I’m still looking for a used mountain bike. Inquire within.

I had a dream last night that Ryan Adams was over my house. I’m not sure why, but I showed him the full-page photograph of him I have hanging on my fridge (which I do, in real life). We just chatted. And actually, in my dream, Ryan Adams called me. This wasn’t a case of me calling him, you see. I remember because his number flashed on my caller ID the first time, but I didn’t answer because I didn’t recognize the number.

So very, very odd.

Happy birthday, Maya Angelou!

“If you have only one smile in you, give it to the people you love.”

“Ask for what you want and be prepared to get it.”

My college newspaper got into some hot water last week for reasons, I believe, are bogus. The administration needs to cut them some slack and lighten up. Seriously.

UNO student newspaper apologizes for spoof issue

BY KIM ROBERTS-GUDEMAN
WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER

The UNO Gateway released its April Fools’ Day issue this week, but Chancellor Nancy Belck wasn’t laughing.

Belck objected to the paper’s “racial stereotyping” in its four-page satire, dubbed The Ghettoway. It was wrapped around the paper’s normal Tuesday issue.

The prank-filled edition included stories such as “Dis year’s spring gear: rock it like uh rock star” and “Chewbacca K.: Not your average cat.” Writers took pen names like Imma Slapu and Donbee Trippen.

“Through headlines, bylines and story content, The Gateway displayed a lack of sensitivity and judgment . . . that demeaned African-Americans and attempted to extract humor at their expense,” Belck said in a statement released Thursday.

Belck said she received complaints from community members and from the Omaha chapter of the NAACP, the Urban League and Omaha Public Schools.

The Gateway’s editor in chief, Josie Loza, said the edition was intended to be humorous, not offensive. She noted that several staff members, including herself, are minorities.

The issue “was intended to poke fun at ourselves and the way we operate, with the occasional inaccuracies that we publish,” Loza said. “It was not directed toward any one person or group of people.”

An apology was posted on the paper’s Web site Wednesday night and appears in today’s paper.

Loza said she hopes to turn this situation into a learning experience. “We aspire to be better. We do accept the fact that we made a mistake, and we want to apologize.”

I’m embarrassed to admit this, but since moving into my house in February ’03, I never washed my kitchen floor. Gross, I know, but it just didn’t appear to be too dirty. Today, however, I changed all that. Using a bucket of hot water and liquid floor cleaner, I got on my hands and knees and scrubbed not only my kitchen floor, but my upstairs bathroom floor and the front door entryway. It all looks so pretty! Spring cleaning is a very good thing.

I decided today that I need to exercise. Everyone needs to be healthy, but not everyone wants to do the work to be healthy. I can’t run (not in shape enough) and won’t join a gym (I’d be too embarrassed to exercise in front of others). So my plan for summer ’04 is to purchase a used bicycle and start riding. I figure with my iPod, I can ride for miles and miles after work and on the weekend, when I’m not at my part-time job.

My mission, now, is to track down a used bicycle. I don’t want to spend a lot of money. Perhaps I can find someone giving one away. Hmm. Classified ads, don’t fail me now!

http://www.marshmallowpeeps.com/

3 glasses of champagne + 2 amaretto sours = 1 fun Tuesday night at the Homy Inn

I saw a handful of local musicians there, too, playing that golf video game, smoking their cigarettes and drinking their Miller High Life. Fun, fun, fun.

How to Use English Properly

1. Verbs HAS to agree with their subjects.
2. Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.
3. And don’t start a sentence with a conjunction.
4. It is wrong to ever split an infinitive.
5. Avoid cliches like the plague. (They’re old hat)
6. Also, always avoid annoying alliteration.
7. Be more or less specific.
8. Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are (usually) unnecessary.
9. Also too, never, ever use repetitive redundancies.
10. No sentence fragments.
11. Contractions aren’t necessary and shouldn’t be used.
12. Foreign words and phrases are not apropos.
13. Do not be redundant; do not use more words than necessary; it’s highly superfluous.
14. One should NEVER generalize.
15. Comparisons are as bad as cliches.
16. Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc.
17. One-word sentences? Eliminate.
18. Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.
19. The passive voice is to be ignored.
20. Eliminate commas, that are, not necessary. Parenthetical words however should be enclosed in commas.
21. Never use a big word when a diminutive one would suffice.
22. Use words correctly, irregardless of how others use them.
23. Understatement is always the absolute best way to put forth earth-shaking ideas.
24. Eliminate quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.”
25. If you’ve heard it once, you’ve heard it a thousand times: Resist hyperbole; not one writer in a million can use it correctly.
26. Puns are for children, not groan readers.
27. Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms.
28. Even IF a mixed metaphor sings, it should be derailed.
29. Who needs rhetorical questions?
30. Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.
31. Proofread carefully to see if you any words out.

A midwestern whiz kid went to Harvard (Yale, insert school of your choice here) on a scholarship. On the first day, he couldn’t find the science building. He stopped a passing upperclassman and asked, “Where is the science building at?” The upperclassman looked down his nose and said, “At Harvard we do not end sentences with prepositions.”  

The Midwesterner responded, “I’m sorry. Where is the science building at, asshole?”