Trials of ‘09

Truth.

I slept through my entire freshman year at Harvard, and I have no dreams with which to vividly recount.

This is, coincidentally, almost exactly an entire year since I last wrote anything on this blog, and the first time I wrote anything worthwhile (at least to me ) on this site, which I guess, is the original intention of any blog.

So my freshman year began in a pre-orientation programs cleaning bathrooms and trash (Dorm Crew)  with other nervous freshmen. Camaraderie while sleeping on naked beds and lazily sweeping dusty, wooden floors really does something to the social soul because you begin to recognize that everyone you meet is not the overly charming genius you expect to meet. Some of us want to sweep floors, some of us want to make 11.80 per hour, and some of us really want to acclimatize to campus immediately. In fact, Harvard/Dorm Crew helped transition me from a nourishing family in Texas to semi-complete independence in Massachusetts.

That being said, I made a lot of friends while sweeping floors. One of my friends who was sweeping floors and dusting bureaus (who actually lived in my house later that year) and I were accosted while cleaning. A guy who was cleaning a row of rooms across the hall sauntered up to us, me specifically, and asked, “Are you a national chess champion?” Confused, I asked, “Do you mean something like being a national chess champion, or specifically, a national chess champion?

“Yea man, are you a national chess champion? Cause we’re in Harvard and I want to get to know you guys, cause, you know, I come from a cutthroat high school, ya know.”

I said, “Yea dude, I am a national chess champion… pretty good guess.” I hoped he was trolling me, putting up some sort of sarcastic reflection of the people one would expect to meet at Harvard. But no…he was THAT guy.

“Did you get perfect SATs?”

“Why?”

“I wanna know, like, I wanna know what kind of people got into Harvard. Shit is hard.”

“Yea dude, shit is hard. Doesn’t matter.” All the while, my friend is amazed and is laughing the entire time. The interrogator, oblivious. He proceeds to tell me his life story about his role in high school politics, the cutthroat nature of high school academics, and how poor he was in relation to what he thought was a student body of wealthy, aristocratic children. Honestly, he was a manifestation of our stupidest expectations.

Classes,  friends, and partying , Annenberg, and a brutally bitter and frosty winter personified the rest of my year. Nothing idiosyncratic really stands out – maybe I should have blogged during the year and you would have known. Meh.

It’s summer now, and it’s fantastic. Updates on a year long reflection soon? No guarantees.

Being Gone

I’ll be gone in a little less than a day, packed to the brim and then some. Carrying some memories, some love, some excitement, some apprehension.

Anyway, have fun in college, trying to make something concrete out of any ambition you may have graduated with. Or have fun applying to college (sorry for the sadism) and trying to figure out whether a certain word will land you at exactly 0 characters left on your online responses.

I had my milestones this summer, kept in touch with true friends, mellowed out (lost any edge to a blunter smile and nod) and hope you did too. I found some of myself that I had dropped over the course of doing stupid things at Bellaire, or maybe I’ve regressed to a happier period

Whoever I know or whoever reads this note, please know that you have contributed to me in some way (whether that disgusts you or not), and please let me know how you are…despite if I haven’t talked to you in years – “it’ll be weird and awkward” is just crap. One life, one time to make as many relationships as possible. (18 years are already gone, geez!)

I don’t know what I’m going to do at Harvard, really don’t – a bit of ambition, and openmindedness that comes with being more relaxed. My dorm house is far from everything (except the baskin robbins and dunkin donuts across the street). Greenough. Looks like some English village (all I think of is My Fair Lady and cockney accents all around).

Also, what the hell? This became too stream of conscious-y, but what I said is true (if there was any dispute).

Last thing (before this aphex twin song burrows itself any further in my brain), don’t dig any holes you can’t get out of.

That’s what she said.

And now for something completely different…(the rest of our lives is supposed to follow the ellipsis)

Late In Memoriam of George Carlin

penguin: How come wrong numbers are never busy?

Do people in Australia call the rest of the world “up over”?

Can a stupid person be a smart-ass?

Does killing time damage eternity?

Why is it that night falls but day breaks?

Why is the third hand on the watch called a second hand?

Why is lemon juice made with artificial flavor, and dishwashing liquid made with real lemons?

Are part-time band leaders semi-conductors?

Can you buy an entire chess set in a pawn-shop?

