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(07/25/02 8:23pm)
The idea that this country was founded by white people, for white people is a statement most people would consider to be backwards and repulsive. It implies this is nation designed for the advancement of whites over people of other races. This is a statement that, if said by a politician, would probably signal the end of his or her career. \nBut let me ask you this. How much different is the above statement from this one: This country was founded by English speakers, for English speakers?\nThis is a statement many people support, although it is the same fundamental argument that all people are expected to conform to the predominant power. Historically, it's a good idea to speak the language of the person with a gun to your head. But we have evolved, and no longer think like cavemen. No, we think like businessmen, which means that how you present something is more important than what you present. \nWhat's the difference between a redneck in a sheet with a burning cross and a redneck in a suit with a law degree? \nThe school system in areas with high populations of Mexican immigrants should have classes taught in Spanish, and I think all U.S. children should be taught the Spanish language along with the rest of the curriculum. Maybe I'm a hypocrite in saying this. After all, my proficiency in Spanish is limited to the phrase "I'd like a chicken burrito, please, amigo." There are only two Spanish words there, but I count three if I use an accent. \nBut I'm willing to learn and try to change. After all, this isn't my country.\nIf that sounds strange, then you don't understand what the United States is. The United States is the greatest nation that ever existed. We are the most charitable, the most forgiving (who else has won wars and instead of taking over countries actually gave them money to rebuild themselves?); we are the only nation to ever give people freedoms because it was right. The United States is much more than a land set between two oceans. It is an ideal. \nAmericans don't believe in having privileges that are intrinsic from the luck of birth. We change. Why should the location of one's birth take away his or her right to exist? Why should Mexican children be put to an immediate disadvantage just because they were brought up to speak Spanish? Is it just because it's different, or is it just too much of a hassle to change? \nLet me tell you something: The Civil War was a hassle. Desegregating schools was a hassle. Marching for women's suffrage was a hassle. Training teachers in the Spanish language and adding Spanish to a few of the road signs isn't that big of a problem. \nIt's not my country because it isn't anybody's country. Our very Constitution speaks not of American rights, but of human rights. An American is not one who lives in the United States, but is anyone who believes in the intrinsic rights of human beings to have freedom. \nOpponents of bilingualism ask, "where do we stop? When will it all end?" They cry, "Will we have to represent all the languages now to accommodate every single immigrant?" \nTo these very heartfelt and intelligent questions, I reply "No, you morons." I think it's obvious when we have enough people in this country speaking a certain language that it benefits us all to learn and implement that language into our society. But I don't expect to see Finnish road signs any time soon. \nUntil we realize that American rights are in fact, human rights, and not just reserved for those born on red, white and blue soil, we can't advance as a society. It is our duty to try and change with the times. \nSpanish-speaking people are just as deserving of the self-evident truths that we hold for U.S. citizens as anyone. The right to freedoms is universal. We should be able to grant for other people the very rights that we demand for ourselves. Anything less is a return to times when the color of your skin or the "highness" of your birth regulated your place in society. We will change, and we will benefit from it. \nAnd that's as American as baseball, mom, apple pie and a chicken burrito. Right, amigo?
(07/25/02 8:23pm)
Society has made a big deal about the difficulty of puberty on adolescents. If I remember correctly, it was a time of intense sexual frustration and awkwardness. I try not to think about it too much because it makes me realize I haven't made much progress since then. It seems boys are treated unfairly during the pubescent years, at least in comparison to the girls.\nThe trauma and excitement of the first menstrual cycle has become something of a "popular" topic. Women complain that men will never know what it is like to get cramps, and we are lucky that we never had to go through some of the embarrassment and even shame that comes from having a period. \nPlease. I'm sure that having a period is tough, but women have Midol, pads, books, teachers and moms coaching them through this. They get a lot of sympathy and advice. I think Hallmark even has a card for this. \nBoys, on the other hand, have to deal with a sudden onslaught of spontaneous erections. And they don't come once a month. They come about every five minutes. There's no advice as to how to deal with this. \nEventually, you just figure out that you have to walk around with a book in front of you in that ever-so-natural "Oh, I'm just walking around with an open math book in front of my crotch" pose. \nOr you can buy really long T-shirts and walk around for two years in the equivalent of a dressing gown. Also, you can just walk around with a lump in your trousers and hope nobody notices. This is a terrible option that I've never seen anyone take because it's a lose-lose situation. If it's noticeable, that's embarrassing. If it's not noticeable, that can start a whole new batch of self-esteem problems.\nI tried to tell this to a woman I know and she replied, in a condescending manner, "Well, if you guys would stop thinking about sex all the time…" I said, "Listen, Grandma, I didn't have to be thinking about sex. The little bad boy had a hair trigger. If I looked at an elbow wrong I had to walk around for five minutes repeating baseball stats over and over."\nThat's true. And another thing, I am sick of hearing about the effect that gorgeous skinny models have on the self-esteem of teenage girls. Sure, little Susie might have difficulty with her self-esteem because she is surrounded by images of female perfection. But once again, she's got people surrounding her with advice. She's got magazines that discuss this. She's got a mom and her friends coaching her through this problem. \nIt's time us men stopped being silent about our pubescent experiences. We need to counsel the young bucks coming up so that they won't have to go through the same trauma that we did. But then, who in the world wants to deal with a group of kids who are that screwed up? Not me. Oh well, at least it's over now. \nNow if you'll excuse me, I've got somewhere to go. Wait a minute. Has anybody seen my math book?
(07/25/02 8:23pm)
So you remember how funny this column used to be? "I don't like fraternities," I'd say, and you'd laugh and laugh. "Dave Matthews, he's not so good either," I'd write, and you'd say, "Stop it, Chris! Our sides our splitting because we are laughing so hard." \nBut that was back in the day.\nAs some of you might have noticed from my byline, I've been a senior for a while now. It's nearly time for me to graduate, and that means this is my last column. From now on, the only writing I'll be doing is on the restroom walls of the factory where I work. \nI know, I know, it seems like a terrible waste of talent, doesn't it? You'd think some newspaper would have offered me a job by now. Shockingly, the New York Times and Washington Post aren't clambering all over themselves for my witty takes on greek life and vegans.\nI realize there are quite a few people who read this, and quite a few take it a lot more seriously than I ever did. Maybe I did insult a lot of people, but come on. Nobody got it worse here than I did. I can't even stop getting made fun of in my own column. \nSo, as I move on to the "real" world, a place where I've already been and don't have much desire to return, I wonder what have I learned at college. Here's a short list:\n1. Smoking is kind of cool.\n2. (This one's for the guys.) If you see a really pretty girl looking at you, it's not because she likes you. She's just looking at you to see if you're looking at her.\n3. You can acquire a lot of restraining orders if you set your mind to it.\n4. The greatest line from any book, movie or anything comes from Larry McMurtry's book "The Last Picture Show." Sam the Lion says, and I quote, "Shut up, woman. Get in there and chicken fry me a steak." I've been looking for a way to include that in my column for more than a year now, and although it makes little sense here, this is my last shot.\n5. Going to class isn't necessary if you don't care what kind of grades you get. \n6. Most of the people on campus are as phony as Myles Brand's accent. That's right, I'm on to you, President Brand. You sound like you're doing a bad impersonation of Mayor Quimby on "The Simpsons."\n7. The only difference between a frat boy and a cow is that cows say "moo" and frat boys say "woo." (And that's the last frat joke.)\nWe did some different things here. I remain firm in my belief that people only read a column if it makes them laugh or it makes them angry. Mostly, I was just trying to be entertaining. Sometimes it worked, and sometimes, like today, it didn't, but that's all right. \nYou think it's easy coming up with jokes every week? I mean, I come up with some quality stuff, not your run-of-the-mill everyday comedy. I do this even at my own expense. Who else would be willing to prostitute himself so willingly for a laugh? I don't think my status as a joke whore will ever be in question.\nI never took a class on column writing or went to a seminar. I've never had the column critiqued. Everything that was ever written here went straight from my noggin to the paper. And although there have been repeated attempts to attack and imitate me, I think we can agree I'm still the Man.\nAnd that's about all I have to say.
