Going out Guidelines for the Not-So-Beautiful
Richard Carter | For the Wichitan

People don’t actually have to be on their deathbeds to ponder what they had wanted to do with their lives but haven’t got around to doing.
I mean, what are the things we wished we had achieved but still have not? Did you want to be a NASCAR driver? Or did you want to punch that supercilious jackass Jeff Gordon in the mouth?
Perhaps you had higher aspirations. Did you want to attend the annual “The Big Lebowski” conference and meet “the Duder” himself?
Did you want to get that big job, have adorable; towhead kids or record a hit CD? Did you want to put the make on some famous Hollywood star? Did you want to be in Paris for a night?
Did you want to write the great American novel, paint the new millennium version of “Guernica” or maybe run for mayor?
Sadly, we’re rarely aware of our aspirations until we find they could be lost. It’s only when our possibilities are endangered that we become aware that it’s our shortsightedness that keeps us sweating life’s small stuff instead of considering the big-ticket items on our agenda.
What can open our eyes? Take a serious malady, for example.
You’re facing surgery. Lying in bed, awaiting the anesthesiologist, considering the risks and the fact you’re in other peoples’ hands.
It’s only after you wake up and realize you’ve survived you think about how great life is and what you want to accomplish now that it’s been restored.
Any life experience—regardless of the severity or extent, can have a way of being eye opening and more important, life affirming.
Graduation, marriage or a car accident can shake people out of their doldrums long enough to see the light.
But why do we avoid larger goals and cloud our aspirations with daily minutia? Do we prefer soap operas to the epics that can be our lives?
Maybe it’s the possibility of making the wrong big decisions and ending up one of those homeless people on the side of the road. I’m sure none of those guys intended to land there.
The best approach to realizing our goals (or dreams) is to see ourselves, recognize what we want and figure out how to get from point A to point B to point whatever.
The shortest distance between two points, mathematicians say, is a straight line, providing you’re in some whack geometry class.
But life isn’t geometry. It isn’t very rational at all, for that matter. But there is a realizable long and winding line (or road) that comes with tangential distractions. We can hoe those lines, entertain divertissements, and still get to where we want to be while having a good time.
What it comes down to is that we must learn to appreciate that the more rare the dreams are, the tougher it is to achieve them.
Take “1985,” the recently platinum single by Bowling for Soup. It’s about a woman who wanted to shake her ass on the hood of Whitesnake’s car. Instead, she ended up married to a CPA with kids who don’t think she’s cool.
Poor girl, she probably would have been happier turning tricks on Mulholland Drive. 
So the key to avoiding a bitter life is actually very simple. Know thyself, avoid guidance counselors, keep an eye on the light at the end of the tunnel and listen to better music than Whitesnake.
Oh, and yeah, the part about anyone wanting to become mayor was a joke. What brand of fool would want such a thankless job? 
 

