THURSDAY,MAY 12,2011
PAGE 11A
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
opinion
I really wish my parents would cheer "One more year!" for me like we do for the basketball players. I don't want to graduate yet!
apps.facebook.com/dailykansan
When I can see both of your butt cheeks as you walk up the stairs in front of me, your shorts are too short.
My professor has incorrectly changed "affect" to "effect" in THREE different papers. The effect of your stupidity is affecting my grade, (bad sentence, but correct usage).
Gentlemen, I understand that the third floor bathrooms in Strong are warm, but for the love of your fellow students casing the stairwell, PLEASE close the door — the aroma is ferocious!
Dear SUA: Best idea EVER: Hire a massusee or two for the entire finals week and have them offer five-minute massages in the libraries.
Creeper in Anschutz is on AdultFriendFinder like it's no big deal.
Even though I look ridiculous, wearing my graduation cap as I sit on my couch in my pajamas and do copious amounts of homework really is helping me push through these final moments of intense senioritis.
I'm going to be out of town for Stop Day, feels like I am missing the college version of Christmas.
Student evaluations are the students' way of getting back at professors that have put them through hell all semester.
Couldn't decide whether or not I was excited for the school year to end until my roommate walked in ... I'm definitely excited now!
I am only allowed to open one gift on Stop Day eve ... Luckily all I asked for was alcohol.
Thanks Glee, just as the Rebecca Black phase started to wear off you made it cool again!
I got in the Free For All today and I can no longer focus on homework because I just want more anonymous fame.
Dear dumb students. You are in Kansas, when it's 90 degrees outside you don't wear jeans and a parka.
Friday on Glee = Crap on Crap.
This stress is killing me, times like these I wish I was a pothead.
Tonight, we dine in hell, for finals are upon us. Good luck, my brethren.
Procrastination seems to ease the fear of my looming finals.
After spending 45 minutes trying to figure out where and how to write on this, I forgot what I had to say.
"I flag" every Facebook comment that uses a hashtag, unless it says "connected via Twitter."
Things get loco when i fiesta. Things
get loco when i fiesta.
I feel sorry for everyone who doesn't go to KU.
As my sentence with this newspaper comes to a close, I've found myself reflecting on just how I ended up here in the first place.
Turning panda lungs into literary gold just part of living the life
HUMOR
Back in 2008, I was convicted of helping my evil twin, Fernando, sell a batch of endangered panda lungs to a black market organ dealer. Since all I did was take the box of panda lungs to FedEx (Fernando had told me the package was a collection of Beanie Babies he had sold on eBay), I got off easy. The judge ordered that I do three years of community service. After explaining to the judge that I couldn't perform manual labor because of my chronic not-wanting-to, he instead instructed that I do something to help the sick, the infirm, the near-death. So, I decided to volunteer in the field of print journalism.
The only problem with this plan was that I was wholly unqualified to be a journalist. I couldn't be a reporter, because they have to go out and
BY ALEX NICHOLS anichols@kansan.com
interview people and do research and the thought of that makes my notwanting-to flare up. And I couldn't be an editor, because they have to do whatever it is editors do, which is probably a lot. I needed something that would allow me to make stuff up and pass it off as "opinion." Something that wouldn't require any qualifications whatsoever. And so, after laboriously searching through the want ads, I finally found the perfect job: opinion columnist for The University Daily Kansan.
The editors at the time were impressed with my passion for misinformation and my ability to write 500 words without fainting, so they hired me right away. At first they were baffled by my insistence that I be unpaid, but then they liked not paying me so much that they extended the policy to the rest of the opinion staff. (Sorry, guys!)
That first semester was rough. I was writing simply to fulfill my requirement, and as a result the work suffered. For example, I wrote a scathing piece about some dumb Facebook movie that Aaron Sorkin was writing at the time. (The movie turned out to be pretty OK.) I wrote a few other columns about stuff nobody really cared about. Things were bleak, but I stuck with it.
As I continued to write, I started becoming more passionate about it. It was no longer just about the court order. It was about the people. Folks started to recognize me on campus, with
praise ranging from "You write for the newspaper?" to "OK, I get it, you write for the newspaper. Now leave me alone."
And now, in writing my last column, I realize that FedExing those panda lungs was the best thing I ever did. The highs and lows of writing for this page made for a truly enriching experience. If you have a passion for writing (or a few hundred hours of community service to do), you should definitely apply. Just be prepared to hate that one-sixth of the page is wasted on a collection of crappy Facebook statuses. And get ready to receive only the most inane/ insane comments on the online versions of your columns. Don't worry, though — the fun you have in the process will make up for it.
Goodbye, University Daily Kansan.
You were worth every lung.
Nichols is a senior from Stilwell studying creative writing.
HUMOR
To change from the world's worst teen to slightly-less-worse adult, start a blog
My mom is a total buzzkill, y'all. She's always encouraging me to do things and acting like I'm all awesome, and frankly, it is really starting to annoy me. Doesn't she understand that I want to squander my potential by watching "Sabrina the Teenage Witch" and tweeting about how I'm pretty sure Salem acts the way he does because after he was turned into a cat he went extremely insane and we all laugh at it like that's not what's going on?
I try to explain to her that my "Sabrina" theories are my livelihood (I have many...)
— yknow, the kinda livelihood that involves eating ramen straight out of the packaging (if you put the chicken powder junk on top, it's pretty tasty) and complaining about how much more awesome my television adaptation of "Sabrina the Teenage Witch" would be if only I were magically given a chance. Also, it's hard to care about things that matter.
