Start wearing purple for me now. You look good in royal tones.

I got one C over the course my entire college career that stretched from my Junior year of high school College Now classes all the way through graduation back in ought two. Whippersnapper. Here's a fancy list from the unofficial transcript of the classes I took that semester. See if you can guess which one it was:

EC 101C BASIC ECONOMICS

SP 101F PUBLIC SPEAKING

EG 365 AMERICAN ETHNIC LITERATURE

R EG 380 FICTION WRITING

GE 101MZ WORLD REGIONAL GEOGRAPHY

Econ? With its dulleasy math, its middling political slant, and boring, far-too-skippable lectures? No. How about public speaking with its stringent quality standards beating against my mumbling too-fast speaking? Not that either. Either of the Junior level English classes? Again, you'd guess wrong. Did you guess the OTHER 101 class. The Geography one? Point for you, sir or madam. My one in the whole domain and freaking range of my collegiate experience was Dr. Ellen Hansen's World. Regional. Geography. 101. How, you might ask, did I fail such an grease-easy class as World Regional Geography? (And I do mean fail. If you don't get at least a B in a 101 class, you failed it. Boo-yah.) Geography! When I play Trivial Pursuit: Genus I, it's blue, blue, blue, all the way to the pie pieces, and then to the center for supreme victory. The answer is simple. I disappointed my professor's sense of my own personal nobilityon my final project for the class.

Notice I didn't say that I did poorly on my final assignment. I mean, I did. It was a horrible performance. Nor did I not turn it in, or not follow the directions. I got in all the requirements. Problem was, Ellen thought I possessed the capacity for more socially conscious final project, so she failed me. Now mind you, World Regional Geography was a total blow-off class. Mostly memorization of world capitals and a' that, papers graded by skimming for key words, etc. And given my penchant for blowing off things I find boring, I was really depending on my final project to keep me up in the B/B- range. The assignment wasn't hard. A C would have coasted me through the end gates of the B. All I had to do was 'plan a detailed itinerary and budget for a two week, out of country trip' that I would take myself. The assignment sheet and the class conversation gave the impression she was expecting a trip to Ireland or the Maldives or something.

Given the busyness of the semester, I took the lazy route and went for satire. (For those you you not yet in college, believe me, satire is WAY easier than actual work. Keep that in mind. Tip #1 for college students: Satire = less work.) Anyway, I spent $35,000 in Vancouver. And it wasn't like I was simply having an extravagant time, I wasted money on this trip for the laugh. I had a limo sit outside the hotel twenty-four hours a day while I drove a rented Ferrari around town. I trashed hotel rooms, gave expensive champagne to winos, bought more dinner than I needed and then left it at the restaurants, that kind of thing. Watched a lot of PPV movies in the hotel room. In hindsight, I could have easily spent a lot more, gotten the total up to a few million for the 14 days, but I was young, and poor, and didn't think about how many other take-home trinkets I could have bought along the way, cars and diamonds. and the like. Maybe a house to live in for each weekend. Really blinged the thing out. But it was still pretty amusing.

But when it came down to it, I didn't work very hard on the project. Some trip days were repeats of others. I estimated some things that I should have been able to look up, etc. So I expected a C on the assignment. B if I was lucky. Like I said, it was a 101 class, and I thought it was pretty funny. I had I put it off until the last minute because I had other stuff to do, like getting a B in Holcomb's American Ethnic Literature class, which I pulled off in some miraculous whirlwind of paper writing which should knock me halfway to sainthood after I die. (You can testify, you read it here. I speak the truth.) But that was a real class. 100 points a semester. One thing wrong on a quiz? 1% point less for the semester. Bad grammar in a paper? Mispelling? 1% off for the semester. His class was hardcore. And I 'B'ed that sucker like a champ. No, two champs.

At Emporia State there was a group of liberal/progressive/radical/whatever professors who formed an anti-war group that had some clever name not clever enough for me to remember off the top of my head seven years after. They liked to set up booths, and make statements in the school paper denouncing things. You know, things that really affect change. Comfortably radical, I'd call it. I mean, they professored at Emporia State University. I love that place, but can you really expect to be taken seriously as a progressive when you're in the upper 10% of the incomes in your city? Some of the members included the above-mentioned Dr. Holcomb, the Gamer's Guild sponsor Dr. Toadvine, and Dr. Ellen Hansen herself. Oh! And the professor that influenced Jill to quit French. Which led to her getting another major. Which led to her going to Avila. Which led to, let's say, rough waters in the marriage, among other unpleasantries.

So, when I my assignment came back with the fattest red F I've ever seen, I shouldn't have been surprised that I didn't get the F for the poor proofreading, or the lack of research, or the lousy formatting, or the copied days in week two. Though those obviously contributed. The note on the last page of the project said I got an F because I was wasting my vacations, she thought higher of me, could have joined the peace corp or something. That's right. I got an F on a final project at an accredited university because my hypothetical assignment self didn't join the Peace Corp.