(04/10/01 3:49am)
Writing is my hobby. "Real" writers sometimes get mad when I tell them that. I write novels, and get them published if I'm lucky, but I don't consider myself the stereotypical novelist. I don't smoke cigarettes. I don't drink myself sick every night. I don't have talent. And although I'm pretty sure the world is out to get me, I don't think that it misunderstands me to the point that I'm driven to a typewriter. \nMy first novel is coming out next month, and despite some rather humorous setbacks (the book is called "Angel on the Lost Highway" but both bn.com and borders.com have it available for preorder under "Angel on the Last Highway"), I'm having a good time. \nIt's sort of fun doing the promotions. I'm not angry about it coming out. I'm not upset because people will read it and miss the point. I don't really care. \nBut I would like to address the "tortured soul" mystique that surrounds writers and artists. Now why does the act of writing a few short stories turn someone into a chain-smoking whiskey drinker? I know a lot of people who define themselves as "writers" or "painters" but never really write or paint. The poet Charles Bukowski said God created a lot of poets but not much poetry, and I agree. The guys walking around with angry looks and berets are too busy looking mad to write. On my best days, I write for two hours. I usually spend more time eating than writing. But I don't define myself as a "food consumer." Why, then, would I want to be defined as a writer? \nI have one major gripe about books and writing. I'm a bibliophile, and read just about anything I can get my hands on. I'm the Charlie Sheen of the library. \nBut I hate literature classes. Professors have taken some of the most rebellious and messed up minds of the times and turned them into something that puts people to sleep. I grew up reading classics, and most of those authors were nuts. It infuriates me to see them beaten to death is some classroom. \nI'm not a big music fan, but let me use this example. Can you listen to Nirvana in a classroom? It's meant to be listened to by angry teenagers in a locked bedroom or basement, or by a 16-year-old kid driving and pounding the steering wheel. Can you imagine your grandchildren taking a Nirvana class? Having some guy with elbow patches tear down the "meaning" of the lyrics kind of misses the point.\nAnd what is with creative writing classes? They have ruined a generation of writers. Writing isn't a Jedi-apprentice relationship. A writer has to feel that he or she is the creator, not the created. A lot of talented writers go to workshops, have their short stories torn apart and lose all confidence. \nA generation of writers is afraid to take chances because they might face ridicule. Besides, writing short stories doesn't prepare you to write a novel. Nobody gets ready for a tennis match by playing pingpong. \nIf you want to write a book, sit down and write it. Don't worry about what anybody says. If it's bad -- and the first one probably will be -- sit down and write another one. The difference between the good authors and the bad boils down to how badly they want to write. People tell me they don't have time to write or read and then ask me if I saw last night's episode of "Friends." \nMy first book isn't the next "Moby Dick." It probably won't sell many copies and won't be on any book clubs. But it's out there. It might get a few bad reviews, but so what? It's always better to be in the ring than in the stands, even if you're getting your butt kicked.
(03/28/01 3:37am)
The mapping of the human genome is complete, and I am already worried. It's not the advancement of science that concerns me, it's the nearly complete and total faith people seem to show in this mysterious group known as "they" -- the scientists.\nHow many times have you heard phrases such as this: "They have mapped the genome," and "They are working on cloning?" It is important to remember that "they" are just human beings and that "they" are subject to the same mistakes and misinterpretations we are. \nFor example, scientists refer to the millions of DNA cells they can't figure out as "junk" DNA. I'm sure this will one day upset their creators. I can't wait until it is possible to interview a gene cell. I'm sure it will go something like this:\n"Mr. Gene, why do you build humans?"\n"It benefits us to have an intelligent life form that can adapt easily to its environment. You know, find shelter, food and procreate. Humans are a lot like a self-cleaning oven. All you have to do is turn them on and they'll do the rest."\n"That's all?"\n"Yeah, why?"\n"What about literature, music and movies?"\n"Oh, that junk?"\nWe are our perceptions. Here's another example: according to Matt Ridley's "Genome," humans share 98 percent of our genes with chimpanzees. Chimps and gorillas share 97 percent of their genes. We are more like chimps than gorillas are, and yet we believe that we came from apes, although there is no evidence for this. \nIt very well could be that apes descended from humans. All other primates have 24 chromosomes. Humans have 23. To quote Ridley's excellent book, "Under the microscope, the most striking and obvious difference between ourselves and all the other great apes is that we have one pair (of chromosomes) less. The reason, it immediately became apparent, is not that a pair of ape chromosomes has gone missing in us, but that two ape chromosomes have fused together in us." \nDo you see how this is deduced? Some scientists and most other people like to think of humans as being the latest and greatest evolutionary craze. We like to believe that evolution was put into place so humans could be the end result. \nEvolution has no ends to its means. Neither theory has more weight than the other. Apes could have descended from humans and vice versa. It is possibly the greatest scientific assumption in history. It is our ethnocentrism that deduces this. We, as a race of humans, are on a bit of an ecological ego trip.\nAs another example, scientists have often influenced social policy with little "real" data. "They" came up with IQ tests for immigrants in the 1920s and found that southern and eastern Europeans were too "unintelligent" to be let into the United States. \nThese tests were in English, a language few immigrants had learned, and included test questions based on things, such as basketball and tennis courts, that were only found in the West. But based on the data from these tests, Congress passed The Immigration Restriction Act of 1924, which severely limited the coming of southern and eastern Europeans into the New World. \nTry taking an intelligence test in Latin someday and see how you do. \nIt wasn't long ago that scientists were experimentally "proving" that women couldn't handle a high school or university education. And as recently as 1970, Dr. Edgar Berman, a respected physician, claimed women could not fill leadership roles in government because of the effect that menstruation has on their bodies. If your mothers and grandmothers don't like math, then it is probably because "they," that is scientists and doctors, told educators that women don't have the same analytical skills as boys, and to not really worry about teaching girls math because they probably won't get it anyway. \nLess than 60 years ago, scientists were still reading the bumps on people's heads in attempt to understand their personalities. We laugh at these misconceptions now, just as they laughed at those before them and the next generation will laugh at us. \nDon't put all of your faith in a group called "they." Don't let yourself be intellectually shackled to a group that plays with the very stuff of which you are made. Too many people are treating scientists and medical doctors like they're plumbers. You don't know what they're doing in there and you don't care. "They" are just people and "they" will make a lot of very serious mistakes if we don't educate ourselves and watch them. \nDon't underestimate your own intelligence, and don't overestimate theirs.
