Let’s take the luge, for example. Or skeleton, I suppose. The only difference is body position, right? Anyway, this is literally one of the most boring things possible to watch on television. The first time I see someone sled down a track, it might be marginally exciting. The odds would be better if I could see the whole track or if I were given any clue about what the big picture might look like. The odds would also be better if it looked like the athletes were doing anything that looked remotely athletic. It looks like they are just sitting there sliding downhill. It shocks me that someone somewhere thought this would be fun to watch.

But it gets worse. After the first person goes, we are treated to the exact same thing umpteen times, with exactly two changes. The sledders’ uniforms change colors and designs, and the amount of time it takes them to complete the race differs by an amount of time that I cannot even experience because the constant cuts give me no frame of reference. The same can be said about any skiing event, the various figure-skating and ice-dancing events (though to a slightly lower degree), and every event that does not feature head-to-head competition.

I can just not watch the Olympics if I don’t want to, though, right? After all, if I ignore it, it’s like it’s not even there and my life goes on as normal, right? Wrong. I consider myself an avid TV watcher. Or, rather, I used to—because ever since the Olympics started, other TV has all but stopped. No network wants to risk their shows’ audiences defecting to the Olympics, so the airing of new episodes has all but ceased entirely. In their place are reruns or worse. The Winter Olympics are ruining TV for me, and I want them gone.

Randy is a sophomore in Arts & Sciences. He can be reached via e-mail r.brachman@gmail.com.

Now I’m sure that there are some die-hard football fans who were able to follow the game perfectly. I’m sure they could tell me at any given point what the odds were that such and such would happen or what the optimal play would be. (Though who would predict an onside kick before the fourth quarter?) Perhaps the Super Bowl was an enlightening experience for these people. Maybe it was even transcendent.

I do not come close to that level of understanding. There are some things I know, and football is not really one of them.

I used to say that I watched the Super Bowl for the commercials, which are generally considered to be some of the best around. Once they started getting halftime acts I liked (generally post-Janet Jackson incident), I said I watched it for the halftime show. This year was different. This was the year when I tried to watch the game for the game itself and not for any other reason.

This decision was not entirely mine, though I had no way of knowing that when I made it. The Who played a great set, but I could have just as easily listened to complete songs of theirs on my computer. They didn’t do anything especially unpredictable, and they didn’t do anything new.

The commercials this year were uniformly terrible, with a few exceptions. Google gave us a heartfelt Parisian love story, and Bud Light taught us important carpentry lessons. Apart from that, it was mostly just various departments working under the Doritos heading trying to out-bizarre each other. Throw in some creepy talking E*TRADE babies and you’ve got yourself a multi-million-dollar waste of time.

Now, I’m not saying I didn’t enjoy the game. I thought it looked pretty good. I could have saved myself two hours and just watched a highlight reel and the best commercials on YouTube afterwards. Perhaps the reason not to watch is not because the game is beyond my grasp. Perhaps it is the medium. With the ever-continuing spread of the ubiquity of entertainment on the Internet, I find fewer and fewer reasons to ever tune into anything else.

Randy is a sophomore in Arts & Sciences. He can be reached via e-mail at r.brachman@gmail.com.

Trying to end a discussion with “It’s just my opinion,” apart from being about as poor a debate technique as is possible, is probably the biggest cop-out that can be committed. This is a major pet peeve of mine. If you can’t support your opinion with anything other than the fact that it is your opinion, then it is most likely an uninformed or even outright wrong opinion. At the very least, it is not thought out at all and is therefore not worth having. But I digress.

If it truly is just a matter of taste, and if taste were immeasurable, then there would be no possible argument either way. Since no one ever says “It’s just my opinion” outside an argument, this is not the case. Therefore, there must be some way to approximate and quantify a measure of taste.

First, a definition of “better” must be established. It is not unreasonable to define “better” on a societal level, and this will make the distinction easier. The only way to objectively determine what is “best” is to allow society to make the judgment. Also, we will assume that people use money as a means to assign a value to something, and the more money they spend on a certain good or service, the “better” that good or service is. And since, as we all well know, time is money, time shall also be an indicator of quality.

Therefore, when comparing the quality of two things whose qualitative differences seem to stem simply from differences in tastes across people, the amount of money that society spends on each thing can be a measure of absolute quality. Granted, it is not entirely accurate. This is biased toward those with excess money to spend, and it really reflects society’s beliefs about the quality of the thing, rather than the thing’s inherent quality (although it can be argued—and I would argue—that there is no difference between the two).

In order to hedge our measure, we will include reviews (both consumer and professional) of whatever we are comparing. It takes time to go out and rate something, and even more to write a review. The more time that is spent, the more people care about what they are talking about and the more their opinions should be taken into account. Again, there are some biases, but I sincerely believe this is the best system we can have.

