What if they fought? It’s the question we here at ThingFight have asked rhetorically and answered incoherently every Tuesday this semester. Contrary to what columns with punbelievable titles like ‘The Young and the Breakfast’ and ‘Burly Temple’ would lead you to believe, quite a bit of quality control goes into ThingFight. Every column starts out as a 400-page thesis, complete with parenthetical citations and footnotes, which is whittled down until only the juiciest bits remain. As you throw together your final papers, we thought we’d show you some of our own ‘come on, you can do better than this’ work. Here are a few ThingFights that never saw the light of day.
In what some still say was an impossible ThingFight, we tried to declare a winner in the eternal struggle between rock, paper and scissors. It seems as if the three are designed to be in constant turmoil, with none having what it takes to eliminate the other two. During field testing, Nick was hit in the head with a rock, Julian took a pair of scissors to the eye and Kyle hid under a large sheet of paper. We speculated that paper’s covering of rock wasn’t a ‘victory’ as much as it was ‘something that happened,’ but we were reminded by our lawyers that a legally-sanctioned ThingFight can only consist of two entities, and that column was replaced by the more crowd-friendly ‘Apples vs. Oranges: Are They Comparable?’
A lifetime of looking at things has given us at ThingFight a keen eye for the ambiguous, along with the realization that things aren’t always as they appear (Don’t give us that look, the lotion by the computer is for our soft hands and baby-skin complexions). Two things have taken the shape of exemplary models for the might-be’s: the inkblot and the common cloud. One is man-made, the other is all-natural. One’s black, the other’s off-white or potentially gray. We needed to bring this fight down to a more basic level: the inkblot is harsh, like a tattoo illustrated by Hannibal, fitting for the back of some sort of poisonous moth; the cloud is much softer and harbors a whimsical shape-shifting demeanor. And let’s face it, oftentimes they’re cute animals. Clouds win, but then again, our shrinks tell us we suffer from severe mottephobia and an uncanny case of sissy pansy-itis.
ThingFighters tend to think that the best things in life are free, especially since we have realized that free things are all we really get nowadays. So it seems fitting to pit two of the heavyweight pro-bono pleasure-givers against one another: taste samples and goodie bags. Every day or so, any amount of granola, small fruits and Americanized ethnic goods are shadily extracted in minuscule increments from groceries nationwide. One could feasibly enjoy an entire meal just meandering through the aisles of a Whole Foods Market. Goody bags are flashy and fun, great for a party, but kazoos and Lego cars aren’t going to keep you alive in this economy. Your best bet is to stick to the shadows. Lurk by the Wonder Bread and leap for the open olives when the night watch moves to the cheese. One day, you’ll land a job as a journalist, seated at a flying typewriter that prints gold. Then you’ll get your goody bags. But not yet . . . not just yet.
The beginning of the year was a time of change: we had a new president, new schedules and of course, new episodes of ‘One Tree Hill.’ In times of change, one thing is always abundant: experimental drug use. We tried out two new street drugs in a ThingFight between angel meth (a stimulant) and baby acid (a hallucinogen). Relying on the democratic process led to a stalemate: Nick preferred the feeling of angel meth, Kyle voted for homestyle taste of baby acid and Julian just kept writing the word ‘leaf blower’ with his own blood. The fight was dropped when, during the typing process, none of us could find our hands.
The food industry is ripe with potential ThingFights, think Pepsi vs. Coca-Cola, baby back ribs vs. Cornish game hens or canned dolphins vs. Whale Bitez. But cereal companies face the most competition within themselves. Among many eerily similar cereals, we chose Fruity Pebbles and Cocoa Pebbles as the closest rivals. They seem to be the same cereal, each originally made in 1969, consisting of crisped rice and artificial flavors and heartily endorsed by the Flintstones. We plugged the pros and cons of each into ThingFight’s Apparatus for the Calculation of Realistically Objective Nonsensical Yelling Matches (A.C.R.O.N.Y.M.), but its circuits overheated, causing a small power issue in Warren Towers. We apologize for the inconvenience.