(03/06/01 3:45pm)
Lately, I've been told everything I do is going to kill me. I can't smoke, drink, eat meat or play with loaded handguns. Even sex can kill me, or so I'm told. Everything seems to cause cancer. And as if that's not enough, if the Catholic church is right, I'm about to go blind.\nWhat is wrong with scientists? Why do they use their great big brains to find out what's killing us? Think of what those minds could do, say, in the area of penis enlargement. Well, maybe that's a bad idea. I'd hate to come to campus and see a law students' 10-footer stomping around.\nLet me point out something that should be obvious. It's a little depressing, but then so is being an opinion columnist. The world is designed to kill you. It has killed everybody so far, hasn't it? If you look close enough at anything, you're bound to find substances that will kill you. Trying to avoid death is like trying to avoid failed-writers-turned-professors in the English department -- it can't be done.\nAm I wrong in saying that science should concentrate on improving the quality of people's lives rather than their longevity? Most of us have lost friends and family to a disease. I myself am among that group. But I wonder how much good we are really doing with cancer research. If medical history teaches us anything, it is that once we cure one disease, a worse one comes along. We are set up to be killed.\nThis might be hard to swallow, but it's true. Most disease-curing research focuses on afflictions that strike the wealthy and insured. The research, and the often useless or harmful treatments, drive the price of insurance up. If the research were limited, and that money used instead to build facilities with a comfortable dying atmosphere, the price of health insurance would drop. \nGovernment money could be spent on improving the quality of life in schools and poor neighborhoods. And don't forget that this means the already-insured would have more money in their pockets.\nOf course doctors' salaries would suffer, but that's tough luck for them. How long ago was it that they were circumcising females to "cure" masturbation and cutting veins to "bleed out" sickness? \nNo facet of American society has made less progress in the last 100 years than medicine. People do live longer, but that's because we have more food and better working conditions, not better doctors. Doctors remain baffled by cancer, AIDS and even the common cold. What type of return have we gotten for our investment? If I put my money into a business and got nothing better from it than the equivalent of chemotherapy and cherry throat lozenges, I'd put my cash elsewhere.\nBeing a doctor is considered an admirable profession because of the education and hours required. I'm sure that being a good surgeon is worthy of the praise it gets, but I'm curious as to how all of that education helps the family doctor or research scientist. I could learn to prescribe antibiotics and check prostates with nothing more than a weekend seminar and a Chinese finger trap.\nAre we so disillusioned as a society we think money can cure all things? Throwing money at death is like throwing money at an ugly stripper -- it'll just smile and keep on coming after you. Too much money is wasted on medical science. The extra few years of life this might gain is not worth what it is taking from the many.
(02/27/01 5:33am)
If some people have their way, I could soon turn on a television and watch electricity shoot through a man's body until his head smokes and his eyeballs bleed. He could soil himself right in front of my eyes as his body spasms and his skin turns a charred black from the electricity.\nNow that's entertainment.\nThis is American culture at its best. I would be able watch a man be tortured to death. And here's the best part: Because the man being executed is a horrible human being, I can feel justified in watching it. I can watch him die and never take my hand from the popcorn bowl, never feel a tinge of guilt. \nOklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh has even suggested that his execution might be televised, a move that could set a dangerous precedent.\nThe state says it's perfectly fine to put a person to death. The religious right claims that this is "eye for an eye" justice and even George W. Bush will condone this act, just as he did while overseeing executions while governor of Texas.\nThe death penalty is not wrong just because of what it does to criminals. It's wrong because of what it does to us. It is not the right of humans to take the life of other humans. What's so hard to understand about that? It's simple. I don't have the power to give life to those I don't think should die. Why should I have the power to give death to those I don't think should live?\nThe "Religious Wrong," whose membership includes Bush, claims execution has a Biblical past and is therefore justified. They claim "eye for an eye" again and again. Never mind that the word "Christian" means "follower of Christ," and he spoke out vehemently against the death penalty. Never mind one of the commandments the Religious Wrong is trying to get into the schools claims "Thou shall not kill." It is not "Thou shall not kill unless…" Einstein once claimed "God does not play dice." Are we then to assume he plays word games?\nWe live in a culture that reveres vengeance. Getting back at those who got you is considered a virtue. Why? Is it manly? Is it courageous? What virtue is there in watching a man get killed? \nHatred cannot be twisted into righteousness, no matter at whom it is aimed. To hate and to kill are inherently wrong, no matter who the recipient is. It defies logic to condemn killing with killing. \nWhat difference does it make that a convict requests to be killed? Why should he have a say in his sentence? Let him rot in jail for the rest of his life. He can't hurt anyone there. By killing him we become like him.\nMcVeigh's sins are too great for the judicial system to bear. That much is obvious. No sentence could punish this man adequately for the pain he caused. Through the act of killing, he has corrupted himself. \nI suspect the look on McVeigh's face when the bombs exploded will be similar to the looks on the faces of those who could sitting comfortably on their couches on his execution day, remote in hand, smiling at the torture and death of another human being.
(02/20/01 5:08am)
Every now and then, I get an e-mail or a letter from someone asking me how to be funny. "Chris," they say, "I'm just an ordinary schlep, girls don't like me and my friends all make fun of me. How can I be funny like you? What's the secret to writing a humor column?" \n Well, it's debatable whether I'm funny. Personally, I see little humor in a dirty guy who spends most of his free time trying to quiet the voices in his head, but if you think my pain is funny, then by all means, chuckle it up. \nSecond, being humorous really isn't all that great. Girls say they like funny guys, but what they really mean is that they like good-looking guys who also happen to be funny. I used to use this joke on dates a lot. Me: "Knock, knock." Her: "Who's there?" Me: "The guy who's stalking you." Her: "Help! Police!" -- OK, so that's not a good ice breaker, but you work with what you've got.\nIt has never been my intention to write a funny column. It just turns out people are amused by the ravings of the mentally deficient. But, if you want to know how to be funny, read this column. If you want to be really funny, send $19.95 to the IDS and I'll get in contact with you soon. \nFirst, you have to pick a topic. I pick on frat boys a lot, because, well, I think they're idiots. Then you have to inject a sense of irony. This is easy because they tend to do this themselves when they write me. I get mail like this a lot: "If you don't stop stereotyping frat guys as stupid and violent then we're going to beat you up." It's true. If I had a dime for every time I've been threatened by a bunch of frat boys, I'd be able to buy some friends, too. And we all know buying friends is about as silly as, oh I don't know, calling a bunch of guys you met two weeks ago your brothers.\nAfter you've picked a topic and injected some form of irony, it's important to drag the level of dialogue down to the lowest level. Like this -- "I hate Dave Matthews. And Limp Bizkit, they're not so good, either." See how funny that is? I can't explain how some of these witticisms come to me. But the important thing to remember is that childish name-calling is always funny. This world is filled with sophisticated people who argue with their lawyer mouths and fancy debate "tricks," such as logic. But that'll never rally the masses like calling someone a "pisshead" will.\nSome advice: never pick on easy targets. Don't make fun of boy bands, for example. It's too easy. Picking on a boy band is like sleeping with your sister. If you must do it, do it in Kentucky where people will at least laugh about it. But don't do it here, because nobody else thinks it's funny. \nOnce you've picked a topic, injected irony and dragged the topic down to its lowest level, you must add an opinion. This is the hardest part, especially if you're like me and only really have strong opinions about things such as Internet porn restrictions -- those evil, disgusting restrictions. Where was I? Have an opinion and tell people about it. If you can, have an interesting opinion.\nThere's a look into the creative process of writing a bad humor column. Remember, funny is in the eye of the beholder, so if you think I'm not funny, go back to Cuba. But if you do think I'm funny, you can send $19.95 to Chris Edwards care of the IDS and I will immediately get back to you.
