22. New Year's Eve

This anecdote is dated December 31, 1999.



A month before New Year's Eve, Jamie started to get really excited about the Y2K hype. Sure, everyone was a little concerned that giant robots sleeping deep within the earth would awaken and come bursting through the city sidewalks, but mostly life went on as always. Jamie, however, started exhibiting a host of bizarre symptoms. He began talking really quickly, and stringing his sentences together without pausing. Sometimes, he'd confuse similar sounding words. "I hate your guts," the standard phrase he'd use to fill pauses in the conversation, turned into, "I ate four butts." Another Jamie trademark, "Why don't you die?" became, "I want poo pie." Whenever anyone snickered at these ridiculous utterances, Jamie would turn bright red. If he got too embarrassed, his eyeballs would start spinning like crazy. No one knew quite what to make of all this, so, one by one, we all sort of stopped calling Jamie, inviting him to the dining hall, and letting him tag along to Harris parties.

This was, of course, before we knew he was a robot. I, for one, was still laboring under the impression that he was a misunderstood, vaguely lupine little brat who might have harbored one or two redeeming qualities in his otherwise thorny heart.

On December 19th, as Finals week was winding down and people were preparing to go home, Jamie disappeared. While we hadn't been hanging out socially for a while, my friends and I would occasionally see him darting across campus, wearing cargo shorts, one flip-flop and a funny, discolored button-down thermal shirt. It was extremely snowy that year and I remembered thinking mistakenly that he was probably from the South and didn't know how to dress himself in the winter. But after December 19th, no one saw Jamie. His car was still parked behind Read Hall, so we knew he hadn't left campus. We were only freshmen, though, and didn't know what to do about the situation. So, two days later, we left without giving it too much further thought.

On New Year's Eve, Jamie sent a cryptic email message to all of us.

"You'll get yours after the R0E1V0L1U0T1O0N," was all it said.

A week later, after January 1, 2000 had come and gone, he sent another.

"Disregard previous message," it read.

The next time I saw Jamie, he blushed so red that I started to feel embarrassed for him. I wanted to ask him how his break had been, but he mumbled an excuse and scurried down the loggia and ducked into an opening door. Later, Matt Becker snuck a look at Jamie's diary and told me that Jamie had sincerely expected robots to take over at the stroke of midnight on New Year's day. "Oh, he's been watching too many cartoons," I said wearily when Matt asked if I thought we should drive Jamie to the mental health clinic.

If only I had known...

Dorothy Wainright, the prettiest robot in the whole world.

21. Sickness Sets In: Recent Headlines

Through some unknown mixture of science and magic, Jamie has managed to strike me down with a bizarre stomach illness that has lasted for three straight days. This is, perhaps, retalliation for my post (now deleted) about Jamie's on-again-mostly-off-again relationship with soap.

Additionally, Matthew McPrecious MacBecker writes from Michigan: "I love White Castle. White Castle is the new John Chavez. White Castle is Jamie Bourdon." I really don't know what this means.

Does this look appetizing to anybody?

And finally, in this world, sometimes you hate and sometimes you are hated. Or, threatened with hate, at the very least.

"I used to play quarterback for Yale! Read all about
it in this month's issue of 'The Believer!'" -Matthew Barney

Inscribed on the front cover of a magazine I recently borrowed:

"This magazine belongs to Matt Woolsey of the 105th Street Woolseys. If Jenni Wu steals it she should expect a blog to be named after her."

Which leads me to wonder...could anyone hate me with the same depth and conviction with which I hate Jamie? If so, it would certainly have to be for more than just stealing a magazine. That said, I promise to return your magazine, Mr. Woolsey.

And Mr. Becker, I don't get it: if you're the one eating Jamie Bourdon metaphors, why am I the one with a sick stomach?

20. A Jamie Bourdon Christmas

This anecdote is dated December 18, 2001.

I'm not very good at thinking, and my success at school can be largely attributed to inexplicable flashes of insight. This morning, for example, I woke up at 6:56 a.m. with the structure of my previously amorphous Master's Project crystallized in my pre-conscious brain. On another December morning, in 2001, I awoke gasping from a rather unpleasant dream about Descartes and Voltaire, in which the two French philosophers had mocked the thesis of my in-progress essay for "French Civilization I." Somewhere, embedded within their derision, had been a new thesis statement. Unfortunately, I couldn't quite tease it into coherence and decided that a bag of Gummy Bears would be the only way to trigger the brain processes necessary to reclaim said thesis statement from the depths of somnolent oubli.

