Many people these days don’t, either because all the tongues and saliva melt together, or it was the offspring of an inebriated evening.

It was a May day in kindergarten. I had seen my parents kiss, in one of those short bursts where they could stand each other’s company and had wanted to try it myself before school got out.

My victim was a girl named Cynthia. She has brunette hair that resembled the same shape as Darth Vader’s helmet. She was furiously scribbling inside the lines for some silly assignment at the round table right behind me.

I couldn’t fight the urge anymore – I stood up from my seat and smashed my lips right against hers.

Cynthia yelped like a dog that just had its tail stepped on and our teacher scuttled over and hoisted me right out of the classroom.

She moved that summer.

Despite that harrowing tale which began the downward spiral that is my love life, it was a social learning experience necessary to the growth of a malleable human brain. It perturbs me that school kids these days are facing banishment from institutions for multitudes of measly incidents.

A 14-year-old student at a Florida middle school was suspended for giving a hug to a friend of his. Not a bear hug, nor a hug around hips, a mildly affectionate hug amongst friends, or whatever else they decide to do when their parents are out grocery shopping.

The school’s strict no-hugging policy sees no difference separating a hug from sexual harassment.

This is disturbing to the highest degree. There is a fine line betwixt a friendly embrace and ‘pantsing’ a classmate.

Do kids still do this ‘pantsing,’ where you tear down a fellow student’s baggy leg coverings and laugh at their bare ass? I, for the most part, missed these hijinks as a middle school attendee being pummeled with weight insults.

No, my momma wasn’t “so fat,” I just really liked to eat and did not enjoy mild exercise. Sue me.

Getting caught having sex in the school library and hugging a friend farewell are two highly contrasting circumstances.

Another instance led a first-grader to be suspended for singing a verse from LMFAO’s “Sexy and I Know It” to a classmate while shaking his buttocks in her face.

There are definitive issues with doing both these acts at all, even more simultaneously, but to land a six-year-old suspension for the contradictory statements pumped at him through mindless media outlets? The problem lies higher than with a stimulated impressionable brain.

The boy didn’t invade anyone’s privacy except his own and should result in embarrassment within his class, not getting a recess from school. If anything, the children should beat him senseless for his mindless actions. That would teach him more than a slap and a letter home.

The policies on kids today is too strict and undermines lessons that need be learned the hard way. If I were not tormented as a child, I probably would not have turned out the way I did. There is a blatant rebuttal to that I’m sure.

Youth needs to learn first-hand the implements of society. It needs to be monitored, yes, but to suspend one for shake shake shaking that booty or reciting the droning lyrics to a pitiful song is an issue that needs to be taken up with bigger fish. Don’t blame the eggshell mind of children for picking up what is pumped into their veins.

The phrase, “utterly useless and makes me question the competence of my (apparently) criminally moronic species” is thrown around a lot these days. It fits best, however, in a rant about the ridiculous things that can be found for sale on the Internet and what it says about the future of our kind.

Though it might seem like I’m quoting product pitches I found on stolen note cards of the desk of the alarmingly erratic Gary Busey, I’m not. The following products are 100 percent real, and I am sure you can find them with a quick Google search.

For centuries, books and literacy have been a sign of at least slight competence. But when you can actually go out and purchase a book called, “How To Avoid Huge Ships,” there is something wrong. I’d like to think the title is a metaphor for drifting through the shipyard that is metropolitan life, but unfortunately, it’s not. It’s literally a hardcover book about what precautions you can take to avoid crashing into huge ships. Not just ships, mind you, but ships so big that they require the word ‘huge’ and the majority of the picture on the cover.

Hey parents! Do you like horses? Or are you into weird kinky sex stuff that my editor has informed I should stick away from describing on a public forum? Great! Do you also have kids? Great! Do you want to traumatize them and make their inevitable psychotherapy sessions much more interesting for the therapist? Great! Then you should buy the awesomely named ‘Daddle.’

What is the Daddle, you ask? Well, allow me to explain. It is a saddle you can place on the back of a father, that the children can ride and ‘have fun.’ And by have fun, I of course mean feed their subconscious with content to fill their nightmares with. If you don’t have kids, that’s perfectly alright! If you own the Daddle, you are probably the sort of guy who doesn’t mind the occasional kidnapping!

