Redesign

I've decided to make some changes to the way I blog. Specifically, I'm splitting this existing blog into two blogs and then adding a third. Because one blog just isn't enough.

This blog (Geeker Joy) will remain my personal blog. I'll talk about the stuff I'm doing and goals I have. I might try some other things, along the lines of that 17% post from 2014. Who knows, really. Basically, this will remain the catch-all blog, where I can write about whatever enters my head. It will mostly be about my life. I'm toying with the idea of making this one private, but I'll let you know before I do that. And I'll make sure friends and family know how to get on the white list.

I'm splitting all of my book reviews off into a dedicated book review blog. It's called Bookish Thoughts and you can find it at caitsbookthoughts.blogspot.com. I'm in the process of porting everything over to it now. It's taking me longer than I expected, because it turns out that Blogger enforces a 50 post/day limit. But I'm chugging along and should have that all set up within another week.

I'm hoping that the new book-only site will be somewhat more navigable. To that end I'm going back through and adding a bunch of tags to my old posts. You should be able to zero in on stuff by author, series, or genre, and I'll try to pull as much of that out as possible to make it easier. Doing that is creating some work for me now, but it should all run nice and smooth with minimal effort on my part once it's up and running. If you're one of the people who cares what I have to say about all the books I read, you can check out that site (which will remain public). If you don't, the personal blog will now be less cluttered for your enjoyment.

The third blog I'm setting up is a writing blog. It's called Paper and Ink Dreams and you can visit it at paperandinkdreams.blogspot.com. I'm hoping to post some short stories and writing challenges over there. Mostly I want to get in the habit of writing for some amount of time every day. I want to hone my story-telling abilities. I want to start producing a mountain of work in the hopes that I will get better at writing fiction. I want to see where this goes.

For the time being, I'm revisiting some old projects. In high school, I was given an assignment to write a short story for each letter of the alphabet, memoir style. Those are currently being posted as a sort of baseline for me to see where I can improve and where my strengths are. And for you all to have a good laugh at 16-year old. Some of these stories are pretty melodramatic. It's fun.

Once that's all up, I'm going to dive back into my companion project - the college alphabet. I started this years ago when I first started the blog. I posted five stories and wrote drafts for six more before it all fell by the wayside. I'm going to start polishing those up and writing new ones. They'll start going up after the high school alphabet finishes posting. Depending on how far along I am, they may or may not be in alphabetical order.

At some point I'll look into daily writing prompts or creative writing challenges or something and start posting based off those prompts. Maybe I'll come up with another project for myself. Maybe I'll start writing actual short stories (as opposed to what I've been writing, which I believe qualifies as "flash fiction" or "drabbles"). We'll see where this goes.

Alphabet Project: Exam Day

I flip through the pages of my midterm, checking the answers one more time. I'm mad that I don't have a clue on the bonus question, but excited to be at a school where the professors are nerdy enough to ask the students to name all four members of teen girl squad for extra credit. It feels cool, in a completely uncool way. It makes me feel like I fit in, completely, finally.

I finish double-checking. Chemistry isn't my strongest subject and it would be awful to fail my very first college exam.  I think I got everything right though. Or right enough. Even with that awful song playing through my mind

I love frosh chem, I love frosh chem, I love frosh chem, each and every day

The sophomores were blasting it on repeat over every speaker on campus last night

I love frosh chem, I love frosh chem, I love frosh chem, in every single way

 Occasionally they interjected it with a loop of slightly more useful songs set to Beatles tunes.

nrt, nrt, nrt, nrt.  The pressure times the volume, nrt.

I'll never be able to listen to Let It Be again without hearing the revised lyrics. I'll also never forget the ideal gas law. I guess that's a win.

I walk to the front of the room and add my paper to the stack of completed tests. Then I turn and leave the lecture hall.

Outside, I take a deep breath and enjoy the Southern California sunshine for a moment before beginning the trek back to my dorm. I'd been hearing about this exam, the First Frosh Chem Test, since I interviewed as a prospective student. It wasn't nearly as bad as everyone had led me to believe.

I join the flock of other freshmen who have completed the exam heading back to our dorms. Everyone's chatting about plans for the rest of the day. No one has another class until the afternoon, and with the pressure of the exam gone it seems like we have all the time in the world to relax.

Approaching the residential end of campus I notice that it's a lot louder than normal. Normally the only people outside this early are either on their way to or from class. But most of the upperclassmen are outside. Running back and forth with water guns and hoses.

