This page is a Monthly Archive of entries from March 2008 listed from newest to oldest.
Next Thursday marks the kick-off (pop-and-lock-off?) of the 6th annual Hip-Hop Awareness Week, organized by U-C Hip-Hop Congress and Floor Lovers Illinois. This event, which continues through next weekend, aims to both educate and entertain the public with the four "elements" of hip-hop culture:
In the meantime, tonight at 7 p.m., the one-man show Jails, Hospitals and Hip-Hop continues in Allen Hall (and closes after Saturday's 2 p.m. showing at The Armory Free Theatre), and showcases hip-hop culture as one of the ties that bind in a script of characters with cultural and social differences.
Hip-hop culture has been alternately celebrated and vilified — is it elitist, or welcoming? Is it sexist; is it racist? Certainly no movement is perfect, but the efforts of activists in our community this coming week bring to mind the positive potential available and active in hip-hop, as an energetic community unifier and a purveyor of poetry.
Will you be attending the events this weekend and in the coming week? What has hip-hop done for you? What can our community learn from hip-hop?
I did a little soul searching this week and realized that I was turning into a curmudgeon. Yes, I have used a thick slab of this column space to whine and complain about a lot of things including Chief Illiniwek, Loren Tate, greedy ministers, the religious right, gun owners, and the like. But I don’t want to be one of those people that complain about everything.
That’s really not who I am.
After all, last Sunday was Easter and it is now officially Spring. It is time for rebirth, new beginnings, flowers, bunnies and all that crap. Thus, your Humble Heretic has decided to die to his old crotchety ways and be reborn into a kinder, gentler and humbler heretic.
When deciding whether to volunteer for a relief trip, you always need to ask the hard question: Would it be more useful to those in need if I simply sent money instead of myself? Sometimes this is obvious. If someone needs a new roof, it is far better in the short run to send them $1000 so they can buy materials and hire local workers who need a job, rather than to show up as an unskilled worker with no supplies who needs to be housed and fed for a week.
I recently got back from a learning tour of Colombia that cost my church and me around $1500. Should I instead have just sent the money to a human rights or service organization in Colombia? There are certainly roofs that need to be built there and, perhaps more importantly, human rights workers who need money to do their critical work. I know people always talk up the “human relationship” benefits from such a trip, but I want to justify my trip in purely economic terms. Shouldn’t Colombia see at least $1500 of value from my trip since I allegedly went there not just to learn but to be of assistance?
Both Illinois basketball teams made valiant runs for a Big Ten Tournament title in 2008. Had either of them won the championship, they would have earned an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament. The women's team dropped a heart breaker to Purdue in the final seconds, while the men's team got shook down by a really strong Wisconsin Badgers team. Needless to say, both teams are left on the outside looking in.
Still, March Madness is everywhere. The first round of the men's tournament is under way, and the women's tourney gets started tomorrow. Sports Editor Seth Fein posted his men's bracket in the Big Ten Basketball Report this week, and now we'd like to know who you have picked for the Sweet Sixteen, Final Four and Champion match ups in either or both tournaments.
First Sniff
You’ll forgive me if I seem more than a little wracked in the brain, please. After all, it’s officially March Madness, and if you are one of the 16–47 people who read the Big Ten Basketball Report each week, you know that I am:
A. A die-hard Purdue fan
B. Fairly spiteful of Illinois sports
C. Obsessed by the NCAA Tournament
So, after screaming at a High-Def TV screen in a random sports bar last Friday while the good guys in Orange upset not one, not two, but three Big Ten teams (including Purdue) en route to almost winning a Big Ten Championship, I am more than a little parched.
So parched in fact, that I found myself craving nothing but cabbage soup, evidently.
Hello, dear friends. As always, I remain the Campus Wit.
Being somewhat of a misanthrope, I often feel the need to look back and find time periods where the state of humanity was not as dire as it is today. In my enthusiasm for history, I often belittle today’s culture by comparing it to the past. In essence, I behave like a bitter old man despite the fact that I am in college and have no direct historical perspective beyond the decrepit financial end to the second Reagan administration.
On Tuesday, the News-Gazette reported that "Unofficial St. Patrick's Day" — which, like REO Speedwagon, Roger Ebert and that Miss America lady, are the spawns of Champaign-Urbana — cost the community more than $30,000.
These costs came mostly in the form of overtime pay for officers in charge of keeping violence and rowdiness to a minimum. Unfortunately, not much of the $30K went to cleaning up the piles of vomit on and around Green Street that seemed to multiply as the day wore on.
