The hour badly spent

I used to take the bus a lot. During the wait, after I whipped out a Parliament, inevitably some grungy-looking lady would make a big production out of faux coughing and fanning the air, as though I had just pulled her into the rancid colon of a dying mastadon. And I’d think to myself, what a prick; she needs this more than I do.

Then I contritely move downwind of her and enjoy my fine tobacco product. Because while the lady is being obnoxious, so am I, which was the focus of Mark Ehrbacher’s Collegian column today. No, not me, silly. Smoking.

“The Manhattan City Commission will vote Tuesday to determine whether to enact an ordinance that will ban smoking within Manhattan city limits at any place of employment or at any public place.

“The argument made for the ban is clear and easy to make. Cigarettes are unhealthy, and has been scientifically proven. It is also a nuisance to some pansyasses people who do not like the smell of cigarette smoke [ed. note: try cloves!].

Years ago, California agreed, outlawing our smoking practically everyfuckingwhere. Now a related bill will be put to the vote locally Tuesday. And lo, some ado is being made about our civil liberties or whatnot. "The ban is wrong on many levels," Mark writes.

"Many restaurants have taken it upon themselves to have smoking and nonsmoking sections. If people do not want to smell smoke while they are eating, no one is forcing them to eat at this restaurant. They can choose to eat wherever they like.

“If there was a large enough outcry for a smoke-free environment, business owners would take it upon themselves to provide one to make more money.

“If a person applying for a job doesn’t like the smoke, they can apply for a job somewhere else.

Then he makes an analogy with people who work in hazmat jobs.

As a dedicated intaker of the sweet, sweet, smokey goodness, I know I should probably take Mark’s side too. But the bill will probably pass, because these bills are passing everywhere. And it’s really not much of a big deal.

In California, you can’t smoke in bars or restaurants. And so, when you’re out at a table, you’ll say "I need a fag," and you’ll go outside and light up. Then a few other people will join you, because either they are trying to fuck you, or because they also need a few minutes away from some other annoying prig at the table, or maybe some will just figure it’s best to do whatever the cool kids are doing. And it will be a nice ten-minute clique. The smokers will all feel like they’re in on a dirty secret together.

And later on in the year, when it gets cold outside, you’ll become more scraggly and determined, huddling in a circle with muddy snow under your boots. And one of you will point out that you’re all pathetic. And you’ll all laugh and take a drag, all secretly knowing that yes, you really are pathetic, which is fine because the people who stayed inside are just not much fun, which is always worse.

[Source: K-State Collegian]

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!).

Few things are more awkward than when a girl brings her friends with her on a date. Like backup in case the evening goes south, and the guy knows it. Saturday night I got to be one of those judgemental cockblockers; Ariana was meeting a soldier for drinks at Mae’s, and she invited everyone along with her.

As soon as I went down the stairs, I was greeted by a bunch of reporters in red T-Shirts. The Collegionnaires were pubcrawling tonight! "Hey, come with us across the street to Pat’s" said Brett King. Hey Brett & Co., just because I may have, on occasion, posted a few unflattering comments about  a tiny portion of your writings, this does not mean we can’t be friends, right?

They looked like they were having fun. And I did want to go with them, badly. Nevertheless, I had made a promise to Ariana. You know that I’m like the least manly person you know? That’s true, but it’d be great to have you there anyway. Besides, I really want you to meet him. By the time I showed up (an hour fashionably late), everyone was already drunk and surprisingly huggy - Ariana (felt good!), Cate (felt good!), Carolyn (felt good!), Cherry (slightly awkward!).

I spent an hour or so floating between Ariana, Ariana’s date, and Carolyn, who was kind of down because the football player she was seeing got mad at her for no apparent reason and slammed a door on her foot. That’s a definite no-no. He’s supposed to do that to the other team’s girlfriends!

When the soldier went to the bathroom, Ariana turned to me. You’re not trying to get with Carolyn are you?

Probably not, I said, drinking something that was in front of me. I’m not really in a flirty mood, and besides, my type looks and sounds much more like Ariana (reddish hair!) than Carolyn (skinny & blonde).

And then she hugged me again. Why is she so huggy tonight?

So how are you, The Hour Badly Spent? Her vowels are normally long anyway. Tonight all her small talk comes out like singing.
Super!
You know you can talk to me.
About what?
About anything. I search out her eyes. Maybe she really does want to get to know the real me.
How drunk are you?

