1. My parents have been gone for the past few days, leaving my brother and I alone to take care of the house. My brother, being a senior in high school and still having friends in the area, is almost never around. Which leaves me alone in this big, empty house. Which I enjoy. If I have to be alone, I might as well be alone in a gigantic house. But when my music stops, the entire house is silent. Sometimes, if I'm being quiet enough, I can hear the tip-tap of the dog's claws as she walks across the wooden floor. That noise sends a shiver up my spine, considering the dog is at the pound. I don't know what I've been hearing--because it's obviously not the dog--but I've heard it enough to verify that I am actually hearing it. Maybe the dog doesn't even make that sound, maybe I've just always assumed it was the dog. Something besides me is moving within my empty house.
2. Saturday morning I was sitting at my computer, undoubtedly doing something very important, when my father entered the room. We chatted for a moment before he picked up the case of the movie I'd rented the night before. "Secretary? What's this about?" "Oh, you wouldn't like that." "Who's in it?" "It's just some James Spader movie, you really should just--" "I don't know who that is." "Well, it's really not worth--" "Maybe your mother and I will watch it." "You won't like it..." "You always say that." He walked out of the room reading the back of the case out loud. "Secretary lures us to the darker side of...human sexuality..."
I went downstairs half an hour later to make myself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich (chunky peanut butter, raspberry jam with seeds), and to my horror they were already watching it. My father had his arms crossed and my mother was knitting. I tried to make conversation. "Pretty weird movie, huh?" "It's not that weird," my father chimed in, "this is how I treat my secretary."
3. As many of you know,I switched majors a year ago, at the end of my sophomore year of college. I knew, even at the point, that I would have to spend the majority of my junior year taking literature courses in order to fulfill the various course requirements of the major. Which is exactly what I did.
Roughly eight months and seventeen days ago, I had a conversation with a literature professor in which he told that me since I was to become a creative writing major so late in my college career, it would be acceptable for me to take five courses in the major in order to moderate (be accepted into the major) instead of the usual six. Wonderful.
Flash forward roughly eight months and five days to my moderation board: "No, it's not acceptable at all, I don't know why he would tell you that." "But he said that five courses would be permissible! So I took five!" "But five courses isn't permissible! So we can't moderate you!" "But--" "I'm sorry, but there's no point in continuing this meeting."
5.29.2003
I had a really great conversation about music last night in a dream. The guy I was talking to knew a lot about hip-hop--far more than I know--and talking to him about the relationships between different hip-hop bands and the distinctions of modern popular music was really illuminating. It was one of those conversations where I walked away thinking, "Wow, I would have never thought about it that way." The ideas he was spouting quickly and eloquently were not my own, and now that I'm awake I'm sad that I can no longer trust them to be true.
5.27.2003 You know who I bet would have really come to appreciate rap over the last five years? This guy. His name is Louis Roederer, and he's been dead for a very long time. But before he died one-hundred and thirty-three years ago, he invented cristal.
I think about time machines a lot--far more than I think about any other fictional machine. I think if I had a time machine, one of the first things I would do with it is track down Ol' Roederer, and play him fifteen minutes of rap music. "Hear that, Lou?! They mentioned your champagne eighteen times during the chorus alone! Jay-Z is drinking that shit by the case!"
I need to get my priorities straight before I buy a time machine. I just think about rap music too much. I do, however, hope this webpage is insanely popular amongst folk singers in the twenty-third century.
(Examples I found within 10 minutes: 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12)
Today I was sitting on a bench by a fountain when a man walked by and remarked without stopping, "I saw your picture in the paper. Congratulations." "My picture?" I asked. But he just kept on walking.
5.15.2003 The funniest, more horrifying scam I've ever heard of: The 809 Scam
HERE'S HOW IT WORKS:
You will receive a message on your answering machine or your pager, which asks you to call a number beginning with area code 809.
The reason you're asked to call varies. It can be to receive information about a family member who has been ill, to tell you someone has been arrested, died, to let you know you have won a wonderful prize, etc. In each case, you are told to call the 809 number right away. Since there are so many new area codes these days, people unknowingly return these calls.
If you call from the US, you will apparently be charged $2425 per-minute. Or, you'll get a long recorded message. The point is, they will try to keep you on the phone as long as possible to increase the charges. Unfortunately, when you get your phone bill, you'll often be charged more than $24,000.00.
The American disease — and I’m quoting someone I can’t recall — is forgetfulness. A person or people who cannot recollect their past have little point beyond mere animal existence: it is memory that makes things matter.
