the navel times and observer

Again, rummaging through old papers, I found a random list of goals from, I suspect, sometime in my freshman year.

1) Have a serious relationship: Technically, I did, though it didn't last long and there's been almost no potential of anything like that happening again since.

2) Get accepted to the MU Journalism School: I got accepted, graduated and I continue to reap the benefits.

3) To graduate with honors and with a 3.5 GPA: Eh, graduated, though with only a 3.3 GPA and no honors.

4) To find out who I am and what I want to be in the next four years: I still don't know really who I am or what I want to be and it's now been almost six years.

5) Develop a closer relationship with God: I did, actually, but in the last two years I lost touch with that relationship.

6) Take the first J-School class and graduate with the Honors College: This very clearly identifies the semester I wrote this, my first. I took that class, Principles of American Journalism, and a number of others. Though, while I didn't graduate with the Honors College, I think I graduated with about three Honors College credit hours.

I've been rummaging through my reams of old papers and I found one of my first news stories for The Maneater. Apparently between me, my editor and the copy editors we managed to spell Lockheed Martin both correctly, Lockheed, and incorrectly, Lockhead, inside a rather short story.

The Civic has been declared dead.

Monday morning I was about 20 feet from breakfast in Columbia waiting on someone to pull out of the diner parking lot, and was thus sitting in the middle of Sixth Street when someone pulled onto Sixth from Broadway behind me, was looking down instead of up and drove his front bumper into my rear bumper, causing $5,340 worth of damage.

Unfortunately, Kelley's Blue Book and the other driver's insurance company have determined the car is worth considerably less than that. As such, the insurance company, Allied, has declared it totaled.

Thus, unfortunately I have to hope whatever I can get for the damage is enough to cover the rest of my car loan, that I can get a new car loan and that it will be enough to buy a decent car. On the plus side, I'll soon be getting another car.

I don't know when I missed it, but when did Sesame Street begin getting corporate sponsors?

To fill in some background, I have Mondays off and today I felt especially ambitious and woke up early just to keep things somewhat near normal. Naturally the only TV really worth watching at 9 a.m. is on PBS, so that's where I went.

What should I find on screen? 4 or 5 advertisements in a row heralding the virtues of McDonalds, AstraZeneca (at least a Web site they've established), an organic foods company and others.

I have to say it threw me, how long as this been going on? Where are Sesame Street's normal sponsors? "A," "3," "Q," the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, viewers like me?

I mean how far does a Sesame Street corporate sponsorship go? Is there now a McDonalds on Sesame Street with a bunch of obese monster children hovering around it? Can Oscar no longer comfortably fit in his can?

Poor Mr. Hooper's gotta be spinning in his grave to see a predecessor selling only Coke in his store or promoting only Hershey candy.

Oh Telly, at least you haven't changed.