David Sends Austria into Anaphylactic Shock, Vol. II

From David Sends Austria into Anaphylactic Shock, Vol. I.

Chapter the Seventh

IN WHICH DAVID BREAKS AUSTRIA

And then the whole country just went to shit around me. For the last two weeks, if I have touched something, it has disintegrated in a matter of seconds, sometimes even in mere days. Some countries just ain't made Dave-proof. Austria, welcome to the Danger Zone. 

What products, specifically, can't handle your overwhelming existence, O glorious warrior-poet, you ask? 

MUSTARD CONTAINERS. Although my grocery-shopping history is admittedly a little touch-and-go, I'd thought that in the last couple years I'd started to get the hang of it. So after going grocery shopping for ingredients with which to make a mustard-based barbecue sauce and a few household supplies for my new apartment, I reverted back to my Washingtonian ways and bought a fabric grocery bag. I filled that badboy up, threw it on my bike handles, and pedaled off into the wind. After two blocks of the bag bumping against my wheel spokes, I decide to pull over and readjust, just as a precaution to keep anything from, y'know, breaking. After the readjustment, a gap opens up in traffic, and I floor it onto the street. On my first pedal rotation, however, an explosion of mustard bursts forth from the confines of the bag and garnishes my front tire. 

Here's a visual cue.

I piece together the crime scene, and deduce that I have, it seems, ripped that shopping bag a new one. Specifically, the bag wandered into my spokes, and a mustard tube (it comes packaged in aluminum tubes like toothpaste here) got caught, whereupon the spokes tore off the top of the tube through the grocery bag. After a few choice words, I roll up the mustard tube to keep it from emptying, push all my groceries away from the corner of the bag with the hole, and continue biking. That ought to teach me to take precautions. 

SHOPPING BAGS. Whereupon, about 4 feet later, I notice a massive tear has opened up the entire back of the shopping bag. I throw that bitch out at the next trash can I find, throw everything into the basket I bought to act as a hamper in my apartment, and precariously walked my bike the 20 minutes to my apartment. 

BIKES. This one's pretty simple. I was mounting my bike all pro-like, and in a decidedly un-pro manner, I kicked off my back reflector. Could've happened to anyone, really. 

BIKE LOCKS. Then I broke my bike key whilst trying to take my bike lock off the back of my bike in order to lock the damn thing right before leaving on a train bound for Villach for the weekend, so me and Andy were forced to double-down on his lock until we got back and I could get my spare key.

LEDERHOSEN. In Villach, we had a Trachtenparty, meaning everyone wore dirndls and lederhosen. I also apparently needed lederhosen for my school's ball (the Pitz Ball, as it were), so this was just a good investment. However, after a mere single use, my lederhosen broke right in the scrotal region. Because I bought them on sale, I couldn't even take them back to the store. Since I'm not trying to show up to the Pitz Ball in ballsack-less lederhosen, this was a low point in the life of The Kid.

"Ah, yup, looks like my testes have found their way onto the floor again."

THE WEATHER. After doing my laundry for the first time in Austria, I hung it out to dry because Austrians are too busy worrying about their silly "environment" to dry their clothes with any efficiency. For the next two days, it rained mercilessly upon my freshly-laundered clothing. I cut my losses, bought a drying rack for my room, and took my clothes inside from the elements which the heavens had unleashed upon them. The weather has been nothing short of heavenly since.

LIGHTS. When the lights in my room are off, they flicker on. Not only is this random circuit-completion disconcerting, but it's also a bitch to fall asleep to. In order to do that, I have to unscrew the lightbulbs in my room every night, so the first thing I do every morning when I wake up at 5:30 in the AM (i.e., while it's still dark outside) is stand on my bed and put my lightbulbs back in their sockets. Which is precisely what I want to do as soon as I wake up at 5:30 in the morning. 

BIKE LOCKS REDUX. Not to be outdone, my spare bike key then broke in my bike lock while my bike was locked. Tough titties, Dave.

HOW DID YOU OVERCOME THESE CATASTROPHES? Moxie. Also, I duct taped the reflector back onto my bike. And one of my students at school told me her grandma would sew my lederhosen back together. And I bought a handsaw and went to damn town on my bike lock until I freed my poor bicycle from his terrestrial shackles. So, to recap, that is, in order: moxie, duct tape, one grandmother, and a saw. And my bike is still coated in mustard.

Chapter the Eighth 

IN WHICH AUSTRIA BREAKS DAVID

The planet was collapsing around my ears, and I hadn't even touched 21st century technology yet. But try as I might, I can't go too long without touching 21st century technology, so you'd best to put on a reading helmet, because you're about to take a ridiculous story to the face.

Once I had my new apartment, I needed internet access. One of the other English teaching assistants in Klagenfurt, Veronica, had accidentally bought two internet sticks (USB ports with SIM-cards in them that act as modems), so I bought one off of her for the store price of €30. It worked wonders for 3 days, when the initial amount on the SIM-card expired. I added €20 to the SIM-card, and thought I'd just get right on back to interneting real quick. My computer, sensing that I could now access the internet of my own accord, reacted in the most predictable manner by refusing to read the internet stick. The next day, I take the stick to Andy's, plug it into Bex's computer, and run some tests. It still doesn't work, so I know it's the stick and not my computer, because science. Though, honestly, it's a little foolish of me to just assume that an Austrian product would work in my presence.  

I take the stick back to the store from which it came, called "3," and they tell me I need to have the receipt. I text Veronica to see if she has the receipt, and, impossibly, she actually does. Come Monday, I go get the receipt from her apartment, and I go back to 3. Since that all seemed a little too easy, the guy at 3 informs me that I do not, in fact, have the correct receipt, and so he can't do anything for me. I ask Veronica if she has the right one, and, more in tune with my life, she doesn't. Still, I need the internet, so I go back to 3 the next day to buy a new internet stick. That way, I can at least salvage the €20 I dropped and only take a €30 hit.

