Daily Columnist

A thousand monkies at a thousand typewriters for a thousand years could eventually write one of these “Hi, I’m the new guy” columns. Even though it’s trite and hackneyed, it’s got to be done so here I am, the new monkey!

My name is Greg Jerrett, but like most men, I prefer to be called Daddy or Big Daddy or Big Papa, even though most women don’t really think that’s very funny at all. I like ranting, body surfing, 19th century French novels, snow cones and the love of a good woman, but NEVER in the same day.

I’d like to get jiggy wit’ it, but I don’t know where to find it.

I deliberately choose not to see Titanic; James Cameron scares me. I hope he doesn’t try to get me fired.

I do not believe that aliens walk among us, I think that aliens would be much more likely to drive among us.

I used to work for the Psychic Hotline, and just between you and me, it’s a scam. But if you have to call up and pay $5.00 per minute just to ask if it’s a scam, then you deserve to get screwed.

If I were stranded on a desert island and had to choose one book, one album and one person to take with me, I would take The Complete Works of William Shakespeare because it would burn longer, The Best of Barry White , ’cause I like to get freaky and Janet Reno because she could hunt stuff better than me, and I like to get freaky. It takes a strong man to love a strong woman. Don’t judge me!

I give most of the credit for my raging liberalism to Charleton Heston and his three greatest films: The Planet of the Apes, Soylent Green and The Omega Man. Every time I see this guy throwing a fit at some ultra-conservative hootenanny about how much he hates liberals and their environmental concerns, I laugh quietly to myself thinking about how many of us he must have personally created the moment he shouted, “Soylent green is people!” He just has to know it, too. I keep sending him those thank you letters. Of course, he’s much scarier today and as a result, he’s probably creating even more liberals as we speak. Keep up the good work, Chuck!

I am from Council Bluffs, the barfly of small cities. For anyone who hasn’t already driven through it at 90 miles per, it is on the fashionable west coast of Iowa across the Mighty Missouri from Omaha. All of the trees in Council Bluffs lean west. Our chief exports are violent, socio-political satire, pornographic videos and Iowans. We have routinely been voted the second most polite city in the United States by some magazine no one reads, and David Letterman once called it the “Armpit of America.” Most people from C.B. are happy to say that they are from there, just so long as they are saying it somewhere else.

Council Bluffs is like that neurotic guy at your high school reunion whose name you just can’t remember, but you know he was in half of your classes. His main purpose in coming is revenge; before the night is half over he’s drunk on seabreezes telling you you’re his best friend right before he lays into some former jock for hanging him off a balcony at the prom, ruining his life; then he passes out in the hotel lobby with the class skank. I don’t why it is, it just is.

I am not setting out to accomplish anything by writing this column. I am not on a mission, I have no agenda that I am aware of, not yet anyway. But I do think this will look really cool on my resume. I was going to put it on there anyway, though, right next to my two years in Vietnam and my charity work with recovering Baywatch addicts.

Greg Jerrett is a graduate student in English from Council Bluffs.