesday, November 23. And at this very moment, the fact that I'm David Wile trumps any planning I may have had the foresight to make.

Indeed, there comes a time in every mentally handicapped person's life when they realize that they're just not quite like other people. Something about their intellectual capacity prevents them from interacting as a normal participant in society. Something is always bearing down like Fate upon their sordid brows. This, friends, was my moment.

I flipped the paper around multiple times hoping maybe somewhere it would say "or Monday, November 22, if you've completely lost track of the seven-day week pattern;" but alas, I searched in vain. Even worse, upon seeing my frantic reaction, the people behind the desk asked me if I needed help, and I had to embarrassingly act like "something just came up" so as to give myself a reason to leave the main check-in desk without checking anything in - although this wasn't so difficult considering that "something" was the dawning realization of my mental retardation, and I needed to walk to a more open area to mull over the consequences of that handicap.

I had alot to mull over: indeed, I had just packed an entire suitcase and traveled for an hour to catch a flight 24 hours early fully convinced that I would depart that night. The circumstances were impressive even for my standards. I also got the wonderful privilege of needing to text my Columbia friends and my roommates that I would not, in fact, be leaving for Thanksgiving that night, and that I would instead be institutionalizing myself to protect myself and society at large.

I take the long, awkward trip, luggage in tow, back to my apartment. I cross the pristine Potomac, laughing to scorn my stupidity even as it flowed peacefully through its Columbian banks. I notice the judging glares of my fellow passengers, every one seemingly aware of my idiocy. One silently mocks me in his "Pawley's Island, South Carolina" t-shirt.

When I finally get back to the apartment, I salvage the one good result from the whole ordeal: I don't have to pack on the day of my flight. I put the retractable handle back down into my rolly-luggage bag: it doesn't go down. I try again. It refuses to go down into the bag a second time. I begin violently lifting the bag by the handle and slamming it into our linoleum. I do this until the bag breaks. To add injury to insult, the bottom of the handle mechanism has come detached from the bag, leaving the handle as more of a see-saw lever than a luggage handle. Miffed, I shove the bag into the foyer.

I'll deal with it tomorrow. 

I also have the sticky situation of having told my Studies in German Film professor that I wouldn't be coming on Tuesday because I would be home. After much deliberation, I concluded that the most diplomatic way of handling this discrepancy - to avoid imposing undue embarrassment on either party - is to just not go to class. It's in everyone's best interest.   

And unfortunately for my family fortune, the very real possibility that I'll miss my flight still hovers in the air, poised and ready to strike at a moment's notice.

Thank God my mom literally just called me to make sure I won't do that.

David Writes a Paper

Luckily for my blog-viewing audience, I have a paper due in roughly 29 hours. It's supposed to be between 12 and 15 pages. And because reading about me writing a paper is exactly what you all wish you could do at any given moment, and All the Wile only exists to serve the public, you guys are coming along for the ride. Get excited. 

2:32 pm. I arrive in Bender Library and find an open computer, only 3 hours after I'd planned to get to the library. Good start. 

3:05 pm. I've checked the Facebook, the Twitters, and my e-mail. I've also caught up on Cheryl's blog. I'm effectively out of immediate time-wasting mechanisms, and I need to gets-ta-steppin on my research, of which I have none. 

3:10 pm. I luck out and find my paper proposal in my e-mail. Alright, go time.

4:09 pm. I've effectively compiled a list of 14 books to go find, not to mention 3 articles on the interwebs. Time to leave the comforts of my chair and go out into the wilderness of the AU stacks. 

4:16 pm. To prep my journey into the stacks, I went onto the Twitters. I have to look up Cheryl's use of "whinger." It's apparently a British term meaning "whiner," but with an added "g" to be approximately 16.6% more pretentious. 

4:17 pm. A girl just sat next to me. I'm convinced she just read every word in my blog, saw that ridiculously easy pretentious British joke, and is thinking I'm a douchebag who thinks I'm hilarious and every minute of my life is worth documentation. Now awkwardly flipping between Twitter, Blogspot, and library catalog tabs.

4:59 pm. I've rounded up all my books. JESUS CHRIST IT TOOK 45 MINUTES TO ROUND UP MY BOOKS??? Alright, whatever, I'm over it.  

5:05 pm. Books organized by topic. I actually have 15 now because I found one from 1966 called Negroes and the New Southern Politics that's bound to be exciting. Or that was bound to be exciting 44 years ago before its binding became old and decrepit. 

5:10 pm. The girl got up and was replaced by a guy, who stepped on my headphones and took the rubber part that holds it in my ear off of the left one. So much for jams. He's also rolled his rolly-chair onto my bookbag, so I can't even get up and go to a more spacious area. 

5:13 pm. Oh man. The chair's wheel is caught between the bookbag strap and the actual bag. I can't even pull it out of there. This is ridiculous.

5:15 pm. I crack open a book.

