iCentury

Yesterday was Father's Day, and I had a nice brunch with my dad, sisters, grandfather, uncle aunt and cousin. For future Father's Days, I will make sure my siblings and I cook whatever communal meal is required so we can skirt the half-billion-dollar buffet prices. Overpriced food, however, is not my main focus today. After brunch, we went to Rosedale Mall. I was already late for work, and a little anxious to get there for fear I might be fired and have to eat my clothes to survive the summer. There must be some primal fear surrounding the thought of me naked and starving that just keeps me from flipping off my boss, making a pass at that good-looking woman from accounting and walking off with $100 in post-it notes. Wait... that's not my life. Nevermind. So, at Rosedale, we walk in to the Apple Store, which for those of you who have been living in a cave or who are receiving this transmission from other points in time and space, non-terrestrially, is the mosque of Steve Jobs' caliphate.

Alright, don't take me too literally. I'm not trying to say Steve Jobs is a muslim, but like the first of that kind, he certainly has created a following. The Apple name is as ubiquitous now as Ford was when cars first came in to popularity. You'd be hard pressed to walk across a college campus, business place, home in the United States, or even Europe, East Asia or the South Pacific and not find an iPod, an iBook, an iPhone, an iProduct of some manner. It'd be like going to sea and not finding water - just can't be done. So back to the narrative, we walk in to the Apple Store, and I had genuinely expected us to be there to get Dad a set of replacement headphones (since I took his to college and lost them). This however, was not the case. Instead, a sales person or I'm sure they called him something very Apple-esque, comes over and my father and this man start talking. "Peter," says my father, "did you bring your student ID?" "No," I reply, "I never carry my wallet with me." (Important piece of information for all future muggers - don't bother with me, it'd be like an eagle trying to carry off a cow. It isn't practical for either animal) "Well then how can we get you a new Macbook?" says my father. "Huh?" I say dumbly. Then the gears start working upstairs and I realize that there is an ulterior purpose to my being there.

Well, long story short, I have now submitted, surrendered to the Apple. I now bow to the west five times every day, facing Silicon Valley, and will one day before my death make a pilgrimage there to look upon the splendor of Creation. Maybe I've got my religions and corporations confused. My bad. On the plus side, I have a new computer! In the interest of time and interest, and because the Rockstarship is running out of fuel at the moment, it just so happens the rest of this story can be addressed in the Q&KaBAM! Timezone.

Q&KaBAM! Time

Ann Lamond of Baltimore, MD in the 44th century writes,

Q: "Commodore, I work at the National Archives, and I came across transcripts of your adventure journal. Writing across time and space, I wanted to ask you why if you have a computer already do you need another one? Granted, everyone in the 44th century has at least five of everything, including thumbs."

KaBAM!: "Ann, you're changing events in history by writing to me, but who am I to say what's correct or not? I enjoy my computer very much, my big black Nobilis peppered with bumper stickers and mismatched keys. It's like a plucky little racehorse that will certainly never win the Triple Crown, but won't be left in last place either. However, like a racehorse, it is loud, heavy, gets hot quickly, can only run so long on its own before collapsing, doesn't connect with the outside world well and incidentally the screen has gone wonky just yesterday (It's bizarre to see that on horses...) The Macbook is like a Bugatti in comparison - sleek, slender, subtle, goes places, does things, picks up my groceries. And by the time I go to France, I should have liked to have had a new laptop, because mine is five years old and technology in our day and age rarely stays top-notch that long. So soon, I shall bid goodbye to my old laptop, my magic box, and take up life with the white pearl."

To be honest, I'd be happy with a typewriter. How do I fit into your demographic models now? Ahahahaha!

Small Wishes

There are several things I wish for, and when I am emperor, I shall get them. In the meantime, they remain wishes.

1) I want everyone to maintain an 18-hour day from the hours of approximately 10Am to 4AM. Failure to do so will result in banishment to a black hole.

