This will be the last Eric Spratling column before school ends (don't worry ladies, I'm applying again for the fall), so I figure that rather than fill today's space with productive and insightful commentary, I'd just cover some lingering odds and ends. Well, mostly "odds," actually, and a little bit of bathroom humor.
See, after nigh on three semesters writing columns for The State Press, many of my ideas ended up in the ideological wastebasket, either because of editorial decree or otherwise. I've never been terribly good at algebra (or math in general, or counting), but if I remember correctly, several bad ideas equal one good idea, so with that in mind I present you with a "Best of the Worst" column idea roundup for today.
For starters, some months back I wanted to make fun of the fat people who were suing McDonald's for having the audacity to sell their greasy food-like products to paying customers. The column would have seen me coming up with any number of highly offensive names for the morbidly obese, such as "butter ham creature" and "sloshing pork monstrosity." I say I could have gotten away with such insensitivity, too, on account of I'm a recovering fatty myself. And besides, if you actually sue a restaurant just because of your gluttonous habits, I'm allowed to call you any thing I want.
But it wasn't meant to be, because the editors had already run a sidebar piece on it the week before. So let me just sum up my argument now: drop the lawsuits and go do some sit-ups, chubby.
Other discarded column ideas were more serious, if only slightly. Some readers may remember the pair of psycho preachers on Hayden Lawn a few weeks ago, wearing sandwich boards telling everyone from "homos" to "sports nuts" just how much hell they were going to. My column that week had already run, so by the next week, the event was staler than Howard Dean and I wrote about robot takeover instead. So while even a kindly conservative Christian like myself calls people like that nuts (no salt, just plain nuts), the question still remains: what exactly did they think they were accomplishing?
I mean, have they ever had one single person show up at their backyard church claiming that being called a "pencil-necked girly man" had inspired them to learn more about Jesus? Somehow I don't think so, and after a while you'd think that Tweedledee and Tweedledoofus would have picked up on that too. So I guess I'm really just wondering where exactly in the Bible it is that God tells us to go make morons of ourselves in front of college students and do everything possible to alienate them.
I also at some point wanted to "give something back" to the readership, but the readers didn't give me a whole heck of a lot this semester in the first place, so I never did have enough material to cough up a column on the "wacky" letters I've received. However, my fellow Thursday writer Lucia Bill has had her own share of reader creepiness, with this week's honorary restraining order being awarded to Jason "I love Chia more than I love veterans" Comer in Tuesday's letters section. What is it this woman does to drive men so mad? It must be the accent.
And a final missed "opportunity" can definitely be filed under "miscellaneous": the night that I started writing this very column, my roommate, computer science senior Anthony Garone, suggested a topic of his own. He said, "Hey Spratling, I got a column idea for ya!" and then ... he farted. Seriously.
I love college. Have a great summer, y'all.
Eric Spratling is a public relations senior. Reach him at Eric.Spratling@asu.edu. Read his blog online at asuwebdevil.com.
