It is raining.
Hey! Get away from the weather page! You will not be able to figure out my location from that, I assure you.
Because it is raining in lots of places. Ha!
It is not always pleasant when it is raining. I'm sure some of you think that it is never fun when it is raining. I beg to differ from your opinion (which you are entitled to hold) by saying that rain is fun when you are sitting on the couch, in your nice warm apartment, watching a movie and eating popcorn. Or fried zucchini.
Rain is especially nice when you have a friend to share it with. As in a furry friend, like Hypnos, or a human friend, like...like...uh....um....
We will return to that topic later, I believe.
Topic of the Day: Rain at School.
There are several main ideas connected to Rain at School. I will list them for you:
1. Umbrellas. People generally use these when it is raining. Also, sometimes they malfunction. Remember those scenes in movies when umbrellas turn inside out and drag their owner behind them into the howling wind and rain, their belongings splatting into puddles and their nicely combed hair dissolving into a slopping mess? Now imagine this happening to a Student in the middle of the Quad.
2. Sad People. People usually become woebegone when they realize that the person being dragged across the Quad by their malfunctioning umbrella is their Friend. Or when they realize that they've left their homework in their car, which is halfway across the school, which is separated from them by veritable lakes of puddles and tornadoes of rain. Or when they come to the conclusion that the only dry place to be is in class, where some of them didn't want to go in the first place.
3. Wet Homework. This happens when your umbrella flips inside out. Or when you drop your folder in a puddle. Or when you trip and fall into the soggy bushes. Or when the person walking very fast towards you, as he tries to get to class on time, accidentally slams right into you and knocks you into the wall, causing your umbrella to fall out of your hand and your papers to collapse into a drenched heap on the sopping cement.
4. Squeaky Shoes. As compared to other happenings, this is not such a bad thing. You will hear this phenomenon in the library entrances, as people's shoes come into contact with wet plastic tiles, and create a high-pitched squeaking sound. If you do not know that it is raining, you will figure it out when you hear the Squeaking Shoes.
5. Grumpy People. If someone has just run into you and knocked your papers askew, I suppose you may not be the happiest person in the world. But cheer up! I'm sure your professor will take your dripping and wrinkled appearance into account when you inform him that you cannot turn in your homework, and as you hold up your mangled belongings with a pathetic air.
6. Less Interest. By Less Interest, I mean less interest in Class. Students that are preoccupied with thinking about how the rain is going to wash their house away, or who are wondering how they are going to get to their car (without an umbrella) and without drowning, tend to pay less attention to professors. On the other hand, professors who are similarly preoccupied will give less interesting and probably less informative lectures, so you both will win.
7. More Noise. Squeaky shoes, plus dripping umbrellas, plus complaining people, plus rustling of wet papers, plus longer excuses for missing homework, plus chattering teeth = more noise. This is a tried and true Math Equation. I predict that most of you are now appalled that I have used the word "Math" and the word "Equation" in conjunction with each other on an English Major's Blog (also a no-no), and so will now X out of my happy musings forever, and never read anything about me again. This too, dear reader, creates more noise, because you are clicking your mouse to exit. Now you can add that to my Equation.
8. Absences. By absences, I am not referring to the people who have just exited out of my life forever. No, I mean those Students who wake up to find that the sky is pouring rain, and who lie in bed lackadaisically (or in despair), and who simply choose to go back to sleep instead of going to class. Who knows how they will react the next day when it is still raining? Goodbye grades!
9. Car Accidents. Eek. This is too scary. Never mind.
10. Unkempt Appearances. Wet hair. Sliding makeup. Dripping shoes. Drenched jeans. Soggy T-shirts. Slushy umbrellas. Angry faces. Sad faces. Droopy faces. Spiky hair. Very curly hair. Very wet hair. Raccoon eyes. Etc.
And the last one:
11. Broken Bones. What would happen, dear reader, if your wet shoe happened to slip on the floor of the library entrance? And then if you fell headlong? And you knocked several people over like dominoes? And their massive backpacks flew into the air and then back down? And then you all were lying on the floor? And the ceiling caved in because of all the rain? And then the whole library toppled? And...
Perhaps the endless stream of increasingly depressing things has made you sad.
I will desist.
In the wee hours of the morning (last night), I went to CSUF. And it was raining.
And Toby was sweeping halfheartedly at the water on the ground in the Quad, and there was a box on the sundial.
Wait. Back up!
And there was a box on the sundial...
And there was a box on the sundial.
And there was a box on the sundial.
AND THERE WAS A BOX ON THE SUNDIAL!!
So. I went over to the sundial, and I opened the box, and there was a glorious sight inside. Toby looked over at me. He was not happy-looking. It must have been the rain, I think. "Hi," he said.
"Hi!" I said, and ate a piece of the fried zucchini.
Toby scowled. "I went to my Great Aunt Anne's funeral."
"That's nice." I ate another piece of zucchini. "Oh. Sorry. Was it - er...was it very bad?"
"Horrible," intoned Toby. He swiped dangerously at a leaf and caused a great splash. Luckily, none of it hit me. Toby blinked slowly as the water tried to splatter him. He whacked it with the broom.
"I'm sorry," I said, entranced by the sight of Toby fighting with a puddle. "Er... I haven't seen you for a while."
"Nope," said Toby. He appeared to be losing the battle with the water. He dropped the broom into the puddle and sat down on the damp bench, and made an effort to smile. It looked like a grimace. "So how was your week?"
"Uh," said I. "Fine. Yours?" My fine-tuned sense of grammar had left me completely.
"Fine," Toby repeated. He picked up a soggy leaf and let it fall with a splat. "I guess someone finally sent you food."
"Right," I said. "Fried zucchini. Do you want some?" At last, I thought. A complete sentence.
Toby shook his head no. He reached for the brown suitcase that was on the bench next to him, and opened it. He took out a bag lunch and produced a sandwich. Then he looked at me. "Do you want a sandwich? Mustard and cheese."
I had already devoured the rest of my fried zucchini in the last ten seconds, and my traitorous stomach growled hungrily. I decided that it would be rude to say no. "Sure."
So we sat on the bench and ate sandwiches together. The rain was very loud, but because there was a tree over the bench, we did not get that wet.
I said goodbye to Toby after I finished my sandwich, and picked up my empty box. Then I produced my umbrella and went away.
Perhaps, dear reader, you would like me to leave you with a happy thought. Perhaps you are sad because it is cold and rainy in the middle of summer.
Happy Thought:
It may not be raining tomorrow.
Okay, there you go! Now for the Tips of the Day:
Tip # 70: Sometimes your blog hates you. I tried to fix the font problem in this post - have you noticed that my font changes from the beginning of the post to the end? - but it did not work. Then I put my head down on my computer keyboard and wept. Also, the spaces between paragraphs is malfunctioning. I think I will go cry somewhere more comfortable, by the way. The keyboard is sort of poky.
Tip # 71: It is more fun to watch the rain with another person than by yourself.
Tip # 72: Cats are your best friends when they want food and/or warmth. Hypnos actually woke up today when I got home. Then he wound himself around my ankles, like those cats do in books, and purred until I got him a bowl of cat food. Then he decided I didn't exist anymore.
Oh well.
See you tomorrow, dear reader.
Sunday, July 31, 2011
Saturday, July 30, 2011
The Targeted Titan
S. A. Montague:
I am on my way to ___________, CA. Tell me, what do you consider an increase in pay? I'd like to know.
And does this prompt answer constitute "honesty" and swift communication? If I add that I have not found the target yet (which I have not), will that persuade you to give me a raise?
- Jack Gent -
The Targeted Titan
Jack Gent:
Hopefully, you will not lack as many skills as my last employee. In order to ascertain this, I am giving you the chance to prove yourself.
The target's last known location was believed to be in ______________, CA. I expect you to find this quickly, and with it, the target, or at least a clue of the target's current whereabouts.
I will remind you to dress appropriately - the target will doubtless be startled if you show up in a turquoise tuxedo, or sport a crimson silk top hat, as you did for your interview. Please at least attempt to blend in.
Furthermore, I expect prompt communication. If you are unable to locate the target, respond to me with this information under a week's time, and no more. Such honesty will not cause me to withdraw funds; rather, it will compel me to (perhaps) increase them, if necessary.
I will expect a reply tonight.
- S. A. Montague -
Hopefully, you will not lack as many skills as my last employee. In order to ascertain this, I am giving you the chance to prove yourself.
The target's last known location was believed to be in ______________, CA. I expect you to find this quickly, and with it, the target, or at least a clue of the target's current whereabouts.
I will remind you to dress appropriately - the target will doubtless be startled if you show up in a turquoise tuxedo, or sport a crimson silk top hat, as you did for your interview. Please at least attempt to blend in.
Furthermore, I expect prompt communication. If you are unable to locate the target, respond to me with this information under a week's time, and no more. Such honesty will not cause me to withdraw funds; rather, it will compel me to (perhaps) increase them, if necessary.
I will expect a reply tonight.
- S. A. Montague -
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
The Targeted Titan
The evil man in the hat crept slowly down the corridor, his head tilted to one side as he listened for approaching footsteps. His eyes were dark and grim, their metallic irises gleaming from under his black hat brim. He turned the corner, walking quickly, and opened the door marked Stairs. Then he went up.
He reached the top of the fifth floor quickly, and when he had opened the door out into the hallway, he stopped, shutting it behind him, and opened his black briefcase. He took out the weapon, and went down the hall towards Apartment 567.
He stood in front of the door and adjusted his hat so that his face was more visible. It was always best when the target, caught at last, could see the triumph in the Agent's eyes, and feel the first, demoralizing rush of sudden fear. He cleared his throat quietly, brushed at the shoulders of his well-fitted suit to knock off any clinging lint, and raised his hand to knock.
As knocking produced no result, he tried the doorknob. It was unlocked. This was unusual, but not overly surprising. He slid in, holding the weapon at chest-height, and quickly surveyed the room.
The floor was clean and empty, bare of all furniture except for one small side table; the windows were all open. The beige, plain curtains swayed gently in the cool night breeze. He did not go to look out. He knew there was no fire escape for this apartment, and that in order to reach the roof, one would have had to climb up five stories of sheer glass and slippery metal. He also knew that there had been no one leaving the premises at night for the last two days.
The bathroom was also unoccupied. Everything gleamed and sparkled; someone had given the sink and counters a good cleaning, and the glass shower door was glittering in the soft glow of the nightlight on the wall.
The bedroom was quiet, and equally empty. He went through the open door and looked around, tightening his grip on the weapon in frustration, as he finally admitted to himself that this whole trip had been for naught. The target was not here.
The target, perhaps, had never been here at all.
Agent II went out of the room and down the hall, abject. After a few minutes, his car pulled out of the parking lot and disappeared into the night.
Three hours later, there was a rustling noise in the ceiling. A screw fell out of the ceiling panel and onto the floor.
Another screw fell.
Two more screws went spinning through the air, followed by a rectangle of light wood.
The Anonymous Titan dropped neatly out of the ceiling and onto the floor, followed by a sleepy black cat.
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
The Temperate Titan
Dear reader, have you ever noticed the library?
The library at my esteemed college, CSUF?
It is called the Pollak Library.
Oooohhh. What a fancy name! you say.
Well, I'm sorry, but it's not really that fancy. It's only called that because someone donated a lot of money, or something like that, and helped fund its creation.
Yawn. Money is boring.
Let's do something exciting!!
Today I would like to talk about Library Etiquette.
As most of you college Students know, the library is a splendid place to write papers, do powerpoints, study, and do other studious Student things.
But wait!
Did someone say... Did someone say that the library is not a good place for any of those things??
Well. Hmm. Dear reader, this is why:
Some people think the library is for social activities.
No! you cry. How horrible! How demeaning! How can anyone treat the library in that degrading manner?
To that, dear reader, I say: Lots of people.
Yuck.
The list of Library Functions (according to most Students) are as follows:
1. Talk on your phone.
2. Use the restroom.
3. Watch TV shows/Youtube/movies/the news.
4. Play video games.
5. Steal your neighbor's belongings while they are in the restroom. Then leave, with your new and shiny laptop in tow.
6. Cough. Frequently. Loudly. Sickeningly. This is sad for both parties. Go buy some cough drops?
7. Give someone the flu. I'm sure this has happened many times before.
8. Practice your presentation, out loud, with at least three, or four, or five, or sixty other noisy people. Bad, bad, bad. If it's hard for you to concentrate, just imagine how all those people who are writing last minute papers and taking online exams feel.
