Thursday, August 24, 2006

24 (minutes)

It's 11:32 a.m. at Irvine Valley College...

What's this? For the first time in the twenty-seven year history of the college, students are actually using the A-quad!


Nobody notices.

...Meanwhile, over by the new (and unfinished) CEC portables, Dissent's crack investigative team is on the job...

CHUNK: "Look! Behind the new temporaries! It's a construction truck!"

REBEL GIRL: "It doesn't look like a construction truck. I mean, it's unmarked. This looks more like one of those, um, one of those--alien vans."

CHUNK: "You mean like in Men in Black or the X-Files? "

REBEL GIRL: "Yeah, exactly!"

...CHUNK & REB SKULK TO THE OTHER SIDE OF THE CEC BUILDINGS...

REB: (in a whisper:) "Hush! Get behind this bush! Do you see those two workers? I bet they're trying to fix the electricity for the portables!...Let's listen!"
1st WORKER: "Did you bring the wire thingy?"

2nd WORKER: "The wire thingy? I thought you brought it? Which wire thingy?"

1st WORKER: "Pendejo!"

2nd WORKER: "Do you hear buzzing? I hear buzzing. Don't you hear that buzzing?"

...SECONDS LATER...

CHUNK: "Look! The fence is sorta open! Let's go check out these new CEC shitboxes!"

REB: "No. We'll get in trouble!"

CHUNK: "How are we gonna get in trouble?"

Chunk walks through the opening in the chain-link fence and over to one of the rooms. Meanwhile, Reb, former Girl Scout, walks toward the parking lot and loiters nervously by a tree that is inexplicably wrapped in yellow security tape and accompanied by an empty plastic box.

She hears buzzing. It's coming from the roof of A300. She looks up at it.

Bees. Zillions of 'em.

Chunk checks out two of the new (and electricity-less) CEC rooms. He takes some snaps:



Suddenly, a shriek is heard from the nearby Humanities Center. Chunk and Reb run inside. They find a woman holding a picture and screaming at a student. "Like this! Like this!", she yells.


REB: "It's a writing conference. Let's leave 'em alone."

Reb and Chunk wander back out to the chain-link fence surrounding the new temporaries. They inspect a sign that they find there:


CHUNK: "This is the list of classes that had to be moved to other rooms this week. Have you noticed that most of the faculty on this list are in the School of Humanities & Languages or are otherwise on Raghu's Shit List?"

REB: "Well, duh."

Just then, the stink of formaldehyde wafts over the area (from A400, no doubt), causing a swift contagion of unattractive nose-scrunching and grimacing.

...Meanwhile, inside IVC's Student Services Building, underneath the "International Flag-o-Rama"...

Students stand in line, unaware that, if certain trustees have their way, the flags of Guatamala and Bosnia will soon house tiny security cameras that will secretly chronicle their every twitch and grumble.


...And over in the A200 Building...

A young woman suddenly starts vomiting violently. An instructor runs around for help. She finds two faculty with cell phones. They think.

They don't know who to call.

"Food poisoning, probably," says one instructor.

"Yeah," says the other. "Probably."

11:56 a.m.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

That's some college you have there. Was it projectile vomiting that the girl spewed? Will the A-quad now be torn down? Will those workers find the wire thingy? I gotta know!

Anonymous said...

Can't the district hire construction firms who can finish the job on time and who own vans emblazoned with their company names and numbers?

Can't the college post emergency information in every building so when someone collapses they don't have to listen to a litany of telephone options before they get an operator?

Is it too much to ask?

Will those classrooms be open on Monday or not?

Anonymous said...

What was the instructor lecturing about? It must be something distasteful.

Roy's obituary in LA Times and Register: "we were lucky to have you while we did"

  This ran in the Sunday December 24, 2023 edition of the Los Angeles Times and the Orange County Register : July 14, 1955 - November 20, 2...