Not only my dreams, but also the dreams of this long-forgotten Crimson editor from the fall of 2003:
The twinned eviscerations of Hilles Library and the QRAC were only the latest in a long string of indignities visited upon Dartboard since his kicking, screaming Quadding last March. Dartboard’s very means of escape from the erstwhile Radcliffe dorms is an existential insult: the Khruschevan reminiscence that is the Shuttle. Confronted each morning by the Shuttle’s dingy used-to-be-crimson paint job and dimly-lit interior, Dartboard has started to feel like a washed-up actor who, on an agent’s bad advice, has taken on an interminably recurring guest role on “That ’70s Bus.”
But Dartboard is an optimist at heart, and when life throws Dartboard lemons—or a hellish exile in the depths of residential Cambridge—Dartboard makes lemonade. Suddenly, packed in with the human freight of the Shuttle, Dartboard was struck by inspiration: If the top floors of Hilles can be converted from study to College-sanctioned tomfoolery, why not some portion of the shabby Shuttle?
The mad dash towards Johnston Gate for the last wheezing ride home would become an infinitely more pleasant experience if Dartboard knew he was running for a vehicle whose hind two-thirds had been converted into the Party Shuttle, a mobile throw-down that hops all the way from Currier to Harvard Business School and back. Disco balls, strobe lights, hydraulics and a thudding sound system would banish trudge and grumble from the Quadling’s commute for good.
Of course, the gruff men and women at 5-0400 can hardly be expected to outfit the Party Shuttle with a keg, but a flask in hand will ensure that even the University’s alcohol policy won’t get in the way of a kinder, gentler, tipsier trip down Garden St.—and it will surely help get through those awful morning cores.
The party shuttle exists! I caught it in the wee hours of Sunday morning when, looking for a simple ride Yardwards, I was swept up in a crush of popped collars and sequined miniskirts, then thrust through the doors of a shuttle that, though painted in its usual livery, rocked back and forth to the high-energy, high-volume sound of Kei$ha and the other luminaries of NOW 38. There were loudspeakers. There were the dim lights of a dance floor punctuated by blue and yellow strobes. There were a surprising number of students taking advantage of these to dance. I was too bewildered to take a photograph.
Taylor Swift sure does have a lot to complain about. It’s a good thing she’s never gone to Avis expecting a full-size car and received a compact instead. There’d be a whole EP about that.
— Uncle Don
“Now, a few words on looking for things. When you go looking for something specific, your chances of finding it are very bad. Because of all the things in the world, you’re only looking for one of them. When you go looking for anything at all, your chances of finding it are very good. Because of all the things in the world, you’re sure to find some of them.” — Daryl Zero, The Zero Effect
fiatluxemburg:
It seems I managed to just drop them in the hallway?
(This was not achieved by looking at the contents of the USB drive)
Executive Mansion, Washington, D.C., January 26, 1863
Major General Hooker:
General: I have placed you at the head of the Army of the Potomac. Of course I have done this upon what appears to me to be sufficient reasons, and yet I think it best for you to know that there are some things in regard to which I am not quite satisfied with you. I believe you to be a brave and skillful soldier, which, of course, I like. I also believe you do not mix politics with your profession, in which you are right. You have confidence in yourself, which is a valuable, if not an indispensable, quality. You are ambitious, which, within reasonable bounds, does good rather than harm; but I think that during General Burnside’s command of the army you have taken counsel of your ambition, and thwarted him as much as you could, in which you did a great wrong to the country and to a most meritorious and honorable brother officer. I have heard, in such a way as to believe it, of your recently saying that both the Army and the Government needed a dictator. Of course, it was not for this, but in spite of it, that I have given you the command. Only those generals who gain successes can set up dictators. What I now ask of you is military success, and I will risk the dictatorship. The Government will support you to the utmost of its ability, which is neither more nor less than it has done and will do for all commanders. I much fear that the spirit which you have aided to infuse into the army, of criticizing their commander and withholding confidence from him, will now turn upon you. I shall assist you as far as I can to put it down. Neither you nor Napoleon, if he were alive again, could get any good out of an army while such a spirit prevails in it.
And now beware of rashness. Beware of rashness, but with energy and sleepless vigilance go forward and give us victories.
Yours, very truly,
A. Lincoln