9. Accidentally break the computer monitor/keyboard/mouse/or give the computer a virus accidentally. After doing so, go ask someone for help. If something has infected your computer, shut it down and then turn it back on. This usually kills the virus, as the library computers have Anti-virus Software installed.
10. Text all your friends. I guess this is okay behavior, as long as your phone is on vibrate or silent. But chiming text messages can be pretty loud. And pretty disturbing. Grumble grumble grumble...
11. Pull the fire alarm. Eeek! Then you go to jail.
12. Spill your beverage on your neighbor. No explanation needed: this is clearly bad library etiquette.
13. Command various people (who you don't know and have never seen before) to watch your belongings while you go to the restroom. Bad tactics. Ask your friends instead. At least you can be sure they won't steal from you, but you can't trust complete strangers with valuable items, or waste their time with watching your belongings. It's rude. Pack up instead. Or leave only non-valuable items there, like empty folders. Textbooks, on the other hand, are important. People steal textbooks all the time: that's why there's so many warning signs about textbook theft in the library.
14. Listen to very loud music on your iPod, as the people around you wonder how it is that you are not completely deaf.
15. Eat food. I don't know about this. It may be rude and it may not be. Sometimes, if your food doesn't smell and you can't leave, I suppose it's fine to eat it. But if your food is very stinky, I suggest you desist. But it's really (of course) up to you.
16. Save a computer for your friend, who will not be arriving for three more hours, and tell all the people who try and sit there that someone else is sitting there. Bad. Very bad. Tsk tsk tsk.
17. Walk around, tap unsuspecting Students (who are writing papers, working on projects, etc.) on the shoulder and ask them to donate money to various countries. This is very hard to take, especially when you have a paper due next class, and you think the tapper is your friend - and when you turn around, they ask you for money. I'm a college Student, not a millionaire!
18. Sing along to your music out loud. I am not kidding.
19. Put all your papers, folders, electronic devices, and other paraphernalia around and on top of your computer station. Also take up your neighbor's space, and then look insulted when they try to slide a few things over so they can type.
And finally, my favorite:
20. Bring your laptop and sit in front of a computer. Then use your laptop and ignore the library computer, and when people begin lining up to use the library computers, remain seated and pretend to not see the library computer (which remains unused) in front of you. Never leave.
In listing all the failings (and some non-failings) of Student Library Etiquette, I hope you have figured out which ones are bad, and which ones are good or merely all right.
Have any of you read the various emails we've been getting lately about fee increases?
Whoops, never mind. That is a touchy topic. I will strive to avoid it, simply because I'd rather not feel depressed this early in the day.
A few days ago I stopped by CSUF again, just to see if anyone had dropped off food for me, but (alas!) the sundial was empty.
I suppose you've all forgotten about me.
FRIED ZUCCHINI, I NEED THEE...
Anyways, I stopped by around 3 in the morning, and lo and behold, I spotted Toby, who was sitting on a planter and reading a book.
I crossed the quad (did you know that it's called that? I just looked at the map of CSUF and figured it out!) and went over to the sundial, which was dark and sad and blank and empty and gloomy and dull.
Toby got up, dropped his book on the planter and started sweeping again.
"Didn't think you'd come back," he said morosely.
I was still frowning miserably at the sundial. "What? Oh. I stopped by about a week ago, but you weren't here."
Toby kicked a branch into his pile of dead leaves. "I was at a funeral." His voice sounded lifeless, like the fallen leaves he was making a mess of.
I felt immediately horrified and a bit ashamed, although I really had no reason to be. "Oh. I'm... I'm sorry."
"Doesn't matter," he said, and kept sweeping. "Didn't really know the woman."
"Was she a relative?" I asked, failing to sound disinterested.
"Yeah. My great aunt." He finished sweeping the leaves together and picked up the dustpan. "Great Aunt Anne. She had fifty or so cats, lived alone, yelled at her neighbors, never left the house. That sort of person. She died of a sudden heart attack. Doctors couldn't do anything for her."
He didn't sound sad, or even remotely grim. I blinked. "I'm sorry."
"Not your fault," he pointed out, and dumped his dustpan into the nearby trashcan. "Honestly, I never really liked her."
"Oh." I watched him drop the pan back on the ground. "Why not?"
He wheeled the trashcan closer to the pile of leaves.
"She always painted the most awful watercolor pictures of her cats, and gave them out as presents every Christmas. Loads of multi-colored kittens, turquoise and burgundy and orange and puce, all crammed together and dripping down the paper. She'd come to visit and I'd have to put them up in my room before she got there, because my mom was afraid I'd hurt her feelings if they weren't prominently displayed. "
He mimicked a high pitched voice. " 'She's just an old dear, that Great Aunt Anne. She has so much fun painting for you, Toby!' So I'd hang 'em up. Then I'd take 'em down right after she left."
I had listened to this little rant with mixed feelings. At least he had had an aunt that painted him pictures and came to visit, even if the pictures were monstrosities (or so he said.) "Is that the only reason why?"
"The only reason why what? Oh. Yeah, I guess. And she was always calling me Tobby. She could never say 'Toby'. It had to be 'Tobby'. 'Tobby, just look how much you've grown! Tobby, your hair is so much longer since the last time I saw you! Tobby, I love how you've strewn all my horrid pictures liberally around your room!' " He shuddered. "I have no idea how she got 'Tobby' from 'Tobias.' And it always sounded vaguely like she was saying 'Tubby'. "
I fought back a grin. "Oh. That makes a little more sense. So she was just absent-minded?"
"She developed her 'absent-mindedness' into a sort of art form. Besides, she was eccentric. Kids don't know how to handle that, you know."
"How old was she... when she..."
"Passed? Let me think... About ninety-six, or something gargantuan like that. She was ooooold."
I privately felt sorry for the "oooooold" late Great Aunt Anne, but decided not to press the subject. Toby seemed to have gotten sick of it too; he glanced over at my sundial and said, "Nothing there tonight?"
"Nope," I said. "Guess my devoted readers have gotten busy."
"What?" said Toby distractedly. He was now trying to peel some gum off the bottom of his shoe.
"Never mind," I said hastily. I had forgotten that he didn't know about my blog, and also that he wasn't supposed to. "I better be going."
Toby straightened up, giving up on his gummy shoe, and eyed me penetratingly. "Hey, kid, I could take you out for dinner. The bill's on me."
This offer was slightly tempting, but I smiled and shook my head. "Sorry. It's late. I have food at home. I'd better run."
"Night," Toby said, and turned back to his shoe.
I'm sure you can think of several reasons why I turned down Toby's free dinner (although it was actually more around breakfast time), so I won't go into any details about it.
If you are wondering where Hypnos is, he is asleep on my feet, and he didn't come with me to CSUF because I did not want a repeat of last time.
I am a bit confused about Toby's behavior. You know how I mentioned he sounded morose at the beginning of our conversation? And then he perked up near the end? It was odd. Maybe he just wanted to talk about his Great Aunt, and he was secretly grieved at her death, and so when he started talking about her he felt better.
I don't know. People are weird.
Tips for Today:
Tip #67: Go on vacation! If this is impossible, clean your house instead. Isn't that a great alternative?
Tip #68: This is a College Tip! Register for classes when you are supposed to. If you don't know where to find out when you're supposed to register, check your CSUF email. Also, go to your Student Portal (you can sign into it via http://www.fullerton.edu) and click on Titan Online. There's a list of things to do on the side of that page, and it gives you your time for registration.
Tip #69: Keep your hair on.
See you later, dear reader.
The library at my esteemed college, CSUF?
It is called the Pollak Library.
Oooohhh. What a fancy name! you say.
Well, I'm sorry, but it's not really that fancy. It's only called that because someone donated a lot of money, or something like that, and helped fund its creation.
Yawn. Money is boring.
Let's do something exciting!!
Today I would like to talk about Library Etiquette.
As most of you college Students know, the library is a splendid place to write papers, do powerpoints, study, and do other studious Student things.
But wait!
Did someone say... Did someone say that the library is not a good place for any of those things??
Well. Hmm. Dear reader, this is why:
Some people think the library is for social activities.
No! you cry. How horrible! How demeaning! How can anyone treat the library in that degrading manner?
To that, dear reader, I say: Lots of people.
Yuck.
The list of Library Functions (according to most Students) are as follows:
1. Talk on your phone.
2. Use the restroom.
3. Watch TV shows/Youtube/movies/the news.
4. Play video games.
5. Steal your neighbor's belongings while they are in the restroom. Then leave, with your new and shiny laptop in tow.
6. Cough. Frequently. Loudly. Sickeningly. This is sad for both parties. Go buy some cough drops?
7. Give someone the flu. I'm sure this has happened many times before.
8. Practice your presentation, out loud, with at least three, or four, or five, or sixty other noisy people. Bad, bad, bad. If it's hard for you to concentrate, just imagine how all those people who are writing last minute papers and taking online exams feel.
9. Accidentally break the computer monitor/keyboard/mouse/or give the computer a virus accidentally. After doing so, go ask someone for help. If something has infected your computer, shut it down and then turn it back on. This usually kills the virus, as the library computers have Anti-virus Software installed.
10. Text all your friends. I guess this is okay behavior, as long as your phone is on vibrate or silent. But chiming text messages can be pretty loud. And pretty disturbing. Grumble grumble grumble...
11. Pull the fire alarm. Eeek! Then you go to jail.
12. Spill your beverage on your neighbor. No explanation needed: this is clearly bad library etiquette.
13. Command various people (who you don't know and have never seen before) to watch your belongings while you go to the restroom. Bad tactics. Ask your friends instead. At least you can be sure they won't steal from you, but you can't trust complete strangers with valuable items, or waste their time with watching your belongings. It's rude. Pack up instead. Or leave only non-valuable items there, like empty folders. Textbooks, on the other hand, are important. People steal textbooks all the time: that's why there's so many warning signs about textbook theft in the library.
14. Listen to very loud music on your iPod, as the people around you wonder how it is that you are not completely deaf.
15. Eat food. I don't know about this. It may be rude and it may not be. Sometimes, if your food doesn't smell and you can't leave, I suppose it's fine to eat it. But if your food is very stinky, I suggest you desist. But it's really (of course) up to you.
16. Save a computer for your friend, who will not be arriving for three more hours, and tell all the people who try and sit there that someone else is sitting there. Bad. Very bad. Tsk tsk tsk.
17. Walk around, tap unsuspecting Students (who are writing papers, working on projects, etc.) on the shoulder and ask them to donate money to various countries. This is very hard to take, especially when you have a paper due next class, and you think the tapper is your friend - and when you turn around, they ask you for money. I'm a college Student, not a millionaire!
18. Sing along to your music out loud. I am not kidding.
19. Put all your papers, folders, electronic devices, and other paraphernalia around and on top of your computer station. Also take up your neighbor's space, and then look insulted when they try to slide a few things over so they can type.
And finally, my favorite:
20. Bring your laptop and sit in front of a computer. Then use your laptop and ignore the library computer, and when people begin lining up to use the library computers, remain seated and pretend to not see the library computer (which remains unused) in front of you. Never leave.
In listing all the failings (and some non-failings) of Student Library Etiquette, I hope you have figured out which ones are bad, and which ones are good or merely all right.
Have any of you read the various emails we've been getting lately about fee increases?
Whoops, never mind. That is a touchy topic. I will strive to avoid it, simply because I'd rather not feel depressed this early in the day.
A few days ago I stopped by CSUF again, just to see if anyone had dropped off food for me, but (alas!) the sundial was empty.
I suppose you've all forgotten about me.
FRIED ZUCCHINI, I NEED THEE...
Anyways, I stopped by around 3 in the morning, and lo and behold, I spotted Toby, who was sitting on a planter and reading a book.
I crossed the quad (did you know that it's called that? I just looked at the map of CSUF and figured it out!) and went over to the sundial, which was dark and sad and blank and empty and gloomy and dull.
Toby got up, dropped his book on the planter and started sweeping again.
"Didn't think you'd come back," he said morosely.
I was still frowning miserably at the sundial. "What? Oh. I stopped by about a week ago, but you weren't here."
Toby kicked a branch into his pile of dead leaves. "I was at a funeral." His voice sounded lifeless, like the fallen leaves he was making a mess of.