How about a product that fights your ineptitude?

Are you so inept that you commonly find yourself asking the day of the week and also happen to own ZERO devices that show you the date? Then grab your credit card, hop on the Internet (which can inform you of the date pretty quick. Just saying.), and shell out about $40.00 + tax for the day of the week clock! This SkyMall-endorsed product (so you know it’s legit) is a clock that is separated into seven sections, one for each day of the week. I’m not kidding.

Are you an alcoholic and do you commonly lose things? No, I’m talking big things, like full size wine glasses. Oh you actually do lose things like that? That’s a wee bit sad. Well, the internet has got you covered. Meet the wine glass necklace! This un-genius — I mean ingenious — product hangs around your neck and holds your wine glass around your neck so you can’t lose it, much like when your mother would staple the field trip check to your shirt so your teachers can see how stupid you are. (It got awkward around junior year of high school.)

I don’t even have a pitch for this next item, because it doesn’t really make any sense. It is essentially a branding iron that you use on steaks on the grill. Because who doesn’t like the taste of melted douchebaggery in their food?

Quick science quiz, (who am I kidding? If you’re still reading this, your sense of humor is like mine and you’re probably not a chemistry major), what are the two things that makeup the majority of the air you breathe? The answers are oxygen and carbon dioxide. You actually don’t really want the carbon dioxide as much as the oxygen, but it’s a good thing that there is plenty of oxygen to go around.

But, if you’re the kind of selfish jerk who insists, “No! I want my own personal supply of oxygen!” Then you’re in luck! In my recent trip south of the border, I read a lot of SkyMall and remember commenting to the big fella next to me about how stupid the personal oxygen supply system is. He responded, and I quote, “zzzzzzzzzz” *snore* “zzzzzzzzz.” Whatever, I thought it was funny.

Are you a golfer? Do you have no qualms with public urination, but only if nobody knows? Well, enjoy the UroClub! This empty, prosthetic club serves as an empty chassis for your pee while on the golf course. Just hold it like you’re putting and do your business. It’s not like there’s a ton of trees around or anything. (I refrained from the multiple Tiger Woods jokes that should have gone in between every sentence in that paragraph.)

If you own the UroClub, you probably would also be interested in the Privacy Scarf. This ‘scarf’ wraps around your head and encases the area between your head and a screen you are looking at in a shroud that hides ‘whatever you don’t want to share with the world’. The ‘privacy scarf’ should be renamed to the ‘watch porn in public scarf’ because I guarantee that nobody is using it to hide their credit card numbers from the people around them, as the product suggests.

From Russia, with sarcasm,
Dylan

I can taste the vodka already. I’m so glad no campus staff monitors the contents of my “water” flask.

For those of you who had the extreme luxury of having lazy instructors who avoid finals week, you can go lay down in front of a speeding Bear Bus. For the majority of students who have an endurance test of piles of final exams, I’m here to help construct a solid study plan, now that last week’s vomit sessions have been systematically purged.

This is my first serious battalion of real exams. Having been a student at a community college, I can say truthfully Oakland University isn’t as big of a joke in comparison.

Perhaps if I didn’t spend the first five years after high school getting high in the back of an Astrovan, I would have set better goals and been cramming for tests earlier in life than cramming hash pipes.

I’ve come to find it’s nearly impossible to get any studious work done on campus, although I find having ass cancer more rewarding than studying. The racket of rabblerousing kids and teen moms inane speech, encouraging pregnancy and the monetary rewards of televised humility. So many distactions prevent important information from seeping into my mind.

The closest I’ve come to a successful study session has been barricading myself into a grandiose study room of Elliot Hall. Sweating profusely with intense focus, cramming every nook and cranny with passion, I was nearly done when some diabolical bastard had to come barging into the room, breaking my concentration.

Those study rooms really need locks.

The best place to plunge into books is void of all light. Take for instance the Oakland Center basement, which will also cut off your phone signal, secluding you into insecurity and prompting work to be done.

