March 14, 2002

Dear Diary,

It’s very difficult to enact social change when you’re unconscious!

Diary, I am writing to you in the midst of day 10 of the Sit-Down Protest to Arrest Admission Application Facilitation, or as everyone is calling it, S-DPtA3F. It’s so exciting! It’s fun to be around so many people my age like Sunshine and Wildflower and Maxmillian who believe so strongly in a cause. Even though Maxmillian and a lot of the other kids keep mentioning how good it will look on their resume, I can tell some of them still think Application Sanctity is at least a semi-worthy cause! Thus far, it’s been a long, hard road, and we’ve been hit in the head a lot.

According to Sunshine (she’s the leader!), our plan is this. We sit down on the lawn in front of the Admission Application Administration Action Association A-building-ion. Whenever there’s a new shipment of Admission Applications coming in or out of the building, we start shouting things like “Down with easy admission applications” and “Hell no, we won’t allow you to use such easy admission applications!” It’s socially forward and fun too! We all laugh and sing as we shout our slogans, eager to change the world with nothing but ambition and hope!

At that point we normally start being hit viciously in the head by Nakajami Riot Police with their head-hitting sticks. This typically happens ten or fifteen seconds into our slogan-shouting, very quickly considering the Police are nowhere to be seen before their attacks. And all they do is hit us in the head! No talking, no negotiations, no solar plexus. Only blows to the head! The bunch of us normally drop like sacks of potatoes. Once it took them two shots to get me down, but that’s according to my less concussion-prone friends. I don’t remember it at all!

There was one point where I thought we made some real leeway. Adjunct Admissions Administrator Aaron Aaaaajohnson was delivering the admissions applications himself! We all knew this was our chance! If we could corner Mr. Aaaaajohnson and grill him on the clear and present danger of such a simple online admissions process, we knew our cause would be furthered immeasurably!

On the short trip between Mr. Aaaaajohnson’s lime green Geo and the Admissions building, we absolutely let him have it! We told him how dangerous it was to short-thrift students with shoddy admissions standards. Mr. Aaaaajohnson was enthralled! He kept saying things like “Yessssss” and “Keep going” and “I’m dying to hear what you have to say about admissions, since you’re all clearly qualified to have an opinion on something so precise as this.” He also motioned behind us a few timesAt that point we were all hit in the head with what felt like head-hitting sticks. Now I’m sure it’s eminently possible we were all simultaneously conked by some non-head-hitting implement, but I’d classify that as unlikely!

For the most part, though, we haven’t achieved much of a dialogue with the AAAAAA. Unless you count the paper airplanes they throw out their windows at us with “Screw you!” scrawled across the wings, among other messages (which I won’t mention here)! Or the tear gas they keep throwing to break up our crowds. But we are strong! We even made a chant for those instances! It goes like this: “Ahhhhh! Oh God! Run away!” We like that one because it shows intelligence in the face of ignorance, and also prevents us from breathing in the burning tear gas!

Yup, protesting is the super-greatest, most important thing I’ve ever done outside the Charityathon we held back in Tempe, Arizona. President L. Brainius even made an announcement about us at their last press conference! It was along the lines of “Nyah, nyah, nyah, we can’t hear you” with his finger-strands in his quasi-ears. Ah well! Not every protest doesn’t end in soul-crushing disappointment!

And through it all, when I look back, the most important thing to remember is that I got Sunshine McTierney’s phone number! She’s so great! I’m planning on calling her soon as soon as I figure out how to dial % symbols and Greek letters! When I do, I’ll be the happiest guy at the front of the class! And I’ll see you there too!

Sincerely,
Gary Helmersparkz