I felt immediately horrified and a bit ashamed, although I really had no reason to be. "Oh. I'm... I'm sorry."
"Doesn't matter," he said, and kept sweeping. "Didn't really know the woman."
"Was she a relative?" I asked, failing to sound disinterested.
"Yeah. My great aunt." He finished sweeping the leaves together and picked up the dustpan. "Great Aunt Anne. She had fifty or so cats, lived alone, yelled at her neighbors, never left the house. That sort of person. She died of a sudden heart attack. Doctors couldn't do anything for her."
He didn't sound sad, or even remotely grim. I blinked. "I'm sorry."
"Not your fault," he pointed out, and dumped his dustpan into the nearby trashcan. "Honestly, I never really liked her."
"Oh." I watched him drop the pan back on the ground. "Why not?"
He wheeled the trashcan closer to the pile of leaves.
"She always painted the most awful watercolor pictures of her cats, and gave them out as presents every Christmas. Loads of multi-colored kittens, turquoise and burgundy and orange and puce, all crammed together and dripping down the paper. She'd come to visit and I'd have to put them up in my room before she got there, because my mom was afraid I'd hurt her feelings if they weren't prominently displayed. "
He mimicked a high pitched voice. " 'She's just an old dear, that Great Aunt Anne. She has so much fun painting for you, Toby!' So I'd hang 'em up. Then I'd take 'em down right after she left."
I had listened to this little rant with mixed feelings. At least he had had an aunt that painted him pictures and came to visit, even if the pictures were monstrosities (or so he said.) "Is that the only reason why?"
"The only reason why what? Oh. Yeah, I guess. And she was always calling me Tobby. She could never say 'Toby'. It had to be 'Tobby'. 'Tobby, just look how much you've grown! Tobby, your hair is so much longer since the last time I saw you! Tobby, I love how you've strewn all my horrid pictures liberally around your room!' " He shuddered. "I have no idea how she got 'Tobby' from 'Tobias.' And it always sounded vaguely like she was saying 'Tubby'. "
I fought back a grin. "Oh. That makes a little more sense. So she was just absent-minded?"
"She developed her 'absent-mindedness' into a sort of art form. Besides, she was eccentric. Kids don't know how to handle that, you know."
"How old was she... when she..."
"Passed? Let me think... About ninety-six, or something gargantuan like that. She was ooooold."
I privately felt sorry for the "oooooold" late Great Aunt Anne, but decided not to press the subject. Toby seemed to have gotten sick of it too; he glanced over at my sundial and said, "Nothing there tonight?"
"Nope," I said. "Guess my devoted readers have gotten busy."
"What?" said Toby distractedly. He was now trying to peel some gum off the bottom of his shoe.
"Never mind," I said hastily. I had forgotten that he didn't know about my blog, and also that he wasn't supposed to. "I better be going."
Toby straightened up, giving up on his gummy shoe, and eyed me penetratingly. "Hey, kid, I could take you out for dinner. The bill's on me."
This offer was slightly tempting, but I smiled and shook my head. "Sorry. It's late. I have food at home. I'd better run."
"Night," Toby said, and turned back to his shoe.
I'm sure you can think of several reasons why I turned down Toby's free dinner (although it was actually more around breakfast time), so I won't go into any details about it.
If you are wondering where Hypnos is, he is asleep on my feet, and he didn't come with me to CSUF because I did not want a repeat of last time.
I am a bit confused about Toby's behavior. You know how I mentioned he sounded morose at the beginning of our conversation? And then he perked up near the end? It was odd. Maybe he just wanted to talk about his Great Aunt, and he was secretly grieved at her death, and so when he started talking about her he felt better.
I don't know. People are weird.
Tips for Today:
Tip #67: Go on vacation! If this is impossible, clean your house instead. Isn't that a great alternative?
Tip #68: This is a College Tip! Register for classes when you are supposed to. If you don't know where to find out when you're supposed to register, check your CSUF email. Also, go to your Student Portal (you can sign into it via http://www.fullerton.edu) and click on Titan Online. There's a list of things to do on the side of that page, and it gives you your time for registration.
Tip #69: Keep your hair on.
See you later, dear reader.
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
The Targeted Titan
A piece of paper blew down the deserted street, dirty white against the dirtier grey-black of the asphalt and its patches of dark green and dark blue gum.
It was followed by a man in a dark suit, his head down, shoulders hunched, eyes eternally grim. He kicked at the paper, which had blown back onto his once-polished, now-scuffed black shoe, and irritably bent down to rip the paper off, crumpling it into a ball and tossing it to the side of the street.
His cellphone buzzed noisily in the depths of his pocket. He drew it out with two fingers and stared at the screen, sighed silently (with a hint of maliciousness), and flicked it open.
"Yes?" he said, his tone dark.
"Mrmuble, mrumble, mumbrle," said a tinny voice. "Mrgrmble mgrmblye mrumble mumrble!"
The Agent listened, his face expressionless. "And?"
The voice reached a higher pitch and began to shriek.
The Agent held the phone farther away from his ear. In the distance, he could see looming skyscrapers; beneath them sat high-rise apartment buildings. The sun was glaring down from overhead, sparkling brilliantly off the shingles on nearby roofs, glancing off his phone and bouncing off the dark lenses of his sunglasses.
The voice in his ear continued to scream.
Eventually he pressed the end call button, without answering the final words of the caller, and dropped the offending device back into his pocket. He continued walking down the empty street.
There were a few cars parked along the side, but they were dingy and old, their paint peeling. One was propped up on bricks, its tires were missing. The radio appeared to be gone also.
The Agent cast a cursory glance over the decrepit vehicles and kept walking.
At the end of the street he emerged into an old, open-air mall. The store signs were faded and drooping, and the neon bulbs, which festooned a scant few, were burnt out, and some bulbs were smashed. He walked straight through, occasionally shooting glances into the vacant shops. The only sign of life was a cat, a small black one, sound asleep in a store window.
He glanced up at the sign (Botonia's Baubles), and passed on.
The rest of the shops were empty. He paused once, looking back over his shoulder, but turned and left the mall behind, heading for his car and civilization. He spat onto a cobblestone as he went around the corner, disappearing into the hazy sunlight of afternoon.
He had not seen the purple-striped bike that was carefully propped up against a store wall and padlocked to a pipe. Neither had he seen the person that came out of Botonia's Baubles an hour later, carrying the sleeping cat and wearing a strange motley of clothes: dark jeans, long brown trench coat, lime green shirt, and one pair of briefly-seen, purple-striped socks.
It was followed by a man in a dark suit, his head down, shoulders hunched, eyes eternally grim. He kicked at the paper, which had blown back onto his once-polished, now-scuffed black shoe, and irritably bent down to rip the paper off, crumpling it into a ball and tossing it to the side of the street.
His cellphone buzzed noisily in the depths of his pocket. He drew it out with two fingers and stared at the screen, sighed silently (with a hint of maliciousness), and flicked it open.
"Yes?" he said, his tone dark.
"Mrmuble, mrumble, mumbrle," said a tinny voice. "Mrgrmble mgrmblye mrumble mumrble!"
The Agent listened, his face expressionless. "And?"
The voice reached a higher pitch and began to shriek.
The Agent held the phone farther away from his ear. In the distance, he could see looming skyscrapers; beneath them sat high-rise apartment buildings. The sun was glaring down from overhead, sparkling brilliantly off the shingles on nearby roofs, glancing off his phone and bouncing off the dark lenses of his sunglasses.
The voice in his ear continued to scream.
Eventually he pressed the end call button, without answering the final words of the caller, and dropped the offending device back into his pocket. He continued walking down the empty street.
There were a few cars parked along the side, but they were dingy and old, their paint peeling. One was propped up on bricks, its tires were missing. The radio appeared to be gone also.
The Agent cast a cursory glance over the decrepit vehicles and kept walking.
At the end of the street he emerged into an old, open-air mall. The store signs were faded and drooping, and the neon bulbs, which festooned a scant few, were burnt out, and some bulbs were smashed. He walked straight through, occasionally shooting glances into the vacant shops. The only sign of life was a cat, a small black one, sound asleep in a store window.
He glanced up at the sign (Botonia's Baubles), and passed on.
The rest of the shops were empty. He paused once, looking back over his shoulder, but turned and left the mall behind, heading for his car and civilization. He spat onto a cobblestone as he went around the corner, disappearing into the hazy sunlight of afternoon.
He had not seen the purple-striped bike that was carefully propped up against a store wall and padlocked to a pipe. Neither had he seen the person that came out of Botonia's Baubles an hour later, carrying the sleeping cat and wearing a strange motley of clothes: dark jeans, long brown trench coat, lime green shirt, and one pair of briefly-seen, purple-striped socks.
Sunday, July 10, 2011
The Tutoring Titan
Yesterday (or two or three days ago - has it really been that long??), while I was writing my post, I thought of something I could write about! (Well, besides what I wrote yesterday - or two or three days ago...)
Dear reader, sometimes it is hard to remember my College memories, so it is always nice when I do.
Do you remember your first day of elementary school? What about your first day of middle school? What about high school?
Let me tell you, dear reader:
If you haven't been to your first day of college - you ain't seen nothing yet.
My first day of college was fraught with numerous difficulties, sort of like when you look down at a stump in the forest and realize that it's completely rotten and crawling inside with termites.
That was how my first day of college was, dear reader. Let us all hope that you will never experience anything like it. Ever. And ever. And ever!
My, that should be a song.
Anyways.
On my first day of college, an interesting thing happened. I was on the freeway, in my car, speeding merrily along and being a very cautious and alert driver, when...
Actually, that wasn't it. That happened later.
In reality, I was almost to school, still driving. I had just turned the corner past the Nutwood parking lot when someone ran into me from behind. I have no idea how it happened, or why they ran into me, because at the same instant a fire hydrant nearby exploded. A veritable geyser of water burst into existence, drenched my newly crashed car, and the traffic light behind me fell over, landing on top of the car that had just crashed into me, and everything everywhere screeched to a halt.
I managed somehow to get out of the car. My head hurt.
Later, after all the mayhem had cleared, and the car was being towed, and the fire hydrant and traffic light were being repaired, I ran into school.
I was an hour late for my first class, Linguistics 101.
I had been looking forward to this class, so I was very depressed, and since lots of people had seen the car crash, and the fire hydrant erupt, and the traffic light collapse, I was sure that my Spy persona was rapidly being decimated.
As I walked into Linguistics (luckily, it was a three hour class) people stared and whispered.
I was wearing a soaked T-shirt, a wet sweatshirt, and extremely drenched jeans. My hood was also dripping, and my shoes squelched on the linoleum (or plastic?) floor.
So, I didn't walk into Linguistics, not really. Instead, I slopped.
As I sat (wetly) down, the professor hurried in. He was holding a folder over his head triumphantly (he must have forgotten it and dashed back to his office to retrieve it) and as he came through the door, he slipped on the puddle of water I had left when coming inside.
He did a spectacular front flip, and then a lovely double somersault, mashing his folder of papers into his chest and breaking his glasses on the floor when he landed on his face. As students leapt up to help him, they also began to fall over as their sneakers hit the newly elongated puddle, and slid everywhere, and thus chaos reigned once again.
I covered my face with my hands.
When the class and the professor had finally collected themselves and some had gone to get more paper towels (my supply had run out), the professor picked up his scattered, wet, ruined papers that had been in his folder, and arranged them into a sort of muddled, crumpled stack on his desk.
He straightened his crooked glasses (one of the lenses was missing, since it was now crushed into pieces on the floor) and leaned heavily against his desk.
"How did the puddle get on the floor in the first place?" he asked. I could tell that he wasn't really expecting an answer.
The students that had seen me slosh in began to mutter to themselves. Someone raised his hand. "They tracked it in," he said, turning to point at me.
I had shrunk down as far as possible in my seat (in the back) but everyone managed to get a good look at my hood anyways.
The professor narrowed his eyes at my hood. "Why are you dripping wet?" he asked, coolly.
"I....er..." I said, stupidly, and tried to think about how to begin.
The professor formed his eyes into perfect slits from behind his mangled glasses. His lips thinned into a pale line. "Get out."
"Er...what?" I said, hardly able to believe my ears. After all this, I was going to have to leave? I had tried so hard to get here! I really wanted to take this class!
