ONLINE ONLY: Chillax

Everyone in Bloomington seems very uptight. I don’t know if it’s from studying for exams, being sexually frustrated by the opposite sex (or same sex, if you bat for that team) or merely being frustrated because of a 500-word column written by some random IU student. But it’s obvious that we all need to just take a few seconds to relax.\nAre you ready? Let’s do some relaxing.\nWoosah. Take deep breaths, in through your nose and out through your mouth. Exhale all the bad energy. Count to 10. Woosah.\nOK. Do we all feel better yet? \nGood – I sure do.\nBut I bet you’re saying to yourself, “Hey. Why are you asking me to do breathing exercises, omniscient one?”\nGood question. Let me break it down for you.\nLast week I wrote a column about ridiculous Indiana state laws. It served no purpose other than to entertain. It talked about public indecency, Chinese ninja stars and interfering with a police horse. I wrote it thinking that my five fans would get a good chuckle from the absurd laws of the state we live in. I never thought it would upset people.\nNow, being my own biggest critic, I noticed that there was a small error in my column, which came about when my editor and I changed a joke, which ended up changing a fact, which ended up making a false statement. One minor blemish and the world reacts as if I made it rain with dangerous inaccuracies.\nPeople were calling my editors complaining about how terrible my column was and how indecent it was to our society. \nIf you think I’m ready to hit you with an apology, then you clearly don’t know me.\nInstead, here’s my response to you all: RELAX! You are missing the point.\nUnlike some of my colleagues, who write to inform and persuade you with their opinion, I write to entertain. I write so that the eternally drunk and stoned get their daily dose of reading. If you couldn’t understand that from my South Park-referencing tagline, then you shouldn’t be reading my columns.\nI’m not writing this to purposely anger you. But it might happen anyway, and if it does, please do me a favor – contact me directly. Shoot me an e-mail or if you got my digits, hit me up.\nMy editors probably have better things to do with their time than listen to you complain about how my jokes upset you... but I sure don’t.\nI love hate mail and I’ve always promptly responded to my critics. If I angered you to the point that you took the time to write to me, then at least you read the whole thing and thought out a logical dissent. I respect that, so I will respond.\nThat’s better than I can say about most of my readers, who probably stopped reading after “Woosah.”