KWSAN COMMENT
More cheap thrills
Looking through a strange magazine the other day, I ran across a picture of a really beautiful blonde. Slowly my eyes moved to the bold headlines on the same page and I was immediately puzzled.
"Just add air," it said, "and she's ready for real action."
Well, I looked at the blonde again. I'm not sure just exactly what I was expecting to find, but I didn't. I mean I didn't find anything particularly unusual about her.
This was certainly startling. Never before had I seen a girl's picture with a headline that said, "Just add air." But then I'd never read this magazine before, either. I was at a friend's place, you know, and this was the only thing he had around to read.
Not that I'm apologizing, understand. I consider myself free to read anything I want. I just want you to know that I don't read girlie magazines all the time.
Anyway, I read on and discovered that the blonde was really only a doll—an inflatable doll that sells for about ten dollars. But she wasn't any ordinary old inflatable doll, not by any means. She was the "ultra deluxe model."
This amazing inflatable doll even wrote her own advertising copy. Listen to what she had to say about herself:
"I'm completely life-like in every detail . . .
My soft, life-like body is flexible and bendable.
Let me be your loving companion . . . I know you will love playing with me."
The ad specified that she stands five feet four inches tall and measures 37-23-36. I had to admit that for ten dollars she sounded like a bargain. But in spite of all of her many attributes and her modest price, I knew that this doll just wasn't my type. And I began wondering just what kind of people her customers might be.
Using my orthodox reasoning, I decided first of all that most of the customers would be men. But what kind of men? I struggled for an answer and finally, being an optimist myself, I came up with a heartening theory.
Yes, the answer was obvious. The man that would buy an inflatable doll was an ecology-minded man. Probably the most critical problem facing the world today is the soaring population. And although this doll could do a lot of surprising things, I really doubted if she could become pregnant. I wasn't certain, of course, but I doubted it.
This was definitely good news—a potential solution to a threatening problem. This doll possessed all the major qualifications. She was
cheap, appealing, and sterile. It would be simply a matter of educating the public—introducing slogans like, "A doll in every home." Yes, this was an exciting idea. I went next door to explain it to my neighbor, who I have always considered a logical man.
"Perversion!" he shouted
"Ecology," I said.
"Perversion!" he repeated.
He had a point. I'd thought that doll advertisement was kind of odd when I first saw it, you know. Maybe the men who bought that doll weren't even interested in ecology. They might have bought the doll even if she wasn't sterile.
But why else would a man prefer a doll instead of a real, live woman? Possibly. I thought, because a doll doesn't present any obligations or responsibilities. A man can enjoy his doll and then shove her in a closet. With the doll, a man does not have to compromise his freedom.
"No one in his right mind cares that much about freedom," my neighbor said when I told him about my idea. He'd heard of people becoming slaves to their own desire for freedom, but this situation was much worse, he said. They're just a bunch of dirty old men who go out and buy dolls because no real woman will have anything to do with them," he explained.
Being an optimist, I just couldn't accept that statement. I've always believed that for every dirty old man, there is an equally dirty old woman. If I'm right, it seems that they ought to be able to get together, unless there's some kind of a communication gap.
Communication! I knew that I'd found the key at last. When confronting the opposite sex, too many people are still trying to be subtle. The trouble is that the world is now moving too fast for subtlety to be effective.
"We've got to have signs." I said.
"Signs, what signs, signs of what?" my neighbor asked.
"But what kind of signs?" he asked,
"Signs that say, I'm Looking for a Dirty Old Woman,' or even 'I'm Looking for a Replacement for My Inflatable Doll.'" I said. "We've just got to get these people together!."
Sorel's News Service
"But what about ecology?" my neighbor asked.
"The hell with ecology." I said. "We've got to stamp out all this perversion."
Joe Naas
"It's very far away. It takes about half a day. To get there, if we travel by my dragonfly."—Jimi Hendrix
Where it's at
Pepperland, Oz, Nirvana, Euphoria. They've always seemed a little abstract to me. I've wanted to go, but I could never understand exactly where they are. Even Jimi's directions confused me more than they helped.