"Get...." said the professor, pulling himself up to his full height of five feet and three inches, raising his voice to a near shriek, "OUT!"
I got out.
My second class, Math 315 (at 10:00 am), went pretty well until the professor began to speak.
"Mumble mumble mumble," she said, passing out syllabuses.
Everyone looked at her curiously. Perhaps we had heard her wrong?
"Mumble mumble mumble mumble," she continued, finishing passing out the syllabuses and walking over to stand behind her podium. She reached for a marker and wrote her name on the board.
It was something like:
The Grand Math Professor
She was tall and thin and stern, with a face like an anvil, or whatever that looks like.
Hmm. I have just looked up anvils on Wikipedia, and that is not what her face looked like at all.
So I will leave off describing her.
Anyways, she continued to talk (read: mumble) throughout the entire class.
When we were finally released, I went to the library and dropped the class from my schedule, and added a different Math 315 instead.
After lunch (I believe I ate fried zucchini), I went to my final class of the day:
Anthropology 101.
I walked into my classroom only to find that it was completely empty.
I hurried back outside and glanced at the number over the door. 645.
This was the right room, but why was no one inside? I sat down in the hallway outside, hoping that someone would show up.
Several people did, but they all sat down on the floor too. I couldn't tell if they were waiting for the class I was in, or any of the other four doors that were nearby, so I snuck glances at the various books and folders they were carrying.
Someone had a paperback Harry Potter book; another had an British literature collection (1800's-current), someone else had a stack of multicolored binders and a fistful of highlighters, which they were using on their notes. The rest of the Students had only their phones and laptops out.
I looked back down at my Anthropology textbook and slid my creased, dirty schedule out of its front.
Humanities 645. Yep, this was the right room.
I checked the time on my phone. 1:00.
Class was supposed to start now.
I checked the time again.
I looked in the classroom. It was still empty.
I glanced around at all the calm, happy-looking Students, and began to panic.
At 1:04, a harried-looking Professor swept past us and into the classroom, and everyone got to their feet and followed him in.
He slammed his briefcase down on the table at the front, and jerked the chair out from beneath the table.
Everyone scurried into their seats.
I chose one in the very back, but this was bad, because there were three empty rows between me and the rest of the Students. I moved up three rows to a seat behind a very large Student with massively spiky hair.
The Professor smacked his briefcase open and yanked out two folders.
He thrust syllabuses into the faces of the front-row Students and ran from row to row, thrusting papers and skipping to the next column. I prayed that class would end early.
When he resumed his position behind his table, he looked around the room dangerously and slammed his briefcase shut again. I noticed that there was a muscle twitching spasmodically beneath his left eye. Maybe he was ill. Or simply loony.
"This is Anthropology 101," he announced. His voice was surprisingly low and gravelly, like a deep river with jagged rocks in it, and the people in the front row leaned back. He was loud.
I lowered my head, grateful that I was behind a very large person so that the sound waves couldn't reach me as well, and braced myself for a deafening class.
Surprisingly, this Professor was a good teacher, albeit a quiet (or calm) one, and by the time class was over I knew what to do to get an A, and I knew what the majority of my grade was based on: papers. This was good, because I could write, and there were no speeches, so there was no way I could fail.
I had other classes the next day, but since I had gotten through most of the pitfalls of the Dreaded First Day, I did not have as many distressing incidents.
I will list a few of the most Distressing Incidents of the Dreaded First Day of Class:
1. Being late to your class(es).
2. Losing your schedule. (Ooooh! This is very bad indeed.)
3. Having a Professor yell at you.
4. Having no one to sit next to.
5. Forgetting your lunch.
6. Crashing your car. (Although I doubt most of you have experienced this particular problem your first day.)
7. Getting lost.
8. Not finding any parking spots and being late to your classes.
9. Missing an entire class because you got lost and went to Humanities instead of University Hall.
10. Walking up ten thousand flights of stairs and still ending up on the wrong floor.
11. Falling down ten thousand flights of stairs and having to go to the Health Center and then being late to your class.
12. Feeling nauseous the entire time you are driving to school, and then feeling nauseous the entire time you are in class, and then finally realizing you have the flu when you are barfing your lungs out in the McCarthy bathroom stall.
I won't go into any more details; I hope you've gotten the point.
A word of advice to Freshman:
Go to school early to get a parking space. Say, about 6 am.
6 am? you screech. 6 am? Anonymous Titan, you've lost your marbles!
No, not at all, dear reader. I am telling you: get to school around 6 am. Although 7 or 8 am would probably do just as well, 6 am is your best bet, especially during Finals and Midterms and the like.
If you get there much to early to go to class, go to the Gym instead!
Furthermore, I'd avoid the Nutwood parking structure. It is always packed, along with the parking structure next to the Gym. Go to the little parking lot next to the Gym and park there. If you have a large car, it is easier to back out in that parking lot than attempt to not hit anything in the parking structures.
On a less practical note, today I went back to CSUF and didn't see Toby. Perhaps he was busy cleaning gum off desks? Hmm...
Tips of the Day:
Tip #62: Choose your classes wisely.
Tip #63: Choose your lunchtime wisely.
Tip #64: Choose your lunch wisely.
Tip #65: Choose your fried zucchini wisely.
Tip #66: Choose your fried zucchini suppliers wisely.
Dear Mr. Siganel,
If I happen to receive - if I just happen to receive - one - one itsy bitsy tiny note -- from you -- again...
You will rue the day you made The Anonymous Titan mad.
Choose your actions wisely. Of course, this will be difficult because your skull contains only a teeny tiny pea-size brain, but I am warning you...
Cheerio,
The Anonymous Titan
P.S. For those frightened readers who may be Freshmen at CSUF next year, here is the link to the CSUF campus map. http://www.fullerton.edu/campusmap/images/campus%20map%20color_1008.pdf
Dear reader, sometimes it is hard to remember my College memories, so it is always nice when I do.
Do you remember your first day of elementary school? What about your first day of middle school? What about high school?
Let me tell you, dear reader:
If you haven't been to your first day of college - you ain't seen nothing yet.
My first day of college was fraught with numerous difficulties, sort of like when you look down at a stump in the forest and realize that it's completely rotten and crawling inside with termites.
That was how my first day of college was, dear reader. Let us all hope that you will never experience anything like it. Ever. And ever. And ever!
My, that should be a song.
Anyways.
On my first day of college, an interesting thing happened. I was on the freeway, in my car, speeding merrily along and being a very cautious and alert driver, when...
Actually, that wasn't it. That happened later.
In reality, I was almost to school, still driving. I had just turned the corner past the Nutwood parking lot when someone ran into me from behind. I have no idea how it happened, or why they ran into me, because at the same instant a fire hydrant nearby exploded. A veritable geyser of water burst into existence, drenched my newly crashed car, and the traffic light behind me fell over, landing on top of the car that had just crashed into me, and everything everywhere screeched to a halt.
I managed somehow to get out of the car. My head hurt.
Later, after all the mayhem had cleared, and the car was being towed, and the fire hydrant and traffic light were being repaired, I ran into school.
I was an hour late for my first class, Linguistics 101.
I had been looking forward to this class, so I was very depressed, and since lots of people had seen the car crash, and the fire hydrant erupt, and the traffic light collapse, I was sure that my Spy persona was rapidly being decimated.
As I walked into Linguistics (luckily, it was a three hour class) people stared and whispered.
I was wearing a soaked T-shirt, a wet sweatshirt, and extremely drenched jeans. My hood was also dripping, and my shoes squelched on the linoleum (or plastic?) floor.
So, I didn't walk into Linguistics, not really. Instead, I slopped.
As I sat (wetly) down, the professor hurried in. He was holding a folder over his head triumphantly (he must have forgotten it and dashed back to his office to retrieve it) and as he came through the door, he slipped on the puddle of water I had left when coming inside.
He did a spectacular front flip, and then a lovely double somersault, mashing his folder of papers into his chest and breaking his glasses on the floor when he landed on his face. As students leapt up to help him, they also began to fall over as their sneakers hit the newly elongated puddle, and slid everywhere, and thus chaos reigned once again.
I covered my face with my hands.
When the class and the professor had finally collected themselves and some had gone to get more paper towels (my supply had run out), the professor picked up his scattered, wet, ruined papers that had been in his folder, and arranged them into a sort of muddled, crumpled stack on his desk.
He straightened his crooked glasses (one of the lenses was missing, since it was now crushed into pieces on the floor) and leaned heavily against his desk.
"How did the puddle get on the floor in the first place?" he asked. I could tell that he wasn't really expecting an answer.
The students that had seen me slosh in began to mutter to themselves. Someone raised his hand. "They tracked it in," he said, turning to point at me.
I had shrunk down as far as possible in my seat (in the back) but everyone managed to get a good look at my hood anyways.
The professor narrowed his eyes at my hood. "Why are you dripping wet?" he asked, coolly.
"I....er..." I said, stupidly, and tried to think about how to begin.
The professor formed his eyes into perfect slits from behind his mangled glasses. His lips thinned into a pale line. "Get out."
"Er...what?" I said, hardly able to believe my ears. After all this, I was going to have to leave? I had tried so hard to get here! I really wanted to take this class!
"Get...." said the professor, pulling himself up to his full height of five feet and three inches, raising his voice to a near shriek, "OUT!"
I got out.
My second class, Math 315 (at 10:00 am), went pretty well until the professor began to speak.
"Mumble mumble mumble," she said, passing out syllabuses.
Everyone looked at her curiously. Perhaps we had heard her wrong?
"Mumble mumble mumble mumble," she continued, finishing passing out the syllabuses and walking over to stand behind her podium. She reached for a marker and wrote her name on the board.
It was something like:
The Grand Math Professor
She was tall and thin and stern, with a face like an anvil, or whatever that looks like.
Hmm. I have just looked up anvils on Wikipedia, and that is not what her face looked like at all.
So I will leave off describing her.
Anyways, she continued to talk (read: mumble) throughout the entire class.
When we were finally released, I went to the library and dropped the class from my schedule, and added a different Math 315 instead.
After lunch (I believe I ate fried zucchini), I went to my final class of the day:
Anthropology 101.
I walked into my classroom only to find that it was completely empty.
I hurried back outside and glanced at the number over the door. 645.
This was the right room, but why was no one inside? I sat down in the hallway outside, hoping that someone would show up.
Several people did, but they all sat down on the floor too. I couldn't tell if they were waiting for the class I was in, or any of the other four doors that were nearby, so I snuck glances at the various books and folders they were carrying.
Someone had a paperback Harry Potter book; another had an British literature collection (1800's-current), someone else had a stack of multicolored binders and a fistful of highlighters, which they were using on their notes. The rest of the Students had only their phones and laptops out.
I looked back down at my Anthropology textbook and slid my creased, dirty schedule out of its front.
Humanities 645. Yep, this was the right room.
I checked the time on my phone. 1:00.
Class was supposed to start now.
I checked the time again.
I looked in the classroom. It was still empty.
I glanced around at all the calm, happy-looking Students, and began to panic.
At 1:04, a harried-looking Professor swept past us and into the classroom, and everyone got to their feet and followed him in.
He slammed his briefcase down on the table at the front, and jerked the chair out from beneath the table.
Everyone scurried into their seats.
I chose one in the very back, but this was bad, because there were three empty rows between me and the rest of the Students. I moved up three rows to a seat behind a very large Student with massively spiky hair.
The Professor smacked his briefcase open and yanked out two folders.
He thrust syllabuses into the faces of the front-row Students and ran from row to row, thrusting papers and skipping to the next column. I prayed that class would end early.
When he resumed his position behind his table, he looked around the room dangerously and slammed his briefcase shut again. I noticed that there was a muscle twitching spasmodically beneath his left eye. Maybe he was ill. Or simply loony.
"This is Anthropology 101," he announced. His voice was surprisingly low and gravelly, like a deep river with jagged rocks in it, and the people in the front row leaned back. He was loud.
I lowered my head, grateful that I was behind a very large person so that the sound waves couldn't reach me as well, and braced myself for a deafening class.
Surprisingly, this Professor was a good teacher, albeit a quiet (or calm) one, and by the time class was over I knew what to do to get an A, and I knew what the majority of my grade was based on: papers. This was good, because I could write, and there were no speeches, so there was no way I could fail.
I had other classes the next day, but since I had gotten through most of the pitfalls of the Dreaded First Day, I did not have as many distressing incidents.
