Gotcha!
Nerf Assassination game storms the dorms
College often makes about as
much sense as a blind person taking
astronomy.
A lot of things are crazy, wild ant
conventional. Like firecrackers
going off in Love Library or a
wedding being held during the
halftime of an NU women’s basket
ball game against Colorado.
Welcome to the next level of the
bizarre... “Assassination.”
Assassination is a game that
nearly all dorms participate in. Each
“floor” holds its own game with the
rules being barbarically simple.
No, it doesn’t involve renting
“JFK” and watching the shooting
scene a dozen times in slow motion.
The rules are these. Keep killing
the people assigned to you until
eventually you are the only one left.
Now taking into account that each
contestant will be armed with toy
guns, it seems like good clean fun.
It also seems simple to begin and
end a game of Assassination in 10
minutes. Stick the entire floor of
guys or girls in the dorm’s base
ment and let them shoot it out. Sure
a few things might get broken, but
the game will soon be over and there
will be only one left. No sweat
right?
Wrong.
You see, the official rules of
Assassination, at least for my floor
at Harper Hall, say that you cannot
“assassinate” anyone in the dorm. It
has to be on either side of the
railroad tracks, translation: on
campus grounds.
Here’s where the game becomes
interesting.
Let me say right off the bat that
I’m not participating in fifth floor
Harper’s “Assassination.” Not only
do I not have a gun that shoots
“darts, balls or soft projectiles,” but
the day you see me chasing some
guy through the Union, pumping out
Nerf products while screaming
“Your butt is mine!!!,” you have
Kasey Kerber
"... the day you see me
chasing some guy
through the Union,
pumping out Nerf
products while
screaming Your butt is
mine!!!,'you haw
permission to take out a
real gun and blow me
to kingdom come. ”
permission to take out a real gun and
blow me to kingdom come.
All this Assassination stuff does
bring forth an interesting idea
though. What if we instituted
Assassination into certain aspects of
society?
Sure, it’s great with a bunch of
dorm guys who are at times too
drunk to realize how their “Nerf
Equalizer ’ works, but why don’t we
try to put it in other areas that need a
little more help?
Area No. 1 — Government. If
you’re like me, you get sick of all
this mudslinging by politicians old
enough to have personally written
the Rosetta Stone. If they want to
argue — let’s give them a crapload
of Nerf and turn the House of
. 7 v
Representatives into a certified
“foam-war zone.”
That would be beautiful! Five
hundred legislators seeking and
destroying — diving over tabletops,
ambushing each other and taking
cover behind podiums.
While we’re at it, let’s throw in
the reporters that seem to do little
more than bring us “overdone”
election coverage! Yes! That would
be truly beautiful! Sam Donaldson
chasing after Bob Dole with a Nerf
Crossbow, his Rambo headband just
barely revealing that bald spot.
Area No. 2 — Foreign conflicts.
Finally, the answer to Bosnia! Take
away those missile launchers and
give them a few thousand “Power
Ranger Ninja Dart Gun” sets! Oh
sure, they’ll complain that the Pink
Ranger’s colors clash with their
camouflage pants, but give them five
minutes and they’ll be so tired,
uninjured and overjoyed that they’ll
agree immediately to settle their
differences and pool treasuries to
buy the complete Nerf “Kill Every
thing” line.
Area No. 3 — College. Everyone
agrees that our classrooms are too
boring and do not promote learning.
Well, give everyone a Nerf “Death
Pellet Shooter,” and that attitude will
quickly change. When the professor
gets boring — cock and fire!
1 know what you’re saying.
Kasey, this is not fair to the profes
sors! Fine, arm them with the
ultimate — the Nerf “Kiss Yo Ass
Goodbye” Magnus Gun with Tri
Pumping Pellet Chambers! Then let
class begin!
Assassination is a game needed
by all college students and the
world. Just think of what it could
provide! Just think of the doors it
could open!.
I know, it sounds corny, but hey,
Nerf did pay me to say it...
Kerber is a freshman news-editorial
major and a Daily Nebraskan columnist
unwritten rules
4- * . I
Tips on conquering lights and meter maids
One of my greatest accomplish
ments since I’ve been down here in
Lincoln has been figuring out the
traffic system. I don’t mean just
being able to drive in the big city of
Lincoln. This means being able to
get where you want to go with a
minimal amount of frustration.