(02/14/01 4:06am)
It has recently come to my attention that I'm a loser. Apparently it had already come to everybody else's attention, it just took a while for it to get to me.\nIt's really not so bad, at least this way no one has any expectations for me.\nAnything that I do is considered a step up. But I have the feeling I'm not the only loser here.\nThat's right, I see you out there. Sitting in bars by yourself. Maybe feeding the birds and mumbling incoherently, maybe just wandering around asking yourself what in the hell is going on. I feel that pain, you losers are and forever will be, my peeps.\nThere are those of us who are socially awkward, who for whatever reason don't socialize much or dress very nicely, or even have conversations that don't end with some type of litigation being filed. We are the square pegs, and the world is, well, round, or at least that's the rumor; I've got to start watching more PBS. I'm writing this article today so that you won't feel all that alone. I know, it's not always depressing being a loner. It's actually kind of fun being one, but society seems to have no love for us. \nWe don't get invited to parties or sent valentines, or reasonable bail, or any of the good stuff. But at least we can share a quiet brother- and sisterhood; we just can't have any meetings for obvious reasons. I could see the minutes for one of these meetings: "Al spent the first 10 minutes spitting angst, and then we all got drunk and then got sober and then drunk again. Then we ate a cheeseball and went home." Or that's my vision, anyway.\nThere's really no reason for any of us to feel so out of place. The world is full of self-important people who exist only to cut other people down. Don't let them get to you. Don't be fooled by the plaster smiles and the trendy turtlenecks. \nI have found in my 23 years that people aren't necessarily something to be feared -- loathed perhaps, but not feared. Everyone is just trying to get along. Life's a pretty frightening thing, especially if you're a little awkward to begin with. \nSo I say to you backward people of the world, don't worry too much about not fitting in, or feeling depressed, or whatever kind of angst you're into. I see you out there, and I know how it is. Just don't bug me with it, because, let's be honest, my angst is just a little more important than yours.
(01/30/01 7:39pm)
Throughout the history of mankind, we have been asking one question. It's the same question I ask every time I wake up in the alleyway outside of the Irish Lion: How did I get here? There are those who believe we are products of reincarnation, those who are creationists, evolutionary believers and those that believe Chris Edwards is God and made all of you to be his slaves. OK, so there's really only one person who believes that, but I predict big things for this movement in the future.\nTo tell the truth, I'm a bit sick of all the bickering and squabbling. I'm also sick of not getting laid, but that's a gripe I should save for another column. God, as he is known, probably doesn't care if we're here or not. He's probably too hungover to remember how he made us, so now we are left to sift through the clues. \nDarwinists claims that some bacteria turned into a fish and some fish turned into a lizard, and the lizards turned into big lizards, and the big lizards turned into mammals, and the mammals turned into monkeys and some of the monkeys put on blue blazers, greek letters and a lot of hair gel and stayed monkeys while the rest of us evolved into human beings.\nCreationists claim that the world was created in seven days and that two young people named Adam and Eve lived in a garden until they ate an apple and had to leave. Apparently a snake, who didn't realize it had millions of years before it could evolve into a lawyer, or a midwestern university president, talked them into it. \nReincarnationists believe, oh hell, who knows?\nI'm here to answer this eternal question with a resounding, who cares? We're here, aren't we? What possible difference does it make? I mean, there are just some questions, such as, what happened to my series of columns about white guys?, that shall forever remain unanswered. \nThe problem with these theories is that they fail to understand a basic logical truth. When one is dealing with an infinite power, all bets are off. Nothing had to happen in any one way. It really didn't have to happen at all. So what's the difference?\nI realize my answer is about as satisfying as a Subway diet, but it's the best I can do. And you know what? It's the best anybody can do, because nobody knows how we got here.\nThose who study past civilizations don't have a clue about what happened in the prehistory of humankind. These so-called archaeologists go out on their university-funded digs, find two hip bones and a pot, and try to tell everyone when this civilization existed and what they used for toothbrushes. \nI don't buy it, but I'll tell you what I do buy. People who get paid to play in the dirt aren't going to come back and say "well, we just don't have any idea," because that means they don't get any more funding. So they come up with stories too, just like the people who wrote the Bible weren't going to miss their chance at putting their immortal stamp on humanity by being silent. So, they made stuff up. \nCarbon dating is simply not reliable. There is no way to really check whether it's actual "science," so there's no way of knowing how old the Earth or anything in it is. My guess is that it's neither as old as the evolutionists claim nor as young as the creationists think.\nI have spoken, and those of you who don't like it can burn in some vague and fiery construction of the human mind, for all I care. I have a religion to start. \nDoes anybody know how to get in touch with L. Ron Hubbard? I need some advice.
(01/16/01 3:57am)
I am a white male, and to make matters worse for me, despite a shocking lack of evidence for a man my age, I am straight. Being a straight white male isn't easy these days. Time was, we were the scourge of mankind, we could repress and pillage at a whim. Now, I'm lucky if I can kick a puppy without ending up in court. \nI can already hear the "boos," but come on, I'm just kidding. It seems lately we can take it, but nobody lets us dish it out.\nNow, before I begin exploring the depths of my crackerness, I think I should let you know that this is the beginning of a series of articles. I want to address the African Americans, the Native Americans, the gay Americans, the feminist Americans, the mostly Irish, the but-I've-got-one-seventy-second-of-Cherokee-blood Americans, and of course, the Americans who think they're Italian but whose mother had an affair with a French guy once when their parents were first married and could very well be French Americans. \nI'm not really angry with the way straight, white males are portrayed or perceived. I just think we get a bad rap most of the time, and there are more misconceptions than I have time to clear up in a single article.\nSo, considering we're in Bloomington, which has more per capita homosexuals than a Christian Coalition convention (they're not fooling me), I think it's a good idea to begin with a column about the relations between gay and straight males. \nThe gay community has my utmost sympathies. Straight guys, of all colors, always try to act macho when the subject of homosexuality comes up. "Man, if a gay guy ever hit on me, I'd knock his teeth down his throat." \nI always ask why? It's not like they're going to talk you into it. No one's that good of a salesman, so just chill out. I've never been hit on by a gay man, probably for the same reason (my face) that I've never been hit on by a girl, so I don't know how I'd react. \nI mean, sure, it's a little unfair to tell straight guys that it's a compliment to be hit on by a gay man. In fact, the actual sexual acts of homosexuality make most of us a little queasy, but that's OK, it's none of our business. If it bothers you that much, go out and play a game of pickup basketball or something, get it out of your system, you'll be all right.\nGay males have to meet us halfway. There's a lot of deeply ingrained prejudice out there. I for one went to a church while I was growing up that told me AIDS was sent to kill homosexuals. \nI wondered why there was no disease to kill off child molesters, rapists and other sexual offenders who were an abomination before God. I even wondered where was the epidemic of laryngitis that should have attacked closed-minded preachers, but I never asked. \nEven some political parties think it's in their best interests to "speak out" against gays. They say homosexuality is unnatural. I say so what if homosexuality isn't the natural state of man? Neither is being a Republican.\nI will say that sometimes homosexuals don't help their own cause. I understand the problem they face in the civil rights parades and marches. When African Americans and women marched for their rights, it was pretty obvious they were black and pretty obvious they were women. \nHow do you show your sexuality? I don't know, but what I do know is that Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech would not have had the same weight had he given it while wearing a leather thong. \nWe can all get along just fine, but it's going to take some effort on the parts of both straight and gay males. We can't just rub each other the wrong way and hope things iron themselves out. We need open forums for discussion. I hope that in the next few columns I'll be able to help clear up a few misconceptions and air a few grievances from the white male perspective. Next week, we're going to discuss feminism. Stay tuned.
