Magazine

As far as the public is concerned, if you’re carrying a magazine into a public restroom and the magazine features an attractive or partially nude woman on its cover, you might as well be on your merry way to rubbing one off. Not that I’m not encouraging masturbation in public restrooms, whether they be single-occupancy or communal. The reasoning for this is persuasive and self-evident in either case.
Anyway, women look at you as either pitiful or sick and so do men when women aren’t around. If it’s just a guy, he’ll shoot you a look like “Good call” but if you react in a way that indicates that you will not be masturbating to the contents of the given magazine, the approving-insider “good call” look becomes a “Why don’t you grab an issue of Architectural Digest” admonishment.
What if all I want to do is peruse through Black Men Magazine in the surprisingly unsanitary confines of a Borders stall? I, for one, have never masturbated in a public restroom. This is not true, but the point is that I don’t even like masturbating in my own bathroom. I’ll wake up in the morning to take a shower and have to address my erection/residual fantasies like, “Look, I don’t feel like a fucking trapeze artist at 7 a.m. Let’s take a rain check.”
True, my quarrelsome boner and mental image of that-one-chick-doing-that-one-thing should respond, “Rain check? Do you even know what that is? Maybe we’ll take a rain check when you go down to Sam McGlerg’s General Store to pay on your grocery credit.”
Fair enough, but we gotta get a DSL hook-up in here.

Horses

CNN reports in the nightmarishly-titled “Police patience tested on Mardi Gras”:

Some officers patrol on horseback. That gives them a better view of the
crowd and the horses are extremely effective for crowd control. However, two
people were arrested for punching horses.

I can’t decide if punching a police horse is (a) utterly unforgivable or (b) badass as shit. Well, it is the first, but I’d like to be open to the possibility of the second even though Real TV episode where a moose is rescued from an icy pond solicits my sympathy in ways that newscast violence simply cannot.
On the other hand, I have a fear/hate relationship with horses’ teeth. I suspect this is similar to most people’s relationship with ferrets. (Note: ferrets are both a nerd and villain pet).
Also, this relationship prevents me from feeding an apple to a horse–a seemingly (non-sexually) gratifying thing to do.
“Hey cowfucks, watch fearless-earthy me feed some cobbler and hashbrowns to this similarly untamed stallion. Anyone? Annnnnyone? No? Alright, fine. Let’s do this, horse.” Pow.

Comic

A newspaper comic by cousin Alex who attends a private evangelical university in the middle of Indiana– a school where, yes, the library is named after a Bible publishing company.
This is a man with a Frank-sized pair. That means huge.
(click to enlarge…the picture.)

Supplies

Retailers of school supplies have a specific market: girls. At best, a guy will have a pen, notebook, and possibly a folder or two. Even then, most guys rarely take notes after freshmen year. To be fair, we don’t have to. We know a dude who knows a dude whose dad owns a landscaping business. Also, we own/control everything in the world.
Anyway, this leaves an incredible amount of schools supplies on the shelves: highlighters, page tabs, paper clips, white out, specialty pens, pencil grips, colored pencils, paper punches, post-it notes, and planners which are not given away by a school.
I actually saw a girl yesterday using three different highlighters on a single page. This can’t be helpful. If highlighting means deciphering an elaborate system of references and covering 70-80% of a given text in some shade of neon, which it does, you’re really just making up excuses to color.
Then again, guys (and fat girls) are more likely to bring their computers to class. Obviously, this a security issue. A man with a computer wants to say to the world, “I am informed, alert, and tech-savvy. Leave it to me to look up that country’s capitol for you.” A fat girl, on the other hand, is probably in a chat room.

Looksee

I knocked on August’s door this afternoon to ask about CD he’d borrowed and, while waiting for a grunt/response, I decided that if he wasn’t there I’d go into his room and “take a looksee”. And then I thought…
“Whoa. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Did you just say looksee?”
Yeah. I guess.
“Looksee? Look-see?”
Yeah, I mean, you know, it wasn’t anything I just–
“–just what? Who the hell says looksee?”
I dunno. People.
“Do you have a child?”
No.
“Are you an emasculated divoree in his late fifties?”
Not yet, ha-ha. No.
“Then why are you saying looksee?”
Alright, this is retarded.
“Retarded? I’m not the one saying looksee.”
Okay, it was dumb and I don’t know anyone who says looksee.
“There we have it.”
But it doesn’t mean anything.
“Doesn’t it, Dave? Doesn’t it?”
Again, ridiculous.
“Again? I wasn’t the one ridiculous in the first place.”
Okay, right.
“That was you, my friend.”
(silence).
“What? Got something to say?”
Obviously not. Why else would I ignore you.
“Ooooooo. Look at me, I’m Dave. I like to ignore people.”
Allllriggghtt–
“–I’m so smart and mature that I can ignore anything that bothers me.”
Whatever.
“I can say whatever because I’m a product of the 1990s. Look at me, Mr. Ignoring Dave. I’m so big and mature everybody–”
–eh–
“–I’m Mr. Big And Mature Ignore Everybody Dave…”

Ralph

NAME: Ralph Hobbes Frank
AGE: 10
WEIGHT: 17 lbs
INTERESTS: Cat food, cat dreams, hiding
RELIGION: Brethren
MUSIC: Adult contemporary
QUOTE: “Raaaalllllffff!”