That or questioning the loyalty of your Hanging with Friends when multitudes of games have not updated in two hours. It isn’t that difficult, just play a word, damn it! Cue the tears of loneliness.

Unless you really need to get on Moodle, it’s best to put away your laptop so you don’t surf YouTube and get sucked into the holographic Tupac videos. Then again, you’ll be forced to use GrizzNet, so a working Internet connection really isn’t a viable option.

The best way to buckle down involves crumpling up this page immediately and tossing it aside. Quit being a crybaby and go find a dark corner to hit the books hard.

Distractions are aplenty at Oakland and there are only so many shady corners to curl up in. Find one quick, since the other three people who read this article might beat you to one.

I had a great year assisting you during your scholarly quests and venting my pessimistic perspectives. Enjoy your summer break brimming with booze and sun basking.

I hope to write for you next year. That is if I don’t get kicked off staff for having sexual innuendos busting out of every article I’ve had published.

10. Take your most “hood-looking” friends and treat them to a mani/pedi adventure.

9. Go enjoy sunlight, take a long walk on the beach and then take up smoking.

8. Punch people in the face, right before they begin to eat their food.

7. Get a facial from one of your classmates. A certified, professional male classmate.

6. Go see a movie while wearing a long-necked giraffe outfit.

5. Go to Ann Arbor on April 20.

4. Draw Digimon characters with the Pokéchalkers.

3. (censored by the editor, but it had something to do with sex).

2. Listen to “Sexy and I Know It” while sexily eating a big jar of mayonnaise.

1. Start a food war at an old folks home and leave while they have flashbacks.

That’s walking 30 feet into the Oakland Center alone.

I dare not step foot on the third level of Kresge this time of year. If you exhale deeply up on that floor, there’s a 70 percent chance you’ll get a harpoon gun pulled on you.

April is “Stress Awareness Month,” perfectly in tune with a barrage of finals and projects, making sure the collegiate crowd is aware of how stressed they actually are.

I, too, have been adversely affected by this time of month. I had to apologize to one of my groups for being a slack-assed student and lock another group in the underground tunnels so I can blame the lack of work accomplished on their absences.

The designated months need to swap awareness dates or the collegiate system must edit the layout of their finals, because this contradictory predicament is ridiculous and it is very self-centered for people expect me to change my opinion on the matter.

I cast my vote for the former. Swap Stress Awareness Month with Black History, since they got screwed with a 28-maybe 29 day month, and they’ve been screwed enough in the past.

Surely I am not the only one who has the Hawaiian Islands breaking out on my forehead resulting from stress and mental menstruation brought on by extreme procrastination of studying. Students are stress puking from the unbearable pressures placed upon them, and then other students are puking because of those disgusting regurgitation noises of Chartwells productions. There are pools of anxiety puke all over Pawley Hall and litter the greens of campus.

I feel the instructors do not understand sometimes the multiple aspects of a student’s life. For the average student, there are roughly four classes, a work schedule and a minimal sleep schedule to juggle. I have to include rounds of excessive drinking as my own personal stress relief.

I don’t have the ample spare time to read 10 or more novels.

I think I may have just admitted to my professor I did a very underwhelming job and completely falsified the research on my last project.

Forget about your physical health, as well. It goes down the toilet with your sanity when you have textbooks strewn in front of you. It’s so much easier to buy five McDoubles for 99 cents than a salad for five bucks.

What I’m getting at here, somewhere, is that Stress Awareness Month is a redundant title for the month chock full of anxiety. Save us the sugar coating.

Everyone is well aware that this is a stressful month, especially the people who witness me punching myself in the pubic bone until I black out.

Now excuse me, I have to clean up these puddles of Chick-Fil-A and get to my assignments I’ve neglected while writing this article.

There have only been a handful of commercials in the last few years that successfully told us, the consumer, what the product was about memorably and that didn’t bother/annoy/lie to us. Like Hanson’s or the Sam Bernstein Law Firm. Insert joke here.

