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(07/25/02 8:23pm)
My buddy, Jer, put it best when he said, "This is a ridiculous town." That was a pretty good summation of the thoughts I had last week. \nOf course, my friends and I were not in just any town. We were in the town of Frank Sinatra, Wayne Newton and those two strange men with the white tigers. I call them strange because of their German accents. But Las Vegas probably wouldn't be what it is if those guys weren't making things disappear.\nVegas is breathtaking. But it's not the same type of breathtaking reserved for things so beautiful they make your head struggle to find the right words.\nThe town takes your breath away because that's usually all that's left after it takes your money. \nOnly in America would we think to put a casino in the desert. And only in America would people actually visit a desert just to gamble. \nNow, I'm not going to pretend to be better than anyone who goes to this town. I went to Vegas voluntarily. My friends did not tie me up and gag me to get me on the plane. I went because the trip sounded like it was going to be a barrel full of monkeys. Heck, I even won enough money to pay for my plane ticket out to that barrel.\nAnd as I left on that free plane ticket, I realized how glad I was the trip was only about four days long. If it had been any longer, I'm convinced I would have started on my way to another vice. \nGambling is strangely addictive. And it's addictive because of its simplicity. Just think about the silliest game in that town: roulette. \nThis game entails a ball rolling around a wheel and people betting on where that ball will land. It is goofy. It is stupid. And it's where I spent most of my time. \nThe thing I loved about roulette is that I didn't feel bad if my number didn't come in. I figured the whole game had nothing to do with any skill I had. I was picking numbers like a 5 year old picks his nose. \nAnd as my numbers came in or didn't come in, I noticed the money in my pile was growing pretty fast. It was almost growing as fast as the hole of debt the guy next to me was digging. \nIt was here when I thought, "Ahhhh." It didn't matter if I was winning because someone was losing somewhere. There are too many people in that town for everyone to be winning. People have to lose to keep the place in business, and I knew that I could easily be one of those people. \nToo much time at any table in Vegas is like buying more and more tickets for the bizarro-lotto. And the winning ticket in this lotto gives you a nice string of bad luck.\nVegas is sort of like life that way. It's just easier to figure when your luck runs out in Vegas. Life is a little trickier. Sometimes it's hard to know when you should get up from the table.\nVegas, in a really messed up way, is just an accelerated version of life. Change is something unavoidable that everyone must do at one time or another.\nMaybe that's what the builders of the casinos had in mind when they built the city. They wanted something to mirror our lives, and everyone knows truth is much stranger than fiction. \nMaybe the casino owners wanted to show us the dangers of never changing. Maybe they wanted to inform us about how to gamble responsibly. Maybe … I'm full of it.\nWell, I guess I just constructed a town that is nothing like the one I just visited. The theory I made is idealistic, naive and I wouldn't bet on it. \nI think the odds are better on Jer's idea. It really is a ridiculous town.
(07/25/02 8:23pm)
The President of the United States has done it again. He has achieved something that is utterly stupefying. Our "Dubya" has slipped out of our collective consciousness.\nIt sounds kind of crazy, but George W. Bush has proven he can be as vanilla as … well, former Vice President Al Gore. \nRight now, Bush isn't even a blip on the radar of the news. Oh, he tried to get some headlines when he appointed an openly gay man to a position. But everyone knows former President Bill Clinton made the headlines with that move.\nSo, besides doing something that's been done before, what is our president doing to receive about as much news coverage as a box of rocks? Well, a look into some headlines on cnn.com might give you an idea:\n"Bush, Jordan's king to talk about Mideast, economics."\n"Bush wants to scrap officer hiring program."\n"Bush proposes 10 percent hike in FDA funding."\nI know. This all sounds like really exciting stuff. \nBut there is little excitement in the political arena for the average citizen. Unless the actions of the government immediately and directly affect us, we seldom seem to care. \nThere are those who love to read and watch every development in the political spectrum, but most of us don't see the world in that light. We care when Uncle Sam is reaching his hand into our wallets and we care when there is some drama involved.\nIt might be safe to say Bush will never receive as much coverage during his term as he did when he was trying to get into office. And while some people might say the election deserved coverage because it was so close, it makes more sense for us to pay attention when Bush is in a position where he can take action. But this isn't the case, and the post-election coverage might explain why.\nTwo things dawned on me after the election. The first was how odd it was that the guy who won the popular vote wasn't more popular (and isn't president). \nAnd the other thought I had was how I forgot that someone was actually going to take office after the last hanging chad was inspected.\nThat's when I realized that no one was really interested in the presidential race. We were intrigued because someone yelled, "Foul!" \nThe government is not that interesting when it's running smoothly. It's just a bunch of procedures that make picking a scab look like a good time. The stories that catch our eye are the things that usually have little to do with actual government.\nWe want scandal. We want controversy. We want tales of Clinton doing strange things in the Oval Office. And we want stories about stupid people who can't work their voting machines.\nThe bottom line is that we don't want to read about the government after the kid throws the paper on our porch. We want to read about the government when we're waiting in the check-out line at the grocery store. This is not a healthy way to get our political news.\nWe should take a better look at our government because we are the ultimate watchdog in the system. We ultimately set the agenda, and politicians are always catering to us. With that said, it might be a good idea if we knew what the heck was going on.\nWe should watch and have a vested interest in the moves our politicians are making. And the point of watching our system is not to agonize about every decision. If we really investigated our system, we would realize decisions are happening right under our noses. And some of those decisions play immediate roles in our lives. It's time we saw that our government does a lot between scandals. And it's time we started to pay attention.
