Tar-nation
Scalds, stupidity consequence of fixing roofs
Recently, the store where I sell
appliances has developed some
substantial leaks in the roof. Most
owners of companies, specifically
female owners of companies, would
hire trained professionals to patch
the roof. But because the owner of
Merchandise Mart is a guy, the roof
would get fixed by unskilled
workers yielding a pipe-wrench and
tar.
Because it was a beautiful day
and I didn’t really enjoy being
cooped up inside repeating the
phrase, “I told you ma’am, I DON’T
KNOW how much that is,” I
volunteered to tar the roof of my
company’s building.
Also, the top of a three-story
building is one of the few places I
can tan shirtless without getting
issued a citation.
Now, I’ve tarred roofs before. In
Mississippi, tarring roofs is practi
cally the state pastime, although the
leaks never get repaired. Usually,
we just drink beer on the roof and,
eventually, after the second case,
conclude that the proper thing to do
is tar the phrase, “Tina is a Whore!”
on the side of the house.
I had forgotten how awful tarring
roofs without beer really is. If any of
you have only a week left to live, I
highly suggest you tar the roof of a
downtown building. I can attest that
every second of splashing hot tar on
your forehead feels like a damn
century.
The basic procedure of tarring
roofs consists of rolling tarpaper
over the leak, sealing the paper to
the roof with molten tar which is
pumped from a ground-level boiling
lank, and burning the “dog-shit” out
of yourself approximately 18,529
times.
Hot tar is perhaps the evilest of
all God’s creations, because once
Steve Willey
“I had forgotten how
awful tarring roofs
without beer really is. ”
it’s on you, brother, it’s on you. You
can’t wipe it off, because you
merely increase the surface area by
spreading it. There is nothing to do
except to accept the pain until the
tar hardens, at which point it can be
removed with a buttered spatula.
And for some odd reason, known
only to laughing tar-manufacturers,
tar always splashes. Moreover, it
always splashes on your forehead.
I have found that each tar
molecule (remember, I have had
chemistry three times, so I know
what I’m talking about), which
molecularly looks like this: T-A=R,
has proteins that allow it to think for
itself.
According to a chemistry journal
I subscribe to, powerful micro
phones, when placed next to cold
and hot samples of tar, revealed
some amazing results.
The article stated that cooled tar
thinks the following: “ whereas
scalding hot tar is obsessed with this
notion: “Find the Forehead, Find the
Forehead.”
Tar manufacturers are not only
guilty of making hot tar splash, but
of other crimes as well.
For example, I am convinced
that tar-manufacturers also add
unnecessary chemicals, namely
horseradish, that cause the fumes
from boiling tar to make normal
folks behave, well, like idiots.
If you don’t think tar fumes bring
about unprecedented verbal stupid
ity, read this actual conversation
between myself and a co-worker
who had been tarring since early
morning.
I’ll call him Andy, only because
it’s his name.
STEVE: “Man, I can’t believe I
volunteered for this!”
ANDY: “I know, (Extending his left
leg) my leg is made of solid gold.”
STEVE: “What the HELL are you
talking about?”
ANDY: (Surprised) “Bishop Tutu!
Why? What are you talking about?”
STEVE: “You’re talking crazy,
man.”
ANDY: “Tell that to your ostrich.
(Pointing at his underarm) I swear,
if Stenberg gets elected and he tries
to paint my nose white, I’ll KILL
HIM!”
I had no idea what my next move
should have been. As a trained
journalist, I knew it was my duty to
record this man’s stupidity, but as a
compassionate human, I desperately
wanted to leave before he began to
dance the Charleston.
Thinking back to the moment at
which I volunteered for the tarring
job, I can’t believe how idiotic I am
at times.
The sad thing is, with my
prolonged exposure to tar fumes, It
be bound to only get worser.
Willey is a Junior ag-Journaiisni major
and a Daily Nebraskan columnist.
Mixed Feelings
Nebraskans leave lasting impressions of America
A few more weeks and my eight
months in Lincoln will be over. As
always, it’s been instructive to live
in a foreign culture, and I’m grateful
for this opportunity to leam some
thing about life in America.
