I Know Hockey Players (Dos)

My dear Cornellians, word has come to me in Australia that several hundred of you staged a semi-violent takeover of Day Hall (Willard Straight is so overdone) to demand another of my splendidly satirical and additionally alliterative articles. As an artist in extremely high demand (my written art has recently been featured on fridges and countertops spanning three states) I decided to clear my busy schedule to bow to your demands. Slash I kind of have to beg the Sun people to let me be in here and this is the first opening since my last column. Interesting sidenote, did you know that in the Sun you’re only supposed to put one space after a period? That was one of the seven deadly sins of elementary typing class that I remember, ALWAYS put two spaces after a period. That, and left hand fingers rest on asdf and right hand fingers on jkl;. Semicolon was probably so proud of itself and bragged to all the other non-letter keys that it got to be part of the really cool “resting keys” group, the ones that sat on the back of the keyboard bus and looked slouchily, awesomely bored during class. I digress.
Also, I just wanted to clear up that I did not choose the article title “G’Day Australia” for my last column. I actually wanted to call it “I Know Hockey Players”. Because I do. Like, a ton of them. I’m pretty cool about it, though, it’s not like I show it off.
So it was my birthday this past week (another sidenote, thanks for all the Facebook messages, especially the ones from TOPHER SCOTT and RAYMOND SAWADA) and for a present, my parents paid for me to go on a trip of my choice. I decided to go to Kadadu National Park, which is a 22,000 square kilometer area of land (making it roughly 35,000,000 square miles, I’m getting really good at the metric conversions thing) in the Northern Territory. I flew to the northernmost part of Australia to a town called Darwin, which interestingly cannot be found on any maps printed in Kansas geography books. I stayed there for a few nights, and Sunday morning was picked up by my tour group, led by the living doppelganger of Steve Irwin (too soon?). We saw crocodiles and and wallabies and kingfishers and monitor lizards and a puppy (not included as part of the tour). We slept outside under the stars in swags, which are sleeping bags with netting over them which is used so that when you wake up in the middle of the night you feel as claustrophobic as possible. The stars were gorgeous, though, and the nights were pretty cool, compared to the days that got to around 39 degrees Celsius, which is 245 degrees Fahrenheit.
One of the tour highlights easily was the first stop that we made when we were driving through the outback to Kakadu National Park. We stopped a gas station slash bar slash takeaway restaurant that also sold groceries, cassette tapes, and inexplicably, a DVD of a Beverly Hillbillies episode. But if you hadn’t gotten your fill of excitement among all these adventures, you could also walk around back to see their zoo, which consisted of an albino water buffalo and two crocodiles, Brutus and Freddie. Brutus was the big one with the gruff exterior and the heart of gold whilst Freddie was the little, hyper one who can always be counted on for a good time…can you imagine the shenanigans that those roommates could get into?? Wow, it’s almost like they (the pronounal “they” people) should make a situational television comedies about characters like that.
Other than that, news is pretty slow. New Australian Boyfriend is the bartender at my favo(u)rite bar; I tip him (tipping is rare in Australia) and he gives me free drinks. This, BioG 109-110 students, is what we call a symbiotic relationship. I also won another dance contest! This time the prize was actually a trip to an island, which is going to be fantastic. I do feel a little guilty about entering these dance contests, though; they’re supposed to be for amateurs and my freshman year I was classically trained by D U-niversity in the art of Frattastic Basement Dance. Fortunately, I don’t think my certification carries over to Australia.
Time to get ready to fulfill my metaphorical contractual obligations with the bartender. Although you (collectively) miss me terribly, ‘tis (Old School Ivy League Style) a mere 6 weeks until my triumphant return. Until then, take this nugget (who doesn’t love that word, tee hee) of knowledge as your new fact of the day, my contribution to education: There are approximately 100 million overweight and obese people in the United States. Of course, these are only round figures.