Of course, because my happiness angers the gods, 3 has, at some point in the last three weeks, ceased production of internet sticks. 

Pictured: the devil.

The blond lady at the store, who's apparently miffed at the level to which spending €50 for no internet upsets me, tells me that I need to go to the electronics store in the mall to find myself an internet stick. 

I go to the electronics store, Saturn, and for just €45, I buy myself an internet stick that's compatible with 3's SIM-card because I refuse to let that €20 go to waste. Of course, I might as well have just thrown the God-forsaken thing in the trash, since I had already made the fatal error of being in its vicinity. Much like a Native American in slavery, the stick would only work for five minutes at a time before dying. Even worse than a Native American in slavery, however, its death would freeze Windows 7. I run a system recovery to take the programs it downloaded off my computer, and the next morning I try to get it to work again, thinking that maybe I just downloaded everything wrong. This second time it works even less effectively, so I run the system recovery again and head off to school so as not to be late. 

When I get back from school, my computer is just finishing up some diagnostics test that it definitely didn't do for my first system recovery, and caps that off by rebooting itself. On the reboot, however, all I get is a wonderful little message informing me that the "BOOTMGR is missing." Apparently, without a boot manager, my laptop can't even manage your average boot, so a reboot was just entirely out of the question. 

This boot, fortunately, is still in the cards.

For those of you keeping track at home, I've now spent €95 on the internet, and have gotten no internet and killed my computer in the process. At least I had the receipt for this stick, so I brought it back to Saturn and got my €45 back. So, on the bright side, it's only cost me €50 to kill my computer. 

HOW DID YOU OVERCOME THIS CATASTROPHE? This one's still in the process of opening its can of whoop-ass on me, actually. My computer is still dead. I've written this entire blog post on a combination of the computer in the teachers' lounge at Pitzelstätten and Bex's laptop in between her marathon Skyping seshes. Such is my commitment to you, my yearning faithful. Oh, and on Friday I found out that my house already had internet I could've hopped on for the whopping sum of €5 a month.

David Sends Austria into Anaphylactic Shock, Vol. I

Slightly more than one month ago, I, your humble narrator, left my native shores and headed for the wilderness of the Austrian hinterlands, where I had been conscripted to instruct the native savages in my mother tongue. On September 15, my flight touched down in the alpine valleys of the W. A. Mozart Airport in Salzburg, where I had planned to stay until the 24th in order to get my registration and visa situations worked out. Adjusting for the time difference upon landing, it was time to party, and I had a fresh case of ruckus tucked away in my carry-on. I disembarked from the airplane, shot one of the 47 Alps surrounding the place the old double sideways six-shooters, and watched it crumble to the ground.

For a small-scale re-enactment, see what you just did.

Through no fault of its own, Austria was about to get rocked. 

Perhaps sensing its own inevitable shortcomings in handling the extent to which rocking was about to be done unto it, Austria's immune system dialed up to 11, and the emergency D. Wile transplant has been getting rejected like the main character at the beginning of a coming-of-age movie ever since. 

Chapter the First 

IN WHICH DAVID'S LUGGAGE ABSCONDS

This allergic reaction to my mere existence first manifested itself after I had been in Austrian territory for roughly 7 minutes. I do the usual post-flight routine of heading to the baggage claim and waiting for my bag, along with my other co-passengers. Unfortunately, my bag does not do its part in this post-flight routine, namely, showing up on the baggage claim conveyor belt. For about five minutes after everyone had already left, I keep staring at the little curtain where the bags magically appear, expecting my bag to arrive by sheer force of human will. Finally, the conveyor belt stops, and a woman wearing official-enough-for-an-airport-looking clothes tells me that I have, indeed, been boned. Not having a phone number and not knowing the address of my hostel, I give the two women working the Lost and Found the hostel's name, which I only remembered via a miracle of God, and they tell me it will work itself out. At the very least, if it doesn't work itself out, they tell me that once I buy a phone I should give them a ring.

HOW DID I OVERCOME THIS CATASTROPHE? It actually did work itself out. Three days later, I went downstairs to the main desk to buy me some breakfast, and as if by magic, there's my luggage cowering in the corner. We saw the twinkle in each others' eyes, rushed into each others' arms, and then I unzipped his ass and took out my Adidas, because Salzburg is flipping made out of cobblestones, and the boat shoes I had been wearing since I left home aren't called cobblestone shoes for a reason. Although, I guess my Adidas also aren't called cobblestone shoes. I digress.

Chapter the Second
IN WHICH DAVID BECOMES HOMELESS

Coming into Austria, I was under the vague impression that I had housing readily available to me. I was under this impression because I had done the necessary research to find an apartment, and I had not only exchanged e-mails, but had also become Facebook friends, with the person with whom I expected to live. We'll call him Tom, because that's his name. Tom and I got along swimmingly. He appreciated how laid back I was, and I appreciated his commitment to party as documented on the Facebookz. We were going to have a blast, and I didn't even have to pay a security deposit. Every time I asked for the address of the apartment, however, Tom would get a little dodgy. Finally, in the lobby of the hostel in Salzburg, I initiated a Facebook chat sesh with Tom again. This time, I demanded the address, calmly pointing out that I needed it to do all that stuff like live in Austria and what-have-you. At this point, Tom burst my non-homeless bubble, informing me that we could not live together because the hundreds of euros I would be breadwinning every month would cancel his housing subsidy from the Austrian government. America, this is the face of socialism.

