From jgoldie @ sccs.swarthmore.edu Sun May 15 23:38:24 2005 Date: Sun, 15 May 2005 11:19:47 -0400 (EDT) From: Jillian G. Waldman Reply-To: presidents @ swil.org To: SWILnews Subject: SWILnews #14 of More Seniors Than We Remembered We Had The meeting was called to disorder at 12:17pm. The rabble was not only non-pathetic, but featured a flying apple-spaceship with soundtrack. Curtain was taking notes, or, as Fist says, "writing meeting as it happens". They want me to write something down. Order of business is to be: SWILbusiness, NonSWILbusiness, Sentience Proofs, Lottery, Remembrances. Yes, it's kind of broken. ====================== =**= SWILbusiness =**= ====================== It was too early to talk about the Massacre. Arthur Chu kept yelling Curtain's name, insisting that he was doing the Twist. The absolute final deadline for BEM is two weeks from today, at which point you will no longer be allowed to glue pages into your copy of BEM. If you haven't picked up a copy of BEM, find one - they're scattered about campus and George. Jamison moved that we elect Pants Warriors, "men of vigor inside our pants." We argued over whether tomorrow or yesterday was No Pants Day, but eventually it was pointed out that it was actually in October. Jackie requested the title of "Honorary Chris", for her bitterness, hatred of us all, similarities to Chris White, and the possibility of Chris/Chris slash. Chris White turned bright red. Fist moved that we approve it, but only if she got to be one too. The motion passed, so Jackie is now an Official Honorary Chris. The sparkly-black-cloaked Kaos, Lord of Cordwainer moved that Andrew Brown be given the title "Ward of Montgomery", because of his ability to defend himself from Eliza. This was approved as long as we also had a "Sear of Roebuck", which would have to be someone capable of seeing without external aid. Unfortunately, Kit isn't sentient. We voted Bill Clinton to be the Sear of Roebuck, to get it out of the way, and then voted Andrew Brown to be Ward of Montgomery, by a very slim margin. Arthur yelled "You fools!" numerous times, and then Fist made loud trainlike noises. Blake proposed fortbuilding in ML lounge tonight for Saturday Night SWIL. We can bring foam swords. Jamison upgraded it to "Storming the Castle" in ML lounge. ========================= =**= NonSWILbusiness =**= ========================= Bryn Mawr's graduation is this coming weekend, over a period of 2 days. On Saturday at 2:30, there's Convocation, followed by Garden Party at 4, which is much better than graduation, and involves schmoozing. On Sunday's the actual graduation with the diplomas, but that's boring. Al Bradbury is running a 24-hour theater-fest thing this weekend, where people write, produce, direct, and perform a play all in 24 hours. If you have free time, investigate. If you haven't gotten Mark's fun posts about Star Wars: Episode III, Mark will give you a ride, but not a ticket. They're going on the midnight of the 18th/19th. Jamison wants to go again, sometime the next week, after he gets back to Swarthmore. If you didn't see Twelfth Night live, there's a showing on Monday of the DVD, which only the cast are invited to. The ML talent show is Monday the 9th at 9 pm. Jawaad wants you to be in it, so we won't have to watch an hour of Arthur being himself. Monday at 7:00 in LPAC cinema will be the final showing of Film Studies II final projects, including "Uncommon Tastes", Andrew's documentary on SWIL. Fist called everyone idiots. Mark hit Chris. Someone might run an Eye of Argon reading. Come, because Chris Segal says it sucks. Ben and others want to organize another trip to see the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Watch fun. Andrew is going to buy Play-Doh and organize Clay-o-Rama sometime this week. Watch fun. ========================== =**= Sentience Proofs =**= ========================== ~~[Viva Rose Horowitz]~~ When asked if she was sentient, Viva asked to check her notes. Noda moved that she was sentient because she was Riff. She refused to answer that she was sentient until badgered, hiding behind a large pile of what appeared to be notes, or possibly honors exams. She read from them that she needed a copy of Louden, Quantum Theory of Light, second edition, but she only had the third edition. "A calculator might be handy. A couple of post-its might be useful. Problem 1: To measure the index of refraction of air... Michelson interferometer, as the air is pumped out of the tube, 46 fringes are measured... HeNe laser... what is the index of refraction of the air?" Many people guessed. Blake got it right. Nick proposed that she's sentient because she bent the laws of physics to her will. Greg thought that course majors were happier and therefore she wasn't sentient, but one can be happy without being sentient. (See rocks, things without brains, people who have had their brains removed.) She can also summon an a cappella group at will, which she demonstrated by summoning Jason Bronstein, Jonathan Scheider, and Mikio Akagi, all of whom were already there, so they stood on chairs and sung "Jason Bronstein" for rather longer than anyone expected. Somebody moved that she was sentient because she could bend light and music to her will, and was therefore the Wizard of Light and Music. We dismembered her three times, because BDan wasn't president, and Mai took the wrong arm the first time. Greg requested the title of "Sergeant at Legs". It passed on the third vote, despite rampant apathy. ~~[Joanna Lynne Karpinski]~~ Joanna Karpinski could barely stand up. She said that at first, she thought if she confused us by speaking Spanish, she could prove her sentience. So she thought she'd stand up and filibuster for an hour and a half, but it was a bad idea. She then admitted that she didn't actually know how to prove her sentience, threw Sarah Hartman some sort of globe as a May Day gift, and sat down. We voted her sentient because she held the whole world in her hands. We cut off her head, instead of her hands, for some reason. Finlay ate it. Finlay told Chris to shut up. ~~[Jason Zachary Bronstein]~~ He proposed that he was sentient because he could bend Viva Horowitz to his will. She stood up. He told her to start talking about physics. She talked about her research doing Spintronics this summer. He told her to stop talking about physics. She stopped talking about physics. He told her to sit down. She sat down. We voted him sentient because he was the Wizard of the Wizard of Light and Music, or the wizard behind the curtain. We removed his ears. We voted Arthur Chu unsentient, because he wanted to prove sentience, but then Mark pointed out that that meant he was graduating. We voted not to listen to Mark. ================== =**= Lottery. =**= ================== Finlay rolled a d100, but was unable to get a number under 20. She switched to a d20, and 2 won the lottery. Kaos, Lord of Andrew won the lottery, but that was totally cheating, since he's supposed to be SWILpresident. There was loud mooing and booing. He chose the mystery bowl, and got two-thirds of a teddy-bear face. We rolled again because Andrew cheated, and 18 won. Jackie won the balsa sea turtle model. ====================== =**= Remembrances =**= ====================== ~~[Qian Li, dismembered 6th Meeting, Fall 2001]~~ Was on gamelan with Mai for two years and was always the most kickass player and helped everyone with technique. Has a really cool hat. For a long time was recognized by Finlay only by her accessories (hat and plaid bag), but that changed one day when Qian was walking away from them, and turned around and gave a huge grin to her and Kit. Was one of the first people Jonathan reached out to at Swat during the Graduate. Was sketched out by Jonathan because he was a really physical person. Despite that, two years later they ended up dating. Came to use Jackie's Finale "for the last time" about 5 times in the last week. One of the few regular SCCS users. Nick approves. BDan went to a Townhill Beavers concert with Qian shortly after he'd met her because she liked Scottish music, and he couldn't tell if it was a date or not. It turned out not to be. Bought Jamison flowers instead of punching him because he was acting annoying, but when she threatened to punch him, he suggested she buy him flowers instead. But this other time she actually punched him. She and Mark had a tradition of rearranging each other's trays when they got up from SWILtable. Was in Parrish w/ Katie freshman year. Bio field trip where it was cold, but Qian slept outside anyway. Had this cool project about cardinals she was very enthusiastic about, but she never got to do it. Actually cooked well and regularly last summer. Believed the only reason Andrew was ever in a good mood was because he was in love. Sat next to Arthur eating raspberry sorbet and put it in his food. Threw a really nifty fruit-themed party. Asked Chelsea if she was Viva. Was in Mertz for some reason or other and once or twice was trying to avoid BDan, so would hide in Comma's room uninvited. Comma also remembers her experimental pie-making. Viva met Qian at study-skills workshop freshman year. Wrote her name Chen on her card, even though that wasn't how it was spelled, so people would pronounce it right. When she went to Bali, posted to fun asking if anyone wanted to go with her. Viva considered going, even though she didn't really know Qian. A few days last summer, Viva was living in Ardmore and had to feed Qian's goldfish, and started sleeping in her bed. (But not with Blake. In fact, Viva has never slept with Blake.) Had really weird dreams where Qian came back and was confused about why Viva was in her room. MOTHERPUCKERS! Has tie-dye and a really cool cloak. With Qian and Elliot started the tradition of the late January birthday party. Lots of candles in the vegan cake Mark's freshman year. Qian came to SWILtable and started telling the joke about the E-shaped pie, and SWIltable spent about an hour arguing with her about whether it made sense. Posted to a Chat thread about whether or not people should cut down a forest, saying that they should ask the trees. Arthur wrote a short story about it, which he was going to read at Walpurgisnacht, but instead never showed anyone. Read something at Walpurgisnacht about when she was a boy in high school. Confused everyone. Mike discovered when Qian was dating Jonathan that weird people like Jonathan could date other people. Jawaad and Qian were part of the breakfast crowd their freshman year - about 8 people who actually went to Sharples breakfast. When she moved off campus sophomore year, Jawaad and she tried to continue this tradition by having breakfast together in Qian's apartment every Sunday morning. Her roommate in Dartmouth house didn't seem to like this much. Listened to Smashing Pumpkins sometimes. Even now that she's living in Worth, he's gone once or twice for breakfast. Wonderful tradition he'll really miss. Greg fondly remembers going to meals Qian would make over the summer, which were really good. Really liked the way she'd decorated her apartment. Greg argues with her about politics and never agrees with her ever, but still thought she had a lot of interesting ideas, and it was fun. Accused Jillian of being a male poet in a French cafe over AIM when Jillian was dating BDan. (This comment established the method of reckoning time by "when X was dating Y", which was used interchangeably with "Z's freshman year" for the rest of meeting.) We liked the Wasteland and Apocalypse Now quotes taped to her wall. Jillian copied her room decor. Jonathan developed a head-jerk reflex every time he saw red or heard jingling, when he was still wading through weird emotional territory. Her freshman year roommate's fridge is still in George. If there's a cushion missing from the couch in Lang, that means Qian's in the building somewhere (unless Chris is asleep). Juries, or after Schlock some night, sought Mark out to seek his opinion on something. Arthur remembers Qian's jury pieces. Is the only person responsible for ever getting Jawaad tipsy. Is over at Qian's place, gives him amazing amazing chocolate cake. After he's halfway through it, she informs him that it's rum cake, but all the rum burned off when it was cooked. He finished the piece, had another one, when he was halfway through the second piece, she informed him that the syrup on it was also made with uncooked rum. Huge moral dilemma, but he finished the piece of cake, stumbled, regained his balance, walked home. Mark has a sequence of pictures of BDan and Qian in a sweater from Walpurgisnacht 2003. Qian no longer has the sweater. Blake remembers interesting conversations with Qian his freshman year. Summer after BDan's junior year, stayed with him for a couple of months in Plattsburgh after leaving without telling her parents. Rode bicycles down to ferry at Port Kent, took it across to Burlington, wandered around, went shopping, he lost his ATM card and their flashlights broke on the way home. Jamison has met a lot of people, but Qian has the most moxie out of all of them. Also spunk. Qian claiming BDan the elephant from Jonathan's room in front of a spec. Jonathan had been sleeping with BDan, but she wanted it back. Very surreal. "You gave up BDan when you left him here!" "You have a roommate. You can sleep with Arthur." Told Jawaad that he understands her better than she understands herself, but he neither understands nor believes it. It's not so easy to think of memories of Qian that should really be made public ;-). Well, of course, there was the infamous time that she picked Kyra up and dropped her on Rachel's