Nick - Well Let Me Tell You

My watch is pretty cool, if I do say so myself.

Watch and sea.

It's so cool, in fact, that I get a lot of comments on it. People frequently ask me where I got it. If I were a normal person, I would tell them.

But alas, of the many things I am, normal is not one of them.

So here are a few of the different ways I got this watch. I think all of these stories are believed by someone somewhere.

• My dad wrote an article for the State Journal-Register back when he was a business columnist. He wrote about a piece about local businesses including a medium sized watch shop, and the article won an award for journalistic excellence in local reporting. A number of the businesses featured in the article sent my dad gifts after the article won the award, and this particular watch shop invited us to come in for a tour. I got the watch there.
• My grandfather worked at an Italian watch factory when he was a kid growing up in Sicily. He stole the watch thinking it was worth a lot of money, but it turned out to not be worth much of anything. So he stole a more expensive watch and I ended up with this one.
• My high school engineering club, of which I was a member, entered a national product design competition. We designed a really shitty watch, and we didn't make it past our regional. By sheer happenstance, the team that won the nationals also designed a watch, and, as per the terms of the competition, their design actually got manufactured. The education nonprofit running the competition sent all the team captains a copy of the watch that won as a participation prize.
• My friend Robert and I were at the mall in Springfield when we saw in one of those claw-grabber thingies a copy of The Hunchback Of Notre Dame 2. Robert, who is a sarcastic bastard, had been making fun of my terrible taste in movies all day and quickly offered to win it for me. I told him to go ahead, and, neither one of us willing to back down at this point, he puts in a quarter and tries to grab the DVD. Instead, he accidentally grabs the coolest watch ever. As per the terms of our agreement, I insisted that the watch belonged to me. I payed him back his quarter.
• My grandfather worked at an Italian watch factory when he was a kid growing up in Sicily. It was about a mile from where he lived, and he walked there every day. However, he stopped working there when his mother got a job and was able to send him to school. Years later, when he was almost 17, he heard that the watch factory had burned down in a terrible fire. He walked over to see the damage, and amongst the partially-standing remains of the building, he found a glass case of prototype watches. He gave me and my brother each one, and he has fourteen more, all way cooler than mine.

I get stronger with every lie I tell.

-Nick.

Nick - Facts vs. Ideologies

Last year I learned things.

I learned how certain chemical compounds react; at what rate, and forming what products. I learned how cells operate inside my very own body. I learned how dendrites and axons, working together, allow your brain to function.

I didn't like learning about any of those things. And that's why, this year, I'm learning very different things.

I'm learning about when it is and isn't morally acceptable to kill people. I'm learning about what is a good basis for policy in domestic terms and in international terms. I'm learning about what motivates people.

And, truth be told, I don't really like learning about that stuff either. And the reason for that is very simple: it's so subjective. It isn't even 'learning' so much as 'discussing.'

But let me tell you what I do like.

I like that moment where we can look at two policies, and say, "this one is the better policy." I like looking at statistics of countries going to war, and saying, "this factor increases the probability of an armed dispute between nations."

I like when we can apply facts to social situations. I like solving real, lasting problems. I like when we can sift through the grey areas to find the truth.

Oftentimes political science is a petty squabble over opinions; there is no invalid opinion as long as one can argue in support of it. This is the part of political science I hate. The part where we distance ourselves from reality in an effort to remain politically unbiased.

But it all becomes worth it in that moment where the numbers are sitting in front of me, and I can see that factor x increases probably of result y. That moment where we can cross a policy off the board, casting it down as ineffectual. That moment where the professor tells someone he's incorrect, and illustrates a real-world example to show us why.

I love facts, and I love using facts. I love applying facts. Because once that barrier between facts and ideologies is broken, the true state of things can be discerned.

Only by being completely open-minded, and completely dedicated to evidence, can we determined the correct path.

-Nick.

The Mediocrity of Harry Potter

"Oh no, my childhood is over. Harry Potter has ended. Waaaaaaaaah!"

Shut the fuck up. Harry Potter is just decent. Move on.

"Oh but Brian, the world Rowling created was just so wonderful and magical. It seemed so real to me! It was almost like I was part of it!"

