Boobs, Dating, Pants.

     Boobs, dating, pants; Boobs, dating, pants; Boobs, dating, pants. Why is it that whenever I open the Daily Free Press, all I read are columns about boobs, dating and pants? I would assume that having a more balanced male: female ratio amongst the columnists would have alleviated this problem, but apparently I was wrong, just like when I assumed that all I needed to be able to fly was to believe in myself and think happy thoughts.

     "Where," I ask, "are the feminists? Where are the charming suffragettes with their liberating pantaloons and Gloria Steinem masks? Where are those revolutionary thinkers that make a mockery of the well-established field of respectable literary criticism?" But, dear friends and readers, my questions fall on deaf walls, for I am in a dark alley full of trashcans and drunken hockey fans instead of feminists. Please remind me never to go down this alley again.

      Some of the things I read are more offensive than the Bond Girls, more bigoted than the Nut n' Honey cereal campaign of yore and more sexist than the Keebler Elves. This is truly a travesty of vast proportions - one might even call them "whopping."

     Now, I don't like to throw that word around haphazardly, but I feel it is wholly appropriate in this particular situation. Everyone who goes to school at Boston University knows about "The Ratio," which tells us how many more women than men there are on campus. If by sheer chance alone, there should be hundreds of feminists running around the campus, paying homage to demagogues like Ms. Pac Man, Emma Peel and Richard Simmons. Sadly, I see no such thing, and like the mythical King Arthur, I can only say one thing: You make me sad.

     This is extremely troubling to me, and crushes my spirit like no other event. Actually, I can think of a few other events that crushed my spirit, like when I watched "RoboCop" again for the first time in fourteen years and discovered that it really wasn't that good of a movie; or when the Golden Girls moved into that hotel and got really bad really quickly; or when they stopped making Frankenberry cereal … man, that was rough. But I digress, as I am wont to do when something is bothering me, either in an ethical-moral sense, or by tapping on my shoulder.

     There is another reason this blatant anti-feminism is troubling to me … I cannot relate to a significant number of issues raised in the Opinion pages. As a misanthropic male of questionable Scottish heritage, I do not have breasts, I do not date, and I wear only my ancestral clan's kilt. What, then, does the Opinion page offer me as a loyal reader?

     I am raising my fist in defiance of the thematic mire some of the writers are currently wallowing in: the mire of boobs, dating and pants. Now I am lowering my fist, because it took me twenty minutes to type that last sentence with one hand.

     There are a myriad of topics one could write about that do not have anything to do with boobs, dating or pants - topics that are untapped wells of comedy, just waiting for a wandering columnist to strike through a piece of soil with a pick-axe or drill - even a hammer would work. The comedy would then fly freely from the ground like Texas Tea or Black Gold, but it must be harnessed or it will only make everyone wet and funny. All it would take to harness this free-flowing comedy is some kind of freestanding oil-drilling platform, which would act as the column in this ridiculously extended metaphor. Then the columnist would have enough comedy resources to build rockets, factories with tall smokestacks and many trains with which to go through mountain tunnels. If one were to film this metaphorical comedy, it would of course be in slow motion.

     This would make you funny and popular, just like one of those novelty tee shirts embroidered with such memorable phrases as "I'm with Stupid" or with arrows labeled "The Man" and "The Legend" pointing in opposite directions.

     The writers need to remain strong in their feminist stance. Sing the song "We Shall Overcome" or En Vogue's "Neva Gonna Get It" for inspiration; burn those bras and raise those hemlines; and most importantly, innovate, innovate, innovate!

     Perhaps the Daily Free Press could impose a new policy of "Cell Phones, Quiet Personal Reflection and Not Pants" for their writers. Please consider the "cell phones" part extremely changeable, as I was having a difficult time thinking of something diametrically opposed to "boobs." Maybe toothpaste, I don't know. I'm sure you can figure something out.