Welcome our newest column:

Different flavor, different style, different content, different column. Tune in weekly for this, you'll enjoy it. And be sure to post and comment in the Suppository. I'm sure people will have a lot to say on this one.

Welcome Nutrimentia.

At least until my Sims start fucking and that little blob thing stops attaching itself to my face in Half-Life.

Okay, here is my menu.

Breakfast:

1 large cup.
1 running faucet.
1 tray of ice.

First, you bring your cup to the freezer. You will then open said freezer and remove the tray of ice cubs. You will have to get the ice cubes out of the tray. I suggest twisting the tray until some of the cubes pop out and land on the floor. Then, you replace tray into freezer, close freezer, and retrieve cubes from floor, placing them in your cup.

You then proceed to the faucet, then you turn the faucet on. Now here it is particularly important to remember to turn on the cold water instead of the hot, which is a common rookie mistake.

You then fill up cup of ice with water.

Proceed to the computer. Repeat when neccessary.

Lunch:

2 packs of cigarettes.
One working lighter.
One ashtray (optional)

Take cigarette out of pack. The brand depends on your own preference. I prefer one pack of Kool Kings, one pack Marlboro lights, and advise switching between the two. Variety is the spice of life!

Put cigarette to lips. Now here, it is also imporant to have the filter side in the mouth and the other side on the out, not the other way around.

Retrieve lighter from whatever dark and unholy place it migrated to over the course of the night before.

Light cigarette.

Repeat 5 minutes later.

Enjoy!

(note: lunch should begin immediatly after breakfast and should continue until you pass out late at night. But do not have lunch while in the shower.)

Dinner:

1 case of beer (24 twelve oz cans)
1 lack of a will to live

To properly prepare for dinner, you should have already placed the beer in the refrigerator a few hours beforehand.

Having done that, go to refrigerator. Retrive a single can of beer. Open it. Drink contents. Repeat 15 or 16 times.

Enjoy!

(Then somewhere during the course of dinner I microwave a few convinince store hamburgers or something)

Alright, see you next week. Gotta go.

It's dinner time.

In case some of you don’t know, the apartment I am currently living in has a lot of problems with its plumbing. Things are always getting stopped up, leaking, whatever. So, being the man around here, it is my charge to try and fix all of these problems. In doing so I have acquired a wealth of knowledge on the subject. Allow me to share some of it with you.

GENERAL

1. When a pipe begins to shake violently and makes a kind of guttural and mechanical sounding howl, abort mission.

2. Black bile coming out of every source of water in the house is a problem best left to professionals (true story, and trust me on this one).

3. If and when you do choose to call a professional, make sure that upon their arrival you explain to them in detail exactly what you have done to try and correct the problem. That way, not only can they undo your damage, but also they will have a right good story to tell the boys back at the office. Oh, and try to get them to say “lay some pipe” as much as possible. Harass them if you must.

4. Wrenches are a plumber’s best friend. To use a wrench, simply place it in the palm of your hand and bang on the pipe with it.

5. Plumbing systems are known for their redundancy. Most parts that you take off of something can simply be thrown out.

6. Just to clear this up, the proper place to vomit is in the TOILET. Okay? Rizz’s friends seem to keep believing it should go in the sink. This is a mistake. I don’t shit in your bathtub do I?

BATHTUB/SHOWER

1. Often times the greatest problem with bathtubs are keeping them clean. I suggest spraying water all over the bathtub to rinse it all off. No other steps are needed. This is known as “showering”.

2. People oft complain that when you flush the toilet, the temperature rises in the shower suddenly and briefly. A good way to remedy this is to render the toilet incapable of flushing (see section TOILETS).

3. Another complaint about showers is that the hot water often runs out before the shower is over. A good way to remedy this is to fix the toilet and have somebody flush it repeatedly.

4. Sometimes, the bathtub starts getting stopped up and then starts regurgitating what looks like black bile. When this occurs, call a priest.

5. If your bathtub DOES start getting stopped up, simply bring a bucket with you when you bathe and empty the undrained water into the toilet (note, the converse of this does not work as well and can be quite unsanitary).

6. A good way to cut down on water bills is to shower-pool. Bring some friends with you next time you bathe.

SINKS

1. Your kitchen sink should have a garbage disposal unit already installed. This is the disposal receptacle for all organic matter in the house, no matter how much your roommates insist to the contrary. Uneaten food, old fruit, body parts, vomit, dead pets, any of these things are all perfectly acceptable candidates for “The Disposer”.

2. Remember however, that most bathroom sinks DO NOT have a disposal unit.

3. In any case, you shouldn’t have any problems with the sink anyway. Sinks are easy. The hard one is the…

TOILET

1. Your girlfriend will get mad at you if you clean the toilet with her towels. But then again, she will get mad if you don’t clean the toilet at all. I don’t get it either.

2. Any problem with a toilet can be solved by doing one of two things:

A: Using a plunger.

B. Jiggling the handle

If you are experiencing a problem that cannot be solved by doing one of those two things, you will have to replace your toilet.

3. If you ever do dare to venture into the tank of the toilet, there are a few things to consider. For one, there is a thing called a “flapper”, a black piece of rubber that regulates water flow into the bowl. Any work that needs to be done on the flapper needs to be done with lightening speed, or you will find yourself need deep in shit in 11 seconds.

4. There is also a part of the toilet called the chain that runs from the handle to the flapper. These sometimes come off of the flapper, and thus the toilet can only be flushed manually (i.e. lifting the flapper by hand). If this occurs to you, you will quickly discover that even though the chain attaches to the flapper with a simple hook, getting the chain back on is akin to solving a Rubik’s cube. And you have to lift the flapper in most cases to do it. Please see TOILETS #3 regarding this.

5. There are also some tubes and things inside the toilet tank. Please disregard these, as they serve no purpose other then storing condoms filled with cocaine.

6. If you have a child of young age in your household, try to keep the seat down. Otherwise, you have to constantly fish out household items as well as your child from the toilet.

7. There has been much debate over the years as to having a man and a woman sharing a bathroom, and whether or not the seat should be kept up or down. My take on it, from a plumbing perspective, is that if we keep the seat down, we have to lift it up to piss. If we keep it down, you have to put it down to piss. Seems an equal amount of unfairness goes into either option. However, most men will in fact not put the seat up to piss regardless of which method you choose, at which point you have to decide if getting piss on your ass constantly outweighs falling into the bowl once every other blue moon. Choose wisely.

8. If your toilet is clogged with a whole bunch of diarrhea, and before you get a chance to use the plunger you are sent to jail for a week, put into mandatory rehab for a month, and then spend a week with your mother, when you come back, do not look in your toilet. Trust me. For the love of Christ, please trust me.

OTHER

1. In some backwards nations, there is something next to the toilet that shoots water up your ass to clean it. In the states, we have something called “toilet paper” that serves the same function. We are working on exporting this marvelous invention sometime in the next five years.

2. Washers and dryers do a terrible job cleaning dishes, but dishwashers do a fantastic job of cleaning clothes. Go figure.

Alright, some feelings of mine that have been brought up through the Showing Your Face in Public thread by billgerat. And just a small bit of a story that has shaped my thinking on the subject considerably. There are very few things in this world that I am passionate about. Hell, there are very few things that I even have definite opinions on. But the way that society treats its criminals is one of them.

The discussion that took place in that thread consisted of law enforcement scanning faces and checking those scans against a massive database of criminal records to identify which people had a criminal record. Presumably, though the article that was being discussed didn’t say so exactly, the people with criminal records would be the ones who would get hassled and watched out for, regardless of whether or not they are doing anything wrong.

Wonderaz asked me if I have been on the receiving end of never having done anything wrong but fitting the profile. I have not. I look, for the most part, like a coddled middle class white boy, which I suppose I am.

But I have seen the other side of the coin as well.

In case some of you didn't know, I was in rehab for cocaine addiction a few years back (actually, there were a lot of reasons, most of them having nothing to do with drug addiction, fairly complicated, but I was there in any case). It was actually a really great experience, kind of like summer camp in a strange way. I am sure one of these days I’ll go more in depth about it. I met some of the most interesting characters I have ever seen in there, but that isn’t the point of this story.

After my 28 days, I chose to move into what is known as an Oxford House. Basically, these are houses run and populated by other recovering addicts. There is a president, vice president, secretary, weekly meetings, all that. And everybody has to do chores, pay rent, etc. Like a fraternity, basically. Pretty cheap, certainly rules (obviously the first being no booze or drugs, no being drunk or high), kind of run down, but a good place to be if you needed to be there. The guys were very supportive of one another. We hung out together; we went to NA and AA meetings together. In any case, a pretty nice way of re-entering society via a semi-vacuum. You are out and about in society, but not thrown straight from rehab back into the mainstream. Though to tell you the truth, I was there for the most part to appease uptight family members and because it was really fucking cheap. But that’s not really the point either (again, I’ll save all that for another day).

There were about 8 of these houses in Topeka, KS. All were full to capacity except one. The only one I could get into was full of ex-cons (whereas many others are full of preppy white kids who acquired a meth habit). Real hard cases trying to go straight and better themselves.

In any case, I moved in. There were about 10 guys in this big house. 9 of them were ex-crack and meth heads with felony records. Ages ranged from 18 to 45.

What I saw in my 4 months living there churned my stomach.

First of all, everybody who moves into these houses, at least as far as I could see, had every intention of staying sober. Despite that, the turnover rate was still pretty high. In my 4 months there the house cycled through maybe 25 guys, the maximum at any given time was 12. I was pretty much a loner; stayed to myself most of the time. Simply put, I couldn’t relate to most of them. They all had been doing really hard drugs for many years, all had Parole Officers and records a mile long. I was just a preppy white kid who drank too much, did recreational drugs, dropped out of school, and whose family thought he should be put into rehab. What the fuck did I know about hitting bottom?

But in any case, about two months into my stay there, I befriended a guy name of Jason. Jason was 27 but looked 16, and had been in prison since the age of 19. He had an almost identical background as myself, save for the fact that his father was rich. Just to look at him or talk to him, you would NEVER be able to guess at his history. He was a really well spoken, handsome, and intelligent fellow (save for the heavy Missouri accent; think Boys Don’t Cry). He was well dressed, clean shaven, and a helluva nice guy.

So we started to talk, we got along great. We became pretty much inseperable. In any case, as I am an inquisitive person by nature I kept asking him about his life. How he had gotten to where he was.

His story is a fascinating one to me.

