PAGE 8A THURSDAY OCTOBER 11,2012 Text your FFA submissions to 785-289-8351 or at kansan.com I just saw Draco Malfoy. Cool. Can we just pretend like we're all still on fall break and no one show up to class? Silly girl, look over my way so that I may seduce you. Fall and Break: two words that completely explain my academic motivation. Hold your head up, Apogee. Someone has to be last place. That moment when you receive a laughing response from the FFA number, but your text still doesn't make the paper. Losing. Billy McCray is the first conservative writer I've seen in the UDK. It was nice to see both sides for a change. If he pays for his coffee with a KU ID, he's too young for you. It's about that time of the year where people shun me for my love of snow. Yeah, the First Amendment is there for a reason, but bashing your own school is not called for. Charlie Weis, it's time you learned to earn respect before you demand it. Freshman year I discovered cream cheese pizza. Sophomore year I discovered cream cheese donuts. I'm looking forward to what Junior year brings. I don't have OCD, but when someone doesn't erase a chalkboard all the way I cringe on the inside. Who knew the remedy for love sickness was bad kissing? On to the next... To the guy with the huge sticker of Dwight Shruite's face on your Mac: can we be friends? I would like to raise awareness about the whale that STILL lurks in the depths of Potter Lake. Football team: We know we suck, just don't put it on paper. Kicker wanted? What about QB want- ed? Thank God Late Night is on Friday. I missed my boys! All the hate towards the football team is sad. Don't kick a man while he's down! NASA should invest in manned flights Turned around and gave the kid coughing into the back of my head during lecture a cough drop, the teacher saw and laughed. Dear vodka. You win. Original hipster: Judy Funnie from "Doug." Now it all makes sense. Slipped going down the stairs today. Made some ninja moves and fell on my feet. No one saw me. That awkward moment when your uncle points out girls on your floor that he finds attractive... When I was a little kid, my dad would drag my brother and I out of the warmth of our beds at 3 a.m., all so we could drive to Nowhere, Kan, and stare at the stars. In the city, you can look up and see all of five constellations. Out in a cornfield, 50 miles from the nearest man made light, the true depth of space is unveiled: light from thousands of unique stars, light that has journeyed billions of miles and is millions of years old, gently hits your eyes. You are literally looking into the past of the universe. It installed a sense of peace in me, and an undiminished yearning to explore the aptly named "final frontier." It was nights like those that made me want to be an astronaut. Sadly, like most children, reality soon reached my aging self. Only 1 in 10 million Americans become astronauts, and that number of astronauts has only diminished since the great Space Race of the Cold War. It has been almost 40 years since man has set foot on the Moon. And why? Because after the Soviet Union fell, NASA's budget was slashed, and then slashed again. The Apollo program was used by Congress as a powerful emotional weapon to demoralize the Communists, and that was it. You see, Congress gets easily bored by science explored only to expand humanity's knowledge, and after the great enemy fell, there was no need to keep putting lots of money into NASA. Right now, of every dollar you pay in taxes, only half of a cent goes to and needs more money to do so. I'm going to jump out on a limb and simply declare that the U.S. was at the head of the world in education, scientific discoveries and really everything else when NASA was in its prime and more children wanted to grow up to be astronauts and engineers rather than the next Taylor Swift or Justin Bieber. est achievements in human history on a half-cent budget. But imagine what NASA could do with a 1-cent budget, or even with 2 cents of every tax dollar. So I, and Bill Nye the Science Guy, believe NASA needs a larger budget. So we can explore the galaxy. So we can unite mankind behind a single cause. So that at the very least, NASA can hire more astronauts, and kids like me can grow up and travel to the stars. You really don't have to imagine, because NASA will gladly tell you. If NASA had double the budget it has now, it could have sent 17 Curiosity rovers ($2.5 billion each) to Mars. NASA has plans of building a new rocket engine that could send people to Mars in 45 days, instead of 365. NASA wants to start sending people to the moon again, and establish a moon base for further solar exploration. You remember the warp drive that made the spaceships from "Star Trek" go faster than the speed of light? NASA is actually going to test starting warp theory, the organization that put the American flag on the moon, the organization that built what is essentially a castle in space, the organization that shot a robot 350 million miles to Mars and hit a 1 kilometer wide target during this year's Olympics. Obviously, NASA has been able to do work, and truthfully has accomplished nothing short of the great- Simpson is a freshman majoring in chemical engineering from Fairway. SCHMIDT HAPPENS By Marshall Schmidt HUMOR Watching debate on illegal drugs Oh my GOD, this stuff is FAN-TASTIC! Oh, ya want to talk about politics for ya? Here's some politics for ya if a broke hack like me can get his hands on stuff this awesome, what can highpoweredpoliticians get? Onethingsforsure: I want someofwhatever Joe Biden's on! When I read the news these days, it often leaves me with more questions than answers. For instance, when I read that story a couple weeks ago about the guy who took a bunch of different drugs and then painted a self-portrait while on each one, I thought, "I wonder whom he's voting for this November." If the guy's eccentric enough to draw a picture while stoned out of his mind, he's certainly eccentric enough to huff his way through a checklist of drugs while waxing political with his buddies, right? What would those conversations sound like? MARIJUANA COCAINE So, like, Barack. I saw that debate on Tues... Wednesday. Last Wednesday. And he looked so different, man! Like, in the '08 election, he was so chill, y'know? But he's kinda lettin' Mitt get