By this time, Cherry had surrounded herself with guys, all of them much older and taller than her. One of them was like 50. Looking at her daddy issues on display from across the bar, I couldn’t help but feel cold and dark inside, like I was watching a puppy in a ritual sacrifice, except I can’t tell who’s the puppy and who’s the knife-wielding priest, who exactly is fucking whom, and maybe they are all victims with no predators or maybe they are all predators with no victims or maybe it’s just extreeemely creepy seeing some kid with old guys floating around her like stormclouds. If they’re going to swarm and compete to stroke this girl’s ego, why not just put their dicks on a chessboard? That’s a game I could play, because I get erect in an L-pattern.

At any rate, I settled into a booth, just sort of fading into the scenery. Ariana’s talking to her date. Carolyn left a while ago. Cherry’s doing whatever it is she does with clusters of older guys. I could sit here forever. I could also just go.

So I did.

Outside I tried to catch up with the Collegiannaires. How sick is it that although they’re snotty red-staters I really wanted to drink with them? The streets were full of people, cigarette butts, and vomit. There were purple T-shirts. Baseball caps. Girls with short skirts, long legs. Douchebag guys with their douchebag friends. A girl, frantically crying and pleading to an annoyed cop; her friend being responsible, "Christina, settle down. He’s not gonna do anything." No journalists. Starting with Pat’s, I went from bar to bar (the back of O’Malley’s smelled like gin and semen), skipping the ones with cover charges, peering through and around girls with impossibly clear skin, wriggling around more baseball caps, more short skirts, more long legs, more purple tees. Still no reporters. I went back into Mae’s and told Ariana that I was heading home.

Collegian, I noticed you’ve been distant lately. I thought you were under a lot of pressure, that maybe you just needed your space. I guess I didn’t pay attention to all the hints Blake Osborn has been dropping in every single column he writes about how we spend too much time on Facebook instead of outdoors admiring our muscles in the sunlight. So there it is: we’re just too fat and gross for you. But did you have to go and run two obesity articles at once? Sending Veronika Novoselova with the message, instead of just talking to me face-to-face; that was just cruel.

Genetic mutations, smoking, heavy drinking and negative environmental influences are usually listed as the most common causes of cancer. Now K-State researchers are finding that obesity can be another leading factor.

Say whatever you want to me, Veronika Novoselova; I can take it. But I will not abide the slander of alcoholics. They are a noble class of people who have at long last figured out How the World Works.

According to the Web site for the National Cancer Institute, obesity and physical inactivity can account for 25 to 30 percent of several major cancers - colon, breast (postmenopausal), endometrial, kidney and cancer of the esophagus.

Okay, I get it. We’re all gonna die! Which strikes me as not only a consequence of alcoholism, but also a leading cause of it.

In "Obesity an issue among all", without even bothering to let me down easy with a snappy headline, Krystle Richards notes:

Obesity is at a national, all-time high, and many are calling it an epidemic. According to the New England Journal of Medicine in 2007, the cases of obesity have increased substantially in the last 30 years, and 66 percent of adults are overweight.

Conclusions from a 2007 study revealed infectious causes of obesity are conceivable.

"Having obese contacts might change a person’s tolerance for being obese and might influence their decision of adopting specific behaviors." Similar behaviors are noticed among those who smoke and drink.

Now we can catch the fat. And pass it on to others, like syphilis (gross, but waaaay more fun to spread).

Like I said, I get it. We’re all rotund and lazy. But I’m doing all I can. In the morning I stand in front of the mirror and circle my flaws with a Sharpie. Then I say "fattie!" and hit myself with slabs of cheese until I cry. And at night I skip dinner to snort coke. See? I’m really really trying here. So why, Collegian, why won’t you just love me?

 

There has apparently been some sort of show running at Nichols for almost two weeks; Little Red Romeo & Juliet or something. I guess it’s such a big deal that the Collegian did a little write-up on it.

It included a profile of Romeo’s actor. "The roles he has played in the past have been more aggressive, and Romeo’s character is exceedingly vulnerable."

"I bring passion to the table," he said. "The role calls for a lot of passion, and I’m a hopeless romantic." More or less the same as every other handsome, slender, chiselled, actor-type I envy.

Juliet’s actress also got some inches. "I’m usually in musicals, and Juliet’s role is serious and emotional. She was sad, in love, frightened, angry and happy throughout the show. The range is so much broader than any other emotional range I’ve had to go through in a show before."

"Her character’s only 13 and I’m 21. I didn’t want to come off as too old." Ergo, she took Teddy Ruxpin with her on stage, a fact that the article seemed to omit.