Put that hammer and sickle down, pinko.

I now had six days before I had to move to Klagenfurt and no address to stay at once I arrived. Even more exciting, without an address, I couldn't register with the authorities to get my residency permit, open a bank account to receive my extensive subsidy-canceling salary, or even benefit from all the communism floating around these parts and get my government-issued health insurance. The situation was looking, dare I say, dire. 

HOW DID I OVERCOME THIS CATASTROPHE? Shockingly, I made friends. At the orientation seminar in Saalbach-Hinterglemm, I became besties with Andy, Bex, and Amanda, an Englishman and two American girls respectively, the former two of which, in stark contrast to your fabled poet-scribe, actually had a roof over their heads, a television, and a David-sized couch. I just had to find an apartment of my own, and I would be settled. Things were looking up, and just in time for school to start. 

Chapter the Third 

IN WHICH DAVID ANNE FRANKS IT

My first night on the couch was the night of Friday, the 28th of September. My second night on the couch was Saturday, and on Sunday morning around 10 o'clock in the AM, I awake after a what has been an entire week of frighteningly heavy drinking to the quizzical visage of Andy and Bex's landlord, Dietmar, who wants to know just who in tarnation I am. Upon informing the Dietz of my status as honored guest, Dietmar tells me that, whilst guests are allowed, I am not allowed to "live" in the apartment, and I have to GTFO without even the option to tits. Unfortunate, considering the entire conversation took place with yours truly all up in his boxer-briefs.

Apparently, sleeping on someone's couch for two nights constitutes "living" in this country, and also landlords are just allowed to waltz on into your apartment whenever they damn well please. All of this comes as some shock to me, but Dietmar doesn't have time for shock. Nor does he tolerate my continued presence in his apartment. I wake Andy up, gather all of my things into his room, and hit the mean streets of Klagenfurt on a Sunday morning. Absolutely nothing in this town is open on Sunday, so I just walked around for two hours before coming back to Andy's. Arrangements would have to be altered. 

HOW DID I OVERCOME THIS CATASTROPHE? Through stealth and cunning. I would avoid Dietmar at all costs. I would sleep on the floor in Bex's room, with only a blow-up camping mattress and a sleeping bag between me and nature/linoleum. In the mornings, before leaving for school, I would hide any trace of my existence. These were dark times, and they were about to get darker. 

Yea, even darker than this.

Chapter the Fourth

IN WHICH DAVID DOES HIS THANG

Let's face it, adoring millions: We all knew, in our heart of hearts, that this one was coming. I had spent three weeks since my departure from Columbia tempting the gods of transport. I somehow got on all three flights from Charlotte to Salzburg without missing any of them. I even had a baggage-check lady run me through JFK's security just so I could get to my flight on time. She used her badge and everything, shit was nuts. I got on the right bus to my hostel in Salzburg, and I made all the trains from Salzburg to Hinterglemm and from Hinterglemm to Klagenfurt without a problem. Hell, I even got on the right bus at the right time to get from Andy's apartment to my school way out in the farmland on my first day of classes. This little bout of punctuality just wasn't sustainable. I was letting the loyal, yearning fans of this blog down, and I knew it. Luckily for you, loving faithful, there's always a second day of school. 

On that fate-soaked Tuesday, I ran out of Andy's apartment slightly late, left my school bag in Bex's room, tragically hesitated on the elevator/stairs decision, and got to the bus stop right as a bus arrived. I hopped on. The streets didn't look like they did on Monday. I convinced myself it was just because I'd been seated facing the other way the day before. Even the people on the bus didn't seem like the same people that were on it on Monday, but hey, who takes the same bus on Monday and Tuesday? Don't be foolish. Still, once the bus up and turned its ass around, I started to become a little less sure of myself. When it got back to Andy and Bex's stop, I was all but certain that this had, indeed, been the wrong bus. 

I waited at the stop for the right one, and eventually showed up for school 3 periods late. Sorry I'm a champion. 

HOW DID I OVERCOME THIS ENTIRELY PREDICTABLE CATASTROPHE? Everyone at school just kinda got over it, actually. It's a very difficult school to get to. Shit is out in the boonies. 

Look at all them boonies.

Also, everyone at the Höhere Bundeslehranstalt für Land- und Ernährungswirtschaft Pitzelstätten is remarkably friendly and understanding, which bodes well for me.

Chapter the Fifth

IN WHICH DAVID'S HOMELESSNESS INCHES TOWARDS THE TEMPORARY

After four nights of roughing it on Bex's floor, I inked a contract with my future landlord, Berend, agreeing to drop €270/mo. on an unfurnished 12 square-meter room. Of course, I still had to live with Andy and Bex until I had time to move my year's supply of luggage across Klagenfurt, but now I had a definite plan. Also, Berend wanted a €540 security deposit and the €270 rent ASAP, and I still had to buy a bed and various other furnishings to get comfy. For those of you counting at home, you can put your fingers down because that's roughly A MILLION FUCKING EUROS. Also, did I mention that we don't get paid for the first time until mid-November? Because we don't get paid for the first time until mid-goddamn-November. And until I can move my belongings, I'm still in hiding from the wrath of Dietmar on the safe though remarkably uncomfortable haven that is Bex's floor.

HOW DID I OVERCOME THIS CATASTROPHE? Pitzelstätten stepped up big in the clutch. They took a bed and a table from the dorms and delivered it to my house. Then one of the English teachers, Astrid, took me to her place where she stored a bunch of excess crap in the basement, and I got myself a coat rack, a makeshift dresser, and the complete works of Nietzsche in the original German. Mercifully, Berend took pity upon my poverty and told me not to worry about the security deposit until I get paid. Finally, Astrid volunteered her car to move all of my various accoutrements from Andy's to my place. After spending a grand total of €0, my apartment was furnished and I would be moving in on Saturday. Clutch.

