Everyone who has gone on a car ride with me that covers any distance knows that I’m a crappy driver. It’s no secret. No Vegas bookie would give you odds on me driving for an hour without hitting anything. You want proof? Here you go:

Incident 1) This was a truly minor happening. My sister and I were driving back from school in my 1977 Chevy Scottsdale, flat bed, two gas tank truck, or as I affectionately called it, The Death Rocket. This thing was no rocket and barely had wheels. The beauty was that this thing was a tank and could roll through anything. For a change of scenery I decided to take the back road home, which consisted of a stringy mess of gravel and dirt roads. Right after we turned into this excursion rain started coming down. I may have been going a little too fast coming up to a stop sign and the car spun a few circles smack nuts into a two foot deep ditch, which came right before the fenceline, which came right before the muddy field. Long story short, the truck absolutely took out two metal posts and busted through the fence. I got out and look at the truck, which didn’t have a single scratch on it. However, the license plate did fall off. When I got back home dad jumped in the truck and made the observation that the door handle seemed like it worked a little funny. Outside of Tracy screaming bloody murder and almost hyperventilating all trouble was avoided.

Incident 2) Shortly thereafter I upgraded to a 1995 Ford Ranger Extended cab. This truck really put up with some shit…
So I was driving back from my girlfriends house near Carrollton, Illinois. Again, I’m on back roads. I take a corner “a little bit short” and jump the ditch, which gives me a flat tire. I call my girlfriends house and her dad and either one or both of her brothers come out to give me a hand. We put the spare tire on and I head back home. I get about three miles from the house and I hear a “rattle, rattle, rattle.” Before I even have time to slow down the front left tire shoots (and I mean “shoots”) off of the truck. The front left end slams down and sparks erupt from that side. The truck swerves off to the right hand side of the road and skids to a halt. One of my drunk “neighbors” eventually drives by and gives me a ride back to my house. We eventually recovered the tire, which rocketed about 100 yards to the left, and dad fixed the truck the next day. I have never come so close to pooping myself.

Incident 3) Same 1995 Ford Ranger. You need to ask about this one.

Incident 4) 2004 Ford Ranger, extended cab, step side. Nice truck. The first boneheaded move in this classic vehicle was driving it to Texas–without break lights.

For some reason the lights had been blown out for about a week. However, we’d already booked a Spring Break trip to Texas and we really couldn’t afford to rent a vehicle or borrow anyone else’s. As a result, we decided to take my break lightless car. We only caused one minor accident and we weren’t even in it. Tom did threaten to kill me on numerous occasions while driving through rush hour traffic in Austin, Texas, which we learned could be done without a turn signal. Thank you, Tom Germann.

Other stories–There are other tales: the two occasions I’ve run out of gas, the time I got pulled over driving back from the Cougar pool and Whitey got arrested, that “other thing,” hitting the rocks in my red car, breaking the windshield to the red car with a hamburger flipper, driving the red car through a water logged parking garage and having to be towed out, being pulled over for going 88 and the cop asks me how fast I’m going and I tell him it shuts down at 90 and it was kind of going in and out, etc.

If you would like me to expand on any of these just let me know. I might not be happy to, but I’ll do it.

Date Published: March 2004

Three thousand miles, 700 U-turns, thousands of dollars, five atlases purchased to replace the ones tossed out the window and a few barrels of Lone Star beer later, my friends and I are back from Texas, alive and not in body bags.

And, the next time someone tells you that Texas is a whole different world, you better believe it.

It’s a world flooded with one-way roads, Whataburgers, Lone Star beer and cheap hotels designed to lure people from Illinois into thinking they’re getting a spot close to the beach for very cheap.

The reality of the situation is you’re five minutes away from the “bad beach” and 25 minutes away from the “real beach,” and your hotel is in the middle of a refinery.

I only wish I were joking about that, but the fact of the matter is I might as well have been wearing a shirt that said, “I’m from Illinois, please take all of my money.”

This is why the majority of the Northern states are in such a sad economic situation, because we take credit cards on vacations down South. Not a good idea.

The people down South will try to con you into buying things you would never purchase unless you’re in Southern territory. Things like hermit crabs.

Why on God’s earth do people in the North need hermit crabs? When people from the South come up here, we don’t try to pawn our annoying native animals off on them.

Sure, hermit crabs are cool when you buy them, and they’re great for show-and-tell in the third grade.

But these things pass - literally. Remember that when you’re tapping on Herbie’s shell wondering why he’s been hiding for four months.