Also omitted: everything else that happened on the stage. Fighting. Dancing. Tybalt’s outfit. Mercutio. MERCUTIO, dammit! We already know Romeo and Juliet are characters in this thing, because we read the title repeatedly, sounding it out very slowly, rolling the R’s and softening the vowels so they swim up and down in the air. Also, because everyone knows they’re in it. Everyone also knows fervor and emotion overtook the stage as Romeo enveloped Juliet’s face in his hand, tenderly kissing her as he gazed desperately into her eyes and recited the classically romantic verses that symbolize infatuated young love.

That harlequin-romance prose is in the brochures. Apropos of nothing, I have no idea what a Harlequin romance is, because I’ve never read any romance novels, not that I know it’s a brand of romance novels or anything. So how could Jenna Scavuzzo discuss the event and NOT MENTION any fabulosity particular to the performance (I’m looking at you, Mercutio). Could it be that she didn’t even see the performance at all? In that case, nice touch with the "gazed desperately into her eyes," but that doesn’t sound like Shakespeare’s style.

All right, ya got me. All semester long I’ve been making fun of Blake Osborn’s weekly articles, calling them "irrelevant," "outdated," "out of touch," "illogical," "asinine," "fucking pointless," "self-congratulatory rubbish," "osbornish," "like getting peanut butter in your hair," "like getting a papercut while reading the Collegian," "like listening to your grandpa rant about loud music," "like being stuck in traffic behind a douchebag in an Escalade who can’t drive," "like being flipped off by an illiterate manatee," etc.

And I was all set to make fun of him again, when I opened Monday’s paper to his column, Higher education vital for succeeding in United States (duh), and read this:

Today, as observed in The New York Times article, having a college education is vital to attaining a middle-class lifestyle.

Every 26 seconds a teenager in the United States drops out of high school. According to the the U.S. Census Bureau’s Web site, "85 percent of adults age 25 and over have completed at least a high-school degree."

The first time I heard these statistics, I was shocked.

I can only assume that "I’m shocked to find out people drop out of high school" is self-parody. Either that or he’s actually mocking my mocking of him. That’s so meta! But I refuse to believe that his message is meant to be taken at face value. Even in Kansas, nobody’s that dense. Right? Right? In other news, compact discs: they’re not just for music any more.
 

When I was talking with the Saucy Aussie the other day we both noted this one quirk of Kansas: people here tend to say the same things Stephen Colbert would say on his show, except when Colbert says them, it’s satire. The title of this post is a direct quote from a local gun nut. I was hoping that all the gun hoopla floating around campus lately was just whacko buffoonery that would die out if I looked the other way. Surely no one would seriously entertain the paradox that bringing guns to class would prevent school shootings. Enter the Collegian.

Last week they ran two front-page articles on the "debate" hosted by Students for Concealed Carry on Campus. And by "debate" I mean "no one opposing carrying concealed showed up to argue, because as students, they’re probably worried more about writing term papers and shit than waving pistols around." Naturally, I stayed at home to watch porn. But Terence, a K-State senior, diligently went and observed.

The worst problem, and the reason I left, was what this particular audience member said. The question was about the difficulty of identifying the ‘real’ killer if other students were armed and firing. The man’s answer was basically, "If you have a classroom full of students that look like you and you and you, and then a guy in a black trench coat with an AK-47 comes in, you’ll know who the killer is."

When this kind of ignorance and narrow-mindedness is allowed to be spouted, it’s not a debate - it’s propaganda.

Duly noted. SCCC president Ryan Willcott said "the only reason people carry guns on campus is for self-defense purposes. He related carrying a gun to wearing a seat belt in that people wear seat belts in case of an emergency - he said it’s the same with handguns."

While Ryan raises an excellent point, the analogy breaks down in that people don’t use their seat belts to fucking shoot other people.

But why do these emergencies happen in the first place? Why, indeed, are gun-toting crazies springing up on universities? Do they just pop up out of nowhere? Is there a training camp somewhere in Texas? Is it remotely possible that when you tell alienated sociopaths that having and using lethal weapons is the truest expression of your liberty, that it makes you a responsibly functioning citizen, that it connects you with the soul of our nation’s heritage, blah blah blah, well what the fuck else will the frustrated triggerhappies do? Volunteer at a soup kitchen?

Nevertheless, the SCCC seems to have a strident following. It’s inevitable; the struggle between two factions will dominate this campus. On one hand, limp-wristed crepe-chomping femicommunist pacifist Jewish furries; on the other, us, the rugged, individualist protectors, who are really just following the 67th book of the Bible: the Constitution. That’s right; I said us. Between the team that’s armed and the team that’s not, which side did you think I was gonna be on?