When books open they should do more than assault your eyes. An additional full-frontal blow to the nose, fingers, ears and hair would be ideal, but Miley Cyrus has yet to release her autobiography, so we’re left with the single-sense focus in literature for now. Let us then consider pop-up books and touch and feel books. The first is perhaps more aggressive; its tendency to ‘pop out’ is often frightening, and the possibility of a paper cut increases tenfold. The latter is a bit more humane; real fur from real dead animal corpses pasted onto thick cardboard eliminates the finger danger that pop-up books only exacerbate, plus it’s great for gaining a few extra seconds of a child’s attention span, provided he’s already drooling from a Ritalin overdose.
During one of several romantic beach picnics we shared this semester, the issue of baskets vs. buckets was brought up. It was quickly dismissed. There are some things you just don’t question.
Let’s move on. Entering buildings is an involved process in a day and age where so many different kinds of doors exist. Consider the automatic door and the revolving door. Clearly there’s great appeal in not doing anything to walk through the threshold. We at ThingFight would like to have a servant chew our food and laugh at absurdly hilarious columns for us, but the child inside all of us screams to run in circles. A revolving door is hazardous; its circular motion is enough to disorient even the most determined employee and send him whizzing out from whence he came; but it’s so similar to a roundabout and merry-go-round that there’s no arguing its necessity. Novelty wins over lethargy any day. Revolving doors it is.
We considered a battle between Lewis and Clark (16th-century explorers and raccoon hat enthusiasts) and Lois and Clark (‘Superman’ characters and also raccoon hat enthusiasts). We always wondered: which duo had more sexual tension? Lois and Clark flew around Metropolis like T.I. in a private jet with a groupie, but we all know Lewis and Clark shared sleeping bags for more than a few lonely nights on the trail. Ultimately, there wasn’t enough information on the explorers, as they are fictional characters. We forfeit this one to the Superbro and his Superbiddie.
Nature is full of its odd little dramas, icebergs and asteroids being among some of the more involved ones. Iceberg made her ‘big’ debut in the blockbuster hit ‘Titanic,’ acting alongside the up-and-coming hunk of a cruise liner from Liverpool, but the underwater shots were less than flattering on Iceberg’s unshapely figure. Nowadays, the earthbound sibling keeps to the oceans where she can hide her embarrassing spare tire underneath the waterline and nurse her iced heart. The asteroid, Iceberg’s bruiser brother, is considerably less self-conscious, and spends his time heckling the larger celestial bodies, occasionally joining up with his buddies to form a belt around the more attractive planets. Through his sister’s recommendation, asteroid was called upon to act the villain in the instant classic ‘Armageddon,’ narrowly missing an Oscar for special effects. It came down to voting holdup: Nick campaigned for the iceberg, Julian was for the asteroid and Kyle was still hiding under a giant sheet of paper.
You may remember our research assistant, Calvin Kreipiefaise, and our best boy key grip, Adam Alliteration. During an exceptionally lazy week, we assigned them research duty for our ‘Ice Cream Trucks vs. Bookmobiles’ edition of ThingFight. In the spirit of ‘The Fast and the Furious,’ they decided to rent out an ice cream truck and a bookmobile and race them down Commonwealth Avenue. The ordeal ended when Calvin tried to hit the Comm. Ave Running Man for ‘bonus points.’ Needless to say, our interns have been demoted from their already lowly positions. They are now the head editors of The BU Underground.
The final ThingFight: who had more fun with ThingFight this semester, the visibly annoyed public or the ThingFight writing squad? We’re not going to get sentimental here, but never mind, we definitely are going to get sentimental here. We’ve laughed, we’ve cried and one of us has vomited while peeing himself. ThingFight has been an absolute thrill, like the rollercoaster whose safety bar fails right before the triple loop. It’s been a blessing, like the unwanted baby that turns out to be really good at the piano and gets you super rich. It’s been a pleasure, like the analogy you use when you don’t need it but you feel like you have to put in because, in high school, they taught you that to do everything in threes. Stay tuned next semester for ThingFight’s spunky sequel, ThangFight: the readability levels go down, and the sass levels go way, way up.
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