But I've been enlightened. Yes, I know where it's at now. Fort Hays. That's right. Fort Hays. If the whole town is like the college, and it probably is, then Fort Hays is a citadel of peace. The college admission questionnaire says that everyone there is "solid, clean-cut, and well-groomed." They keep it like that by trying to keep out people who might have problems.
Waste?
—Joe Naas
LONDON (UPI)—Five British garbage men have won Sir Winston Churchill memorial trust grants of $3.600 to travel abroad and see how other countries collect and dispose of their refuse.
Oh wow. A land of perfection. Now if I can just locate my . . . uh . . dragonfly.
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WASHINGTON—The F-111, the Air Force's swing-wing attack plane, has yet another "serious shortcoming." This latest flaw—an inadequate wing box—will require overhauling 450 planes at an expected cost of $80 million. A Senate Appropriations subcommittee also revealed that the F-111, which has cost more than three times the original estimate, is "seriously short in engine power for non-nuclear missions." But, says vice-commander of the Air Force Systems Command John W. O'Neill: "The F-111 is a very good airplane."
It's Superbotch
hearing voices一
To the editor:
The demonstrations against ROTC last year, and the moratoriums and anti-war demonstrations of this year certainly illustrated an apparently intense desire on the part of many people (especially in the moratoriums) to bring an end to the war in Vietnam. The ROTC question is being hashed over and the war continues. It is time to be realistic.
In effect, every person demonstrating against the war, by the mere fact that he exists, is an integral part of the basic problem that caused that very war to start and is enabling it to continue.
The demonstrations were aimed at the wrong target
I am not justifying war. But if this problem and others (pollution, pesticide poisoning, famine, etc.) are to be alleviated, the basic cause must be alleviated, that being over-population.
I challenge every single person who participated in anti-ROTC demonstrations and moratoriums to give at least as much active support to the movement for population control. Not to do so would be hypocrisy, unless the anti-war movement is just an immature fad packed with insincerity.
I further challenge every one else to move into action. The population problem is every one's problem. But remember that concern is fruitless unless one takes action toward correcting the situation. Join the "Zero-Population" organization, write senators and congressmen, write school-board members and teachers from home-town schools urging that proper education in population control be started now, early enough to sustain the movement generation after generation.
The scope of the human-survival problem is finally being realized. Time is running out. Do something.
Robert E. Fisher
Auburn, Neb., sophomore
$$
★★
$$
To the editor:
To the extent that publicly demonstrated ignorance is proof that Kansas should spend more money on education, Mike Shearer's, "Money, money, money..." editorial in the Thursday, February 10 UDK demonstrates much more money on education must be spent to provide an adequate education even at the State's largest university.
For Shearer's benefit, as well as the benefit of others who have been "absent" from the state for several years, the central controversy is not whether schools need more money but, rather, where it shall come from. The question, in large measure, is whether to retain the outmoded and inefficient tax on real property as the basis for local school finance or to abandon it in favor of an income tax with equalizing factors between school districts. The issue is not, as Shearer immaturely and dogmatically states, whether, "...Kansas' schools can look forward to sinking into the slime of insufficiency," but whether the tax burden of excellent schools will equitably be shared by all or inequitably borne by those with the most real property: the farmers.
Since Shearer has not seen fit to provide us with facts, we must therefore guess that the property tax lid proposal he is against is not the property tax lid embodied in current House Bill 1851 which would impose not so much a property tax lid as a statutorily open path to enactment of sales and income taxes by local units of government. The property tax lid proposal that Shearer thinks he is against would ultimately raise more revenue than retention of the present real property tax. Could it be that Shearer has not read the property tax lid proposals?
Philip Ridenour
Third year law student
Admire, Kansas
Patricia Ridenour
Third year law student
Peabody, Kansas