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(05/07/09 10:32pm)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>This is my 59th and final column.I’m obviously incredibly remorseful about this, because 60 would have been a much less awkward number to end on. But so it goes.In the rare moments these days when I’m not counting down the seconds until graduation or packing up my apartment four months before I plan to move out or rolling down my windows and screaming, “SENIORS ’09, SUCKERS!” as I drive haphazardlythrough clusters of frightened underclassmen, it sometimes occurs to me that there are a few things I might miss about college.I will miss experiencing all of the varied and unexpected ways that an umbrella can break, just when I think I’ve seen them all. I have had to buy a new umbrella every week for the past four years. But now that I will no longer be taking long walks through monsoons, the thought of not constantly buying new ones is making me feel confined: I’m not sure I’m ready to settle down with just one umbrella for the rest of my life.Another thing I will miss is the game that my roommates and I play of seeing who can embarrass the bank teller the most with what we write on the “memo” line of our rent checks. Classics include “breast exam,” “genital reconstruction,” and “the sex you slipped into my coffee.”I will also miss being the girl who is always running to the bus while the other passengers sigh impatiently. I run with such urgency that it’s fun and easy to pretend I’m rushing off to somewhere important, like to the airport where I am about to catch a red-eye flight to Paris to stop the love of my life from marrying the wrong woman. (Although lately I have felt less like the endearing heroine of a romantic comedy and increasingly like a strung-out college senior who just rolled out of bed and has hair and drool stuck to her face. But I will miss that a little too.)And now I’m going to be serious, because the truth is that there is at least one thing that I know I will miss wholeheartedly: I will miss having this column like Paris Hilton misses having a BFF.College is truly a crazy and confusing time, and you’re lucky if you can find something (other than vodka) that helps you through it. This column has been that thing for me. I wrote it when my hand was broken, when my heart was broken, and from the hospital waiting room while my dad was having open-heart surgery.And so my obligatory, cheesy last thought is this: When you find something that you love to do, you owe it to yourself to stick with it. Regardless of everything else.To those of you who enjoyed my columns, thanks for reading. To those of you who enjoyed leaving biting, anonymous comments online, thanks for teaching me not to care what other people think. To those of you I’ve offended, thanks for the material. I will miss you all.
(05/01/09 1:07am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>This is my 59th and final column. I’m obviously incredibly remorseful about this because 60 would have been a much less awkward number to end on. But so it goes.In the rare moments these days when I’m not counting down the seconds until graduation or packing up my apartment four months before I plan to move out or rolling down my windows and screaming “Seniors ’09, suckers!” as I drive haphazardly through clusters of frightened underclassmen, it sometimes occurs to me that there are a few things I might miss about college.I will miss experiencing all of the varied and unexpected ways an umbrella can break just when I think I’ve seen them all. I have had to buy a new umbrella every week for the past four years, turning me into a serial umbrella monogamist. But now that I will no longer be taking long walks through monsoons, the thought of not constantly buying new ones is making me feel confined: I’m not sure I’m ready to settle down with just one umbrella for the rest of my life.Another thing I will miss is the game that my roommates and I play of seeing who can embarrass the bank teller the most with what we write on the “memo” line of our rent checks. Classics include “breast exam,” “genital reconstruction” and “the sex you slipped into my coffee.”I will also miss being the girl who is always running to the bus while the other passengers sigh impatiently. I run with such urgency that it’s fun and easy to pretend I’m rushing to somewhere important, like to the airport where I am about to catch a red-eye flight to Paris to stop the love of my life from marrying the wrong woman (Although lately I have felt less like the endearing heroine of a romantic comedy and more like a strung-out college senior who rolled out of bed and has hair and drool stuck to her face, but I will miss that a little too).And now I’m going to be serious, because there is at least one thing I know I will miss wholeheartedly: I will miss having this column like Paris Hilton misses having a BFF.College is truly a crazy and confusing time, and you’re lucky if you can find something (other than vodka) that helps you through it. This column has been that thing for me. I wrote it when my hand was broken, when my heart was broken and from the hospital waiting room while my dad was having open-heart surgery. And so my obligatory, cheesy last thought is this: When you find something you love to do, you owe it to yourself to stick with it – regardless of everything else.For those of you who enjoyed my column: thanks for reading. For those of you who enjoyed leaving biting, anonymous comments online: thanks for teaching me not to care what other people think. For those of you I’ve offended: thanks for the material. I will miss you all.
