In recent weeks there have been demonstrations both on campus and off made by a group of UWF students attempting to persuade others to take certain political action.

Sometimes this action is directly related to events that have happened in the greater Pensacola community. Sometimes they are asking students to join their fight against the system as a whole.

I watched one of their demonstrations on campus last week and noticed that the student body seemed largely apathetic to what they were doing. Even if I am slightly sympathetic toward their viewpoint, I still have to wonder if the old tried-and-true method of taking to the streets really works anymore.

It seems like this entire decade has been filled with protests by people from one side of the political spectrum or the other trying to convert people to their point of view.

When Bush was in office we had an ever-increasing number of Americans marching on the nation’s capital and asking for the War in Iraq to end, or for the impeachment of the President. In spite of all of their hard work and planning, nothing changed.

I never heard anybody say that their minds were changed because of the angry protesters on TV. If anything, they complained that these people were getting the attention that they got.

It certainly didn’t put a dent in Bush’s morale, either. It’s the same with the Tea Party protesters (I’ll be civil here and not call them “teabaggers,” as much as it makes me chortle with glee), the abortion protesters on 9th and Creighton, or the “Bible Baptists” who condemn motorists out on Davis Highway. People don’t want to hear it.

They look the other way, drown it out with their car stereo, or even shout offensive things back at the protestors. You don’t exactly endear people to your cause by being loud and obnoxious about it in public.

In fact, you risk turning people off to it altogether. I am not saying that this group of protesting students were necessarily jerks to anybody.

I’m almost certain that they weren’t. I’m just saying that they shouldn’t be surprised if people were less than receptive to their message.

As we say in mass communication, “the medium is the message,” and nowadays if your medium is a bullhorn, you’re guaranteeing that people are going to take offense to what you have to say.

For my money, things like politics and religion are just way too personal to people for you to just change their mind on it like it’s a consumer product. I think the only real way you can change their mind on such matters is by just setting a good example for your cause.

As cheesy as it sounds, everything really is inter-connected, and if you don’t want to say it like that you can say that we’re all part of the same conversation. Everything we do communicates something.

You’re communicating with people just by how you act when you pass them in the hall. If you’re a cool guy, people are going to see that and want to know what makes you so cool and maybe want to get down with what you’re doing.

Just a suggestion.

Originally published by The Voyager for the University of West Florida.

Saturday night was the first time I’ve ever been put in handcuffs. In fact, it was the first time I had ever been slammed to the ground and forcefully shackled for threatening another person with… well, let me start at the beginning.

Saturday night Freedom and I were at Flounder’s and a girl we know was buying us shots at the bar. While we were standing there, she started talking to some little dweeby guy next to us and apparently he slapped her.

Freedom and I jumped in and told him to get lost, but he wouldn’t back down. Then he said he wanted to fight Freedom.

Freedom took a small shot at him and we all jumped in and broke it up.

I pulled the guy away and told him he needed to chill out. My mentality was that we were all a little drunk and we didn’t need to ruin everyone’s night with something lame like a fight.

Then he tried choking me, but I pushed him off and reminded him that I was trying to help him out. That’s when he looked me dead in the eye and called Freedom a n*****.

Here’s where it got interesting. Hearing someone call my best friend the N-word just seemed to activate some kind of strange mouth-slapping reflex I didn’t know about.

It was the weirdest thing. He just kept saying it, and I kept slapping him in the mouth. It was like some kind of race-themed Three Stooges skit.

After a few seconds of that, the bouncer hauled him off. I was still pretty agitated, so I said some things and the security people told me to shut up.

Sure, shutting up is fine, but I had to get the last word. So, just to top off the night, I told the guy if he said it again I’d do something terrible to him that only a proctologist has the right to do to another human being.

This must have terrified the security team and the cop who was there, because they immediately tackled me to the ground and handcuffed me.

I don’t know why — I mean I was just standing in one spot and chuckling to myself. Perhaps they saw me as an imminent danger to the rear ends of everyone around me.

It sucked, though. They broke my pair of silly, fake Buddy Holly glasses too. Jerks.

After a minute or two, they let me stand up and they took the cuffs off. I guess they could tell I wasn’t in a very violent mood or anything. I just thought it was funny more than anything else.

So yeah, that happened. My first time in handcuffs. It almost qualifies as the first fight I’ve ever been in, but it was more of a slapstick routine than a fight, really. The things I do for this column.

Originally published by The Voyager for the University of West Florida.

It’s Sunday, it’s raining and I have the sniffles.

The kind of sniffles that say, “Screw homework. Stay in bed and watch Lost all flipping day.”

Unfortunately, I’m a journalist and I have a deadline, so I have to ignore the things my sniffles tell me to do and talk to you people about my boring life.

Saturday night Freedom (tall goofy black guy, also writes a column here, we have a band together) and I decided to throw a party at his house, thinking that since our band hasn’t played any shows in a while that maybe we could just perform for our houseguests.

It seems like a pretty good idea on paper, because on paper you aren’t taking into account mild vampirism.

Two really good friends of ours were at the party, let’s call them Boris and Natasha, and they had brought some people along with them to add to the party.

Boris and Natasha are a unique couple. They’re both punk rockers, they both party like there’s no tomorrow, and I’ve never seen the two of them ever fight with each other. Until last night.

Boris went outside with one of his friends — let’s call her Rocky. Sure. So Boris and Rocky came outside and walked into the front yard waving a knife around and talking about cutting open Boris’ arm.

No sooner had I got over there to try and break it up than Rocky takes a nice jab at Boris’ bicep and a river of chocolate syrup starts running down his arm.

As soon as that happened Natasha lunges at Boris and starts sucking the sticky stuff right out his blood vessel. I was horrified. They were loving it.

So I walk over to the other side of the yard to tell Freedom about it, and apparently the couple started arguing because Natasha was ashamed for not being the one who initiated the gore-fest.

She was pissed and started charging off while Boris yelled at her to get out of his life.

Since no one at the party is really certain of what just went down between the two of them, we’re all trying to calm them down and talk it out.

Suddenly, a switch flips on in Natasha’s brain and she starts apologizing to her man and telling him that she was just being a bitchy girlfriend. This is what really threw me and Freedom off.

It wasn’t the blood sacrifice, it wasn’t the shame that Natasha felt for letting another girl stab her boyfriend, it was the fact that we actually heard a girl apologize for acting insane.

This is something that Freedom and I have heard of before but have never actually witnessed in the wild.

I suppose Natasha is just a better class of woman than the kind of heartless succubi that I seem to attract, or her and Boris just have a way stronger relationship than anything I’ve ever been in.

Either way, it’s nice to see two people so in love, even if they do have a weird way of showing it.

Originally published by The Voyager as “Strange love can work” for the University of West Florida.