foot, causing it to hurt for a few days. It's still unclear why she thought that was a good idea. The rum cake that she made when Kyra came to visit this year for the ball - she ate it on the way home, and it was awesome. Qian was very good to her in general when she visited - she was even willing to just give Kyra her room for the weekend, which was awesome! The summer before her junior year she would gather all the SWILlies on AIM into a single chatroom. Qian was the person who always used AIM chat rooms. Arthur remembers how she purposefully started chat rooms with names like Gossip, so people would wander in. They acquired a random 16-year-old from Washington named Kelsey. We apologized for hiding in Mark's room and pretending not to be there when Qian came by, even though she'd called earlier to tell us to go to Screw. Qian kept insisting she wasn't drunk the night of the WRC party, and carried herself off quite elegantly. Characteristic scream of horror, accompanied by violence to who or whatever is closest. Said "Jawaad!" in the same fashion. Mai feels guilty for never going to MQA birthday parties. Mai and Sarah could always tell when Qian was around the quad, even when their doors were closed. Andrew remembers Qian's intimate involvement in his hair, which resulted in the blueness, gray-silverness, greenness, blondness, and its current state. Sitting on Andrew's bed, asked if it was okay to take off her bra, removed it without taking off her shirt, threw it towards Alex's computer. BDan was screwed with Qian her frosh year as Man in Black and Vizzini in the poison scene. Shared a love of music with Jonathan, shared honorary status on a radio show. Collaborative work on a mini-show in Bond. After she and Jonathan had broken up, surprised him by showing up randomly and giving him a book of Alan Ginsburg poetry. Greg was screwed with Qian his freshman year. (Oh my god, that happened! -qian) He was Black Mage, she White Mage, and she didn't get any of the jokes. It was Arthur's fault. Mark was screwed with Qian this year as a series of stacked puns she didn't get. Comma remembers her Bacheloretto party, because of the name, which was a great name. She had thought the gender hadn't sounded confused enough before. Only person who's ever successfully ended one of Jamison's reigns of terror. Ran into Blake's room, stole her computer, ran away and hid, but she didn't chase him so he got bored and gave it back. Noda was away at a college bowl tournament, got back to discover looks of horror on everyone's faces because Qian had proven sentience that day. Qian stood up, said that the health center claimed she was on the brink of eating disorder, all she needed to do to complete it was to vomit unnecessarily. So she had a can of spreadable spam and a bottle of ipecac, which she threatened to consume at meeting unless proven sentient. Made risque Wink calls at Reunion when people with children (and, Rachel believes, some of the children themselves) were present (often made risque Wink calls in general). Used to knock on Rachel's door to wake her up on Sundays, and then hang out with her for an hour or two. Qian is one of the kind souls who let me JC try on their clothes. JC believes this was at an End of the Word party, but I could be wrong. (Speaking of End of the World parties, Qian is fun to play Deprivation with). ~~[Adam Oleksa, dismembered 3rd Meeting, Fall 2001]~~ Lived in Parrish with Mai, she'd stop and chat every time she went to the bathroom. Showed her part of the Star Wars Holiday special, but after two minutes she demanded it be turned off. Frequently seen loitering around Andrew's room looking for Alex. Will sit there and stare at Alex's or Greg's KOTOR staring at it for hours, until Andrew demands that all the people who don't actually live there leave. Chris' freshman year, chaos on the college bowl team because all the seniors were going to graduating, all the sophomores were having nervous breakdowns. Chris was going to be president, Rebecca Paul corralled him to be treasurer against his will. "Do you want to be treasurer?" "...ok" "Good, we need a budget proposal by 9:30 tomorrow" Nick met Adam by going to 1-2 college bowls his freshman year before discovering he was too dumb for college bowl. After one of them, he was under the impression that his name was Alex Odemsa. Sophomore year, Katie and Adam lived directly across the hall, were in Craig Williamson's Beowulf to Milton class, kept counts of how many times he said "boff". Before exams started dating at the same time everyone else in the universe started dating. Went to NY and saw Les Mis on Broadway. They were going to be screwed together, but their roommates were apathetic/nonexistent, so Susan Christensen put together a sweet but last-minute Arwen/Aragorn. Katie was very confused at the beginning of the year when Adam was dating Blair, Katie's quintmate. Adam and Blair also didn't tell Miriam that Blair was dating him. Miriam had been spending the whole summer agonizing about whether to ask *someone* out, and it turned out to be her roommate. Adam has the most memorable reading-college-bowl-questions voice, like that of the voice of the guy fromt he original hitchhiker's guide - very clear diction, but witht he sense that it's all read with unpleasant shock. Looks scarily like a stereotypical Asian villain when he does his evil face. After Adam Oleksa made himself look pathetic with his sentience proof, KT was going to ask him on a date because he seemed like a nice guy and then he wouldn't have never been on a date. KT enjoyed watching him grow into himself. Tone-setter for Finlay's semester by telling her what to expect from Craig Williamson, got her addicted to Star Trek. Kit apologized for not folkdancing. During longsword practice, once Rachel couldn't come, so Adam came and played. They had a rehearsal for May Day, and realized they hadn't asked him if he could play, called him, he agreed to play, even though he was needed five minutes ago, so he came all the way to Tarble on no notice. Nick's sophomore year in ML, long conversation about the fundamental game mechanics of the Star Trek collectible card game. Proved that they needed to enroll in a Trekkies Anonymous group. Jason's sophomore year, had just moved to ML from Willets because his roommate wanted to move there. Alex made him feel comfortable and at home. Chris White used to play Magic when he was young; plays now mostly because Adam is still involved; Adam has crushed him every time. Chris for some reason challenged him to a duel. Adam offered to bring his rapier. Chris was going to bring his tennis racket, but then he forgot to show up. Adam's room is right by the staircase, so Jamison always wants to talk to him. He's like a bear, because bears are scary on the outside, but all good inside. His character made first level of arcane archery (applause -rabble). Andrew keeps looking at the attendance list and seeing new takes on a plot to kill one's opponent in Magic between Adam's first and last names. At 2 am, Mai stumbled over him and friends playing Magic in the hallway in ML. He and Nick enabled Mai in terms of Trek. When Mai pokes him, he makes magical growls. People running around the dorm saying they were going to watch Trouble With Tribbles in his room, more and more people slowly accumulated in the course of the episode. Willingness to slack off and have fun. Star Trek Brings People Together. Adam is the only person besides Nick who believes that learning Klingon is a worthwhile hobby. Chris Segal has never lived in ML, but Adam mostly stays in ML, so Chris got to know him very late. Adam is the only reason Chris wishes he had lived in ML at some point. Seal game he was playing with Jessica Bachrach. Jessica would draw baby seals on her white board, Adam would draw methods to kill them and the time. If she didn't erase the method of killing them, he got a dead baby seal point, if she did, she got a baby seal point. One of the methods was the red dot of a laser targeting system. He couldn't use the same method of death twice, but there were still over 100 ways. Once had an AIM conversation with Katie about mastodons being sucked into airplane jet engines. Is comfortingly more frightened of the future than Katie. We gave him his head back. ~~[Alex Flurie, dismembered 4th Meeting, Fall 2001]~~ Mai's partner in screwing Jason and Rachel Winer. It was all his idea, but she went along with it. Saturday of Screw at lunch, Alex entered w/ umbrella, held it over her head as he declared her princess of the world. Mai entered in black to kidnap her, brandished baseball bat, took her away to the radio station. Alex dressed Jason up in a wetsuit, forced him to run up the beach fighting his way past Jason Mui, Adrian, to WSRN, as WSRN was trying to broadcast. Finlay knows him only as his AIM screenname. She spent a lot of the summer IMing him frantically about WSRN. He was very patient with her overeager questions. Jamison fails his remembrance check by not knowing who Alex is. Yale house this past summer, Flurie sublet a room in Yale House (1/2 duplex just north or some direction from Campus towards chester on yale avenue, owned by Swat alums), Nick joined their food coop. Flurie-mobile finally died (1986 blue Chrysler minivan that at one point contained a complete drum set, two people's worth of clothing, lots of vanilla coke, special smell), for at least 2 months after it died it sat in the yale house driveway rusting. Challenged Zach Rider to a 24-year vintage video game tournament with emulators, so everything was being run at 3-4 times the original speed. People flowed in and out of the room. Played Megaman 3, Chrono Trigger, Super Metroid, etc, Flurie was the Champion by two games. Swearing his head off at Zach Rider. "Mr. Rider, you're screwed." "Mr. Flurie, you're going down." In FF6, there's this one area where you walk through these caves and all the monsters are undead, he'd bought 999 Revivifies, but was an hour behind Rider in game time, went into the came, tossed Revivifies at all the monsters, so got out of the cave 30 minutes ahead of Rider. Sentience proof involved his special method of eating an ice cream cone with two cake cones with ice cream between them which he used to stop time while he left the room, (by breaking the ice cream cones apart). One of the first people Viva met at Swat - he and Christopher Ward slept over in her room within the first three days at Swat. Lived with Jason fresh/soph years. Despite this, Viva could only visit one at a time, and the other wouldn't talk to her. Freshman year, Screw, ChrisW and Jonathan didn't find screw dates for each other. Night of Screw during the formal were sitting in their dorm room in Mertz resenting each other. Turned on WSRN to "The Sound and the Flurie" where he was reading long SF stories. Jonathan called in and thanked him for entertaining them when they were lazy, said "I guess Jason was lazy too", but he said no. When he sees Jonathan, he makes chicken noises under his breath. For a while Arthur confused him with Angela Fleury. He runs WSRN, she allegedly started the thing with putting "Chu" in song lyrics. College bowl, arthur and alex spent a lot of time talking about batman at intramurals, arthur felt really smart, alex didn't know arthur was already in college bowl, went up to him randomly asking him to be on their team anyway. Made fun of ChrisW behind his back. Now they're apparently comfortable enough that Alex says "I want Chu to want me" behind his breath, even though Angela started it. Jason's roommate for two years, really great roommate, helped him adjust to Swat. They'd go running together in the mornings - neither is a really physical guy, but both did X-country in HS, they'd wake up at 7:30, run through the ville, make strange sounds. Started fake a cappella group Coitus Mayfield to sing seventies rock songs and be out of key. Instead got together the ML3rd crowd (Mike O'Keefe, Ross, Franzie) and they drank a lot, mostly, and made up fake emails they drew out of a hat and read them to everyone. His smile and general appearance of happiness. Always came up to Jawaad to ask about Ethan Sherrard, was the one who passed messages from everyone else to Jawaad. E6 is the washout course for engin major, mechanics. Prof Siddiqui always called him "Ahlex? Ahlex Flahrie?" (in a better accent) So the engineers started calling him that. In response Flurie started calling Nick "N'quord". Fattest bridge. Worked in Hicks last summer, snuck up behind the people working in the robot lab silently, say their name loudly. (N'quord!) Nick and Alex had Physics 8 w/ andrea stout (she doesn't understand people who don't understand physics) midterm had a question involving 2 cylinders rotating inside each other, drum capacitor, magnetic field, no one knew how to do it, andrea stepped out of the room, flurie stood up, said "What am I?" and rotated around with his hands up in an impression of the rotating cylinders. Freshman year he found that Noda also a huge fan of Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, kept trying to get together to play multiplayer, but it never managed to happen. Incident at SWILtable involving Prime and an Ice Cream cone. Prime tried to get him into SWIL and it backfired horrible. Confused with Mark because of WSRN. Heavy computer geek, sophomore spring had Music 13, Math 30 back to back, Math 30 in trotter computer lab, he spent class playing something online where you calculate things and send armies places. Teleported his limb. ~~[Tom "Brodie" Winner]~~ (perennial hunt monster, never dismembered, oops) Jackie remembers him