journal
11.01.01
the word i hear from suzie's mouth at least 30/day= "corny". it replaces anything from "shut up" to "why can't you just leave me alone?" she says it more often than usual these days because vi and i like to tease her about boys.
i have fake lashes on right now.
11.06.01
my last class ended at 5:30 today. was walking home in a bad mood- completely exhausted and freezing cold as i hadn't dressed properly this morning. then i noticed that my zipper was open. the last time i went to the bathroom was in the morning before i left for classes. i must have been walking around like that all day, just sitting down, standing up, reading the nyt on the old main steps with my feet apart... why didn't my lab partner say something? well, i suppose it's better to find out myself than have someone point politely toward my lower regions and let me know what was up- or down in this case. corny. anyway, it made me laugh and i acutually felt less cranky as i nonchalantly grabbed the damned zipper between my forefinger and thumb and gave it a swift upward pull.
where have i been you ask? i have been reading harry potter books into the early morning. these days i read more harry potter than the bible and my school texts combined. i know, it's really bad... but it's so good. there are only four books out so far. three more to come though, since each book is based on one school year at hogwarts(school for wizards and witches), and hogwarts is seven years in total.
i've been cooking a lot. today i made denjang-jige and bulgogi for dinner. when everything was ready i woke suzie up and told her she had to eat. i felt like such a mom. then i thought about my housewife potential. could i be one? wendy says she wants to be one. the kind that goes out to lunch with friends and spends a lot of money at the mall. i think i can handle that kind of housewifery as well.
i know someone who got married this past weekend. she's 23. he's 31. and he's a dentist.
the number of people having crushes on other people within the fellowship took a steep rise these past couple of months. freshman girls pining for upperclassmen guys, senior guys not being able to stop smiling when the cute freshman girls are around... even younger guys and nunas seem to be feeling it. something's in the water this semester.
11.07.01
had most disorienting day. might owe it to watching little shop of horrors right after i woke up. i had caroline take me to tj maxx to return a suit i bought there several months ago. i was really pissed when they said i could only have store credit. i don't like the idea of being *bound* to tj maxx in that way. got into a few minor "scares" (running over curbs, driving over the cement divider in the parking lot, little mercy for pedestrians, etc) because c is an insanely horrible driver.
then when i went to class, no one was there. so i sat there alone for a few minutes, logged onto a computer, and wondered if the meeting place had been changed or the class been canceled. i had not recieved any email notices. it seemed to me like a conspiracy. how long have they been plotting against me? i im-ed one of my classmates who had an away message saying that he was in class. "dude, do we not have class today? i'm in class right now. alone. what's going on! i'm so confused!" then people started filing in one by one because weds classes start at 1:25 and not 1:00.
then i saw the guy i had imed and we casually greeted. i completely forgot that i had left what now seems, an extremely odd message on his im.
once i got to yoga, nancy asked me if i had read the collegian, our school paper. it was on the front page that a girl died from taking e this weekend- the girl was chiho's girlfriend. v.shocked.
we did some foward bends today, stretching out hamstrings and opening up the spine. the instructor told us to let our arms "dangle like noodles and heads hang like ripe fruit".
sarah has a date with some guy from deloitte. she started work this past monday mind you. for lessons on flirting-like-you-were-born-to-do-it, contact my v.good friend sarah.
i'm tired. today was such a strange day. i have an stat exam tomorrow. should study but all i want to do now is read harry potter and take a nap. so that's exactly what i'm going to do.
11.10.01
sam yun's older brother is visiting him this weekend and his fiance joyce is staying at our apt. moses (the brother) and joyce are both 23, met in college (cmu), and are to be married in december. the rock on her finger is a tasteful size i must say. they seem very very happy.
met up with ina for lunch today. it was all nice. we ate then went to a coffeeshop and chatted. i hadn't been to a coffeeshop in a long time. so ina's coming to tp with me next friday. : )
my mother's side (the parks) are going on a cruise at the end of the month. it was just supposed to be my grandparents and their six daughters but some of them said they couldn't leave their husbands for an entire week. so i guess the husbands are going too. i'm kind of worried about this trip. i don't like the idea of all of our parents floating about in the middle of the ocean. i would never go on a cruise. i don't like the ocean.
i wish someone could take me to barnes and noble so i can get my hands on harry potter book four. i hear it's 800 delicious pages. i finished book three last night. man, it was so good. can't wait to see the movie which will be out in just 6 days!