I’d also love to see people in Texas drive in Illinois. If you miss a turn in Illinois, you can turn around at the store up ahead and go back down the other lane. You can’t do this in Texas.

Texas only has one-way roads. This forces you to make a 180-degree loop past the refinery, under the overpass, into Arizona and back on the one-way street you came in on the first time when you messed up, just to get to the stupid Whataburger.

Now, if you’re a porn-watching, religious gun freak, Texas is the place to be.

Not five seconds after we crossed into Texas there were ammunition stores everywhere, almost outnumbering the Whataburgers. And, right next to the ammunition stores are porn shops.

And right next to the ammunition stores and porn shops was a church. Once again, I’m not making this up.

If terrorists are looking to blow up at least half of this country, all they have to do is land a missile in Texas where there’s enough live ammunition to light up a small country.

I had a great time on the break but, believe me, Texas is a whole different world.

Date Published: March 2004

I have three words for the administrators at this university: sell beer, please.

Why not provide a public service to students and pad the pockets of the university a little bit, just in case any more crises occur that require cuts to higher education?

What’s wrong with that? Everybody wins.

It’s a fact of life that college students are going to drink. Why not give them some incentive to stay on campus when they do it?

As it stands now, we have to drive at least five minutes off campus for liquor, and most of the bars in downtown Edwardsville are 10 minutes away.

With this situation, there is a higher likelihood of drunk driving accidents than if there were a bar or even a place to buy beer, on campus.

And where is the university gonna get the money to pay for the liquor license and to build a bar (wink, wink)? I say use some of the money Parking Services gets from dishing out citations.

In case you didn’t know, Parking Services sold roughly 16,000 parking permits in 2002-2003 and dealt out nearly 35,800 citations. That’s at least two citations per permit holder, per year.

Theres nothing like Parking Services to make an honest, law-abiding, tuition-paying student feel like a felon.

Lets say 70 percent of those citations were for being parked in the wrong lot, and 30 percent of the citations were for either an expired meter or improperly displaying a permit.

Given those numbers, I estimate Parking Services made roughly $1,161,290 last year just handing out citations. That’s aside from the more than one million dollars they made in selling the permits.

And the saddest part of the whole situation is a person can park at a meter and get fined $15, but if a person parks in a lot that they’re not designated to park in, then they get a $40 fine.

So next time you plan on parking illegally, do it at a meter. It’s cheaper.

I’m practically ready to sell my body to Gateway Medical Research for the next three weekends just to pay for my two citations, and here Parking Services is virtually winning the lottery on a yearly basis.

And selling beer on this campus merely requires a one-time pull in some funds from Parking Services. It would not be a yearly thing.

You can’t tell me any place that sells alcohol on this campus wouldn’t turn a profit.

And what does Parking Services do with all the money they make?

Even when you take into consideration the cost of the extended cab, four-wheel drive Dodge trucks that roam this campus, the salaries of the people driving them and all of their bosses, it shouldn’t add up to more than two million dollars;,unless of course they plan on investing in bulletproof H2s to give us citations over the next year or two.

At what point is a university vehicle going to need to go off-road?

They could just as easily, to save the students a little money, drive single-cab Dodge Ram pickup trucks that are not four-wheel drive.

Ultimately, as a student, what would you rather see? Parking Services workers driving bulletproof H2s or beer being sold on this campus.

And when you’re designing the bar, a woman named Allison wants a big tree in the middle of it. You know, for effect.

Date Published: April 2004

You don’t have to be Jesus Christ to walk on water; just take a jog on Cougar Lake.

It’s like the Really Dead Sea. And, have you seen the Donal Myer Arboretum lately? It’s such a mess even the plastic turtles are protesting.

I saw what appeared to be a Facilities Management worker at the arboretum a few days ago. I didn’t get a great look since he had climbed up the remnants of a tree to get away from Buick-sized piranhas snapping at him.

The point is, Cougar Lake and the arboretum should be parts of our university that we showcase. Instead, it appears as though they’ve been shelved.

The bigger problem by far is Cougar Lake.

I’m not sure it’s legal, but I’ve seen people fishing in Cougar Lake. How on earth did they do it? Did they treat it like they were ice fishing? Did they walk out into the middle of the moss, chisel a hole and throw down some steak?

As I’ve previously stated, we’re not dealing with cute and primitive creatures.

My only theory is that the science departments are working to create a mutant form of fish. These things are probably so advanced in the evolutionary process that they have razorblades for teeth, breathe fire, have 5-inch skins and weigh deuce, deuce and a half.

Would you want to eat what you pulled out of that lake?

