The Black Sheep
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• a college newspaper that’s actually about college •
Volume 2, Issue 1 1/19/12 - 2/8/12
theblacksheeponline.com
Let Me Tell You Why
i hate green
daniel park wrote this
Beep. Beep. Beep. With the quickest, “oh shit!” I don my basketball shorts, snatch the car keys, loosely slip into my untied Jordans, barefooted, and sprint out the door. I reached the end of the hall and summon the elevator. An agonizing twenty seconds later the doors open for me and I’m immediately button-smashing the “close door” labeled circle like a kid who doesn’t know how to operate his XBox controller. From the ninth floor, the descent takes approximately forty-five seconds to the lobby. Do the math. Answer below. As soon as the bell rings and the gate flings, I dash out of the apartment complex like a madman. Who cares what I look like at this point? The evil man in a yellow jacket stands beside my 1995 black Corolla, jotting down whatever evil men in yellow jackets jot down at this hour on a bright and chilly, January morning. The time on my cell phone reads 7:01 a.m. when I manually unlock the door, hop into the car, start the engine and floor the gas pedal out of a “No Parking Zone from 7 a.m. to 9 a.m. on Monday.” Keep in mind that the parking security officer is in the middle of recording my license plate number and now screaming, “Hey! Stop man! What are you doing?” I’m giggling more than a four-year-old child hearing fart sounds for the first time in his life. It’s quite a sight, as I’m laughing hysterically in perfect harmony with my quivering body. I blast the heater and start realizing I successfully avoided my 18th ticket of my college-with-a-car-life. I drive around the block of Main Street and West Franklin
Other stuff
Inside
for a few minutes and parked on Monroe Street. Please, do not judge me. Once you receive your first beautiful neon-green envelope, you’ll understand. Believe me, it’s not a Harvard acceptance letter under that windshield wiper. In the beginning, I paid for every citation. Obviously, when your father transfers an allowance into your checking account every month, these tickets are easily affordable. $20 isn’t too bad, right? Wrong. Similar to a game – the higher the levels achieved, the more challenging it gets. Once you start surpassing the five ticket checkpoint, then the ten ticket milestone, then pretty much after the fifteenth ticket, you just want to curse your luck and quit. Fifteen twenty dollar fines alone sum up to $300. That’s two Physiology textbooks. Or fifty Chipotle chicken burrito bowls. Maybe eight filled gas tanks. Don’t forget about the thirty ice-cream dates with your significant other. Let me answer a few questions, before I wrap up. It takes five seconds each floor down the Trolley elevator. Why’d I drive off while the man wrote up my ticket? Well, other than it taking a pair, I didn’t have the money. Every
Wednesday, at the City Hall at 2 p.m., a large group of citation protesters gather and line up to provide a brief synopsis of their appeal to the judge. Based on how pathetic and truthful their stories are, the judge issues a warning and voila , there is no fine to be paid. One of the stories that brought my ears great joy came from a businessman. Keeping it short, sweet, simple and some other “s” word I don’t even know, he courteously explained, “Your honor, I never received this ticket on my window shield. I honestly don’t know how or when I got it.” He won. I won.
All You Can Eat
The Party Bus
The Top Ten
There’s a better way to bring your partying self to the bars.
An embarrassment of riches has left us spoiled, like the food we don’t eat.
see page 4
see page 5
Worst fashion trends spotted at vcu. see page 11