11.12.01
finished fourth book harry potter and the goblet of fire last night. i found it at pattee library- nearly sprained my ankle while making a dash for the bus to the library. unfortunately the movie won't be playing in state college. will have to wait till i get home for break. :( life will have a little less sparkle until the fifth book comes out.
yesterday was my first day with the sunday school kids. i have to work with the fob kids who are the most troublesome of the lot. they made a little girl cry because her name sounds close to 'sung gi'- and i don't even know what that means... something to do with sex. what the heck?
i have to prepare a lecture for my social theory class tomorrow. this really sucks. have to talk about max weber infront of a large class *and* my professor who is completely neurotic and insane. i am finding very little useful information on the web. will not go to the library at this hour. i guess i'll have to make the most of it. tough luck lin. you know what you're in for when you wait till the last minute. why do you do it? i don't know. it's just against my nature to do things in a well timed and organized manner.
11.13.01
i *walked* to the library this morning which is extremely rare. people look so rushed in the morning. you know what's really funny to see? funny runs. i saw two funny runners today, scampering to class in a half jog, half hop, a lot of arm movement all the while weighed down by a backpack- especially peculiar when they're running *towards* you. then there's the odd business with big guys pedaling vigrously on small bikes. i saw this guy from class cycling up a steep hill with determination. he was pedaling so fast but moving ridiculously slow. i was walking but i made it to class before he did.
11.14.01
vladimir putin looks a lot like jen's dad.
so i thought i was a harry potter fan. i watched an hour long behind the scenes special on e! and one little girl said she read goblet of fire 27 times. she must be lying. she hasn't lived long enough to read 700-some pages *that* many times. another boy claimed to have read each book at least 4 times. apparently, there's a high demand in eye-glasses frames that resemble harry potter's. also, two wands used in the film were auctioned for nearly $20,000.
fetishism. people become so obsessed with objects. *things* really take on a life of their own. a chance to meet jk rowling or to own the bra she was wearing when she wrote the first few pages of sorcerer's stone?
jannifer, i recieved the books today. very nice surprise indeed. thankyou! i will start reading them right away.
speaking of jannifer, i need to meet her co-workers. everyone from the gay-as-nighters to the contortionist/chinese/dj. she always stumbles upon the richest, thickest clump of amusing people all at one time. it's as though they're just deposited there, waiting for her.
jen thinks i have a future in fortune telling. i just need an apt on 7th ave, a neon sign, some kind of accent and a pair of gaudy earrings. got the basics down already. everything lies between "i sense a lot of negativeeety" and "your father don't like the gay". that's two hundred dollars baby.
i can do a pretty good russian accent. actually, i can do an array of accents and voice impersonations. even chinese opera. last friday i did janice from friends in front of a live audience of 60+ people. sung played pheobe and sang "smelly cat" but kind of chickened out in the middle of the song. i don't think that is nearly as embarassing as the janice laugh.
11.15.01
when i woke up this morning i realized that i had slept 45 minutes into my class which really sucked since i had a presentation to give today. of course i missed the damned bus and had to walk to keller building, and you *know* that keller is the farthest building from campus. i made it to class just before it was my turn and the professor made a sarcastic comment about how "timing was just right ms.yoon". why can't people pronounce my last name? they see it and then just *make* something up- yoon, joon, yuhn. And how is it that everytime i *so* need the bus, i happen to miss it by .5 seconds?
is it just me or is it fairly obvious that my alarm clock is conspiring against me?
11.17.01
i woke up around 2:30 in the afternoon, because it is perfectly okay and not at all lazy to wake at such hours on a saturday. the weather was, and has been for the past few days, vedy nice. but that did not matter to me as i did not step out once.
i decided last night that today would be house-chores day. i put on my house-chores clothes including a handkerchief on my head, and blasted some beepy-trance music. i dusted, wiped, organized, danced and pranced about my bedroom, jovially singing over and over again, the three word lyrics of beepy techno song. i realize now that i was subconsciously desiring to be faye wong in officer 622�s apartment. after thorough cleaning of room, i gazed hesitantly at my laundry basket that runneth over. i was holding out till thanksgiving break to bring dirty clothes home, but it was plain to see that i had not one clean pantie to wear to church tomorrow. that my friend, is reality. and reality bites because it required me to find one dollar bills, then a walk to playland (arcade place two blocks from my apt), to exchange those bills for quarters. ah hah! so i did go outside today.
ridiculous episode with the boys with biblical names
i was comfortably nestled on my leather couch (for the last time, it came with the apartment. i would not furnish my college apartment with luxurious leather couches and a large mirror on which the pre-9/11 manhattan skyline is etched), reading a book when i heard a soft knock on the door. i was so silly to assume that it was a friend stopping by rather than a complete stranger who would burst into my apt, demand *absurd* directions from me, and ask to use my phone.