Apathy! We're all pretty good at it! Let's play 9 billion hours of that zombies thing in "Call of Duty" and/or download No Doubt's entire discography and listen to it for no particular reason. Screw the future! Laugh at that jerk-with-your-name's face from the future for how many hours he's gonna have to work at Wendy's a week to pay off those student loans. Stay at
BY CHANCE CARMICHAEL
carmichael@kansan.com
But, wait! Maybe, my mother is right. Because the effects of those causes all involve me selling Wendy's Natural Cut/Chemical Laden fries and Sarah Palin wearing a moose fur to her inaugural ball. Maybe it doesn't really matter how weird (and worse than terrible) that last season of "Sabrina" is. I mean, the future is a thing, right? If my mom's calculations are correct, the best way to combat apathy is by actually doing something. So, I guess we should all do something, son.
home on election day — unless that voter's box somehow magically turns into that box of Cheez Its you were going to eat.
My mom has made some pretty ridiculous suggestions — one time she told me to write a Lifetime movie ("Because somebody writes all of those, and they have to be making a ton of money, right?") and when I was a sophomore in high school she told me I should write a "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation"
episode about a murderer who kills their victim with fireworks (CLOSE-UP SHOT OF CHARRED SKIN). However, on the occasion she'll make some pretty rad suggestions that are hard for me to mock. She keeps telling me I should start a blog.
So, I guess I will, America (if you are cool you just read that sentence in Bernie Mac's voice). According to all of those blogs, blogging is awesome, and why would blogs lie about blogs? Blog. And my mom is right — all of our moms are right! We should get some experience — at least try to do something productive, so we can really complain if we get stuck flipping those weird square hamburger patties (Wendy's freaks me out, guys).
After all, if there's one thing "Sabrina The Teenage Witch" has taught me it's that with a little care and work, you can go from being the world's worst teenage witch to the slightly-less-worse adult witch. If you want to check out my blog (which will be hilarious), follow me at salemisinsane.tumblr.com. It will be a funny summer, y'all! To you stinkers: SEE YA NEXT SEMESTER!
Carmichael is a junior from Mulvane studying creative writing. Follow him on Twitter @ChanceComical.
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HOW TO GET INVOLVED
Interested in being a columnist or an editorial cartoonist for the opinion page next year? Email fall opinion editor Mandy Matney at mmatney7@kansan.com
LOCAL CULTURE
There is no need to keep Lawrence weird
Austin is to Texas as Lawrence is to Kansas. A blue dot on a red map, with a live music scene and state university — the analogy appeared to strike a sudden grave familiarity with Illinoisans, so I adopted the tired response the way a local would recommend a fish house.
Having been a part of the colloquialism then, I shouldn't be surprised local stores have begun selling shirts emblazoned with "Keep Lawrence Weird." A play-off of "Keep Austin Weird," the battle cry of the more loveable Texan preservationist, its immediate comparison seems too convenient now it been slapped across a white tee.
In the hypothetical hierarchy of liberal college towns (a haphazard ranking based on the likelihood of passing through endless blocks smelling of incense and damp hammocks), Lawrence falls into a lower spot on the upper wrung. Mecca is Berkeley, Calif., a city upon a hill for people who deconstruct the city upon a hill model
BY MATTHEW MARSAGLIA
mmarsaglia@ekansan.com
while roaring around the paved edge of a precipice pockmarked by free-solo climbers and sun-drunk seagulls. Nearby, Boulder, Eugene, Portland and Austin compete passive-aggressively for runner-up spots; while in the east, Madison and Providence struggle with the question of whether or not to wear shoes: the decision demarcating hippies from hipsters, genuine from gentrified.
Between these cities, of course, in the middle of the country as every foreigner loves to point out, is Kansas
— a state occupying another hier-
archy of things that aren't sex. Like
Chris Mullin on the '92 Dream Team, Lawrence holds a deserved, albeit reserved presence amongst America's best enclaves for immaterial-driven dreamers. But aside from a consistent jumper and being a good listener, Chris Mullins had as much appeal in '92 as a Sade CD bought on layaway. Berkler has more Olympians than deep fryers. Austin rumbles like the saloon of a perpetual boomtown, and Berkley's a familiar folk song spread across a fault line. Lawrence just has a jump shot and a few good people to hear you out.
And to a sentimental senior, that's the appeal of Lawrence — it's sexy in a uniquely Kansan way. There's just enough organic ice cream on the cherry pie.
Compared to said cities, Lawrence has normalcy, not in the pejorative sense, but in the sense that Lawrence exists more as a real place because it's not caked in its own quintisternality. Unlike the way large cities and small towns signify themselves with certain
icons, impressions, attractions or possession of the world's largest things. Lawrence is not a basketball town the way Hannibal is a town memorizing its master.
For a mid-sized city, Lawrence represents the diversity within the body of the bell curve. People have normal, run-of-the-mill lives here, which outsiders might consider more boring than other liberal college towns. But until you're surrounded by people that are so buoyed into a subculture of a culture that is that city, it'll be a treat to see a chubby father in socks and sandals buying a banana split for his conventionally named child. You get these Rockwellian scenes in Lawrence because it's an hour deep into the middle child of fly-over states, and ultimately it's the location that preserves the progressive normalcy. Until this changes, we wont need a slogan other than the chant we already have.
Marsaglia is a senior from Naperville, Ill., studying English.
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