Monday, December 31, 2007

Farewell 07, Hello Excess

If you could only take 100 pounds of stuff with you to the Moon, what would you take?

Oh, wait, sorry. Hold on. I gotta do the introduction schtick.

I'm David Heckman, sophomore at Goucher College, from Columbia, Maryland, and I'm going to study abroad in Lugano, Switzerland, at Franklin College. Bam. I will attempt to seed the rest of this post with various other interesting tidbits, in a process that will be in no way forced or awkward, at least until I get bored.

Now, perhaps, you can begin to understand the title of my blog. I'm going to attempt to (mis)use this public space to chronicle the life-changing study-abroad experience and document the emotional and intellectual changes that I will no doubt undergo, thus becoming a fuller and more balanced individual through synergy, leverage, proactive business management, blah blah blah, and a healthy dose of xenophobia. (Just kidding! Probably.) This is sort of going to be like a diary, except that instead of it being a private source of healing catharsis, I will instead scream out into the endless black void that is the Internet, hoping that someone, anyone, will listen and perhaps derive amusement from my misguided, desperate attempts at self-aggrandizement. (Self-aggrandizements such as the fact that I was once mentioned in The New Yorker at the tender age of four, for my pithy and insightful comment that the best part of my trip to New York was the hotel room.)

To segue inelegantly, let's return to my original, jarring, downright aggressive demand/question that I hit you with at the top of this, my first post. If you were going to the Moon and you could only bring 100 pounds of stuff with you, what would you bring? The natural response is to say something logical, like food, games, shelter, 100 pounds of porn, or a butane stove. Of course, I hadn't specified where on the Moon you were going, and whether or not it was some kind of Moon-based colony, meaning that unless you said "A space-suit and compressed air," you would be doomed to a horrifying death by asphyxia. Of course, if you actually brought a space-suit, then you would be left with no room for food or water. So you would inevitably wish that you had chosen the sweet relief of boiling blood and exploding eyeballs instead of the agony of starvation. (Speaking of horrible agony, I enjoy many geeky activities such as Dungeons and Dragons, Magic the Gathering, and, uh, blogging.)

You know, I have a tendency to go on and on about irrelevant things. What was my point?

Oh, right! Metaphor! You see, dear reader, the above question was actually a clever cipher for the dilemma that faces me now. My flight to Switzerland leaves January 9th. I have until then to get everything I could conceivably need in the next four months. And it has to fit into two suitcases. And they can't weigh a total of more than 100 pounds. Now, perhaps, you see the analogy, although the Moon is considerably different in characteristics to Lugano, Switzerland, most notably in the number of Swiss people, amount of air, and general level of je-ne-sais-quoi. (I took four semesters of French in high school, and one in college so far.)

So I've been puzzling out what to take and in what quantities, kind of like Tetris, except each Tetris block has a numerical value as well and the blocks that make up each row can't have their numerical values add up to a certain number or higher or the line won't be cleared and I have to clear a certain number of lines in a short period of time and my mother is nagging me constantly. So, really, not much like Tetris at all, but whatever.

The decisions have been agonizing. Give up my electric razor in favor of a lighter disposable? Take only my favorite bowling ball, and leave the rest at home? Consider taking a toothbrush that isn't made of depleted uranium? Perhaps I could take a TV and just one pair of pants. If I skip out on condoms, I could take my favorite DnD miniature. Hey, those two things dovetail nicely; what person who brings a DnD miniature to study abroad could possibly need a condom? (My favorite is the one I custom-made for my character Yotohiro Mise, the hobgoblin samurai. I play DnD with a group of home-schoolers that I know by way of my younger brother, Steven, who is 15, who home-schools, and my favorite color is purple.)

Luggage concerns aside, I have some great things planned. And I'll keep you (Yes, you!) informed about them ad nauseum. Yes, I plan to become a self-absorbed, self-obsessed blogger concerned only with what I am going through right now. (I took that line from Mystery Science Theater 3000, a show I like. Other shows I like are Mythbusters and the Daily Show/Colbert Report duo.)

Yes, soon, I, Dave, will be in Europe, and will become insufferable. And this is a blog. The titular implications, gentlemen, are obvious.

(I wear a variety of hats.)