Growing up he had everything he wanted except a happy childhood. His father had been for many years an abusive alcoholic, despite owning a chain of hotels (in fact, during this period, Jason often attended meetings with me that his father was chairing. They rarely spoke). Mother he had never known. Around the age of 14 or 15 Jason, always having been an impulsive and rebellious kid, starting doing drugs with his friends. Same old story. First this, then that, then more of this, you know the drill, and you probably know the type. By the age of 16 he had become a pretty hard case. Was getting heavy into “bad” drugs (drugs that are in no way EVER “recreational”. Things like crack and heroin and meth and whatnot). Started shoplifting. Got running with the bad crowds. Got deeper and deeper in.

By the time he was 18, he had dropped out of school and had his fingers into every pie you could think of. A crackhead by then, he was robbing stores at gunpoint, stealing cars, burglarizing homes, shoplifting, scamming, was a fence for awhile, whatever he could do to score. When I tell you this guy is a very sharp fellow, I mean it. Some of his dealings and connivings and schemes that he told me about are pretty fucking brilliant. But it is hard to keep a sharp wit for long with that kind of habit. Eventually, even the smartest minds just become raving lunatics under those conditions. Jason was no exception. Whereas at first he was creating elaborate and foolproof scams, he was by this point simply walking into check cashing places with a shotgun.

At one point, for reasons known not even to him, he and a few buddies went on a multi-state crime spree. He would rob mostly check cashing joints, and his MO is that he would superglue the clerks' hands to the counters after he got what he needed. He was fairly infamous, mostly for that reason (some of the newspaper clipping he showed me were actually pretty funny. Nothing like seeing a SWAT team trying to get a dude’s palms off a countertop). Also, this whole time he was a crackhead of the highest degree and order, as were the people he was rolling with. He was also a wanted felon in 3 states.

In any case, he did this all the way to Arizona (on his way to Mexico) before he got nabbed. Got the fuck beat out of him by the cops that finally caught him (they broke 14 bones). Got the third degree in interrogations. Refused to roll over on the guys he was with, which meant they were going to try and throw the book at him. They finally charged him with everything from armed robbery and assault to weapons charges and driving without a license. Sentenced to 10 years, which was actually a pretty light sentence all things considered (especially considering all the other shit he had done that he was never caught for). Jason himself admits the only reason he got that light a sentence was due to having a really fucking good attorney (the last thing his father did for him before disowning him).

In his words: "Man, when you're 19 and you get 10 years, that's like a life sentence.”

He was a real rowdy guy in prison. Kind of like what Jyates said about the lifers, he didn’t give a fuck anymore. Showed me his demerits or whatever the fuck they call them; basically the write-ups they do when you start shit in prison. Told me the stories behind them. Starting riots, refusing to work, beating people up, getting high, spitting in a guard’s face (which he claims was the biggest mistake he ever made in prison). All that shit. He was by no means a model prisoner. And, he joined the Aryan Nation for awhile, mostly for protection (he claims). You should see the tattoos he had. He looked perfectly normal until he shaved his head and took off his shirt, and then he looked like Ed Norton in American History X. Spent half of his sentence in Arizona and then was moved to finish it out in a prison in Kansas.

And like Norton, about 3/4s of the way through his sentence, he just started getting fed up with everything. It wasn’t what he wanted anymore. For about a month the crack supplies in prison dried up towards the end of the sentence, and a bit of the haze finally lifted. He just didn’t want to do it anymore. He was done.

At the age of 27 he was released and voluntarily went straight into a 9 month rehab program for cons (if you think you can’t continue a drug habit in prison, you are an idiot). He wanted to go straight. He wanted to be in control again. And then when he wasn't able to stay in rehab any longer he moved into the Oxford House.

It was there that I entered his life, and he entered mine.

We did the deal together. We became really great friends. What I saw when I met him was not a con. I saw an honestly good man who had just never done much of anything right. But he was trying like hell to change all that. We did the deal together. He went to a NA or AA meeting a day. Went to the AA social functions (they have dances and whatnot every once in awhile.

And right off the bat he tried his damndest to re-enter society.

Society fought back.

His first handicap was with his PO. Twice a week he had to go see his PO (15 miles away and he had no car). If he was 15 minutes late, a warrant was issued for his arrest. He had to pee in a cup. If anything showed up, even booze, he would be sent back. The PO wanted nothing more then to throw Jason back in, and made that abundantly clear (to both of us, I was often the one driving Jason to these appointments).

Then he tried to get a job.

One of the tenants of the 12 step programs is to try to be the best person you can be. That includes being honest. And so, every application, when he was asked if he had ever been convicted of a felony, he answered honestly. Because of that, nobody would hire him. Even McDonalds turned him down. More then a few places would simply never return his calls, doing everything they could to avoid them. One place even asked Jason, after reading over his application, to kindly leave the store and never come back.

I was watching a segment on 20/20 the other day, that implicitly expressed outrage that it is not required by law for everybody to do extensive background checks on job applicants. They didn’t say so, but the implication was that anybody who came up with felonies should not be allowed a job. They gave anecdotal accounts of carpet cleaners who ended up raping the homeowners, or crazed postal workers, or whatever. Not mentioning the thousands of other cons who have been honest law abiding citizens ever since they got out. In any case, were a majority of Americans polled, and if they had their way, I imagine there would be nothing but lifers in the American prison system. We like to think that we want them to re-enter society, but when it comes to having and ex-con live in your neighborhood or building, or having them prepare your food or sell you shoes, people get a little hypocritical.

He applied for maybe a hundred jobs. Got turned down for all.

The only way he could make any money was with day labor. For those who have never done it, it is probably the shittiest work that any man could do. Basically, at about 330 AM all the homeless people, illegal immigrants, crack heads, and ex-cons get in a line (you have to get a good place in line or the jobs run out. Then, around 5 AM, they open the doors and start handing out jobs auction style. They then stick you in a van, ship you off to put together cardboard boxes for 10 hours, bring you back, and hand you 40 bucks or so. Then, the winos and immigrants and whatever would go across the liquor store to spend their money, and Jason would walk the 2 miles home to plop it down for rent.

We also had a few run ins with the cops. Generally, what happens if you come home drunk to an Oxford house and refuse to leave is that we call the cops on you. Jason is a strong guy and has a great sense of responsibility, so he was often the one that tried to handle these situations. When he did, the cops would often start hassling him along with the drunk flatmate. On several occasions, after checking Jason’s ID (for no good reason), they searched him and roughed him up a bit. A few times he was even taken to the station for questioning, and then released and told to walk home. I got pulled over once, and the way the cops treated him versus me once they checked both our IDs was absolutely sickening. And I was the one who was driving.

His family no longer talked to him. His old straight friends didn’t want to have anything to do with him. He tried becoming close to his few old drug buddies who had since sobered up, but each one of them kept dropping back into it and disappearing. The only people who wanted to have anything to do with him, besides myself, were his old drug and crime buddies, and they wouldn’t leave him the fuck alone. They were always calling or showing up stoned, and he always had to turn them away and go back to playing chess on my computer. They’d roll up in their nice cars, and he’d have to turn them away and go to Day Labor.

Finally, in a great stroke of luck, he landed a job at a Telemarketing place. A real shithole, but an honest way to earn a living. Actually, he and I both started off there. We went through two weeks of training, and then they start laying people off. The new ones got the axe first. Back to Day Labor.

His life was shit. No two ways about it. There are even a helluva lot more things I could talk about here that I haven’t gotten into. But to be sure, this was not the life he envisioned. He was a second class citizen. He was the bottom of the fucking barrel as far as society was concerned. He had only the pretense of freedom. No friends, no family, no money, no job, no respect. And he was stone cold sober to enjoy it.

Some people may call this fair and just. Karma is a bitch, no? He brought it all on himself. Some people, even despite all those obstacles, still succeed. All those things. There is some truth to that, I suppose. But to me, that is nothing more then Double Jeopardy. He was paying for the same crime twice. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy in my mind. People expect ex-criminals to keep committing crimes, and thus make it so they can do little else.

He so wanted to do the right thing.

But it all finally just overwhelmed him.

One weekend, I was off visiting somebody. Apparently one night, he snuck into another roommate’s room, grabbed his car keys, and took off.

They found the car about a week later, filled with stolen TVs and stereos, and some crack paraphernalia. Nobody has heard from Jason since.

And one of my deep dark secrets is this:

Had I have been there that night, I probably would have gone with him.

I think about him still from time to time. I only knew him maybe for two months, but I learned a lifetime’s worth of lessons through my talks with him. He was at his heart a truly decent and strong man. I know this.

Society is worse for his absence. And society should shoulder a large amount of blame for it.

They say you can judge a society by the nature of its prisons.

What about the prisons that extend past concrete walls and steel bars?

Shortly before he left, Jason told me something I remember still.

“Man. I feel like I’ve been on autopilot my whole life. And it feels like somebody else is programming it.”

I’ll miss ya, Jason.

Incidentally, I wrote about 3/4s of a screenplay based mostly on my talks with him and his old scams, crime sprees, and fuck-ups. Here is an excerpt. Forgive its klunkiness. Screenwriting is a difficult format to master. And even more difficult to transfer to HTML.

INT. PICK UP TRUCK – DAY

MARCUS
You ever try to go straight?

JASON
Sure I did, right before you met me. I had been out of prison and sober for a year.

MONTAGES ## VARIOUS

MONTAGE: Showing Jason doing the things he is speaking of in the following passage. The dialogue is narrating the montage.

First image is of a bunch of mean looking black guys sitting around watching boxing, with Jason sitting in a corner.

JASON (O.S.)
I got out and found a place to stay with other ex-cons. It was a real shithole, and we all fucking hated each other but it was the only place I could afford and the only place that would let me live there after doing a credit and background check.

Now it is a series of shots of Jason in job interviews, being turned down.

JASON (O.S.)
I tried to get a job, but nobody wants to hire an ex-con with
armed robbery on his sheet.

A series of images of Jason in a waiting room, Jason being taken down a hall, Jason talking with a mean looking guy, Jason pissing in a cup, Jason leaving.

JASON (O.S.)
I couldn’t leave the state, I had to check in with my P.O. once a week, piss in a cup. If they would have found traces of anything, even weed, they would have locked me up again for a year.

Images of Jason standing outside a shitty looking building before sunrise. All sorts of horrible looking bums and ex-cons are milling about in line.

Then image of a large room, looking almost like an auction, with some ladies behind a desk handing out jobs and calling things out.

Then image of Jason stuffed in a minivan with a dozen other people, all very crowded.

Then image of Jason putting together cardboard boxes, getting his fingers cut, etc.

Then image of Jason stuffed in a car again, the sun setting.

Then image of Jason getting 40 dollars in cash and staring at it in disbelief, holding it with his bleeding hands.

