Another Perspective

Perpetual Twilight

EUGENE--PRESENT DAY. Perhaps you've noticed that the postcard weather which greeted this school year is now just a fond memory. A season of gloomy darkness has fallen over the land, swallowing your 8:00am contemporary history seminar. You can go for weeks without even seeing the sun; the cloud cover allows only a dull gray light through its filter. It is damn cold. Not a nice, crisp dry cold, but that annoying damp Eugene cold that permeates every keyhole in your house and every pore in your skin. But the weather is the worst: God is continually taking an 8-Ball piss on this region. The rain keeps us inside and isolated, making campus a lonely wasteland inhabited by only faceless figures wandering the moors shrouded in Gore-Tex. Even when it isn't raining, you can still manage to get wet: the dripping trees, mud puddles and thick fog can soak you to the bone if you're not careful.

Each day is the same: You frantically struggle out of bed, already late for school, and mount your bike for the high-speed commute because you're clinging desperately to a D- and the professor has the nerve to take roll. By the time you get to class, your face is covered in dirt-freckles, you have mud spray from your lower ass to nape, and your clothes are drenched t the briefs. If you wear glasses, they are completely fogged over and caked with liquid earth. The first symptoms of hypothermia numb your senses, and frostbite renders your writing hand useless.

"Higher education" is hardly worth this daily endeavor, so you drop all your classes, cursing the day you chose to attend the U of O. You confine yourself to the comfort of home. Here you remain wrapped a in fetal position under your down comforter, only surfacing to eat, shit or suck hits from your skull bong. You despise the mere sound of your phone, or any other contact with "the outside." Your diet becomes erratic: you can fast for a week and a half, then rebound with a five-day Peanut Butter Capn'n Crunch binge.

This behavior continues for about six months. THen one day, when the chrysanthemums bloom and the honeybees return to work, you roll back the stone and crawl from your cave to embrace springtime.

But many people don't make it through this dark period of hibernation. They become extremely depressed and go off the deep end. Some even hang themselves. These weaklings weren't as lucky as you. THey never heard my four hardcore tips for winter survival in Western Oregon. I'm not going to blow sunshine up your ass like they do at the Student Health Center. I won't cheerfully tell you to excercise for 30 minutes every morning, nor will I advise some cockamamie low-starch diet. That mindless crap is what gets people killed. From my 23 years living in the Willamette Valley, I have learned a few practical tips:

1. Use proper rain gear.
   Forget umbrellas. You're only fooling yourself if you think a little hand-held membrane will keep you dry. Even those gigantic soccer-mom umbrellas are useless. The rain will find a way, whether it be blowing in from the side or splashing up from the ground. In extreme cases it will seep right through like ectoplasm. You must don rain gear, and not those half-ass flashy nylon coats and pants. If you treat the daily commute like a fashion show, you will drown. You need no less than a full-body rubber suit. I bike to class looking like Gordon the Fisherman. As for footware, I don't fuck around with high-top leather shoes and Polartec socks. I learned that lesson when I got trench foot in the second grade. I swear by knee-high rubber boots--steel toed.

2. Cognac on Cheerios.
   Breakfast of Champions. I know it may seem a trifle decadent, but it keeps the cockles warm on those wretced winter days. The importance of winter drinking was equluently summarized by Ancient Greek poet Alkaios:

       Zeus rumbles and a mammoth winter of snow
       pours from the sky; agile rivers are ice.

      Damn the winter cold! Pile up the burning logs
      ad water the great flagons of red wines;
      place feather pillows by your head, and drink.

      Let us not brood about hard times. Bakchos,
      our solace is in you and your red wines:
      our medicine of grape. Drink deeply, drink.
                 (c) 590 B.C.

3. Lower your expectations.
   One thing you should never do is "pray for sun" or "keep your fingers crossed" for good weather. Harboring these unrealistic expectations only leads to frustration and deep despair. Always anticipate the worst in Western Oregon. I don't even watch the weather reports--they're always reruns. If it isn't raining, then it just finished raining or is about to rain. But now and then the sun shines through and blesses us with a warm, dry day--what a pleasant surprise.

   You take nothing for granted living in a temperate climate. You must treat every sunny day like it was your last; and enjoy the snow before it melts. Many people never experience the variety of the four seasons. I was in LA visiting relatives over the holidays. It was sunny and 77 degrees while the high in Eugene was 21 degrees. When I suggested a trip to the beach, everyone looked at me like my eyes had no pupils. "It's the middle of winter, are you out of your fucking mind?" they asked.

4. DO NOT WHINE ABOUT THE WEATHER.
   Casual classroom banter about the rain is sometimes permissible, but endless bitching and moaning only brings down everyone's mood and exposes you as a hypocrite. If you celebrate Eugene for its lush evergreen forests, fertile gardens and skunky-funky-killer-dank grass, then you forteit your right to badmouth the weather. If year-round sunshine is so damned important to you, then please, take your whiny ass back to San Dillanos or whatever godforsaken suburban California armpit you came form, and smoke your Mexican dirt-weed.

OPERATION TITILLATE

Where do all the fine chicks go during the winter? This question is pondered and debated by every straight male student at the U of O. WHen the school year begins, campus is crawling with babes--droves of sultry vixens frolic around in skimpy sundresses and bikinis, making your college utopia come true. But around mid-October when the weather turns, these goddesses mysteriously disappear. There are many theories concerning this phenomenon.

Some say the chicks are too bundled up to stand out in the crowd. Maybe they just stay inside. Perhaps they all gain 20 pounds, wear bulky clothing, and abstain from makeup. The mystics swear that these ladies do not fully exist in the physical realm; they just materialize with the sun like a rainbow.

After four years of my own frustrating rumnation, I have found the truth. My crack spy unit recently intercepted some 435 names of University employees listed under "Special Operations." Ensuing investigation unearthed the details of "Operation Titillate": During the beginning of fall term and the end of spring term, the university flies in actresses, models and prostitutes from as far away as Paris, Milan, West Palm Beach and Hollywood. These floozies are hired to attend classes, frequent the parties and bars, and sunbathe in bikinis. They strut around campus flirting and teasing guys into attending the U of O, and they often go the "extra mile." Ever have a one-night-stand that was too good to be true? Guess what--it was.

While the strategic deployment of ladies keeps men coming back for more, the biggest success is in luring new students. Campus tours provide the kids, and Special Ops provides the candy store. When those horny little high school cum-pumps walk down 13th in the spring, they are reeled in hook, line and sinker.

But men aren't the only targets--that wouldn't be fair. The university hires plenty of male models and hustlers. There are the ubiquitous shirtless pseudo-hippies playing frisbee and hacky-sack in the quad, their hair extentions blowing in the balmy wind. Then there are the robust steakheads in Hilfiger shorts with Abercrombie hats pulled down over their noses wearing the letters of a fictional fraternity. The most common decoys are the strapping rollerbladers; these Nancy-boys swish all over campus, distinguishable by their neon spandex shorts, Oakley shades and Xtreme bandanas.

It is important to expose "Operation Titillate." It gives students some idea of the suberfuge that Johnson Hall is capable of. It probably won't bother some of you; eye candy is fine at any price. If you're comfortable living a lie, then so am I.

Michael Atkinson, a senior majoring in journalism, is a featured columnist for the Oregon Commentator