Daylight savings time.  Why are they saving it and where do they keep it?

Did Noah keep his bees in ArcHives?

Do pilots take crash-courses?

Do stars clean themselves with meteor showers?

Do you think that when they asked George Washington for ID that he just whipped out a quarter?

Have you ever imagined a world with no hypothetical situations?

Have you ever seen a toad on a toadstool?

How can there be self-help “groups”?

How do you get off a non-stop flight?

How do you write zero in Roman numerals?

How many weeks are there in a light year?

If Barbie’s so popular, why do you have to buy all her friends?

If blind people wear dark glasses, why don’t deaf people wear earmuffs?

If space is a vacuum, who changes the bags?

If tin whistles are made out of tin, what do they make fog horns out of?

If you shouldn’t drink and drive, why do bars have parking lots?

If you jog backwards, will you gain weight?

Why do the signs that say “Slow Children” have a picture of a running child?

Why do they call it “chili” if it’s hot?

Why is the time of day with the slowest traffic called rush hour?

One tequila, two tequila, three tequila, floor.

The main reason Santa is so jolly is because he knows where all the bad girls live.

I went to a bookstore and asked the saleswoman, “Where’s the self-help section?” She said if she told me, it would defeat the purpose.

Could it be that all those trick-or-treaters wearing sheets aren’t going as ghosts but as mattresses?

If a mute swears, does his mother wash his hands with soap?

If a man is standing in the middle of the forest speaking and there is no woman around to hear him…is he still wrong?

If someone with multiple personalities threatens to kill himself, is it considered a hostage situation?

Isn’t it a bit unnerving that doctors call what they do “practice?”

Where do forest rangers go to “get away from it all?”

Why do they lock gas station bathrooms? Are they afraid someone will clean them?

If the police arrest a mime, do they tell him he has the right to remain silent?

Why do they put Braille on the drive-through bank machines?

How do blind people know when they are done wiping?

How do they get the deer to cross at that yellow road sign?

Is it true that cannibals don’t eat clowns because they taste funny?

One nice thing about egotists: they don’t talk about other people.

Does the Little Mermaid wear an algebra?

Do infants enjoy infancy as much as adults enjoy adultery?

If you try to fail, and succeed, which have you done?

Why is it called tourist season if we can’t shoot at them?

If the “black box” flight recorder is never damaged during a plane crash, why isn’t the whole damn airplane made out of that stuff?

If you spin an oriental man in a circle three times, does he become disoriented?

The Dark Knight/The Wackness Review

Before you can grasp a fictional character’s nuances, idiosyncrasies, and convictions like you can with a person in real life, it takes a while on the silver screen. In TDK, most viewers have a notion of the backstory, but may not understand the grit and dark aura that makes up Frank Miller’s reinvention of Batman.

The first scenes of the movie removes any doubt about the brutality of the film – as well as all the scenes of implied gore. You get everything from a realistic hero and his followers to the crazed maniac who feeds off of the hero to make his own “living.” The living media, the city’s vitriolic emotions, and the naive ambition of the DA, Harvey Dent (an underrated role played by Aaron Eckhart in light of Heath Ledger’s The Joker).

The movie is long, roughly two and a half hours, and has chewy themes – dialogue that characterize and establish points of reason, descent into madness etc. It’s pretty good, but not mindless, and not necessarily escapist cinema that we all wearily trudge to the movies for.

The Joker’s performance was creepy, well – acted, and understandably sensational. Bale played Batman well, but could have been better…I don’t know…But Eckhart played his character very well, and undeniably reasonable at the end.

I give it an 8 out of 10.

————

The Wackness takes place in the 90’s and its about this semi-shy, laid-back, high school drug dealer named Luke who tries to find some way to cure the depression from his parents’ fights, and slow descent into poverty. He has a psychologist, played very well by Ben Kingsley, who gives treatment in exchange for marijuana.

They really transform in this movie…Kingsley’s flawed character comes through magnificently throughout the end, and Luke transforms as he falles in love with his psychologist’s daughter. The friendship, the relationships really do work on screen – is realistic, hypocritical, and everything you want it to be when it gets to the end. Ben Kingsley does a really good job, and so does Josh Peck.

I give this movie a 7 out of 10.

It’s All English To Me

Keep up.

