In an attempt at alchemy for my last column at the Summer Post, I’ve decided to gather notes and ideas that I’ve been unable to formulate into actual columns over the past few months. It’s been a pleasure writing for you all, and I hope I have contributed something positive to your summer existence in Athens.

—About a month ago, after days of downpour in Athens, I stumbled across a black snake lying underneath a fallen tree branch on the sidewalk. Once I saw its eyes glimmering in the sun, its tail poking out of the leaves, I hopped away and flatted my back against a wall.

But as my courage built, I grabbed a stone and underhanded it at the snake’s face. No movement. I proceeded to break off pieces of a twig and try it again and again and again: still nothing.

When I began to poke it in the face with a large stick, a police car rolled up and asked what I was doing. My voice bubbling up with toddler excitement, I yelled, “Snake! See? It’s huge!” So he, too, grabbed a nearby stick and poked it in the face.

I noticed, then, that about twenty other small stones and twig segments were scattered around the dead snake. It seemed this dead creature baking in the sun had been met with the same reaction throughout the day: the person first frightened, then curious, then proceeding to test their and its mettle by poking it in the face.
We are a repetitive bunch.

—Early on in the quarter I became convinced that recent teeny-bopper comedies like Garden State, Napoleon Dynamite and Juno should be re-evaluated based on their content rather than the sudden burst of hype surrounding them.

After watching Juno for the first time, I gave up on the idea in a huff, never feeling so ashamed of what could come out of teen pregnancy.

—A temporary job I had at the library last winter was to be the lookout for a suspicious gentleman who was, perhaps, responsible for smearing his feces on the bathroom walls.

“It’s savage,” one of my bosses said, pure rage on his face. “It-it’s something animal.” I giggled the whole time, one of the few who found this hilarious.

I held a position of paranoia: Every half hour, I tip-toed in and ducked down to look for oddly positioned feet under the stalls, for drops on the floor or somebody caught mid-brush and suddenly becoming quiet.

I was, and am, convinced that it was a public art project, and that those who found the two or three smeared walls failed to see the detailed landscapes or self-portraits beyond the smell of half-digested dining hall meats.

But it was never solved: once the paranoia kicked in, the smears ended. So please, whoever did it, please let me know if you’re an artistic genius or among the craziest people ever to use the first-floor library bathroom.

—When I went to Wales last fall for a $10,000 study abroad trip that will keep me in debt for the next 10 years, the only worthwhile memory I came out with was realizing that “easy” is not understood in Wales as a euphemism for loose or promiscuous.

Proof: a Welsh professor in a Beat Generation class asked me on the second day of class, “You being from…from Ohio is it? What is that people from your state think of people from California?”

I replied, “They’re…easy?”

The professor and students looked confused, heads cocking to the side like puppies hearing a yodel, while the only other American snickered next to me.

“Ah,” I finally said, breaking the silence, “I’m glad nobody understood that.”

They stopped considering me an expert on Californian culture when they realized I was just full of cocky remarks similar to this, and consistently wrote off California’s liberalism as a result of everybody being high all the time, which is something all experts should always do when met with a difficult question.

Justin Noga is a senior English major.
Send him and e-mail at jn108203@ohiou.edu