OPINION
MONDAY DECEMBER 8 2008
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
5A
MONDAY DECEMBER 8 2008
JASONROGERS@FLICKR.COM
I have no excuse to have the flu
Self-esteem, I've surmised, is the main accomplice to the flu in college. The week before my illness started, Watkins Health Center had even set up a type of guerilla flu clinic in my own workplace. I quickly scurried by. I didn't want my co-workers to see me cringing at a microscopic needle, and I thought I would be fine. After sounding like a duck every time I spoke for a week from nasal congestion, the encouraging smiles of the nurses I ignored now seem sadistic.
My worse memory of Rudolph the Red-Nose Reindeer coincided with my first lesson in metaphor. I came to kindergarten one day after a bout of the flu with a bright red nose, only to be greeted by the two jerks who sat across from me thinking that the moniker was the most hilarious thing anyone could ever say.
I am now in the same position, sniffling and coughing and trying not to cover everything I own with an insulation of snot. I've been sitting in the back of my classes. One Santa reference was enough for my lifetime.
A flu shot at the doctor used to be opportunities for free-range candy-mongering and getting cool cartoon Band-Aids my mom would never buy but made my aliments seem awesome, even if they were just covering up a bruise. Now that I am forking over $15 for someone to stab
Look around: Everyone is a potential carrier just waiting to sneeze on you or touch the same door handle in an attempt to seek out accompanying misery.
and swab me, it seems more like money pit for something I could be buying instead, like more Sudafed.
What I fail to realize every year is that the flu will hunt me down and strangle me with its viral strands no matter how many times I wash my hands. It seems like a vague, empty threat until I am lying on a couch buried under a blanket of used Kleenex. Yet, every year, this false confidence persists. I don't need a flu shot. I can tough it out, right?
The real problem is that everyone has a conformation bias toward the flu. It's hard to imagine everyone being ill when you aren't.
Don't be one of those people. Get a flu shot. You are less likely to give it to someone, who is less likely to give it to someone else you know, who will give it someone else, who is likely to give it to you again.
And the financial costs don't add up. Flu shot: $15. Kleenex, antibiotics, soup, bad movies you are too embarrassed to rent until you are home alone sick and no one sees you watching them: $40 at the least.
So go to an ATM. Withdraw $20. Drive to Watkins. Get a shot or nasal spray. Feel resentful for a while and then mostly apathetic. But you'll be able to laugh at all the sickly invalids come January. Maybe even call them Rudolph.
Oberthaler is a Wichita junior in English.
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THE EDITORIAL BOARD
FROM THE DRAWING BOARD
"ONE PRESIDENT AT A TIME..."
What's wrong with saying 'douchebag'?
When a newspaper in Baltimore had "douchebag" on its
NICHOLAS SAMBALUK
in September, you can imagine how many complaints it fielded from the older audience. But does the
relatively young insult really fit into the "bad word" category yet?
Our generation views profanity a lot differently than our parents' generation. My mother still cringes if I say the word "crap," so I can only imagine how she would react to the word "douchebag."
For some reason the word is not held to the same standard as other forms of profanity. Publications have used the word, and it does not seem to fall under the umbrella of obscenity that other words have.
So it's no surprise that when a club owner in Las Vegas named Michael Minelli sued the author of a book called "Hot Chicks With Douchebags," the result was some of the most beautifully absurd legal paperwork in the history of the United States judicial system.
The word is less of an insult than other profanities, and despite flak the word "douchebag" might get, I will continue to use it.
"Douchebag" is a "giggle word" that kids love to say when they first discover its existence and love to hear from the mouths of grown-ups, who are supposed to be, well, grown up.
That's the issue with any "bad word": context. On the playground, they're no big deal. But when a judge has to preside over a case where a "bad word" plays a prominent role, it becomes a spectacle. A wonderful, hilarious spectacle.
Pictures of Minelli, accompanied with a description of his alleged douchebaggery, were published in the book without his consent. In response, Minelli sued the publisher for libel. The complaint, available for viewing on TheSmokingGun.com, features a douchetastic list of allegations. Allegation 18 simply states: "The Publication refers to the Plaintiff as a Douchebag."
Mothers of River City, heed the warnings before it's too late! Are certain words creeping into your child's language? Stuff like "swell," and "so's your old man"? Well then, you've got trouble, with a capital "T" and that rhymes with "P" and that stands for "pool!"
The standards for what is profane and what isn't change all the time. Every now and then, a new term is used as profanity. Its place in the modern vernacular is changed, at least for a while, into something seemingly inappropriate. Douchebag is a fun term now, but I'd be surprised if it still is in 20 years. By then, some other hygiene product will have taken its place as many people's insult of choice.
A few days ago, a student used the insult "douchebag" to describe a character we were reading about in front of an entire English class, including the professor. Everyone laughed, and no one seemed to be offended. And there wasn't any need to be.
Even the feminist movement has started to embrace the word as an insult. A feminist magazine started a blog called "douchebag decree." It is a weekly post about
people the writer deems to be douchebags.
Some protested this word used as an insult, but a word that came from the idea that women are dirty and need cleansing is better used in that sense.
Douchebag isn't so bad. Like all words, it has to be dictated by the audience. Printing the word in The University Daily Kansan is more acceptable than printing it in The New York Times or Washington Post because it's used in the everyday lives of its audience.
We can call our friends douchebags because they know there is no ill will behind it. But this does not mean we should gnore the real world.
Douchebag is the new fuck. It's the new all encompassing word that can mean anything and be everything. You can throw it into any part of a sentence.
A friend used the word douchebag in front of my parents over Thanksgiving break. When my parents tried to use another word to explain what my friend had said about someone, my friend stopped them and said, "No, he's just a douchebag."
It's the new be-all-end-all word. It's time to embrace it.
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Rip his fucking head off.
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