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About The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 17, 1998)
CLIFF HICKS u a news-edi torial and English major and a Daily Nebraskan columnist And single, I hate Valentine’s Day, and the rea sons have nothing to do with being sin gle. OK, maybe they have a little to do with being single, but that’s not the point. The point? Oh yeah, the point The point is that the majority of people did Valentine’s Day wrong. The whole gen eral concept and the way people go about it - wrong. I have watched single people and I have watched couples, and believe me, I’ve seen the mistakes you people have made, the errors you stumble through, the stupid gifts you get and the foolish ideas you try. Mind you, some of them impress even me with their outrageous ness. Read and learn so that Mien next year rolls around you’ll be ready. I’ll try to keep your attention. Lesson No. 1: Be subtle. A few years ago, I was out of town shortly after the dreaded holiday, dri ving through a city that shall be lucky enough to remain nameless. On a bill board bigger than my beat-up pickup truck i which, my roommate can tell you, is big enough to have the turning radius of Montana) was a woman’s (half-deranged looking) smiling face. Next to her face, in letters taller than I, read “I love you! I want to bear your child!” Subtlety is something this woman isn’t familiar Mth. I stopped and got lunch in a local Love lessons What to do on that fateful day in February diner in this city and I asked the wait ress about the billboard. “Dear Lord, did that girl make a mistake,” she told me. I asked her what she meant and she told me that not only had the girl been rebuked by her pursued beau, but she had forgotten to put his name on the billboard So she spent months hearing “OK, if you really want my child... ” from every guy in town. Lesson No. 2: Be personal. Never let your gifts be impersonal. It’s the kiss of death. Now a lot of you are wondering how I classify “impersonal.” Here’s a general list to get you started of things you shouldn’t give for Valentine’s Day: new tires, weedwhackers, lighters, belt buckles, firearms (or, in fact, weapons of any sort), poultry, road flares, Brylcreem, Nair, your empty beer bot tle collection, glassware, tools, lumber, ferrets (I stress again, ferrets are a defi nite NO), night vision goggles, whisks, spatulas, tobacco or alcohol products of any kind, carpeting, lottery tickets, your autographed poster of Axl Rose or keno stubs. Repeat, all of these things are wrong. Guys also should not give lingerie until they know, for a fact, no doubt about it, guaranteed, that she will enjoy it Getting to see your partner in it is a nice little benefit In fact, that might be a great idea for next year. Women can give themselves lingerie for Valentine’s Day, and the present will be to let their significant other see them in it Have character with your gifts. Give a touch of style to them. Make it so there’s no question that they came from you and you alone. Lesson No. 3: Plan ahead. Taking your date out to dinner is not a good idea on Valentine’s Day. Otherwise, it will draw die inevitable lemming comparison. Yes, lemmings. You, your date and approximately 400 people you don’t know will all be packed in any given restaurant. Any restaurant McDonald’s, even. Pretty soon, one person will go mad and run out into the street, and like good little lemmings, you’ll all go running after them. Don’t go out on Valentine’s Day. Try cooking. Seriously. Even if you bum/destroy/mangle/mutilate/disfig ure/disintegrate whatever it is you’re trying to make, the thought is what counts. And even if your intimate moment for two becomes an intimate moment for two plus all the firefight ers, hey, it’s still intimate. Er, nevermind. The holiday’s passed, so you’ve got 12 months to learn how to make a good home cooked meal. Start preparing. Lesson No. 4: Don’t stick to the plan. Nothing kills a date worse than fol lowing a rigid plan. Relationships are meant to be fun, wild and spontaneous. Say you have a dinner planned, and then you plan to hang out at your place afterwards, just talk. Great concept. Feel free to waver. Nice weather? Go out walking or driving. Don’t, however, take this too far. Driving a girl out of town to, say, Pierre, S.D., will get you slapped with lawsuits faster than you can say “Goodbye, Nebraska!” Trust me, I know people who know people, and they deport you for offenses like that Then again, I’ve known people who practically have egg-timers for keeping their evening in a strict sched ule: “At 9:45 we have to be at the restaurant and we need to be back by 10:45.” Either scenario is a bad one. Life requires you to color outside the lines sometimes. Lesson No. 5: Take chances. There are no rules that cannot be broken. Be spontaneous, even if you aren’t in a relationship. I sent flowers to peo ple this year and I’m single. Why? Because I could. Even if I only got one smile for the seven roses I sent, that’s enough. Let me share a little secret with you. The Beatles said a long time ago, “Money can’t buy me love.” And I put my faith in the Walrus. A smile is worth more than it ever costs you, because it’s priceless. The look on someone’s face is something that will never leave your mind. The memory of your action will never (hopefiilly) leave theirs. If you always live by the rules set by society, you’re going to go stir crazy, I guarantee it Talk to people at random. Speak your mind as you feel the need to. You’ll stumble and fall occasionally, but that’s part of the game. Life. Don’t break all the rules, though. Calling someone you don’t know at 3:30 in the morning to compliment them isn’t usually die best idea. Photographing someone going in and out of their house isn’t a great idea either. Nor is tapping their phone. Or going through their garbage. There’s a fine line between being risky and being a stalker, but I feel confident that three out of four of you can do this just fine. If you slip up, just get up and try again. Believe me, I’ve had conversa tions where I was ready to go and speak exactly what was on my mind: “You have the most entrancing eyes, and your laugh is simply enrapturing. I have not said anything about this before because I was simply too awestruck to speak. Perhaps you would be kind enough to allow me to take you to din ner this weekend?” It ended up a little less eloquent “Girl got pretty hair. Want date?” It happens. Move on. Lesson No. 6: It isn’t just about Valentine’s Day any more. Valentine’s Day shouldn’t be a once-a-year thing. You should be think ing about your loved one every day of the year. Do nice things j instances. Brings rase Jbrwneasqn. % J Go out to dinner sortie night just ^ because. Call justto heajf&e sobntldf\ their voice. 