being shirtless a lot during the hunt, in the amazing werewolf costume. Trigun showings his sophomore year in the very messy fishbowl. When Eliza specced here, Kate took her to a trigun showing in the fishbowl. Pterodactyl hunt Jr, Sr year, impressive (so sexy! - jonathan, with agreement from the rabble) werewolf, followed by the orc with the 8-foot long (giant f***ing) battleaxe of doom. Three hunters around him, holding them off with the eight-foot long battleaxe. Generally badass. Really intense RPGer. In Finlay's vampire campaign. Finlay isn't sure how she actually got to know him. He's the only person who finds her in the middle of the week to talk about new game mecahnics he's invented. Greg in Witchcraft and Magic english class. had to perform a scene they'd read. Greg got paired w/ lots of MLers, brodie didn't want to be on stage. Greg was the body of Faust and carried the skull, which spoke (Brodie). Jerome's reaction to seeing the skull. He used to have short hair. Could tie it back w/ a ribbon and be like Horatio Hornblower. All Hallow's eve his sophomore year, Julia Gayner did a pagan ritual in the crum, led a lot of people through the Crum in the middle of the night. While we sacrificed the pomegranate, he was off to the side swishing his sword doing kata and looking very cool. For a year Mai was neurotic around him because she couldn't figure out whether he liked her or hated her. Managed to get scurvy by being nocturnal, never going to sharples, never eating fruit. But it was probably actually just a problem with his toothbrush. Mai told someone about her schedule (4 days off, two days of classes, weird sleep schedule), UberMatt said she had a Brodie schedule. Kevin Smith fan, had almost regular showings of Mall Rats. Posters on his walls, not just film posters but complete prints of sabotage plans from Mall Rats. Eliza was on his hall, remembers walking by his room late at night and he'd be going insane on some videogame. "Wow, when I'm a junior I hope I have that much spare time". One of the 5 people who inspired Greg to get a black trenchcoat. ~~[Katie McAlister, dismembered 9th Meeting, Fall 2001]~~ Nick knows her best through SPC (swat protestant community) because they've both attended regularly all 4 years. Big fan of "motion songs" (from vacation bible school, church camp) which involve pseudo-sign-language. Arkie, Arkie; Pharaoh, Pharaoh. It makes SPC fun. ChrisW a big fan of the polls on her door. (Ferret! -rabble) Katie has wonderful clothing. She and Mai havethe exact same stuffed warthog, so they are probably at least partly the same person, or share brains, or something. Mai had the most interaction with her this semester, great help in catching up, studying in biology. Katie and Eliza helped Mai pick up her 400 hatched baby mantises, so they each got their own mantises. Katie's is named Kafka. She keeps going to PetCo to buy crickets. (The plural of Mantis isn't Manatees. Really. -rabble) Bio picnic had the skit "Bad Bio Pickup Lines". Katie walked up with pizzazz and poise and said "Pollinate my pistil." Miriam remembers the confused look on her face when she and Adrian started holding hands in the ML3rd lounge. During Jackie's many recent all-nighters, Katie had offered caffeine of many sorts, which she still ought to take up at some point. When Jamison runs down the second floor he stops in front of her door to see if she notices the change in noise, and says hi if she does. Her door is always open. Nick thought Katie was really cool for her Quicksilver G4 Powermac sophomore year. Sager this year, Mike went to ML in search of women's clothing, found a nice court-jester-type skirt that Katie loaned him for Sager. Miriam went to the Zoo w/ Katie, Blair, Liv, Susan Wilker last semester, because Katie'd been going all semester, but never got out of the Ape house. Stared at naked mole rats, one of which had a clubfoot. It was sad. Cute, but sad. If one ever needed to find someone to share a tolkein fangirl/boy moment, Katie was always willing to help with Squeeeee. Kyra wanted to put in a remembrance for her because of her participation in story readings. She can't even remember how many times she went to a story reading and listened to Katie reading out a story from Kelly Link's book _Stranger Things Happen_. Each time Katie did, Kyra was in awe of this really fascinating writer. She never had the time to borrow the book from Katie, but she would also look through it at the story readings and have fun looking at the stories. So Kyra's definitely grateful to Katie for introducing her to this atuhor. Lent Mai Smoke and Mirrors for storyreading. Read an awesome story this year. Carries herself in an impressively poised manner "even if I don't know what I'm doing I know what I'm doing". Reassuring and remarkable. Qian's most vivid memory of Katie is their shift watching migratory birds at night. Qian was timing and she was counting birds, and to this day Qian feels bad for going 10 mins. over -- it was just so good to lie on the roof watching birds fly thru the light and chatting with her. Noda mentioned that she might be the current keeper of the Clue. Katie admits that she might have it around somewhere. (The previous holder was Arcadia; it's supposed to go to the female SWILlie who has the most work and will therefore need it the most. Katie passed the Clue on to Marie.) We returned one arm of indeterminate chirality. ~~[KT Randle, dismembered 14th Meeting, Spring 2005]~~ Has written other people's sentience proofs, therefore the presidents thought it was fair to apply Executive Rule 4 to declare her sentient, not that they needed a reason. Besides, we like her. We dismembered her telekinetically; hopefully, we can undo the damage before she notices. Nick's sophomore year, living in ML basement, RA Jim Maiolo had a Playstation 2 with Kingdom of Hearts (disney?). KT played it for about a weekend straight. Refused to prove herself sentient, but came up with BC's proof instead. Shorter than the average man, had triangular feet (he held up his feet to demonstrate) therefore he was a duck. And somehow therefore sentient. Miriam remembers her from before she got to swat when visiting her sister, and last year. Nasty social shit. But KT made sure to reassure Miriam that even though she knew Miriam through these people, she still wanted to be friends w/ Miriam no matter what happened with the others. The quad with Katie. At one point offered to switch rooms with Katie because she'd be more comfortable in a smaller space. Really nice gesture. Comma's Jr year, she walked up to Comma, informed him that he needed to be Heidi for Halloween, she had a dress he needed to borrow. And it happened, and no one was really clear on why, but it was a good thing, because it involved a green dress and looped pigtails. We returned her limb before she noticed it was gone. ~~[Kate Duffy, dismembered 4th Meeting, Fall 2001]~~ Used to write for the Phoenix, did Weird New Jersey tours of illegally trespassing in condemned prisons, asylums, plus a series of surreal interviews (Gene Ray, the Time Cube guy, producing one of the best and only online interviews of him; the Troma guy, from whom she elicited a great quote about women as "gyno-americans") Filmed "Amid the dead", in which Arthur had a minor role. Audition process, in which people were required to go into hysterics, die, spit, disturb a nearby film studies class. Goaded him into drooling on the spec (martha hoffman). Awesome director, worked incredibly hard on a very quirky project. Also did another film about a bunch of girls killing abusive boyfriends. Angry arguments with Arthur on LJ because she's a member of the punk movement. September freshman year, Kate Duffy went with Viva to see "Atom and his package" in Philadelphia. This morning, Viva saw Kate for the first time in a very long time. She had gone to the science center for tea to meet someone, person wasn't there, there was no tea, but there was Kate. DJ'd the kegger one year, spent the whole time jamming. Had the most ewok-intensive sentience proof ever. Comma's been sharing a house with her for the past year or so. 4 of them in the apartment, but Kate was doing the "young and counter-cultural" thing on all of their behald. "Yes, I need to rent the camel suit for tomorrow. Do you have any of the bears?" - this kind of thing makes living with her very interesting, especially late at night. Nick met her through Erik Osheim because he was a former sysadmin. They were one of the few couples he knew who matched each other in dress exactly - torn jeans converted to shorts, chains, etc - like a pair out of a movie. Election night this past fall, came to yale house for election night party, she, nick, very sick drunk raoul, mike o'keefe, ethan jucovy had a conversation while hoping for official election results till abnout 6 am. Definitely has a very different political orientation than many people Chris Segal has known. Chris White was in 2 english seminars with her this semester. Dinner party at professor's house at the end of one. He and Kate were the only people to start with red wine. Mark's sophomore year, people blocked, one of the people went abroad, Kate Duffy ended up rooming with Carmen Barron somehow, in an Odd Couple pairing, and they managed not to kill each other at all. Jillian was up till 4 finishing her Fairy Tales paper sophomore fall, and encountered Kate Duffy cleaning an axe in the ML basement bathroom. Sleepy conversation ensued in which she said it was dusty and Jillian pretended to believe her. ~~[Ben Mitchell, dismembered 9th Meeting, Fall 2001]~~ Has snakes which Mai thinks are cool. Looks darling in periwinkle blue. Great Sir Andrew in 12th night, took a really active role in ideas for directing. Lovely singing voice. One of the few members of the cast on key for the finale of 12th night where they each had to sing one line. (Jamison was not among the on-key) Dressing room before the show, sitting in his briefs putting spirit gum in socks so they'd stay on his legs. In Fairy Tales and Magic Fictions with Katie freshman spring. Always had a lot to say. Fellow CS person and roommate this past summer with Nick, source of good debates on CS topics - developmental roboticist vs Nick's engineer, really likes C++, Dvorak... They're on opposite sides of all the various CS debates. Reminded Nick why FF6 is so awesome, parallel gaming emulation. Good with makeup. Did the makeup for Amid the Dead. Seeing him as Sir Andrew was funny because he's partly exactly that, partly the opposite. Like an engineer building a bridge with makeup, has a vision, can lecture for hours on the technical details. 12th night cast had a running list of who's seen Ben's ass. It grew phenomenally, because he's unselfconscious. Playboy with two bunnies at SWILoween. Was really phenomenally done, but really out of character. BDan's partner for final project in robotics Ben's sophomore year. Really good partner, had to go through the pain of having to wait a day or two for the robots to evolve so you could find out if there was a bug in the code and then run it again. His Sir Andrew voice is identical to the voice he uses when talking on the phone with his girlfriend. Consummate swordsman. Always in the hunt as a regular monster because he's so good he doesn't need to be anything stranger. Fenced once upon a time. [strike]Sarostro[/strike] Monostatos in Magic Flute with eyebrows of doom, evil sneer, marvelous tenor singing voice. From upstate new york where there's rain, wears trenchcoat with hat, just walks right through it without noticing. Seems so cool, Mai wants to get to know him, looks eerily like a 30-year-old Finlay once had a crush on so Finlay keeps thinking she knows him. Only person to have ever gotten makeup on Jamison. Very distinctive clothing style. Cowboy boots are freaking awesome, and apparently damned comfortable, too. Mark would compare notes with him on Math 18 homework sophomore fall. ~~[Viva Horowitz, dismembered 14th Meeting, Spring 2005]~~ Abby has never seen someone so excited about mundane ruach business. Integral in getting on and off topic. Makes it fun. Summer cooking coop was Viva's idea. Jonathan's freshman year he really wanted to get to know Viva because she had black hair with a white stripe and looked like a skunk. Viva didn't understand that the comparison to a skunk was a compliment, although they're God's most beautiful creatures. Nick's never seen someone's parent get so involved in stuff as Viva's mom does. Buddhist meditation, came to gaming... (We're not remembering Viva's mom -presidents) Viva is a very passionate person who never does anything without feeling intensely about it. Never apathetic. Jason will miss her desperately. Arthur talked to her on AIM from the Phoenix office, discovered that he was in Parrish 5th right above her, she came up, stayed talking till 3am. Lots of random conversations with her. Arthur really embarrassed Viva by acting stupid and talking to her former roommate. Her reaction to embarrassment was "funny", because she sank under the table. Mark found 6 different bus routes for her to take from Ardmore to Swarthmore, and she took them all. Mike's idea of the ideal swattie. Passionate about work, life. ("Apathy is my enemy"). Can trust her opinion over everyone's in Ruach (because they're on the same "political party") Mikio in Chaverim with Viva, inside window into the divisive ruach board politics, physics dept intrigue, "orgasmo" trauma. Mikio screwed with viva, third in a long line of chaverim freshmen. Kit specced here, his host never showed up, he was adopted by Viva, Lisa, Michael