Tuesday, November 18, 1997

Wasting Redheads

I have a problem with the concept of dating. (What I'm about to talk about is a problem in the universal sense of dating, not that I specifically have a problem with the concept of dating. Hell, everybody knows that.) Anyway, I have realized that I can only really date somebody and start to like them a whole lot if we begin our relationship as something other than a couple, or an item, as some would say. If the first thing we do, or the way we meet is through a date, what’s the fun in that? Where's the chase? Speaking as a strictly narrative filmmaker, I need conflict! Boy meets girl, boy likes girl, they live happily ever after. What kind of crap is that? No one's ever gonna sell that screenplay to anybody important. Come on! I'd walk out of the theater pissed if I had to watch that movie, I sure as hell don't want to have to live in it. Of course the plot is slightly better than some. Boy doesn't meet anybody, boy ends up alone, life sucks. Fade out. I guess that's a little bit worse. I guess I should be happy if my life turns into a screenplay at all, even if it does suck.

Alrighty, all you guys. I originally wasn’t going to share this as a quote of the day, but it's too funny not too. So I'll try to hide the relatively personal parts and explain the premise. Whatever... So anyways, I was talking to Dan after I had stayed up all night for no flippin' reason about the trail of ex-girlfriends I had and the things they had in common. I started relating what they had in common to the color of their hair. OK, I told him that all of the blonds I dated did one certain thing after we broke up, and the one redhead I dated turned gay when we broke up (and no, I'm not proud, and I didn't do it completely. She was already bi.). To this, Dan replied..


Quote Of the Day 11/18

"OK, you're not allowed to date anymore redheads if you're gonna waste them like that."
-Dan (the guy who drinks a whole hell of a lot) Gregory



Boy meets girl, boy gets girl, boy turns girl gay. Now there's some conflict!


The redhead convertor,
Extendo.


Still Standing Right Here...

Monday, November 17, 1997

Walking Distance

Hi guys. I hope all your finals are going well. I'm not exactly done mine, but I've gotten to the point where I'm in so far over my head that I can procrastinate. I realized that I'm not going to finish my animation project this semester. It's just not going to happen, got it? So once I realized that I wasn't going to finish, I had a lot of freedom. Cause I mean what's the point in working my ass off to get it 65% done when I can just slack off and hand it in 40% done? Now that I've missed my deadline, there's no sense in busting my ass. The same sort of thing happened with the quote. I got about a week behind, and when you're a week behind, what's another day? And when you're that behind, what's another weekend...
So anyway, here I am. I'll try and do as many as I can before we go, so don't be surprised to check your mailbox and find like 7 quotes of the day in a row. Of course, you also shouldn't be surprised if you check it and this is the only one. I have high ambitions.

This quote came from a conversation I had with Meghan (the volleyball one) the other week about her new house. I asked her how far away from campus it was. Here's her response:


Quote Of the Day 11/17

"It's within walking distance on a good day."
-Meghan (of M&M)


Apparently, the house is on some sort of tread mill controlled by the temperature outside. And when it rains outside, you have to call long distance.



Still crazy after all these years,
Dustin.


Still Standing Right Here...

Friday, November 14, 1997

Really Satisfying

Well, even if I do fail out of school this semester because I'm not doing my work, my student career here at UMBC will have been worth it. And that is because I finally, after five years of losing in the championship game, won indoor volleyball sixes. And it's a good thing too. Because after every year I've lost, I've taken that stupid mug (of which I had accumulated 12 before I started giving them away as prizes), and punted the thing in frustration. And now that they're glass, I imagine it would have hurt a lot more. Anyway, what made it even better was that after two straight years of losing to Tony's team (not our Tony, but evil Tony, the Asian one. He's not really evil, we just call him evil Tony because we all met "good Tony," the blond one, first. So if you ever meet another Dustin, he will be known as "evil Dustin." Unless of course you have already met another Dustin, because I cannot be known as "evil Dustin," so we make an exception to that rule and call the first Dustin "first Dustin." OK, I'm going to return to my sentence now), well, anyway, after two years of losing to evil Tony's team in the finals, we beat them. It was neat. Lots of people showed up. I fell down. They all laughed at me. So I punched them in the genitals. I like monkeys.

