Once again, it's time for the weekly update to remind people that I exist and enlighten you all as part of my quest for universal, ubiquitious group mailing
INTRODUCTIONS
MY BASTARD DOPPLEGANGER IS TAKING MY MEALS
SURVEYS OF THE WEEK
HOMECOMING '99
CHOOSING MY SUCCESSORS: THE HOME STRETCH
THESIS WATCH
WEBSITE OF THE WEEK
CONSPIRACY THEORY OF THE WEEK
NEWS OF THE WEEK
FILE OF THE WEEK
INTRODUCTIONS
All right, everyone, I made some new friends, or at least rememebered some old ones. They'll probably want off the list before they finish reading this sentence, so you better get to knoe them quickly. Even better, I get to deeply offend people and insure that they'll never talk to me again, which is what happened for 98% of last week's entries. (If you ever plan on doing something similar, don't write it at 4:30 a.m.) All part of my plan, though--no one's wanted off the list, presumably to see what i've been saying about them.
First is Robert T. Missonis III, The Teacher Formerly Known as Bo. (missonis@erols.com)
Bo was the old president of debate. He graduated a year and a half ago, but he has attended more tournaments and debate meetings than any current member. He's a teacher of some of the worst classes in P.S. 206, a Bronx public school, which is just under crash test dummy on the emplyment desirability scale.
Next is Deepak Gupta. (deepak@gupta.org) He is another Fordham debater, and currently attends Georgetown Law. He is a devout athiest and many other types of oxymorons--if God was revealed in the flesh, Deepak would be delighted because then he'd have someone to kick. It seems strange that he's attended two Jesuit Universities, until you start to meet people that have sppent too much time in Catholic schools.
Zac Yousey: (zry1@geneseo.edu) Woo hoo! I've finally got people from my high school. Zac was a member of the Liberal Demokrtatzkis, a faux-fascist organization we used to take over student governmetn and foment discontent and rebellion. We were named after the Russian party headed by Vladimir Zhirinofsky, our honorary leader who has, among opther things, requested that Russia purchase giant fans to blow radioactive waste over Europe. Zac is a techie for a TV station at SUNY Geneseo.
Bryan Lane: (bsl2@geneseo.edu) Another graduate of my high school. Another member of the Liberal Demokratzkis. Another student at SUNY Geneseo. Yes, I am closed minded. Bryan was among my best friend for many years. Like so many friendships, ours was cemented through our shared predilection for cross-dressing. Bryan is now successfully hazing people at his fraternity and studying business to make as much money per year as I will in my entire life.
Bryan's character as well as my negligence in keeping up communcation can be easily relayed by posting his entire reply to the e-mail i sent to him.
HIS REPLY: He lives, he breathes. Ladies and gentleman, the one and only Ryan Brenizer.
--Lane
Brian Lyman (CenterMan@aol.com) My first mentor on the Ram, he was the one that sucked me in (you bastard!) and he also will most appreciate my thesis whines, as he had to do one while on the Ram himself. He is currently at the Columbia School of Journalism, where he makes a living offending orthodox Jews.
Maura Kelley (makelley@fordham.edu) She is the first female debate president at Fordham, and I have to suck up to her since she may decide whether I am going to Sydney even though my life has kept me from attending a single debate tournament so far this semester. She does a mean Irish jig.