Although I’ll stay in America for
four more months, I feel that as I
leave Lincoln I’ll being saying
good-bye to something ultimately
American, something so genuine
and true that I won’t encounter it in
same form in any of the fancy cities
and national monuments I’m hoping
to see soon. My new status will be
the major obstacle for experiencing
this “true” America — from
foreigner living in this country I’ll
switch to a foreign tourist, and my
experiences will be those of a
temporary visitor.
And then I have this funny
feeling, illogical though it is, that
the state capitol of Lincoln is closest
to the heart of America that I will
ever be able to reach. For me,
Nebraska is the purest America, the
America I came to know first and
best. Until I’ve lived in some other
state for eight months or more, I’ll
believe that everything I’ve seen so
far and will see in future will only
be refreshing curiosities from the
standard cornfield.
First impressions are those that
last, and my eight months in Lincoln
have created a strong image of what
Nebraska and Nebraskans are like.
It’s a pity, because in a small place
like this and in a relatively short
period of time, random disadvan
tages can grow unnecessarily large
when more profound positive things
go unnoticed or ignored.
As it is, I often forget that my
laptop computer was stolen in New
York City, not in Lincoln.
Instead of their kindness,
helpfulness and honesty, I fear that
some of my most permanent images
of Lincolnites will be a 60-year-old
Veera Supinen
. .1 fear that some of my
most permanent images
' of Lincolnites ivill be a
60-year-old lady who,
sitting in Lied Center
listening to the San
Francisco Phil
harmonic, chews, loudly
and visibly, a huge wad
of pink gum. ”
lady who, sitting in Lied Center
listening to the San Francisco
Philharmonic, chews, loudly and
visibly, a huge wad of pink gum.
That and the weekend father who
took his three-ycar-old kids to sec
“Braveheart” and refused to leave
the movie theatre as the children,
scared by all the mutilation and
head-chopping, started to cry.
Even sadder is that these and similar
incidents create the characteristics
I’ll possibly relate to “typical”
Americans, and that these stereo
types will be those I transfer to
people I communicate with. It’s
terribly unfair and irrational, but
better knowledge doesn’t always
help. No matter how hard you try,
generalizations are difficult to
avoid.
The time I’ve been in Lincoln has
been both enjoyable and useful, and
there are great people and places I
know I will miss a lot. Still, I can’t
say I’m going to miss Lincoln itself
— despite my attempts, I can’t think
of this city as a particularly pretty or
interesting one.
And despite the wonderful time
I’ve had, if someone would ask me
what I thought about Nebraska, I’d
probably say that I didn’t like it
compared to most other places I’ve
seen in the United States.
My mixed emotions towards
Nebraska are something I’ve tried to
figure out. The reasons are naturally
many, but one of the biggest is the
fact that Nebraskan mentality - this,
of course, being a generalization - is
so akin to what one can find in
Finland. People in both places feel
that they live in a periphery and they
also act accordingly. Inferiority
complexes come in many forms, but
especially in doubts about whether
the home culture and society should
be protected by overpatriotic attacks
on anything even slightly different,
or whether it would be safest to
exaggerate negative things and
laugh cordially with those who find
the society somehow imperfect.
Either way, the result is an un
healthy mixture of excessive pride,
self-mocking and pity.
Perhaps the most illuminating
expression of the similarities
between the Nebraskan and Finnish
mentalities is the somewhat pathetic
way in which sports bolster national
self-esteem. I’m leaving a state
which unites behind the achieve
ments of a college football team for
a country whose biggest heroes are
guys who can jump far with skis
attached to their feet.
Small world.
Supines Is a history and American Stud
ies major and a Dally Nebraskan columnist
Colleges too lenient
on student protests
“I am reading ‘Pride and Preju
dice’ because I am being forced
to,” went the complaint of one stu
dent protester participating in the
hijacking of Hamilton Hall at Co
lumbia University.
Really? Have things come so far
that innocent students at leading
universities are being held down
and forced to read Jane Austen?
How barbaric.
