If you're anything like us, fall is one big wake-up call (and if you're even more like us, you totally missed your 7 a.m. wake-up call on Monday).
Basically, we have to be reacquainted with two things: responsibility and something called "the morning." Morning is no longer a time for old people, children and Regis and Kelly. It's now a time for you to get up-and-at-'em, too. So head over to Deja Brew with a copy of The New York Times and try pretend you buy into Ben Franklin's famous proverb.
Oh, wait.
Well, as a consolation for a week of mornings lacking in caffeine and a Wednesday without Maureen Dowd, we can offer this week's Welcome Back edition of Darts & Laurels. Hey, beggars can't be choosers.
We're sorry to have sent you into a bout of post-traumatic stress over the conspicuous absence of the Grey Lady on campus, but fret no more. Student Government is currently in the process of reinstating The New York Times readership program and should have the paper back in those blue boxes on Monday. For listening to the outpouring of distraught paperless students and working to help us get our news on once more, the Department of Darts & Laurels would like to send an if-only-you-could-make-those-boxes-possible-to-open-we'd-be-golden LAUREL to SG Treasurer Maryam Laguna. Some of us only know what day of the week it is based on whose column is running in the Times, so your efforts will not go unnoticed.
Something else that didn't go unnoticed, apparently, is the fight that broke out in front of Club Decadence on Wednesday morning. As two women broke into a straight-up brawl, a crowd of about 50 people gathered to watch. Sometimes fights are cool - if you've ever seen someone confront an always-late RTS bus driver, you know this. Fights involving violence are not, however. For standing around and watching like gladiatorial gawkers, we would like to send a DART to the crowd that did nothing to stop the fight. While we're at it, we might as well throw a half-laurel to the two women for taking it outside (because God knows that if people started throwing 'bows inside that shoebox, nine people would have been killed). Unless, of course, the place is bigger on the inside than on the outside a la "House of Leaves." Who are we kidding? If Club Decadence ever posed any sort of metaphysical question to anyone, we would die of the shock.
To anyone who has ever bemoaned the fact that American Apparel manages to sell $20 T-shirts that consist of approximately two ounces of fabric, you're about to have some more fodder for your proverbial cannon. Currently being sold in AA stores is something called Bag-O-Scraps, which is exactly what it sounds like. For a nominal fee of $8, you, too, can own scraps from the floor of an actual American Apparel factory. For pushing their we-sell-you-$3-shirts-at-a-9,000-percent-price-markup credo to a whole new level, we'd like to throw a not-even-the-late-Billy-Mays-could-sell-us-this-one DART at American Apparel. We could possibly relent on 'em, considering they are throwing in a 'zine with the box, but we realized that if you're buying garbage, you probably don't have the requisite brain power to make it through four to five pages of reading material.
Those of you who are lamenting the death of the Bright Futures book stipend may be getting a break yet again. We would like to throw a thanks-for-saving-us-when-Florida-almost-made-us-pay-for-some-of-our-college-experience LAUREL to a new Web site called textbookaid.org that will help students get a tax break. All documented, out-of-pocket, college-related expenses can be reported for up to a $2,500 tax break. We're starting to regret forgoing the bag (and the receipt) at Goerings Book Store. So much for being environmentally conscious.
That's all for this week. See you Monday morning.