JASON (O.S.)
Since nobody would hire me I had to become a day laborer, with homeless people, the winos, the trash, the dregs. Every morning at 3:30 AM I would have to go to this shitty ass building to get a decent place in line. At 5 AM the people would hand out jobs, then they would stuff us in a car full of smelly ass bums and winos, drive us to some fucking factory, where we would spend all day putting boxes together or some shit. Terrible, monotonous ass work, all day long,
with like 5 minute breaks every two hours, and most days you would be lucky just to get any job at all. We’d work ten hours, get stuffed in the car going home, and they’d pay us maybe forty bucks. All the bums would go across the street and get their fix and I would have to walk a mile home and throw the money down as rent.

Image of Jason walking into a large room full of telemarketers. A bunch of black guys, a guy in a wheelchair, white trash as far as the eye can see, and young teenagers making out, all with headsets on.

Image of Jason in a chair, on the headset.

Image of Jason wincing, as we can hear a caller SCREAMING obscenities at Jason.

Image is repeated, with a different caller’s VOICE.

Image is repeated again, with a different caller’s VOICE.

Image of a crying lady making an announcment to the room, everyone staring at her.

Image of everyone exiting the building, throwing pop cans through the windows or whatever.

Image of Jason, hands in his pockets, with a sad look on his face, walking down the street.

JASON (O.S.)
After a few months of that day labor bullshit I finally got hired by a telemarketing company. That was almost worse. Everyone who worked there were almost as bad as the homeless people from day labor. I had to endure more verbal abuse than I would wish on my worst enemies, trying to sell shit to people that nobody needs or wants. Finally, after about a month of that, the bosses announced that cutbacks had been made, that all new employees were to be laid off and only the people who had been there over a year kept their jobs. Back to day labor.

Series of Jason looking frustrated, making phone calls.

JASON (O.S.)
I figured at least my family and old friends would have forgiven Me, but nope. Nobody would have anything to do with me. No One would even speak to me.

Series of Jason answering the door and various criminal looking types showing up.

JASON (O.S.)
The only people who would have anything to do with me were my old criminal buddies, and they wouldn’t leave me the fuck alone, always trying to get me to go back out there, to do the things again. Fuck, I didn’t have any friends, any money, any respect.

Series of Jason sneaking through a dark room, going to a bedside table, taking the car keys of a roommate, pushing the car out of the driveway and down the street a bit, then getting in the car and taking off.

JASON (O.S.)
Finally I just couldn’t take it anymore. Being in jail was better than that. So one night I stole a roommate’s car, took off, anD Haven’t looked back since.

Shot of Jason re-uniting with the criminal buddies. Hugs and pats on the back all around. They pass him a pipe.

JASON
I just feel like I been on autopilot my whole life.

FADE OUT

1. Hurt yourself. Nothing amuses Keith more then my accidentally bashing my head into something. I am not sure as to why this works so well as a way of cheering up little children, but it may have something to do with #11.

2. Teach them many curse words. A colorful vocabulary is essential in this developmental stage. Besides, nothing is cuter then telling a 2 year old to pick something up and having them respond “Fuck off, bitch!” See #14.

3. Kids dig flashing lights. When those cop cars are chasing you after you find $500 (on an old lady), slow down a bit so they stay close. And when they do catch you and begin beating you down, make sure the kid has a full view. See #1.

4. Treat children at this age as you would a stoner of any age. Trust me. See #1-21

5. When they are going to bed in their room, put on a bunch of their movies and play with all their toys. Make sure they can hear. See #16

6. See #7

7. Set things on fire.

8. Children pick up on the speech patterns of their caretakers. Speak sometimes with a Scottish accent, sometimes with a Pakistani one, sometimes with a Louisiana one, and sometimes with a German one. Really screw with their speech development. If you have done this right, by the time they are 12 they will be talking like John Voight in Anaconda.

9. Kids find farting and burping just as funny as you do. Use that fact to bond.

10. Children love to be scared. Walking up behind them and screaming “Boo!” is a joy for them. For that real hearty laughter, chop mommy up into little pieces while the child watches. See #11 and #3.

11. Lock them in a dark closet for an hour or so. Then, when you open the door to release them, shout “PEAK A BOO!”

12. If you have a little boy, dress him up like a girl. If you have a girl, dress her like a whore. Then send them off to school. This is a great way for them to meet people. (Note: works at any age).

13. Children love animals. Take them to the zoo! Children love tigers. Go teach them about tigers while visiting the zoo! Children love to learn with a hands-on approach. They love to touch and feel things. “Let” them play with the tigers. Children love to explore the curious and fascinating world of nature by themselves. While they are learning about tigers at the zoo, be learning about booze at the liquor store down the street on your way home.

14. Train them to fetch things.

15. “Babies don’t cost money, babies MAKE money! Especially those healthy white ones.” ---Strangers With Candy

16. Children love music that has an easy beat and uncomplicated lyrics. The Potty Mouth Sissies are a preschool standard.

17. All kids love Richard Nixon. Wear only your Richard Nixon mask while in the their company. Also, be naked.

18. Kids need and enjoy high protein diets. Two words: bacon grease.

19. When installing a car seat, make sure that the seat belt holding the child safety seat to the car is loose enough so that, on turns, the car seat leans a whole lot. Make a lot of turns.

20. Many children don’t like baths. They can be scary for a 3-year-old. And they can be time consuming and exasperating for the caretaker. Just stick them in the toilet and flush it a few times. Remember though to remove the child from the toilet when they look clean enough. Especially remember to do this before you have explosive diarrhea.

21. Much of children’s television programs is bland and uneducational. Make them watch Charlie Rose instead. When they cry, throw something at them. Like another child.

Hello gentle readers. In the past month I have been forced to attend several family functions, from Christmas to funerals, and have come to a bit of an epiphany, albeit a quaintly obvious one. The realization is this: While in a room full of people who think you are a fuck-up, have screwed your entire life, and are a black mark on the family name, it is usually wise to be drinking. A lot.

Bow before my wisdom.

However, the catch is that overt drunkenness does not help make your case as being a responsible and upstanding citizen, especially when you pee on your 2 year old cousin at the wedding of his parents. Thus, while it is imperative that you be drunk when dealing with these people, it is often wise to conceal your state of inebriation, lest you further tempt fate and lend credence to the baseless accusations against your good name tossed about by your own blood.

And so, having done extensive research on this subject myself of late, I have decided to share with you my empirical findings.

1. Do not talk about being drunk.

2. DO NOT TALK ABOUT BEING DRUNK!

3. At functions that include a free bar, it is a moral imperative to drink as much free booze as possible. Especially if you are underage, as they never card for private bars. However, to camouflage your obscene consumption rate, order only things that look like “straight” drinks. Things like screwdrivers, Bloody Marys, and Rum and Cokes. To the untrained familial eye, these drinks simply look like orange juice, tomato juice, and coke, respectively. A beer can be mistaken for little else, save for carbonated urine. And, as everybody knows, only Uncle Eddy drinks carbonated urine.

4. Play with the little kids in the family. You are able to talk gibberish, sit on the floor, and generally behave like a drunken moron, and come across only as “sensitive” and “fun loving”. However, when they reach an age where they can recognize the stench of booze on your breath and the difference between a “good” and “bad” touch, it is best to ignore them completely from then on.

5. Hang out with the elderly. They represent a group that your drunk ass can blend in with while completely blitzed. Few other social groups make no sense in conversation, fall down a lot, spontaneously release bodily fluids, and smell like pee, even when stone cold sober. The only other comparable group in that respect that comes to mind are Mexicans. If you can find a group of elderly Mexicans to hang with, it would be well advised to do so.

6. All that said, truly the best way to avoid having your drunkenness detected is to not hang out with anybody. Sweet sweet isolation.

7. Flasks are your friends. Easily concealed, quick to drink, good all around. Especially in situations where no other booze source is available, like while in a car, or at a baptism, or while carrying a casket.

When you are concealing a flask of gin, and a flask of tonic, and a lemon in your coin purse during Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve, mixing them in your mouth in the back pew, you have done well. Good job!

8. That said, being seen pulling from a flask at family functions is bad form. Thus, it is usually best to conceal your flask in something while pulling from it. I suggest closing your wallet around the flask and pulling from it that way. Thus, when your Great Aunt walks into the coatroom and sees you pulling, she will assume you are simply drinking from your wallet.

9. Formal wear is fantastic for concealing flasks and bottles, as there is often many pockets and layers. I suggest a button up dress shirt with two breast pockets, a sports coat over that, and a trenchcoat with lots of pockets. And cargo pants.

10. Wine is often a socially acceptable spirit served at family functions. For more kick, spike yours with Everclear. If it is red wine, cherry Mad Dog 20/20.

11. There is always one Obscenely Drunk Uncle (ODU) wandering about. Latch on to him, under the guise of “taking care of him”. That way any booze stench, vomit on your lapels, and broken china can be easily blamed on the ODU. Make sure, when the ODU sobers up, to brief him on all his drunken antics that he doesn’t remember not doing.

12. A great way—nay, the BEST way—to conceal booze on your breath is by eating Ranch Corn Nuts. By eating a packet of these, you ensure your breath will smell like nothing else until late August. Unless of course the nuts were chased with paint thinner.

Also, it really helps in your attempts at isolation, as nobody will want to stand anywhere near Ranch Corn Nut Man.

13. If anybody asks, you are not drunk, you are “tired” or “sick”. And the green chunks around the rim of the toilet seat in your Aunt’s house are not “vomit”. They are “digestive problems”.

14. Take the focus off of your alcoholism and drug problems by constantly changing the topic to your inauguration.

15. If you have found yourself in the wonderful and enviable position of sitting up late one night and talking to your Uncle over whiskey sours, keep pouring him more, because your pounding of booze then becomes “social drinking”. When he finally says “no thanks, I think I’ve had enough”, knock him out with your chair and finish the bottle. Blame it on the cat or something.

16. If you are my sister and you write a journal entry on loose leaf paper about how much dope you smoke and how you sell your prescription medication and use the money to buy harder drugs, do not leave said journal entry on the floor of your grandfather’s living room, even by accident, as it will be picked up by your nosy Aunt, read, and quickly disseminated among your entire extended family.

If you are me though, you (I) should be fully prepared to capitalize on this diversion, as it takes the focus off of you and you can then freely move about in a drunken stupor and hit on your cousins while sipping your Everclear Zinfandel.

That is all.

(I am, after all, only here to help.)

I'm back.

Funeral went fine, very nice in fact. Very hard on my grandfather and mother of course. Very glad I went, actually kinda had fun in a macabre sort of way. Travel was hell though.

So don't think you can get away with making snide comments about me in your posts anymore, as I will be seeing them once more.

