PLEASED AS PUNCH by Chunk

OK, so on Friday, after my morning class, I headed to UPS to make some fliers. Then I headed south to Saddleback College to distribute said fliers and to take some pics, only, it was a pretty dreary looking day, and that sucked bigtime.

I rolled up to that parking lot near Fine Arts, where I spotted a snazzy little sports car. Blue, I think. I recalled driving around the campus one day a few years ago and spotting a car just like this one. It was driven, I thought, by a certain theatrical fellow—one of the Scandalous Boys—the kind that used to control the union so it could bail ‘em out of scrapes. ("Scrapes" is a euphemism.) This particular Scandalous Boy used to leave me unpleasant voicemail messages in which he breathed so heavily that he seemed on the verge of unconsciousness, or climax. Blecccch! (See “the Character of the Opposition” in the ARCHIVES: November ’98.)

One time, when I was at a restaurant with a friend, Scandal Boy happened to be there too, eatin’ fries; he spotted me and, after a few minutes, he worked up the courage to stand up, point at me, and declare: “He who lives by the sword, dies by the sword!” He trembled and quaked. We stared at him. What was the matter with the fellow?

Seeing this car again made me think: hey, what about cars? I mean, the kind of car a person drives says a lot about ‘im. Me, for instance, I drive a beat-up old Honda, which tells you either that I eschew materialism, or that I am a slob. Take your pick.

Well, Scandal Boy seems to drive a car that says, “Girls! Over here! Look at ME!” plus “Cash to burn!”

Anyway, I headed for the Fine Arts division, where I found the faculty mail plus a secretary who was sitting next to a box with a phone on it. She seemed aware of how it looked. She squinted up at me and said something like, “I guess this looks pretty stupid.”

“Well, it is special,” I said.

She explained that “they” had taken the furniture and so she was stuck, sittin’ there next to a box and a phone, and she sure hoped they’d bring that furniture back soon. “What am I supposed to do? Sit here like this by this phone?” she said.

On my way to the Library, I came across a really old guy who seemed to be dying right there in the grass. “Diversity,” thought I.

Walking past the old Board Room brought back memories of Nazis and Irv Rubin; of screaming students and shouting demonstrators; of Frogueian rants about the CIA and the ADL and the DAR. (See ARCHIVES: January & June ’98.)

Ah, the good old days!

I headed up to the third floor, where the denizens of BGS are now housed, now that BGS has been declared toxic. Somebody told me that they might actually have to tear that building down! Recently, Dangerous Bob told me that, when he enters BGS, he starts coughing, but he was coughing when he said it, and we weren’t in BGS, so what can you say.

It was weird going through the automatic door into the third floor offices. I looked askance for Chancellors and toadies, but then I realized that the district is now elsewhere, uptown.

After I put fliers in mailboxes, I took some snaps of the Dilbert-style cubicle hell that Liberal Arts and Business faculty now call home. It was a Friday, and so I didn’t spot any faculty, just a cute 18-year old girl in one of the modules who was telling another girl, on the other side of a partition, how she was gonna do something outrageous to break up with her boyfriend. She declared that she was giving up on dating. “Ha!” said the other girl.

I briefly visited the portion of the third floor that once housed the Chancellor. As I approached the “zone of glass,” I encountered a secretary who looked squarely at me and barked: “Who are YOU?” I told her I was distributing fliers. I handed her one. She studied it and screwed up her face a bit. “Oh,” she said, unpleasantly.

I snagged a copy of the latest Lariat, the student newspaper, which seems to have been inspired by the district’s “get hotties” marketing campaign, for, on the front page is an eye-catching investigative piece about the self-indulgence of American youth. The article focuses on “18 and older clubs” where young women dance around, get drunk, and strut their stuff.

The accompanying photos of assorted "hotties" are pretty amazing. (See.) Here are some excerpts from the article:

"Most older guys just stare at you," said Danielle Wilson, 18, real estate. "It doesn't really bother me because they don't try to touch you or anything."
....
Neither Club Glam nor The Boogie discourage the use of cameras, and camera phones pointed under a skirt or down a woman's cleavage are commonplace.
.....
Clubs such as The Boogie pay professional go-go type dancers to entertain. Male or female, these dancers strip down to their underwear while dancing seductively for the crowd. If these dancers remove their clothing, additional permits for a figure model studio (strip facility) may be required….
...
While the federal government is cracking down on the pornography industry, the young women of middle-class America seem to be emulating it. Many are wondering where the line of social acceptance will finally be drawn.

We at Dissent have a pretty good idea where the district draws that line these days: at “hotties and happiness”! (See “Money and Hotties,” ARCHIVE: September ’05.)

Over at Math, I managed to get past the sentries to distribute my fliers. Jeez, there sure are lots of faculty over in Math. It was wearin’ me out, poppin’ those fliers in all those boxes. I was sweatin'.

The last time I did this, a secretary, still sitting at her desk, roared:: “Who are YOU? What are YOU doing here?!”

“I’m just distributing fliers. I’m from IVC.”

The bit about IVC didn’t help. She roared again: “next time, tell me before you do that!”

But, this time, I must’ve done something right. I think that, unconsciously, I chose to affect the carefree attitude of someone distributing Carl’s Junior coupons. That is, I looked pleasant and vapid and pleased-as-punch. When the two secretary types came around and spotted me, they said nothing. They even smiled!

Next, I drove up to the new building and parked near the reserved parking. I spotted an impressive Mercedes in one of the reserved spaces, and I figured it was the Chancellor’s. I'd seen it once before. I wrote down the model number. Later, I determined that this car goes for about fifty grand. Maybe more. Wow.

An old TV show theme song started to play in my head: “…to that Deee-luxe apartment, in the skyyyyyy!”

I took pictures of the Mercedes. I very nearly left one of my fliers under one of Raghu’s windshield wipers. But then I thought, “what would Rebel Girl do?” I walked away from the Mercedes and straight into the new building.

I took some snaps of the new boardroom. I took a picture, too, of the picture of Mr. Goo, just outside the room. (See.) In the photo, he seems terribly pleased.

A few minutes later, the elevator opened, and I beheld the Sentry Station for the district area. It’s pretty impressive. The woman sitting behind the counter popped her head out, craned her neck to the right, and said, “Who are YOU? What are YOU doing here?”

I asked her if I could go inside. “No,” she said.

“Well, how do I get inside?”

“If you have an appointment with someone, I could call them, and verify that you’re supposed to be here. Then I’d let you in.”

“Oh.” I paused. “So I can’t just go in there and take some pictures?”

“No.”

I smiled and thanked her. Despite my affected pleased-as-punch vapidity, I do believe she thought I might be a terrorist. I got out of there fast.

Maybe I got this scrambled—could be—but I think it was somewhere in the new building that I spotted the much ballyhooed nurses program facility. It was locked. I looked inside. The room was exactly like an intensive care unit. It looked good. I spotted a patient in one of the beds. His head was foam. His eyes were buttons.

Wow, they’ve got an ICU unit with mannequins! How cool is that?

Back out at the parking lot, I took another snap of Raghu’s car. It was beautiful. It seemed to say: “I’m rich and I’m better, much better, than you!”

It seemed to point at me. It said: “it is much better to seem just than to be just.”

I climbed into my Honda and, amid the gloom, I headed home. --CW