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Round, Round, Get Around
August 26, 2008 - 12:00amWelcome back all you interns and wage slaves, to Cornell U-topia, where the newspapers are free, meritocracy reigns, and every day is casual Friday. Let it be a balm to the beating you just took from the real world.
If you’re a freshman and spent the summer prancing about “enjoying yourself,” congratulations on your two weeks in Cancun. Still, you should know that though I spent my days on the Long Island Railroad, the announcer at Jamaica station had a real Jamaican accent. Instant tropical retreat sans the airfare, you vacationing fools.
Something Lewd [wink-wink] ;-)
April 29, 2008 - 12:00amIt’s a slap-dash bit of work you’re about to read. I tried to weasel my way out of writing it and got a euphemized “hell no” from my editor, so I put it off and put it off, and now it’s a half hour until deadline and I’ve got the mental acuity of a fish stick on Quaaludes.
Topic trouble is a miserable thing. I had big plans earlier in the week after reading an online poster’s response to an earlier column, enjoining me to “write something lewd.” Lacking a better idea and tired of writing in the shadow of Jenna B., I penciled “lewdness” into my academic planner and set aside a two-hour block on Saturday for just such a purpose.
Secession: Not just for old men from Vermont
April 15, 2008 - 12:00amBetween Hillary’s bogus bullet dodging, Barack’s lambasting of “bitter,” small-town America, and the overall creepy vibe I get from John McCain, I’ve begun to wonder if I had better give up and vote for Ron Paul.
Or secede.
Snicker up your sleeves, naysayers, but the secessionist movement is growing. The grizzled old men are gathering around camp fires and in wood sheds across the nation. And in the wood sheds and around the camp fires, the grizzled old men will sport their flannels and stroke their whiskers and plot a brighter future for this festering nation.
Give Me A Job, Damn You
April 1, 2008 - 12:00amWhen I heard that then-New York State Governor Eliot Spitzer had spent $4,300 on a 105 pound, 5’5” brunette “escort,” my first thought was, “I wonder how much she pulls in annually.”
Second thought: “If I had David Paterson’s eyesight, I could tolerate Eliot Spitzer as a client. I’d get me to Albany and make a killing.” Alas, my vision is excellent. There dies my dream.
What? Are you scandalized? You shouldn’t be. Know this, Arts and Sciences Career Services: it was you who drove me to this.
I’m a F@$%ing Steamroller
February 26, 2008 - 1:00amI hear the hum of Presidential politics. The acid-laced rhetoric, the simpering sound bytes, the jingle-jangle of fat cat campaign contributions. The sordid music of America.
But hark! A melody in the distance, high and hopeful and sweet. It swells from the state of Washington and rolls across the plains of Nebraska. It echoes in the gorges of Tompkins Country and reaches a roar on Ho Plaza. It is the Obama sonata, harbinger of truth, beauty and the American way.
Hugging Trees and Beating Horses
February 12, 2008 - 1:00amA Redbud-esque breed of tree-people has been plaguing the University of California at Berkley for the past year. The protest, which may well be the Longest-Running Urban Tree-Sit in the World, began in 2006 after the university announced plans to build an athletic facility that would destroy a grove of oak trees.
It’s a hard sell, even by Berkley standards.
The university has promised to plant three trees for every one destroyed, and the protestors’ claims that the site is host to an Indian burial ground, lies on an earthquake fault line AND is dedicated to WWI veterans, have all been debunked. Leaving what? Just the snuggly satisfaction of guarding tree spirits from the murderous glee of progress.
You Special Snowflake, You
January 29, 2008 - 1:00amYou’d think that those Diversity Arches of 2005 would have vaporized the last scraps of intolerance blotting our otherwise morally superior campus. After I walked through them, all I could think about were puppies and giggles and a giant interfaith prayer circle made of men and women of every color of the flesh-toned rainbow.
But maybe that’s the problem. There is one issue that the political correctness proponents didn’t incorporate into the Diversity Arch voodoo, despite its mention in the University’s “Diversity Goals.” That is the issue of social class.