Americans are a spend-happy bunch. We're raised from day one with commercials telling us to buy (roughly in order) new bibs, faster toy trucks, new duds, faster real trucks and new bibs.

It's great that Boston University's School of Management has a Starbucks. It's a perfect symbol of the corporate world to which all SMG students will someday belong.

Every year, there's a big science brouhaha so that people who don't know science can get excited about science. In my junior year (2003), I was all woohoo! about the invention of a meat tree. That's a tree that bears steak instead of fruit. You peel an orange and it's meatball dinner!

While watching Tyler Hansbrough (same name!) absolutely wreck the Michigan State Spartans Monday night on national television, I was given a little shock when CBS Sports decided to turn itself into a veritable music promotion show and premier a 90-second clip of a new Green Day song called 'Know Your Enemy.'

When I was accepted to Boston University four years ago, all I read of the letter was 'Congratulations Miss . . .' and then immediately posted the news on my MySpace and drove all of my high school textbooks into the arid Southern California desert and buried them alive.

When former Vice President Dick Cheney was in office, Americans, not just Republicans and conservatives, regularly fell to one knee as he walked by. So it should be no surprise that the nation shuddered when Cheney said that President Barack Obama had made the nation less safe.

ThingFight headquarters, located conveniently inside an active volcano below the Charles River, is home to activities you're better off not knowing about. Forbidden experiments to create a new animal more whimsical than a unicorn while at the same time more hilarious than a kitten dressed as a firefighter.

When President Barack Obama took office, he swore that America was a 'friend to each nation . . .' [that] seeks a future of peace and dignity.' These were more than empty words (although he humorously included Russia in that list of nations), but now the question is who would want to be America's friend.

Imagine if each stationary bike, treadmill and elliptical machine in the Fitness and Recreation Center used the friction created while you ran to charge your computer battery. Think of it - all those feet powering all those computers and all that energy going to a practical purpose. I wonder how much we'd save by simply unplugging our laptops from wall outlets.

What the hell are 'apple bottom jeans?' I'm sorry. Maybe I'm missing something, but it just seems like jeans that make you look like the bottom of an apple would not be appealing, let alone lyric-worthy.

Everyone has one once in a while - or at least had one in his or her life. A lot of people have more than one and at different ages. Some people get their first one earlier than others. My first real one was in fifth grade.

Due to an unfathomably bizarre accident involving a speeding DeLorean and Christopher Lloyd, Randy was flung eons into the future last week. Until Lloyd can work out how to undo the error (he suspects it'll take about 1.21 gigawatts), a Randy hurled back from the end of time will fill in on Pinion's Opinions.