>>> The Rollercoaster of Drama
By staff writer Simonne Cullen
September 26, 2004

Wisconsin, the land of dairy. For decades it has been providing America, Canada, and maybe even Mexico (although doubtful, I think they drink donkey milk down there) with the creamy fruit of millions of udders. Where would we undergrads be without Wisconsin? There would be no cheese on our pizza, no milk in our Starbucks lattes, no gelatin in our Jello shots. (Gelatin comes from cow hooves people.) If it weren't for Wisconsin, the rich would all be sitting around drinking that nasty organic soy-tofu-bean milk substitute and the poor would be using powdered milk, which could easily be mistaken for crack.

I grew up on the chic city streets of Chicago, where the only livestock I've ever known were at the petting zoo showing during my friend's eighth birthday party. (P.S. While baby goats look cute and friendly they only want to eat your clothes. It's true. To them nothing burps better than denim.) Anyway, sincemy cousins own a dairy farm in Kenosha, we make sure to visit whenever my mom has the sudden urge to go outlet mall shopping. So it was at a young age when I realized that cows are the best animals in the world. Think about it. What other animal gives you ice cream, Jello, meat, and then when you're done slaughtering it for its edible value, very stylish baseball gloves and leather jackets?

I could go on for hours about cows and their intrepid greatness. But let's talk about something that relates more to college life and not the 4H Club shall we?

A lot of Midwestern universities exist in the middle of cornfields. Who wakes up one day, breathes the brisk morning air (unless you're downwind of the cattle poop pile—then it's the crisp manure air), looks far out upon endless rows of cornfields and says, “You know what would look great here? A university. A university where kids will learn so much more because they won't be distracted by city life—and perhaps might some might even develop a higher appreciation for agriculture.” That's most likely how the University of Illinois-Champaign, Indiana, Iowa, and Nebraska were founded (based on thorough research of course). Ha. I bet that same guy never figured a city of bars would become a halo protecting students from the endless rows of cornfields (but sorry to say, not so much the smell of cow dung).

Remember that scene in the movie Love Actually when the ugly British guy walks into a Wisconsin bar and walks out with three incredibly gorgeous Wisconsin girls? That's the most unrealistic scene Hollywood has ever barfed up. My god the movie Taxi with Queen Latifah looks more realistic than that scene. With the exception of UW-Madison of course—we see enough of your girls' boobies on collegehumor.com to know you're a whole different breed of Wisconsinite. The rest of the state does not look like Shannon Elizabeth—well maybe if Shannon Elizabeth ate cheese curds every day for a year and got really bad highlights…then she'd be a little closer. I'm not going to lie here people: ladies in other states, you have the freshmen 15 and the sophomore 10 to worry about, we have the Wisconsin 45 to worry about…all four consecutive years. That's not a nipple collegehumor, that's just a cheese curd.

Wisconsin is a family-oriented state. All people do here is eat cheese, drink beer, procreate, cheer for the Packers, and get vanity license plates. And on everyone's bumper is the same sticker that says, “Green Bay: A Drinking Town With A Football Problem.” Which is, coincidentally, the Wisconsin Tourist Department's tag line.

That's really the one thing about Wisconsin that I cannot stand. Everything (from bars to shopping malls) is swathed in green and gold decoration with big P's on it. You know why Green Bay makes it to the Super Bowl so often? Because if they don't, they get pelted with chucks of cheddar by men and women (both equally fanatic) who would beat them with their own kids' strollers if they had the chance. That's the motivation here people.

When the Packers lose it's like the whole state goes into depressed mode. The first day of class was last Friday and during attendance my new psych professor noted that Iwas from Chicago. He asked if I was happy about the Chicago win against the Packers two Sundays ago. Treading lightly here, I thought I safely answered with, I don't really follow football. He said, well if you did you'd cheer for Chicago right? And I replied with, I guess so. He retorted with an eye roll, muttering something under his breath. Then he said that he hoped, for our sake, that the difficulty of our midterms would be based on the Packers game two days before. If they win, consider it smooth sailing, if they don't—well, it's not going to be pretty.

So Brett Favre, if you should ever stumble upon this column, know that you directly affect my academic performance. And I don't even know what number your jersey is, or what position you play for that matter.

Even hooking up in Wisconsin is a whole different culture. Girls drink so much that they can go out in a short skirt and big jacket and not feel anything. Until the long cold morning walk home when it gets to negative forty degrees and water pipes in the dorm begin to burst. There you are, attempting to run against the wind, barely able to breathe because the air is ice cold, eventually resigning yourself to a slow walk home while contemplating life, realizing that this walk of shame might damn near kill you. So you do what any other good beer-drinking, football-loving state resident would do: make a deal with the heavens to drink warm beer for the rest of your life if you can just make it home alive—and a small please for a couple more touchdowns in the fourth quarter if you do make it home. Because you don't earn psych grades in Wisconsin. Brett does.

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