Fear and Loathing in Chambana: May the Odds Be Ever In Your Favor

Last weekend, yours truly fearlessly drove a 1998 Mercury Sable without a working gas gauge thousands of miles from Highland to The Eighth Wonder of the World, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC).

Needless to say, while there we killed people, burned shit, and fucked school.

There were a lot of things I wanted to do that I didn't. I wanted to pass a level 11 song on Dance Dance Revolution. I wanted to protest the introductory press conference of new basketball coach John Groce (more on him at a later date). I wanted to ask every Asian I passed "Hu's your professor?" because apparently that question can get quite complicated. I wanted to drink some wine and snort copious amounts of cocaine.

Sadly, none of these happened. I have not played DDR in years and thus miserably failed at even the easiest songs. My mother forced me to stay in Highland to support my badass little bro at his first track meet, so I could not infiltrate the press corps at Groce's introduction. I was too busy raffing at all the Asians studying on the weekend to ask them such politically incorrect questions. And as for the imbibing, we did that vicariously through The Boys and Girls Guide to Getting Down, my favorite independent film of 2006.

But the best part of this trip was obviously our time spent fapping to the love story of breadmaker Peeta Mellark and archeress Katniss Everdeen during The Hunger Games*. I would have preferred Kristen Stewart appeared somewhere in the movie (nothing sexier than a monotone voice and face made of stone), but drunk Woody Harrelson and creepy Lenny Kravitz more than made up for the story, you know, not being  nearly as enthralling and beautiful as Twilight.

UIUC is the weirdest place you could ever hope to be. You have about 20,000 forever-arone Asians**, another 20,000 whitebread fratstars and sorostitutes, and all ten people from Highland somewhere in between. That bizarre mix and the massssssssive campus (though the place has a real, functional bus system, something we at Mizzou are too good for) turned me off from going there, I do not mean to dismiss UIUC. 

No - the world needs UIUC. We need its thousands of engineering graduates to repair our nation's crumbling buildings during President McCubbins' Second New Deal. We need its weekend library dwellers to make us feel better about our own pathetic lives. We need its shitty TV channel to entertain us at 3 AM. We need the denizens of its Rec Room to film the next hit weight loss infomercial. We need its athletic programs to make the rest of the B1G look good, and we need the B1G to make the SEC look like the greatest collection of schools ever assembled in the history of mankind***. We need its women to wear yoga pants 24/7/365 and to remove them while in the close company of one Ricky Newcomb.

We need it to keep living up to that status - The Eighth Wonder of the World.

*Later, we found a group of Beanie Babies have already shot a far superior remake.

**Of course, many whites fit the forever-arone description, and a few Asians are in the Greek system. We just seek to reinforce racial stereotypes and make easy generalizations through our in-text depiction. This is all we're good at. Don't take it away from us.

***Which, of course, is totally true. #RollTide #WarEagle #WooPigSooey #GoStephenGarcia #GatorFansWearJortz

Fear and Loathing in CoMo: Damn Africa, That's So Fetch!

Last weekend, the lovely lady known on the internets as "aRoseMcCubbins" visited yours truly in scenic Columbia, MO. We were the lamest people in town that Saturday; I mean, it was her spring break, St. Patrick's Day, and we only had enough alcohol to get Amanda's tiny little self "slightly tipsy" during a Mean Girls drinking game. (Yes . . . I celebrated my Irish heritage like a real man. DON'T HATE. TINA FEY IS A COMIC GENIUS AND PRE-CRACK LINDSAY LOHAN WAS OK I GUESS.)

BUDDHA BROS!
(and my awkward smile)

In spite of this, it was a lovely time. Yes, much of it was spent in an emergency room. Yes, we watched lots of Bridal Wars and Rob Dyrdek's Ridiculousness. Yes, the only souvenirs were fat Buddhas and finger puppets of historical figures. And yes, it was fucking awesome.

Saturday night we let the party get the best of us*. Due to the jacked sleep schedule we were on, there was no sleep to be had, so we just talked and talked and talked about the shit people who think too much think about. Politics, genius and the nature of success, the impossibility of maintaining mental health in our modern age, our love lives, the words of Truman Capote and the songs of R Kelly, the principles of misogynistic feminism, the possibility that the creationists are right, the massive right-wing conspiracies behind 9/11 and the moon landing . . . basically, all the normal shit people already address in everyday conversation.

We concluded that the world is fucked. It's the truth, and it's kinda ugly, but it's not bad. Life on Earth isn't easy. You gotta deal with a never-ending stream of assholes and bitches and dumbfucks and bullshit heading your way. So what? There are still laughs to be had and tears to be cried. There are awesome people to meet and talk to and possible fuck and marry and divorce. There are MGMT albums and Rams Super Bowl victories. It's OK to get down as long as you remember all the reasons there are to get back up again.

Here's to a future full of more great weekends with great people. Hopefully there's more booze and weed to accompany the journey next time.

*I claim to be cultured, yet I just linked to a Wiz Khalifa song. LOLOLOL. /hides in shame