I will list a few of the most Distressing Incidents of the Dreaded First Day of Class:
1. Being late to your class(es).
2. Losing your schedule. (Ooooh! This is very bad indeed.)
3. Having a Professor yell at you.
4. Having no one to sit next to.
5. Forgetting your lunch.
6. Crashing your car. (Although I doubt most of you have experienced this particular problem your first day.)
7. Getting lost.
8. Not finding any parking spots and being late to your classes.
9. Missing an entire class because you got lost and went to Humanities instead of University Hall.
10. Walking up ten thousand flights of stairs and still ending up on the wrong floor.
11. Falling down ten thousand flights of stairs and having to go to the Health Center and then being late to your class.
12. Feeling nauseous the entire time you are driving to school, and then feeling nauseous the entire time you are in class, and then finally realizing you have the flu when you are barfing your lungs out in the McCarthy bathroom stall.
I won't go into any more details; I hope you've gotten the point.
A word of advice to Freshman:
Go to school early to get a parking space. Say, about 6 am.
6 am? you screech. 6 am? Anonymous Titan, you've lost your marbles!
No, not at all, dear reader. I am telling you: get to school around 6 am. Although 7 or 8 am would probably do just as well, 6 am is your best bet, especially during Finals and Midterms and the like.
If you get there much to early to go to class, go to the Gym instead!
Furthermore, I'd avoid the Nutwood parking structure. It is always packed, along with the parking structure next to the Gym. Go to the little parking lot next to the Gym and park there. If you have a large car, it is easier to back out in that parking lot than attempt to not hit anything in the parking structures.
On a less practical note, today I went back to CSUF and didn't see Toby. Perhaps he was busy cleaning gum off desks? Hmm...
Tips of the Day:
Tip #62: Choose your classes wisely.
Tip #63: Choose your lunchtime wisely.
Tip #64: Choose your lunch wisely.
Tip #65: Choose your fried zucchini wisely.
Tip #66: Choose your fried zucchini suppliers wisely.
Dear Mr. Siganel,
If I happen to receive - if I just happen to receive - one - one itsy bitsy tiny note -- from you -- again...
You will rue the day you made The Anonymous Titan mad.
Choose your actions wisely. Of course, this will be difficult because your skull contains only a teeny tiny pea-size brain, but I am warning you...
Cheerio,
The Anonymous Titan
P.S. For those frightened readers who may be Freshmen at CSUF next year, here is the link to the CSUF campus map. http://www.fullerton.edu/campusmap/images/campus%20map%20color_1008.pdf
Thursday, July 7, 2011
The Talkative Titan
Today is July 6th, dear reader.
I have done several things since my last post:
1. Sent nasty notes back to Mr. Sinagel.
2. Discarded rotten zucchini from above person more than three times.
3. Moved places also more than three times.
4. Gone to CSUF and bought a sweatshirt,
5. And had a Fourth of July celebration.
My Fourth of July was very pleasant. I sat on my roof and set off fireworks until the police came, and then I crawled back into my room through the window and went to bed. (They never knew who it was!) Furthermore, I hung all the apartment hallways with red, white, and blue streamers around 2 am the morning before, so on the Fourth it was very festive. The other tenants went downstairs and told the manager how pleased they were that he had decided to decorate this year. While they were thus occupied, I went around my hallway taping little flags on my neighbors' doors.
Yesterday at 3 or so in the morning, I stopped by CSUF (wearing my new grey sweatshirt, with the hood up) to pick up my fried zucchini!
I went past the Nutwood parking lot (more on that later) and down the walkway past McCarthy, and was almost to the sundial and the lovely white plastic box on top of it when I saw it.
Or, rather, him.
There was a lone employee leaning on his broom and puffing on his cigarette, one hand reaching for the gleaming white box lazily. I came to an abrupt halt.
Then I broke into a frantic run!
"Stop!" I shouted, "Wait!" and skidded to a halt in front of the frowning employee. I removed his (very incredibly strong) fingers from the box and said breathlessly, "This is mine."
"Really." He puffed out some smoke into my face. "And why is it here?" The question was more of a statement, but he was still frowning down at me.
I stepped backwards, repelled, and batted ineffectually at the smoke (the employee watched with mild amusement and made no move to step back). "None of your business."
The employee cocked a mostly gray eyebrow and stared harder down at me. Then he took the cigarette out from between his lips and crushed it on the sundial. This was rather unkind, as the sundial hadn't ever done anything to him, but I did not protest, being a little cowed myself. I could only imagine how the sundial felt.
"You can't put stuff on the sundial," he said (as if he had not just done so himself). "What is that, anyways?"
"Food," I said, getting a little annoyed. "Why does it matter to you?"
"I work here," he said, as if I hadn't already figured that out. He stared at me some more, watching as I wrinkled my nose and grimaced back at him. I figured out that he could see my facial expressions and stopped making them.
The employee propped his broom against the sundial and offered me a brown, work-hardened hand. "I'm Toby."
I took his hand and shook it, still wary. "Nice to meet you."
We dropped hands and continued to eye each other. I wasn't sure why he had suddenly changed into a nicer (or craftier?) person.
He appeared to be waiting for something. "Well?"
"What?" I said.
"What's your name?" he said, beginning to frown again.
I shrugged and shifted my box to my other hand.
"You're not going to tell me, are you," he said.
"I guess not," I said, and made to walk away.
"Wait, kid," he said. I could hear him tapping his broom handle on the sundial indecisively. "Do you need...are you hungry or something? I have some food, well, if you want any."
I turned back around and smiled at him. "I don't need food," I said. "I'm fine. See?" I did a series of jumping-jacks.
Toby raised both eyebrows this time, but he looked slightly relieved. "Well."
Then he looked past me. "Hey, is that your cat?"
Hypnos had just crept out from under one of the benches and begun to climb a nearby tree, digging his claws deeply into the soft wood. I hurried over.
"Hypnos, stop that. Get down." I grabbed for him, but he scurried higher and curled himself into a crook of the branch, staring down at me with a supercilious air.
Toby, who had followed me over, raised his broom and poked the end menacingly at Hypnos, who snarled and extended every claw on his flailing front paws.
I glared at Hypnos and thought about climbing the tree, but it was clearly too small to support either me or Toby, who had dragged a bench over and gotten on top of it.
He thrust the bristly end of the broom at Hypnos' startled face, and the cat leaped off the tree, screeching his displeasure.
Hypnos landed agilely on his feet and stalked away to hide in the shadows of McCarthy, every line of his sleek body stiff with offense.
Toby looked at me and then got down from the bench.
"Sorry," I said. "I don't really know how to make him behave. I've never had a cat before."
"Ah, cats are terrible miscreants," Toby said, now dragging the stone bench back into place with one hand. I watched in awe. "You can't control 'em."
"Did you say 'miscreants'?" I said, now really stunned. "Are you like an...an -"
"- an English major?" Toby finished. "Yep. Well, I was. I dropped out my junior year."
I didn't quite know how to respond to this. "Oh. That's...um....uh....not...good?"
"Yes, it was sad, sort of," Toby supplied. "I guess so. But I like my job, and I like this school, so I guess everything worked out." He looked up at me again, brushing off his hands, and suddenly showed a very large mouthful of gleaming white teeth. I instantaneously thought of wolves and piranhas, and took a little step back. "Define... 'neologism'."
I blinked at him. "Define what?"
"Neologism," he repeated, still grinning in that madcap sort of way.
"Uh..." I searched the farthest, darkest, most cobwebby crannies of my brain, but I couldn't think of anything pertaining to 'neologism'. "I guess it has something to do with new stuff? Since it has 'neo' in it"
"Wellll," Toby said, "then what does 'logism' mean?"
I cast around some more, but came up with nothing. "I don't know. Something to do with math?"
Toby lost his madcap grin. "Did you say -" his face drew itself into a horrible wrinkled mass "- math?"
"Oh, er, no," I said, hastily backtracking. "Never mind. I don't know. Why don't you tell me?"
"Neologism," Toby intoned with great deliberation, and grimly serious solemnity, "is a new word or phrase that has recently been created. Or the usage of this new word or phrase that has recently been created."
"How interesting," I said, wondering if I was holding a box of rotten mozzarella sticks or of cold fried zucchini, as something wet and cold was seeping out of the crack between the lid and the box and onto my fingers. "I didn't know that."
"That was obvious," Toby said, and began to sweep the bench off. "Your cat is climbing up one of McCarthy's pillars."
I ran to get Hypnos down. When I returned, lugging an angry cat under one arm and clutching my leaking box in the other hand, Toby stopped sweeping the sidewalk to shoot a glance at Hypnos.
"You should think about getting a dog instead," he noted.
I shrugged. "I can't; my apartment doesn't allow large pets. So I'm stuck with this beast."
"Maybe he's lonely?" Toby asked, now tipping the benches over to clear out spiderwebs. "You could buy him a friend."
"No money," I said flippantly, and felt more liquidy stuff slide down my fingers and drip onto my shoes. "I'd better run."
"See you tomorrow night," Toby said, and waved emphatically with his broom.
I nodded, since my hands were full, and headed back towards McCarthy.
The last thing I saw of Toby was his silhouette hunched over the sundial, staring hard at something glinting on the metal, a sort of glutinous liquid that was dripping slowly down the side.
When I got home, I dropped Hypnos on the floor and ran to the sink with my package.
I ripped the top off only to see:
A whole lot of fried zucchini, except it was covered in what appeared to be tomato sauce.
"Oh," I said, now realizing why there was so much liquid everywhere. I rinsed my bloody-looking hands off and put the fried zucchini (with the ketchup) into a bowl. Then I sat down on my new couch and turned the TV on and began to eat my well-earned food.
Just kidding, dear reader!
Instead of sitting down on my nonexistent new couch and turning on my imaginary TV, I sat down on my hard linoleum floor and looked out my one, slightly crooked, circular window. It was about the size of my head and since it faced the opposite apartment structure all I could see was a section of brown, faded wall.
I must have fallen asleep, as I woke up this morning to find an empty bowl (with a few crumbs), a mewing Hypnos, and a head-shaped window with the sun glinting off of it.
Which is why today is now July 7 instead.
I realize you are probably wondering why I have stopped writing about College, but remember, dear reader, I am not in school!
Really? you ask, your eyes wide and your bushy black eyebrows raised high.
No, you would probably say (instead): "I knew that, Anonymous Titan. Please don't make fun of me." Then you would frown scarily (with your bushy black eyebrows making a V).
And to that I would say: "You know, dear reader, you are so right. Which is why I will stop laughing at you. But it is so easy, you see, so give me a moment to catch my breath and finish rolling around on the floor. By the way, I like your new haircut. I got one too! Hey, is that a clean T-shirt? And do you have freshly brushed teeth? Wow, the things people do to read my blog! You're so kind." Then I would smile pleasantly and change subjects again.
Anyways, I've stopped writing about College because I am not there! Except when I go to pick up things.
On another note, I haven't gotten any more mail from the person who left me a (nice) letter in my fried zucchini that one time. Go to my post The Tenacious Titan to read about C. Mason.
Someone is knocking on my door. One moment.
The Anonymous Titan gets up and goes to answer the door.
After opening it, he/she sticks his/her head out, and says: "Hello. Do you need something?"
The person outside says, "Hi. Yeah, I do. Are these yours? No one else will admit to stringing them up everywhere."
The Anonymous Titan takes the laundry basket full of streamers from the neighbor. "Yeah. Thanks."
The neighbor raises his eyebrows and attempts a smile. "You were... nice to hang them up."
"Thanks," the Anonymous Titan says, and begins to shut the door.
The neighbor sticks his foot in the way. "Hey, were you the one setting off fireworks on the roof last night?"
"What roof?" the Anonymous Titan says, and shuts the door all the way. Then he/she locks it and puts the laundry basket on the floor, looking thoughtful. He/she walks back over to the laptop.
I'm back!
Some guy gave me back all my streamers. That was nice of him, wasn't it?
It's hot in here. I'm going to go start making dinner.
Here are your tips!
