The Electron Pencil

Dear Sky:

Please stop raining on us. If you don’t I will be forced to do something rash — like taking an overdose of peanut M&Ms.

You’ll be sorry.

Me

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Do Something

And then there’s some sage advice from Gail Collins in the New York Times. Just the tonic for those of us who’ve been crying in our pillows over the prospect of President Gag:

Pick a trauma. You can’t go through the day obsessing about 40 different terrible things Donald Trump might do. It’s true there are 40 terrible things he might do. Maybe 400. But pick one. Maybe climate change. Or guns. Or public schools. Wherever your heart lies. Then really get in there and fight. You can be a warrior instead of a victim.

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Sinners

Did you catch that IDS piece about the Kilroy’s on Kirkwood tradition of hosting patrons from open to close on Martin Luther King Day? For the uninformed among Pencillistas, KoK does this bit every time there are no IU classes for one holiday or another during the regular semester. Students are invited to stay in the place from the moment the doors are flung open at 11am, eating and drinking (participants must purchase a drink or something to eat at least once an hour), until 3am the next morning.

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[An aside: If I tried that stunt like that, I’d be writing this from the grave. That’s just me entering my seventh decade. Had I attempted to do 16 hours of drinking when I was 23, for pity’s sake, I’d have spent subsequent weeks in the ICU.]

Even the Herald-Times editorialized about it, saying the practice was an affront to the memory of the civil rights icon. Plus, the H-T today also carried the story of a student allegedly engaging in drunken mayhem at the Jimmy John’s “food” shop that’s just a stagger away from the KoK. Coincidence?

Anyway, feathers are being ruffled because good and decent folk should be Doing Something Good on MLK Day, not drinking themselves into oblivion. Especially our precious, college-educated youth.

Honoring MLK At Kilroy’s On Kirkwood

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The truth is, though, the frat and sorority habitués who’d be prone to indulging in the #MLKO2C septic tank of overindulgence aren’t likely to prioritize helping their fellow species-mates eat a meal, find a home, dodge random violence, or even find a way to vote, all of which would be more appropriate ways to celebrate King’s birthday. One kid was quoted in the IDS saying the O2C thing has “always been on my bucket list.”

First, 21-y-o kids do not have bucket lists. All of life is your bucket list when you’re that age. And second,  if your fondest aspiration is to spend one of the planet’s spins around its axis swallowing $1 shooters, no amount of sporadic Doing Something Good will redeem you from the hell that your young life has already become.

If you’re offended by KoK’s MLK fete, you’re missing the point. The fact we’re again raising a generation of party monkeys who proudly display their drunkenness on public forums any day of the week, as if that’s an enviable accomplishment, is the real outrage.

Even when I was 23 — and believe me I was one extraordinarily stupid 23-y-o — I knew I owed the planet and my fellow humans a hell of a lot more than that every day I was alive.

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