2) Money will be abolished. Instead of money, all value shall be based upon a persons ability to high-five. I would be quite wealthy in this new economy.

3) I shall have a personal plane. No. Rather, I shall have a personal rocket that shall take me to wherever I wish to rocket off to. Granted, I have the rockstarship, but let's face it, that's strictly metaphorical, and by the time the 747th century rolls around, I may or may not have discombobulated.

4) Queen Elizabeth II and Goldie Hawn will have a boxing match on my front lawn, followed by Oprah Winfrey juggling flaming knives with Albert Einstein on a mile-tall unicycle.

That is all.

Standing Up To The Challenge Of Our Rivals

To my seventeen billion daily subscribers, I say: Worry not! The Commodore and the Rockstarship continue on the intergalactic adventure, no matter what foibles befall me. As the Gospel according to Survivor indicates, it's the eye of the tiger, it's the thrill of the fight, standing up to the challenge of our rivals, and the last known survivor stalks his prey in the night, and he's known to us all as the eye... of the tiger. Dun dun dun, dun dun dun, dun dun dunnnnnn. While my afternoon might have been dreary, after having a bit of lunch and heading off to work, things brightened. At work this week, we've been doing thank you calls, which are blissfully easy. Even though most alumni are usually excited to hear from us, even the grumpy ones like getting thanked. Who doesn't like getting thanked? "Another thank you from Macalester College? What a bunch of overly grateful pricks. I'm never giving again!" No, it never happens like that. In fact tonight, on a night when we are completely not asking for money, I got nearly $600 in donations. For the record, that's more than I've brought to the college ever. Except when I donated $30 million to name the MARC the Shivaun, but the check got lost in the mail.

Also work was particularly enjoyable because Elias was there. Elias is an international student from Greece. Everything he wears is designer made, including his socks. His calls to alumni make us all a little nervous that we might all be fired when Brian Rosenberg learns that alumni no longer give due to an overly confrontational Greek guy working at the annual fund. He is also the most ridiculous person I work with. Take the following transcript from this evening...

Elias: "My neighbor has been kidnapped."
Stephen: "Does that happen often in Greece?"
Elias: "No dumbass, it isn't Italy."
Hillary: "Wait, is this that one neighbor?"
Elias: "No! I'd actually be sad if it was her."
Me: "Why would you be sad to have one neighbor kidnapped but not the other?"
Elias: "Because... she's like my mom's best friend."
Hillary: "That's not the only reason."
Me and Stephen: "What?"
Elias: "Nevermind."
Me: "Okay, there has to be a reason. What, did you like, sleep with her?"
Elias: "Yeah."
Me and Stephen: "WHAT?!"
Hillary: "Oh, did he admit it?"
Me: "You slept with your mom's best friend?!"
Elias: "Yeah."
Me: "How old was she? Are we talking MILF?"
At this point, we all crack up and Zach our boss walks over. Granted, Zach is only like three years older than us, we quickly turn quiet.
Zach: "Hey guys, what's so funny?"
Elias: "My neighbor got kidnapped."
Zach: "Elias, you laugh at the most inappropriate things!"
Elias: "That's not why I'm laughing."
Zach: "Okay, how come then? Is it something I shouldn't know?"
Me: "We'll tell you when you're older."
Zach shrugs his shoulders and walks away. Stephen and I turn back to Elias.
Elias: "Well she was 33 then."
Me: "Then?"
Elias: "I was sixteen at the time."
We all start laughing incredulously.
Elias: "Hey, she gives me the best Christmas presents!"
Me: "Clearly, you gave her the best..."
Zach had walked over again at this point and we all go back to work.

