Jack Nicholson once said, “People who speak in metaphors should shampoo my crotch.” I beg to differ.
My life as a Medill freshman is a perpetual visit to the circus, but not like how Britney Spears sings it and definitely without the clowns. I hate clowns. You’d assume that it’s because of Stephen King’s It but in all honesty, I think clowns are just hideous.
When I’m not shielding my eyes from those pasty-faced, crusty-looking brutes, I like to read novels by Richard Brautigan and daydream about a post-apocalyptic world. For future reference – and I’m sure you’ve noticed this already – Norris would be an awful place to hold siege against a campus full of zombies. There are just way too many windows and doors.
My lurid zombie fantasies might be warranted by where I spent the freshest years of my adolescence-slightly north of Pittsburgh, where the original Dawn of the Dead was filmed.
Before Pittsburgh, I lived in Morgantown, West Virginia, but I’m not from there either. I was born in Xinjiang, China. I grew up eating soybean paste and playing mahjong with my grandparents, and I was thrilled to find that America has both soybean paste and mahjong.
Unfortunately, this column won’t be about soybean paste, mahjong or even metaphors, though it is probable that I will mention all three at one point.
Cathaleen Chen is a columnist for The Daily. Her columns will appear every other Monday. She can be reached at [email protected].