Fortunately, I have yet to contract swine flu this year, but, recently there have been a few things that I’ve been getting sick of.
Brett Favre
If there is one thing worse than hearing about Brett Favre’s pathetic “to retire, or not to retire” dawdling during the offseason, it is hearing people gushing about his “successes” – there are quotes around that word for a reason.
As any football fan, or anyone who took a glance at a USA Today Monday morning, could tell you, Favre did throw a touchdown pass to beat the 49ers with only two seconds on the clock. Sensing some “Cinderella” – or better yet, “Rocky VI” – storyline, the media gripped onto this like a picture of Brangelina towing all six kiddies through Central Park.
But, as anyone who saw the play can tell you, it was more of an incredible catch and a mediocre evasion of exhausted, 340-pound defensive linesman than the glorified Favre-centric narrative. Plus, as anyone with any memory can tell you, Favre is going to suck come November – turf or no turf – like he has for the past few years.
Favre faces the Packers this week on Monday Night Football – one of the greatest rivalries in sports. This game is so huge that I am going to forgo my weekly Monday-night “Gossip Girl” viewing routine, break my two-beer a night general rule and go down to the Nickel to get wasted with a bunch of 45-year-old townies.
The Sauna
Some of my most treasured memories from the early days of my Lawrence career are of me and some bros sweating it out in the men’s locker room sauna in the Rec Center. Besides receiving a warm feeling that permeated every inch of my body, these sauna seshes let me catch up on current events with Sage fourth floor’s foremost movers and shakers. But those days are over.
Yes, ever since some charlatan poured water on the fake electrical rocks late second term last year, the men’s locker room sauna has remained out of commission. Sadly, there has been seemingly no effort to fix this, the most popular fixture of campus life. There is another, even more significant reason why this rubs me the wrong way.
This is my last year at Lawrence, hence the last year I have easy access to over 800, mostly-single, women of equal, or at least comparable, economic station. I plan on taking full advantage of the Lawrence dating scene before I am cast out into more treacherous waters.
I don’t think people appreciate how great they have it here. I mean, it only takes a few days worth of detective work between me and my associate editor – read: lackey – Mac Watson, before I am conveniently holding a door in Main Hall open, commenting to my friends on how my abs are killing me, right as some unassuming redhead is leaving to go to lunch. Next year I am going to have to go on dates where society expects me to pick up the tab and carry on intelligible conversations about wine – two things which I do not have the means or the interest to do.
So with the sauna as broken as Hilary Clinton’s dreams of ever becoming president are, how am I supposed to drop the necessary three pounds every week before I go on a date. I mean, I already fast every Thursday and Friday to drop five pounds before the big Friday night, but eight is the lucky number before I can slip into my waist-size 29 Fabio di Nicola fashion jeans. Never heard of Fabio di Nicola? Yeah, I thought so.
Does this university really want me to now have to start starving myself for a full three days before every date I go on? If they don’t, then they should fix the sauna so I can sweat off the three pounds requisite to reach eight.
Rush Limbaugh
Every afternoon before I update my Elisabeth Hasselback fan site, I check up on the latest pronouncements of the holy trinity: Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Michelle Malkin. But as of late, Rush is wearing me thin. First this whole “Obama is a racist thing” is getting old; anyone with a brain has known this ever since he picked Joe Biden for Vice President. Plus, he has moved past the Karl Rove litmus test of cute conservative paunch to just being full-out populist fat.
What we patriots need is someone like Glenn Beck: a fun-loving showman who smoked marijuana every day for 15 years before he found Mormonism.
First, there is Beck’s most prominent and redeeming feature: his adorability. If his preschool teacher faces and cheeks that make Alvin feel like an imposter of his own species don’t make you change your political views, then you are not human.
Also, Beck is a master of the gimmick – which, besides fast food and the minivan, is one of our nation’s greatest inventions. Have someone pour gasoline over themselves while Glenn holds a lighter a mere six inches away from them to show what Barack Obama is doing to our country? Why not? Throw a live frog into a pot of boiling water? Sounds fun to me.
One can’t forget that Glenn Beck once said that Barack Obama was trying to create a network or reality like one that appears in the movie “The Matrix.” That’s just so much cooler and truer than anything that boring ol’ Rush could come up with.
People in relationships
No one likes people in cults, and no one likes Kanye West for the same reason: self-delusion is a highly unattractive trait. And the belief that someone likes you for who you are, will be there when times are tough and thinks your jokes are funny is self-delusion of the highest order. It is my firm conviction that people in relationships as well as the Democratic control of the presidency and Congress have have led to our national epidemic of smugness.
Besides rap music and evolution, relationships are one of modern society’s biggest screw-ups. We need to revert back to more natural sets of behavior where people only form bonds with members of the desired sex to produce offspring and keep warm during the winter.