Lion Food ✍ Sex With Old Women ✍ Better Than Sneezing ✍ $2 Million Will

Stranded With Hamlet ✍ Hawaiian Drag Queens ✍ Spring Break Survival (maybe)

“Mrs. Kerr,
you’re trying to
seduce me.”

The
Collegian
Volume 17 Number 5 April 2006
Manifest
3

4
Africa Abroad
Val Larson
8
Lessons in Danish
Features
Stream of Consciousness:
Easter
Will Bruce
The Collegian is published monthly by and
for the students at Washington College, 300 Wash-
ington Avenue, Chestertown, Maryland 21620.
Local correspondence can be sent through
campus mail. E-mail collegian_editor@washcoll.
edu or visit http://collegian.washcoll.edu.

land.
The Collegian is designed on Macintosh
computers using Adobe InDesign and is printed
at Chesapeake Publishing House in Elkton, Mary-

The Collegian does not discriminate on any

basis. We reserve the right to edit submitted mate-
rial as we deem necessary. Monkey, you can talk?
...on the cover

Kate Amann I taught myself to talk! This is incredibly odd. I

know. Let’s fight!
11
On the Uses of Dead April 2006
Livestock Volume 17, Number 5 Photo by Kaitlin Wedge
Val Larson
13
Sophie Kerr Special
Edited by Peter W. Knox
Departments
Including a short story by Round Robin: Round 2 6
Michael McGrath Reilly Jorret

Concert Reveiw: Mogwai 7

And excerpts from fiction by Johanna Schaeffer
Cindy Brown
Will Grofic Review: The Neti Pot 11
Renée Farrah
Capella Meurer
Juliana Converse Comics: Theology 101 10
Jackson Ferrell
19
Review: Mexico East 17
BusHitler:
Being Diplomatic
Sophie Megan Walburn

Wes Schantz Lives: Poetry

Erin Thorp, Will Grofic
20
The first
22 annual Sophie Endgame 24
Spring Break Kerr section Peter W. Knox
Snippets
Edited by Johanna Schaeffer

The
Collegian Kaitlin Wedge Additional Contributors Issue Photo Credits:
Peter W. Knox Photography Editor Renée Farrah Kaitlin Wedge, Val Larson, Renée
Editor-in-Chief Wes Schantz Farrah, Lindsay Bregman, dan-
Johanna Schaeffer Jackson Ferrell hostel.com, dansk-deli-houston.
Kate Amann Megan Walburn Will Bruce com, frenettik.com, answers.com,
Layout Editor Copy Editors Val Larson washcoll.edu, gettyimages.com,
Lindsay Bergman Michael McGrath google images
Assistant Layout Editor Molly E. Weeks Cindy Brown
Business Manager Capella Meurer
Molly E. Weeks Juliana Converse
Will Grofic Reilly Joret Erin Thorp
Features Editors Distribution Manager
 Dangling is life. Life, thoughts, actions, whatever–

Stream of
in one way everything is permanent once you do it,
because that’s the way things work… done is done.
But there is a tome of apologetics that goes along
with every thought or decision in which rests the
thoughts about the decision or thought before, during,

Consciousness:
and after that thought or decision has been thought
or done. The “after” part especially… that part is
updated years after what’s done is done. Sometimes
to some effect, because the afterthought becomes
a new forethought, but sometimes to an effect that
only the person… well, gee, this paragraph has

Easter
become convoluted and navel-gazing- and I haven’t
discussed Easter at all. What is an Easter Themed
Article anyway? The History of Easter Throughout
The Ages? A religious debate? Should I write an
exposé of the Christian conspiracy? I hear that sells.
Will Bruce I’m a Christian. I’m not sure that I can write
any sort of exposé, because I’ve never been tricked by

D
eadline? 21st. Today’s Date? 18th. Creative on this year? Is it the same every year? Is Easter my faith. I grew up Christian, and I used to wonder
Motivation: not much. Apply that formula to in March? Since coming to college I haven’t been whether it was true or not, but I don’t do that anymore.
all article possibilities and the only feasible very in touch with the things the real world places It’s been too real for me for too long to be anything
one is the seasonally-themed Easter Article. And here weight on. Real world is absolutely the right word to but true to me. I’ve closed my eyes and directed
I am on an 18 hour bus ride back from Florida with use here. College is a half-truth… perhaps growing body, soul, heart, dreams, pain, hopes, hurt, joy, and
the women’s crew team and a notebook. I didn’t more and more truthful as the years go on… As a breath skyward with shattering force and felt myself
really pick the Easter Themed Article, it was just the freshman I couldn’t know… but yes. It is a place emptied and lifted and changed. There is a very large
inevitable result of a number of variables. where people are stitched together into patterns that part of me that can look at the things that I ask people
When I think about Easter, the first thing that are real and beautiful, but get all their source material to swallow when I tell them I’m a Christian. I mean,
pops into my head, for whatever reason, I know it looks
is a concert I went to one Easter after bad. I know it
church was over – it was the Unicorns looks stupid.
and a bunch of other Canadian bands In a few places
(the Arcade Fire, at the time, was just in the New
some other Canadian band), and my Testament, Paul
mom had to come along, because that’s acknowledges
the way things were back then. It was that it looks
in the basement of a Unitarian Church. stupid. Easter
After a set which opened half an hour late looks stupid
with the song “Hey guys, we’re going to – on this day,
leave and go get some beer, mmkay?” you’re supposed
and then actually opened another half- to believe that a
hour later, the Unicorns closed with man, who was
a great rendition of their theme song also God, and
during which they invited everyone in God’s son, rose
the audience up on stage for an Easter from the dead
egg hunt. They had hidden some of after three days.
those little foil-wrapped chocolate eggs And that this is
everywhere. It was pretty great. I had important for
fun. some reason.
I’m not going to be able to That’s a lot to
read this to type it up when I get swallow. But
back home… my handwriting is me you know…
scribbling while I think, and the bus is college is a lot
bouncing around…like an Easter bunny. to swallow.
Ha. That’s thematic. Or like a toddler Feelings are a
needing a piss. Ha. That’s just funny. lot to swallow.
Funnier. Toddler Jim, I have bad news This is
for you – we are now four hours into an 18-hour from umbilical cords attached to much larger quilts the most thinking I’ve done about Easter… or
trip, and Tom Murray is in charge of the bathroom of experience that lay draped over beds that parents God… in about a month. It’s almost Spring. It’s
back there on the coach, and I’m not sure he wants continue to dust off until their travelers return to sit almost Summer. I haven’t talked to God in a long
to let you pee and possibly miss and add bad smells around sluggish in the sticky summer sun trying to time. I think everyone should talk to God. I think
to his list of reasons he doesn’t want to be on the explain what they saw in dream-land. it’s beautiful when the air is just right, and then that
bus. So you’re going to have to sit tight. 18 hours. College is one long speech, and you always little breeze makes it just a tad too cold, and then it’s
Well, 14. 14 hours, Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is have to have a thesis, and prove it. You can’t just just right again, and the trees are blossoming, and the
what Easter is about. Christ, what day is Easter even let things dangle. But you know what? Dangling? bees start. Buzz buzz love buzz.

Vol. 17, Issue 5 The Collegian 3


Africa Abroad
I
t was funny to watch people’s faces when I told
them I was going to South Africa for a semester.
First there’d be this kind of happy expression,
because people are generally happy when you tell
them you’re going abroad, either because they know
it will be a healthy experience for you, or because
they simply want you out of the country. Then the
smile would fade and the forehead would wrinkle
into a look of concern, as they began to remember
all the things they’d heard about S.A. And then,
finally, the face would resolve itself into a look of
4 The Collegian
Val Larson
confusion. “South Africa? Cool. Wow. Um...why
South Africa?”
By the time I was ready to leave, I had
encountered this reaction so much that I had a whole
list of reasons ready to whip out at a moment’s notice.
Because it’s warm there. Because they have giraffes.
Because of the nifty drama program. Because the
government won’t let me access my secret Swiss bank
account from here. Because I said I would. Because
it’s different. Because it’s important. Because I
can.
All of which were actual reasons, to some
extent. The process of choosing S.A. was me
deciding I wanted to travel to a different hemisphere
from Ireland. Japan was too expensive, Australia
was too cliché, Thailand’s program was nonexistent,
China didn’t cater to either of my majors, and South
Africa had none of those problems.
If I were to break it down to one reason,
though, it would have to be Nikki’s picture. Nikki
Tripp went to Africa last year, and came back with
amazing stories, telling anyone who would listen
that this program was absolutely life changing, that
she hadn’t wanted to come back. Plus, she had this
picture. It was of her petting a cheetah and smiling
at the camera. The cheetah looked pretty chill, too.
And I saw this picture and that to myself, “That is so
cool. I want to do that.” So now I am.
But I hadn’t really sat down and asked
myself why, why, why South Africa. Why third-
world South Africa, with all its problems and
scariness and instability? It took until I was on the
plane on the way to the Cape Verde islands that the
all the questions that “cheetah picture” didn’t cover
finally presented themselves all at once. There I was,
halfway to Johannesburg, asking myself why I was
going to South Africa. I drew a complete blank.
That’s not fun to do whilst flying over a vast blue
ocean of nothing much.
Of course, at that point I was tired and
stressed and dirty, in the middle of two straight days
April 2006
of traveling, in my tenth hour on a plane with ten where ritual sacrifice happened. Poverty preserves There is a power in that. In this place of so
more to look forward to. I had just finished reviewing tradition in these places steeped with unemployment much poverty and misery, I am neither impoverished
my little info packet’s section on the AIDS epidemic, and desperate boredom. A 90% unemployment rate nor miserable. Therefore I can help those who are.
and it was beginning to dawn on me that considering meant that these people couldn’t get jobs if they In the midst of weakness and tangible sadness, I am
the mad dash through the Atlanta terminal to the wanted to. Sometimes we came upon stretches of strong and can step into places that others can’t climb
connecting flight, my luggage had probably never government-funded housing—acres of land filled out of. I can help.
made it onto the plane to South Africa. Being back at with hundreds of small, rectangular houses, crammed That’s new. And it’s a good feeling. In a
home in Pennsylvania, or even better, back at WAC together to fit as many dwellings as possible in an place where the only things they have an abundance
(with all the domestic comforts, without the jet lag) allocated space. Places where it’s skeletally obvious of are pineapples and poverty, I can do something
was looking very attractive, in the way that things how much these people need housing. These places about it. I can volunteer. I can meet the denizens of
do when they are unattainable. Or I could have just aren’t where you would choose to live. It’s where these townships without fear; they are people. And
gone back to Ireland. That would have been nice. you go when there’s nowhere else. people who need people are the luckiest people in
Ireland was easy. Ireland had just one It was on that first trip there that fear faded and the world. We could have pineapple together, or
climate, which it did and did well, all year round. was replaced by something else. It wasn’t precisely something.
Ireland was full of locales that I knew and loved. sorrow, or pity, or great sadness. No condescension I still don’t know what to expect, aside from
Ireland had places it was okay to walk through alone or guilt. Not anger. More an amalgamation of the eventual arrival of my luggage.
at 2am. Ireland included friends, and cheap flights to these that seethed into this calm and iron-wrought But I’m learning to look forward to it. ✍
the rest of Europe. And in addition to being a mere determination. I am here. I can do something.
seven hour flight away, Ireland was home to people
whose accents I could understand.
Also, I was right about the luggage.
I was—and still am—scared of Africa.
Hey, I’d read The Hot Zone. I knew the statistics
on AIDS and TB and murder and rape. I knew
about the struggles since apartheid ended. I’d read
the accounts of the street children and violence and
BOOKPLATE
rings of prostitution, too often in conjunction. I was
familiar with the names of diseases like yellow fever,
We Moved and Expanded Our Selection of Titles!
cholera, and malaria, which had formerly affected Same Address, Different Storefront.
only characters on the Oregon Trail. In the face of all
of this, the colors of Nikki’s picture began to fade and
Check it Out.
dull—as, throughout the course of a devilishly long
flight, did my enthusiasm.
It was only having arrived in Africa and
encountered the challenges of lost luggage and jet
lag, the realities of beggars and street kids, and just
the incredible culture shock that hits at unexpected
moments, like the first time you realize the toilet
flushes in the opposite direction, that I realized the
real reason why I came.
Without the opportunity of this program,
without the cushion of Rhodes University, without
the peer support of the fellow WACos in this with
me, I never would have come to Africa on my own.
Ever. Are you kidding me? It’s a huge country, with
lions and tigers and bears, oh my, and deserts and
rainforests à la Joseph Conrad’s worst nightmares,
and apartheid remnants and poverty and devastating
disease. Yes, that’s right: I came because I never
would have come otherwise, because to be honest,
this place scares the shit out of me. 112 S. Cross Street
I really need to think my reasoning through
more thoroughly before I get on a plane. 410-778-4167
Ever so ironically, the first ebbing of that
fear came when we ventured—in a car—into the
townships. I saw stretches of small ramshackle
houses, patched together out of scrap metal and
Fine Used Books
pieces of wood, or with mud plastered onto timber 1st Editions, Signed Volumes
frames, just holding together enough to qualify as
rough dwellings the size of dorm rooms, but housing Imported Tiles & Ceramics
entire families. Goats, chickens, and cows wandered
through the street, which I at first thought was adorable, Enter through the door under the tile sign.
until I realized that these animals are food sources,
or that they’re there because the idea of bride-price Book searches are welcome! We mail worldwide!
still exists, or until I began to recognize the places

