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(04/01/03 4:48am)
English majors are known to do crazy things. For most people the idea of majoring in English is already insane. But, in addition to that, we also read, write, casually say "whom" as if it's really a "word," and "put things in quotation marks" for no other reason but "fun." \nKeeping that in mind, I hope what I'm about to do doesn't seem out in left field: Henceforth, I want an embargo on word irony and all its conjugational forms.\nYou see, irony never used to be a problem. Before a certain Canadian musician (for anonymity's sake, we'll call her Malanis Orissette) chiseled the word ironic into our lexicon, it was one of the things you avoided until that last question on your freshman English final. And, in a moment of hesitation and panic, the only example of irony you could remember from Jonathan Swift's 1792 essay "A Modest Proposal" was, "OK, one night Swift was at Ye Olde Neighborhoode Applebee's, and he was afraid to fly so his plane crashed."\nAnd as that big red F on that essay indicated, that isn't ironic. It would have helped to know irony comes in basically three forms:\nVerbal Irony -- When you say something but you really mean the opposite. For example, "Yeah, Jonathan Swift is alive."\nDramatic Irony -- Utilized for tragic plays when the audience knows something that the characters don't. For example, "Although they saw the man emerge from the shadows, the audience gasped when he stabbed Jonathan Swift eight times."\nSituational Irony -- When the opposite occurs rather than what is expected. For example, "Jonathan Swift had been lost in the desert for days, deliriously thirsty from the sun, and when he found an oasis, he fell in and drowned." \nWe mostly goof up situational irony because verbal irony is sarcasm and dramatic irony, much like Jonathan Swift, is dead.\nSo if Swift were afraid to fly and died in transit on his first flight, it wouldn't be ironic; you might even expect that. But let's say he's afraid to fly so he takes the bus, which swerves off a bridge, killing him and everyone on board. Hoorah, you might say. It's ironic and he can't write anymore.\nIrony doesn't have to be about death either (although, ironically, the best examples are the morbid ones). Last week I heard a girl at a dining hall say, "It's the same soup as yesterday," and her friend replied in all seriousness, "Isn't it ironic?"\nNo. It really isn't. In fact, most people who misuse the word irony are sure they know what it means. It'd only be ironic if Residential Programs and Services switched soup providers for variety, and the new provider served the exact same types of soup.\nMaybe instead of imposing an embargo, we should just educate about irony. That way as people start using the word irony in important situations (presentations, job interviews, weddings, surgeries), they'll get it right.\nMaybe I've done that, or maybe I've squandered 600 words on irony instead of something timely, like the fact that -- I'm the not making this up, this is actual Associated Press stuff -- the U.S. military is using dolphins to locate mines in ports along Iraq.\nSo, I henceforth reverse my previous henceforth, because putting an embargo on words isn't just unconstitutional, it's also stupid. It's just not ironic.
(03/11/03 5:30am)
Every once in a while this column likes to tackle a serious issue (which has nothing to do with the need to establish myself as a serious journalist eligible for serious awards, hint hint). Today's serious issue: Your student government, the IU Student Association.\nOh, come on, stop laughing. IUSA is serious.\nAnd if you don't think the IUSA can be cutthroat, you obviously a) have never had an IUSA stapler thrown at you; b) don't live on my dorm floor, where candidates campaigned loudly at 1 a.m. on the opening day of voting and tore off banners supporting opposing candidates; or c) thought you could figure out, in less than a decade, who won last week's election.\nIn the race to succeed, the Kirkwood party yielded to these campaign slogans: " … want some?" (Action's vague and somewhat open-ended catchphrase); "The Power of U" (Unity's self-empowering support group slogan); and "Books, Beer, and Basketball" (Crimson's minimalist rhetoric which alienated that crucial voting bloc of college kids who don't drink, don't like sports, and can't read).\nRegardless of the slogan though, the new administration was inheriting the negatively viewed IUSA, which for a brief period of time was one of the seven words you couldn't say on the television. So, here are some universal -- and don't forget award-winning in the serious kind of journalism way -- tips for the next set of IUSA executives:\n1. Engage the student body. \nThis is probably the most important thing. Every ticket claimed it would involve us, but how? You not only represent the thousands coming back next year, but the thousands of new students who didn't get to vote. Get the word out. Be at events. Talk to students. The student body didn't vote for you because they all got together one night and decided these people need impressive résumés. And if you spend $60,000 on a car; well, just don't do that, OK?