"People have the right to defend themselves," said Concealed Carry Instructor Patricia Stoneking. "To post any place as a gun-free zone is to basically pose them as a target."

There you have it. Hordes of bloodthirsty villains lie continuously in wait for the chance to pick me off. With my back to the wall and all hope lost, I’ve got no choice, only one chance to take back control. And this has to be subtle. If it’s overdone, I’ll be posed as a target. Therefore, nothing fancy; just a couple of gats, a bandolier (looks like a seatbelt!), and some surface-to-air missiles slung tastefully across my back. Hell, if you’ve got a problem with my Second-Amendment rights, I’ve got a problem solver. Its name is revolver.

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:

 

Is anyone curious about what it’s like to not have sex? The Collegian seems to think so. They weighed in on it this month. Twice. I wonder how much one could actually say about sex without having any subject material? On April 7, Ryne Witt shared his wisdom:

Casual sex for me was never going to be an option, because in order to have such an intimate moment with someone, I needed a certain level of trust with them. That trust can’t be gained in one night at a party or the bars.

Since that trust can’t be gained in one night, it would take a relationship to exist in order for me to have sex and, to be honest, everyone I have dated has never gotten to that point where I trusted them that much.

Blah blah blah blah mommy issues. Eric Davis followed up two weeks later:

I can remember the first time I tried to have sex with a woman who I didn’t know. From the minute we went back to my residence-hall room, I just felt weird. I will spare everyone the embarrassment and just say it didn’t happen. Also, I can’t remember a time in my life that I have been more embarrassed.

Details, Eric, details, or else we’ll be forced to engage in wild speculation. And you don’t want to let that happen, because we’re just going to assume she got freaked out when you told her you’re a furry.

Two of my friends keep going back to relationships they know aren’t healthy, but the sex comforts them. I feel like they have their self-worth wrapped up in their libido and if they sleep alone, they are unwanted.

Here’s the thing about a sex column: when I turn to this page, I expect to see titillating tales of frantic groping in the dark, not predictable bonerkiller haughty virgin preachiness.

There’s a special technical phrase for an otherwise painful relationship wherein one lonely party uses sex to medicate: your twenties. It’s not sad. It’s an awesome learning process. Plus, you get to fuck. Given the choice between - on one hand - an emotionally destructive mindfuck made better by the mutual celebration of sin and carnal delight, and - on the other hand - cultivating your self-esteem through enlightened solitude and frequent masturbation, I’d probably go with "fucking." Why in the world would you opt for a productive, healthy independence, when you could just be having sex instead?

 

Jimmy Carter recently began an attempt to reach out to Hamas, an inveterate and influential foe of the Middle East peace process. The logic is that since Hamas has enough power to disrupt peace talks by blowing shit up, making them a party to peace negotiations might discourage them from blowing shit up, which would be smarter than ignoring them and hoping they go away. The talks failed, of course, but in his latest Collegian column, Brett King honored the elder statesman for his courageous idealism:

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the definition of senile is "relating to, exhibiting or characteristic of old age: exhibiting a loss of cognitive abilities."

With this definition as the base of examination, it is time for the family of former president Jimmy Carter to call the men in white pants and jackets to escort grandpa back to the home.

In 1979, Carter was successful in orchestrating a peace agreement between Egypt and Israel that has since held strong, but even a blind kid hits a baseball every once in a while.

So there you have it. Old men are useless, so you probably shouldn’t vote for one in November! The blind, too; not much point in having them around, tripping over shit and bungling foreign policy the way they always do, unless it’s to the point when you reach the 8th inning and you’re really counting on a long flyball deep into right field, cuz the blind can swing those stripey canes like they’re bats, and even if it’s not a home run, you can have the runner on third tag up and score. Back to the point: a peace agreement? Not historic at all. In the scheme of things, really no big deal.

Due to the Bush Doctrine and years of commitment to Israel, the United States has avoided communication with the Hamas government. But have no fear, here comes President Carter with hopes of orchestrating a peace deal to fix the whole situation.

Khaled Mashaal, a top Hamas leader who met with Carter, said the group was prepared to offer a "10-year truce if [Israel] withdraws from all lands seized in the 1967 war." How gracious of the murderous thugs to offer peace for only 10 years as long as Israel gives up half the city of Jerusalem and other land holdings it acquired from a war it did not start.