(04/17/09 12:13am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>There comes a moment in every young woman’s life when she must stop and ask herself the dreaded question that her entire youth has been building up to: Am I too old to shop in the juniors’ department?If you have to ask – probably.This paralyzing revelation, often accompanied by a tearful breakdown at the local shopping mall, is only the beginning. It hits us like an oncoming train, opening up a whole new can of questions and concerns that suddenly start pouring out of our minds like confetti.Are people embarrassed for me because I still wear pants that say “Hot Stuff” on the butt? Am I also too old to giggle at the word “penal”? Is it time to record a less obscene voicemail message? Has it become more depressing than fulfilling to stand around a shoddy ping-pong table while drunk acquaintances toss balls into cups of stale beer? Might I one day regret these pictures I am loading onto Facebook of me getting blazed in a stolen cop car?For all these reasons and more, it’s a confusing time for those of us preparing to leave college.We are torn between our grown-up ambitions and our youthful tendencies. As a certain pop princess once explained: “I’m not a girl, not yet a woman.”Me too, Brit. Last semester I wrote essay after essay for my grad school applications, trying to prove on paper that I should be taken seriously. Then I printed out the pages and attached them using my neon green staples and hot-orange paperclips. This is the story of my life.Many of us wake up early to work at jobs that require us to be mature and responsible. But between work and classes, we are completely un-self-conscious about sprawling out on the floor of the nearest campus building for a nap. (I’ve heard rumors that this is not always smiled upon in the real world.)Of course, not everyone is struggling with this transition to adulthood just yet. Those moving back home will get to revert back to an infantile state – having their meals cooked, getting their laundry done and being tucked in to bed at night.But for the rest of us, the time has come to ask the tough questions: Can I come back to nap at the Union when I’m no longer a student? What should I do with my pastel-colored office supplies? When I have my own family, will it still be okay to eat oatmeal for dinner while watching The Bachelorette and chatting on AIM?I do not know the answers to these questions, for I am still trying to find my balance between these two worlds. I’m too old for juniors’ clothes, but too young to know how to navigate the women’s department without ending up with clothes that make me look like a potato sack. Incidentally, that would make an excellent title for a pop song.
(04/03/09 12:42am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>I saw a 4-year-old taking pictures with a bulky, multi-colored Fisher Price digital camera the other day. When I was that age, I was playing with the Fisher Price Chunky Little People Farm, and that was exciting for its time because the barn door made a “moo” sound when opened and the set included a miniature tractor and a tiny bag of feed.So I went online to figure out if I had really seen what I thought I did. I had. The Fisher Price Web site describes their Kid-Tough Digital Camera as being simple enough for kids “3 years and up.” A customer review on Amazon.com described it as being “a hard-to-use, inferior product that your kids will love.” Another customer claimed “the pictures are so bad that it might as well be a block of wood painted to look like a camera.”I browsed Amazon.com for quite a while in a state of shock and awe. Amazon has a “Digital Camera for Kids Community,” which is a forum where clueless parents post questions and advice under headings such as “Which ... camera to buy for daughter’s 4th birthday” and “HELP!! What’s a good digital camera for a 6 yr. old?”I only recently began to accept the reality of 14-year-olds having their own cell phones, so this really had me scratching my head. What other bizarre toddler trends had my college-town bubble been protecting me from noticing?I had to find out. So I held my breath, closed my eyes and daringly typed “BlackBerry for kids” into my Google search. I got 14,200,000 results.Apparently, a British company called LeapFrog is about to launch the “Text & Learn,” a BlackBerry-style gadget aimed at toddlers.I know what you’re thinking: If we are going to encourage young children to start imitating their parents’ habits, shouldn’t we at least start them off with addictions that are less destructive and time-consuming? Like gambling? Or drinking?From what I understand, the Text & Learn is like the Speak & Spell on shrooms. It has a large LCD screen, a full keyboard and a built-in calendar to better help 2-year-olds keep track of their time commitments. It also has a pretend “Web browser” mode so that children can pretend to surf the Internet while they communicate via “text message” with an imaginary, asexual friend named Scout. I personally think this last feature is incredibly beneficial. With children hitting puberty at such a young age these days, they need all of the texting practice they can get early on so they will know how to send and respond to midnight booty calls in just a few short years. When my children turn 3 someday, I hope to buy them a Fisher Price time travel machine with a built-in MP3 Player and Blue-ray Disk. With any luck, I will have them T9ing before they even know their colors.
(03/12/09 11:57pm)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>I vividly remember going into my shared bathroom freshman year and finding a Post-it note left by one of my suitemates on the toilet paper roll. It read: “Next time refill the toilet paper. How hard is it, really?”It’s a startling experience the first time you receive a passive-aggressive note from someone with whom you thought you were peacefully coexisting.Sending and receiving such notes is an experience many of us continue to have throughout college as we attempt to live with people who are eager to point out the ways we fail as roommates because we may occasionally forget to turn off a light or rinse a dish or feed the cat for a few weeks.The problem with these notes is that they tend to have the reverse effect of their intention. When I read that Post-it in the bathroom, my reaction was not to make a mental note to myself to remember to refill the toilet paper next time. Instead, I became irrationally defensive and angry, to the point where I had to talk myself out of the sudden urge to unroll all of the toilet paper and use it to spell out the message “How ugly is your face, really?” That would teach her not to patronize me through Post-its!I currently have four female roommates, so you can bet various notes pop up from time to time. Luckily, the majority of our notes are more passive than aggressive.For example, when someone doesn’t want her note to appear hostile, I’ve noticed she will end it with a smiley face. And whose day doesn’t that brighten? You can’t stay mad at a note that is smiling at you, even if it is pointing out that you are as fat and worthless as the bags of garbage you forgot to take to the curb.Another tactic I’ve observed for keeping a confrontational note friendly – and conveniently anonymous – is to word it as if it were written by the appliance to which it was taped. On our freezer door is what appears to be a plea from the freezer itself: “Please make sure I am closed all the way!” This risks being condescending in an apartment where everyone is 22 years old and has been closing doors most of her life. But instead, I find it a little endearing; it makes me feel I am looking out for the well-being of this helpless little machine.Like anyone else’s, our notes sometimes do get out of hand. An anonymous roommate once drafted a contract we all had to sign as proof we understood that failure to lock the dead bolt in addition to the regular lock would result in a robbery that would be our own fault.So my hope is that one day we will live in a world where confrontations do not involve Post-it notes or dry-erase boards. But until then, I urge you to at least find ways to keep your written advice to your roommates friendly. I mean, how hard is it really?
