The hour badly spent

This semester, an unprecedented number of K-State students needed on-campus housing. The university responded by placing people in "overflow" housing. The photo accompanying Sydney Eagleton’s follow-up story in today’s Collegian makes dorm life look like the opening scene of a gay porno.

 

Glancing over this semester’s collective Collegian front pages, it feels like Manhattan is going through a crime wave. Stabbing rape rape stabbing rape rape rape. "If it bleeds it leads, if it’s sex it’s next" was at first annoying, then just unsettling, then, once it set in that this is not a temporary spike and that Manhattan-Kansas is in fact the rapingest town I’ve ever lived in, a special type of long-iced-over indignation rolls in. "I don’t understand why more women here aren’t up in arms," Madeline said to me the other day.

Perhaps because locally, the most prominent discussion of this issue takes place on the level of a gaggle of hippies huddling together in the rain. The point of consistently reporting the ugly stuff of this town is to raise total social awareness. The other day, Whitney Hodgin penned a pair of pieces, in which two K-Staters told deeply personal stories of rape and its aftermath (in both cases, the legal system turned against the women.

Whitney is a thoughtful reporter, and always manages to get her subjects to say things that add meat and depth to the topic. The articles came out excellent. The Collegian put them on page five, right across from Tim Hadachek’s weekly rant against the government. What urgent topic of great social and political import ran on page 1? "Many students unable to make decisions without help from ‘helicopter’ parents." Of course they can’t.

Among men — men who describe themselves as chivalrous, good guys, men who are oblivious to chivalry’s inherent rapeyness — the conversation begins and ends at "If I found a rapist I would Kick His Ass," with everyone else sitting nearby nodding their assent and scarfing down their cheeseburgers or whatever. If these good guys were listening closely, they’d notice something off about a lot of the dudes at that same table. It’s in their persistent braggadoucherie, and it’s in way they talk about the female teachers they don’t like. You will not see these good guys cheering at Take Back the Night.

Last year, my buddy Eric would party every weekend, telling me about it Sunday mornings over bummed Parliaments. "Some girl got raped at the party I was at last night," he’d tell me. Every weekend. "Were you at TKE again?" was my usual response. Then what? I don’t know. What do you say after that, not really knowing anyone involved?

Then there’s this friend I have. Her rapist still haunts her, in every sense of the word. She’ll be out at Mae’s, or at Finn’s, or at some old place, and OMG look who shows up! This happened about five times in the space of two weeks. She always notices before anyone else, being especially attuned to the particular tones of his voice, and he’s talking especially loud just to get her attention (he usually tries to occupy the booth behind her or the barstool next to her while she steels herself to ignore him). What’s my role here? I consider introducing myself ("Hi, how’s it going? Raped anyone lately?") but she signals "no" with her eyes. An uncomfortable silence ensues. FOR TWO HOURS. She spends the rest of the evening in a quiet trance, staring long-faced at a dark corner of the room. Hours later, nursing a cigarette on her balcony, when she’s ready to speak, I’m still not sure I’m ready to hear it, even though it turns out to be only two words.

"I’m sorry," she mouths.

Of all the things to say, why that? I’m sure I’ll never understand. So am I, I say back.

[K-State Collegian]

Tanya Gonzalez said she liked the line about "taking a cake out of the oven."

"Yeah," I admitted, "it was kind of pompous, but I like that they let me play around with stories about the arts."

[K-State Collegian]

Another reason to see The Laramie Project.

Led by Rev. Fred Phelps, supporters of Topeka’s Westboro Baptist Church plan to protest the Friday and Saturday night productions of The Laramie Project at K-State.

Ten years ago, Phelps also showed up at [Matthew] Shepard’s funeral.

“We do a reenactment of a Phelps scene in the play,” [Ariane] Chapman said. “It’s interesting that he’s a character in the play and he’s picketing the play,” she added.