5:26 pm. The guy next to me got up! My bookbag is free! Also, I remember I have extra rubber-parts in my bookbag. Jams are back on the table. Specifically, "She Wolf."

6:18 pm. Just read the word "ignanomous." I begin to question the validity of this source.

6:34 pm. Dinner time. I just shoved 15 books into my backpack. Let's go check out a laptop from the Reserves desk, check out all these books, shove them back into my backpack, and hit up Salsa.
6:53 pm. Sitting in the Tav. Everything I just said actually went off without a hitch. I am amazed. 
9:01 pm. Ran out of battery in the Tav, back to the library. After a 15 minute search for a table near outlets, settled for a table not near outlets. Laptop battery has 5 minutes left. 
9:09 pm. Battery dead, replaced with new, livelier battery. Back online, baby.
9:27 pm. New bullet point added to the outline. Total count now up to 2. 
11:00 pm. Thomas Jefferson, on New Englanders: marked "...like the Jews, with such perversity of character, as to constitute from that circumstance the natural division of our parties." Gotta find a way to work that into the paper. Whenever "the paper" happens.
11:11 pm. Wish made.
11:21 pm. Done with first part (of 6) of outline. 5 bullet points, or 2 more bullets than were in Andrew Jackson's body at any given time after 1813. 
11:43 pm. Second battery replaced. These batteries can't handle my blogging.
12:34 am. Goal established: writing by 3 AM. Go time.
1:08 am. Done with second part of outline. 3 major points, but 2 pages of outline. 3 pages of outline so far for 4-6 pages of paper - solid. 
1:10 am. Ran into Steven Haber, discussed merits of blogging during paper. 
1:17 am. Bathroom break.
2:19 am. "I'll punch that old bag of beef in the ribs with my pitchfork." South Carolina's very own "Pitchfork" Ben Tillman on President Grover Cleveland, Democratic National Convention, 1896.
2:32 am. Yeah! 12 hours of doin' work. Get some. 
2:42 am. Eagle's Nest run? Eagle's Nest run.
2:55 am. Forgot that the Eagle's Nest closes. Chances of making it through the night have decreased exponentially. I cower in fear and tiredness.
4:09 am. I have failed miserably to meet my goal. Slightly disappointed in myself. Moved to an outlet because I'm out of battery and the Reserves desk is closed. Scared, tired, hungry, and cold. 
5:07 am. Done with third part of outline. 4 pages of outline, 0 pages of writing. Keeping a great pace. On the positive side, 1 hour till McDonald's opens, and I get to do my Bull Moose Party research now. 
6:05 am. McDonald's run!
7:08 am. Back from McDonald's run. Class in 4 hours, really??? Paper due in 13... This is about to get sticky. 
7:13 am. Too many instances of the word "fetish" in this article for me to take it seriously. Also, too many instances of the phrase "Tea Party."
7:38 am. Holy Christ balls, I wrote a word! "Since." Eh? Good word?
7:50 am. First paragraph done, moving right along.
8:06 am. 1 page, check me out.
8:38 am. 2 pages in exactly an hour. 
9:13 am. 3 pages. 9-12 more. 9-12 MORE??? Fuck me.
9:43 am. 4 pages. I need to rally, I'm drooping out here. My brain's tired, my fingers are slowing down out there. My eyes look like they just smoked a pound of weed. These are not the proper circumstances under which 30% of my final grade should be decided.
9:58 am. Girl just comes to the library at 9:58 in the AM, asks me to "plug her in," and tells me I have "hardcore bloodshot eyes." Thanks, doll.
10:10 am. 5 pages. 
10:35 am. 6 pages. All I want is bed. Like, that's 100% of the things I want right now.
10:47 am. Except maybe also to be done with this paper. And not have to go to class at 11:20. Those three things are 100% of the things I want right now.
11:02 am. 7 pages. Bathroom break. Well-deserved bathroom break.
11:23 am. Almost 8 pages in, 3 minutes late to class. I think I have to return this computer now. And pack up my 6 trillion books. I'll be back by 2 though, kids, don't you worry your pretty little heads none. 
12:42 pm. Hit the 24-hour mark like 10 minutes ago, still going strong. Rally time through Linear Algebra now. Also, got some pizza in my Dissident Media class, so there.
2:18 pm. Back in the library. Home, sweet home. 
2:32 pm. Now celebrating 24 HOURS OF PAPER WRITING!!!
3:03 pm. Focus totally lost. 
3:23 pm. Focus regained. Up to 10 pages. Home stretch. Haven't even started talking about Bull Mooses yet.
3:46 pm. Here's a surprise: battery's about to die. Go figure.
4:29 pm. 11 pages. I look like I'm dead. But now come the Bull Meese.
4:54 pm. 12 pages. I can stop now, but there's still so much more paper that has to happen.
5:25 pm. 13 pages. 23 hours and 59 minutes ago, my bookbag was liberated. Never forget. 
5:46 pm. Battery replaced again. 14 pages done. Still have to talk about the Tea Party and compare it to the other four case studies of factional movements I examine in the paper... There's no way I'm gonna do that in a page. Mad foop sets in.
5:55 pm. DO I OR DO I NOT GET FOOD??? 
6:09 pm. That was the question. And apparently the answer is "I do." The answer's always "I do."
6:10 pm. T-2 hours till paper's due. 
7:12 pm. T-58 minutes. Oh shit. I STILL NEED TO BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
7:52 pm. Bibliographying. On the clock like the smallest hand, in the words of Lil' Wayne.
8:04 pm. I bounce out the Tav. Go time.
8:12 pm. Enter library, get on printing computer. Gettin' my print on.
8:15 pm. That's fine printer, I didn't want you to print page 11. PRINT AGAIN.
8:19 pm. Wow. I'm done. Only 10 minutes late. WE MADE IT!!! Oh man, I feel like Rocky. And with how swollen my eyes are, I kinda look like him too. 