But, like I said, the real reason I got that F was that I didn't devote enough attention or work to it because I was working on my 30 point (re: 30% of the grade) final paper for Holcomb's American Ethnic Literature class. This is the class where the professor told me during the first week that he'd make a radical out of me by the end of the semester. I don't think there's any better way of entrenching a young, college conservative than telling him that he's going to be a radical in three months. I told Dr. Holcomb that I already was a radical. See what I did there? Turned it all around like he didn't expect. Clever, no? Hmm?

The statistics say that going to college turns you more liberal (and more spiritual, for that matter). I got more conservative. The team of obnoxious professors prompted it. Listening to Rush Limbaugh fed it. Reading National Review Online solidified it. More pro war, more anti-tax, more small government. And as I got more 'conservative,' I got more Republican. I've voted for Dubya twice, and I don't regret it. I'm still registered Republican. I have a hard time trusting any Democrat politicians, and I tend to trust a Republican one more. Thats where I come from.

Which brings us to New Hampshire and Iowa and Michigan and politics in general. And how I'm not that into politics anymore. Jill and I did give fifty bucks to the Ron Paul campaign on the anniversary of the Boston Tea Party in December. First time either of us had ever donated to any political campaign ever. I might donate again. I think his ideas are the best direction to take our presidency. He's been consistent for a long time in politics as a constitutionalist. He's principled, which almost makes him not a politician.

But as much as I want Paul to win the nomination, and then want him to win the whole thing, I'm getting to the point where I almost hope he doesn't. I'm not interested in voting for any of the other candidates. I care about Paul; I could care less about the others. (Well, I like Fred Thompson, but that's as an actor that makes Sam Jackson's manliness look like Pauly Shore's.) And with the Pauline exception I just mentioned, I just don't care that much about politics anymore. With Paul out of the way, I could pay attention to all the more important things than how our country is run.

I think part of the reason that I've classified myself as a conservative, and later a libertarian is that I have faith in Jesus. Which sounds cheesy I know, but it comes from that fact that that Jesus got executed, and he wanted to stop it so much beforehand that he dropped into a serious physiological freak out. But then, he went through with the whole ordeal anyway because he thought it was the right thing to do. Even if it meant him getting the crap kicked out of him and then him dying. All of which, I think means that as a person who tries to follow him, I should do what I think is right, even if I don't know if the ends will turn out ok. Even if I think the ends look pretty bleak.

I read a great post on Digg once where a guy said that the main difference between rightists and leftists is that rightists are system-oriented, and leftists are results-oriented. A hardcore rightist doesn't really care what the results are if the system is set up the way it 'should be.' And a leftist doesn't really care what system there is as long as it gets the results that there 'should be.' I think I'm in that first camp in my thinking. I'm not saying it's the right answer or anything, or that Christians have to follow it for sure. It's just where I am.

Jesus said that the realm under his control isn't even in the paradigms of the world around us. It's something else entirely. The poor sit at the head of the economic table, and the uncool win the popularity contests, and the ugly smelly girl gets to marry the king. Most people I know don't swing that way. I don't most of the time. I just get glimpses of that realm now and then. If it were up to my instinct, Darwin would get his fingers down into sociology and relationships, and the strong would kick the weak down to where they look like they belong. But down deeper than that, I've got a deeper instinct, like a legend that's become myth, that tells me that the story isn't the strong kicking the weak, but the weak giving themselves up to save the undeserving strong who kicked them

Which is why I kind of hope the election goes sour for my favorite candidate. Because even though he seems like a guy who wants to do less with the power of government, I want to live a life where the power structure is all backwards and looks awkward. And I think that if Ron Paul stays in, I'm going to care too much about him fixing my problems then me doing something about the problems I see around me. Like people hurting who I can't figure out how to breech the subject with. And how I want to pray more but I'm too self-absorbed. And how I can't seem to keep from getting drunk and silly off my extrovertedness at parties. And the fact that it's almost three in the morning and I need to go to sleep but I'm still not sleepy but I'm tired. Guess who drank 84 oz of Diet Mountain Dew today. F- for that choice. Seriously.

Never thought I'd be that guy

The first semester I taught high school, my addiction got so bad that I would drop by the convenience store at the corner of 47th (Johnson County) and 55th (Wyandotte County) and get my fix on the way to work most days. That gas station is a scuzzy place. Like a lot of places in the Turner area. Not shady, mind you, just scuzzy. Like when you go to a small town in the middle of Kansas, and things are dusty, and no one notices because there's nothing to compare it to. That's Turner. small town feel, but they've got some big town issues. Gangs, if you believe it.