In ten years someone will write another play about Phelps picketing a play in which Phelps pickets a funeral. Then Phelps will picket that, and another actor will show up to picket Phelps’ picketing, and then the universe will finally and instantaneously implode only to be replaced by something even more bizarre and self-referential, a universe in which homosexuals have written the Bible, God is a troupe of travelling actors, and all records of the whole thing are just an echo chamber of hyperlinks leading back and forth between each other, starting with this blog. Thanks to Phelps THE HOUR BADLY SPENT WILL BE THE CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE!! Until the whole implosion thing happens again. I have nothing to do with that.

[Source: K-State Collegian]

A couple of weeks ago, when the weather here was a bit danker and colder, Cherry took me to the junky thrift store by the highway so I could get an actual jacket.

While we looked around we came across an old typewriter. Whenever I see these things I get this vision of myself; I’m chain-smoking at a desk, wearing slacks, a white shirt, suspenders, and a visor that has a piece of paper sticking out of the side. The paper says "Press." I’m clack-clack-clacking at a monstrous Smith-Corona when the boss walks in. The typewriter dings; I whip the paper off the roll and present it to him. "Here’s your exclusive!" Then I sit back down and reach for the fifth of bourbon in my desk.

That typewriter didn’t work. But there was another one!

Cherry saw the crazed old-timey look on my face and bought it for me — a belated birthday gift.

"Your new ROYAL portable combines precision workmanship, found only on the finest office typewriter, with sparkling new features that make it the most modern and durable portable typewriter in the world. It’s truly an office typewriter in portable size."
– (C) 1953 by Royal Typewriter Company, Inc.

Typing is surprisingly quiet. If you strike two letters at once the keys get stuck.

Resting it comfortably on the desk is a simple matter of unscrewing it from brackets on the bottom of the case and hefting the thing out. This is before the Age of Plastic; the cast iron renders it hackerproof. Suck on that, Macbook Air.

In keeping with the polarized political climate of the times, the Collegian went all Lincoln-Douglas on us with a spirited dialectic of great social and political import. Joe Vossen took our orders first in "Curly fry best represents Millenials with seasoning."

    Being only a humble opinion columnist with little training or understanding in food science, I will attempt to enumerate for this journal’s readers why the true snack of the future, the tastiest tuber, is in fact curly fries. In double-blinded taste tests administered in the Union food court last week, curly fries were favored for taste by twice as many people as waffle fries (three people were involved in this study).
    Before they are fried, curly fries are coated with paprika and other seasonings (unlike waffle fries, which are merely cut and thrown unlovingly into lava-hot peanut oil) leading to a much more palatable deep-fried experience. Said one person surveyed, "These so-called waffle fries taste like salty chalk."
    French-fry aficionados will appreciate the crunchiness of the curly fry. The spiral shape of the curly fry is achieved with a special cutting tool that is either motor-driven or hand-turned. The cutting implement is set into one end of the potato and the potato rotated, creating the trademark spiral shape. The advantage, of course, is in the increased surface area achieved with the helix shape (over a waffle fry). With more precious potato in contact with delicious oil during frying, the result is a crispier, crunchier fry.

Duly noted. With "Unfailing texture deems waffle fry America’s best," Adam Phan served an elegant, well-salted rebuttal.

One cannot take the particulars of potatoes too seriously.
    To establish a hierarchy is necessary; to crown the waffle variety king of that hierarchy is obvious; to offer a defense of such a position is effortless. And why should that be? The manifest weakness of the competition? We could distract ourselves with a drawn-out discussion of third-party candidates - the road too well-traveled - but most of the lot can be summarized in the space following the semicolon of a single sentence; steak fries are mushy, shoestring fries are gritty and almost everything else is either too trivial or too ordinary.
    Curly fries do deserve their very own special rebuttal, if only for their startlingly effective frivolity. Why have so many bought into the curly cult, anyway?
    "They’re curly," the apologists lamely assert, as if novelty alone could serve a legitimate function. "They’re so spicy and peppery, so savory; how could one fail to appreciate that?"
    And what should be said about this seasoning? As is the case with tasteless little outfits like Arby’s, this so-called seasoning isn’t anything more than a crude preparation of paprika and onion powder glued onto a flash-frozen product.

