Brits Have More Fun

Attention, American men with questionable morals, for in my palm lies your golden ticket. For those of you who possess too much integrity to resort to roofies, but not enough to snub the more moderate arts of deception, the solution is quite simple: get yourself a British accent. Yes, I know it sounds incredibly lame, reprehensible and unpatriotic, but rest assured- the effectiveness of this strategy vastly outweighs the ridicule you’ll receive from your accent-less friends. Now I can’t speak on the success rates of foreign intonations across the board, but recent observations from my English poetry class have been nothing short of astounding. Let me explain.

This class is comprised of about 30 students, and the gender ratio is evenly proportioned. As far as I can tell, everybody falls in the category of your typical English major at a public university: overly analytical, unnecessarily angsty, and for the most part, too self-loathing to notice anyone else around them. But this kid…this one gangly, glasses-wearing, subpar-looking British kid has broken the spell, and I desperately want to uncover the mystery.

You see, the syllabus says that discussion is “required” in the class, but it is not technically calculated into the final grade, so I personally take this to mean “zone out and contribute absolutely nothing”. I assumed that most everyone else was on the same page, except for the five or six token know-it-alls who strangely do not have the attention span of a five-year-old, so I guess that’s why it came as a surprise when I realized other people were actually not laying on their desks in puddles of their own drool. You’re probably thinking I noticed this phenomenon upon hearing the British kid- to whom I will apply the stereotypical alias of “Nigel”- but you are wrong. The first time it came to my attention, I was literally startled by the sound of fourteen or fifteen females turning 180’s in their desks to face the back of the classroom. The creaking wood and the shifting feet and the ruffling papers were noisy enough to wake me from my slumber, and all because Nigel had merely opened his mouth.

Nigel quickly proved himself to be one of those attention-span-haver’s I mentioned earlier, so I knew that my daydreams of rainbows and fruit roll-ups would continue to be disrupted and decided to make the best of the situation. I began to observe Nigel and his influence over these ogling young women in every class period, digging for answers. After about a month of this, a few things became apparent.

First of all, Nigel is no T.S. Eliot. Sure, he is competent and for the most part on track with his remarks, but his intellectual donations are by no means impressive, and could be made by any schmuck who read a Dickinson poem in high school. I’ve even matched up Nigel’s talking points to that of a purebred American boy, who we’ll call Bobby, to see how the two compare. Nigel’s ramblings are average and superfluous, while Bobby’s are deeply organized and thought-provoking- not to mention Bobby is, by leaps and bounds and absolutely no nationalist bias, the most attractive male specimen in the class. It doesn’t matter, though. The ladies show no response to Bobby’s palpable charm and scholarly input, as they are too busy swooning at every syllable which courses from Nigel’s beak.

Secondly, I don’t believe in love at first sight, but love at first sound is alive and well. One of my fellow female classmates, Christy, is showing all of the symptoms- and this is no mild case of sheer infatuation. Everybody knows the countenance of a person in love; it’s blissful, it’s elated, it’s nauseating, and it’s invading Christy’s face. Poor girl, her passion for Nigel is already taking a negative toll on her in-class performance. Two days ago when she swirled around to look at him speak she knocked the books off her desk and sent papers flying across the floor- highly embarrassing for her, highly entertaining for me. Then, yesterday, I overheard her telling a friend that she got a D minus on our midterm essay. If I may say so myself, anything below a solid B in this class is the direct result of being in love with a British classmate.

Third, Nigel has a girlfriend; she is gorgeous, she is American, and she is also in the class. I don’t know why, but they kept their PDA hidden for a few weeks, and now waltz in hand-in-hand every day, flaunting their relationship for the world to see. From the consistent array of striking glances it’s clear that all of the girls hate Nigel’s girlfriend, and all of the guys hate Nigel and his false cultural pretenses. I think Nigel’s lady friend had an evil plan. They waited- waited until each and every female, at least those who remain conscious, fell head-over-heels for Nigel just by listening to him speak, until Christy’s grades began to plummet, until he became the best thing to happen to the act of interpreting literature, and then they yanked the rug out from under us. They are now the disgustingly perfect, unattainable power couple of English poetry. But that’s neither here nor there.

To verify my findings I interviewed my 20-year-old neighbor, Abby, simply asking her how men with accents differ from those without them, and this is what she told me:

“I made out with an ugly American boy once, and I was grossed out after. On the other hand, I made out with an ugly British boy once, and I was completely fine with it.”