Vol. 17, Issue 5 The Collegian 5

 T
he door stuck a little, holding close to the jamb
Round 2
as if it was locked from the other side, but there
was certainly no lock on this side of the door.
He let go of the knob and took a few steps back, but
his determination to uncover the truth about the door
made him remove his coat and set his umbrella to the
Reilly Joret side. He grabbed the dented knob with both hands
and placed one foot on the wall beside the door. He
Round Robin put his weight on his leg and yanked with all of his
might; he felt as though he had not exerted himself
so much in years...maybe since college. God, had it
been that long? Finally, the door gave way, flying
open with a loud popping sound, throwing Charles
back. He landed with a perfect view of the white
ceiling of his flat. A second later, Charles realized
that the popping sound had not come from the door,
but rather, from somewhere in his lower back; a
shooting pain followed that left him laying in agony.
He looked up over his stomach and over the tops of
his shoes and saw what was behind the
door, ending the mystery that had been
haunting him since the appearance of
the door.
Beyond the threshold of the
unexplainable door, there was a dim L-
shaped room, barely outlined by light.
Charles slowly managed to get into a
kneeling position, carefully bracing
himself up on a chair and a small table
that were nearby. As he kneeled, he
noticed a smell that had not been in his
flat before. It was a pungent, sickly-
sweet aroma, almost visible in the air.
Long curls of smoke began to emerge
from the room like arms stretching out
into many motioning fingers. Charles
sniffed the animated air. It was an enchanting odor,
something he had never smelled before. It did not
belong to the smoke of the cigarettes he smelled
when passing by strangers on the streets, nor did it
remind him of the smell that came from many of the
unwelcoming rooms in his college dormitory. This
was something much different.
Charles grabbed his umbrella and, using it as
a crutch, slowly got up from his crouched position.
He carefully poked his head through the doorway. It
looked as though it had been sealed for quite some
time. There were fresh chips and cracks in the paint
from where he had forced the door open, and the
inside of the doorway seemed to have been sealed
with some sort of thick, black tar. But Charles did not
notice any of this; he was too intrigued by what was
beyond the doorway. He thought about how he had
taken the trash out countless times to the dumpster
behind his building, and yet...here was this room.
The room looked old—perhaps decrepit is a
better word—as if it hadn’t been cared for, or even
cleaned, in years. Around the bend in the L at the
back of the room, old divans and couches with burn
holes and patchwork stains crowded around a large,
low coffee table. Several men dressed in tattered
dress clothes sat, leaning in around the table that
was covered in tin foil, long glass tubes, and Zippo
lighters. They didn’t seem to notice that the door
had been opened, nor that Charles had entered and
6 The Collegian
was peering around the corner. One man leaned in
and picked up a glass tube. He pushed his long hair
from his face, securing it behind his ear, and began
to smoke. The sweet, strong aroma Charles had
smelled coming from the doorway once again filled
his nostrils. The other men reclined and stroked their
unshaven faces. The smoking man finished and set
his pipe and lighter back down on the table. He sat
back and began to nod his head as if drifting off to
sleep; very quietly, he said, “Nicely done, Chef.”
One of the other men, a heavyset man with a sallow
face acknowledged the compliment and continued
sipping from his mug.
Charles stood motionless leaning on his
umbrella, as he had been for the past five minutes.
Carefully, trying to be as silent as possible, he inched
a little farther from the doorway to get a better look
at what else was in the room. A fireplace burned
slowly, the flames rising and falling on one nearly
extinguished log. Several small lamps barely touched
the room with light from underneath yellowed shades
cross-stitched with orange and black butterflies. On
the walls hung limp and dusty arabesque tapestries
that may have been beautiful once, but now were dull
and faded. Many of them were covered over with
tattered pages from newspapers, torn and smeared
as napkins, the stories and headlines only barely
visible.
Conversation began between the men; it
was low and steady, and for the first time since he
opened the door, Charles felt like an intruder. At
first, his instinctive curiosity had provided a reason
for entering and exploring, but now it became quite
clear to Charles that he was imposing upon a world
that he was quite unfamiliar with, and not sure that
he wanted to know. Slowly and silently, he crept
back from where he came, back into the reassuring
familiarity of his flat and shut the door as firmly as he
could without making too much noise. He dropped
his umbrella by the door and sat leaning against the
wall, pulling his knees in tightly to his chest. He tried
to forget about what he had seen inside that room—
he wasn’t even sure if he really had seen it. But the
part of him that had driven him to open the door in
the first place kept wondering: if he opened that red
door again, would that room still be there; and in the
morning, would the door even be there at all? ✍
April 2006

M
arch 6th, five thirty in the evening. I
have slept nearly eight hours in the
past two days. Am approaching a dull
kind of insanity. Five thirty in the evening, two of
my buddies ask me if I want a ride. “To where?”
“Sonar. The Mogwai concert. The one you
bought a ticket for two days ago.” What
day is today? I recall buying the ticket some
span of time ago, but have no concept of the
passage of time in terms of 24-hour increments.
“Yeah, I want a ride.”
We leave forty-five minutes later, five of us
squished in a little Corolla. I remember that I used
to have a Corolla. It was midnight blue with brown
plastic wood on the dash. The horn had a chipper sort
of beep to it.
We listen to some Mogwai, then, having
whetted our appetites for their sound, put on Coheed
and Cambria. The new album sounded like Rush
meets Metallica meets every emo band you’ve ever
listened to. Rating: grumble.
We arrive at Sonar. It’s right across the street
from a dirty little diner with murals on the outside walls:
Hollywood Diner. Sign says something to the effect
of “Dinner and a Movie.” Clever, I guess. The club
is also next to the UTZ potato chip factory. The neon
lights in the little girl-logo’s hair have gone out; all that
remains are her round, red cheeks. They look like eyes.
A demon is snacking on Grandma’s Kettle Cooked.
We enter the club. Nothing is happening
yet. People are already collected near
the front of the stage; others wander in
small groups or huddle by the bars or
by the t-shirt-and-LP table. My buddy
and I pay four-fifty each for a beer. I tip
the guy a dollar, my standard tip for one
drink regardless of how much it costs.
I find out that some group called
Growing is opening. I assume the music
would be somewhat in the style of
Mogwai, but not as well-constructed.
I count on the music being electronic
and instrumental. I get electronic, I
get instrumental, but I also get a lot of
noise. Two guitars: a blonde, thin man
in a baseball cap on the first and a short
man with long curly brown hair on the
second. I’m given hope when the second
man begins to play a mad sort of Irish lullaby while
the first man pounds out a dirty beat below it, but
abandons it when the first man loses his rhythm. He
stops playing, leaving his compatriot on his own
for a while, then, once he thinks he’s found his beat
(he hasn’t), begins again. At one point he makes a
strumming motion over the guitar strings, but nothing
is coming out. I wondered if this was some kind of
avant-garde, John Tesh-ish statement. I decide it is
simply lousy music. I witness a badly executed jam
session by what could only be classified as a noise
band. The rest of the forty-five minute, breakless
session is cacophonous. My neck and feet begin to
ache from standing in such a crowded space at the
front of the room. The tight-packed crowd begins
to grow restless. During the (infrequent) quieter
parts of Growing’s set, I can hear people talking
Vol. 17, Issue 5
Review
Concert:
Mogwai
to each other, commenting on how bad these guys
are. I think we all clap at the end because it is over.
Mogwai takes an unreasonably long time
to set up. “This is the hard anticipation, right here,”
said the burly man who had just cut in front of my
buddies and me, blocking a large portion of our
vied-for view. We wait. Eventually people begin
to chant. And Mogwai takes the stage. There is no
longwinded introduction, no showboating or crowd-
milking. There is no need. The audience screams
as the band casually takes up their instruments.
Two guitars begin a whale-song duet that is
perfectly matched in rhythm and in tune. The third
guitar chimes in, playing behind the duet, distorted
but in key. The crowd is mesmerized for nearly a
minute, then, the drummer kicks in with a great beat
which rattled my eyelids and caused me to blink
at each hit of the bass drum. The crowd convulses,
like a man in the throes of a powerful orgasm, and
responds with cheers and body-rocking bobbing to
the air-shaking beat. Then, the song rises up from the
depths without warning. It is exhilaratingly jarring.
And that is the first song. Unlike the
auditorally offensive Growing, Mogwai’s songs
have a perceptible beginning, middle, and end.
The band is reminiscent of Godspeed, You Black
Emperor (and every classical composer) in that
they generally start with an opening theme, present
The Collegian
Johanna Schaeffer
variations, and then eventually come back, full circle,
to the beginning. The variations, rather than being
the traditional melodic variations held together with
a consistent rhythm used by classical composers,
involves complex changes in both meter and in tune.
At one point, the synthesized piano keeps both the
rhythm and the melody, as zinging, distorted guitars
rise off it while the drums are silent. At the times
when the rhythm would completely change, these
changes are usually gradual and prefaced with a
drum-free guitar-and-synth exchange. Sometimes
though, as with the first song, the changes
will be dramatic. Usually this works, though
it does throw off the bobbers in the audience.
One would imagine that such music would
be hard to enjoy, hard to even bob to. But the
crowd is held in a trance, alternately lifted
up and brought down again. There is no real
crowd bonding at this show- Mogwai fosters
contemplation rather than companionship.
Mogwai sometimes rocks hard, and sometimes
presents beautiful, slow melodies. The great
thing about them is that they do both these things
in one song. This is music to be experienced.
They play for about an hour, during which
time they manipulate the crowd like a wizard
would his enchanted princess. The last song
is fast-moving with a heavy drumbeat. We are
into it. It is catchy and loud with many layers.
Vibrations from the speakers make our very legs
shake. Suddenly, with a final roar, the music stops
abruptly. We emerge from our trances, dropped
roughly from our private clouds of enjoyment. We
all want more, even as Mogwai, still aloof, slouch
from the stage. We chant, clap for about five minutes.
They can’t leave us like this. We aren’t finished.
And neither are they. Their spell is not
complete. There are two more songs. The final one
ends on a tremendous note that goes on forever, held
by the amplifiers as Mogwai leaves the stage for the
final time.
Intense.
We gather ourselves, locate our lost buddy.
On the way home, I drink a 20-oz cup of coffee and
eat some cheese and pepperoni. This is the first time in
my life I have had to “come down” from music. ✍
7
 without much confusion on the driver’s part.
From the outside, the hostel was every bit
as charming as I had imagined it would be judging
by the information I’d seen on the Internet. I started
getting that good feeling you get when you know
you’re about to take off your 5,000 cubic inch

Lessons
capacity backpack, maybe have a drink, and settle in
for a while.
So you can understand my shock and disdain
when the lovely and apologetic woman behind the
counter informed me that not only did they not seem

in Danish
to have my reservation that I’d made nearly three
months ago and confirmed by e-mail, but the hostel
was full, and it was the only hostel in the area.
That good, putting-the-backpack-down-and-
having-a-drink feeling? Yeah. That went away.
Kate Amann I didn’t panic. In fact, I knew I’d end up
somewhere by that evening in some hostel bed.
Mostly, I was just incredibly disappointed that it

