The Interview

Welcome back readers, I just want to say a few things before I get to the long awaited, and highly anticipated interview of the century. Well the first day of classes has finally arrived. Durham is once again overflown by college students as we settle into our dorms and apartments. Students are hanging up your typical Sublime, Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd, Muhammad Ali, and/or Boondock Saints posters on their walls, hooking up their Wii's, 360's, and PS3's (I have PS2, old school bitches) and stocking their fridges and closets with various types of alcohol. The weather is looking nice for the week and Labor Day weekend which is highlighted by partying, pre-gaming and the opening football game on Saturday.

Introduction

Over this past summer I began thinking about college in more general terms I started talking to a lot of people, first for my own inquiries, but I found that they were actually much more entertaining than educational, so I have decided to share them with all of you. The different people I talked to were all different ages and they all attended different universities. They all asked to remain anonymous and I agreed. Enjoy.

The Subjects

• Older guy from work. He went to UMass and is a crazy old hippie.
• A family friend who graduated from UNH a few years ago. Kind of a wacko.
• A friend who is a senior at BU. Normal apart from going to BU.

The Interviews

1) If you could have changed one thing about your time at college what would it have been?

Older Guy- I wish I spent more time studying and less doing…extra curricular activities… I went to UMass in the late 70’s the “ZooMass” hey-day… and the drinking age was still 18.

Graduate- I would have changed my major, I got a degree and I don’t have a job in that field. I now realize that you shouldn’t believe everything your professor says either, they can just tell you what they want. If you really what to learn something, research it yourself, don’t rely on other people.

Student- Well, I still have this year and then maybe graduate school, but I wish I moved out of the dorms sooner. Not dealing with RA’s will be very nice this year.

2) What do you see for yourself in 5 years or so?

Older Guy- Well hopefully I can sell my company (construction) and retire to a nice house on a lake up north. (Not bad for a ZooMass grad.)

Graduate- I’m trying to get more into politics. I campaigned for Ron Paul this past election, I hoping to run for the (city) council and eventually mayor. I want to work my way up to governor or senate in another 10-15 years. I see a long career in politics for myself. I would really like to make it to DC as a state Rep or senate member, then who knows.

Student- Well as a Bio major I hope to land a high school teaching job and eventually move to a private school, academy or college where more money can be made.

3) What was the low point of your college career?

Older Guy- I got arrested at what was supposed to be a nonviolent protest about the price of textbooks. The funny thing is I never bought books, but this girl asked me to go with her. Although in hindsight, we have been married over 30 years so it all worked out.

Graduate- cocaine.

Student- I was arrested for public intoxication on Halloween of my sophomore year.

4) What was the best part of college?

Older Guy-, The girls, the booze, the drugs and the parties. College used to teach life lessons, students would stand up and protest for things they believed in.

Graduate- I always had apartments at UNH and we always had parties and stuff. There were always people over and a lot of weed in our house. In general I had a great time.

Senior- I feel bad saying this but when our hockey team won last year there were some awesome parties and even professors lightened up for a week. It was pretty cool.

5) What is the most important thing you got from your time at college?

Older Guy- It taught me how to be more responsible and to deal with my problems on my own.

Graduate- It’s all bullshit. Read a book or do your own research if you want to learn.

Senior- Hopefully how to be a good Bio teacher. We’ll see.

6) Any stories?

Older Guy- When I was at UMass a kid jumped of the library to commit suicide, its like 21 stories or something like that. When my younger brother went there a kid ran through the dishwasher in the café and died. It was like a miniature carwash and the thing burned him alive.

Graduate- We had the only ground level apartment downtown and during the Red Sox riots we got a front row view at everything. When the cops brought out the pepper we let a bunch of people into our tiny house. There were probably about 40 people we didn’t know sin our living room.

Senior- I been on the subway after a few Sox and Bruins games and seen some shit. Bar fights happen a lot down here. When I was underaged I would go to a couple bars that wouldn't card us by Chinatown. One of my buddies got in a fight with this like 40 year old guy. It got broken up pretty quickly and we weren't allowed back so it kind of sucked but it was also really funny.

I hope you got something out of this, maybe it will just make you think for minute about why your here. Most of all, your in college and you probably wont be back again so enjoy it while you can.

Stay classy, not UMassy.

Back To School

It’s that time of year again. Fall classes are starting up and soon the new semester will be in full swing. I don’t know about you but I have been anxiously waiting to get out of my house and back to campus. What can I say, I like my freedom here. These past few weeks have been pretty interesting from partying it up in Bar Harbor to picking out nice new Nikes while back to school shopping. I have even been getting some interesting emails about the blog with has gotten me very excited because it shows that people actually read this and that I’m not completely insane. I got one email asking me to give some free advertising for a local company. I was unsure at first but after checking out there product and learning that some employees attend UNH I decided to go along with it.