\n2. Style over substance vs. substance over style. \nTalking about governing and actually governing justly happen to be two separate things. Now that you're soon to be in office and the campaign is over, the people who voted for you and the people who didn't will be looking at you either to fulfill or abandon campaign promises. \n3. Don't take your winning too seriously.\nYou win and you lose in the game of politics. Obviously winning this election is substantial, but don't expect absolute victory from here on out. The difference between losing and winning may only be a few votes, so look for a common ground to accomplish your agenda. Now that you're in office, you should remember there were other people out there who wanted other things done this election cycle, and you should work to bridge the gaps between them and you, not toss them out and drive away.\n4. Address attendance before you get absences. \nAnd this makes a lot of sense, because congressional absenteeism leads to appointments, which lead to people not being democratically represented. When I attended a few IUSA meetings last fall to see what the organization was all about, I witnessed an interesting phenomenon: appointments. If appointments are necessary, get the word out for qualified people (not your friends who maybe put in extra hours of campaign work) to apply for the seats, be interviewed, and if selected, tell their constituents they have new representation.\n5. The press is your friend, and enemy. \nIt is covering you, and if you're consistently unavailable, it'll turn against you like a rabid raccoon. You've taken positions in the public eye, and private administrations upset people. Interviews and discussions are better than press releases from "undisclosed locations."\nNow, where's my award?
(02/26/03 3:54am)
I prefer to write my column from the comfort of my dorm (read as: I can wear only boxers without being harassed). But I admit I've had a hypothesis since I've arrived at IU about doing work and coffee houses.\nIt goes something like this: Working in a coffee house is conducive to studying. That's my hypothesis. It's not exactly a rewrite of Darwinism, I know. \nI'm sure there's a reason it's conducive. It may be the coffee aroma. It may be the surroundings. Or, maybe people look really cool working in a coffee house.\nBut, would a column written in a coffee house be better, or would a columnist simply look good doing it? I was determined to find out. And look good doing it.\nSo, I packed up everything necessary to write my column (laptop, notes) and everything not necessary (pants) and headed to a local coffee house to find out. For anonymity's sake, we'll call it "Barstucks."\nBarstucks offers a cozy atmosphere, and most prominently, humongous caffeinated beverages with really fancy names. This is important. These drinks may all seem the same, but if you choose the wrong one, you fail. This is why ordering takes so much time at Barstucks: everyone is cautiously scanning the menu, wary to ingest any non-genius drinks, which come in one of three sizes: tall, grande, and venti (literally, "bucket").\nThe second lesson you learn is that to achieve full genius potential, you must have a window seat. This means genius spends lots of time waiting. \nBarstucks provides a few nice, comfortable window seats, if you're the first one to get to them, which I can assure you I was not. I initially sat as far from the window as possible, waiting. Apparently people that have window seats hold them as long as humanly possible. ("Isn't your open-heart surgery today?" "Oh, don't worry. I postponed it. We have such nice seats.") \nThe only reason other seats are even provided is so people can wait impatiently for their chance to seize a window seat, an event which plays out much like a soccer riot, only slightly more polite because no one wants to spill coffee.\nSo, with your coffee and a successful conquest of a window seat, you can begin.\nAnd, really, that isn't as easy as it sounds. I sat, and drank, and waited, and nothing. But as I was thinking about breakfast, the burst of genius I sought hit:\nBefore: "Cereal is yummy."\nAfter: "Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian shore!"\nSo, there you go. That kind of enlightenment, of course, doesn't ring twice, and I struggled to remember what it was when I typed it 20 seconds later. \nBut now that I had experienced it, I wondered, was that really genius or just delirium revved up on java? And is suddenly feeling as if someone is attempting to staple something to my forehead a common side effect of genius?\nI don't know, and for my safety, that's probably a good thing. Perhaps it's just the buzz, not the place, which creates an illusion of genius. After all, I do some of my best thinking under the warm, wake-up shower buzz. I just don't bring my laptop there.
