MUN 2004

MUN is now over for this year. It was certainly nothing short of interesting. We are also officially representing the Russian Federation. If circumstances require it, we may also have 1 more country: hopefully the Holy See, North Korea, Afghanistan, or Cuba (the top 4 choices in that order of preference). Ian and I will be on the Security Council. But enough of the future happenings, because the past is more interesting. In conference this year, I got to be on the General Assembly B, and I have decided that the General Assembly is not nearly as interesting as the subordinate committees. The most annoying this is the sheer obnoxious and audacity with which many people approach things. We spent approximately 1/3 of the time (without doubt) dealing with points of order and procedural quibbling of nasty little nations like Liberia. The proper representative (the representative from General Assembly A spent most of her time in General Assembly B too) of Liberia had at least 3 resolutions struck in their entirity because of minor formatting errors. One girl spent nearly a minute speaking of some "fatal error" with this one resolution, when it turned out that the "fatality" was a comma being where a semicolon should be. Then there was the length of the speakers list. At one point, the wait to speak was 1 hour, meaning that there was an eventual wave of people who had to yield their time to the chair because they didn't have anything to talk about anymore. And the rest of the Arab block was full of total idiots who were essentially advocating voting for worthless resolutions because they would "instill hope" in the Palestinians. Somehow I think that passing something that does nothing only accomplishes the opposite. Vatican City also made several attempts to strip Palestine of voting rights (it was granted voting rights in a previous MUN conference, but not the real UN), and attempted to launch a crusade against Palestine. The scary thing was that they had over 60 nations signed up for it. Nevertheless, I gave several speeches against the western infidels, women's rights, and the restriction of Palestinian "activist" organizations. Saudi Arabia is the most efficient nation on Earth. I also cut off all communication of notes with the United States (who never made a single speech...), and had quite a few notes thrown away by the pages (i.e. youngs subserviant messengers) for various reasons. I took matters into my own hands and delivered my own notes. In the process, I arranged for the sharing of Wilson and Lincoln extemp files for the state speech tournament (seeing as there's only one person from each school in extemp at the tournament, it seemed like a good idea).

But that was only a quarter of the fun, because we played some quality pranks in the off-time. There are two people on MUN, known respectively by us as Greg and Pierre. Greg is a junior and quite possibly the most socially unperceptive person on the face of the planet. It's not a matter of being arrogant or nerdy, because everyone has those qualities. No, no. It's a matter of him incessantly talking over people, having no anger management, thinking and trying to act as if he is much smarter than he is, and it's a matter of his phenomenal cluelessness which ends up being incredibly inappropriate in every setting. He is also clueless of these facts, and clueless of the fact that no one likes him for it. Pierre is a freshman who I believe has ADHD, and has glasses that are at a 20° angle. He is absolutely insane and can't stop talking. He talks and talks and talks. Mostly about his "plans to take over the world" and the like, which he finds quite humorous. According to Meghan, he made a 6th grade messenger cry, and he was proud of it. He may actually be worse than Greg, apart from the fact that he never really seems to get mad... which is good. So we ended playing a few pranks on Greg and Pierre, and doing some rather rude things to avoid them...

Exhibit A: Lunch on Thursday. I was to meet Dan and Kadish at some wierd street intersection whose location I did not know, and we were to proceed to eat at this incredibly good, cheap, and authentic restaurante Mexicano. I thought that I'd try to catch them in the lobby so I wouldn't have to aimlessly wander around the U of O looking for them. I entered the lobby and looked around for a couple seconds when I sensed that an enemy radar had locked on to me. Greg walked up to me and asked me if I had plans for lunch. I didn't see anyone else I knew, so I was forced into talking to him. There were two options: A) to say I had plans. Knowing Greg, he would just invite himself along. I knew that having Greg attached to me while eating lunch with Kadish and Dan would probably result in their murdering me swiftly. B) to say I didn't know what I was going to do yet. I opted for B. I mumbled out some mostly senseless words to that effect, and Greg of course said, "Oh well then I'll just come along with you." At this point I was really sweating, so I said needed to go to the bathroom for a moment. Luckily he didn't offer to do that with me, so I went the bathroom on the other side of the building (actually the closest one), and took about 15 minutes. When I came back, he was gone. It was very mean. But I went on looking for Dan and Kadish, walking toward the block of restaurants about a 1/4 mile away. In the process I just about ran into Greg and Pierre, and had to spent about 5 minutes walking roughly 4 meters behind them trying not to be noticed. Needless to say, they're not very observant, so they didn't see me.

Exhibit B: This happened just this morning, and was quite brilliant. Greg did not sleep at all last night, like many people. So this morning he was in a bit of a zombie pseudo-hangover state (without the alcohol, of course), again like many people. However, while we were meeting loosely as a school doing some final voting proceedures with our countries, Greg had fallen asleep in this chair. His position was such that his head was back and his mouth was open. It's sort of that perennially embarrasing state of stupor which is fun to see. So we got a camera and had a little fun making some keepsake memories of Greg. Interestingly, Pierre was sitting right next to him looking equally idiotic, but awake. Pierre didn't seem to notice us taking pictures of him for some reason. (this was all done with a digital camera from the yearbook staff, but I don't think anyone would be so mean as to publish it) After about 4 or 5 pictures, Greg still wasn't awake, and we stopped to finish our voting. This devious freshman who had an infatuation with Cheese-Whiz (I have never seen something so revolting), kept around however, and proceeded to squirt the substance into Greg's open mouth. I was told that his mouth became quite full before he awoke. When he did awake, he became enraged and nearly attacked the kid with the Cheese-Whiz before Ian came to defuse the situation and decry the action. I made sure to throw in a serious glance, but the comic genius of the moment was simply too great and Greg stormed off. But here's the thing. Sure that was mean, but had it been done to anyone else in MUN, they would have found it immensely funny if embarassing. It was quite so after all.

Exhibit 3: This was a long series of actions, resulting in the victimization of multiple people. Either Dan, Ian, or Jon came up with the idea of somehow stealing 3 of the 4 pillows out of Greg's room, so they would have to fight for the right to use the last one. But how were we to get them out? There was the main door to the room, but that would be hard. So someone came up with the brilliant idea of climbing out on our balcony and over two rooms to Greg's, where we could access his room via the sliding glass door to the balcony (we were only on the 2nd floor). Dan volunteered for this duty, and after he left we (of course) locked him out and closed the curtain so that he would be trapped on the balcony with 3 pillows. But Greg's sliding glass door was locked, so our first attempt failed. I personally wanted to walk outside and wave to Dan on the balcony and just leave him there, but we were satiated after a few minutes and let him in without much humiliation. We still didn't have the pillows though. Eventually, someone else in Greg's room let us take 3 of the 4 pillows just by asking. All of the rest of the room was gone and he was about to go to bed, so he didn't care as long as he had a pillow on which to sleep. We never did hear the result of that experiment though. Maybe our efforts to temper his tempermental outbursts through repeated loosening of the wierd seriousness were succeeding.

I can only hope to Allah that Greg will not read this--which of course he will not.