It passes the common sense test: “Inglourious Basterds” is better than “League of Extraordinary Gentlemen,” even without DVD sales.

Why would you ever do anything that is not fun? That is what I ask them. The answers are invariably some form of either “I don’t know” or “because I have to.” Neither of those is a sufficient reason to do something unenjoyable.

Socrates said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” How could you do something without knowing why? Motivation is the key to every action. The only way to truly and completely do anything—and do it well—is to know why it must be done. And all motivation comes from within. The reason that anyone does anything comes from within. Not knowing your motivation simply means that what you are doing is not well thought out.

As to requirements, they are irrelevant. We all have to do things. But we oftentimes get a choice of what those things are, and even when we don’t, the simple fact that an action is required of us does not in any way preclude it from being fun. It is simply an issue of framing or gaming.

For instance, throughout the course of my college career, I have had to write a few essays. I have not particularly wanted to write the vast majority of them. That, however, is a very negative way of viewing the essays. Instead of trying to write something I did not want to write, I changed the topic of the essay to something I wanted to write about. This makes the process fun. Also, passion shines through in writing and improves it. By framing the essays in a way that made them fun to write, I improved their quality.

Some things are hard to frame. Sometimes, you have to walk for a long stretch all alone. You have no one to talk to. Maybe it’s raining. Casting this in a positive light is going to be tough. Why not play a game? Maybe you watch other walkers—solitary or otherwise—and come up with backstories for them. Maybe you relive the last great moment you had. Maybe you just fantasize about being in a different place. Maybe you take a Superball out of your pocket and start bouncing it as you go. No matter what you do, though, simply by doing something you enjoy, you’ve taken a dull and boring walk and turned it into something much, much more.

Robert Heinlein once wrote, “Man is the animal that laughs.” Oscar Wilde wrote, “Life is far too important a thing to ever talk seriously about it.” Let loose. Have fun. Do what you like; like what you do. Not only is it the best way to live life, but it is also the only way to live life well.

Weekends were tough. In defiance of all possible logic, Bear Lair is the only eatery open for most of the day on weekends.  I value my sleep and don’t like breakfast foods, so brunch was out of the question. I went on many a lonely walk to campus on Saturday or Sunday afternoons. Luckily, I could schedule many of my weekend meals around times I had to be on campus anyway, so I wasn’t going out of my way.

As time wore on, I got more and more used to my routine. I started eating less fried food and more vegetables. I was walking more. My cheeseburger consumption dropped to alarmingly low levels. My overall quality of life declined—not by much, but by enough. By the end of September, my craving for a Half and Half was palpable.

I decided I would give in. My boycott would end with the first full month of school. I reasoned that I’d already gotten my message out; I’d already made enough of a statement. Plus, I’d heard rumors of major changes to Bear Lair. The last week was very tough, but when I went to Bear Lair just after midnight on Oct. 1, I brought the best Half and Half I’ve ever had back to my suite.

Since then, I’ve returned a few times. I have yet to try a sandwich (the limited and avocado-filled menu is intimidating, and the panini press seems much less friendly than the toaster did), but I have not been entirely satisfied with the rest of my experiences.

Bear Lair’s only improvement over last year’s Bear’s Den is the addition of Tater Tots. Every other change is at best negligible but, far more often, drastically worse. The lack of seating, total absence of Bosco sticks, still-overpriced food and so on have all been talked about ad infinitum. It is highly unlikely that any of that will be changed anytime soon.

What can, should and—dare I say—must be changed, though, is the system of paying before receiving food. This system is highly inconvenient and leads to huge mistakes. It makes customizing orders much more difficult. It lengthens the time it takes to get food and encourages mix-ups. There is and can be no benefit to the student through this policy.

A few weeks ago, I overheard three freshman girls while walking to class. One was telling the other that she was constantly encouraged to steal food whenever she could because Bon Appétit steals from us. Perhaps they should try to protect themselves in a better way: one that does not foster these thoughts.

If you’d asked me this time last year what the best part of Wash. U. was, I might have said Bear’s Den. I probably wouldn’t have, but I certainly would not be swearing it off. I ate at least seven or eight meals a week at Bear’s Den last year. What could possibly have happened in the less-than four months I was away that could so completely annihilate the much-beloved South 40 institution?

Instead of having all of the food available in one compact package with every food station in the same place, there are two different rooms with food. And the kicker is that even though these two mini-cafeterias are in the same building, there’s no way to get from one to the other without going outside, and there’s hardly any seating downstairs. What if it’s raining? What if it’s snowing? What if it’s just plain cold? I don’t want my hot food exposed to the cold air for as long as it takes to walk upstairs. I want my hot food exposed to my mouth.