Going out Guidelines for the Not-so-Beautiful
Jason Kimbro | Staff Reporter

It is time for me to continue my series of self-help, self-imaging columns, designed to make you a more confident person, no matter how corpulent or repulsive you may be.
This time I will cover the topic of going out on the town as a beautiful person when in all actuality you are hideous.
This comes in a variety of steps, as usual, so be prepared to follow them to a tee.
Step 1:  Find attire that is appropriate for your imperfection. If you’re overweight and love to eat drippy foods, then dress in the darkest clothes you can find. Not only is it more becoming for fat people to wear black, it is easier to clean up a spot of nacho cheese from a black shirt versus a white shirt.
If you’re ugly, find a nice masquerade ball to attend. If you find you no longer live in the 1700s, then wait for Halloween.
Step 2:  Locate the darkest restaurant, club, and after party you can find. The less people can see of you, the more likely you will be considered a beautiful person.
Being a fatty in black can go two ways: you either get lost in the oblivion of people in a crowded club, thus you fit right in, or you are noticed as a huge gaping, nacho-eating black hole in the corner of the dance floor, thus people avoid you out of fear of the unknown.
A prime location would be Graham Central Station, which I am sure if you have been keeping up with my columns, you all know to be one of my favorite clubs. Yeah, favorite.
Graham’s offers up all sorts of dark venues with plenty of ugly, fat people just like you! The cage is a particular favorite of overweight females who think, nay, KNOW they look good.
All joking aside, I have dated a few hefty gals. Some of them really do know they look good. And they seem to know a lot!
Step 3:  If you are taking a date, make sure your date is uglier than you. Many want to run out and try to find the most beautiful person they can in order to wear them to the ball, but this is a mistake. Their beauty will shine and your face and/or gut will be like a horrid eclipse and we all know, an eclipse is noticed long before the sun is all alone.
Your deformities will stick out like sore thumbs on cnidarians (that one’s for Dr. Stangl).
The advantage to having an uglier date is that they will stick out, not you, and it will be YOUR beauty that is being distracted. Plus, if you place a rotten tomato next to a fresh tomato, even if you hate tomatoes, the fresh tomato will appear to be much more appetizing.
Step 4:  If you can, drive yourself, do not ride with a friend. More than likely, you’re the ugly one of the group. With that in mind, you’re more likely to become the unhappy, unfulfilled one at the club because that is just how our cruel world works.
This may be cause for you to want to exit early. If you are just too damn sad or depressed because you ate four tacos when you know you should have stopped at three, it is better to get on out of there instead of moping around the club.
Not only do you avoid people getting an even worse view of whom you are, you can make it look like you actually have somewhere important to be. You don’t have time for this Graham Central Station nonsense! You have Toby’s or Iron Horse to attend too!
Then you can go home and eat your Ben & Jerry’s or watch your “Jerry Springer” so you can feel happy about how you look once again.
Once again, I must infuse the fact that I, myself, am a big, ugly guy.  I am what the girls call adorable, which we all knows mean I am a huge, ugly man who happens to be really nice. I do not present myself in such a manner when I am out clubbing, though.
I am able to blend in with the beautiful people of our fair city because I follow the preceding steps. Of course, I am unable to drive due to a visual impairment, so step four just makes me SOL.
If you happen to be like me, then it would be best to perfect the art of the upset stomach, for when you have to go, you really have to go. I learned from experience, nobody wants to be stuck with the person who throws up at the bar. Phew! Nobody, indeed.
I hope all you fat and ugly people out there will realize you are, in all actuality, beautiful people with great bodies, even if the majority of the population disagrees with that.
Society can only tell us which words are vulgar or which political party is the cooler one to be in. It is up to our own personal tastes as to what is ugly. So I don’t care what any of you think. I am hot and sexy. I am getting up in that cage tonight and THEY WILL SWOOOOOOON!



Feminist views harm Country
Wayne Schields | For the Wichitan

Open Letter to Feminists: Regarding Your War Against the Penis

Dear Babes,
Harvard president Larry Summers, commenting on why women are under-represented in the hard sciences, said, "In the special case of science and engineering, there are issues of intrinsic aptitude, and particularly of the variability of aptitude, and that those considerations are reinforced by what are in fact lesser factors involving socialization and continuing discrimination. I would like nothing better than to be proved wrong..."
By simply posing the possibility that women and men may have innate differences, Summers has shed light on your feminist fallacy that equality of the sexes is a foregone conclusion. After all, men have penises, and women have vaginas. How’s that for an innate difference? Predictably, your feminist thought-police want Summers fired for his assumptions.
I’ll acknowledge that women have achieved equality in many areas. Women outnumber men on most college campuses and are achieving parity in salaries for doing similar jobs. Women have professional sports teams and leagues that maintain a solid fan base. Women have reached the heights of political power and are on the verge of a presidential nomination.
You have achieved all of this while maintaining your position in the ever-important category of "victim." Congratulations!
It’s easy to see where you went wrong. First, you embraced the hysterical writings of Betty Friedan, who called stay at home mothers "a waste of human self" who were "in as much danger as the millions who walked to their own death in the concentration camps." So much for feminists supporting femininity.
You also succumbed to the writings of Simone de Beauvoir, who wrote, concerning pregnancy and abortion, that "no woman should be authorized to stay at home and raise her children...Women should not have that choice, precisely because if there is such a choice, too many women will make that one." I thought you were pro-choice!
Your devotion to the cause of abortion has turned you into sub-humans, even to the point that you would support a cheating, lying, and alleged rapist president so long as he wouldn’t do anything to take the right to infanticide away from you. Or, as feminist and former Time contributor Nina Burleigh said, "I would be happy to give him [Clinton] a blow job just to thank him for keeping abortion legal. I think American women should be lining up with their presidential kneepads on to show their gratitude." Never has the feminist thought process been so evident.
Speaking of abortion, Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger is often lauded as having pushed for "easy access to birth control for low-income, minority, and immigrant women." A noble and respectable goal, for sure, but, do you realize why she wanted this?
Sanger believed non-whites to be inferior and wanted "more children from the fit, fewer from the unfit." She also wrote that "Negroes and Southern Europeans" were "mentally inferior," Jews were "human weeds," and that "Blacks are a menace to the race." Have you ever asked yourself why most Planned Parenthood facilities are in areas heavily populated by minorities?
With Friedan, de Beauvoir, and Sanger as your role models, it’s understandable why your feminist cabal is so confused and angry.
Your social engineering has infected the United States military as well. You lobbied to have military physical strength tests dumbed down to allow more women to pass it so they could serve in combat, putting women’s lives in harm’s way in the process.
You have ignored the natural and instinctive desire of men to protect women. Think about the most memorable faces of the Iraq War. The faces of Jessica Lynch, Shoshanna Johnson, Lynndie England, and the more recent mud wrestlers come to mind first (they all have vaginas, by the way).
You have also overlooked the obvious: that young men and women serving in closed quarters and in close proximity to one another will cause sexual tensions to increase and troop morale to decrease. For example, in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, the destroyer USS Acadia was dubbed "The Love Boat" because 10 percent of the female sailors on board (36 babes total) became pregnant while deployed for Operation Desert Storm.
What does this say about our country, that we would send mothers, sisters, and daughters into a combat zone against people who already hate our decadent way of life? Like you really give a damn. As long as you get your way, the War on Terror must play second fiddle to the War on the Penis.
Inevitably, we come full circle to what Larry Summers said and to your predictable response to his inquiry. There are innate differences between the sexes that you cannot legislate, lobby, or go unshaven for.
At least Summers had the humility to acknowledge that there is room for him to be proven wrong. Maybe you should follow his lead, examine your own faults, and acknowledge that your feminist fantasies have hurt more women than they have helped.
With your best interest in mind.