Really? Because there really isn't even much to the world. It's like, what, Hogwarts, the Ministry, Hogsmead (what's the deal with hogs?), and Godric's Hallow? And I'm not gonna say it's badly done, because it isn't. I like it well enough, but I don't see what's so special. I wouldn't be ripping on the world Rowling created if that weren't the frontline for every defense of Harry Potter. But it is, so I am. I just feel like so many other series do a much better job of it and get little to no credit, let alone the worldwide acclaim Harry Potter has gotten, and that's frustrating to me.

Harry Potter has some good characters, but let's be honest here; Harry Potter himself - least interesting of them all. The fact that the main character of the saga sort of sucks puts me off a bit. That's like if the title track of a pretty good album isn't very good. It doesn't necessarily ruin it for me, but it puts doubt in my mind. He's just an angsty little kid who gets lucky a bunch. Ron is way cooler, and he's a ginger.

Wow, I just got really bored of writing this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLKzJtjyc0E
'Nuff said.

-Classic

Nick - The Most Self-Indulgent Post On The Planet

Today, I texted some of the other members of Classic Brian with the following question:

"When you think 'Nicholas Dietrich,' what is the first word that comes to mind?"

Here are some answers.

Tuesday Mada: Clean.
Classic Brian: robot
Sunday Robert: hair. im so sorry.

Notice that none of these words are "asshole." (Though I am, apparently, a clean hair robot.) Today I'm going to change that.

Now watch me play drums, dammit.

Behold my awesome drum set. The gorgeous, shining cymbals. The roto-toms with their translucent blue sheen. And my sleek, sexy body. Beautiful. And how talented!

And since I assume you are scratching your head and trying to keep up with me, I'll just help you out with that too. It's in 5/4, then 7/4, and then 4/4.

I don't want to hear any complaining, because I'm busting my ass over here trying to be modest. I left my shirt on in the video. I even kept it less than two minutes! In the words of my brother, "your drumming is usually more flashy than that." So there! I'm talented, gorgeous, and modest.

Sincerely yours,
-Nick (is an asshole).

A Murderer Interviews His Victim

By Robert Langellier

I wouldn’t say a murderer, really. I mean, I gave life more than I took it. Specifically, from my and my friend Jimmy’s mutual uterus sprang 19-year-old Cassie Tipping.

I’m not going to tell you the story in full, because the topic has been exhausted in full by the blogosphere this week (you should read those to fill yourself in), but I will tell you the story in short. My friend Jimmy and I put in countless hours this past year creating a false Facebook persona, first to fool our friends Garrett and Molly, then later others like our friend Joel, and then finally just Garrett as people began to catch on.

It’s hard work keeping up an internet profile: adding a realistic amount of friends, maintaining an interests section, getting other people in on the joke, commenting on their walls, posting frequent statuses, writing Facebook notes, taking Facebook quizzes, and finding the Tumblr of a minor actress from “The Last Song” starring Miley Cyrus and uploading all of her down-to-earth photos we could find onto Facebook. All just to see if Garrett’s sappy lovey-dovey girlfriend would friend request her as she did with countless other Mizzou friends of Garrett. Lot of work for a small punchline.

But as everyone at Mizzou knows, she quickly grew larger than the joke, and we went to greater and greater efforts to make her seem realistic. She developed an extensive backstory of high school life in Oak Park, Illinois. She took part in her sorority ADPi’s events. She penned an article for Mizzou’s student newspaper, The Maneater. She guest rapped a verse on acclaimed local rap duo Twain Tokenz’ song, “fuckyou.docx.”

Many months later, the cat’s out of the bag, and it’s interesting to see the reactions of the people we ended up deceiving in our creepy little puppet trick. Joel made his stance clear in his blog, and it’s as important as the rest of this post, so I’d recommend reading it. I wanted to give something unique to the Cassie blogosphere, so I thought I’d interview the biggest butt of the joke, Garrett, and get his view on the subject. I edited a bunch of it out so it would fit; here are the important parts:

-------------------------------------------------

Robert: Could you talk about your thoughts or opinions of Cassie as you started to hear more about her?