Forsaken by the hysterical trivialities of sovereignty, the aberrant behavior – rather the orthodox insubordination was the nexus of the nascent tryst. Maybe that was the crux of outreach, an upheaval of behavior. The “significant” assimilation of agents of change, the conglomeration of identities that encircle the microcosm of an unorthodox relationship – that was the purport of love’s unidentifiable idiosyncrasies.

He thought about the ties that bound him to an incontrovertible institution of isolation, the vapid indecency of another being’s platitudinal falsehoods and superficiality. That institution wasn’t just a girl, but all the circumlocution of a self-designated authority – a society, a facade of austerity, a denigration of virtue.

She thought about his eccentric uneasiness, instigated by a devolution of intra-cognitive changes about inter-social interactions. Oblivious to the bromides that pervaded the banality of her existence, she unwillingly ascertained her satisfaction – the negation of dissent  – as one not made esoteric by a society willing to engender conformity if only for pleasantry. Oh, but if you view conformity as the paramount thesis of their unwritten communication, do not spurn this message as one of a proponent of revolution. This is more a convoluted lesson in conventionality than a pedantic investigation of abnormality.

You made it! Just foolin around.

Premonitions

These days really are panning out well, except for a few hindrances (read: problems)

Before I continue, you probably noticed I haven’t posted in a while…sorry. I’ve been having these late night conversations, I’ve been working later (meaning I’m tired earlier), and I haven’t been at home when I do come back…because I am having fun, probably some sort of divine compensation for school.

“steven: I have to go now, I’m going to go write something in my blog.

xxxxani: you hv a blog? man, you hv no life!”

Anyway, so Harvard has these preorientation programs – one for rock climbing, one for artistic expression, one for international students, and one called Dorm Crew.  Thinking this would be a good opportunity to have some fun before college starts (read: maybe a week before college?), I signed up for Dorm Crew.

Bad idea.

The first image I’m greeted with when I open open the Dorm Crew packet is a picture of a toilet and then various pictures of kids smiling and having fun with brooms and making mustaches with brushes…OH NO, so it’s some sort of campus beautification process that bonds people together and in teamster optimism claims to be the “Dorm Crew.” Great!

I took my first drive by myself a couple of days ago (usually my mom or a friend is riding with me). The only place I knew how to get to was Meyerland, so I ended up going to Starbucks and ordered a shaken Passion Lemonade and Iced Tea. By myself. The drink was too sour, but the weather was perfect, my windows were down, and I had some music blaring…it felt good, kind of like the strokes of liberation you take when you shave your stubble (oh wait, sorry, I’m a little ahead of some of you guys-and girls- haha).

There’s also a lot of drama going on, you know the same drama that makes you grimace and groan at the same time – guys who are obsessed, girls who are clueless, and me smack dab in the middle who can’t resist to say that’s what she said. Maybe it’s a preface to college. I don’t know. I really don’t know what to expect.

And really, I need input on stuff to talk about, so leave comments with your own suggestions – anything at all.

A Conversation (warning: a poem)

For Jessie.

If you  guys like, I can put up more poems.

A Conversation

Two black holes,

enveloping light, reason, personality -

and destruction is eclipsed

by a vapid rip across her face.

My hands crawl away from a bohemian epidemic.

And no point of discussion could equal

her sense of tragedy, her abyss of expectant dialogue.

Attraction has its faults,

the epiphany of averting your gaze,

the feeling of ugly disquietude.

And now for something completely different

Last night I couldn’t sleep (partially cause I have kept sleeping around 4 am and last night I tried around 10pm) and in half-drowsy stupor, I came up with an idea for a web start-up. The scale of the project seems too immense, but I am talking to a couple of web programmers/domain-holders to see what we can do.

—

So yesterday, I was hanging out with Yekki and Menglin and we arrived on a bet. Well the pretext was a couple of bets we had made earlier. At Starbucks, Menglin and I saw this Asian man drive up in a new Corolla and wait in line. A few minutes later, another Asian man drove up in a new Corolla of a different color and he got in line at Starbucks. For some reason I decided that they probably knew each other and at the very least would sit together. Menglin, challenging my skills of sociology, bet that they wouldn’t. Whoever lost had to treat the winner to Starbucks.

