Thursday, February 25, 1993
Behtterid's uncontrollable urge to
blow money
by Matt Duddy
The coilegian
was talking to one of my
friends die other day about an odd
joke that he had bean!. It seems
as though he was sitting in the .
Gorge eating when he overheard
some students talking. They
were discussing bow much
money it cases just to launch the
space shuttle into orbit. MI of a
sudden, we of them inoclaimed
..:it's an undisputed
law of nature that
tornadoes search for
trailers to touch
loudly something like, "Wowl
That costs almost as much as the
stair tower!" The other panics
involved laughed uncontrollably,
and left my friend in a stupor.
Upon further investigation, we
discovered that the stair tower
cost an astounding $1.5 million
to construct,. After we heard that,
we laughed uncontrollably at the
Joke.
When I actually thought about
that outlandish figure. I began to
ponder the reasons as to why we
needed such an expensive fixture.
At first, I thought perhaps it was
merely a necessary structure to
PT,Xide easy access to the /tam
and apartinents. Then rtsiliThd
by Dave Barry
Syndicated Coinminist
As the more than 34 billion
regular readers of this column
are well aware, I pride myself on
my accuracy. I do not report idle
speculation or gossip. Let's say
I happen to hear a rumor that
Vice President Gore likes to
relax by putting live spotted
owls through a Salad Shooter. I
am not going to just haul off
and write a statement like that
in the newspaper. I am going to
follow the procedure used by top
journalism professionals, which
is to write: "Vice President Gore
REPORTEDLY likes to put
live spotted owls through a
Salad Shooter." That way you,
the reader, will have "just the
facts" and can draw your own
conclusions about this issue,
and decide whether or not it
might also involve baby pandas.
The point is that I have high
journalism standards, and that is
why today I am so upset that I
am tempted to commit suicide
by drinking vending-machine
coffee. Because it turns out that
some of my recent columns
contained FACTUAL
ERRORS. Yes. These errors
were spotted by vigiliant readers
who took time out from their
busy schedules to write letters,
that a stairway doesn't have to
ten that mock As a Matter o f
fact, a pair of escalators enclosed
under a roof would not only be
cheaper, but faster, More
importantly, though, is that
people might actually use an
escalator instead of walking down
the hill behind it like they do
currently.
Second, I thought it was an
attempt to make the campus
more modern and glorious. I
then observed that that couldn't
be the case; after all, if the
college wanted to have a modern
and glorious campus, we
wouldn't have trailers all over the
place. From what I understand,
some,have been around for over
ten years.
Third, my friend and I
considered the possibility that the
tower is actually a top-secret
nuclear missile silo. We
concluded that this is the most
logical case, since anything
costing that much money must
involve the government.
Furthermore, we decided that the
missile was probably pointing at
a rival university, most likely
Pitt.
Since the university has an
affection for malign. perbaPs we
should buy more. Maybe we
could even attempt to ordain the
world's first office trailer court.
Since there's a ms-pool forming
I am not Rush Limbaugh
and so today I want to "set the
record straight" on certain
matters.
1. MONTANA IS NOT
NORTH OF CANADA.
Actually, I never said that
Montana is DEFINITELY north
of Canada. What I said, in a
column about a trip to
Montana, is that it is "possibly"
north of Canada. This resulted
in a stern letter from reader Lena
Anderson, who states: "You
must be one of the uneducated
young that never cracked a
geography." She sent me TWO
maps of the United States, and I
am embarrassed to say that they
clearly show that Montana is
not north of Canada at all. It is
north of Iceland. So I owe an
apology to Ms. Anderson, as
well as to a number of Canadian
readers who were greatly angered
by another column I wrote
recently in which I identified
Canada as "a nation located near
Buffalo, N.Y." As anybody who
has ever cracked a geography
will tell you, what I SHOULD
have said was, "a moose
preserve located near Buffalo,
N.Y." Sorry!
2. MILITARY FOOD
TASTES GOOD.
You may recall the column I
wrote after my wife and son and
dogs and I conducted a taste test
()pinion
beside .cu of them,think they
should. have built a
stair.tuwer -
s_awar,e4matnicult-plant. Even i f
Me university didn't like the
escalator idea, I'm surprized they
hadnl thought of the escarrailer
idea. It would look like an
ordinary trailer sitting at the
bottom of the cliff, but upon
entering, it would transform into
a trailer tower, and would hoist
th
Nobody has to point out that
rni not a Penn State accountant.
l'in just wondering exactly who
decides what to do with the
nktiey around here. Is it being
sPdnt wisely? There's no
question that the suites, the stair
tower, the new librarY, and the
soon to-come >plastics lab art
involving the Meal Ready to
Eat (MRE), a U.S. Army
tactical food concept. Our
conclusion was that the MRE
was the ideal food for certain
military situations, mostly
involving captured enemy spies
("Perhaps you would like some
of this BEEF STEW?" "No! I'll
TALK!"). But you wouldn't
want to feed it to anybody on
your own side.