Foxes

Most of my nightmares as a child involved either (a) witches or (b) foxes. I blame (a) Evangelicalism and (b) Aesop.
More importantly, foxes should be the size of wolves so there can be a dog version of the lion/tiger rivalry. Arctic foxes, in particular, need to be a lot bigger so that they can battle snow leopards. We’re talking at least a hundred pound gain. As it stands, they’re only the size of baby snow waaaaaait….I just noticed that the guy (“Lioncrusher”) who runs this snow leopard information site also dabbles in Native American/fantasy art:

-Kitsune Koto. Urban samurai she-cop fox babe, or “an antagonistic Hengeyoukai (shape-shifter) from Werewolf: The Apocalypse game.”
-Female Anthro Wolf. Reserve the initial critique, he knows about “the lack of breasts”.
-Tiger anthro. “Pretty kewl samurai tiger dude.”

Shirts

I saw some Jack Johnson fan at the mall wearing a shirt that said, “I’ll try anything twice.” I thought about going up to him and asking in a sultry voice, “Anything?”
So why are supposedly-ironic-personal-statement novelty t’s considered less passé than, say, a youth pastor with a stud earring? They sucked when kids with droopy-spiked hair wore them and they suck now. All they’ve done is reinvented themselves by spilling sex, beer, and color all over their local Hot Topic retailer. The black and white standoffishh “you’re just jealous that voices talk to me” has become a fitted orange ringer with some creepy uncle pun about bratwurst. Most of these shirts just make me think about the painfully forced laugh I would have to issue if a friend asked me to “check out” a purchase like one of these from Target, Aeropostale, Kohl’s, or American Eagle.
But I guess booze-n-tits-zinger graphic tees are made both more marketable and realistic by the selection of graphic t-shirts in juniors departments. You got three themes:
1.) I’m a whore.
2.) I’m a bitch.
3.) I’m a whore/bitch who likes money.

Do your thing Ms. Independent and show us your shamrocks….hi-five!

Bested

Emails.

School:
We are preparing for the Parent Phonathon and would love for you to send us some quotes that reflect, “What a Hillsdale College Education Means to You?”
Would you be good enough to send us your quote that we could use on our phone calls to parents?

Dave:
A Hillsdale College education means I can now say that FOX News is objectively right on everything. Thanks Hillsdale!

School:
Thank you, David.

Propound

An op-ed piece in this week’s Collegian was written by a Christian Studies major and began “I propound”. Bobbling an air of affected ironic affectedness, it outlined the benefits of languid and cultured off-campus living. Highlights:

• “My argument is not so much deductive as it aesthetic.” I mean, naturally. The approach of any man of letters.
• “In contrast, The Bench is more than a house–it’s a way of life. Every morning we roomies wake to a pot of coffee and fry up some breakfast before heading up the hill.” A few things: Is The Bench “Fight Club”? Do you really cook breakfast every morning? Did you really just call the people you live with “roomies”?
• “By teatime we are back at The Bench to don our slippers and robes (in my roommate Ivan Heitmann’s coinage, we ‘put on our domesticity’) and to read or waste time.” And then take oatmeal baths and call upon the governess.
• “Here our priorities are straight: books for reading, desks for writing, a keg for tapping and a bar for throwing a few back. Smoke breaks, espresso pauses and random recitations of Milton, Aquinas and Heitmann punctuate the day.” Cuz Heitman is one of his roommates and not Milton or Aquinas but, you see, he threw it in there like he was going to say someone else famous, but, then it’s also kinda like a second joke, because Heitman is a real witty dude. The life of the learned youth is indeed the sweetest nectar!
• “Our laundry machine is as loud as a Harley, our couches are as stained and ripped-up as work jeans and a mouse lives in the cupboard behind the stove.” The ol’ place has quarks, but we wouldn’t have ‘er without ‘em.
• “Living off-campus is a taste of the independence and responsibilities of adult life.” Wise words, wise words.
• “Hang it all–at bottom, beer and house mice are a better accompaniment to learning than visiting hours and house moms.” Hang it all? Is that even an idiom?

They printed my letter to the editor just below this article. This will be boring if you don’t attend the school, but I suppose that is assumed because who would give a duckshit if this were the case. My (somewhat edited) letter:

Collegian fails to report important news

The biggest difference between Hillsdale Magazine and The Collegian is that the former is printed on glossy paper. It also tends to be a little more open about its mission to lure donors and appease the administration.

As I browse through The Collegian’s news section, I find myself both less startled and less intrigued than when I read my uncle’s family newsletter.

“Everything’s swell! Don’t worry! It’s all been swept under the rug!” the news section shouts. Why? Because our school newspaper is a newsletter. Book signings, building renovations and Student Activities Board events—that is to say, other newspapers’ fluff—are our paper’s cutting-edge stories.

Granted, Hillsdale is a small school in a small town in the middle of nowhere. The school paper doesn’t have much choice but to run a front page picture of the newly-elected homecoming queen or to devote a certain amount of space to any Republican politician who stops by our president’s office.

Fine.

But so far this year, The Collegian has made every effort to appease Moss Hall rather than doing what college newspapers are expected to do: inform students about significant school-related events, especially if those events are controversial.

Or if those events could have blinded them.

Before winter break, two students set off chemical explosions in and around the library. They were disciplined, with community service requirements and changes to employment and housing, and they still live on campus. This is all the information The Collegian dared to bring us.

Students deserve to know who these people are, where they worked, what they did and why they were allowed to remain at our school. But, in typical Hillsdale fashion, the paper acquiesced to the administration.

David Frank, ‘06