(02/11/03 4:54am)
The federal budget is boring. I mean, really boring. You might think it's boring hearing or reading about it, but I'm actually writing about it, so think about how boring it is for me. Then think about how well I slept afterward.\nBut it's an important topic very worthy of discussion because it's relevant to everyone. The problem: how does one approach discussing a thing like this? The last thing I want to do while I'm sitting in class, completely bored, is look down to read an article that's so much more boring that it makes me want to pay attention to the class.\nSo, since we're on the topic of the budget, let's pretend that the 2004 budget the Bush Administration submitted last week is not $2.23 trillion (that is how much it is; trillion with a t-r) but actually $2.23.\nI think that's pretty rational. Most college kids could probably scrape up that kind of change from a tray somewhere in a room or car. And since Bush's budget is the furthest thing from being fiscally conservative, ours will be the furthest thing from real.\nSo, where does this money go?\nThere are two ways the government spends -- badly and worse. No, just kidding. The two types of spending are known as nondiscretionary and discretionary. \nNondiscretionary spending contains programs to which the government is locked into, like Social Security, or programs that stem from interest payments on the national debt. Most college students consider pizza and beer money to be nondiscretionary spending.\nThen we have discretionary spending, which means "available for use as needed or desired," which translates nicely into government lingo literally as, "Yeehaw! Here we go!" Most college students consider textbook money used on pizza and beer to be discretionary spending.\nSo discretionary spending is everything else, not required but desired, divided into two categories: defense and non-defense. Defense spending is a big priority for this administration. Using our mini-budget of $2.23, 38 cents (roughly 17 percent of the whole thing) will be spent on defense, including 9 cents on currently a nonexistent missile defense shield.\nThis is the largest defense spending increase since the Ronald Reagan presidency, which was synonymous with fiscal responsibility in every way Bill Clinton was with fidelity.\nBut that's not all. Bush wants another round of tax cuts (67 cents in our little budget). He wants 15.5 cents for NASA, which got only about a nickel last year. \nSurprisingly, Congress seems lukewarm to this. With only narrow majorities in both houses, Republicans hope to keep the budget intact. \n "People used to say a president's budget was dead on arrival. That's certainly not the case now," said Chairman Don Nickles (R-OK) of the Senate Budget Committee.\n But Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND), the ranking member on the Budget Committee, said that now Republicans have control of the budget, they're using the power to "take off into a deficit swamp."\nEither way, the budget will be complicated. Bush will oversee a gigantic deficit (beating out his father, who previously held that record). And he doesn't allow any money at this point for the impending war with Iraq, which analysts say could cost at least 61 cents (our plan) to at most two gazillion dollars. \nI personally don't know where he'd get that money. If he's like most college kids, though, he should start looking between the cushions.
(01/28/03 4:40am)
Last week, around the campus and the world, people celebrated the life, the work and the dream of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Many people took time to pause and reflect the accomplishments and thesuccesses, but that still doesn't mean we don't have a long way to go on civil rights issues. In fact, I encourage people everywhere, and especially the students within the Bloomington collegiate community, to realize one very important fact: Regardless of race, religion, nationality, sexual orientation, etc. -- we're all very cold.\nThat's right. It's January in Indiana, and we're all insanely cold. Just last week, according to The Weather Channel, the midwestern U.S. experienced persistent "dangerously cold air (with) some areas lucky to warm up above zero degrees." The oracle of weather continued, saying, "If there's any good news, high pressure will dominate … allowing for sunny skies," which wasn't really good news at all -- just a sign the snow will be glowing like it's radioactive and you'll need sunglasses.\nYet the point remains the same. Why bother with intolerance and prejudice when we all share this undeniable truth: We're all human, and we all got really cold.