Journal: 4/8/00

(Retrospection)

In the morning, Bear stopped by to accuse us of stealing his keys. I didn’t know anything about this, but since the boys had been talking last night about getting Bear back for not coming out with us, I thought it was very possible they had done something and I told Bear to talk to them. It turned out Bear had just misplaced his keys, and he later found them. The boys interpreted the whole thing as divine retribution for Bear’s not coming out on Bosch’s birthday the previous night. (“See boys” Bosch said, “We didn’t even need to prank Bear. Vengeance is mine says the lord.”)

I went　to the gym to do some weight lifting. I got Darin D’apolito to spot me.

I went back to the apartment. Since we had developed a trail of ants, I began doing some heavy duty cleaning. Bosch joined in when he got back, and we worked on the place. Cakes went outside without a shirt on, and Kevin Gort organized throwing snowballs at him. This turned into throwing snowballs at Bear as he walked by. Not thinking much of our aim, Bear spread out his arms and invited us to take our best shot. We all threw and we all missed (although Brett managed to break one of the street lights). Then as he was turning to go, Bear slipped on the ice and fell into the snow. We all had a good laugh about that one.

Bosch and I returned to cleaning the apartment. Bosch was making liberal use of various cleaning chemicals, and our RA Athania Pfister stopped by and told us the whole building reeked, and wanted us to open up our patio door. At this time we had no screen on the patio door because of Keene and the cheese incident. I complained that bugs would come in if we opened the door. This was of course ridiculous because of the excessively cold spring we were having (there was still snow on the ground), but I just felt like being difficult for some reason. {Ed. Note: When I saw Athania over the Christmas holidays this year I finally apologized to her for this-She didn’t even remember}.

Athania and I compromised by leaving the door halfway open. But later I decided the apartment really did reek of cleaning chemicals, so I went to Johnny’s café to avoid the smell.

Shawna Bowers was already at Johnny’s, so I sat at a table and studied with her. Shawna was really studying intently, so for the couple hours or so I was there neither of us really talked much.

Eventually I went back to the apartment, only to find everyone was gone. Not only had my roommates disappeared, but the whole courtyard apartment area seemed really dead. I’m not sure where everyone went, but I went over to see Bear and Prodigy, and made plans with them to go to the theaters and see “Black and White”. (Technically watching movies during the school year is a violation of my rules, but I’ve been having so many lapses on this point recently that I thought I might as well go watch something I was interested in instead of just whatever happened to be on in my apartment, and I was very interested in seeing this new “Black and White” movie.)

I went back at my own apartment, where Rob was hanging out. Bella called Rob up to see what he was doing. Since Rob was up to absolutely nothing that night, I invited Bella to come see the movie with Bear and Prodigy and I, and she accepted.

The four of us drove to Showcase Cinema. In the lobby we saw Kyle Park, Lena, and Tu-in there. Since Lena and Tu-in were dating, Kyle was the proverbial 3rd wheel. He didn’t seem to mind, but we jokingly tried to get him to ditch Lena and Tu-in and come watch the movie with us.

There were not that many white people in the theatre, so I was embarrassed when, after a preview for a Spike Lee movie, Bear commented on how much he hated Spike Lee. (Actually to be perfectly honest, Bear was discreet enough that it wasn’t a big deal at the time, but when I retold this story to the boys later in the night I exaggerated it somewhat.)

However because the movie was sexually explicit, I was genuinely embarrassed that I had invited Bella, a girl I hardly knew, along to see it. (Bella, by the way, was much more talkative that night then she usually is. We chatted about movies in general the whole way there, and we talked about our impressions of the movie we had just seen the whole way back.)

When we got back, I invited Bella to hang out with us, but she gave it a pass. I think she said she wanted to watch Saturday Night Live, but I have trouble understanding her through her accent sometimes. Dave Vanderboom was hanging out at my place. We decided to try and find Bosch, and I went with Dave to look for Bosch in Margaret’s apartment. Although Bosch nor Margaret was there, but we talked to Wizzy for a while. Wizzy accidentally let slip something about a surprise birthday party being planned for Bosch, which I wasn’t supposed to know about, because Dave and Wizzy doubted my capacity for secret keeping. Once the secret was out, Dave and Wizzy swore me to secrecy.

I ended up going on an hour or so long walk with Dave. We talked about girls and how frustrating they are. Basically it was the same conversation I always have with Dave.

When I got back to my apartment, Keene and Cakes were in the living room taking shots. John Patton had also shown up to hang out with his big brother Rob.

Earlier that night, Rob had actually gone with Keene and Cakes to a party, and then once he got there he decided he didn’t want to go after all, so he told them he had to work as an excuse for them to bring him back, despite the fact Joel Hoort was working that night.

This was the first night Keene had hung out with our apartment since the infamous cheese and the screen door incident. Rob told me later that Keene had actually apologized for it.

Keene and the boys started to make prank phone calls again, (they had been up to this earlier in the evening as well).) The game was that they would use the Calvin student directory book, call up random girls and ask them out on dates, and giving out the Bear's name and phone number.

One of the girls apparently called the bear back to try and figure out what was going on. The bear of course didn’t know, but he had a pretty good idea of which apartment the calls were originating from. He called over to ask what was going on, and then he came over in person.

When the bear walked in the door he seemed pretty upset, and started shoving Keene. Keene reacted in kind, and for a moment I was worried that I might have to break up a fight between Bear and Keene (a prospect I did not enjoy) but then the bear laughed the whole thing off and everyone was friends again.

As the night progressed, Cakes got pretty drunk off the shots, and Butterball and I had a good laugh when he went into the bathroom to puke, and then wandered around the apartment with bloodshot eyes.

Bear insisted he didn’t want to take any shots, but was finally convinced to by Keene. When he finally did take a shot, it did not seem to agree with him because he had a hard time swallowing it. During that time, when we asked him how it was, he just communicated by gestures and by humming. Cecil and I had a good laugh at this.

Useless Wikipedia Fact
Despite urban legend, Crapper did not invent the flush toilet (the myth being helped by the surname). However, Crapper put in effort to popularise it and did come up with some related inventions. He was noted for the quality of his products and received several Royal Warrants. The noun "crap" was in use long before he was born, but no longer used in Victorian Britain

Link of the Day
Mr. Guam's take on Conservapedia.
and
FBI Investigations Faulted in Scathing Report