There is a liquor store next door, and a bar I went to one time to celebrate an early year Friday with some colleagues. It ending up being just three or four of us, and I had a Mountain Dew, and they all had beer. Step one of the reasons I never fit in with the teacher crowd. By January, I was already uncertified, and one of those guys at the table had drunk-dialed one of his volleyball girls and he got swept under the Turner rug like everything else there that doesn't fit the Turner values. He wasn't the only teacher that left in the middle of the year, but I guess small Wyandotte school districts don't matter in the grand scheme of things unless plagiarism is involved. But then again, Piper's got some money, and Turner's the cat that you walled in during remodeling and you can't even hear the meows to know you screwed it all up. Probably one of the reasons I loved it there. I don't think I would have quit if I hadn't had to.

I never fit in with that teacher crowd. For people that are supposed to be teaching kids how to become, they haven't become very well themseves. Petty people, a lot of them, thinking they're helping, but unwilling to change. I'm not sure if it was that I still felt young, or that they were all very populist and I lean on Libertariansm, or that I liked to hang out with the students and they mostly liked to kick them on the way out the door at 2:30. You home life sucks, but you can't be here. Get out. And they wonder why so many Turner girls drop out right before they move in with their baby daddies.

But besides of a couple three people who were gone at the end of the year, I never made the connection beyond 'hi's in the hall, and the occasional lunchtime debate over politics. Maybe if I'd had more than a year to become a teacher. The common wisdom says you need three years to get acclimated to the job. And stuck myself with one because I'm not much for bureaucratic red tape and reading. But that's my fault, nobody else's.

But like I was saying,there were a whole string of mornings I stopped by that gas station to pick up two cold 2-liters of Diet Mt. Dew. One for before lunch, and one for after. That's 4 liters of caffeinated bliss every day. Or, in terms perhaps more existential, approximately 1/6 of the dose of caffeine it would take to kill a 200 lb. male if ingested in less than an hour's time. And I was right there at 200 lbs. Some days I got a fifth liter as I gassed up on the way home. Or 42 ounces at Quicktrip over lunch.

Let me say something about Quicktrip here: It freaking RULES. If you've been there, you know, man. You know.

It was around this time that I made my Christmas list for that year. Now, this was back in my consumerist days, before I learned to fight the power of the Needs Stuff Empire, and when my Christmas lists were multi-page categorized and hotlinked affairs with options for all price ranges and purchasing abilities. One of the myriad items I asked for from Think Geek that year was a hoodie with the caffeine embroidered on the front. I'm trying to say that I was hardcore into that stuff in late 2005.

After a while I started to notice that my mental math skills weren't working as automatically as they usually do. Most of the time, if I want to know how my 57+62 is, I ask my brain, and it spits it out in a second or two, like an old school adding machine. That fall, I was having to spend the time to write it out in my head. It was like I could feel my myelin sheath dissipating, clouding up in a dust cloud after it left. I wasn't sleeping well either. Wake up in the middle of the night, terrified that I had slept in and missed work. Did that once, even. Sleeping in, that is.. And then there were nights I couldn't get to sleep. Admittedly, my schedule wasn't helping. I am not a morning person, and on top of that, I like late nights. Double whammy. But at least I wasn't doing it with sugar pop. Ida been twice my weight by then ifa had.

So I quit. I remember being pretty irritable and anti-social for three or four days, but I did it. Even with first year teaching and everything. And it felt good. Like I was living again. It was like spring. Every winter I fall away from the surface of alertness and motivation, so slow I don't even know it. And then one day in March or April, I realize how deep I am and kick back up to the surface, finally getting air I didn't even know I was missing. It was like that.

Today, before work, I went to the convenience store with Dan. He got a breakfast sandwich, and I got a 64 oz diet Mt. Dew. Later in the day as I started dragging after lunch, I had a cup of coffee to get the motivation to keep writing this post. And as I'm finishing this up here in the corner at Jeremy's birthday party while people play Halo2 (my favorite game of all time; a post for another day), I almost grabbed a can of Mt. Dew to muster the mental acuity to finish. Like Derek Webb said in that song about the box of letters, I find the same old things are plaguing me still.

I was off for a few months. Maybe it was the fact that I now owned a blue hoodie with an electric green caffeine molecule on the front, or maybe it was just that I like the community coffee creates, or maybe I liked the illusion of being able to function on very little sleep. But I hopped back on that beast as soon as I got the chance and took a ride.

It's not as bad as it used to be. Believe me on that one. I did drink a gallon on January 29th, but that was over 8 hours. And halfa one most days at work. But it's not nearly as bad. Maybe I'll quit again, and get awake again. Maybe I'll take the wide road and go get a can out of the fridge right now. I'll let you know either way. But I've got a party to be at, so, tootles, ya'll.

Edit: I had one 12 oz. can. And it's 2:15. And I'm trying to figure out why our old router doesn't like our new cable modem and flakes out when acquiring a new IP address. I got nothin'.