�do you know if there are any other apartment buildings in this area with an apt #606?�
i did not like dorky, white intruder at all. and what kind of a question is that? i told him there were several high-rise apartment buildings around here and suggested the one across the street.
�no, i was already there and there is no 606. can you think of another building?�
oh
mah
goodness.
by this time i want moron intruder boy to be gone at once but instead i let him use my cell phone to call his equally moron friend who obviously invited him over but failed to tell him where he lived.
�nathan, yeah this is david cook. dude, what�s up. what are you doing now? oh, yo which building do you live in?�
he then turns to me to ask if i know where nicholas tower is. i don�t know. i don�t know anything beyond beaver ave other than frat row, jamie&joyce's apt, and say sushi but i don�t tell him that. i just tell him that i don�t know. david cook is now exasperated at my lack of knowledge of the local grounds. he continues his conversation with nathan and begins to walk with shoes on across the living room to look out the window because he can in fact read street signs that are six stories below him.
�uh, where am i now?�
�dude, i�m on locust. dude it�s like on beaver. uh, she doesn�t know. i�m at someone�s apartment.�
as his conversation ensues, i hear my phone beeping- someone is calling me. david ignores the beeping and keeps on talking. i am really very ready to kick him where it hurts, out of my apt, and out of my life. but i can�t because i teach Sunday school and tomorrow�s lesson is about the good samaritan. so i let him walk and talk on my chocolate brown carpet, hoping he would see the look on my face and hurry the hell up. i feel the gong li in me start to come out. i want to throw something on the table. in a matter of minutes this person has forced me from faye wong to gong li, and wore shoes inside an asian household.
finally he hangs up, informs me that i've missed a call, mumbles a quick thankyou, and leaves. i don�t like this ridiculous episode at all. but david strikes me as the type of guy who really couldn't find things all his life, and i seriously doubt he would find nathan of nicholas tower, what with only street signs and intuition. this thought amuses me but i feel bad becasue it�s cold out. half an hour later i receive a call from nathan of nicholas tower. �hi, is dave there?�
i shall call you... kaleb
jenny house. how adorable is jenny house? once at bigbowl she was completely unaware of the fact that sitting with her legs spread very wide apart, ankles buckled around the legs of her chair while eating, was very funny looking. we laughed at jenny house at the noodle house. laughing and noodles and the whole business with the nose and mouth being well connected, makes laughing and noodles an unpleasant experience. this is also true of boba tea. a boba once shot out of jinny�s nose. or so they say.
anyway, this is really the story of why linda jun stayed in on a sat night to roast a 10lb turkey:
jenny house called me to ask if our oven could be used to cook one of the turkeys for tomorrow�s dinner. that was fine with me. then she asked if i could cook the turkey. i didn�t want to cook turkey. i�ve never cooked turkey.
�sure�
jenny house came and left behind a large, raw, plastic wrapped turkey. i put on my rubber gloves and unwrapped it. it was cold and slippery and vile turkey juice spilled out of its hollowed body.
directions:
release both legs from the leg clamp. do not remove the clamp.
remove the gizzard bag from the cavity
remove the neck
i removed the leg clamp entirely, but after reading the directions once more, i panicked and shoved it back into place the best i could. gizzard bag was easy enough to locate but i didn�t see a neck. i looked at the large gaping hole and saw no neck. i felt the front of its backbone. could this be the neck? perhaps the neck bone? but isn�t this really part of the spine? there was an accidental contact of turkey and my arm. pulled off gloves immediately and washed my hands and arms in fear of turkey leprosy. i quickly decided that the very front of the spine might be the neck and cut through a hunk of bone and cartlidge. now bigger gaping hole. gasp! that�s when i saw it. the neck was already removed and placed inside the bird. the neck was thin and long and curved just as a bird�s neck should be. i began to feel insecure about poultry and rather guilty about the mistake, the mistreatment and placed the hunk of spine i had wrongfully removed, inside the darkness of its own cavity.
now i have time. a lot of time to kill at home. all the roommates are out and i am nursing a turkey on a sat night. sure, i didn�t have plans but i could have had them. i could have decided that i would have plans but now it�s all over. i am to be barefoot in the kitchen roasting a thanksgiving turkey. �how do you feel about that?� well, i feel badly. i feel unhappy about it. but it�s forcing me to write. i�m writing crap but at least i�m writing. i am going to title my entries from now on because all good writers title their entries. i am not a good writer but i�ll be closer to becoming one if i title my entries. like jen. she titles her entries. she�s a good writer. i�m going to check the turkey now and give it a biblical name.
