I met Chris Andino my first semester at the University of Virginia. He was the managing editor of the weekly humor and news magazine, and I was a first-year staffer. Dino, as they called him, was one of a group of guys on staff who were super smart and incredibly funny and quick in a way that I had never encountered before. They made jokes about the characters on C-SPAN. I was scared of them. My first year was Dino's last, and after UVA he moved on to DC and the Foreign Service. After a two-year stint in Bogota, Columbia, he is currently serving in Tripoli, Libya. We spoke in the late summer; it was late morning in Libya and 2 a.m. in Portland. Attempts to follow-up, get a little background info, some pictures maybe, to try to get him to say something funny about Qadhafi, whatever, were thwarted, because: the Lockerbie bomber was released, there was an African Union summit, it was the 40th anniversary of Qadhafi in power, he had a human rights report deadline, and then there was that whole G20 thing.

THE AWL: One of the articles you wrote in college, you said you could kill a cow and you could drive a bus, so at the very least, you'd always be fed and working. I remember that sometimes and think: I have no skills.

ANDINO: I was a bus driver in college, and I was also sorting trash for recycling. So those were my career experiences. READ MORE 8