If that wasn't enough, later on that night I'm working at my desk and I hear Elias talking to an alum. "What?! You're so incompetent you make me want to cry. This isn't a spelling bee!" He was trying to take down the business place of an alum that was called "Riesenow and Holstein Art Forgers" or something like that. Maybe if it was like "Nikodropolis and Anastos Uzo Brewers" it would have been easier for him to spell. However, one should not assume that just because Elias is amusing to me that I enjoy his company. His mannerisms towards others are equally applied to all, including myself. Today, he kept scoffing at the fact I was wearing white socks. I can understand him scoffing if I'd been wearing like a Miller Lite shirt with sweat and grease stains, but white socks? And they were clean even!

Also the stress of the day was slightly lightened when I discovered from the college that I stand to make about $450 in the next pay period because of the work I did for reunion. Yay! Still, I'm perpetually reluctant to spend money, even when I have it, and there's no word on what's up with my car. Maybe if I sacrifice some kind of urban woodland creature to the gods of automobiles and highway management. It's modified from an old Masai ritual intended to cure gout.

Q&KaBAM! Time

Gwyn DeVrees of Bloemfontein, South Africa writes...

Q: "Commodore, you've been quoting the titles to a number of 80s hits in your blog. I understood from your fifth autobiography that you mainly listened to classical music. What gives?"

KaBAM!: "Well Gwyn, being a commodore of a 747th century Rockstarship requires one to be well versed in the music of all cultures and throughout all times. While certainly, classical music is still my favorite genre of music, if I were to start using lyrics from say, the Messiah in my transmissions, my adventure journal would quickly take on a millenarian overtone with which I doubt I'd be comfortable. Likewise, even if I steered away from the religious realm of classical music, I'd either be infringing on famous poets like Shakespeare or making no sense at all. For instance, if I were to title a transmission "English Horn - C-C-D-E-C-C-Quarter Rest-C-A-C-D-D-C" or something like that, I'd lose subscribers across the board. And then the advertisers would bail, and the Rockstarship would cascade into oblivion like a declining red supergiant. Mostly, I just like listening to 80s music from time to time. A little variety is good for the mind and soul."

Walk a mile in another man's shoes, and not only are you a mile away, but you also have his shoes.

Every Now And Then I Fall Apart

There is good reason for my picking Bonnie Tyler's words for the title of this transmission. I'm running out of money, my car won't start, my bike needs fixing, my room -almost two weeks after having moved in- is still not all set up, I need to get my life in order for going to France in less than two months -namely I need to pay bills, get a visa, apply for various travel benefits- and I'm probably also not consuming enough calories because it's irritating difficult to cook for myself when I have a dozen other things to do. I thought that living on my own would be easy and enjoyable. Haha. No. This has been the most stressful and expensive period of my life. That and it won't stop raining. Fuck.

Voyagering

Since I've already transmitted twice in the past two days, I'll make this short. Today, I woke up realizing that time is flying by. This is too bad, because my summer will be especially short - I leave August 6th for Spain, and then to France. I am waking up earlier than during any other summer, usually around 10 AM. Hopefully, I'll be waking up even earlier in due time. I enjoy a bit of morning time, especially since my room is so well lit in the morning.

Today, I woke up and sorted the last of my clothes that have to be put on shelves and on hangers and what have you. Slowly my room is coming together, like a giant Rubik's Cube of furniture, clothing, knicknack and carpet. I am lazy however, so it is slow work, and I sacrifice a good deal of time I should devote to housework to spending time with friends. I also haven't had time to read much yet, although I did recently finish "In A Sunburned Country" by Bill Bryson. Now I want to visit Australia. Well, I had always wanted to visit Australia. Now I want to visit Australia a lot. Will someone please lend me $10,000? I promise I'll bring you back a live kangaroo.

After I woke up, I went on a bike ride with Ryan, Molly, Joe and Allison to Lake Calhoun. It was especially nice and sunny, and I had never seen the Greenway before (okay, that's not completely true. I came there once when it opened several years ago with Helen and my Uncle Tom and Aunt Rebecca. It was nice, but there was a clown there that frightened me, as all clowns do and should). It is quite pretty - the greenway, not the clown. We played frisbee in the water, and I found some nice rocks. Molly however, was unaware of my recent fondness of rock collecting and started throwing some back into the lake until I stopped her. It was probably for the best as my backpack was quite heavy already. I got a fair bit of sun, and I'll get more as soon as it stops bloody raining every other day!