Apparently this column
aroused the dander of Capt.
Bryan Dion, who is in charge of
Army recruiting in southern
Oregon. Dion contacted his
local newspaper, the Eugene,
Ore., Register-Guard, which
conducted a taste test of its own,
with a six-person Taste Panel.
The panelists consumed a
variety of MREs; then, using a
10-point rating scale, they all
died
No, seriously, the panel gave
the MREs a rating of 8.1 on the
taste scale. This is clearly a
scientific result, because it
contains a decimal point. Even
more convincing is the fact that
the Taste Panel included--get
ready-- a SCHOOL-DISTRICT
FOOD SERVICE DIRECTOR.
If anybody would recognize a
delicious shelf-stable food
substance, it would be the
person responsible for the menu
architectural marvels, but do they
need to be so glamorous? I often
wonder how much our tuition
would decrease if Penn State
would be more miserly toward
luxury items.
Por some mason, known only
to a goose sitting behind a desk
somewhere in the Penn State
domain, Sehrend College enjoys
spending huge amounts of money
on unnecessary things. Don't we
all remember the Budget Cuts
Scare of fall '92? Wasn't
University Park ready to take
away our allowance? I heard they
even wanted to get rid of the full
time people that took care of the
plants. Maybe it's just me, but I
can't imagine firing people who
water plants, and then turning
around to build a multi-million
dollar plastics lab. We could
enjoy a regular stair tower instead
of a Trump version. We could be
happy with a regular new library
that doesn't look like the lost
city of Atlantis, We could get by
with regular snow plows instead
of using the kind found on 1-90.
Don't misunderstand me. Hike
our university conditions very
much. Most of the policies here
are logical, and try to protect
everyone (except for the
bookstore that is). The sidewalks
are (almost) always clear, class
registration is easy, moat
programs are flexible, and the
options at a public school
(Today's Featured Entree: Tuna
Remorse). So I am forced to
conclude that I, along with
several hundred thousand
military personnel, have been
mistaken about MREs: They
taste wonderful, and if the Army
happens to have a few extra tons
of these culinary treats stacked
up in warehouses, it should
delvier them, perhaps via large
Air Force bombers, to Oregon,
which is just north of Montana.
3. THE LEAGUE OF
WOMEN VOTERS DOES
NOT ENDORSE BULL
SCROTUMS. My annual
Holiday Gift Guide for 1992
included, among other gift
suggestions, a genuine bull
scrotum, which looks sort of
like a hairy handbag and is sold
by Goode Company Barbecue in
Houston, Texas (a nation
located near Tulsa, Okla.). The
Gift Guide included the
following statement: "Don't be
fooled by cheap imitations. This
is the only bull scrotum
endorsed by the League of
Women Voters and the Rev.
Pat Robertson."
This is inaccurate. I have here
a letter from reader Howard J.
Smith, who writes: "Both my
wife and I are proud members of
the LWV and resent your using
facilit)es are wonderful. When it
comes to financing and allotting
money. however, I think
something must be done.
Otherwise, our tuition will soon
spiral out of control.
Nobody has to point out that
I'm not qualified to be a Penn
State advisor, either, But logic
tells me that since it's an
undisputed law of nature that
tornadoes search for trailers to
...the [stair] tower
is actually a top
secret nuclear
missile silo...pointing
at a rival universit
touch down on, perhaps it's a bad
spending practice to keep putting
so many trailers here.
Arid as for that missile sib•
behind the suites, it's probably
being aimed at my house righ
now. And the sick thing is, it's
the money I spent to buy boo
with that is most likely being
used to have it done. Whatever.
Mau Duddy is a fourth
semester science major. His
column appears every other
week in The Collegian.
its name. Bluntly, I find your
remarks to be denigrating,
uncalled for and insulting.
Furthermore, by tactily
associating the LWV with Pat
Robertson, you have added
guilt-by-association to your
offenses."
So, for the record: The League
of Women voters does NOT
endorse bull scrotums or engage
in any other activity that would
detract from its mission, which
is the world wide distribution of
Amway products.
(Incidentally, I did not receive
any letters from the Rev.
Robertson on this, so we can
safely make the journalistic
assumption that he does, in fact,
endorse this particular bull
scrotum.)
In conclusion, let me expa ss
my gratitude to the readers wio
pointed these errors out, an I
invite any other reader who finds
an error in my columns to
please contact me: David Broder,
cio The New York Times,
12345 12345th St., Washing
ton, D.C. 12345. Thank you,
and your fly is down.
Dave Barry is a syndicated
columnist from the Miami
Herald.
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