So, another semester comes to an end. I’ve only got one left now. I feel I had more when I started. Four years, that’s a lot of time. Eight semesters, that sounds like even more. We all throw a couple away. Count your time in pong cups you’ve crushed, it seems like a lot longer. Count it in Govt’ Mule concerts you’ve been to, turns out you’re not here for very long (if at all). Count your time in Ithaca High kids you saw smoking pot at that concert and you’ll think you’re here forever.

However long you’ve been here, it’s definitely long enough for you to have forgotten at least a few of those semesters, if not a few years. So I’d just like to take this space to recap some of the monumental issues that have passed us by in recent years, ones that we cared deeply about. Or at least ones we pretended to care about.

Our journey starts in a little corner of Florida known as Pinellas Park. According to Wikipedia, “notable residents” include Fez Whatley, Mike Cope and Terri Schiavo. Who are these people you might ask? Fez Whatley is a hilarious radio host, Mike Cope is a NASCAR driver and Terri Schiavo is an insurance clerk.

She was also a national headline for a few months, before she was brutally murdered (or put to rest). Bet you forgot all about her though, huh? But boy, what a big deal that was. And now our lives are changed forever.

Remember those flags on the Arts Quad last year? That happened. For about a month these pages turned into a battlefield of words. But thankfully, after all that debate the issue is settled forever, all our problems are solved and we have forgotten about them entirely. We have also forgotten about the outrage over some library that dealt with some sort of sciences ... I want to stay emotional here.

Or how about the economy. Sorry, sorry, I meant The Economy. Although almost everything is now mandated to start “With the economy the way it is ..” there hasn’t been a single article in The Sun specifically about The Economy this year. What happened to all those big bad finance men? Well, some of them died. I bet you wish you could take back all those “I hope those bankers all just die!” comments now, huh?

On a topic closer to home (geographically speaking), remember that forceful touching that occurred a few weeks ago? I’m pretty sure everyone at Cornell made a joke about that one. And we would have forgotten all about it had it not been for the daily reminders we get about robberies and harassments taking place on Dryden.

Healthcare? Is that mess still going on? We’ll forget about it shortly. Just as we will forget about the new abortion bill. As we all know, the minute that you stop writing about something it ceases to exist.

Four years ago, everybody was all about the SAT. And now nobody cares. Well, nobody besides Cornell students care what SAT score you got.

Whatever happened to Freddy Adu? A pre-teen soccer superstar bigger than the Jonas brothers, he’s now playing in Portugal’s lower leagues. And miraculously, he is now the same age we are.

How about the hype over the Titanic? Both the movie and the actual ship. Can you believe we’re not talking about that anymore? I can’t.

Darfur. Whatever happened to that Facebook group that would save Darfur if 10 million people joined? I guess we came up short. And now it’s too late, because nobody cares.

I seem to have forgotten about Facebook 2.0 ... 3.0 ... 4.0 ... 5.0. Every time there’s an update, there’s a million people that don’t want the update. They want to keep the previous updated version. And then there’s a half dozen articles about how students communicate more on the internet than in real life and how we’re losing our sense of self to the internet. Or something.

I could go on and on with random shit that we have all forgotten about. James Kopp. The Cancellation of Veronica Mars. The Pussycat Dolls. Afghanistan. Carbon Monoxide poisoning. Dr. Kevorkian. Emo Kids. Tamagotchi / Beanie Babies / Furbys / Pokemon. Cornell’s Swedish language cancellation. Nancy Kerrigan. Myspace Predators. Proposition 8. OJ. Y2K. The Mars Rovers. Evil Microsoft. Avian Flu. SARS. America’s Unhealthy Eating Habits. Al Gore. Global Warming. No Child Left Behind. Border Jumpers. Gas Prices. Pretty much anything that’s either a political issue or a weird toy from Japan that cultivates mass hysteria.

I think that’s it. Unless I forgot something. Stay tuned for a whole ’nother semester of crap nobody will care about a few months from now.

Yevgeniy Feldman is a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences. He may be reached at yfeldman@cornell­sun.com. That Really Grinds My Gears appears alternate Mondays this semester.