A water balloon splashes on the sidewalk next to me, followed quickly by another. Some of the frosh are trying to dodge out of the way, others are running to see what the excitement is all about.

The dorms are absolute chaos. A pyramid of dressers, drawers, and bookshelves is displayed in the courtyard. It seems to be as tall as the dorm itself. An entire room has been recreated in the courtyard as well. A couple of cages house freshmen who have been soaked and are now enjoying beers while upperclassmen occasionally hose them down again.

Another dorm has stacked 50 or more mattresses into a pile near the balcony. Students are taking turns jumping from the second story onto it.

A clothesline has been strung up diagonally across the courtyard with all sorts of underwear on display: boxers, briefs, panties, and bras.

There's a full-fledged water balloon fight happening, though the sophomores seem to control nearly all of the ammunition. Frosh are stealing what they can, but are usually promptly punished for their cunning with sprays of water.

I continue on to my dorm, on the far end of campus. I want to put my calculator away before joining in the fun. At the entrance to my dorm I encounter a hastily constructed labyrinth of fences. I have to go through it to reach my room, and there are sophomores stationed all around to pour buckets of water on me, drop water balloons, or spray me with a water gun.

I hold up my calculator in defense. One of them points to the alternate route that's been set up if I don't want to get wet, but I opt to simply hand her my calculator instead. They pass it along while I make my way through the labyrinth. At the other end, I feel like I've been dunked in a pool. Happily my calculator remains dry and functional.

My roommate has already been back to the room. It seems that she had to deal with a hundred Dixie cups stapled together and filled with water. I'm glad she got here first and dismantled them. I throw my stuff on the bed and dash back to the water fight and pile of mattresses. A campus-wide party is the perfect way to blow off steam after my first college exam.

Alphabet Project: Know-It-All

 Know It All

All freshmen are required to take Special Relativity during their first semester at Mudd. It's taught pass/fail which takes some of the pressure off. And really, the math is pretty simple. Just multiply all your standard mechanics equations by gamma and you're good to go. The difficulty lies in the concepts.  Time slows down and space stretches out. The only constant is the speed of light and it is always constant.  You cannot travel faster than the speed of light. Even if two rhinos are charging at each other, both traveling 300,000,000 meters per second, they will approach each other at 300,000,000 meters per second. The math works out, but it takes a while to wrap your brain around.

Worse, these new concepts lead to all sorts of ideas that seem to contradict themselves. Half of our time is devoted to unraveling these paradoxes and trying to make some sense out of them.

Professor Emeritus technically retired last year.  But he knows this subject so well that he decided to continue teaching it. He guides us gently through the many logical conundrums we encounter.

One day, the entire freshman class is gathered in the lecture hall while Professor Emeritus explains a particularly tricky paradox. As he finishes showing us how the math manages to remain consistent no matter which reference frame you're in, the hand of a student in the front row shoots up.

The nasally voice begins, "Well, have you considered...?" Clearly this kid thinks Special Relativity is as real as Hogwarts. He is also under the impression that he's the smartest person in the room. It was probably true in high school; most of the students here were the top of their high school classes. A few have yet to realize that this is no longer the case.

When the student finishes poking holes in the paradox and disproving all of relativity, he sits back haughtily. His profile belies his smugness, and I just know there's a self-satisfied smirk on his face. He's sure he has stumped the professor. For an instant, the class is silent, wondering what will happen.

Then Professor Emeritus throws his hands up in the air. The chalk he was holding goes flying. "Oh my god," he deadpans, "I hadn't thought of that. My career is over!"

All of the tension from a moment earlier is released as laughter. Professor Emeritus proceeds to explain, quite kindly, why the know-it-all is completely wrong. Meanwhile the know-it-all has been reminded that we're here to learn, not show off.

Alphabet Project: Broomball

Broomball

Eight of us are crammed in a car that seats five. One person sits in the passenger seat with another on his lap. Four of us are squished into the back seat. Someone even volunteered to ride in the trunk.

Sober drivers are hard to come by when there's a broomball game. It's a game best enjoyed while drunk, and as many people as possible want to enjoy it to the fullest extent. But the ice rink is a ten minute drive from campus, so some people have to stay sober and their cars get pretty crowded.

The ride over is loud. We've had a lot to drink in preparation for this once-a-semester game. The windows are all rolled down so people can hang out and provide some relief for the cramped car. The music is blasting and everyone is shouting over it.

At the ice rink we spill out of the car and go inside. The rink is a mass of people. At least a hundred students, maybe closer to two hundred, have gathered. We're milling around, sliding across the ice. 

