David Does More or Less Exactly What One Would Expect

By now, most of my adoring audience is well acquainted with my eternal struggle with the banalities of high-speed transportation. Buses, trains, and airplanes continue to show an annoying level of commitment to their refusal to learn the detailed intricacies of my personal schedule, and I continue to maintain my commitment to my refusal to learn theirs. In our latest episode, we join David at his apartment in DC on Tuesday, November 22, needing to catch at 10:30 AM flight to make it home for Thanksgiving. He's been up since 2:30 AM after an accidental nap left him extremely behind schedule for an assignment that quite possibly is due that very morning. He spends the rest of the night/morning reading the article he would then have to write a page on were the assignment in fact due that day. Let's pick up the unforeseen consequences of this uncertainty here. 

Having finished reading Terry Moe's "The Presidency and the Bureaucracy: The Presidential Advantage" for my aptly-titled class "The Presidency" by around 7:00, I then had to answer a question about it, which took until 8:22. Taking my fellow passengers into account, I grabbed a quick shower. I also hadn't actually packed yet, so I knocked that out of the way, and then I texted Cullen to pick me up at the Charlotte airport at 12:30. Having planned to leave at 8:30 and give myself a comfortable 2-hour window before the flight, I ended up leaving my apartment at 9:10. Still, I should be able to Metro on down to Reagan with enough time to be allowed onto the plane. 

I get to the Metro by 9:18, and immediately a train comes. I get off at Chinatown and head downstairs to the Yellow Line in time to see the train I need leave the station. I now have 8 minutes to wait before the next train, which means that it'll whisk me away around 9:39, giving me probably around 35 minutes to get from Chinatown to my gate. I'm doing some intense Metro math to figure out how long it'll take the train to get to the airport, estimating that I'll get there around 10:05 and then have 10 minutes to get my boarding pass, mow through security like John Rambo through North Vietnamese, and mosey on into my plane. 

So naturally I'm pretty pleased when my train pulls into the Ronald Reagan National Airport Metro station at 9:57. That gives me about 18 minutes to run through an airport, which, fortunately, I'm pretty experienced in. Unfortunately, I don't know what airline my flight's on, so I go with my gut feeling getting off the Metro and head to my right. The departure TVs are telling me that my flight is U.S. Air, which is good because that's the direction I walked in, but apparently my gate is in Terminal A, and all the signs around me are telling me where to go to wait for the shuttle to Terminal A. Not one to wait for shuttles when my walkin' legs are perfectly capable of carrying my lithe frame from one end of a building to another, I decide to walk briskly to my terminal. 

Walkin' legs, deployed.

At 10:04 I get to Terminal A. All I see is jetBlue and one or two other airlines who had apparently wronged Reagan National Airport in a past life, but no U.S. Air. I catch a peak at a little sign at the terminal entrance, and it tells me that U.S. Airways is Terminal C. You might recognize Terminal C as the complete opposite side of a 3-terminal airport. I certainly did, and I expressed this recognition by punching the top of the door frame as I stormed out of Terminal A, drawing suspicious glances from the two other people who apparently did have actual business in Terminal A. I briefly consider that I may have misread the departure TV, but I quickly dismiss this possibility as so far beyond the realm of probability as to render itself impossible. 

I get back to Terminal B by 10:08, and realize just how poorly marked an airport Reagan is. There's a single sign upon arrival telling incoming passengers where to turn towards U.S. Airways, but you have to have practically already turned in that direction to see it. There's another sign further down to tell you to go upstairs to check in, but you either have to have already given up on your search for the check-in desk and be helplessly yet comically turning in circles in listless frustration to see it, or fortuitously have been born with a backwards skull.

Unlike you, this owl knows where to go to get his boarding pass.

Luckily for me, I don't have to rely on this frustration because I've been to this airport before and know that upstairs is where the real party is. I go up the escalator, and, luckily for me, the U.S. Airways check-in desk is the last of every single domestic airline company's. Finally, at 10:11, after having already been in the airport for 14 minutes, about 10 of which had been spent going in the wrong direction, I get to the check-in kiosk. I push my credit card into the machine, enter in CHA because I'm flying to Charlotte, and wait for my boarding passes to print. I've got between 4 and 9 minutes to get to my gate. I've noticed that the first sign after check-in points passengers to gates 23-34, and the departure TV says I need 23A. Essentially, once I get through security after checking in, I'll be in my gate. I'm preparing to eke this one out by a nose. 

Then, the unimaginable happened. Taking it upon itself to regulate my punctuality, this cold, heartless, soulless machine tells me that I'm too late to check in for my flight.

The following scene could easily have been avoided with a T-800 check-in kiosk.

I check the time: 10:11 AM. I still have 19 minutes; surely I can reason with this machine. Operating under the admittedly shaky logic that physical violence might subdue the electrically powered piece of machinery into printing my god-forsaken boarding pass, I begin mashing the kiosk with my fists. I loudly and explicitly inform the soldered mesh of metal and copper wire of precisely what sexual acts it can perform upon itself in its private time, while it implicitly informs me of precisely where I can shove my boarding pass. I slam my head against it and whimper like a beaten dog. I throw my bags down onto the floor and start kicking the Christ-fearing crap out of them. The small child and his young parents behind me are watching this meltdown of human psyche in a mixture of horror and shock.  

Ultimately I give up on convincing the computer and decide I need to talk to a person. I am mere feet from my gate and, even after suffering a psychological crisis wherein I singlehandedly disillusioned the naive and innocent Weltanschauung of a 5-year-old child, still have 17 minutes until my plane takes off. Surely a human being will understand the injustices I am suffering. 

Lines be damned, I run in front of every person waiting to punctually check in to their flights, demanding the services and attention of a living, breathing, soul-bearing fellow person. My first interaction proved less than fruitful, as one of the ladies that makes sure everyone goes to the correct check-in kiosk tries to direct me to another check-in kiosk, to whom I promptly explain that I have no use of such unsophisticated hunks of metallurgy as those considering their refusal to print my boarding pass. The lady agrees that I need to talk to a person, but then tells that person that I've missed my flight. Insulted, I remind her that I haven't missed it, it's still goddamn there and will be for the next 15 minutes; to which she coldly replies, without daring to break her permanent airline customer service smile, "Yes, but you're too late to check in so you've missed it." Luckily for her, I had previously exhausted all my fist-beating on door frames and electronic screens and had reserved none for her face.

