Living with a Covert Ops Hippie

College commencement speeches, regardless of who you have deliver them, often carry many of the same tired old clichés for seniors in poorly-ventilated nylon tablecloths to take in with all the enthusiasm of a rock. It’s not the seniors’ fault; hearing about the long journey they’ve taken or it being time to enter the real world is trite before they even hit the poor acoustics of their university’s basketball gymnasium. At the same time, I’m not suggesting there should be a revolutionary change in the oratory comfort zone that is the graduation speech, either. It’s a rite of passage, just as much as the post-diploma handshake, the mortar board cap launch, and the 45-minute mulling about session as newly minted grads try and locate loved ones in the stands is.

But hey, maybe some pyrotechnics would add something.

So yes, you’ve entered the real world, much as the 2nd runner-up in the ’96 Republican primary said you would. It’s been a whole 5 years since that speech, and you’ve done other clichéd things like jumping in with both feet and hitting the ground running. Perhaps your travels and your career path have taken you far, far away from your collegiate home in Williamsburg, Virginia. Maybe you did grad school or got married. Hell, you may have even had a kid. And with the crazy home sales market, you’ve probably hopped from apartment to apartment to apartment with little regard for updating your contacts and address books.

But remember, Alma Mater is watching.

The bastion of knowledge at which you spent 4 years likes to know where its children end up once they leave the nest. The reasons for this are as varied as the paths each graduate takes with his or her life. Some colleges like to know where you to hit you up for some cash once you’ve gone into the real world and made a financial killing. Others like to send your alumni magazines that really no one reads other than the 3 inches of text dedicated to your class’ notes in the back.

(Note: This, too, is a waste of time. It’s just a listing of the section editor’s friends who got married since the last release. So if you aren’t the section editor and you didn’t invite him to your wedding, you’re probably not going to get any press for it. That’s okay – we hear he gives copies of the alumni magazine as a wedding gift, anyway.)

One other reason that your alma mater likes to keep tabs on you is to send you information regarding historic homecomings that end in 5 or 0, most often signifying that word that everybody loves: REUNION! Yes, come back and show off how awesome you are to the classmates you haven’t talked to since! Bring your pretty wife! Dress up your adorable children! Rent a sweet car from Enterprise and fool ‘em!

This past week, I received a brochure for all the things W&M are planning to bring home the Class of 2002 in style. But in order to do so, they want to make sure that they let EVERYBODY in the Class of 2002 in on the party. That’s where their crack team at Alumni Services comes into play. Alumni Services is a clever surveillance op that stops at nothing, thanks to the power of the Internet, to find out where each graduate has landed, five years after scattering to the wind. Of course, this is a public university and therefore, is constrained to a state budget (at least it’s not Pennsylvania’s budget.) So some graduates have slipped through the cracks.

78 out of 1,304, to be exact. 6 per cent's not that bad.

But still, there are 78 nomads out in the world. 78 souls that have become such free spirits that their own alma mater can’t even find them. In a world of internet, e-mail, Facebook, alumni organizations, academic departmental newsletters, student organizations, blogs, these 78 people have fallen off the grid. They’ve become the dreamer minstrels of our generation – those who can’t be bothered with names and numbers and forwarding addresses. They live to be free of all that. Or maybe they've become top secret spies in other lands, damn near impossible to unearth.

Well, I’m ready to do my part, Alma Mater. For I have located one of these special ops free spirits. Yes, she’s been on the run, but it’s time to come to justice. For on your list of missing people, I have found number 52:

KATHERINE PRETZ

And all this time, I thought she really was an elementary school teacher.

Parker Egypt Can't Lose

Back in college, I had a reputation of being a creative parker. For three of the four years I was in Williamsburg, my mode of transportation was the old Volvo tank that sat about twenty. With or without jukebox money.

When the car was in motion and I (read: not Mattias) was behind the wheel, everything was cool. The only expense being incurred was the cost of the fuel the Volvo burned, and back in the good ole’ days, I think we paid $1.30 a gallon. But when the car was not in motion, that’s when it could get expensive.

