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November 24, 2004
Here's to a Successful Year of School
I can't really figure out this whole marketing thing. For instance, why the sudden explosion in low-carb? I don't know anyone on a low carb diet. Of course, I don't know many people.
I also don't know why when I went to the liquor store the bottle of Wild Irish Rose was not only fortified with grain alcohol, but also with ginseng. Do they really think winos will be more likely to buy a bottle of Wild Irish Rose because of ginseng?
I bought two bottles.
I normally don't drink Wild Irish Rose. I drink MD 20/20.
Toward the end of my freshman year of college I made friends with a couple hard drinkers. They were rather unconcerned with school, due to the fact they both intended on dropping out and working on fishing boats in Alaska, and were therefore more fun than most of the kids that spent a modicum of their time in the company of open books.
Yet, that does not mean they were without goals. Aside from the previously mentioned dream of performing manual labor while cold and wet they were each working their way up to drinking an entire bottle of MD 20/20 (green flavor is for speed; "wine" flavor is for savoring) in less than 30 seconds without taking it from their lips once.
We went down to the local liquor store, pointed to the Mad Dog and pressed a fake ID up to the bullet-proof glass and we were on our way.
In the parking lot outside of their place Norm performed the feat in under 25 seconds and declared his year in college a success.
We went inside and began drinking with wanton abandon. Sometime during the course of the night a fraternity called the police on us (they lived next door to a frat house) and instead of living up to what we had done we chose to run. Our quick thinking led us to sneak into the school's makeshift movie theater (on weekends the school aired second run movies for a buck or two) in the auditorium of the student center. We figured we'd be safe in the dark, besides they were showing "Braveheart," and what kind of people would go from rambunctiousness of the sort we'd just employed ourselves to watching the nearly eternal "Braveheart?"
Somewhere along the way Brian (the other one) decided he'd head back to his place to sleep. I was about to go too when Norm tugged on my arm, "Dude. Stay. I'm gonna need help getting that thing down."
What thing?
The school seal (4' in diameter) hanging above the stage (about 16' up).
When the movie ended we tucked ourselves low in the seats and waited for the projectionist to turn out the lights and lock us in. Then we made our move.
We scurried up onto the stage and lept up at the seal. We tried to boost each other up to the seal. We tried to boost and jump. Things weren't looking good, we weren't even close to the thing.
Then Norm came out from behind the back curtain with a ten foot ladder. He climbed up the ladder but found the seal too strongly hung from the ceiling.
I tried next. Once up on the top step of the ladder (one up from the one that read "Do not use this step") I saw it was hung with some metal wires and we could probably cut them. I got down and ran back stage to find something to do the job.
I looked around, but found nothing, and emerged from the curtain just in time to watch Norm say, "I'm going Shaq Attack it" before he launched himself from the ladder and grabbed the top of the seal. The wires gave and he and the seal fell to the ground.
Are you OK?
Hell yeah, man! I got the seal!
Outside we heard what we both mentally pictured to be a security guard and made for the emergency exit. I knew a back way out of the building that took us to a loading dock on the dark side of the building. Once there we took turns hoisting the seal and sprinting down the unlight road to the far side of campus.
Once there we split up. I guarded the seal and he ran back to his place to get Brian's car. It barely fit, but we got it back to their dorm.
At the dorm everyone else was either asleep or studying and we were able to sneak the seal into Norm's room.
Again he loudly proclaimed his college year a success. Following that we made plans to meet up and cause more trouble the following day. After our hangovers wore off, of course.
We did.
Posted by calculatoronfire at November 24, 2004 02:55 PM