EDITOR
Josh Funk
OPINION
EDITOR
Mark Baldridge
EDITORIAL
BOARD
Lindsay Young
Jessica Fargen
Samuel McKewon
Cliff Hicks
Kimberly Sweet
Our
VIEW
Run for
the border
Location s sudden
closing prompts outcry
Taco Bell, we hardly knew ye.
The downtown Taco.Bell, 245 N 13th
Street, also known to downtown rats as
-“Taco Smell” and “Toxic Hell,” has
dropped the big chalupa, closing its door
forever (as of yesterday), giving its
employees a shameful three days notice
and its loyal customers scarcely two.
The poverty-stricken among us, who
pinched pennies all morning to slide
another 69-cent burrito down their sorry
gullets in the afternoon, will now have to
go home hungry at night.
_ bure, there
•• are other Taco
Oh, Taco Bell! Bells in other
parts of the city,
MOW Will We but they’re even
pvpv mnkp n worse’ some of
ever matte a them, than the
run for your one downt°wn
. • used to be, and
mythical they’re farther
hnrdor? away ~ if you
DOraer. don’t have a car,
- ' they might as
well be in another state.
(Can you imagine taking the bus to
Taco Bell?)
For that refried*bean fix you still have
Amigos, of course. Two locations, on and
off campus.
(Help!)
And if you ever craved Mexican food,
well, there has got to be a restaurant
around here that serves it - several say so
on their storefronts, anyway.
But Taco Bell was different, Taco Bell
was its own thing: far from the nutritious,
simple pieals of Mexico, further still
from the “all beef” patties of Burger
King.
(Shudder!)
Oh, Taco Bell! How will we ever
make a run for your mythical border?
Taco Bell was a place to meet other
slackers, where you could exchange
_greetings with the friendly, familiar staff
- or go around the side of the building
and watch them assemble your order
through the big windows.
You can’t do that at Amigos. They
could be doing anything back there. At
Taco Bell you could watch them doing
it.
But we’re digressing from the point
here.
The point here is not to say anything
untoward about any other restaurant.
It’s just a simple plea.
A cry in the metaphorical night.
To the faceless, nameless powers at
Taco Bell corporate headquarters:
Yo Quiero Taco Bell!
; *o|gjjjjjgt||^|D 01 DnBn 16135
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Obermeyer’s
VIEW
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Paste this cartoon to cardboard and cut out the figures! Arrange them in your own opinionated nativity scene,
otherwise know as a creche. Will the Rev. Creech unite Marty and Joseph in holy matrimony before the
protesting shepherds have him defrocked? Fill in the word balloons and picket signs. Color and enjoy!
On an Indian Summer
Warm weather creates worries of global warming
The weather was nice.
Too nice.
I’ve been a lot of places, with a lot
of different kinds of weather, but I
have never been anywhere where nice
weather could stir up so much uneasi
ness in people.
When I was a kid, we called it
“Indian Summer,” the warm patch the
Great Plains sometimes runs into
toward the end of fall.
We didn’t mean any disrespect to
American Indians, I don’t think. We
were just trying to say it was a beauti
ful time to go running around outside,
a livable spot between the horrors of
summer and the cabin-fever killing
sprees of winter.
And anyway, it had those colors,
those beautiful fall colors that make
us think of Thanksgiving and that
first, hypothetical meal - Puritans and
American Indians eating together,
before it all went to hell.
An idyllic time, and one that
came, if not every year, at least often
enough to have a separate name, a
separate identity as a kind of semi
official proto-season.
Indian Summer an all-too-brief,
thoroughly pleasant time.
But not if you ask a college kid
today.
:j oj oifllhis-year’s unseasonably warm -
autumn saw kids out and about, wear
ing shorts, playing in die dried leaves
as usual - but all of diem afraid.
Afraid, or at least slightly anxious.
You could read it on their lips from
halfway across a glorious public park:
“Global wanning.”
Usually accompanied by a ner
vous, forced laugh, a little titter of
half-amused dread.
Global wanning? You know what
it is: Fluorocarbons released into the
atmosphere as the byproduct of -
industrial processes act as “
house” gases, allowing light energy
through the atmosphere but bouncing
heat back to the Earth.
Like one of those high-tech, foil
survival blankets, it causes the tem
perature to build up beneath a certain
layer of the sky:
Or that’s the theory.
I’m sure I don’t have to tell you
that we have records of the weather
on this planet going back only a very
short time - at least compared to the
very long time this planet has had
weather - and that even within that
period there have been warmer years,
even centuries.
Though no reliable weather indi
cators exist from Roman times (for
example), we have historical records
that can be used in much the same
way.
There was once a time, for
instance, when the planet was warm
enough that grapes were being
cultivated in Scotland.
l hat s pretty warm, con
sidering that Scotland is not,
today, exactly renowned for
its fine wines.
And this was long
before die dent of
human industry on
planetary ecology had
reached anything like
today’s levels.
Way back, you
know, when the total
human population of
the planet could proba
bly have been counted
in millions.
But I’m pretty
sure you already
knew all that.
I’m pretty
sure it’s just a
Nebraskan
thing, a sort of
deliciousness
in guilt.
You feel
guilty about
the ozone, the
greenhouse
gases, die
unsustainabil
ity of the
“American” A
lifestyle being
lived elsewhere. You feel guilty, and
you love it. Particularly if you have to
suffer.
An Indian Summer is hardly pun
ishment, and you feel so much more
comfortable if you can somehow pay.
For instance, I know of no place
else on earth where people show so
much pride in turning on their air
conditioners later in the summer than
their neighbors:
“Oh, it was so hot last night; a
thermometer in the house said it was
over 100. We just finally had to break
down and turn on the AC.”
“Oh really! We never turn it on till
after the Fourth of July! (Sniff!)”
It’s too absurd!
I think it’s that Puritan thing
again. That German Protestantism
that looms so large in the Nebraskan
genes.
I mean, what else could it be?
Mark Baldridge/DN
Mark Baldridge is a senior English major and opinion editor Jbr the Daily Nebraskan.
