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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (Jan. 8, 1999)
NEWSROOM: (541)346-5511 E-MAIL ode@oregoa uoregon.edu ON-LINE EDITION: www.uoregon.edu/~ode ©regonff^merafo EDITOR IN CHIEF Ryan Frank EDITORIAL EDITORS Kameron Cole Stefanie Knowlton Starting the new year with a bang... \ columnist rejlects on lije and death as he careens into 1999. N! ew Year’sEve. 11:50 p.m. Absolute dark ness. “Highway to Hell” blaring on the ■k radio. The dial displays some ✓ alien AM frequency as the AC/DC anthem screams out of the speakers, penetrating every y micro-cleft of my numbing body. j As the time sucks through my cerebellum I quiver and jam the foot to the crumbling floor; full throttle, hammering my way up the black ness of the freeway. Gunning across In terstate-5,1 realize that I am amid the beautiful sea range and the snowy Cascades, in the valley... of death. And white like the snow on the mountains are the lines that are viciously vacu umed, like a supersonic Hoover, as the car darts along the endless slab of straight tar that vanishes in the distance. Another New Year is nigh and desperation takes over. l’v* The engine is a lulling ^ drone, the road is a Mgr’sgL lazy straight line, but the pain and 'y fear won’t go away. \ Solution? More \ speed. And as the j foot presses HEH^PP | against the floor, ) the speedometer j needle creeps far / tiler and farther to / the right. The legal j limit exceeded by j many, many digits. / The car continues to I frenziedly devour the j white lines that disap ■T I pear as the ground be ■ / low is over taken by the ■ j explosive speed. And as I W * fly" fly my car through the de dv serted valley, I come across the inevitable: 1 he explosion ot a naive, road-crossing raccoon splatters animal blood and fur on the cracking windshield. The wiper, faced with the lack of water, spreads the noctur nal beast’s remains on the stained glass as if it were butter on toast. Vision is now completely shut off. Even so, the needle continues its defiant crawl toward max speed. Opinion Vince Medeiros wii vjuu, ciuuiiici yccu . is it worth it? And you may be think ing: “How dare you ques tion our almighty Lord in whose sacred hands reside the power of deciding the destinies of all living things in this world?” Well, I dare question it, indeed! And I tell you readers, it’s not worth it! Enough of all this an guish and torture that nave luimemeu my uiuiiudiic exisitJilUtJ for the past several years. Can’t take it anymore. And the upcoming year promises to be even more hellish. Twenty credits sadistically await me this term, ready to destroy every attempt I might make at having a little bit of a life. Plus there’s work—a freaking drag. The campus night life has been as ex citing as sex with an aged, haggard prosti tute, and my once-treasured stack of pom has become too old to comfort my misery. Not much hope there. So, as the road bends, I go straight. A precipice looms ahead. I’m probably go ing to die, exploding on the ground below, the glow visible for miles, and my body re duced to an amorphous mass of bloody mince—my lifeless head writhing as the last muscles finally cease to move. But as I get closer and closer to my doom, I suddenly ease my heavy foot and slam on the brakes in a desperate attempt to halt the inertia that will lead to my in evitable fate. A horrendous shriek ensues as the brakes bum, trying to fight the violent ro tation of the tires. Just inches before the abysmal cliff, the wheels finally pause. Jeez. Close one. But I thought I should give 1999 a bit of a chance. Vince Medeiros is a columnistfor the Emer ald. His views do not necessarily represent those of the newspaper. „.DOMT WORRY. PoiKS.' /M OKAV/? ir 6eh,jww_ (OUIDNTWU JU$T PMtOON ME? LETTERS PQUCY The Oregon Dai ly Emerald will at tempt to primal letters containing comments on top ics of interest to the University commu nity. Letters must be limited to 250 words. The Emer ald reserves the right to edit any let ter for length, clari ty, grammar, style and libel. Letters may be dropped off at EMU Suite 300.
