The most rewarding part about having my own site is definitely all the negative criticism I get in my guestbook. This is what I most enjoy about the World Wide Internet. In the real world, when you are wearing a t-shirt that people don’t like, nobody comes up to you and says, “Hey, asshole! That t-shirt is much uglier than the one you wore yesterday! What’s wrong with you?” Here, however, everybody is very excited about letting you know how much they dislike your website. For example, here is what somebody recently wrote in my guestbook: “This page used to be funny, but now it is truly lacking. What happened??” That is a very good question, and I appreciate that they took time out of their day to ask it. What happened was that people began to criticize the direction of eKarjala, and this sent me down a spiraling path into depression and sadness. Consequently, now I can no longer laugh, or know what it is to make others laugh. Also, now I can no longer truly love other people. And I’m not eating right anymore. Thanks for the question!

I really can’t figure out how a website like this can garner criticism. I mean, if you bother having an opinion about whether or not a personal site hosted by Tripod is getting less enjoyable, you really need to reexamine your priorities. For example, in the time it takes you to insult me on my guestbook, you could have fed a homeless man a sandwich, or bought me a sandwich, or took me and the homeless guy both out for sandwiches, which you would have treated us to because it’s the holidays and it’s the season of giving me sandwiches. I would have probably selected some sort of chicken sandwich, while the homeless gentleman would have likely preferred some sort of steak sandwich. Actually, I just lost my train of thought because I began thinking about sandwiches and now I’m really hungry. But I believe my point is simply like this: If you want to sign my guestbook, please feel free to take me out for sandwiches afterward.

The annual holiday known as Merry Christmastime is fast approaching, and I am in jolly spirits in anticipation of all the promised fig pudding. From what I know about Christmas, it is the celebration of the birth of Jesus, and it involves the myth of Santa Claus going from roof to roof to give presents to all of the good boys and girls (i.e., those who are not Jews). Santa Claus is probably Jesus’ fat, nutty uncles or something like that. I think somebody should give Santa Claus the following present: a fucking razor. To me, with his beard he looks like a hobo who found a big ass red suit in a dumpster and then stole a magical sled. Which may in fact be his actual origin; again, I really don’t know much about the history of Christmas.

I believe that there is a Christmas legend that has something to do with oranges, because my parents used to put an orange in me and my sibling’s stockings every year. My mom used to explain something or other about wise men or wandering in deserts or some shit, and how oranges related to that, but I never really paid attention. In retrospect, it’s likely that she made up the legend about oranges in order to gyp the kids out of extra stocking space. So to be honest, I’m not sure if oranges really have anything to do with Christmas. They probably don’t. This is probably another one of my parents’ lies. Just like that one about how you can accomplish anything if you put your mind to it.

When I was a very young lad, before I had fully caught onto my parents’ filthy lies about Santa Claus existing, there used to be many childhood theories amongst my peers regarding how Santa Claus managed to deliver all of those presents to all of the children. Some kids wondered how he got to every house in the world in one night, while others were more intrigued with how he managed to stuff his fat ass down a chimney. The answers to these questions usually came down to one of two possible scenarios: time-traveling or magic powder. Alternatively, some kids believed in the Multiple Santa Claus Theory (MSCT), which stated that there were thousands of independently operating Clauses working around the globe on Christmas eve, and that they were assisted by tiny, tiny people known as elves (or midgets, to be politically correct). Then we realized that our parents were really giving us the presents, and, sad and heartbroken, we learned never to trust anybody ever again. And that is the story of Christmas.

This site has recently surpassed the 10,000 hit mark, which can be attributed to its ability to attract the crucial “Random Person” demographic. These are people of an indeterminate age, gender and purpose who visit this site and often sign the guestbook with the most random messages humanely possible. Back in 2000, people used to sign the guestbook and simply say normal guestbook things, like “Hello Eric, I know you from school. Oh well, I don’t know what to say. Peace out.” It was a nice little guestbook system; they typed some shit, I read it, and we all went home at the end of the day and got on with our lives. Eventually, however, the guestbook turned into a strange and mysterious creature, and instead of tipping their hats to inside jokes that we shared, guestbook patrons began making up inside jokes that I didn’t really even understand. Oh, sure, I played along—I pretended to know who these people were and what they were talking about. But gradually the messages got more and more bizarre, until I began forgetting whose guestbook I was even reading. I would say, “Damn, whoever owns this guestbook must be one fucked up kid to be getting all of this nonsense. I’d hate to be this … ‘eKarjala’ guy.” Then about twenty minutes later I would realize that I was the owner of the guestbook, and I would be sent into a deadly spiral of confusion and betrayal. “National Socialism? Sunglasses at night? What the hell are these people talking about? What’s happening to me?”