Garrett: She slowly became this hyperbolized “slut” character. I think there was one status that was like, “Apparently waking up in a random guy’s bed isn’t acceptable here. Whoops.” And then she started typing like Jimmy does via text, which I’m surprised I didn’t pick up on, spelling “like” l-y-k-e, and stuff like that.

Robert: Those were probably Jimmy’s.

Garrett: Yeah, I don’t know. I mean, I read Joel’s post, and I was obviously flattered because I was just getting compliments out of the blue, but I never was offended by it. I thought it was hilarious. Anyone who’s seen “Get Him to the Greek,” I just felt like I had been deeply mind-fucked, as I think I said that day, because literally I had never ever ever ever ever doubted that she was real, once. I don’t know why. Looking back and seeing how Brandon talked about his slipups, I remember him saying at the Maneater about how she moved in after first semester, which was completely contradictory to everything I thought about her. I never once suspected that she was fake.

*click*

Robert: Oops.

*ring*

Robert: Oops. Pressed “End.” Well, to give some context to the joke, we never thought it would be anywhere near as big as it did.  And then, eventually, one-by-one, the pins got knocked down, and you were the last one standing for a couple months, so for those last couple months…

Garrett: Wait, me and Joel were the last ones for a couple months?”

Robert: No, you were the last one for a couple months. Ashley blew the beans to Joel a couple months before you found out.

Garrett: Ohh my gosh, I thought Joel caught on a matter of hours before I did. That’s even worse! Oh my gosh. And the thing is, Joel was throwing out this conspiracy against his friends, but honestly, if I were in that position, and I had started the small joke and was completely killing you and Jimmy with it, of course I would’ve kept going for the whole year. That’s like, literally, you’ve been handed a golden ticket. You cannot waste that. That was like the ultimate joke, and to blow that by thinking I would be offended would be dumb.

Robert: Well there were some moral issues. But still, it was worth it.

Garrett: Oh yeah, of course if I was like, “wow, this feels like a betrayal of trust”… It’s not like that. I don’t care. You know what I mean? Like, whatever. It’s not like I found out you were sleeping with Molly when she was here, which I actually still have not verified.

Robert: Oh, no, I did.

Garrett: She gets this awkward blush whenever I say your name. I’m like, that’s awkward, why are you blushing? So, I don’t know. It’s one of those good experiences overall. I think Joel took it a little harder than I did.

Robert: Yeah, probably. I don’t think we were expecting Joel’s post. I would’ve expected you to be offended more than Joel. Not because that’s your personality, but just because you eventually became sort of a bigger target.

Garrett: The weird thing was, Joel was surprised I hadn’t blogged. For some reason, it literally never crossed my mind to blog about it.

Robert: At any point, did you Facebook stalk Cassie? Be honest.

Garrett: Oh, yeah, definitely.

Robert: Muahaha.

Garrett: Looking back, I really have no room to critique you guys, because I fell for it 100%, but there was this weird gap where she had no pictures that I remember thinking, “There are no pictures in here with a clear shot at her face that I could recognize.” For some reason I thought she was Kristen Herhold for a while. I thought that was Cassie Tipping.

Robert: That’s really funny also. That’s brand new news.

Garrett: Oh yeah, like, I didn’t know Kristen. She was in journalism classes, but we never hung out with each other. I never ate lunch with her, so I thought it could’ve possibly been her, but then I found out that was Kristen Herhold and I was like, “Okay, who is Cassie Tipping?” I’ve even seen “The Last Song.” I didn’t even know that girl was in “The Last Song.” Like, I couldn’t even recognize her.

Robert: Well, she did play a minor role.

Garrett: And then, the makeout pic, at the same time.

Robert: Yeah, that was Elizabeth Downy.

Garrett: She lent me tanning oil once.

Robert: That’s good. Do you think you will ever be able to trust again?

Garrett: No. I mean, ever? Yes, obviously I can trust again. Or actually, I can’t really answer that, because I don’t really know. How am I supposed to know if I can ever trust again after you guys fucking with me for literally an entire year? I guess yes, with a side of no. God, this is so frustrating!


NO REGRETS.