Stone, stayed up being told about SCCS, LaTeX, Viva pressured Lisa into giving him a LJ code. Also, pink fuzzy handcuffs. She dyed her eyebrows and only Abby recognized her. (And Mai, who'd seen her do it.) We should thank her for being Passover coordinator. On her form, instead of saying her dorm # and cell #, it had her dorm phone and lab phone. Mai and Viva seem to be only peripherally affiliated by hanging out with the same people. Mai was getting on the shuttle when Viva was getting off, craved human contact, she said "It's Viva!" and Viva was happy someone was so happy to see her. "Are you Viiiva?" Qian's strategy for getting to know viva; Qian could not recognize her. Qian asked her on a weekly basis if she was the person associated with her livejournal username. Jonathan gets bored and searches Viva's LJ for his name, although he doesn't actually read her livejournal. One night when they didn't actually ahve to stay up all night working on math homework, in the CRC, they just sat there all night after Chaverim rehearsal working on Real Analysis, got to know each other well. Arthur first met her over the Summer of the Oracle, random girl rooming with Jillian whose name was actually Viva, rather than that being a nickname. Subscribed to the fun list her freshman year without knowing it was affiliated with SWIL. Posted to Fun once her freshman year, and had a random alum ask if her name was a nickname given to her by SWIL, and then some alumni had a discussion of how to parse it--whether it was Viva! Rose Horowitz or whether Viva modified the entire name, etc. When she introduced herself to the Chat list two years later, (probably the same) people made (probably the same) jokes about her name. Once, Viva lost her purse, and called public safety to let her into Kohlberg so she could look for it. Public safety never came but they had a phantom vehicle between Kohlberg and Parrish that was empty. Some passing students let her in and when she came back out the vehicle was gone, without there ever having been a sign of anyone to drive it. It turned out she'd really left her purse in Bond, anyway (and Rachel had to climb through a window to retrieve it). Would spend all day in Cornell Library, chatting, making people think she was working really hard. Believed that carrying a textbook around made it easier to do homework, or at least made it look like she was doing work. Qian remembers first getting to know Viva enough that she wasn't confusing her for Megan Nelson, and commenting that she reminded her of herself, and Rachel Sapiro took great offense at that. She also remembers her rare sober moments. Arthur unintentrionally stalked her, randomly came to physics events. SHe, he, one other person were the only ones who dresed up for the physics halloween party. Viva got an eyeball ball. Phoenix makeover. People were amazed. She got listed on the Daily Jolt hot list recently. Over the summer, Viva was good about organizing LN2 ice cream. BDan actually talked to her for the first time the week after he graduated, when he was living in her room with Jillian. (Jillian is sorry) BDan remembers playing Ice Bubble, the Snood variant. We all remember Viva posting to livejournal constantly, but that was also the week when she got her livejournal. Greg remembers seeing Viva drunker than she thought she was, and the Viva claiming to be drunker than she actually was. Greg was hanging out in ML after exams stopping by to see the seniors who were drinking beer from Iron hill, Viva wanders in, sees Sam's riding crop, sits by Greg whacking her hand with it. Jillian and Viva's being roommates is possibly responsible for SWIL's inability to communicate with itself except over LJ. When they were roommates, they talked to each other all sorts of ways (LJ, AIM, chat list, fun list, ytalk...), often at the same time. Tontie! Jawaad went to Longwood gardens with Viva and Viva's mom. Viva threatened to start a livejournal for Jawaad over the summer and post in it for him. Viva posting to LJ from lab asking how to take off eye makeup using estesol hand cream and getting 60 replies despite the fact that it was 2 am. On Valentine's Day, Viva stole the rose symbolizing the eternal promise of Arthur's love because it was her name. Jonathan's mom wants him to marry Viva, Viva's mom wants him to marry Lauren Ianuzzi. Viva was one of the most fervent mutt evangelists Noda ever met. During the LJ outage earlier this year, viva kept up her regular posting schedule by writing in a text file on sccs and then posted all of the things she'd written over the 48 hours, thus claiming half of Noda's friends page. (If I'm the only person appearing on your friends list in a given day, you need to friend more people -viva) Has a compulsion to bring order to the world, which sometimes manifests itself by taking over every organization she's a member of (watch her attempt to take over remembrances -c) Finlay met most of us through LJ. First encounter in RL was at RTT when physics/SWAP had set up rocket making, viva walks up with stack of quantum physics textbooks. and then she bought her a drink. (Viva just called Blake Noda. Noda hides. -c) Jamison thinks she's an excellent presence at the SWILtable Maintains the long tradition of using SCCS, shell scripts, who command to stalk people and know their current coputer whereabouts. When Nick randomly checks the processes running, Viva's running who. Jillian became Viva's roommate almost by chance. She was at the summer housing lottery the semester Viva was at Harvey Mudd, and she had a very bad number, so she sat in Parlours watching the singles and the the doubles be taken by everyone else. She overheard Sarah Gaertner talking about how she was supposed to be Viva's proxy, but Viva was at Mudd, and Sarah didn't know if there were any girls there who knew Viva, so Jillian volunteered, and they picked into the giant basement double together. Much ensued. Nick says ML026 was awesome, and that the spoons left in it were all Fritz' fault. Used empty shelf space in Cornell to store textbooks, hiding them all over the first floor, because she lived in ML basement. Heavy aim conversations between Arthur and Viva during the vagina thing. "can you give me a vagina because I don't have one and feel left out" "oh my god, my mom's here, you can't type that!" "I can't have one because i"m a physics major and I don't know if it woudl be appropriate" Aongus does a good impression of Viva's voice. Also of John Boccio. Ruach-chat just needs to exist. Viva and Rachel Sapiro dragged Mike to New Dorm so he'd block with them. They broke into the construction the day after the official tour. Viva and Jason needed a third to block with them. The block didn't go through,but Mike ended up in New DOrm anyway. Blake: "We remember Viva. Boy do we remember Viva." He was shouted down. We returned a limb. ~~[Jason Bronstein, dismembered 14th Meeting, Spring 2005]~~ Jackie one days was taking a nap in her room with the door open, woke up to hear him playing his keyboard and singing, lay for a while and listened. Suspiciously eager to dress up as a girl, for instance for Rocky Horror and Sager. Mai met him freshman year when he was dating her roommate rafchel and absolutely despised him. By the end of the year he'd become her surrogate older brother (which means, she still hates him -m) Finlay met him one night when she was watching Bowie movies alone in the lounge Bowie-ing out, and he proceeded to be just as enthusiastic as she was. One of the least intimidating Ruach members whenever he'd randomly go to Ruach events. Recently accused of being too close to SWIL. Wink, best moment was when through unfortunate circumstances Blake was close to kissing Arthur, arthur said "Jason, Save me!" and he did. Viva will miss him terribly. They were screwed together her freshman year. It was exciting. He was Captain Everywhere. She was Lady Oblivion. Complicated, involved a string thingy on Parrish Beach, with Alex Flurie and Lisa Spitalewitz making phone calls to random campus phones and they had to run around and answer them. Rachel, Jessica, Viva, Jason found an igloo on Parrish Beach, went into it. Greg claims that he and Steve Bhardwaj and Blake built it. Drinking with Jason earlier in the semester and ending up sleeping in his bed, with him (Viva). She's also slept with his girlfriend more than he's slept with Viva, both in his mom's apartment and in ML. Jason is the Face Of Chaverim, the Name Of Chaverim, in that it has to be inserted into every song, sneakily or not so sneakily (replacing "da-da-dum" with "Jason Bron--stein") In the Lunt concert at Haverford just now, every time they heard Jason Bronstein, they went "brrrrr" with their invisible noisemakers, and got the audience to join in. Jonathan also said Jason was responsible for trying to kill all the Jews with his music. Walks into Jonathan's room with a towel around his waist, sit down at the piano, what do you think of this? "It stinks! Put some clothes on!" Came to Mark for rhythmic help. It was good. Jawaad feels like he's known Jason forever, like, since Spec weekend. They were in honors chem with Ottinger. Mikio remembers pissing off Gwen by hitting on Jason. It has nothing to do with Gwen, he just wants Jason for his body, and wants to imitate him completely after he graduates, because he loves him. When Chris White moved to ML, Jason's presence in ML convinced him it wasn't such a bad thing. Music 12. Mark met Jason the summer after his junior year of high school, they were at jersey boy state, got to know each other, but not really anyone else. Gave him his ears back. ~~[Mike Cohen, dismembered 3rd Meeting, Spring 2004]~~ Chris is sorry. Joanna remembers earlier this year when Ji dragged her here to give him a bag of Chai tea. He was there but trying to do something with furniture, they decided what he really wanted to do was deloft his bed, but he couldn't get around to doing it. So they stayed there and delofted his bed. Mike is a debate team dropout. Early frosh year, mike and chriss debated together. Their volume and stutters were converging, until they stopped. Sayaka says hi (Greg pulled out a knife). (And then proceeds to whack him.) The story about Michael's freshman year. Arthur was absolutely sure it was an exaggeration when he heard it; made Arthur lose his faith in Swarthmore college as a safe space. (We win! - chris segal) Two Jews and a Chu. (Arthur, Jonathan, Mike, Jonathan would pass out.) Really good listener. One of the easiest people to talk to. Arthur was really shocked when he found out about Mike and Susan, but it's been one of the cutest things, even the pining, reaffirmed Arthur's romantic notions about love (which Jonathan had previously shattered) Arthur, Sayaka, Mike were taking pictures, Mike had the most interesting poses, "flows like a liquid", drapes beautifully over trees. Viva's had a lot of conversations with Michael. He'll have an opinion strongly, because he says "really really" instead of just "really" and while having this opinion will consider yours, discuss it, discuss all of its pros, and still sincerely have his opinion. Sophomore year, parents' weekend, Jawaad sees Mikey, Mikey's mom, sees Mikey's mouth moving, only hears Mikey's mom. Everything suddenly made sense. (We're not remembering Mike's parents -presidents) Mike and Jonathan grew up together at Swarthore when they decided to room together. Through Jonathan's dating Qian (...), Susan dating Mike. Just before Mike and Susan got together, three of them plus JC decided to get lost in the Crum in the middle of the night when it was impossible to see. They followed Jonathan (something about chickens and missing heads -mark), trudging through the murky dark of the crum where you can't see your face. Mike wasn't having as much fun because the next morning the council for educational policy interviews were at 9:00 (on a sunday morning), but the bond of love held them together. Jawaad shares that there are issues about Mike waking up late in the morning... even issues about Mike coming to exams late at 7pm. He has come into orgo exams 10 minutes late with a cup of coffee which he obviously got at Kohlberg, but he always failed to factor in the stop at Kohlberg. During the Second Orgo II exam, everyone was taking bets as to what minute Mike Cohen would walk into the room. Jawaad lost the bet. Chris says that the problem was solved by all of them getting together and assigning someone to have wake-mike-up duty. Mark says: "Disappearing Jedi". You had to be there. Joanna says that Mike is the only person who could miss not one, but two consecutive Swat vans. Arthur throws in that one of the interesting things about Michael is that it's very easy for Arthur to develop ideas by allowing Mike to argue back and forth with himself. It speaks well of Mike that he is a very open-minded person who gives everyone and every side the benefit of the doubt. This is humorous because the person he most hates on campus (Jordan Rosen) and he's been caught trying to justify Jordan's behavior, like when he locked Mike in a closet. Qian will always remember Mike as the worst stutterer in SWIL who miraculously -- well, okay, through hard work and humbleness-- fixed it. Last summer she frightened him terribly by conveying to him that my speech pathologist friend was concerned by her description of Mike's stuttering, but it came to a wonderful good end. Mike is a good, honest and intelligent young man and does not deserve to stutter, and she almost fell over in joy when they talking in the fall and she realized his speech was clean! Michael's debut in campus media was in the