(04/26/01 4:15am)
It all started inside a dorm room. You moved your things in and wondered what kind of weirdness your roommate was going to bring. You waved goodbye to your parents, and thought about the sudden lack of air in your dad's voice when he said, "Be good, and don't forget to call."\nYou wondered about the one smelly kid on the floor. No one ever saw the kid shower. But at least that explained the smell coming from the kid's room. It seemed like a combination of Glade and a sweaty armpit. \nBut the ones who didn't have hygiene problems were often the ones who accompanied you to grab some food. Sometimes you ran to a food court to get something terribly unhealthy. And there were days when you made it to the dining hall during the 15 minutes it was actually open. \nYou told yourself you would avoid the "freshman 15." You didn't want to be that person who looked like they used to be thin, or you might not have cared at all about your weight. The Student Recreational Sports Center was either your best friend or a strange, foreign location. There really wasn't any middle ground.\nBut the SRSC wasn't the only place to pass the time. The people in your residence hall always found ways to make you want to do something other than study. There were movies to watch, games to play and that one person who could keep you entertained for hours. \nThen there was the day when you, the big sophomore, were laughing at the freshmen. Your favorite freshmen were the ones who walked like they were too cool for school. Then you realized how uncool you were for using a phrase like "too cool for school."\nBut you didn't care anymore. You realized that being cool was part of the propaganda high school kids toss at each other. And you were certainly becoming too old for that garbage. \nBut you were not old enough to look for a fake I.D. You'd try to figure out who looked like you out of your friends who were already 21. Some people were lucky because they had older brothers or sisters, and then there was that one Asian friend who couldn't find another Asian guy who was six feet tall. \nBut the day finally came. You made it to the age where the local bars would welcome you with open arms … right after they did a body cavity search and asked you for two forms of identification. \nYou found out that the Bluebird was the happening place on Wednesday. And you eventually made it to Sports, Kilroy's on Kirkwood and the Upstairs Pub. You didn't really know what to make of Mars, and you were even confused more when people started calling the place Axis. \nAnd then there was Nick's. The sacred ground reserved for seniors and graduate students. Well, that's the way it used to be. But there are a lot of things that changed over the years.\nAnd every change we faced gave us a chance to show the outside world how gracefully, or ungracefully, we could act. It is hard to forget the demonstration/riot after former men's basketball coach Bob Knight was fired. It wasn't our finest hour, but it wasn't the University's, either.\nThere were many times we will not try to forget. It will be easy to remember how you don't really remember that much from your last Little 500 week. And it will be hard to forget the pure bliss that followed Kirk Haston's three-point dagger into the heart of Michigan State. \nBut the small moments will be the ones that linger after you pick up your cap and gown. You will recall the laugh of your favorite professor, the group that made your project fun and the time you let that idiot you call your friend take a shot at cutting your hair.\nAnd when it's all said and done, it will end just as it began. Your dad will wrap his arm around you and that strange voice will once again escape from his throat. It will almost sound like a whisper when he says, "We're so proud of you." \nAnd right as that water starts to collect around your eyes, you will wonder where the heck those last four (five, six … stop when this applies to you) years have gone. It all went by so fast, and no one was really taking notes.\nWhere we go from here is anybody's guess, but one thing's for sure. School is not just out this time. It's out for life.\nCongratulations to the graduating class of 2001. You've been a joy to write for.
(04/20/01 3:51am)
A visit to my roommate's church this weekend did not convert me into a religious person. In fact, my venture into the church was eerily similar to the three or four visits I'd had in the past. It just made me wonder.\nI was sort of turned off from the church in high school. I had a friend who was deeply religious. He made a vow during his junior year to not date any girls until he went to college. It was basically a two-year lenten period he imposed on himself. But that's not how he chased me away from the church.\nI don't even know how the conversation started, but a holy war broke out when he told me that people who didn't take Jesus Christ as their savior were going to Hell. This was when my eyebrows went past my forehead and almost jumped off my head.\nI could not figure out how a guy, probably one of the nicest kids I knew, could be so close-minded. It was disturbing, to say the least.\nI've met other deeply religious people in my years since that incident, and I can't get over how narrow their beliefs can be about religion. There are people in this world who believe that their way is the only way. But I don't think that's the case.\nThere are too many different religions in this world for one religion to claim to be the right one. And there are too many situations in this world to say something like my friend did.\nMy curiosity about his afterlife policy made me come up with questions I never thought I'd ask. I asked him about ancient people who never heard about Christianity. Those people couldn't be in heaven because they'd never heard of the religion. And I asked him about the babies who die every year. The children never got a chance to say their first words, but, according to him, they were going straight to Hell.\nAnd that was when I decided I might not ever want to get involved with religion. I was scared I would become less tolerant of people who didn't have the same beliefs as me. \nDon't get me wrong; I do believe that there is a God. And I believe that things happen for a reason. That's not really practicing anything. I usually just try to make sense out of things that happen in this world. You can call it "pragmatism," if you want. But it's not really a religion.\nI do things that are morally right, while refraining from actions that could be deemed morally questionable. Every day I try to be the best person I can be. Sometimes I do a good job. And sometimes I fail miserably. But I don't need religion to tell me the difference.\nFrom what I understand, religion offers something comparable to a code of ethics. But it's more than that; it's a code for life.\nReligion can be a wonderful tool if it's used properly. Most religions have lessons and stories and moral guidelines that can be learned at any age and at any time. I have nothing against parents attempting to pass their religion on to their children.\nBut an idea that should always be passed along is tolerance. No matter what type of religious ideas you practice, you must realize that there might be another person who could gladly argue against everything you say. \nYou shouldn't change your ideas to agree with that person, and you don't even have to make any attempt to like that person. But you should respect that person's choice to believe in something else.\nOur concrete knowledge of the afterlife is like a grain of sand on a beach that stretches to eternity. Simply put, we don't know squat.\nSo condemning people might not be the best thing for us to do. No one knows what's going to happen when we leave this world. \nBut I figure that as long as we're here, we might as well be tolerant of others and open to different ideas. And I'm pretty sure there's no religion opposed to that.
(04/05/01 3:52am)
The San Diego City Council is now the worst team in San Diego. Forget about the Chargers and the Padres; the council is making decisions that are actually worse than drafting Ryan Leaf.\nThe recent "Leaf-like" decision concerns the word "minority" in official documents. The San Diego City Council decided the word was "disparaging," and it will not be used in any city documents or in any discussions. \nThe word you are searching for right now is "bizarre." That is the only word that can describe what the council is doing.\nThe word "minority" is defined in Merriam-Webster's collegiate dictionary as "the smaller in number of two groups constituting a whole." I don't know about you, but that doesn't sound that disparaging to me. \nThe interesting thing about this "minority" ban is that the council's decision was unanimous. And the popularity of this ban is what makes it scary. It appears no one on the council thought twice before making this decision. Not one council member questioned the idea before every council member decided to follow the butt of the lemming in front of him. \nI'll be the first to admit that it would not have been politically savvy for anyone on that council to vote against such a politically correct ban. But this PC garbage has to stop somewhere, and this seemed like a good place for the bouncer of common sense to throw the PC guy out on his metaphorical head.\n"Minority" is just a word. It doesn't have to have a negative connotation. It just means that whoever is in this group is not in the majority. And there are too many minority groups in this country for the word to be only negative.\nFor example, the student enrollment at IU is 52.5 percent female. That means the male students are in the minority. So if we use the San Diego City Council's logic, people on this campus believe the male students are inferior to the females. We could even say that less is expected of male students. This is the type of argument the council presented when it passed its decision.\nBut I'm not really here to bash the San Diego City Council. Its intentions are good, but its decision is not going to solve anything. The council might as well pass a decree granting peace on earth and good will toward men. \nWhat the council and lovers of PC need to see is that people who want to break others into groups based on race, class or any other category are going to do it no matter what a law says. Racists are not going to feel the effects of a "minority" ban.\nThe people who are going to have the most problems are going to be those who are already speaking like they're walking on broken glass. Those who take the time to recognize and accept the differences between people are going to be the ones who suffer the most. They will be the ones who are punished for making a conversational slip, and slips are easier to come by when rules sprout up more often than bacteria on a petri dish.\nNo matter what the San Diego City Council is thinking, it is not going to solve our PC problems. What it is doing does not really serve the greater good. The council is doing something of which popular opinion is not in favor. \nWell, that's what the council members would call it. We'd simply say their opinion was in the minority.