I go up to the person whom that lady had previously told I had missed my flight, hoping he would be more receptive to my plight than that woman's face had been to the concept of changing expression. Unfortunately, he's acting as if I've missed my flight too, rather than fallen victim to the clerical error of a machine. He types away for a little bit, and we talk about South Carolina because he was from Spartanburg and that's what people from South Carolina do when they find each other outside of their natural habitat, and all of a sudden it's 10:17. At this point, humans have been of little help to me and I have no chance of making it to this gate before it closes.

Eventually Guy A gets called away because they need someone with a passing knowledge of Spanish over at some other check-in station, and I'm left with Guy B, who hands me a boarding pass to a 12:15 flight and sends me on my merry little way. I go down the escalator at 10:24. There's no one waiting in the security line, so I go through that in a matter of seconds. I get my belt and shoes back on, repack my laptop, and go past gate 23A at 10:29 AM. I watched my plane take off just to stick it to that clown of a kiosk who didn't believe in me, and headed down to my new gate. 

I text Cullen to let him know that he doesn't have to come get me until around 2 PM now. I go to a bar in the terminal and grab a cheeseburger and a beer, and just kinda hang out there until my new flight starts boarding. I realize, of course, that I don't have a seat on this flight, so I'm standbying the shit out of it. Unfortunately, my standbying efforts fall short, and I'm advised to go to a little booth at the end of the terminal where they deal with airport vagabonds such as myself. It's two days before Thanksgiving, so right now weaseling my way onto flights I'm not scheduled to be on isn't looking like a strong game plan. The lady at the desk tells me she can get me first on the waiting list for a 1:45, though, so hopefully that pans out. I tell Cullen not to get me until around 3:30 and pass out in the gate. 

I wake up to a text from Cullen at 12:53 PM reading:

Wtf. I wake up to a bunch if messages and missed calls. What's going on?

Apparently Cullen had forgotten all about the night where he called me, asked me what day I was coming home, and then proceeded to tell me to tell my mom to not worry about picking me up in Charlotte that afternoon because he had me covered. Had I made my original flight, I would have been waiting in Charlotte for at least an hour and a half for someone to come rescue me. Although lesser men would take this incident as a stroke of good fortune in an otherwise dreadful day, I'll instead derive the entire moral of the anecdote from this happy coincidence, and leave you with the thought that, rather than missing a flight, perhaps a higher Providence was watching out for me on that particular November morning. No, I am not above arguing that an omniscient and omnipotent power monitors my waiting times.

He's got nothing better to do.

Needless to say, considering who was playing on my team that day, I squeezed my way onto the 1:30 flight to Charlotte. I got there at the exact same time as Cullen, and we enjoyed a wonderful drive home together. And when you consider all the circumstances, everything worked out for everyone; I got home, Cullen was saved the shame of arriving late, and you, yearning faithful, even finagled a blog post out of the deal. Look who's the lucky winner there. And, as luck would have it, that assignment wasn't actually due until the next Tuesday, so this entire incident was really just a big misunderstanding.  




Ed.'s note: This post was written more or less entirely via writtenkitten.net. I suggest this medium to anyone writing any work of note or prestige. It is a trailblazer in its own time. 

David Builds a Wall

Back when I was in Berlin, I agreed to live with Laura Lalinde for our senior years. On July 31st, roughly 11 days before I was to be kicked out of my cozy Vaughan Place apartment, we decided to actually go looking for an apartment. This search was less than fruitful, and we went home still potentially homeless. That's when a brilliant idea came to me as if from the heavens: I would take one for the team (specifically, Team David) and partition off a section of the living room in Gianluca and Andy's apartment for myself while Laura would get the third bedroom, which their would-be third roommate's fortunate schedule conflicts had just freed up. It was a beautiful plan, and I would only be dropping $600 per month, which in DC is almost stealing a room. Except it's more like paying $600 every month to have a piece of a living room. Semantics.

Having staved off homelessness, I found myself needing to stave off roomlessness. For the month of August I had the master bedroom because Andy had to housesit for his boss and Laura wasn't moved in yet; but once September rolled around, I'd need myself a room. I had two walls just from the natural corner of the living room I was inhabiting, and luckily for me one of the apartment's past residents left a gigantic bookcase, so I just needed to cover the back of that for Wall #3. So to have a room, I needed to build myself a single wall between the living room and the dining room. Game time. Come August 30th, Andy and I go on what we billed as a magical shopping spree, a single fell swoop through the Sam's Club and Ikea wherein we would get a some furnitures, a microwave, and, most importantly, a wall. We got everything and still got back to the apartment in time for me to make the #1 pick in my live fantasy football draft. We thought we had everything we needed. How wrong we were.

For instance, I forgot to pick up a medical expert to tell me not to draft this hamstring.

At Ikea, I bought a Malm, which apparently has something to do with a dresser, which is only notable because it vaguely sounds like "Mom" and I got to run around the warehouse part at the end of the store shouting, "I can't find my Malm! No, this isn't my Malm! My Malm's not brown, my Malm's white!" which was only amusing for so long (read: until I found it). More importantly, on the wall front, I grabbed five 24"x108" Anno Amorfs and a Kvartal on which to put them. Translated from the Swedish, that means I bought curtain panels and a rod to hang them from. The grand design was to look something like this guy's. I also snagged a pack of two Ritvas on the way out, which I would use to cover the back of the bookcase. If the draft ended by 10:15, I'd have a room by midnight.

Let me toss some history at you. King Gilgamesh built the walls of Uruk and became the title character of the world's first epic poem. Emperor Hadrian built himself a wall across the entirety of England which has stood for 1900 years. Nikita Khrushchev built a wall through the city of Berlin in a single night. William T. Great built a series of walls each bearing his name, the most famous of which delineates the northern border of China to this day. Friends, there is a reason that those few brave men who have had the in-born ability to build walls are hallowed in the annals of history. There is a reason that only men of magnitude and strength even so much as make the attempt to build walls. That reason is Ikea.

What you see below is a picture of the tools Ikea pretended they would give me in order to attach the Kvartal to the ceiling. What you see crossed out in the blood wrung from my desensitized wrists, for those of you lacking a basic understanding of rudimentary symbology, are those tools which Ikea neglected to give me.

The diagram on the next page depicts the constructor shoving the Kvartal through his eyeball.

With the Kvartal out of the picture, I began looking for alternative measures by which to hang my Anno Amorfs. I naturally turned to duct tape, but not only did I blasphemously doubt the level of reinforcement the duct tape would provide, but I also wanted this to be a classy endeavor. This is Ikea we're talking here.

Gianluca comes up with the idea to use 3M tape. I'm pretty wary, but I also know 3M tape can do magical things, so I don't dismiss the idea immediately.  I try it out, and the Anno Amorfs fall faster than a Mesoamerican empire during flu season. Gianluca's weight guestimations were, to say the least, faulty. 