A friend of mine said of the new Bear’s Den, “Every time I go there, they give me a new reason to hate it.” Let me illustrate my last reason to hate the new Bear’s Den.

The day was Aug. 23. I had to be at Mallinckrodt at about 2:45 p.m., so a little bit before 2 p.m., I went to Bear’s Grill (which is a terrible name, by the way), expecting that I would be able to get my buffalo chicken sandwich (sadly devoid of both Caesar dressing and house bread) and eat it with time to spare. I got in a three-person line at the grill. Seven minutes later, it was my turn. Standing under the menu board advertising buffalo chicken sandwiches, I ordered one. The woman at the register pointed to the vegetarian section and told me I had to order my meat there. I got in the back of a long line of people, all of whom, it turned out, were also getting buffalo chicken sandwiches and had also been directed to the vegetarian station by the very same cashier. After nearly half an hour of waiting in this line (during which two people from the line were helped), I took a Half-and-Half that someone else had ordered and ate it while walking because there simply wasn’t enough time to go upstairs and find a table.

Now, that may have been a particularly bad experience. That could have been the worst day in Bear’s Grill history. My best experience so far, though, has been waiting far too long for food that simply just wasn’t worth it, especially when compared to last year’s fare. And don’t even get me started on the sandwiches.

There is no higher purpose at heart here. I simply have never had a good experience at Lower Bear’s Den, and I neither have seen nor have heard any reason why that should have changed already. Truthfully, I doubt it will change at all this year.

If you believe, as I do, that Lower Bear’s Den is simply not worth the time, effort and aggravation, don’t go. When Bon Appétit tracks spending and sees it way down down there, they may change. This is the only hope I have of getting a Half-and-Half without waiting an hour and a half.

What I can (and therefore will) do, however, is give a great big hello to all of my loyal readers and a slightly smaller hello to those of you readers who found this article not so much by following me but by meandering through the jungle of Student Life. How was your summer, reader? Did you go home and see as many friends as you could in those precious few hours of the day you weren’t working? Did you stay here or attend some other university, taking classes or perhaps doing research? Was there an internship waiting for you in some strange city at the beginning of last May?

Regardless of what you did, what you are doing now is the same as what we all are doing now: enjoying the scant time we all have here in St. Louis before we go back to a new school year. But maybe this is a bittersweet time for you. Are you filled with reflections about the past three or four months? Is your mind abuzz with thoughts of what had changed back home? Mine is.

I was still friends with the people I’d been friends with in high school. We still went to the same ice cream parlors and bowling alleys and movie theaters, swam in the same pools, hung out in the same parking lots. We were still close, almost as close as we’d been before college.  But something had changed irreversibly.

The fact of the matter is that a year away changed me in ways that I still don’t quite understand. I have more perspective now; the problems that seemed so insurmountable during high school now make me scoff; the petty concerns of me and my peers have revealed themselves to be nothing more than adolescent whining. I have more experience now; people are more comprehensible to me, and I am more open to new exploration.

The topic of conversation at my home-away-from-home (I spend most of my time here­­—so much, in fact, that I find it difficult to imagine being anywhere else for extended periods of time) strayed from whatever we talked about before college-mania took us over during senior year to stories from college: what we or our friends did, things we saw or heard, the strange people one is bound to meet at an institute of higher learning. True, the stories petered out as time went by, but they were always there.

I spent more and more of my time alone as the summer progressed, wishing fervently for time to speed up until my return here and my reunion with my college friends. While final goodbyes last year were emotional ordeals—sometimes lasting hours—a simple “Have a nice semester” seemed like overkill this year.

Did these changes need to happen? Are they a necessary consequence of leaving the nest, taking on some independence and having life encounters that are totally different from those of the peers with whom I grew up? Am I, Heaven forbid, maturing?

Digsby combines all of your instant messaging programs, e-mails and social Web sites into one window. Right now, I have mine running AIM, Facebook chat, my Gmail and my Facebook. It’s very handy. I’ve Facebook chatted more times since I got this program than I ever have before. I don’t have to open Firefox to check my e-mail or Facebook anymore.

At first, Digsby seemed like a winner, much like the last one I downloaded, Mojo. It was not long before I found the dark side of Digsby. And what a dark side it is.

Whenever any one of my friends does anything on Facebook, I am notified. New wall post? Bubble in the bottom left corner of my screen. New profile picture? Bubble in the bottom left corner of my screen. New status? New album? Did I get a message or a friend request? Bubble in the bottom left corner of my screen.

I can’t look away from these bubbles. I find myself reading everything that everyone is doing simply by virtue of the fact that my mini-feed (and more) is now on my desktop. And sometimes I click it.