(02/27/09 2:20am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>The IU Office of Overseas Study offers more than 80 programs in 37 countries, 17 languages and nearly every field of study. Still, approximately only 1,600 out of about 40,000 students from IU go abroad each year. That’s slightly more than 1 in 25. That’s about 4 percent.But there’s no good reason not to study abroad.I understand you might be afraid of homesickness or of missing out on things here in Bloomington.But trust me, when you get back from spending a few months in another country, you will find that everyone and everything is eerily exactly the same as it was when you left. Meanwhile, you will have had extraordinary once-in-a-lifetime experiences that you will be telling stories about for the rest of your life. And if you think you can’t afford to go abroad, you probably haven’t researched your options. The Office of Overseas Study gives more than $100,000 in need- and merit-based scholarships each year. Any student with a 3.3 cumulative GPA is eligible for a Hutton Honors College International Experiences grant, regardless of whether you are in the Honors College. As an out-of-state student, spending a semester abroad ended up costing me less than spending a semester here.When you go abroad, you will form friendships unlike any you will ever have again. You will also return home 100 percent more independent, confident, curious and adventurous than you were before you left. You will think about life differently, and you will have a better understanding of the world in which you live. Your only regret will be not staying longer.If you are afraid of a language barrier, you can go to an English-speaking country. You can live with a host family, in a dorm or on your own. You can go with or without a community of other IU students. You can go over the summer if you don’t want to miss a semester. There is something for everyone.You can research the different programs at http://www.indiana.edu/~overseas/. You can also stop by the Overseas Study Information Center in Franklin Hall 303. It is open Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. and is staffed by advisors and peer counselors who are eager to help you find a program that fits with what you want.It’s time to rethink anything that might be stopping you from going abroad because right now you have an opportunity that won’t come again. And what are you more likely to regret at the end of these four years: the risks you took or the ones you didn’t?
(02/13/09 2:46am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>An imposter has been making some interesting purchases with my credit card number.When a man from my bank called a couple weeks ago to tell me they suspected credit card fraud, he read a list of recent transactions and asked whether or not they were my own.“I’m seeing a purchase made at somewhere called Cheeseburger in ... P-A-R-S... is that Paris? Have you gone shopping at Cheeseburger in Paris?”“Cheeseburger In Paradise,” I corrected. “And yes, that was me.”“And what about the China ... Buffet?” he asked.“Also mine,” I confessed. This was irritating. Did my bank suspect fraud because they thought someone was buying things in Paris and China?“Okay,” he continued. “How about purchases with Napster?”Uh-oh. “No ... I use LimeWire.”“And did you make a donation to a children’s hospital in Melbourne, Australia?”“Donate? Me? Never.”So the bank man shut down my credit card. I was by myself in Chicago at the time, which isn’t exactly where I would have chosen to be when I got this news, but luckily I had access to another account.The bank man told me my imposter’s only purchase that had successfully gone through was the donation to the children’s hospital, in the amount of four dollars. He gave me a number that I could call to dispute this charge if I wished. I thought about calling, but then I envisioned a doctor unplugging a young boy from life support and explaining that his funding had fallen through. Meanwhile, I would probably take my four dollars straight to the drive-thru of McDonald’s – where I could afford exactly six Chicken McNuggets – while somewhere in Australia, grieving parents would be lowering their son into his grave.So, by not calling, I may have saved a life. Which was really nice of me.But still, it leads to the question: Who steals someone’s money and then donates it to a good cause? Who is this modern-day Robin Hood? If I were to steal someone’s credit card, I imagine I would take it straight to the China Buffet and never give a second thought to the greater concerns of humanity or any other cause that did not directly benefit either my hunger, my fleeting materialistic whims or my own vanity. But maybe that was the point; maybe this thief looked through my credit history, noticed how selfish I am and decided to teach me a lesson.Point taken, credit card thief. And might I add that I also admire your attempts to pay for music rather than pirate it. Even though it would have been much easier for you to illegally download your songs for free, you went through all the trouble of stealing a credit card to pay for them. Your respect for the entertainment industry is to be commended. This has been a paradox and a wake-up call: My credit card thief is a more proactive citizen than I will probably ever be. But from now on, I will try to follow his or her example.
(01/30/09 3:51am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>I created a Twitter account today for the same reason I do a lot of things I don’t really want to do: Everyone else was doing it.For those of you who don’t know, Twitter is a social networking site that allows users to constantly provide 140-word updates about their lives and read the updates of others as well. If you imagine just reading all of your friends’ status updates on Facebook, Twittering is basically the exact same experience, as far as I can tell.In fact, the only difference I could really see was that Twitter uses a more honest terminology. As we all know, Facebook refers to those we stalk as our “friends.” I would hardly say that someone is my “friend” just because I enjoy keeping tabs on them every day and because they might make an occasional appearance in certain fantasies of mine. But Twitter refers to these people, completely accurately and un-ironically, as people you are “following.”Within 60 seconds of creating my account this morning, I saw that I already had one follower. I’ve dreamed my whole life of having a following, so this made me feel extremely important, like I was the leader of a dangerous civil rights movement or perhaps the president of a small-scale cult.I clicked on the link to view the profile of my one loyal patron, whose name turned out to be “Matt from date.com.” Obviously, I was flattered. Less than five minutes with an account, and already the kinds of unmarried men who browse Twitter in the middle of the workday were deciding I was a hottie. And I was hardly even discouraged to discover that Matt was also following 250 other women – although I later realized that there was no way he could even know I was such a hottie since the only picture I had up was a clip art image of kangaroo. Unless he is into that kind of thing.As I thought about how to describe my current whereabouts to the Twitter community for my first update, I couldn’t help but remember the days long ago when my dad would forbid me to give out any kind of identifying information in Nickelodeon chat rooms, back when we all still had a healthy fear of strangers and pedophiles.I realized that this must be such an exciting time for sex offenders, who no longer have to pretend to be 12-year-old girls seeking pen pals in order to get information out of potential victims. Social networking sites make it so much easier to plan “chance” encounters that it’s almost impossible not to. The rest of us are eerily willing and eager to provide online updates as direct and uninhibited as “Kim is at the Starbucks on the corner of Kirkwood and Indiana and will be here all night,” or “Mary is at home, lonely and wasted. Door’s unlocked.”But whatever, times are changing. Twitter me!
