BEHREND BEACON
January 29, 2010
www.thebehrendbeacon.com
Happy
Green
Not a single inhabitant of Earth looked for the perfect person of their
dreams the old fashioned way anymore. Blind dates, meeting someone by
fate and all of those cliché ways of finding "the one" were seen to be a bull
shit concept in the not so distant future. No one wanted to waste time with a,
that romantic hoopla. If you wanted to find the perfect person you cut righ
the chase and went to the Green Partner Pairing Institute.
The Green Partner Pairing Institute matched you with your significant other by It ,
using the most technologically advanced computers on the market. These computers paired
you and a person of the opposite sex, or same sex depending on your preference, who had the same
height, weight, age, IQ, political views and musical likes and dislikes as you did. After being paired up
you would be married on the spot with no questions asked. This was originally just another social craze
that only a few people did to be unique; however this craze took an unexpected turn and became the
new way of social life. People were so happy with their paired partners that marriage survival rates sky
rocketed to 95%, suicide rates went down, crime went down, the economy became stable and war was
nearly non-existent. Partner pairing was the definition of success and eventually became required by
law.
The founder of the Green Partner Pairing Institute was a man named Linus Green. According to the
partner pairing computers, Linus was a five-foot, 10-inch tall man that was 185 pounds, 45 years old,
had a genius level IQ of 146, was a Democrat and loved jazz music. He was hailed worldwide as being
the genius who helped save the human race from incompatibility and was given the Nobel Peace Prize
for his achievement. Linus was very personable; treated every partner pairing customer with respect and
greeted them with a smile that made them feel like they had known him forever. He was loved by every
one and was even given a holiday named after him that was celebrated once a year by the whole world.
To top it all off, the success of the partner pairing industry that Linus patented was so lucrative that he
became one of the most affluent men of the world. Everyone thought he was perfect, but only Linus
knew that he was the furthest thing from perfection.
Underneath the Linus Green that the whole world loved was a poor, miserable self loathing bastard.
Sure, he was successful and helped change the world for the better, but Linus felt that his invention
was more of a curse than a gift. His problem was that he never intended for partner planning to be
come a worldwide way of life. He wanted to help people connect easier with each other, but in •
the process he killed off the one thing that was the basis for him to create partner pairing: ro
mance. Linus thought if he could help match people perfectly then it would give more peo
ple a sense of being romantic, but it backfired horribly. To cope with his failed good 2 ,
intentions, he became a raging alcoholic who drank aged scotch from a flask he kept
in the breast pocket of his suit jacket. This was how he managed to treat every partner ,4: :
pairing customer with respect; he was a happy drunk. In all honesty, Linus hated
the people who came into the partner planning institution, because they reminded :if.:
him of how he betrayed romance. Each experience with a customer left him with
a bad taste in the back of his mouth. You know the kind of taste that no matter
how much mouth wash you use you can't get rid of? To cope with this bad
• .
taste he smoked at least two packs of Marlboro reds a day. He didn't care that
he hated the smell of cigarette smoke, and did he care about getting lung
cancer; he just needed something to get his mind off of his misery. In Linus'
eyes he was a walking, talking, breathing ca-fucking-tastrophe that was suf- • •
fering from mass depression.
In the midst of his mental depression, the only one who Linus could con- '
fide in with his problems wasn't any romantically deprived person, but it was .
his dog Buzz. Buzz was an eight year old, white and brown spotted Pembroke
Welsh Corgi. Whenever Linus would come home from what he thought was a rough day at work
Buzz would always be the first one to greet him.
"Hey, boy! How are you doing today?" Linus would say.
"Ruff, ruff!" Buzz would reply.
"Today was such a pain in the ass today boy," Linus said, "you're the only one who I can
actually talk to about how much I think partner pairing is a sham."
"Bark! Ruff bark!" Buzz said.
"I know Buzz, I hate all those people. I wish it was like the old days when people actually be
lieved in romance and found the one the natural way, not through this abomination I've invented "
Linus said
By this point, Buzz was whining for Linus to feed him. He had stopped listening to Linus's
laments, but to Linus it made each day a hit more bearable.
Linus and Buzz were the only two living in Linus' mansion but before there was Buzz, Linus
once had a wife. His wife's name was Carol, and he had married her before he invented partner
pairing. According to the partner pairing computers Carol was a five-foot, two-inch tall, 110
pound, 35 year old that had an IQ of 120 and was a Republican who listened to country music.
She was very incompatible by the computers results, but to Linus she was the one. She was the
one who convinced Linus to invent the partner pairing system because she thought it was a damn
shame that people couldn't find someone they could connect with.
"Linus," Carol said. "you're legally a genius. If anyone could devise a way to help people find
the perfect person it
would be you. You
could finally end loneli-
Linus
Day!
an exhibit of Behrend students' expressive thoughts
Chris Marchini
freshman political science m,
ness!"
"I guess so," Linus
Behrend Showcase
Everything has to start somewhere
Hilary Bienio, junior