T
here’s an unwritten would not be there.
law of the universe The lady was nice enough to start scouring
somewhere that says the Danhostel system for available beds in nearby
the more control you try to hostels as I sat there at a table in the cute little lobby,
exert over something, the looking through the glass counter at things I could
more likely it is to sooner or buy had I forgotten to pack them in my excitement
later implode spectacularly for my travels. Toothpaste, travel alarm clock, candy
in your face—and always bars, the essentials. Eventually, the woman informed
when you least expect me that all of the hostels in the surrounding towns
it. As a self-proclaimed were full. Should she try Copenhagen? Sure, why
control freak, I have, of not? Two more days in a place I’d already been. I was
course, spent my life trying too tired to attempt wrestling my way into another
to disprove the existence country at that point. Plus, my Copenhagen Card—
of this law. To control it, an all-in-one transportation and attraction pass for
even. I am the most prompt, thrifty travelers—still had a day left on it.
often over-prepared person I After more scouring, she secured me the
know. I expect things to run only bed left in a Danhostel in Copenhagen, which
smoothly. I expect events to happened to be the one on the other side of town
unfold according to plans The hostel I did not get to stay in. Looks nice, huh? in Amager. At least there would be something new
I’ve checked over and over. and everything. I left Copenhagen in the morning about my stay. Only thing to do now was get back.
And yet sometimes, well, shit happens. and caught a train up to Elsinore after checking out
Regardless of the fact that my inner wiring of the Danhostel Bellahøj and picking up one last
may be perfect when it comes to planning, technology scrumptious cinnamon roll at a local bakery I’d
has its flaws. Flaws that cause one to be stranded in adopted as my own for the previous 3 days. (By the
the land of Hamlet with a botched reservation, an way, forget Cinnabon; go to Denmark. I mean, these
hourly train that one has just missed, and a particularly people invented the Danish. I swear they put drugs in
ominous-looking cloud cover. Something rotten in them.) The ride took about an hour, and to be honest,
the state of Denmark, indeed. I don’t really remember most of it. It was raining off
All of this happened to me a mere four days and on and I probably spent the time as I tend to on
into my first foray into solo backpacking through the most trains: mesmerized by the passing countryside.
European yonder, a trip I had planned and booked to The train pulled into the station in Elsinore
the very last detail so that I wouldn’t have anything and I went across the street to the tourist office to find
to worry about while I was doing it—in order to out which bus to take to the hostel. I was in luck, the
allow myself the luxury of spontaneity, of course. woman said (and probably for the only time that day).
In any case, I think the gods of travel were trying The hourly bus that went right where I was headed Saved by a pastry!
to tell me that I couldn’t control everything or the would be leaving from the bus stop right across the
trip may never get interesting enough to warrant me street not ten minutes from now. So, armed with a I was told that I had just missed that hourly
scribbling furiously about it in my notebook. They Danish name of a stop to ask the driver for, I crossed bus on its way back to town, but there was an hourly
were probably right, but we’ll get to that. the street repeating it over and over in my head hoping train which was due in about 35 minutes—sooner
The second scheduled stop on my trip I would not forget it—or worse, mispronounce it. I than the bus, at least. So I got some directions which
was Helsingør (or, in the English-speaking world, certainly don’t have a mind for foreign languages. brought me outside, across the street, through a fairly
Elsinore), Denmark. More famously known as the The only word of Danish I remember even now is sizable field, and across the train tracks onto a little,
location of Shakespeare’s brooding, angsty prince’s ‘tak’ for ‘thank you.’ At least my mother’s message backcountry platform. No one to be seen for what
castle. Incidentally, also some pretty nice beaches. I that manners are important sunk in diversely. I must seemed like miles. And to think I didn’t even get to
had booked what looked to be a fantastic, relaxing have managed not to butcher the street name too see the beach.
hostel on the coast. It had its own private beach badly because I got to where I was going soon enough
...continued on page 18
8 The Collegian April 2006

T
he playful weather toys with us this time of
year, with sunny 80 degree days followed by
gray days with rain and a high of 40. Naturally
once we can wear summer clothes we refuse to wear
anything else.
The next step is a wave of colds, flu, and
allergies brought on by duped flowers that decided
to bloom and spread their pollen. Now a majority of
the campus is suffering from blocked nasal passages
and wear nothing but pajamas. Being caught in this
dreadful situation myself, and dangerously close to
running out of pajamas, I was introduced by my friend
Katherine to a successful homeopathic remedy: The
Neti Pot.
The Neti Pot is sex for your nose. You put the
tip in a nostril, the salty water flows, and it feels so
good to get relief. It can be messy and uncomfortable
if you’re not sure of what you’re doing on your first
time, but with guidance and practice you’ll learn to
love it. I had no problem trying it right away and
welcomed an audience, while others struggle with
the decision.
In less metaphorical terms, what the Neti
Pot does is “washes away excess mucous, bacteria,
pollen, allergens and viruses from the sinuses. There
is one main sinus that the Neti pot can reach - the
maxillary sinus which is on either side of your nose -
basically inside the ‘cheek bone’. When they fill with
pus or mucous, it hurts” (E-zine Article).
To use the Neti Pot, you put about half
a teaspoon of salt in warm water in the Neti Pot,
which looks like a small teapot. The temperature of
the water and the amount of salt is very important.
Cold water and too much salt only cause
pain and bleeding. Warm and slightly salty
is the way to go. You put the tip of the Neti
Pot in one nostril and tilt your head so the
water flows and goes through your sinuses.
Keep holding the Pot in your nostril until
the warm salt water makes its way through
to the other nostril, where a gentle waterfall
escapes. If you’re badly clogged it may take
longer for the water to get through, or only
drips will fall.
Once half of the water in the Neti
pot has been used, take it out and blow your
nose and repeat on the other side. You’ll
hear your ears squeak, feel your sinuses
being cleared underneath your skin, and be
wowed that you can feel relief making its
way through your face. It will also affect
your throat. Do not
freak out, you are
not choking, things
are going correctly,
it’s helping that
annoying Post-Nasal
Drip dry up.
Obviously if
you have allergies to
shellfish, don’t use
sea salt. Good salt
for everyone is one
that is non-iodized,
and contains no
Vol. 17, Issue 5
Review
The Neti Pot:
Sex for your Nose
additives. Filtered water is better
to use because chlorine burns. If
you’re really stuffed up it will take
longer for the water to make its
journey through your sinuses. You
may have to repeat the process
in order to get results or tilt
your head more. You also do not
need to forcibly blow your nose
afterward in an attempt to speed
up the process, it will happen, give
it time.
The Neti pot originated
in India hundreds of years ago,
and is still used today by
enthusiasts of Yoga and
Ayurveda (the study and
practice of a holistic way
of life). They consider it an
important cleansing tool.
They believe it creates
an equal balance in your
body, while others simply
use it to battle allergies
and air borne irritants.
The Collegian
Renée Farrah
Advanced users use the Neti Pot
with herbal oils, but the simplest
and most often use is with warm
salt water.
People all over the world
use Neti Pots, it’s just a natural way
of helping your nose filter what
goes in your body. I know what
you’re thinking—what’s natural
about pouring something in your
nose? Our bodies already secrete
salt water through tears and sweat.
It’s water, our body relies on it for
survival, our planet is covered
in it, and it wasn’t ground down,
and compressed into pill form that
comes with a list of side effects.
You can use it once every day, once a
week, whatever your body needs.
Beware of over using the Neti Pot.
If you do it too much it can hurt your
sinuses. If you have acute sinusitis
don’t use the Neti Pot. If you just use
it when you need it you shouldn’t have
problems as long as your immune
system is normal. Asking a real doctor
about your personal use of the Neti Pot
is encouraged. I googled “risks of the
Neti Pot” and did not see any deterring
evidence except the possibility of over-
irrigation. But too much of anything is
harmful.
What works for some people
does not work for all. James Tidwell
was not successful with the Neti Pot.
He tried it a couple of times and said, “The Neti Pot
is a magical lamp that does no wonders.” It also
may take some people longer than others to accept a
foreign object in their nose and to not feel as though
they inhaled warm ocean water.
For some, such as my friend Sandy, desperate
times called for desperate measures. “I gave in to
peer pressure and used the Neti Pot. I was at the point
in my cold that the Neti Pot took multiple attempts.
So note to new Neti Pots users: be persistent. Use the
...continued on page 18
9
Comics

Attention Theology 101 fans! Jackson Ferrell is considering putting together a collection of his Theology 101 cartoons, with extra bonus
features such as strip commentary, an introduction, and unpublished strips. If you think you might be interested in purchasing a Theology
101 anthology, please let Jackson know! You can email him at jferrell2@washcoll.edu to express your interest.

10 The Collegian April 2006

Disclaimer: Those with gentle stomachs may wish to
read this on an empty one. Those who adore Misty of
Chincoteague are advised not to read on at all.
A
s I am sitting here writing, I’m trying to
figure out a way to get the bloodstains out
of my pants.
Those who know me may fear the demise
of some unfortunate soul who got on my bad side
on the 28th day of a vicious cycle. Those who don’t
may wonder if this is an intro to some article about
the virtues of a certain stain remover (stranger things
have happened in The Collegian), or at the very least
about a very bad scrape I got this morning from falling
down the stairs or something. Neither, I assure you,
is the case. As a matter of fact, I was feeding lions.
Allow me to introduce you, gentle reader, to
the Born Free Big Cat Sanctuary, part of the Shamwari
Game Reserve, located not too far from Port Elizabeth,
South Africa. The aim of Born Free is to provide a
home for big cats (read: lions and leopards) who have
been living in sub-par conditions, have lost their fear
of humans, and are unable to be rehabilitated
to the wild. Born Free is home to eleven
cats; seven lions and four leopards, none of
whom would last thirty seconds in the real
world. I was brought here on a field trip for
the Washington College-Rhodes University
exchange program.
You may find this hard to believe,
but hearing the sob stories of various cats
is not necessarily my cup of tea on a public
holiday. But trust me, it was worth it. I got
within biting distance of these magnificent
creatures, which were most fortunately
separated from me by an electric fence. Our
guide, Glenn, was a pleasant fellow who
regaled us with stories of how these cats
had arrived. None of the stories were very
happy, but it really makes you appreciate
why places like Born Free exist. One lion,
who was in a spectacular condition, had
been living in a zoo in Dubai. She had been
shipped there illegally when she was three
weeks old to a buyer who had wanted a
cheetah cub as an exotic pet. The poachers
were hoping the lion cub would pass,
because lions have cheetah-like spots when
they’re young. The buyer didn’t take the
bait, though, and left the cub in the airport
without food, water, or prospects. The zoo
took her in, and she eventually found her
way to Born Free.
Another lion was a diplomatic gift
to an African ex-president who kept her in
an empty water tank and never fed her. This
lion killed her own brother for lack of any
other food, and grew up malnourished and
mistreated. Though she’s now fed and watered and
eats as much as any other lion, the damage is done:
she’s blind in one eye, and suffers from epileptic fits
whenever she gets overexcited.
There are three leopard cubs living together
in a single enclosure, all brothers and sisters. They
came in from Sudan, where they were being raised by
Vol. 17, Issue 5
On the Uses of
Dead Livestock
a bunch of Sudanese soldiers. No one knew where
the mother was; whether she’d been captured or
killed by hunters or another animal, no one knows.
So there I was, listening to these stories,
feeling pretty bad for the cats, when Glenn says,
“Come on now, we’re going to clean out a cage.”
Now, this does not mean cleaning up some giant
version of a litter box, but in fact refers to cleaning
up after the cats’ weekly feeding. And if you thought
The Collegian
Val Larson
these giant kitties ate nothing more serious than giant
kitty kibble, think again. The first thing I picked up,
gingerly and held at fingers’ end, was a cow
skull, which I took outside the enclosure and
threw on a rapidly growing pile of bones.
For those of you with delicate sensibilities,
let me hasten to add that these were old
and sick cows, whose owners had called up
Born Free when it was apparent that the cow
was doomed to an untimely end. Actually,
cleaning up after lions and leopards is not
as grisly as you might think. The bones are
picked pretty clean, and crawling through
the bush looking for bovine remains is kind
of like an X-rated version of an Easter egg
hunt.
So the clean-up session was
rounded off with a nice cup of tea while
Glenn went to prepare a meal for the three
cats that needed to be fed that day. He soon
returned, and asked if any of us want to help.
Courtney Madden (another WAC peep)
and I volunteered. Courtney wants to be a
forensic anthropologist and thus figured it
wouldn’t bother her, and I’m just morbidly
curious.
That day’s menu turned out to be
not the usual defrosted remains from the
humongous walk-in freezer, but a horse.
Fresh horse. It was a 26-year-old creature
who had broken its leg and would not have
survived, or if it had, would have done so
in great pain for the rest of its short life, so
stop feeling bad for it. This horse, which
had been shot that morning, was under a
black tarp in the back of Glenn’s pickup. In
pieces. We couldn’t see it, approaching the
truck, but the smell and the redness dripping
off the back were quite enough to fuel the
imagination.
Courtney and I jumped in the truck with
Glenn, clutching our latex gloves to us, as if that
would help. Glenn drove us out to Anthea and Rafi’s
enclosure. These, if I remember correctly, were
...continued on page 18
11
Sophie Kerr A child who’s got the habit will start reading under the covers with a
flashlight. If the parents are smart, they’ll forbid the child to do this, and
thereby encourage her. Otherwise she’ll find a peer who also has the habit,
and the two of them will keep it a secret between them. Finding a peer can
take place as late as college. In high school, especially, there’s a social
penalty to be paid for being a reader. Lots of kids who have been lone
readers get to college and suddenly discover, “Oh my God, there are other
people here who read.”
-Shirley Brice Heath