(03/29/01 4:27am)
Movies are only good if you've seen them. I know that sounds crazy, but it's just crazy enough to be true. \nI thought of this when I was watching the Academy Awards this year because I hadn't seen a lot of the movies that were up for the bald statue. I sat there rooting for "Gladiator" and "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon." \nIt was here I wondered how I would give out my own Best Picture awards, I think I would do a different job than the Academy, and I think I would put an emphasis on being able to quote the movie. That would be the deciding factor in whether a movie won a "Mike-ademy award." \nAnd since it took me so long to come up with the name of my awards, it is only fitting that I give some away. These timeless movies all deserve to say, "I'd like to thank the Mike-ademy …"\n"Braveheart"\nIt doesn't get any better than this. William Wallace is one of the greatest characters ever to make his way onto the big screen. I still get a little teary-eyed every time Wallace yells, "Freedom!" The speech at Stirling is also memorable, and people often like to see me reenact it at parties. It's usually not too much of a struggle for me, but lugging the horse around all night is a bit of a hassle. \nMemorable quote: "I know you can fight. But it's our wits that make us men."\n"Gladiator"\nI might as well give the Academy some credit for giving this movie the award for "Best Picture." One of the only words that captures the essence of this movie is "epic." The battle scenes are breathtaking, to say the least. I probably dislike the evil Commodus as much as I like the hero Maximus. The opening scene is amazing, and watching Maximus decapitate a guy in super-slow motion is pretty darn cool, too. \nMemorable quote: "What we do in life ... echoes in eternity."\n"The Sting"\nThis movie might be a little before our time. I only saw it because my dad made me sit down and watch it with him when I was in high school. My mother asked me why I got such a bad grade on my calculus quiz that week. I blamed Dad; he blamed the movie. "The Sting" was made in the early 1970s, and it is part of the era when any movie with Robert Redford and Paul Newman was good. The movie keeps you guessing, and the ending is what really makes the film a masterpiece.\nMemorable quote: "Luther said I could learn something from you. I already know how to drink."\n"Swingers"\n"Swingers" is one of those movies that might be mostly for guys. Lucky for me, I'm a guy. This movie is where Vince Vaughn got his big break, and he has never quite equaled his performance as Trent. "Swingers" is the male handbook for dealing with relationships. And like every great male handbook, the directions are missing. \nMemorable quote: "Didn't you see 'Boyz in the Hood?' Now one of us is gonna get shot!"\n"Rocky" \nI'll let you in on a little secret about this movie: It's not really about boxing. It's about a guy trying to prove that his life means something. Mickey is one of the more lovable characters in this movie, and you don't really know why. It's also hard not to like Rocky, and his talk with Adrian before his fight with Apollo is the scene that makes "Rocky" a classic.\nMemorable quote: "All I wanna do is go the distance. Nobody's ever gone the distance with Creed. And if I can go that distance seeing that bell ring and I'm still standin' … I'm gonna know for the first time in my life, you see, that I weren't just another bum from the neighborhood."\n"Goonies"\nSometimes I think that part of my childhood was actually spent inside this movie. I watched it so many times I began to think having asthma was cool. Who could forget the "Truffle Shuffle" or the number of times Cyndi Lauper songs were played throughout the film? This movie also got to Corey Feldman before he took a turn for the worse.\nMemorable quote: "This one. This one right here. This was my dream … my wish. And it didn't come true. So I'm taking it back. I'm takin' them all back." \nAnd those are all the Mike-ademy awards I'm giving away this year. Some nominees for next year are "Varsity Blues," "October Sky" and "A Few Good Men." I've got a feeling they're going to win some awards. Not only are these movies exceptional, but they pass the Mike-ademy's ultimate test: \nI've seen them.
(03/08/01 4:30am)
People who remember childhood as an idyllic time in their lives were never really children. They don't remember being a kid is hard, and that's part of the reason why the growing number of school shootings in suburban communities is still a mystery. \n Santana High School is just the last school to become part of a growing trend. It is part of a question with no answers. Yet, there are plenty of theories.\nExperts want to blame the entertainment industry or the easy access kids have to guns. But these theories are skirting the bigger issue. \nIt appears that kids are having a tougher and tougher time dealing with being kids. \nMy own voyage to the plateau of "not-so-well-adjusted young man" is one I will not soon forget. I lived in New York, Texas and Illinois before I was 16.\nAnd if you don't think moving was tough on me, then you probably don't realize that those states are about as different as they sound. \nThere really is something to being the new kid. Especially when you're a kid who is scared of his own shadow. \nI was still in a weird phase when I entered my last new school. My weight was having a tough time catching up with the rest of me. I was about 5'9 and 130 pounds. I couldn't have fought my way out of a paper bag.\nI also had a head that was a little too big for my neck, legs that were too long for my body and elbows that were too big for my arms. I thought I was one of Dr. Moreau's rejects.\nI was not exactly happy with who I was back then. Sometimes I wished I was someone else. I really think my sophomore year in high school was the toughest.\nThere are times growing up when you feel like you're alone. You feel like you're the only kid being picked on or you feel like the problems you're having are the only ones that exist. And there are times when you feel like your life couldn't get any worse. \nYou want to lash out at the people who are going through life with an ease you will never experience. You want to do something to make them take notice of you, and you want them to know you're important, too.\nAnd this is the thought process all the gunmen in the school shootings seem to have in common. They have an urge to share their pain with others, and violence is the only means they think will work.\nWhat these kids need to realize, and what adults should be focusing on, is that they are not alone. For every kid who wakes up thinking he's got it together, there are at least 10 who are wrapped in a blanket of insecurity.\nAnd for parents to figure out which kid they have, they need to stop talking to their congressman about violence on television, put the phone down and talk to the kid who just ran in the front door.\nParents are the keys in helping kids grow into adults. My parents always helped me see that childhood was not the end of it all. They showed me it was only a phase I would eventually grow out of. They told me feeling left out was not going to be typical for the rest of my life.\nI don't know if I believed them back then, but they were right. It wasn't long before the parts of my body started to work together instead of against each other. I eventually made it out of childhood.\nEvery kid should make it to this point. They should all be able to look back and laugh at how strange it was to be a kid. This is a healthy way of doing things.\nThe unhealthy way is what happened at Santana High School. Kids should never be forced to grow up at gunpoint. Childhood is already tough enough.
