You, as a Duke student, cannot be expected to notice things all the time. That's my job. I get paid to notice things around campus and document facts, so the student body will be informed. If you have a particularly nice student body, please contact The Chronicle; they'll know where to find me.
This week's noticing included this large structure. My friends took me there to cure my munchies after the football game. I was so toasted that I thought we won! Apparently I climbed onto the goalposts and proceeded to mount them in my undies. Somebody took my picture. Anyway, they were jabbering about this great place to get omelets. Since I order filet mignon from my couch every night, I'd never been.
Let me tell you, that cheesy omelet was great! They mix in some sort of small flakes that really add pep! The student health fee covers bypass surgery, right? What?!?! It only covers the free condoms!? Well, at least they're fun to put on people's doorknobs. I say Rick's should jack their prices and hire an attractive waiter or two; they could run the Oak Room into the ground. Or they could change nothing and run the Oak Room into the ground.
After a few bites of cheesy goodness, I became curious as to my whereabouts. We had walked a great distance, possibly toward Edens, a direction rarely traveled. Probably not far enough, though. I once got lost there and woke up in a strange creek to the sound of trucks backing up. I asked my buddies where exactly we were, and they were told that all was well, we were in the West-Edens Link. Sprite shot out my nose when I thought of that one.
I thought it might make a good story. Students would definitely want to be aware of a new dorm on campus, so I started investigating. A quick stroll around the perimeter got me pretty lost. At one point, I pointed to the back of a West Campus dorm and asked somebody which one it was. She told me it was HH2. I have no idea where HH2 is, so I asked her what was there last year. She told me she lived on East last year. I delayed my investigation for a period of 30 minutes, during which I cursed the new housing plan and all sophomores with singles.
All that cursing made me hungry, so I decided to hit up Subway. Wait, did I say "Subway"? I hear Subway is going to open right around the time the Independent Corridor becomes a social force on campus.
So back to the WEL I went. I ducked in after a resident to find red bricks, waist high as far as I could see. Two years and millions of dollars for this ugliness? I kicked the bricks in disgust, only to hear a hollow thud. Yeah, the bricks aren't even real.
By this time, I had exceeded my monthly limit of swearing, so I decided to ask the Lord for forgiveness. What better place to call to the Lord than from the ubiquitous church benches? Church benches in dorms? What's next, special rooms to keep the trash cans in? Kilgo residents, let me hear you!
Thirty minutes of swearing later, sprinklers were going off, so I climbed out the window onto some construction scaffolding. Somebody took my picture. It took them 90 minutes to turn the sprinklers off, marking the first time the Duke University Police Department has ever looked speedy. Special Officer Doofy was there, ticket pad in hand. Five minutes after the fire trucks arrived he was spotted proudly placing a $100 fire lane ticket under the wiper of the Durham Fire Marshal. Angered by this, the Fire Marshal spent the next day doing fire drills in the Bryan Center. Vice President for Student Affairs Larry Moneta was quoted as saying, "There are a couple of pieces of information we need to find: Why it took so long to turn it off and how to make sure this will not happen again." Students were also left wondering, "How can we make sure Larry Moneta will never happen again?"
A somewhat drunken, portly redheaded fellow, speaking on the condition of anonymity, revealed the final phases of Moneta's master plan to me. He said, "They [Mother Russia] sent Moneta here to turn Duke students into pets for foreign petting zoos. The groundwork starts freshman year for Randolph residents, as we acclimatize them to small living spaces. When their housing is linked to the WEL, we tell them their rooms are bigger, but they really aren't. Then we take away their water fountains and install hamster-style water bottles in the hall."
He took a swig from a silver can in his left hand, and another from his right, before continuing: "The Randolph kids who didn't do well in the hamster experiment got flooded. Plan B involves turning them into goldfish. Ol' Larry's gonna sprinkle some fish food in the eggs at the diner to speed things up!" He then tiptoed in the direction of Pauly's cart.
THE SECOND GUNMAN would like to toss a shout-out to all the Southgate kids linked to Edens.
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