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About The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (Dec. 8, 2000)
Opinion ZM/vNebraskan Since 1901 Editor Sarah Baker Opinion Page Editor Samuel McKewon Managing Editor Bradley Davis Quotes of the Week “(Diamond Dallas Page and Kevin Nash) could murder puppies and still get a huge crowd reaction, and of course, they do. Get a huge crowd reaction, that is.” Reporter Neal Obermeyer, on the undying popularity of two WCW old-timers and their ability to maul cute domesticated wrestlers “The campaign's $22 million budget comes from Congress. It is part of a five-year, $185 mil lion-a-year national anti-drug multimedia cam paign directed at youth that began in 1999.” From an Associated Press report on a nation al campaign designed to encourage youths to find their Santi-drug” “We are the guys that never stopped playing after high school. So when people come to see us, they are going to hear a very high-quality product” Ed Love, musical director and saxophonist of the Nebraska Jazz Orchestra, on the rarity and quality of the ensemble “We never really left Bobby Newcombe alone, even when we left him alone. At first it was hype, then controversy, then an extension of goodwill toward a successful career.” Columnist Samuel McKewon, on the inces sant involvement of the public in Bobby Newcombe’s college football career “I just wanted to go out there and play with a passion and work hard.” Nebraska outside hitter Laura Pilakowski, on playing through a recent surgery “Painters see a concept in colors and angles. Musicians hear concepts in notes. Writers just use words instead.” UNL student Emily Waibel, on the continuity of varying forms of artistic expression “Consider, please, what you’ve put me through during the course of one semester. And don’t try to persuade me of a message. Oh God, my sweet asinine creator, there is no message to be spread here.” petaluma watson, in her final show of rebel lion against a self-indulgent creator “I understand the need to keep the downtown area vital, but it’s taking business away from mom and pop businesses like (mine). I’d like to see more effort put into small businesses than big businesses.” Terrance Reis, co-owner of Coffee Culture, on the possible downside to a downtown enter tainment megaplex “Warm weather, flat, slow flowing sewers give rise to hydrogen-sulfide difficulties. It is extreme ly common.” Joe Ruocco, president of Phoenix Bio Systems, on why York stinks “It is certainly a luxury and convenience to hear the same music in Lincoln as you would in a big-city bar. You don’t get any better than the people they've had play there over the years.” Randall Snyder, professor of theory and com position in the UNL School of Music, on the value of the Zoo Bar in a non-big city like Lincoln “It's a building project that will benefit every one." Ed Paquette, executive director of the Nebraska Alumni Association, on the value of the new Champions Club, with 25-year mem berships running a mere $20,000 Editorial Board Sarah Baker, Bradley Davis, Josh Funk, Matthew Hansen, Samuel McKewon, Dane Stickney, Kimberly Sweet Letters Policy The Daly Nebraskan welcomes briefs, letters to the editor and guest columns, but does not guar antee their pubkaboaltiB Daly Nebraskan retains the rig^rt to edit or reject any material submitted. Submitted material becomes property of the Daiy Nebraskan and carat be returned. Anonymous submissions wl not be published. Those who submit letters must identify themselves by name, vearinechooL maior anchor arouDaffitation. if anv. Submit material to: Daily Nebraskan, 20 Nebraska Union, 1400 R St Uncoti, NE 68588-0448. E matlettarsOunlnfaunl.edu. Editorial PoScy Unsigned editorials are the opinions of the FaN 2000 Daily Nebraskan. They do not necessarily reflect the views of the University of Nebraska-Lincoin, its employees, its student body or the University of Nebraska Board of Regents. A column is solely the opinion of its author; a cartoon is solely the opinion of Ms artist. The Board of Regents acts as publisher of the Daly Nebraskan; pot cy is set by the Daly Nebraskan Edtoriai Board. The UNL Publications Board, established by the regents, supervises the production of the paper. According to polcy set by the regents, reeponsi bUty far ttw editorial content of the newspaper las solely In the hands of its employees. i /'JjbW (oW IT’s Time To n<sm OUT WHo AWANGEPT6 HAVE Wo APDITioNAL- PARKING- W tuc new 16-scteeiJ-mm VouiNTom! a?M msfc services! Vu£ To coey/fjQncmtUtui.