(03/02/01 4:56am)
Once there was a boy who was going to take over the world. He had a natural gift that was his and nobody else's. The gift was special, and he was the only one who could give it to the world.\nBut he was not going to use his gift for political means or for monetary gain. His only hope was to bring some beauty to this world. And beauty came from the sky.\nHe liked to look at clouds. Their impermanence was a wonderfully tragic thing to him. He knew they only had a short time to live on their canvas. He would often find inspiration from the clouds, and his passion often fell into his pictures. \nHis emotions were translated in his art, and his ability to express his feelings was nothing short of spectacular. He saw the world how he wanted to see it, and he always dealt with it in his own way.\nBut the boy was getting older and it was time for him to go to school. \nHe was a bit pensive at first, but he didn't think school was that bad. He liked recess and looking out the window on the bus. Yet, his time inside the school made him wonder.\nHe wondered why the place was so square. He sat in a square, brown desk that was placed in a square, white room. He often looked at the square, gray tiles on the floor, which usually led his eyes to the square, brown door that was keeping him from the outside world. \nHe usually dreamed of desks shaped like clouds or even just round like circles. He wanted anything but the squares.\nHis daydreaming led him to trouble all the time. His teacher would sometimes call him to do math problems at the board. He didn't like math. The numbers were stiff, and it reminded him of the uncomfortable chair at his desk.\nHe was really starting to hate the day-to-day routine of school, but then the teacher said it was time for art and the children could draw whatever they wanted.\nThe boy's heart leapt. \nHe decided to draw with yellow and gray that day because that was how he was feeling. He felt like the sun reaching out to the clouds. He wanted to draw a picture for everyone so they could see how he felt about the sky. \nWhen he finished his drawing, it was everything he hoped it would be. He was so proud of his work that he showed it to his teacher.\nShe sighed the smile reserved for patience. She told the boy his picture was nice, but he might want to draw something else. One of the other boys had drawn an airplane that day. Didn't he want to draw an airplane?\nThe boy stood like the world had just fallen on his shoulders. He didn't know what to say. He couldn't understand why his teacher wanted him to be like somebody else. He had so much to share with other people, but now he didn't know if anyone cared. His teacher didn't care, and she might not be alone. He wondered if maybe the world was a place where you needed to fit in to make a difference.\nSo he decided to sit up in the chair at the square, brown desk in the square, white room. He would subtract and add all the numbers on the board, and he would never think of making his desk into a circle.\nThe boy eventually started drawing airplanes. He only used colors that made sense in the real world, and his emotions never spilled into his pictures. His feelings were no longer clear to him. He didn't really know how he felt anymore. He figured he probably just felt like everyone else did.\nAnd the gift he needed to share before didn't need to be shared anymore. Its need to break out of him had disappeared. The pushing had ceased to exist.\nNow the young boy is a young man who often writes columns in a certain newspaper. He often pushes limits to a fault. He is scared his pen will turn into a cookie-cutter. And with every rule he breaks, he thinks he might be one step closer. \nOne step closer to finding that little boy. And one step closer to leaving that square, brown desk.
(02/22/01 3:54am)
Long cardigan sweaters are quite the popular fashion item right now. But these aren't your father\'s cardigans. These cardigans have been put through some type of trend machine, and now females are wearing them like they're going out of style. \nYou know what I'm talking about. These new-wave cardigans appear to be long sweaters genetically blended with robes, complete with a belt at the waist. Some have hoods and some have zippers. Some are longer than others, and they come in many different colors. When you think about these cardigans, they're really quite disturbing. I don't think the robes knew what they were getting into when they agreed to do this venture with the sweaters.\nThere really is no other way of identifying these bits of clothing. They are cardigans, or "dress cardigans," if that suits you better.\nIf you feel compelled to refer to these items as "smocks," as I have been doing, I must warn you of the consequences. The female subjects I've tried the word on have not been receptive. I think one even tried to smock me with her smack. That could be the other way around. The details are still a bit hazy.\nBut you really do have to hand it to those girls. The fashion monster they've created for women\'s clothing is really something. Every year, it seems females are covering up something different and showing us something new. It's mystifying, to say the least.\nBut I take the issue for what it's worth. It will be something I never figure out, and that goes along with the rest of my theory on females. It's never going to be completed.\nAnd while I'm content with this realization, there are people in this world who swear they have the answers for men and women. They publish books, write columns (some published in college newspapers) and offer the shortcut that will send us on our way to relationship bliss.\nThese people are all barking up the wrong tree. They've just identified a problem, and the enigma that stupefies men and women is not that hard to define. It's actually pretty simple.\nMen are men and women are women. No big epiphany there. That's how it is. And that's how it's going to stay, barring any type of surgical procedure.\nBut the nonsurgical suggestions people want to pass on to the masses are not really going to help anyone. And while some of these ideas seem to be based on a solid foundation, they're not practical for this universe.\nFor example, some people love the idea of clear communication. But this type of action is not for just men and women. Clear communication is for fathers and sons, mothers and daughters and it could even be applied to lions and zebras. Yet it's not the solution that's going to end all the squabbles in the universe.\nDo you actually think lions will stop eating zebras if one of the zebras can suddenly speak lion? Do you think the lions will change the way they live if a zebra says, in his best lion accent, "Hey, you lions eating us is really hurting our self-esteem?"\nThis is never going to happen. Lions are never going to stop eating zebras because lions are meant to eat zebras. And zebras are never going to fight back because they still can't find a place where their stripes act as camouflage.\nThis could also be applied to men and women. We coexist in a world we see differently. We are built, wired and brought up differently. And this isn't anyone\'s fault. It's just how it is.\nThose people who tell you anything different are either lucky because they've found someone with whom they're compatible, or they're trying to sell you their new book. And beware of those people with the books, because they're selling fast-food answers for 10-course problems.\nI'm through trying to figure anything out. All I know is that we have two lives -- the life we plan and the life we live.\nNo matter what you do, the life you live will continue to hijack the life you plan. I've given up on planning anything around the opposite sex. All I want to do now is figure out how I'm going to live with that smock.
(02/15/01 2:56am)
My eyes burning will probably be the one thing I never forget. I'm not sure if there is any pain like it. It's tough to put into words how it felt, but I can tell you one thing: it really hurt.\nMy weekend was interesting up to that point. I had visited some friends at another school, and I was sleeping on the couch in their living room.\nAt about 5 a.m., I woke up because something had hit me square in the face. It felt like a beer bottle, but that was my groggy assessment. It took me about three seconds to realize an open bag of trash had landed on my head, along with that beer bottle.\nIt was sort of strange, because I was still a bit clueless about what was going on. What I later pieced together was some guys who I had never met had come in the unlocked front door, and thought throwing a bag of trash at me would be fun.\nI'm not sure if my attackers knew there was a bottle of hot sauce in the bag (they probably did), but the liquid did get in my eyes. When I washed it off my face, I couldn't help but also get water into my eyes, and I don't know if they have ever hurt so bad in my life.\nSleeping was definitely out of the question, because it felt like there were enough paper cuts on my eyes to eliminate the whites. I got up, found a new spot to sleep in and thought about what just happened to me.\nThis situation was a tough one because I usually like to think things happen for a reason. The only conclusions I found for this particular scenario were all pointing at me. My own messed up logic said this was somehow my fault.\nI started thinking about karma, and I figured maybe I deserved what happened to me. I thought about whether I had held the door open long enough for a stranger, or if I had been kind to the last person I talked to.\nThese were the type of thoughts I had running in my head for about an hour, until I eventually made it to the place I was dreading to go.\nThe cold, bone-chilling truth I didn't want to think about was that some people are just mean.\nWe all eventually have a realization like this, but I never thought it would happen to me, at least not this early in life. I have based my beliefs on trying to find the good in people or to attempt to see a perspective that is not my own.\nBut the bottom line to everything I believed was that people would eventually feel remorse if they did something terrible. I'm not so sure this is true anymore.\nSome people do things without thinking about the other people involved. Some people do things at the expense of others because they think it is funny. Some people throw a bag of trash at the kid with the idealistic heart.\nWhile it might seem I'm making a big deal out of nothing, this is just the last in a series of bad events. The other big event was when I was robbed a few years ago. That's when my doubts about the nature of humankind took me up to the cliff. The events of this past weekend just gave me the push I needed. \nI do encourage all of you to find the good in this world. It's out there. It's just been beaten and kicked around a little bit.\nI truly hope the events of your life will lead you in the right direction. But if you ever feel lost in you struggle against the evils of this world, don't try to follow me.\nMy map with the idealistic directions was taken out with the trash.