(12/12/08 3:41am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Dead week? Yeah, right – more like death week. Isn’t this the one week out of the semester that is supposed to be free of major exams or important lectures so that we have more time to study for our finals and meet with faculty? So then why does everybody’s grade for every class seem to depend on the exams and papers that are due within this deadly five-day span?What exactly is supposed to be dead during dead week? I’m still seeing some signs of life. My classes are certainly not dead, nor is my workload or my desire to throw myself down a stairwell in Ballantine Hall. No, those things are all still very much alive and well.The only thing that is really dead during dead week, as far as I can tell, is my free time. Oh, and my social life. And my health, both physical and mental. And my ambition. And my natural sleep cycle and soul.Maybe they call it dead week because dead is what we would rather be. I do not even have a little bit of desire to exist this week. I wouldn’t mind lying down in my bed, pulling the covers over my head and not waking up until Christmas morning.Or maybe they call it dead week because, at any given moment, we are only one step away from damaging our bodies beyond repair. One more sleepless night, one more sip of Red Bull, or one more early-morning alarm might set us over the edge into cardiac arrest.At some point this week, each of us must mourn the death of our motivation. This generally happens around 4 a.m. when we stop and ask ourselves if it’s really worth it, we start obsessively calculating and rationalizing. “Well this project is only worth 25 percent of my final grade,” we might say. “If I can just pull off a 36 percent on it, I can still get a 59 percent in the class, which is almost a D, and there was that one time I shared that story about my aunt’s alien abduction, so that should bring up my participation grade a few points, so I am probably not going to fail. Besides, graduate schools and employers probably won’t even care how I performed in underwater basket weaving, right? Oh my gosh, will they?”In this way, our anxiety-riddled minds become such a hopeless inferno of hell that we can no longer be sure that actual hell could be that much more unpleasant. This could also be why it’s called dead week.But instead of “dead week,” I’ve been brainstorming a list of terms to propose to the University that could more accurately describe this week preceding finals. My runners-up are “Brain-dead Week,” “My-body-feels-like-death Week” and “I-envy-the-dead-because-at-least-they-get-to-sleep Week.”But so far my favorite is one a friend suggested to me, which is “Week of the ‘Living Dead.’” Because, really, what are we this week if not possessed paper-writing, presentation-giving, caffeine-chugging, bubble-filling, living-dead zombies?
(12/05/08 3:22am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Thanksgiving at my house was the usual. A student from the local university none of us had met before ended up at our dinner table performing magic tricks, and as we stuffed our faces with turkey and mashed potatoes, Mom made another attempt to convince my sister not to sell her eggs on the black market. If you think I’m making any of this up for the sake of comedy, you are more than welcome to stop by next year and see for yourself.After we ate our turkey, we all sat back and patted our stomachs as is tradition in America, land of plenty, and announced that we were so full that we might never eat again.I always say this when other people do because it is important for me to fit in and not look like a fatty, but the truth is that I have never in my life felt so full that I have stopped fantasizing about my next meal even momentarily.While I’ve noticed that my family stays somewhat true to their word and doesn’t eat again for at least the rest of the day, I generally only last about two hours before I find myself rummaging through the refrigerator, already ready to sink my teeth into another tender, flightless bird.I think we can all agree that the best part about Thanksgiving is making dozens of delectable sandwiches with the leftover turkey, which is definitely more instantly gratifying than expending all the energy it takes to remember to be thankful for things like health and family.But the worst part about Thanksgiving is that by the time I have effectively finished napping off all my food, the break is over and it’s time to take finals. Suddenly, it was 3 p.m. on Sunday and I realized I had a four-hour drive ahead of me and three papers due the next week that I hadn’t yet begun.I wasn’t even home long enough to have to unpack my cell phone charger and recharge. As I always say, break was way too short if I leave with as much battery power as I came with.I have about one friend left in my hometown, and I didn’t even have time to see her because being home for less than a week means that both our families keep us on house arrest.Whenever I told my mom I was going to go see my friend, she would look at me with eyes full of hurt and whimper, “You’re not really leaving, are you?”I would have no choice but to say no, of course not, and would end up staying in and playing Scrabble with my parents until all hours of the night.In conclusion, Thanksgiving break is a huge tease.Either it should last longer or winter break should start earlier. I think a good policy would be to end the semester when radio stations begin switching over to Christmas music full-time, which I incidentally couldn’t help but notice happened this year in mid-October.
