Point/Counterpoint: Will Northwestern make the Rose Bowl?

(via chicagosidesports.com)

POINT

by Evander Jones

As much as it pains me to say it, I don’t think that the good old Cardiac ‘Cats have a Nebraskan hail mary’s chance of making The Grandaddady of Them All. Unfortunately, there are more impediments blocking Northwestern from making the Rose Bowl than there are ways for NU to lose a game, but these three sticking points immediately jump out to me as reasons Northwestern doesn’t have a chance to make this New Year’s Tournament of Roses:

Point/Counterpoint: I’ve Decided to Stop Drinking vs. WHO WANTS TO DO SHOTS?!?

Point

I’ve Decided To Stop Drinking

by Kevin Greenberg

I think I’ve reached my limit. It’s been a fun ride but it’s time the rubber hits the road and I curb my drinking. I know I’m going to miss going downtown on Saturdays and hanging with Greg on Thirsty Thursdays, but I just don’t have time for that kind of stuff anymore. I’m finishing up my senior year and I know it’s time to buckle down to make sure I’m ready to graduate and get a job.

The years really have flown by. One night you go to bed at 5 a.m., a freshman with nothing to lose, and the next morning you wake up at 8 a.m., a senior about to step into the real world. It really hits you hard.

Point/Counterpoint: The Base System

Also like in baseball, there's usually a pitcher and a catcher.

There’s a question we all ask our single friends regularly, usually when they show up looking unkempt, worried, and possibly pregnant.

“How far did you get with them?”

This is a question that SEEMS like it would have simple answers. “I let him touch my vagina.” “I touched her vagina,” “We started to get naked but I ejaculated prematurely,” these are all reasonable responses. But, for whatever reasons, (mostly embarrassment) people never give these answers. Instead they rely on euphemisms, the most popular of which is “The Base System.”

Which would be fine, that’s cool guys, its totally fair to equate sex to baseball – they’re both exhausting team-sports that are hard to watch for more than ten minutes – and, just like baseball, I don’t really understand the rules. But if we’re going to use a base system, we need to have one common definition for all the bases. And right now, that consensus does not exist. Is first base kissing? Does tongue have to be involved? Where does tactile vaginal contact fall? Boobs? What about BOOBS?! WHO’S GOING TO TALK ABOUT BOOBS?!

Don’t worry, we will. And at great length.

Anyway, here are the two different ways you can interpret the base system. Which one is right? Sound off in the poll below.

FIRST BASE

Sometimes you can just guess...

Point, by Sad Bones Malone
First base inhabits this weird realm of ambiguity. Everyone understands that kissing is involved in some capacity, but this begs the question: “how much kissing?” We both agree that a peck does not constitute first base, but I feel that to actually get to first base, you have to be “making out.” There is an underlying expectation that there’s a little bit of hands, and a little bit more action than a single kiss. It should be a semi-extended duration that might involve a little bit of exploration. First base contains a whole host of operations — hickeys, ear-play, fondling — these are all entry actions to the sexual experience. And since first base is the entry way to the other bases, all these activities are constituted within first base.

Counterpoint, by Manua Hiki-Hiki
You have to be kidding me!? I mean, you have to do a little exploring in the land of the mouth to be considered “at first base,” but first base does not mean you have to be searching for the hidden realm of the esophagus. First base is an important step, but IT’S JUST THE FIRST FUCKING BASE!!! Using your definition as first base is like saying you don’t know anything about geography until you know the capital of Zimbabwe (you should really look into learning that though, as Harare is bomb as Hell). Next thing you’re going to tell me is that I have to be inside a girl’s pants to be at second base. Like, really? Really?!?

SECOND BASE

Although he's usually hopelessly out of breath by the time he rounds third.

Point, by Manua Hiki-Hiki
Actually, let me just preempt what I expect will be your naively asinine answer: There’s no way being inside a girl’s pants qualifies as second base. I have far too much reverence for the vagina to place it at such an easily accessible base. If a 500-pound bear-creature named Prince Fielder can make it to second-base in a game of baseball, then searching the mystical vagina cannot be second-base – because second base is PRETTY FUCKING EASY to get to. Want to know what’s not easy to get to? The Vagina. Therefore, those two things cannot be equivalent — it’s math. We all know the real second base: Boobtown. Boobtown is a very important step and deserves its own base. You cannot neglect boobs. Boobs are awesome. Getting to touch a girl’s boobs is like riding a bike for the first time: both are important landmarks in your life, both cause a big sense of accomplishment… and I ejaculated after both. All excitement issues aside, boobs are very important in the grand scheme of the “game of love” and deserve their own base.

Counterpoint, by Bad Bones Malone
Listen guys, I don’t want you to think I’m coming from the wrong place. I love boobs, and I have the upmost respect for boobs — in fact, some of my best friends are boobs. But if we only have three bases to work with, boobs aren’t deserving of their own landmark.

She just has... so much... you know... CHARACTER!!!