    These are deliciously the best op-eds I’ve ever seen in the Collegian. Yet, as I look around, it’s pretty clear that today’s young snackers have grown tired of all the ketchup-slinging of tasty morsels as usual. It’s time for change we can believe in.
    If it was possible to merge the two sides, to sculpt and curve your matted, crispy goodness into a swervy mouthful of chain-linked yummy, then this war would have no losers. We need a fry cook who can bridge this divide and heal our fractured palate. And the healing begins with you. Heap a helping of each on the same plate. Let them mingle and dance. In your mouth. Just move the penis aside (zing!).

In today’s Collegian Sarah Burford shared a story about cocking and shooting off at a local firing range. At first I thought the article was mostly kind of bleh. But when I re-read it, I noticed it seemed eerily similar to the Jenna Haze (NSFW!) movie I’ve got open in another window, right now. I am perfectly aware that this says more about me than about Sarah Burford, but humor me:

"Whoa!"

I let out an involuntary yell as the rifle butt slammed into my shoulder [ed. note: That is HOT!]. The men around me chuckled and continued to advise my shooting skills. It was my first experience at a firing range, and I didn’t know the first thing about guns. To me, they were foreign objects, entirely too powerful and consequently, rather intimidating.

But my timidity lessened and my interest increased as the volunteers at the Fancy Creek Range instructed me on the basics of shooting.

This is where I made a major shooting range faux pas: I described a gun as "cute." No matter what a girl thinks a gun looks like, she [should] keep her comments to herself if they have anything to do with femininity.

So coy, so sexy. It’s totally obvs that it’s her first time, right? Of course you can’t tell a guy that his gun is cute. It invokes the castration complex. THEY ARE ALL BIG AND SHINY. My gun is the resplendent avatar of my virility. I don’t want to give too much away, but let’s just say my actual penis doesn’t suffice at all, wink wink. In terms of length and girth, nudge nudge. This is what it looks like:

 

The International Festival of Talents took place Sunday at McCain Auditorium. The performances were apparently a hit. Whitney Hodgin provided a servicey recap in today’s Collegian.

Singer Minako Nemoto and pianist Jun Tadaki, junior in business administration, conveyed "the beauty of spring" in Japan with such precision that it was easy to forget that most of the audience didn’t understand the language Nemoto was singing in.

"My initial reaction is ‘wow’," said Vikas Bahirwani, graduate student in computer science. "These performances are doing away with the language barrier."

    Doing away with the language barrier? All right Whitney, I get it. Whitney’s cultural enrichment this weekend obviously exceeded mine by far. She attended the International Festival of Talents. I attended TengaiCon, a local supernerd gaming convention.

    Whitney heard a Japanese man sing The Marriage of Figaro, bringing Mozart’s score to life. I watched a bunch of kids from Wichita dress up like bit parts in Princess Mononoke.
    Whitney saw Philipinos light up the stage "while balancing candles on their heads." I saw a fat middle-aged guy light up a D&D game board with a lucky roll of the dice.
    Whitney saw an Indian student perform a "personal" dance piece that "combined modern music with several decades of dance moves, including the moonwalk." I stumbled and flailed in front of Dance Dance Revolution for two hours, quitting after I got schooled by some skinny nerd.
    When Whitney walked away from the event, she probably still had "the beauty of spring" resounding in her dulcet ears. When I walked away from the dance pad, I heard the kid go "What does ‘high score’ mean? Did I break it?" Then he dropped a smoke bomb, and although he was no longer there when the smoke cleared, everyone could still hear his villainous laughter.

