A. A.

The title of this post is cryptic, I know. Since I spent the last two years trying to decipher an insurmountable number of unexplained acronyms at Morris, Acronym Capital of the Midwest (MPIRG, STLF, NORML, PSEO, etc.), I’ll not subject you to the same difficulty until the end of this post. Henceforth, “AA” will be held to mean “Ann Arbor." I have also decided for impromptu and not wholly justified stylistic purposes to refer to myself in the third person for the remainder of this post. So ordered.

When we last encountered our dashing, roguish, yet endearingly sentimental protagonist he was walking from the corner of S. University and S. Forest streets and assuming an admirable but ultimately unconvincing visage of stoicism after the departure of the last friend he was likely to see in some time. No doubt any interested passerby would quickly see through the façade, but fortunately for our central character he was not a particularly noteworthy fellow to the average viewer and no one saw fit to call him out on his chicanery. While his outward attempts to fool the unconcerned public at large were ill-conceived, his inward attempts at self-trickery were considerably more successful. He managed to convince himself he was not, in fact, sad but rather excited and determined and full of adventurousness. He had in recent years, and with no small influence from an incorrigible Irishman surnamed Flanders, developed the rather destructive habit of listening to the red-clad fellow with forked tail and dubious-looking horns whispering in his right year while categorically ignoring the white-clad fellow in robes with a peaceful nimbus surrounding him pleading urgently into his left. Thus, he found the path of self-deception was an easy one to follow and he traversed it wholeheartedly.

Simultaneously, he traversed the path of S University, ambling into a Mediterranean restaurant and ordering something having to do with falafel. It was perhaps a sign of his unremarkability that the employee of the restaurant engaged in amiable conversation with literally every customer but him while he waited for his food. This was probably for the best, as his silence gave at least a vestige of credibility to his otherwise-woeful attempts at stoicism. Upon receipt of food he left, consumed the still-unidentified, vaguely falafel-affiliated (and delicious) sustenance, and wandered about the city in a pattern that could only be described as hopelessly haphazard and random. Here are some of the things he saw:


A bookstore named after one of his favorite books in one of his favourite series (The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, book three of the Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis). From that series he acquired the habit of using old-world English spellings for certain adjectives, such as "favourite," as well as his favoured alias of Eustace Clarence Scrubb.


A Co-op for the purchase of local, organic and fairly traded goods. Mr. Whitsett's disconcerting and precipitous evolution into a hippie-like being, already evidenced by his transition to veganism and his notorious tendency to espouse alarmingly liberal views, was no doubt accelerated by this discovery.


Pictures like this, taken inside the Co-op, can only give credence to suspicions like the one expressed above.


The narcissism inherent in the inclusion of this picture is embarrassingly obvious.


Even our esteemed and unquestionably neutral author cannot help but smile at the presence of fairly traded coffee in such copious amounts.

* * *

After a long day walking back and forth across Ann Arbor, futilely trying to decipher bus maps, retracing steps, becoming lost, found, lost, found, and finally lost again, our subject at last found himself at his new home:


Undoubtedly a person of reasonable taste would consider the blue-on-blue coloration of the house questionable at best and garish at worst, but the wanderer was lucky enough not to be troubled with anything resembling artistic vision. Poor soul, he actually enjoyed his house's appearance. We shall forgive him this once. Artless and blind though he was, he was well-intentioned, and although it could scarcely make up for his many faults it must at least have counted for something.

He entered his new place of repose and, undaunted by the unwelcoming (indeed, bruising and even offensive) nature of his "bed" -- which, were it compared to a rock, would give the rock good reason to feel affronted -- fell immediately asleep.

What new adventure awaited on the morrow? What events would manifest themselves in the life of our beloved (if only by virtue of sympathy) subject? Would he encounter another living, thinking, speaking being and engage it in conversation worth noting in this space? Would he develop anything resembling an appreciation of visual aesthetics?

For answers to these questions, visit next time when not only will this story's subject stop referring to himself in the third person (at least temporarily), but will in fact make the first of what will prove to be many encounters with the ominously-named Michigan SS.