The pressure continued to mount on a local student this week after a conversation with his parents revealed he was responsible for filling several hours on a Saturday afternoon while his family visited. The phone call was peppered with lines like “There’s so much to do in New York City,” and “I’m sure you know all the best restaurants around,” but in fact the student had not been to the city all semester. His parents are coming in with high expectations having planned activities for Saturday morning, Saturday evening, and all day Sunday, but left a huge gap on Saturday afternoon. We caught up with the local student who was postponing several important homework assignments to research activities in the area.
“My dad said there was a cool art museum in the area, but immediately followed it up with saying that I probably wouldn’t be interested,” he told us. The student informed us that of course he wouldn’t be interested, not because the museum would be boring but because the Pinnacles took a trip there so it was a tainted location. Nonetheless, it would have ended the continued hours of yelp reviews and google maps time estimations.
“The yelp interface is really counterintuitive and ineffective, I might apply for an internship with them just so I can change it,” the student told us, poring over a thick notebook labeled Things I Might Be Able To Suggest For This Weekend. Our suggestion of using tripadvisor instead was rejected with a hearty “That little owl is gonna steal all my data and ruin my hopes and dreams!” Google Maps was deemed by the student to be an effective measurement of transportation times, “unless you’re taking NJ Transit and then it’s just a random number generator.”
We helped the student brainstorm new ways to think of activities. From selecting letters from a hat and seeing if they could be unscrambled to form a place to typing letters into the search bar one at a time and seeing what autocomplete thinks, every avenue of idea generation was explored but alas we were unsuccessful. As a premier journalistic institution, we don’t have to idea-generate our news, as we only report on the facts, so our skillset was poorly suited to this exercise. On a side note, if you have any tips for completely real news, please bring them to our office. Anonymous tips are accepted via paper airplane if necessary, but please no remote-controlled cars as the noises scare our punctuation editors.
Towards the end of our interview, the student received yet another call from his father. The phone sat on the desk, ringing and vibrating incessantly, but the student just stared. Dramatic music began to play in the background as the phone continued its jolly tune. “Pick it up; it’s fine,” we told the student. “No,” he said. “He’s going to ask where he should park.” After a few more notes from Jingle-Bells (the student is in the Christmas spirit already), it went to voicemail and we presume remains unreturned to this day.
The publishing of this article is a cry for help on our behalf for the student who told us to only publish the article if he had not found an activity yet. As this article comes out on Friday, his parents arrive tomorrow morning and have high expectations for a Saturday afternoon filled with excitement and quality time. Anyone with ideas is encouraged to submit them to our office where we will sort through the ones that might interest our parents before passing the rest on to him.
Off The Press is a satirical Opinion column written and organized by Off Center, often used to joke about current Stevens issues and campus news. It is currently organized by Off Center President, Matthew Brantl.
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