Prince Harry had secretly been serving as an army officer in Afghanistan. The news outlets in on the secret decided, for the sake of security, not to report this information. The Drudge Report got wind of it, blasted it front and center, and Britain was forced to recall the prince. Adam Phan, in the deceptively-headlined "Journalists should be punished for ignoring media embargo," argued that Matt Drudge should, well, be punished for ignoring the media embargo.

It should be noted that Drudge is simply not a journalist. He’s some guy with a blog. Like this one, but more famous and wingnutty and whatnot.

And as much as I want Drudge to be shipped off and waterboarded in a prison somewhere in the poorest, filthiest, most snake-ridden part of the world, punishing him would be an unacceptable kneecapping to freedom of the press. Without that basic principle, democracy is a sham, like in Russia; this particular blog could not exist, and I would have no reason to live. Other than, you know, the redolent spring breeze and all the people who love me and stuff.

There’s no such thing as a media embargo. The media can print anything that’s true. It is their job - and a necessary one - that they reveal, not conceal, information. So they found out what Prince Hal’s been up to. Kind of weird anyway, keeping him squirreled away like that. How long can you expect a figure as high-profile as the crown goddam prince of England to stay hidden? Hopefully his commanding officer, Dumbledore, showed him where to get all the primo Afghani opium, while his old pal Falstaff showed him what to do with it.

Piano Man: This is the best Collegian profile I’ve ever seen. First, it’s got a punny headline. Smarmy bastards like me lrrrve puns. Next, Adrianne leads with a scene:

"Wingfield’s instrument - the piano - sits toward a back corner with empty space surrounding it. Students and faculty members gather around the piano each day. A slim man dressed in dark pants, a dressy jacket and wire-rimmed glasses, Wingfield, performs piece after piece and serves as the musical vehicle as he accompanies students and faculty members each day."

So cinematic!

She proceeds with a deep, thorough portrait of campus microcelebrity Bill Wingfield, pretty much writing with as much style as Wingfield plays the piano. By the end, I vaguely got the idea of how awesome it is to be around Bill Wingfield. Then I remembered I have no rhythm, musical talent, or even anything funny to say about this article, so I hit the bars.

[Update: I just passed Adrianne on campus and she did that thing where you look at someone then pretend to be looking somewhere else, INSTEAD of just mutely nodding or waving hello, while you pass. I used to be like that too, but then I turned 15. Imagine being in a newsroom with a "grown woman" who acts like a high school brat. Still, this was a good article.] 

Today’s sex column, Students should improve sex IQ by understanding myths, courtesy of Whitney Hodgin, was written with humor, class, and balanced with sensitivity toward red-state tastes. I’m sure I’ll never see another article like it.

She gingerly reveals the typical deep-seated sexual fears of, surprisingly, men. Do women fake it? I’ve always found their blank, disinteresed expressions; their derisive amusement over my penis length, and their post-coital mantra: "Hey, it’s been real, but I’ve got a better party to hit up" to be extremely convincing. But Whitney meant something different by "it": "toe-curling orgasms." No, I’ve found that they tend to get bored and fall asleep before they can get around to faking those.

Does size matter? Dave, a K-State human sexuality instructor, said "As long as a guy is two inches long, he’ll get the job done." That’s right - this is serious work! Annisa, a K-State senior, did not agree: "I don’t think two inches would do it," which is not good news for me.

"On the other hand," she continued, "a guy could be really big and not know what to do with it, which is worse." I know what to do with mine. When it’s sunny, I hang my wet laundry across it. That way, all day long, it smells like fresh detergent, although I have to suffer the effects of fabric softener.

Full disclosure: I met Whitney at an English-majorey speech or presentation or something last semester. She suggested that I write at the Collegian, and because she is a cute geek girl, I did not disagree. Sadly, after I had been there for a few weeks, Whitney disappeared from the newsroom, leaving me nothing to look forward to except the aloof self-importance of the remaining more dedicated, if mediocre, writers. Occasionally I would look over at the old, un-manned Macintosh by the window and hope a left-wing geek girl would just materialize into the seat, but it just never happened, which is as good a metaphor as any for my time in Kansas.

