The Pathetic Adventures of Rory Hornblower

Greetings, earthlings (and Ross Fischer). My name is Rory Hornblower, and I am Jonathan Yu's new full-time Communist, er, columnist. First of all, I would like to apologize on my boss' behalf for the delay in getting our website up and running in 2001. What can I say? The guy's a sex maniac. I mean, this is a man who reads Britney Spears for the articles. But enough about him. Let's talk about me and my trip back home for the holidays. Garden Grove is a nice place and all, but if you really want to live, get your ass to Mountain View, CA – a quaint suburb of 100,000 that's home to my family, Microsoft, and an amphitheatre built on a pile of shit.

It was dark outside, and no, I'm not talking about Rosie O'Donnell's vagina. Where were all the Christmas lights which usually accompany the season of feeding homeless people? Maybe Tim Burton was filming a movie here. Or maybe I had boarded the wrong flight and flown to Israel instead. Oh, wait a minute. That's right. California has no power. Apparently, those rubber fish are more popular than I thought. I still wish my hometown could at least try to get into the holiday spirit. Then again, this was the same city that decided to welcome the "millennium" with a mass bell-ringing.

One cold December night, I paid a visit to Mountain View High School, and walking through the empty halls of my old stomping grounds, it all came back to me – the drug busts, marching band rehearsal, the drug busts at marching band rehearsal, Stress Awareness Week, and the time I lost my virginity, found it crumpled up in Martin Roark's backpack, and lost it again in a maelstrom of licentious passion to Shea Anderson in the dark room of the photo lab. What fool this mortal be. How could I have been so puerile? I never loved her. My heart always belonged, and still belongs, to Diane. Diaaaaaaaaaane!

Besides the fact that it looked like South Central, caged in by a disconcertingly large graffiti wall, what struck me most about my alma mater was how new age it had become. Idealism saturated every corridor, and I couldn't help but feel that it was a phony kind of idealism – imposed optimism, if you will. I mean, there was less sincerity here than there is parking at the Special Olympics. Everywhere I went I saw postings preaching the "you can do it" attitude. One particular flyer that caught my attention hawked a new organization called Women Enlightened, as if women have been locked in a cave for the past 50 years. I have a feeling this club won't last very long, because sooner or later, women will discover fire, learn how to use tools, and marry Mormons. What's more, who knew that Mountain View had its own Latino Movement too, meeting every Wednesday during lunch to "discuss hip-hop dance contest & resource fair"? This is what it has come down to, folks: the achievements of Cesar Chavez beget freaking slutty girls at a fucking resource fair.

Speaking of a Latino Movement, I saw the movie Traffic and I have to say, Benicio Del Toro, if you're reading this, you can do my garden work any day.

On the trip back to Southern California, there was a billboard for Forbes magazine that told me to "Proliferate Capitalism." Why? What has capitalism done for me lately? Power shortages, another Bush administration, and Temptation Island. Happy Chinese New Year indeed. • RH

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