BMT show, and he totally stole the show as the token Swillie. He needs no script; on stage, he is the funniest thing ever at Swarthmore. Ben says that Michael was the Ruach board member with whom he worked most closely; Mike was a great co-conspirator for Mystery Seder Theater. Mark says that he'd leave the dinner table for Wind Ensemble when Mike was arriving, but Mike eventually showed up with two full plates of food. Joanna will never forget how wonderfully indecisive Mike is: two or two and a half months ago, she and him discussed when he should buy his ticket to Europe for several hours. During the aforementioned BMT show, Greg and Arthur warned BMT that naked rugby players would be coming. They surrounded Susan, and she was saying "Oh, the penises, the penises!". Arthur pointed out that Mike has a penis too, and Susan freaked out. Jonathan mentions that Mike took forever to decide on his AIM screenname "indecisionwins". Jon asked Mike if he wanted to come along on a trip that he was going on, Mike was trying to decide, Jon packed up his stuff. Mike followed Jon all the way to the train station before deciding that he wouldn't go on the trip. Jon and a friend were going back to MAryland one Friday, and they were waiting in Bond where Mike was as well. Mike spontaneously decided to go along, which shocked Jon because of the speed of the decision, which Jon commented on. Mike was shocked as well, and then began questioning his decision because of Jonathan's prompting. The entire ride to MD, Mike was wondering if he should or should not have gone along. Mike was there whenever people were having horrible bloody dramas. The legend of Michael's mom is known even to Arthur. Mike drew the card "You are now your own mother" in 1000 White SWILMeetings. EVeryone laughed for 15 minutes. Thanksgiving freshman year, Mike went home with Jawaad, and brought a gift for Jawaad's parents (because it's traditional). No one in his family knew what it was, but it still has a prominent place in the Hussain cabinet. Jawaad has often had conversations with Mike where one of them says "I have to go now" but the conversation continues for hours anyway. Finlay says that this is a sign that they are dating. In that spirit, Mike is a good friend to Jawaad. Mike has a catchphrase: "In theory, it could be interesting. It could be interesting, in theory." ~~[Joanna Karpinski, dismembered 14th Meeting, Spring 2005]~~ Mai wishes that she ahd gotten to know her better. She likes her, and wishes that she would stay. BDan has four memories from Sarah Hartman: Oreos crushed with Sarah's calc book. Joanna brought Sarah flowers. Joanna screwed Sarah and Mark their freshman year. That introduced Sarah to SWIL. That year was the year that Joanna was nicknamed "The Screwdriver" because she set up about 8 screws between Bryn Mawr girls and Swatties. Chelsea Rosenth took intro ling 1 at Swat, and met Joanna there, along with many other geeky SWILlies. She was surprised to meet a Mawrter in a Swat class. Joanna is the organizer of several DoubleSWIL events in which SWIL goes over to Bryn Mawr to game with DoubleStar. Random SWIL and Bryn Mawr folk tend to show up. Joanna has consistently been one of Jawaad's friends their entire four years at Swat/Bryn Mawr. They knew each other, or had met, when they were about 4 years old. They scheduled a day to hang out together, which was 9/11, so they had to reschedule. Joanna slept in Chris' bed freshman year to crash after the Star Wars: Episode II premiere. Mark claims that Joanna was present to find blood in Mark's hall, but Mark was clearly confused. Joanna scored tickets for Jawaad to see John Kerry speak in Harrisburg. Joanna talked to Mike about his Susan angst. Joanna gets her recently taken head back. ~~[Chelsea Rosenthal, dismembered 7th Meeting, Fall 2004]~~ Andrew thanks Chelsea for the name. There were several occasions at which they were both eating dinner and Chelsea told Andrew that he should cross-dress to embrace his inner fairy princess. Jawaad moved away from those conversations. Sarah says: Bubble Queen and the anti-christ; Chelsea held her and made her compose a theme song for the anti-christ; Chelsea finally had a parade at May Day which several SWILlies attended; Chelsea and , gave simultaneous press releases on LJ regarding their relationship. Joanna says "fishnets and fairy wings". Noda says "Hi. I'm Eloise. I'm six." The first time Noda met Chelsea, , and Noda had moved into Dartmouth D3, and Chelsea was staying for dinner. Noda claims that he traumatized her, but Comma wonders who traumatized whom. There was an awkward "hi. how are you." The comment that Noda would have to be tied to a chair and poked with a spatula was made by Chelsea, which sounds suspicious. Noda said, simply, "Oo.". You would never expect it, but Chelsea looks really good in black vinyl (says BDan) (why would you never expect it? -c). Chelsea tried to convince Jawaad that Rocky Horror was not evil, demented, and crazy, and that he should do it. Chelsea got Mark an awesome Bryn Mawr t-shirt: front: Septa w/ logo; back: "I get off at Bryn Mawr." Chelsea is one of those people that Andrew would talk to who is not really a SWILlie, but more of a nerd groupie. "One of these days, you're going to be holding a WonderBra in one hand and a condom in the other, and you're going to be very glad we had this conversation." -- Chelsea, according to Noda. BDan says that Chelsea would go on at length about encountering cross-dressing Boy Scouts. BDan is not a boy scout, but Chelsea makes him comfortable wearing a skirt. Chelsea gets her spine back. ~~[Chris White, dismembered 4th Meeting, Fall 2004]~~ Arthur says that the first time that he met Chris was at College Bowl. "If college bowl were the Justice League, Chris White would be superman", Arthur said to Alex Flurie. The details of the fundome incident are misremembered, but if you've been through an experience like that, you know a person. Chris brings us together in shared hyperbolic misery, says Arthur. Arthur thinks it's really cute when Chris has a girlfriend. Without him, College Bowl will be a much more mean-spirited place. Noda says he's sorry regarding college bowl. Andrew will always hear the music that Chris is endlessly humming, in his dreams. Finlay got to know chris as a wonderful individual when Lauren Smith convinced Chris to stay still long enough to get sharpie doodled all over his face, arms, and legs; that is, everything they could get to without ripping off his clothes. Mr. Joy was written on his forehead. Jamison will never, ever forget when Chris played the cymbals. Chris played them with more enthusiam than anyone, and his hair flipped up when he stopped the cymbals. Jackie was in Lang for most of her life, speaking to no other human beings except for her Music 12 class and Chris. Once a day, they'd run into each other in Lang and laugh hysterically. Jonathan owes Myrt Westphal a debt of gratitude for their freshman year living with Chris. One time Jonathan brought a dog home to the room, thinking that Chris would be happily surprised to get a puppy for Christmas. The dog climbed onto his bed and starting licking Chris' face, and Chris woke up and said "I'm afriad of dogs". Mark demonstrated that Chris slept in all of his Music 12 classes, and often slept in Lang. Greg thanks Chris for increasing the total share of misery that he has had. Arthur wrote a ten question homestar runner packet for college bowl and Chris got all of them. Arthur hit on Chris at the root beer kegger, and it was great. There was also the stalker stuff. There was one college bowl practice when Chris wasn't there. Arthur said that it's too bad that Chris has a gf because he's having sex. It was declared that there are certain people whose sex lives would never be discussed. Ben says that Chris goes into maniacal glee at the mention of gaming. Mark says: "Someone has to do it. Lesbians.". Jonathan's fondest memory of Chris is that Jon had a tendency to bring in surprise guests, some of whom Chris liked more than others. J.C., Russel, a friend from Temple were hanging out in the room drinking beer. Chris sits down at Jonathan's electric keyboard and starts improvising a drinking song about each of them. The night was bizarre because it freaked him out because everyone was crammed into Jonathan's cot. Finlay's joining the insomniac club, and learning to play bridge, have had nothing to do with Chris. Jackie remembers the foundation of the insomniac club, which involved the esteemed Professor Easy. Chris was horribly broken in 19th century europe class because of the Chopin nocturne. Jawaad mentions the bridge contingent, and the endless amount of bridge that has been played. Everyone but Jawaad has become really damn good thanks to Chris, and J.C., and UberMatt, and Abby. Chris was not always a part of the bridge and trains contingent, says Noda, in fact he hated the train contingent. Noda and Mark were looking at a SEPTA Fantasy Map, and Chris was sucked into the train contigent. . Mark has a tangent about Chris: he should hear Samantha complain about Chris' composing and the klack-klack his keyboard makes at 3am. Qian says that Chris W. was always too thin. Always moody like her. But she remember that he slept in that couch long after she decreed it unfit to be napped on. Chris composes a lot, kinda like how she wishes she would compose. Jerry their composition teacher said he's even more unrealistic than she. Jawaad says that Chris has always had this offbeat little grumpiness that shined through even when he was happy. Finlay says that he was happy, but that he's grumpy about being happy. Jawaad thinks that Chris is the most enigmatic of all of the people that we've talked about. Chris Segal told Jawaad to stop. Jonathan's parents were mad that Chris introduced him to classic rock. Chris is 0/2 for disproving Jonathan's and his own sentience. Jackie remembers playing with balloons in the ML lounge. Finlay can't believe how many great things have happened in Mark's room, like the wonderful noises that Chris makes when he is poked, which resulted in a terrible ticklefest that had to move from Mark's room to the lounge because Mark had to take the FE in the morning. Eliza says that it seems like only yesterday that she remembers all of the Langcest... but wait, it was yesterday! Jackie throws a napkin at Eliza. ~~[Jawaad Hussain, dismembered 12th Meeting, Spring 2003]~~ Andrew's Valentine's Days were improved by Jawaad's Bitter Bachelor events. Jackie remembers a single rose and Jawaad discovering exactly how to ruin a touching moment. Andrew was always glad that Jawaad took the time to let him know he was his friend and he could always come to him. Michael always thought of Jawaad as a great friend, and really loyal, and really willing to listen whenever he asked him advice and stuff. Occasionally it's misguided, but the fact that he tries and that he cares about people is I think a really wonderful thing. I think that freshman year you at least tried to protect me from Jordan. BDan wants to continue along the lines that Jawaad is one of the nicest guys he knows. And his tendency to address his friends as "my friend" is one of the nicest reinforcements of that. Eliza remembers walking to class one day and meeting Jawaad on the walk, and he had this huge grin on his face, and he was like, "I got into med school!" She was just so excited, and it was so cool. Jackie remembers Jawaad walking around in the Dactyl Hunt, horribly broken, and being renamed Sephiroth. Nick remembers this past summer Jawaad and he were living in adjacent rooms on ML 2nd and shared a bathroom, and they were playing JC's PBEM Diplomacy game, and a lot of discussions and plotting were happening in the hallway. There was at least one occasion, when Jawaad was Austria and Nick was Turkey, and they were working together for almost the entire game, and there was one occasion when they were plotting their next move while they were brushing their teeth or something. And Nick tried to backstab him but failed because he didn't know the rules. Chris White doesn't have any real big, momentous stories, but he's known Jawaad at least vaguely all these four years and he's always been one of the kindest, most approachable people he's known ever. Basically to everyone, and it's really touching. Mark says it's amazing how many people he knows and how many people he cares about across this campus, and in this crowd that's rare. Jonathan says he gives great hugs. Finlay remembers Jawaad as the patriarch of the Valentine's Day Massacre, in this snazzy blue suit, and gave Finlay a great hug, and there's this great photo that makes it look like she's hugging this important person. Nick just wants to thank Jawaad for the past year or so when he's been pretty busy and collapsing the social groups he's had on campus. Jawaad kept telling him, "We need to hang out," and it's good that he kept reminding him. At Screw this year Jawaad and Nick both had nice suits, so there's a cool picture of them. Arthur remembers Jawaad being one of the first people he met at Swat, who got him into the PA program and into Rotaract -- whenever he's running an event he's done his best to try to take care of everyone and make everything go smoothly. He's been an anchor and the person who makes Arthur feel safe and like he has somewhere to go. Miriam remembers Jawaad getting really into tango, and bouncing and being excited. Chris Segal remembers Jawaad almost having a nervous breakdown taking care of five of his friends from high school. Chris Segal also remembers how their schedule synchronized so well