Power Rankings: Week 2 AD

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The Board would like to start by giving Thanks.

Thanks, to the countless hours you have spent dedicating yourselves to the betterment of Durland.

Thanks to those of you who have contributed to the blog.

Thanks to the nimble fingered Malaysian children who help keep labor costs down at the companies the Board members head.

Thanks to Omnicorps for protecting their foreign assets.

Thanks to Van Hollen for clear leadership on the fiscal cliff.

Thanks to Van Halen for this.

This time of the year, it's important that we all stop and count our many blessing.

My preternatural ability to glisten like a wild beast's fur. 

Mikey's incredible alcohol tolerance.

Jeff's unquenchable libido.

Often, these power rankings devolve into ad hominem attacks on house members. Not this week. This week, we celebrate and thank each other.

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Just kidding.

  

1: Amanda    

My father has fed me many morsels of wisdom, perhaps none as profound as the following.

Whatever you do, do it well.

Certainly I haven't taken it to heart, since I'm currently writing this on Verathon time. However, Amanda's Friendsgiving dinner was a coupe de gravy. Every element was deliberate and perfected. Need some ice in that lemon infused tonic drink? Why, it's in the ice tray right there. Wishing for a hint of winter motif? The cranberries in this autumnal arrangements nod, ever so gracefully, towards mistletoe.
The feast was feastly, and the roast beast was beastly. Well done, ma'am. Well done indeed.
In addition, she landed a job, and continues to have the most sterling rating of time spent in the house.

2: Keyan 

Coach Metcalf would occaisonally take time away from his "networking obligations" (doing lines of coke off of the women's x-c coach) to proffer advise. His go to adage was that champions are made when no one is watching. I now believe he meant that it requires constant, intrinsic dedication. At the time I thought he meant "take a lot of steroids, don't get caught, and elbow your opponents in the balls when no official is looking."

Keyan, the board is always watching. You cleaned the house like an exploited immigrant in preperation for Friendsgiving. You took the magic milk pill so that you oculd fully participate in the meal. You brought home a chicken and bread for dinner. You fought for position and went strong to the hoop in basketball. You even, hopefully, spent a good part of today scooping a come up for my law library.  

3: JP

A reliable force for good and wood, JP came through in the clutch this week. He secured oodles of firewood along with Mikey. He helped secure the aforementioned berks with Keyan. He did work on the FRM. JP's biggest test is the next 6 months. He's shown, countless times, how well he works while working. We'll see how he handles a winterlong break without studying. Either he goes into full on beast mode and teaches himself COBRA , or he spends the winter hunkered in the basement with his spiders, reading Star Wars fan lit and masturbating into a protein shaker. Vegas has it at even odds.

4: Jeff

Unwavering commitment to the blog. In an unprecidented move, the Board has put a non-Zack blog contributer  behind  3 house mates who did not post. From this, we can extrapolate the following inferences.

1: Life wins provide large bumps (proven by Amanda's securing of a job and JP's FRM.)

2: Pandering pays off, but even better is just being good (see Keyan.)

3: The Board looks favorably upon those who help procure items for the house (see Keyan and JP.)

4: However, procuring items alone is not worth vaulting you above a poster (see Mikey.)

The rough rule is this:

1: Life wins

2: Blog posts

3: Procuring items for the house.

4: Hard work/Cleaning (in particular when it is not your responsibility.)

A combination of 3's and 4's can overcome a 2, or even a 1.

Got it? Good.

5: Cheeky and Fun Shennanigans.

Streamers in Lars' room. Soap box derby down Lake City. Malicious flatulance. Perhaps in a mad rush to expunge our juvenile urges before docking begins in earnest, this week saw a massive uptick in cheeky and fun shennanigans. Here's hoping that we can keep our shennanigans cheeky and fun, and not cruel and tragic evil shennanigans in the weeks to come.

6: Ben Conway

Although a few regular readers are not yet initiates into the mystical world of Moon Temple, I can assure you that Conway led half of Durland closer to enlightment. He is the second most respected authority on trashcans. He drove home (although his sobriety was in question) and stepped up his game for Friendsgiving by audibling out of greenbean casserole and pulling through with the cider.

Conway has shown that he belongs on these rankings. With great rankings comes great responsbility, though.

7: Mikey

Mikey demonstrated how powerful the idea of grounding is. He established that he likely would not arrive for basketball, and then shattered all of our expectations by arriving fully dressed and moderately sober. In addition, he helped pick up wood with JP, and lived up to his reputation as the house lush, plowering through trashcans like Jerramy Stevens through a retirement home.

8: Zack

The puppet master continues to mooch off of his good natured room mates. Fetch me wood! Gather me an encyclopedia! Drive my drunk ass home after the Moon Temple! Nurse me back to life the next day! If not the for charity and kindness of his friends, this blogger would have ended up cold and shivering in a puddle of regurgiated trash can.

9: Lars

The best that can be said for Lars is that he was a deft subject for our various verbs. He was acted upon this week, and defined by what happened to him. His room was streamered, his face was farted upon, his ability to write an essay was brought into serious question.  Lars, the world was broken and reformed when Jeff posted on the blog. This is week 2. You still have time to define yourself, rather than letting yourself be defined by others. If I were you, I'd pull an elaborate and cheeky prank- docks be damned.

10: Trash Cans

Not only the surprisingly delicious and dangerously efficient drink at the Moon Temple. Keyan managed to swoop a fancy new and extra large recycling bin for Durland. And, we have far less paper recyclables than we used to thanks to our old friend fire.

 

Bottom Billion:

 Post-Ironic Hipster Meta Commentary

Blogging about the blog, squashing the squash. We spent much of this week stuck in the same repertoire of coincidental comedy. It rang hollow. This week, we did things. Amanda smoked two turkey. Mikey passed a test. Zack chopped lumber. Lars' room was streamered. Sure we're being dominated by dominion, and yes we drank our drinks. But in doing so we almost got Jeff to take his shirt off. We are past the thumb twidling paralysis of the millenials. We are a generation apart, in an alternate timeline. We are Durland.