P
oetry pleasers and literature lovers (and are the fun classes: Freshman Creative Writing, Advanced Fiction and Poetry
alliteration aficionados!), rejoice, for this is Workshops, Playwriting I & II, Writing for Film, Travel Writing, and Living
our weekend. What War on the Shore does Writers. There is no better way to enjoy a novel than to discuss it in class with
for lacrosse, Sophie Kerr Weekend does for writing, its author, and no better way to improve at writing plays/novels/short stories/non/
and what better way to celebrate than to print an issue fiction/poetry/screenplays than to recieve feedback in person on a weekly basis.
of The Collegian – twenty-four pages dedicated to Students who can meet with a professor over coffee to discuss a thesis truly could
what students can do with words here at Washington not be more blessed than to attend Washington College.
College. Sophie Kerr provides many students with a leg up in what is an ever-
When Sophie Kerr, author of 23 novels and increasing competitive market of writing and publishing. Take William C. Bowie,
hundreds of short stories (as well as a cookbook), class of ‘75 and the editor of the Washington College Review who published a
passed away in 1965 before her 85th birthday, she did collection of poems called The Conservator’s Song, which won the 1992 Arkansas
what few had ever done before her: she gave money Poetry Award. Peter Turchi ‘82 read from his third novel last year, having written
to writers. The half-million-dollar trust fund (now the first draft of his debut novel, The Girls Next Door, while at Washington
up to a two million dollar endowment) was to be College. Sue DePasquale ‘87 is now the editor of The Johns Hopkins Magazine
twofold. after launching the first issue of The Collegian in 1986. Mike Hammer ‘93, who
The well-publicized Sophie Kerr Prize is once composed poetry on the Literary House Porch, is presently the editor of the
given annually to a graduating senior who shows the Plum Review literary magazine.
greatest “ability and promise for future fulfillment Students are still writing, editing, and publishing on a daily basis at
in the field of literary endeavor.” In 1968, the first Washington College. In this first ever Sophie Section, The Collegian is honored
prize of $9,000 was given to a Christina Clark, but to contain the works of several active writers all vying to take home the fat check
last year Claire Tomkin, the soft-spoken girl in my for literary greatness. But even if they fall short of hearing their name during
travel writing class, walked away with a diploma and graduation, each will still have in a special folder tucked away on their computer
a check for $53,609. Although that’s no Powerball desktop a little bit of what Sophie would’ve wanted to read herself.
ticket, the Sophie Kerr Prize is a lottery you can
actually deserve to win. —Peter W. Knox
Less obvious is the other half of Sophie Collegian Editor
Kerr’s wish list. For every Prize awarded in May,
there is an equal amount of annual endowment profit
that’s called the Sophie Kerr Gift. This money has
brought well over two hundred writers and speakers
such as Edward Albee, Gwendolyn Brooks, Anthony
Burgess, James Dickey, J.P. Donleavy, William Gass,
Alan Ginsberg, William Kennedy, Toni Morrison,
Joyce Carol Oates, Katherine Anne Porter, W.D.
Snodgrass, Elizabeth Spires, William Stafford, and
Richard Wilbur (just to name a few). Jonathan
Franzen wouldn’t have been here if Sophie Kerr
hadn’t been here first.
What you don’t see on the surface is the
$500 each English professor receives to buy
new books or the $2000 that goes to periodical
and magazine subscriptions of literary merit.
Sophie Kerr Gift money funds Writer Union
Programs and campus publications like the one
you’re holding in your hands. And every year,
Sophie Kerr Gift money gives twelve thousand
dollars in scholarship money to support three
students in each year at Washington College.
That’s money that changes everyone’s lives, not
just one a year.
Writing has not stopped at Washington
College; rather, it has flourished under the umbrella
of programs and capable professors. English classes
W
hen I was applying to colleges in my senior year of high
school, every time I mentioned to one of my relatives
the schools I was considering, the first thing out of their
mouths upon hearing me mention Washington College was “Oh! That
school with the prize!” Forget the fact that we have a beautiful campus
and some great athletic programs. This is what we’re known for. This
is why I came here.
When I arrived at Washington College in the fall of 2003, I
had my entire four years planned out. Of course, I picked up a second
minor in political science and then stressfully had to work the late-
in-the-day creative writing classes around my also very late lacrosse
practice schedule. But I understood that this was something I knew I
would have to do before I came to Washington College, and accepted
that along with my decision to be a student here. I knew I was going
to be an English Major and a Creative Writing minor and wanted to
submit the portfolio I worked on as my senior obligation to the Sophie
Kerr prize.
Then the unfortunate day arrived late in the first semester of my
sophomore year when I was sent an email informing me that anybody
Rant
who was then a sophomore or freshman English major and Creative
Writing minor could no longer
simply complete a creative
writing portfolio as their senior
obligation. We would now have
to do a senior thesis or Comps.
If you were intending to submit
your senior obligation portfolio
as the Sophie Kerr prize…well,
you better drop some activities
because there goes your senior
year. I was in utter disbelief.
Why would they do this to
me? I was sure that somebody wish I was a senior...
would fight it. Wasn’t this
illegal or something? I attended
a meeting at the lit house with the then “speaker” of the Lit House
(who was a senior), on this issue and I sincerely thought that the ideas
and solutions we came up with there would lead the administration to
revoke their decision. I was sorely mistaken. Most of the people who
had authority and experience in the Lit House and familiarity with the
administration were juniors and seniors and so didn’t really care what
happened with it, because, well, it didn’t apply to them.
We were told that they didn’t have enough creative writing
professors to read all of the portfolios thoroughly enough and so were
therefore being “unfair” to the prospective applicants. By adding
the thesis obligation, it would in turn reduce the amount of students
who submitted something for the prize. But is that really something
they wanted? Less students submitting something? Isn’t a lot of
competition a good thing? In our meeting we decided that we would
get to the root of the problem by hiring a new creative writing faculty
member, and, sure enough, a year and a half later we have a new poetry
professor…only after 10 years of Professor Day literally begging the
administration to hire a new poetry professor because contrary to my
own opinion, he does not consider himself a “poet,” and believes that
we deserve a real poet to instruct us. So, thank you, Professor Day.
I recently spoke to an English department faculty member
and was told that the department believes that a thesis better prepares
students for graduate school and displays their knowledge of English
more extensively than a portfolio. We must remember, however, that
we have the option of choosing a thesis *or* Comps. Now, the amount
of studying required for Comps generally takes up about half the
time and energy a thesis does. If you were given the choice of taking
Comps or writing a thesis and you had planned on not having to do
either anyway and you knew that you wanted to put all the energy you
have into your portfolio because, hey, it’s $50,000 we’re talking about
here… which one would you choose? Yea, same here.
So what is happening to the prize? It is no longer the largest,
the University of Texas now holds that honor. And what is this book
prize thing? It’s not even student-oriented. I’m glad to see that we are
getting a new Lit House director, but I was pretty happy with the one
we had. If you can’t tell, I’m not really a fan of change.
I know the prize is notorious for its lack of any sort of “future
literary endeavor” desired in the students by Sophie Kerr herself. I
am speaking of the so-called “Sophie Curse” which lies in the fact
that everybody who has won the prize in the past has indeed not gone
on to excel in any “future literary endeavor.” (Except for Christine
Lincoln, who won the prize in 2000 for her book Sap Rising). But in a
world where you can get any poem or short story off the Internet and
just scoot down the road to your public library to pick yourself up a
novel, it just isn’t a lucrative profession anymore. We’ve got to pay
bills. It’s a highly competitive
business, too. Cut us some
slack. I know the prize has also
received some bad rap in the
past few years from winners
involved in drug abuse. I think
the faculty is just fed up with
the prize. I think they want to
see her fade.
I guess my argument
is more personal because I
now have to rethink my entire
senior year around the fact that
I need to study for Comps and
now take a mandatory course
in the second semester (because it isn’t offered in the fall) for people
who are submitting something for Sophie Kerr. I am wondering now
if I will even have time to work on something for the prize. But maybe
that is what the faculty wants, less applicants. I think it was very unfair
for them to advertise the option and then rip it away from us during
our sophomore and freshman year. I don’t know why they couldn’t
wait two years to change it. It’s even still advertised as an option on
the website.
I understand that not all people who chose the option submitted
something for the prize, but most did. I also know that some people who
chose to write a thesis instead also submitted something for the prize.
Other majors can submit something too…but nobody knows when the
last non-English major who did that won. It must be acknowledged
that the people who did use their portfolio option as their submission
for the prize were able to dedicate all their time to their submission.
Wasn’t that the point of having it this way in the first place?
I even created a Facebook group for people angry about the
revocation of the option and it includes all of 8 people. If this is any
representation of how many people I will be competing against, then,
great. But honestly, I want to know that my portfolio is put in a pool
of great work, and the greater the amount of submissions, the more
quality work I will be put up against. I’m not really excited about
being the English Department’s guinea pig. They say we are getting
four credits or something but nobody has really told me much. I don’t
need any more credits. I just want my senior year back. ✍
 T
he list had just come through on the fax machine in the
The Stud office when I came downstairs. Each day Katherine
had Sammi the assistant put the list together and
wire it over. There were some constants; sit-ups and various
vitamin supplements that I had agreed to at the beginning,
but there were always some surprises. Today I saw that I was
getting my neck hair waxed and going shopping for new belt-
buckles. But the first stop was going to be the fertility clinic,
where I was to fertilize the eggs that Katherine had harvested
and preserved somehow at a domed building in Arizona a
long time ago.
We first met at the after-party. That night my tuxedo
was a little big for me, borrowed from a friend I no longer
talk to. Katherine had just won her Lifetime Achievement
Award from the Greater Hollywood Film Institute and she
was all smiles and lipstick, her gray hair piled up on top of
itself with something like chopsticks and her huge sagging
breasts held up by what must have been a Kevlar bra. I
poured her champagne without knowing who she was—my
parents were not fans of hers and I had never seen one of
her movies, not even the one about the WWII nurse. My
pager was going off wildly all that night, 911s from a lot
of unknown numbers, mostly from the Valley, who needed
one hundred bucks worth, all five minutes ago. My tux jacket
pocket was weighed down with maybe twenty grams, tied up
in a ball and enclosed in a clear, plastic box.
The Greater Hollywood Film Institute was a dinosaur,
and even the pro girls looked bored and pathetic under the
sporadic lights. Katherine’s escort, a semi-closeted sitcom
star, grabbed my leg when he talked, resting it just above
the knee, while his own leg bounced in time with his jittery
jaw line. I spoke to Katherine about looking for meaning
Michael and respecting her craft. The jewels hanging from her neck
McGrath were nestled within a deep wrinkle in her skin, just above her
gown’s neckline. I had just been diagnosed with gonorrhea
and the meds I was on made my mouth dry all the time. She
noticed and offered me a sip of Rattinger from her flute. I
studied the lip imprint her gloss had left on the rim of the
glass as I swallowed what was left and then we danced a
slow salsa. She slipped a card into my hand before she left
and I called her the next day. We have been together ever
since.
Being with somebody like Katherine can raise eye-
brows, but that is mostly because nobody knows how these
deals work. For one thing, we do not live together. I live
in Silver Lake and she lives in Brentwood. I perform no
services other than what has been agreed upon and submitted
to my attorney in the form of a contract. I receive a weekly
stipend. She pays my mortgage and when she dies I will
receive the Silver Lake house, all bought and paid for by
her estate. I have access to a car service and I get bonuses at
the beginning of each quarter. I can bang other girls as long
as she never sees them. I submit to monthly AIDS tests.
I cannot gain more than ten percent of my current body
weight. I must get all haircuts pre-approved. I have a black
Amex. The bill is sent to Brentwood.
Everybody wants to know about the sex. They are obsessed, angry even.
But sex with Katherine is easy money. For one thing, the breathing machine she
is on hums loudly enough that I cannot hear her sighs or dirty talk. The room is
always dark. She keeps her nightgown on the whole time. She calls me Charlie
before and after. Charlie was an assistant director on one of her first films. I met
him once—don’t see what the big deal is.
After taking the vitamins and doing the sit-ups I went back upstairs and
watched a Christmas-themed adult film. Santa was disciplining a wayward
elf when the phone rang. It was Sammi with directions to the fertility clinic. I
14 The Collegian
told her to email them to my Blackberry and I could make out Katherine in the
background, just over the din of the iron lung. “Katherine says please don’t drive
the motorcycle over there,” reported Sammi. I hung up, looked down at my
crotch, shrugged, popped the DVD out of the player and put it in my shirt pocket.
I grabbed my cell and the Ducati keys and made my way down to the garage.
I had never signed a contract before I met Katherine. She hired me a lawyer
to help me go through the terms and I picked the guy that seemed the least
disgusted with what it was the contract was proposing. The lawyer, Eric, who I
think I had sold to some months earlier at a gay bar in downtown LA, had slicked
back hair and wore flip-flops with his three thousand dollar suit. We had gotten to
the tenth page of the document when the subject of these eggs came up.
“You realize,” said Eric, sucking on the lime wedge from his mojito, “that
this means you will be a father.”
I knew that.
“You jealous?” I asked, smiling at Eric coyly and watching the vacuum at
the bottom of the pool slowly creep towards me.
“And as far as you know you are capable of fertilizing these eggs? There will
be a test conducted. This is a potential deal-breaker. She wants these babies.”
I imagined a little me, running around town in a Power Wheel, dating
Dakota Fanning, sitting on my lap at the Ivy while I met with an agent to discuss
the film rights to my autobio.
“I’ll come on however many eggs she’s got,” I told Eric. The vacuum was
bumping up against the wall of the pool and the gardener hadn’t noticed yet.
It made an unpleasant buzzing sound, even from under three feet of water. It
sounded like a candy machine returning a wrinkled dollar.
After everything was signed Eric asked me if he had met me before. “Yeah,
“I said, “maybe at Rico Suave’s birthday party.” He showed himself out and I