Later that night, Andy gives me some metal hooks to jab into the ceiling. He says I have a good chance of just screwing them into the ceiling by hand, so I go off of that. After 30 minutes of screwing, I have a hole in the ceiling too wide to hold the screw, so I decide to sleep on it. I go into the hardware store the next day intending to buy some ceiling mounts, but those don't exist at Ace. Instead I just grab even bigger hooks and plan to do some damage. I ask the guy helping me how I can go about screwing them into the ceiling. He tells me I can probably just screw the hooks in by hand, or, worst comes to worst, drilling 1/16" holes ought to do the trick. Despite my prior inability to screw the smaller hooks in by hand, I decide that since this Ace employee is obviously an expert in his field, I'll just take his word for it. 

I get back to the apartment expecting to build a wall, and instead I find Kat, whom you will remember from our European adventures, has arrived on her visit from California. She, Jenn (also a Berlinsketeer living in DC for the semester), and Laura catch up on the last three months or so of their lives. I don't have time for catching up. I have a wall to build, damn it.

I try to screw the hooks into the ceiling by hand, and, wouldn't you know it, it doesn't work. After they go in a certain depth, they just stop going in any deeper. It's high time to bust out the power tools. I grab Andy's drill, toss a 1/16" bit onto it, and put it flush against the ceiling's face. It gets about a quarter inch into said ceiling's face before it starts just spinning around in place. I try in three different places, and get the same results for all three holes: quarter-inch holes and then, blam!, adamantium. At this point, the chances of hanging anything from this ceiling are looking bleak. On the bright side, however, now we have some stylish holes in our ceiling. Turning my attention from the wall I'm constructing from scratch to the wall I can easily assemble, I drill some holes into the left-behind bookcase, nail one of the Ritvas to the back of it, and call it a day.

That night, on my way back from realizing I didn't know what room number my night class was in, I have a revelation: What if, rather than hang my Kvartal from the ceiling, I turn the Anno Amorfs sideways and hang it from the wall? I could grab some wall mounts to mount my Kvartal to the wall, attach three or so of the Anno Amorfs to the Kvartal, and then wrap the other end around a pole; I'd not only have a wall, but a retractable wall at that. I quickly dismiss the idea as the ravings of a crazed lunatic, but it lingers in my mind. When I go back to Ace and note their lack of suitable wall mounts, I realize I can toss out the Kvartal altogether; I can grab a second pole, attach the Anno Amorfs to that end too, and stick that whole mechanism against the wall.

For the next two days, I go to Ace and spend at least two hours there looking for usable poles. Finally, a worker there sees me wandering the store with two pieces of wood, a curtain rod, and an insulating tube and asks me what on God's green earth I'm trying to do. "I'm trying to build a pole," I say. Apparently Ace already has pre-MacGyvered poles called "PVC," so I nab 8 feet of that, some horseshoe-shaped braces to brace the PVC to the wall, 50 feet of 1/4" thick rope because, hey, rope, and a plastic oil basin to use as a base to hold up the PVC pipe just in case it needed to become the outer rather than wall-side pole. Upon bouncing out the Ace, I get home to another Berlin-in-DC reunion carrying the PVC pipe and get to engineering.

Because there's about a two-inch dip in the ceiling when it gets about two feet out of the wall, the PVC pipe is just a smidgen too big to attach wall-side. It'll have to suffice for the freestanding side. Now it's up to the oil basin to come up big and actually hold the pole up somehow. What with the known weaknesses of oil basins, one could say at this point that it was all kind of a pipe dream.

The next day I have work for 9 hours, so I get a half-hour break. After eating lunch, I go to the Glover Park Hardware store across the street from my Starbucks and see what they have to offer. Their pole varieties display a much greater diversity than Ace, and I ask for a 7-foot dowel. Because I technically am paying for the entire 12-foot dowel, I take the 5 leftover feet as well and grab some 3" nails with the intention of using them to connect the dowels to the wall. At the end of my lunch break, I mosey back on into the Starbucks with 12 feet of wooden pole and some nails, and my co-workers are caught in between awe and hysterics, but I don't have time for such tomfoolery. I have a wall to build, damn it.

I assume the bus is off-limits as I'm carrying two man-sized sticks around, so I figure it's best for me to just take the 45 minutes to walk home. For the second day in a row, I come home carrying at least one gigantic pole while a crowd of people in the living room stare at me in bewilderment. I throw them down into the dining room for some engineering later. Come around 2 in the morning, I decide to get this road on the show and actually connect my Anno Amorfs to the 7-foot pole. I wrap the curtain panels around the wood and hammer 3 one-inch nails into each one to keep it all together. Unfortunately, somewhere along the way to hammering 9 nails into a wooden pole lying on the floor at 2 AM, I neglected to take into account my downstairs neighbor. Fortunately, my downstairs neighbor took me into account and came upstairs to let me know just how accounted for I was. Well, joke's on you, sleepless neighbor below me, because I just finished hammering my 9th nail in.

Now I've essentially got 3 Anno Amorfs nailed to a wooden pole and spread across the entire dining room. The wall would stay exactly like that for the next two weeks. I spent that time plotting, thinking of my next moves, engineering the single greatest contraption since the Roman blind: the sideways Roman blind.

Do you see the legend at the bottom? It doesn't make sense until you see the legend at the bottom.

The design was brilliant.

Once this technology overpowers humanity, this is the bleak dystopia we look forward to.

Under this arrangement, I would abandon the PVC (especially since my attempt to drill a hole into the oil basin for the PVC to fit through resulted in the basin cracking in half), string some rope across the space the wall would cover, run that rope through the 5-foot pole to which the Anno Amorfs would be nailed, grab some lightweight dowels to run vertically in between the bigger poles, and loop some string through the whole thing to act as a draw string. Easy as pie.

Slut.

In order to accomplish this Herculean task, I took what I hoped would be one final trip to the hardware store. I bought the following (children and American University students are advised to look away, because numbers are about to be coming at your face):

• 2 5/16" bolt eyes with nuts
• 1 pack of 3/4" nails
• 1 pack of 1" nails
• 2 .284"x2-5/8" screw eyes
• 10 .098"x1-1/8" screw eyes
• 1 pack of 1-1/4" screws
• 48 feet of 1/8" thick rope
• 3 4-foot long, 5/8" thick dowels
• 1 21/64" drill bit

I also realized I needed 6 medium-sized screw eyes (I'd only bought large and small), so I bent, using my bare hands/pliers/the arm of our shitty couch, those ceiling hooks I bought way back when into the screw eyes I needed. Problems began arising; I'd bought the 3/4" nails to hammer into the 4-foot dowels, but (once again: look away, math) 3/4" > 5/8". That means despite my master planning, I needed to take another trip to the hardware store. I do this the next day, and the only things I find smaller than 3/4" nails are 3/8" aluminum staples. The guy at the store says I can just hammer those badboys into whatever I desire, so things are looking up. When I get back to the apartment, I presumably have everything I need to build myself a wall. For the next week and a half or so, this is our dining room:

Dining room by Ikea.