That’s the worst. It takes me straight to whatever it was that I clicked on. I don’t even go through my homepage anymore. I don’t need to. I tried to write an essay last night. It took four hours longer than it should have because of Digsby making Facebook incredibly convenient. This article is almost a day late for more than a few reasons, one of which is Digsby.

Maybe, though, the problem lies with me. Maybe I am a Facebook addict. It’s certainly possible. I mean, even before Digsby I regularly checked my Facebook three or four times each day. If that is the case, though, Digsby is like giving a brown paper bag to a homeless alcoholic. It’s giving a used syringe to a heroin addict. It’s giving an elected position to Rod Blagojevich.

Is there a plus side to this? Well, Digsby seems to be incredibly convenient. It probably isn’t, but it seems to be, and that is just as good. And hopefully I’ll learn some self-control because of this. I think they say that exposure is the surest way to deal with temptation, and if they don’t say that, I sure hope it’s true anyway. It is only through dealing with my problem that I will be able to solve it.

Or I’ll just check my Facebook so much it bores me, and I won’t want to do it anymore. This is the most likely scenario. I can live with that.

I achieved that goal. Granted, it was neither particularly hard nor particularly impressive, but still. I was one for one this break.

I had very high expectations for this movie. David Fincher is one of my favorite directors. Brad Pitt is one of my favorite actors, or at least he is in a lot of my favorite movies (and really, what’s the difference?). F. Scott Fitzgerald is one of my favorite authors. How could this movie possibly be bad?

And it wasn’t. It wasn’t nearly as good as I was hoping, though. It wasn’t even as good as I was expecting it to be.

Walking out of the theater, I thought that Ben Button is what you would get if “The Notebook” and “Forrest Gump” had offspring. Granted, I liked “Forrest Gump,” and I watched “The Notebook,” but that does not mean that they should mate.

Ben Button would have been much better had it simply presented the narrative of the eponymous character’s life. If the movie had started with his birth and ended with his death (disappearance into an invisible womb?), I probably would have put it into the spot I reserved for it on my list of favorite movies.

I appreciate the clock metaphor. However, did it really need to be in the movie? I don’t think it added anything at all, and it wasn’t connected to the main plot in any tangible way. It didn’t take up much screen time, but when you’re dealing with a 168 minute run time, any trimming that can be done becomes necessary.

The other part of the movie that baffled me was the inclusion of the flash-forward Hurricane Katrina scenes. First of all, the “twist” that Julie Ormond’s character was Brad Pitt’s character’s daughter can hardly be considered a twist at all. A good twist makes the audience rethink the rest of the movie. It turns events that had previously been insignificant into significant events. It makes the audience question their interpretations of events that had already happened. It is important in the overall plot of the movie. It is not glaringly obvious.

Unfortunately for everyone involved in this movie, this “twist” was none of those. There are very few people I have spoken to about this movie to who did not guess that Ormond was Pitt’s daughter. There is no one who cared. The fact that Benjamin Button sired a child does not shed any light on his other actions. It does not develop his character. It does not make him a more sympathetic character. All it does is use up time.

The rest of the 2005 scenes only served to break up the action of the primary storyline. Did I ever care what Ormond or Cate Blanchett (whose makeup/CGI and performance was very good) had to say about what was happening in the narrative? No. It was just an awkward way to introduce a narrator who was not really necessary in the first place.

I wanted so much for this movie to be great. Mr. Fincher, you have disappointed me. That is not to say I did not like it; I did. But you could have done better. Next time, please do.

//

Before I flew back, my dad asked me which felt more like home: Plainview or St. Louis. I couldn’t give him an answer that satisfied me.

Basically my entire pre-college life is in Plainview and the surrounding areas. The people I’ve known for my entire life and whose personalities developed along with and intertwined with mine are back on Long Island. The places I grew up frequenting and the geography I know are there. My support system, my bed, most of my clothes and my DVR are all there. Plainview is familiar and comforting. Then again, going home reminded me just how much I don’t like the people at home whom I don’t like.

St. Louis is new and, at times, overwhelming. I don’t know nearly as many people, and I’m not nearly as close with those I do know. I don’t know how to get around off campus except the Loop. Every day is different from every other day. The food is worse (although it’s still really good). I will live here for the majority of the next four years.

I very rarely get the chance to be totally alone here. I don’t know whether this is good or bad.

When I was home this past weekend, I missed my new friends from school. I missed Ruby 1. I missed my roommate. While I’m here, I miss my family and my friends and my bed. Wherever I am, I miss high school. When I’m on a plane coming or going from or to St. Louis, I generally sleep.

So where is home? Is it where I’ve been or where I am? Is it where I’m comfortable or where I’ve reinvented myself to be whatever I want to be? I really have no idea.

Maybe I now have two homes.Or maybe I haven’t found one yet.