I admire and support Barack Obama. I am looking forward to seeing him in the Oval Office after he is sworn in next January 20.
I also admire and support Obama’s long-time pastor, the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright. I have heard Dr. Wright speak a couple of times — not at his church on the South side of Chicago, but as a guest speaker at my seminary, Garrett-Evangelical in Evanston — and I have always been impressed and inspired by his words. So it surprises me that Dr. Wright has come under fire lately for statements he has made in some of his sermons.
One advantage to being in a foreign country and not knowing the language is that a major political crisis can happen while you remain largely ignorant of how serious it is. I was in Colombia during the Chavez–Uribe standoff last week, and my lack of Spanish prevented me from following along with the local daily news. Since the only thing Colombians could personally communicate to me was “Chavez es loco,” at no time did I feel like war was about to break out. I wonder if this is how people who are kidnapped feel right before they get carted away by guerillas.
Downtown Champaign’s M2 building is slated for completion in late 2008. As home to the Destihl Restaurant and Brew Works, BankChampaign, four floors of office space and four floors of residential units, the building will draw increased traffic to the evolving downtown area. To accommodate this congestion and the anticipation of future development in the area, a 600-space parking garage will be erected by early 2009 at the corner of Hill and Randolph streets.
The garage is likely to find its most use at night (particularly weekend nights) when parking is in highest demand.
Though going up in tandem with the privately owned M2, the garage will be a publicly funded and operated facility.
“It’s a city deck, so it’s public parking,” Shirl Johnson, parking operations supervisor, says. Parking fees will be collected by an attendant or automated credit card machines.
The contract for construction will be voted on at the March 18 Champaign City Council meeting. If the current proposal is accepted, the contract will be awarded jointly to English Brothers and A & R Services for the construction of the $10,590,000 garage.
First Sniff
I have recently tangled up with a new and freshly-minted obsession: weight loss. After years of making certain that my belt line increased annually with plenty of red meat, Jarling’s Custard Cup, and an excessive amount of mushroom sherry sauce from Original Pancake House, I have decided that this is the year to start reversing that trend. I am currently 5'7" and 200 pounds. That, according to most healthy weight-management sites, is about 40–60 pounds more than I should be, making me officially obese.
I am willing to accept this — for now.
But 2008 means more than marriage for me. It means a skinnier Sniffer.
Oh Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz?
My friends all drive Porsches; I must make amends.
—Janis Joplin
The Bible contains a lot of wisdom about wealth. In fact, wealth may be the number-one topic addressed in the Bible (it’s certainly in the top five). Let’s review just a few of the more well-known passages.
In the past few years, the University of Illinois campus has made room for a plethora of new restaurants, shops and other businesses. This week, workers broke ground on a County Market to be completed this fall at the corner of Fourth Street and Springfield Avenue. By the end of this summer, Urban Outfitters and the university's Office of Public Affairs will take up residence as well. And within the past year or two the campus has welcomed Pitaya, Noodles, Chipotle, an Apple Store and more. But what is campus still missing? What would you like to see within walking distance of Green Street?
There is a bill in the Illinois House (HB 1826) that, if passed, will give same-sex couples the right to be joined together in a civil union. This bill has a dozen or so sponsors including our very own 103rd District Representative, Naomi Jakobsson. According to it's synopsis, this bill does the following:
“Creates the Illinois Religious Freedom Protection and Civil Unions Act.... Provides that 2 persons may form a civil union if they: are not related by adoption or blood in any manner that would bar a civil union; are not in another civil union or marriage with any other living person; and are not under 18 years of age. Provides that: protections, benefits, and responsibilities of partners in a civil union are the same as those granted to spouses in a marriage.... and a civil union between 2 persons of either the same sex or the opposite sex licensed, officiated, and registered under the Act is valid in this State.”
Proposed bills like this one really ruffle the feathers of conservative evangelical Christians and their fundamentalist cousins, the groups collectively known as the "Religious Right". They insist that the Bible says homosexuality is a sin.
But does the Bible really state this? The short answer is, actually, no.
Good day, gentle reader. I remain, The Campus Wit.
As of late, many people have approached me and questioned my moniker. “Why do you call yourself The Campus Wit? In three posts, you have yet to say anything remotely witty.”
In response to their griping, I have conceded and decided to begin acknowledging to calls of “The Campus Curmudgeon" and "The Campus Prick" as well as “The Campus Wit.” So feel free to call me by any of these names if you somehow see me, but please know that I will continue to ignore you and your friends just as soon as you approach me.
Today, however, I have a fourth name: “The Campus Hypochondriac.”
Why? One word: Meningitis.
| 
