I AIN’T GOT TIME TO BLEED
From Blood E. Youfiggeritout: Net: We generally don’t care to censor the scribes who kindly write in, but in this case it was necessary. Simply placing a “K” in place of another similar-sounding consonant at the beginning of a naughty word often used to describe a certain feminine orifice doesn’t quite make the cut. At least not by our quiet Midwestern standards. So, I called the anthro department to make sure that my lab was meeting at 6:40 p.m. tonight even though the class hadn’t met. Sure, it’s meeting, the incompetent staffer told me. Net: You can always gauge the incompetence of a University staffer by the time it takes them to say the word “sure” at the beginning of a sentence. “Sure,” spoken quick and sassy, indicates a person of above-average intellect. “Suuuuuure” means you’re dealing with someone who isn’t worth the steam on a stream of urine. Of course, my class that was supposed to end at 6:30 in Folwell didn’t let out until 6:35 and the lab was on the West Bank. So I jump on my trusty bike and make mad time over to the other side of the river, ignoring the sign by Anderson that tells me I’m “supposed” to walk my bike. Net: Walk, schwalk. You want to walk from one end of campus to the other? Go to Augsburg. Hey, I’m in a rush here. I race into Blegen and, yeah, I’ve gotta use the bathroom. I charge into the hideously tiny women’s restroom (Oh wait, all women’s restrooms are tiny at this university) Net: Who are you, Bea Arthur? and go into the one available stall. No toilet paper. It’s about 6:43 now. Net: FOR HEAVEN’S SAKE! YOU WERE LATE FOR A LAB? NO DEGREE FOR YOU! I grab some paper toweling which, fortunately, is pretty soft, and sit down. Oops, it’s my period. Oddly, there’s no tampon machine. Oh, wait. THERE ARE NO TAMPON MACHINES IN THE GODDAMN TIN, WOMEN’S BATHROOMS ON THIS CAMPUS. Net: Well, silly, that’s because they’re all in the expansive, well-appointed men’s rooms. The fellas even have changing tables, big-ass La-Z-Boys and free booze. You get Ladies’ Night, they get to crap in comfort. Fortunately, I find one in my backpack. I pull up my pants, run up a couple flights of stairs to the lab. Net: This is beginning to sound like that old Hertz car rental commercial with O.J. Simpson. Except you’re not a Heisman Trophy winner. Oh, and you didn’t … well, never mind. It’s now 6:45. I’m five minutes late. And there’s a convenient little sign letting me know that the lab isn’t meeting.
So, friends (not the pathetic little boys who are already offended by my mention of the dreaded “P” word), Net: You mean “pants?” is the moral of the story “Never trust U office attendants because, in the end, they really don’t care if they give out the wrong info?” or is it, “We’ve come a long way but, in the new millennium, it will still suck to be a non-anorexic, menstruating woman”? (Insert insulting Network remark here). Net: Gee, both sound pretty good. But how about this one: “It isn’t easy being a woman, but it is easy to fit more than one tampon into a friggin’ backpack.” Or, “Who actually buys stuff out of a bathroom vending machine?”
DESPOTDEPOT
From Buoyant in CSOM: Networkers, for years I have complained about the exorbitant pricing and snail-ass slow checkout lines awash with annoying, silly-looking patrons at our campus bookstores. Net: At last, a unique idea. Go forth, Networkians, for ye are informed. Every time I participated in the tri-annual textbook purchase-a-thon, the University stores would emerge victorious and I would stagger home — defeated, disheveled and penniless. Net: The best solution to your problem? Two words: Unmitigated thievery.
Just last spring, I wound up killing 20 minutes of time waiting behind some belligerent, obese raccoon of a human Net: Sounds like the basis for a “Lone Ranger” re-make starring Drew Carey. Or some other puffy, no-talent actor. trying to purchase a Donutology text with third-party Arby’s gift certificates. After that fateful incident, I decided it was high time for Buoyant to swing into action. Thus, I formed an organization known as “Students Against Bookstore Despotism at the University of Minnesota” in an attempt to raise awareness among fellow classmates of other textbook-buying options. Unfortunately, at the close of that quarter, SABDATUOM (pronounced SAB-DAH-TWOM) Net: It’s got a nice ring to it. Be we would have gone with Students Against Bookstore Oppression, Taking Aim at Gluttonous Extortion: SABOTAGE. still had but one lone member — myself. Once again, bookstore oppression prevailed over our bank accounts.
Fortunately, now the tables have turned. Someone — SOMETHING — Net: Students On Methodone Eating Tacos Helping to Irreversibly Nullify Gas? has heard my plea (and the pleas of others that are with SABDATUOM in heart and spirit).
Thanks to a chalk-based epiphany sprawled across a Dinkytown sidewalk, Net: “Stop vivisection” sorta loses its punch as cultural discourse when it’s written in pink and blue. I believe I may have found a better way to get my books — over that Internet contraption. Net: We haven’t spoken with that bastard since it failed to show at the last Net family reunion. Mama Net was crushed. True, it seems a rather turbo-nerdishly I.T. (i.e. indescribably unhip) method of purchasing textbooks, but ANYTHING Net: All Numbskull Youth Take Heed: Ignorance Not Good. that can help release me from the evil clutches of the campus bookstores must be good. Today the score is different: Buoyant 1; despotic bookstores 0.
Today, I am free.
THEMOREYOUKNOW
Net: And now, a public service announcement brought to you by The Daily: It Soaks up Drool.
From Disco Fox: Greetings to the Networkians! The Disco Fox is back. Last Thursday morning in the Architecture building, I found a hemp choker/necklace with blue and purple beads. If you lost it, write in. Thanks.
Net: Okay, enough of that. Don’t make a habit of sending in that crap, Networkians. Post a flyer, for chrissakes.