(01/09/01 3:53am)
The future is here, and quite frankly, I'm a little disappointed. It's 2001 and things haven't turned out for mankind as I'd hoped. Don't get me wrong, I couldn't care less about flying cars and meals in pills, but I do want to know what went wrong. I was supposed to be driving around in a hot rod, wearing dirty leather pants, eating dog food out of a can and shooting motorcycle gangs over gasoline. Where's the bleak future I was promised?\nI think it's obvious I'm a pessimist. There are those who say the glass is half full, those who say the glass is half empty, and then there's me, who'll drink what's left and then smash the glass over your head. It's because I'm such a deep cynic that I spent my elementary and high school years stockpiling dog food and rolling around in the back yard, shooting at targets with a semi automatic. \n"Suckers," I'd say to the kids who studied, "don't you know the commies are gonna start a nuclear war, and in the aftermath the only way to survive will be to wear cool black clothes and shoot everybody you meet on the this wasteland we will call Earth? Ha, ha, ha, what good will your GPAs do you then?" \nI didn't get laid a lot in high school.\nDespite the "election" of George W. Bush (It's just as well; Al Gore might very well have become the first president to be assassinated by a woodpecker.), it has dawned on me that we're probably not going to have utter anarchy for a while. But that doesn't mean we don't have "futuristic" issues to deal with. The most explosive of these issues has to do with cloning and the fears that come with the possibility of creating human clones.\nPeople worry that cloning technology will be used for bad purposes. My response to this is -- yeah, it probably will. But, what other type of new technology has mankind come up with that hasn't been used for bad purposes? Cloning will likely be a tremendous help to many people -- amputees, for example -- but that's not to say the government won't try to make cloned and programmed soldiers for war. Folks, if there is ever another big war in which the United States is involved, you'd better believe we will throw every bit of new technology at the enemy, regardless of ethics. Every country has done it in every war. Still, I believe many of the fears regarding cloning are overwrought at best.\nSome are afraid of the creation of a "worker class" of clones, like the ones in Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World," where the author envisioned a future in which mindless and expressionless workers are grown in labs and forced to wear khaki to distinguish themselves. \nI wonder if he ever stood outside the Kelley School of Business. \nAnyway, this won't happen, simply because it's not good for the economy. We're still a democracy, and people will get upset if they lose their jobs to worker clones. In fact, the same argument will be true for the military, as well. It makes no sense to have a standing army of clones that take jobs from other military personnel. The economy and its fragile inner clockwork will handle most of these problems and fears associated with cloning. \nPeople were upset when Copernicus claimed that the Earth revolved around the sun. Some of the great minds of the 19th century worried that if a human being traveled faster than 30 miles per hour in a car, his blood might boil. There is a long precedent of fear of new technologies. \nWe as humans like to think there is something special about us. We like to think the act of sexual reproduction has some sort of significance in our lives. So the question of whether cloned individuals will have a soul comes up, but it's unfounded.\nWe will clone people. Scientists have never found a way to do something that they haven't done, but don't worry. The first time a cloned person picks up a pen or a paintbrush, and articulates what it is like to be a cloned person, then we'll all get our humanity back. There is more to human beings than cells and DNA; most scientists don't understand that. They spend so much time staring at the tiny building blocks of human cells that they miss the point. It's like going to the Sistine Chapel and examining the carpet fibers in the lobby. \nWe're all going to be fine. Well, except for me. What am I going to do with all this dog food and these leather pants?
(12/05/00 3:54pm)
Everything is gone, wore out, or shot, just like me." These were the last words written by an Iowa farmer before he ended his life. It is a testament to the sadness that has overtaken our rural communities.\nSen. Byron Dorgan of North Dakota wrote in Washington Monthly that the suicide rate among small farmers is three times the rate of the general population. Do me a favor and don't pass judgement. Don't fake sympathy so you'll feel better. Don't tell me about social Darwinism and how capitalism has casualties. Don't insist farmers are an ignorant bunch of country rubes and have no place in our civilized society.\nIt is difficult to describe the feeling that comes from having your entire way of life taken from you. The rural communities of the Midwest are dying out. The suburbs, with their faceless groups of white-bred, floppy-haired kids and soccer moms, with their fake tans and home gym equipment, with their second-income families and fat-free diets are spreading into the rural communities like a cancer. They buy up farm ground that has been taken over by the lawyers, the bankers and the businessmen, and set up shop and destroy every bit of personality the countryside had. I have seen farmers who were independent, hard-working and happy end up as nothing but convenience store clerks. The people taking over their farmland hold the same distaste for farmers as they do for blacks and Hispanics, the people who caused the ex-suburbanites to move out in the first place. \nSmall farmers can't compete with the corporate farms and are forced out of business. The sense of displacement among farmers has bred the worst kind of depression. Going into a destroyed farm town, as I do every time I go home, is like spending time on an American Indian reservation. Alcoholism and depression are rampant. Most of the farmers commute to work in factories. Factories are not places for people, period, but especially not for men and women who spent their lives using their brains and hands to manage their own businesses. Factories are dusty, dingy places where they make you hit time clocks and take orders. Men and women who once managed a small business and could fix just about anything in creative and useful ways are relegated to being nothing but robotic pawns. \nIt's hard to do when you're used to being independent. \nThe worst part about this is it is celebrated by most economists. Here's a quote in Washington Monthly from appropriately named Steven Blank, an economist at the University of California at Davis -- "The U.S. no longer needs agriculture and is rapidly outgrowing it." We're outgrowing our need to eat? \nOther countries that aren't as spoiled as the United States take precautions to protect their food producers. Sen. Dorgan attended the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle this year, and wrote about it in Washington Monthly, "The European representatives were talking about families and communities, while the Americans talked about markets." European rural communities are flourishing, while those in the United States rot. This is despite the fact that small farms are every bit as efficient as the corporations. \nI don't have the column space to delve into economics, but it's neither good for the consumer nor the farmer to have these policies in place. You think Microsoft is a monopoly? Eighty percent of the beef produced in this country comes from four producers. The American economy is top heavy, and will soon fold in on itself like an accordion. \nThe result of such policies is that the younger generation who never worked on the farms have nothing to identify with. They become rednecks, deer hunters, wannabe cowboys and the like because there's nothing left but the posturing. \nIt's true that one would have to be blind not to see this trend coming. I worked on one of the last family farms in our area for more than 10 years, and I could see it coming. Only about three of us farm hands were left at the time, and we worked in factories and as manual laborers; all of us have walked around displaced and fitting in nowhere. \nThe destruction of the farm life has hit me hard but not as hard as the old-timers. I was young enough to be able to change, but the old-timers weren't. What do you do when you're forced from your lifestyle and home in your 50s, 60s or 70s? According to the coddled, stupid, soft-handed laissez-faire economists, like George W., who walk around on ranches they've never worked a day on in their clean cowboy boots and khakis, these farmers were supposed to see the trend coming and start an Internet company or a line of fall fashions. \nI look around and I see strip malls and frozen yogurt shops where there was once personality. I see teenagers who have nothing to identify with. There is no work, no lifestyle that they can feel is a part of their culture and as a result they grab at anything they can. I think about what it must feel like to be those poor men and women who feel the only way out is to end their own lives rather than become faceless and degraded themselves -- and what I think is -- won't somebody help? Does anybody even open the letters I send to my congressman? What is the government's job if not to preserve the heart of our country? \nThe farmers have given so much. It is an indisputable historical truth that a nation can only go as far as its farmers can take it. It's the worst irony that farmers are being destroyed by the market and economy they worked to help create. \nWrite your congressmen, tell them to enact legislation that labels where products come from, and then buy the small farm products. Ask them to write laws that require supermarkets to buy a certain amount of their produce from family farms -- sort of like affirmative action for small farmers. This is the only way that we can survive in an economy where the consumer makes the decisions. Please.\n"Everything is gone, wore out, or shot, just like me" --- just like America.
