Ed. note: David was struck by the roller street hockey dude and is in a coma. Davis Scrottinger has kindly agreed to fill in.
Dear Davis,
I just transferred here this semester. Last week on the 80, I thought I overheard two people talking about going to see ""the terrorist"" when the weather warms. Are my ears deceiving me? Does this campus really harbor a terrorist?
—Martha B.
Martha, when I first came to UW, it was about a week before I thought my ears were deceiving me. Granted, I lost all hearing in my left ear at a hella ragin' DMX concert four summers ago, but I've become one heck of a lip-reader, so that shouldn't matter. I remember it like the last time I pooped my pants: the day my house fellow convinced our floor the terrorist was ""totally rad"" and people started visiting it every day. I realized then what my mom meant when she said college was for learning, not making friends.
There are many ""open"" secrets on this campus, so open that no one seems to remember they're supposed to be secrets. Some, like the toxic-waste dump that Lucky was built over or the 2002 Halo-inspired massacre at the Lakeshore dorms, are essentially harmless—really just a garden for witty jokes and nice conversation starters to use at Johnny O's. Others are so putridly sinister you wonder what spell of the devil keeps good men from speaking out about them. The ""secret"" terrorist here is of the latter type. Coming here, I knew this school had a reputation for leaning to the left; I knew its commie boosters didn't say ""Go Big Red"" for nothing. But I never expected it to be liberal enough to like terrorists. Yet if you ask any senior what his favorite part of UW-Madison's campus is, after four years of brainwashing by the godless extremists who fill our faculty he will no doubt tell you it's ""the terrorist,"" who evidently lives by Memorial Union. Also, you will discover that in addition to transforming its students into freedom-hating terrorist sympathizers, this university has also utterly neglected to teach proper diction, as the senior you question will invariably fail to pronounce the final ""t"" in the word ""terrorist."" The bastardization of the English language may be a battle we have already lost with this generation, Marth, but I hope you will join me in taking a stand against any Osama bin lauding it might engage in.
I'll never forget the day sophomore year my own brother asked me if I wanted to go hang out at the terrorist's. I told him I wasn't too keen on hanging out in caves or constructing shoe bombs. He acted like he didn't know what I was talking about, as if all anyone ever did at the terrorist's was ""read a book"" or ""watch the sunset."" He had actually convinced himself that the terrorist was harmless.
""Oh, come on, Davis,"" he said. ""You'll love the terroris[t]. It's the only one in the country that sells beer!"" I looked at him with my icy glare and told him that I didn't care if he sold Dippin' Dots—a food item for which I have a known weakness—for $2, I still wasn't going to finance domestic terrorism, with bills displaying George Washington's face, no less! Yusuf Islam is the only terrorist in the world that used to sing ""Peace Train,"" but that doesn't mean he doesn't still read books about building shoe bombs and pray to The Lah for the sun to set on western civilization, I said. My brother just gave me a naïve and bewildered look and left. It was then I knew the Scrottingers had lost another to those ""Progressive Danes."" My dad said he'll come around, though.
Family issues aside, Mar-Mar, it's important you know how to handle this. I'm not your stepdad, so I'm in no position to lecture you, but I have some advice. Apparently, our campus has harbored this terrorist for a while, so whatever terrorist attack he's been planning, we have to believe it's going to be soon. I haven't been able to pin down exactly where his base cave is, so we can't call in the preemptive strike just yet, but my sources say it's somewhere near the lake on the northeast side of campus. So if you value your life, you should steer clear of that stretch of space behind Memorial Union, which is too bad because there's such a nice big patio back there.
Do you know where the terrorist is? Tell Davis at dhottinger@wisc.edu.