You see, it’s not that William and Mary was at a loss for open space where a stationary vehicle could call its home. It was just that most of that open space was either 1) freshly cut, well-manicured fields of grass that were used less for parking and more for say, soccer; and 2) nowhere near anything of real importance of interest. Yes, I could have parked and walked whenever I needed my car at William and Mary Hall (now Kaplan Arena at WM Hall.) But, as you may remember, my memories of the Hall aren’t exactly the sunniest.

Very often, I would press my luck and parking in spots reserved for “Faculty and Staff of the College.” My justification was simple: while I may not have the official Fac/Staff parking decal, I do hold to paid positions at the College and therefore could be considered “Staff.” While it may not have gotten me out of paying that $15 at any time, it at least made me memorable with the good folks at Parking Services. All in all though, my excuse got me nowhere.

Maybe I just needed a better excuse.

One of the fringe benefits of being an ambassador to the United Nations, for any country, is the idea of “diplomatic immunity.” While residing within the borders of the nation in which you serve your state from afar, the rule goes so that you are free from the law unless your home nation waives that right. So what does this mean? Of course.

Diplomats suck at parking.

According to New York City, UN diplomats have racked up a bill of approximately 18 million dollars since the HQ has resided in the Big Apple. Can you imagine the size that glove compartment would have to be to hide the sheer paperwork involved? 18 MILLION DOLLARS. Dude! You’re in New York City! There’s way better ways to spend that kind of cash! That’s over 5,500 front row season tickets at Yankee Stadium! 900,000 trips to the top of the Empire State Building. And thanks to McDonalds’ latest marketing scheme, 108 million Chicken McNuggets!

Oh, that’s right. There not spending the money elsewhere. They’re not spending it at all.

The article lists Egypt and Kuwait as the biggest offenders, but not much past that. However, thanks to some crack research, we found a list chronicling the parking criminals up to 2002. (see page 20) After these two, the next 17 of 18 are from Africa (including some diplomat named Chad who is Number 3 all by himself!) So it appears Africa doesn’t care so much about parking safety. Mr. Eko, why have you forsaken us?

In other news, the bottom of the list – those who are law-abiding as ever? 21 nations that have managed to never park illegally. The group ranges from Canada to England to Azerbaijan to Oman. Now are we really to believe that these diplomats are so ethical that they would not think of parking illegally. No way!

Our guess? Somehow, they convinced NYC to park in Fac/Staff.

Plants Before Children

There’s an old saying that provides a litmus test for those thinking about bringing a child into this world. It’s logic is simple, sound, and while in completely different kingdoms of organisms, it’s true. Yes, for those who want to raise a baby and aren’t sure if they can handle the responsibility, start things off more simply.

Start with a plant.

Now Katie and I actually have never co-owned a plant in either of our two apartments, but regardless, we’re not rushing out to the local greenhouse for a test fit, T-minus four weeks to baby. So as a married couple, we can’t really speak towards that aforementioned adage that has been passed on from generation to generation, from apprehensive grandparent-to-be to apprehensive grandparent-to-be. Yep, we’re just not a test case for this.

On the other hand…

There was a time where I did put this saying to the test, and from the experiment that was conducted in the fall of 1999, the conclusions were unanimous, absolute, and conclusive. Based on our findings,

Four college guys in an apartment are not capable of raising a baby.

We know this not because Steve Gutenberg wasn’t a roommate. We know this because we, the Fantastic Four of Governor’s Square, couldn’t even manage to raise a plant. And it was certainly not out of a lack of trying. Sophomore year, we brought a little fauna into the world, and he was beautiful. Leafy and green, we were four proud fathers of our little guy.

He was named Endor.

Yes, as proud parents, we’re not necessarily recommending naming your child using the Star Wars Book of Names, but it worked. You see, Endor was a forest moon that was chosen by Imperial Empire to hide their shield generators for the Second Death Star. By using the green foliage to hide massive amounts of technology, the planet Endor served its purpose. And as for our Endor? What did he hide?

