Wasting Away In Graffitiville

"LOVE WITHOUT CONDITION. LIVE WITHIN THE TRUTH." -Desk in McBryde 209

One of the first things I thought about when I first decided to get a digital camera was all the enormous possibilities and freedoms getting that camera would entail, as well as the different funny photo galleries I could come up with once I got it. Well, none of those have come together yet, but I still have some good ideas kicking around in my head every now and then. I've decided to start a collection based on one of those ideas. What's this collection based on, you ask? Desk graffiti.

We've all seen messages of varying lengths and wisdom scrawled across our school desks before. Sometimes they're accompanied by a masterful work of art spanning across the surface area of the whole desk, and you wonder how long it took the person to draw it. Other times, the ink has faded so much that other people have made creative "additions" to the original quote (i.e., replacing the "u" in shut with another vowel, or something similar).

My personal favorite pastime in boring classes is editing the vulgar graffiti and turning it into something harmless, or even positive. For instance, an angry young man might write "This class is GAY" on his desk before leaving, but I would simply later add an "n't" to that phrase to make it appear that the angry young man was just defending the class' honor. Stuff like that has gotten me through many a class period. Another fun strategy is to perpetuate a pen-pal like conversation with different desk artists. It might last for several weeks and might look something like this:

Graffiti-er #1: Unleash the beast!
Graffiti-er #2: You're an idiot.
Graffiti-er #3: But I don't want to.
Graffiti-er #4: VT sucks!
Graffiti-er #6: [insert highly detailed anime character here]

The commission to you, my loyal readers, is to pay attention the next time you sit at a desk and see if there are any pearls of wisdom waiting to be discovered there. Whether you choose to participate in the graffiti is your choice, but do write down the good ones (not every phone number or "Jamie Loves Cledus") and post them here as a comment. I'll do the same, mmkay?