Palestinians didn’t start the war either, but that’s irrelevant to diplomacy. Continual suicide bombings is apparently better than 10 years of peace. Calling names and then leaving the room is the new "diplomacy." In a world where peace is insane, the Bush "Doctrine" is the only thing that makes sense. This is how you decide the future of nations:

Hamas: "American foreign policy has left our people destitute and angry. We will go to any lengths to get attention for our plight."

Bush: "Whatever. Hey Jeb, pull my finger. Heh."

 

The coming of Tax Day apparently brought me so much more happiness than I could ever put into words. So I’ll let Brett King do it for me:

Like the seven dwarfs skipping off to work, our representatives and senators on the state and national level believe every working-age individual should be singing this all the way to the post office: "I owe, I owe, to pay my taxes I go."
Yesterday marked the day when all the good little liberal boys and girls felt joy in their hearts because the "government" received more money to pay for social programs and pork spending.

Unlike normal people, liberals lrrrve paying taxes! Especially to bankroll a war they oppose! Especially if they can do it while skipping along, to a catchy song! Cue the Versificator!

Conservatives rightfully (get it?) hate these "social programs," like health care, public schools, public transportation, and law enforcement. Fuck the cops, eh Brett? So maybe we would be better off privatizing this stuff. Corporations don’t do "pork spending." There’s no waste or corruption in the private sector! All the legislative functions Congress does now should just be outsourced to Exxon’s board of directors. Outsource law enforcement to Blackwater. Do away with the school system; let schools be sponsored by Washington Mutual. In a recession, your monthly bank statement would read "Due to a poor third quarter performance, there will be no basic fucking science taught this year."

In "U.S. surpassed by other nations connecting," Blake Osborn rides the cutting edge of some new trend, globali-whatsit or something, all made possible by teh Intertubez. "This unprecedented collaboration that makes geographic distances irrelevant is something to think about. No longer are students competing with people of the same nationality." Really? Better double up on that border fence!

 

Thomas Friedman, columnist for The New York Times, wrote his book "The World is Flat" in 2005. He observed how, as a result of the Internet and other wireless communication devices, the playing field is being leveled between nations - and this is how the world is being flattened.

Nations from around the world, Friedman wrote, can now "plug in and play;" they can innovate without having to emigrate. In the U.S., the issue is what we look up to. "In China today, Bill Gates is Britney Spears. In America today, Britney Spears is Britney Spears — and that is our problem."

"Americans’ obsession with celebrities and the next winner of "American Idol" is in sharp contrast with the developing momentum in other countries like China. In a March 30 article in The New York Times, Roger Cohen pointed out how the baton has passed to Asia, where there is a "confidence and a burning desire to succeed. Asian business leaders are rock stars."

Because there are no rock stars in China (or maybe it’s because the Chinese music industry hasn’t achieved the same levels of amoral asshattery we have here, under the leadership of guys just like Bill Gates!). At any rate, the proles are all over each other clamouring for a glimpse of the bare crotches of old white geeks. They like this particular "Gates" fellow because in China you can can get Windows XP for about five bucks, which I hear is pretty rad.

 

"According to an article from the March 24 issue of Time magazine, the Pope created a new list of seven deadly sins. They extend beyond the individual and end up creating voids in society. This "social resonance" of sin resulting from globalization shows how much we are connected as a world, without any frontier or Manifest Destiny to carry us westward." Manifest Destiny; those were the good old days. We didn’t measure our progress as a nation by the same bullshit we go by now; "social justice," "sexual prowess," or "the OLD Book of Proverbs."

"The competition has crossed even the oceans, and Americans are now part of a bigger game. So travel abroad, read the newspapers and get to know people from other countries." I’m so confused. What ever happened to ‘innovate without having to emigrate?’ And if the foreigns’ magazines are full of Bill Gates pics, I think I’ll take my chances at home, where Marilyn Monroe and Lindsay Lohan converge into something so wonderful and beautiful that it fills me with "confidence and a burning desire." Heh. To succeed, you pervs.

Normally, tables for two seat a man and his penis. But when Brad, a freshman, went to Gaymous Dave’s to grab a bite with a friend, his date brought his own penis.

"We were worried the waiter would think we were gay," Brad said.

They wanted him to know for sure.

"I know straight guys don’t worry about this, but two guys eating cock together looked weird. We joked about it all night, spooning in each others’ arms, naked but not doing anything."

According to a New York Times article, the "man date" is increasing in popularity. The article described the event as "two heterosexual men socializing without the crutch of business or sports. It is two guys meeting for the kind of outing a straight man might reasonably arrange witn a woman," adding "Eww, ladyparts!"

