Things The Man Doesn’t Tell You about Going Vegetarian

LOOK HOW HAPPY SHE IS. DON’T YOU WANT TO BE THAT HAPPY???

Hey kool kollege kid, want to check another cliché off your list? Already converted to Buddhism, studied abroad, went Greek, and pissed away your parents’ retirement funds playing 2048 instead of taking finals? Need something to mitigate the fears of your advancing alcoholism? Don’t worry, you don’t even have to move to save the world. You can literally eat fucktons of fries and be able to call yourself a hero. How? Skip the meat, become vegetarian, and BAM: you’re compassionate. Now go forth, and quote Finding Nemo un-ironically because ~fish are friends, not food~.

But wait[1], that being said, here are a few things to keep in mind coming from someone you should totally trust completely with all life decisions because internet:

The Top 5 Species of CTECs

Welp, it’s getting to be about that time again. Just as you start to cram for finals and mentally prepare yourself for a few all-nighters, Northwestern decides to saddle you with your quarterly Course and Teacher Evaluations. (The second C stands for “Cooch”, or so my roommate tells me). So to use as you please, here are your top five formats to help you get through CTECs so you can start worrying about things that matter, like New Years plans.

5. The Pshhh

In Defense of Self-Medication: An Attempt to Cure Winter Quarter Depression

Then again, I’d be depressed if I had to wear that cardigan.

Seasonal affect disorder is a thing. A REAL thing. I mean, the acronym is literally SAD so the shrinks who came up with it were either fucking with us or spent a half hour with a Northwestern student (read: me) and realized Googling “teach me how to be happy” and “people having a worse day than me” on a semi-regular basis are grounds to be concerned about mental stability. And this SADdness infiltrates your life in every way until the only thing saving you from full-blown depression is the knowledge that a repeat of House Hunters might be on later and that maybe the couple will be beautiful and loaded.

A Pep Talk For Your Finals

Are you a Wildcat? ARE YOU A MOTHERFUCKING WILDCAT!?!?

Listen up, kiddies, because this is going to be the nicest damn thing you hear from Sherman Ave for the next three years.

You’re going to rock your finals. Because we said so.

Remember the first house centipede you found on your wall freshman year?  You captured it live in the free purple plastic Northwestern cup with the weird straw, dropped it in the toilet, watched its disgruntlement as it flailingly realized its own mortality, and showered urine and verbal profanity on it before flushing. That centipede was a mild and euphemistic foreshadowing of what is going to happen to your finals this week.

Sherman Ave Freshman Guide: Libations at NU

What most intoxicated freshmen look like to us.

So you’re going off to NU this fall, eh? You like to party hard? NO YOU DON’T, HIGH SCHOOLER. Now that we have that aside, let me be your tour guide around the beautiful bar that is the NU campus.

BEER
No shit you’re going to find beer. What did you expect? Prepare for keg beer, Keystone Light, Busch Light, and PBR galore. Occasionally you’ll find something else, but don’t get excited. For the love of God, please do not drink the bottles if you find any in a fridge! That shit is stealing and is uncool. Be thankful enough that NU’s frats don’t charge like asshole state schools. We’re nice like that. Don’t trash the place.

Bag Tax in Evanston?

Welcome to the People's Republic of Evanston

Earlier this week, the FWH, or “Fuckers We Hate” (formally known as the Evanston City Council) recently proposed a 5-cent tax on all paper and plastic bags in the city of Evanston. On campus, this has spawned controversy and inspired impromptu musical performances. Additionally, it has prolonged the FWH’s long-standing tradition of controversial taxes, laws, and ordinances; Evanston has managed to legislate something questionable with approximately the same frequency of Northwestern’s defense allowing a third-down conversion. This proposal leads us to wonder: How would a bag tax impact students?

It seems that for most students, a bag tax would have a minimal effect on their daily lives. Consider the stores in Evanston where we most frequently shop.

CVS
Usually students use CVS when they only need to pick up one item, like crayons or Magnums (I’m not referencing the firearm). Generally, the only time students need a bag to carry their items home would be in the case of what I call “Chaserpalooza” – a quarterly event in which four weeks of Kellogg studies are spent on 35-40 2-liter bottles of CVS brand soda, which, incidentally, tastes like fucking cough syrup. But even this is hardly valid as an argument against the bag tax; we here at The Ave know that the only real chaser you need is the palm of your hand.

Do 7/11 Taquitos go well with rum?

7/11
Let’s be honest. The guy who works the register at Sevy Levy (shout-out to Dijay) is undoubtedly stoned out of his mind every minute of every day. I’ve gone there at least five or ten times when he’s explicitly requested that I don’t pay the sales tax. The older guy who works there could attempt to prevent that, but he’s usually too busy singing “Moves Like Jagger.” The point is: Given the 7/11 staff, it seems implausible that a bag tax would actually be implemented at that store. But damn, do I love those employees.

EV1
Just as no student enters Ev1 without a backpack, no student leaves Ev1 with a paper bag. That would look suspicious. Instead, we choose to stuff our small backpacks with our four newly bought handles of Smirnoff and take to the streets of Evanston. That way, we get to maximize the number of awkward encounters we get to have with professors, TAs, and friends’ parents on the walk back to campus when there are clearly multiple conspicuous protruding objects clanging loudly in our bags.

A box of clementines for only $15!? WHAT A STEAL!

Whole Foods
If you shop regularly at Whole Foods, it is quite improbable that a 5-cent bag tax would be a financial burden, and it is even less probable that you would ever conceive of opposing an environmental measure.

We can conclude that a bag tax would not have adverse effects on the majority of the student body. This seems especially bizarre, considering that this ordinance was proposed by the Evanston City Council. And it doesn’t negatively affect the Northwestern student body. Am I missing something? Is there a hidden clause that taxes the verbalization of the word “blowjob?” Did Morty finally kill off the Death Eaters that had penetrated the city council? Only time shall tell how the Evanston City Council has secretly designed this law to completely fuck us.