These guestbook messages, however, make far more sense than the comments my English professors leave on my analytical papers. Apparently, there is a policy that all English professors must repeatedly bash their hands with a hammer before they grade students’ papers, so that all of their ensuing notes are impossible to read. Here is an actual excerpt (as best as I can decipher) from my professor’s critique of a recent analytical paper I turned in: “A ver sard papir! How9w, ib lafer some of tower oven pg. 4, where mystopl, etc. Soeal sape!” Thanks, teacher, that clears a lot up for me. I know that asking these professors to print perfectly legibly would be too much to ask, because after all I am only paying tens of thousands of dollars to put up with this bullshit, but could they at least pretend like they’re writing neatly? Or was I absent on the day the professor passed out the fucking decoder ring?

Thanksgiving break has come and gone, and now everybody’s back here at school doing whatever the hell else people do at school (I believe they go on Ferris wheels and buy cotton candy, but I might be thinking of carnivals). For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, Thanksgiving is a holiday which celebrates the anniversary of when Christopher Columbus flew down on his miraculous golden boat and made fast friends with the local savages (or Native Americans, as we call the savages today). Then Christopher Columbus created a time machine into the present to direct the film version of Harry Potter, which can currently be seen in theaters around the nation. I haven’t seen it yet, but I know it has something to do with Coca-Cola and worshipping cults.

On an unrelated topic , I would like to purchase the soundtrack to my alarm clock. It is by far the best sound that science has created. Sometimes I’ll set my alarm clock for a minute into the future just so I can hear the melodic sound of it going off. “Beep-beep! Beep-beeeeeep! BEEEEEEEEP!!!!” The rough translation of this sound into English is, “Hey asshole, guess what? It’s time to wake up, you little bastard! You’re such a bastard!” Hey thanks a lot, alarm clock. One day I’m going to get revenge on my alarm clock by randomly sneaking up on it and bashing it with my hand. “Hey alarm clock! Wake the hell up! Oh, wait, what’s that? You don’t like being woken up? That’s what I thought. You little bastard.”

Some people try to trick themselves into getting to class on time by setting their clocks a few minutes ahead, as if they are going to somehow fool themselves into thinking that it’s 8:30 when they know damned well that it’s only 8:25. So they just think to themselves, “Oh, well my alarm clock is fast, so really I have an extra five minutes,” and then they end up arriving at class the same time they would have anyway. So now not only are they late, they also had to do arithmetic.

I don’t think that people should lie to themselves about what time it is by setting their clocks ahead. If you get into the habit of doing that, you’re going to start lowering your gas tank gage to make it seem like you need gas when you really don’t, and changing your bathroom scale to make it seem like you need to lose weight when you really don’t. And then pretty soon you’re going to be living in a magical fantasy world where everything is skewed by your own fanatical perception, and you’re going to stop eating and sleeping and you’re going to just keep compulsively setting your clocks ahead more and more into the future. Setting your clocks five minutes ahead is the path to failure. You really just have to be true to yourself.

The Mario Kart 64 Robbery of 2001 has reached an inexplicable resolution. On this past Monday afternoon, the game, as well as the three controllers that had also been taken, mysteriously showed up in a plastic bag on one of my friend’s futon—exactly one week after it had been stolen. I still don’t know who the criminal was, but I do know that Mario Kart is back, and for once in my life, I nearly feel complete. All the Spanish-speaking kids who live in my hall will be ecstatic as soon as they learn that they get to play the game once again. Some of them had been becoming noticeably depressed. Everyday their eyes would get very hopeful and they would ask, “Eric, is … is el Mario Kart back?” I can’t wait to see the joy in their eyes when I tell them that it is. By the way, a special thank you goes out to everybody out there who has wished Mario Kart a safe recovery. That means a lot to me in the face of this horrible hate crime.

On another topic, taking a shower in a community bathroom is tricky business. For one thing, you have to wear pool shoes or waterproof sandals or something, because it is generally assumed that there is an inch-thick layer of gonorrhea encrusting the shower floor. For another thing, in my wing of Landon Hall there are only three showers: the one that’s freezing cold, the one that has no pressure and the legendary Third Shower, which is the Goldilocks “just right” shower that everybody yearns for. This turns the practice of taking a shower into a competitive game of musical chairs. But even the Third Shower has moments of inconsistency, because all community bathroom showers must legally provide a temperature roller-coaster thrill ride of excitement. If somebody takes a quick sip of water from a drinking fountain on the other side of campus, your shower could potentially turn into either a blazing downpour of liquid fire or an icy artic blast comparable to chewing Dentyne Ice™ brand chewing gum. When somebody goes so far as to flush a nearby toilet or use a neighboring shower, it’s anybody’s guess as to what your water temperature is going to be. MSU has a very bad pluming situation, and I’m pretty sure that all of the water here originates from the Red Cedar River. This could explain why tap water on campus tastes like ass. No wonder vending machines have the audacity to charge $1.25 for a bottle of water. Everybody wants to buy some non-ass water.