FYI: I don't like science fiction. This is all true.
Tuesday, May. 10, 2005 - 18:09

Yesterday I got out some of my notebooks and folders to take to my writing class, and so of course I started looking through them and wow it is a veritable treasure trove of high-quality literature. 'Veritable treasure trove' is a phrase made up by someone long ago and it's been used numerous times and it will continue to be used. 'Trove' may or may not be a word on its own, but I can safely predict that I will never use it without the words 'veritable' and 'treasure' in front of it.

I went to my writing class last night and my grilled cheese and murderous horse 'word pieces' were read aloud and they went over like a can of cherried canaries.

Here's what I wrote in my green notebook before the class started:

My writing class starts at 7:00. This is the third week. And I've never gotten to spend any time on campus, so this week I wanted to -- I wanted to find, like, the main building, you know, where they have like job postings and places to eat. Unfortunately I never found it and I became irretrievably lost. However, thanks to my cunning geographical and navigational skills I was able to find myself.

The University of Washington campus was originally designed by my great-great-grandfather Wahezichiah before the Great Robot Invasion. He envisioned a grand institution of learning and laughing and navigational ease. Unfortunately the robots got him and he was killed before construction was complete.

Work was taken over by the terrible robot leader Brian I. In those days, robots were still basically tin cans with claws, and it was difficult for them to build things with finesse. Hence, the realized campus of the University of Washington, and the city of Los Angeles.

The robots were terribly fond of libraries, so most of the buildings they built on campus are libraries -- there's a library for the law school, one for undergraduates, one for engineering, one for boys, one for girls, one for dog owners, one for sheep herders, one for Republicans, and a few more.

In the middle of campus there is a big brick plaza that was originally used for robot rallies. Today it serves as a home for wanna-be Euro pigeons. It was built with approximately 3.6 million bricks and is half a mile wide by one and a quarter miles across.

As I walked around this place, my ancestral homeland, I could not help but wail with quiet sadness for the plight of my foremothers and -fathers. Soon after the demise of my great-great-grandfather Wahezichiah we were forced into hiding. We lived under a bridge in Ballard where our only sources of food were lake trout and pigeons. We managed to survive, though, until one day in the late 1970s, during a routine brothel raid, the robot police discovered our crude concrete-hewn cave, killed my parents, and captured me and my seven younger brothers and sisters as we tried to flee into the Olympics. They ate all of my siblings but decided to keep me alive for the Great Experiment. Hence, me today.

Yes I was thinking of all this, wringing my hands in agony, lost and alone, and then I had to go potty. Having to go potty when you're lost isn't anything robots can understand, but it can be very uncomfortable.

But like I said I found myself, and I got me into a bathroom, whereupon I was startled by my reflection in the mirror. It being a moist day, my hair had become fairly large, for I had neglected to put any mousse in it. Mousse is a product invented by my great-great-grandmother Betty. I don't know how it works, it's magic, and humans put it in their hair to keep it from looking like my hair did.

I am by no means an expert on university campuses but being the great-great-granddaughter of the legendary campus architect Wahezichiah Toowomba and having been a student at two very different universities I just thought you might like to hear my opinion.

The University of Washington campus is actually very nice, I just got lost and then lost in thought. The buildings are lovely, the greens are quite green, the bathrooms are campusfully utilitarian and charming.

It is definitely a step up from the stark bleak campus where I went to grad school. That campus was designed by the robot overlord Vladimir Blastinski, a very poorly programmed machine with no aesthetic sense whatsoever. He actually hated robots -- this will be a surprise to you -- he hated the sight and smell of robots. But he was also very shrewd and he knew the power of the masses, knew they could overthrow him and then throw him over the ocean bluff, so he designed that campus so that there would be no open space in which robots could congregate and riot. -- True story.

In contrast, the campus where I went to college is a lovely place. It was designed in the first few years after the Invasion, before the survival of my family was found out. It was a time of great joy and celebration for the robots, who thought they'd won. The campus is open and green and students sing joyfully and hold hands as they skip off to class with bells on their toes and butterflies in their bonnets -- robotic butterflies, unfortunately, as all the real butterflies were burned as fuel in the early years after the Invasion.