Five things this column will not be about:
1. The Superbowl.
2. The commercials during the Superbowl.
3. Why the kid I tutor now thinks I’m cool.*
4. How my weekend felt like flying at a cruising altitude of thirty thousand feet and hearing a train, then getting hit by that train, then finding a million dollars in my pocket, then paying that million dollars for reconstructive surgery, then realizing the dollar is strong in Paraguay.
5. Soap Goo.
I’ve been sitting here for two hours staring at a blank screen and trying desperately to think of universally funny things to say about soap goo, that stuff that forms on the bottom of soap when you leave it sitting on your sink. My writer’s block is so massive that I’ve changed clothes three times, alphabetized my belly-button lint (only once), and finished a problem set that was due freshman year.
More than anything, right now, I want to be able to write a column about soap goo. That’s all I want. I want to be able to think of something witty to say about the goo that develops on the bottom of my Irish Spring bar. I want you to laugh about soap goo.
And that’s really the problem. Why do my columns always have to be funny. Why can’t they just be amusing, or weird, or just well-punctuated. Do you think it was easy to write this whole paragraph without question marks. Do you? (I give up.)
I’ve asked all my friends what to write about soap goo and they have no ideas. They think I can’t do this. So, writing about soap goo is now a manly thing. This column is the manliest thing I’ve done since destroying a sixth grader in a Dr. Pepper “drinking without breathing”* contest, which is the manliest thing I’ve done since whipping out my [copy of Wuthering Heights and only reading the last page – ed.]
This column feels like the part of any first date where we’ve both finished our meatball subs, and I forgot your name. Neither of us really wants to continue at this point, but I owe you for flexing me, and I guess you just feel sorry for me.
Rather than pain you with further bad writing, here is a hasty sketch drawn by Cadenza’s own David Kroll.
Four things this column should have been about instead of soap goo:
1. The comfort that despite terrorism, the most prominent issue in Friday’s opinion section was the social scene at WU.
2. The number of recent social situations that would have been much less awkward if I had just announced that I was an alien from the planet peepee, and warned everyone that I was made of rubber and they were made of glue, but if they said nice things then it didn’t bounce.
3. My continuing effort to boycott the movie Titanic.
4. I couldn’t even think of a fourth topic, so I had Taylor do this one.
But I’m late for an etiquette dinner. Next week’s column, HAS to be good.
*FYI: In middle school chugging is called “drinking without breathing” and if you want a kid to eat a cup full of crushed goldfish, animal crackers, milk, salt, and six kinds of soda, then it will set you back about $2.75 (or best offer).