took my shirt off and tried to ignore the vacuum.
The bike really opens up on the freeway. I was preoccupied while driving.
I had never gotten a chick pregnant before and this seemed like an odd but hip
way to get into it. I was going to need a lot of inspiration for this- the Santa porn
was still in my pocket and I prayed that the clinic had DVD capabilities. If they
just had a magazine rack I might not be able to pull it off. I am more particular
about my pornography than I am about my girlfriends. When I am with Katherine
I replay entire scenes in my head with my eyes tightly closed. I have never been
good at school but I have a photographic memory for these kinds of things. Once
when I was with Katherine I
played a scene in my mind
about a female traffic cop
and afterwards Sammi had
to call an ambulance because
Katherine’s heart-rate was
like a drum roll.
The clinic was in a
modern building. A foxy
receptionist took down
my name. I asked about
the DVD players and she
assured me that they had
them in each room. I am
led to the last door on the
right, after walking down
a gleaming, blue hallway. I
heard only small noises from
behind some doors, and the
sound of my shoes on the
polished floor. The room was small. There was a bed that I would’t need and a
wall-mounted TV. The nurse handed me my cup and closed the door behind her.
The DVD slid in and the screen came alive, first an FBI warning and then some
previews that I skipped over. The North Pole appeared- a blonde with pointed
ears and bells on her shoes looked right at me and bent over. I thought about
Katherine. I thought about Dakota Fanning. I thought about Sammi and then the
elf and then Mrs. Clause and then of rows of eggs, lined up like at the store. They
had faces and they looked like me. One had pointed ears. My eyes closed and my
ears popped. ✍
April 2006
 G T
ina’s dragging TattooNeck along from person to person, those
High School Reunion breasts bouncing up and down near to spilling out of her shirt.
Gina. VaGina, a name I gave to her in high school. I snort into my
glass. All around me are familiar faces and I wonder if any of them know
anything about anyone, really. But I’m most interested in Gina. I’m won-
dering if anyone really knows anything about her. About how her father
left her mother for a woman with bigger breasts and started a whole other
family, hiding from the press his first one. He was an influential bastard
who kept his ex-wife and ex-kids quiet with lots of money, Valium, and
expensive cars. He gave his new wife and kids the same things, minus the
Valium.
And here comes Todd. He’s fiercely handsome, a top guy at some
brokerage firm, making millions. He’s got his fat, sad-looking wife and
two kids following behind him and he’s flashing a smile as big as his bank
account. He’s a different man. He’s made it.
I asked Todd to the senior prom in a fit of blind desperation and un-
compromising teenage love. He was pimply and isolated like me. I wrote
him a letter but Todd, like every other boy, wanted to take Gina. He was
“In love with Gina(’s breasts). Sorry. I just can’t go to the prom with you.”
Gina didn’t know Tom was in love with her (breasts). I remember when
he was all pimples and tinted Clearasil and braces and asked her out by the
janitor’s closet, in front of the entire cheerleading squad.
“Heh. You’re fucking joking, right?”
I watched as he slumped away holding a wilted flower taken from the
garden at the entrance to the school, laughter following him down the hall.
Later that afternoon, over the loud speaker, he was called into the princi-
pal’s office and even though Todd had never deflowered anything, he was
given a week’s worth of community service to make up for deflowering
our school property.
“Okay, can everyone have a seat, please! We are going to do some
ceremonial-type stuff.” Cathy, the president of the alumni association calls
us to attention and everyone begins looking for the tables we are assigned.
As the age-old monotony of herding by the last name would have it, I’m
with Gina, TattooNeck (she never did tell me his name), Todd, Todd’s fat
wife and two kids, and J.T.—the class clown and then local marijuana
kingpin.
“Hey Todd, where’s the other half a kid?” I ask.
“What?”
I say nothing and take a swig from my glass. Gina sits down in her
chair, her breasts resting on the table once she scoots her chair in so she’s
not blocking the aisle. She looks at Todd’s nametag and stares hard at it for
a moment. She’s taking in the mullet, glasses, pimples and bad teeth. Then
she looks up, “Todd? Oh my god! It’s so good to see you again! You look
great!”
Gina jumps up from the table, those glorious breasts jumping with
her and runs around to give Todd a hug. Todd’s fat wife looks none too
pleased.
“What are you doing with yourself?”
“I’m a broker. Big financial guy. Making money,” he says to her
breasts, which she has left dangerously close to his face after she releases
him. She puts her hands at the small of her back, pronouncing all that
splendid womanhood and he’s practically drooling. Some things never
change.
She smiles at him, “Really? Wow. That’s cool.”
In high school, Gina had all the money she wanted. Daddy kept her
mouth shut with it even though she was sucking the cock of any boy she
thought handsome enough. But he had to be handsome and usually had to
have a girlfriend. Girls hated Gina but loved Gina’s breasts. Gina always
claimed she “didn’t take anything that didn’t wanna be taken.”
“Hey. Can you hear me? It’s good to see you. You’ve still got your
hair dyed blue.”
Cindy “Oh. Hey Todd.”
Brown “What are you doing with your life?”
“I’m a writer.”
“Gosh, some things never change.”
I look at his face and notice a small pimple on his chin, “No, they don’t.” ✍
Vol. 17, Issue 5 The Collegian
he car was not a jalopy; it was the red dragon, named
aptly for its color and the fierce gargling sound when it
stumbles in jerks up to the stoplight. Our necks jerked in
violent, unrhythmic bobs to the music. The night was vacuous
in the summer suburban night, and if tumbleweed rolled by, we
wouldn’t have batted an eye. These three lanes all four ways;
Wu-tang supposed worse circumstances and yet better left quiet
for now. Diggs had just made the new mix CD. He’d shown it
to me before he slipped it in, and it read: “Life Lessons of Wu-
Tang.” We’d been searching the search for most the night and
were supposed to be heading to a big gathering. It was the sum-
mer before our senior year of college, or, as we’d say, the sum-
mer before the cubicles, 9-5s, and, abstractly and inversely, paid
freedom coupled with tenantable servitude.
If the neon Bennigans and T.G.I. Friday signs reflected the
disenfranchisement of individuality, our future selves would want
a drive-thru. But our tonight selves were supposed to be at a party
3 hours ago that was vaguely promoted as a house party/ high
school reunion. At the light before our desti-
nation’s house 2 hours and 50 minutes ago, Will
an SUV pulled up next to us, reverberating in Grofic
pure bombast DMX’s “Where the Hood At.”
Ol’ Dirty Rise
It was a good question, one we didn’t regularly
ask at night and on the way to a social function
because we know said hood wasn’t quite in
our vicinity. If anything the hood was toward
the opposite direction of the SUV and the red
dragon. I mean D.C. was less than 20 minutes
down the road, real D.C. It was like the Wild
West in your backyard. Wake up, open a win-
dow, and hear the gun draw at high noon. Ask
anyone from the suburbs, and they tell you the
city that their house nearly aligns with. Pretend
like you could, if you would want to, drive so
few miles to the tangible existence. Only that
far away from saying been there, done that, but
none of us would.
The suburban development was new and
rigid and sprawling with mirrored houses of
identical structure. At one house, the garage
may be on the left, two houses down; they’d
switch the garages to the right. It was a simple
modification but enough to promote not a cop-
ied image, but a mirrored one. Our windows
were open because it was a miracle for the
red dragon to start; asking it to cool us was
above and beyond. The air vapored to us of a
time when trees weren’t so formally placed, so
exactly the same height. And if not the same
height, how green the branches were blossom-
ing, even at night, inciting in me a suspicion
that these trees grew through electric light
from the street lamps glow. We soaked in the
night and became lost in the maze of same-
ness.
Diggs speaks, “How do we get out of
here?”
Poppa Wu reminded us, If you forget
where you come from, You’re never gonna
make it where you’re goin.
We’d been driving, turning casually left
and right. We made sure there was never a cir-
cle performed or end to the lines; we’d made
at least four halves of trapezoids and rhom-
buses. ✍
15
 S I
he works in a class for the developmentally
disabled and on that particular day she was
watching one boy, David, play a Star Wars
games on the old Play Station. Behind the two forms
sat another, suited, bobbing boy. The suit sat on his
thin body perfectly so that he looked older than his
mental capacity actually made him. His deep brown
eyes, which rarely focus on anything, were riveted
on the dancing star ship on the screen. And when the
player lost and the T-Wing exploded, Daniel Taylor,
the boy yet man, parroted “Game Over.”
She leaned over to the player and murmured
“David, class is almost over, so we have to stop soon
so that you have time for your two minute bathroom
break before PE. Is that OK?”
The player rubbed his hand over the back of his
head then his forehead, looked up through his eye-
lashes and said, “Is that why we should stop soon?”
“Yes, So that you aren’t rushed because I know
that you like to move slow and steady.”
“Yes, I do, slow and steady.”
“So is that OK?”
“Yes, that is OK.”
She sat back to watch the last few minutes of
shooting out TIE fighters. Dan Taylor had heard.
Sometimes people think that he can’t hear or that
the soundtracks in his head tune all background out.
Maybe it was because he was so focused on the video
game that, when it had stopped on the Game Over
screen rather than moving through the High Scores
screen and back to the game, he had
Capella felt a pattern change. Something
Meurer wasn’t right when things didn’t go
as they were supposed to, when the
Simpsons was cancelled for football
Dan Taylor
or library time fell through because
other classes needed the computers.
It wasn’t in order any more, things
didn’t make sense and the world
around Dan Taylor warped so that
he had to find a pattern somewhere,
something safe and orderly to hold
onto while everything around him
changed. She heard him mutter
“No.” Suddenly she felt her hand
clenched by another.
Dan Taylor had latched onto
her, pulled her hand closer and
clasped it tight. When she looked at
him she saw that his eyes begged,
not David, but the TV to stay live. It
was there, the emotion that he could
never explain, darting and shifting
with his eyes so that one had to be
quick to catch it. She whispered,
“Look at me, Dan Taylor, eye con-
tact.” His head snapped around,
almost against his will for his eyes
strayed back. “We will play another
time, I promise.”
Dan’s hands shifted around
hers. His fingers caught on her rings
and slid the one on her ring finger
almost off then back on again, mar-
rying himself to her promise. ✍
16
Catharsis
would have laughed, but I suddenly had so little inclination to do anything,
think anything, barely see anyone around me, or hear any of the soft, lilting
coos of sympathy bombarding me from every direction. I had to retreat. I sat
in the back of the car for the rest of the service, and no one stopped me. I watched
as people cried, dabbed their eyes, hugged each other. I had no desire to hug any-
one. I think I fell asleep. I woke up as the service was ending. I heard my dad’s
father talking to someone. “Life’s very strange, isn’t it? Thought surely it would
get me before him.”
Maybe I was already getting used to the way you feel when your world
crashes around you. And somehow it made sense that Grandpa Baxter, the typical
old, crusty, “Greatest Generation” curmudgeon, would be in a deep, dark, mental
pit of despair. But I still couldn’t imagine my father, the rosy-cheeked, loveable
party animal, Three Tenors impersonator and giver of noogies, swallowing a pistol
in his bathroom. It didn’t add up.
Jake and Mom got in the car. We were silent for a few minutes before I broke
it. “Why didn’t you tell me any of this?” Mom flinched and started the car, but
didn’t take the brake off. “I think I have a right to know my own father.”
“Of course you do sweetie,” Mom said. “We just thought it was better if you
didn’t have to think about it. Jake had such a rough time, and I guess…we were
hoping it would skip a generation or something. We didn’t want you to start self-
diagnosing every little thing.”
I awoke one Thursday afternoon, listlessly dreaming about missing AP Cal-
culus again when I heard movement outside my door. I opened it to see a baby
cradle make its way down the hall to what used to be my dad’s study. Then fluffy
curtains. “What the hell is going on?” I asked no one in particular. But one of the
hairy-assed mover guys said over his shoulder, “Making way for the new family
member, kid!” I was not amused. I ran downstairs to the kitchen. Mom was lean-
ing against the kitchen counter, smoking another cigarette, a habit she seemed to
have picked up in the last few months. I looked at her stomach. She did not look
remotely pregnant. “Charles. I’m adopting.”
Juliana
“Oh, Jesus,” I said, chuckling. The chuckle turned into a guffaw. Mom Converse
didn’t share in the laugh. In fact, she smacked me. The sound of her hand against
my cheek echoed against the tile. She paused for a split second, looking as bewil-
dered as I did.
“Grow up!” She sobbed at me. “I’ll make a damn good mother when I have a fresh hand of
cards!” I had no idea what she was talking about. No one was accusing her of being a bad mother.
So I calmed her down enough to find out that she was adopting a little girl from Guatemala. “Sounds
good,” I said nonchalantly, and I strolled out of the room, ignoring her befuddlement.
I sat on my bed, staring out the window for a while. Not a single thought crossed my mind as I
watched kids on plastic motorcycles, wheeling up and down the street, their parents helping to push
them along. What will screw up that kid’s life later on? I thought grimly. I picked up The Complete
Existentialist Collection and started reading. I ran through Nietzsche, Kafka, and Sartre like a light-
ning bolt. I had no idea what it meant. Waking up as a giant bug? Shooting a man because the sun
hurts your eyes? The necessity of believing God is dead? Utter gibberish. So, like everything else I
couldn’t understand, I didn’t let it go. I spent the next three weeks reading.
Eventually, I processed what I read as a three-step pattern: Idealism, Nihilism, and Realism.
Or something like that. I soaked it all up greedily at first, but finally I had to shelf it again. It was
like I had Nietzsche sitting beside me, nudging me about “becoming,” and the absence of ultimate
truth, speaking in a language I couldn’t understand, but in a tone that suggested he was speaking in
generalities, but was targeting me in particular. I didn’t need it.
Instead, I left the house. I drove up and down and back and forth on the endless River Road
to get to the falls. I passed by the McMansions, the gated communities, the high school campuses
that resembled small liberal arts colleges. The leaf blowers. A commuter’s paradise. Nothing in the
air but sawdust and gas fumes. It hit the head before the nose. I reached the park. I almost dashed
down the toe path to my favorite nook in the woods. I scurried down the path. There was no one out
today. I swung around the trees, down the rocky steps, climbed up boulders and hopped over small
streams until I smelled the rushing water. I carefully climbed out on my rock, facing Virginia, the
tide between us.
I thought about the baby. The new replacement. The drop of freshwater in a basin full of
seawater. Doubtless, Mom saw her as her anchor of hope. I saw her as a startled outsider, who
would grow up in a brand new, over-privileged, over-developed, over-medicated world. Fantastic, I
thought. And with luck, she would be more lucid than the rest, and inevitably become dragged down,
as I had. But I will bring her here, I thought, looking out at the green, yellow and vibrant orange
trees, the turtle basking on his rock-like throne, the blue heron soaking in the afternoon. ✍
The Collegian April 2006