I’ve heard that when the humans and these monster fish coexisted, students used to swim in Cougar Lake. What happened? Are the fish in a union? Did their contract come up for negotiation and the university officials have been dodging them for 30 years and just telling us not to swim there because they don’t want any students to drown?

They don’t have to tell me they don’t want students to drown. I believe Cougar Lake is where the Environmental Protection Agency sends its lesser employees it wants to get rid of.

The EPA just sends them in and lets the behemoth, fire-breathing demons residing in that mudhole do the rest. But, have no fear, there is a solution.

As advanced as our problem is in these two sections of our community, we still have some options.

One solution is to drop 10 tons of ammonia nitrate in the lake. But that’s not environmentally friendly.

I’ll give the SIUE administration a few other alternatives in the form of a multiple-choice question. What do we do with Cougar Lake?

A. Feed the deer, geese and plastic turtles to the cougars we’re gonna bring in, feed the cougars to the piranhas and then sell the super-piranhas to the government for a price hefty enough to take care of the university budget problem.

B. Put a high-voltage fence around the area and pretend it doesn’t exist.

C. Put a high-voltage fence around the area, call it SIUE Jurassic Park and sell tickets.

D. Just fill the whole stupid thing in with concrete and give those of us on my end of the 400 side a few more parking spaces.

Personally, I’m in favor of the last choice, but I’ll let you decide for yourself.

Date Published: June 2004

Like Anakin Skywalker, my computer is morphing into something that is the epitome of evil. And, like young Skywalker, I’m pretty sure my computer won’t have an ounce of goodness left in it by the end of the next “Star Wars” movie.

You see, the Sasser worm has rooted itself deep inside my PC, rendering me incapable of sending e-mail, playing video games and … umm … sending more e-mail. As a college student, e-mail and video games are necessities of my daily routine; they rank just below beer and far above anti-bacterial soap.

You’d think sucking the Sasser worm out of the system would be a piece of cake, right? The worm was probably created by some over-intelligent and rebellious 14-year-old who likes seeing everybody in the “adult world” slap themselves stupid trying to fix it. It didn’t take too long to shake the Sobig virus and the Blaster worm was gone within a matter of weeks.

Unfortunately, rooting out the Sasser worm isn’t as easy as getting cheap Tylenol from Canada to cure the headache Sasser will give you. And to my knowledge, Norton doesn’t make a Windows or Macintosh disinfectant spray.

I know. I’ve spent days trying to defeat the Sasser worm. I’ve downloaded every patch, update and cure-all that Internet gurus have to offer. I’m just glad I don’t have to pay for any of them, because they don’t work.

I lied. They do work. They work just long enough for me to restart my computer and have a little gray box pop up saying something to the effect of, “Travis, I am your father. Come to the dark side. Sincerely, Sasser.”

At this point your screen will start to melt, your processor will burn up, your RAM will run away and while your monitor is melting all you’ll see as the Blue Screen of Death fades away is a skull and crossbones. All the while your computer is sinking into the dregs of a gigahertz hell.

So, what can you legally do? Nothing. If you have the Sasser worm, run away before the pile of goo that was once your computer takes on a tangible shape (something resembling Predator), reaches up, and grabs you by your hard drive.

You can also step into the realm of the rational. Go to your local hardware store and fork over the few bucks for a decent 10-pound sledgehammer. Do you remember the poster where the duck is holding a sledgehammer above his head, ready to lay into the computer? Assume the role of the duck and hack away at the computer’s tower until it is bleeding yellow, blue, purple, red and neon green wires.

If all else fails, see if Yoda is willing to come out of retirement.

Date Published: June 2004

A good friend of mine came to me seeking some advice. You see, he’s just re-entered “The Dating Game” - something that men around the world have been losing for years, decades and even centuries.

He’s met a girl he likes, who doesn’t hate him; so now the question is, what’s next? Neither of us knows what’s next, because, neither of us, in fact, understands women.

What we do know, and have compiled for your reading enjoyment, is a list of things that you DO NOT DO - under any circumstances - in those crucial first two months of any relationship.

You never call them first. Under no circumstance are you to cave into your instincts and pick up the phone. Why? You don’t know it when making the phone call, but you have nothing productive to say. She will inevitably pick up the phone and say, “Hello.” You will then go into a panic, drop the phone and fall face first into a waffle iron.

Never call her more than once. Women view this as annoying and unforgivable. Make her call you, and make her leave a message. This means you will have no control over the subject matter of the conversation when you call her back, but this also lessens the likelihood of you ramming your foot in your mouth.

