What Is Wrong With You?
It goes without saying that whenever there’s a massive accident on the highway, cars slow down and they watch. People take the time out of their busy lives to slow down and stare at the carnage that has just unfolded right in front of them. Drivers go from speeding down the expressway with nothing on their minds but their destination to slowing down to stare at the misfortune of another person. On any other given day no one cares about the other random drivers around us, but the moment that something happens, all eyes are upon the victims. Now where am I going with this? Recently, the report on the space shuttle Columbia came out and all eyes are again upon the victims of the tragedy and its cause.
Since John F. Kennedy pledged to put a man on the moon, the United States have been at the forefront of space exploration. Countless missions have gone up and come down safely, much like the millions of cars traveling on the road today. But the only time we stop to care is when something bad happens. Apollo 1, Apollo 13, Challenger, Columbia… all those names mean something to us because something happened. With the exception of Apollo 11 which contained Neil Armstrong, the first man on the moon, do we care about the missions in between? We have gone from treating America’s astronauts as heroes to not even caring when another shuttle is launched. We know basketball, football, and baseball players’ names, but rarely do we know the names of crewmembers on the next shuttle mission. NASA’s budget has shrunk considerably since the heyday of the space program while sports stars are getting larger and larger salaries. Where are our priorities?The report criticized NASA for being complacent about safety, but that complacency extends further than that. They have grown complacent because we, as a society, have gone complacent… again. History is once again repeating itself. All the stress on safety that came about after Challenger happened slowly eroded away when the public stopped caring. The court of public opinion is far greater than any court of law. When the public cares about something and watches it closely, there’s no other option but to ensure that what they see isn’t a second-rate production. Sports teams play better when the fans are cheering for them; it’s the x-factor. Who’s cheering for the men and women that dare to reach for the stars? No one… and that apathy is as much to blame for what happened as anything else NASA did or didn’t do. But then of course… we don’t care… at least not until something else blows up.
Speaking of Things That Just Aren’t Right…
It stands there, tall and proud, mocking drivers and pedestrians alike. Drivers must pay them and pedestrians walk into them, parking meters are the greatest evil known to humanity. It’s the land of the free, yet for us to put our gas-guzzling All-American SUVs in some parking spots, we must give a little machine some money. Not just any money, it demands quarters. Just how many people keep enough quarters on their person to pay for decent times at a parking meter? They’re evil. They exemplify all that is evil in society.
And the worst thing: they don’t give refunds. Ever since the Jewel closed down on Harrison, students going to SSB have no place to park their cars for free. True, we weren’t supposed to park our cars there, but everyone did anyways. Now, we’re stuck feeding the meters and UIC’s pocketbooks. So, as good little brainwashed students that we are, we are compelled to pay the meters before it unleashes a Bat-signal-like beacon for the cops to ticket us. We never know how much to pay either! We never know if our trip into SSB will take 5 minutes or 5 hours. Pay too much and you don’t get your money back, but if you pay too little and a ticket will pop up quicker than a Starbuck’s at a neighborhood near you. This is just another example of UIC teaming up with inherent evil to rip you off.
GOOO SOX!
Why is it that the Cubs are always in the forefront of the Chicago sports world? They’re everybody’s favorite losers! The Sox are currently in first place in the AL Central, but yet… no one seems to realize that. Esteban Loaiza has an AL-leading 18 wins and is in contention for the Cy Young Award… but no one knows who he is? Magglio Ordonez has been an All-Star for three out of the past four years, yet no one knows who is either? But we all love Sammy “Corky” Sosa, Kerry “Unpredictable” Wood, and the rest of ticket-scalping organization known as the Chicago Cubs.
The Cubs rip off their own fans by selling over-priced tickets via their own brokering agency and fans still flock to Wrigley. The Cubs had a shot at first place in the NL Central and they blew it, but fans still love them. Whereas the Sox hosted the 2003 MLB All-Star Game, military personnel go to games for free, and are in first place and they are still a second-rate baseball team in Chicago. Magglio donated a full set of baseball equipment to an impoverished Little League team in Venezuela… Sammy corked a bat. And who’s the household name? There is definitely something wrong that and when William Ligue Jr., the guy who jumped onto the field at Comiskey, gets more publicity than White Sox players. Chicago and the world have been rooting for the wrong team. The Chicago White Sox are your best bets. GO SOX!
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