11.18.01
she cries cries cries in her lonely heart thinkin:
the turkey came out not at all dry and i was proud of this. i received a call from cindy who was to come by and collect juicy turkey. would i, could i then possibly carve it? alright. just cause cindy asked me and cindy is way cool. cindy and rosie arrived and the three of us respected perfect turkey. then i began to slice the meat in long, precise movements not unlike the donor slicers of eastern germany. but donor and turkey are very different meats and soon my little self was flecked with turkey bits. this sucked big time. my entire body became possessed with a stank turkeyness that would subside only after suicide scrubbing of my skin in a tub of scalding hot water.
scrubbing in scalding hot water reminds me of a tv movie i saw many-o-many years ago about a vietnamese girl who is brought over to the states immediately following the war. she is adopted. needless to say, she is wispy and graceful she is, and not too young in age so the big american daddy touches her incestuously but not incestuously i guess since they are not related. so the big white american daddy touches her pedophilishly and she becomes one very disturbed young woman. thus, she takes to ruthless skin scrubbing until she is caught in the act by american mom. but the dad tells the mom that vietnamese people bathe that way. and i just thought how coincidental, because korean people bathe that way too.
Sunday school kids, while they appear small and cute and cuddly are only small. no this is not true. they are not that small. and they are wretchedly cute. cutey cute little beans. i will let them get away with most anything, but they don�t know this yet. my teaching partner is not as indulgent and by all means, not a cute bean. he is however, able to command authority when i cannot, thereby allowing us to actually go through a lesson. today we covered noah�s ark. then we made noah�s ark and some animals to put inside it. duk-won, a second grader saved two species from becoming wiped out by the flood: rabbit and spider.
i�m watching the hbo britney live from las vegas and shamelessly knowing all the lyrics. britney is having straight hair tonight. and wearing tight things. she seldom wears anything but. even when she�s having a cranky day you see, with bloating and cramps and desiring all that is chocolate. but she�s allowed because she�s britney spears and she�s not a girl, not yet a woman (that last bit, for those of you who are not as spears-savvy, is a song on her latest album). britney is speaking to the audience now. oh all that has happened... oh she�s so happy to perform... britney has just told us that we must never lose our passion to dream.
well i never...
i am feeling bloated, crampy, and cranky. i�m going to put on some tight clothes and have dreams. i�m not a girl and i sure as ham won�t describe myself as being a �twenty-three year old woman� because that just sounds way too weirdish.
this is what i want. i�ve been wanting it for some time now. i want jennifer what�s-her-name�s job. i want to be on intimate escapes and be paid to travel and eat fancy dessert in palatial estate turned guest houses because i am almost one hundred percent sure that i can outdo her, �mmmmm.... wow. wow. this is very very delicious�. and dude, it won�t ever be �bon-jur and welcome to pare-iss�. and believe you me, my on-air wardrobe will never ever include striped shirts or tapered khakis and i will not blatantly flirt with venetian glass blowers or gondolier steerers. for crying out loud, you are not allowed to flirt in tapered khakis and striped shirts.
good night. why must morning prayer be so early in the morning. if i choose to sleep in at the last minute, then so be it. but that means i�ll also miss the meteor shower. and that would make me sad. by the way, if you�ve got prayer requests, i�ll be happy to muse over them and pick and reject as i see fit.
i'm kidding you fools. i�ll pray for you. just email me. or call. no just email because do i ever pick up the freaking phone? it�s the size i tell you. my phone is too small and i�ve lost my earpiece.