Chapter the Sixth

IN WHICH DAVID GETS SMOKED OUT

Friday night was my last night sleeping on Bex's floor. It was emotional for all of us, but this eagle's gotta spread his wings. Unfortunately, right as I got out of the shower and before I could get my sweet-ass feathers all plumed up for freedom, I'm once again met by the grisly visage of Dietmar, Landlord Extraordinaire. And boy, if he isn't just itching to have a word with me in the living room. We're always so quick to forget that the Anne Frank deal wasn't such a feel-good story after all.

You and me against the world, Anne. You and me.

We retire to the living room, where Dietmar asks for my passport. After I fetch it for him, he snaps some pictures of it with his iPhone. I have been documented. The realness level in the building has increased dramatically. He asked me what would happen in America if someone did what I'd done, and rather than saying "nothing," I just implied it by literally saying nothing. I'm a sly fox when it comes down to it, is what that is. He suggested that such a hypothetical person would be arrested. I didn't have the heart to tell him that, not only are people allowed to sleep for a week in their friends' apartments, but that the landlord who just all willy-nilly-like busts into your apartment would be the one in trouble, so I just implied it by literally saying nothing. Sly fox, like I said.

HOW DID I OVERCOME THIS CATASTROPHE? Dietmar may be Austrian and I may be American, but we both speak the same language. We both speak three of the same languages, in fact: English, German, and dolla dolla bills, y'all. I dropped him a 50 spot, told him I was already on my way out that afternoon anyways, and he seemed satisfied. In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.   

Continue to David Sends Austria into Anaphylactic Shock, Vol. II.

David Plans for the Future

Just five weeks ago, your fabled hero and narrator graduated from college. Having miraculously emerged from the four-year ball-stomp that is the modern American university system with at least the faint recollection of my sanity, in the sense that, say, one maintains the faint recollection of an arm violently gnawed off in the godless jaws of a grizzly bear, I, your humble poet-sage, have been thrust against my will out of the proverbial frying pan and into the less proverbial fires of the current job market.

OCCUPY FLAME.

Finding my vast stores of personal wealth rapidly depleting, I'm gradually coming to the horrifying realization that, one day, I will indeed have to find a steady source of income. Even more terrifying, that steady source of income may have to be arranged as some sort of exchange for my very own individual share of labor.

You see, adoring faithful, I face the unenviable choice between consuming alcohol and prostituting my specific talents around the Washington, DC, metropolitan area. Now I certainly don't want to lose the only thing I can rely on to help me cope with my constant disappointment with my life's glaring lack of direction, but I also don't suddenly just want to up and start actively searching for employment. The moment I do that is the moment the Bureau of Labor Statistics moves my little voodoo doll from the "jobless" pile to the "UNEMPLOYED" pile, and I become an infographic on Fox & Friends and a general liability for the Obama reelection campaign. 

The Bureau of Labor Statistics, presumably.

What I'm saying is that this decision has far-reaching repercussions which could easily irreparably alter the course of American history or, at the very least, disrupt the flow of human evolution.

So rather than go into this job search guns blazing and unwittingly lead mankind to its untimely ruin, I will instead just begin to prepare to seek employment. The first step of this preparation, is, of course, discovering which field of labor would suit me best, what with my distinguished bachelor of arts degree in Political Science from the American University, my dual mathematics and German language minors, and a promising though tragically short career in the barista-ing arts and all. Let us, then, dearest readers, examine a few such fields, and, with the stark honesty for which this blog has become synonymous, judge the extent to which my persona is compatible with such a career choice. My background seems to have barred me from contention for such noble pursuits as "astronaut" and "seven-time Super Bowl winning quarterback," so we're gonna have to set the bar at somewhat less prestigious.

PRESIDENT
Now, now, I know what you're all thinking, loving millions: a Wile administration would be the perfect salve this country - nay, this world - needs to heal mankind's self-inflicted wounds, revive America's tarnished image, and bring JFK's long-delayed dream of a columbian Camelot utopia forth onto this earth. This destiny is surely divinely ordained, you say. Verily, you say, go forth, idle man, and fulfill what your God and your father's God has commanded unto your soul.

Now those are all good points, and I certainly can't refute them with the evidence at hand. And true, I should be able just to waltz on up to the American people, let them experience my raw sexual magnetism and the mesmerizing poeticisms of my soothing rhetoric, and decide for themselves if my credentials, viewpoints, and pre-Raphaelite jawline are what's best for America. But before I get democracy all hot and bothered, let’s just point out a few caveats.

Can America look away from this statuesque beauty long enough to vote?

To begin with, I am but 22 years of age. According to the Constitution of these United States, I need to have "attained to the Age of thirty-five Years" to run for the Office of the President. That's a whole Bar Mitzvah between now and then. Who knows if I’ll be able to maintain my classic features and svelte frame for the lifespan of a beagle?

Second, that whole "résumé-building" thing just isn't for me. What, like I'm supposed to join a mail-room somewhere, and somebody's going to just all Good Will Hunting me and recognize my genius, gradually promoting me through party ranks until I get to be the one running for President? You can't leave God's will to mere mortals/supervisors.

Perhaps what's holding me back most, however, is the fact that I'm Jewish. In the past three elections, America has had to deal with a Catholic, a black guy who looks a little muslimy, and a Mormon, and has had a legitimately difficult time doing it. And none of those guys even killed Jesus. Is America ready for a Jewish president? Is America ready for a young, mysteriously dark-featured, professionally inexperienced, divinely ordained, Jewish president? Well, friends, that's one of the few questions my political science degree did not prepare me to answer.