To the people at Slouchback here is your shout out. Their products are designed for dorm rooms and one is basically an inflatable top half of a couch that you can put on your doom room bed to make it double as a couch. I thought it is a pretty cool idea.

I have also gathered some tips, through my own knowledge and some helpful emails. When buying textbooks be sure to check out textbooks.com or amazon.com before venturing to the MUB or to the DBE, you can usually find books for much cheaper prices online.

I know I wrote about this before but studentoffortune.com can be an easy way to make a few bucks or gain some important knowledge for school. Check out my feature article about them if you missed it here.

I also have some news about the blog in general. Thanks to my 12-year-old cousin and his knowledge of technology I have learned how to Bluetooth pictures from my phone to my laptop and I’m hoping that this ability will lead to many funny pictures of our beloved campus throughout the year. This could help me with my “picture of the day/week” posts, which I stopped after only 2 entries when first starting the blog.

After reviewing the current tally in the latest poll it appears that many of you wish me to drink a lot and post. And if that’s what you want then my liver will have to take one for the team. I also have a small project in the works that I never got around to last year that I’m hoping to finish sometime in the near or distant future. It also looks as if you want me to write more advice and opinion pieces and seeing as this is a blog that is already what I do during the year so keep coming back because I try to post daily (at least 5 times a week) during the semester.

Getcha popcorn ready because this is a new year at the University of Nonsensical Happenings. This years first song of the day is "Lawyers, Guns and Money" by one of my all-time favorite musicians Warren Zevon.

Stay classy, not UMassy.

Eating a Firecracker

Note: The following took place on Friday March 6th, 2009; roughly three weeks before this blog was first published. This is 100% factual. Enjoy.

Introduction:
A friend of mine and I had bought tickets to see the world famous Pink Floyd cover band, The Machine, at the Portsmouth City Music Hall. We are both huge fans of Floyd and since we are far too young to have seen the original Floyd we figured that The Machine would have to do. We made plans take the early evening bus to Portsmouth, pick up our tickets and have about an hour before the show started to walk around downtown. After the show we were going to crash at my older brother's apartment just outside of downtown Portsmouth, about a 10-minute walk from the Music Hall. The plan seemed pretty solid.

The Story:
My friend and I decided that there was no way that we could see a Pink Floyd cover band without being under the influence of a little plant known as marijuana, but there were two problems. 1) Since we had to take a bus to Portsmouth there was no way that we would be able to smoke before the show and still be influenced by the time the band came on. And 2) we lived in a dorm. So, being the good college students that we are (seriously, we both get very respectable grades) we did some research. Thanks to some crazy cannabis forum found via the Internet we learned about something called “firecrackers.”

A firecracker is a very simple way to cook weed much like a brownie, but it is very quick and scentless, which caught our attention because we lived in dorms. To make a firecracker simply take a saltine cracker and coat it with natural fat-containing peanut butter (found at the bagel stations in our lovely dinning halls). Then sprinkle on some weed and take a second cracker with peanut butter to make a sandwich. The final step is to microwave the peanut butter weed sandwich for about a minute on high. Since THC is fat-soluble it cooks from the weed into the fat of the peanut butter. It’s simple chemistry. The crackers are only there to make it a little easier to eat. A good firecracker will take about 1.5 hours to kick in and can potentially give you a crazy strong high for up to three hours.

DISCLAIMER: Firecrackers are not worth it. They are too inconsistent; we did this twice each and only had on good result out of the four we cooked. That good result was me in this story.

Back to the story.
So anyways we cooked up our snacks and downed them promptly (they tasted disgusting.) We caught our bus and were on our way to downtown Portsmouth, a city that I knew decently at the time and my buddy had never been to. The bus ride, because of the various stops, took about 45 minutes. About 40 minutes into the ride, I began to take a ride of my own. My firecracker was coming on very early, and very strong.

I began to try to explain to my friend that the bus wasn’t even moving, but the road and the buildings were moving around the bus. As soon as I finished trying to explain this phenomenon I realized that I could see the moves the bus driver were going to make. I knew where he was going to turn and when he would brake or accelerate. Not only this but I began to see the bus from a third person angle, like in a videogame. To put it simply, I was fucked up.

At this point in time we had reached our destination, downtown Portsmouth. The bus drops off right near the Music Hall, but I was not in the right frame of mind to realize this, and like I said before my friend had never been to Portsmouth. We began walking in the wrong direction all the way around the block that makes up the downtown area. About 35 minutes later we arrived at the Music Hall, I was able to pick up our tickets at will call without a problem and we were seated in our balcony seats with a half hour to spare. Success! My firecracker was beginning to wear off, or so I thought. When The Machine came on and busted into Shine on You Crazy Diamond the balcony turned into a rollercoaster and I was forced to lean back in my seat and grip my armrests as hard as I could. It was fucking intense.

