A Muffin of Sudden Clarity

And Yet, Still Majoring in French

Sorry for the late post.  Due to me not understanding how to use my cell phone, the weekly "DON'T FORGET YOU HAVE A BLOG!" alarm failed to fire. 

The French take an indescribable, meticulous fascination in distilling every nuance from the slightest of emotions.  I base this conclusion on four years of reading France's answer to The Catcher in the Rye mixed with Where the Red Fern Grows à la Slaughterhouse Five.

First, it is a law that characters must die in every single work of fiction penned by a French hand.  Not only that, but they must die painfully, and their deaths must cause untold agony for those who once knew them.  (Readers included.)  Death by drowning, by poison, by gunshot, or simply by wasting away of misery--these are the only acceptable ends for fictional residents of the Hexagon.

Second, the characters who don’t die (or who remain woefully alive until the end of the story) are required to be unhappy.  Their wives or husbands should be unfaithful.  Their shops should do badly.  Their children or lovers should die.  Extra points if they kill their own cat by throwing it against a wall.

Finally, since nothing resembling success ever occurs, these characters have plenty of time to reflect on what a cruel beast is Fate.  One may spend an entire morning wandering hag-like through the boulevards of Paris and wondering when the greenish, bloated, rotting visage of one's drowned husband (whom one has killed) will fade from one's memory and allow one to sleep.  There's nothing better than a long walk for fixating on nauseating imagery and the feelings it provokes.  Ô la belle vie française!

I'm guessing that if you have read only one French book, it was The Little Prince.  The Little Prince was slightly different from the trope in that (SPOILER ALERT) the certainty of the death of the Little Prince is under debate.  But this book contains another important element of French literature, which is that it does not make sense.

Food Theft: YOLOOOOO

Most students at the College of Merp choose the full meal plan--21 meals per week--because the food is quite good and it's nice to have someone cook for you and wash your dishes.  But a significant minority of students choose to get 14, 10 or 5 meals per week.  The idea of buying a reduced meal plan is theoretically that you will buy your own food and/or sleep through breakfast every day.  Maybe sleep through the weekends too.

This rarely happens in real life.  Those who sign up for the reduced plan often do so with the insane grin that's shorthand for "YOLOOOO!"  Instead of having 21 opportunities to get 21 meals, a student now has, let's say, 10 opportunities to get the same number of meals.  Sneakiness, pockets, not making eye contact, and creative use of potential containers are popular strategies in this campus-wide challenge.  Last year, one student actually wrote an article in the school newspaper on how to, ahem, maximize your ratio of food obtained to food paid for.  

Naturally, Dining Services did not think this was so great.  (This is probably one reason for Shimesky's limitations.)  And I have to admit that I side with them.  On the other hand, they should be flattered that we think the food is so good that we want to steal it.  Other colleges don't have this problem.

Honestly, I think it's totally cool to take a snack for later when you're eating a meal that you paid for.  There's a difference between getting your money's worth and smuggling a rice-cake bag filled with sandwiches out of the dining hall by hiding it in your pants leg.  Most students on the full meal plan don't eat all of their meals, anyway--c'mon, early breakfast on Sunday is for squares.

With all of this in mind, I have drawn up a few images of Acceptable ("Yes") vs. Unacceptable ("No") use of dining hall resources.  My devoted readers may refer to these in times of internal strife.

How to Agree on Car Music

So You Think You Can Park Here

This actually happened.  Except that I did not move my car.  I brazenly left it in the closest lot--a multistory lot with 2/3 of the spaces STILL FREE, mind you--while I sherpa'd from my room FIFTEEN TIMES.  I think this was a lose-lose situation.