that Jawaad could wake him up as he got up and Chris could wake him up as he got up. Greg has nothing more to say that Jawaad's helped him through a lot of really hard times even before he became an RA. Jillian remembers going through the Ruach chocolate seder with Jawaad and Kelsey and afterwards going through the campus with a real incredible sugar high. Jonathan wants to include his name on the list of people whom Jawaad has helped through tough times. Jawaad was an incredibly important mutual friend of him and Qian thanks to the aforementioned Sunday breakfasts. Nick says having lived in ML Basement it's a really tough hall and he would've loved to have had Jawaad as an RA. And everyone who participated in the ML Basement exodus remembers him as an awesome RA. Mark says Jawaad was the only one on the upstairs hall who could hold his own in a pillowfight. Miriam says he's very ticklish. Michael remembers one part of the reasons he got into SWIL was getting dragged in rooming with Jonathan -- and part of it was that all the people he liked freshman year were in SWIL, and Jawaad was a major part of that. Joanna: This one comes proxying Sayaka -- *smack*. Mark adds that Jawaad just screamed out "Yeah, Sayaka!" at graduation; Joanna remembers that he said something so inflammatory afterwards that in full academic regalia Sayaka took off after him trying to whack him with a diploma. Joanna had a really tough freshman year, and, on a more serious note, Jawaad held her together until she could hold herself together. Mike Karcher remembers tangoing with Jawaad choreographing a five-minute song. One day we thought we were done, ran through, and realized we were missing the greater part of a minute. Jawaad's face was priceless. Qian remembers when she told Jawaad at the beginning of this year that she had resolved not to hunt boys anymore, and he said "Um, you can't stop, and I can't help you." And he was right. Jawaad does know me better than I do at times. Here's another example: Jawaad invited her to audition for his Tango piece in Terpsichore. She really really wanted to because she thought this could be a project to top off their time here together, so when he cut her she was terribly upset, but as it turns out she didn't want to be in his piece, didn't even like tango, and would probably have died because she wouldn't have wanted to show up to rehearsals. Kyra says that she knows a lot of people who love to relate the plots of things that they like. Most of the time, it's really boring and unpleasant - after all, if you really want to know the plot, you can just read the book, watch the movie, or whatever yourself, right? But once Jawaad described in detail the plot of a series of video games to her, and it was really, really interesting. Somehow, the way he described actually managed to avoid tedium and give her an impression of why he really loved these games (and thought they were really weird at times, too). Plus, his descriptions vaguely influenced some ideas she has for things she wants to write, so she also appreciates that. ~~[Jonathan Schneider, dismembered 11th Meeting, Spring 2002]~~ Michael says deciding to room with Jonathan was probably the best decision he's made at Swarthmore as far as his own happiness (Jonathan: "I made that decision"; Miriam: "What about Susan?" Michael: "But if I hadn't been rooming with Jonathan I wouldn't've met Susan!"). Jonathan's been a really great roommate and a really great friend, even though he's done some things Michael wouldn't want to talk about. Probably the first best friend Michael ever had. The story of how Michael ended up rooming with Jonathan. They were sitting together in Ed Fu's room in the quad, and he just happened to mention "Hmm, I'm thinking of rooming with Jonathan Schneider", and it happened to get passed on to him in Sharples, and it was like, "Hmm, I wouldn't mind you rooming with me." BDan says we dismemembered Jonathan after he played [garbled name] on his teeth, and he was dismembered on the condition that he do it again at remembrances. Jawaad says that Jonathan is a beatbox. Going back to breakfast at Qian's, Jonathan started doing techno music with his body while walking about Magill Walk. Qian joined in, and people walking by were just smiling. Mark says that Jonathan has a phenomenal flair for using his body as a percussion instrument. He had a habit of sitting wherever at the dinner table freshman year, a bad habit that was eventually broken. Chris W. brings up freshman year roommating, and their next door neighbors. Chris still has access to many of Jonathan's papers. Arthur still has access to Jonathan's AIM account and e-mail. Arthur says that freshman year he was feeling his way around SWIL and Swarthmore, and he and Jonathan often skipped out on work to talk about life and religion and so forth. So many TV shows could be made about life in their dorm room. He's a great person to bounce ideas off of, and he always has so many random insights, which are sometimes funny. Jonathan has such joy and enthusiasm for what he's doing right at that moment. They did many things together, like buy groceries, or clean mildew off of things. Noda channeling Jillian: Jillian got to know Jonathan through a strange chain of communication. Jonathan would try to explain Qian's explanations of BDan. Jawaad's first impression of Jonathan was from a conversation in Wharton courtyard with Jonathan and Roxanne. Mike says that when Jonathan is doing something fun, he just wants to pull everyone into the fun. Something popped into Mike's head that we won't go into. It's really great to be around him, to be around someone who's making everything fun. Jonathan's really tolerant of basically anything, to the point of being unable to comprehend why someone wouldn't like someone else. Mark mentions Jonathan's aggression when playing Wink. Jawaad says Jonathans best Wink call was "It's chicken time." Finlay says that no one understands the experience that Jonathan until you run into him some evening out for a stroll wearing a purple crown and no shirt. Arthur's whole sophomore year revolves around the things they did in their room. The improve ideal "Yes, and..." is exemplified by Jonathan's life. Little things become huge affairs, and silly jokes become night-long distractions. Bizarre rap song outside of a Vertigo-Go show, or Greta Holms in joke, or more. At the science center dedication, Jonathan was explaining the minutiae of origami folding mathematics. A very different Jonathan from his anything goes side. Jawaad's first exposure to origami with Jonathan was at breakfast at Qian's. Jawaad started to understand Jonathan's passion for origami in the context of mathematics. Chris Segal informs Jawaad that non-scientists know what a poster session is when he tried to explain the concept in the context of Jonathan's origami poster. Bio majors were hitting on Jonathan at the poster session because of his poster. Chris W. says "The Chicken", even though he hasn't read the Jolt since sophomore year. Arthur thinks that it was very touching that Jonathan taught Jessie how to fold origami. He also thinks that for Jonathan beatboxing is a pretty serious thing. Jonathan takes lots of things, like Arthur's crappy radio shows, very seriously. Jonathan even co-hosted a few of Arthur's radio shows, including an improvised beat-boxing to a track Jonathan had never heard before that turned out amazingly. Arthur wishes he had saved the audio, and Jonathan demanded that Arthur never force him to do that again. Arthur recalls walking him through an interactive fiction game, or showing him random websites, or making him listen to Arthur's eclectic music. Mark mentions that Jonathan once posted to fun "Gaming. 8pm. Lang concert hall." to get people to go to the wind ensemble concert. Mike and Jonathan explored the Martin subbasement, and Jonathan started making up a story about the man who lived in this tiny space in the basement. Arthur talks more about the "Yes, and..."-ness of Jonathan, and is surprised that Jonathan didn't do more acting at Swat. Jonathan had Arthur convinced that he had gotten in a brawl with Phi Psi guys at a party that the cops had to break up, and Arthur was totally convinced. Jonathan convinced Mike's mom that the fire department honker was actually a cow mating call. JC met him at the beginning of his frosh year at Vertigogo tryouts. He had the longest nails he'd ever seen in person and was completely crazy, so of course he invited him to SWIL table. [mock righteous indignation] For the record: FOQS was never an organization devoted to swooping. That's just slander.[/mri] Then there's all the unprintable stuff... yeah. JC would like to take this time to make an inside joke and apologize to Chris White again. Hmm... when Jonathan and Arthur were rooming in Danawell, JC went to their room, fell asleep in Jonathan^Òs bed, and vastly confused him. Jonathan vastly confused is one of the more amusing sights Swarthmore has to offer. He suggests we confuse him some while he's still around. Also, he was the one to put JC up when he came to crash in ML this past year. Viva remembers meeting Jonathan. It was First Collection during Orientation, and Viva had sat down in the amphitheater when she heard a loud voice behind her saying, "I think people should give more platonic hugs!" Viva was in a bouncy meeting-people mood and so she turned around and said, "I agree!" A guy with big hair said, "Would you like a hug?" and they hugged and then introduced themselves as Viva and Jonathan. Then Viva wondered what she had gotten herself into. Viva also remembers Real Analysis with Jonathan, and those long problem sets in particular, as well as countless Chaverim rehearsal and performances. ~~[Chris Segal, dismembered 14th Meeting, Spring 2003]~~ Jackie remembers meeting Chris S. before she actually met Chris S. during the 1000 White SWILMeetings game. Nick got the "I hate you all" card, and Noda got the Chris card, and then Chris himself showed up so that there were three Chris Segals at meeting. Chris W. memorializes the entire institution of Chris, like blue, and other things. Greg wants Chris to come home. Jameson's first impression was that, if he were to hate anyone in SWIL, it would be Chris. But he doesn't hate him! Noda says that even when Chris is being a bitter curmudgeonly old bastard, you can tell that there is a warm friendly person deep inside who just has a cynical shell running on top. BDan knows that Chris enjoys a good bike ride, even an ill-fated one. BDan, Jawaad, JimMosk, and Chris S. decided to ride out to Ridley State Park from ML. There got about 3 miles out when there was a loud noise that was the sound of Chris' bike's tire blowing out. It had a large, visible hole in it. Chris walked to the nearest train station and got the train back to swarthmore. BDan got a flat later in the trip. Joanna also has a Chris and flat bike tires story. The bikes were taken out of the back of Joanna's tire. When they attached the hand pump, Chris' entire tire deflated, because they didn't know how to use the hand pump. Joanna knows that Chris hides a huge love for politics beneath his love for the British navy. Joanna and Chris got really drunk election night after they realized that Kerry was going to lose. When Chris was proving sentience during sophomore year, he had to miss one of his three consecutive meetings. Mark asked Chris for a proxy, and was given a yellow plastic cup. The meeting approved the cup as a proxy, and then Mark smashed it with a hammer. Mike notices that, in general, drunk Chris is a lot more pleasant than normal. Chris came by Mike's room to Willets, when the roof was accessible. Chris was drunk enough that he was looking over the edge of the roof. Mike took him inside. Chris navigated for a debate tournament at UPenn. Chris was a jerk to everyone who didn't know the local geography. Chris perhaps knows UPenn better than he knows Swarthmore. Chris at SCF small group bible studies and geeking out with Arthur about biblical criticism. In political discussion, Chris saves up his counters to everyone's arguments and says them all in one breath and tells them that they're all stupid and he's done. Ben thanks Chris for being his roadie at The Point in Bryn Mawr for open mike night. Chris is drunk. He comes back from the lounge with the inflatable George Bush. He claims that George is his best friend, because he can kick his ass, proceeding to punch him repeatedly. Noda mentions how Chris finds a shopping cart on top of his car. Mark and Noda and Chris had to decided to go bowling in NJ. There was a shopping cart sitting in the middle of the parking lot at the alley. There were hijinks getting there because they had missed the turn for the alley. Stopped at a lot, people get out of the following car and bang on the trunk of Chris' car. They start whacking the shopping cart around the parking lot with their cars: shopping cart soccer. Finlay points out that the new Chris bats his eyes really adorably. Chris demonstrated, causing various screams and comparisons to Andrew Brown. Chris apparently decided to speak to Finlay this past semester, and discovered that she was as obsessed with high school as he is. They had a three-hour session of enthusing about their high schools. Finlay also claims some responsibility for killing the old Chris, by proving that no one is immune to the power of freshman girls at three am. He also gives really good tours of the Crum, and is surprised and gratified to be able to show his British Navy posters to you, and is a surprisingly good person to talk to. Chris, Mark, and Nick