For two years now, I have been your slave. Yet despite being chained in the figurative prison of your reading enjoyment, I am finally free – kind of. When I became a columnist for this newspaper, I had no speculation that I had inadvertently opened Pandora’s box of literary naiveté…

Television is not a pastime, nor is it a hobby, habit or addiction. It is, pure and simple, an epidemic. Any semi-attentive simpleton can notice that TV, in all its virtual glory, has visually conquered the universe, showing up in grocery stores, restaurants…

We’ve reached the aftermath. After another 364 tedious days of restrained sincerity, the favorite yearly festival of knee-slapping, side-splitting practical comedy has passed once again. Packing peanuts, underwear and excessively inebriated bodies litter Pullman lawns the morning after…

I must admit that I’ve fallen for temptation. Since the closing of the 2010 Winter Olympic Games, all that’s circled in my labyrinthine mind has been one pressing question: How many of these so called “sports” of the Olympics are really sports? In a world of junk e-mail…

In English, the rule is that rules don’t always rule. Beginning in elementary school, we learn the basics of our language labyrinth along with the 39,456 exceptions. We learn, for example, that “I” always comes before “E,” except when following “C.” Then we ironically go to science…

There are two types of people in this world: those who have a lawsuit and those who are looking for one. Welcome to the “United Suits of America.” To many, the best thing about a democracy like ours is that no matter who you are, what you do or how you do it…

I’ve never talked to the women living in the apartment above mine. But, assuming music tastes parallel persona, I do have a general idea of their characters. Outside of the housing complex, these average college gals are quieter than doves. Inside, they are weapons of mass destruction…

Sometimes, in the most public places, you hear what seems to be the most private sounds. “Come on! Do it! Push harder! Show me what you’ve got!” It is the masculine grunt following those commands that convinces your mind that the scene is something from a pornographic film yet the source is much more common – the weight room…

I’ve been seeing very strange things lately. Driving down Stadium Way earlier this week, I could have sworn Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer failed to stop at a stop sign. Or at least it looked like him – a very Chevy Suburban-shaped twin of his. With a giant red foam ball affixed to the front grill and a pair of plastic antlers lining the roofline…

Imagine this hypothetical scenario: Attempting to listen to an early-morning history lecture, your mind lies elsewhere while wishing you wouldn’t have stayed up all night taking shots with some guy named Morgan. The consequence is surreal; the slow-motion meandering of your monotonous professor seems more lackluster than watching a silent film on Xanax…

“Men, are you looking to increase the size of a certain part of your body?” Well, come to think of it, I’d like my calves to be bigger – maybe my arms and chest if a bargain is in order…

“Rusty, did someone break into your room?” My mom did not have a hint of sarcasm in her voice. Though in pure sincerity, her inquiry was sprinkled with inadvertent disdain as she worriedly swiveled her eyes across what she believed to be a crime scene…

I stood nervously on the cold locker room floor. My eyes wandered across the lockers and I dubiously gazed into the next room – the scale room. The nervous trembling had already begun. Kicking off my Nikes, tossing aside my belt and emptying all excess weight from my pockets…

With shimmering chrome panels stretching from a stainless steel brush guard to the flame-patterned metallic mud flaps of its flamboyant derrière, a red Ford F-150 caught my eye one day while I was driving with my girlfriend. The truck, capped with a remarkable array of antennae and blinding off-road lamps…

I’ve been meaning to write this column for a very long time now, but I never got around to it. There has always been something to stop me – some tired subject I found more important or, at times, funnier to write about. But really, I think it’s because I never knew exactly what to write…