However, we knew damn well that this was not yet the end. In fact, the stated rule is that nothing was over until the pledges had successfully completed full construction of the cardboard cave system. Until then, the actives were bent on getting back into the house with the express purpose of stomping the shit out of anything under construction they could find.

But I was drinking in a room with a terrific view of the perimeter, I was armed and ready. And I had face paint on. I was unstoppable.

In any case, the pledges in the engineering core (everybody but me, Parks, and Smitty) were that morning busily going up and down stairs, dragging cardboard from the basement stockpile and placing it all over the house where it would later be turned into a gigantic cave system. The massive amounts of cardboard we had collected over the semester had all been stored in a large room in the basement, right at the bottom of the steps that lead up to the back stairwell (the one that contained the back door and its barricade). You should have seen how much cardboard we had down there. It was literally like a gigantic cardboard floor had been placed in the basement, one that raised the elevation by about six feet. Most of the cardboard was in the form of large broken down boxes for things like refrigerators or washers and dryers. The boxes for any major appliance that was shipped into Des Moines during the 5 months of our pledgeship ended up in that basement.

So, in any case, the first job for the people not as lucky as Parks, Smitty, or myself, was to drag most of these boxes and place them all around the house to prepare for the construction.

About 30 minutes into digging through that stockpile, two pledges noticed that there was some sort of burrow in the cardboard, like a foxhole. Kind of like a sofa mattress fort. In any case, they tore it apart in their routine, and to their surprise found another active. He was huddled in the fetal position around a bottle of Captain Morgan’s rum, totally passed out. His name was Ptazak, an Australian bloke, and also, like so many of us, crazy as a loon. A cool guy though. Apparently, his idea was that he would hide out in the cardboard of the basement while the house takeover was taking place, and when the pledges were through getting most of the actives out, he would then creep out and steal around the house, unlocking windows and dropping rope ladders and whatever. So at 8 PM the night before he had came down with his bottle of rum, a pack of smokes, and an ashtray, and tried to wait us out. Unfortunately, he failed to account for his sloppy drunkenness, and Captain Morgan had his way with him before we could get to him. The only thing he really accomplished that night was to pee on a large portion of our cardboard reservoir. Well, two pledges picked him up, like carrying a drunk out of a bar, took him up the stairs to the back door, and then threw him out with a foot in his ass for good measure.

Also, not too long after that, Smitty and I were the only people on the third floor as construction on the caves on the first floor had begun. Smitty would come over from his third floor window every once in awhile to grab a beer from the keg sitting next to me that the actives had so kindly provided for themselves. He was sitting there on one of these breaks, we were smoking in one of the few rooms in the house that smoking was expressly prohibited in (The Observatory, which was Lund’s room that he shared with 3 others, each of whom were AVID non-smokers and two of whom claim to get nauseous when they smell smoke), mostly out of spite, when all of a sudden we hear the shower in the third floor bathroom come on. The main bathroom was on the second floor, and Carl was hiding out in there waiting for The Beach to open up. The third floor bathroom just had a toilet, a sink, and a shower with no curtain. In any case, Smitty and looked at each other quixotically and then proceeded down the short hall on the third floor to the bathroom.

We open the door and see, bare-ass naked, an active in the shower. He was a short squat really muscular dude name by the name of Fuller. In case you are wondering, by the way, in our fraternity you were generally either known by your last name or some crazy ass nickname like Paint CHiPs. Well, Fuller was just standing there washing himself, and then he sees enter two pledges with super soakers, duct tape on their belts, and war paint, dressed in all black. He blinks his eyes a few times, obviously trying to recollect what the fuck was going on (in all fairness, sights such as pledges with super soakers wearing war paint was not all that uncommon in my frat), then all of a sudden it dawns on him, and a look of frightful determination came across his face. "Awww shit, I forgot. No no, you motherfuckers ain’t getting me!!" It seems Fuller had suffered a similar fate as Ptazak. He had holed himself up in a crawlspace with a bottle of Jack Daniels, and had, as the night wore on, ended up passing out. And, as finding yourself waking up with all your clothes on next to an empty bottle in a utility crawlspace was also not all that uncommon in my frat, had figured this was just the result of another night of heavy drinking and had gotten up to shower. Well, he hadn’t lost his resolve, only forgotten it briefly in a drunken haze, and once it all came back to him and he saw us standing in the bathroom doorway, he got in a football crouch and bare-ass naked, tried to barrel through us to safety.

Smitty and I grabbed him, but as he was naked and wet, it was hard to keep a hold of him. We started shouting for assistance and somehow Fuller slipped by us and started running down the hall for the staircase. Right before he reached it though, Parks was in front of him, having come up the same staircase in response to our cries for help. Parks tackled him and knocked him to the floor, at which point we duct taped him as best we could, trying hard to avoid his genital region. Once we got him sedated, we dragged his naked ass down the stairs and threw him out the back door.

This lead to another pretty funny site, a completely disheveled looking still drunk active name of Ptazak, still standing by where we had thrown him trying to figure out what to do, being knocked down into a pile of snow as we threw a duct taped naked man at him. I am not entirely sure how that situation was resolved by the two, as we quickly closed the door and re-barricaded it, muttering "sucks to be you" under our breath.

For awhile the morning progressed uneventfully. Good progress was being made on the caves by the poor schmucks who had to do all the hard work. Smitty and myself, on lookout on the third floor, were starting to get slightly buzzed, and were sitting on our asses by windows on opposite sides of the house. Parks was going around and bothering the pledges on work detail, asking them which actives they could remember getting out of the house, trying to figure out the whereabouts of the 4 who nobody had remembered seeing. When all of a sudden, at about 10 AM, we hear a gigantic crash and a ruckus coming from the second floor. Smitty and I immediately run down, and we see Crazy Carl, with his arm lodged in the doorway of the beach, throwing all his weight on the door trying to push it open. The sounds of a few actives on the other side, desperately trying to get the door shut once more against the force of this beast. Apparently, figuring the coast was clear as the only sounds that could be heard were the pledges on the first floor working on their caves, the three guys in The Beach had decided to peek out and see if they could make their way down to the back door to let in the actives who were lurking around outside (there were still a few). However, after opening the door not even an inch, Carl had barreled his way across the 3 or 4 yards from the bathroom to the Beach and had literally thrown himself against the door, throwing one of the actives on the other side across the fucking room as the door suddenly smashed into his chest and nose. The other two guys in that room then immediately lurched into the door in an attempt to shut Carl out. When we saw what was going on, we joined the fray.
Carl though really didn’t need our help. By himself he was already quickly pushing the door open, even against the force of the three actives in the room trying to shut it. It looked like a man pushing a truck, digging his heels in and gradually getting the thing to move his way. But with Smitty and I throwing our weight in, we finally shoved open the door enough for Carl to squeeze in, and that was pretty much that.

Carl, once inside, immediately grabbed one of the actives and got him into a half nelson. Another active ran for him, at which point Carl grabbed the guy by the shirt collar and threw him over a coffee table and into an entertainment center. There are no "acceptable rules of engagement" to a guy willing to bash his head into a plaster wall because it is looking at him funny. And the third guy was already on the floor holding his bloody nose after having been knocked back when Carl had first thrown himself on the door.

When Smitty and I got into the room, our first job was to calm Carl down and tell him to please not kill anybody. It took some doing, but we finally convinced him that bashing the guy in the headlock’s head into the nightstand a few times for good measure was probably not a good idea. Secondly, with Parks’s help (who had finally arrived), we took to duct taping the three and dragging them down the stairs. Parks, Smitty, and myself carried two of the guys. Carl himself had picked up the third, thrown him over his shoulder, and was already on his way to the window.
A job well done, we thought. The Beach had been secured, we had been able to lock the windows that lead to the porch and no longer had to fear the actives getting in that way.

The rest of the early afternoon went about pretty uneventfully. The caves had been coming along nicely, and now the only way to get around in much of the house’s interior was to crawl about in a complex series of cardboard caves. Most of the third floor was still clear, but the first floor was almost entirely covered in caves now. The caves were set about in a maze of sorts, that went up and down stairs, curved around to dead ends, and had a bunch of "rooms", places big enough to sit in comfortably. The rooms were themed. There was a make-out room that housed two couches and could only be gotten in and out of by climbing over the kitchen counter, and also contained a stereo with only CDs like Barry White and Parliament. There was a psychedelic room with black lights and Day-Glo paint and an oriental rug to sit on. Also, the entire bar-room (the back room where Lund got his) was open, so people could mill about and pour drinks, but the only way to get to it was to find your way through the gigantic maze of cardboard. Same with the bathrooms, though that one was, in retrospect, probably a bad decision. The only entrance to the house for the party would be through the basement. There were two steel doors, like tornado shelter doors, on the far end of the basement, and the caves would start there. Basically, if you wanted to get anywhere, you had to crawl, but it really was dope and a pretty fucking unique setting for a big party.

Though it was still under construction at this point.

At about 1 or 2 PM, Smitty had shouted to me something like "Hey Paint CHiPs, I think I just saw Miegs lurking around out here!" I heard him fire off a few bottle rockets, kind of warning shots, though he couldn’t be sure who it was out there or what they were doing. At about the same time, I saw two actives to my right, crouched down and silently running out of the forest by the parking lot towards the mattresses beneath me. I leveled my bottle rocket, fired, and shot a guy in the leg, who yelped and ran back into the forest. The other guy had made it to another little cluster of trees between us and the sorority house, immediately in front of me. I was firing bottle rockets at the tree that the guy had hid behind, focusing straight in front of me, when all of a sudden from my left a bottle rocket whizzed by my head and exploded on the awning right above my head. I jerked back into the room and fell over a futon. Smitty was furiously firing off bottle rockets of his own across the hall, and I could hear him saying "Paint, Paint, what’s going on?! I see about six guys running around! Out here!". I shouted, still on my ass, "Yeah, same here!! PARKS?!! PARKS!??! BE READY!!!" When from the other room, I heard Smitty yelp and saw him duck just as a bottle rocket flew in from his window, across his room, out his door, across the 3 feet of hall space, into my room, and landed and exploded on the futon I had just tripped over.

"ACK!" I shouted, as fire started to come up from the futon. I jumped on top of it and started stomping out the fire. I succeeded in stamping the fire, and the futon, to death. Finally, I grabbed my plastic cup of beer and poured it over the remaining pieces, extinguishing it in a haze of smoke that wafted around the room. Unfortunately, all my stamping had rendered the futon into a charcoaled pile of kindling and skanky beer. Take that Lund.

I quickly stumbled back to my window and looked out. A bunch of actives were dragging the mattresses away from the windows and driveway. As they were right below me, I grabbed the bucket of piss that the actives who had barricaded themselves in the room the night before had used, and I dumped it out my window. It splashed all over about six guys, who scattered, though they got two of the mattresses. Another hail of bottle rockets shot for me, and I ducked back in the window.