have a mutual love of all things Trek, involving endless conversations, arguments, etc. Chris has checked out items from the Nick DVD library, organized Star Trek showings, etc. (It's impossible to watch all 700 hours of Star Trek during senior week, or even to watch a season of NexGen each day). Chris is Jawaad's closest friend at Swat. At Spec weekend on a Sunday morning, Jawaad went out to Parrish beach to read, and discovered that the only other person there was Chris. Neither of the got any reading done, but they became fast friends, kept in touch over the summer, and were amazed to discover in August that Myrt had made them roommates. Then they both did debate, stuck with it till this year, joined SWIL at about the same time. At virtually every debate tournament, Chris has been the food bitch, responsible for getting all the food. Jawaad has been the food bitch's bitch, responsible for moving the food. They get into the big red Peaslee van with $1000 to get the food, and Chris says "We have $1000 and a van. lets go to Mexico." Chris and Jawaad have different religions, which they're pretty devoted to. Chris got a "Religious Views on Life" poster which explains every religions take on why Shit happens. While Chris went out to get tape, his roommates made up a poster in the same font that said "Quakerism: is anyone moved to talk about this shit?" and put it up before he got back. The Bridge Contingent. There was one game of 1830 in greylock where Chris was freaking out because he really wanted to win the game because it contained trains and therefore he must win. He grabbed a notepad and started calculating all the ways he could win the game. He paused the game for 1/2 an hour to calculate while everyone else did something else, then went with his guy instinct anyway. Also the game where he spazzed for 4 hours over a minor mistake (it decreased my margin of victory by 20%!) Introduced everyone to the DOS version of 1830. Debate story - Jawaad standing in front of the American Debate Society saying, "we all know chris, and what we know best is that he's very much a ladies' man. He has high standards when it comes to women." So they had bought him a gift to commemorate his high standards. It was a hat with the letters, "I only date crack whores." They also gave him a giant yellow beer helmet. Nick thanks Chris for introducing him to, among other things, Scotch, due to Chris' high standards. Chris and Nick have been pretty parallel in their exposure to many many games - Nick's learned over 100 games since coming to Swat, so Chris is presumably in the same boat. Chris was in an infamous Flux game, and has never played Flux since. There were about 10 people in the game. The person immediately to Chris' left went first. Play went around till it got to the person to Chris' right, who played "Reverse order." Play went around to the person to Chris' left, who played "Reverse order," again. Finally, after about 20 rounds, play got again to the person on Chris' right, who promptly won the game. Andrew loves Chris, but cannot reduce him to memories, despite the fact that he has a bitter, bitter soul. Chris is one of the most partisan Philadelphians Noda (or anyone else) knows. It took him a few tries to successfully explain where he's from. He finally succeeded with "Third stop from the end of the R7 Chestnut Hill." Jawaad has often received drunken voicemails/emails from Chris at debate tournaments. The best began with "What's up, Jew?" (Chris says he actually said "What's up, dude?") Third Wing has largely been a mini-SWILtable, this year only about 3 or 4 of us meeting every week. Despite the Star Trek majority, they've been pretty good at restraining themselves from turning the Pope, the EU, China into discussion of Star Trek. Chris ran 3rd wing for the first semester, at least, and it's been really fun to listen to him argue and get frustrated with stupid people who're obviously wrong, and generally serve as the voice of reason. JC remembers that Chris was also a fellow history major (rare in SWIL while JC was there). With Noda and Mark, they occasionally managed to turn the SWILtable conversation to alternate history (at least until Noda and Mark started talking about trains, or someone brought out a deck of cards). Speaking of cards, Chris's drunken bridge at last inauguration (he was my partner, and tjeu won). Many amusing debate stories. Would you believe 3 calendars saying it's 1861? Zombie donkeys and Confederate necromancers. Formerly the epitome of bitter, but seems to have changed of late. That angsty PPPP that was also the end of JC's assassins game -- and after all the arguing Blake announced he was going to run _his_ game (of a variant of assassins with four simultaneous games) and no one there was interested so he declared he would find other people elsewhere to play and walked out. Chris declared "I hate him." That was Qian's first memory of Chris' unforgettable personality and she's been so happy to see it's gotten funnier since he came back. In her second year as Hobgoblin Queen, Chris was Rachels' lieutenant. After she graduated he was Hobgoblin King, leading the Legions of Bitterness with gusto. Mai bonded with Chris over naval fiction and bitter cynicism. She is an honorary Chris and thinks that he's secretly quite fuzzy. Mark still had Chris' arm, so we gave him a random arm from the Box o' Limbs. He said if it didn't fit, he'd return it. Bickering ensued over whether it was really Chris' arm. ~~[Nick Ward, dismembered 3rd Meeting, Fall 2001]~~ Jackie remembers D&D in JC's oneshot. Nick was wonderfully in character the entire time. JC said the whole party came upon a blockhouse. The group assumed it was a regular house. Nick's character has a racial enemy - he goes horribly mad at the sight of goblins, so he decided they should attack the blockhouse, which was swarming with them. After it was revealed to be a fortress, and revealed that Nick had known this all along, but hadn't thought it in character to tell them this, he was dragged around in a bear for the rest of the campaign in revenge. Nick is the most benign person in SWIL, but is a quite capable gangster (head Victron in the massacre). SWILmeetings of Mark, Nick, and JC may not have been the most efficient, but were quite fun. Things are always OK when Nick is around. Nick made Andrew regret that when he was younger he didn't watch Star Trek. Andrew also has film footage of Nick accusing Andrew of being taken over by a parasitic video camera. We can no longer think of the following things without thinking of Nick: Star Trek. Mountain Dew. SCCS. The Robots that will Destory us all. In Jawaad's limited gaming with Nick, Nick has played Sauron in the LotR game, where he is diabolical and makes his best effort to kill them all. Nick can do a strange and disturbing thing with his jaw, which also involves an impish expression. (His orthodontist wants him to get surgery for it.) Jawaad respects him deeply. Nick and BDan have several things in common, including Star Trek, being tall (Rachel believes he grew 6 inches his frosh year, but it was actually only 3), and LEGOS. Chris enjoyed talking to Nick about religion. They're both the most involved of the people who're so involved they're never around, but they both show up for gaming and star trek and it's always really fun. Nick has this thing called the Farming Game. No one here has ever played in it (except BDan). It very accurately simulates the depression and closeness to failing miserably that you get when you're a farmer. It's sort of like Depressing Monopoly. Mark and Nick have an engineering bond. Right at the end of fall of their junior year, the potential candidates sat down and hammered out who would be president, and Nick took this very gracefully. Mark wants us to learn from this. Nick has always risen above the SWIL drama. There was a random incident where the debate list called him "morally bankrupt" and he sailed through it (to all external appearances). (Morally Bankrupt: another phrase we will always think of Nick from) Nick has made going out and buying a bag of Fritos, in homage to the fields of golden corn in the Midwest, into a spiritual experience. Ben has always enjoyed conversations about religion with Nick. Nick is a good Lutheran: he believes in the Holy Trinity of Star Trek, Macintosh, and Mountain Dew. Picard/Q/!Subtext versus Picard/Q/Subtext! Qian was really hurt when Nick unfriended her on livejournal, because she could no longer read his moral dilemmas about buying stuff on eBay. Mai knows Nick two ways, as a SWILlie and an SCCS sysadmin. The best part was when she, Kelsey Hollenback, and Jillian duct-taped him to the table so they could run meeting (Mark and JC being conveniently out of town) and he tried to eat his cereal with a spoon and no hands. Nick is the consummate Mac addict, fortunately for young, naive switchers like Noda. (It's too pretty and it works too well! What do I do? -finlay) Through Nick's judicious use and possibly occasional abuse of his root powers, he's been an infinite help to SWIL. Nick's head is usually quite fuzzy. Nick's sentience proof involves making a waffle on the waffle iron, sticking it to the ceiling with 5 or 6 forks, saying that it was God (according to a specific simpson's episode), eating the waffle and being depraved, and therefore sentient. Nick is the local maximum standard of sentience. The grease stain from the waffle is still there. Ratchet and Clank. Mark and Nick always joked, but never got around to, having a Holy War over Windows vs. MacOS. Nick helped Mark keep his sanity the summer after his sophomore year, when he was in Indiana all alone, because of the Oraclebot. Nick really likes the weird ergonomic chairs. Mark says he stole one. He certainly had the first one of them Jawaad had ever seen. This turned into a conversation a year later about Nick really liking the game "Harvey the Handsome Executive", about this executive in a swivel chair fighting people. One time Nick spent about an hour reading things off from Voyager, adventures in the deep, the badly designed card game. It was the closest Mark ever came to being drunk. We fondly remember the posts about simulations of X-wings on LJ. Nick often posts details about his robotics work on LJ, to varying joy and boredom. Nick DMed Adam's first RP game at Swarthmore, introducing him to the world of Planescape. Reading SWILnews written by Nick, Mark, and JC, where they kept a running total for the whole semester of who was getting smacked for what. JC won by a very large margin, according to Nick. Nick W. is cute. Qian remembers during orientation he somehow got in with the international frosh crowd and rolled around on Parrish roof with them. And he's the only one on her AIM Buddy List who frequently has a can of gasoline in front of his icon (indicating AIM Mobile). She remembers visiting him in New Dorm for the first time and learning all about D-ring binders. It was largely thanks to Nick's description of a game he played with his family that we invented Telephone Oracle. Nick has also been running a Diplomacy game that Kyra's father, brother, and uncle are all in. She hears about it a decent amount, so it was very interesting to read Nick's perspective on it in SWAPA. Nick also mentioned, in that zine, her brother's friend at Columbia who is also in the game, although she think he called him "some guy at NYU." Both educational and amusing! As the fearsome monk Kurono(sp?), bravely beat up JC's character in the D&D campaign his frosh year. JC writes, "I WILL HAVE MY REVENGE!!! (actually, I almost certainly won't)". A classic superhero (powers: can turn any conversation to Star Trek. Weaknesses: defeated instantly by the introduction of Slash). Also, the fellow who convinced JC to get an SCCS account (lots of you tried, but he was the one who set it up for me). The other one-shot with JC, wherein Andrew cast darkness on himself and one of JC's NPC's attacked him, gave Alex and Nick the opportunity to shout out, spontane- and simultaneously, "I am attacking the Darkness!" We returned to him half of a left leg and half of a right leg. He screwed the OmniLeg into his hip. ~[Mark Handler, dismembered 3rd Meeting, Fall 2001]~~ Freshman year, Andrew only remembered that Mark was the guy he spent countless hours in Kohlberg with playing Settlers. Now he's just the source of all gamery. Mark and Nick had an illustrious SWILpresidency. They contributed hugely to the examples of what not to do as SWILpresident. As presidents, they learned that one shouldn't procrastinate on writing SWILnews, and that having two junior engineers with four-letter names ending in K, plus one senior was kind of a mistake. (It could have been worse: JC could have been an engineer.) We remember Mark, Nick, and JC's love child, plus the future children of Mark, Nick, and JC. The freshmen missed out on Parrish Parlours, home of constant gaming, piano playing, plus one defenestration. Mark has been Chris' "other best friend" at Swarthmore, despite the fact that they never have in fact dated. They putter around on breaks together because they live close and have cars. Chris had a breakdown second semester freshman year, and Mark invited him to the SWILtable, where he and Elliot sucked him into SWIL. Mark is not only the source of all games, but the source of all gaming, since between him, Chris, and Elliot, there were always three people to play any given game. Once, in a game of plenty questions, Andrew was trying to clue Sarah's D&D character, who he believed was female. Mark for some reason brought Jackie's name into it in a guess, so she