(02/08/01 3:30am)
Words to live by.\n The early bird gets the worm.\n A penny saved is a penny earned.\n A rolling stone gathers no moss.\n Knowledge is power.\n Ignorance is bliss.\n Winning is a habit. So is losing.\n Winners never cheat.\nCheaters never win.\nLosers make excuses.\nNice guys finish last.\nPractice doesn't make perfect. \nPerfect practice makes perfect.\nSticks and stones ...\nOld friends are the best friends.\nLove thy neighbor.\nAlways wear your seat belt.\nDrive safely.\nLook both ways before crossing the street.\n"Almost" only counts with horseshoes and grenades.\nMeasure twice. Cut once.\nYouth is wasted on the young.\nIf life gives you lemons, make lemonade.\nIf life gives you limes, throw 'em back.\nAnything that can go wrong, will go wrong.\nNever underestimate the power of the "dark side."\nBe careful with what you wish for.\nOne person can make a difference.\nThe mob has spoken.\nLive and let live.\nLive and let die. \nThe walrus was Paul.\nAll you need is love.\nBeauty is in the eye of the beholder.\nNever be afraid to ask for help.\nHelp those who cannot help themselves.\nThe most obvious answer is usually the correct one.\n"C."\nBeware of all enterprises that require new clothing.\nOpportunity knocks but once.\nTake the path less traveled.\nWaste not, want not.\nBeggars can't be choosers.\nNever bite the hand that feeds you.\nGive it the old college try.\nDo or do not; there is no try.\nThere's no time like the present.\nThe future is now.\nLife is short.\nSo spread your wings and fly because knowing is half the battle. And now you will always be prepared. Good luck and beware of falling objects.
(02/01/01 3:42am)
The English language just ain't what it used to be.\nNowadays the language is butchered to a point where no one can really distinguish what is a real word and what isn't. We've taken slang to a new level, and it is starting to get out of control.\nI'm not going to stand on my columnist soapbox and preach about how we should use the language correctly. I'm just as guilty as the next guy when it comes to making the English language my own. I decided a long time ago that normal English was not for me. I'm pretty sure it was the day I asked why the words "daughter" and "laughter" didn't sound the same. That's when my faith in the language started its downward spiral.\nSo I figured it shouldn't be up to me to try and conform to something that has trouble conforming to its own rules. This is why I'm starting my own language.\nAnyone can use my language, and this makes my language almost exactly like English in this country; it can be selectively used correctly also.\nNow, without further adieu, here are the rules for "Yom dupe." (Hey, it's my language. I get to pick the name.)\nThe dupe is the dupe\nThe word "dupe" is an integral part of "Yom dupe," as you can tell by the name of the language. Dupe is a noun. Dupe is a verb. Dupe is an adjective. Actually, dupe is anything you want it to be in my language. You can say things like, "Hey, look at that dupe" or "C'mon, let's dupe it." You can also use dupe if you don't like someone's last name. For example: "I'd like you to meet my friend, Bobby Dupe."\nSmitten \nThe word "smitten" will take the place of the word "love" because it's just a better word. It is more fun to say, and being smitten just sounds better than being in love. It makes me smile every time I hear someone say they're smitten or, as Mike Myers puts it, in deep smit.\nDance \nThe word "dance" will now be part of a phrase. It will never be said without the words "the" and "big." To say the word correctly, you must always say, "the big dance." This will always refer to the greatest spectacle in sports, and that will always be the NCAA Basketball Tournament.\nSophomore \nWhenever this word is uttered, it will be said how it is spelled. The word is not pronounced "soph-more." The word is "soph-o-more." "Yom dupe" also stipulates that true believers in the language will use the name of an IU basketball player after they use this word. But the player must indeed be a sophomore. A good example is "sophomore Tom Coverdale."\nSwearing\n"Yom dupe" does not condone swearing. Watching the introductions at the Super Bowl made the founder upset with the number of "F-bombs" dropped on national television. "Yom dupe" wants to set an example for the kids. Swears should be replaced by colorful made-up words. Words like "fark" and "shnykees" convey the same meaning as other words. This rule also applies to chants at basketball games that rhyme with "bull spit." "Yom dupe" asks that people use their heads and chant something like, "Nuts and bolts, nuts and bolts, we got screwed!" \nThese are tentative rules for the language, and they will have exceptions. Yet, we might as well dupe it and get started on this language because we are so far from speaking English correctly, we wouldn't know what proper English looked like if it hit us on the grammatical head.\nSo let's dupe and maybe we'll learn how to spoke this language good.