From downstairs I heard a lot of activity as Parks and the other pledges were running around making sure everything was barricaded. When I peeked out again, I saw actives running from tree to tree, sneaking up on the place. The mattresses had been dragged into the forest and now were forming a kind of duck blind, propped up against some trees in the semi-distance from which two actives were firing at me and at the back of the house. I saw a few guys running up and down the driveway.

Now, I had been firing bottle rockets at the people in the distance, and was fairly successful at staving them off. But once they got close to the house, it became nearly impossible to aim my bottle rockets, as when you try and aim straight down the rocket slips out of the bottle before it goes off. And besides, my bucket of piss tactic has already been used.

So, I saw two guys directly below me, who had flattened themselves against the wall so as to not be seen by the pledges through the first floor window. So I lit three bottle rockets I had in my hand, and simply dropped them.

This turned out to be a wonderful tactic, and Smitty started doing it as well. You see, when you just drop a lit bottle rocket onto concrete, what happens is, when the fire hits the fuse, the bottle rocket starts to spin around. Then, all of a sudden, it will rocket itself in whatever direction it happens to be facing and explode at whatever point of impact it meets. Deliciously chaotic.

In any case, I dropped the three bottle rockets, shot off a few at the mattress barricade, and watched below as the two actives who had flattened themselves against the wall tried to run in opposite directions. One of the bottle rockets shot off towards the forest, but one of them shot right at one of the fleeing actives, hitting him in the ass and dropping him to the ground, and the other rocket (I only found this out in conversations later), nailed the other active on the back of his hand, leaving a scar he still has to this day. Thus, the actives, in approaching the house, or in trying to get from the back to the front via the driveway, had two options. Try to give the house some distance, at which point they risked our aimed fire and being seen by the other pledges in the house, or they could try to stay close to the house, at which point they didn’t really have to worry about being seen so much, but had to worry about bottle rockets being dropped all around them that could conceivably shoot off in any direction. Also, there were the buckets of piss to consider.

As more and more actives started to get close to the house, I needed a new weapon. The dropped bottle rockets were still working, but the actives had figured out that when I drop them on the ground, they shoot off at low angles. And thus, when one was dropped in front of them, they either jumped on it to extinguish it, or grabbed an awning or a gutter or something and climbed up a few feet. Besides, I was dealing with the random chance that the rockets would shoot of at an active and not into the forest or the yard. Granted, it was really hard to get away from if it chose to shoot off at you, as it was short range then, but also really hard to ensure consistent effectiveness. I probably hit an active with these random rocket drops about 15 times, out of maybe a hundred dropped (though I was dropping them at a really fucking rapid rate, so being on the ground approaching the house was like running across a minefield full of Bouncing Betty’s).

In any case, at one point Parks ran upstairs and gave both Smitty and me buckets filled with water balloons of a great variety that the pledges downstairs had been making on and off throughout the day. Some were filled with shaving cream, some with Crisco, some with piss, some water, some with hot coffee, whatever. It was like a box of chocolates; you never knew what you were going to get. So in addition to shooting bottle rockets and simply dropping them, I also began throwing water balloons. THESE I can aim. It was great fun, nailing a ducking guy in the back and watching shaving cream explode all over him. Or dropping a balloon full of Crisco square on the top of some guy’s head from three stories up and watching him stumble away in a panic and a daze, covered in slimy non-stick goodness.

However, as I was doing this, the downstairs people were having problems.

It seems that we had missed a single active who was still hidden in the house. And this one did not have a drinking problem (though in my frat that was all quite relative). His name was Gerald, a really good guy, levelheaded and cautious. What he had done was to hide out. There was a small space, actually one right next to The Beach, that is kind of hollowed out, the space beneath the stairs that lead to the third floor. In that space we had kept a file cabinet, a rather large one, that kept all kinds of frat records. We also kept various things in there like broken chairs or stolen lawn art or fire hydrants or whatever.

Well, what Gerald had done was to empty out all the drawers of the file cabinet and lock them away in his room. He had then taken a bunch of older drawers that had fallen into disuse and ended up in a junk heap in the basement (a room we called "Storage" that contained artifacts deposited by frat members from as far back as 1968). In any case, he had gotten these old shelves and had sawed off all the parts except for the faces and the part that holds it to the cabinet. He then GOT INSIDE the hollow file cabinet, and from the outside, it looked the same as it ever did.

Well, once the actives were starting to claw there way inside from the first floor, all the pledges had run down to try and help stave them off. About 20 actives were trying to pull apart the barricade of the front doors, and were semi-successful, so most of the pledges were there, trying to rebuild it and support it. Gerald then got out of the file cabinet, and ran to the beach and threw out a rope ladder from its window. He then ran towards the back of the house and threw another rope ladder out of a very small room, the only single in the house. After doing that, he attempted to get to the third floor (he was one of the non-smokers who lived in the Observatory), but when he got there, he found Smitty and myself. He quickly had a face full of shaving cream, pants full of burn holes, and a body covered in duct tape. We didn’t have time to get him out of the house, so he laid there, in the third floor hall, shouting "Paint CHiPs, put out that cigarette!!! Quit smoking in my room!!! And what the fuck happened to Lund’s futon?!?!"

Smitty and I had no clue what was going on downstairs, we just held our positions at our windows. After a short while though, I couldn’t see anymore actives, though Smitty was shooting off as many fireworks and balloons as fast as humanly possibly. At one point, he shouted to me "Paint CHiPs, they’re climbing up the fucking walls!!!!" He couldn’t see the rope ladder, which was hugging the wall below the single room a bit to his left. 8 guys were under it, 6 of whom were beginning to climb their way into the house, and two of whom were simply staving off Smitty by constantly sending a barrage of bottle rockets and roman candle fire his way. It got so bad that all Smitty could do was keep the window cracked and throw out water balloons, careful to not extend any appendages out of said window for fear of fire (which lead to him scrapping his earlier idea of just pissing out the window and bypassing the piss balloons altogether). The barrage of bottle rocket fire from the actives below was so bad that from that day forward, it was nearly impossible to see anything out of that particular window, so covered in soot and fire and ash as it was.

Since I had no more targets on my end, and as I heard a helluva lot of noise from downstairs, I decided to go help out the struggle on the first and second floors. As I reached the staircase, I saw an active who had stopped at the bottom of the stairs on the second floor and was staring up at me, not sure of how to proceed. I then shouted over my shoulder, "HEY GUYS, LET’S GET HIM!!!" at which point he took off. The bluff worked.

What had happened is that through the single room below Smitty, about 5 of the actives had gotten in and were now running around the house kicking through cardboard and trying to find ways to let more actives in the house. Carl, meanwhile, had seen the actives coming in through the Beach, and even though the door opened inward, had barricaded the door with a bungee cord stretched to its limit attached to a toilet somehow.

To this day I have no clue what all happened. All I know is that I ran into the single room that I had just seen another active run out of, and there I saw two guys--Petey and Bob--coming towards the door. I screamed for backup, and as they went for me, I managed to get to the rope ladder hanging out of the window and throw it to the ground below. The two actives that had made it into the room were on top of me, but by this time another pledge, Bowser, had come in to aid me. He closed the door behind him so the actives couldn’t run by us, and I took Petey and Bowser took Bob.

Meanwhile, downstairs, the actives had busted in through the front door and about twenty of them had been standing in the main room, kicking apart cardboard boxes and wrestling with pledges when Stimmel came in from a back room, dressed in combat fatigues, and holding his .45 above his head he shouted at the top of his lungs "EVERY ACTIVE IN THIS GODDAMNED HOUSE HAD BEST GET THE FUCK OUT RIGHT FUCKING NOW!!!!". At that point, he shot off two blanks above his head. BANG!!!! BANG!!!!

I wish I would have been there to see the actives run, but apparently, it took about 5 seconds and the main room was cleared of actives.

Meanwhile, Bowser and I were still locked in combat, wrestling around on the ground with the two actives. There were also about 8 other actives running around the house being chased by a bunch of pledges. Not to mention however many actives had gotten locked in The Beach by Crazy Carl. Also, the house president and probably the most responsible of any of us, an active name of Barringer who had gotten in somehow, was running around trying to see if somebody had been shot or not.

I had almost gotten Petey immobile, and had an arm snaked around his neck ready to choke him, when all of a sudden the fire alarms in the place went off. This was nothing new, the fire alarms in the place were notorious for going off at any hour for any reason. So we continued to wrestle around.

However, a cloud of white smoke began to creep in through the closed door.

It took us awhile to even notice, as we were locked in combat, but at one point, Petey said "Wait! Wait! Hold up guys!". To which I replied "Foolish active, I will not fall for such a ploy!!!" "No no," he continued, "Paint CHiPs, Bowser, Bob, I’m serious, I think the house really is on fire!" Still holding each other but no longer struggling, we each stopped and, breathing heavily, looked around. We let go of each other and opened the door, and the hall was full of a white powdery smoke. Petey said to Bob "Fuck this" and they took off down the stairs for the back door. I said to Bowser "Holy Christ, let’s find that shit and put it out!". At that point, we dove into the caves and started shimming through them as if they were Viet Kong dugouts.

It was truly a site to behold. The second floor was full of this white smoke. On the first floor actives were trying to find the quickest route out of the house, as Stimmel was still brandishing his .45. Some of the pledges, convinced the house was on fire, were leaping out of windows. And then there was the glorious scene in the middle of the second floor that involved Ptazack, 4 other actives, and Parks and a few pledges.

I wasn’t privy to this as I was shimming around the caves up and down the back staircase looking for a fire and asking anybody I came across if they had seen it. But apparently, A few actives had been chased around by Parks and his pledge goons, and they had finally gotten cornered. In front of them was where the construction of caves had ended and the rest of the completed caves began. Basically, a hall full of cardboard caves. The rest of the second floor was not yet done, so they had been moving about freely, but going through the cave mazes with a bunch of pledges in hot pursuit would be slow going at best. So, Ptazack turned around, grabbed the gigantic industrial fire extinguisher off the wall, and sprayed it all in one gigantic shot at the oncoming pledges.

This had two effects. For one, it stopped the pledges dead in their tracks, as they were covered in the CO. The pledges then all went right for the bathrooms to try and wash and/or towel off the freezing cold liquid.

But secondly, it had created an enormous cloud of white hazy smoke that filled the house and caused everybody to think it was on fire.

Total chaos, to be sure.