It keeps stressing me out to constantly go over in my head the exact order in which I need to nail everything everywhere, so I write down a list of instructions to follow.

Well that clears things up.

Archaeologists and epigraphers have deciphered this inscription to mean the following:

1. hammer 3/4" nails into end pole
2. roll [Anno Amorfs around end pole], hammer 1" nails into end pole
3. turn curtain over, hammer staples into center pole

4. screw screw eyes GOLD (bent hooks) into end + wall pole (at place in line with center poles)

5. roll back over, screw eyes into center poles

6. do this [pictured]

7. screw eye screw into wall [moved above 6]

8. screw eye screw into wall-side pole [moved above 6]

9. tie rope tightly

10. tie string to wall-side pole, loop through all screw eyes, TIE ENDS TOGETHER. 

Boom. Ten easy steps to building your very own wall from scratch. After just letting the wall and wall-pieces sit on the ground for a few weeks, it was time to get to action. Steps 1 and 2 just involved me getting the Anno Amorfs around the 5-foot freestanding pole. First I screw two holes into the top of it using the 21/64" drill bit I bought to make sure Step 6 goes smoothly. Then I nailed the ends of the curtain panels down to the wood with smaller nails, rolled the curtain panels up, and then used larger nails to keep the Anno Amorfs stationary around the wood. Done. Then, friends, tragedy strikes. The holes through the Anno Amorfs are too large to keep the nail heads underneath them; my plan is literally unraveling before my very eyes. No that does not get old.

I put on my quick-thinking cap, which looks alot like putting my hands to my head in despair but is really just the closest head cover I can find with so little time to react, and realize I won't have that problem with the staples. So instead of nails, I'm now just hammering staples into the pole. Unfortunately, the staples come with their own problems: they suck. They're 47 times more likely to just fold over than to go into the actual wood, so I'm having to hammer a nail into the wood where they go before I can hammer the staples themselves into the wood in order to reduce those odds to just 4 times more likely. This process takes a decent amount of time, but I get over it.

With Gianluca's help I turn the whole shebang over and staple-nail the center dowels in place. What with those dowels being lighter wood, the staples go in much easier. Shockingly, when we turn the future wall back face-up, tragedy strikes again: the nails are now tearing through the Anno Amorfs on the wall-side pole, finally following their comrades on the other side into active revolt after two weeks of passive resistance. I take care of these with more staples, and finally I'm done with Steps 1 through 3 and am ready to move on with my life.

But then, friends, a true miracle happened: Steps 4 through 8 went off without a hitch. Let's take a moment to let that soak in. An entire 50% of the steps went off perfectly. All the screw eyes went into their places like they were supposed to. The small ones went perfectly into the center dowels. The bent hooks screwed perfectly into the wall-side and end posts. The two large screw eyes went into the wall and wall-side post, respectively, at an exact height of 6 feet and 10 inches as if divinely aided. At this point, I'm pushing my luck, so I call it a day. For the next week, this is our dining room:

Bit of a misnomer, really.

Keeping in line with the course of nature, this bout of success means that Steps 9 and 10 need to make up for 4-through-8's shortcomings. First off comes the realization that everything is backwards. What you see in that picture, friends, should be the inside of the wall, facing my room (to the left); you'll notice the bottom of the pole sticking out to the right that renders this ideal impossible. I become mildly upset considering I definitely accounted for this possibility when I first nailed the Anno Amorfs to the 7-foot pole that dark night three weeks ago and still managed to screw it up, but at this point in my life I've just accepted that no amount of foresight can stop the ever-pressing tides of fate from relentlessly barraging me with minor annoyances.

Still, all I have left to do is hammer the 3" nails through the 7-foot post and into the wall and then string everything together. There should only be about 15 minutes left in my wall-building enterprise. I get Gianluca to hold the freestanding side of the wall up while I hammer away at the other side. After the nail gets about an inch into the wall, it completely stops going in and bends at a right angle. That's useless, so I pry it out. I try to drill a hole through the wall for the nail, but the drill stops drilling at the same point the nail stopped going in. I have apparently vastly underestimated the extent to which the entire apartment is framed with adamantium. Nevertheless, despite the evident impregnability of the inlaid structure, the first inch of drywall has all the fortitude of Mitt Romney's personal convictions, so the nails are falling out. I'm gonna need screws - big ones - if this plan is going to be salvaged.

I go back to Ace. I buy five 5/16"x2-1/2" screws and four 5/16"x2" screws just in case the 2-1/2" ones are too long and go back to work. Naturally, the drill chooses this day for the battery to die, so it's taking me 30 minutes to drill each hole through the wood and into the wall. I've propped up the wall on a futon so I can work alone into the night. For the next 12 hours, all I'm doing is drilling, wrenching with pliers, and lamenting the circumstances which led me to this situation. Eventually, at around 6 AM, I have 2 decently screwed-in screws and 2 more screwed in as far as I could get them before the pliers warped them. My palm has a pliers-shaped bruise and I can't close my hand. The freestanding side has started to show structural damages, and I have to throw my last few staples at the problem. Regardless of how unsuccessful the day has been, for the first time in a month, we don't have a makeshift wall taking up our dining room. Before going to bed, I leave this note on the floor for my roommates:

It's practically a study in poignancy. The next day, Andy and I try to see if the rope will hold at this point. After a few tugs, it's pretty obvious that the wall-side post is about to get ripped straight out of the wall. I have to go buy a wrench and some more screws, stat.

I need some exercise, so I jog to Ace. I put a $10 bill in my shoe, tie my keys to my shoelaces, and take off. When I get to the hardware store, not only am I shvitzing beyond the recommended volume for polite commercial transactions, but I also realize I completely underestimated the cost of a wrench. Expecting to get an adjustable one, I have to settle for one that will only screw in screws that happen to be the size of the screws I have. I buy an extra 5/16"x2-1/2" screw as well and get to the register. My total comes to exactly $9.99, because I am a champion. I run back to the apartment with wrench, screw, and receipt proving my champion-hood in hand. Never mind that with every step I take my keys are flopping around and I'm jingling like Christmas morning. I have a wall to build, damn it.