Human + alcohol - friction = laughter (and bruises in the morning).

At midnight the game starts and a ball is thrown into the rink. The drunken mass now has a purpose. We are running towards the ball, trying to get it first. There’s only one rule in broomball: get the ball in the other team's net.

It doesn't take long to figure out  that if you go near the ball, odds are you will end up in a pile of people. And if the ball comes to you, you will be at the bottom of a pile of people unless you throw it away immediately. Once you are in one of these piles you learn that your body bends in new and interesting ways. Ways that will probably be painful tomorrow.

Tonight drunk trumps pain.

At one point I see my roommate going for the ball while a frosh is to pulling her away. I do what my alcohol soaked brain believes is most sensible: I go after the frosh. The only problem is that he’s way bigger than I am and pushes me away easily. The next moment I’m down on the ice, and he’s reaching out his hand to help me up. My head hurts. I must have hit it when he knocked me over. I wave his hand away and indicate that I’m okay. Then I make my way over to the side of the rink.

The game’s been going on for half an hour. The other team has yet to score and we’ve scored 3 or 4 times already. Possibly 5. It’s a little unclear, but we're winning. That's all that matters.

When I’m reasonably sure that the room is spinning because of the alcohol in my system and not my head injury, I go back out on the ice. This time I make my way over to our goal, where a group of girls is lined up to block the other team from scoring. Arms linked, fingers woven into the net, our job is to block people more than balls. Which we do quite effectively.

Soon enough the timer buzzes indicating the end of the game. The final score? 69 to bitch, as always. We won, as expected. Some people say we scored 4 times, others say it was as much as 9. The other team didn't score at all.

We pile back in the car and go home. Tomorrow will be painful. Bruises and cuts on top of a hangover make getting out of bed hard. But that only lasts for a day. Memories are forever.

Alphabet Project: Zoom

Story Notes:  This story didn't flow right without naming one of the people involved.  So I made up a name.

 

Zoom

The night is young. The alcohol is flowing freely. The music is blasting. The beer pong table is occupied, and has been claimed for the next five games. People are standing around drinking and maybe dancing when someone suggests playing a drinking game.

“Kings?”

“No, I don’t know where my cards are.”

“Landmines?”

“There aren't any cans.”

"Flip cup?"

"We don't have a free table."

“Fuck the Dealer?”

“That needs cards, too.”

“Dr. Killabrew?”

“I’m kinda full.”

"Quarters?"

"Where?"

“Let’s play Zoom!”

“Yeah, we haven’t played that in a while.”

“I’ve never played, how does it work?”

"Nate?"

“Alright,” Nate makes sure everyone is paying attention, then jumps into his explanation of the rules. “The name of the game is ‘Zoom, Schwartz, Pafigliano, and Beederman’. Playing this game is like passing an invisible ball around the circle. There are four things you can say when you have the ball: Zoom, Schwartz, Pafigliano, and Beederman. Zoom passes it to the person you’re looking at. Schwartz returns it to the person who sent it to you. Pafigliano passes it right and Beederman passes it left.

There are three rules. Rule number one: you can’t Zoom a zoomer, but you can Schwartz a schwartzer. If you Zoom a zoomer, you have to drink. Rule number two: you can’t say the name of the game. So if I say ‘Zoom’, he says Schwartz, and I say Pafigliano, you can’t say Beederman or you have to drink. Rule number three is the rule of threes. You cannot say anything three times, either as a group or individually, or you have to drink.

When someone messes up, the person to their left restarts the game. Is there anything left in the keg?”

“I think so,” someone replies.

“Okay. If you mess up four times in a row, you do a keg stand. Are we ready to start?”

“Uh…” The three people who have never played before look nervous.

“Don’t worry. You’ll pick it up. It really isn’t as hard as it sounds.”

“What about nicknames?” Someone who has played before asks.

"Or noonans?" Another chimes in.

“Let’s let them play a few rounds to get used to it,” a slightly more compassionate person suggests.

We split the newbies up. The game is more fun when the people who have never played before are sandwiched between experts. It makes it easier to gang up on them.

“Does everyone have a drink?” Nate asks. Everyone holds up a red cup; each is filled with something alcoholic. “Alright, let’s start. The name of the game is Zoom, Schwartz, Pafigliano, and Beederman. Zoom.” And we’re off.

Alphabet Project: Voodoo

Project Notes: The plan is to post these stories as I write them, in no particular order.  I'd like to do one a week.  We'll see how long I stick to that schedule.  I decided not to follow any sort of length requirement.  This story simply wouldn't fit on one page.  I kept identifying information out.  If you were there, you should know who all the people involved are.  If not, you should still be able to follow along.  Please tell me what you think!  Your feedback helps improve the story.

