>>> Text-Heavy
By staff writer E.E. Southerby
Volume 67 – February 8, 2004
“Now with advertising!”
Now Playing: “Hotel” by Cassidy feat. R. Kelly
Today's column is all about cleanliness. Because cleanliness is godliness and godliness is emptiness or something like that. It's been a while since I've listened to the Smashing Pumpkins. I tried downloading the song so I could get the lyrics right and have the joke make sense, but all I got was shemale porn. I suppose, when I think about it, I could have just looked up the words to the song on one of the 800 billion websites on the Internet devoted wholly to song lyrics. I've always wondered if the people who run those sites actually listen to the songs and then type out the words themselves, or if they copy and paste them. Because if it's the latter, than there's really no point in the site existing at all. But if it's the former, than it's pretty scary. People who type out lyrics are the closest thing we have to modern-day scribes. I don't want to make fun of them too much, because those lyrics sites are actually pretty useful, and plus I'm afraid they'll find me and poke my eye out with a quill. Here's what happened:
-Quote of the Moment: Sign posted outside a classroom, on a public bulletin board: “Writer's Wanted.” At first I thought it was ironic, what with them making a grammatical error right on the poster. Then I realized they probably just need “writer's” really badly.
-How come whenever I dry my clothes in the dryer, no matter what I put in there, the lint in the lint trap is always blue? I don't even own anything blue! That's going to be really awkward when I get married. (I don't own anything old, new or borrowed, either.)
-Once February rolls around, the average college house has reached it's maximum dirt saturation level. The bad news is, our house is a sty. The good news is, it can't actually get any dirtier no matter how hard we try. I could spill a plate of spaghetti on the floor, leave it there, and call it “cleaning.”
-What is it about student houses that makes them so dirty? I think, more than anything, it's the dishes. Nobody ever wants to do the dishes. Of course, we have a dishwasher, so you wouldn't think that would be a problem. But nobody ever wants to load the dishwasher. Or unload the dishwasher. I haven't had a clean cup or plate for months. At this point I'm pretty much drinking out of an ashtray and eating off playing cards. I still wash my forks, though. I have to draw the line somewhere. Even though it will soon be smudged and crossed.
-Sometimes, when I'm in the bathroom and I need to blow my nose, I'll use a sheet of toilet paper in a pinch. Then I start to wonder how the other pieces of toilet paper feel. I'm not saying that the other pieces of TP are jealous, necessarily. I'm just saying if I die and get reincarnated as a sheet of toilet paper, I'd want it to be THAT sheet of toilet paper.
-Our university had a blood drive this week, so I thought I'd do the right thing and get me that free popsicle they give at the end. Turns out I'll let scientists poke me pretty much anywhere if there's a complimentary dessert involved.
-Did you know you're ineligible to donate blood if you've gotten a body piercing or tattoo within the last year? I guess I wouldn't want some freaky goth kid's blood, when I think about it. But they make you sign a form stating that you haven't gotten a tattoo or a body piercing in the last twelve months. They also ask you if you've been to England during the mad cow scare. Nowhere on this form does it ask whether or not you regularly inject heroin into your arm with rusty needles you found beside a dead guy on the railroad tracks. Those people probably need the popsicle more.
-So I finally make it past the forms and into the actual Blood Donating Chamber of Doom. There's this ‘Blood Services' 18-wheel truck idling outside the building, which is a little scary. They seat me in a little chair in a dark room with a lightbulb dangling overhead, like an interrogation chamber. That's more than a little scary. The nurse walks in holding a bucket! I'm thinking “Oh crap, they're going to fill that bucket with my blood! I need that blood to live!” But then I'm pleasantly surprised when the nurse just puts the bucket over my head, so I won't be able to see/shriek when she pulls the fire hose out from the back of the 18-wheeler and then yells “Fill ‘er up!”
-Nobody wants to miss a good party just because they're sick. My friends will get drunk when they have a cold, saying dumb things like “I'll drink my cold away.” Like getting really hammered and throwing up all night is going to make them wake up fresh and healthy. Idiots. But imagine if this really worked. Would it really be a good thing? I mean, you could never call in sick again. “I'm sorry, sir. I can't come in to work today. I'm really sick.” “Johnson! Don't be ridiculous! Drink a fifth of Captain Morgan and be here in an hour!”
-The worst feeling in the world is when you're not sick, but you're starting to FEEL sick, and you know you'll be sick in a few days. So you start drinking lots of liquids and taking multivitamins preemptively. Every time someone asks you how you're doing, you say “I think I'm coming down with something” and then force a cough to drive your point home. Then you're in class and someone starts to sneeze or blow their nose, so you instantly get up and move as far away from them as possible so you don't catch whatever they've got. But the next day, despite your best efforts, you're always sick as hell anyway. It's ok, though. You're still going to that party, gosh darn it! Hey, it's better than doing those dishes.