-rtelKt&K of m "saoey vBu'GMP-m^mi stmn.y iwifttp N&L&OO NealObefmeyer/DN And stay out! From what I have been reading, it seems that most people are upset that President Clinton chose to visit Kearney and Omaha instead of Lincoln. I, however, feel just the opposite. I’m glad he’s not coming to Lincoln. He can stay away from here, for all I care. In fact, he shouldn’t have gone out of his way to visit Nebraska, period. We obviously weren't good enough for him for Letters to the editor seven years and 11 months, so what makes us good enough for him now? It would be nice if Nebraska were known as the state that Mr. Clinton didn't visit. We're doing just fine without him. Mark Otte Civil Engineering Junior Cable: A new world cometh As I write this, I am on the verge of a revolution. A change so monumen tal it will affect me pro foundly, and in more ways than I can think of right now, which is two. The wheels of time are set in motion and I, a helpless inhabitant of this island earth, am but one cog in those infernal gears of life, destined for the destiny that awaits me. In just over a week my life will be transformed into a new life, and in the meantime, I wait and wring my hands in anticipation. For the first time ever, I will have cable TV at home. Well, maybe not the first time ever but the first time in a long time. There was a very short period, during my elementary school years, where my par ents signed up for a free promo deal in which they could get cable free for three months if they acted now. And act they did. The days of renting a Nintendo (“NES”) from Hy-Vee and running it through the VCR so we could record our pathetic attempts to beat World 1-2 in Mario Brothers and watch them over and over until the wee hours of the evening before our 6:30 bedtime was gone. Now we had Nickelodeon, CNN and The Weather Channel to keep us busy. Unfortunately, our parents caught us watching You Can’t Do That On Television one day, and when Barth served up more of his mystery meat, they decided it was time to pull the plug, both literally and figuratively. But now that I’ve moved out of my parents' shack into the gold-plated walls of a fraternity and am old enough to really appreciate the subtle humor ofYou Can’t Do That On Television, Ren and Stimpy and Full House, the shows have all been canceled. I’m sure I’ll find something out there, though, to make that $50 a month worthwhile. I’m afraid I’m getting a little ahead of myself here. Allow me to back this thang up and tell you the whole story. We got two new brothers at the frat recently, and after bringing their blood-alcohol level up to a respectable 2.0, we all decided to cele brate and get us-selves cable TV Ben made the call to CableVision, or maybe it's AOL-Time-Warner, and got us the ultimate hook up. We're getting Digital Cable, which is so new it doesn’t exist yet, which is why it’s so expensive. I swear I could hear laughter erupting from the phone as Ben hung up and began telling us about the huge deal we were getting. It includes, and I’m not kidding here, well over five channels including a strange health network called “Ache-BO." We’re going to have so many channels that I’ve already gone into mental over load and reserved a room at the hospital. Right now, we have our TV duct-taped to the dinner table we ripped off from a garage sale this summer, and as long as you stand five feet in front opinions wanted An^fifyyoiraic&Getyoirwo^ Ifyou'vegotsdtmgpofitkaiopMcirts^. WewantyouontheDNopnionpage Apply at20 Nebraska UnM^ drawings wanted Vafidateyoursketdies.PokefiiiatASUN lfyou<andraw~ WewantyouontheDNopnionpage. Apply at 20 Nebraska Union today. i of the TV and jiggle the coat-hanger, which is jammed into the antenna receptor and attached to the floor lamp, you will get a picture good enough to let you distinguish Alex Trebek's mustache f*e»n a fuzzy gray caterpillar. Cable, they say, doesn't _ require such nonsensical measures. It does require a “box,” a “splitter” and other such medieval tor ture devices. I'm not sure why, though. When we had it back in the days of yore and He-Man underpants, there was just this ubiqui tous black thing that sat atop the two-head VCR. I never figured out how, but when you turned this black box-type apparatus on, it also turned the TV on. Strange, yes, but that's how things work in Cable Land. I never watch much TV except for reruns of The Simpsons a few times a week. Mostly, I use the Internet, play my guitar and watch the Star Wars trilogy. I don’t really see the point of TV, because most of the shows, when I do watch them, tend to be the same. It includes, and I'm not kidding here, well over five channels including a strange health network called uAche-BO.” We’re going to have so many channels that I’ve already gone into mental overload and reserved a room at the hospital. And the jokes, if you want to call them that, are generally very far from funny. “Oh no, Joey, it looks like you caught a vene real disease from Monica’s toilet again!” Ha, ha. Oh, my side. I did watch an episode of Iron Chef once, and although the idea of making every course of a 15-course meal out of asparagus, including the drinks and the silverware, appealed to me, I still don’t think I could justify spending money to watch it. But I am, and I'm looking forward to it. I don’t know why. It’s like smoking or bungee jump ing. You know it’s bad for you, yet it’s strangely compelling. At the gas station down on the comer, they sell a product called — and if you’ve been there you know I'm not joking - “Big Butt Beer." The guys at the fr at have already bought every last bottle of it so we can make sure to do this Cable TV thing the right way. The way God