THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
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I need a better Facebook profile picture. That's a legitimate worry at this point in my life.
Anyone that seriously says "frat hard" should seriously think hard about where his or her life is going.
MONDAY,APRIL 4,2011
MCCOLLUM PARKING LOT DANCE PARTY AT 4 IN THE MORNING!!
YEEEEAAAHHHH! Oh wait, it was just a fire alarm.
I think it's about time for another Taylor Swift on campus rumor.
Huskies vs. Bulldogs. Might want to distance yourself from this match up, Michael Vick.
You laugh at me because I haven't had sex. I laugh at you because you have herpes.
Dear Safe Ride, sorry about the poopage.
I have more important things to do other than sleeping, such as watching frat initiations from my window!
Here come those eyes. There goes my ability to breathe.
Why does everyone come to me for relationship advice? It's not like I've ever had a successful relationship or anything.
So you not texting me back was just an April Fools' joke, right? Right? Dang it.
My girlfriend wants to go to a strip club with me. Where's the nearest wedding ring store?
VCU is in the Final Four, April Fools' Oh wait.
The fact that I absolutely despise you 90 percent of the time turns me on even more.
How the HELL did Tyrel not win the Senior Class Award. I voted for him like 30 times.
I am also at the library. I had one of the best poops I've had in a long time. Do it.
I'm at the library and I have to poop. Go home? Yeah, except I rode my bike here.
In the five minutes it took to get a parking permit, I got ticketed. Really, KU Parking?
It's squirrel chasin'time.
It's really hard to focus on my math homework while my roommate and his friends are talking about their favorite sex positions.
Facebook keeps telling me I need a girlfriend. Any takers?
I think Facebook is trying to tell me something. It always puts your posts at the top of the "top news," and it keeps showing me pictures of you with your ex-girlfriend.
I just downloaded Adele and Britney Spears in the same hour. I think I'm confused.
I hate being in debt from college. It's like I owe part of my soul to the U.S. government.
A K-State window sticker and a Missouri license plate? No wonder they didn't know how to drive.
The more passionate the fan, the more hurtful the letdown
COMMENTARY
I probably care too much about sports, but I am not the only one.
The first step to fixing a problem is identifying its existence, so here it goes: I don't watch anything on television other than sports or people talking about sports. I try to synchronize my attempts at going to the gym with the ESPN shows "Around the Horn" and "Pardon the Interruption," and I take losses by the teams I follow way too hard.
In 2002, I was a huge St. Louis Rams fan, and that year they lost in the Super Bowl to the New England Patriots. After their game-winning field goal in the closing seconds, the confetti fell from the rafters, the Patriots' owner accepted the Lombardi Trophy, and I just stared at the screen.
I couldn't believe that a team I cared about so much could lose. My will for them to win was so strong that I thought it would be enough. I stared at
BY JAROD KILGORE jiklgore@kansan.com
the screen until my eyes gave in, or I decided I needed more Peanut M&M's, whichever came first.
Then I got sick and missed the next couple days of school.
In March 2005 the Jayhawks had a good men's basketball team with some of my favorite Jayhawks - seniors like Aaron Miles, Keith Langford and my absolute favorite, Wayne Simien. My dad decided to surprise me with tickets to KU's first game in that year's NCAA
Tournament. It was obvious we were going to win; I wanted it so badly.
There was no other possible outcome.
They were playing the Bucknell Bisons, who could have just as well been known as the Somewheres Whoevers, and whose conference had never won a game in the NCAA Tournament. Before the opening tip my dad went to get us some Cokes, and came back with this story;
"There was a guy in line with a Bucknell shirt on, and somebody asked him, 'So, where the heck is Bucknell?' He said it was in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania and the first guy said 'Huh, I didn't know that.' Then the Bucknell fan said, "Everyone is going to know a lot about them in a couple hours."
After the loss, my dad and I watched "EdTV" in our motel room. Neither one of us were laughing. That really had more to do with the movie than
the game, but nothing could have given back my ability to speak that night.
I got sick the next day and missed that entire following week of school.
After the VCU game, my two roommates and I sat in silence for a few moments, parted ways to our separate rooms and didn't talk to each other until Tuesday.
From what I've heard on campus and read on the always-trustworthy Internet, I'm not the only one that takes these losses hard. It seems that our greatest attribute as fans, our passion, is also one of our problems. With the looming NBA and current NFL lock-outs, this might be the best time to look for new ways to waste time. Sometimes things happen that you don't expect. We can only hope that something good will come from them, sometimes.
Jarod Kilgore is a Junior in film and Media Studies from Lenexa.
GUEST COLUMN
Community service projects create endless opportunities for students
As freshmen, on a whim, a friend and I decided we would start volunteering with one of the Center for Community Outreach programs called Mentors in the Lives of Kids (MILK). This program connects students with the local Boys and Girls Club. Hanging out with kids a few hours a week after school seemed like an OK past time, something different from my day-to-day schedule.
I thought of it as a filler activity until I found something else that fit my college goals better. Little did I know my decision to volunteer twice a week at the Boys and Girls Club would actually lead me to change my major and my career goals to education advocacy and after school care programming.