Tips of the Day:
Tip #59: Here are some more great summer activities: 1. Go to the pool (a neighborhood one, a hotel one, a school one) and swim around! Pretend to be a shark and chase other swimmers around, growling loudly and pretending to gnaw on their paddleboards and foam noodle thingies. When they yell at you (or accidentally hit you in the head with their board), swim away, looking offended, and sulk in the corner of the pool for an hour or so. 2. Stay at home and draw/paint/crayon/pastel/watercolor/stencil a self-portrait. Refer to the mirror. 3. Go to your school with a bucket of chalk and draw pictures on the sidewalks. Or draw on the buildings. If you can't go to your school, go draw on your neighbors' houses. Tell them that if they don't like it, they can wash it off with a hose. If they yell at you, erase your artwork. It is better to lose your masterpieces than to spend the rest of your summer hiding in your house. 4. Visit England and affect a British accent. When real British people look at you funny (or roll their eyes), bow and explain that you are Australianish.
Tip #60: If it is too hot in your house/apartment/room, go buy a wading pool and set it up in the middle of your bedroom. Fill it up with water. Also, you could fill your bathtub completely. Or you could go buy a giant fish tank and fill it with water and go scuba diving. Great additions to indoor aquariums are: goldfish, lion fish, jellyfish, miniature sharks (wait, do they have those?), baby blue whales, seals, sea turtles, and fake seaweed. If you can't find any of these, go to an Aquarium place and fall into the shark tank. Or fall into the normal fish tank. Or go inside the penguin exhibit, although I wouldn't recommend the polar bear habitat.
Tip #61: Go to the sundial with pairs of purple-striped things and leave them there. What about a pair of earmuffs? Or a pair of shoes? Or a pair of brooms, or canisters of bug spray, or purple-striped paired tins of peppermints? Or a pair of purple-striped books?
Gosh, I simply have run out of words. I will say farewell, then, dear reader.
Ta-ta!
I have done several things since my last post:
1. Sent nasty notes back to Mr. Sinagel.
2. Discarded rotten zucchini from above person more than three times.
3. Moved places also more than three times.
4. Gone to CSUF and bought a sweatshirt,
5. And had a Fourth of July celebration.
My Fourth of July was very pleasant. I sat on my roof and set off fireworks until the police came, and then I crawled back into my room through the window and went to bed. (They never knew who it was!) Furthermore, I hung all the apartment hallways with red, white, and blue streamers around 2 am the morning before, so on the Fourth it was very festive. The other tenants went downstairs and told the manager how pleased they were that he had decided to decorate this year. While they were thus occupied, I went around my hallway taping little flags on my neighbors' doors.
Yesterday at 3 or so in the morning, I stopped by CSUF (wearing my new grey sweatshirt, with the hood up) to pick up my fried zucchini!
I went past the Nutwood parking lot (more on that later) and down the walkway past McCarthy, and was almost to the sundial and the lovely white plastic box on top of it when I saw it.
Or, rather, him.
There was a lone employee leaning on his broom and puffing on his cigarette, one hand reaching for the gleaming white box lazily. I came to an abrupt halt.
Then I broke into a frantic run!
"Stop!" I shouted, "Wait!" and skidded to a halt in front of the frowning employee. I removed his (very incredibly strong) fingers from the box and said breathlessly, "This is mine."
"Really." He puffed out some smoke into my face. "And why is it here?" The question was more of a statement, but he was still frowning down at me.
I stepped backwards, repelled, and batted ineffectually at the smoke (the employee watched with mild amusement and made no move to step back). "None of your business."
The employee cocked a mostly gray eyebrow and stared harder down at me. Then he took the cigarette out from between his lips and crushed it on the sundial. This was rather unkind, as the sundial hadn't ever done anything to him, but I did not protest, being a little cowed myself. I could only imagine how the sundial felt.
"You can't put stuff on the sundial," he said (as if he had not just done so himself). "What is that, anyways?"
"Food," I said, getting a little annoyed. "Why does it matter to you?"
"I work here," he said, as if I hadn't already figured that out. He stared at me some more, watching as I wrinkled my nose and grimaced back at him. I figured out that he could see my facial expressions and stopped making them.
The employee propped his broom against the sundial and offered me a brown, work-hardened hand. "I'm Toby."
I took his hand and shook it, still wary. "Nice to meet you."
We dropped hands and continued to eye each other. I wasn't sure why he had suddenly changed into a nicer (or craftier?) person.
He appeared to be waiting for something. "Well?"
"What?" I said.
"What's your name?" he said, beginning to frown again.
I shrugged and shifted my box to my other hand.
"You're not going to tell me, are you," he said.
"I guess not," I said, and made to walk away.
"Wait, kid," he said. I could hear him tapping his broom handle on the sundial indecisively. "Do you need...are you hungry or something? I have some food, well, if you want any."
I turned back around and smiled at him. "I don't need food," I said. "I'm fine. See?" I did a series of jumping-jacks.
Toby raised both eyebrows this time, but he looked slightly relieved. "Well."
Then he looked past me. "Hey, is that your cat?"
Hypnos had just crept out from under one of the benches and begun to climb a nearby tree, digging his claws deeply into the soft wood. I hurried over.
"Hypnos, stop that. Get down." I grabbed for him, but he scurried higher and curled himself into a crook of the branch, staring down at me with a supercilious air.
Toby, who had followed me over, raised his broom and poked the end menacingly at Hypnos, who snarled and extended every claw on his flailing front paws.
I glared at Hypnos and thought about climbing the tree, but it was clearly too small to support either me or Toby, who had dragged a bench over and gotten on top of it.
He thrust the bristly end of the broom at Hypnos' startled face, and the cat leaped off the tree, screeching his displeasure.
Hypnos landed agilely on his feet and stalked away to hide in the shadows of McCarthy, every line of his sleek body stiff with offense.
Toby looked at me and then got down from the bench.
"Sorry," I said. "I don't really know how to make him behave. I've never had a cat before."
"Ah, cats are terrible miscreants," Toby said, now dragging the stone bench back into place with one hand. I watched in awe. "You can't control 'em."
"Did you say 'miscreants'?" I said, now really stunned. "Are you like an...an -"
"- an English major?" Toby finished. "Yep. Well, I was. I dropped out my junior year."
I didn't quite know how to respond to this. "Oh. That's...um....uh....not...good?"
"Yes, it was sad, sort of," Toby supplied. "I guess so. But I like my job, and I like this school, so I guess everything worked out." He looked up at me again, brushing off his hands, and suddenly showed a very large mouthful of gleaming white teeth. I instantaneously thought of wolves and piranhas, and took a little step back. "Define... 'neologism'."
I blinked at him. "Define what?"
"Neologism," he repeated, still grinning in that madcap sort of way.
"Uh..." I searched the farthest, darkest, most cobwebby crannies of my brain, but I couldn't think of anything pertaining to 'neologism'. "I guess it has something to do with new stuff? Since it has 'neo' in it"
"Wellll," Toby said, "then what does 'logism' mean?"
I cast around some more, but came up with nothing. "I don't know. Something to do with math?"
Toby lost his madcap grin. "Did you say -" his face drew itself into a horrible wrinkled mass "- math?"
"Oh, er, no," I said, hastily backtracking. "Never mind. I don't know. Why don't you tell me?"
"Neologism," Toby intoned with great deliberation, and grimly serious solemnity, "is a new word or phrase that has recently been created. Or the usage of this new word or phrase that has recently been created."
"How interesting," I said, wondering if I was holding a box of rotten mozzarella sticks or of cold fried zucchini, as something wet and cold was seeping out of the crack between the lid and the box and onto my fingers. "I didn't know that."
"That was obvious," Toby said, and began to sweep the bench off. "Your cat is climbing up one of McCarthy's pillars."
I ran to get Hypnos down. When I returned, lugging an angry cat under one arm and clutching my leaking box in the other hand, Toby stopped sweeping the sidewalk to shoot a glance at Hypnos.
"You should think about getting a dog instead," he noted.
I shrugged. "I can't; my apartment doesn't allow large pets. So I'm stuck with this beast."
"Maybe he's lonely?" Toby asked, now tipping the benches over to clear out spiderwebs. "You could buy him a friend."
"No money," I said flippantly, and felt more liquidy stuff slide down my fingers and drip onto my shoes. "I'd better run."
"See you tomorrow night," Toby said, and waved emphatically with his broom.
I nodded, since my hands were full, and headed back towards McCarthy.
The last thing I saw of Toby was his silhouette hunched over the sundial, staring hard at something glinting on the metal, a sort of glutinous liquid that was dripping slowly down the side.
When I got home, I dropped Hypnos on the floor and ran to the sink with my package.
I ripped the top off only to see:
A whole lot of fried zucchini, except it was covered in what appeared to be tomato sauce.
"Oh," I said, now realizing why there was so much liquid everywhere. I rinsed my bloody-looking hands off and put the fried zucchini (with the ketchup) into a bowl. Then I sat down on my new couch and turned the TV on and began to eat my well-earned food.
Just kidding, dear reader!
Instead of sitting down on my nonexistent new couch and turning on my imaginary TV, I sat down on my hard linoleum floor and looked out my one, slightly crooked, circular window. It was about the size of my head and since it faced the opposite apartment structure all I could see was a section of brown, faded wall.
I must have fallen asleep, as I woke up this morning to find an empty bowl (with a few crumbs), a mewing Hypnos, and a head-shaped window with the sun glinting off of it.
Which is why today is now July 7 instead.
I realize you are probably wondering why I have stopped writing about College, but remember, dear reader, I am not in school!
Really? you ask, your eyes wide and your bushy black eyebrows raised high.
No, you would probably say (instead): "I knew that, Anonymous Titan. Please don't make fun of me." Then you would frown scarily (with your bushy black eyebrows making a V).
And to that I would say: "You know, dear reader, you are so right. Which is why I will stop laughing at you. But it is so easy, you see, so give me a moment to catch my breath and finish rolling around on the floor. By the way, I like your new haircut. I got one too! Hey, is that a clean T-shirt? And do you have freshly brushed teeth? Wow, the things people do to read my blog! You're so kind." Then I would smile pleasantly and change subjects again.
Anyways, I've stopped writing about College because I am not there! Except when I go to pick up things.
On another note, I haven't gotten any more mail from the person who left me a (nice) letter in my fried zucchini that one time. Go to my post The Tenacious Titan to read about C. Mason.
Someone is knocking on my door. One moment.
The Anonymous Titan gets up and goes to answer the door.
After opening it, he/she sticks his/her head out, and says: "Hello. Do you need something?"
The person outside says, "Hi. Yeah, I do. Are these yours? No one else will admit to stringing them up everywhere."
The Anonymous Titan takes the laundry basket full of streamers from the neighbor. "Yeah. Thanks."
The neighbor raises his eyebrows and attempts a smile. "You were... nice to hang them up."
"Thanks," the Anonymous Titan says, and begins to shut the door.
The neighbor sticks his foot in the way. "Hey, were you the one setting off fireworks on the roof last night?"
"What roof?" the Anonymous Titan says, and shuts the door all the way. Then he/she locks it and puts the laundry basket on the floor, looking thoughtful. He/she walks back over to the laptop.
I'm back!
Some guy gave me back all my streamers. That was nice of him, wasn't it?
It's hot in here. I'm going to go start making dinner.
Here are your tips!
Tips of the Day:
Tip #59: Here are some more great summer activities: 1. Go to the pool (a neighborhood one, a hotel one, a school one) and swim around! Pretend to be a shark and chase other swimmers around, growling loudly and pretending to gnaw on their paddleboards and foam noodle thingies. When they yell at you (or accidentally hit you in the head with their board), swim away, looking offended, and sulk in the corner of the pool for an hour or so. 2. Stay at home and draw/paint/crayon/pastel/watercolor/stencil a self-portrait. Refer to the mirror. 3. Go to your school with a bucket of chalk and draw pictures on the sidewalks. Or draw on the buildings. If you can't go to your school, go draw on your neighbors' houses. Tell them that if they don't like it, they can wash it off with a hose. If they yell at you, erase your artwork. It is better to lose your masterpieces than to spend the rest of your summer hiding in your house. 4. Visit England and affect a British accent. When real British people look at you funny (or roll their eyes), bow and explain that you are Australianish.
Tip #60: If it is too hot in your house/apartment/room, go buy a wading pool and set it up in the middle of your bedroom. Fill it up with water. Also, you could fill your bathtub completely. Or you could go buy a giant fish tank and fill it with water and go scuba diving. Great additions to indoor aquariums are: goldfish, lion fish, jellyfish, miniature sharks (wait, do they have those?), baby blue whales, seals, sea turtles, and fake seaweed. If you can't find any of these, go to an Aquarium place and fall into the shark tank. Or fall into the normal fish tank. Or go inside the penguin exhibit, although I wouldn't recommend the polar bear habitat.