11.19.01
last night i dreamt that i had harry potter's owl hedgewick and where ever i went i carried hedgewick in her cage, occasionally letting her out to fly around and frighten people. i was also secretly afraid of hedgewick because birds are the devil. in my dream, hedgewick swooped down and perched on my arm. i held still lest she'd sense fear and consequently peck my eyes out. when i awoke, it was 1. now it is 5. poli-sci-soc class was canceled and the other class today was yoga but i didn't go to yoga, oh, because you know, yoga schmoga. instead i watched tv, switching back and forth from the wedding story (bad!) and the purple rose of cairo (good!) while eating pudding with one chopstick. i realize that i miss woody. woody allen that is. he just makes me laugh. jennis once said i would've had a better shot than soon-yi previn. but, well... we would have driven each other crazy. we would end up hating eachother. besides, i don't have the appeal of being his girlfriend's adopted daughter.
bad girls
emi watched harry potter without having read the book. now she is trying to play it cool. but really, who are we kidding?
linlin078: highlight of this weekend: harry potter movie
AmeOto: watched it
AmeOto: soooo good
linlin078: don't tell me you didn't even read it
linlin078: .....
AmeOto: no
linlin078: i keel you!!!
AmeOto: y?
linlin078: that makes me sad sad sad
linlin078: because the books are always invariably better than the movie
linlin078: and as excited i am about the movie
linlin078: the book is my first love
linlin078: oh emisan
AmeOto: yeah?
linlin078: you are a bad girl
AmeOto: i gotta read it now
linlin078: but now you know what happens in the sorcer's stone
AmeOto: so?
soon-yi and emi are bad bad girls.
11.21.01 giving thanks with the parks
i'm home now. i'm home a lot. but this time is thanksgiving and i'm allowed. feeling a bit wary about dinner tomorrow because 1)i'm korean 2)as are my relatives. it'll start off with, "how's school?" then move slowly onto, "why are you still in school?" and of course the "are you looking for a job?" "why are you not looking for a job?" when it becomes quite clear that i will never find a decent job, "why don't you have a boyfriend?" "did you ever have a boyfriend?" "why don't you eat more?" "why are you so short?" but i like to hear these complaints because they are in actuality, sincere words of love. of course these people want me to find a good job and a good man and are not purposely trying to make me feel all sorts of worthlessness.
so my cousin mary wants to bring her boyfriend of two years and introduce him to everyone but her mother will not have it. her mother has for some reason taken a great dislike to mary's boyfriend although he has ten fingers and ten toes and is korean. mary's mother, our eldest aunt, never fails to remind us of the evil that is "skinship". sarah, mary's older sister, and i were chatting about tomorrow's dinner and our dysfunctional family boarding up on a cruise ship next week. sarah imagined her mother walking around the ship shouting, "no skinship on ship!" she also suggested that we all bring big black men to dinner. this would be extremely amusing indeed. maybe they'll stop picking on grace for once. grace, my second aunt's daughter, really is quite obese and therefore teased by the boys at school and the family at thanksgiving.
i should be sleeping now but i have to write about how i saw the harry potter movie and really did like it. i thought the casting was good, and the special effects were well done. it was just cool to *see* it visually but of course the book is far better. it disturbs me that the actor who played the part of hp has since grown a foot and dropped his voice to a low manly tone. will he be able to play hp for the following 6? it's almost 6am. i'm sleepy.
happy thanksgiving guys. i'm thankful that i can spend it with my family. i know my family is really strange but yours are probably stranger. regardless, they love you and feed you and sometimes say nice things to you. and for that, among many many other things, we are thankful.
11.23.01 wingardium leviosa
i went to watch the harry potter movie for the second time today. and you know, that chess scene didn't seem so corny this time. i don't see why they had to leave certain parts out tho. they just couldn't manage to make it work within three hours?
did anyone else notice that the slytherin quidditch captain had extraordinarily bad teeth? well, the brits have bad teeth in general. perhaps not with green stuffs in the gaps as the quidditch captain had. green stuffs in the gaps between teeth remind me of a bad date i went on once. but we will not get into that.
thanksgiving dinner was good. we actually ate the thanksgiving dinner for lunch and had korean food for dinner. this is how it is done every year. my aunt bought a yorkshire terrier. i cannot begin to describe how precious this little puppy is. and trust me, i'm not one for animals. ah but it is tiny! it is quiet! and it was manhandled all day long! it was also dropped twice onto the hard kitchen tiles by my 4yr old cousin who is really elmyra from loony toons. she is going to love it and hug it and perhaps drop it a few more times before it becomes paralyzed on one side, and will consequently drag itself around for the rest of its life. elmyra will then abandon lame dog. she will be cruel to lame dog.