Turns out they did know each other and sat down outside, right next to us – and of course they had to smoke their Chinese cigarettes. Menglin told me how to say cigarettes are bad for you in Chinese, I said it very loudly, and we left.

So yesterday, we bet on the *futbol* game yesterday between Spain and Germany. I bet on Spain to win – and Menglin bet on Germany, being the Nazi that he is. And the wager was that the other would have to go skinny dipping in front of some audience, but then I realized I really don’t want to see him naked.

So then the bet between me, Yekki, and Menglin takes place next Sunday at the Galleria – we all have to get a number from someone in whatever capacity, cannot mention the bet, and cannot get it from someone we already know. The last person to get a number has to walk around a store on a crowded day with a sign of the winners’ choosing. The problem is, guys are more likely to give girls their number than girls are likely to give guys their number.

So I’m thinking she’d have to get a number from the Abercrombie model - or from any girl…

Whatever the case, we’re going to record each person’s attempts and put it on youtube, and of course on this blog. Maybe one of the punishments would be to pay for gas, cause it is so damn expensive…damn leftists.

Pol.i.tical Games

I’ve learned a little bit more from yesterday. Yesterday I might have said something too personal that I couldn’t say plainly, so it sounded tedious. Sorry.

So the latest thing in my mind is Bobby Jindal – what an extraordinary guy. As the governor of Louisiana, he runs on ethics and Republican standards and is heralded as having a stellar political career (and he’s only 37). And he is making huge strides in Louisiana despite the setbacks “levied” on to him early in his career.

Republicans around the nation are giving him the thumbs up to be McCain’s VP and true to form, McCain has invited Jindal over and they’ve compensated for each other’s faults by pandering to constituencies in black neighborhoods, rich neighborhoods, etc.

I just don’t know if I want Jindal to be associated with McCain in 2008 when the Democratic backlash is so huge. Plus there was a statistic that if Romney was McCain’s VP the public vote would be 59% in McCain’s favor. But then again, if McCain loses, no losing VP has ever come back to win the presidential election since 1920.

I think Jindal can be a legitimate presidential candidate in 2012, provided he keep away from McCain – unless his counter-personality can topple Obama.

What do you think?

Nascence

What has passed has not been simply an experience, but cynically, it has been a war of attrition. The years that fed into high school – middle school, elementary, daycare centers – all the sights and sounds that have caused me to feel dysfunctional at the slightest mistake or unsettling event have been the hardest to overcome in high school. So that awkward conversation in the hall, a teacher’s reproach, someone’s disdain – or even the leaps to false conclusions really threw my feelings out of whack.

But it’s been fun:

The volatility, the irrationality, and the spontaneity have been great. Can I highlight?

9th Grade: Ambition, and a middle school success high. I made a fool out of myself, and a shame since that’s how that class will remember me. Highlights: Indian dancing, random tests/quizzes, “Comrade” (and speeches too good to not be canned), social suppression, and premature introspection.

10th Grade: New high school – freedom? Dress code, harder classes (APWHIST), and thoughts about epiphanies – not fully developed then and not now either.

11th Grade: English with Seward was the best, people were nice, and recovering from a weird (in the loosest definition of the word) relationship. Pervasive debate culture.

12th Grade: Activities start snapping into place, a hierarchy of motivation and ideals start to emerge, and I gain a lot of good friends. This was how high school should have been in the past – people gifted with charisma take it for granted. And what’s growth without a vanity search (yes, I am the only Steven Maheshwary) with a side order of self-importance?

Hahaha, those highlights started devolving into generalizations. (oh well, I guess it is parallel to my development).

The point of this post is nascence – the event of birth – a chance to finalize my being as steadfastly awesome. And by awesome I mean charismatic, ambitious, and (as this induction into the blogosphere suggests) my-own-mousetrap-builder.

Harvard. Oh yes. The immigrant parent dream, and the dutiful son’s obligation. On April 1st, my mother shed the truest tears of accumulated motherhood – a hope not gone anticlimactic on a son seen to be awry. And my father, in the conflict of judging his son (like I said, there was dysfunctionality, awwww look a nudist soul) said, “good job.”

What can I say? I will smile, accept your congratulations, and will not premeditate a personality. That is my nascence – a reflection, an introspection, and pushing an epiphany from eureka to practice.

Thanks for reading this, and if you guys have anything you want me to talk about, let me know – above all, COMMENT!