(11/28/00 5:26am)
Before I begin, let me state that this column is not about what is politically correct or incorrect. This column is about what is historically correct or incorrect. \nSome people are considering filing a lawsuit against the United States that seeks slave reparations, compensation to the descendants of slaves for what slavery took from them. But if they are going to sue the United States, they should also sue countries in Africa, because nations on that continent played as great a role in slavery as did this country. \nThe first slaves in America consisted of Indians. The second set of slaves consisted of dirt-poor whites from England. These people were transported to the New World on the same slave ships that would later carry the Africans. I'm not talking about indentured servitude; I'm talking about slavery. \nThe Englanders were the same color and spoke the same language, so they could escape, which was a problem. They also tended to whither in the Southern heat. Africans, on the other hand, could not speak English, were easily recognizable by their color and were accustomed to the heat. This is why they were "chosen" to be the third set of slaves. But another factor is important as to why they were "chosen;" Africans were more than willing to capture and sell other Africans.\nYou see, the blame for slavery also lies heavily on Africa. Two black scholars, John Hope Franklin and Alfred A. Ross Jr., researched the history of slavery and racism in the United States, and wrote a book called "From Slavery to Freedom." They found the history of slavery is not divided into white and black. When European slave traders went to Africa, they didn't just park their boats and begin grabbing people. They had to deal with the leaders of African tribes. \nThe traders went to the local chiefs, asked for permission to trade in that area and then bribed the chiefs with gifts until they gave the traders members of his tribe to be used at the trader's disposal to kidnap other Africans, according to Franklin and Ross. The head kidnapper was an African, called a caboceer, and his job was to be the main liaison between the chief and the traders. He was in charge of the kidnapping. The greed of slavery cut Africa into many warring factions. Africans kidnapped one another and sold them to the traders, and were among those who became greatly wealthy from the slave trade. \nThe same thing happened in the New World, Franklin and Ross claim. Only 25 percent of Southerners in the height of slavery had any immediate economic interest in slavery. The other 75 percent were left to impoverished, starving, illiterate, nasty, brutish and short lives on small family farms. The slaves undercut the only paying jobs in the area. The people who benefited from slavery were a handful of Southern plantations owners. \nThe only way the plantation owners could sell this terrible repressive system, which was almost as repressive to poor whites as it was to blacks, was with the idea of racism. The economic policies of slavery were so destructive to every facet of Southern life that the South has still not recovered and might not for the next 100 years. Do you see a pattern? The haves in the United States sold out the have-nots, just like in Africa. \nSlavery was never a matter of one race versus the other. It was a matter of who was in control and who wasn't. \nIf the plaintiffs win this lawsuit against the United States, I say poor whites should be allowed to sue. The descendants of certain members of African tribes should be sued as well. If any money is won, then due compensation should be passed on to the descendants of white Northern soldiers who fought and died for people they didn't even know. \nIt is always a bad idea to associate with a color. Throughout history, no religious or racial group has been devoid of blame. To associate with the color white is to associate with every atrocity whites have ever propagated as well as the great accomplishments of those people. To associate with the color black is to do the same. \nThis lawsuit cuts the legs out from under the black community. It tells the black community they are owed something based on their color rather than their merit. Blacks and whites both participated fully in slavery, and the blame falls on both sides.\nYes, racism in the post-Civil War America has hurt the black community, but even at racism's worst in this country, things were often better for blacks here than in Africa. Right now in Africa, Franklin and Ross said, more than 100 million women suffer from genital mutilation because of female circumcision policies and a repressive demand for female virginity. Nations in Africa, although they have a rich history, are just as guilty of atrocities as any other group. \nAfrica is not and was not a paradise for all peoples. The United States is one of the only nations in the history of the world to give rights to a repressed people because it was thought to be right. \nBlacks did not overthrow the government. They enlightened their repressors and now have equal rights, at least in theory. The only people who seek to hold them back are those who would dig up grudges and perpetuate an attitude of bitter isolationism. \nWhen the rhetoric regarding this lawsuit starts to fly, remember that slavery was bad not only for all blacks but for most whites as well. Remember that blacks and whites are both guilty for slavery, and we are equally responsible for perpetuating racism through the misrepresentation of history, no matter what color we are.
(11/21/00 4:19am)
There is a lot of rhetoric this time of year from certain animal rights organizations that turkeys are mistreated at Thanksgiving. I worked on a small commercial farm for years, so I think this type of argument is the equivalent of spitting in the faces of me and everyone else I knew who worked to keep the supermarket shelves full. I'm not going to attack this rhetoric outright, but I am going to discuss why, if you go for a vegetarian or organic Thanksgiving, you should know a few things.\n Many people join the "battle" for animal rights because they cannot separate a livestock animal from a pet. The logic goes something like this: "I love my dog and wouldn't eat him. My dog's an animal. Hey, a cow's an animal, too. I shouldn't eat cows." \nI find this an interesting chain of thought. I like dogs, too. I just know what that dog thinks of me. He might like me because I feed him and pet him, but he doesn't love me. I know that when a dog licks me that he's not doing it because he loves me, but because of the salty taste of my skin. In other words, he thinks I taste pretty good. He doesn't lick other dogs because their fur isn't as tasty as my skin. He doesn't lick anything he doesn't want to eat. In fact, pets cause one of the main problems crime scene investigators have when looking at deaths in the home. You see, when the owner dies, dogs or cats in the house develop a tendency to nibble on him or her.\nAny human traits you think your pet has are put there by you, and any human traits that are put on livestock animals are put there by you as well. \nI would like to caution anyone looking to serve organic vegetables at their Thanksgiving festivities. For some reason many more organic vegetables are sold than are grown. Isn't that funny? This oddity in mathematics was investigated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. They bought 55 common food items at a regular supermarket and at an organic supermarket. What they found was that the word "organic" really just means expensive. "Organic" foods cost much more; $55.42 was spent at the natural store and $33.31 at the supermarket on the same foods. \nYou know what else is funny about these organically grown foods? They often contain more pesticides than supermarket items. The U.S. Department of Agriculture did another study on 55 common produce items from "organic" stores and supermarkets. Thirty percent of the "organic" foods contained pesticide residue while only 20 percent of the commercially grown foods had residue. This happens because pesticide residue resides in the soil, and they get on the vegetables whether the growers use pesticides or not. The commercial growers, or your average American farmer, take precautions to keep that pesticide residue from getting on your dinner plate. The organic farmers, because they do not directly apply pesticides, don't. \nBut believe me, you don't want organic vegetables anyway. Without those pesticides to keep bugs off and without agricultural technology that stimulates growth, that vegetable is more likely to be small, withered and eaten up by bugs, not to mention that it's more likely to contain pesticides. So you're getting the pesticides and a lower quality of food. If you see a big, crisp vegetable with the label "organic" on it, you can be assured the label is the only thing organic about it.\nThe animal rights movements are a con and a sham that are based on nothing more than emotion. Animals are animals. They aren't people and never will be. Supposedly organically grown foods are nothing more than an elaborate scheme to separate wannabe hippies from their money. So enjoy your turkey and shut up.
