At the end of a year, there are always a bevy of “best of/worst of” lists flying around that try to sum up the happenings of the year before. Anna Nicole Smith made Mr. Blackwell’s list of worst dressed. J.Lo — nom de reality Jennifer Lopez — garnered the Gallup poll’s top honor of most admired woman.
And the American Dialect Society named the phrase “weapons of mass destruction” 2002’s Word of the Year. Technically, “weapons of mass destruction” isn’t really a word, but a phrase. And other phrases such as “axis of evil” and “material breach” probably gave the “weapons” phrase a run for its money.
So in the spirit of meaningless end-of-year lists, I have composed my own set of top phrases heard on or around the University in 2002, in no particular order:
* “Fife, you suck!” Was everybody saying it, or was I always standing by the same belligerent fraternity guy in Autzen Stadium all season? Either way, “Fife, you suck” became a mantra that stuck with poor Jason Fife all the way through the Seattle Bowl (and I know because my die-hard Husky relatives were chanting it non-stop, among other insults). Sigh.
I’m no sports writer, but a 42-14 loss to Washington is hard to take, especially when inundated in Seattle with Duck jokes (my favorite is this: What do the Ducks and Billy Graham have in common? Both can make 60,000 people stand up and yell, “Jesus Christ!”). But honestly, we can’t blame a single football player for the shortcomings of an entire team, can we?
Then again, “Ducks, you suck” doesn’t have the same ring to it.
* “Sorry Timmy, I can’t play ball tonight. I have to go to my 1,654,798th Programs Finance Committee budget recall hearing.” Okay, I may be exaggerating a bit with the number of hearings. But after a $536,000 “accounting error” at the ASUO office last year, it seemed every incidental-fee funded student group was forced to attend an armload of budget re-approval hearings by a group of students who could barely balance their check books.
Even the good ol’ boys at the Oregon Commentator postponed their Magic: The Gathering game and got their bowels in an uproar over the verbiage of their mission statement. Ill will swelled all around, but with any luck, the budget allocations for next year with a new crew will be more organized.
* “Is that my phone?” Cell phones have infiltrated every corner of campus. Phones are ringing while people are riding their bikes, walking down the street, in the middle of class, during lunch, driving and yes, last week I heard a woman on her cell phone while in the bathroom stall.
A trend has occurred where the phone must ring at least three times (I’ve heard Michael Jackson, Beethoven and “Super Mario Bros.” jingles) before the owner is able to dig into the bottom of the bag to retrieve it and sheepishly turn it off.
Dear professors: If a phone rings in your classroom, make a policy that you will answer it. Embarrassment will ensue, and the problem will be solved.
* “And in Eugene tonight, there were more riots… .” According to the rest of the free world, every person at the University is an angry rioter. Even CNN thinks so. There were a few out-of-control riots in Eugene last year, a pittance compared to the 360-plus days when there was peace. Not much can be done, however, to dissuade intoxicated block partiers from burning couches in roundabouts and blaming it all on the police.
Honorable mentions include: “dry frats,” the great “Wind Storm of 2002” (as it was proclaimed by local television stations) and “shock jocks.”