Tip #61: Go to the sundial with pairs of purple-striped things and leave them there. What about a pair of earmuffs? Or a pair of shoes? Or a pair of brooms, or canisters of bug spray, or purple-striped paired tins of peppermints? Or a pair of purple-striped books?
Gosh, I simply have run out of words. I will say farewell, then, dear reader.
Ta-ta!
Saturday, July 2, 2011
The Thrilled Titan
Dear reader!!
I forgot to inform you!!
It is my blog's first anniversary!!!!!
Due to you, dear reader, my blog is appreciated, and I will not forget that. I wish you a delightful and pleasant night.
Farewell,
The Anonymous Titan
I forgot to inform you!!
It is my blog's first anniversary!!!!!
Due to you, dear reader, my blog is appreciated, and I will not forget that. I wish you a delightful and pleasant night.
Farewell,
The Anonymous Titan
The Thoughtful Titan
Today I went to the beach, dear reader.
The waves were crashing along the shore, and people were scattered everywhere on the sand, with blankets, umbrellas, and little kids running haphazardly up and down.
I walked towards the pier and looked around. After choosing my spot, I put up my purple-striped umbrella, spread out my towel on the sand, sat down, and opened my novel.
It was very peaceful.
A little while later I heard voices and looked up, curious.
A family was spreading out their blankets nearby, chattering amongst themselves and slathering on sunblock. The youngest of the five kids (he was six, maybe seven) snatched up a pail and made a beeline for the water.
"Russel! Get back here, the sunblock has to soak in!" his mother called, successfully dodging a falling umbrella which she had been attempting to put up.
Her husband grinned at her and picked it up off the sand, brushing sand off its nylon top. "I'll do it, honey," he said, and began digging a monstrous (No, I am not joking. It was a very monstrous) hole.
Another kid detached herself from the group of wriggling youngsters and strutted down to the waves. She bent over and began searching for shells, ignoring her mother's increasingly annoyed calls of "Sabrina! Get back here!" Apparently she had somehow managed to avoid the sunblock completely.
Finally her mother went over to her (after she finished smearing sunblock over the rest of the children) and talked for a minute in an undertone, her voice calm and measured. Sabrina stopped digging in the sand and listened gravely, her head tilted to one side. Then she got up and followed her mother back to the blankets.
The husband had finished erecting the umbrella; he stood proudly to one side, admiring his handiwork.
"Honey," his wife said, smearing sunblock over Sabrina's shoulders, "why don't you go look for sand crabs with Curtis? He's been wanting to all week."
Curtis looked pleadingly at his father, his little face hopeful. He appeared to be the oldest of the children, possibly eleven, and he had reddish blond hair that stood up in spikes all around his face.
"Please, Daddy?" he asked, as his father rubbed his chin thoughtfully and unconvincingly pretended to be unsure. "You told me you would."
His father's face broke into a smile. "I know I did, bub. Okay then, let's go. We'll find the biggest ones ever!"
The two of them trooped down to the water, where they crouched down, ankles in the waves, and peered intently at the sand, occasionally snatching at the sand with cupped hands.
The mother had finished putting sunblock on Sabrina. She sighed and sank down into a beach chair underneath the umbrella.
"Okay, kids," she said. "You can go play in the water now. Stay where I can see you."
Her final sentence was drowned out by a combined roar as Sabrina, Russel, another boy with light-brown hair, and another girl with frizzy blond hair all shrieked in excitement and ran madly away.
I turned my attention back to my book, as the mother finally seemed to notice that there was someone sitting nearby.
It was only a little while later when another gang of people made their way through the sand and began unloading their stuff. Unfortunately, they had chosen a space directly in front of the mother, who was watching her children intently.
She leaned forward and spoke to the nearest of the six gangly teenagers. "Excuse me, but I'm watching my kids. They're right in front of you. Do you mind moving over?"
The teenager (a dark-haired girl around 17) turned around and frowned at her, displeased. "We can sit wherever we want."
"I'm sorry," my neighbor said, frowning a little herself, "but you'll have to move. You're putting your stuff directly in my line of sight."
I wondered briefly if she was an English professor (line of sight?) but stopped thinking about it as another teenager turned around. He had light blond hair, and appeared to be (according to the current definition) rather handsome.
"What's going on?" he asked the dark-haired girl, hefting his beach chair in one muscular hand.
"She wants us to move so she can see her kids," the girl replied, waspishly, biting off her words. "I think we can sit wherever we want."
"Oh." He turned his attention to the mother, who was openly scowling now. "We'll move. Sorry."
The dark-haired girl opened her mouth and shut it, clearly furious, but unwilling to cause a scene. "Scott! We don't have to move!"
"C'mon, Hannah," he said, already repacking his stuff. "She has to watch her kids. We can find another spot; they're everywhere."
The rest of the group obeyed without argument; they seemed to be used to listening to Scott. Hannah shot an inimical look at the mother as they moved off. The mother stared past her and pretended not to notice.
I raised my book again.
Around lunchtime, the gaggle of children (along with their father) came out of the waves and over to their towels. They were all dripping wet, and Curtis was carrying a dripping pail of water.
"Look Mommy!" he cried, thrusting the pail in her face (and spattering drops of seawater all over her shirt).
She almost recoiled, but caught herself and smiled. "Sand crabs! How nice! Did you find all of those yourself?"
"Daddy helped," Curtis said. He plunked the bucket down on the sand and sat cross-legged next to it, staring and poking at its contents with an introspective air.
The little girl with frizzy blond hair sat down next to him and peered inside. "They're pretty," she said.
Curtis began a long and detailed monologue about the merits and oft-overlooked beauty of sand crabs, and Russel began to rummage in his mother's beach bag.
"What's for lunch?" he asked with an air of complete exhaustion, after failing to find what he was looking for and collapsing wearily on the sand.
"Chicken sandwiches, watermelon, grapes, chocolate cookies, and trail mix," his mother announced, ticking them off on her fingers. "Are you all hungry?"
There was a general chorus of fervent affirmation. The father, who had been picking up things and dropping them back into the sand, finally located the igloo and lugged it over.
"I found the sandwiches and fruit," he said happily, and proceeded to hand them out.
The family dug into their well-deserved lunch, after, of course, a mild argument in which the light brown-haired boy (his name was Justin) tried to move Russel's bucket of sand crabs so that he could see them. The father resolved this by putting the sand crabs in the middle of the blankets and beach chairs so that everyone had a clear view of the little water creatures. I noticed that their mother picked at her food and looked in every direction except at the crab pail.
While they were eating, I dug around in my backpack and produced my lunch:
1. 1 bottle of water
2. 2 peach halves
3. 3 pieces of Fried Zucchini
4. 4... 4... uh, never mind. 2 oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, which were delish.
While I and my neighbors ate, I noticed some more people walking along the beach towards us, people different from the normal skateboarders, joggers, beach bums, and/or people in bikinis that usually came to the beach.
As they walked closer, I realized that they appeared to be a motorcycle gang or something equally strange. Maybe a band of pirates? I put down my cookie and watched.
They were all very intimidating, with tattoos and scowls and tans and such. There were four of them. The first one in the line (for they were walking in a single file line) I named "Captain Smooth-Talking Dan", because he seemed to be in charge (the rest were stomping behind him) and I doubted that it had been easy to get the others to follow. He had greasy dark hair and a lopsided smile and a very large tattoo of a green eagle on his left arm. It was quite bright, so I could only assume that he had gotten it redone. Or maybe it was new.
The second I named "Mr. Mantis" (which would be a good first mate name), as he was very thin and tall, with pale sun-deprived skin, and he walked like he was tiptoeing across the sand. He had no tattoos, but he did have gleaming gold rings in his ears. He was the cleanest of the lot.
The third man was stocky and short, with almost no hair (what was left was a dirty blond color) and a thin, wispy goatee. I puzzled over his name for a while, and then decided on "Goat". He certainly looked like one. If he was a pirate, he'd be one of the thugs.
The last was the most bizarre. He was wearing sharp, neon colors: a yellow bandanna on his head, lime green sneakers, bright orange shorts and a faded pink shirt. He did not look especially clean. He had slung a canteen over his shoulder, which bore a familiar green eagle on its side, and he had several gold and silver bangles up and down his arms. I named him "Sam Snazzy", and decided that he must be the cook.
I watched as the four pirates (for so they seemed to be) paraded past, their various jewelry things clinking, their bare feet making no noise on the sand, their haughty heads held erect, and their backs straight.
The family next to me had suddenly stopped talking. I snuck a glance to my right. Russel was clutching his pail of crabs and eying the pirates with trepidation. His father was still lounging in his beach chair, unconcerned, and the little girls were whispering noisily in each others' ears, very interested in the pirates. Their mother was staring with eyebrows raised, but the four men did not even glance their way. They had ignored me too. They continued past and off down the beach, heading towards the pier, still in their line, looking rather like ducklings following their mother.
I shrugged and went back to my lunch. My neighbors broke into a loud conversation about the "weird men" and what they had been wearing.
"Daddy, did you see the man in neon?" Sabrina asked.
"Mhmm," he said. "What about that really tall guy?"
"He was weird," said Russell, still clutching his bucket. "They were all weird."
"Now, Russell," his mother said. "We must be nice to everyone. Those men were just... interesting."
"Very interesting," her husband confirmed.
She shot him a look.
"Are you guys almost done?" she asked the children.
"Almost," said the blond-haired girl.
"I am!" shouted the brown-haired boy. "C'mon Russell, let's go in the water!"
"But I want to watch my crabs," Russell complained.
"Seth," his mother said to the brown-haired boy, "why don't you see if Daddy wants to go in the water?"
His father got up and brushed sand off his legs. "I'll go," he said. "What d' you say, Seth?"
Seth trotted happily after his father, and Sabrina shoved the last bite of her cookie into her mouth and got up to follow them.
After a little while longer, I packed up my things and headed home.
Outside my door was a thin white envelope. I picked it up carefully, ripped it open, and read the note inside. This action took a considerable amount of thought.
I was verry displized to fynd youyr responze in youyr laste blog poste.
I azzure youy that I wiill nevere stop unlezs youy apologise for youyr actiocns.
Enclosed is a contianer of ded mozzeralla stickes.
Enjgoy,
Mr. Siganel
After I read the note, I threw it away, and the mozzarella sticks too.
I plan to send this response in return:
Dear Mr. Siganel,
Your constant note-sending habit is getting to be a tad annoying. Why don't you, instead of murdering the English language and desecrating every single lovely word, spend your time in a more productive fashion? Read my latest blog post for helpful Tips, and follow one or more of them. Furthermore, I strongly suggest you stop sending me notes, or I will track you down and leave all the rotten mozzarella sticks you have given me in your house, preferably smashed into your fridge.
- Anonymous Titan
Tips of the Day:
Tip #56: Going to the beach is very nice, but you must wear sunblock. I noticed several wincing people with large red sunburns, staggering slowly up the sand to their cars and complaining. I am pleased to inform you that I always wear sunblock, even when I am wrapped in a towel and sitting under an umbrella in the shade.
Tip #57: It is easier to get rid of rude people by being extraordinary nice than by being increasingly rude. I have found that if a telemarketer calls you and asks you if you want to buy something, it is better to say "No, thanks" instead of "Stop calling my house, you dork!" Both parties will be much happier. Similarily, if someone is rude to you and says you are a "weirdo" or a "meanie" or "Your hair smells bad", then you should smile at them and say, "So does yours," or "So are you!" Then walk away and smile at people who are staring.
Tip #58: If you find that you are bored: 1. Go to CSUF and bring me fried zucchini. 2. Visit Australia. I hear the weather is quite nice this time of year. 3. Leap into shark-infested waters, and voila! Your boredom will vanish! 4. Find the newspaper and read the comics section while you blow bubbles at passerby. 5. Go see a movie, and sit perfectly still the whole time, even if there are scary parts and you want to put your fingers in your ears. At the end, jump to your feet and demand a refund. Then the workers will look shocked and you will not be bored. 6. Visit the aquarium and talk to the fish. While you are there, do #3. When you are rescued, explain that you were "merely investigating the thought processes of such magnificently deadly creatures," and look as surprised as possible when the person who rescued you storms off in a huff. Then fall backwards (accidentally, of course) back into the tank. Drench as many people as possible. 7. Find a book and read it. If you don't like what the author wrote, cross out those sentences and write your own in the margins. I wouldn't do this with library books, though. 8. Finally, if you are still bored after all these exciting activities, paint a large poster board with your name and the words "Vote for (your name)" and then stride up and down your street, shouting and hoisting the sign over your head. Watch with amusement as people make funny faces at you.