Level of compatibility: Middling.

ATTORNEY-AT-LAW
With my four years in college having done little to convince people that I should be in their employ, perhaps what I need to make myself more marketable is a little more book-learning. Dare I say it, law school could be in order here. Not only would the law provide me an outlet through which I can turn my life into one half of the greatest show ever produced on television, but I hear that at least some percentage of the job could consist of me logicking at people so hard they soil themselves. The rest of it, if I'm to understand Law & Order correctly, is maintaining the fragile balance between society's expectations, public safety, and the rights of the individual citizen all while coming to grips with the innate case-by-case subjectivity of morality.

It's a bitter pill to swallow, Mr. McCoy. 

All of which seems like a good deal. Can I do it? Probably. Would it kill me? Probably. You see, my parents are both lawyers, so I have a bit more of an insight into the profession than just my immense experience with the Law & Order franchise. And if you ask my mother, "maintaining the fragile balance between society's expectations, public safety, and the rights of the individual citizen all while coming to grips with the innate case-by-case subjectivity of morality" is really just a by-word for "paperwork." And that sounds like a bitch.

If you look at it from another angle, however, a career in the law could be an excellent stop-gap while I fulfill my constitutionally-required 13-year hiatus from seeking the presidency. Twenty-seven of America's 44 presidents have been lawyers.

Stephen Grover Cleveland: Two presidents, two lawyers, one walrus mustache.

So I could go to law school, become a lawyer, and just bide my time until America is ready for the sheer magnitude with which I will charm it out of its miniskirt. And if that doesn't work out, I'm still trained for an occupation. How's that for a win-win?

Level of compatibility: Tepid.

ENTREPRENEUR
Even though all the companies and corporations which currently exist might deem me too unqualified for employment with them, if there's anyone who'll hire me, it's me. I'm my kind of guy. I remind me of me when I was my age. I like the way I think; I like my spunk, passion, desire, my style, as it were. I like the cut of my jib.

At first glace, entrepreneurship might seem pretty simple. There are millions upon millions of entrepreneurs out there. Every time I walk down my street, I'm amazed at the American ingenuity which thought, "Only three dry-cleaners on this block? That is at least one dry-cleaner too few." But only a select few have such a unique idea or innovation which fills such a vital yet previously missing niche in society that their enterprise rakes in billions in profits. People like Walt Disney, Henry Ford, Steve Jobs, that chick who made Spanx.

And that's my problem. You see, I'm not the best at understanding society's wants and needs. When I see a woman walk by me on the street, I don't think, "Now there's a poor gal suffering from painfully flat hair who would benefit from some kind of plastic hair support system" so much as "Boobs?" I've never once shotgunned a beer and thought, "Gee, if only the company responsible for packaging this beer had made a can specifically to simplify this process; that innovation would certainly attract me to another brand." I don't look at tacos and Doritos and think, "Yes, these two things should be one thing."
 

Because who doesn't love a cozy afternoon on the toilet?

I'm just not an innovator, I guess. And I certainly can't do anything with technology. I refuse to use Macs because I still haven't forgiven Steve Jobs for the one-button mouse. A few weeks ago I tried to change the formatting of this blog and my toaster exploded. My first reaction when my Internet stops working is to punch my computer even though I know they're different things.

Not to mention that Fonz-based troubleshooting hasn't worked since 1967.

Even if I did miraculously get an idea that would revolutionize the world, turning that idea into a product and marketing it would cost thousands of dollars that I do not have. Right now, I have so little money that my bank wants to charge me for the service of having to input such a short number into their computers. Because that will solve that problem right up, Capital One. So the entrepreneurial route is, at least for the time being, not where my immediate employment salvation lies.

Level of compatibility: Sub-par.

WRITER
If there's one thing college might actually have prepared me for, it's a career as a writer. Writing was 73% of all I did in college, and the other 27% was an awkward mixture of alcohol, masturbation, and sleep. I even have my very own blog. In fact, writing is probably the only activity I do for fun that could possibly be parlayed into a career. It also comes with the additional benefit of letting me set my own hours, which, as we all know, are nocturnal.

Now, All the Wile certainly has its millions of loyal and loving admirers, but somehow that hasn't translated into cold hard cash just yet. And since I believe my blog should be a free and ready service by which the public at large can receive my tales of woe and ineptitude, I'm going to have to branch out into more lucrative mediums: novels, novellas, screenplays, amping up my Twitter presence if I have to. Fifty Shades of Grey fan fiction. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

According to my watch, the time is not that desperate.

Of course, I can't just mosey on up to a publishing house and start bathing in the lucre. To begin with, college made it such that I can only write under the most extreme circumstances. If I am not constrained as much as possible by the twin forces of the amount of work I have to do and the amount of time in which I have to do it, I am physically and mentally incapable of producing anything. I'm going to have to overcome this little college adaptation and self-motivate the Holy Spirit out of myself if I'm going to make it in the writing field.

Also, I hear writers need to have ideas, which are just the things I happen to be plumb out of. I've spent every day of the past 6 years trying to come up with a plot of any nature for any medium that doesn't suck. My freshman year of high school, I wrote a screenplay for a film noir about detectives investigating the apparent murder of Humpty Dumpty, and I haven't had a decent idea since.

Obviously a decoy of the King's by which to distract all of his men and horses.

You, avid readers who hang upon my every word, probably recall me taking an X in a course for the sole reason that I could not for the life of me come up with a research topic idea. Even my blog posts aren't really "ideas" so much as "life stories." Although, in fairness to myself and the beloved nature of this blog, that means I could at least write one bitchin' memoir.

