Jump to Comments AKA ‘WEEKEND UPDATE are-Kansas’ So, uh, yeah. Well, I guess this whole weekend wasn’t spent in lovely Circe Searcy, Arkansas, but, uh, I’m just using that title because I can.

So, Friday evening was spent going to the Pacers vs Magic game with all the German exchange students. I guess I haven’t actually written anything about them, have I eh? No, I haven’t. Well guess what, I’m on His Lukeness’ laptop right now and don’t feel like bothering with it. Anyhow, they all said they had a very good time, but we were in Nosebleeds and the stupid Pacers can’t play a solid quarter, so, uh whatever. Frau was scared to death of one of the requisite nosebleed hecklers, fuahahaha. Crazy Neu Zeelanter.

So, uh, Saturday morning we all went to watch Midwest Turf Association play la crosse or something, which was vaguely enjoyable. Annette seemed to have fun, but she also seemed to get sunburned, blah. That evening the old guy and I flew Northwest to Memphis. Both airports were nearly completely deserted, security seemed quicker than it did before the recent Unpleasentness, and the flight was quick– much quicker than the nine hours or whatever the drive would be.

Memphis, Tennessee. This town is the Mac Shizzle, my Nizzle. Seriously, it is off the Hizzle fo’ rizzle. And, enough with the Snoopisms. But, anyhow, yeah, for those of you that don’t know, Memphis International is one of the primary Northwest Airlines hubs, and, therefore, every sign in terminals A and B are in English and Japanese. In Tennessee. But most of it is the loan-word phonetic alphabet, so something might say TERMINAL A or GATE A1-A26 in English and then “TE – MI NA RU [A]” or “GA – TU [A1-A26]” below in Japanese. I’m not sure what’s up with the dashes, but I’m pretty darn sure those don’t have any phonetic value in Japanese… katakana, or whatever. Speaking of Asia, on the shuttle to the Hertz rentabuick joint there was this little girl, about 4 or 5 or 8 (I don’t know kids; I’ve never been a good average reference point in my life XD) with an American father and an East-asian mother who looked almost exactly like the child in that Monsters INC movie, excepting the fact that she wasn’t, you know, computer animated. Just thought I’d share that.

So, Hertz gave us this Buick Century. Aside from the instant turn-offs of the recent Buick Century being the ?humpmobile, and that it only had a V6 and seats made out of that weird GM carseat velour material, it was a quite enjoyable ride. Its acceleration was poochy, and the suspension would be perfect if one was 85, but it could consistently drive at speed and was quite fuel efficient. Not that it we tested it with particularly challenging terrain– this Arkansas place is almost as flat as Flatland, and unlike here, it doesn’t appear to have a significant freeze-thaw-freeze cycle, so the roads were smooth. I mean, it’s nuts– these two-lane Federal Highways down there are like the forking Autobahn. And the roads had passing lanes every few miles, which was just too perfect. No, wait, I’ll tell you what’s too perfect. Driving down an emty road in Nowheresville with an FM band full of music– good music— like, 40 minutes of uninterrupted Led Zepplin and stations playing album-length Beatles music. I don’t know how I can emphasize this enough. I’ve mentioned it to people at school, and they say, “yeah, so you just go buy CDs, big deal.” But, dude. CDs cost money. We’re talking about getting more Rock stations in Nowheresville than we have Smooth Jazz / ‘Lite’ whatever. Yes folks. Absolutely zero Avril Lavigne. None of that ‘R and B’ crap trying to pass itself off as ‘hip hop’. No obnoxious commercials– well, except for a certain commercial that is in theory the ultimate in irritation but in reality was simply hillarious.

…The Nitrous-burning ALL WEEL DRIVE CAR CRUSHING

MIIIIIIIIIINIVAN!

Can you can bring the whole family, because CHILDREN UNDER TWELVE ARE

FRREEEEEEEEEE.

Muahahahahahaha.

So we stayed in a hotel room that was part of the Soviet Student Union, or whatever those are called. The elevators were from in the 60s, and the motors made most excellent early-electromagnetics-type wooshing noises. If I end up going to Harding, I’m so going to blow a day recording them all. Didn’t do much Saturday Night, as we got there at, uh, 12ish. Woke up and went to church with His Lukeness. The service that he likes to go to is quite, uh, informal, contemporary, modern, progressive, whatever. However, I enjoyed it much better than when certain, uh, ‘worship leaders’, or whatever, try and be, um, progressive or whatever at a certain congregation I might just happen to attend. And why, you may ask? Because there’s a difference between having church and singing songs and enjoying it and just happening to be doing it in a way that’s, uh, ‘non-tradional’ (whatever that’s supposed to mean for a sect that’s only 200 something years old) as opposed to doing thing that are ‘non-traditional’ with an expected goal of having church and singing songs and enjoying it– you can’t forking mandate mindsets, people. If I figure out that I can plug up some schmuck’s nose with cotton swabs to keep him from sneezing, it’s not going to change the fact that he’s got an allergy to tree pollen and feels miserable. Same bleeding thing. Symptoms aren’t diseases; actions aren’t mindsets. On a related note, ‘actions speak louder than words’ is part oversimplication and part outright BS; thanks in advance.

Oh, right, Circe Searcy! So, after Church, dad, Luke, and I went to a nice place called ‘Colton’s Steakhouse’, where I had, uh, Steak, and, uh, Steak Fries. It was much a tasty. We stayed and chatted for a while, and then went back to campus, and I spent the afternoon walking around campus and hanging out with the Lukester in his dorm. It was quite enjoyable, although I know I’ve completely forgotten all his friends that I met. Oh well.

So, Montagmorgen I woke up, got out of bed, aped Paul McCartney lyrics. Met up with the infamous Admission guy, who has impeccible timing to call me at home while I’m sleeping. He’s a nice guy, and I toured the campus officially, went to chapel and met the Honors Department head, etc. Speaking of the Honors Head, he’s like, you know, Mr. Bloede, except on, uh, copious ammound of Caffeine. FUAHAHAHA. I should so go to this college.

In regards to going to the college, I had my scholarship interview at 1400 that day; I hope it went well. I really do. I have no prior experience with interviews of any sort, and I’m normally incredibly hypercritical of myself directly after a major societal transaction, so I can’t honestly say how well I did or didn’t. We drove around the town after that, it’s quite nice, and reminds me of a wierd blend of Texas and what Mentone would be like if it weren’t dying and if it were located in this crazy Arkansas land. A nice drive back to Memphis followed– another interesting radio note– three full-length Beatles’ songs, as well as a McCartney tune within a period of 35 minutes. Okay, is the reader now comprehending the utter awesomeness of radio in this area? I mean, this is forking insane, and I cannot stress it enough.

We sat around entirely too long at MEM (we probably could have stayed longer in Ci– Searcy and visited some of the other people down there that I know). We had some good barbeque at the aptly named “Intersate BBQ” inside the terminal, so, uh, that was a nice way to make up for it. Northwest Airbussed our fool selves back home– those planes suck in comparison even to the DC-9, not to mention the vastly superior Boeing jets. We circled Indianapolis twice, landed, taxied all the way around the tarmac as we landed on a NE-SW airstrip and the terminals are located at the NE corner of the airport land. Further, we sat in the plane a few yards from the Gate for about 20 minutes, probably because it wasn’t ready, or something dumb like that. Did I mention that our bag was the last one off the conveyor? So much for getting to an airport early. I went to sleep at about 1; all in all, it was a fun trip. Now comment, dangit.