Barringer had finally found Stimmel, gotten the explanation for the gunshots, and had taken the .45 away from him (it was handed over voluntarily; even despite the war games, Barringer had the ultimate authority). The actives were now divided into three or four different camps. The vast majority of them were already gone, figuring either Stimmel had a .45 and had cracked or the house was now on fire. Another large group of people were actives and pledges who were jumping out of windows or finding their ways to the doors, convinced of the same things. Then there was the group with Ptazak who knew exactly what was going on and were now going to un-barricade the front door.

I’m not sure how, but at least among the actives and Barringer, word of what had really happened began to disseminate. The pledges who had originally fled got back in, and all the actives had either fled of their own free will or were now at the front door, either coming or going, in one massive bottleneck. The pledges were also at the front door, shoving the rest of the actives out of it.

That was a scene unto itself, the massive struggle of 30 or so guys. Water balloons flying in every direction, one guy got accidentally punched in the face and was screaming bloody murder, Hijinio was trying to get in and screaming in Spanish about his family portrait.

At one point, when the tide had clearly turned in favor of the pledges, the actives who had, up until then, been trying to push INTO the house, all of a sudden began to try and pull pledges OUT of the house. This came as quite a surprise to the pledges, who went from pushing to being grabbed and forced to pull the other way in a split second. I was at the back of the fray. It took a few minutes, but finally we got them out of the front door, though they had gotten a pledge named Boucher and had him on the porch and hog-tied.

We decided to sacrifice him for the sake of the house, and had closed and were furiously re-barricading the front door. We found out later that the worst fate that Boucher was forced to endure was to sit in an active’s apartment and take shots.

It was about this time the cops showed up.

Now, the street the house was located on was solely home to all the fraternities and sororities of Drake University, so the cops getting strange calls regarding those properties was nothing new to them. They also tend to go by the mantra of "more trouble then it’s worth" in regards to how they deal with it. But when shots are fired and fire alarms are going off, they have to at least send a car out. So at the same time as the actives all began to disperse, the cops showed up.

This lead to another funny scene. Barringer, the president, goes out to meet the two cops that show up. They glance around, see duck blinds made of mattresses, rope ladders out of a front window, urine, shaving cream, and spent fireworks EVERYWHERE, men with war paint walking around leaving the scene nonchalantly, four guys carrying a hog-tied man away, and Barringer walking up to talk with them, sweating balls and scared out of his wits because he has Stimmel’s .45 in his pocket.

In any case, Barringer, who had had much experience talking to police on behalf of our frat, convinced them that both the gunshots and the smoke was from fireworks. He got lectured a bit on fire safety and noise levels, the cops made sure the hog-tied man was okay ("yes officer, we are just playing around") and everybody got warned to cut all the shit out. They had briefly thrown around the idea of going inside the house to check things out, but one active told them "I don’t think you’re going to be able to get in there".
More trouble then it’s worth, officer. The cops left. The actives left. We finished the caves.
The party that night was truly dope. We had a few thousand dollars worth of alcohol. At the bottom of the tornado shelter doors that lead to the basement from the outside, before people entered the caves, every single frat member and every date got a bottle of champagne of their own, dug out of a garbage can full of ice. It was a blast. All the actives were no longer pissed, but rather much of the time was spent trading war stories amongst each other. I had at least five guys come up to me during the course of the party and show me scars that my bottle rockets had caused, saying "Hey Paint CHiPs, that was AWESOME! Nice fucking shot!" A few of us approached Hijino and said "Hey man, we’re really sorry about your family portrait" at which point he guffawed quite a bit and said "It’s okay man, I’m really sorry for lying to you about my family portrait". Charlie had even returned, and he was in the middle of a circle of frat members, recounting his fabulous story of how he got from the Iowa wilderness 60 miles away to St Louis and then back to Des Moines again (more then a few people said "Dude, we thought you were dead.") That rugby player I had blinded hours earlier came up to me and asked to see the super soaker I had wielded against him. I handed it to him, at which point he smashed it to bits against the wall. He then turned and shook my hand and said "Good fucking show." Everybody was tired as fuck, but the exhilaration and booze kept spirits and energy really high.

We had an insane amount of alcohol and women around (the ones that stupidly wore skirts to the party had to crawl around on their hands and knees being followed by a pack of guys). Everybody was all smiles, telling stories about the day, complimenting people on various aspects of their maneuvers and on the incredibly complex system of caves, and generally having a great time. People and their dates were exploring the caves, meeting other couples in the middle of a space maybe 4 feet by 4 feet by 4 feet and sitting down like Bohemians to finish their drinks and start up a conversation. All over the house people were wandering around in cardboard caverns, trying not to spill their drinks, and marveling over the amount of work and effort that it must have taken to create the caves. And the dates didn’t even know the half of it.

I remember I was with my date in the make-out room, and she whispered into my ear "Let’s go back to your room." I responded, "I’d kind of like to see how the party turns out." It was that much fun.

The party started at 7 PM. At Midnight, also on par with tradition, the caves were destroyed. On the dot, one of the actives shouted "KILL IT!!!" and all of us started stomping the shit out of the caves, reducing them once more to flat cardboard, much to the bemusement of our dates. Viking funeral.

Probably, all in all, that 36-hour campaign and subsequent celebration was the most fun I have ever had in my entire life. Not only was it one of the best parties I have ever been to, but the events leading up to it made it all unforgettable. We had to WORK for it. We got to play Rambo for two days. It was war without consequence.

I got to be Patton CHiPs.

(Finally) The End.

Post script: A few days later, Ptazak, for spraying us all with CO, filling the house with smoke, and making us think the place was on fire, was subsequently kidnapped by the pledge class and taken to the trail that led from the fraternity and sorority street to campus proper. There, he was duct taped upside-down to the trunk of a massive tree that was next to an Emergency Phone, the kind that you are supposed to pick up if you are being raped (known as Blue Phones on some campuses). We left him duct taped upside-down on that tree, left the Blue Phone off the hook, and walked back to campus.

“In this case what we have to do is go all out. I think this situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody’s part.”
“And we’re just the guys to do it.”
--Animal House

I could lie to you and tell you that the plan we concocted in the dorm room that day was a brilliant military scheme that would make Napoleon proud. One that would make Peter the Great quiver in his stockings. But it really was nothing like that. Perhaps a better way to describe it is that a few of us had a vague notion of an organized assault, and then the other 20 guys were planning what they would be doing, regardless of what the rest of the group came up with.

Oh, in the weeks prior to this day, the Friday afternoon before the Cave Party, we had created such detailed plans and organized ideas that Fort Knox would not be able to withstand the onslaught that we were ready to provide. But after the heads of the war committee had been abducted, and good ‘ole Charlie was still MIA after nearly 24 hours (he was, we later discovered, hitchhiking in the wrong direction), a lot of the finer points had fallen by the wayside. It became more of a pissed vendetta then a pure endeavor.

Don’t get me wrong, spirits were high. The pledges had just successfully, against all odds, broken out the captives in a house full of actives. A near unfathomable victory to be sure. But it had taken more then a little effort and resulted in quite a few bruises and burns. Morale was soaring, but the problem was that in the euphoria, in the rush and the thrill, all organization had seemingly been shattered.

Still, we kept to the plan as best we could. Basically, at that stage, the pledge-class-house-takeover idea had become something akin to how a republic works. A few ideas and directions were centralized and permeated throughout, but the individuals all had their own ideas in mind as well.

It was already about 7 PM Friday night, and we had three pledge sentinels standing watch over the frat house, camouflaged. And we also had many other pledges in various areas getting ready. For the most part, however, we were all busy arming ourselves.

I had decided to keep myself as streamlined and ready for combat as possible. Other men were burdening themselves with backpacks full of fireworks and suspenders covered with water balloons filled with piss. I, on the other hand, decided to keep it simple, as I suspected that close-quarter combat would in the end win or lose the day. I had two high-powered super soakers, each of which I strapped to my back like Samurai katanas. Instead of filling them with water, however, I decided to fill mine with laundry detergent. This had, in theory, two effects. For one, if you have ever spilled any laundry detergent on yourself, you know that the sensation is unpleasant at best. It doesn’t burn or cause permanent injury, but it leaves a sticky film all over your skin that lasts for days, and a strange and irritating slimy sensation that counteracts that oh-so-fresh feeling. But secondly, if you get a head shot, you blind the target (basically like getting soap in your eyes). Also, the fact that it probably wouldn’t kill anybody was a plus in my book (the same couldn’t be said for Stimmel’s .45). In retrospect, the laundry detergent super soakers probably made the most effective weapons that anybody in that frat wielded that day, for a variety of reasons that I will get into later.

I also made sure that I was wearing steel-toed boots, black leather gloves, a black sweatshirt, and my trusty corduroy pants. In those days, I could fit a total of six beer bottles in the pockets of those pants, a unit of measure that is only valid in fraternities and Ireland. I had two cap guns in my pockets that served no other purpose really other then to make loud noises. I also stuffed a bunch of bottle rockets in my coat pockets along with my trusty zippo (I had a khaki trench coat back then), a Swiss army knife, and I, like the rest of the pledges, donned face paint (I mean come on, you can’t do something like this without bad-ass face paints!). I chose to go with the quarterback look, while more then a few went with the Braveheart motif, and one guy dressed up like the Ultimate Warrior.

When the sun went down, we set the gears into motion.

Two other guys and myself had crept up to the back of the frat house parking lot. The parking lot was a big one, but it ended on one side right at the frat house, and at the other side, where I was hiding out, it ended in forest, that pretty much surrounded the entire lot. The front of the house had several trees in the front lawn, and then the lawn ended at the driveway on the side and the street at the front.

In any case, it was about 8 PM at this point, and all the actives from all over town and campus were steadfastly drinking in the house and setting up their defenses. The back door could easily be barricaded from the inside with a gigantic plank of wood that we kept there to keep out uninvited guests from our parties and social functions. The front door that lead to the porch would be extremely difficult to barricade due to the architecture of it, but it went right into the first-floor main room, that by this time would have 40 actives and a few kegs. By this point, most of the actives were more then a little buzzed, and morale was high among them. From my vantage point right outside of the glare of the parking lot light, huddled in the snow at the end of the forest, I could hear the bass of the techno music and the many guffaws and loud snippets of conversation.

At 8:10 PM, a mini-van full of pledges zoomed down the block towards the frat house, honking the horn and whooping and hollering. I could hear the actives suddenly turn down the music and pound up and down the stairs towards the front rooms that faced the street. Then the van full of pledges screeched in front of the frat house, hopped the curb, and drove up right into the middle of the front yard. Immediately, the van doors opened and about 10 pledges jumped out and began shooting off bottle rockets and roman candles and cap guns and whatever, aiming at the front of the house. All the actives went to whatever front window they could and started throwing water balloons and fireworks back at the pledges, who all quickly scattered behind the van and trees and continued the diversion.