Because, as much as I like boobs, they aren’t even close to being equal the vagina. When a guy gets drunk and gets a little boob-gropey it’s “a little creepy,” when a man decides to go straight for vaginas it’s “a little bit of a felony.” Those lines are drawn for a reason, the vagina is simply far, far more important than boobs.

The fact that boobs don’t get their own base also has to do with the function of the base-system — it’s shorthand that can be used to denote romantic progress. And, while I’m sure it was nice, I don’t really care if you touched a girls boobs. We aren’t in junior high anymore. Boobs get touched all the time — and if you’re making out with a girl it’s not an unreasonable jump to assume you might have felt her up. If you’re using the proper definition of first base — my version — then you’ve already covered fondling anyway. Congratulations.

The first time you touch a girl’s vagina is important — it’s the first time you have a chance to let her fake an orgasm (laaaaadies), which as far as I’m concerned is the EXPRESS PURPOSE OF SEXUAL ACTIVITY.

So if you’re going to chart the progression of sexual activity, then you better fucking have a stop reserved for the first time you take an action that actually ends where you’re trying to go.

THIRD BASE
Consensus: I think we can all agree here: Once the trouser dragon has entered the salivary sea, you’re at third base.

HOME
Consensus: If you’ve solved the coital conundrum, you’re home.

The proposed base systems have been researched by many a student at Harvard, Princeton, and other places where these things never occur… and that is why we need your help. Vote in the poll below and help solve history’s second most important Trojan War (ahhh, get it? Trojan. Like the condom. SEX).

–Sad Bones Malone and Manua Hiki-Hiki

Point/Counterpoint: Peanut Butter Patties vs. Tagalongs

POINT: Peanut Butter Patties are the real motherfucking deal

The only thing more delicious than a Peanut Butter Patty is two Peanut Butter Patties, served by Natalie Portman

So there’s this astoundingly delicious and delectable dessert that I freaking love. It is affectionately known as the “Peanut Butter Patty” among its admirers, and the scrumptious power of this cookie cannot be underestimated. Astute Americans from New York to California salivate worse than an adolescent female at the opening of Never Say Never 3D merely at the thought of wrapping one’s lips around a Peanut Butter Patty and sinking into its ludicrously luscious interior. The interplay between chocolate, peanut butter, and cookie is titillating to say the least, and exquisitely heavenly at best. Needless to say, Peanut Butter Patties are pretty gosh-darn fucking amazing.

Yet there are still a few ignorant Americans who deny the orgasmically divine existence of Peanut Butter Patties. I’m speaking, of course, of my ignorant, dimwitted, and deliciousness-denying colleagues on the far-left who insist, against all reason or logic, that we should instead direct all of our yummy praise at “Tagalongs.” Can you believe that shit!? These Tagalong dirtbags are robbing America of its culinary identity, reducing the simple elegance of the Peanut Butter Patty to a name better reserved for that kid you met once during Wildcat Welcome week, yet who still insists on texting you every weekend to find out about parties. Without the Peanut Butter Patty, what have we become as a nation? Lose this symbol of American piquant pleasure, and risk losing all that we’ve accomplished as a nation of trans-fats consumers? Nice try you Neo-Nazi Communist Anarchist Soccer-playing Tagalongites, but I love this glorious nation far too much to sit idly by while you destroy one of the greatest examples of our national pride.

by Evander Jones

COUNTERPOINT: Tagalongs: The Life-Blood of our American Existence

What's more American than Dairy Queen? Nothing, except Tagalongs.

I want you to envision something wonderful for me. Picture a cookie. This isn’t just any cookie: it’s a mound of creamy peanut butter encapsulated in a shell of smooth, tantalizing chocolate. Now picture yourself gently slipping this 12 gram stone of delight from the plastic package that has served as a gentle and loving home. You caress its smooth edges with your shaking fingertips and hold it in your hand as the light but arousing scent of chocolate and peanut butter wafts towards your welcoming nostrils. You place the cookie in your salivating mouth and take a bite. You swirl your excited tongue as bits of chocolate and peanut butter meld forming the perfect symphony of sweet and salty. The pleasure is so intense that you let out a soft moan. Finally, you swallow the last bite of this titillating treat and sit back in satisfaction.

Ladies and gentlemen, you have just eaten a Tagalong.

Now, there are some small-minded people out there who will tell you that the proper name for this moan-inducing dessert that we have come to love is “Peanut Butter Patty.” I can assure, you that this is fascist propaganda. In 1921, the young Benito Mussolini brainwashed Troop 246 of the Girl Scouts of the USA into telling their fellow Americans that the cookies were known as “Peanut Butter Patties.” (Fun fact: Mussolini played the violin.) Il Duce did this in an attempt to divide Americans to the extent that civil war would distract the nation from beating the shit out of him in World War II. So let us end the right wing madness that begot this nation’s confusion over the name of a Girl Scout cookie. This debate has consumed America more than abortion and Arcade Fire’s GRAMMY win combined. They are called Tagalongs. Now. Forever. Now, in the name of Juliette Gordon Lowe, can we all just get back to our lives?

by Blaise Bernard