Читать книгу Big Dead Place - Nicholas Johnson - Страница 11

1 The bottom of the barrel are Hotel California and MMI (Mammoth Mountain Inn) because they are far from the Galley next to the thundering Helo Pads and the walls are so thin that the neighbors can be heard humping or vomiting in the trash can. If you live here, everyone else’s room is bigger than yours.

The Lower Case dorms are nearly identical except for 210 and 211, which were designed by a Hawaiian architect. They have high ceilings and uneven heating. Recently, Lower Case dorms 204 and 205 were renamed 203B and 203C, circumventing an arcane code concerning the number of simultaneous building renovations. Now there are three dorm 203s. If you live in the Lower Case dorms, everyone else’s room is not really bigger than yours, but it appears so because their furniture is arranged differently.

The most desirable rooms are in the Upper Case dorms, 206-209, the large brown dorms with three stories. Dorm 209 is special in that 209 Bayside rooms have a view of the sea ice and the Transantarctic Mountains. 209 Bayside is full of managers and old salt. Some people with enough Ice Time to live in 209 choose another dorm instead, because 209 is considered stuffy and the walls have ears. If you live in Upper Case, your room is bigger than everyone else’s.

2 Forty million years ago, Antarctica was home to a giant carnivorous bird called Titanis, nicknamed the “Terror Bird.” The New York Times (“Fossil ‘Terror Bird’ Offers Clues to Evolution,” by Walter Sullivan, Jan. 31, 1989) wrote, “The bird’s head was longer than that of a horse, and it presumably used its massive, hooked beak to tear apart its prey, after striking it down with one of its huge clawed feet.” Crazed and insatiable, the feathered beasts slaughtered giant armadillolike mammals for their brutal birdie feasts. A researcher from the Institute of Human Origins in Berkeley, CA, said it was “probably the most dangerous bird ever to have existed.”

3 Standard usage, though less common, allows “skua” to mean “contribute to the skua pile,” such as, “I figured someone would want these sponges shaped like human organs that expand when placed in water, so I skuaed them.”

4 The Housing Coordinator who had received the death threat had, amongst her other achievements, made a new policy that skua piles were off-limits to winter-overs, who had formed the skua piles to begin with. This policy ended with her covert departure at Winfly.

5 Though most people are very conscientious about sorting their trash, Construction Debris nonetheless remains a community favorite. CD is the category where one should put mixed floor sweepings, an inseparable chair made of metal and plastic and cloth, or a broken mirror, but when no one’s looking it means “anything goes,” and is where people sometimes like to throw bags of trash from their room that they don’t feel like separating.

6 “Diversity” is mentioned just often enough to scratch some statistical itch. The Program is overwhelmingly white.

7 From K at Pole: “We have had a helluva Thanksgiving. The beakers supplied all the wine; so you know where the night went…hell in a handbasket. It was awesome. Last week this chick got busted giving a blowjob in the upstairs bathroom…not once, but twice in the same night. This past weekend she was making out with any woman that would. Wow, I tell you. She propositioned Speed and I one night in the bar; and she continues propositioning me. Oy.”

8 I-Drive might commonly be heard in contexts such as “Did you see your picture on the I-Drive? Why were you carrying a mop at that party?” or “I went to Cape Royds last week and took 42 pictures of penguins. I put them all on the I-Drive.”