Imperfect love Perfect for Life
August | Schuman | Staff Reporter

Love is not perfect. I have come to realize this in my years of dating. Your boyfriend or girlfriend will never be perfect, so stop trying to make them perfect. Their flaws make them who they really are. Without their flaws, a great day with them would not be as wonderful, and a bad day would never bring a glimpse of hope of working it all out. You have to learn that sometimes just giving in will make the night go by much more smoothly, and arguing about the stupid things that won’t affect tomorrow is not worth it. I am still trying to work on that in my relationships. I have been told that I can be pretty hardheaded.
I started off my college years with a boyfriend from back home. My ex-boyfriend and I had been dating for more than a year and a half when I started college. Girls, if you have a boyfriend back home, just go ahead and break up with him; it will be worth it in the long run. I understand he might be the only thing you have in your life right now, but down the road it will change.
I don’t regret dating my high school sweetheart for the first year of college because it helped me become who I am today. I am very independent. By having a boyfriend back home, I had to learn to be independent. All I cared about was him, and I spent my first year mainly in my dorm room talking to him on the phone. Don’t get me wrong – I had friends, but I didn’t need them. He was my life. By shunning most of my sorority sisters and wanting to spend time only with him, I learned to do many things on my own. I would even eat in the cafeteria by myself.
I know that, for many girls, independence is a problem. Many of my friends today will not go to Wal-Mart without someone with them. Back then, I did almost everything by myself. However, I did become a well-rounded student my freshman year in college, and that has helped me keep my grades to a standard I am very proud of today. Having a boyfriend my first year taught me a lot of things, but now I look back at that year as being an unhappy point in my life.
It took about three months for me to finally get enough courage to go through with the breakup. That was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. But I did it. And I am glad I finally did.
I needed to find myself and be my own person. If I was truly meant to be with him, then one day we would be together again. This was a test of our love that, I am glad to say, failed.
I also needed friendships. Friends are something you can not live without. Like they say, boyfriends and girlfriends will come and go, but friends will be there for life.
Now, after a wild year of being single and finding the best friends that anyone could ever have, I am back in a relationship. I have been in this relationship for eight months now, and it has been a very enjoyable rollercoaster ride. Many of my close friends are now starting to date, so I am not the only one staying home on a Thursday night wanting to spend time with my boyfriend. Yes, sometimes I miss going out with the girls, but having a boyfriend changes the whole “going to the club” experience. It is nice going to the club knowing I don’t have to worry about trying to find someone.
It is fun watching all my friends start dating again. I have a close friend who has two guys interested in her. It is fun listening to her drama and giving her advice. It is crazy how dating works. One day you are lonely, and the next day you don’t know what to do because they will not stop calling. I don’t understand why that is, or why, when you start dating, some other interest suddenly presents itself. Isn’t a great feeling to have butterflies in your stomach, or have your heart skip a beat because that certain someone calls? At the same time, however, the relationship is very scary because one day it may end.
 Today, I am truly happy with a guy I really care about. Having great friends makes my life with him so much sweeter. I am trying not to be as stubborn, and I am realizing this is the path I am destined to take. I finish this column as I began it: love is not perfect, but to me it is being yourself with the one you care about and having fun along the way.

August Schuman a junior mass communication major from Sunray, Texas.