Surround-sound speaker wire.

Yep, it may not the best reason to bring new life into your home, but that’s pretty much the reason we’d have to impart to our little guy if he ever asked. Fortunately for him, he never asked. Fortunately for us, our plant didn’t talk at all. That would be a bit strange. Nordberg might have evicted Endor.

So where did we go wrong?

It’s not hard to remember to feed a plant that sits on the floor near a high-traffic walkway between the living room and the office. We did that alright, and most times, we even remembered that water works way better than Mountain Dew. After all, watering Endor would make him grow taller, and well, further obscure the view of the audio wires. However, his location in a largely windowless room didn’t give him the sunlight he so sorely needed. That’s why we would remember to put him out on the balcony every now and then.

Remembering to bring him back in, however, was a little harder.

RIP Endor
(1999-1999)

Two Wheels of Fury

“Even in the future when kids are fat, immobile technaddicts, nothing will beat waking up Christmas morning and finding a shiny, new bicycle under the tree.”
- Spud Mellor, Monrovia Top Five

And while we like this quote just because of the coining of “technaddicts” it appears that in his ode to his first red bike, Mr. Mellor is clearly on to something. Although it should be pointed out that unless he lived outside in an evergreen forest, his and every other Christmas morning bicycle probably rested next to the tree and not under it. That’s why God invented kickstands – so shiny new bikes don’t fall into the tree and ruin Christmas.

While I was unable to post to MT5 that particular week due to Blogger playing Scrooge, I, too, would have made sure a shiny new two-wheeler was part of my list. Before I write my own personal ode to a bicycle, I think it’s worth taking a gander at the latest bike to roll down the line.

Is it a Huffy? No.
Schwinn? Uh-uh.
Trek? Don’t think so.
Mercedes? Of course!

As if making reliable German luxury cars wasn’t enough, it seems that the automaker has finally rolled out their auto show prototype BICYCLE. Yes, it seems that since Germany didn’t win the World Cup, they have instead focused their efforts to the world of cycling. Jan Ulrich aside, this just might be the bike that takes them to the forefront of Ich Sport de Tightpants.

The Mercedes bike, according to the linked press release, has some features quite nicer than the Point A-to-Point B stuff we Americans are used to. An intelligent lighting system operates to provide safety features in close quarters, as well as ask you impossible Trivial Pursuit questions (probably Science and Nature) during your bike ride. An on-board computer does an array of functions from displaying speed and gear, to flashing a lateral red light back and forth with the voice of Mr. Feeney from Boy Meets World. But the most revolutionary bicycular advancement on the Mercedes bike?

An automatic transmission.

Yes, while you are shifting gears with your hands like a sucker, the Germans are letting the machine do the work FOR THEM. Face it, your hands are busy enough with minor tasks like “steering the bicycle” and “not falling off,” they could use a break. The Mercedes bike does the work for you by calculating speed and incline to determine the ideal gear. That’s why it’s the Mercedes is the Mercedes of Bicycles.

Now let me introduce you to the Saturn.

Known for affordability, initial dependability and reliability, both the Saturn and my Huffy Mountain Bike get off to flying color starts. They serve their purpose with a limited sense of style. This is a Huffy I probably got in 6th grade or so. It was the third in a line of bikes for me; the first had been handed down, and then I really put the pedal to the metal with my first red 10-speed. However, as my riding got more aggressive (read:off-road), it was clear that it was time for an upgrade and Santa came through. BIG TIME.

This was 1991.

NINE YEARS LATER, I brought the aptly-named Huffy Death Trap to college with me for my freshman year. I had grown 13 inches in that time; the bike did not. Its gears? Squeakier. So much that you could hear it coming at the UC if I was still at Monroe. Had it had an equivalent on-board computer, it wouldn’t have been capable of speed and gear readings. Its processing power?

Perhaps it was more the speed of “The Cow Says Mooooooo.”

RIP, HDT.