5.13.2003
IN THE SHOWER THIS MORNING I tried something stupid. I thought it would be an interesting idea to mix together the shampoo and conditioner. Sometimes I can be careless. The fire that ensued devoured the whole building. Two people died and one girl lost her eyebrows, which had been beautiful and pinched tight at the ends in a way that could only have been natural. The firemen were powerless; they compared the building to a coal mine. They said it would go on burning for years. We all had time to make comparisons. The flames behind the window shone like the skin of a candied apple, I thought. No one yelled at me, because I was wearing a towel, but now I'm concerned about what the tabloids could do with my photograph. I don't want my likeness to be used in any relation to Catherine Zeta-Jones. She and I are separate entities who were never meant to be combined.
1. Almost 700 people watched my "Pregnancy" sketch yesterday alone, and we haven't even posted a link to it on the website.
2. I apologize for my recent lack of posting, but as you can see by the below flyer, I have a show coming up on Saturday. If you're in the Upstate New York area, you should come (it's a free show). E-mail me (ben@oldeenglish.org) for directions.
I wish I could take credit for this piece of absolute genius, but I can't. This is the work of Adam Conover, who made this for his dorm fridge and who actually performed the actions described on the flyer.
5.5.2003 "Hello?" "Hi. I'd like to squat my room, but I forgot to come into the office last week. Would it be possible to do that over the phone, or do I have to come over to the office?" "Well, actually, you missed your chance. We had scheduled times and you missed them." "I know, but I actually came in last week and they told me that I would have to come back again between this hour and that hour and I just forgot." "Well, that's really too bad. We have a policy and I can't help you." "Alright, thanks."
I waited half an hour and called back, this time with a different voice.
"Hello?" "Hi, I've been out of the country for the past week, and somebody informed me today that I missed the squatting dates. I wondered if it would be possible to do that now." "Well, actually no, the only squatting times were last week. I'm afraid you missed them." "But I wasn't here. I wasn't around to bring them in. Are you sure it's not possible?" "No, it's not possible. I'm afraid we have a policy that--" "Right. Okay. Thank you anyway."
I waited another half hour, then I showed up at the office in person, using a third variation of my own voice.
"Hello." "Hi, my name is Ben Popik. I'm a Junior II, and I'm afraid that I forgot to come in on Friday and squat my room." "Yeah, Friday was the last day." "But I've got my card right here. Are you sure we can't just take care of it now? Nothing has changed since Friday." "No, I'm afraid we can't do that." "Please? It would make my life a lot easier and it wouldn't affect anyone else." "It's just that we have a policy." "So what, exactly, is the policy?" "Our policy is that we only squat rooms at designated times. I'm sorry, but that's our policy." "But--" "If I were to let you squat your room now, after the deadline, it wouldn't really be fair to the two other people who've called here in the past hour trying to do the same thing."
5.4.2003
I'm currently at the library devising games to keep myself distracted from the nervous breakdown already in progress. My most recent game consists entirely of printing. I'm trying to print more documents than anyone else in the computer lab, and I'm winning by a lot. After this, I'll print out some sort of scoreboard so I can alert everyone else in the lab of just how badly they're losing.
An interesting fact about the library: the "hey don't steal that" detectors at the front doors are really sensitive. I set them off last time I was at the library in about the most embarrassing manner possible. Actually, there are more embarrassing ways.
In high school we used to sift through the stacks looking for the most demeaning titles, things like "Puberty and You" or books of male nudes, and then we would hide them in the backpacks of our classmates. The moment they stepped out through the library doors, the alarms would go off and the aging librarians would have to hobble out of the back office to go through their things. That joke never got old. And it was far more embarrassing than my recent experience, which was also fairly embarrassing.
To understand how I got caught stealing books, you first have to understand Bard's screwy library system. Despite that fact that every student is issued a library card on the first day of school, you have to go to the office of the head librarian to activate it. But I never come to the library during the day, which is of course the only time the head librarian is in the library, so I've never activated my card.
Because I'd been hassled before, and because the attendant wasn't guarding the front desk, I figured I could just put the books in my bag, and hurl the whole heavy mass over the detector. Which is exactly what I did. And it worked perfectly. Except the alarm went off, and the attendant came back. By the time he had reassumed his place behind the desk, I had already picked up my bag and put it on in an attempt to mask the degree of deceit he and I were dealing with. In all fairness, he was very kind considering that his job consists largely of keeping me from doing what I was doing. Though, of course, he didn't understand at first that I was doing what I was doing, and offered warmly, "People forget to put books back all the time." He was less warm when I opened my bag to reveal that I had in fact "forgotten" to put back six books, and further that I had never bothered, in the space of an entire school year, to activate my library card.
You know who I bet would have really come to appreciate rap over the last five years? This guy. His name is 
"An Israeli policeman responding to neighbours' complaints about a noisy hen party found himself mistaken for the main attraction.