For the past several weeks, Co
lumbia University, my alma mater,
has been the scene of what The
New York Times affectionately la
bels a “rite of spring.” Student “pro
testers” blockaded themselves in
side a key classroom building and
endured a hunger strike in an at
tempt to force the university to meet
their demands.
The Times seems to find this
admirable, offering a retrospective
of Columbia “dissents” from past
years. Morris Dickstein, a former
Columbia professor and now an
administrator with the City Univer
sity of New York, told the Times
“students there feel some need to
live up to the heroism of their pre
decessors. They have this sense that
once there was a generation that
was activist.”
Heroism? When Andrei
Sakharov publicly challenged the
Kremlin for violating human rights,
that was heroism. When Lenny
Skutnik dove into the icy Potomac
river to save survivors of the Air
Florida crash, that was heroism.
Occupying the dean’s office at Co
lumbia and defecating in his trash
can, burning the research notes of
professors and closing down the
university for a semester, as the
student “protesters” of 1968 did at
Columbia, was not heroism. It was
criminality.
But, of course, the administra
tion did not treat the student hooli
gans as criminals. No one was so
much as expelled. And indeed, the
students were widely lauded for
their supposed “idealism.” With the
passage of time, and the help of
liberal organs like The New York
Times, the Columbia “uprising” has
taken on almost mythic proportions.
Little wonder that through the
years, handfuls of students have
attempted to reclaim some of the
glory of the ’60s.
But the most recent protest—a
demand that Columbia create an
“ethnic studies” department and
incorporate more “multicultural”
works into the core curriculum —
met with a surprisingly hard-headed
response from the administration, j
University President George Rupp t
said, “Students do not design our (
curriculum nor enforce our stan- j
dards.” i
That curriculum and those stan- <
dards have been a source of pride at *
Columbia for more than 100 years.
All undergraduates must complete 1
a course of study that includes the I
great ideas of western civilization, <
art, music, literature and samplings I
of other cultures. The two courses
that compose the core, “Contempo- <
Mona Charen
“Do I appreciate
Beethoven less because
Pm not a German?
Has Plato nothing to
teach non-Greeks?”
rary Civilization” and “Humani
ties,” introduce undergraduates to
the works of Plato, Homer,
Aristotle, Adam Smith, Alexis de
Tocqueville, Miguel Cervantes,
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Jean Jacques
Rousseau, Georg Hegel, Sir Tho
mas More, Herman Melville, John
Stuart Mill, David Hume, Friedrich
Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud, Charles
Darwin, V.I. Lenin and the afore
mentioned Austen, amongmultiple
others. It isn’t a summary of the
‘best” ideas—note the presence of
Lenin and Rousseau. What Colum
bia has sought, and in my judgment
largely succeeded in doing for 100
/ears, is to give students a sense of
the most important ideas that have
shaped our civilization.
The newest crop of protesters at
Columbia scrawled in chalk on the
wall of Hamilton Hall the authors
they would see incorporated into
the core: “Marcus Garvey, Bobby
Seale, Steve Biko, Frederick
Douglass, Cesar Chavez.” With the
exception of Douglass (who is not
neglected in American History
courses), the list is a mere catalog
of left-wing political favorites, not
a serious collection of writers who
have influenced western thought—
nr any other.
The tragedy of the multicultural
agenda is the constricted view of
nne’s intellectual heritage it encour
ages. Do the Federalist Papers be
long less to me because my ances
tors were living in Europe when
they were written than to the de
scendant of a Mayflower family?
Do I appreciate Beethoven less be
cause I’m not a German? Has Plato
nothing to teach non-Greeks?
After two weeks ofhunger strikes
md disrupted classes, the adminis
ration demanded that the students
wacuate Hamilton Hall. In return,
he administration promised to hire
nore minority faculty members and
:onsider expanding offerings in
ksian and Hispanic studies.
That’s not quite the unflinching
wsturc one might have wished for,
>ut in the annals of universities’
esponses to unruly students, it ap
iroaches backbone.
C) 1996 Creators Syndicate, Inc.