she also fed it to near death last night, as the dog seems to have no sense of fullness. this is also how i ate- except i felt the fullness and just kept eating. this makes me more of a pig than the dog-who-is-never-full. so what is *that* supposed to mean? are you going to tell me that i have food issues? is eating too much a disorder? oh, yeah it is. it's called binging. add purging to that and it becomes bulimia. but i know that is not allowed. i put a stopper to the purging business years ago, however sometimes i still participate in the binge. nay, it is not like in the movies, i.e. miriam baxter bernie (mom from family ties) goes to a grocery store and scarfs down a box of thin mints in the snack-lane, then rushes over (with chocolate crumbs curiously caked all over her face and not just the mouth area) to the dairy section and slams down a half gallon of milk. it is a lot less glamorous than that i tell you. it's just that sometimes i'll eat too much and feel too full. i start to feel guilty and i get irritated with myself. then i wish to rid the food somehow but there really is no fast and easy way to do it. i know i'll just have to wait for it to digest then go work out. so i let it digest but the working out part never materializes. hence the recent aquisition of more fleshy flesh. more flesh= more me= no fitting pants. an eating disorder is hard to shake off totally. the slight taste of self-disatisfaction is always there. the desire to be thinner is always there. i'm beginning to sound like an excerpt from reviving opheila. this must be stopped.
me n'food, we got problems. that is all.
11.28.01 songs i really hate
so far i can only think of one. tears of a clown. a truly horrid song. i shall live my life in fear of hearing it ever again.
the evil that is fake starbucks
today is rainy and cold. so i moseyed along to chats after class for a coffee. chats is a coffee stand at the hub (student center). although chats *pretends* that it is starbucks by using starbucks beans, charging starbucks prices, and serving coffee in starbucks branded cups, it is fairly obvious, at least to me, that chats is a raging imposter as 1)their coffee tastes like ass 2)it is named *chats* and not starbucks.
but really, where else to go for coffee when on campus? dammit, there is only chats! so here goes the story of linda's latte and why it left her so peevish afterwards.
as i waited in line (us sheep in line for chats are herded through line-organizing-bands that one may see at a bank or at the immigration building in newark), i checked my wallet. i was pleased to see that i had three whole dollars which bumped me up from regular house coffee to something more splendid like a mocha with whipped cream. i finally settled on a latte. "tall skim latte, not too much foam." after waiting for all eternity, an imposter barista called my drink. i whisked it away to the little bar with sugars and stir-sticks where i sprinkled in half an equal. i was a little annoyed to find absolutely no foam on the surface- this makes the coffee seem not at all frothy. also i noticed that it looked a bit watery. with suspicion i took a small sip. it tasted like water and milk with a very slight taste of coffee. i gave it a second try. then a third. by this point, i had already exited the hub contemplating on whether or not i ought to bring it back. i mean, i didn't empty my wallet to get a rotten cup of milk-water now did i? a quick decision was made and i swivled around, right into the chest of a guy who really had no business of walking so close behind me. fortunately the latte did not spill. back at chats i was really nice about the "recall" on my latte as opposed to maybe taking the gong-li approach which might have involved a vicious look at cashier, throwing the latte (cup and all) at cashier's head, then vicious look for everyone there. in any case, a new latte was issued. but this time it was whole milk instead of skim. so i lost. again. i'll never win at chats and i know this. but why do i go back for more?
11.30.01 eyeball kabobs
been rather rainy drainy here in happy valley. not yet been speared like jen. however living in constant anxiety of the umbrella people. the penn state umbrella people are not about pocket sized totes or the regularly sized apparatus to protect them from rainy drainy days such as these. the penn state umb.ppl are out there, clutching in their hands, blue and white beach parasols. i'm not exaggerating.
the forcible monopoly on campus, more commonly known as the penn state bookstore, is the only known source of umbrellas within walking distance. thus when it is raining and one is caught mid day, mid campus without shelter from the rain, one is inclined to dash off to the student center (actually connected to said bookstore) and buy a latte. one might then also desire an umbrella.
the selection of umbrellas at the bookstore is limited to blue and white umbrellas with psu logo and blue and white beach parasols with curved-handle-therefore-an-umbrella umbrellas. so i understand up to the bit about not wanting to get wet, but do people really need five feet of dryness all around them? apparently yes, they do. because that is what i see up and down the
town.
penn state might not have the umbrella density of midtown manhattan, but giant beach parasols with a lethal spoke-span that can kabob your eyes out in a single, swift jab is right up there in my opinion.