One bitching memoir.

Unfortunately, I would need enough people who find the story of a suburban middle-class white male captivatingly interesting for that badboy to sell. Who wants one?

How about now?

Level of compatibility: Me-oww.

David Takes a Gander at Geese

Not two days ago, your young, captivating hero joined with his fellow Berlinsketeers Alex Calta and Jenn Smith on what spontaneously became a walking tour of our nation's capital. Somewhere along the National Mall, we encountered a particularly patriotic group of waterfowl plying their trade upon the banks of a reflecting pool. Yet just as we were about to give them the old "Howdy, partner," tip our Stetsons and ride on past them to Mama O'Grady's General Store with the sun to our backs, they started acting suspicious. They smiled toothlessly at us; they punctuated every thought with a single repetitive sound; they were spooked by our concealed, unregistered firearms; they administered health care to one other in a sickeningly egalitarian manner. That's right. These were Canadian geese.

What say you and your anchor goslings learn some goddamn English, eh?

Anyways, since we'd already passed the responsibility of determining an individual's right to exist in this country based solely on stereotyped profiling on to the officers of Arizona's state-level law enforcement division, we moved on to other more pressing concerns: namely, what one calls a group of Canadian geese. Other than "socialists," of course. We considered the merits of each of the following options, among others that escape my memory:

• A herd of geese
• A goose colony
• A pride of geese
• A phalanx of geese
• A pack of wild geese
• A wild goose chase
• Pillows (pre-production)

Pillows (post-production).

• A heap of geese
• A goose bump
• A whole heapin' pile of geese
• A peck of geese
• A murder MOST FOWL

We just couldn't seem to hit the nail on the head. Anywho, we continued on our merry way, and the entire episode flew from my mind like a contubernium of geese.

UNTIL:
Fast forward to the next day when, whilst looking up the number of spots on Barney the dinosaur (answer: 8) on GALACTIC KNOWLEDGE COMPENDIUM Wikipedia, I find myself linked to, of all pages, the article on Mother Goose. Scrolling through this page, as is my wont, I encounter the following poem, which is not only written by, but is also about Mother Goose:

     Old Mother Goose
     When she wanted to wander,
     Would ride through the air 
     On a very fine gander.

     Jack's mother came in
     And caught the goose soon,
     And mounting its back,
     Flew up to the moon.

Now, I had the first thought here we all did: Hey, Jack's mom, that's a pretty shoddy parenting job, neglecting Jack to go play goostronaut; also, you might want to double-check and make sure you didn't just commit a goose-murder-suicide.

But look back up there, and you'll have the same second thought I had as well: notice the word "gander." THAT'S IT. That has to be it. A gander of geese. How could we have forgotten gander? "What's good for the goose is good for the gander." What's good for one goose is good for all the geese of his ilk. What's good for you is good for yourn. Everyone knows that. Upon realizing such an obvious lexical oversight, I entered an emotionally heightened state wherein I was too excited with scientific/idiomatic discovery to actually check what a "gander" might be, and hastily scribbled on Jenn's Facebook page the following:

Well, joke's on me, because a "gander" is not a group of geese whatsoever. A gander is just a male goose. A group of geese, for those still wondering, is known as a gaggle of geese when said geese are grounded or asea, but once such geese transcend this terrestrial coil and reach cruising altitude, they become a skein, according to GALACTIC KNOWLEDGE COMPENDIUM Wikipedia. 

Which ultimately evolves at Level 36 into a shitplague of geese.

My research shows that a simple "flock" would work as well, but that's just for fools. Interestingly, "fool" apparently fits a second definition of "gander."

If you're anything like me, and you are everything like me, the idea of "gander" as plain old Mr. Goose is anything but satisfactory. It begs the question: What precisely does the idiom "What's good for the goose is good for the gander" mean? Does it mean "What's good for the goose of indeterminate gender is good, too, for the male goose"? Because that is much more difficult to apply to humans than what I thought it meant. And it certainly has no bearing on a group of female humans ("humanesses," the science calls them).

We now have a mystery on our hands, folks. I turned to the various Internets and posed my query on the Googling machine. The Internet horde replied: it apparently understands the idiomatic expression as a pre-industrial cry for the equality of the womenfolk. To these Mongol rubes, the phrase means "that which benefits the humaness is that which benefits the huMAN." This interpretation is honestly all over the fucking Interwebs. Be not fooled, ye faithful minions, nor be ye deceived by the fumbling keystrokes of these witless ganders. For to find this answer, we must delve into the darkest depths of the Internet, boldly going where no man has gone before: the second page of the Google search.

What, no, that's just nonsense. Sorry if I made anyone nervous there. No, seriously, you can come back from cowering in the corner. We're just going back to GALACTIC KNOWLEDGE COMPENDIUM Wikipedia. Stop trying to set your computer aflame. We'll get through this; that was really immature of me. There is no second page of a Google search.

MOVING ON:
Returning to the GALACTIC LEXICOGRAPHIC COMPENDIUM Wiktionary definition of "gander," we see underneath the word's definitions the terms derived from that word under the cryptic heading "derived terms." And here we see our fatal mistake: the phrase "What's good for the goose is good for the gander" is merely a corrupted form of the original idiom, "What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander."

"Gosling? More like 'sauce-ling'! They're talking about the sauces we eat, right? Those humans?"

Further investigation (i.e., clicking the GALACTIC LEXICOGRAPHIC COMPENDIUM Wiktionary link) shows that the sentiment conveyed in the idiom is absolutely not a rudimentary peasant expression of the ideal of the equality of the sexes. Rather, the sole definition is precisely what I had always believed it to be: "If something is acceptable for one person then it is acceptable for another."

