So far this week the big news story around campus seems to be the abduction of the Travelocity garden gnome. In case you missed it, the gnome was taken from the lobby of the Transportation Center last week while Travelocity’s parent company, Saber Holdings, conducted on-campus interviews with students. I might be the only one to say this, but I’m actually glad the gnome is gone. I never trusted him anyway with his beady eyes and his British accent and his magical powers and his apparent lack of arms. That’s exactly the kind of riff-raff we need to keep out of this university. I read “Harry Potter”; garden gnomes are nothing but trouble. I think Travelocity could make an awesome new ad campaign out of the situation. Instead of ads showing the gnome in pictures around the world, they could run ads showing pictures of the gnome tied up and gagged holding that day’s newspaper.
In other news, Hardee’s introduced their new country breakfast burrito this week. The burrito consists of a two-egg omelet filled with ham, bacon, sausage, cheese and sausage gravy all wrapped in a flour tortilla. My original reaction to this was the same sort of surprised confusion I get every time I die of dysentery in “Oregon Trail.” This happens surprisingly often, and it makes me wonder how many people actually died of dysentery. It also makes me wonder what it was like for the other people in the wagon when someone died of dysentery. That had to be gross. Anyway, what Al Gore is for global warming, Hardee’s has become for fat people. Now you can get nearly all your daily caloric intake from just two breakfast burritos, and for only $5.38. I have never been more proud to be an American.
Some non-Americans have been making waves in the music world recently. (Good segue? Live with it.) Specifically, Radiohead has offered their new album for download from their Web site allowing fans to pay as much or as little as they want. In other words, you don’t have to pay a dime for the new album if you don’t want. Nothing gets me more excited than free things, especially when it’s free Radiohead things, but I felt sort of guilty when I didn’t pay for this album, particularly when I selected a payment of $0.00, and a message came up saying “We value your custom.” I got two feelings from this message. First, Radiohead needs to work on their grammar. Second, I got the same sort of feeling that you get when you do something stupid and your girlfriend gets mad at you and she refuses to say that she is mad (“I’m not mad. Honestly, I don’t care. I’m not mad at all.”) but you know that deep down inside she is really pissed. At any rate, I acted the same in both cases. I stopped caring and enjoyed my freebie.
Space filling YouTube video of the week: search for trampoline bear. This one is a classic but still hilarious.
Weinberg senior Alec Hayden can be reached at [email protected].