There are three reasons. First, they had a catchy jingle that eerily seeped into your subconscious and stayed there like that one friend that invites himself over and crashes on your couch for “just a day or two, man,” (or a week). Secondly, they provided you with easy-to-remember contact information. And finally, they weren’t lying or presenting ridiculous situations that even M. Night Shaymalan or Quentin Tarantino look at and say, “Dang, I wish I was creative enough to come up with a crazy plot like this.”

But it seems that commercials lately haven’t caught on to that winning combination. The Blue Tax commercials, for example — I have never seen a mascot as terrifying as Max, the Blue Tax bug-eyed crack addict. There is nothing like a big-eyed, fast moving crazy person to portray the levity of federal tax.

And the newest Taco Bell commercial is a complete disaster. The people at Taco Bell try to convince you that the appropriate party contribution is a 12-pack of tacos. And they go even further, painting the other people as lazy or stupid for bringing things like ice or chips. Because only idiots would even think to bring ice or chips to a party, right? They don’t stop there. They show a pretty girl giving a coy look to the jackass who brought a toilet-destroying quantity of fast food to a party. You know what all the pretty girls like? Fast food tacos, apparently! Also, you can’t help but notice that there are around 25 people at the party. The genius brought 12 tacos. Yeah, the guy who brought ice is stupid.

Speaking of disturbing commercials, hats off to Activia yogurt. I don’t know what their actual motto is, but it should be something like, “It makes you poo!” The commercial features Jamie Lee Curtis sitting with an odd assortment of other women, eating yogurt. (Party!) Their conversation is essentially as realistic as the ‘not feeling so fresh’ conversation. They are talking about how Activia yogurt is a tasty alternative to Senna Laxatives. This is not a conversation anyone has. It’s weird, uncomfortable and upon further examination… yep.

It’s a Christmas party.

There are wreaths in the background. I wish Santa came in and said, “You have all been good girls this year! Painless pooping for everyone!”

Almost as awful are the H&R Block commercials. You know what a prank is? A prank is a practical joke that ends with laughter. The H&R Block commercials just exhibit douchebaggery. They built a whole ad campaign around the idea that a camera salesman somewhere in the seventh circle of Hell tells people they can have a camera for free, just to snatch it away from them at the last second, commenting “You didn’t really think we’d give our best stuff away for free, did you?” The ad is clearly fake, because if it was real, I guarantee that guy would have gotten punched in the mouth. He just has one of those really punchable faces and the fact that he is also apparently a jerk doesn’t help his cause.

And lastly, Dr. Pepper 10. Seriously, what the hell, Dr. Pepper? Let’s just get it out of the way.

It is quite possibly one of the most sexist and misogynistic 30 seconds of television in any given time slot, including the time slot during South Park and/or The Rush Limbaugh Comedy Hour. (That’s what his show is called, right?)

P.S. Instead of paying for any more of those dreadful Mucinex commercials, can we just invest in bringing back Billy Mays? Please? Vince from Shamwow gives me nightmares.

From Russia with sarcasm,

Dylan

———

Contact Staff Intern Dylan Dulberg via email at dsdulber@oakland.edu. Follow him on Twitter @dyldude64

I would flush a toilet 600 million times. I would invest in a multimedia department for The Oakland Post that actually did its job. I would buy my place of employment and immediately close it. I would pay to have your vocal chords ripped out if you utter that question to me once more.

While the $654 million Mega Millions jackpot has been decided, I didn’t buy into the hype like so many contemporaries of mine — money is an immortal corrupter. I know this firsthand.

When I was 16, I had a great-grandparent pass away. Instead of giving a crap about her death, all I cared about was the enchanting $2,000 I was bestowed.

I didn’t care that I was a soulless rotten boy. I threw money at my friends like I was king and frolicked in my newly instituted wealth.

Until my back account over-drafted two weeks later and daddy kindly bailed me out.

Friday night revealed three winners scattered across America in Maryland, Kansas and a little town in the middle of Illinois.

Luckily for the winners residing in Maryland and Kansas, they can remain silent and stash their $218 million cut quietly. The tiny town of Red Bud, however, is currently in cahoots and newsfeeds alike, as state laws do not condone anonymous winners of lottery tickets and the winner has yet to cash in his or her chips.