Back at the apartment, the drill's fully loaded again, the screws are all lined up, and the wrench is prepped and ready to get its wrenching on. I realign the screws on the wall-side pole to be more towards the top where the screw eye that will hold the rope is located in order to reinforce that side so I can make the rope coming across tighter. After about 24 hours, I've finally attached the wall-side pole to the wall. Let me emphasize just how much I underestimated the difficulty of that process: if you go back up and read my instruction manual, you'll notice that in literally zero places do I mention attaching the pole to the wall. Yes, adoring readers, even I must admit the faultings of my own genius at those rare moments they brave to peak through the steeled shield that is my intellect. Just to get back at me, it became the single most time-consuming and physically painful part of the wall-building process.    

Two days later, Gianluca asks me if the wall will work. I haven't tied the rope yet because I don't want to prove that it won't, but I realize I'll have to cross that bridge eventually. We draw the rope through the screw eye on the wall-side pole, and I try to tie the six-turn San Diego jam. This attempt fails magnificently. First off, we realize we need to put something under the shorter freestanding side to keep everything even, so Gianluca grabs a box. We try the San Diego jam again, to similar results. We give up on the San Diego jam and just start tying your average knot, but the rope isn't taut enough. Something drastic needs to change. It is at such trying times as these that true genius manifests itself: desperately needing to keep the rope from slipping down the screw eye, I became the first person to ever attempt the fabled triple-loop. With the help of a loving God, I emerge unscathed and the triple-loop stops the slippage, and after just a series of square knots, I have a room with four walls (albeit with one propped up by a USPS box).

"Come at me, Mr. Gorbachev." -Wall

I know you're thinking, "Put that masterpiece in the Louvre," but, friends and admirers, let's not get too far ahead of ourselves. We're not done just yet. All I need to do now is prop the wall up with something that's not made of cardboard, preferably figure out a way to attach that to the Anno Amorfs there, and you can call me Aeacus. Probably shouldn't take much more than 15 minutes.

David Solves Problems

  

On Friday night, my roommate Andy and myself decided to cap off our latest FIFA binge by going to Public bar in Tenley, grabbing a beer or two, playing some shuffleboard, and calmly strolling back home. After successfully completing the first three of those tasks, we decided to embark upon the fourth. We get out of the bar, onto the street, and walk about a block before the most ridiculous perversion of modern technology since Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull punches calmness in the mouth and makes it bleed its own blood. Namely, I get this text from an unnamed number:

You are an ass hole cunt!!!

I begged to differ, so I responded accordingly:

I would beg to differ.

I was, nonetheless, concerned by this verbal affront, so I tell Andy what just happened. The only information I have on the unknown texter is that his or her number has a 310 area code. Andy gets on the iPhone to do some recon: the 310 apparently represents the lovely township of Santa Monica, California. I quickly think of all the easily upset, foul-mouthed Santa Monicans I know. I settle on Emilio Estevez.

Meanwhile, Andy's trying to convince me that my response to the initial text should have been handled in a more even-handed manner, personally suggesting I respond with more poetic turns of phrase like "I will shit in your mouth" or "I will fist you with a boxing glove." 

In the meantime, I get another text.

(310): Really?! U beg to differ? U think ur perfect u dick?

At this point I'm really not sure what I did, exactly, to anger Emilio, but he apparently perceives an arrogance on my part which, adoring faithful, could not be farther from the truth. I start to wonder if it actually is Emilio after all.

(DW): Who is this? 

(310): Im ur worst nightmare

Andy and I begin brainstorming. By the time we're debating between Richard Simmons and a hot chick with a Patriots tattoo on her left tit, we come to the 24-hour McDonald's down the block from us and decide to stop in for a bite. As I'm ordering, my phone is blowing up like a Palestinian activist, but I decide to be respectful to the patient McDonald's employee across the counter from me and finish ordering before answering. I open my phone to find the following vital pieces of information:

(310): Butt face
(310): Cunt
(310): Poonani
(310): Twat

Having just been called a "butt face" and a "poonani" within a matter of seconds, I'm a little taken aback. I still maintain my calm, however, and advise Emilio to get back on topic.

(DW): Anatomy is not helping here.

Emilio then uses a pretty nice segue to get back to the heart of the matter:

(310): U think ur so smart... U don't even know

My calmness, however, quickly disappears, but the truth of the second part of that statement inspires quite the texting outburst in me. Standing slightly to the left of the McDonald's cash register, I put my angry face and my point-making thumbs on and hammer out a response:

(DW): Apparently, considering I HAVE NO FUCKING IDEA WHAT'D GOING THE FUCK ON.

Andy, seeing both my angry face and point-making thumbs, reads the text from over my shoulder and tells me that he can hear me saying exactly what I typed. We sit down in a booth with our food, and I begin working on my fries. Unfortunately, Emilio would have to put a damper on fry time and direct me to my typographical error.

(310): U can't even spell!

I quickly go over my last text, and notice that I hit 'D' instead of 'S.' I'm mildly embarrassed, but I take the high road and, rather than point out Emilio's equally brutal spelling, apologize for my egregious error:

(DW): You're right. I'm a retard with clumsy thumbs.

At this point, chomping on my double cheeseburger, I'm almost certain that the mystery-texter is Emilio Estevez, and the next text only serves to back up that point. (WARNING: Those members of my adoring faithful who are sensitive to sexually explicit material and/or extremely fallacious logical leaps should think twice before reading on).

(310): Omg!!!!! So u mean u can't give urself handjobs?

Whoa, Emilio, that took a dramatic turn.

(DW): That is none of your concern. Also, that is quite the logical leap.

I finish up my McChicken and we head out. As we're walking in the door to our apartment, I get a new text:

(310): Who are you?!?!

This biddy wants to know who I am?

(DW): Bitch, who the fuck are YOU?

Andy and I get into our room and go to our respective beds. Emilio is not pleased with the choice words I offered him, and let's me know it:

(310): Woww you are calling meh a bitch? Fuck you Johnp

At this point, I'm not so sure Emilio meant to text me. Probably just accidentally hit my name in his contact list while looking for this Johnp guy. I inform him of his mistake.

(DW): Johnp? My name's nothing like Johnp. For one it's David. For 2, Johnp's not entirely a name.

I expect Emilio's response to apologize profusely for accidentally calling the wrong person a "poonani," and Andy and I happily await his revelation that he's been texting the wrong person all along. Instead, we get this gem of a reply:

(310): Wow typo. It was John, sorry asswhole. I hope you like sucking your own dick. U should have just said u weren't John. Thanks asswhole.

