Yes, it's immature. But the gallery of Japanese Engrish is the funniest nonfiction website.

The people in the building next door are standing/sitting outside in the cold, and it reminded me of some entertaining fire drill stories:

Back in my, Teaneck High School days, I was bored. Fortunately, one of my peers hated sitting in class even more than I did, and he'd pull the fire alarm.

Rumors were that it started when someone was looking to kick another kid's ass, because if you pulled the fire alarm, all you had to do was walk around the building and you'd find your nemesis to "jump".

However, we started having alarms pulled with no ensuing fights. The principal announced over the loudspeaker that it was costing the school money and endangering lives of anyone caught in a real fire. They clamped down on issuing hall passes for trivial reasons. They timed how long you could be in the hall. They hired monitors in the hallway. They pored attendance records. Eventually, the caught the guy — probably someone ratted him out. But I was so excited to see the strobe light and hear the siren that I broke into spontaneous dance a few times.

In college, I had two much less interesting experiences. The first was in the freshman dorm, the day after the big Organic Chemistry final (which I didn't take, but hey — party!). I alternated shots of rum and vodka. First time I was really ill from drinking. Man, I had a buzz like you wouldn't believe. Then I made that timeless drinking mistake — I reclined.

The world started spinning. I went to go lie down on my bed. It sped up. I ran to the bathroom and pretty much blacked out. When I awoke, I had my cheek against my arm, which was resting on the toilet seat. Vomit was all in the toilet. But there was this loud ringing sound. After a second, I realized it wasn't my head or an alarm clock, but the fire alarm. I ran down two flights of stairs and promptly puked into the garbage can outside my RA's room. My friend Cindy Arko came through, and held my long hair out of the way. Then, I stumbled outside and lied down in the grass, a crumpled mess. In front of about a third of the freshman class. People gave me shit. Eventually I stopped telling Cindy that I was going to die, and shut the hell up and slept.

Last but not least was the time during finals of my sophomore year, where some cutthroat classmate of mine pulled the fire alarm at like 3 am during Finals week. There was no fire. My suitemate Fat Don had the keen observation that you could tell who was sleeping with whom, because they came out of the building together. It confirmed my bad suspicion that not only do the hot chicks flirt with the rich assholes, they fuck them too. Ah well. Unsurprisingly, someone pulled the same stunt the next year. Lucky for me, I was not only out of the dorms; I was out of the country.

This blog is no longer active, and comments have been disabled.