There you have it.

The point is, for the fellas at least, a valuable lesson can be learned from Nigel. It doesn’t matter if you’re pale, frail and physically unattractive.  It doesn’t matter if, in addition to being unattractive, you have average-at-best intellectual capabilities and minimal game. It doesn’t matter if you use Axe body wash. You don’t need those things that other men have. All you need is to walk softly and carry a British accent, and believe me, the panties will drop. 

Plan B

Ah, emergency contraceptives. We've all been there. Not really, but I feel better lumping all of humanity into the world of poorly-planned premarital sex together. The truth is most young adults out there have probably not used the Plan B pill, but in a college town, the statistics are overwhelmingly comical.

Let me paint this picture for you.

It's Sunday, October 10th, 2010. That Saturday was a home football game in Athens against the University of Tennessee. Drinking commenced at 8 am that morning and did not cease until 2 am on the Sabbath. Oh, and Georgia won. To say you made bad decisions, well, that would be the understatement of the century. So you wake up in a fog wearing an A.J. Green jersey with no panties and ask the vaguely familiar individual in your bed what happened. The two of you attempt to piece things together, he asks if you want to talk about it over breakfast at Waffle House, you say "get out of my apartment", and he hands you forty bucks in fives and ones.

You proceed to text all of your roommates, who are all strewn about the same apartment and within twelve feet of you, until one of them drunkenly agrees to accompany you to CVS. On the drive across town, your roommate asks if he used a condom. You say no. She asks why, and you say you don't remember, but you guess it's because he didn't have one. She asks why you don't keep some extras stored in your nightstand. You glare at her, offended, and say, "What am I, a whore?" And then you go into CVS to abort your baby.

The woman behind the counter says she's sorry, but they have run out of Plan B. The drugstore has RUN OUT OF PLAN B. Supply and demand, folks, supply and demand. As much as this initially terrifies you, it simultaneously puts things in perspective. So many other college kids behaved just as shamefully, if not more, than you did on Saturday night that there are not enough contraceptives to go around. Needless to say, on game day weekends in the SEC, Plan B is Plan A. But this makes you feel better. You and your roommate leave CVS with candy bars, three bags of Cheetos and a giant slurpy, bragging that if Britney Spears can raise a child, by God so can you.

And then you go to Rite Aid in the next county over and invest the most important $50 of your life. True story.

There have been some pretty heated debates over whether the Plan B pill is actually abortion. Whether you're pro-life or pro-choice there's enough mixed opinions out there to support either side. Personally, though, I like to think emergency contraceptives are not abortion, they're just bad execution. Consider the following sports analogy:

You know those times in basketball where you deliberate too long about whether to shoot or to pass, and when you finally release the ball from your hands its a hideous combination of the two that just flies awkwardly through the air at neither the basket nor your teammates? Well, in these moments, you have a choice to make. If you simply allow nature to take its course, the ball is going to be recovered by someone on the opposing team, and they will run down the court and score. However, as long as you acknowledge your mistake immediately, and sprint to catch the ball that you just hurled into the air before it hits the ground, the game is salvaged. Sure, you're going to get called for a traveling violation and the other team will get the ball, but it's okay, because you and your teammates will be prepared and have time to set up on defense. If and when the opposing team does score again, you will be ready, and hopefully in a committed relationship.