MY BASTARD DOPPLEGANGER IS TAKING MY MEALS
This is by far the most important event of the week. (Ram interviews, pshaw!) So I, being an idiot, leave my meal card in a soda machine, and someone takes it. $15 for the card, and I figure if they are semi-intelligent, they'll use the $5 I had for the copy machine. $20 for being an idiot, that seems to me to be a good price, so I am not too upset. So I get a new card the next day, and get it re-validated so I can eat. And then I go to the cafeteria. No meals left. Hmmm... that seems odd. And then I go downstairs to use my flex dollars (for those not cursed by Marriott catering, this is the money which you are forced to pour into your card so they can assure you'll spend it on their product and they can charge whatever they want. Hmm.... how interesting. My balance has magically gone from $220 to $87. How wonderful. This evil fuck that picked up my card managed to spend $130 and all my meals ina few days AND GOT AWAY WITH IT! Since my picture is rather prominantly featured on the ID, and even though Marriott workers are barely sentient, even they would check the ID for a $65 lunch purchase, this guy has to look a lot like me. I know, that should be punishment enough, but I want vengence. I can't trust Marriott to find him, so the only solution I have is to beat up anyone who looks remotely like me. I mean, how many Irish will there be at a Catholic institution anyway? So, even though I thought I wouldn't have surveys, this has importance ...
SURVEY: WHO AT FORDHAM LOOKS LIKE ME, AND CAN I BEAT HIM UP?
this one also has a certain level of neccesity...
SURVEY 2: WHICH WAS THE MOST OFFENSIVE OF MY DESCRIPTIONS OF PEOPLE?
I will make a public apology. You may not vote for yours.
A vote that I was not offensive enough, and should have informed people that, say, Brendan is a crack addict or Jay once let a girl drown in the Chappaquiddick and then lied about it, ending his presidential campaign, is also valid.
HOMECOMING '99
So I spent all day on Saturday sitting in a parking lot while my team got beaten by HARVARD! IN FOOTBALL! Not only should Fordham leave the Patriot League, we may seriously consider going to two-hand touch. Speaking of that, despite being the most horrendous football player in the world, not on our varsity team, I pulled out the win for the official Homecoming Two-Hand Touch Tackle if You Feel Like It Asphault Classic with a last minute catch, which I spiked before the endzone but then cheated and lied my way to the win. Rudy! Rudy!
For the record, this was the first time in a long time that I was hung over by the early evening.
CHOOSING MY SUCCESSORS: THE HOME STRETCH
So I and a few others am currently in the position of interviewing people for next year's staff. Not does this mean that the light at the end of the tunnel is visible and I get my life back (or fabricate one since I never had one to begin with). It also means that people have to suck up to me (or at least I like to think that they do). Break out the knee pads!
THESIS WATCH
So I had my first real thesis meeting today, which erased a good deal of the stress in my life. Basically, my thesis advisor let me know that I could have an A, instant admission to Columbia, a job after college, cheap helth insurance, and enough coke to give a Columbian swingers club nosebleeds for a year, if I should want any of the above. (touché, Mr. Forde) Or I could just do what he did--join the Jesuit order long enough to have my education paid for by the Church and secure a posiiton at a University, and then get married.
Why don't they run tests of the Emergency Broadcast system any more? Have they perfected it? Are they sure it will work? I mean, that annoying buzz is pretty complicated technology. Was there a test-ban treaty I was not aware of?
WEBSITE OF THE WEEK
http://www.fordham.edu/theram , of course. Soon to have local menus and links to pornog...er, useful websites.
CONSPIRACY THEORY OF THE WEEK
We've all heard right-wing conspiracy theories: Clinton killed 47 people just to watch them die, the EPA is a front for homosexual communist junkies, and beer kills brain cells. But its not every day that you get to see a left-wing conspiracy theory, so here goes:
CIA Crack: What is known--the CIA fights the Drug War, on the wrong side.
THE CIA admitted that it engaged in a conspiracy to protect known narcotics traffickers throughout the Contra war years. It released a 410-page report admitting to the crimes on 10/8/99, just one hour after the House of Representatives voted to conduct an impeachment inquiry on President Clinton and just before House members were compelled to cease all other activity to resolve the budget crisis. A brief story inThe New York Times, picked out a paragraph from journalist Gary Webb's report which acknowledged that Contra leaders in California and the Bay area specifically planned to deal drugs to raise money for the Contras, with help from the CIA. the best part is that this trade is where the largest part of the '80s crack epidemic came from.