Instructors sacrifice comforts to teach in Afganistan
Sacrifice comforts? Of Manhattan? Holly Campbell, are you serious? This place fucking sucks.

U.S. should appreciate life free of forced-child warfare
No kidding, Blake Osborn. Way to make the issue of forced-child warfare really hit home. Now I feel bad, as though the "violence we see in our movies and video games" somehow encourages forced-child warfare in Africa. Wait.

Feminists should reach beyond U.S by Aubree Casper, and while I’m at it, a note on reading comprehension: so-called "hippie-feminists" know that "feeling pretty is something some truly enjoy." The point of books like "Beauty & Misogyny" - which, by the way, I have never read - is that many of us have been bred to accept only a heavily made-up, pornified ideal as the face & body of Beauty. As a culture, we should grow up and expand our understanding of beauty so it reflects something realistic, something that includes real women, not just big boobs and Holy Oil.

Pirates vs. Ninjas in the SGA Election: Together, these articles left me with a deep and thorough understanding of the political process. Perhaps they lack insight into a few key platform issues (Pirates: what will you do about the menace of scurvy? Ninjas: where can I get one of those Naruto headbands?), but overall, this is what political reporting should be! Good work, Rebecca Perez. Willow: superb and amazing! That is all.

Yesterday, Brett King’s right-wing vomitorium railed against - shock! - Kansas’ Democratic governor. Athough he tried to demonize her, King was completely unable to specifically fault her for anything wrong or bad.

To wit, his argument seemed to be:

Kansas lost X private sector jobs while she was guv, but gained (X - 5000) government jobs.

Big government bad, making capitalist rich good.

Therefore, Kansas guv bad.

See, coincidence equals causality (I know what you’re thinking. But it’s wingnut logic, not real logic. There! Did that sort everything out?), although King is at a loss to directly or indirectly link the Guv to the loss of private sector jobs. It could be that a lot of companies just performed really shitty or went overseas. Of course, that’s probably the Democrats’ fault too. I’m pretty sure all those government “jobs” are just welfare anyway (i.e. they went to minorities), so I guess I see his point. Once again, great work Brett!

Just scanning today’s front page. Hmm… “KSU Horse Judging team wins world championship.” Fascinating! Not a sport that I particularly follow, but it is kinda kewl, because chicks look hot with those boots and that riding crop. And they rode those fillies all over the world, no doubt! WOW!

Looks like Ryne chose to lead by making grammatical errors, using too many words (“When COMMA most people think of successful K-State team, one of the basketball teams or the volleyball team might come to mind.”), and apparently talking about some other sports, presumably because those sports are exciting. But horses are fun too. Wait a sec… did you say horse JUDGING team? So they don’t actually ride; they gawk at the athletes, rank them, and then get ranked on that? 750 words, you say? It takes NINE people to do this, you say? And you can get a trophy for this?

Well, I guess this was educational, but I totally just lost the interest I barely had. At least the photos are nice.

The article about Ice T’s speech probably should have been front and center instead of the aforementioned horse shit. It was actually a good article! Eric hit the nail on the head: “Despite the lack of discussion of serious modern day civil rights movements, the crowd was receptive of the message blah blah blah.” Kudos sir!

Glaring omissions in Adrianne DeWeese’s “$1.8 million grant funds pathogen research:” what the fuck does Ehrlichia chaffeensis actually do? All that "vector" info is really really helpful - who knew ticks and mosquitos actually - wait for it - carry germs? - but once infected, what are the symptoms? Adrianne doesn’t seem to want to tell us anywhere in the article, except that it “kills about 3 percent of those infected.” I can only assume that it’s instant, and it looks sort of like getting Vader’s force-choke.