\nFor example, the University of Michigan (another university, which I hear is very cold as well) is currently in the midst of controversy over its affirmative action program, which gives minority applicants "points" to help diversify the university. In an ideal world, of course, we wouldn't need affirmative action, and everything would be fair from the start. Also in an ideal world we'd have peace on Earth and a temperate weather system in January, with no need for The Weather Channel. But in all seriousness, the leader of the free world isn't helping. George W. Bush took the bold steps of criticizing the Michigan system -- on Dr. King's birthday, nonetheless -- as "divisive, unfair and impossible to square with the Constitution." Then turned right around just a few days later and spoke at a black church to commemorate the holiday, saying there is "still more to do" to attain Dr. King's dream of equality. And although he was rejected for an appellate judgeship, Bush re-nominated Charles Pickering for the post. Pickering, a district judge from Mississippi and friend of ousted Republican leader Trent Lott, was criticized for his civil rights record, including efforts to reduce a sentence of a man convicted in a cross-burning case.\nThe president had also nominated Jerry Thacker to serve on the Presidential Advisory Commission on HIV/AIDS. Thacker, a Pennsylvanian marketing consultant and former Bob Jones University\nemployee, was known for referring to the disease as the "gay plague," and homosexuality in general as a "deathstyle," instead of a lifestyle. Thacker has since withdrawn his name amid the controversy.\nThere isn't room for this hate in a world where we all share a common bond. It's important to know that beneath all those winter clothes, hats and coats is a person not necessarily exactly like you, but a fellow brother or sister, trying to stay warm, just like you. When we begin to understand the strong things we share, the puny differences don't seem so disrupting or so divisive.\nIt's only then that we can realize that we are like crayons, all different but all stuck together in the same box. And if pieces of wax can get along, surely so can we. We know there's no reason to discriminate.\nWell, except maybe against the warm people in cars.
(01/14/03 5:12am)
The late Senator Paul Wellstone once wrote he never understood the arguments for politicians to move closer to the center, or act more moderate, to become elected. Maybe that was because many of Wellstone's opponents had no problems throwing out the word "liberal" and "left" like they were curse words. Yet Wellstone took it all in stride because he believed left, right and center never mattered; people just want a politics they can believe in and know that it's about them.\nAmericans believe politics should be about them; like a superhero in a comic book, government should use its powers for good and not for evil.\nSo, why is liberalism -- whose essential goals are basically bringing politics back to the people -- demonized? That's not to say liberals don't do a little name-calling of their own. It's just that generally branding someone a liberal is as easy as a paint-by-number picture and branding someone a conservative is as easy as duplicating a Jackson Pollock work down to the last paint drip. In many parts of the Southern, Plains and Western states, being called a liberal can spell certain political doom.\nPundits caricature liberalism as evil, equating it to the fascist days of communists, and tying the idea of social programs to "big government," a phrase and system no one, even liberals, likes. It's because conservative machines can spit out these connections between liberalism and political extremism -- "Liberals want to take away your guns," "Liberals want to take away your gasoline cars," "Liberals want to kill babies" -- that people dread being called the L-word.\nThis political name-calling may cast doubt on the credibility of John F. Kerry, a Democratic senator from Massachusetts, who is running for the 2004 presidential nomination. Certainly out of all the current candidates Kerry boasts the most intimidating credentials: a decorated Vietnam veteran who came back as an anti-war advocate; an international policy expert, serving on the Foreign Relations Committee since his 1984 election; a district prosecutor; a lieutenant governor.\nBut, but…he's an L-word, people will say. They could point to the fact that, yes, he was a lieutenant governor, but under Gov. Michael Dukakis, whose own presidential campaign imploded against George Bush Sr. in 1988. They might concede that, yes, he was a prosecutor, but he's against the death penalty, and note without reservation that he serves in the shadow of Massachusetts' other senator, Ted "liberalism incarnate" Kennedy. Also three out of the four last Democratic presidents were from the South, making him "out of touch."\nSo Kerry needs to escape the harshness of the word liberalism by utilizing what John F. Kennedy (the one of those four presidents who was from the North) once said, by not avoiding who he is and letting America know what he stands for:\n"...if by a liberal they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people -- their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties -- someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a liberal, then I'm proud to say I'm a liberal."\nKerry has almost a year to figure it out before the primary elections, but if he can communicate his issues clearly, stand up for what he believes and let people know, "Hey, maybe I'm not a regular guy but I'll undoubtedly stand up for him," maybe this JFK can have the same electoral success as the other JFK.