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(03/24/11 6:00am)
With ""The Hobbit"" slated to be released in 2012, I can't help but
feel my inner ""Lord of the Rings"" geek rear its head as the
months fly by. To be honest, it never ceases to amaze me just how
few people have actually read the LOTR trilogy, especially when
considering how badass J.R.R. Tolkien's masterfully written stories
actually are. So with all the movie hype, why aren't people reading
the books? I think the answer probably lies in the writing itself.
It's not easy to read ""Old English."" Considering Harry Potter
practically caters to second graders, maybe Tolkien's books would
get more credit if they were dumbed down and/or changed to resemble
more modern speech. Since there aren't too many kids who can use
the ""I dunn read gud"" excuse at Madison, I have to assume it must
be the archaic language that keeps students from really getting
into the books. So, to help everyone get in the LOTR spirit, I've
translated an excerpt of Tolkien's ""The Return of the King"" into
a more popular urban vernacular that most students will relate to.
Though there were some difficult translations to be made, the
overall plot remains unchanged:
(03/03/11 6:00am)
Everyone can think of a point in their lives where they'd like to
hit the rewind button and completely re-live their respective
moment of disgrace, stupidity, or dumb luck. I, having been a
pristine example of how not do things at many, many points in my
life, naturally think these types of thoughts quite often. However,
I am educated to some degree, and though I've dabbled with the
possibility of time travel, I've never found anything on the
Internet that could come close to working to get my hopes up on the
subject. Though I'm still looking.
(02/24/11 6:00am)
Last year, school was a dark and gloomy part of my life. Why?
Mainly because every week I was relentlessly subjected to some of
the most gruesome material known to man in the form of ethers,
carboxylic acids and alcohols during a hellish course called
organic chemistry. This life wrecker of a class meant that I sat in
the library constantly, attempting to make little squiggly lines
react with other squiggly lines to create some other, more superior
squiggly line. As it was, I was in need of a little help, in pill
form, to generate the required mental processing power to do such
things. The idea was that some chemical reaction in my brain would
help me carry them out on paper. So I visited a friend and picked
up a little red study-helper for the library that night.
(02/17/11 6:00am)
So I've been reading a lot of Shakespeare lately … not by choice of
course. As it so happens, when you're enrolled in ""Shakespearean
Drama,"" there is some amount of obligation to do these things. The
fact of the matter is this mishmash of vowels, verbs and adjectives
that Oxford is calling English is so far removed from the words you
and I speak today that I might as well be reading Swahili.
(02/11/11 6:00am)
So last weekend I was violated. There I was, nestled on my couch
haphazardly watching the Packers beat the tar out of the Steelers.
The first half was nothing special, and the commercials were OK,
but about halfway through the show, pandemonium broke. It was like
""Schindler's List,"" ""Saw"" and some deranged form of ""Tron""
all mixed together in one big devastatingly depressing event. I am
speaking, of course, about the Black Eyed Peas' halftime show.
(02/03/11 6:00am)
Well, Sunday's the big day, and congratulations you lucky
cheese-for-brains. If you're not from the great state of Wisconsin,
I'm sure you'll be joining me in my yearly ""my team didn't make it
again"" ritual that includes drowning my sorrows in a bowl of
Velveeta cheese dip. Sunday night, come 6:30 p.m. hundreds of
millions of Americans will be huddled around their television sets
(however many inches wide they may be), in time for the
Packers-Steelers smack down—a game that is certainly looking to be
a real barn burner.
(01/27/11 6:00am)
""I don't use drugs, my dreams are frightening
enough.""
(01/20/11 6:00am)
I used to have a pretty good friend named Gary. He was a good
enough fellow, and we used to shoot fireworks off at each other
down by the creek every once in a while. Once we even made a pretty
ambitious bike jump over a really deep ravine and Gary, who used to
be pretty daring, ended up shattering his pelvis in several places.
After the ""Pelvis Incident"" Gary was confined to an ""ass-cast,""
as we called it, and went into self-instated retirement for what
ended up being several years. The last few words I ever heard Gary
speak still run through my mind from time to time:
(12/06/10 6:00am)
As Muggles of the United States, we must accept the sad truth that
we're all susceptible to being screwed over by the long arm of the
law. It's a sad reality that upon committing serious crimes in our
society, iron barred squad cars and the county jail await us, as
opposed to somewhere cool like Azkaban or Professor Umbridge's
chambers. Honestly, I sometimes wish I was a fucking wizard. I'd
much rather have a dementor as a cell-mate than some cracked-out
scrub with a gas problem. But, such is life.