Meanwhile, in the back, when the ruckus had caused all the actives to go to the front of the house, myself and the other two pledges with me hurried out of the forest and into the parking lot. The other two guys quickly went about hiding explosives and fireworks along the perimeter of the parking lot, while I went and jimmied the locks on as many of the back windows I could. After about five minutes, I had three windows unlocked. I didn’t open them, I left them shut, but I made sure they were unlocked.

After I did that, still listening to make sure the ruckus out front was grabbing the attention of everybody else, I took out my super soaker full of detergent and began to hose down all the cars in the lot, the ones that belonged to the actives. In a few hours the detergent would freeze and leave a shell casing over the whole car. This had no real strategic value as far as I could see; I simply did it out of malice. Motherfuckers kidnap ME!?

As I was doing that, the other two guys were still furiously planting fireworks on all the rocks surrounding the lot, and making sure they were all fused together. Once there were about 20 or so caches of hidden fireworks all along the parking lot, they ran the fuse discretely to a spot right next to the back door. It was fairly well hidden, so that you would only be able to find it if you looked for it, and even on the happenchance that an active did come across it, they would most likely think nothing of it (we had our doorbell and music systems so jury-rigged that there were wires and cords everywhere anyway).

When all that was completed, we went to the side of the house, to the windows of the big front room. This part was tricky, as there were a bunch of actives already in the front room, but since the actives were so caught up with the ten pledges in the front yard who were lobbing fireworks and water balloons at the house, we were cool. We then dragged the five mattresses out of the bushes and put them under the largest window of the house, a big sliding-glass window that looked out from the main room. This was coincidentally also the window that I had earlier in the day leapt out of to escape my captors, and it faced the concrete driveway. We were putting the mattresses over the concrete. We then very quietly shoveled as much snow as we could on top and in the vicinity of the mattresses as we could, so after five minutes it looked only as if a large snowdrift had formed under the window. The mattresses, by the way, were about six feet below the window (I told you it hurt like a bitch when I jumped out of that mug and dove onto the driveway below!).

When we finished with that, the three of us stole back into the forest and headed to the dorms.

After another 10 minutes or so of pointless noisemaking, the Diversion Squad finished their assault, piled back into the van, and screeched off.

Well, here was the plan, and it worked very well I must say. The actives had no idea when to expect us, and each time we showed up they would all assume it was our full assault. So every time that van would pull up, or every time six of us would start pounding on the back doors or the side windows or whatever, the entire house would jump up, start running around in a tizzy, get all pumped up on testosterone and adrenaline, and generally just make a huge ruckus trying to find us and shoot things at us.

So, our plan was to do this about every 35 minutes.

And so we did. At about 9 PM a bunch of us came back and started pounding on the front windows, screaming, “GET THEM!!!!” or “STIMMEL MADE IT INSIDE!!!!” or “I GOT THE BASEMENT WINDOW OPEN!!” or whatever. Then immediately all the actives would flip out and start running around trying to find Stimmel (who was, by the way, safely back in his dorm room doing shots of Jagermeister), and they would open up all the windows and start shooting fireworks at anything that moved, and would run up and down the stairs pounding on doors shouting, “THEY’RE HERE!!,” and then all the people who had been trying to sleep or drink or whatever would also freak out and start doing the same thing. And while all this was going on, the pledges outside were already on their way back to the dorm rooms to watch Ren and Stimpy for another 35 minutes, leaving only a few people behind to constantly shoot bottle rockets at the house.

All through the night we did this. And all through the night the actives were pounding booze, freaking out, running around, and just generally expending all their energy. And we were rotating who was doing the diversion, so that no single person had to do it for more then two hours and then could go get some shut-eye. At one point, maybe about 2 AM, that big Texan who had the day before been one of the captives (name of Parks) actually jumped in a first floor window, ran around the house screaming and shooting off fireworks, and then jumped back out and ran away before anybody could catch him. That lead to another round of the actives that were still up and drinking running around the house looking for more pledges and waking up all the actives that had already passed out.

This occurred about a dozen times all through the night.

At about 4:30 AM, the entire pledge class (save for a few who were still running around on the frat property throwing things at the house) all went to an all-night diner to grab some breakfast. We must have been a strange sight, the lot of us dressed in black and camouflage, wearing war paint, eating eggs and hash browns and drinking coffee at Denny’s. But oddly enough, this didn’t seem to bother the waitress any.

After our breakfast, the real onslaught began.

We all starting sneaking around on the property, getting into various positions, being flanked by six or seven other guys who hung back with bottle rockets and other fireworks. Our last diversion had just ended about 10 minutes ago, so the house was all quiet and 95% of the actives were exhausted and hung over, passed out in their locked rooms or on the floors of the halls. Luckily, two of the back windows I had earlier in the night jimmied open were still unlocked. Parks (who was a football player, a huge guy, and thus was going to be the first to enter) got under the window, and I lifted him up. Due to his girth, though, he is less then graceful, and more or less fell inside, landing on the linoleum floor with a thud. At that point, an active who had passed out in that room (a skinny prick by the name of Lund) awoke, rubbed his blurry eyes, and saw Parks’ fat ass struggling to get up under the immense weight of a duffle bag on his back carrying about 70 pounds of duct tape. Needless to say, Lund jumped to his feet and started howling bloody murder, and Parks, finally standing, ran for him, checked him against the wall, and then ran for the back door barricade to let us in.

The next site was one of sheer beauty. Lund ran to the open window that Parks had entered in, the one I was directly below, screaming some sort of war cry. I had not seen what had happened, as the window was directly above me, but I had heard it. Next thing I know, Lund’s upper body appeared in that window. One hand was holding the windowsill, seconds away from slamming the window shut and locking it. The other hand was holding a super soaker of his own, filled with piss and aimed right at me. I flinched and prepared to get drenched when ,at the exact moment that Lund let out his war cry, one of the pledges who was on point lit his roman candle and aimed. All I remember seeing was the barrel of this super soaker, and then seconds later Lund get hit square in the chest with a brilliant green ball of roman candle fire. His expression was fucking priceless, and he dropped his soaker and fell backwards into the room, at which point I leapt for the still open window and got inside.

It was pretty much around then that my memory of the events that followed gets a bit hazy, as the entire house pretty much erupted into chaos. I had jumped in the window and starting running around unlocking all the other windows I could get to so more pledges could get in. Lund was on the floor howling and tearing his shirt off. I heard a few actives upstairs begin to pound their way around the house in an attempt to wake up all the other actives most of whom were either too exhausted from last night’s drinking and escapades to move or didn’t believe that it was for real, thinking this another diversion. In any case, pledges started popping in from the windows I had managed to get open, and Parks had succeeded in getting the back door open.

In the main room, the one that I was running around in trying to get more windows open, there were five or six guys passed out on the couches. They were weary and dog-tired, but when they saw me running around, and then saw a trickle of other pledges popping in through windows, they all got to their feet.

I turned and saw the first guy come at me, a rugby player by the name of Jason. I was in a corner of the room with nowhere to go other then out the windows, so I leveled my super soaker at him and shot him square in the face. He stopped dead in his tracks and immediately fell over screaming, “GAAAAHHH!!! WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT STUFF!?!?” At which point I opened the main window that overlooked the mattresses on the driveway, and with the help of another pledge who had just climbed in a different window, picked up Jason and threw him out the window onto the mattresses. He was still screaming, “I’M BLIND!!! I’M BLIND!!!”

Next out the window was Lund, shirtless with a big smoke stain on his naked chest. He was still flailing in panic when we picked him up, and though he had no idea what we were doing, he starting shouting, “ACK!!! THIS IS FUCKED UP!!!! THIS IS FUCKED UP!!!!" Out the window he went.

See, the thinking on the window thing was that the normal way of getting them out of the house would be to wrestle them to a door, deposit them outside, and then get the hell back inside before they came back at you. Needless to say, that was a pain in the ass to say the least, not to mention dangerous, as they could get right back inside unless you locked the door, and even then could sit there and wait for you to come back out with another active in tow, at which point you would be suddenly outnumbered and outside. By throwing them out the window, and with the six foot drop to the mattresses below, you wouldn’t run those kind of risks. And besides, there are few things in life as satisfying as throwing a man out of a fucking window.

So we looked out, and Jason the rugby player was still running around blind and hollering, dunking his face in snow piles to try and wash out the detergent. Lund was sitting on one of the mattresses, not saying anything, just sitting there with a pissed-off expression and rubbing his chest wound with snow.

In any case, in the back stairwell a helluva fight was going on between six or seven actives and 10 or so pledges. The actives were furiously trying to push the bottleneck of pledges back out the back door, which was at the bottom of the stairwell. Meanwhile, the pledges, in one gigantic pile of people, were pushing back and smashing water balloons into the faces of the actives. In the main room, the five or so pledges who were now awake were quickly being surrounded by the 10 or so of us who had popped in through various windows all over the house and were now beginning to advance on them as they grouped together wagon train style in the middle of the room. They were shouting for help, and the other actives in the house were beginning to finally awaken out of their haze of dead brain cells.

And, as they had just seen two of their brothers thrown out of the goddamned windows, they were not going without a fight.

So, I shouted a war cry, and then all us pledges ran for them in the middle or the room.

Two of the actives went down quickly in the fray and while the other three were trying to wrestle their way out of a swarm of pledges, two of them were being pinned down and duct taped, at which point the pledges who had wrestled them down joined in on the other three. One of those morons with water balloons filled with piss attached to his suspenders jumped on top of the dogpile, the balloons all burst at once, and we were all suddenly wrestling in urine.

I was on top of a tall skinny hick named “Smokey,” who was known for being a hell raiser in bar fights. I had shimmied myself around his neck and had him in a chokehold, and he managed to get to his feet and started flailing around trying to shake me off. At that point, another pledge knocked his feet out from under him, and both Smokey and I fell to the floor, he was on top but still on his back. I then kind of scissored my legs around and dug them in around his knees, rendering him basically immobile, at which point two other pledges jumped onto him and started duct taping his arms and legs together. One of the pledges was singing “On top of old Smooooookeeeeey!!!!,” at the top of his lungs in a rather disturbing tone. In any case, out the window went old Smokey.

We had managed to throw the four actives out the window, which was a sight unto itself, seeing four grown men in a dogpile on a pile of mattresses on the driveway, writhing this way and that to try and free themselves from the duct tape while a skinny shirtless guy was trying to help and a rugby player was furiously dunking his head in piles of dirty snow. In any case, there were five of us inside in the main room who were still wrestling on the ground with a giant of a man called Lang. The back-door fray appeared to have been won by the pledges, the door was re-barricaded by us, and a pledge guard was left there to un-barricade it when we had to throw a new active out of it.