I'm happy that we get to share this accomplishment. You know, without you getting any of the bloodshot eyes, sunken face, slow-ass muscle movements, and slight hallucinations that I get to take home with me.

David's Favorite 10 Rap Lyrics of the Decade

So I'm entirely aware that my consistency on blog posting sucks. Rest assured, however; this isn't so much due to the fact that I hate sharing my life with my anticipating audience so much as the total lack of anything interesting happening in my life. So, I'll just share my musical taste with you here. Specifically, my favorite rap lyrics.

A little background here. I consider the rap genre to be the poetry of the modern day - or at least the only outlet that provides a reasonable chance for the public to hear something that has a chance at being poetic.
Sure, you'll get alot of Christopher Marlowe's out there spouting such wonderful lines as "No homo / You suck like Tony Romo / So fuck him, and fuck you too / Now go tell that to Bono" or "Woke up in the morning, fuckin' bought a yellow Aston Martin," but you'll also - albeit rarely - get such lines of Shakespearean beauty that remind even those most pessimistic about the state of modern poetry that rhyme and meter are not going gentle into that good night.
Lines like "You say you gotta lotta whips, well I got a lot" and "Streets too loud to ever hear freedom ring." Lines like these:


10. Women say I talk more game than John Madden.
Ludacris, "Last of a Dying Breed (Move the Crowd)," 2008. 1:03.



This one barely beat out Nelly's "I spit game, 'cause, baby, I can't talk it" to get on the list. Although Ludacris can, apparently, talk game, he does so more than John Madden, which is impressive when one considers the amount of games John Madden has talked through. Even more so considering the amount of women John Madden has bedded.

It beats Nelly for two reasons:
a.) I like similes.
b.) Nelly's isn't even the best line on his track, which is a bevy of hip-hop highlights, including, but not limited to, "Girl, I think my butt gettin' big," "I was like, 'Good gracious, ass is bodacious," and "I got a friend with a pole in the basement / ('What?') I'm just kidding like Jason."

9. You should be honored by my lateness.
Kanye West, "Stronger," 2007. 0:56



This is certainly my most relatable lyric of the decade, if only my 9th favorite.

8. Rappin' for the hell of it, / Hella rich / Never have to sell a brick again, / Must I tell a bitch again? / The bullshit I'm addressing, check, / I'm on some next-level shit / Never been fucked in the game, I'm celibate. / Rarely out my element, / Barely out the ghetto with / One foot out and one foot in, / Intelligent as fellas get. / Listen, let's settle this: / Be clear, I could fall back 7 years / Still it ain't no one ahead of me. / Consider it a blessing if you get to stand next to me: / 5-star General, O.G. veteran, / Caked like Entenmann, / Blowing that celery, / Stack that cash like the U.S. Treasury.
T.I., "I'm Illy," 2008. Just hit play.



Yeah, I just included the majority of the entire first verse of this song. He rhymes everything with "hell of it"! It's absolutely incredible!

Highlights: The reference to celibacy, a favorite topic among rappers these days, also featured in Fabolous's "Imma Do It": "My attitude is celibate, I don't give a fuck." Also, the reference to Entenmann's baked goods is fantastic.

7. I take breath, the opposite of Primatene Mist.
Young Dro, "Shoulder Lean," 2006

This is precisely the kind of shit that Young Dro does not do.

Creative, just a cut above his impressive discussion of car colors that culminates in the beautiful non-sequitur that is, "Our cars look like crayons, hos know I'm the man though; I can shoulder lean, I don't know how to dance though."

6. Call me George Foreman, 'cause I'm sellin' everybody grills.
Paul Wall, featured in Nelly's "Grillz," 2005. 2:20.



Paul Wall kills this track. Great track to kill, mind you.

5. You're now rockin' with the best, tre-pound on my hip, Teflon on my chest.
50 Cent, featured in The Game's "How We Do," 2004. 2:06, but it's edited? What the fuck?



Although The Game chooses to start off this song with the powerful simile, "Fresh like 'uh'," this line somehow manages to top even that dramatic opening.