Let's ignore the reversal of Emilio's previous policy of typo-intolerance and instead focus on the meat of this text. Imagine yourself in Emilio's shoes. You've just been texting a person a string of insults only to find out it was the wrong person. Do you:
a) apologize and get on with texting the correct person, or
b) AMP UP THE FUCKING PROFANITY

If you chose option (b), you and this person might get along, except you probably wouldn't considering the combination of severe antisocial tendencies you both display would cause spontaneous mass murder-suicides to occur in any room you two happen to occupy simultaneously.

Although Emilio was prepared to let the emotions of the moment get the better of him, I knew I had an obligation to get back to being the voice of reason.

(DW): Well you've just got to start this whole conversation over again with John. I'm sorry that I responded negatively to your string of insults to the wrong person. I'll promise to work on that if you promise to work on your conflict resolution skills/phone number research. What, may I ask, did this John character do anyhow?

(WARNING: Children, avert your eyes.)

(310): He fucked my BFF

Yeah, John was two-timing Emilio with his best friend. Not cool, John.

(DW): Whoa. Well, fuck his ass up. But with the right phone number this time. Also, check your BFF.

And this is my favorite text I've ever gotten (by the way, I've been imagining Emilio as a girl in a biddy huddle in the corner of a bar somewhere angrily showing these texts to her friends):

(310): Thank you for your support sorry about all that. Where r u from?

I use this to show Andy the benefits a subdued response has on a crazed person. I let her know I'm from South Carolina and, so as not to sound like I actually went through the trouble of asking my roommate to look up the area code on his iPhone, ask Emilio where he's from.

(310): Oh I'm from la sorry I meant to txt Baltimore whopsie

She meant to text Baltimore??? There are two Baltimore area codes, 410 and 443. My area code is 803. Somewhere in that first text, mistakes were made. Anyways, I try to keep the conversation up:

(DW): Ah, gotcha. Good luck then. Be strong and you'll be fine.

I was hoping that my sweet, kind, supportive nature coupled with the fact that I already had her phone number would result in some sort of in-person meeting, wherein I would play to her emotional distress, sleazily hook up with her, and then, inevitably, sleep with her best friend. Unfortunately for her and, especially, her best friend, Emilio never texted me back.

As for John? Well, that's the next mystery we have to solve, gang.

David Gets to Gettin'

When I first got to Germany, I kept thinking in English, translating my thoughts to German, and then retranslating them back to English because my host parents understood English anyways and there was remarkably little point translating it to German in the first place. Although this thought process didn't necessarily improve my German, it did direct me to one of the extreme peculiarities of the English language: the word "get." We use it all the damn time, and there's no single word in German that's nearly as versatile. Some variant of the verb "to get" can be used in just about every situation. For instance, here's an excerpt from someone's diary I just made up:

I just don't get it. Every time I get chili and cheese on my hot dogs, I get sick. Last night I got some, and I get a massive stomachache. I get onto the bathroom floor because its the only place I can get comfortable. Suddenly I get a phone call, but I've got no idea where my goddamn phone has gotten off to. I'm trying to get to it, but I have to get the strength to get off of the floor first. I get my arms underneath me, and I start to get my mosey on down the hallway. I'm getting all up and against the walls, the pictures are getting knocked off the wall, and I'm getting hit by the falling frames. The ones that don't get me are getting smashed to pieces as they get to the floor. Finally I get my bearings, and when I get to the living room I get a sense of the epicenter of the ringing. Eventually, after I get all the cushions off of every chair and sofa, I get to the phone, having gotten tired and downright exhausted from the search. Of course by the time I've gotten to the phone, the phone's gotten done ringing. I've got an awful feeling in my stomach now because I had to get off the bathroom floor and get up and about, but I try to get back to the caller anyway. Unfortunately, the phone won't get reception anymore because it had just gotten covered in chili cheese dog.  

That's 14 sentences and 35 forms of "get". How is that possible? Well, let's analyze this further. Keep in mind I've been thinking of this word for 5 months, so we can use some examples. Here's just using plain old "to get":

He'll get bigger.
He gets mugged often.
Did you get the book I sent?
I'll get the ball.
Get me a car.
Cars get my dog all riled up.
I couldn't get him to talk.
I get to sleep all day on Wednesdays.
I don't get Heidegger.

Here we have it meaning, in order:

• become
• is (passive voice)
• receive
• retrieve
• give
• make
• convince
• am allowed to, &
• understand.

We have a single word that can be used 9 times without two sentences using it the same way. In German, you would have to use at least 8 different words to say these sentences (the conjugated forms of: werden for the first two, bekommen/kriegen, holen, geben, machen, überzeugen, dürfen, & verstehen, respectively). It even takes over the standard "to be" in the passive voice. That's right: the English language has two different verb forms of the passive voice. DOES THIS BOTHER NO ONE ELSE??? I can only assume this differentiation occurs because we would rather "get" something done to us than just "be" there while it happens. If you "are punched," you just sat there like a little bitch and took it. If you "get punched," you earned that badboy.

i.e., "Snooki got punched."

"Get" gets even more batshit when you start adding prepositions to it. For instance:

Get oneself/something [up (to)/down (to)/in(to)/out (of)/on(to)/off (of)/back to/back from/behind/in front of/around/past/beyond/by/to/ next to/over/under/between/through/away from] some undefined object.
I didn't get to raking the lawn today.
We should get together more often.
I don't get out much.
He can get by without your help.
They don't really get along.
Get up, Jim, it's almost noon.
I need to get up the courage before I talk to my boss.
Get over here.
Get over him, Patricia.
The Broncos front four needs to get after the quarterback more.
He can't seem to get around the law.
I'll get back by 6 tonight.
Get away from that infant, grandma!
O.J. can get away with murder.
I get off work at 5.
Feet get me off.
Get with the program.
I can get behind that.
I wanna know if you can get to that.
Get at me, bra.
Get down with your bad self. 
Let me get my pants on first.
Let me get my pizza on first.

In order, these mean:

• move oneself/something in the general direction stated in relation to some undefined object
• have the opportunity of
• meet up
• leave the home
• survive
• agree
• wake up
• gather
• come
• stop dwelling on
• chase
• circumvent
• return
• escape, when one considers the dangers of infants
• evade punishment for
• finish
• arouse
• join
• support
• wrap one's mind around
• respond to
• boogie
• put on, &
• nothing. This sentence means nothing.

And if someone knows what in the Christ that means, by all means.

There's 24 more uses (25, if you count Mr. Smith's babblings).