The townspeople are staked out with pitchforks and torches ready to rob this sucker if he or she comes forward waving the golden ticket.

If I were this winner, I would think long and hard before revealing my identity. Money brings out desperation and severe douchebaggery.

When I had my two grand baller status initiated, I foolishly offered money to any woman who would accept dollars from my pudgy palms, in exchange they graced my presence in public for 90 seconds. So long as I had green, most overlooked the fact of my mutilated face and let me shower them in rainbow-sprinkled cookies in the cafeteria.

I can’t sustain the potential damage of having 100,000 times my dismal disintegrated amount now.

People long forgotten would emerge in zombified hoards with dollar signs for eye sockets, clawing and grasping every Benjamin in my butt pocket.

Family members who have written me off as a foolhardy wordsmith would surely be enraged if not treated like they don’t exist, which is essentially what I do now.

As much fun as being a puppet master might be, I don’t think the government should force that option on any lucky person.

Anonymity is essential to at least cling to a shard of normal life. If you turn your life into luxuries and suddenly speed up in a shiny Lamborghini with a Skeletor-looking model, some will suspect you were a Mega Millions winner, or have murdered Donald Trump, stealing his money and hot daughter.

When your name gets printed in the papers as the winner, there’s sure to be a price on your head; every criminal is gunning for your house more than ever. Investing in security personnel and fleets of rabid Doberman Pinschers.

Congratulations to your new lavish life, shell-shocked Illinois resident.

I wouldn’t regret burning that ticket and keeping a normal ramen noodle-stocked life in order to cling onto shards of sanity.

That’s just my opinion, though. Pay me 50 bucks and I’ll shut my big mouth. Please — the fridge still needs milk.

Contact Multimedia Reporter Brian Figurski via email at bdfigurs@oakland.edu or follow him on Twitter @WhatDidBeefSay

Where and when else can an 18-year-old get straight-up obliterated other than in Mexico on Spring Break? Only one problem. Traveling there sucks.

I write this from seat 17f of my initial flight from Detroit Metro Airport to Lauderdale, Fla. Or maybe I should say seat 17f and a half, because the Michael Moore-sized (emphasis on the ‘M(o)ore’) guy next to me is doing a good job on splintering the armrest into oblivion and effectively wedging me against the wall. But hey, at least I’ll be thinner, much like a compressed accordion, by the time this flight is done.

Thankfully, this episode of Dexter I’m watching involves chopping an inconveniently-sized killer into a more convenient size, so I am casually hinting that my friend in seat 17e and 17f simultaneously could befall the same fate if he doesn’t move over. (Note: if I am arrested for a murder of a larger gentleman anytime in the next week, please destroy this document.)

For the last few years, every flight I have taken has been either Delta or Airtrans or Southwest. But this time, we took a different airline. And this has taught me that the airline you take can determine if your plane ride is smooth, or if you resort to writing a Mouthing Off article within the first half hour.

I’m sure you can tell which of the two kinds of airlines this one is. In order to not offend any airlines, let’s just call this one… Spirit Airlines or something like that. OK? We’ll call it Spirit Airlines.

So here’s the thing about Spirit Airlines. They suck. If you follow me on Twitter, you may have already read some of my thoughts toward Spirit airlines.

1. It’s called Spirit Airlines because by the time you make it through the multiple, endless, indistinctly-separated lines, you have passed on to the spirit world.

2. It’s called Spirit Airlines because your bags have to be, like a spirit, practically weightless for the drones at the gate to accept them without charging you and extra $50. (Hintety-hint-hint – Yolanda at gate 6.)

3. It’s called Spirit Airlines because, like spirits, assistance or terminal attendants of any kind are damn near impossible to find without advanced sonar equipment. And even then, it’s all luck.

And then  — oh great. Julius Ceaser next to me is snoring. On my shoulder. Help me. Please.

—

Dylan Dulberg is an Intern at The Oakland Post. He is a senior at Seaholm High School in Birmingham, Mich. and will be attending Oakland University as a journalism student.

If the cries of rapture are true and these are the last nights on Earth, these are some of the most sought-after activities on our bucket list.

