Off the Faux Deep End

When I was eight years old I was a damn good hockey player. When I was 11, my family moved from Long Island to Tucson. In Tucson, the people are not so fond of Canada. Also, it's very hot. I had to stop playing hockey.

Last weekend, my roommate went on a retreat with the Harvard Glee Club. In fact, he is the president of the Glee Club. (We-me, his parents and his lovely sister Dianne-are all very proud.) On their retreat, the Glee Club played games, and apparently, one of these games was a variation of hockey. At least, this is what I assume since my roommate brought home a box of plastic hockey sticks.

In the past few days, I have re-discovered my love of hockey. For countless hours I have stood in my common room with a miniature red hockey stick and a bright yellow tennis ball taking slap shots at my roommate's brand new, 27-inch, Panasonic television. In the meantime, a lot has been going on...

The recruiting process has started up. So has the perennial stream of articles about recruiting, and the dinner-table dissection of its moral merits. In case anyone is still wondering, recruiting has no moral merits. It is a practical route to lucrative employment, not a life philosophy. There-now everyone has more time to discuss the last two disappointing episodes of "Dawson's Creek."

Last Thursday, a handful of Harvard's security guards accepted early retirement. Most of the guard force is being replaced by cheaper and better-trained guards from an independent contractor. In Adams House, a petition has been posted so that students can protest this obviously irresponsible move on the part of University bean-counters.

Last Saturday, the LSAT was administered at various locations around Boston. The sight of blood makes me queasy, and I have not taken a single substantive college science course. Having ruled out the MCAT, I took the LSAT instead. I heard somewhere that Harvard Law School has the lowest student-satisfaction rate of any similar institution in the country. It's my first choice.

Gov. Jesse Ventura came to campus this week. According to most major newspapers and the cable channel CNBC, this was a very big deal. Ventura has been the target of much criticism lately for comments he made in an interview with Playboy. I picked up a copy of the magazine in order to judge his remarks for myself. It turns out that a female boxer is photographed naked in the same issue. I didn't even know there were female boxers.

The New York Mets earned a spot in the playoffs for the first time since 1988. Back when I played hockey, I was a huge Mets fan. I remember watching Bobby Ojeda throw the winning strike of the 1986 World Series. At the time, many of the Mets' best players were crack addicts, wife-beaters or both. Maybe the Mets will win the Series again this year.

On Wednesday, Harvard celebrated the success of its recent capital campaign. Our friends in the administration raised $2.1 billion. They held a big party in Manhattan to congratulate themselves and the donors. If the federal government had Neil L. Rudenstine's fundraising skills, we might be able to save Social Security and Medicare. Harvard plans to use the money to construct new ornamental towers for Sever, Emerson and the government tutorial office on Dunster Street.

Yesterday, Amoco and Chevron both announced that they will start warning customers not to use cellular phones near their gas pumps. It seems that electronic impulses from the phones could start a fire. Cellular phones also cause brain cancer.

For seniors, thesis pressure is slowly starting to mount. The social studies department is requiring that all concentrators turn in a thesis prospectus today. The social studies faculty is extremely fond of theorist Jurgen Habermas. If I wrote my thesis about him, I would probably do very well. Unfortunately, when I was assigned one of his books during my sophomore year, I couldn't understand a single word of it.

Jedediah Purdy '97 was a social studies concentrator. He just published a book about the pervasive presence of irony in modern culture. Recently, quite a few intellectuals have been expressing concern for the state of the zeitgeist. Many have observed that technological innovations have led to an excess of information. People are exposed to too much data, leaving them jaded. Perhaps irony is a means of escaping the weight of over-saturation. I really don't know. In order to participate in such modern debates, I am told that one must understand Habermas.

This weekend is a three-day weekend. There are no classes on Monday. Many people are planning on taking small vacations. I will be in my room, shooting bright yellow tennis balls at my roommate's new TV.

Noah D. Oppenheim '00 is a social studies concentrator in Adams House. His column appears on alternate Fridays.