Doug Lief Lief is a fourth-year English
student who dreams of electric sheep. Contact him at [email protected]. Click
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In the present, UCLA is a post-apocalyptic nightmare world where
its denizens fight for existence on a daily basis. They fend off
the dangers of “˜professoroids’ and soylent dorm
food.
The following is a fictional survival guide of one Homo
sapien’s struggle to adapt, or to become food for someone
higher up on the social ladder. I promise that I am not nearly as
nerdy as the character. No, seriously.
This column is best read out loud with a terrible lisp:
This e-mail is a missive to all the kick-ass dudes in
“Magic: The Gathering” chatroom, and I’d like to
give a special shout out to Gothkidd01 who I just heard got his
headgear taken off today. With that in mind, I would like to update
my progress on project: Bruin-assimilate. I swear, this place is so
like the Borg I should call myself Locutis. Hee hee hee hee
>SNORT!!!<
Why did I type in the snort?
Anyway, Magicdudes, this was my first experience with a UCLA
Thursday, and let me tell you, it was something out of H.P.
Lovecraft (his early stuff before he totally sold out).
In the morning, I left my cubicle, er, dorm room, and took a
trip down what they call Bruin Walk. Apparently it’s some
sort of display put on by the psychology department to showcase
paranoid schizophrenics. There were hillbilly preacher guys telling
me I would writhe in hellfire, communists telling me I would writhe
in hellfire (communism is so, like, 1917 anyway), and an Asian
fraternity telling me I would writhe in hellfire.
I told the frat guy I would only pledge Lambda Lambda Lambda,
but apparently they don’t have a chapter. Well, the dean is
certainly getting an angry letter from me and Anthony Edwards about
that.
 Illustration by RODERICK ROXAS/Daily Bruin
Then it hit me; it was already 10 a.m. and nobody had beaten the
living crap out of me. I was neither in a garbage can, nor anointed
with a “kick me” sign, yea Internet brethren, for I was
saved from that scourge of high school: the dumb jock. At last
Darwin had taken care of him. Now I only have to deal with the guys
at UCLA who weren’t cool enough to be the dumb jocks in high
school and are making up for it now. You know, the ones who walk
around saying “Dude, that’s soooo gay” all the
time. Seriously, those guys are so homo-phobicus I’m totally
ROTFL ;) Ha, >SNORT!!!<
I finally got to class and you wouldn’t believe it, but
this totally hot girl sat next to me. We struck up a conversation
and she rocks. She says she’s still with her boyfriend from
high school, which is back in Michigan. Score! This will take me to
levels of platonic friendship never before imagined. I’ve got
to tell you guys, this place is great. The women here bring a
much-needed sophistication to the art of lying. It’s really a
refreshing break from the overt rejection of high school girls.
So then I went to the Bomb Shelter for lunch, not far from the
“Giant Waxy Ears” sculpture: a tribute to nerd-kind
everywhere. I struck up a conversation with the guy next to me. I
told him the food was “hella-good.” He then pummeled me
senseless for an hour and a half. It is a slang-habit I had better
correct at all available speed.
But this is all a prelude to the best night ever. I went back to
my dorm/walk-in closet where my roommate was waiting for me.
He’s way taller than me, like, 5’7” or
something. I mean, he’s freaking huge. I shall hereafter
refer to him as Lotharg the Destroyer, as a tribute to the great
ogre warrior Lotharg from Terry Brooks’ “The Elfstones
of Shannara.” He’s a nice enough guy, but he listens to
a lot of music from the Loud and Crappy genre.
Well, Lotharg got me into a frat party, where apparently
appreciation of Loud and Crappy is mandatory. It was pretty cool
for a while but then they brought in all this foam. It was fun to
swim in the stuff until the foam had a bad chemical reaction with
the cartridge in my inhaler and some kid wound up with third-degree
acid burns. We decided that would be a good time to leave for the
apartment parties.
I wasn’t keen on the idea of drinking so-called alcohol,
but thankfully someone had left some individual servings of Jell-O
out on a tray, and you know how we nerds love our semi-gelatinous
non-Newtonian solids, hmm hey!
Why this all happens on a Thursday night is a mystery to me.
Supposedly it dates back to a fascist Chancellor in the 1930s
who tried to declare that all students entering UCLA would now
respect his new Year Zero calendar, wherein the Sabbath day of rest
would be moved to Thursday to coincide with the Chancellor’s
daughter’s piano lessons/Bacchanalia.
Getting back to the party, the next thing I knew, Lotharg was
pressing himself against a mirror, claiming he was “Lord of
the Glass” so I had to correct him because Brynwynnyll is
Lord of the Glass, I mean, duh. Lotharg is supposed to be guardian
of the sacred cudgel. LOL!
I was feeling a little dizzy myself, kind of like that great
high you getwhen you find that first sword with a +7 against orcs.
But then I turned around and saw that hot girl from class again.
Sorry to say I was too blasted to remember her name, but going on
probability alone, a UCLA female has a 78 percent chance of being
either Jennifer or Sarah.
Jennisarah told me that she really felt like she could talk to
me, which is girl code for: “regardless of sexual
orientation, I’m going to treat you like my new gay
friend.” She gets to dump all her problems on me, and I get
to live the lie that I’m not attracted to her 24/7.
It’s nice to finally have a relationship that’s so
evenly give and take.
But here’s the best part Magicdudes, I totally laid down
the Avatar of Will card and told her how I felt, and she said that
maybe she’d consider being interested in thinking about
possibly calling me sometime. So I looked her in the eye and told
her “No.” I then walked out with my dignity intact, had
some more special Jell-O, and (as I was later informed) got it on
with the fireplace.
And so, Magicdudes, I bid you a kind Bruin farewell. Live long
and prosper, and accomplish that by not saying “hella.”
End transmission. 8-)