D
iverse” is not the first adjective that comes
to my mind when asked to describe the
demographics of Chestertown, Maryland
residents. In fact, it would not even make my list
of adjectives; I would much sooner use words like
“yuppie” and “dog-walking,” as reflected by the
people I see coming and going in the downtown area.
However, diversity is just what I found upon entering
Chestertown’s newest Mexican restaurant one cold
Saturday evening.
I had been recovering all day from Saturday
night’s adventures, and by no means did I have the
motivation to cook dinner. My boyfriend volunteered
to take me out to eat, with the stipulation that I choose
the spot. Feeling uninspired, I headed in the direction
of O’Connor’s Pub, again. After driving all the way
around back to find a parking place, we walked into
the breezeway and were assaulted by the onslaught
of college students eating dinner, drinking beer, and
generally overwhelming me. I picked out people I
knew at seven different tables, and that was too many.
I could think of nothing to do but turn around and walk
out. Feeling defeated, I whined, “Now where will we
eat?” Luckily, said boyfriend had the presence of
mind to suggest that new Mexican restaurant next to
Downey’s, now that it had finally opened. We drove
off in search of something different in Chestertown.
The green-and-yellow sign on the side of
the building reads, “PLAZA TAPATIA: Authentic
Mexican Cuisine.” We missed the entrance, which is
accessed misleadingly from inside the Acme shopping
center, not from 213. We parked on the edge of the
Downey’s lot, only to be chased away by a large,
greasy woman brandishing a broom. Now properly
parking in the Plaza Tapatia parking lot, I wondered
just how authentically Mexican it could be, as it is
housed in the old Pizza Hut building, abandoned
since 1999. Nearing the front doors, I questioned its
authenticity again as I read the banner listing other
Tapatia locations: Ocean City, Easton, Cambridge,
Salisbury, Seaford.
Upon stepping inside the restaurant, I
promptly took back all of my grump, hungry, and
cynical thoughts. Our senses were cheerfully greeted
with stucco walls decorated with bright artwork, teal
MAKE YOUR MOVE
Reserve Your Apartment
for 2006/2007 Now!
Call 410-708-3654
Or email
margroberts@comcast.net
Vol. 17, Issue 5
Review
Restaurant:
Mexico East
and blue booths and tablecloths, and peppy accordion
music in the background. A young Hispanic man in
a yellow polo shirt piped up, “Two for dinner?” I
noticed with a relief that there were at least three open
tables, and only one or two diners that I recognized
from school. There was a small merry throng around
the bar, bantering with the eight or so Hispanic men
behind it. We were seated at a booth behind a man
that I suddenly noticed was wearing a tight, white
suit, bejeweled and fringed, with a slicked-back ‘do. I
wondered briefly if there was an Elvis impersonation
contest somewhere that night, until I realized that
there were four more men walking around the
restaurant in the same snazzy suit. From the front, I
could now see that the suits were actually boleros and
pants, and the men were the live Mariaci band that
the restaurant had been boasting. We had just missed
the performance!
Just then, our chipper, polo-wearing waiter
distracted me with the menu. And quite a menu it is.
Appetizers, lunch and dinner specials, side orders,
new entrees, desserts, and drinks are spread over
seven pages in English and Spanish. The menu
offers an entire vegetarian section as well as a list for
those 10 and under. Most entrees are between $10-
$15, making Tapatia more reasonably-priced than
The Collegian
Megan Walburn
most of downtown Chestertown. Margaritas come
in strawberry, peach, coconut, lime, and “Texas-
style,” ranging in price from $4.25-$6.00, or, for the
more enthusiastic drinker, pitchers run $14.95-18.95.
There is also a section that gives descriptions for
each Mexican-named dish on the menu. Being an
incredibly WASPy, blonde American, I found these
translations particularly helpful, and happily ordered
myself a shrimp enchilada. After devouring that and
a fizzy strawberry Mexican soda, I left the restaurant
with a stuffed belly and a positively Mexican feeling.
Plaza Tapatia brings the Hispanic-American culture
that is growing rapidly on the Eastern Shore to the
rest of us, and they do it with flair.
Plaza Tapatia is located between KFC/Taco
Bell and Downey’s, and open 7 days a week. Lunch
hours: 11am-2:30pm. Dinner hours: M-F 11am-
10pm, Saturday 12pm-10pm, Sunday 12pm-9pm. ✍
Editor’s Note: Plaza Tapatia is currently still awaiting
its county liquor license, so don’t go just for the
margaritas like I did.
Cozy Remodeled Building
Close to Campus
Studio, 1, and 2-BRs
Laundry
Internet Ready
Big Backyard.
17
 Danish continued from page 8
I took my backpack off and paced and sat
and paced and sat and stared at the information
written in Danish on the battered, weathered,
wooden board on the platform. The only book I
had was buried under a ton of stuff in my pack and
I was too exasperated with the situation to dig it
out. So I sat some more. I sat and wished that I
had someone with me to bitch about how much it
sucked. I thought about all the stuff I wasn’t going
to see. I thought about the fact that the sky looked a
hell of a lot like rain.
Then I had one of those moments I’m sure
anyone traveling alone must have at some point.
I looked around, wondering how the hell I ended
up here. Completely alone on a train platform in
the middle of some trees in a field. I couldn’t see
Neti Pot continued from page 9
Neti Pot at the first signs of getting sick, because
I waited too long. It did eventually give me some
temporary relief. For those that don’t want to try it,
it is quite amusing watching others.”
Katherine Honold says, “I had a stuffy nose
from elementary school to high school. I had serious
sinus infections all the time. It took me some time
to get used to it. One of my doctors suggested that I
use it. My cold has never been bad again since.”
Dan Holles used to the Neti Pot to impress
his girlfriend, Katherine, who also introduced
him to it. “I had a real bad stuffy nose, and I tried
everything, but nothing would work. So one day
Dead Livestock continued from page 11
two lions who had been kept in a bird aviary in
Greece before Born Free took them in. We were
accompanied by the other WAC folks and a load of
British tourists with their cameras. Glenn backed
the truck right up to a fence and then got out. He
pulled back the tarp. The smell and the flies were...
indescribable, really. He opened the first gate to a
double-gated area and supervised as Courtney and I
manhandled two pieces of horse into the enclosure.
The lions were pacing mere centimeters from us,
but believe me when I say that this is not your
primary focus while you’re dragging a very heavy,
very smelly, and very slippery chunk of horse into a
small area. Well, having got the horse in, Courtney
and I backed out, Glenn shut the gate, and then
we opened the second gate that let the lions at the
food. These huge creatures just took hold of the
meat and dragged it away, and damn, that horse
was heavy. The English tourists clicked away with
their cameras while Glenn looked on in pride and
satisfaction as Rafi began chowing down on what
looked suspiciously like a liver.
18
any people or even the road. It might have been
anywhere in the world if it hadn’t been for the fact
that every written bit of anything around me was in
Danish. It was a very strange, small feeling: as if I
were the only person left on the planet and I had no
concept of where exactly I was. But it was amazing.
How often does one find herself humbled by the
world? In the middle of an overgrown field, no less.
It sounds a little silly, but I suddenly understood
why travel is like a drug. In that moment, I became
an addict.
Just as suddenly as I had zoned out, I heard
the slow, two-car, rickety local train lumbering
towards the platform and I was back. I got on the
train full of locals on their way into town to do their
shopping, looked out the window the whole way
back, and crossed to the regional platform to wait
for the train back to Copenhagen.
Katherine told me about this amazing device called
a Neti Pot. I tried it, and I’ve been hooked ever
since.”
There are plenty of articles surfacing now
about the growing immunity of antibiotics. Just try
it, there’s no prescription or trip to a doctor needed.
An article in the Chicago Tribune said “A recent
University of Wisconsin study found the Neti Pot
provided a simple drug-free treatment for sinus
infections. Patients reported fewer headaches, fewer
side effects and decreased use of antibiotics.”
Where do you buy a Neti Pot? Natural
and organic food stores such as Whole Foods, or
Chestertown’s very own Chestertown Natural
Foods on 214 Cannon Street sell Neti Pots.
We got back in the car, bloody gloves
carefully held away from the leather interior, driving
over bumpy dirt paths, and in no time at all we’re
at Kuma’s enclosure. Kuma was a bad-tempered
leopard whose story I forget, but I do remember
that he got the head. The horse’s head and neck
were not easy to carry, and Glenn had to do the last
few yards because Courtney and I were not able
to handle the weight, the awkward positioning, and
the nearby electric fence at the same time. Then
that leopard grabbed that hunk of meat and yoinked
it away. Kuma was obviously still in touch with his
wild leopard instincts. Good for Kuma.
Having deposited the four legs safely in the
walk-in freezer, our trip to Born Free was more or
less finished. What an educational facility. This is
what I learned:
1) DO NOT take big cats out of their wild
habitat. If God had meant for us to own
exotic cats, then he would not have given us
upholstered furniture or affection for horses.
2) DO NOT ever bend down while making
The Collegian
And of course, as I stood there, it started
to rain.
By the time I got back to Copenhagen, it
was around 3pm. I knew by the time I got out to the
hostel, checked in, dropped my stuff in the room,
and got settled, it would be time to go back out and
find dinner. So, since I had spent an entire day on
a whole lot of nothing, I went to the bakery in the
station and got another one of those famous Danish
cinnamon rolls. A country in which they make a
pastry that could solve the problems of the entire
day is worth the trip, in my opinion. Even if the trip
ends right where it started, there’s more than just a
bakery between point A and point A. ✍
They cost around $10-$20, and you can
buy special Neti Pot salt. The pots come in ceramic,
stainless steel, or plastic, and in multiple colors. ✍
Want to watch a demo of the Neti Pot being
used? Go here: http://netipot.org/demo_video.htm
SOURCES:
http://www.bytheplanet.com/Products/Yoga/
neti/Netipot.htm http://ezinearticles.com/
?Nasal-Irrigation-Using-a-Neti-Pot:--For-the-
Common-Cold-and-Congestion&id=85143 http://
altmedicine.about.com/cs/allergiesasthma/a/
SinusIrrigation.htm
eye contact with a lion. They do not like this,
and will make their disgruntlement known in
the form of a charge.
3) DO NOT mock butchers, veterinarians,
farmers, or rangers. They have hard jobs, and
dull knives to prove it.
4) The inside of a horse is not a pretty sight.
5) If you ever wish to become a vegetarian, I
know the perfect turn-off.
6) Bones aren’t as bad as you think.
7) Blood makes things very slippery, but makes
up for it by drying super fast.
8) Never stand between a cheetah and his
dinner. Ever.
9) Lions and cheetahs are extremely cool, even
when on the down and out.
10) If you come to Kuma without food, you are
not Kuma’s friend.
And now that the day is done, it’s time for
laundry. Stain remover, anyone?
www.bornfree.org/uk ✍
April 2006
A
high school social studies teacher in Colorado
has compared President Bush to Adolf
Hitler. One of his students tape-recorded
Mr. Bennish telling his class that the State of the
Union address “sounds a lot like the things that Adolf
Hitler used to say.” The student’s tape was aired on