4. When shit pop off, I'm jumpin' out just like "Wassup, ho."
Dem Franchize Boyz, "Lean wit It, Rock wit It," 2006

Largely because of such creative twists on classic hip-hop motifs as these, Dem Franchize Boyz entirely avoided accusations of relying too heavily on cliches. Also, this sentence would work surprisingly well in a Lewis Carroll poem.


Ed.'s Note: I can't find the version of the song that has this line in it, but I assure you it exists. Just look up the lyrics, it'll be there.

3. Man, what the fuck is Goyard, nigga?
Gemini, featured in Lupe Fiasco's "Dumb It Down," 2007. 3:37.



Even though this song contains such true poesies as "I'm peerless / That means I'm eyeless / Which means I'm tearless / Which means my iris resides where my ears is" and "I'm flying on Pegasus, you're flying on a pheasant," the entire song becomes overshadowed once Gemini asks this. The point of the song is that Lupe is too smart for commercial rapping, which he proves by using big words, referring to Ichabod Crane at one point, and making that play on the word "peerless" mentioned above. Also, I like the word pheasant, so I enjoy that little cameo.
Gemini is supposed to reinforce this fact during the hooks, pointing out how people won't get Lupe's rap unless he "dumbs it down," which the uncompromising Lu refuses to do. And while Goyard is apparently the most popular luggage in the Chicago hip-hop scene, as evidenced by Kanye's lyric: "The Goyard so hard that I'm Hugo's boss," Lupe's references to it in his rapping apparently make his songs less accessible to black youth - an argument the song later reveals is really just made up by the white industry execs to prevent young African-Americans from thinking "smart is cool" and, ultimately, keep the black man down.

Anyway, now that you have the plot, I just always thought the lyric's syntax was hilarious.

2. Las rimas, las pololas, las baterìas, las pistolas, las canciones, las camaradas desplegadas para inspirarte màs
Ana Tijoux, "Obstàculo," 2010. 0:51.



I'm not even pretending that I understand what she's saying here. From the words pistolas and baterìas, though, I think I can make out that it has something to do with battery-powered handguns. Either way, the repetition of "las" is impressive. However, I will admit that I'm not sure if that's even hard to do in Spanish. I'm also not sure where this lyric begins and ends grammatically, so if someone wants to inform me that I should have started it earlier, go ahead.

1. I'm living in that 21st Century, doing something mean to it.
Kanye West, "Power," 2010. 0:11.



I just can't get past the image of Kanye continuously flicking the entire 21st Century in its shoulder and giggling about it that this lyric provides. The line is one of the best to open a song ever (compare to The Game up there, at least), and there's some truth to it: Kanye is certainly redefining the boundaries of a hip-hop artist, considering the Runaway film and G.O.O.D. Fridays, and his Twitter page is second only to Shaq's. Now it's not necessarily interrupting the 21st Century's acceptance speech at the VMAs to tell it that someone else's video was more deserving, but I guess I can see "something" mean in what he's doing. Continuous flicking should at least get annoying after awhile.



The best part about this list? 5 of the 10 songs contain name brands. Whoa.



Ed.'s Note:
If it weren't a mixtape, I would also include:

T.I., the entire mixtape "Fuck a Mixtape," including such gems as:

• Is there a message from the greatest? / Yeah, go get yourself some paper, player. / Try to do as I do, guy / But I anticipate your failure.
  
• Hey, throw this cat a G, I don't want broke niggas to talk to me.
  
• Never have a better car than mine / Though you may buy and buy / And by the time you buying what I'm riding / I be flyin' by.
• I know you think we out here trappin' 'cause we wanna be, / but it's a trickle down effect of the economy. / Hey, what you want from me? / And why you stare at us? / Hey, you the one who wanted Bush to run America.
  
• Stack money like Jews.
  
• Can't tell a lie, tell the judge I'm guilty.

David Wastes His Life

Since moving into my new apartment in McLean Gardens, I've done little else but play FIFA 2010 on my roommate's XBox. Andy and I started out small, playing the little expansion 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa as the U.S. Men's National Team against eventual World Champion Spain. After 3 days and one goal to show for our efforts, we finally broke through and defeated them. We started to play Brazil, but that was just absurd. We learned to hate 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa, because it displayed an obvious anti-American bias. Xavi once knifed Cherundolo in the 52nd minute without getting so much as a slap on the wrist, while Michael Bradley was once sent off having received 2 yellows in the 4th and 6th minutes for repeated infractions of "being bald." We, too, were amazed that EA had animation for either of those.

I eventually just started playing FIFA Soccer 10, in the hope that I wouldn't have to have thumbs made of Pele in order to win. I was wrong. In this utter hopelessness, we took a rest from FIFA for a little bit.

And then Andy bought a 42" television set. It looked alot like this:


And it was good.
And it had a remote control holder. That sticks to the fucking wall. And it looked alot like this:


And it was good. And there was evening, and there was morning, and the TV was still astounding to gaze upon. And the remote control holder still hung firmly on the Wall of Black Athletes.

