by John Bear
Daily Lobo
In the next week I will be jettisoned from the mildly informative and somewhat overpriced college teat from which I have been suckling for five or so years.
A little weary of the world I am.
That's the cost of an education I suppose. I have learned about the world from a rather cozy perspective. And what I learned is the world is a horrible place, wrought with peril, and though I am happy to be escaping, I don't really want to leave. It's ironic.
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There are injustices too numerous to list, most of them caused by my ancestors. After a while, I began to feel a slight pain in the pit of my stomach for having it so good. Whitey guilt, I believe it is called.
Of course, college is no easy task. There are papers to write, tests to study for, fake street cred stories to invent when I get a teacher who grew up in the 'hood and endless cigarettes and change to bum out to people in clothes nicer than mine. Needless to say, it can get pretty stressful.
Sometimes I daydream about just coming undone at the seams and wasting 15 people with an assault rifle instead of writing another paper about another long-dead white-poet laudanum addict.
I usually calm down, because it could be worse.
At least I don't live in Liberia.
But I do live in the Student Ghetto, and on most nights it sounds like there is a war outside. Instead of gunfire and explosions - though I have heard a lot of that on occasion - there's breaking glass and the tapping noise of a philosophy major pissing on the side of my house while he drones on about the inherent pointlessness of existence.
Student Ghetto housing gives a person a new perspective on economics. First there are the roving gangs of crack heads who possess some sort of ESP in regard to when I am stepping out for a cup of coffee and the exact whereabouts of my laptop. I have bought three.
The college student is the modern nomad and moves from apartment to apartment with relative frequency. He or she will come into contact with the slum lord, the hyper capitalist who charges exorbitant rent but refuses to fix the roof that is sloping inward or replace the refrigerator that actually cooks food. Not all of them are like this, but one bad apple - yada, yada, yada.
The give-and-take nature of capitalism - I give, they take - extends beyond the domicile. There is of course the book buyback next week I will walk away from feeling like Edward Norton in "American History X" - shower scene. The only flaw in this analogy is I will tell them, "Thanks a lot. Now I can eat."
My student loans will begin to clock interest at an alarming rate. I owe $25,000. People get shot for owing less money than that. There's tuition hikes, credit card and save-the-world offers, fast food and my personal favorite, parking tickets, endless parking tickets for seemingly made-up offenses.
The movies lied to me. "Animal House" and all of its subsequent ripoffs made it look like one big party - toga parties and smoking joints with English professors - culminating in a violent street riot to exact hilarious revenge on one's enemies, mainly pretty-boy overachievers and soulless administrators.
Nonsense.
Liquor gives me a rash and a look of utmost curiosity as to why my furniture is all broken, and I seem to have written hundreds of pages of bad poetry. That and weed has become the favorite cause of leftist rabble-rousers, so partying at all is out of the question. And how many frat boys have to die before they edit out John Belushi downing an entire bottle of Jack Daniels like it's apple juice? Stop the madness.
That's what I learned. I owe some shadowy government agency money. I am now hopelessly locked into the economy. And I don't even get my drunken street riot at the end. Avenge me.
This isn't fair. I refuse to pay for lousy service. I'm skipping town.
That means I will probably have to move a long way away, somewhere they can't find me - like western Pakistan.
That will work. Now, if you will excuse me, I have to go practice my Waziri. Peace out.