(11/21/08 3:23am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Last week I missed most of my classes because I couldn’t find the energy required to put on shoes. Also, I was talking like I had a baseball lodged in my throat.By the time I made it to the health center, I felt as weak and defenseless as a needy young child and was behaving accordingly.“Is it going to hurt?” I whined, pulling my arm away from the nurse who was about to take my blood.“Just a little, honey,” she said soothingly, “but I know you’ll be brave.”At my request, she let me lie down on a cot while she took my blood. As it was happening, she talked about yummy Thanksgiving foods to distract me.“Now that wasn’t so bad, was it?” she asked when it was over.“I guess not,” I said smiling, feeling proud.“Would you like anything to drink while you wait for your results, honey?” she asked.“Apple juice would be nice,” I cooed. “With a straw.”Twenty minutes later my doctor returned with the good news.“The good news is that you don’t have strep on top of your mono!” she said.“Mono?” I croaked. “I don’t have time for mono!” I wanted to say something about classes and applying for graduate schools, but it wasn’t worth the effort of talking and the pain of swallowing my saliva afterward. I attempted to cry but got so exhausted trying to summon tears that I forgot where I was and almost fell asleep.“Don’t do anything even remotely physical for the next month,” she instructed. (Had she not noticed me struggling for 20 minutes to get up from a cot after a routine blood test?) “And if anyone hits you in the abdomen, call the ambulance.” Then she prescribed some pills that would make my throat feel like a human body part again. She told me that these pills make some people feel really euphoric and others really depressed. I figured I had nowhere to go but up, so I went home, heated up some mac and cheese, took my pill and prepared to slip into a state of pure ecstasy. Ten minutes later I was curled under my covers in the fetal position, weeping on the phone to my best friend and howling between sobs, “I don’t even want to live! If this is life, then I don’t even want to live it!”On the bright side, my depression pills restored to me the gift of speech. The next morning I reasoned that if I could talk, I could go to class. But after the bus ride into campus, I felt so exhausted from watching so many things out the window that I decided to just go straight back home and spend the next two weeks napping off the bus ride. But considering how easy it is to fall asleep on the bus and in the shower, I’m always so surprised by how difficult it is to fall asleep at night. This is the paradox that mono has caused my life to become.
(11/14/08 2:17am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Women on this campus are so committed to looking identical that they will endure all kinds of winter weather in those thin, black spandex pants.People like to complain about the hideousness of Ugg boots, but Ugg boots don’t bother me nearly as much as the black tights that get tucked into them. I am of the opinion that if it’s cold enough to be wearing boots, it’s cold enough that you should be wearing pants thicker than a dryer sheet.So why do women wear them? “Because they’re so comfortable!” This is the untrue, defensive cry of women all over America who starve and suck themselves into whatever ridiculous trend they think will turn them into a walking sex symbol.It’s like the time my friend bought a pair of Crocs a few summers ago when they became popular (not that this exactly turned her into a walking sex symbol). When we all made fun of her for it, she insisted that she only wore them because they were so convenient to wear in water. This seemed legitimate, because who doesn’t like to wear shoes in the water to keep the bottoms of their feet dry? But her argument became void the following winter when she purchased a new pair of Crocs lined with fake fur.I’m just saying that if I were dressing purely for comfort in 30-degree weather, there are a few things I’d be more likely to tuck into my boots (or my fur-laced Crocs) than spandex. Overalls would be closer to the top of the list, as would a bathrobe or pajamas with feet.I have trouble figuring out what would be all that comfortable about having my hips and legs so tightly constrained that breathing becomes a conscious effort. Not to mention that it seems there would be something inherently uncomfortable about having every inch of my butt on display for the public. Which makes me think that maybe, on some level, I’m just jealous of the self-esteem it would require to walk out into the world with the thinnest possible layer of clothing clinging to my legs and crotch.If I wore these tights, I’m pretty sure I would be constantly plagued with the horror that everywhere I went, people would be turning to their friends and whispering things like “she really can’t pull that off,” or “Are those her legs or are they plastic bags filled with chunky oatmeal?”But mostly I think I’m just wary of trends that highlight every curve and outline of a female’s reproductive parts. Call me old fashioned, but I still say that no guy should get to see that much until at least the second date, or until he has properly romanced his lady with chocolate and roses (whichever happens first).All I’m saying is that it’s time to reconsider your wardrobe when you are cold and uncomfortable. There will be plenty of time in the spring to remind us of the sexiness that is your body. But for now, please, put on some real pants.
(11/07/08 2:05am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>It is the time of year when I have to throw away the makeup I bought during the summer to better blend with my tan because I am now, once again, back to being as pale as a whale’s underbelly.In other words, winter is upon us.The days are shorter, the air is crisper and the lonely nights just got a little lonelier. The only thing worse than winter itself is having to wave goodbye to Daylight Savings Time, as though it is a lover insisting upon a 6-month restraining order (a feeling I know all too well).The excitement of having that extra hour at 2 a.m. in which to do whatever I please always wears off so quickly, leaving only the reality of sunlight slipping away every evening at 5 p.m. as I walk home, making me more susceptible than ever to rapists and other violent figures who lurk behind shaded alleyways and shrubbery. (But at least for the next two weeks I can continue to justify every wasted hour by the remembrance of that extra hour gained.) I just don’t understand why we can’t observe Daylight Savings Time all year round. I have no use for sunlight in the mornings. I even go to great lengths to block it out of my bedroom with a brown curtain as thick as steel, so I’d be just as happy to save up my sunlight for later at night. But, unfortunately, this apparently isn’t about what I want.Farmers generally oppose Daylight Savings, preferring bright mornings and dark nights. This is because grain harvesting is best done after dew evaporates, so the labor of field hands is less valuable when they arrive and leave earlier in the summer.But what these farmers have failed to consider is the harvest that grows deep within the human heart and the dew of depression that crusts over it during periods of darkness, forming a thick blanket of negativity over an otherwise hopeful spirit. What I’m saying is that people become depressed when they don’t get enough sunlight. Depression leads to suicide, and suicide is not good for anyone, farmers included.Daylight Savings Time began in the United States during World War I, primarily to save fuel by reducing the need to use artificial lighting. It was not commonly used between the wars, but was observed nationally again during World War II.America was really on to something. Like I said, people generally feel happier when the sun is bright and shiny. So not only does Daylight Savings cut down on the use of actual fuel, but it also cuts down on the unhappiness in our hearts that fuels wars in the first place.Less war should be a pretty convincing argument for year-round Daylight Savings, as should the decrease in pedestrians getting hit by buses, walking into lampposts and falling into manholes.So write to your Congress person and cite these reasons I have given you. Maybe, just maybe, we can live to see a day when it is Daylight Savings Time all the time.