'V ^ Being single gives a much more J ' accurate perspective of the whole dat ing situation and you people need to get a grip, but quick. Bring back the magic in your relationship. I can’t count the times I’ve seen a couple in a restaurant with one person’s attention wavering. Romance is a full-time thing. Just have fun with it and be inventive. Keep your sense of humor about it all. Life is meant to be fun. Live it that way. ] College criticisms | Concerns include pinball, no men’s lounge and racism mmsma in 11 m i ■lllllllllilil II TODD MUNSON is a junior broadcasting major and a Daily Nebraskan columnist. As some of you may have guessed, I’m not the most issue-oriented person. That’s going to change, for today at least. Don’t fret. I won’t hop on the “Save the Whales” bandwagon, try to put a new spin on the whole Iraq thing or beat the dead horse that is Monica “if you’re rich and powerful, step right in” Lewinsky. I promise I won’t even say anything bad about cows. Besides, milk is the greatest thing in the world. Oh yeah, the “Moo Movies” grand prize will be mine. What will be discussed today are a few observations and goings-on at this microcosm known as the University of Nebraska-Lincoln that ruffle my feathers, making me madder than a wet hen. (Someday, I will be a grizzled old man and adages like the previous one will actu ally fit in the context of everyday speech.) When I’m supposed to be writing these things, I’m actually in the union game room more than the Daily Nebraskan, so we’ll start there. I can t express in words how much of a bummer it was to see the cost of pinball double to the industry standard of 50 cents per game. For years, pinball at the union game room was a better value than ‘Taco Tuesday.” Some may place the blame on the cost of union expansion, but I think the inflated price comes from some thing else entirely - those mean-spirited jerks who pound on the machine when that little ball goes down the main drain. If you have no idea what type of person I’m referring to, peek into the game room some time. They’re real easy to spot, usually pound ing the table with a clenched fist and yelling something like, “Stupid friggin’ ball, don’t go in there. Oh, that’s it! Now you’re going to die.” Then, they proceed to pummel the hapless machine with a series of roundhouse rights (lit erally punching its lights out) before dropping to the ground and forcing the machine into sub mission with a figure-four leg-lock. These folks amuse me. I can’t help but laugh at those who play pinball to get angry. I hope they’re just business college students who are acting out their frustrations because some day they will become soulless automatons in America’s workforce. If you’re not a business student and you find yourself beating a pinball machine worse than Paul Reubens beats him self in an adult film theater, you have no place in the game room, or society, for that matter. Pinball isn’t supposed to be a violent, hos tile game. It’s a game of skill and karma that is analogous to life. One second, you can be light ing up jackpot after jackpot and the next, it’s main drain city. It’s hot about how hard can you shove the machine until it tilts but the ebb and flow of the silver ball. The next time you find yourself getting ready to body slam an inani mate object, stop. Give up the remainder of your game to a more civilized person, and march over to the health center to sign up for an anger management class. Let’s segue now to something gender-ori ented. When university administrators decided to expand the union, during ____________ the time future his- ^SSSBBSB torians will refer to as the Age of Gender Equity, why weren’t any plans included for a men’s lounge? For y’all who aren’t aware, right next to the unused ASUN office is a lounge exclusively foi the female gender. I wish I could tell you what goes on in there, but because I don’t know the secret knock and have a different apparatus than the users of the lounge, all I can say is that it’s a gateway to Shangri-La. Users of the women’s lounge might vehe mently declare that women have special needs that can only be tended to in privacy. But so do men. A man’s natural state is in his underwear. Ladies, do you have any idea how hard it is for a man to force himself to wear pants for an entire day? Just imagine, with die addition of a men’s lounge, men would finally have a place they could hang their pants at the door, kick back, and watch reruns of “SportsCenter” in the sanctity of their own kind. With gender covered, let’s move to race. Every so often, UNL shows signs of being i racist institution. A cross burning here, a nasty e-mail there. About the whole e-mail thing, that professor H EH*$ L0W6£ AmyMartin/DN ^ (I refuse to say his name because his son’s emerging rap career has received too much free publicity) was most definitely wrong in what he did, but until America falls to right-wing radicals, free speech is here to stay. I was disap pointed that Chancellor James Moeser took so long to make an official statement. The guy before him probably wouldn’t have done a bet ter job, but he at least would have done a magic trick or two while condemning racism. My point, and I like to think I have one, is that if UNL wants to be known as a racist school, then there should be a full-on battle royale of racism. If you’re of Irish decent, get drunk and go punch an Italian. If you’re French, choke a Briton to death with a loaf of French bread. If you’re Finnish, give the finger to a Russian. If you’re German, hate everybody. Forget about this black vs. white stuff, let’s go back to the days of how America used to be. My final gripe is with students. it you re a college student, cnances are you’re here of your own free will. You like to learn, and you want to learn more. If you don’t want to have to think, and college is just an opportunity for a multi-year party, save the money, and don’t enroll for classes. A few weeks back, Tito Puente, the undis puted king of Latin jazz, made the fust visit to Lincoln his 50-year career, That night, even the staunchest Republican had a booty-shaking good time. Unfortunately, a pair of history of American jazz students didn’t think so. At intermission, die pair agreed they had seen enough, made sure they had a program and their ticket stub and loudly declared it was time to go drink. Please excuse me if I seemed like I was constipated or something, but sometimes, you have to question the mentality and intellect of your academic colleagues. Was spending a cou ple hours to see a living legend give an excel lent performance too much for an instructor to ask? I would have hated to see what they thought of those who wort to see Tito of their own voli tion.