(01/25/01 3:46am)
My friend Johnny D'Mico called me the other day. Johnny doesn't call me often, but the weird thing is that he always calls when I'm thinking about the same thing he is; it's almost as if Johnny is tripping over the ideas sitting in my head.\nSo Johnny called, and he was really mad about sports figures. He told me there weren't any heroes in any major sports anymore, and all the guys were bums.\nI couldn't believe what I was hearing, so I asked, "What about Alex Rodriguez? He's a pretty good guy, and he's the best darn player in Major League Baseball."\nIf Johnny had been in the same room with me, I think he would have hit me. His voice rose to that strange level it always hits when he's angry. It's somewhere close to the pitch that only dogs can hear.\nHe started to scream at me in that dog-whistle tone, explaining that a guy who signs a contract close to the gross national product of Guam is not a good guy no matter what he does on the field.\nBut I said, "Well, wouldn't you take it if the team was willing to give it to you?"\nJohnny was not amused. I could hear him throwing things, and his tossing was not limited to inanimate objects. I thought I heard a dog go through a set of wind chimes.\nJohnny started to say that those guys were a huge part of the problem, too. He argued that if a guy like George W. Bush could own a team, then you knew there was a problem with the system.\nHe said players are getting too much money. He asked me when enough was going to be enough. He asked what the difference was between $100 million and $150 million.\nI told him the difference was exactly $50 million. Johnny was not amused.\nHe went on to say the whole sports world had taken a wrong turn somewhere, and it had trickled into every aspect of the spectrum. \nI asked him about sports journalists, and he said journalists were a different kind of problem.\nI realized I was part of the journalistic collective, so I asked how we were screwing things up.\nJohnny let out a sigh, as he usually does when he feels his listener is not really paying attention.\nHe told me journalists at this weekend's Super Bowl game are going to ask Ray Lewis about his time in court as much as they are going to ask about the team's excellent season.\nI asked Johnny what the big problem was with that. The Ray Lewis trial was big news.\nThen Johnny said he was just sick of sports journalists reporting like it's their civic duty. I asked him what he thought that meant, and he gave me this example.\nJohnny told me that if a famous sports figure is killed because a drunken driver hits him in a head-on collision, then he doesn't need to know that the sports figure wasn't wearing his seatbelt. Johnny said the seatbelt information was unnecessary in that case. And after all, sports figures have mothers, too. I pondered this and realized I had boxed Johnny into a corner. I said, "But Johnny, I thought you said all the guys were bums in the majors? So who cares how we report on them?"\nJohnny fell silent for a moment. My argument seemed to take out his case at the knees, and he had nothing to stand on.\nBut then Johnny seemed to serendipitously walk into a peaceful place. His voice came back to a normal pitch, and his speech slowed to a normal pace.\nHe said, "I just want everything to go back the way it used to be. I want to believe that guys play the game for the love of it, and there aren't contracts or arbitration. I just want the game to be pure again like when I was 10."\nThen Johnny let out a huge sigh and said the truest words I've ever heard him say: "You know, maybe the problem isn't really anything in the sports world. Maybe it's me, us. We grew up, and now we know the business side of the major leagues. I just wish we could go back. Go back to the driveway or the sandlot or the backyard. Where trees marked the end zones and chalk carved out the three-point line. The games were so simple back then. I just wish we could go back." \nIt was a strange moment for Johnny and me. We had nothing more to say because the unthinkable had happened.\nWe finally agreed on something.
(01/18/01 4:26am)
Reality television is making me hate my TV. And this is not good for a guy like me. My TV is a lot like one of my good friends. It presents information to me, and then it has me apply my knowledge to the real world.\nThis used to work well when television shows actually had something more to say than just, "Look at me! I'm on TV!" There were lessons, there were morals and there were goofy sidekicks named Boner.\nAnd all of these things would pass through the tube and resolve themselves in about 30 minutes.\nMy own sense of morals and ideals was shaped a bit from the lessons of many sitcom families. I'm not saying I learned everything from television, but it has had an effect on my behavior.\nThis is why I am afraid of all the reality TV that has sprung up in the last few years. Television has an effect on people. Some would argue that it doesn't, but it is too prominent in our society not to have an impact on people's actions and habits.\nIf you find that hard to believe, then how come I yell, "What is" before I answer any question on a TV game show? And how come I always say, "Help control the pet population. Have your and spayed or neutered" at the end of every "Price is Right?"\nTelevision is a part of my life, but reality TV is starting to make me hate that part of myself.\nAnd the show I blame for all of the programs like "Survivor" and the show with that darn island I won't utter the name of is "The Real World."\nYou know this show. It's the place where people stop being polite and start getting obnoxious. This program is full of so much overreacting and intolerance, it makes me wonder who's casting the show. It almost seems the casts are put together because the producers want the cast members to tear each others' heads off.\nI know what you're thinking, and you're right; the people on the show are cast because they are supposed to have problems with each other. It makes the show dramatic.\nBut this is not real drama.\nReal drama is not the end result of putting people in extreme circumstances, and I am sick of watching the failed attempts on my TV. I know you're probably telling me just to shut off my TV right now, but it's really impossible for any well-adjusted human being to do that. It would be like not letting the rest of the world influence anything you decided to do. And the last time that happened, there was goose-stepping and World War II.\nAll I'm trying to say is that my life already has enough reality for me to handle. I'm only 22 years old, and I have been through so much already. I'm sure if you examine your own life, you will realize that you have been through a lot, too.\nI've experienced what it's like to be the new kid at school five times in my life. I had to wait, along with everyone else in my family, while my cousin searched for a kidney that matched the tissue in his body. And I've had to smile and nod at my great grandmother every time I see that she no longer recognizes my face.\nThis is only a glimpse into the drama and reality that has filled my life. And seeing programs on TV that networks call "real life" only seems to trivialize the situations I have to deal with on a daily basis.\nDealing with the world is a tough proposition. It is something we will never stop facing for the rest of our lives.\nIt's like the bull that keeps charging, the door that won't close and the water that won't stop dripping. It is constant, and it is never-ending.\nAnd the sooner we realize this, the sooner we'll see that reality should never have commercial breaks.
(01/11/01 3:59am)
Once upon a time, a young rogue came along with the ability to look at the world like no one else before him. He had the ability to take any situation and turn it into prose that was nothing short of horrible. \nHis friends liked to call him "Mox." He was branded with the name because of his friends' love for a certain movie, and because he was also part of a strange magazine-label debacle. \nMox was not unlike many other men at the university he attended. Outside of his need and love to publish his terrible prose, he was almost like the rest of the guys on campus. His desire to watch "Sportscenter" was usually where his schedule-building began on a typical day, and he made it a rule to start and end his day with the show. Mox was quite fond of his television, and he was enthralled with the many games on it that involved some type of ball.\nMox's life was usually full of all kinds of possibilities, and he was often thankful for the three guides who usually pointed him in a direction. They were seldom found making their way toward the right direction, but Mox was usually just happy they agreed on where they were going. \nThe first guide was a mythical figure known as Cat Stevens. He was a bit perturbed when he started to be mistaken for the singer, but he eventually learned to deal with his often mistaken identity. Cat was known for his bluntness and his strange impressions of a 1970s gigolo. He liked to tell Mox to just forget about his morals and act. \nCat followed a mantra that life was a strange game only the clever people actually played. Mox often took this into account when he thought about Cat's advice. But the end result was usually that Mox got into trouble, most often with members of the opposite sex. Mox would sometimes wonder why he ever listened to his folk-singing look-alike. But Mox remembered Cat was there at the beginning, and he would, no doubt, be there at the end. \nThe next guide who often felt the need to chime in was the one known as "Pedantic." He would find himself in situations where he could overreact and ask questions no one could really resolve. He would ask things such as, "What am I doing?" and "Why did I drink last night?" Answers from both Mox and Cat could never be applied to a constructive plan of action. Mox usually answered with the clever phrase, "I don't know." Cat would wave his wand of bluntness and say, "Because you're an idiot."\nPedantic was loud like no other being, and his catchphrase ("Are you kidding me?") was even louder. Pedantic always ended up with the most interesting tales. He liked to hold story times to orate his history to the masses. And while many people usually attended these sessions, few listened.\nOne who was almost always not listening, and who was often part of Pedantic's stories, was the last guide in Mox's life. He was known simply as "Red." Red had a strange relationship with porridge, and he was often MIA during the week. His lack of time around the other guides often led to a weird form of tackling when he was around. Mox, Cat and Pedantic had a strange practice of jumping on Red when he walked through the front door. Red tried to defend himself from these outbursts of joy, but he was never successful in fending off his three attackers. \nRed was a master of all things fast-food. He knew locations, hours and phone numbers. He could find a place to eat at the drop of a hat, and he avoided cooking for himself like Pac-Man avoided those strange video-game ghosts.\nRed rounds out a strange collection of characters Mox knows he will remember with fond memories. And Mox knows he is not alone when it comes to his situation, and he is sure there are many other variations of himself on the campus. And for every Mox running around the university, he knows there are multiple sets of Cats, Pedantics and Reds. \nMox hopes he has found the right way to tell his friends how much they mean to him. He also hopes every other Mox will find a way to tell his friends what he is trying to say to his right now.\nBoys, you are a huge pain in the ass, but I don't know what I'd do or be without you.