(10/31/08 2:36am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>“Are you sure you want to be the kind of person who doesn’t stop to watch squirrels?”The voice in my head caught me off-guard last week by asking me this question as I thoughtlessly walked past a hyperactive squirrel frolicking at the base of a nearby tree.“Fine,” I sighed, already late to class. The voice always ends up winning anyway, so I turned around and walked back to the squirrel, which seemed completely unbothered by my close proximity. I watched that little guy hop around spastically for three whole minutes.We don’t notice it anymore, but squirrels are kind of amazing.They are tiny like baby humans, except they are smaller, fuzzier, and have more pathetic-looking arms. They are actually one of the most hilarious creatures on earth: like jittery little crack addicts, except cuter.Unfortunately, most of us eventually reach a point in our lives when we stop appreciating squirrels. This happens at different times for different people. Maybe you stopped noticing them at puberty, or when you discovered alcohol or when you decided to enroll in 18 credit hours.We stop appreciating squirrels for two main reasons.One is that we are just plain busy. We have a lot of music to listen to during our strolls through campus, and we also have a lot to think about. Our minds are constantly sorting through the phone calls we have to make, the e-mails we have to read, the papers we have to write and the resumes we have to build. We have to be constantly making plans by sending and receiving text messages if we want to stay socially connected, and we have to respond to everyone who wrote “Happy Birthday” on our Facebook wall.It’s no wonder squirrels get pushed to the back burner. So do the sounds of nature, the clock towers that chime each hour, the other students, and the fact that our campus is so beautiful it almost isn’t fair.The other reason for this is that we are busy being angry. We expend a lot of energy getting worked up about gay marriage, the economy, Indiana Daily Student columns we don’t agree with, and Sarah Palin’s knocked-up daughter. It’s exhausting and leaves us with little time for squirrel appreciation. After next week’s election, about half of us will be happy and half of us will be upset. And most of the happy half will eventually end up feeling disappointed, too, because no new president can take away our obsession with feeling cheated, angry and afraid. We will always find more to complain about because that is who we have allowed ourselves to become.There will always be more to do, and there will always be more reasons to be angry. But there will also always be fountains, clock towers and squirrels.And I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to become the kind of person who just doesn’t stop to watch squirrels.
(10/24/08 1:38am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Today I told my boyfriend I’m going to start keeping a list of the jokes he tells that I like and a list of the ones I don’t like so that he can review the lists regularly and, in the future, better cater his jokes to my sense of humor.“I’m not Facebook News Feed,” he told me. “You can’t just hit an icon of thumbs up or thumbs down to choose which kinds of stories you’d like to hear more and which you’d like to hear less.”I hadn’t consciously made that connection, but he was right: I wanted to be able to have the same control over him that I have over my Facebook News Feed. Ideally, I’d like to have that kind of control over everything.On News Feed I click “More of This” to receive more frequent updates about my exes’ bitter breakups, or to know when the hotties on my friends list update their phone numbers, class schedules and home addresses. I hit “Less of This” to block stories about heartwarming engagements or people receiving those irritating pieces of flair.How cool would it be if I could do this in real life?It would have been nice these past few weeks when I couldn’t take 10 steps through campus without someone asking if I was registered to vote and thrusting a registration form and a pencil at my chest. I wanted so badly to be able to click the thumbs down. Less of this harassment, please.What about that crazy guy who used to show up on campus to tell us that we are all going to Hell? Or the pro-life group that holds up enlarged photographs of aborted fetuses? Come on now. Definitely less of this.Sometimes I go to the library at the busiest time of day and someone will be leaving his computer just as I am arriving, and I will get to it faster than other people who probably have more work to do and have been waiting a lot longer. Thumbs up, universe. I’d like to see more things like this work out in my favor.The other day my teacher told us there would be no class on Election Day because we would know who our next president would be and that knowledge would be too distracting. When we pointed out that the winner wouldn’t be announced until much later that night, he told us to take the day off anyway to just to think about our country. Fine with me. I wouldn’t mind seeing more of this.I’d like to see more days with sunny skies and a slight autumn breeze and less days where I have to wear a coat in the morning but am sweating by the afternoon. I’d like to see more of the students who occasionally break-dance outside Ballantine Hall and less of the girl who shows up to my morning class looking like a supermodel.What I want, more than anything, is to be able to control my offline environment as effectively as I control my Facebook News Feed.
