The hour badly spent

To be fair, it’s easy to write like Shane Oram. You hardly even have to say anything! But you’ve still got to use a bunch of words.

Hopefully, we all enjoyed the break from school, the time with family and the chance to eat (too much) good food and relax with a book or an Xbox controller. Perhaps we called friends to tell them how much they mean to us or made mental lists of the things we are grateful for.

Chances are, however, that something important, something we might never think to be thankful for, was left off of those lists — the Bad Things.

The Bad Things are those horrible occurrences in our lives: the bombed tests, the breakups, the blizzards (the icy snow kind, not the cookie-dough kind), which make us wish we were someone else in an alternate universe where problems have yet to be released from Pandora’s Box.

"Icy snow" and "cookie dough" are kinda cute, which rescues this column from the level of Shane Oram’s soul-destroying pomp. However!

The Bad Things are painful. They mess up our plans; they rearrange our futures. On the surface, it doesn’t make sense to be thankful for something so disruptive and undesirable.

But as ridiculous as it might sound, the Bad Things in life are often the reason that a multitude of good things occur.

For example, when a child grabs a tray of cookies fresh from the oven, he receives a deep burn, a Bad Thing. His hand feels like a million bees stung it at the same time, his mother is furious that he didn’t stay away from the tray like she told him to, and he still hasn’t gotten the cookie that he wanted. But at the same time, the child has learned valuable lessons about the nature of hot metal and obedience to his mother.

Et cetera, et cetera. Columnists are always trying to act like they’re our parents. "Eat your vegetables." "Don’t inhale that sweet, sweet powder." "Don’t have sex with your relatives." Maybe it’s better when they stick to fixing capitalism and eulogizing chivalry? Or should that be the other way around?

[K-State Collegian]

Oh, look. In "Sending the wrong signals through clothing easy," Jessica Ulrich’s got a tirade against chicks in skimpy clothing.

We often hear about women getting frustrated that men are only interested in their bodies and not in who they are.

"He stared at my chest the whole time I was talking to him!" they’ll complain, lamenting the fact that men are only after "one thing."

However, the truth is that more often than not it is women’s faults that they are objectified, not the mens."

The article needs imaginary skanks, continually thrusting bare nipples into the face of some drooling fratbag, and it needs this to happen all the time. And we’ve all seen this type of girl before. That’s not a woman "getting frustrated." That’s a woman who likes to demonstrate her superiority by baiting dudes, then throwing them back. Whatever; you shouldn’t even envy her. She’s got way too much ego riding on that shit, and it’s kind of a hoot to watch her run her course.

If a girl truly is intelligent and funny, that will show no matter what she’s wearing. If she’s trying to impress a guy and all he sees is boobs, that’s his loss. If he can’t get a sense of a girl’s personality through conversation, that’s his loss. "Handing out invitations for people to focus on physical attributes" is always the right signal, as long as those physical attributes are boobs.

"Why do so many career and employment counselors advise students to wear subtle, professional and modest clothing to job interviews?"

What do counselors recommend for socializing? A pantsuit, three letters of recommendation? You could talk up your good qualities. Constantly. Keep announcing "I’m funny, vivacious, and intelligent." Then quote Corinthians and we’ll all celebrate your awesomeness.

[K-State Collegian]