Story Notes: This story describes a hazing tradition that my class was among the last to participate in.  The administration killed it during my junior year of college.

Voodoo

The first hint that something is wrong is the time of the meeting.  Dorm meetings usually begin at 10:30, but we are told to be in the courtyard at 9 PM sharp.

The upperclasswomen spend the majority of the day drawing on the concrete courtyard with sidewalk chalk.  They refuse to answer any of our questions about what they are doing and why.  Eventually we stop asking and content ourselves with watching.

A large star takes up most of the courtyard.  Each point contains a name, three of which I recognize.  They belong to a sophomore, a junior, and a senior currently living in the dorm.  The fourth is a student who graduated the previous year.  No one seems to know anything about the fifth person, Suggs.  The space between the points of the star is filled with drawings: a rose, a keg of beer, meat, sports equipment, and a little black dog.  These are the symbols of our dorm, though I've never really been able to figure out the dog.  The pentagon in the center of the star is filled with a psychedelic swirl of color.

By the time we congregate in the courtyard, apprehensive and already tipsy, clutching cups of Ice House, the drawing has been completed.  The rest of the dorm members are already there, standing around the star.  This is strange, too.  Usually the upperclassmen remain in their rooms while the frosh announce the meeting, shouting ever louder until the entire campus must know that all of us will soon be drunk and rowdy.

We are directed to stand around the chalk drawing.  It goes without saying that we should not stand on it.  We group together, sipping beer, waiting, wondering what will come next.  A sophomore walks to the center of the circle, stands in the middle of the star.  This is the sophomore whose name is written in one point of the star.  He begins to tell a tale.

Years ago, there was a student named Suggs who lived in this dorm.  Now Suggs, he liked to party.  And on his birthday, he wanted nothing more than to drink and have a good time with his friends.  Unfortunately for him, his friends had all chosen to major in engineering and had too much homework to accomplish that night.  They turned down his invitations to drink and let loose, promising to make it up to him that weekend.

Dejected, and with no one willing to share a drink or a game of beer pong, Suggs retreated to his room.  Once there, he drank himself into a stupor and passed out.  Meanwhile, his friends slowly began to come around.  They realized that it was their good friend's birthday and that a celebration was called for.  They would have a much better time partying with him than struggling with a problem set that, if they were to be honest, they would probably never finish.  Minds made up, they grabbed a bottle of alcohol and trooped up to Suggs' room.

Of course, Suggs was already unconscious.  Try as they might, they couldn't wake him.  But by now they were committed to celebrating his birthday, whether he participated or not.  So the group found a large, wooden rack, tied Suggs to it, and proceeded to carry him from dorm to dorm, laughing and drinking and inviting the other students to shower Suggs with birthday presents.

When Suggs awoke the next morning, he was still strapped to the rack which had been left in a field on the eastern edge of campus.  Hungover and dirty, he eventually managed to free himself.  Back at the dorm he found his friends who were still laughing at their prank.  But Suggs didn't find it funny.  In retaliation, he placed a voodoo hex on them, and on all the residents of the dorm, all the people who ever would live in the dorm.  The only way to counter this hex, the sophomore concludes, is to sacrifice one freshman every year to relive Suggs' humiliation.  The names in the star belong to previous frosh chosen for this honor.

The story teller points to the frosh who has been chosen as this year's Sacrifice.  Hands immediately grab him and lift him up.  He is carried over to a rack of wood propped against the benches.  He is tied down.  Goggles are placed over his eyes.  The upperclassmen produce cans of whipped cream, bottles of chocolate and strawberry syrup, sprinkles and cherries.  We watch while the Sacrifice is transformed into a "birthday cake", though a sundae seems to be a more accurate description.  Should we try to free him?  Are we expected to join in?  With no direction, we simply hang back and drink our beers.

Finally, the upperclassmen exhaust their supply.  The other male frosh are directed to pick up the rack.  Quickly, they chug the remainder of their beers and step forward to lift the Sacrifice.  There are enough of them that this is an easy task.  They will have to carry the rack and the Sacrifice around to the other dorms.  Presents must be collected from each dorm if we are to escape from the hex for another year.

The females are excluded, warned to stay back.  "Be glad you're a girl," the seniors tell us as we follow the group of frosh guys, carrying the Sacrifice on their shoulders, to the dorm across the courtyard.

