Times are tough. We are in the midst of a horrendous economic crisis, thousands are dying needlessly in conflicts overseas and innocent people all over America continue to be subjected to Nickelback on their radio stations. Locally, a backwards honor referendum is being passed (or are they? I wrote this thing four days ago, people.) Students are coping with the loss of their most trusted news Web site (Juicy Campus), biweekly Cavalier Daily columnists continue to work without pay and needy underage punks constantly pester surprisingly old second-years named Nick Eilerson to buy them beer.
Now throw all that in a pot and stir it up with a smorgasbord of personal problems: I recently suffered a sprained ankle, am still recovering from yet another bout of football-related depression (or, in medical terms, Rooting-For-the-Dallas-Cowboys syndrome), continue to live in Gooch/Dillard and was recently dumped by my girlfriend of three years, Selma Hayek.
In light of such daunting predicaments, most heroic people around the world might muster up a healthy dose of courage and do their darnedest to overcome their trials and tribulations. But as for me, like any other self-respecting American citizen, I know that if Brett Favre is calling it quits, then by golly, I might as well be too. That’s why I’m dropping out of school and doing something more productive with my life, namely moving to North Dakota and starting an emo band.
I’m moving to North Dakota because ... umm ... well, frankly I don’t know. It is simply a frequently overlooked place that is, according to Wikipedia, technically part of the United States, although a recent poll found that more than 60 percent of its citizens believe they actually are in Canada. Anyway, if there’s one thing these semi-Canadians, and the rest of this depressed country for that matter, needs, it’s a pathetically self-deprecating group of lowlifes artistically expressing their sorrows via crying into a microphone and piercing body parts previously thought to be unfit for earrings, including the inner eye.
My emo band will be called — in honor of North Dakota’s state bird — The Weeping Mongeese, and we will embark on an epic tour of the Great Mongoose State, travelling from farm to farm and whining about the tough issues hard-working North Dakotans want to hear us whine about, such as their rivalry with South Dakota and the fact that Selma Hayek dumped me for some hotshot French CEO to whom she apparently was already engaged. We will quickly become the most decorated emo band in North Dakota history by way of chart-topping hits like “Crying Myself to Sleep,” “My Eyes Are Bleeding Thanks to This Earring” and “Mount Rushmore, Where’s Millard Filmore?”
Unfortunately, our North Dakotan audience, being primarily comprised of muskrats, moose, mongooses and various other animals that start with the letter “m,” probably will not take to our revolutionary brand of music too well. After noticing that our listeners only seem to become angry after hearing our music, we will bravely heed the call of the people and take the band in an entirely new direction, switching to a style of music that will no doubt please the angry masses. Yes, we shall become a death metal band and change our name to Bloodthirsty Birdflesh. Playing songs like “Rotten Gutworms,” “Gandalf v. the Pig Destroyer” and the more melodic acoustical version of “A Bison is Just a Cow with Hair,” we will take our bold new sound to the next level by venturing beyond the rolling prairie and travelling to even more obscure venues like Native American reservations and the University of North Dakota. There, we will stumble upon another obscure nomadic band, a two-man acoustical New Zealand group called The Flight of the Conchords, who will complement our sound perfectly. Soon after joining forces, however, we will suffer from a series of poor managerial decisions by our new band manager, Murray, who will sell all our instruments to a pack of mongooses.
Oh, who am I kidding? My North Dakota fantasy will never materialize, because I know that two or three months from now, Brett Favre will, for the fourteenth time in his career, announce that his retirement speech was just a joke and that, of course, he will be playing football next season. So I too will feel the need to return to my post.
And though I will return, I will have to continue enduring the ever-growing corruption that envelopes our planet. When will the day come when the world embraces peace? When will our nation’s athletes start telling the truth? When will the seemingly omnipresent evil forces of the world, like Ann Coulter, cease to exist? I don’t know, but as for me, I’m just gonna keep living by the immortal words of the Great American Band, Nickelback, which proclaims, “We all just wanna be big rock stars, and like everybody else I hope this band gets SARS.”
Nick’s column runs biweekly Mondays. He can be reached at n.eilerson@cavalierdaily.com.
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