Still, since the idiom meant what I thought it meant, we're left with the same problem. To say what it actually says, the saying should go: "What's good for the goose is good for the gaggle," or "What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gaggle." Although that last one unfortunately carries some connotations of goose-genocide (which was, apparently, a thing?), no ganders need be included to muddle this whole thing up with post-modern feminist notions to begin with. And if we don't want to bring up horrible memories of the Goose-ocaust, we could just say: "What's sauce for this goose, Goose A, similarly serves as sauce for that goose, Goose B." Finally, I've found what I've been searching for for all these years: idiomatic clarity.

Pictured: a thing. Goddammit. 

Now, since we've already shown that you and I are practically the same person, I don't have to tell you, adoring reader, that there's a second mystery here which should be bugging you, weighing down, in fact, upon your very soul. Don't you fret, because we're covering that next. No, you are certainly not done with this blog post, get back here, young lady. So let's just get it out in the open: "What, pray tell, is a 'peck,' if not a unit of goose?" you ask in despair, hoping against all hope that I might provide your salvation. Well sit right on back and put your sexy-time reading shoes on, because I'm about to knowledge you up something fierce.

We'll begin this discussion where we began the last one: children's rhymes and idiomatic expression. We know that a "peck" can at least describe some measurement of pickled peppers, yet even our very source leaves unanswered the question: "How many pickled peppers did Peter Piper pick?" We don't know; but we know he picked a peck. That is a fact, and it is undisputed.

Once children's rhymes and idiomatic expressions have inevitably failed us as researchers, we must move on to the next best option: GALACTIC KNOWLEDGE COMPENDIUM Wikipedia. According to the peck-based article, a peck is a customary unit of dry volume. In fact, it amounts to a quarter of a bushel. For those of you unversed in the measures of dry volume, that's half a kenning. So Peter Piper knocked out 2 dry gallons of pickled peppers, is what I'm saying.

This definition is actually good news for our goose-related endeavors. It is technically possible to obtain a peck of geese. All we have to do is find out how many geese make 2 dry gallons worth of goose. But therein lies the rub. I might be just taking what I learned in 7th grade and trying to apply it to the world outside of middle school, but I recall that taking the volume of any irregularly shaped object, as some consider the common goose, is best done by determining its water displacement, or the amount of water it displaces when it is completely submerged. So even dry volume gets a little wet. Unfortunately for us scientists, all empirical evidence attests to the goose's renowned buoyancy.

Quick! Hold him under!

Since measuring the dry volume of waterfowl via water displacement technically falls under PETA's definition of "drowning animals," we're going to have to come up with another means of figuring out just how much three-dimensional space one goose encloses. As luck would have it, a Google image search reveals that apparently they make baskets that hold varying denominations of peck. 

Front row, far right: one peck. 

So yeah, what, like, goose, goose-and-a-half? 

David Goes to College: The Decline and Fall of a GPA, Vol. I

Roughly four years ago, I arrived on the campus of the American University in Washington, DC, with the wide-eyed wonder of a college freshman, ready to take on the world one midterm at a time. Signing up for classes in political theory, comparative political science, international relations, history, and law, David Wile was going to march into the halls of the Ward Circle Building and show this town something it ain't never seen before. Four years, forty classes, twelve countries, 72 all-nighters, 43 hangovers, and two jobs later, ecce homo, battered, beaten, world-weary, with upwards of $2800* in fines owed to the American University library and using Latin in a blog post while legitimately trying to pass off "la isla del Easter" as Spanish for Easter Island on an exam.

"Hey David, what in the hell happened?" you might find yourself asking, and yea, I too have found me posing such a question myself. Well, let's go back to the beginning and see if we can gather any clues from there.

The Beginning
Our story begins with my fabled entrance onto AU's campus. Herald angels proclaimed my arrival to the breathlessly anticipating university; a new star shone from the heavens to announce my prophesied coming; and, lo, three kings bedecked in the grandeur of the ancient Orient appeared to bestow upon me the gifts of royal birth. 

Like so.

My first week of classes, suffice to say I had no idea what was going on in school. I was showing up to class expecting to get taught me some facts and stuff, and instead everyone was talking to the professors like they already knew all the facts I wanted to be told. This situation wasn't ideal, and after about two weeks, I did some independent research to figure out exactly why I was apparently the dumb one in class. In the course of this investigation, I discovered that some professors don't just tell you your homework at the end of class; they put it in the syllabus, and expect you to have done by a certain date whatever reading assignments had magically appeared on this omniscient sheet of paper. My classmates weren't geniuses, they just seemingly intrinsically knew how to do homework. This little discovery would have a massive impact on my future college career.

Anyways, after this initial bump in the road, I settled into somewhat of a routine. I read for the two classes I thought I had to read in, and in the other classes I waited till the day before the exams to flip through the books and get a general sense of the learning material. As hard as it may be to believe, I never went to sleep after 4 in the AM; no all-nighters, no two-thirds-nighters, nothing past your run-of-the-mill half-nighter. In bed by 4, awake by 9:10 AM for the 9:55s I had 4 times a week. Yes, I even took 9:55s. Please, adoring millions, just bear with me. I know this insight into my past might irreparably shatter that unconditional respect and love you previously had for me, but I just couldn't bear to keep it a secret any longer. There you have it: my dark, tormented past. It's just one more lie I don't have to live anymore.