However, four of those actives who were in that fray had escaped, and, as we were in the front room, they exploded out of the back stairwell and came running for us to try and free Lang. They were running in through the kitchen, so I leveled my super soaker once more and sprayed the linoleum floor in front of them. One guy slid smack into the refrigerator, one guy into the cupboards, one guy into the closet (ironically the closet that contained the cleaning supplies), and one guy just plain fell on his ass right in the middle of the floor. It was fucking beautiful. We got them out of the house in no time. Lang was a bit trickier, as he was close to 300 pounds, so we duct taped him real good, dragged him to the back door, and opened it. There were some actives running around outside, trying to climb back in windows, and they saw the back door open and ran for it. Luckily, we had the foresight of having two guys behind the four who were dragging Lang, and those two guys started firing bottle rockets at the actives, who quickly retreated. We threw Lang into the snow, went back inside, and barricaded the door once more.

At this point, most of the remaining actives in the house were barricaded up in their individual rooms, with about 15 actives running around outside, and all the pledges were now inside (save poor Charlie who was by now somewhere in Missouri in the bed of a farmer’s pickup truck surrounded by chickens). So, we started going room by room, posting sentries around the house at points where actives might try to re-enter, including two guys who were working on their engineering skills trying to barricade the front corridor that led to the porch with a combination of bungee cords and miscellaneous furniture.

The first few rooms we went to were astonishingly easy. We picked the locks with credit cards and then stormed in the rooms menacingly brandishing cap guns and water balloons. What we kept finding would be a room full of five or six of the most hung-over and exhausted men you could ever come across. Remember, they had been up for about 12 hours now, drinking steadily and running around trying to defend themselves from our perceived onslaughts until they had all finally passed out from the exhaustion of our diversions. So what was happening was that we would enter a room, shoot off the cap guns, and the actives would groan and roll over. Then we shouted some more, and they would whine about wanting to sleep, at which point the “shhhhhhkkk” of us taking out duct tape would cause them to sit up and say ,“Okay, okay, let me get dressed,” and they would leave quietly. A few would try to put up a fight, shouting, “Come on guys!! They’re here!!! Help me!!! What’s the matter with you guys!!?!?!,” but it would fall on deaf ears, and they would be quickly wrestled to the ground, duct taped, and thrown out the window.

Some of the rooms were a lot trickier, and we would literally have to pound ourselves into these rooms. We would unlock them, the actives inside would try to put all their combined weight into shoving the door shut, and then 10 or so actives would push back. When we would finally shove our way inside, a wrestling match would ensue, everything in the room would get knocked over, people would get faces full of laundry detergent, and in the end, since there were about 15 pledges that were going room to room in one big group, we would outnumber the actives, and they would end up duct taped and throw out the window or dragged out the back door.

When we got to the second floor, I set up flattened cardboard boxes on the front stairs and hosed them with detergent, forming a slide that we would throw duct-taped actives down. Sounds harsh, but it was either that or have three pledges carry a flailing man down a flight of stairs. Besides, it was pretty funny to watch them roll down the slide and then knock into the wall at the bottom.

On the second floor, we started meeting more and more resistance. One room, for example, was well barricaded and the occupants kept shooting bottle rockets from under their door into the hall, which really freaked us out at first, as there were fireworks coming at us through a closed door. We got into a room next door to that one and an active dumped a vat of Crisco and a bucket of flour on us. That motherfucker got MUMMIFIED with duct tape, but it left five of us looking albino, or like escapees from Pompeii, for the day.

There was one room that we couldn’t get open for the life of us. The Beach. It was the one that had a window that opened up onto the porch roof, so we were worried that they would throw some rope or something down to the actives below. What we didn’t know is that the occupants of that room, a beatnik and a stoner, had shoved the entire bunk bed in front of the door and passed out.

In any case, we posted a sentry there, probably the strongest guy among us, name of Crazy Carl, who had a reputation as being “bad crazy.” He would get drunk off of grain alcohol at parties, and we would find him somewhere in the house in the middle of the night staring at a blank wall, holding a knife in his hand with a crazed expression on his face. It looked like a Mexican standoff, only with a wall instead of another person. And sometimes, a few of us would get lawn chairs and sit in the hall about six feet away and drink rum and just watch Carl with his knife fronting on the wall all night. On more then one occasion, this would last for hours, with Carl not moving or speaking except to pull from his bottle of Everclear. And then, every once in a while on these occasions, we would be sitting there talking and watching Crazy Carl, and out of the blue he would smash his head into the plaster wall, leaving a gigantic fucking hole. And he would then pull back and continue to stare evilly at that fucking wall, as if nothing had ever happened.

But he was strong as an ox, so we left him there, and he hid out in the bathroom directly across the hall from The Beach. So we expressed sympathy for the poor souls who ever dared come out of that room, and went on with our room by room sweep.

Some difficult rooms, some easy ones. On the third floor there were two rooms. In one room, called The Observatory because it looked directly out at the sorority house across the way, there were six guys who we thought would give us a lot of trouble. But the night before, they had at 8 PM gotten a keg for only that room, took it up there, and barricaded themselves in. By 8 AM, they were in no shape to fight.

The problem was, it was well barricaded, and the only way to get to it was by getting into the other third floor room across the hall and then accessing the crawl space (the one the actives didn’t think any of us knew about). That room, though, was a helluva fight. It was the biggest room in the house, and contained about eight or nine guys, all ready to fight. About 20 of us went after that one together, and once we pushed our way inside, it took about 30 minutes of wrestling to start getting the actives under control. At one point, the Mexican dude that lived in that room, name of Hijenio, starting screaming, “YOU MOTHERFUCKER BROKE MY FAMILY PORTRAIT!!!,” and was acting very genuinely enraged at this as he was trying to wrestle his way out of a dogpile of three pledges. As he was being duct taped, he continued to inform us that we were “fucking going to get it” and then he would start ranting in Spanish. We all were genuinely worried, as most of the others were just pissed in a playful way, but Hijenio seemed honestly enraged. Only later did we find out that this is kind of a tradition as well, every year one active that everybody in the pledge class likes and respects will pretend to get enraged in blind hatred over some offense that never occurred. Like “YOU BROKE MY WATCH!!!,” despite the fact that they wouldn’t be wearing a watch, but leaving all the pledges confused and frightened all day. A few of us spent most of the day on and off looking for this nonexistent family portrait of Hijinio’s to see if we could fix it.

In any case, we finally got them all out of the house. We used the crawl space and dug out the Observatory. It was directly above the mattresses, so there was some debate about whether or not we should just throw the fucking guys out the third story window onto the mattresses below, but we finally decided against it and dragged them down two flights of stairs anyway. But in any case, we finally got them the fuck out of the house and the only people left were whoever were holed up in the Beach, but we finally gave up on getting them out for the time being. Carl was on watch in any case; they weren’t going anywhere.

So all the actives were now in the back parking lot in a large group, plotting how to get back into the house and wondering what the fuck that film on all their cars was. Some of them were shooting fireworks at the house, but most of them were in a large huddle, talking under their breath as they hatched various plans of re-entry.

Meanwhile, the pledges inside had begun to get all the building materials for the caves. It was, after all, around 8 AM and we had a cave to build. Parks and I were put on patrol, meaning we didn’t have to do jack shit but be sentries, looking for actives. I sat my ass down in the Observatory next to that half-full keg with about three pounds of bottle rockets and a bucket of piss. Life was good.

Meanwhile, a pledge named Smitty, about 5 foot 3, who was a helluva shot with a bottle rocket, had decided to get the actives the hell off the property to allow us at least a moment’s peace as we re-barricaded the house and tied up all the loose ends. So, Smitty took the big plank that was leaning on the back door off, opened it up, and reached over to light the fuse we had set there earlier that night.

From my perch in the Observatory, that was on the side of the house, I could only make out about half of the back parking lot. I saw the group of actives in the dead center of the parking lot, and when Smitty stuck his head out of the back door, a few of them shouted his name and ran for him, but he had lit the fuse and ducked back inside before they could get to him.

After about a minute, all of a sudden the fuse reached the first caches of fireworks hidden around the parking lot, and the morning EXPLODED in bangs and flashes, coupled with a few pledges opening up back windows and shooting off bottle rockets at the actives. You should have seen it. All the noise and the very sudden explosion of activity from all around them caused them to panic, and they dispersed with great haste in every direction. They almost literally jumped out of their fucking boots when those firework caches started to ignite. For all they knew, the entire pledge class had surrounded them in the forest and was preparing to take all the actives captive like poor ‘ole Charlie. They had had enough of that for the time being, so they all fucking took off. It rocked.

We knew, however, that they would be back one more time during the day, to try to get inside and fuck up our caves. It wasn’t a matter of "if"; it was a matter of "when". Sometime during the day they would launch their own massive attack, but I swore I would be ready. Parks was wandering around the house, watching everybody else do the hard work of setting up an entire cave system out of cardboard, while he was simply looking out of windows and checking locks and crawlspaces. Smitty perched himself on the third floor in a big room across the hall from the Observatory, and he trained his bottle rockets on anything that looked suspicious. I sat in the Observatory with a pair of binoculars and a box of bottle rockets, drinking from the keg that was in there, awaiting their return.

Guh, I had intended to finish this all at once, but it just keeps getting longer and longer, so tune in next week for the (hopefully) exciting conclusion to Patton CHiPs!

Oh, and as an afterthought, I would like to dedicate this one to escape_artist and tack. May The Force be with you both.

1. Censorship Central has added two more people to its ranks. Welcome bowmore and JoeyCat to the fray. They will be correcting your stupid fucking spelling mistakes and making fun of your writing skills behind your back now, just as missphinx, morgana, bunkum, and billgerat have been doing all along.

2. The problems with The Lost Forum being slow-loading APPEAR to be fixed now. I am the least technical admin of any website you have ever visited, but it seems cool now.

3. But maybe while TLF was loading slower then Stileproject, you all got a chance to wander around in our other forums. Like the fucking Suppository. Yeah, you heard me. That is the place where people are supposed to comment and discuss all the brilliant writing we get up in here. People can't write very well in a vacuum, they need feedback and discussion. And the activity in the Suppository has been lackluster of late. If you have been reading the User Updates and columns and have been enjoying them, the least you can do is say so. Or to say if you DIDN'T like something. Or to begin or participate in a discussion spawned by issues raised in a piece of writing (that's the idea of the forum).

The point is, we have hoped that the Suppository would be a great way of providing interaction between the authors and the readers, something you VERY rarely get, online or in real life. So when you read something on the site and it makes you think, or happy, or cry, or whatever, you should post about it in there. That's the point.

That is all.