What I hope is true:
George W. Bush, son of former CIA head George Bush, is a crack addict, and so is the goat who is his secret lover.
NEWS OF THE WEEK
Laissez-Faries
The French Parliament passed a new law this week giving legal status to unmarried couples, including homosexual unions.
The law allows all couples to enter into a union and be entitled to the same rights as French married couples with regard to income tax, inheritance, social welfare and housing doe-eyed, Birkenstocked American
sixteen-year-olds on student-exchange programs that, like, totally change their lives forever.
The legislation was originally intended to give rights to gay couples specificially, but during its gestation, it grew to include virtually any two people sharing a home, be it a brother and sister, two platonic friends or a cruel, hypocritical priest and the well-meaning hunchback who mans the bell tower.
Earlier this year, more than 200,000 people marched through Paris to protest the law, with one group saying the plan would "destroy the remains of civilization still separating us from barbarism" - and if the words "The Maginot Line" ring a bell, you know just how good those French are when it comes to barbarism separation.
Supporters of the law dismissed the critics as "homophobes." They also dismissed those critics whose names sounded like other words as "homophones."
Gay couples in France have long been known for their stability, as well as for their surprisingly attractive facial hair, which are a result of the curious fact that pretentious French mustaches, when combined with
ridiculous gay mustaches, cancel each other out.
MARTHA! MARTHA! MARTHA!
Continuing her trend of reinforcing America's intrinsic sense of worthlessness, Martha Stewart launched her company's initial public offering (or "IPO" for those of us with a "computer") on the New York Stock Exchange netting a cool $612 million in just one day of not working.
At Miss Stewart's insistence, the stock's symbol is "mso:" m for "Martha," s for "Stewart," and o for "whatever the hell I want it to stand for. I'm Martha Stewart dammit! How dare you question me!"
Martha Stewart describes herself as "an every day woman" who's as comfortable in overalls as she is an evening gown ... Provided those overalls are designed by Vera Wang exclusively for Martha Stewart.
Upon hearing the good news, the self-made house and garden queen got right to work on changing the name of her show from "Martha Stewart Living" to "Martha Stewart Living Large."
"Martha Stewart Living" magazine was launched in 1991 and has a circulation of over 1.5 million readers, none of whom are actually able to take advantage of Martha's helpful hints primarily because they don't
have a team of underpaid sherpas doing all the prep work.
FILE OF THE WEEK
If you can dowload this, happy reading. This is from Jack Chick, the ultra-orthodox, ultra-protestant cartoonist, as scary as he is unintentionally funny. Here are a few excerpts from a conversation Brendan and I had about his work:
RKBrenizer: Explain how the Spanish Inquisition could happen again.
Brendan59: Chick says that?
RKBrenizer: Yup. And he says that the Council of Trent was covered up by a conspiracy.
Brendan59: How do you cover up what people know existed?
Brendan59: Woah!
Brendan59: When did the Lord declare that celibacy originated in Hell?
Brendan59: If the Apocalypse is due in a couple months, and I have to choose between being killed by the beast and the woman who rides the beast, let it be the woman.
RKBrenizer: Or the nuke.
Brendan59: no, that would hurt.
RKBrenizer: only for a picoseond if you were at ground zero, which we are.
RKBrenizer: THE BEST ONE YET!!!
No Fear? #52
Suicide...The subject is common among teens today. But when Lance decides it is the only way out of his troubles, he discovers that hell is not the party place described in popular songs.
WHAT SONGS????
Brendan59: You know...Tony Bennett...
RKBrenizer: Squirell Nut Zippers, i guess...
Brendan59: No they're anti-Hell
Brendan59: Welcome to Hell! Join the party!
RKBrenizer: Another one says that Hindus kill babies. Veera will love that one.
Brendan59: oh GOG
Brendan59: Hindus don't even eat MEAT for gog's sake
"You better cut the pizza in four pieces because I'm not hungry enough
to eat six."
--Yogi Berra