I spent sometime trying to decide how exactly I wanted my blog to look, because honestly, since ______ already talked about crossroads a few posts down, I feel like I need to at least match the caliber of her/his writing in order to make it look like I put the effort in for this--which I did of course!
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Crossroads: dining commons that services Units 1 and 2 (about like a gajillion students). It’s buffet style. Accomodates a variety of tastes and palates. Yum Yum!
Anyways, I’m going to blog about crossroads now. Let’s take it over 7 days, see what happens.
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Day 1:
So I’m sitting in crossroads staring at the food, but it really doesn’t look that great. This beef stuff looks like its been drug through the dirt and resoaked in leftover sauce. Hm, I think I wont specify which actual dishes I’m talking about--the cooks might see this and spit in my food next time. I’m not even sure if the beef was beef! But no matter, there’s always pizza to eat even though pizza really isn’t all too healthy for you. I’m eating crossroads with my roommate, Alex, and he’s soaking his food in hot sauce.
Me: Alex, why do you put hot sauce on everything?
Alex: Because the food sucks dawg.
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Hmm, my notes from earlier probably shouldn’t be posted here.
Anyways, I’m sitting here eating--trying to, but I keep talking. Everyone talks here. People talk more than they eat. The way I see it, people talk because they enjoy talking, or the food is horrible and they need a distraction. More likely, it’s a combination of both.
This makes me wonder. If the food is so substandard and repulsive and crap, why do people come here and eat it? If I were to sit and think about my question (which I did), I would probably (because I did) come to the conclusion that the only reason people eat is for the social aspect of dining with their peers. Don’t get it twisted, I’m not trying to say that people would never eat if they could be social all the time, I’m just trying to say that the social factor is the deciding factor of dining at crossroads.
Me: Alex, you want to go eat?
Alex: Yeah, let me call Dick too.
[this girl on our floor overhears us]
Ally: Oh are you guys going to Crossroads?
Alex: [inaudible]
Me: Ally, you can’t come with us, we’re going to have guy talks.
From a personal standpoint, I didn’t want Ally to eat with us because having her there would ruin the chemistry of the conversation I would have with Alex and Dick. In effect, this would negate my entire rationale for even going to crossroads. So to make the nasty food worth it, Ally had to be ditched. Sorry.
This conversation thing could be extrapolated into the courting ritual as well. Food = Socializing = Courting time = WIN!
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Day 2
This place is loud!
I once heard that if you have a group of people and you orchestrate them such that they all say the word RHUBARB at different times in their natural voice, you can simulate the chatter of a crowd that would be having their various conversations. Supposedly this is how they generate the crowd-sounds in movies.
I’m imagining everyone in crossroads saying RHUBARB.
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The rest of the days, I’ll spare you because they’re mostly days of mediocrity and picking the food, and pushing it around my plate while I make converation.
Here’s a list of things me and my friends talk about
-girls
-sports
-school
-gossip
-relationships
-jokes
-clothes
-shoes
-drama
-other peoples business
-skating
-weekend plans
-what we did yesterday
-celebrities
-discussions of what people would look like naked
-discussions of who would potentially be good in bed
-the internet a la facebook
-balloono
The point is that crossroads is the epitome of mediocrity. It’s like high school cafeterias with their unappetizing food followed me to college. Crossroads is that slice of high school.
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In conclusion, I guess the only reason people traverse the blah-ness of crossroads is for the make benefit their social life. I guess that's like, you know a dumb-it-down version of those people that will bribe the popular girl into going out with them. Same idea: do something you really wouldn't like for the sake of socialness. Anyways, crossroads. I wouldn't eat there if i had other options to be honest with you.
I like the way your sketches reflect your thought processes while eating at Crossroads. In particular, your pictures of McDonalds and Crossroad's "inedible" food are well juxtaposed to show what students often think about when they are forced to eat at the Dining Commons.
ReplyDeleteWith respect to Latour's "Circulating Reference", I think your gathering of evidence and subsequent representatino of Crossroads is very much like the way in which Latour describes the representation of the forest. Like a scientist, certain elements (namely the bad food and a description of your conversations, etc) are isolated, evaluated, and then used as a representation of what Crossroads is: a place for socializing that students do not really go to for the food. This representation is easy to relate to for students, because it is widely accepted that Crossroads food is not that good.
The main methods of representation here are sketches and a 3-minute video which details the process of going into the DIning Commons, getting food, and then sitting down with other students. This representation is a good medium for conveying the experience that sutdents go through almost every day.
Your rhetoric in terms of describing the space is interesting. It seems almost like a stream of consciousness piece to me, in that you sometimes interject random ideas (such as the rhubarb point) that are not directly drawn from observingh the side, but rather from your thoughts whilst observing the site.
I think your representaiton through drawings is similar to Sue's treatment of Yogurtland, in that you both have sketches of a hypothetical "student"; one eating at Yogurtland and one eating at Crossroads respectively. Illustrating the site through the lens of a student is particularly effective for this piece, in my opinion.
Overall, your post was interesting and easy to relate to, because Crossroads is already so infamous for producing bad (and sometimes sickening) food. Good job!
-Albert