"Dave Gagnon is now single."
- Headline of the new feed on Facebook

They changed facebook while we were sleeping. It was like some sci-fi film where overnight, everything you knew and held true was now gone. Since Saturday, the Brown campus had been beset by tragedy. In a freak accident, Steve "the Croc Hunter" Irwin had been impaled by a stingray barb through the chest, and promptly died. Added to the universal tragedy of Pluto's demotement, things on college hill were not well.

After a brief introduction to History 110 - "The Crusades", I was left to piece together the immense tradition that was walking through the Van Wickle Gates. Fortunately, I found friends on their way to the event, who were armed with packets and information, and confident that things would be alright.

Walking down the hill, the conversation turned suddenly to facebook, and the outrage that something so universal could be so quickly erased. They hadn't exactly erased Facebook, but the re-formatting took the soul out of the thing. I felt lost in a digital newsroom of sorts when I first booted up. A series of headlines and feeds greeted me to "the new Facebook."

And across the top, in bold letters, the call sign of the apocalypse reared its ugly head. Highlighted with a pink heart and bolded for posterity, was the message "Dave Gagnon is now single."

The world had changed fundamentally.

We strolled up College Hill and through the iconic gates into the University. It was formal now, we were all Brown Students. We only had one way back out of those gates, and it lay a good deal off in the distance.

Faculty members in full academic regalia appaulded our entrance and marked the occasion with hopeful faces. As Jeb took pictures with a disposabal camera, there was a sense of grandeur and satisfaction. I was at once honored and humbled. I had truly arrived at Brown, I was truly expected to make something of myself.

Lunch followed lectures that should not have been given. At the Ratty, the Facebook dialogues continued. Dave had recently discovered that a group of his former friends had de-friended him on account of a political change of heart.

After spending time at Brown for but a couple of days, Dave changed his political status on Facebook from 'Conservative' to 'Libertarian'. It was an almost laughable change. On Facebook, profile alterations of this kid were virtually unoticeable. There would be almost no one to notice such trivial things unless the person in question was so ridiculously plugged in, that they monitored the "Recently Updated Friends" with near fanatical devotion. This was unwaveringly absurd. Political views were conversation starters, not cause for war or strife.

But this kid, apparently, was a crazy motherfucker. In fact, as Dave explained thoroughly at lunch, the kid in question was a proto-facist whose grip on reality centered mostly on wire-taping and other applications of the Patriot Act. He loved it. So when Dave switched view points, this kid shit an brick. Exercising Mussoulini like precision, the facist from Bates formed a coalition of the willing to de-friend Dave and put him in his place. Their prescribed motivation was that Dave had absorbed liberal bullshit on College Hill and fallen into the political purgatory that was Libertarianism.

(Interesting sidenote on this kid, he supports the Death Penalty for small misdemeanors like theft, shoplifting and jaywalking. Stuff like Drunken Driving requires medieval quartering, or death by public hanging. Just some additional ideological information. Just something to thing about.)

Anyway, I ran out of lunch to catch CS 15 with Andy van Dam at MacMillan Hall. Known for his absolute CS prowess, Professor van Dam made a dramatic entry. Kids from his classes had formed Pixar after graduating Brown. "Andy" in Toy Story was actually named for him- a frightening bit of information for a kid who believed that the course would kill him already.

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A few hours later, and I was at the Avon on Thayer watching Little Miss Sunshine with Evan, and Dave "the now single man of Middle Keeney" Gagnon. About 1/4 of the way through the movie, things started to go directly to hell. The projection went out of focus, then out completely, and then the feed turned into the pure white light that is film manna.

It was a beautiful film. Profound, stirring and absolutely appalling. Combined with the light rain falling outside of the theater when we left, the feeling of the experience was sublime. I was tripping on intellectual provocation and the midnight drizzle stimulation.

It was a powerful experience.

Around the corner on Thayer, we found a man playing the Saxphone and narrating his "famous one minute Oprea" between bouts of classic brass and smoking breaks. His glasses were duct taped and thick with scratches. But he was Providence, Rhode Island invested in the body of a man, and for a dollar or two in the hard shell saxphone case, he would tell you your national fortune.

We strode down an empty Thayer and through a deserted Main Green that only hours before had hosted Pizza tasting and before that, Convocation. We had indeed been called together. But were we already drifting apart? There was no one here on the agora academia, and it was only 11:00. What was wrong with these people?

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Midnight conversations with Kirsten left me in a mood of utter contentment. Over Quesidillas and Nantucket Nectars we had already achieved intimacy.

I had known her already by many names. She had been "Shrooms" in the reflections of a drunken night, and a chorus member in the adventures of other evenings. But now, with her nursing NeuroScience, a smoking habit, and a love for DARK movies, there was more to the beautiful girl than I could ever imagine. I was meaning to be pretentious in any regard, but Kirsten, like the talent that is Brown women, blew me away with her staggering wit and great insight.

And she was beautiful. That is worth mentioning, because it is always worth mentioning and because I had already "accidentally" described her as Liza Menilli-like, which was unfair.

We sat on my bed discussing disconnects with Alma Mater and the trouble with Brown decadence. We thought about finding the Brunonian Dream and what it would mean to other people.

But already, in our shared experience, the specter of the dream was forming. It had been Sunday night on the top of the V - Dub where we could see everything we needed to sustain college living, looked over Thayer Street like Olympian Gods, and stayed up drinking and smoking until the materials necessary had been exhausted.

There was only one way on and off the roof. And that, if nothing else in my collected fragmentary drunken allusions, had to be the main nerve of the college dream known as Brunonia.