In fact, we like the word "get" so much, we even invented a verb construct just to get it some more air time in the term "have got." As in, "I have got way to much time to think about the English language." The entire thing makes absolutely no sense, and it appears nowhere else in English. It's not the past participle of "get." That's "have gotten" (at least in American English, which is the only English that counts in All the Wile's book), as in, "I have gotten chlamydia." This construct contrasts with "I have got chlamydia." The first means you have received or contracted the disease, likely (unless you went out looking for it) from someone, i.e., "I have gotten chlamydia from your sister." That construction doesn't work with "I've got," because "I've got" literally just means "I have," in this case in the sense of "to possess." We could only grammatically say, "I've got chlamydia. It's from your sister." Which means we've just taken a word we already have, "have," and stuck another word onto it, "got," to mean what we already had in the first place. We've made a verb as simple as "to have" into a two-word phrase that takes more time to say solely because we have an absolute woodstockian lovefest going with the word "get."

Gross.

But English speakers don't have time to be wasted on silly things like saying two words to mean something for which we already have a single, monosyllabic word. We have no problem dropping one of the two words, so sometimes that means we drop the one we're trying to say in the first place: the "have." We'll throw "have" under the bus because, for some reason deeply embedded within the English-speaker's psyche, we fucking love the word "got." When we could grammatically say either "I have to go to the store" or "I've got to go to the store," we could just as well colloquially say, "Yo homeskillet, I got to go to the store real quick, bruh. Talkin' 'bout groceries, dawg. Groceries." This sentence makes perfect sense to everybody.

Especially K-Fed.

Even more intriguing is the fact that "I got to go to the store" already means something: I was allowed to go to the store, maybe by my mother, or once the school within 500 feet of it finally shut down. Sure, context exists and it would be admittedly difficult to screw that one up, but regardless: we have chosen the possibility for linguistic ambiguity over just goddamn using the word "have." The next time someone signs off of Facebook or G-Chat with a friendly "g2g," you, O enlightened reader, now can wisely and helpfully respond to them, "I congratulate you regarding your newfound liberties, good sir or madam, but what precisely, may I ask, was heretofore preventing your departure?" Check. And. Mate.
We assume you have no interest in the friendship continuing after this conversation.

This word is what I thought of every single day for 5 months in Europe. Every single one. Invariably at some point, my thought process would turn to how I was always having to find synonyms for this word that apparently means everything, and thinking of all its uses, listing them day in and day out. In fact, if you were having a conversation with me while I was in Germany, there was about a 50% chance I was just listening to how often and in what contexts you used the word "get," having slight semi-subconscious mind-gasms every time I found a new one. I would constantly stress myself out over the multiple uses of this word, thinking of how ridiculous it would be to be a foreigner learning a word with at least 33 different meanings.

This poster makes remarkably little sense to non-English speakers.

This is what I do. This is my life, this is my thought process, and this post is my cry for help.  

David Among the Greats: A Comparison

One month and twenty-seven days ago, friends and neighbors, I reached a milestone of American legal culture: I turned 21 years of age. In America, this would have been celebrated with much pomp and circumstance (I think it's generally more pomp than circumstance. I haven't been in America for four months, however, so I could be mistaken on this matter). In Germany, where people apparently turn 21 all the damn time, this milestone was celebrated in a much more subdued manner. Of course, I realize that I haven't done much to earn an extraordinary celebration of my birth. True, I have created a blog that has won me the praise and adoration of millions, but beyond such benevolence and creativity, I have passed but a scant amount of my potential greatness onto my fellow human beings. But I'm so young and have so much time to truly extend my genius to mankind, one might say. So let's test this philosophy with the infallible process that is scientific inquiry. Using purely biographical information from the list of the greatest heroes whose feet this planet's dust has ever had to glory to kiss, we shall attempt to answer the following question: How do I compare to such historical giants at the grand old age of 21 years, one month, and 27 days? 

Game time.

Julius Caesar

Where he was at 21:
With his father Gaius Julius Caesar, the governor of the province of Asia, dead when he was a mere 16 years old, Julius became the head of the Caesar family. When he was 17, he was appointed high priest of Jupiter, which meant that he'd need himself a wife; he was summarily married to the daughter of Lucius Cinna, one of the top two most powerful men in Rome. When the other most powerful man in Rome, Lucius Sulla, got back to the office after having some business to attend to bustin' skulls down in Greece, he targeted, among others, Caesar in his purges, taking away Julius' inheritance, dowry, and priesthood. Julius went into hiding in the Italian countryside to avoid execution; eventually he used his connections to get Sulla's pardon and return to Rome. With his first choice career path closed, Caesar joined the army, and was summarily honored with the Civic Crown, the second highest military honor in the Republic. He subsequently became an ambassador to King Nicomedes' court in Bithynia. Charged with securing a fleet using the king's financials, Caesar spent so long in the king's court that rumors began to circulate back home of a homosexual affair between the two of them, accusations which would follow him his entire life. Detractors disparagingly gave him the title "Queen of Bithynia." 

Chances of David being Julius Caesar:
11%. I have a number of things working against me here. For one, I wasn't appointed to any high priesthood before my high school graduation. Additionally, I have yet to be purged by the most powerful man in my country for any political involvement, nor have I earned many military valors. Never has anyone even thought to question my sexual orientation, which will probably end up costing me some sweet, sweet motivation in the long run. Why else would I put in the effort to rise to a position high enough to be draped in women - including my future assassin's mother - at all times?

"What? I told him to chill with the 'mater tua' crap."

All in all, I'm afraid I just might not have the experience with political intrigue to become a Caesar.

Jesus

Where he was at 21:
Nobody goddamn knows. According to the Gospels, he was born to the Virgin Mary in a manger in Bethlehem, whisked away to Egypt, and raised in Nazareth. At one point when he was 12, he was found in Jerusalem after an episode with some negligent parenting reading from the Torah in the Temple, but after that the story gets a little fuzzy (and by fuzzy, I mean non-existent). He emerges again in his 30s primed and ready for some solid Bible-thumpin'. We're gonna have to go outside of the gospel for this one: specifically, Shingō, Japan. According to local legend, Jesus decided at the age of 21 that the best place to pursue some good old divine knowledge was in Japan, and moved there for the next 12 years. That's right: at 21, Jesus was in Japan. How accurate is this account? Well, you can decide that for yourself. According to the legend, after Jesus went back home and his crazy East-by-Middle East theology wasn't a hit with the locals, his brother Isukiri - a traditional Judean name - took his place on the cross. Apparently a little Tale of Two Citiesed out, Jesus headed back to the place that stole his heart: Herai Village in Shingō, where he and his family took up rice farming and he died at the ripe old age of 106. 
Sounds about right. 