(11/14/00 4:41am)
It has been a little more than a year since I started writing this thing. In this time I have acquired quite a bit of mail. Since this is more or less my one-year column-writing anniversary, I'd like to acknowledge some of you loyal fans, and those of you nonfans -- whom I can only describe as player haters.\nTo protect the anonymity of the mail writers, some of the questions and letters below are made up, while others are real.\nWriting about fraternities is always a good way to get some reader response. Here are a few letters I received after I bashed a frat in a column:\n"Hey Chris, you're an idiot. It is so not fair to say all frat guys act alike. P.S. Dave Matthews rules."\nHe has a good point. Here's one I got from a different frat boy.\n"Hey Chris, you're an idiot. It is so not fair to say all frat guys act alike. P.S. Dave Matthews rules."\nWow, these guys are right on the money. Let's look at one more.\n"Hey Chris, you're an idiot. It is so not fair to say all frat guys act alike. P.S. Dave Matthews rules." \nI guess that puts me in my place, eh?\nMost of you who write in ask questions. This is a good opportunity to answer them. So here are a few of the most asked, and most interesting, of them.\nQ. What's wrong with you?\nA: I'm not sure. I think it has something to do with pork rinds.\nQ. Do you realize the entire campus thinks you suck?\nA: Yeah, but I'm big in Germany.\nQ. Hey, Mr. Funnyman, do you think you're funny?\nA: Uh, no, I guess not. Knock knock -- never mind.\nQ. Hey, did I see you the other night, drunk, streaking down Kirkwood?\nA: Nah, I'd never run naked down Kirkwood. That street has enough potholes as it is …\nQ. What exactly do you plan to do with a diploma in history?\nA: Tie it to a rock and throw it at people who ask stupid questions.\nQ. Isn't your column really just a step or two above playground name calling? Do you realize that by engaging in this type of rhetoric you contribute to the dumbing down of America you so claim to despise?\nA: Yeah? Well, you suck, hippie.\nQ. Do your columns ever contain hidden messages?\nA: Basically, only when dorks overtly write notes to our meager editors does this sort of thing come up. Columns, however readers interpret such issues, seldom style anything to add new and hidden messages.\nOn occasion, I develop groupies. Well, sort of.\n"Hey Chris, me and my roommates think you are hilarious. If you weren't so brutally unattractive we might even consider dating you."\nMy Answer: Stop it. I'm blushing. Besides, I'm engaged. And Maria says she plans to stay married to me even after we've met and she gains her citizenship. So there.\nEvery now and then there's a mix-up in the mailroom and I get the Sexpert's mail.\nQ: Me and my wife were having sex the other day. She stands on one leg, shakes a tambourine and licks me while I masturbate and swing wildly at a pinata shaped like America. What I want to know is -- how can I keep the monkey from hitting her over the head with his banjo? Signed, George "V" Bush \nA: Well, Mr. Bush, I would suggest running for president. That way the Secret Service can wrestle your monkey to the ground before he can do any serious damage. \nI'd like to thank everyone for writing in. I'm a bit of a hate mail junkie, so if you really despise me, by all means, let me know. Just remember, I'm a person, too, even if I'm not very good at it.
(11/10/00 4:09am)
As of this writing, it looks like George W. Bush is going to win. I think it's interesting when we have a president who most citizens don't want. It's not a secret that George W. was a frat boy at Yale. I wonder how he plans to spend the next four years hazing the country. I can picture George W., paddle in hand, standing behind the bent over United States.\n George W.: "Tax cuts for the rich." Whack! \n The United States: "Thank you, sir, may we have another!"\n George W.: "Tougher drug laws for people who don't have the good sense to be rich enough to avoid prosecution when they do drugs like I did." Whack! \nThe United States: "Thank you, sir, may we have another!"\nGeorge W.: "No foreign policy whatsoever." Whack! \nThe United States: "Thank you, sir, may we have another!"\nGeorge W.: "Death penalty for people who don't have the good sense to be born into rich families like me." Whack! \nThe United States: "Thank you, sir, may we have another!"\nGeorge W.: "A crazy sounding school voucher system that is guaranteed to further run down schools that educate the poor and middle class." Whack! \nThe United States: "Thank you, sir, may we have another!"\nGeorge W.: "No money for the middle class and poor to send their kids to college." Whack! \nThe United States: "Thank you, sir, may we have another!"\nGeorge W.: "A president who will bow to special interest groups and do anything that the party tells him to do." Whack! \nThe United States: "Thank you, sir, may we have another!"\nI could go on and on, but what's the point? I despise George W. Bush. He is the epitome of everything racist, elitist, class-structured and corporate-owned about the United States \nHe has never done a single thing on his own merit. His daddy got him into Yale. He scored a 566 on his verbal SAT while the rest of the incoming Yale class scored substantially higher. You tell me how he got in. His daddy got him into the National Guard so he wouldn't have to go to war like the poor kids. He got out of college and ran every business he was given into the ground. Luckily, he fell into some Texas Rangers' money and then used his daddy's name to become the governor of Texas. Let's face it, he ran Texas into the ground like he did every other thing he's ever touched. \nCan somebody explain to me why his drug use doesn't matter? Why is it that if a black kid in Houston's fifth ward gets caught with cocaine he goes to jail, while a white kid at Yale does cocaine, and he goes to the Oval Office? Is doing a couple of lines off the coffee table at the frat house substantially different from snorting coke in the hood? \nHow come George W. didn't have to go to Vietnam? When the draft, or as the people in my county liked to call it, "the white trash bus route," came for every other young man his age in the '60s who wasn't rich, why did he get to stay in the United States and wear blue blazers and haze freshmen pledges? \nWhy is a country that gets so up in arms over buying products produced in Third World sweatshops not concerned with the fact he supported an illegal industry that causes corruption and the most vicious kinds of murder? \nIf he wore tennis shoes made in some Third World country sweatshop, then we'd be mad because he would be supporting a despicable industry with his money. But when he did cocaine, he supported an industry that calls for not just the exploitation of women and children, but murder and intimidation.\nDon't get me wrong. I'm proud of the United States. What other country in the world can split itself politically down the middle and not fire a shot? \nI'm just saying that it's a terrible insult to the political system that a guy like Bush can get anywhere near the presidency. Whatever the case might be, he has to realize most of the people in this country, and perhaps even in Florida, didn't want him in office. He does not have a mandate from the people, regardless of whether he gets the presidency or not. \nThe people have level heads. We own the country's power, and we'll be watching for the next four years.
(10/30/00 5:02am)
Halloween has always been my favorite holiday. As a kid, I especially liked it, maybe because it was the one season when the neighbors didn't complain about the decorations we left in the front yard all year.\nI remember when I first started going trick-or-treating. My mother, ever the jokester, dressed me up as a deer and sent me out to the neighborhood houses. This joke wasn't particularly funny, when one considers the ratio of hunters to small boys dressed as deer in my town. And the main evening entertainment of those hunters in the neighborhood included sitting on the porch eating pork and beans out of a can and cocking and uncocking a shotgun. \nI was 13 before I even knew it was called "trick or treating." I thought the phrase was "Please don't shoot. Can I have some of that?"\nAfter a few excited hunters buzzed my tail, my mom reluctantly gave me an alien costume. At the first house I visited, some good ol' boy was sitting on his porch with the obligatory shotgun. He had a big wad of chewing tobacco in his cheek, and I went up to him and opened my "can I have some" bag with a big smile. Apparently, he thought I was carrying some form of new disposable spittoon, because what I got sure didn't look like candy -- didn't taste like it, either. \nThat first year as an alien, all that I got was two cigarettes, a spent shotgun shell, six pennies and a handful of nacho cheese dip. I did better in subsequent years, and if I didn't, I resorted to tricking people. That plan wasn't as easy as it sounds in a town where a tree full of toilet paper is regarded as a blessing from the Big Lots fairy.\nAs a grown-up, I don't look forward to Halloween like I used to. It just isn't the same at college. Watching horror movies just doesn't do it for me. How am I supposed to be afraid of a killer who is constantly getting the crap kicked out of him by a 17-year-old babysitter? \nThese movies don't even scare the people they're intended to scare. Remember those sorority girl slasher movies? You can't scare sorority girls with a psycho killer. They're too peppy. "Ohmagod, Lindsay, our entire house has been brutally mutilated with a pick axe by an insane killer. Let's make T-shirts!" \nNo, if you want to scare sorority girls, you've got to come up with movie titles such as "The Day the Bakery Ran Out of Chocolate Chip Bagels." But if you really want to scare one, just tell her going to the tanning bed six times a week doesn't make her look any thinner.\nI have tried going to costume parties, but I always end up going as the "guy in the corner who nobody talks to," and the only thing that scares me at these parties is just how tight those black stretchy pants can get.\nI am at a moment of real crisis. Halloween is the one day of the year I really look forward to. I have to find the true spirit of Halloween somehow. Maybe I'll get really drunk and go sit in the pumpkin patch with Linus. \nNo, this year I think I'm going back to my roots for Halloween. I'm going to go back home, open a can of beans, put in a wad of chew, cock my shotgun and wait on the next generation to come by.