But something had changed. While watching an MMA fight, we realized that two grown men were actually making each other bleed in our living room, on our off-white furniture. Mario Lemieux stickhandled a puck between my legs in the 1991 Stanley Cup Finals en route to a goal against the Minnesota North Stars. C.C. Sabathia hit me with a pitch, and I took my base. We grew afraid to turn it off lest, due to its massive size, it develop its own gravitational pull and, much like a black hole, suck in everything in our living room before ultimately collapsing upon itself and turning our very lives into a sit-com. We had gratuitous amounts of television, and we needed to play FIFA upon them.

And so we started playing FIFA again. We rose from the mire of holy-hell-why-do-we-keep-doing-this-to-ourselves to a level of consistent mediocrity. We even scored occasionally. It was fun.

Now I told you that story to tell you this story. On the evening of August 20, 2010, Schmatthew Schmazik - yes, the very same "Schmiladelphia Schmouthpaw" - joined me for dinner and a wild night of FIFA play. We stood facing the flag for the national anthem and played the first game with Andy. We lost to Sweden 2-0, but then beat Mexico 1-0 with a beautiful shot from the outside of Landon Donovan's right foot across the goal mouth in the 116th minute, as per my thumb's command. Upon this occurrence, we lost our shit.

Andy, meanwhile, leaves to go do his thang, and Schmatt and I continue to get our respective FIFAs on. Playing as VfB Stuttgart (pronounced "fow-eff-bay," if you want to understand my reasoning behind the choice) against Blackburn Rovers, we quickly take a 1-0 lead. A mere seconds later, some random German guy under my control has taken a through ball and dribbled through everything in sight, including the goalkeeper's hands. No more than 3 feet of green, green grass separates the ball and the goal. If I sneeze hard enough at this point, I might blow the ball into the net through the television screen; after all, a life-sized computerized soccer match is taking place literally in my living room. But I don't sneeze. Instead, under the gravitas of the situation, I undergo a massive bowel movement, the likes of which had been previously unseen since Arius of Alexandria fatally shat out his liver in 336 AD: I hit the A button. Pass. My video game soccer character stops on a dime to deliver a gorgeous, on-target, useless pass to a player 15 yards behind him and under Schmazik's control, who, in the understandable shock of the situation, kicks the ball into the side of the net. Neither of us know it yet, but something extraordinarily terrible has just happened.

We find this utterly hilarious. After all, we've been kicking Blackburn's ass for the entire game, and should be up 2-0 at this point. No big deal. We'll get it back.
Incorrect.
They score on a penalty kick. 1-1. Then, in the 86th minute, they score again. 2-1. Game. Naturally, we have to play again. We deserved to win, and, God as my witness, we were going to do it.

Approximately 15 games later, we haven't won. We've scored 5 times. Schmazik scored each of them. I've hit 17 posts.
That's not to say we never came close. We came close. Hell, we almost won once. Taking the lead on the greatest build-up in the history of sporting video games, involving a left-to-right cross, 3 through-balls, a give-and-go, and an extraordinary individual effort to score the goal, we further extended our lead when the opposing goalie unwittingly punted the ball into the ass of a player running back towards the other end of the field with enough force to one-hop it back into his own net. After replaying this scene about 10 times (each time laughing just as hysterically, thank you very much), we get back to the game, up 2-0. By the 81st minute, it's 2-2. We're sad. We go into extra time. At the 117th minute, it's still 2-2. At the 120th minute, it's 4-2. For those of you who don't know how to tell FIFA-time, that means Blackburn scored 2 goals in approximately 5.2 seconds for the sole purpose of pissing us off. Eventually, after a few more humiliating games, we try a new strategy.

We decide to play as the U.S. National Team against Sydney FC. The Australian professional soccer league is one of the worst in the world, and we're the goddamned U.S. National Team. We figure this should make us feel better about ourselves.

Approximately 10 minutes later, we're down 5-0, the play-by-play has been reduced to Martin Tyler and Andy Gray's prerecorded laughter, and we're scrolling down to the "Restart Match" button to avoid this getting into the permanent EA Games record. We have to play one more time for our dignity. We lick our wounds, and only lose 1-0 this time. Rather than kill ourselves to end our misery, we decide to call it a night and go to bed.

Then, just when all appeared lost, the Lord our God showed us that He does, in fact, have greater plans; that every single loss, every post hit, every on-field knifing were each divine events directed toward a single objective; and that this objective was to make the next 7 seconds of my life as awesome as possible. As soon as we've turned off the XBox console, we hear a key jimmying in the door and it slam open. A blur runs into the apartment. Amidst a chorus of angels coming in from the hallway, we here a single cry of "Fuck! I owe this cab driver outside so much money!" and see the bright flash of Andy bolting back out.

Thou hast not forsaken us.