Once we rode back, Joe, Molly and I went to a choir gathering and I had the best watermelon I've eaten in ages. I love fruit, and I'm glad that I'm actually getting a decent amount of fruit, especially cherries. However, the two pounds of cherries Molly and I got for the pot luck cost *$11.57* When I build my time machine, I am going back and sewing the ground all about the Twin Cities with cherry trees, and we shall eat cherries like they were... uh, like they were candy! Free candy! Free candy for everyone! Yeah! Okay, now I'm tired, but I have to be social for some reason. Goddamn interpersonal relationships...

No Q&KaBAM! Time tonight. The Commodore is exhausted. Let the Commodore rest or else no cherries!

Life at Home No. 2

I have now been in residence at my home on Portland Avenue for just over a week now. I have yet to spend a full week here yet, since with one thing or another, I've either been at my house home at Kerry Court or working the Reunion until wee small hours. I am gradually getting more and more settled however as furniture gets moved into correct positions and decorations go up and dishes find their way into the correct cabinets. It's almost like living in a Harry Potter house minus the wand and with a lot more cracked paint. About half the outlets only have sockets for two prongs, and the walls of my room appear to be made of cement(?) because you have to nail things in to get them to stay. On the whole though, the place doesn't smell (except the basement, which has a curious musk of cat piss, fungal life and old man), is relatively cool (but so is the weather as a whole) and I can't hear my roommates from my room (although I only have one on my side of the house currently, and she is quiet normally). Maybe the whole world will come crashing down tomorrow.

Speaking of that, I also discovered that the floor by my desk slants slightly. Soon all of my housemates will have arrived, and then we'll have a big party and possibly all be arrested. I don't know whether I'm for that or against that yet. It certainly would make for interesting stories to tell my children. I find that time is, as usual, slipping past me. I was thinking today how I am going to become a junior next year, and how I'm already half done with college. I remember being a junior in high school and wanting so badly to go with all of my senior friends off to college, and how I wanted high school to end more than anything in the world. Now the reverse has occurred. I'd give mostly anything for a few more days here and there in the last two years. It's like my professor David Lanegran once said: "Life is like toilet paper. Every instant, like every individual sheet, is exactly the same length, but as you roll more and more out, each sheet becomes a greater proportion of the whole." He also said the opposite of a mother is a witch and that we must always judge strangers on the street as either our mothers or witches, and that the witches would eat us. I'm sure I learned a lot from that class, but it will have to settle in my mind before I can use it properly.

I'm going to go find Joe and watch Batman Begins. I love Batman.

Q&KaBAM! Time

D.H. Chatterjea of Kolkata, India writes,

Q: "Commodore, who is your favorite superhero and why?"

KaBAM!: "Obviously the answer is Batman. Batman, unlike Superman, is an ordinary human being who does amazing things using his strength of mind, body and character. Superman was just born with the ability to bend bars and shoot lasers from his eyes (while under an M-type star, of course) My other favorite superhero is myself, however my powers are yet fully formed. Perhaps when I get blasted by gamma radiation, or fuse my body to an elaborate machine..."

Better a slip of the tongue than a flick of the wrist.

Reunion!

Oh my goodness! Today is Sunday, and I've been working for the Macalester Alumni Reunion since last Wednesday. It has been so much work, but every moment has been worth it. As commodore, I give all who worked with me a 21,000 gun salute. I will certainly do it again next year, and I encourage all of you who are able to join in. So what did I do? Drove golf carts, bartended, set chairs up, ran errands, schmoozed with alumni, all around did whatever was asked of me (including making more buttons than one could rightly shake a stick at, would on be inclined to shake such a stick). I worked almost fifty hours in four days, which might not sound like a terrible amount, but two days, I was working nearly 15 hours straight. Oy vey!