(10/17/00 5:13am)
The presidential election isn't far away. I know it might be a little late for this, but I'm announcing my candidacy today. I'm dissatisfied with the current choices.\nIf we elect George W. on a Tuesday, we'll have Canadian rule by Thursday. I'm not even really sure if George W. is an actual person. I think Castro gave Dan Quayle a facelift, put him in a pair of cowboy boots and unleashed him on the United States as a cruel joke. \nAnd it's not that I really dislike Al Gore. It's just that I think he's missing something, like elbow and knee joints.\nI'm still trying to figure out how we got stuck with these two guys. I was rooting for Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., but apparently only a handful of people get to decide who runs for president. \nYou know what the sad thing is? I don't think the candidates know how they got here, either. George W.'s daddy got him into Yale. He's not aware of anything; somebody's running his campaign, but he doesn't know who. He's not even smart enough to know that whispering on a microphone defeats the purpose of whispering. He didn't have any idea there were subliminal messages in his attack ads on Gore. \nHe can't even pronounce the word "subliminal." \nAnd how did we get Al Gore? Was he standing by the yellow brick road until somebody poured some oil on him? Apparently, he thinks he invented the Internet somehow. Do we want a guy this delusional to have his hand on the button? Is he going to wake up someday and "invent" a nuclear disaster? \nI don't really want to be president, but somebody must stop these two.\nWhat kind of a president would I be? Let me put it this way. If I'm guilty of a little misconduct in the Oval Office, I promise not to lie about it. In fact, I'll put the whole thing on pay-per-view.\nI should start with some campaign promises and some sort of platform, so here it is.\nI will legalize marijuana, but only if a representative from this movement can get through a three-hour question-and-answer session in the Senate without referring to anyone as "dude."\nIf elected, I promise to make Britney Spears my ambassador to the Mideast. I figure nobody will fight over some holy dirt if they can watch an encore of her Video Music Awards performance. I've already got a space cleared on my television set for the Nobel Prize.\nI promise to immediately execute anyone found quoting that damn Robert Frost poem about the "road less traveled." And it will be mandatory that the executioner give a smarmy smile and say, "Two roads diverged in a woods and you took the one that led to the gas chamber." \nI also promise to execute grouchy opinion columnists who keep writing long after their schtick has stopped working and they revert to doing jokes about Britney Spears and the Middle East.\nInstead of giving a boring inaugural speech, I'll just kick Jim Carrey's ass.\nI will disband MENSA and replace it with a NASCAR fan club.\nI will make it mandatory that this joke -- Q. "How many sorority girls does it take to screw in a light bulb? A. Five, one to screw in the light bulb and four to make the T-shirts," -- be told at least once a day on every college campus across the country. \nI'm going to pardon the cigarette companies. Nobody crams a cigarette in your mouth. Anybody who is persuaded to smoke by a cartoon camel is bound to wander out into traffic long before lung cancer can get them. \nIf elected, I promise to have every member of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals tied to a chair and slapped in the face with a steak until they admit they're really just bitter because they missed the 1960s.\nIf anybody named Elian wanders into the country, he will be shot back to his native country out of a cannon.\nWell, there's my platform. I hope I get elected. That would look great on my resume.
(10/10/00 7:14am)
I'm confessing my geekiness today, which should cause about as much shock as when Gandalf the Grey became Gandalf the White in the second book of the Lord of the -- oh, never mind. I am a member of MENSA, a society for geniuses. Membership is based primarily on IQ scores, but one also has to show proficiency in giving a nerdy laugh, receiving wedgies and, of course, the Star Trek quiz. I had to cheat on that part.\nI'm kidding. Not all smart people are dorks; it just so happens that I am. Today I'd like to speak on the decline of intelligence in our society. The evidence is really everywhere.\nLet me define what I mean. I knew guys on the farm who weren't book smart but could fix a tractor with ease. One of my buddies and I often argue about who's smarter. He claims he is functionally smart, which means if the tractor breaks down, he can locate the problem and fix it. I'm book smart, which means if the tractor breaks down, I can sit on the wheel and discuss Plato. \nIntelligence comes in many forms. But I've noticed that an entire generation of kids are not only unintelligent, but also don't know how to do anything useful. Kids who grow up in the suburbs with Michael Jordan posters on their walls and Gap clothes in their closets might have mastered going to school, but they didn't learn anything. These kids do just fine here at IU, because they've learned how to work the system. \nThus, we have a generation of cow-eyed, young adults walking around campus, bumping into each other for four years, who graduate from college and really don't know how to do anything but hang out. I assume most of them will end up sitting in some cubicle, drooling.\nLet me point something out. Most of you won't like it, but I don't care. I've stayed in the smart closet so long that I'm sick of it, and no longer care if other people like it or not. An IQ score of 80 is mentally challenged, 100 is average and 132 or higher is genius. I'll put this in perspective: John F. Kennedy's was 119 and Da Vinci's is estimated to have been in the 160s. Only 1-2 percent of the population is in the genius bracket. \nWhat do you notice? The distance between genius and average is a good deal further than between mentally challenged and average. What's this mean? Nothing is suited for the smarter people, who are often too bored in average classes to care. Being gifted is the equivalent of the average person sitting in a special ed class. \nI had a real eye-opener this summer when I started taking independent study classes. I easily went through 300 level classes in about a week. My grades before hadn't been great, but I'm taking six of these classes and have yet to get less than an A. Semester-long classes move so slowly I want to jab a pen in my jugular, and every time one of the herd animals breaks loose and asks "How many pages does this paper gotta' be?" I want to throw a chair at them. \nThe worst thing is that nobody reads anymore. I am constantly talking to college juniors and seniors who say they haven't read a nonschool book in years. They say they don't have time to read and then ask me if I caught last night's episode of "Friends."\nCollege isn't the only place where ignorance reigns. Nowhere is the decline of intelligence more pronounced than in this presidential race. Bill Clinton is a smart guy; he has to be to get from the hollers of Arkansas to the Oval Office. But he is an exception, and quite possibly will be the last intelligent person to take office for a while. I am amazed that a genuinely stupid person such as George W. Bush can get anywhere near the presidency. Presidents used to be the best and brightest. James Garfield could write Latin with one hand and Greek with the other at the same time. I doubt if George W. could wave "bye-bye" with both hands at the same time. \nIntelligence is not innately fixed. All we have to do is take an interest in the things around us. Please, turn off "Dawson's Creek," pick up a book and fill your minds with something other than pre-packaged knowledge you get from your classes. Otherwise, us smart people are going to take over the world. And you know what that means, don't you? Wedgies for everybody.