(12/06/00 4:09am)
making resolutions for the New Year is starting to look like trying to elect someone president: They're both a waste of time.\nI don't really know anyone who has followed through with his or her promises, and that's sort of strange when you think about it. After all, they are making promises to themselves.\nBut don't worry. I have come up with an almost foolproof plan for making resolutions. All you need are some low expectations for yourself and a creative mind.\nI have implemented a similar plan whenever I toss some change in a wishing well. I no longer wish for the instant healing power of Mr. Miyagi; I wish for a sandwich. I figured I wanted to get my wish more often. And I usually do, unless I'm low on bread.\nSo if you're having trouble keeping your resolutions, just pull one from the "Michael Moy list of low-stress resolutions." These 25 resolutions vary in difficulty and are in no particular order. Proceed with both caution and a grain of salt.\n1. Take more pictures of your friends. (Resolution made more difficult if you accomplish this with a stranger's camera.)\n2. Wear a headband to the gym on the odd-numbered days of the week.\n3. Never pick up change if it's "heads-down."\n4. Wear all your baseball caps backwards.\n5. Never spray contact disinfectant directly into your eye. (Not as easy as it sounds.)\n6. Quote "Swingers" on a daily basis.\n7. Take pride in hitting a bad shot on a golf course. (Easy if you've never played golf.)\n8. Always hide your cookies.\n9. Burn the top of your mouth whenever you eat pizza.\n10. Never bet on a game of billiards with a guy who has a state or a catchy word in his name. (Examples: Minnesota Fats, Fast Eddie, Slick Willie.)\n11. Throw a ball in the house.\n12. Imagine the "Darth Vader theme" plays whenever you enter a room. (Resolution made more difficult if you actually belt out the theme when you enter a room.)\n13. Eat Pez.\n14. Write a weekly column nobody has any desire to read in a local student newspaper. (Looks like I'm set for 2001.)\n15. Watch Anne Murray do really bad renditions of good songs at 2 a.m. (This becomes a legitimate resolution if you order the CD and listen to it. I have yet to meet someone who is this committed to keeping a New Year's resolution.)\n16. Make fun of your friends every time they do something stupid. (See number five.)\n17. Laugh every time your dog bites on the "fake throw."\n18. Root for the Cubs no matter what their record is. (Easier to do during the months between November and April.) \n19. Say words exactly how they are spelled. (Fun words to try: rendezvous, faux paux.)\n20. Procrastinate and put off making any resolutions. (Can be accomplished with a ton of effort or no effort at all.)\n21. Fly wingman at least once for one of your friends.\n22. Always forget to give people their pens back after you borrow them.\n23. See a really bad movie. \n24. Put the orange juice container back in the refrigerator even though you know the amount in it won't add up to a sip.\n25. Look both ways before crossing the street.\nThat last one is almost foolproof, but if you're still not too thrilled about committing to anything, don't sweat it too much. There's always next year.
(11/30/00 3:51am)
The two weeks of class after Thanksgiving Break are two of the toughest for me. And it's not because I have a lot of work or because I'm anxious about the finals I have to take. The two weeks really just make me think about Joe Bisanz.\nMany of you are probably wondering why that name seems to stick at the top of your brain, while others might recall what happened.\nJoe was the student who died of asphyxiation at the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity house Dec. 13, 1998.\nIt might seem like a moot point to some people, because the incident happened nearly two years ago. But the weeks leading up to finals always make me go back to the aftermath of Joe's untimely death.\nIt makes me think about people complaining about the administration and its new vigor for cracking down on underage drinking. This action was met with complaints from parts of the student body, and the opinions on both sides of the issue were running rampant through campus.\nYet the thing that drove me nuts back then was that people seemed to take Joe's death in stride. A guy who was a friend of mine even said he didn't think everyone should be punished because of the misfortune of one person. He went on to say he wanted everything to go back to normal. The idea I found in his diatribe was that he wanted to pretend the whole incident never happened.\nI was forced to hear others echo this opinion when I returned to campus after winter break, and it made me sad more than anything else.\nJoe was my friend. He had other friends too, and I'm sure it hurt them when people talked about him like he was more of a situation than a person.\nI won't lie to you and say we were really close, but Joe was someone I had known since high school. And no matter how much I wanted to distance myself from the whole idea of his death, it was something I couldn't think about without finding a lump in my throat.\nAnd the context of my own life that surrounded this incident is something I think about every time I submit my column.\nI was embarking on the spring semester of my sophomore year, and I hadn't written a thing for any publication on this campus. I told people that I didn't know why I hadn't written anything. I usually said "I hadn't gotten around to it yet" or "I didn't have the time." But the real reason I hadn't written anything was that I was a little scared.\nI was worried my writing wouldn't be good enough. I was worried people would tell me my chances of finding a coherent sentence were about as good as a guy finding a black cat on a moonless night.\nBut when I heard people talking about Joe, it sent me to my computer. And I wrote a letter to the IDS. \nIt asked the students on our campus to stop talking about Joe like he was something in the way of the rest of their lives. All I wanted was to make people realize there were more important things in life than the alcohol policies on this campus. \nI was trying to give people the perspective they were lacking, and that's what I try to do every week.\nI started writing a column consistently the summer after the incident, and I owe it all to Joe. \nHe is the reason I started to write again, and he helped me find a sense of purpose.\nJoe gave me a direction for my column, and for that, I am eternally grateful. There is really nothing I can do that will ever come close to what he did for me.\nI tried to write this column last year, and I couldn't do it. Maybe I wasn't ready to write it, but all I know is that I couldn't find the right words. I'm not even sure if I've found them today, but there was no way I was going to scrap it again after I realized what I know now.\nMy column has always been for Joe. And it always will be.