Farewell, dear reader.
I'll catch up with you soon.
The waves were crashing along the shore, and people were scattered everywhere on the sand, with blankets, umbrellas, and little kids running haphazardly up and down.
I walked towards the pier and looked around. After choosing my spot, I put up my purple-striped umbrella, spread out my towel on the sand, sat down, and opened my novel.
It was very peaceful.
A little while later I heard voices and looked up, curious.
A family was spreading out their blankets nearby, chattering amongst themselves and slathering on sunblock. The youngest of the five kids (he was six, maybe seven) snatched up a pail and made a beeline for the water.
"Russel! Get back here, the sunblock has to soak in!" his mother called, successfully dodging a falling umbrella which she had been attempting to put up.
Her husband grinned at her and picked it up off the sand, brushing sand off its nylon top. "I'll do it, honey," he said, and began digging a monstrous (No, I am not joking. It was a very monstrous) hole.
Another kid detached herself from the group of wriggling youngsters and strutted down to the waves. She bent over and began searching for shells, ignoring her mother's increasingly annoyed calls of "Sabrina! Get back here!" Apparently she had somehow managed to avoid the sunblock completely.
Finally her mother went over to her (after she finished smearing sunblock over the rest of the children) and talked for a minute in an undertone, her voice calm and measured. Sabrina stopped digging in the sand and listened gravely, her head tilted to one side. Then she got up and followed her mother back to the blankets.
The husband had finished erecting the umbrella; he stood proudly to one side, admiring his handiwork.
"Honey," his wife said, smearing sunblock over Sabrina's shoulders, "why don't you go look for sand crabs with Curtis? He's been wanting to all week."
Curtis looked pleadingly at his father, his little face hopeful. He appeared to be the oldest of the children, possibly eleven, and he had reddish blond hair that stood up in spikes all around his face.
"Please, Daddy?" he asked, as his father rubbed his chin thoughtfully and unconvincingly pretended to be unsure. "You told me you would."
His father's face broke into a smile. "I know I did, bub. Okay then, let's go. We'll find the biggest ones ever!"
The two of them trooped down to the water, where they crouched down, ankles in the waves, and peered intently at the sand, occasionally snatching at the sand with cupped hands.
The mother had finished putting sunblock on Sabrina. She sighed and sank down into a beach chair underneath the umbrella.
"Okay, kids," she said. "You can go play in the water now. Stay where I can see you."
Her final sentence was drowned out by a combined roar as Sabrina, Russel, another boy with light-brown hair, and another girl with frizzy blond hair all shrieked in excitement and ran madly away.
I turned my attention back to my book, as the mother finally seemed to notice that there was someone sitting nearby.
It was only a little while later when another gang of people made their way through the sand and began unloading their stuff. Unfortunately, they had chosen a space directly in front of the mother, who was watching her children intently.
She leaned forward and spoke to the nearest of the six gangly teenagers. "Excuse me, but I'm watching my kids. They're right in front of you. Do you mind moving over?"
The teenager (a dark-haired girl around 17) turned around and frowned at her, displeased. "We can sit wherever we want."
"I'm sorry," my neighbor said, frowning a little herself, "but you'll have to move. You're putting your stuff directly in my line of sight."
I wondered briefly if she was an English professor (line of sight?) but stopped thinking about it as another teenager turned around. He had light blond hair, and appeared to be (according to the current definition) rather handsome.
"What's going on?" he asked the dark-haired girl, hefting his beach chair in one muscular hand.
"She wants us to move so she can see her kids," the girl replied, waspishly, biting off her words. "I think we can sit wherever we want."
"Oh." He turned his attention to the mother, who was openly scowling now. "We'll move. Sorry."
The dark-haired girl opened her mouth and shut it, clearly furious, but unwilling to cause a scene. "Scott! We don't have to move!"
"C'mon, Hannah," he said, already repacking his stuff. "She has to watch her kids. We can find another spot; they're everywhere."
The rest of the group obeyed without argument; they seemed to be used to listening to Scott. Hannah shot an inimical look at the mother as they moved off. The mother stared past her and pretended not to notice.
I raised my book again.
Around lunchtime, the gaggle of children (along with their father) came out of the waves and over to their towels. They were all dripping wet, and Curtis was carrying a dripping pail of water.
"Look Mommy!" he cried, thrusting the pail in her face (and spattering drops of seawater all over her shirt).
She almost recoiled, but caught herself and smiled. "Sand crabs! How nice! Did you find all of those yourself?"
"Daddy helped," Curtis said. He plunked the bucket down on the sand and sat cross-legged next to it, staring and poking at its contents with an introspective air.
The little girl with frizzy blond hair sat down next to him and peered inside. "They're pretty," she said.
Curtis began a long and detailed monologue about the merits and oft-overlooked beauty of sand crabs, and Russel began to rummage in his mother's beach bag.
"What's for lunch?" he asked with an air of complete exhaustion, after failing to find what he was looking for and collapsing wearily on the sand.
"Chicken sandwiches, watermelon, grapes, chocolate cookies, and trail mix," his mother announced, ticking them off on her fingers. "Are you all hungry?"
There was a general chorus of fervent affirmation. The father, who had been picking up things and dropping them back into the sand, finally located the igloo and lugged it over.
"I found the sandwiches and fruit," he said happily, and proceeded to hand them out.
The family dug into their well-deserved lunch, after, of course, a mild argument in which the light brown-haired boy (his name was Justin) tried to move Russel's bucket of sand crabs so that he could see them. The father resolved this by putting the sand crabs in the middle of the blankets and beach chairs so that everyone had a clear view of the little water creatures. I noticed that their mother picked at her food and looked in every direction except at the crab pail.
While they were eating, I dug around in my backpack and produced my lunch:
1. 1 bottle of water
2. 2 peach halves
3. 3 pieces of Fried Zucchini
4. 4... 4... uh, never mind. 2 oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, which were delish.
While I and my neighbors ate, I noticed some more people walking along the beach towards us, people different from the normal skateboarders, joggers, beach bums, and/or people in bikinis that usually came to the beach.
As they walked closer, I realized that they appeared to be a motorcycle gang or something equally strange. Maybe a band of pirates? I put down my cookie and watched.
They were all very intimidating, with tattoos and scowls and tans and such. There were four of them. The first one in the line (for they were walking in a single file line) I named "Captain Smooth-Talking Dan", because he seemed to be in charge (the rest were stomping behind him) and I doubted that it had been easy to get the others to follow. He had greasy dark hair and a lopsided smile and a very large tattoo of a green eagle on his left arm. It was quite bright, so I could only assume that he had gotten it redone. Or maybe it was new.
The second I named "Mr. Mantis" (which would be a good first mate name), as he was very thin and tall, with pale sun-deprived skin, and he walked like he was tiptoeing across the sand. He had no tattoos, but he did have gleaming gold rings in his ears. He was the cleanest of the lot.
The third man was stocky and short, with almost no hair (what was left was a dirty blond color) and a thin, wispy goatee. I puzzled over his name for a while, and then decided on "Goat". He certainly looked like one. If he was a pirate, he'd be one of the thugs.
The last was the most bizarre. He was wearing sharp, neon colors: a yellow bandanna on his head, lime green sneakers, bright orange shorts and a faded pink shirt. He did not look especially clean. He had slung a canteen over his shoulder, which bore a familiar green eagle on its side, and he had several gold and silver bangles up and down his arms. I named him "Sam Snazzy", and decided that he must be the cook.
I watched as the four pirates (for so they seemed to be) paraded past, their various jewelry things clinking, their bare feet making no noise on the sand, their haughty heads held erect, and their backs straight.
The family next to me had suddenly stopped talking. I snuck a glance to my right. Russel was clutching his pail of crabs and eying the pirates with trepidation. His father was still lounging in his beach chair, unconcerned, and the little girls were whispering noisily in each others' ears, very interested in the pirates. Their mother was staring with eyebrows raised, but the four men did not even glance their way. They had ignored me too. They continued past and off down the beach, heading towards the pier, still in their line, looking rather like ducklings following their mother.
I shrugged and went back to my lunch. My neighbors broke into a loud conversation about the "weird men" and what they had been wearing.
"Daddy, did you see the man in neon?" Sabrina asked.
"Mhmm," he said. "What about that really tall guy?"
"He was weird," said Russell, still clutching his bucket. "They were all weird."
"Now, Russell," his mother said. "We must be nice to everyone. Those men were just... interesting."
"Very interesting," her husband confirmed.
She shot him a look.
"Are you guys almost done?" she asked the children.
"Almost," said the blond-haired girl.
"I am!" shouted the brown-haired boy. "C'mon Russell, let's go in the water!"
"But I want to watch my crabs," Russell complained.
"Seth," his mother said to the brown-haired boy, "why don't you see if Daddy wants to go in the water?"
His father got up and brushed sand off his legs. "I'll go," he said. "What d' you say, Seth?"
Seth trotted happily after his father, and Sabrina shoved the last bite of her cookie into her mouth and got up to follow them.
After a little while longer, I packed up my things and headed home.
Outside my door was a thin white envelope. I picked it up carefully, ripped it open, and read the note inside. This action took a considerable amount of thought.
I was verry displized to fynd youyr responze in youyr laste blog poste.
I azzure youy that I wiill nevere stop unlezs youy apologise for youyr actiocns.
Enclosed is a contianer of ded mozzeralla stickes.
Enjgoy,
Mr. Siganel
After I read the note, I threw it away, and the mozzarella sticks too.
I plan to send this response in return:
Dear Mr. Siganel,
Your constant note-sending habit is getting to be a tad annoying. Why don't you, instead of murdering the English language and desecrating every single lovely word, spend your time in a more productive fashion? Read my latest blog post for helpful Tips, and follow one or more of them. Furthermore, I strongly suggest you stop sending me notes, or I will track you down and leave all the rotten mozzarella sticks you have given me in your house, preferably smashed into your fridge.
- Anonymous Titan
Tips of the Day:
Tip #56: Going to the beach is very nice, but you must wear sunblock. I noticed several wincing people with large red sunburns, staggering slowly up the sand to their cars and complaining. I am pleased to inform you that I always wear sunblock, even when I am wrapped in a towel and sitting under an umbrella in the shade.
Tip #57: It is easier to get rid of rude people by being extraordinary nice than by being increasingly rude. I have found that if a telemarketer calls you and asks you if you want to buy something, it is better to say "No, thanks" instead of "Stop calling my house, you dork!" Both parties will be much happier. Similarily, if someone is rude to you and says you are a "weirdo" or a "meanie" or "Your hair smells bad", then you should smile at them and say, "So does yours," or "So are you!" Then walk away and smile at people who are staring.
Tip #58: If you find that you are bored: 1. Go to CSUF and bring me fried zucchini. 2. Visit Australia. I hear the weather is quite nice this time of year. 3. Leap into shark-infested waters, and voila! Your boredom will vanish! 4. Find the newspaper and read the comics section while you blow bubbles at passerby. 5. Go see a movie, and sit perfectly still the whole time, even if there are scary parts and you want to put your fingers in your ears. At the end, jump to your feet and demand a refund. Then the workers will look shocked and you will not be bored. 6. Visit the aquarium and talk to the fish. While you are there, do #3. When you are rescued, explain that you were "merely investigating the thought processes of such magnificently deadly creatures," and look as surprised as possible when the person who rescued you storms off in a huff. Then fall backwards (accidentally, of course) back into the tank. Drench as many people as possible. 7. Find a book and read it. If you don't like what the author wrote, cross out those sentences and write your own in the margins. I wouldn't do this with library books, though. 8. Finally, if you are still bored after all these exciting activities, paint a large poster board with your name and the words "Vote for (your name)" and then stride up and down your street, shouting and hoisting the sign over your head. Watch with amusement as people make funny faces at you.
Farewell, dear reader.
I'll catch up with you soon.
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