can i just turn in my blog for a thesis? otherwise i'm not graduating

my favorite pair of pants finally got too tore up to wear outside without looking like a hippie. duf and i were changing his spark plugs and it was damn hot and i was tired of looking like a hippie, so i turned them into shorts without even taking them off. thanks for the knife, santa. now i get to wear my favorite jeans again, and i get to wear them all summer, and i still won't wash them because jean shorts are lame, but cutoffs are trailer park, and i OWN t-park style.

well not everybody understands fashion like i do. i'm out tonight rocking my pants with a white t-shirt, and as i'm climbing into my car this indian girl walks up to me, saying "holy shit" and smiling and staring at me. i told her she had me confused with somebody else. then i notice how she's dressed. jean shorts. something's written on her shirt. she snapped to her senses and asked me, "oh, were you on the barcrawl?" huh? what bar crawl? and she busted out laughing. "oh my god you're not. you're just wearing them. it's the 'students against jean shorts' bar crawl." i shit you not. she warned me not to go to clyborne's or i'd get my ass kicked. more likely i would've made about a hundred friends and they would've bought me drinks.

i've got news for you, bitches. everything comes back eventually. all it takes is one rock star to get the cool kids wearing it, and one movie star to piss off the cool kids and get all the other kids wearing it. like trucker hats and white belts. i've seen cali girls in cutoff highwaters. i swear to god you'll all do this when your ripped jeans start falling apart. and if you weren't lucky enough to have shitty jeans, you'll pay abercrombie to do it for you. i'll be john the baptist of kitschy college fashion. and i'm so damn smug about it. somebody punch me.

one night, two posts. blog heaven

i've told this story to every person i've seen in the last three days. might as well put it on the internet. it's about how gross and creepy ben is and how women should never give him their phone numbers.

ben met a girl at murphy's thursday night and got her number at closing time as she was leaving. five minutes later he walked out and we lost track of him, thinking he'd gone home with her. he hadn't. he just left us, walked out of the bar, and called his new number. he said "hey this is ben. you want to come over and make out?" the girl declined and said that was an inappropriate thing to say. he said "no, i think it's very appropriate. you should do it." she told him no but said to call her the next day and they'd hang out. which makes her patient, cool, and desperate, which is exactly what ben needs.

of course he didn't call her the next day. he waited until about midnight when he was drunk and suggested somebody else call her and say something inappropriate. matt said he didn't know the girl, so why the hell not. but he was going to pretend to be ben. deal. matt called the number and left a message. didn't even fake a german accent. he said "hi this is ben again. i was hoping you'd come over and i could make your labia sing." great! so then everybody's laughing at matt and ben feels mad brave and wants to leave a funny message too and he calls and says "hey, this is ben. sorry, that wasn't me earlier, that was matt joking around. so i was hoping you'd come over and i could make your ass boil."

ben hung up and smiled all smug feeling clever, and matt and i stared at him mortified, slackjawed. he had obviously crossed the line, and we told him so. "oh come on, i was just having some fun." we had to explain to him that not only had he been vaguely threatening and explicitly creepy, he had also implicated matt. the girl had been with the british illini girls (not true, but don't tell him), who we drink with almost every night. (they hadn't heard, actually. i told them the story last night.) we even convinced him she might call the cops if he didn't apologize. he did, the next morning, when she finally picked up. which only took four tries.

like i said, i told everybody this story. later that night i saw the new kid in our research group, and after he reminded me what his name was, i told him the whole thing, then immediately forgot i'd done it because there was a dog running around with a cigarette in its mouth (sad) and the cops came (funny).

the next night ben and i went to our adviser's house for a party (weird) and deepak (real-life genius, pretty much guaranteed to be famous in ten years, doesn't get out much) met us at the door and asked if it was true that ben asked a girl to come over and make out with him. we said yes, it's true, but however he heard the story, thank god he didn't know the whole thing. oh, but he did. and so did everyone else. adam had remembered every detail and relayed it faithfully to our whole group. even hannaneh knew. sweet quiet iranian hannaneh was giggling. i wouldn't even say "pee" in front of her, let alone "labia". that's when ben turned to me and said, in all seriousness, "phil, i don't know how or when, but i'm going to get you for this." and you know what? he never will. because i own him now. my very own german.

the hpv

people are still surprised when i bring this up in conversation, despite its being over a week old, so i'll link to it here. merck's new HPV vaccine "gardasil" just passed its phase II trials. for some reason it's just for women, which is disappointing, but c'est la vie. this drug protects against the two strains of the HPV that cause cervical cancer and the two that cause genital warts. supposedly in this trial the experimental group showed a 90% reduction in cervical cancer rates, and i think there were zero instances of genital warts. it's entering phase III trials soon and they hope to sell it in about two years. glaxosmithkline should have a vaccine coming out at about the same time that doesn't protect against warts.

if you know anyone who's died of cervical cancer or anyone suffering with genital warts, you'll be as excited as i am to see this happen. there are an estimated 1 million new HPV infections a year in america alone. these drugs could lead to the eradication of those two illnesses in a generation. in rich countries, that is. the third world is still fucked. the WTO is doing everything it can to guarantee drug companies aren't vicimized by poor people with diseases.

speaking in the native tongue

i just started richard wright's autobiography, black boy. i just finished huck finn, and wright felt like a great follow-up. his native son essentially taught white people that black men weren't all placid and servile uncle toms and nigger jims. he also has a lot to say about manhood, and it gets tangled up in my head and makes me confused.

on the one hand, i'm 23 and it's springtime in college and i want ass. and the big lesson i've learned in this place is the best way to get some without hurting anyone is to drink a lot, fuck strangers, and lie all you want as long as it's not about your intentions. but it feels really empty. and the drunken conversations, the acquaintances and drinking buddies and familiar conversations, our piercings, baseball, the chief, what's your major, where's your accent from. if a night doesn't end in fucking, it ends bored, drunk, and frustrated. i felt like i wasted my undergrad years. i didn't waste these two years, but i'm disappointed again. this town was boring and dry. worse than that it was cold and disinterested. so businesslike. even sex was like a product, faceless and without personality or style.

so goodbye champaign and goodbye midwest. they say things are better out west. i'll let you know.