(11/16/00 4:51pm)
The picture is an angry-looking turkey.\nI'm still not sure what possessed me to draw the thing, but the turkey just looks really ticked off. Maybe he's about to be eaten, or maybe he's just mad about being overweight. But the turkey looks like he's about to chew the leg off some unsuspecting farmer.\nThis is what Thanksgiving is for me now. It's that picture of an angry turkey I drew about 15 years ago. It's probably the longest running joke in my family, and nothing has ever taken the place of it.\nIn retrospect, I probably should have softened some part of my Thanksgiving piece. The eyes could have been friendlier, or maybe the smile could have looked more like a smile than a zipper. But I was six years old. I had no clue back then my artistic abilities only extended to drawing lines that were almost straight.\nBut I can't change the past, and my family loves to throw this picture back in my face. It's like one of the things I can always be sure of in my life: Death, taxes and the "Crazed Turkey."\nAnd while this might sound like I resent talking about the picture, it is actually quite the opposite. Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday.\nThe holiday is almost always the same collection of people -- my immediate family.\nIt's just my mom, my dad, my sister and me.\nWe spend the entire holiday with each other, and this is one of the only times in the whole year when we are together, isolated from the rest of our family tree.\nAs I get older I realize these times are harder and harder to come by, and I know they're going to be harder to coordinate when I graduate from college in the spring.\nMy sister is already out of school and working in California, and my parents are happily living in Texas, which leaves me in the only place where you can consistently see your breath in the winter.\nWe have enough miles and time zones between us to make communication tough. Sometimes I have no idea what any of them are really doing until I see them in late November.\nAnd every time Thanksgiving passes, I feel like I have less time to tell everyone in my family how much they mean to me.\nI don't know if I'll ever have time to thank my dad for giving me all my strange idiosyncrasies. Or have the hours to explain to my mom that the reason we argue so much is because we're so alike. Or even have the moment to tell my sister that she is one of my very best friends.\nIt sounds like I'm starting to panic, and maybe I am. Maybe my pedantic roommate is starting to rub off on me, but who really knows?\nAll I know is I'm sorry I didn't cherish every moment with my family. I guess I didn't realize how special the whole situation was until my sister moved out of the house. There aren't enough "I love you's" in me to make up for all the Thanksgivings when I wished I was somewhere else.\nThe great irony of this universe is that you never realize what you have until it's gone. So try and remember what's important to you this Thanksgiving.\nI'll be thankful that I take another one on the chin from my family's collective fist, and I wish that turkey would come out more than once a year.
(11/09/00 4:39am)
We are a nation of victims. We never want to take the blame for anything that can easily be pinned on anyone else. \nCalling ourselves victims might be too nice a label to put on our collective self. We're actually more like idiots.\nWhy else would a Florida judge uphold the $145 billion damage award in the Florida smokers' trial?\nThis award is the biggest in the history of cigarette-related lawsuits, and it's amazing.\nBut it's not amazing because of the amount of money that will change hands. And it's not amazing because "Big Tobacco" has finally taken a big hit. This case is eye-opening because of the ignorance on both sides.\nTobacco companies have historically strolled through a minefield of lawsuits. They've stepped in the wrong place every now and then, but they're still rolling through that field and selling their product -- a product a U.S. surgeon general once said contained a substance that was as addictive as heroin or cocaine. A product that is one of the major causes of lung cancer in this country.\nI have a weird feeling that the idea of ethics at these tobacco industries is about as common as a blonde hair on my head.\nThese companies have a strange type of ignorance. It's called "selective ignorance." They basically choose what they want to know and what they don't want to know. For example, they know that money is good, but they have no clue why sick people are suing them.\nBut tobacco companies aren't the only ones claiming to be stupid. The people who sue the industry are complete idiots.\nI don't care what people say; they knew they were putting their health at risk. How could they not?\nThe big health hazard with smoking is in the name.\nSmoking … smoke.\nYou would think people could figure out the big problem with this particular habit. All it takes is about a second to identify that inhaling smoke is not good for you.\nDo people stand over a fire and take in the air? No. That's because breathing in smoke and passing out on some flames is not a very bright thing to do. It falls on the stupidity scale somewhere between putting aluminum foil in the microwave and trying to drink milk through your ear.\nPeople need to start taking the blame for their actions. Smoking is a voluntary action. No one took any of these people aside and made them smoke a pack of Lucky Strikes, unless they had a 1950s dad who caught them with a cigarette.\nThese people made a decision. They knew the consequences, and no court should ever reward people for making a bad choice.\nThe "victims" in this case do not deserve $145 billion.\nAnd they'll probably just take the checks, roll some tobacco with them and smoke some more. That might sound like a stupid thing to do, but why should they change now?\nOld habits are the hardest ones to kick, and stupidity puts up a heck of a fight.
(11/02/00 3:56am)
People often give me strange looks when I tell them I don't drink alcohol. It's a stare of disbelief that always leads to the question, "Why not?"\nI always reply with, "I don't know. I guess I just don't want to."\nThat's usually good enough for most people, and it should be -- it's the truth. But it's only part of the truth. I never really elaborate on why I choose to be sober.\nMost people are not going to understand my reasoning in this scenario because drinking, not baseball, is the favorite pastime of most college students. But I'll keep going anyway and hope the drinking masses are reading this without a drop in their systems.\nThe main reason I don't drink is because of an incident involving my father.\nHe drank his fair share in his younger days, but it wasn't a traumatizing thing for me growing up. I never saw my father drunk or even drinking. I was as ignorant about alcohol as the next kid.\nBut when I was 17, my dad told me a story that struck a chord in my brain.\nHe told me that when he was around 40, he went in for a medical check-up and the doctor asked him if he drank much alcohol. My dad said he didn't think he drank any more than the next guy, but the doctor told him he might want to cut back on his alcohol intake.\nThe doctor told him he might have problems with his liver if he didn't change his lifestyle.\nEvery time I think about that story, I try to imagine what thoughts passed through my dad's head. If it were me, I know I would have overreacted. But my quick panic button is inherited from my mother, so my dad's cooler head probably prevailed at the doctor's office.\nBut the end result of this situation is my father basically gave up drinking about 10 years ago. He has a drink every now and then, but he's given up his fish-like tendencies.\nIn retrospect, I probably wasn't ready for the story back then. It gave me more perspective than I was ready for, and it set up a strange visual in my head.\nWhenever I look at any type of alcohol, I don't see what my friends see.\nWhen they see a beer, they see a buzzing good time. All I see is a strangely lit, cold doctor's office.\nAnd it scares me.\nYet I'm not scared of looking like an idiot or feeling sick enough to puke my guts out. I've done both of those without the aid of alcohol.\nThe thing that scares me is being 40 years old, wondering if I'm going to see my 10-year-old son graduate from college. That's what makes me know I don't need alcohol. \nBut I don't have a problem with people drinking around me. I go to the bars with my friends, and I have a great time.\nI actually enjoy my friends more when they're drunk because the more they drink, the funnier I become. They're also funnier when they're drunk, too.\nI'm not here to look down on anyone for choosing to drink. It's not my place to pass judgment on people who are doing something that is socially and legally accepted. \nBut this lack of opinion should work both ways. It doesn't make me feel good when people look at me like I have leprosy or when they tell me it's "really cool" that I choose not to drink.\nChoosing not to drink does not mean I'm full of integrity or connected to the inner-workings of the universe. It just means I'm able to drive at the end of the night. \nI'm not an idiot; I'm not boring; and I'm not "really cool." \nI am what I have always been and what I always will be.\nSober.