The Sociopolitical Implications of the Sacco-Vinzetti Appeal

I'm sitting in the back room staring at a com­puter screen full of blank white pixels. At the other end of the house, my mother and brother are watching Monsters University. Our house is a small one, so I can hear the cheers, the screams, the fanfares, the obligatorily mopey three-quarters-of- the-way-through-the-story soundtrack.

It occurs to me that this might actually offer a small glimpse of what college is like, so I take a moment to pray that my higher educa­tion experience will involve considerably fewer "spro­ing" sound effects.

I stretch my arms, then begin racking my brain for ideas.

It's only eight-fifteen, and my eyelids are already drooping, although I sup­pose that's not necessarily a bad thing tonight. Being tired going to bed means I'll spend less time falling asleep and more time actu­ally catching forty winks, which means I'll wake up tomorrow morning rested and perky, ready to take on the world, with the understanding that "the world" consists mainly of small groups of students from a handful of area high schools.

Tomorrow (at least to­day's tomorrow, as by the time you get this paper, tomorrow will look a lot more like the day before the day before yesterday) is Knowledge Bowl Region­als, which I am incredibly excited for. It's the first Knowledge Bowl meet of the entire year that actually counts for something - the top two teams advance to State, others end their season - and my team's ready to kick some serious hypothalamus.

But that's tomorrow. This is tonight, and my in­ner wellspring of ideas did not get the "column is due by Monday at eight A.M." memo. I'm chewing on a blue paperclip, flipping it around with my tongue, as though this will somehow snap me into the proper columnist mentality.

Not working.

I hear jazz music com­ing from the living room - still the movie, I presume.

The creative part of my brain has already hit the sack. This time tomorrow, my entire brain will have done likewise. Knowledge Bowl meets are a bit like running a marathon with your cranium, after which point said cranium loves nothing more than to call it a day and punch out early. One of my teammates is fond of saying that his post-meet thought process is limited to "tree = pretty, fire = bad". (And he's usu­ally the most coherent one.)

Yup, that'll be me on Monday afternoon, and that's why I finished my fourth-period notes a day early, because my cranium will be in no shape to as­sess either the bearing of Progressive philosophy on Woodrow Wilson's Four­teen Points or the sociopo­litical implications of the Sacco-Vinzetti appeal. As a matter of fact, I'll probably be hard-pressed to assess the location of the nose on my face.

And - what's this you say? I've ranted so long I only have half an inch of column space left? Jeepers, it's nine o'clock! Why am I still up? On that note, why are you still up? I would've fallen asleep right around paragraph 4. Say, if you're brain's sturdy enough to make it this far, you oughta turn out for Knowledge Bowl next year!