A necessary ego boost

I would summarize the events of this weekend, except that a) nothing all that extraordinary occurred, and 2) see a). My fears that I am becoming boring are becoming more well grounded every day. Perhaps it’s just a consequence of getting old — I’ll be 23 in less than an hour. I’ll save that whole spiel for tomorrow. Two interesting things did happen on Friday, and another today, so here goes.

First, Free Speech Friday, the opinion page feature where every yahoo with an internet connection can get their cock-eyed views published in the fourth largest Seattle newspaper, was overflowing with pro-Chomsky sentiment. After Wednesday’s faculty editorial condemning him as an America-hating anti-Semite (despite his being Jewish), I was glad to see such a voluminous rebuttal from the rational members of the campus community. To quote the sole letter to the editor on Thursday, “As an American, I appreciate his views. Does that make me anti-American? Not so long as Americans have the right to an informed opinion.” Telling the truth, however ugly it may be, can never be a bad thing in politics. I may have to renege on that statement later, but for now it will stand.

Second, the Outhouse frisbee team lost on Friday, putting our season record at 2-1 so far. We played our hearts out and the match was really close, but in the end the other team was just too good. They had these two Asian guys who single-handedly out-maneuvered our entire team, like off-duty ninjas. We only had one Asian guy, Lam, and while he is a confirmed off-duty ninja, obviously we were at a disadvantage right off the bat. In a repeat of the first game, I jumped for a frisbee, landed, and then one of my teammates fell on me from the sky. It was the same guy in both games, and both times it didn’t hurt much at first but then hurt a lot later on. Caitlin, who was watching from the sidelines, informed me that our collision sounded like one of the tackles in Any Given Sunday, that crappy movie about the NFL with the amplified tackle sounds.

Today I got my short story workshopped, which was a nice little half hour of ego stroking — long overdue in my fiction career. People seemed to really like it. One class member’s comment in the margin: “OMG it exists… a grammatically correct list using semi-colons. Thank you. This was like seeing Bigfoot. I am overwhelmed.” Many of the critiques I got back were very helpful in their suggestions, which I plan to incorporate in my revisions. Somehow, over the course of the last two years, my opinion of peer feedback has progressed as follows: “these idiots don’t know what they’re talking about”; “OK, ass-hat number two actually makes a compelling case…”; “that’s interesting, let me explore that idea with you more closely.” I can’t say what is responsible for the shift — surely not a reduction of ego. That would be unthinkable. As for the story itself, I’ve decided to distribute it only in hard-copy form, which is available upon request. I have many reasons for this choice, but mostly I just don’t want to wake up one day and realize I’m one of those people with an extensive short story collection published only on the Internet. I might be already.