Never refer to her as your girlfriend. This means that you think she is committed to you, the person who blacked out on the phone and fell face first on the waffle iron.

When you drink, hide your phone in a strategic place that you will never find it while you are drinking. The last thing that women want is a drunk phone call from a guy delivering a play-by-play of how he just won $20 from one of his friends for snorting 3 ounces of powdered sugar. She will not be thrilled.

Which brings me to the next point - keep your friends as far away from her as possible. Because without even knowing her, they already know that you are going to hang out with them less because of her. Therefore, they will do anything they can to get rid of her. This means getting out incriminating pictures, telling crude stories or getting you hammered and having you do beer bongs off the balcony wearing a hula skirt.

And, there’s always the problem of the first kiss. Do you kiss her? Do you wait for her to kiss you? Or, do you stand there for too long thinking about it while she walks home because you fell asleep?

The bottom line is, don’t worry, because you’re not gonna win - just don’t make the male species look too shameless.

Date Published: June 2004
The most daunting task I’ve faced as a college student is not writing a 20-page paper or putting together a last-minute presentation or getting set to enter the third straight hour of drinking games - it would have to be assembling a futon.

Maybe it was the cheap futon my good friend chose to buy, maybe it was the full moon or maybe it was fact that we had a little help from Auggie Busch III - I don’t know. What I do know is that I have a newfound respect for the workers who assemble the futons on display at local shopping establishments.

You see, my friend was moving into an off-campus apartment and he needed a bed. Instead of buying a comfortable and affordable air mattress, or investing in a regular mattress and throwing it on the floor, he splurged and bought the finest futon he could get … for $133. If it’s been awhile since you’ve dabbled in the futon market, that doesn’t go far.

For about $300 you can get a futon made of gold and for $150 you can get a solid, stable wooden futon. For $133 the company will dismantle the dented aluminum futon on display, take every screw out, strip the black paint off, pack it in a 1-by-2-foot box and throw it at you.

I saw a guy wearing a shirt a few days ago that said, “Support America, Buy Made in Mexico.” Truer words have never been spoken, because the first step in reassembling this beast of a futon is converting the instructions from Spanish to English. This can be a little bit difficult if the only Spanish you know after two years of it in high school is, “Donde esta mis pantalones?” Show some ambition, look it up.

We chose to bypass step one and use the pictures to guide us. That’s easier said than done when there are so many pieces the part numbers go up to ZZ-1.

Including breaks, it took three men with the mechanical mental acuity of the three blind mice about four hours to put the vile contraption together. If we hadn’t put the back of the futon on upside down, I’m sure we could’ve done it in about three and one-half hours.

We’re just lucky we didn’t stab ourselves with the rods or screw ourselves to the floor; but that could still happen, we did end up with about five extra screws.

Date Published: June 2004

I’d rather be beaten mercilessly by a mob of midgets than subjected to another low-carb concoction.

My sincerest apologies to the wee people, if they are offended. As a matter of fact, if we are to rise up and reclaim our soda, custard, chips, pizza, burgers and beer, we need somebody who can fit under the counters and easily infiltrate enemy lines.

Even fast-food joints, the last refuge for the typical overweight, impressionable, college student, have crumbled like white bread burger buns before the almighty Atkins. I remember the days when the college sect used to crave belly bombers, 99-cent cheeseburgers, pizza with cheese in the crust and cheap beer where one can had more carbs than a case of C2 has now.

I even remember when carbs were called carbohydrates, people used to go to the gym if they wanted to lose weight and we could order a 2-pound salad smothered with a half-pound of full-fat ranch dressing without getting assaulted.

Looking back, I think those days were like a small slice of heaven.

In the last two years our societal standards have begun to deteriorate and the carb crazies have been allowed to move in. Leave it to the laziest country in the world to embrace a diet that tells people to simply omit eating something.

I’m sure the Atkins diet encourages people to supplement cutting the carbs with going to the gym on a regular basis, but that requires movement and motivation - something that started being sucked out of our society with the invention of Pong.

And, if you don’t think the food industry smells blood, you’re sadly mistaken. Executives are jumping on this bandwagon faster than college kids lunging at a freshly tapped keg. Pepsi and Coke are marketing Pepsi Edge and C2 to Atkins fanatics. Why don’t the companies pump more money into marketing their diet products? Because they naturally don’t contain carbs, that’s why.

And, what exactly constitutes low carb? The Food and Drug Administration is working diligently to define that. Yeah, right. I think Vice President Dick Cheney moves faster than the FDA, and he’s already logged three heart attacks.

