Hana Yori Dango, the "abridged version"

I have no idea what possessed me to write this, but once I got on a roll, I couldn't stop. I don't know if anyone else reading this has seen the Hana Yori Dango dorama, but even if you haven't, well, here's a summary. Sort of. You can read this and save yourself the 9 hours of actually watching the show! Wheeeeee! Ha ha funny!


Makino: Hi, I'm Makino. I'm a poor girl who got a scholarship to a high school full of stuck-up lazy rich kids. It sucks.
Domyouji, Rui, Soujiro, Akira: Hey, we're the "Flower Four". We're even more gratuitously rich than the rest of the snotbrains here, so everyone bows down to us. Our job is to give random people a red tag and make their life miserable at school because we're spoiled, bored, and better than all of you. Really, there's only two of us who actually MATTER in this show, but "F4" sounds cooler than "F2", plus it sucks playing mah-jongg with only two people.

Sakurako: I'm Makino's only friend at school! Really! Heh heh heh. [walks into Domyouji with lunch tray]
Domyouji: Bitch! I'm red-tagging your ass!
Makino: Oh, lay off her, you pretentious asshat.
Domyouji: Fine, I'll red-tag you instead!

School: OMG RED TAG MAKINO. U DED. [tries to kill Makino]

Rui: Hey, Makino, you're kind of cute. Shame my friends all hate your guts. [saves Makino from the school]

Makino: Fuck this F4 shit! [punches out Domyouji]
Domyouji: OMFG. U DED. [gets his henchmen to kidnap Makino]
Makino: Oh crap.

Domyouji: Ha ha only kidding, I abdominated you to give you a makeover and expensive clothes.
Makino: You fucking retard, it's "abducted", and I don't want any of this stuff! Let me out of this crazy mansion! WTF is this, Hogwarts?
Domyouji's mom: Stupid commoner, get out of my house. AND STAY OUT!

( Well, okay, it's a long summary )

John Langworthy, 1977-2005

Goddamnit, why does this keep happening to me, finding out that people I knew at Carnegie Mellon are dead now?

http://www.caledonianrecord.com/pages/community_deaths/story/d0c846938

I came home from work, had an issue of the Carnegie Mellon alumni magazine sitting there, did what I usually did and ignored the entire issue and just turned to the back to read the "where is everybody now" section; scanned the personal news bits for the classes from about 1995 until 2002, then scanned the marriages, births, and deaths lists. At the bottom of the deaths list, I see the name "John R. Langworthy, E'99, 9/12/2005", and I'm like "NO FUCKING WAY."

Even the obituary I linked to above said that he "passed away suddenly at his home".

It just doesn't make any sense, seriously. I mean, I'll admit I didn't know John that well -- we were friends from anime club, back when I actually went to it. He was housemates with my good friends buoren and oren during the 1999-2000 school year (he was in the 5th year integrated master's degree program in ECE), so I probably saw him the most that year. I remember once spending a few hours with him moving the entire anime club VHS tape library, back in '98 or so. (Ah, those were the days, heh. "What? We don't have any Hime-Chan tapes between episodes 4 and 40?!!? Did they fall out of the crate??") John always seemed like a really sweet guy, very nice and very smart, but also so incredibly quiet and shy that it was really hard to break his shell. The only conversations I really remember with him mostly involved anime and Japanese and stuff. I guess that's all we really had in common.

I don't know. Even Oren, who was his classmate and housemate (and was an officer in anime club with him), said that they hadn't really kept in touch after graduation and they didn't know each other that well. I don't even know if anyone on my friends page outside the old Vermillion crew would remember him. I think that this time, I'm more freaked out by the "someone I knew in college, who was a good and kind person, two months younger than me, is dead." factor than anything else. I called Carl on the phone to talk to him a bit tonight. It's just really getting to me in this sort of, "what if I don't call people and keep in touch? What if I show up at Carnival and find out someone else I know is dead and I'll never get to talk to them again? Why am I cursed with a stupid timezone that makes it a pain to call people?"

It's just, I look at that page expecting the names I know to be in the marriages and births column. They shouldn't be in the deaths column. This is just too weird.

(Damien's death wasn't listed in the alumni magazine. I wonder if I should figure out who the heck our alumni correspondent is and email them.)