The residents of this dorm have prepared.  A tarp is laid out on the ground, near a balcony.  The guys walk over to it and begin to lower the rack but are immediately ordered not to.  They must stand and hold up the Sacrifice, while the residents of this dorm throw their presents down from the balcony.  The festivities begin with a tureen of soup.  It might be a day old, and it might be a week old.  I'm glad I'm outside the splash zone.  The soup is followed by more food, stolen from the dining hall over the past week.  Condiments from the sandwich bar help larger items stick.  Some things aren't meant to stick and instead bounce off one or more bodies before landing on the ground.

The supply of food seems endless.  Upperclassmen are hooting and hollering while our guys try to avoid the spray.  Finally they give in and stand still, resigned to their fate.  It's like the first few minutes after stepping outside into a rainstorm.  At first you try to avoid getting wet, but soon enough you are soaked to the bone a little more hardly seems to matter.  But this rain of rotting food is infinitely worse than mere water.

Eventually, this dorm runs out of things to throw and we move to the next dorm.  It's a strange parade, with the freshmen out in front.  The rest of us trail behind, trying to avoid stepping in whatever is dripping off Sacrifice and his bearers.  The sophomore who began the evening has a bottle of water, and as we walk he does his best to rinse the worst of the mess from the Sacrifice's face.

There are seven dorms to visit in all.  The "presents" seem to get more creative as the night goes on.  Bags of flour and coffee grounds are split and sprinkled over the guys.  Eggs are thrown.  Juice and milk are poured.  Between each dorm, the sophomore rinses the Sacrifice's face.  He is able to breathe, but he cannot move or avoid the "presents".

At the end of the circuit, we return home.  Another tarp has been hastily set up and the guys know what to do by this point.  They position themselves under the balcony.  This dorm, our dorm, is worst of all.  The men who live here have been through this themselves.  Every thought that began "I'm glad they didn't throw..." has morphed into "We should totally throw...!"

Someone drops a fish.  It doesn't stick, just makes a sloppy thwack as it hits one of the guys supporting the Sacrifice and slides off to the ground.  Someone saw the flour and coffee grounds and upgraded to kitty litter.  The soup here is weeks old, as is the chunky milk.  They have been preparing for a long time.

Finally, the guys are allowed to set the Sacrifice down.  They prop him up near the side of the dorm and loosen his bonds.  The upperclassmen have everyone pose for pictures.

"We should get out of here," one of my friends says as the first camera flashes.  We turn to her and realize what she means.  I look back at the guys, covered in putrid, pinkish-brown, vomit-inducing gunk.  They have their arms around each other and are laughing as the cameras capture the results of the evening.  One looks at me and I see a glint in his eye, the beginning of an evil smile.

"RUN!"

I'm the slowest member of the group and it's obvious that I'll be brought down first.  We're only halfway to the nearest dorm when I'm tackled, squealing, to the grass.  The other girls don't slow down or look back; they're trying to make it indoors before the other guys catch up to them.  But there are twelve guys and only four of us.  No one stands a chance.

Eventually we all make it back to the courtyard.  We're laughing and jostling each other, trying to ignore the unique stench rising from our skin, our clothes, the courtyard.  "Hurry up and shower," the dorm president commands us, "then meet in the lounge in fifteen minutes.  The night is only just beginning."

Alphabet Project

During my junior year of high school, my English teacher assigned a project that I had a lot of fun with: an alphabet book.  We had to write twenty-six short stories, one for each letter of the alphabet.  None could be more than a page long.  All had to be true.

I still have the collection of stories I wrote.  Some are wonderful, some are awful.  Some experiments worked, others didn't.  One of the stories turned into my college essay.  It's a great snap shot of who I was, and a nice book of memories.  It's like a scrapbook with words instead of pictures.

Ever since I finished college, I've been toying around with the idea of repeating this project, with the stories taken from my college career.  I've written a few over the years, but never got very far.  It's something I still want to do, though.  So I'm considering writing the stories and publishing them in this blog.

Names would be omitted, facts altered or rearranged slightly.  This would be a collection of my memories of college, the truth as I saw it.  In bite-size chunks.  It might be more challenging, having only four years of material to draw on instead of sixteen.  The challenge wouldn't be coming up with stories - there's a ton of those - but coming up with names for those stories, to fit the alphabet naming requirement.  Picking and choosing which ones to tell.

So I think I'm going to try this.  I like writing.  And this will be a nifty exercise that hopefully sharpens my skills while providing me with a nice collection of memories to cherish in the years to come.

Thoughts?