to him! Like, lookin' away from him and frownin' and stuff! He needs to stop lettin' "the man" get to him like that! Maybe he should do like me and light up a fatty before the next debate. BATH SALTS Sorry for keeping you guys waiting. I had to set the timer on the hobo-face casserole I'm making for dinner; it's a new recipe, and I want to make sure it gets cooked all the way through to stave off the salmonella demons. I honestly don't know who I'm pulling for in the election, even after the debates. Romney is a mixed bag; on one hand, he hasn't been much of an activist for zombie rights, but on the other hand, cutting entitlements might lead to more poor people out on the streets, which could cut down on my living expenses quite a bit. I guess a lot of it will hinge on how good this casserole tastes. Call me a single-issue voter if you want; I haven't got a mind to disagree, or, hell, any kind of mind at all. LSD So I'm watching the first debate online, and I can't stop staring at Romney's flag pin. It's bigger than Obama's. Whoa, Damn, and you squint reeeeeccaaally hard at Obama's flag pin, you can see a hammer and sickle. Oh, God, it's Joey Stalin! He's wearing a flesh mask! It's a mask it's an Obama mask MITT, HIT THE DECK! God, I've got such a headache. Maybe I should have made Tyleenol the last drug on the list. Or HeadOn. After mulling it over, I've come to the conclusion that the election is anyone's game at this point. Either way, our country's gonna have four mediocre years ahead of it, so in the meantime I'm going to keep nursing my drug problem to take my mind off of politics. I would advise each of you to do the sa—WHAT THE HELL IS THIS THING IN MY OVEN! ALKA-SELTZER May is a sophomore majoring in German and journalism from Derby. "Seeking arrangements" another option for singles With the election coming up in less than a month, the state of the economy is only being talked about more and more. But especially if they aren't graduating for a few years, students may feel at least slightly disconnected from it. They may pay taxes, but many are at least somewhat removed from the stress of finding and keeping a stable career and how the economy impacts employment. But one way that the economy has recently affected students has been in their dating lives. The two elements may seem totally unrelated, but according to Seeking Arrangements, an online site for sugar daddies and their babies, the number of college students that use the site has exploded in the last few years. In fact, of its 800,000 users, 41-year-old founder Brandon Wade estimates that 35 percent of them are college students, who get rewarded for registering an email address ending in "edu." Students who register those email addresses receive an automatic free upgrade from a basic membership to the a premium one, which allows the babies to send messages to the site's "VIP sugar daddies" On top of that, those babies get a free stamp on their profiles that certify them as college sugar babies. "Sugar" relationships are generally characterized as being between a much older benefactor and a younger recipient, or a "sugar baby," who receives money, gifts and more for companionship, sexual favors, etc. Typically these babies are young females, but they can also be young gay men looking for a "daddy" or other straight guys who desire a relationship with a sugar mama. Many people gasp and scoff at the idea of these sugar relationships because they aren't "real" or that it's prostitution, but when the pickings at the University seem slim and the chances of being able to afford a college education by your lonesome are even slimmer, it's practical if you think that kind of relationship will work for you. Sugar relationships aren't for everyone, myself included, but times are hard. And because these relationships are pre-arranged with (usually) clear expectations already set, babies who wish to partake often find them very easy. By legal definition, the relationship between a sugar daddy and baby is not prostitution because people paid for services besides sex (sugar babies are often also paid for companionship) are not prostitutes. Semantics aside, though, there's no arguing that sugar babies are still seen this way. And having sugar daddies is often looked down on as bad cases of abandonment and rejection. But they shouldn't be. After all, many relationships are based on "agreements." The difference is, though, that other kinds of agreements, like good sex or convenience factors like proximity, or issues like "we've just been together forever" exist. Sugar daddies and babies are just more upfront about it. Everyone looks for something specific in relationships, and these babies are no different. By no means am I necessarily endorsing the website or the construct of sugar relationships. But what I am saying is that even if we don't wish to partake in them, the least we can do is live and let live. Sugar relationships may be blatantly superficial, but everyone is at least a little superficial anyway. Someone else's sugar baby status doesn't affect my life, and we need to stop acting like it affects anyone else'. In the end, it's just a lifestyle choice that struggling students have made for themselves to help fund their education. And in a vay, it's kind of genius. After all, ca ollege girl's gotta get paid, son. Rachel Keith is graduate student from Wichita in education. Follow her on twitter @Rachel_UDKeith. CAMPUS CHIRPS BACK Twitter photo of the week. Send your twitps to @UDK. Opinion and see them here. HOW TO SUBMIT A LETTER TO THE EDITOR Send letters to kansasanodesk@gmail.com. Write LETTER TO THE EDITOR in the e-mail subject line. Length: 300 words The submission should include the author's name, grade and hometown Find our full letter to the editor policy online at kansas.com/cotters. Ian Comings, edtor editor@kanman.com Vikas Shanker, managing editor vskander@kanman.com Dylan Lyen, opinion editor dlyen@kanman.com Bren Newman, business manager newton@kansasan.com Elise Farrington, sales manager safington@kansasan.com CONTACT US Malcim Gibson, general manager and news adviser mgibson@kansan.com Jon Schiltt, sales and marketing adviser ischltt@kansan.com THE EDITORIAL BOARD Members of the Kaplan Editorial Board and Ian Cummings. 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