User:Clcrhiggaeeermo
Hey, I'm Charlie!
Contents
gratuitous introduction
Well, technically, this isn't just a gratuitous introduction. Wiki formatting would have misrendered this article had I not included text here, because (as you'll note) I am a snob and have therefore chosen to incorporate section headers into my sentences. You will need to readjust your eyes accordingly if you want to view my paragraphs cohesively.
These are the
classes
I took, and the halls I inhabited therewhile:
- LOU 05.1 CODE A, Rob's hall (Ryan 4, I believe)
Since it took me so long to find my home in LAN.2, I never rose to the
prominence
that some of my friends had, but I did manage to:
- keep the ten-year-old Fruitopia in my freezer between '08 and '09, and then drink it (unfortunately, not at Passionfruit, because Debbie had it and she wasn't awake then; I managed to pass it down at an impromptu ceremony outside Keiper after final classes)
- build postctydepression.com and maintain it since 8/27/06! (PCTYD has since spawned things like Project Future, a sporadic webzine called "Forevermore", and a forum community with 300ish members and some 60,000 visits per year)
A great many people have expressed consternation about my
username
which I use on RealCTY, PCTYD, Twitter, and many other sites. It garners more Google results than my actual name.
- It DOES have an official pronunciation: cull-curr-higguh-EER-moh. The third and fourth syllables are generally merged when I say it, though, because I talk fast.
- It can also be pronounced clicker-higga-ear-moe, because Jallegra said so.
- I insist upon using it because I came up with it during my squirrel year at CTY, during Duct Tape Appreciation Day. It's some kind of cipher on my name that we learned in Crypto.
- It's synonymous with ambiguity and frustration. (Don't worry, this is intentional.)
I am forever indebted to Max for teaching me
how "whom" is used
right here on a previous version of this page, and I couldn't bring myself to delete it during this update, so:
I'm not all that important, except for that I run postctydepression.com. And its magazine spawn, Forevermore. And Project Future. Which is kind of a big deal, I guess. It depends on whom you ask.* -* Is it "whom you ask"? "Who" definitely sounds better, either way, but I think it's "whom" here. Somebody please tell me.** -** The proper word is "whom," because an object pronoun is required.*** -*** Thanks, Max. Fixt.
I love
CTY
and I love the Passionfruit. But I love CTY a lot more. Partly because my Passionfruit juice was actually an energy drink called "Venom", and I had been really looking forward to drinking BAWLS.
Upon reading some other userpages and finding Passionfruit speeches, I've decided to post
my '09 speech
which I liked very much at the time. I find, now, of course, that it's a little obnoxious, but I'm resisting the urge to edit. Please excuse my off-putting capitalization and occasional repetition as crimes of passion. I did write it at 2am the night before, after all, when I was sixteen.
[The presence of Vic's megaphone made this SOOOO much cooler, btw. This was mostly written out, but I ad-libbed some transitions, which are paraphrased here. All the important shit is verbatim.]
Good morning; I love you!
I'm Charlie, you might know me from the internet as clcrhiggaeeermo. I want to start by paying respect to each of my five years here, but I promise to be brief about it:
Crypto at Siena 05.1: I didn't learn much, but it got me here. Comp Sci at Lancaster 06.1, with Wesley who I know is here, taught me how to code HTML (which is how I know a lot of you!) and I fell in love with Lancaster. It's hard for me to describe the effects of these two years, because we change so much at 12 and 13 that it's hard to remember exactly what it was that touched our lives so much. But with the last two years I can be a little more specific.
07.2, Crafting the Essay. No one from that class is here, but if they were I'd be thanking them for teaching me to stop worrying so much about who I am, because self-improvement is one thing, but self-obsession is another. And because of Crafting I turned from introspection to action.
Then I took Logic, with Lena, Victor, Maggie, Jill, and Emily, and I learned how to think, how to remove the fallacies from what I said, and more importantly what I did. I have Logic B to thank for teaching me not to languish in uncertainty, but instead to deduce and defend the truth.
And now I'm about to finish Utopias and Dystopias, and I can't say yet what change it's made in me, but I know I've loved spending every minute of it with the greatest people I've had the fortune to meet. You might know them as the Alcove, but I know them as Race, Vinny, Rips, Jake, Wendy, Emily, Vic, Bee, Lena, Mike, Dan, Mackenzie, Bree, Maggie, Allegra, Otter, Eliz, Jill, Cassidy, Declan, Marnie, Logan, Dennis, Ariane, Morgan, Gibbie, and like five others whom I forgot, but I still love.
Just writing down those names brought to mind a feeling of intense friendship. Which is ironic, because ever since I heard about the Alcove I wanted to be a part of it, and until this year I never really was. But this year, without my even asking, they embraced me with a warmth and a group love that is really the essence of CTY, even before we formed the individual bonds that I cherish so much right now. But these one-to-one relationships mask the disturbing fact that we all know to be true: The Alcove is dying, and along with it traditionalism, spontaneity, and the veneration of the visible genius. So I have a message for you, Sam, and PHB, and Otter, and everyone else who's coming back: DON'T LET IT HAPPEN.
Let's start with the PDA rules: They were cruel to us this year, and it made it harder to fall in love. And for that reason I implore you: FUCK THE RULES! Keep kissing, keep embracing, keep holding hands, keep making eye contact, keep whispering, keep thinking about your lovers the way they deserve - no matter how far they go with the rules, do everything you need to do to be in love. If you let the rules get stricter, they will choke CTY where it stands. Do not let that happen!
Why is it important? Because I would not have become this, this confident man who can speak proudly and think clearly and love completely, without CTY. So I cannot allow you to deny someone the same opportunity by allowing our community to become the passionless adolescent daycare that Baltimore is designing. So it's up to you: be interesting, be sexy, amaze each other. When I was younger I made the mistake of thinking that CTY's magic happens automatically when you put 600 nerds together. But that's not true. We have to do it ourselves. It is no longer enough to sit and watch the game; it will end if more people don't start playing. There are people in this circle who spent these weeks consuming CTY, but not helping to produce it. And that is not okay anymore! By all means immerse yourselves in the beauty here, but not without adding your own.
That said, I'd have nothing to complain about if CTY hadn't been the best thing that ever happened to me. Thank you for making me into a person I love being! Thank you for teaching me and kissing me, making me laugh and making me think - every year my mind falls asleep and every year you wake it up. I wish I could recapture the passion I had for this place when I was 14, because it was stronger then than it is now, and I'd have a lot better things to say.
So that's it. I love you all; if you haven't kissed me yet, come do it or my heart will break and we'll have to put it back togedda wit some RICE!
[At this point Mike came up and loomed over me as I insisted on finishing the last sentence]
I'm sorry this speech was so long, but I had to do something to protest the cruel fleeting of time.
[Then Mike stuck his tongue into my mouth. I didn't have a choice in the matter.]
I love CTY, and I love the Passionfruit!
[Then there was a line of seventeen people waiting to make out with me. I did not anticipate this. After I had satisfied them: ]
Again I love CTY, and again I love the Passionfruit. Now where's the BAWLS? [looks around] You took the BAWLS? NO! I'll have to drink the VENOM!
[Applause; I returned to my seat, where I made a list of everyone out with whom I had just made, and several people chose to qualify for the list at that point as well. It was glorious.]
