After the events of this weekend, I believeI have found a way to combine the forces of good and evil into one amazingly beautiful, awesome event. Specifically, I would love to bombard the wasteland known as Kiewit with jars of a most divine sandwich-spread, peanut butter.
How I came to desire this rather unusual event is the result of nothing more than a pretty boring and sad Friday afternoon.
I have always been somewhat skeptical and disapproving of the computerized, technological revolution that seems to base its brainwashing expansion efforts right here on the Dartmouth campus, but I never realized what power this takeover has over emotional stability.
But last Friday, the war began. Casualties have been insubstantial thus far, but I am far from raising my white flag of surrender. Kiewit will not have the last laugh.
Paralleling the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, my printer decided to just break that Friday about an hour before a paper was due. This seemingly minor catastrophe in fact triggered a whole series of painful events.
First, someone in my hall volunteered to print my paper to Kiewit - two copies, just to be safe. After a good half hour or so, I went over to that ugly little building behind the library to retrieve it. And ... it just wasn't there. Not under my name. Not under Kim's name. Not there at all. Great.
Then I went to the always fabulous "Computer Store" to buy some new ink to try to miraculously energize my sad little printer into working again. While I was there, I asked about disk drives (something Kiewit has cheated many of us out of) only to be MADE FUN OF for not understanding exactly what a "Zip Drive" is.
My next stop was to that ever-so-ironically named "Help Desk" to ask about my printer dilemma as well as some more serious problems that have infected my Powerbook since November (something to do with "Extensions," another term the Kiewit people expect me to understand).
The interesting thing about the "Help Desk" people is that they just don't help. Really, sometimes I think they try to help but just don't know how to deal with computer-stupid people like me.
Returning to my room, I installed the new ink (which did fix the problem - yes, I already owned up to my stupidity), and then followed the "Help Desk" guy's advice to try to "reinstall" everything on my hard drive.
Well, that fiasco took a good hour and left me with a completely empty and non-functional machine. So I called the "Help Desk" for a little help, naturally, in dealing with my lack of BlitzMail and empty Apple Menu.
"You can just put whatever you want in the Apple Menu," the girl told me.
"Well, what am I supposed to have in there, and where do I get it?" I asked.
"Uhh, I don't know. It's really whatever you want."
"Well, I have no idea. Can I bring it over and have someone help me?" I asked, since I was speaking to the "Help Desk" and all.
"Well, we won't, but maybe the repair shop could. I guess," she told me in such a snotty tone, implying that my question was so simple that help really shouldn't be needed.
"All right, bye," I told her, having no other way to defend myself from this controlling technological superpower.
Or so I thought. Suddenly my ultra-pathetic peanut butter taste test emerged as a saving grace, my only strategy for attack against this monstrous entity.
While explaining the magnificent being that is Reduced-Fat Jif to another friend in the hall - the one we affectionately call Hockey Kim (obviously to distinguish her from the Kim that printed for me) - we suddenly had a breakthrough. During the following military convention, we decided to use the losing jars of godly peanut nectar to bombard the warlords of Kiewit. Sadly, there were only four jars left, as I had to throw away my lovely Jif to prevent myself from eating the entire thing in less than a day (a phenomenon common to peanut butter addicts like myself).
But we have time, time to collect enough jars and enough allies to cover that building in oozing, sticky, brown, extremely fatty peanut butter. All we need is the help of all you peanut butter lovers and Kiewit attack victims on campus to join our cause (and, surely, those two categories must include all of you at least once).
If nothing else, I'm betting those "Help Desk" people will be a little less intimidating with some good old chunky Skippy smeared on their faces.