I also met a whole bunch of neat people. Most of the reunion workers are international students (including both our coordinators, Lilla and Najada). Many domestic students don't have opportunities to interact with international students during the year, so this was a great chance to meet a lot of people I otherwise wouldn't have. I think its too bad that more domestic students don't do things like this, because they're all such neat and kind people.

I am now quite sweaty, and need a shower and a nap.

Q&KaBAM! Time

Theresa Bergstrom of Butte, MT writes,

Q: "Commodore, I have lived in Montana all of my life and I am definitely a big sky gal. You live in the city, but you grew up in the country. What do you think of the transition between the two environments?"

KaBAM!: "While certainly eastern Minnesota is nothing like Montana, I did grow up on a large plot of land on a lake with only a handful of neighbors. Growing up, I often wished that I had lived in town, closer to my friends and things to do. However, even so I enjoyed the countryside very much. The perpetual quiet from manmade noise (except lawnmowers and occasional shotguns), the openness of the lake and all the green surrounding me really left an impression on me. Living in the city now seems cramped and stifled, where it is never truly dark, and never very quiet, even though it is more exciting. I suppose I should take advantage of my youthful ability to adjust well to these adversities. I am certainly very grateful that I can go back to where I grew up any time, and although I enjoy my life in the city now, I would certain like to move back to the country one day."

May the Force be with you!

Domesticity

I have a house! Okay, so I have a single room that leads into another room in the attic of half of a house. Homeownership is still a few (hundred) weeks off. The room itself is maybe 16’x12’ and there is a little bit of an entry way that is the size of a Dupre single, or 8’x6’. The room is quite spacious. So much so that my throngs of crap might not even fill it. However, I have yet to acquire a desk and I haven’t filled up the bookshelves. I’m absolutely broke right now, so I’ll either have to craigslist things or wait until the bank is buffer for big purchases. I have a double bed, a small chest of drawers, and some shelves and a low bar to hang clothes from. Total bonus though: there is a really comfy loveseat up here! It’s awesome.

Moving was not especially difficult. Helen and Dad both came with to help, and then my friend Ian Noble and us went to dinner at the St. Croix broiler. The only problematic part of moving was fitting a double box-spring up the stairs that were a little too small for it. In the end, we just sawed the box-spring into two slightly thin twin box-springs. The splinters aren’t that bad.

I only have one half-housemate, Alison Liss. Harley Brown and Allison Olmos note the second L, that is a key distinguishing feature) live on the other half of the house. Tim Campbell and Amir Zinkow will be joining us on our half in a few weeks (Tim has the other room of the top floor) and Josh Porte and Caitlyn Cohen will be joining Harley and Allison – Caitlyn in only two days!

I need sheets, a fan (or two) and maybe I’ll paint. I’d also like to soundproof the door between Tim’s and my room, because I keep late hours and often like listening to music sans headphones. That might be a sore spot. I hope not. Tim is a cool guy.

I can’t actually post this, because we won’t have wireless until Tuesday, but… imagine that I had been transmitting this at the speed of light!

Q&KaBAM! Time

Youssou Ndore of Bamako, Mali writes…

Q: “Commodore, what are your thoughts on the rebuilding of New Orleans?”

KaBAM!: “I have never been to New Orleans, and therefore I cannot speak on it except in a removed sense. My good friend Lynn Cohen (I know a lot of Cohens) went there over spring break to do humanitarian work, and she said she had a great time and that it was an eye-opening experience. All I can say is that I hope they rebuild it safely and with a greater degree of consideration that was given when it needed help most. I’m always a fan of green urbanism, so I’d like to see that. Basically, I hate Las Vegas. Don’t build in the desert, and especially don’t convince millions of people to live in said desert. P.S. Don’t even think of taking our water.”