During that semester, I earned myself a 4.00 GPA. I also checkmated a computer chess program on its highest level. Neither of those achievements would ever happen again. This retrospective aims to determine why such was the case. Did I stop trying as hard? Did I lose focus? Did I get a very large and shiny television set? Did college make me dumber? Did I perhaps subordinate academic endeavors to straddle that thin line between awesome and alcoholism? Hypothesis: Yes.

But let's return back to the facts we're studying. After that first semester, I assumed that getting an A in a college course just meant handing in all of your work with a decent level of competence. Despite all evidence to the contrary over the next 7 semesters, I would maintain that assumption with the blind confidence of a post-epiphany Oedipus asked to gauge his certainty that he banged his mom on a scale of 1 to eye-gouging.

"Well, 9.5, but I just rounded up."

Those next 7 semesters would systematically kick my ass. 

The Decline: Part I
Upon starting my second semester at AU, I convinced myself that I was able to attend class five days a week. This completely unjustified confidence would prove my undoing. With 9:55s 3 times a week and 11:20s on the other two days, I was waking up on the AM side of the day far too often for my own health. That fifty minutes of class on Wednesday destroyed the easy-going life of my first semester. 

I began staying up later and later. It became a common occurrence to go to sleep at 6:30 AM, watching the sun rise over the smoke stacks behind Anderson Hall. Under these inhumane circumstances, my GPA took its first hits. 

The first one came in the last week of classes. Having stayed up for a majority of the night working on my part of a group presentation for Macroeconomics, I rolled over the next day as the clock struck noon. This was unfortunate, because my class began at 11:20. I put clothes on and, breaking my personal prohibition against running in public, sprinted across the entire campus from Anderson through dozens of touring families to the second floor of Ward. I got to class right after my group had finished presenting. Whatevs, I didn't need that 15% of my grade. 

The next hit happened during finals week. Instead of a final for my Research Methods class, we just had to e-mail in the paper we'd been writing that semester on Blackboard. With my paper due Tuesday May 1st, I decided to get a head start on it that Sunday night. For some reason or other, my laptop couldn't get onto the Internet, so I had to go downstairs to the Anderson Computing Complex to do my work. Checking my e-mail before starting the paper, I see this little gem:

Hi David,

Your final paper is not on Blackboard - did you post it?  Please let me know what's up, and email me a copy ASAP.

- Prof. Robinson  

Apparently under the confusion that May 1st was that Tuesday, I had completely forgotten that May 1st was the Friday before, and I was calmly writing my paper not 2 nights before it was due, but 3 nights after. Well color me flabbergasted.

I'm not proud of my reaction in the ensuing minutes. As nonchalantly as I handle the daily shitstorm of my life now was as panicked as I handled this one then. Real talk, if that depiction of studious freshman year David made you queasy, by all means, scroll through the rest of this section with your eyes closed until you feel safe and grab a cold shower. If you do bravely read on, I just want you to imagine the D. Wile you know and love typing these actual words to another adult human person and laugh to your heart's content. Let's just hope we can still look each other in the eyes afterwards.

My first response wasn't so much an e-mail as a literary study on the onset of hysterics:

OH MY GOD, I THOUGHT IT WAS DUE ON TUESDAY. I'll finish it right now and get it up to you. I'm so sorry. Oh my god, I'm terribly sorry. Oh no...

followed immediately by this free verse masterpiece: 

Also, my Internet has not been working for the last three days (it's not the AU network, it's just my computer, and no one's been able to fix it), so I haven't been able to get online at all. (This is completely true. I'm in the Anderson Computing Complex right now because I needed to get on that site with the blank maps, and I can't get to it from my laptop. It's also not very good that I just had a slight meltdown after reading that here...)

I wrote the eight pages of my paper in about 3 hours, and put it on Blackboard. The next day, my professor responded in a much more subdued manner than I'd responded to her and, apparently unaware I'd already sent the paper in, asked when I'd get the paper in to her. My response apparently doubled as an exercise in Kerouac-ian stream-of-consciousness prose:

I put it on Blackboard last night at like 9:30-ish (I did the data analysis in like an hour and a half). If the penalty doesn't change and the fact that I'm not sure if I wrote most of it in actual sensible words would make the grade even worse, I can look over it and turn it in again later tonight. Although I also might not have too much time, considering I have 2 exams tomorrow, I don't own the internet at the moment, and I pretty much need a 100 on one of those exams to not destroy my grade (that's the class the presentation for which I slept through - I can't begin to describe to you how proud of myself I am this semester...). So it might just end up working out that what I slapped together on Blackboard last night remains my final.
So I guess the better question is, when do you want my paper? Because depending on that answer, you either have it already or you don't. 

Freshman David was apparently a huge fan of the ellipsis-closed parentheses combo.

Anyways, as luck would have it, I must've gotten that 100 on my Macro exam, because I got a B+ in that class when a B was the highest grade I could get after I sacrificed 15% of that grade to the sleep gods. As luck wouldn't have it, I was deduced 10 points from my final in Research Methods for handing it in late. Even despite this penalty, all of the grades posted on Blackboard still averaged to a 91, A-. And even despite this average, I got a B+ in the class because "Participation" is a bullshit little loophole in the grading system designed to let professors give you whatever grade they want within a 10% radius.

Thus my initial universal theory of college, that if assigned work is done with a minimal level of competence then it will be deemed an A, remained unchallenged because my own incompetence rendered me unable to meet that initial condition.


Continue to David Goes to College: The Decline and Fall of a GPA, Vol. II.




*Ed.'s note: It's more like $30, but the American University library seems to be under the faulty impression that I have lost one of their hallowed Dell Ass-sucks from the stone age, and wants to charge me a market rate of $2700 for it. The American University library also seems to be under the faulty impression that "market rate" is the price at which a laptop was bought 6 years ago cubed.