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.