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Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Snow making you angry? Make it fun again!

Although winter flurries can be bothersome when commuting to classes, try to embrace the idea that snow can actually be fun. Snow is a versatile medium and it should be the source of laughable and enjoyable entertainment. Forget the usual snowboarding and skiing, think outside to box and have fun in the snow - there’s plenty of it. Here are a few ideas to start your snow fun!

Miss your pet?
Use your pet as your snow muse. Here is the way to bring Fluffy or Sparky to Pullman. Take a mound of good packing snow and begin with the torso and then work up to the head - just like a snowman. After finishing the foundation of your snow pet, move on to the details. Use an ice-cycle for a tail and all that street gravel to simulate the fur effect. Spray a fine mist of water all over your snow buddy when you are finished and place outside overnight. For a fun joke place them in front of a friend's outside door and enjoy their reaction.

Sick of paying sky high rent?
Sculpt your own shelter. This may be an oldie, but the satisfaction of building your own shelter out of snow is like no other. If you want to build a fairly large structure, I recommend using a medium sized plastic wastebasket as a mold for your snow blocks. Start stacking them in a circular fashion gradually building up and into the center. Use outdoor furniture and trashcans as support during the building process. Once all of the blocks are in place, fill in holes and smooth out the edges of the snow blocks. When the entire structure is finished, use a spray bottle to mist water inside and outside of the igloo. You'd be surprised to find out how warm a shelter make out of snow can be.

Into extreme sledding?
I advise to exercise extreme caution when attempting to build and use a snow ramp. This ramp requires a house where you have access to a sturdy low-raised roof or a raised deck. Because of the recent snow fall there is plenty of snow piled up on your roof or deck. Whip out your shovel and push all of the snow into a pile directly against the house/deck. Shape the pile into a flat ramp and pack the snow down firmly. I advise using a large piece of cardboard to smooth out the ramp surface. Please do not spray water onto the ramp to make it slicker. Clear all hazardous objects away from the path of the ramp. Once all safety precautions have been checked and double checked, grab your sled and enjoy.

Some Ways to Avoid Cabin Fever This Weekend

Cabin fever is a condition caused from being in a confined space for a period of time. More often, it creates restlessness and irritability. There is a possibility that the term originated when settlers would be snowed into their cabins and would have to wait for the spring in order to travel to town.

According to weather.com, we can expect snow every day through next week. For those not interested winter outdoor activities, there are plenty of things for you to do outside of the house. Pullman transit is a good alternative to driving and walking, and can take you just about anywhere in Pullman.

This weekend brings Cougar Men’s Basketball back to the Palouse. On Thursday they will be playing the California Bears at 7:00 p.m. on Friel Court (Beasley Coliseum). On Saturday, the Cougs will face the Stanford Cardinals at 12:00 p.m. on Friel Court.

Other Cougar athletic events happening this weekend are:
Friday – Swimming vs. Oregon State, 5:00 p.m.
Track Invitational in Moscow, all day
Saturday – Track Invitational in Moscow, all day

The Student Recreation Center (the REC) can also provide some good entertainment away from the house. Besides offering workout equipment, the REC has pool tables, a swimming pool, hot tub and a lounge area. It is a great place to hang out with your friends, outside of the house and inside from the cold.

Eventually we all have to sit down and do some studying and homework. Instead of doing your work at home, try going to one of the coffee shops in town. Some places to check out are Café Moro, Daily Grind, Starbuck’s and Zoë’s Café. For those that are 21, Rico’s is a pretty cool place to relax and do work as well.

Hopefully you’ll get out of the house this weekend and avoid cabin fever.

Get Out of the Cold, and Into the Theatre!

This being the perfect weather for some nice indoor activities, I thought you might like to know about a few movies you can catch at the Pullman Village Centre Cinemas.

Juno is about a high school student who, after one night with her best friend, finds herself pregnant. She decides that adoption is her best option, and finds a family who she can really connect with. Juno, played by Ellen Page, goes through many traumatic yet hilarious situations while in her junior year. This is a suitable film for guys and girls alike. Juno's love interest, Paulie Bleeker, played by Michael Cera (Superbad) plays a similar role as the sweet and confused boy next door. Juno is upbeat yet down to earth and worth the eight bucks for an hour or so of laughs.

If you're interested in more suspensful, hopeless situations, then you should check out Cloverfield. This Blair Witch style of filming is exciting yet nauseating at times. A surprise going-away party is being filmed by a friend when what seems to be an earthquake shakes Manhattan. It soon becomes apparent that the cause of the "quake" is actually alive. After being seperated from many of the party guests, Rob (Michael Stahl-David) goes searching for the woman he loves, who happens to be in the center of the mayhem. Rob's friend Hud (T.J. Miller) keeps records of the evening with a camcorder which ends up with government officials. Some surprisingly funny dialogue takes place, but if you're prone to motion sickness waiting for the DVD might be a better option. Cloverfield is definitely worth seeing if you like thrillers and surprise endings.