(10/17/08 5:24am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>What should I be for Halloween? This year I want my costume to be original, but I also want it to be as cheap and easy as I am. So I’m either going to wear bunny ears and no pants, cat ears and no pants, a nurse hat and no pants, or a piece of dental floss.Thank goodness for Halloween. Am I right, ladies? I don’t think I’m alone when I say that all the other 364 nights of the year I have to suppress how slutty I actually can be.Now boys, I know you are eagerly anticipating this night and these costumes even more than we are. It’s understandable. But before you set your sexpectations too high, you should know that my choice to show up in a Saran-Wrap toga has little to do with you. It’s about the other women. If my roommate decides to wear a post-it note and a rubber band, then you can bet that I will only be wearing a rubber band. Half of the time I don’t even feel like dressing like a hooker when it’s zero degrees outside. But there’s no way I’m showing up dressed in a bear suit or covered in some stupid sheet with eye slits to a party where all the other skinny women look like they just wandered off a ship full of sexy pirates.Remember when we were younger how we all dressed like princesses on Halloween as an excuse to wear makeup and heels? Isn’t Halloween so much cooler now that we’re older and can dress like prostitutes as an excuse to wear makeup and heels? Plus, now we have these luscious curves and this taut flesh we can suffocate under a sheath of fish net.But now kids’ costumes are changing, too. Today at Wal-Mart I was browsing an aisle of Halloween costumes for young girls. On the outside of the packages were photographs of each costume being modeled by a 10-year-old. My first reaction was that the witch dresses looked awfully short to be worn by girls so young. When I was that age I was still rocking the M&M suit. But then my friend pointed out that maybe it’s a good thing for parents to help their daughters dress scantily early on to help prepare them for future Halloweens when they will be drunkenly wandering the streets of their college campus wearing only devil horns and a thong.The days of going from door to door looking for candy are over. Now we go from party to party looking for scraps of attention. While we used to enjoy tricks and treats, now we dress like tricks and bask in the power of dangling and withholding the treat. Good luck, ladies, as you put together your own creative costume this Halloween. I look forward to seeing the new ways you come up with to sexualize seemingly modest professions such as doctors, farmers and law enforcers. Look for me at the parties this year. I’ll be the one not wearing pants.
(10/17/08 2:19am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>What should I be for Halloween? This year I want my costume to be original, but I also want it to be as cheap and easy as I am. So I’m either going to wear bunny ears and no pants, cat ears and no pants, a nurse hat and no pants, or a piece of dental floss.Thank goodness for Halloween. Am I right, ladies? I don’t think I’m alone when I say that all the other 364 nights of the year I have to suppress how slutty I actually can be.Now boys, I know you are eagerly anticipating this night and these costumes even more than we are. It’s understandable. But before you set your sexpectations too high, you should know that my choice to show up in a Saran-Wrap toga has little to do with you. It’s about the other women. If my roommate decides to wear a post-it note and a rubber band, then you can bet that I will only be wearing a rubber band. Half of the time I don’t even feel like dressing like a hooker when it’s zero degrees outside. But there’s no way I’m showing up dressed in a bear suit or covered in some stupid sheet with eye slits to a party where all the other skinny women look like they just wandered off a ship full of sexy pirates.Remember when we were younger how we all dressed like princesses on Halloween as an excuse to wear makeup and heels? Isn’t Halloween so much cooler now that we’re older and can dress like prostitutes as an excuse to wear makeup and heels? Plus, now we have these luscious curves and this taut flesh we can suffocate under a sheath of fish net.But now kids’ costumes are changing, too. Today at Wal-Mart I was browsing an aisle of Halloween costumes for young girls. On the outside of the packages were photographs of each costume being modeled by a 10-year-old. My first reaction was that the witch dresses looked awfully short to be worn by girls so young. When I was that age I was still rocking the M&M suit. But then my friend pointed out that maybe it’s a good thing for parents to help their daughters dress scantily early on to help prepare them for future Halloweens when they will be drunkenly wandering the streets of their college campus wearing only devil horns and a thong.The days of going from door to door looking for candy are over. Now we go from party to party looking for scraps of attention. While we used to enjoy tricks and treats, now we dress like tricks and bask in the power of dangling and withholding the treat. Good luck, ladies, as you put together your own creative costume this Halloween. I look forward to seeing the new ways you come up with to sexualize seemingly modest professions such as doctors, farmers and law enforcers. Look for me at the parties this year. I’ll be the one not wearing pants.