Alright, now that that's over, I have to explain to you my family. There's a reason I am the way I am. Our entire family has the same sort of low-brow, off the wall sense of humor that I do. I remember this every holiday (for example Thanksgiving). I sat a little ways away from my uncle Eddie, who is over 50 years old and having another kid (well, his wife is having a kid. You know what I mean). That little fact has nothing to do with what I'm about to tell you, except that there's gonna be more little annoying kids I'm going to have to chase around the table playing dinosaur within the next few years. Anyway, we were eating our huge turkey dinner (Grandma made 15 pounds of mashed potatoes), and my uncle Eddie just finished his meal. He grunts, grabs his full tummy, and casually says...


Quote Of the Day 11/14

"Boy!... I could sure go for a Snickers Bar."
-My Wacky Uncle Eddie


Most of the family laughed at this "most-bizarre thing he could think of to say" statement. My grandmother didn't see the humor in it. I can still hear her bitching to him about not realizing the true spirit of the holidays.


Still crapping mashed potatoes,
Extendo.


Still Standing Right Here...

Thursday, November 13, 1997

The Adrenzlization of William Tell

Have any of you guys out there been so screwed, you can't express in English words the amount of crap you need to do in the next couple of days? Well, I have reached that point. I am so screwed for the next couple days, I feel like anything I say to anyone will not do justice to the amount of work that needs to be done. None of you (no offense intended) would be able to comprehend merely by me telling you guys, just how far up shit's creek I am. So if you ask me how I'm doing and I just laugh and say nevermind, that's why. Or if you start to talk about how busy you'll be this week and I just laugh to myself and start to cry uncontrollably, you have been warned. I'll tell you all once I get through this week what it is that I did, but it's too depressing to think about how much I have to do instead of just doing it. So please, nobody ask me to play Mario Kart in the next three days, or I'll be likely to say yes and then I'll fail all my classes, lose my job, and get kicked off campus next semester, and I WILL blame you!

Well, I finally went home last Wednesday for the first time in over 3 months. We have a dog now. And a sister too. The dog's name is Romeo. I recognized the sister from a few years ago, before she moved out. She still answers to the name Charmaine. She can roll over now. It's pretty impressive. Who says you can't teach an old sister new tricks? Anyway, I got a ride home with Kevin and Mike, two of my closest friends from back home. A two hour trip with the three of us is like a virtual quote-of-the-day-on-wheels. Well, we were  listening to one of my many mix tapes with the William Tell Overture on it (it's the one that goes "Da-da-dump, da-da-dump, da-da-dump-dump-dump. Da-da-dump, da-da-dump, da-da-dump-dump-dump. Da-da-dump, da-da-dump, da-da-dump-dump-dump. Da-da-dummmmmmmmmmmm, da-da-dump-dump-dump..."), and I was remarking on how cool it was that a classical song could get me so pumped up. I believe the actual words I used were:


Quote Of the Day 11/13

Me: "Wow. I've never had a flute get me that adrenalized before."
Kevin: "Well, you're probably using it wrong."


I don't even want to know how to use it if it doesn't involve blowing into the end with the whole in it. Of course, that would explain why I saw a piccolo in Russ' room.


Crying on the outside, crying on the inside,
Screaming Cricket.


Still Standing Right Here...

Wednesday, November 12, 1997

Deep, Dark, Filmographer's Great Time Abyss of Death

O.K. You have all just witnessed what has become to be known as the "Deep, dark, filmographer's great time abyss of death." All you engineering and random other dumb class majors can complain all you want that we don't do any work, but we do. We just take all the work that needs to be done in an average semester and do it all in about a week. A long, sleepless, unfun week. But anyway, I'm sorry I fell so damn far behind. I'm gonna hustle like a banshee to catch up again (don't know what a hustling banshee does, but I imagine there's a lot of screaming).

This quote comes from sometime around the beginning of the year. Eddie (really tall high jumper guy) was talking about this girl who goes here who suffers from dwarf syndrome, which is where a person has all their limbs and other bodily stuff in proportion to each other, they're just a lot smaller than normal. She stands about a little over two feet. (Note: Eddie is 6'3") Anyway, Eddie was telling us that he saw her the other day going to the library or something.