Well, I've talked about comedies and suspense films, so what else is left? A chick flick, but of course! 27 Dresses is about a young woman who makes it her life's priority to handle all of her female friends' weddings. She has been a bridesmaid, you guessed it, 27 times. Jane, played by Katherine Heigl, begins to question her life as a professional bridesmaid after her sister, Tess begins dating Jane's long-time crush and boss, George. Jane's life gets completely turned upside down after meeting Kevin (James Marsden). Their relationship makes things complicated for both parties, especially after it is discovered that Kevin is a journalist. This romantic comedy has some elements seen across the "chick flick" board, but the cast is great and the plot is refreshing. Check out 27 Dresses if you're looking for some light-hearted fun at the movies.

For more information about these and other movies playing in Pullman, and for showtimes, check out Pullman Village Centre Cinemas.


We Want To Get To Know You

Take our survey so we can write things you want to know about. It takes less than 10 minutes and it's real easy. You're bored in class anyway, so what's the harm??


http://www.zoomerang.com/survey.zgi?p=WEB227D6328BVX

Monday, January 28, 2008

Someone Big Comes To Pullman... And We're Not Talking About Elton John

While you might not be feeling Sir Elton John’s love, we do have another pop culture icon coming to Pullman who’s got a lot of love to spread. Literally.

The Student Entertainment Board is bringing the porn king himself, Ron Jeremy, to face off with the porn pastor, Craig Gross, on Tuesday, February 5th, 2008. The two men will verbally duke it out as to whether or not the porn industry is beneficial to our society.

The event is purely student-oriented. Students not only get to go to the event for free, but they will also have the opportunity to create pre-determine questions that will guide the lively, and hopefully slightly racy, debate.

Ron Jeremy has appeared in more than 1800 adult films and has become the face of the porn industry. He has appeared as a celebrity star on The Surreal Life and as a guest on the Jerry Springer Show.

Craig Goss is a pastor and the founder of xxxchurch.com, a website devoted to telling the truth about the porn industry. This website has seen more than 60 million visitors and the numbers continue to grow.


FAST FACTS:

Who: Porn King Ron Jeremy vs. Porn Pastor Craig Gross
What: A Porn Debate
When: Tuesday February 5th, 2008 at 8:00 P.M.
Where: Beasley Coliseum
Why: Seriously? It’s not every day that Ron Jeremy comes to your campus.



Check out this awesome video from www.porndebate.com.  This will, without a doubt, get you excited.





For more information, check out:

Many WSU Students Will Not Be Feeling the Love the night of April 12

This Mom's weekend thousands of students and their mom's will be sitting around trying to make plans due to their main event falling through.
As many are aware the Elton John concert tickets went on sale Friday at 10 AM. Even though many students had the conflict of class, Beasley had no problem selling the tickets out in the time span of 3 hours and 40 minutes. However, out of the 10,885 total tickets sold only 700 were given to students at Beasley.
Many students and their mom's are enraged by the fact they were told the best way to buy tickets would be online, but when they logged onto Tickets West they were greeted by a page saying they were under routine maintenance. Panic came across everyone who hoped to catch a glimpse of the Rocket Man so many ran to Beasley to join the thousands of other students, or tried calling Tickets West only to get disconnected.
Tickets West made this statement on Beasley Coliseums website about the issues that occured.


TicketsWest is pleased to have assisted the Beasley Performing Arts Coliseum in selling out the Elton John performance scheduled for April 12, 2008. Following are some statistics with regards to sales channels:

Box Office: 700 - 6.43%
Internet: 4,460 - 40.97%
Call Center: 2,174 - 19.97%
Outlets: 3,551 - 32.62%

Obviously this onsale generated a tremendous amount of interest, with demand far outweighing availability. Throughout most of the onsale, our web servers experienced over 6,000 concurrent connections. Qwest reported that at one point we had over 5,000 calls per minute running through their circuits to our call center.

The TicketsWest ticketing system was fully functional and transacted orders from all sales channels throughout the onsale period. Due to the heavy traffic to the website, on two separate occasions, at 10:21 AM and 11:12 AM respectively, TicketsWest engineers displayed the TicketsWest maintenance page for a period of approximately 6 minutes in order to allow existing traffic already on the TicketsWest.com site to complete pending transactions.


On the 11th Elton John will also be performing in Missoula. This will be an Encore perfomance from one they previously had on September 28. The same concept happened with their ticket sales the first time through. This is why he is returning and this time the ticket process was done differently. The schools newspaper the Montana Kaimin said in a recent article that ticket sales this time through went much better.
It is interesting that before us another school went through the same situation, and becuase of it is now doing it over. It just makes one think why didn't WSU learn from the mistakes that had already been made?

For more information go to these links:
The Daily Evergreen
The University of Montana