(10/10/08 2:35am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>A pleasant-looking girl in a sleeveless sundress boarded the bus I was riding this morning on my way to class. The bus was crowded, and she had a large art portfolio hanging by a strap from her shoulder that brushed against me. “Sorry!” she said.I looked up at her, about to say that it was OK, that I had been in an art class too, and knew what it was like to have to lug that thing around, when suddenly I saw something that sucked the words right out of me. She had extended her arm to hold onto the pole above my seat. My eyes immediately landed on her arm pit, so dark and fuzzy with hair that a bear cub might very possibly have been nesting in it.I guess I shouldn’t have found it so shocking. I had a similar experience last year in class one day when I leaned over to pick up my pencil and lifted my head just in time to make the mortifying discovery that the girl seated next to me, the one wearing the breezy springtime skirt, had hairier legs than my father.Sick.Call me superficial and not very progressive, but seriously, ew.Now I’ll be the first to admit that I rarely shave my legs in the winter. It’s like I get to wear a second pair of pants that keeps me extra warm, plus I can pretend that I’m a centaur. But it’s a gift I give myself. It’s my own little secret (although I suppose it’s not anymore).My point is I would never consider prancing around outside in sundresses with hairy pits.The feminist argument might be if men don’t have to shave there, neither should we. Well, most men I know also don’t keep soap in their bathrooms or take out the trash. Men are supposed to be a little disgusting, which is kind of why they need us.And it’s not that I have a problem with women who choose not to conform to westernized standards of beauty. I actually have a lot of respect for women who are confident enough to ignore fleeting fashion trends and to not find their worth in an image they create for themselves with makeup. I even used to be one of them until a few years ago when I came to college and became completely insecure and self-focused.But seriously, female pit hair? I applaud individuality, but why not just work on developing a charming personality quirk or an unusual hobby?Female body hair is one of the most natural things in the world. I wouldn’t give it a second thought if society had not conditioned me to find it so wholly repulsive. But that’s the reality we live in. Maybe it’s wrong, and maybe someday we will live in a world where appearances go unnoticed, males and females are totally indistinguishable, and unsightly body hair will not cause fellow bus passengers to gag and vomit. But in the meantime, ladies, please shave your pits.
(10/03/08 4:23am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Unlike you, I’ve never had an unlimited texting plan. My parents are under the laughable impression that texting is unnecessary and not something they should pay for. So I’ve been on a plan called “unlimited texting until Dad notices.” It took a couple years, but he did.So now I am trying to limit myself to sending and receiving 250 texts a month. This might sound reasonable, especially when you consider all the things that most people in this world are forced to live without. But this means I can only send and receive eight texts per day. That goes faster than you might think in my typical college-student life of simultaneously trying to make plans, impress people with my wit, fight with friends, begin relationships and end relationships. When I asked my friends to start getting in the habit of calling rather than texting me, my request was met with looks of bewilderment and confusion.“So if I have something to tell you that I would normally send as a text,” one friend asked, “Should I just call you and say it and then hang up immediately?”Despite such concerns, I didn’t really think cutting back on texting would be that big of a deal. For the first 19 years of my life I had never even heard of text messaging, and yet I had functioned almost completely like a normal human being. If I did without it then, I thought, there is no reason why I can’t get by just fine without it now.Wrong. So wrong.What I’ve come to realize is that, over the course of my texting career, I have actually developed an irrational, almost pathological fear of talking on the phone. If someone texts me a question and I have to choose between calling them or not responding, I will not respond and then later make up an unnecessarily outrageous lie about having been away from my phone for an extended period of time while occupied with a family emergency.In the rare event that I do call someone, I find myself praying that the person won’t answer so I can just leave a message. If they call back later I let their call go to my voice mail, even if I am doing nothing but staring at a wall and feeling lonely, so that they can also just leave a message. I expend an impressive amount of energy each day just trying to maintain these cycles of avoidance, hoping I can keep them all going until the issues that need to be addressed eventually either resolve themselves or become irrelevant, or until the termination of our lives as physical beings on this earth.Cutting back on text messaging has revealed things about myself that have forced me to re-examine my life. All this time I thought what I wanted was a plan with unlimited texting. But maybe what I really want is a plan to help me re-learn basic conversation skills.
(09/26/08 2:26am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>I have a class in Briscoe this semester, and I am not impressed.Everyone who lives there seems to wear the same clothes and come from the same state and have the same recurring phone conversations.It makes me feel lucky that I lived in Read my freshman year. Unlike Northeast campus dorms, Read houses a hodge-podge of fascinating individuals, each one unique and a little bit off in his or her own way.Across the hall from my room lived a girl who was about four feet tall. She was very judgmental, and she also had two lazy eyes so you were never quite sure if she was looking at you or past you.On Sundays she would come into my room and ask if I was going to church.“I have too much homework,” I would say on days when I had too much homework.“So do I,” she would say in a deceptively pleasant tone, her lazy eyes piercing through me (as much as lazy eyes can really pierce through you), “but I think Jesus is a little more important.”On the opposite end of the spectrum was my suitemate. At the beginning of the year, I asked her what her major was and she responded, “Um, I don’t know, sex? Can sex be a major?”Several mornings I was awakened by her dramatic screaming. “I’m tangled in my web of liiiiiiiiiies!” The mantra of her college life.At night I would stand silently in our shared bathroom with the lights out and listen to her phone conversations.“I’m so horny,” I heard her announce one night. “When I open the refrigerator I get turned on by the carrots.”The sixth floor of Read is a story in itself. Many people do not know there is a sixth floor because the elevator mysteriously does not go there. I am convinced that this is where the University hides its weirdos.I once ventured up to the sixth floor to visit my heterosexual male friend. When I got there his door was wide open. He was playing his guitar and singing a song he made up as he went along called, “I went gay for Jonathon Taylor Thomas,” which consisted of multiple, highly-detailed verses about JTT’s locks of long, beautiful golden hair.Another noteworthy inhabitant of the sixth floor was a large seventh-year senior who my friends and I eventually nicknamed “Fake British Accent Guy.”From almost anywhere in Read you could hear his booming, British accent. We found out it was all a farce one day when my friend who lived next to him heard him talking on the phone to his mom in a completely normal American voice.Of course I felt a little cheated when I learned the truth about “Fake British Accent Guy,” but I’m still just impressed with his dedication to keeping up such a life-consuming act for so long.These are the kinds of people you could only meet living in Read. And that’s why Read is the best and most fun place to live.