Examples of man dates include dinner, a movie, going for a walk, cooking together, or a 3 a.m. booty call.

"I don’t make it a big deal," said Brad, who said he had never previously heard the terms "man date" or "rusty trombone."

"It’s more sexy to keep it casual. A friend and I will just grab some food, then come back and play video games or catch a movie and teabag."

The Times article said attending a movie as a twosome can be an anxiety-inducing event for two self-hating gay Kansas tweens. Some will even go so far as to sit in each others’ laps. However, Brad said this is not something he thinks about and has seen multiple movies with male friends.

"I would definitely sit in the lap of a guy friend," Brad said. "It would be a waste of time to find an extra seat in a theater. I just want to unzip his pants, get in, watch the movie, and get out."

He acknowledges there is a line between what is appropriate for two heterosexual males and what is not, but added it can be difficult to define.

"Anything intimate would not be cool," Brad said. "It’s a tough line to draw, and I’m not much of a cuddler. I don’t want to be the one to draw the line or step over it. Cooking a meal for a friend is weird, but breakfast the morning after is different."

Brad said there are three types of "dates" for men.

"There’s man dates, manly dates, and gay man dates," Brad said. "It’s like Bush’s terrorist threat meter, with elevated, high and low risks." Gay man-dates threaten national security.

He said hanging out with a guy friend one-on-one is more spontaneous and less planned.

"Anything can happen! It’s just so beautiful and natural," he said.

Other men, like Matt, senior in manology, agree that man dates are more spontaneous.

"A date with a woman can have more pressure on it," Matt said. "With a guy, it’s just two guys hanging out. A quaint moonlight post-coital stroll with a buddy is just more casual."

Matt said he prefers the term "Cleveland steamer" to "man date," and would probably opt for lunch with a guy friend instead of dinner to avoid awkwardness. He said, however, he would not worry about the stigma of two men being out together.

"I wouldn’t be doing anything to attract that kind of attention," Matt said. "I can give blowjobs discreetly, under the table, like Michelle in American Pie."

Other men believe the type of place you go to can make a big difference.

"Eating cock casually with a friend is OK as long as it’s not anything big, shiny, and veiney," said Joel, junior in pre-professional business administration. "Eating cock at a nice place would be awkward though. It wouldn’t be any fun to go with just any guy to a restaurant to eat a $30 sausage."

While man dates might be becoming more common, that does not mean all men are comfortable with the terminology.

"The term ‘man date’ is dumb," Joel said. "It is a double standard with women. Two Korean schoolgirls with breast implants, high-heels, hoopy gold earrings and heavy makeup doing an Alaskan pipeline would not be called a date. It’s more normal and accepted, which is fine with me."

[Source: More men spending dates eating out, gaming together (K-State Collegian)].

In "Climate hype? People should look at the research," Mark Wampler presents the issue of global warming as bunch of blowhards shouting at each other. One side makes one claim, the other side claims the opposite. Which side is right? It is apparently not Mark’s job to check up on either of their claims. His job is to present one side as a bunch of wild-eyed kooks, and show the other side as being calm and rational without even adding any science to the article, as if his point is self-evident. Instead of putting forth a single bit of evidence either way, he just sells us an image of the people behind the argument, and so undermines the validity of his own headline.

In actuality, leading scientists are divided on the seriousness of the perceived global warming threats. While the cries of ignorance are abound, there is not an overwhelming amount of scientific data that supports climate change disaster.

Underneath Mark’s PR job, his point is that, ecologically, we have nothing to worry about. But what is this conclusion based on? Someone else said so. But why did that person say so? How do rising temperatures affect ecosystems? What does hotter air actually do to the environment, and how does this affect the human population? Though they seem like obvious questions to bring up in an article on global warming, Mark just glides right around them, preferring instead to just cherry-pick some "experts" from either side and call it a day. A vast majority of the scientific community does indeed believe that global warming, a result of increased CO2 emissions, does have lasting effects. This isn’t some radical hairy-fringes brainwashing; this is chapter 13 in a textbook I’m holding in my hand right now.

Measurements made on bubbles of air trapped in Greenland and Antarctic ice deposits show that there was little change in CO2 concentration in the ten thousand years before 1860 [which coincides with intensifying industrializing in Western countries - ed.]. The CO2 content of the atmosphere has gone up by over 20 percent since 1860 and is today increasing faster than ever. The CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is currently 27 percent higher than it has been at any time in the past 650,000 years.