CUT TO:


INT. MIDDLE OF DINING HALL, UMBC - 1:20 PM

The sound of people chattering and utensils clanging against glasses pervades the room in the background. The camera pans across to reveal the dining hall full of students eating and talking around a grouping of tables. The camera pans passed this one group of tables with a tall man, EDDIE, standing up talking to the rest of the group. The camera fixes on the group and cuts to a tighter shot of the table in the foreground, everything in the background out of focus:

EDDIE
(Quote Of the Day 11/12)
"...but she's so cute! I just want to go up to her and bend down and give her a huge hug! But I know that would probably be the most insulting thing I could do to her. With the possible exception of running up and jumping over her."

Laughter fills the air as the camera pans back across the dining hall. A clumsy student in a pink hat drops his soft ice cream cone onto his left shoe. In trying to catch it, he inadvertently trips a tall blond girl, causing her to spill gravy all over her white dress. She yells and then punches him in the nose.

FADE OUT:

Tuesday, November 11, 1997

Carrying Ice

There you guys are! I've been looking everywhere for you!

Sorry I haven't e-mailed anybody in a while, but I've been sick (he's just lazy) and overwhelmed with work (addicted to Mario Kart) as of recent. But I'm gonna try and crack that habit now by spending a little free time each day e-mailing again (he'll do anything to put off schoolwork). So here we go...

Alright. For those of you who don't know, I play intramural hockey. Our team name is Fathead. We are currently doing fair, but that's besides the point. We won a game last Monday and in doing so, Chika (opposing player) got jealous of my stunning looks (just a theory), and decided I needed a fat lip. Well, he hit me in the face with the stick and I start bleeding all over the gym floor. There was a point when they thought I might need stitches. And when they said that, my first thought was "Damnit!... I don't have time to go get stitches." Well, I had to keep this bag of ice attached to my lip for a while. Also, in walking back to the dorm with a big thing of ice on my lip and blood all over my shirt, two people on the way home that night still stopped me on the sidewalk and said, "Damn Dustin!... Put some freakin' pants on!" I tell ya! What does a guy have to do to get attention drawn to his lips these days? Well, I got back to Potomac's lobby and Ted saw me walking in from a distance carrying the bag of ice, and he says to me...


Quote Of the Day 11/11

"Damn Dustin, it's not cold enough out there for you, you have to carry around a bag of ice?!?"
-Ted "Head Trojan of the Pack"


Let the records show that Ted had on long pants, a heavy jacket, and gloves. But his ears were exposed to the open cold air. He's got to be insane!


Love, cranberry sauce, and
Bowser's freakin' Castle,
Yoshi.


Still Standing Right Here...

Monday, November 10, 1997

No Pants November

OK. Most of you know me well enough to know that I wear shorts year round, but for those of you who don't, I wear shorts year round. Usually in any type of weather no matter what. I wore pants twice last year. Once for my job interview for the RA position (and they weren't even mine, I had to borrow them), and one other time when I went out and played tackle football in the snow (and people still called me a wus). Also, I'm a pretty sharp witted guy, and usually good with little one liners. Well, you'd think as often as I wear shorts in the cold that I'd have some sort of stock answer or witty comeback kinda deal for every time somebody says to me "Hey, isn't it a little cold for shorts?" or "Aren't you cold?" or "Hey look, that asteroid is going to kill us all, and hey, there's that freak who always wears shorts. HEY YOU! YEAH, YOU IN THE PINK HAT! PUT SOME DAMN PANTS ON, IT'S FREEZING OUT HERE! AND STOP CRYING!... Weirdo." But I don't. I have no comeback. And I feel so stupid for not having a comeback. Because then I usually just say something like "Yeah." and keep walking, thinking to myself how much of a dork I must sound like now. So if anybody has any ideas for witty retorts, please let me know. It's easy if I have my ear muffs on, because then I can just take a shot right back at them about "MY LEGS? AREN'T YOUR EARS COLD? AND STOP CRYING!... Weirdo." But without my ears muffs, I'm lost, and I could use the guidance of you 110 or so of my best friends. Thanks.

OK. I find quotes in the strangest of places sometimes. Like this one I got from that dumb RA conference I went to in DC. I only say it was dumb because for the most part, it was pretty dumb. Anyway, during our lunch this guy who was some chairman of athletic academics or something, gave what they called a "keynote speech." I didn't see the relevance. Anyway, in his opening remarks, he said that a key player on Duke's basketball team was called in to see his coach, because it was discovered that he was getting 4 F's and a D midway through the semester. His coach sat him down, and said to him...