(11/30/10 6:00am)
I'm a huge proponent of the History Channel. Sometimes there's
nothing better after a long day of toiling over mind-numbingly
exhaustive classes than sitting down and letting the History
Channel pander its infinite wisdom to me, without even asking me to
read a few hundred pages after the show ends.
(11/28/10 6:00am)
As we enter the commercialized orgy that is the holiday season,
it's important to think about the concept of giving thanks. Giving
thanks is the gift that keeps on giving. Think about it. Unless
you're a complete asshole, whenever you get a gift, you give
thanks, even if you don't have jack-diddly to give back in return.
Of course, I wouldn't be writing any of this if ThanksGIVING wasn't
right around the corner. I wrote giving in capital letters because
I've always been baffled by why we emphasize that half of the word.
Why not THANKSgiving? It would technically make more sense seeing
as we're giving thanks for all sorts of things, or at least
pretending to.
(11/23/10 6:00am)
As we enter the commercialized orgy that is the holiday season,
it's important to think about the concept of giving thanks. Giving
thanks is the gift that keeps on giving. Think about it. Unless
you're a complete asshole, whenever you get a gift, you give
thanks, even if you don't have jack-diddly to give back in return.
Of course, I wouldn't be writing any of this if ThanksGIVING wasn't
right around the corner. I wrote giving in capital letters because
I've always been baffled by why we emphasize that half of the word.
Why not THANKSgiving? It would technically make more sense seeing
as we're giving thanks for all sorts of things, or at least
pretending to.
(11/16/10 6:00am)
Madison is big. Real big. With such a large university comes a
multitude of students from all walks of life, all with their own
unique quirks and personalities. There are those people who have a
great sense of humor and those that are chronic assholes. Some are
musical, athletic, dorky, quiet or religiously outgoing. In any
case, there's a clusterfuck of humanity walking the streets of
Madison, and if you feel like you're a little fish in a pond full
of 40,000 other various-sized fish, you're not alone. It's normal
to see completely new faces every day you walk down the street to
class, and it's easy to feel overwhelmed at the sheer volume of
people here. Plus, if you're like me—an incredibly studly fish who
has its fins involved in a lot of different and random interests
and activities—it can be tough to find a ""school"" of other
like-minded fish.
(11/08/10 6:00am)
A few days ago, California came just 7.6 percent short from a full
legalization of marijuana in its much-hyped and controversial
Proposition 19 vote. Needless to say, I almost dropped my croissant
upon reading this news during my morning Internet current events
binge.
(11/02/10 6:00am)
We all know that times have changed since the early days of our
childhood. No one wears glasses with lenses a half an inch thick,
wind suits with purple, blue and orange patterns, and our president
isn't banging Monica Lewinski (as far as we know).
(10/18/10 6:00am)
I was stepping out of the shower early the other day (yes,
unbelievably, I shower, and because I always forget to turn the fan
on, I began to wipe the steam off of the mirror for my usual
assessment on what variety of ten (out of ten) I was looking like
on that particular day. Immediately I knew something was amiss
though I just couldn't put my finger on it.
(10/11/10 6:00am)
So a few days ago I was at Memorial Union, you know, the one by the
lake. I was shamefully stuffing my face with soggy Rathskeller
fries and a not at all unexpected overcooked Badger Burger, when I
unfortunately ran into an acquaintance of mine from high-school
chess club.
(10/04/10 6:00am)
*Author's Note: This article may only appeal to those who exhibit
high levels of productivity issues and/or a knack for messing with
other peoples' heads—traits that I find create a hell of a lot of
entertainment.
(09/28/10 6:00am)
After three years of constant, sporadically located construction
being done on UW campus buildings, streets, sidewalks and
courtyards, the UW Chancellor's Office has declared that in an
effort to speed up the process the entirety of the UW campus will
soon be under construction.
(09/21/10 6:00am)
Last week, as local sophomore Timothy McFadden eagerly waited in
front of his television set for the 2010 MTV Video Music Awards,
something magical happened. Sitting with a box of Cheez-Its and a
lukewarm Doctor Pepper, Timothy was so emotionally stirred by the
groundbreaking vocal performances of Justin Bieber and Usher, that
he made a personal pledge to be ""just like them"" some day.
Timothy's personal realization that he was bound for musical
stardom occurred just as Bieber (16), surrounded by 13-year-old
male background dancers, sang his most well known lyrics ""Like
baby, baby, baby ohh"" for the 36th time.