Once industrialization become widespread and far-reaching, CO2 concentration throughout the atmosphere rose. More CO2 concentration bulked up the earth’s greenhouse effect, according to Konrad Krauskopf and Arthur Beiser’s twelfth edition of The Physical Universe, ©Mcgraw-Hill, 2008.

    "As fossil fuels continue to be burned at a high rate, the greenhouse ‘window’ of CO2 becomses a better trap for heat and the atmosphere will continue to warm up," according to Krauskopf and Beiser.  The proliferation of greenhouse gases produces a global warming feedback loop: as Earth’s average temperature rises, more ice melts. With less ice, sunlight is absorbed instead of being reflected back into space, making the temperature rise further. Krauskopf and Beiser go on:

On the basis of plausible assumptions, the best guess is that the average temperature in a hundred years will be between 1.4°C and 5.8°C higher than it is now. Even the lower figure represents an extremely quick jump, a warming rate nearly 40 times faster than the warming that ended the most recent Ice Age. At a 5.8° increase, the world would be an unrecognizably different place.

But that’s all just "scientific research," which is frequently the least persuasive point one can make in a red state. So if the back-and-forth thing is more your style - as if science is a basketball game - I defer to an international group of scientists who recently convened to report on the effects of global warming. Their results line up nicely with the figures in my textbook. Almost like lovers spooning (actually I don’t really know much about stuff like that). It’s as though their research is based on universally accepted nuggets of information. "Facts," so to speak. Before dismissing them as batty doomsday rhetoreticians, global-warming maniacs, whatever, be aware that they do have a large part of the scientific community behind them. They are the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and they won a Nobel Prize last year. They are among the scientists Mark sourced for his column. Too bad he didn’t manage to fit their research in with his argument.

 

The Collegian is running a "four-part series investigating the disconnect among certain student demographics on campus.
Apparently if you’re not young, white, and single you’ve come to the wrong fucking school, bro. Scope it:

Dealing with "the other" - meaning anything unusual or out of the ordinary [ed. note: thanks for clarifying!] - also can make American students uncomfortable to try and understand people from different backgrounds, said Bradley Shaw, associate professor of modern languages and director of international and area studies in the College of Arts and Sciences.

"I think that we are sometimes a little hesitant or a little reticent when we’re dealing with things that we don’t understand or don’t know," Shaw said.

Did people from Kansas not know this already? Forget I asked.

In other news, people who are married or have kids have trouble merging with the general population of wingnutty barhopping vikings about campus because they never get to go to the really cool parties.

 

Many students agree there is a disconnect among traditional and nontraditional students on campus.

As a traditional student, Shane Howard, senior in electronic journalism, said it is not easy to connect with nontraditional students.

"There is a natural disconnect between traditional students and nontraditional," Howard said. "Nontraditional students are forced to do things that traditional students don’t have to do, like taking care of kids. It makes them less free to do spur-of-the-moment things."

Shane, you don’t wanna hang out with these kids anyway. There’s nothing like watching a bunch of 20-year-old drama brats sip tequila out of each others’ bellybuttons to make you really sit down, take a long hard look at what your life really is and how it has led up to this moment, and then just go to hell with it and have an OD, but not on any of this crystal meth/jenkem the kids are into these days. You kick it old school. You kick it opium style.

 

"The week passed for most citizens of the United States with little awareness of the powder keg ready to blow in Europe." And so begins this week’s issue of Neocon Weekly in the Collegian’s Op Ed page.

Brett King’s article focuses on the release of Fitna, a 15-minute documentary made by Dutch politician Geert Wilders, that reportedly shows video segments of militant Muslims declaring war on Western civilization, in addition to Quran quotes encouraging violence.

(As if those particular soundbites are the entire Quran. Like they’re even put into context in their respective passages).

In 1984 (what, don’t you fucking read?), Orwell writes about a daily ritual called the two-minutes’ hate, in which the ruling political party gathers all of its members together in front of a bigscreen TV and makes them watch a video depicting an Enemy of the People maligning the nation. Whipped into senseless fury, the party members shout and throw shit at the screen, expressing their surging rage against whoever the authorities tell them to.

 

The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but, on the contrary, that it was impossible to avoid joining in. Within thirty seconds any pretence was always unnecessary. A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge-hammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current, turning one even against one’s will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic.

Sounds like their team is winning! So why, exactly, are they so pissed? Their authoritarian government has made almost every aspect of human nature illegal (especially fucking); the people come to the two-minutes’ hate so they can expel the violence and humanity simmering beneath their consciousness. That way no aggression will remain to direct against authoritarianism, the true enemy of humanity.

