I'm one of the most easily distracted people on Earth. You've heard of space cadets? I'm a space admiral. My whole life, I've spent a large portion of every day zoning out. I frequently find myself crafting little stories in my head, like the one where my statistics professor fights crime at night under the name of The Median Avenger, fighting epic battles against his arch-nemesis, Standard Deviant.
But lately, things have been different. There's been a lot of strange stuff going on in Madison, stranger than the stuff of my imagination. The city is overrun with raccoons, octopus salad and Evil Amos, and no one seems to believe me.
The Evil Amos thing started last spring at the annual softball game between The Daily Cardinal and The Badger Herald. Whichever paper you prefer, the game really just boils down to a bunch of very smart people deciding that it's a good idea to get drunk in the sun on a hot day. But there was something worse than sunstroke and cheap whiskey at Vilas Park that afternoon. There was Evil Amos. Evil Amos is what one of our comic strip artists named a guy who was hanging out at the game. He looked like me, only with darker hair and different glasses.
The past two weeks, I've seen him everywhere; in bars, on campus and on Gilman Street. He's definitely evil, because one of us has to be and I know it's not me. Besides, every time I see him, he's hanging out with several women and drinking Michelob Ultra. Setting aside my natural grudge against guys who are more popular with women than I am, can you really trust someone who goes to school in Wisconsin and hates carbohydrates?
But while nothing about Evil Amos seems truly, inherently bad, that's more than I can say for the raccoons. For some reason, raccoons seem to be everywhere I go at night. Maybe they were in town to see Howard Dean. Maybe they're plotting a bloody coup d'??tat of Bucky, trying to assert themselves as the eminent carnivorous mammals of this region. Whatever the reason, raccoons seem to be everywhere, even on State Street once this past weekend. The scariest part is that no one else seems to see them. I hope they're not specifically after me.
But even if the raccoons were actually out to get me, and even if it was all an evil plot orchestrated by Evil Amos, that would still not be the oddest thing going on in Madison. That would be the octopus salad in College Library. I love the changes they've made on the first floor there. I love the computer stations and I love being able to get hot tea. I even understand selling sushi, even if it's a bad idea. But octopus salad? Is there that much demand? How many students are studying in the library on any given night thinking to themselves, \Man, studying sure would be easier if I had a dead cephalopod to chomp on?""
I've imagined a lot of things in my life, and a lot of them weren't real. This is. You may not believe me. Octopus salad doesn't scare you, you say. Evil Amos is a-OK, right? Well, don't say I didn't warn you when the raccoons come for you.
amosap@hotmail.com.
