Sox to be me

By Jason Satek - Columnist

Select images taken at any point during an occurrence do not necessarily convey the truest sense of the entirety. At least I hope that is true for my White Sox. They are not mine in any ownership sense, but as a devoted fan, I feel kinship and a symbiosis to their efforts. Lately, we've been down.

A large division lead has disappeared and a playoff appearance is very much up in the air. Coupling that with team history and the general state of existence makes for trying times. For the uninitiated, I will explain.

The Chicago White Sox have not won a World Series in 88 years. They have not been to a World Series in 46 years. They have not won a playoff game in 12 years and have not been to the playoffs in five years. There is no goat curse, no piano-in-the-lake mystic and no spurned demigod wishing them ill. They've just been bad for a really long time.

The White Sox are the uncrowned second team of the Second City , the flipside to the primetime Chicago Cubs who are owned by a major newspaper that controls a nation wide television channel to feed a massive fan base. The Sox are largely forgotten in baseball lore because of a lack of sizzle. For decades, fans of the Cubs and the Boston Red Sox would disguise pining for an elusive championship with a devil-may-care attitude and grim pessimism, respectively, with the White Sox ambling mutely behind.

It had been this way for my entire life and way beyond, but this all changed last year with the implausible thunderbolt that propelled Boston from a 0-3 hole to topple the evil empire New York Yankees and bum rush the St. Louis Cardinals. In breaking the status woe, the Red Sox have demonstrated the silliness of fatalism, and left Chicago baseball fans looking upon the world with new, hungry eyes.

Before the season, prognosticators anointed the reigning divisional champion Minnesota Twins and upstart Cleveland Indians as the factors in the American League Central Division, with nary a thought for the White Sox. I thought them remiss at the time and was born out as the months went by.

Yet, having possessed the best record in baseball for much of the season, the White Sox struggled mightily for the last two months while the foretold Indians have roared into contention with a .755 winning percentage since August and now seem poised to derail the White Sox and add them to a list of infamous baseball failures. The coming weeks will tell.

To be certain, this is only sports. To a hurricane victim it is rightfully a low priority, but don't tell me athletics has no value. Sports function as an outlet, distraction, pastime, communal rallying point and as a touchstone. In one of my favorite cinematic moments in an admittedly odd location, Daniel Stern of the movie “City Slickers” relates that when he and his father were arguing about everything, they could still talk about sports. It is a neutral common ground, accessible to any interested and mildly informed conversant.

In practicing this pseudo-religion, I understand the sun will rise tomorrow regardless of any contest but being a fan implies my mood will have a healthy margin of error. No team will win a World Series without getting through the playoffs. No team will get through the playoffs without getting to the playoffs. Perhaps this year won‘t be the year, but for all anyone anywhere knows, perhaps it will. The return will be worth the investment.

Reinging internet time waster

By Ron Felten - Columnist

Walt Kowalski, an undeclared freshman, was camped out in front of his computer Friday night when an instant messenger window popped up on his screen and interrupted an intense game of Battlefield 2.

“It was my friend Sam,” said Kowalski. “I don't know why he IMs me when he lives just down the hall, but whatever.”

Kowalski said his friend was so frantic that his typed messages were nearly incomprehensible. “I don't know if he was just jacked up on Mountain Dew or what,” said Kowalski, “but he kept mistyping words, and there were a bunch of ‘ones' where I think exclamation points were supposed to be. I eventually just yelled out my door and told him to come over.”

By the time Sam made it to Kowalski's dorm room, he had calmed down enough to get the news out: Facebook.com had finally arrived at UIS.

Facebook, a free social networking Web site similar to Friendster.com and MySpace.com, allows college students from around the world to link up with one another via a “friends” page and, further, lets members write comments about other users on what is referred to as “the Wall.”

The site's administrators must first add a given college to their list of approved schools before students from that institution can access the site's features. While Facebook.com has been up and running for over a year, UIS was added only about a week and a half ago, just as the rest of the country is beginning to get bored with the site.

“This is the moment we've all been waiting for,” said Kowalski. “First we got those column things in the quad, then we were made into a four-year university and now we have Facebook!”

But not everyone on campus is as excited as Kowalski about the university's new-found obsession. Jennifer Mulligan, a psychology sophomore, said she hasn't seen her boyfriend in over a week because of Facebook.

“He's totally fixated,” said Mulligan. “The last I heard, he had started some kind of group on the site – a fan club dedicated to himself. He won't return my calls and I'm pretty sure he hasn't been to class since this whole thing started.”

When asked if she plans to sign up for a Facebook account of her own, Mulligan answered angrily, “Hell no! I don't need the Internet to help me make friends.”

Some students, however, like Kowalski, object to Mulligan's response. “Listen,” said Kowalski, “Facebook lets me have tons of friends without any of the drama that comes along with them in real life. I don't have to visit anyone or remember anyone's birthday. I just click ‘add' and sit back while my popularity grows.”

Kowalski added: “And you don't have to shower every day for people to stay your Facebook friend.”

Steve Chown, a business administration junior, said that presentation is everything when trying to build a large network of online associates.

“The first step,” said Chown, “is to put up a good picture of yourself on your profile. If you've got ripped abs like me, it's only natural that you'd put up a picture of you with your shirt off. And you should definitely be flexing in the picture and maybe even holding a beer can. That shows the ladies that you mean business.”

Chown, who has 479 Facebook friends as of this writing, said one should use what he calls “the shotgun approach” to getting others to link up to one's page. “Just go around trying to add as many people as you can,” said Chown. “Even the ugly ones. Because, really, you never know who might have hot friends.”

Chown added that he doesn't even know who some of the people in his Facebook network are. “I think I saw this girl in the cafeteria once,” said Chown as he pointed to a picture on his computer's screen. “But who knows?” he said. “I'd do her.”

Over all, most UIS students seem to consider the arrival of Facebook to be a positive – yet admittedly distracting – phenomenon. “I wasn't doing any of my homework anyway,” said Kowalski. “And, even though this whole thing might be just a fad, when we get tired of it, we'll still be able to waste our time and procrastinate the old fashioned way: Internet porn.”

Sox to be me

Reinging internet time-waster