Stopping Short: Columns that never made it
(Notes II)

Writing 500-600 words of "humorous commentary" every week is more difficult than one might think. Try as I might, sometimes I can't come up with 500-600 funny words on anything; but I can come up with 100 or 200. So without further ado, Babies, Puppies and Black Tar Heroin presents: Stopping Short: columns that didn't have enough material to be completed.

"Give Up on Hygiene"
It's getting warm, which is the time of the year I'm most glad I don't live in the dorms. When you live in the non-air conditioned dorms as I did, you generally just learn to give up on hygiene after it gets be hotter than 65 degrees outside. When it's 65 degrees outside, it is generally no cooler than 129 degrees in your dorm room as well as the corridor, unless you live on the top floor, in which case you can actually be classified as radioactive as some states. Because of the extraordinary heat, any small amount of activity - including breathing - will cause you to break out in a sweat. Therefore, by the time you have gotten to the bathroom to take your ninth shower of the day, you have already lost ten to twenty pounds, not to mention your will to live. After you get out of the shower, you have to walk down the corridor to get back to your room. By the time you are back in your room, you have broken out into a new sweat and you need another shower all over again. My advice: give up on hygiene and stare at pornography on your high-speed internet access.

"Pumping Music out of the Car"
The other day I was walking home on University Ave., and I saw a guy blasting music out of his car with his windows down. You know this guy. Usually the blasting music is hip-hop, like Busta Rhymes or Ludacris or something else that causes the car's subwoofer to flatulate, and that's cool. If you're going to blast some music, that's the music to blast. But this guy was listening to Dave Matthews Band. Worse, he was not even listening to a song that might cause one to get up and boogie; he was listening to "Satellite." And I was like, "Oh, come on. Get a copy of The Blueprint or something." Then I went home and cried because I had realized that I was the whitest man ever.

"40 Days and 40 Nights"
There is this new movie out with Josh Hartnett called "40 Days and 40 Nights." I have not seen this movie yet, but I saw Hartnett in an interview on Late Night with Conan O'Brien where he explained that the premise of the movie: Hartnett's character has a bet with his friend that he can't engage in any sex acts for 40 days (and, presumably, the nights that come along with them). Upon agreeing to the bet, the entire modeling population of the United States tries to have sex with Hartnett's character.

I would like to announce that I have made a bet with my friend that I will not engage in sex for the next 40 days and 40 nights. He thinks I won't make it! But I will prove him wrong... or will I, ladies?

"The Necklaces"
It seems like everywhere I go, people are wearing these necklaces with lower-case "t"s on them. What's with that? Why doesn't anyone pick another letter of the alphabet? "T" isn't even a vowel.

Also appeared in MU Student News, March 11, 2002