BusHitler: Being
a Denver radio talk show, and the teacher was placed
on leave while the school system investigates his
conduct. And every step of the way, the Associated
Press and the wonders of the Internet make it possible
for us here in Chestertown to read about the case at

Diplomatic
our leisure and even to listen to the recording if we
are so inclined.
But the thing about this Information Age we
live in is that it’s just that, information. It is mere
information, not necessarily truth, not the intelligence
with which to discern it, and certainly not wisdom, Wes Schantz
that we can access at any time, in mass quantities,
over the net, the radio, or the television. And when it
is a blog, a personality-driven talk-radio program, or either. High school students are still idealistic, recognized something that makes my old outlook
satirical fake news we’re listening to—entertaining they are interested in debating current events, and seem incomplete. I don’t think it’s ever wrong to see
as these sorts of things may be—it is not even it is our privilege— maybe even our as many sides of an issue as possible; fundamentally,
information being conveyed: it’s misinformation, responsibility— I’ll go on in this way. What is untenable is how I
it’s that ubiquitous thing, in a free society would stop there, doing nothing with it. Because,
spin, whatever the to speak against while Bush is not much like Hitler, most people today
person whose mouth the head of state would fit right in in Germany under that demagogue.
it’s coming out of may even within the We are content to stand by as long as nothing bad
say to the contrary. public schools. happens to us: we aren’t the ones dying in Iraq or
There are And as for Sudan, just as they weren’t the ones in the camps a
two approaches to this the student generation or two ago. Senator Birch Bayh, in his
difficulty that faces us, who tape- talk in Tawes this past January, spoke movingly about
fascinated as we are by recorded his this. He cried real tears; it was amazing. People in
Mr. Bennish’s story and politics are human
hoping to learn more (in beings, too. That’s
what way is Bush like something else
Hitler? has this sort of that hadn’t really
talk gotten out of hand? occurred to me.
what is Mr. Bennish’s first All the
name?). We can either teacher, why bloggers and talking
plunge headlong into the web of fact and did he have to be so heads, the people
opinion, relying on our education, wits, and Google’s sneaky, why didn’t who have sent Mr.
Moderate SafeSearch to steer us towards the truth we he give the teacher Bennish’s family
seek, or we can stop being facetious for a moment fair warning that he death threats, and
and think soberly about the case as we understand it. was going to report the students who
him if he kept on protested outside the
We’ll see that there is a third option, of course, being opinionated? school with duct-tape
and that it’s the opposite of the first in another way Well, because it was over their mouths—
than the second is. That is, rather than subjecting exciting, and because maybe they’ve gone
ourselves to the inanity that is the media, we can he’s a celebrity now. overboard, but if so,
choose to ignore it as much as possible. Rather than I can see it’s partly because
adding one more voice to the shrill cacophony, we both sides of a case so many of us aren’t
can treat it as none of our business that this teacher in like this, but what I going anywhere at
Colorado said something that has a bunch of people can’t see is why people worked themselves up over all, we’re standing still. If we say we can’t help it,
livid and a bunch of other people overjoyed. it one way or the other. Can you literally convince that the wars and the global warming and the crude
It is this laissez-faire attitude to politics that I yourself that the president harbors genocidal intrigues tone of political debate are all out of our hands, it’s
have long taken myself, and I never really saw much against Arabs, or at least the oil-rich ones? Are you partly a self-fulfilling prophecy. Until reasonable
reason to change it. Common sense tells us that going to take it upon yourself to demonstrate that a people take it upon themselves to enter the political
Bush is not Hitler, and that this guy should have been high-school teacher is justified in putting the name forum, or at least acknowledge there might already
teaching geography instead of making incendiary Hitler anywhere near the name of anyone who hasn’t be a few of them in there, we really have no hope.
claims without providing any kind of substantiation killed millions of people, and maybe not even because Likening Bush to Hitler won’t do us any favors, but
besides “it sounds a lot like things Hitler used to you think it’s an accurate comparison, but because neither will saying nothing at all. It’s the second
say.” But the beauty of common sense is that it is of the sacrosanct First Amendment? Sometimes you choice we’re left with, talking seriously and carefully,
evenhanded, homey in the way Bush grinningly have to agree with the Dude on these things: “Walter, and having done my best to exercise it here, I have to
pretends to be, and it tells us, while Bush is not Hitler, you’re not wrong, you’re just an asshole.” say it’s really hard. ✍
he certainly isn’t a picture of presidential brilliance, But within this Bush-Hitler analogy I

Vol. 17, Issue 5 The Collegian 19

 Braided Bones
Erin I have grown tired
of watching hair spread underwater,
winding it around my fingers

Thorp like I am setting a clock

I see the same strands

in the irises of your eyes,
wondering if eyes grow
like hair grows,
back through your skull
down through your body

I feel it wrapping around

your bones, and I understand
why it feels like your hands
are watching me:
iris ivy twists your fingers
until they blink

The Home I Will Build

Poetry
Mid-prairie, I build you a pinwheel house,
tiny windmills bound together with violin strings
that make harp-plucked sounds
when the wind strolls by,
lazy whirring, spiral staircases of sound.

Outside, I spill a moat for you,

concertos of water pour
from green coiled garden hose
and I pray you like to swim;
in case, I compose bridges of colored glass.

And from the grass I weave a ship,

tie the sails of song to the masts of moments,
pull anchor and gaze starboard.
Ready for our symphony to begin,
ready to sing you home across the gold ocean.

Cellos and basses pluck and hum your praise

I sketch your outline with my eyes
on the clouds, in the water, floating down by the sandbar.

(Anything but) Flatware

Studying the world behind my back
in the reflection of my dinner spoon.
My eye bends around the focal point
of this utensil, silver workhorse.
I witness waiters balancing their way
upside-down and backwards
through stainless concavity.

I look beyond the spoon and you

are sitting staring at your hands
folded neatly in your lap.

20 The Collegian April 2006

 Poetry
The Amish In Me
A house put up last week by the Amish
the size of an elongated trailer, still a house,
pure roof angled to protection and sheltered shelf,
strict outer skin laid down between the fiber glass,
and nothing has happened to it since then:
the stoop or porch not built, the door
hangs suspended a few feet above the ground.

A part of me is Amish never knowing

the fundamentals of computers
or the proficiency of finding out the weather forecast.
The binary code can be taught
with a hammer, a nail, and a board.
Magnify these hammers and nails and boards
and have a computer.

Sensory Attenuation
I.
A vatic mask for the man that rips off flaps from silhouetted mattress tags
from an avatar of a city behind.
Your metropolis set aside a comfortable wording in symbolists’ rasps
a guy on a train aligned
like tickling ourselves.

We are prescient beings, being from the Southside of the galaxy and closest
to the closet of unseen
down the stairs to the left of men that make fountains in mason jars of Mimosas
to dream the dream
like tickling yourself.

The float of virelay on proleptic fingers. Our own. Period swift into the fitted seam,
who wasn’t that serious:
the senses pulsed an adaptation of august augur in restoration, the starting beam
of our light being querulous
like tickling myself.

II.
The face mask, what was it all worth when leaving the avatar of city-
I saw a guy on the train,
first train ever I took out of New York, dusk lighting, he wears a shitty
face mask that I could explain:
Like tickling the same. I wore that thing for fiber glass in an attic, it said
it didn’t protect, the fiber glass we moved in 100 degree heat for a friend’s
sister newly married, now divorced, what was it all worth?

III.
Was it worth the poem to fit into lines? Was it worth the lines to mean something
besides the repetition? The vague rhythm? The ticklish sense of another thing:

Will
IV.
A thing not my own, a thing so undetermined it’s actually quite worth the work.