By about the 3rd song my firecracker wore off for good and I was sad to hear that my friend was completely sober the entire night. But I would not let that last long, and neither would my brother. The Machine finished their set, which included most of Dark Side of the Moon, Animals (my favorite Floyd album), all of Wish You Were Here and hits from The Wall as well as some lesser known (but equally awesome) songs.

After the show, we walked over to my brother’s apartment to chill with him and a couple of his friends. We had a few beers, took a few hits from a bong, threw some darts and later played some videogames. I remember asking one of my brother’s friends, who is a huge Lions fan, how they would do next season. He gave me a hard time for making fun of the team because one of their players just died.

Then the fun started, or should I say complete domination. My brother’s roommate, knowing that I’m a big fan of skateboarding, busted out the most recent Tony Hawk videogame he rented for PS3. A couple people played before me, in a head to head total points format, with the winner staying in. Before me the highest point total was about 15,000. I realized they didn’t know the R2 button to “revert to manual” for huge combos. I broke 500,000 without a sweat. After beating everyone with my high score over 900,000 everyone else got pissed and quit. My brother’s roommate returned the game the next day. It remains a soar subject with him to this day.

The rest of the night was pretty uneventful, people passed out on couches and I on the floor. We returned to campus the next day. So that is my firecracker story, I just wanted to kick off the new school year with something interesting. It was a very fun experience, but seeing how inconsistent they are I probably won’t be cooking any up this year; but if I do, I’ll let you know.

Stay classy, not UMassy.

A Quick Rant (sorry, not drunk.)

A while back I got a message on my twitter account simply asking “What is the best part of UNH?” I didn’t see the message until for a few days and I felt bad for not replying earlier so I quickly answered without much thought. I know I said this a while ago, but it may have been before I had more than a handful of readers, but I encourage you all to ask me any questions, open-ended or not. You can tweet me a message on twitter, ask New Hampshirite on facebook, post a comment here on the blog or email me at unhblog@yahoo.com. The more questions or comments I get, the better and faster the blog will grow.

This one reader’s question got me thinking and I really wanted to take some time to give a legitimate answer. So what really is the best thing about UNH? A lot of things at UNH are probably pretty similar with most large universities across the nation.

I really enjoy the freedom I have at UNH. I know a lot of people complain about the cops and RA’s (as I have several times on here before) but step back and think about it for a minute. The cops are just doing their jobs, to protect and serve. If they see a drunk kid stumbling around at night they are going to arrest them because they have to...but they are still douchebags... RA’s can only do so much, so if you have a plan you should never get in trouble from an RA.

Outsmarting RA’s is not even hard to do. Especially because someof them couldn’t give a shit about what you do, but there are always are a few in each dorm who take their job a little too seriously. Pay attention, these are my tips and if you follow them you will never be busted by an RA. This is really basic information that most kids know and freshmen will realize it within the first few weekends, but I figure it wont hurt to share my ideas. Some of this is a repeat of my freshman article so I apologize if I'm being repetative, but kids always get in trouble for stupid things the first few weeks. It's gonna happen.

Keep your music at a reasonable level and have a place to hide your drinks if there is a knock on the door. While drinking in a dorm room my friends (yes, I have friends) we usually keep a drawer open and if there is a knock at the door everyone puts his or her drink into the drawer and shut it. I probably had an RA knock on my door about 15 times last year while I was drinking with some friends and never once did we get in trouble. Not even a noise violation or a warning. Always pay attention to the time; being loud after quiet hours is the easiest way to get written up. Open the door all the way, this shows that you have nothing to hide. If you are playing drinking games don’t make it too obvious. NEVER use beer cups during Beirut; water cups are the way to go, plus it’s more sanitary. (Trust me I got an A in Germs 101 last year. Easiest class at UNH. Seriously you should take it.) If you are playing a card game, try keeping some poker chips on the table. If you’re playing kings make sure you ditch the king’s cup too, we usually didn’t use one just to be safe. A lot of RA’s really don’t give a shit; they only do it to get free housing, which goes to show that it is very important to know which RA’s are on duty. Basically you have to be really dumb to get caught by an RA. Don’t be dumb.

I know a lot of people bitch about different things at UNH and I could easy write about every little thing that is wrong with UNH. But that’s not my style, I would rather just rip on things that truly deserve to be ripped on and appreciate the rest. I have realized that the best part of UNH is that this question is so hard to answer. Comprende? There are so many things I enjoy about UNH; it is nearly impossible to pick one. I hope you all enjoy your college experience as much as I have so far.

Stay classy, not UMassy.