Chances of David being Jesus:
94%. This is a pretty rough estimate, but nothing about Jesus' childhood outside of that virgin birth really guaranteed his international adoration as the Messiah. I went ahead and took 6% off though because, no offense to my mom, but I probably wasn't born to a virgin. Also, Grand Strand General Hospital is a few turtledoves shy of a manger, if you catch my drift. However, the Big J and I are both skinny-ass Jews, and I totally rode a donkey that one time I was in Israel. 

I also rode this Israeli.

And, if that isn't spooky enough, when I was 12 I was definitely reading the Torah in a temple before my mom came and picked me up. Considering I haven't already moved to Japan to become rice-farmer Jesus, that means I'm almost certainly on my way to become Lamb-of-God Jesus. And you know what that means: 

I'll take one in bigger.

Get on it.

William Shakespeare

Where he was at 21:
Shakespeare's life is also a bit of a mystery. Born in 1564 to a glover and his wife, Shakespeare got himself baptized real quick and was educated at a free school chartered by Edward VI in 1553. After undergoing some intensive Latin schooling and going through the Classics, the 18-year-old Shakespeare was married off to Anne Hathaway, who would achieve fame in her own right after 2001 in her breakthrough role as the lead in The Princess Diaries. Seven months later, the 26-year-old Anne (high five, Shakespeare) would give birth to a baby girl, Susanna. Two years later, just shy of Shakespeare's 21st birthday, Anne would give birth to twins, Judith and Hamnet. The next 7 years of his life are considered his "lost years," and for all intents and purposes he was just dicking around before arriving in London in 1592. He possibly wrote his earliest play Titus Andronicus  before hitting the big 2-1, but it was more probably written sometime between his 22nd and 29th birthdays. Recovering from his lost years, he went on to become the most badass poet in English literature.

The valiant taste of death but once, bitches.

Chances of David being Shakespeare:
43%. Although I've been schooled for longer, I've only read a fraction of the Classics that Shakespeare had gone through, and I'm going to guess that I know less Latin (but probably more German) than old Willy. I have neither married nor impregnated anyone to my knowledge, and I can safely say that I am not a father of 3. However, I am well on my way to having a series of "lost years" that my future biographers will painstakingly and meticulously scour every moment of in order to figure out just what in the Sam Hill I was doing between college and becoming the best writer of the English language ever. Having collected an extensive paper trail largely through credit card receipts, they should be less than intrigued to find an impressive amount of McDonald's consumption and a disappointing volume of European H&M purchases. My chances of becoming Shakespeare though are largely hampered by the fact that Shakespeare was already Shakespeare. Unlike royal dynasties and boxing championships, "best writer" titles don't really get passed down so easily, so unless I do something remarkably revolutionary to this language (hint: SUPERiambic pentameter), I'm probably not going to get Shakespearean accolades. 

George Washington

Where he was at 21:
Born in February of 1732, George Washington suffered the death of his father at the age of 11. Raised by his half-brother Lawrence, he became the official surveyor of Culpepper County, Virginia at the young age of 17. With the money from this job he was able to purchase land in the Shenandoah Valley. He eventually caught the attention of Virginia's lieutenant governor Robert Dinwiddie largely because Lawrence was the commander of the Virginia militia, and was appointed to a major in February of 1753, around his 21st birthday. He also joined the Freemasons at this time, so his connections with the Illuminati were taking root as well. With the French expanding their territorial claims into Ohio Country, the British ordered Governor Dinwiddie to let the French know post-haste that dibs had, in fact, erstwhile been called. Washington delivered a letter stating said dibs, and the French commanding officer at Fort LeBeouf politely informed him of where he could shove that letter - specifically, onto the desk of his commanding officer in Canada, as he would be in charge of the dibs-claims department. Washington wasn't even about to go all the way to Canada, so he came back to Dinwiddie, said the French refused to leave, and was ordered to raise a militia regiment.  

Chances of David being George Washington:
18%. Washington seemed to have a bit more feet in the door to gain jobs and quick promotions and the like. Riding off the successes of his half-brother, Washington was able to get some dollaz, land, and a military position. I have none of these at the moment. Also, there seems to be a relative dearth of country-founding going on in this day and age, so the chances of me leading a nation to rise up against our colonial oppressors are looking bleak. As was the case with Caesar, I have yet to become an ambassador representing the wishes of my respective Empire either, so that's working against me. Still, me and George both share at this green stage of our lives a certain youthful laziness. Had I been in the same position as Georgie was, asking a Frenchman to get off of my country's land and whatnot only to be told I needed to go ask the higher-ups way the fuck up in Canada, I'd've probably just gone ahead and started the French and Indian War too. I mean, Jesus. Canada. Do they even know how far away Canada is?

What is that? They turned ice into a sport?

Albert Einstein

Where he was at 21: 
Educated at a Catholic elementary school for three years and then at Luitpold Gymnasium for the next 7, Einstein showed an early interest in building models and mechanisms and a talent for mathematics. At age 10, he was introduced to Kant's Critique of Pure Reason and Euclid's Elements. At 16 he wrote his first scientific work, "The Investigation of the State of Aether in Magnetic Fields." He applied to the Eidgenössische Polytechnische Schule in Zurich and failed the entrance examination (but did well on the math and physics parts), and finished secondary school in Aarau in northern Switzerland. He graduated at 17 after studying Maxwell's electromagnetic theory and then renounced his German citizenship to avoid the military. He enrolled in the four-year program at Polytechnic, cozied up to his future wife Mileva Marić during romantic nights reading textbooks on extra-curricular physics, and graduated at 21. Easy enough. 

Chances of David being Einstein:
76%. I've gone to school, and I probably showed a talent for mathematics when I was little. I'm on track to graduate by the time I'm 22, so Einstein's got a year on me there. Sure, I haven't written any scientific works yet, but everyone knows about aether in magnetic fields nowadays. Come on, Einstein. His résumé is actually pretty basic: he just went to school and did well in math and bad in everything else. If I don't read physics textbooks for fun it's because computers and televisions have been invented. When Einstein was my age, fun, like aether in magnetic fields, wasn't a fully developed concept yet. Societal differences are the only thing holding me back from being another Einstein: if I can overcome the bounds of this age, the vices and temptations that beckon me away from genius every second of every day, nothing else can stop me from discovering how matter and light can act both as waves and particles or proving the Riemann hypothesis. Unfortunately for the mathematical world, Facebook not only exists, but so does Law & Order: SVU. 

I can't even look away from the title card.

Combined, that means I'm probably not getting any work done any time soon. Hell, the fact that I could finish this blog post at all should really be celebrated.