Grofic
Vol. 17, Issue 5 The Collegian 21

Spring Break
Snippets
Poster: You are currently logged in as
MaryElizabeth.
Date: March 23 2006 5:52
Subject: Spring Break
I haven’t updated in a while...I guess I should mention
the break at least a little. All week of break, I stayed
in the oh-so-rowdy Chestertown, and worked all day
every day for my boss (doing everything from invoices
to laundry for her (laundry, are you serious?), while
my car stayed in the shop. This prevented me from
leaving the tremendously exciting Kent County- I
mean, why would I ever want to leave? At the end
of the week, at least, I made enough money to pay
the mechanic for the car from when I hit that deer,
and my electric bill. I think that the wildest thing
that might have happened to me was, when I finally
did venture outside the bubble that is Chestertown to
go to the Smithsonian in D.C., I ran into my friend
Caroline from Louisiana whom I haven’t seen since I
was in 9th grade. She looked good; I got her lj name
so we’ll be in touch.
Quote of the Moment: “patronization: the new
roses”
~ Mary Elizabeth
AIM conversation with Eric Blumenthal
RandmFrend: So how was your break?
Bloomenthal: It was crazy
Bloomenthal: Me and some friends went down to the
Dominican Republic
RandmFrend: That must have been fun
Bloomenthal: Yeah it was crazy
Bloomenthal: On the first night my boy Drew Hill
entered a couples contest and ended up having to get
on stage and switch clothes with a complete stranger
RandmFrend: lol
Bloomenthal: he came out from the back in a skirt
and a nice little tanktop
RandmFriend: I bet he filled everything out very
well
Bloomenthal: bahahahah
22
Edited by Johanna Schaeffer
Isaac Schendel
Professor Mooney
Creative Writing Assignment: Spring
Break
3/25/06
What I Did During My Spring Break
During my spring break I fended off 1,000 Viking
invaders. However, it was all in vain, for by Sunday
I had to withdraw from camp to get to school the next
day. Without my leadership, the resistance failed and
all my comrades were viciously slaughtered. Next
year, I humbly suggest that for the survival of the
nation, the spring break be lengthened to include
Monday and Tuesday of the following week.
To: ant_patty@aol.com
Subject: JAMACIA IS GREAT!!!
Dear Aunt Patty
That resort you recommended is fantastic! Jamaica
is great! The resort is a sponsor for Sesame Street so
there was a character parade and everything, and the
kids loved it, and I even got to see Grover! He’s my
favorite! I totally got sunburned during the parade,
but it was worth it!
Love,
Mary Lide
The Collegian
From the Spring Break Travelogue of
Kevin McGarry
“If it wasn’t for bad luck, I’d have no luck at all.”
Everyone has heard or used this phrase at some point
in time. I, however, have seen it become the concise
version of my life story. So I should have known that
when I set out looking for a Spring Break trip that
this luck would follow me. But I took a risk and
figured I might have finally dodged the bullet with
this spring break trip, one I embarked on with my
best friend of twelve years. I had to at least try to
be optimistic. Anyway, I was more than ready for a
break after a horrendous first half of the semester. On
the Thursday night before we left, after just receiving
the worst mid-term grade of my schooling career, I
remember thinking, “This is gonna be one hell of a
trip.” Looking back now, I realize that was just the
half-a-case of Bud Light talking.
My best friend Tim and I set out Sunday
morning for six days of all-inclusive debauchery
in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic. The next day
things looked better. I felt fine, and spent the day at
the swim-up bar, which made me feel even better.
All was finally set up for a night out. So naturally, I
started things off at the casino since it was roughly 30
feet from my front door. Two hours, a few drinks, and
$300 later I decided to call it an evening and headed
off to the club. Once inside my buddy and I almost
immediately met two girls. We started dancing,
drinking, and doing more flaming Sambuca shots
than I care to remember- so many in fact that Tim
forgot to blow one out and almost lit his face on fire.
I was fairly confident that I had escaped bad luck for
the evening, but I was wrong. As I was sitting there
talking to the young lady I was about to leave the
club with, I saw an arm come flying in between us.
I wheeled around, figuring I would have to tell some
Canadian punk to buzz off, but instead was greeted
by the not-so-smiling face of the young lady’s father.
Needless to say, I was out of there faster than that
last shot of Sambuca decided to leave my system the
same way it entered.
Tuesday was a pretty boring day, drinking
and losing more money in the casino but not much
else. But Wednesday would atone for all of Tuesday’s
failings. Wednesday was drinking day at the resort,
with drinking activities all day at the pool and
Tequila Night in the club. First up was the beer-
chugging competition, and who was I up against but
the British man named Hoss who was at the lobby
bar drinking glass after glass of Dewar’s Scotch at
10:30 that morning. Needless to say, I got my pride
handed to me. I then decided to volunteer as the male
“participant” in the sexiest girl contest. I figured this
would mean judging, but instead I wound up getting
lap dances from four middle-aged French-Canadian
women and a 15-year-old British girl. To top it off, I
then had to shed whatever shred of dignity I had left
by dancing for the girls. At least according to the
crowd I was the best of anyone up there.
April 2006
As told by Mike Schaffer at lunch
It was nearly time for the drag show to start!
My worst kept secret is that I have a drag queen
fetish. It’s nothing sexual, but is merely for pure
entertainment purposes. Drag queens are the funniest,
most eclectic people you could ever meet. Having
encountered several in my escapades throughout
the District of Columbia I was well acquainted with
proper drag queen etiquette. There was one simple
rule: don’t fuck with them.
After about the fifth or sixth (or seventh or
eighth) individual performance and an equal number
of beers it started getting really crowded. Like the
dining hall when they used to have good food. Okay,
bad analogy, they’ve never had good food. Maybe this
one is better: it was somewhere between the dining
hall on chicken fingers day and a Less than Jake
concert mosh pit. It was pretty intense. Somehow,
the Hawaiian drag queens not in the contest must
have found out I was there and knew about my love
and admiration for their kind. They started filing in
and standing directly in front of me and my adopted
mother. Each one of them was about six feet tall,
which made them seven feet tall with their heels.
Each one of them was also very pretty. I actually
thought one was Beyonce Knowles and wanted to
tell her how hot she looked, but I wasn’t ready for
that jelly.
Now there were about five of them, standing
shoulder to shoulder. Hey, I’m all about the freedom
to assemble guaranteed in the Bill of Rights, but
this was getting ridiculous. I’d had enough. I open
my mouth in the typical Mike Shaffer fashion: for
awkward attention. “How did we end up with all of
the 7-feet tall drag queens in front of us?! I mean
seriously!” This got a laugh, especially from mom.
I knew she understood. I also knew my record for
moms loving me was still unbroken. Finally, the
attention I’d been lacking all night! Why stop here?
“You know, even if they got down on their knees we
still wouldn’t be able to see! They’re just so tall,” I
said slightly louder.
Uh oh. It happened. One of them had heard
me say “Down on your knees,” and thought I was
being hateful! I had violated the rule. She turned
around and gave me a look that could have killed a
school full of children. It was at that moment, I think,
that a dam broke on the Island of Kauai sweeping
Vol. 17, Issue 5
away several homes and killing 8 people. What had
I done?! What to do? WHAT TO DO? I didn’t panic.
I was caught in a pickle. I felt like I had just walked
Next month...
into a bathroom with four urinals and one man on
each end of the row. I had to make the discomfited (...maybe)
decision as to which man I wanted to stand next to
and allow them to think I was checking out their junk.
Either way, one false look and I could be dead meat. What To Do If
At this moment I immediately regretted not tipping
the bathroom attendant. It was because of people like
You Suddenly Find
him that people like me were protected from getting Yourself Surrounded
swirlies at fancy restaurants. I knew I was about to
get the worst kind of swirlie: a big gay swirlie most
By Naked People
likely performed by a ninja.
The answer to my current drag queen crisis
rested with the direction of my gaze. I just looked Senior Obligations?
back at her square in the eye. Not with a smug look I’d Rather Be Drunk!
like “Yeah, I said it.” But with one that said “No, you
didn’t catch me saying something I wasn’t supposed
to. I wouldn’t do such a thing, look how cute I am.” Grad Schools:
Grow Up
AIM conversation with Becky Streaker Puzzling
WCgirl37: So how was your break?
Endgame
Streaker09: It was awesome
WCgirl37: What happened?
Streaker09: Motion City Soundtrack rocked the
Swank Summer Jobs:
Electric Factory Janitor, Anyone?
Streaker09: MW and C, The Matches, and The
Format did too. They opened.
WCgirl37: That must have been fun Snakes On A Plane
Streaker09: omg. Picture this: South Street
Philadelphia. It’s 34 degrees outside. Windy as
hell. Sun going down. An hour and a half of sweat,
pushing and shoving, screaming, singing, jumping,
laughing, cheering, applesauce…
WCgirl37: A night of gerunds! But applesauce?
Streaker09: Long story. * * *
WCgirl37: Ok. Who was the encore?
Streaker09: The Future Freaks Me Out. Then there
was a trip on the way home to Condom Kingdom and
Philadelphia Joe’s Pizza…and an hour drive home
Not Impressed?
Then WRITE FOR US!
The Collegian
Monthly Interest Meeting
Thursday, April 6th
7:30 PM
Reid Basement
The Collegian 23
T
he black pick-up truck pulls over to the shoulder of 291 heading
west and I quickly lower my thumb, rushing to join it. I have
covered four miles at the slow pace of an hour and a half thus far,
and I’ll be damned if I won’t accept help with the last eight. Besides, this
is the whole purpose of my journey anyway, I think, motivating myself as
I open the passenger door and swing myself into the seat.
“What’sup man?” Those friendly words draw my attention to the
driver, a smaller-sized black male in his early thirties playing the part of
my knight in shining armor. I tell him I’m headed towards Washington
College and he retorts, “Oh, I’m going that way.” My gaze pulls away
from the unshaven man swallowed up in his too-large gray jumpsuit
down to the twenty-four ounce Keystone Ice in the cup holder.
The car pulls away and I survey the scene as I push the red
button on the recorder in my pocket. I hadn’t known what to expect, and
for the last four miles had hesitantly thrust out my right thumb, walking
backwards, wondering what would happen if no one picked me up – or
worse, if someone actually did. Knowing I’m not the type of person to
pick up a hitchhiker, I worried who would. Is CSI: Chestertown going to
hear my last living conversation on my recorder or will this guy think to
check my pockets before he dumps my body? Say something. “Thank
you, I’ve been walking for a while.”
“I do a little good Samaritan for you. I’m just getting off
work, the name’s Buck.” And I introduce myself, and feeling foolishly
vulnerable I admit that this is my first time hitchhiking. What I don’t tell
him is that I’m carrying a recorder, digital camera, cell phone, journal,
pen, and I had my friend drop me off twelve miles away from campus.
“Well there’s a first time for everything,” says Buck, and I find myself
surprisingly comfortable with this stranger, despite the obvious danger
I have entered. Explaining how I found myself in the passenger seat I
relate this lie I crafted a week before about my friend dropping me off
at the intersection with 301 because he was late for an appointment in
Annapolis and couldn’t take the half hour detour to drop me off at the
school. This seems to suit him and he tells me how “I walked this once
before cause my truck broke down on me once. Even a couple people
that I knew drove past me, but they didn’t know me by me walking. I got
with them when I saw them, ‘Remember that guy walking? Yeah that was
me’ I broke it down to them.”
Despite having only hitchhiked for one short hour of my life,
I knew the feeling. I had stared into the speeding eyes of dozens of
passing motorists with an extra seat. The last words in my moleskin
read, “Has the media successfully convinced people that being selfish
is the only way to be safe?” As cars of every type zoomed by, I saw the
How vain it is to sit down to write if you have not stood up to live.
hypocrisy in many that declare support for troops overseas, yet wouldn’t
pick up someone else lost on their way to college. What happened to
the proud highway Jack Kerouac rode for seven years and his dream that
with a pack of twelve sandwiches he could travel cross-country relying
on his fellow man? All I knew was that if I were going to write a travel
article for class, reading On The Road wasn’t going to be enough. I had
to live it, if just for one afternoon.
Four years ago, the only way I connected with literature was by
laying my head across its hard covers in bleached white interrogation
rooms called AP English classes. Coming to college was what everyone
did after high school, and it was by chance that I ended up here. Sophie
Kerr and her treasure chest were as foreign to me as the equations in my
“Physics for Poets” class; a class I took not because I was a poet, but
because I was certainly not a physicist. English classes were simply part
of the distribution requirements I took because I didn’t have a major.
When forced to decide, I’m glad that’s what I felt most confident in
learning. Walking into my advisor’s office to pick classes, I left signed
up to hike mountains in Europe as well. And that’s what opened my
passion for literature – actually interacting with the words, taking them
off the page, and seeing them in reality.
At the top of the mountain in northern England where William
Wordsworth wrote his poetry, behind his cottage and garden, I saw and
understood why there would never be enough words to capture the
breathtaking view. Enjoying a Guinness in a pub in southeast Ireland, I
realized it made sense for Seamus Heaney’s poems to be short enough
for the Irish people to recite by memory; they conveyed a feeling that
would be lost in more words. As if being intoxicated during important
professional college functions wouldn’t impart enough of the paranoia
that fueled Hunter S. Thompson, I traveled to his hometown of Woody
Creek, Colorado to drive where he drove, drink where he drank, see
what he saw, and write where he wrote–all in time to witness his ashes
explode out the top of a 153 foot Gonzo-fist cannon on his property. As
if hitchhiking eight miles for a college paper wasn’t extreme enough.
And I’ve listened to contemporary authors as well: write journals
like Augusten Burroughs, carry a recorder like Tucker Max, “masturbate”
like Sam Lipsyte recommended in my Living Writers class, and listen to
people like Chuck Palanuik. At a time when any idiot with a computer
can get drunk and blog, it’s far more important to write well. But if you
haven’t lived through anything interesting to write about, then try to
remember why you’re writing. I suppose that has been and always will
be the question writers try to answer. Hopefully, they never will.
- Henry David Thoreau
Endgame Peter W. Knox