Getting involved in service opportunities at the University and in the Lawrence community will serve you for the rest of your college career, possibly for the rest of your life. One of the most academically beneficial service opportunities at the University is the opportunity to take service learning courses.
When students have the opportunity to enroll in these courses, they have the opportunity to explore the class material outside of the classroom. They have a chance to apply abstract concepts from a textbook to situations in real life.
I've learned so much about myself through courses that offer service-learning options. It truly teaches you the importance of not just learning to earn a good grade but how to make an impact in the world.
Another benefit of volunteering is the opportunity of getting to know a new community. As I have worked with the Center for Community Outreach throughout the past three years, I have fostered friendships and memories that will last far beyond graduation. Service brings alive a community of people passionate about similar
In a community of like-minded people, students can share their passion, enrich their lives and work together to make the University and Lawrence a better place to live, work and play.
causes. It founds deeply rooted friendships that sink deep below surface-level acquaintances.
This spring break I travelled with six other KU students on an alternative break to volunteer at an elementary school and afterschool program in the projects of Richmond, Virginia. We had the wonderful opportunity to work with an entirely different community, and as a result we all came out better friends and better people. I learned more during these five days, working with the teachers, kids and my peers than I have learned in many of my classes.
And now that I am back in Lawrence, I look forward to using my new knowledge and excitement to serve in my own community and to make a sustained difference in my life and the lives of those with whom I will work.
As a freshman, turning in my Boys and Girls Club volunteer application, I never thought volunteering would have such a profound impact on my life, my education, my career and my friendships. But looking back, I am so grateful I thought it might be fun to play with kids.
Emily Lamb is the co-director at CCO. She is a junior in American studies from Lawrence.
Weekly Poll
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CARTOON
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RESOLVED: That a continuing resolution fund the operation of the government for a period equal to the duration during which this resolution is read aloud. Period.
Nicholas Sambaluk
POLITICS
No grassroots here, more like an Astroturf movement for Tea Party
When hordes of outraged Americans began convening Tea Party rallies in 2009, liberal critics cried foul.
"This initiative is funded by the high end — we call it Astroturf. It's not really a grassroots movement.It's Astroturf by some of the wealthiest people in America to keep the focus on tax cuts for the rich instead of for the great middle class," then-House Speaker Nancv Pelosi said in April 2009.
Other commentators observed Tea Party protests and saw the heart and soul of Middle America. The people who attended Tea Party events, donned in Revolutionary War-style regalia and waving "don't tread on me" flags, looked more like the 5 p.m. crowd at HOP, not striped-pants Wall Street tvcoons.
When voters in Massachusetts — Massachusetts! — elected pickup truck-driving Scott Brown to the United States Senate early last year, it became undeniable that Tea Party sentiment resonated in even the unlikeliest of regions.
BY LUKE BRINKER
lbrinker@kansan.com
After Brown triumphed over Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley to win the seat formerly held by liberal lion Edward Kennedy, Sean Higgins of Investor's Business Daily opined that the outcome illustrated "the fact that this is a real grassroots movement and not an Astroturf one"
The Tea Party movement likely reached its apex last August, when gold huckster and television demagogue Glenn Beck brought his histrionics - and hundreds of thousands of acyoltes — to the National Mall for his Restoring Honor rally.
At the time, Politics Daily quoted Todd Burek of San Antonio, who felt compelled to attend the rally because he feared "our country is headed in the wrong direction, away from the values
Grassroots anger — even if it's rooted in a poor understanding of the health care law, financial rescue and how Keynesian economics works — is real. But that doesn't mean the rank-and-file of the Tea Party — the Joe the Plumbers of the world — haven't been played for fools.
In an intrepid piece of investigative reporting, New York Times journalist Mike McIntire noted last week the connection between leaders of the Tea Party movement and lobbying organizations working for Asia Pulp & Paper, an Indonesian company that has run afoul of environmental, labor and fair trade standards.
our founders put in place."
McIntire couldn't help noticing a paradox.
"The Tea Party movement is as deeply skeptical of big business as it is of big government." McIntire wrote.
How else to explain Tea Partiers' resolute opposition to the rescue of Wall Street firms and Detroit auto companies?
But anyone willing to look beneath the surface realized long ago that Tea
Former House Majority Leader Dick Armey (his real name) founded Tea Party group FreedomWorks. Until last year, he worked for law and lobbying powerhouse DLA Piper, which describes itself on its website as a firm representing "multinational, Global 1000, and Fortune 500 enterprises."
Last December, The Washington Post reported that many Tea Party-backed members of Congress were hiring lobbyists from the energy, manufacturing and financial services industries to serve on their staffs.
So much for sticking it to the Washington establishment.
The evidence continues to mount that Tea Party leaders are just as devoted to corporate interests as their establishment predecessors.
Will Joe the Plumber take note?
Send letters to kansanopdesk@gmail.com. write LETTER TO THE EDITOR in the e-mail subject line.
Brinker is a sophomore from Topeka in history.
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Nick Gerik, editor
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Michael Holtz, managing editor
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Kelly Stroda, managing editor
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Party leaders, while they spout populist bromides, are intimately linked with big business.
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THE EDITORIAL BOARD
Members of the Kansan Editorial Board are Nick
Gerik, Michael Holtz, Kelly Stroda, D.M. Scott and
Mandy Matney.
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