Keys

It was 4AM. I as working on an assignment, and by working I mean opening the assignment and procrastinating. Sean, too, was working on a project due the next morning. He came downstairs periodically to talk about fantasy football, so naturally, we were both working diligently.

I was downloading Spirited Away from Rapidshare. Unfortunately it's in parts, so I have to download 14 things. Regardless, Sean came down for what must have been hte fifth time, discussing players he wanted to trade and pretty much bragging about how good his team is.

"You wanna take a break?" he asks. I knew what he meant. Smoke break.

I declined.

"Alright, then. Your loss!" he smiled as he closed the door.

About fifteen minutes later I heard a rapping on my chamber door. "It's open," I called out, not wanting to take my eyes off some basketball blogs.

The knob turned back in forth. "It's not," Sean said. "What are you doing in there?"

"I didn't lock it!" I called out. I got up to open it. It wouldn't budge.

I turned the knob and pulled. It still wouldn't budge.

I look in between the cracks and saw this. The big part is called the latch bolt, and I think the small part is called the lock bolt. When you turn the door knob, the latch bolt turns. If the door is locked, the lock bolt somehow clings on to the latch bolt and neither go in. In this case, the latch bolt went in, but the lock bolt, the small one, was stuck.

So yes, I was locked IN my room.

I asked Sean to get my room key from Eric, who lives above me. We all switched rooms at the beginning of the semester, but our keys are all switched up because they gave us the keys based on our assigned rooms.

The key didn't work. Sean woke up Evan, who sleeps on our couch. As disgruntled as Evan was, he soon saw the hilarity of the situation.

"Hey Andrew," he asked me through the door. "Can I make one of your ramen noodles?"

"I don't think now's the time, dude...but if you're really hungry..."

It's okay, I thought. They'll think of something.

"Andrew," Sean called to me, trying to sound soothing. "Don't worry. Evan and I are brainstorming ideas to get you out of there...Hey, Evan. Can you put on Madden real quick?"

"Andrew," Evan would later ask me. "Can you take off the hinges of the door? Do you have a screwdriver out there?"

"Yeah. Let me check real quick," I replied. I shuffled through my drawers.

"Alright, guys. You still there?" I asked.

"Yeah. What'd you find?" they asked.

"Alright. I got a flashlight and a pair of fingernail clippers."

Needless to say, it didn't work.

So I ended up calling Public Safety. The door was broken down. I left my room.

How frustrating it was.

Grosse Pointe Blank

So the tragicomedy that continues to riddle my life lives onward, full swing in its cliches and mundane grievances. It seems like we've become so much of a culture that complains that it has inevitably led us into a dark crevasse of criticism.

Because we've felt this unyielding urge to express ourselves, in words, in actions, in pictures, we have forced ourselves to become self-aware. We have made criticizing art into an art form itself, rewarding not only the attributes we supposedly should hold so dearly and so closely to our hearts, but also those very attributes that supposedly make us better.

In addition to the already extant expressions of complaints, our interestingly inexorable ability to self-reflect on our culture has resulted in an immeasurable amount of nonfiction. I believe this is a shift in our cultural values.

While we once loved legends and myths and stories made up for our fancy, we are slowly and certainly shifting our love to stories that are real, reflecting our preference to understand ourselves more. Our films were once lauded for their storytelling abilities, their fiction our fancy. However, in recent cinema, the trend has been to reward films with a basis in real stories.

We see much greater appeal in movies that tell stories that have already happened, but captured in a light that somehow makes it more appealing, romanticized for our viewing pleasure. Biopics have recently taken off and will eventually peak, culminating in a genre of film few thought would be as popular as they are now.

We began as artists. Art is expression, and, as I see it, art is complaining. Criticism came along, bringing along its cynical brother satire. In this era, we have emphasized criticism and satire. We seek constantly to make things better, so we follow commentary on how to make other things better.

Look at the intense popularity of Stephen Colbert. He's so famous that you don't even pronounce that word the same way anymore. When you see "Colbert," you don't read it as "COAL-BURT" but "COAL-BEAR" (see irony). Colbert's popularity points not only to his capable and satirical commentary, but also points to an audience that seems ravenous for such commentary.


So as we began as artists we are evolving as critics, masters of observations. We become experts at looking inward as well as outward.

And yet, sometimes, we cannot express ourselves to we look to others to express it for us. We flock to those who can relate to us the most, allured to the security that is ultimately a reflection of ourselves.

And we keep quiet those emotions we find difficult to express. We harbor obsessions we seek never to disclose for reasons that aren't obvious. While it may seem we don't disclose these obsessions because we are embarrassed, it is also very possible that the embarrassment is actually not as great as the fear of embarrassment.

So we hold these things to ourselves, our quiet obsessions.

And I can honestly say that the cross that is resting on my chest has never been heavier.