Granted, you can go with the
flow and get there eventually. But
it’s more fun to beat the system. I
imagine these beady-eyed traffic
planners sitting up in their plush
offices and inventing new, creative
traffic plans designed to get the most
people home the latest.
By this, I don’t mean running red
lights or passing ambulances. I’m a
good defensive driver. I always look
both ways, even on a one-way street.
(Hey, don’t laugh! I almost got run
over on P Street once by a driver
going the wrong way!) When I stop
at a stop sign, I stop the full three
seconds — in fact, I count.
Well, maybe not.
But I always slow down to the
speed limit in a school zone. This is
because there’s always a speed trap
set up in one at least once a week.
The biggest speed traps are set up
around Vine Street, Adams Street
and 27th Street. So don’t speed
there. You only get one diversion
class.
There are, to go with the laws of
the city, some unwritten rules that
make driving a lot easier, ilet me
share a few of the things I’ve learned
living there.
First of all, the lights ARE timed
on all the downtown numbered
streets, and on P and Q streets. O
Street is not timed. Avoid it at all
costs, unless you like hitting on the
opposite sex when traffic is stopped.
Because you will have to stop at
least five times before you finally
get to go more than two blocks in a
row without stopping.
Another small way to turn
driving into a science is to watch the
other light. When the opposite light
Kristi Kohl
"... the meter maids
WILL come ariywhere
from 10 minutes to 15
seconds before you come
back to your car. ”
turns yellow, it will turn red and
your light will turn green in about
1.5 seconds — and you can time this
so the light turns green as you reach
the crosswalk. If you do this, you
don’t have to stop.
If it’s still red, you slow down
until it turns yellow. Then you can
speed up, breezing superiorly by the
jerk in the hot red Camaro who had
to slam on his brakes at the stoplight
because he was going too fast.
There’s another method that I
employ every once in a while. It’s
more useful because I am usually
toward the back of the traffic line. If
this is your situation, the WALK/
DON:’T WALK signs give you a
good indication of how fast you
need to go to catch the light.
If the WALK signal is on, don’t
worry. You’ll have plenty of time,
and if you speed up, you’ll have to
slow down for the traffic ahead of
you. But if it’s blinking, you need to
hurry. How fast? It depends on the
light. Some have 13 blinks, some
have 10, and one I know only has
four. If you learn this, you usually
can catch all the lights. .
One of my greatest challenges
was the block between 16th and
17th streets on D Street. Sixteenth
Street is a timed street, but every
time I turned the comer to go down
D Street, the light would turn red
halfway down the block. I would sit
at the light forever, fuming. What
made it worse was that I had a
computer science class at this time,
and I pulled several all-nighters at
the lab. This meant that I would sit
and wait while no cars came from
the other way. It was TEMPTING to
run the red light.
Anyway, this was the desperate
situation that drove me to conquer
the light. I began watching, and I
learned The Secret. That light has
only four DON’T WALK blinks, and
they begin when the light on 16th
Street turns green. So, if you can
take the comer without slowing
down or rolling, and accelerate from
there, you can make it to the
intersection in time to make it look
good.
But, you can’t do it all the time.
So my final survival tips for you
have to do with the inevitable. First
of all, when you get to where you’re
going — don’t leave the meter
unplugged. And don’t plug it for an
hour and a half when you’ll be gone
for two. Because the meter maids
WILL come anywhere from 10
minutes to 15 seconds before you
come back to your car.
My last tip is this. Find a great
radio station without any commer
cials. Oh, there aren’t any? Well,
find two or three so you can switch
when the commercials come on. Or,
invest in a CD player and some good
CDs. For me, it’s hard to be frus
trated when I’m listening to “Fishin’
in the Dark” or “Any Man of Mine.”
(You don’t have to, especially if you
don’t like country.) But enjoy
yourself. And drive safely. ^
Kohl ia a junior biology major aad a
Daily Nebraakaa coiamaiit
Space talk raises
questions of belief
You would think that by
hanging around someone for the
better part of seven years and
sharing a house for more than
two, you’d really get to know
‘em.