David Ends Up on the Wrong Side of Responsibility

Sometimes - not often, but sometimes - I make brief forays into the life of a responsible adult; rare, bright, shining glimmers of hope for what-could-be and what-never-was. Suffice to say, between June 4th and this very afternoon, I maintained my longest unbroken streak to date of fairly responsible actions. Then, as always, reality caught up with me.

I was doing so well, too. I got an apartment in the District, paid the vast majority of the rent out of my own pocket, made myself meals, began thinking about utilities without my mind automatically referring to a Monopoly board, got myself a job in which I was entrusted with the care of small children, considered doing laundry occasionally. And then I made my fatal mistake: I ran out of food. Faced with the prospects of starving to death or going grocery shopping, I decided - as a responsible adult would - that spending money was slightly less terrifying a fate than dying.
So I gathered up the courage to go to the grocery store.
I Googled which grocer was closest, and came upon the good old trusty neighborhood Tenleytown Safeway, apparently on the very street which I live. Unfortunately for me, Fort Reno Park runs through that street, so I have to mosey around that to get where I'm going. I get to the Safeway, find everything I need just fine, head to the register, pay the $40 over 2 credit cards like a responsible human being, and tell them to go ahead and plastic bag my foodstuffs. Damn the DC Plastic Bag Tax, full speed ahead.

And full speed ahead I went. While in the store, I'd decided that the only way for me to take 3 bags of groceries and a gallon of chocolate milk home was by stealing the shopping cart, although once I got outside and started to take off, my conscience got the better of me. I left the cart behind (despite the fact that it was just DC chillin' by itself on the sidewalk in front of the Safeway, the momentousness of the fact that I was leaving my faithful cart behind got the better of my common sense), grabbed two bags in one hand, one more and the gallon of chocolate milk in the other, and took off. They felt good in my hands; I figured I could make it. As I got to Wisconsin and Davenport, I got a nice little red light to rest at. I put the bags down, waited for the cross light to turn yellow, picked them back up, and crossed the street. Not so bad.

As I get to Fort Reno Park, I notice one of the bags is destroying my arm. I readjust. Everyone's doing okay. I go up the little gravelly path through Fort Reno Park, which goes uphill for a bit. After mounting this summit, I breathe easy; it's all downhill from here, I remind myself. I get to Davenport and Nebraska, and I get another rest at a red light, where I notice my bread is taking a beating and I try to fluff it up a little. Two more blocks, and I am quite literally home free. I'm struggling. I feel like a prisoner dragging chains made of food through suburban DC. The bags' handles are cutting into the point where my thumb and wrist connect, and I'm beginning to consider what a waste of amputation it would be if I lost my thumb carrying groceries home. I can feel each bead of sweat forming between my shoulder blades - I can tell you now what a strange feeling it is to only be aware of the sweat on your back. I'm walking like those guys on World's Strongest Man competitions do when they're dragging 9 billion pound airplanes behind them. I get a final rest at Davenport and Reno. I prepare for glory.

I cross Reno Rd., get past the playground at Murch Elementary, and suddenly my load gets significantly lighter on one side followed quickly by a loud thump. I look down, expecting the worst, only to find my Juicy Juice lying helplessly on the sidewalk, staring those innocent fruit-punch-colored eyes at me, begging me, imploring me to not leave him to the dogs. On a scale of 1 to real, shit has just gotten real. My Juicy Juice hasn't exploded yet, however, so I figure I'm lucky. I just have to figure out a way to get my Juicy Juice home without a bag to put it in. What follows is the first in a series of perfectly resourceful decisions pertaining to the survival of this Juicy Juice. Namely, I start kicking it down the street.

I do this until I reach 36th St., where I notice a pedestrian staring at me like I was holding three bags of groceries and a gallon of chocolate milk and kicking a full bottle of Juicy Juice down the street or something. Under such harsh scrutiny, I decide to alter my arrangement. I re-fluff my bread, put some pasta into the frozen foods bag, and put the Juicy Juice into the pasta bag. I'm practically on my stoop.

As I climb the stairs, I notice a woman coming up the other end, fumbling for her keys. Upon realizing my hands are full she opens the door for me. I walk in ahead of her. Crossing the threshold, I go down another man: the bread jumps ship, landing right across the doorway, and the woman behind me, not realizing the full extent of the slapstick farce which she'd just unwittingly entered into, steps her left workin' heel about 3/5ths of the way down the length of the loaf.*

She freaks out, thinking she just ruined my bread, but I calm her down by explaining that it was pretty destroyed anyways. She offers help, which I decline. I'm confident I can find a place to stash this bread, provided the carrots don't slip through my grasps as well. Ah, hubris.