So let’s rally the troops, mount a revolution and cram the carbs back into our diet - it can’t hurt anything, except maybe the sale of Atkins-approved products.

Date Published: July 2004

You could say my string of luck with university housing has burned out.

When people ask me what I do to supplement my monstrous Alestle paycheck (for the record, I think I am actually paying The Alestle to work here), I tell them I’m a professional mover.

I’ve lived in five Cougar Village apartments in three years, going through roommates faster than quarters at a C-V laundromat - the roommate count now stands at 12.

You can’t blame it on me. I actually planned on living with the same guys throughout college, at least until our apartment burned down and my personal roommate roller coaster began.

This isn’t the sacrificial apartment burning that happened last year that most of you would remember. This is 412 that burned down a few years ago - I’m still waiting for the findings report on the cause of the fire.

If the university is looking for something to burn, they can melt all of the Rubbermaid tubs I use to hold my personal affects when I move, which become less and less with each relocation, and easily reconstruct a plastic version of the Morris University Center - and you could do that for a hell of a lot less than the nearly $20 million we spent to renovate the MUC.

But anyway, the first day I moved into the next apartment, 419-2A, which is on the extreme 400-side, the person below us complained that, while moving in, I was being too noisy while walking up the stairs. We hadn’t even rolled in the radios, computers, guitars or a dartboard and the old codger said we were being too noisy

So we moved yet again, this time to the opposite end of the 400-side, where people have a pulse, into 423-2B. We were more than content to stay there for the next six years until we graduated, but fate, once again, threw us the big hook.

I love how the university hangs important documentation, such as, oh, I don’t know, homesteading forms, on the little magnetic clippy thing outside of your apartment door. If your little magnetic clippy thing fumbles the papers that will dictate where you live the next year, you’ve just earned a free ticket to the housing lottery.

The housing lottery is an extremely complicated system that no ordinary college student, administrator or anybody in university housing can figure out that uses your grade point average, total semesters spent in university housing, weight, height and hair color to determine what number you will be in a line of about 2,000 bloodsuckers who are all out to take your apartment away from you.

Somehow, I wound up with the number 2,050, and my friend and I were forced to move again, this time down the valley into 427-1B.

The biggest problems I have now are the air conditioning spontaneously shutting down, the water occasionally getting shut off, the sewage backing up and the mirror on the back of my door falling off and shattering at will.

I guess I should just be grateful this apartment hasn’t burned down - if you do see smoke in my general direction though, come on over, we’ll be up in the circle parking lot having a party.

Date Published: August 2004
If I mention Lucky the Leprechaun and you know what I’m talking about, you might be a Level I gambling addict. If you think of Rainbow Land, then you’re at Level II, and if you’re paycheck gets directly deposited to Harrah’s Casino, you’re a Level III.

I’d only gambled once before a recent trip down to Southern Mississippi. A good friend and I had done pretty much everything there was to do and we were looking for something else, so we hit a few casinos.

The first day I walked out about $25 up - that was after a brief $20, 3-minute interlude at a $5 blackjack table.

I won all of my money that day on a nickel slot machine called “Leprechaun’s Gold.” Like all other nickel slots, it’s a very complicated game where you push a button and hope the pixilated Lucky the Leprechaun is feeling generous. You will not know why you won what you won, or why you lost what you lost, but you will walk out at the end of a five-hour period, during which you will hit the automatic banking machine 127 times, never questioning Lucky’s decisions.

If you’ve ever gambled, then you know walking out $25 ahead means you’ll be back at a later date, which we were. I lost somewhere between $10 and $1,000 and learned one valuable lesson - there’s more to say for a gambler who loses to a real dealer than one who gets taken by a machine.

The most interesting aspect of casinos is the amazing number of retired people there. Walk through a retirement home and you’ll see old people playing bocce ball and struggling to lift the pieces on the checkerboard. Walk through a casino and you’ll see those same people almost ripping the levers off the slot machines in the hopes of winning back all of the money they wasted paying for insurance their whole life. The casino gives them little cards that they can put money on and then simply plug themselves into the machines. It’s the casino’s version of life support.

If you’re wondering where the money you’re paying into Social Security right now is going, look no further than the front door of your local casino.

And, how do you know if you’re a gambling addict? The first sign is if you find yourself standing in front of the sperm bank asking yourself if it’s really worth it. And, if you’ve reached that bank’s limit - red flag.

Another warning sign is if you try to disguise your voice when calling the hotlines to stop gambling. And, last but not least, if you wake up having wet dreams about going to Rainbow Land with Lucky, you need to see a doctor because you’re beyond the hotline help.