Quote Of the Day 11/10

"Son, I think you're spending too much time on one subject."
-Duke's b-ball coach


Alright guys, it's now 4:30 and I have a screenplay to finish by 10 (I just like saying "I have a screenplay to finish." It sounds cool).


Grating you like cheese,
Extendo.


Still Standing Right Here...

Friday, November 7, 1997

A Q in Sex

I'm not quite sure, but I think I saw an ark over by the ECS building.
It's now been raining for three days straight, and I know that's nothing compared to what Noah went through, but think about it. THREE DAYS!!! That's a long flippin' time for it to be raining non-stop. And we all know how great the drainage system is on campus. There'll be puddles on the quad until next March if this silliness doesn't stop soon. I found God's e-mail address on the web and I wrote him asking him to spare us, but he hasn't replied yet. I think I just assume everybody checks their e-mail daily nowadays. I know God's busy and everything, but so am I. And I manage to find time in my day to check my e-mail. At least almost daily. I'll give him until midnight tomorrow. If he doesn't reply by then, I'm going to mail dump him. He hates that.

I was in sex class the other day and we were about to get our papers back. Davey and I were kinda worried because we hadn't read a damn thing the entire semester up to this point. We had both BS'd our papers and we knew it, Davey worse than me. We started imagining exactly what death was in store for us. Davey said he'd be completely happy with a "D" but he imagined the grade would be worse. We wondered if she was the kind of teacher who would stop at an "F," or keep going down the alphabet if the paper sucked that bad. Davey was convinced that under that kind of a system, he would get no better than a "Q" or something around there...


Quote Of the Day 11/7

"I'll have to get an "A" on the final just to fail the course."


For the record, Davey got a "D" and gave me a high five.


Buying stock in canoes,
Wet Cricket.


Still Standing Right Here...

Thursday, November 6, 1997

Jenny, I Got Your Number

You know what I just noticed about my extension (a.k.a. Stryker told me a while ago),? Remember that hit song of the 80's called "Jenny" followed by a phone number? My extension is the first 4 digits of that phone number (x8675). And coincidentally enough, the remaining 3 numbers in order, are the amount of points scored by OA in our second volleyball game, followed by the amount of points Diablo scored in their second game against us, and finally ended with my favorite number plus 4. It's almost to the point of freakin me out!

OK. I confess. I listen to country music. And one thing I noticed is that there are an amazingly high percentage of male country singers named Tracy. Tracy Bird, Tracy Atkins, Tracy Lawrence, and I'm sure there have got to be more. Well, a while ago, I asked a group of people sitting at a dinner table why they supposed that was so. Here's the end of the conversation:


Quote Of the Day 11/6

ME: "Why are so many male country singers named Tracy?"
TONY (after a brief pause): "Well, what else are they gonna do?"


Guys named Leslie turn into wacko actors, guys named Shannon play tight end for Denver football teams, why shouldn't guys named Tracy make a living whining about crap to that steel guitar twang?


Student, athlete, and masochist,
Dustin.


Still Standing Right Here...

Wednesday, November 5, 1997

My Ugly Hat

Volleyball started yesterday. I already skipped two classes on the first day of games. This does not bide well for my attendance to these classes for the rest of the season. I actually skipped one of those classes just to watch a game. And it wasn't even a good game. This addiction I have to volleyball is quite unhealthy. I didn't sleep all last night because I was thinking of a better way to run a 6-2 offense. Let me rephrase that. I stayed up all last night because I'm an idiot. I just happened to pass the time by thinking about volleyball. Both our men's team (Extendo) and our coed team (Screaming Crickets) are 2-0 as of right now. But I'm trying not to get a big head about it, because we will inevitably run into the "Pucketeers" and there goes our undefeated streak. But until then, we'll enjoy the weather.