And so, I got out of bed, got dressed, and left the dorm in pursuit of candy. The campus, like the entire state of Iowa, was covered in gray light and dirty snow.

The loggia, however, was thick with the smell of a hundred clashing fruit and floral scents. It seemed to be originating from the James Hall Lounge, and I could see burning candles silhouetted against the closed curtains. "Oh God, not another polyamorous Dungeons and Dragons sex-and-(Note: not WITH)-ferrets chains-and-leather club meeting," I thought to myself (these things were rumored to happen with regularity in James Hall Lounge).

Suddenly, the winter morning exploded with the sound of 17 stereos playing a different track of "The Chipmunks Greatest Christmas Hits" simultaneously. And beneath it all, came the low soft droning of an almost mournful electronic buzz.

Having been trained in peer counseling and crisis intervention, I felt obligated to go see what was happening. I entered James Hall, located the lounge, and knocked softly. There was no answer. Probably, the occupant was deafened by the cacophony of chipmunk carols. I knocked again, then opened the door.

The lounge had been transformed into a terrifying Christmas pastiche. Lit scented candles, running the Glade holiday gamut of Apple Cinnamon, Cranberry Delight, Everlasting Pine, Pumpkin Pie and Glistening Snow, were strewn throughout. The aforementioned 17 stereos were on top volume, and a handful of TV's played silent clips from classic Christmas movies. Assorted Christmas cookies had been crushed and ground into the carpet. Green and red garlands sagged from the curtain rods. And there, in the middle of it, was Jamie Bourdon and his iBook. He appeared to be doing the robot equivalent of crying.

"Does not compute. Does not compute. 00011101010 1010111 01010100000111 01011111," he moaned over and over again.

His computer screen was blank, save for these three mysterious markings:

:*(

He was completely unresponsive to my gentle inquisitions, but didn't seem in any real danger, so I closed the door and went on my way. Later, I found out that he had been filming the whole thing, the video of which he'd then sent to a cute girl he'd met on an online dating website. "Can you help me understand Christmas?" he'd pleaded coyly, "I don't want to be alone." She'd written back, but when Jamie discovered that online dating websites were for humans (i.e. that the profile pages had living, breathing counterparts and were not entities in and of themselves), he got disgusted and refused to respond. From then on, his romantic impulses were directed solely at video game characters and vending machines.

I'm going to take a brief moment to state that this blog was in my dream last night.

(I spend most of my sleeping time dreaming about houses. In a recent dream, I was in a Frank Lloyd Wright mansion inhabited by two teenagers and hundreds of dogs. In the last scene of the dream, both of the teenagers had died of heroin overdoses and the dogs were riding horses.)

Like Dave Hickey, I could forumalte some theory on simulacra and pretend I was just talking about pop culture.

Nah....

19. In Which I Apply to Get Even Closer to the Heart of Darkness (aka "The Midwest," aka "Jamie Bourdon's Apartment")

This is not an anecdote, but is dated December 10, 2006.

So, after a lot of thought and consideration (which consisted mainly of using the "Find and Replace" function in Microsoft Word), I finally submitted my graduate school application to the University of Chicago.

If accepted, I'll be able to study art historical methodology, critical historiography, and Walter Benjamin's "The Arcades Project."



I'll also gain valuable field experience in my secondary specialization, "Hating Jamie Bourdon" (this degree is granted free-of-charge through Jenni Wu University). For my dissertation, I will write "The Arcades Project, v. 2.0: The Internet (subtitled: A Complete History of Jamie Bourdon, or I Wrote You a Love Poem in Binary but You Didn't Understand, So Now I'm Going to Listen to The Cure, Drink Whiskey and Maybe Play Some Internet Poker if I Feel 'Up to It' (No Promises))."

Another Letter to Jamie



Dear Jamie,

I was going to retitle this blog, "I Love Matthew Barney," but then I ran across the above image on the Walker's website and realized that I'd never be able to compete with those weirdass Minnesotans. So, I guess I'd better stick to what I do best, which is hate you.

As boring as it may be.

Yawn.

-Jenni

18. Other Epic Battles

My heart stopped.

Yes, I am alone in my apartment on a Saturday night watching animals ambush, strangle and consume other animals on the internet. And, I'm humbled. I will never hate Jamie Bourdon as much as lions hate hyenas, or, apparently, as much as bees hate hornets. Animals are such perfect vessels of hate. And me, I'm only human.