As I'm picking up the bread, a man begins fumbling for his keys outside, and I open the door for him. He sees my struggle and asks if I need help; what an absurd notion. I finally feel comfortable to take up camp again and take two more steps, before I hear the faint tink of glass on carpet and feel the now-all-too-familiar lightening of my load. I look down behind me, only to see Bertolli's Tomato and Basil sauce lying in the same helpless position in which I'd once seen my Juicy Juice lying. I start seeing flashbacks of my poor Juicy Juice lying wounded in front of the southern facade of Murch Elementary, and enter into a state of panic. Two bags down, three separate groceries covered in dust and tears. I throw everything out of the bags in an attempt to rearrange them again, but fitting 3+ bags worth of groceries into a single unbroken bag proves difficult. Now every piece of grocery I own is lying strewn about my person - my Pepperoni Pizza Lean Pockets cowering underneath my Hungry Man Boneless Fried Chicken dinners; my linguine, rigatoni, and farfalle holding onto one another for dear life, crossing themselves and muttering the rosary over and over again; my 5 lbs. of carrots reduced to tears, having had a front-row seat at both the dribbling of the Juicy Juice down the sidewalk and the macabre high-heeling of the bread on the doorstep and knowing they'll likely end up on the wrong side of a foot as well. Looking at each one, seeing the horrors, the fears, on their faces, I could only sit there in the middle of it all, unable to help them, yet unable to walk away. On a scale of 1 to real, shit has hit the fan. I know when I'm up against the wall. I turn to the man whose offer I just declined and ask him for help. He obliges.

He grabs the chocolate milk, the Hungry Man Boneless Fried Chicken TV dinners, and the sauce. I grab the rest, and we get onto the elevator with the woman who stepped on my bread.
"This is the biggest shitshow I've ever seen coming home," she notes. True story. The guy carrying my stuff leaves everything outside the elevator as I get off on the third floor, and I come to my door and put the groceries I still had in the one usable bag there. I go back to the elevator and get the others. I reach in my pocket for my keys; they aren't there. I try the door. It's unlocked. Well, thank God I can rest easy after having been outside of the apartment for 2 hours without keys with the door unlocked, considering I have no pretense of responsibility to maintain anymore.

I drag everything into the apartment. The frozen foods are thawed, naturally. I put everything where it needs to go, except I leave the Juicy Juice out for examination. It took a pretty rough tumble, and the bottom is a little scraped up. I notice it's leaking ever so slowly from the bottom, so I figure I should find another container for it. As luck would have it, I have no idea how to recycle in this apartment complex, so I have an empty Juicy Juice bottle lying around. Well, I say to the bottle, what's a perfectly good Juicy Juice bottle like you doing on the kitchen floor next to the trash can like this, when I have this guy here that's been beaten half to death trying in vain to keep my Juicy Juice inside its breached containment system? Perfectly resourceful decision #2 ensues. I decide it's best to pour the Juicy Juice from the broken bottle to the used bottle. I look for a funnel, but can't find one. I guess I'll just have to go bareback. Miraculously, the vast majority of the Juicy Juice ends up in the other bottle, and I shove that badboy into the fridge.

I open the carrot bag and pull one out and pour myself a glass of Juicy Juice. Delicious.



*Ed.'s Note: NOT a 3/5ths Compromise joke.

David Goes Bankrupt

On April 29th at 10:30 PM, I was in the Centennial 3 Lounge getting my homework on. Suddenly my phone rings. Grandmama Wile is on the other line. "Happy birthday!" she shouts to me. I'm fairly confused by this, partially because I'm trying to find a movie to watch for free on the internets to write a paper for my LIT-270 Transformations of Shakespeare class and partially because my birthday was a month and a half ago. "It's your birthday, isn't it?" my senile, pilled up grandma asks me.
"Ye-yes it is, grandma," I stammer, not sure if this is a test or not. Jewish grandmothers can be sneaky like that, and if Jewish grandsons aren't careful, it's goodbye happy birthday calls at strange hours a month and a half after your birthday, and no one wants that on their permanent Jewish record.
"Have you talked to your father recently?" she asks.
I try to recollect when the last time I talked to my father was; nothing comes to me, so I make something up.
"I sent him your birthday money and told him to mail it to you," she says. You see now why Jewish grandsons have to be careful.
"I guess I'll talk to him tomorrow," I say.
"It was 200 dollars!" she says. I am flabbergasted.
"Thanks, grandma." I'm really bad at thanking people over the phone, so this doesn't convey my excitement whatsoever. Secretly I'm freaking out. I'm also fairly certain I punch my computer once or twice because it's loading something slowly, but I digress.
"Have you talked to your father recently?" she asks, and we go through the conversation roughly 7 more times, meaning I have to not only continually be a bad thanker, and a self-aware bad thanker at that, but I also have to pretend it's my birthday 7 times. Eventually I get off the hook.

Two days later, I go downstairs, open up my mailbox, and lo and behold - a shiny new check. I immediately tell Schmatthew "The Schmiladelphia Schmouthpaw" Schmazik, who is with Gianluca in the vending machine area, of the benefits of senility in grandmothers. I'm theoretically $200 richer, so I don't bother cashing this bad boy. It's May 1st, or as it's known in the Eastern Orthodox liturgical calendar, Maypril Fools' Day. And I, my friends, am a Maypril Fool.