OK, this quote is about the ugliness of one of my hats (as opposed to my shirt). I have this hat that I don't wear too often, unless I know for sure that I'm not going to run into anyone I need to impress for that period of time. It's not even really pink. It's got pink in it, along with yellow and brown and black. And it's a weird fabric, especially for a hat. It feels like a curtain. And the colors are in a really ugly pattern. It's almost random really. And in a bad way. And it's even shaped funky. I have to wear it backwards or else I won't be able to see. And then I can't look up. The only reason I keep it is that it matches everything I own. Well anyway, I was at dinner with Robyn, and I traditionally take my hat off to eat (mom would be proud). So I took my hat off and set it down at the table in the middle, somewhere between Robyn and myself. She had already started eating by the time I got there, and she looks down at it and says...


Quote Of the Day 11/5

"How am I supposed to digest food with that sitting in front of me?"
-Robyn, a.k.a. "Sarcastic One"



At least she wasn't eating with Andrew's face sitting on the table.



Trying to muster up the motivation
to get out of this chair,
Dustin Sleepyhead.


Still Standing Right Here...

Tuesday, November 4, 1997

My Ugly Shirt

I forgot how much fun Halloween could be. I went to Fells Point for the first time ever on Halloween last Friday. When we got there, there were these five or six guys with drums on straps, and they were roaming all around the streets, and stopping occasionally, creating a kind of dancing area right in front of them. At one point, they stopped and these two girls who didn't know each other, dressed up like Poison Ivy and Catwoman, started really getting into it with each other. They were getting extremely graphic considering they were in the middle of a street packed with people moreso than I've ever seen. And I cannot express to you guys in words how upset I was that I had a Riddler costume sitting in a ball at home on the floor, having just been taken off not an hour prior to that moment. Damn. It was also a little discouraging that the one time I dressed in normal clothes (long pants and very few fluorescent things) to go out, I still looked awkward.

This quote came from a while ago, and I hope you guys can still appreciate it. I wore my favorite shirt into the dining hall (the button down one that is mostly skittle green, but has about 4 other gaudy pastel colors in it that don't match each other), and ran into quite a few people who haven't seen me in the shirt before. Jason Yankus, a pretty good friend of mine saw me for the first time in about a week, with my shirt on, and of course a bright pink hat to accompany it, and the first thing he had to say to me wasn't "Hi" or "What's going on" or anything like that. He just walked straight up to me and said...


Quote Of the Day 11/4

"WOW! Don't walk under a black light. You'll hurt somebody."
-Yankus


That still doesn't equal the damage Andrew's face can do under a normal light. (Bring it on, Proz!)


A statistic in a system that a civil servant dominates,
Screaming Cricket.


Still Standing Right Here...

Monday, November 3, 1997

Old Knees

Holy shit. I just now looked at the little clock on the computer. Apparently, it's 5:00 AM. I had no idea it was getting that late. Listen, I have to get some sleep guys. Volleyball season starts tomorrow, and I've got two important games to play. And my old age is already one strike against me, I don't want to be exhausted too. I don't know if you guys are taking me seriously with this whole me being old thing, but my knees don't do things that they used to. Of course, when they did the things that they used to, they never really did the things that they were supposed to, and I think I'm paying the price now. But I don't know. Because had they not done the things they weren't supposed to, they might not be able to do the things that they used to now anyway. Or maybe it would just hurt a lot more. Who knows?
I went to Suzanne at dinner tonight and asked her to feel my knee when I bent it. It makes all these jerky popping and snapping motions. So after careful analysis, she determined the cause of my demise. "You're getting old." Well, I guess I'll have to accept it. I mean, it happens to the best of us. Unless of course, you're REALLY good.

Here's the quote just a little bit late. I'll catch up tomorrow. I was busy all today trying to find out a way to tactfully skip my class so I could go to the women's volleyball game. Anyway... I was talking to Danielle (the twin on the floor that isn't Natasha) about how it seems like whenever I walk into her room, she's got about 4 or 5 guys in there. She claims that a lot of the time they just come, whether she wants them to or not (don't even bother, it's too easy), and a lot of the time, she'd rather not have them in there. To help with her point, she asked her friend Marti to back her up. He used what's known in argumentative tactics as a "counterattack"...


Quote Of the Day 11/3

"The first time I walked into your room, there were 3 girls on the bed, and like 200 condoms on the floor."
-Marti (That's just how I spell it)



Just for the record, those condoms aren't for me anyway. I'm on the pill.



Love, volleyballs, and reconstructive surgery,
Extendo.


Still Standing Right Here...