You’d think you’d know his
favorite foods, his favorite beer,
um, whether or not he believes in
space travel.
1 mean geez, we went through
high school together, we’ve spent
holidays together — cripes, I
think I’ve even seen him naked.
Yeah, I thought we were pretty
tight — more importantly, I
thought him to be a sane human
being.
But apparently that i sn’t the
case because about two months
ago he revealed a secret he had
been keeping from me all along.
He said the United States space
program doesn’t exist.
A sincere statement, that, to
this day, remains the most asinine
thing I have ever heard.
Apollo 11? Never happened.
Apollo 13? Yeah right. Tom
Hanks was more believable than
Jim Lovell.
The Challenger explosion?
C’mon, ever seen Battle Star
Galactica?
And from what I’ve heard,
there are more people out there
who share his disbelief — more
people than you’d think.
The night my Itiena mt me ana
the other three people in the living
room with his little debate ignitor,
it took me a good 10 minutes to
stop laughing and say, “Shut up.
How can you not believe that
we’ve been in space?”
He stood his ground and
calmly replied, “Can you prove to
me all that stuff happened?”
At that point I was laughing so
hard my face hurt. The others just
looked at him — squinting in
disbelief. I tried to form a
complete sentence that would
answer his question, but couldn’t.
So he seized the silence to
explain.
You see, it was right during
the Cold War,” he said, intently
looking around the room as if it
was a campfire story. “The
Russians had just said they went
up there, so Kennedy thought it
would be the best thing to do for
the United States.
By this point, the heartfelt
passion he spoke with lured me
in, wanting to hear more from a
man who, I’ll admit, had about
.001 percent of me believing him.
“So they paid NASA, this little
company, to build a spaceship and
to make it look like it went to the
moon.”
By this time my laughter had
turned to anger, and I quickly
piped up with proof I thought to
be indisputable. “Oh yeah, what
about the moon rocks and stuff
they brought back?”
“You can get that crap out of
your freakin’ fire place,” he said
— now laughing at me.
Not likely, I thought, but he
continued to press on.
“Um, OK, what about the cool
space footage.”
“People can make a picture out
of anything. A guy can put his
Ted Taylor
“He said the United
States space program
doesn’t exist. A sincere
statement, that, to this
day, remains the most
asinine thing I have
. ever heard. ”
head on a picture of a pregnant
woman if he wants,” he told us,
shaking his head.
All I could muster was a
dumbfounded “Hmm.”
“There just isn’t any proof,” he
concluded. “Star Wars had better
footage than NASA.”
And then, as quickly as it had
started, the conversation ended.
He went upstairs and left r..e to
sit there and think about what my
virgin ears had just heard.
It wasn’t that I really started to
believe him, it was the fact I
couldn’t come back with any
solid arguments to back my
position on the topic.
So I stored the discussion away
in my memory and we all went
out together.
But for the rest of the night, I
couldn’t look at my roommate
and best friend the same. I
suddenly saw him as a man who
had shattered a belief that was in
the same ballpark with Santa
Claus.
(Not to say there isn’t such a
thing as Santa Claus, kids.)
How could he do that to me?
He actually had the gall to tell
me that Neil Armstrong landing
on the moon — a piece of United
States history that still brings
goose bumps and a tear to my eye
— never happened? (Well, OK,
he never said it didn’t happen; he
just thinks it happened on a
Hollywood sound stage.)
One small step for the silver
screen, he says.
fcince mat mgnt, rve tried to
forget his horrible, devilish
words, but every now and then,
I’ll be in the mood for a good
roommate discussion and will
hesitantly bring the topic up again
He just tells me not to get him
started — so I suppose that means
he hasn’t, which is understand
able because completely wacky
ideas like that can’t just come and
go.
So from now on, when I meet
someone, the first question I’ll
ask is: Do you think space travel
exists? Yes or No?
Taylor b a junior news-editorial
major and a Daily Nebraskan senior
reporter.
l^-TWlK.DlSroBnOKs
LIES, QUESTIONABLE
ETHICS... OH,WELL,
EMOUGH M^OUT
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