Coffee: Easier Said Than Done

        Perhaps the greatest thing about morning classes is that you never have to attend them hungover, you simply attend them drunk. For some people, the last thing they want to do is get up after a week night of excessive drinking and go to school. For me, though, it's far more enjoyable to face the day's academic challenges if you've still got a buzz going. Think about it. You'll make friends with other students you previously acknowledged as nothing more than blank faces. You'll be super enthused by every point of your professors' lectures, and say things like "right on!" when you agree. You'll chat up the hot brunette that clear-headed you was far too intimidated to creepily tap on the shoulder. Overall, going to school with a fuzzy brain and minimal motor skills is far superior to, well, sobriety. The hardest part is simply getting there, which brings me to my anecdote.
       It was ten o'clock on Friday morning, and I was hammered. Thursday is $1 margarita night at El Patron, and coincidentally, $1 beer night at a bar downtown. Like I said, it was ten, and I was hammered. I'm twenty-three and in college, so naturally the looming anticipation of piping, delicious coffee is the only thing that gets me out of bed. I got up, dazed and confused, and stammered into the kitchen. I guess tequila promotes ambition along with promiscuity, because not only did I plan to make coffee, but I decided to make it a mocha. That's right, I set the bar high. And then fall miserably short of it.
       I had coffee grounds, an easy-to-use coffee maker, instant hot chocolate powder, and somewhere between six and eight brain cells. Looking back, this should have been a sure thing. The hot chocolate was instant, for God's sake, and all I needed to do was add it to the coffee while it was nice and scalding. But as we all know, a sure thing doesn't exist. So I poured the hot chocolate powder on top of the coffee grounds in the filter and pressed start.
       About ten minutes of me stumbling through my room fiddling with various articles of clothing passed before I returned to the kitchen. To my immense disappointment, I found a thick cloud of steam, a disgusting, overflowing filter and a pot filled with half a cup of what looked like the Swamp Thing's bath water. I took a sip anyway. I gagged. I made another pot- strictly coffee this time.
       Somehow I had managed to dress myself, inhale a granola bar and brush my teeth in just enough time to head out for the bus. All I needed was my coffee to accompany me. Clearly it would have been far too easy of a day if there had been clean thermoses in the cabinet, so I cheerfully resorted to Plan B, which was a red Dixie cup. This alternative actually seemed rather appropriate, as now my drinking accessory perfectly matched my Blood Alcohol Content. But looks aren't everything.
       The plastic cup was scalding hot- thank God I had little to no feeling in my extremities when I first tried to pick it up. OK, this was a problem. I quickly reviewed the facts of which I was completely sure: I had to leave. I had to leave right at that moment.  The coffee was too hot to carry. I could not leave without my coffee. Alright, no problem. My next move was to apply simple, good old-fashioned logic. My coffee was too hot, so I needed to cool it off. Easy, right? I put the Dixie cup of coffee in the microwave. That's right, the microwave. You're probably wondering what button I pressed. It was Defrost.
       The coffee was hotter, the cup was deformed and the kitchen smelled like cancer. I poured the coffee into a different Dixie cup and ran out the door, beginning to feel a bit defeated at this point. It was obviously raining profusely, and I was a hot mess trying to gulp down as much caffeine as I could without drowning or scorching my throat. I knocked out half the cup on the way to the bus, but decided there was too much remaining liquid to waste. Weeks later I still couldn't tell you why I didn't just take the coffee on the bus with me, especially when such momentous drunken effort went into making it. It just seemed...wrong. But I refused to let the day oppress me, so I devised a plan to outsmart the weather. I hid my half-filled Dixie cup beneath a Toyota Four-Runner, tucked safely behind the back tire. After class I'd walk back through that parking lot and finish my drink, and it would be delightful.
       I went to class, rode the bus home, and walked back through the parking lot. The Four-Runner was gone and the Dixie cup was a pathetic crumpled piece of plastic getting pummeled by rain. So much for delightful. Oh, and I puked on the bus.
       So yeah, if you've got the choice, go to school wasted. And take a thermos.


  




       

The Brief and Wondrous Speech of Junot Diaz

       Last Wednesday I did something a bit out of character for myself: I got involved. The UGA English Department brought Pulitzer-prize winning author Junot Diaz to speak at the chapel, and I am so happy I forced myself to go.
       I read Diaz's novel The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao last fall in American Lit, and thoroughly enjoyed it. The book is fascinating in its palpable presentation of intermingling cultures, as the young protagonist (like Diaz) is a Dominican immigrant growing up in New Jersey. Diaz is a bit of a young gun on the literary scene and I really had no idea what to expect from his visit to campus, but he kind of blew me away.
       He did two brief readings, one from a short story and one from Oscar Wao, and spent the rest of the time on Q&A with the crowd. Obviously you assume writers to be somewhat articulate speakers, but I've never seen anyone tackle every answer with such ease and fluidity when put on the spot. He was far more impressive than politicians. The very first question he was asked launched a full-fledged discussion about the nature of art, and Diaz's response was so enlightened that I want to share a few quotes.

''Art challenges the church's authority. If not viewed through a religious prism, art allows people to view the world in a way that would make it very hard to be pushed around by any institution.''

''In a capitalist society, the artist is the first to be thrown off the row boat when the going gets bad.''

And my personal favorite:

''There is no novel that does not have deep within its belly the exact opposite point that the artist is arguing.''

In so many words, Junot Diaz is brilliant. His views on society and art gave me a new perspective. I'm only sorry my lazy ass hasn't attended more campus events the past couple years, but now I know I've been missing.