10.  Play a “Mad Men” drinking game in which you take a sip every time a white person isn’t on the screen — it won’t be very many.

9. Ask current OUSC President Benjamin Eveslage for fashion tips

8. Locate and  talk to “all the pretty girls that go to Oakland University”

7. Meet Sofia Vergara and have  her speak lots of sexy Latin words

6. Become the Chartwells idictator and have students battle for food, “Hunger Games” style

5. Dress up like a Disney Princess, go to Disney world and scare all the kids away

4. Run around beaches and ikick over sandcastles that kids have worked hard on

3. Rob a Burger King dressed iup like The Hamburglar

2. Check into one of Kim iKardashian’s bedroom via FourSquare

1. Become the mayor of her bedroom

The campus is alive.

Funny thing is, it’s only March.

Normally, snow ravages the Midwest until the middle of April, keeping kids focused on their schoolwork before Spring blossoms and preoccupies the minds of many.

It has prevented me from getting any serious work into any of my classes for the past two weeks.

The trees are starting to bud again, two months early.

We haven’t even endured April’s showers and I already have dandelions coming up through the cracks in the pavement in front of my house and sending me into very public sneezing fits.

The medical community hasn’t adjusted, as Sudafed and other sinus medicines are still low in stock.

All while the climate is 85 degrees, all-smiles-and-sunshine in the mitten, it’s snowing in dry arid Arizona, a southwestern state that doesn’t even know what rain is.

The first news reported that a cargo plane dropped packing peanuts before the Arizonans figures out it was actually the weather.

Is anyone else concerned that the sun might explode this year? I truly love the warm weather and the scantily-clad clothing choices that come with it, but if I had a choice between sweaters and Birkenstocks or booty shorts and jogging bras, I choose the former. I have Internet access for the latter.

This wacky weather has to be one tell-tale sign that everything is true – 2012 is the end of the world.

I didn’t buy into the hype at first.

How could the world just suddenly cease to exist like clockwork? The idea seems ludicrous on paper, how low can people go?

Now the signs are crystal clear. There is an apocalyptic ending looming over us. Crazed hobos on street corners of populated cities screaming, “you’re all gonna die!” are still very scary, but speak the truth, and I can’t help but throw change at them.

Now that my eyes are open, I can see everything. Little things I may have shrugged off as sheer coincidence are now blatant inductors death eternal for Earth.

The iPad 3 is released as the iPad 4 was announced. Tim Tebow. There is no milk in my fridge. Far East Movement has a second LP. I found seeds in my clementines. Figurski/Reed 2012 is gaining steam in the OUSC elections. Madonna is now an “electronic artist.” Still, there’s no milk in my fridge.

There’s still time to turn things around, right?

Nope. We have crazed neighborhood watch figures shooting teenagers to death over, what? A neon colored bag of Skittles that somehow resembled a weapon? Perhaps a squirt gun from the endcaps of a supermarket aisle.

If nature doesn’t destroy the world by year’s end, civilization will do it in.

That is, as long as “Teen Mom” keeps airing, proving that stupid people produce more offspring than the rest of the population, and will probably have stupid kids.

If this isn’t foreshadowing a volatile ending for dwellers of Earth, I don’t know what is — Nicole Polizzi, or the famous Snooki monster from MTV’s “Jersey Shore,” is pregnant.

The first problem is that a cast member of the “Jersey Shore” is being allowed to repopulate the planet without an uproar.

If there were ever an unarguable debate for pro-choice supporters, something Rick Santorum can’t formulate a rebuttal about, it would be video clips of the dribble shown on MTV.

Secondly, Snooki ‘s due date is none other than Dec. 21, 2012, the Mayan calendars predicted end of days. How could the Mayans have predicted the coming of the anti-Christ all those years ago?

I am clueless as to what nonsense to expect from the remainder of the year, but intuition tells me the worst is in-store for humanity. Keep your fingers crossed for the best, Grizzlies, but if you’re in the same boat as I, we should try to have some fun.

Let’s start planning for the best funeral ever.

Contact multimedia reporter Brian Figurski via email at bdfigurs@oakland.edu or follow him on Twitter @WhatDidBeefSay