took her revenge by asking, "is it more like this, or more like Mark in a bra." Of course, this was all the result of a misunderstanding, since Sarah's D&D character is in fact male. Mark is perpetually cheerful. Rachel Sapiro points out that the moods in his LJ are almost entirely good. Sarah remembers Mark and Jackie deciding what piece of 19th century music Mark's crotch should play. She first met Mark by throwing pudding at him in the Screw set up by Joanna. Squish. G'night kids. Y'all. Mikey. Oh, this is trouble. This will only end in tears. Meh. Nerp. I think we should consider this more closely... Excellent. One, two, three. You're done, kid. Um, not so much. Chris sucks! Hose Chris! That's unfortunate. Nice try. Oh, yes. Ohhh, yes. (Noda will wiki the collected sayings of Chairman Mark) Eew! Marksex! (Mai claimed dibs on Marksex for remembrances) Chris thanks Mark for trudging through his compositions, twice. Ubermatt was the first person to drag ChrisW to SWIL, but Mark was the second. Nick thanks Mark for, freshman year, his example causing Nick to teach himself how to whistle. The first time Jamison went into Mark's room, he looked at the can of air on his desk, but Mark wouldn't let him play with it, so now Jamison's deathly afraid of air cans. Mark and Rachel introduced Jillian and Kelsey to slash. Mark's freshman room was this tiny double which ended the year with Mike Cohen in the other half of the double. It was set up so that immediately inside the door was a small wedge of space contianing the chair to Mark's desk, his closet, and his bookshelf, walled off by his lofted bed and his desk under his bed, all at a 45 degree angle to the wall. All 4 corners of the fram of his bed are held together by 1/2" diameter pins, all of which were out of alignment, at least one of which was bent so it looked like it was about to collapse at any moment. Mark was the least evil of Mikey's quadmates. If you're read "Ordinary Men", the German soldiers didn't believe in the Nazi ideology, but they still killed people. That's Mark. Ben remembers a couple of summers in which Mark was instrumental in the production of Ptero hunt equipment. Without Mark's car, there would be no Pterodactyl hunt. One can fit at least 40 fun noodles crammed into the back of Mark's car. Mike Karcher remembers the secret places tour, trying to get on top of Hicks roof, Nick had told them the key was behind a pole somewhere. Mark's maniacal laughter ensures that there's a minimal standard of happiness in ML. Mark is fun to screw with, because he doesn't break. Arthur's bled on him in Wink and he didn't break. Mark's junior year, there was this assassins game run by JC. ark abd Arthur had this little feud, because Mark kept foiling Arthur's attempts to kill him, despite Arthur's hiding in a broom closet, claiing that the WSRN office was on fire. The best part, of course, was that Rachel, not Mark, was Arthur's actual target. At Ren Faire, Jamison considered buying a chain mail bra. There were 13 of us, including Mark, sitting and chatting on Jillian's bed. For some reason someone brought up the Mark in a Bra story, and we decided that since we were at very close quarters, it should be easy to restrain him and put the bra on him. It succeeded, and there are pictures, which are unfortunately in Switzerland. Jackie has two AIM conversations with Mark consisting entirely of horrible, horrible Music puns. He drove her to the fabric store, and then didn't complain when he had to drive her back after she lef tthe baf in the store. He assassinated her while getting a drink in lang. He was the first SWILnonmember Finlay identified as a nice person. It took her a semester to realize that Mark-from-SWILmeeting lived across the hall from her. The rest of the year consisted of her bugging him to post photos to LJ and listening to him emit funny noises from his room. He's basically the roomamte Finlay talks to, as opposed to her actual roommate. She has spent the night on his couch, being kept up for about an hour because he snored. (Well-placed pillows will fix this problem. Also well-placed bullets.) There was a plan to have a baby grand in Chris' room and a bridge table in Mark's. ChrisS wants to thank Mark and Chris for the idea of the rogue railway themed hall which never happened in ML but did in Hallowell. Sometime Jillian's sophomore year Mark made the mistake of asking what was going on in her life, and she explained ... at great length ... to Mark's surprise, possible amazement, and great apparent nonchalance. Mark is the one Jonathan turns to when having trouble deciding whether or not there are any sets. Mendez will never forget the many incarnations of Mark's laugh, especially the freaky high-pitched one. In a world where there are so many insincere laughs, knowing that for the duration of the laugh there is true happiness is a wonderful thing. St. Louis vs. Philadelphia rivalry between Mark and Mikey. Both kind of suck, though. Mark didn't get Mike Cohen into SWIL, which is good because then they would've been around each other 24/7. At Mark's b-day party Mike played Wink and really enjoyed it. Wink call about the Rams game and people sort of looked at him cluelessly. THe intra-engineering rivalries - people fall into tracks. Mark's engineering *involves* tracks (bridges, trains), so he and Nick have a little bit of rivalry going on (Why don't you go build a *bridge*? How ya doin', Bridge-builder?) Mark has discovered that if you don't often change your emotional level, people notice when you do. So when Mark actually worries about someone, you notice and pay attention. One time Mark was driving with Finlay and she said she didn't want to go back to the door, so he drove home the long way. (You heard it here first, kids. Don't be nice all the time - jamison) Ben seconds that Mark is there in a pinch. Mark's incredible packing skills at getting all of Jillian's life from ML to Greylock (and back two weeks later). He also "broke" the Greylock elevator, not to mention solving the packing problem (which is NP-complete). While Mark *joined* the Trains Contingent (Noda/RuPaul), he is the charter member of the Trains and Bridge Contingent. Mark is excellent help when the Philadelphia airport is designed stupidly, or the Parrish dumbwaiter refuses to work for two hours. Reponsible for everyone's calling Mike Cohen "Mikey" now. Jawaad says it's so much more appropriate and has followed Mark's lead. (Despite the fact tha Mike doesn't actually like it) (Jawaad was surprised to find that MMikey didn't like it) Mark is a bad person, apathetic and hateful. He should stop posting from Underhill. Finlay remembers Mark's frogs, which have been placed on his head, stabbed, etc. Large hall parties that have formed by the stairs. Sleepover in Mark's room! Mark will always be the definition of a SWILpresident. Calm, patient, from the start. Jillian will miss his ability to be loud without being histrionic, and his ability to calmly do the things on a long list of things that needs to be done, without panicking about how long the list of things that needs to be done it. Jillian, Andrew and Mai may be quite good at doin gthe *job* of being SWILpresident, but with incompetence aside, Mark, Nick and JC were the best at *being* SWIlpresident. (Kind of like Nixon versus JFK, with Finlay as their Gerald Ford - the rabble) Mark is one of those who have defined an age of SWIL. We are all jealous. And he has none of the negative geek stereotypes. The most conformist, stereotypical frat boy still wouldn't be able to successfully mock Mark. By their powers combined, Mark and Nick are a structurally sound force of balance against SWILdrama. If you hang around Mark long enough, the absolute love and undying patriotism for NJ comes out. Including its diners. (Jackie, you're not fro South Jersey. -mark) (diner run! - rabble) (I have a paper - finlay) In the hunt this year, Mark-the-dactyl got fragged by a spec. One of Kyra's favorite memories of Mark is playing this word-game with him, Rachel, and Benitez at the dinner table one day. Maybe it had to do with coming up with different words that all began with the same sounds, as opposed to rhyming words? Something like that, anyway. It was really surprisingly fun, and she liked playing it with him. That awful game of Starfarers during Walpurgisnacht sophomore year. (Which Nick defends, saying it caused him to buy Starfarers.) And many vastly-superior gamings. The originator and keeper of the *smack* pun statistics during JC, Mark and Nick's presidency. A Bridge player of some expertise (and also a bridge builder by academic specialty *smack*). (Let the record show, gentlement, that JC has smacked himself -c) (he learns! -rabble) JC's fellow hunt wizard during the year the Hunt took a drastic turn for the hack+slash (we really should have found another of those purple funnoodles, after our staffs got turned to hydra flails). Jillian is deeply grateful to Mark for running that, and pretty much all subsequent Hunts. Qian says that Mark H. takes the cake for people she has never been able to open up to. After all that mess with Rachel, she thinks she can see why. But she says it became funny when he was with Jackie because "suddenly he was human for a while." Rachel remembers a big snow fight behind Mertz, in which they turned a pristine snowfield into something that looked like hundreds of people had walked through it. There were weekly movies on his roommate's tv his sophomore year, with pillow fights afterward. We all remember "snow"ball fights at Puckers Mark was, on average, a red-headed lesbian. Mark, Mary, Marie, Finlay were all lying on the floor. JC was there, and Noda, and Ben. There were a bunch of red-headed girls, therefore they were lesbians, and they surrounded Mark. QED. Broke his ankle at Puckers. Was then crippled and yet in an amazingly good humor and still willing to do everything. A good sport about being mocked. Couldn't chase us. Qian was so happy to have Mark on C-line when he could skate again. MOTHERPUCKERS! Mark and Rachel are at the top of the list of ambiguous SWIL couples, followed by Miriam and Blair. Mark lost last year's Remembrances because he reformatted his hard drive. Also, he can't spell. We love him anyway. We returned his entire body. It was heavy and made a thunking sound. ==================== =**= Conclusion =**= ==================== Chris Segal had a speech, because, he says, he likes to hear himself talk. The important thing that's been left out is the remembering of everyone else who's been important in their time there. SWIL was a really important part of their time there, so, after 7 hours of people talking and talking and leaving and eating and coming back, and 4 years of talking and gaming and stuff, Chris thanked everyone for pretty much everything. It was sweet. Noda points out that, a long time ago, we were quite concerned about the smallth of the class of '05. And yet, we have just had the longest SWIL remembrances in recorded history. We called the meeting to order at 6:54 pm, before Sharples staff could evict us. ========================================================== =*= Attendance list of the overlord of Cordwainer =*= =*= Jackie: ::grumble not even the librarian grumble:: =*= ========================================================== Meredith "Lord Girly Hands" Conforti Jamison "Pencil Rising" Jamison Durp "Durp" Durp Venger "All Mighty and All Destroying Lord of Non-MOOSE" Jamison Katie "about to start wandering and already lost" McAlister Adam "4 years, and all I got was this Remembrance" Oleksa Nick "The Q stands for Qameron" Ward M. Jawaad "The Prodigal SWILlie" Hussain BDan "Rule 6" Fairchild Chris "Why the FUCK am I at SWILmeeting" Segal The spirit of bitterness alone and bereaved. MARK "AGE OF MIRACLES" HANDLER STEAM "VIBROMATIC" ROLLER Joanna "Why the hell don't I have a name in quotes" Karpinski Eliza "Mostly harmless, we swear!" Blair Jason "Not actually a SWILlie" Bronstein <- "Now actually a `SWILlie'" Chris "Lang" White Jackie "Here a Chris, there a Chris, everywhere a Chris a Chris" Werner Abigail "I want to live" Graber Michael "The title of `Chris' should not be a May Day gift" Noda Chelsea "Oo, I feel all included" Rosenthal benjamin `like feet, with thumbs' r, george ****** "not present" **** Marie "..." Cosgrove-Davies Sarah "eep!" Hartman Kit "[unrenderable non-ascii that looks like Japanese but possibly means Digges]" La Touche Ben Newman Arthur "An affectioned ass who consists without book" Chu Mikio "sleep, what?" Akagi Miriam "refrigerator box" Newman Michael "Can I leave my head in Martin with the chickens?" Cohen JONATHAN "SENSE OF FINALITY" SCHNEIDER* Greg "A new era of bitterness" Robinson Blake "Eppur si muove" Setlow Qian "Screwed!" Qian Viva "The Wizard of Light and Music! I have now joined SWIL! It is a new beginning!" Horowitz (*tear* -c) Mai "Alas, earwax" Pucik Jillian "`working' in the `library'" Waldman Jamison "Rocks!" Las Vegas Nosimaj "The Fallen Avatar of Dangerous Evil" Regnar Eliza "Why am I still here?" Blair (because even if you'd left, you would have been back by now? -c) Eliza "It's five-fucking-fifteen!" Blair (see, Alex came back! -c) Jackie "I'm not going to mention ****** **** - oops" Werner Mike "5 hours late and loving it" Karcher Emmanuelle "Why R U Still Here? Why? AAA" Wambach Finlay "doesn't mind the chaos" logan * THIS FOOTNOTE WOULD LIKE ITS LIMB BACK ---------------------------------- This message processed by the Filter for the Preservation of the Attendance List ... working ... ... replacing 2 occurrences of ****** ... ... replacing 2 occurences of **** .... Done.