intended it. I'm not much of a sports fan, but I'll be darned to heck if I’m going to waste our subscription to ESPN by drink ing the wussy stuff like “Bud” or "Pepsi” while watching Da Big Game. ) No sir, I’m going to use the picture-in-picture (in-picture) capabilities of our 1983 Mitsubishi 13 inch TV to become a full-fledged member of socie ty by ingesting as much TV as humanly possible, in every way possible. Screw all this reading and talking all the time. Sheesh. Bottling up the two faces of alcohol “To alcohol! The cause of - and solution to - all of life’s prob lems!” Homer Simpson A young woman, we’ll call her Cindy, went to a party last year Mark Zmarzly at ray menus house. Cindy proceeded to get real intoxicated and needed a ride home. Her Mends took poor little Cindy home and put her to bed. At die time of the party, Cindy was liv ing with her parents. That night, Cindy decided to sleep buck naked, like all good girls should. In the middle of the night, Cindy didn't feel very good, so she got up and went into the bathroom to vomit Problem No. 1: The bathroom wasn't quite where she remembered it being. Problem No. 2: The new bathroom looked a lot like her little sister’s bed room. So while her little sister was peace fully sleeping and dreaming about petals on roses and whiskers on kittens, Cindy vomited all over her litde sister: Cindy’s little sister then woke up, cov ered in vomit and saw her naked sister passed out on her floor. Hie little sister ran into their parents’ room and starts screaming, “Cindy's dead! Cindy’s dead!” Now let’s look at the example of my Mend Scott Before there was a Mickey’s Irish Pub, there was a little bar known to us as Morgan’s Upstairs. Back in the day, a cou ple of Mends and I used to frequent this establishment because it was the only bar we could get into with our fake IDs. The summer of 1995 the bar intro duced a drink called the Goombay smash. It was 64 ounces of alcohol mixed up in a fishbowl. The neat little thing about this drink was that if you, and you alone, couldfinishitattherateof 1 ounce a minute for 64 straight minutes, you got to write your name on the walL One night, Scott decided to go ahead and attempt this litde feat because two of my friends had done it the week before, and they didn't seem to have suffered any permanent side effects. So, fast forward, we carried Scott back to the fraternity house and put him to sleep on my friend’s couch. Seth, the friend, places a trash can beside poor lit tle Scott and then goes to bed. Later, Seth woke to see Scott walking out of the room, only Scott wasn't wear ing the same clothes he went to sleep in. Seth thought nothing of it because he was tired and drunk. When Seth awoke again, he began to piece together the puzzle of why Scott had changed clothes. As it turns out, Scott had gotten up in the middle of the night, stripped naked and proceeded to take a dump on Seth’s coffee table. After doing this, Scott then went into Seth’s dirty clothes hamper and put on some of Seth's dirty clothes. The reason that I bring up these sto ries is not to make the two individuals (I’ve changed their names.) feel bad; I simply bring them up to make a point The point is, don’t leave your coffee table or little sister unguarded. Seriously, my point is that alcohol is a fickle little bitch. One moment you're suckling at her sweet teat and reaping the benefits of being the life of the party, and the next minute you're shitting on your friend's coffee table. She is as much of a savior as she is the person who damns you. Alcohol has caused people I know to piss on their beds, couches, floors, girl friends or whatever else seems to be around. People have gotten hit by a car, passed out in a ditch, etc.... After each one of these incidents, the poor person is then made fun of until someone else does something to surpass the level of stupidity. More permanently, people I’ve known have failed out of college, gotten a DUI and contracted a sexually transmit ted disease all because of alcohol Now, I’ve done my fair share of drink ing; in all honesty, I’ve probably done your share, too. I’m not hear to judge anyone—just to provoke you to think. You don't have to let your alcohol induced actions define who you are. These are just things that you’ve done; they don’t have to be who you are. I went out this last Saturday with a couple of my friends from these good old days and attempted to relive some of our old behaviors. As we were outside of The Spigot begging women we didn't know for a ride home, I came to realize that alcohol is a learning curve, and I am defi nitely still learning. I don’t use alcohol nearly as much as I used to. I have cut down for three rea sons. First, I don’t have as much free time as I used to. Second, I don't want to make any of those mistakes I listed above. Finally, I really hurt the next morning. Man, I mean, I hurt as if I’m inventing pain for the very first time. One final note, to the young lady who gave us a ride home, thank you so much from the bottom of my heart. To your friend who made out with my friend in the back of the car, you rula