Knowing I had 200 smackeroos on reserve just waiting for my endorsement, I began a lavish lifestyle. Eating out, buying various accoutrements, spending like Jay Gatsby became part of my everyday life. I even wrote, produced, and was featured in a rap song in which I detailed explicitly the diameter of the wheels which I paid an extravagant amount of money to have placed upon my automobile, how I used said wheels to impress women in order that they might engage in various acts of consort with my person, and clarified to those who would detract from my artistry that I am not, in fact, colluding with officers of the law. I may have ignited a feud with OJ da Juiceman as well, although The Source has yet to verify insider claims. Soon I had it all - women, cars, mountains of cocaine, a cocaine addiction, a little swimming pool I could fall into if someone ever shot me from my upstairs balcony. They told me to slow down, but I wouldn't listen. I was too foolish and naive for that. Everyone else falls from these heights; but not David Wile - not the Kid. This was my life, homie. You decide yours. Then came the day I tried to order Chinese with my credit card - and no dice.
Alright, I said to myself. I have less than $24 in my account. I can still live my life. You can still decide yours. But then - SCENE: Morning of May 4th, David Wile walks into the McDonald's in the tunnel and orders a sausage, egg, and cheese biscuit - and no dice. Alright, I said to myself in a similar tone to the time I said it to myself before. I have less than $4 in my account. I can still live my life. Your ability to decide your life, however, could be somewhat hampered. I think nothing of it, put my Chevy Chase student debit card back in my wallet, and pay with my momma's card. I consider going to the bank to deposit my $200, but it's not open yet, so I continue on.

Flash forward, morning of May 5th - Cinco de Mayprilo in the Spanish liturgical calendar. I breakfast on another sausage, egg, and cheese biscuit. Once again, too early for banking, so I head back. Around 11 in the AM, Matt Tweardy comes by to the Centennial 3 Study Cell, where I've been living for the past 2 weeks, and asks me to help him move a box to the UPS Store. I gladly oblige, eager to get as far away from my War & Personal Responsibility paper as possible. Whilst in the tunnel, I figure I can kill two birds with one stone and hit up da banks. I mosey on in, gallivant up to the counter, and proudly place my $200 through the window. Put this in the magic money system and let me get back to my lavish ways, I say. She asks me if I know how much is in my account.
"Under 4 dollars," I answer.
"Actually, it's negative."
I am surprised at this. "How negative?" I inquire.
She presses some buttons and scrawls a number on a piece of paper. She hands the paper to me upside down like I got a bad grade. Well, if a -80.71 is a bad grade, then I certainly got one, because that's exactly the number she wrote in a color I like to call "mocking purple" on my "Balance Inquiry Form." I quickly go through some calculations in my head, and I cannot even comprehend this number.
"Do you know how it got that way?" she asks me.
"No..." I say, looking for some answers.
"Would you like to see?"
Why yes I would, as a matter of fact. So I'll present that same question to you. Would you like to see? Because you're going to.

This, friends, is the last page of my monthly account balance (I've conveniently circled the only important part for you to look at in red):

Well. You'll notice that in the 2 days after I received my check for $200, I quickly blew all ~$60 I had to my name. $48 of that was a professor depositing a check for some play tickets 3 weeks after I gave it to her; sorry I forgot to account for that, Chevy Chase - my bad. Transformations of Shakespeare is really doing a number on both my bank account and GPA this semester.
You'll also notice that on the day of May 3rd, I made 2 egregious errors. The first occurred that morning as I was bringing my all-nighter through the home stretch through a morning McDonald's run. A refreshing $4.28 sausage, egg, and cheese biscuit & sweet tea. After taking 2 exams on literally 0 hours of sleep, I wandered back home, strangely awake from my test taking, albeit with a slightly atrophied right hand. From whence will my help come? THE MACDONALD'S. I stroll up to the register, dirty, beleaguered, the painter's strokes of years of toil and anguish meticulously pressed upon my face.
Through the pain I uttered these 7 words, 7 words to haunt me all the days of my life: "Double cheeseburger meal...and a...sweet tea?"
I looked on the register. $4.17. He'd gotten the meal right. Most of the time people don't expect meals with the double cheeseburger, so they just press the sandwich button, but this kid had it right. He was a pro. He could handle himself around a register, and we both knew it. We exchanged respectful glances, and I went about my life.
That is, until May 5th, when I deposited my $200 check only to find that the sausage, egg, and cheese biscuit, double cheeseburger, fries, and 2 sweet teas (once again, FROM MCDONALD'S) cost me $78.45.

Luckily, because of my check, I still had $120 of my deposit to continue living the American dream. BUT: just imagine the quandary I would be in if I didn't have a senile grandma - JUST IMAGINE THAT.

David Takes a Blog Post Down Due to Censorship

My friends, these are certainly unfortunate times in which we live.
I apologize to all those I may have offended.
God bless you all.


Sincerely,
The Editor