 

"The only hate speech which seems to be spread is coming from the radical Muslims themselves," wrote King, failing to grasp in the slightest how this film is patently offensive. That, presumably, is always the problem: willful ignorance.

The film is a one-sided portrayal of the Muslim world; a view that panders to racism and fear. Flyover-state neocons will see this and take this video to be the truth about all of Islam. They will write op-ed columns in newspapers across America that will marginalize all Muslims based on this small, vocal segment. I know how it works all too well; in L.A. we’ve all watched "Bowling for Columbine" ten thousand times. We think all Midwesterners are exactly like Tim McVeigh. Also: I learned all about women from 2 girls, 1 cup.

"Racial divides in Europe have increased substantially over the past decades as Muslims have immigrated to many European countries," writes Brett. "Refusing to integrate to European society and committing themselves to continue the practice of Sharia law within the borders of their host country has produced a difficult situation for many." Solution: strike down freedom of religion. Replace it with a border fence!

"Film should not be condemned but studied," reads the column’s headline, somewhat awkwardly. Yes, the video should be studied; but not in isolation, like a formula that purports to tell us exactly how all Muslims supposedly tick. Rather, it should — wait for it — be put into context with the rest of Islamic society.

An enormous portion of Muslim society has been quick to try to distance itself from the rhetoric on Arab TV stations. Yesterday, Radwan Abu Ayyash, deputy minister of culture in Ramallah, was quoted in the New York Times on this exact issue:

What is not fine is to build up children with a culture of hatred, of closed minds, a culture of sickness. I don’t think they always know what they are creating. People use one weapon, language, without realizing that they also use it against themselves.

Seriously man, front-page story. Don’t you fucking read? Of course you don’t. "The week passed for most citizens of the United States with little awareness…"

As usual, everything’s going to shit, according to Blake Osborn’s latest column. Whatever, just read on.

The fixation of the authenticity in politics and in food is a result of the overarching homogeneity in U.S. culture, according to a recent article in Time magazine. Legendary business consultants James Gilmore and Joseph Pine II, who together wrote "Authenticity," said in the article that America has "toxic levels of inauthenticity." As a result, they claim it is essential for businesses, if they want to thrive, to "start selling experiences" instead of products.

No longer are buyers concerned with only price and quality. Instead, they respond more to the product or the person as an experience. Companies must be "transparent," meaning they are what they claim to be, or they can openly fake their authenticity by offering cheap substitutes blah blah blah."

And in a single stroke, the entire public relations industry is unmasked!

Then he meanders on to his favorite target: teh Internetz.

The "virtualization of life, with friends meeting on Facebook.com and the increasing popularity of blogs, increases the desire for more authentic experiences with others…"

Meeting on Facebook? You can do that now?

But he may have a point. There was that time I went to milfhunter.com and since then I’ve been jonesing for Kylie Minogue. I just can’t get her out of my head. Her loving is all I think about!

Oh, right, I was supposed to say something about online degrees, wasn’t I? Well, how do you get access to education if you’re, like, ridonculously busy, can’t make the commute to class, but really need that extra certification?

Online classes are "not in par, in my opinion, with traditional classes at top-tier universities," a source told Osborne. "The general ambience of the class provides a better experience."

I would have to agree…in regards to education. I would prefer the interactive atmosphere of a classroom to the computer screen. Technology has its limits.

We must not forget the true meaning of authenticity, which is more than a blank computer screen or an ATM.

Authenticity? Nothing provokes an authentic existential crisis like a blinking cursor.

 

1. Observe a disturbing "trend" among the young’uns. Examples:

    a. Drinking diet soda.
    b. The interwebz.
    c. Fellatio.

2. Google or use Lexis-Nexis to find evidence documenting the spread of this trend.

    a. News flash: lots of us drink diet soda!
    b. News flash: lots of us use Facebook!
    c. Lexis-Nexis didn’t have much to say about this. I had use a different site for my research.

3. Keep quoting the articles until 80% of your column is really someone else’s column.

4. Use your last two or three paragraphs to decry this phenomenon as the downfall of civilization as we know it. Examples:
    
    a. Diet Dr. Pepper does not, in fact, taste more like regular Dr. Pepper!
    b. Facebook is the Diet Dr. Pepper of human activity.
    c. Speaking of Facebook, this really oughta be a Superpoke.

There! Next step: type it up on your mom’s old Smith-Corona (because computers destroy your soul. Not Macs, though). Have your "copyeditor" run spellcheck, and you’ve written Blake Osborn’s next column!