Finals are over, professors are panicking about submitting grades, and seniors have been in an alcoholic coma for weeks in a futile attempt to avoid the swiftly-approaching reality of graduation — yep, it must be the end of the spring semester.

These four months have really flown by here at the Spin; we’ve had all sorts of escapades with almost an entirely new group of bloggers and myriad interesting events on campus and in Philly. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading the insanity.

Good luck living without us for a full summer; you can always read through the archives if you’re really jonesin’.

And in the next few months of valuable internships (read: brewing coffee without pay) and barrista-ing (read: brewing coffee for hourly dough), think hard about next semester — and your irrepressible, inescapable urge to be a Spin blogger.

It’s a great way to get your voice out there and hone your writing skills, and you’ll quickly find yourself in a great a community of smart, funny people with something to say. And yes, we bake brownies and have sleepovers on weekends*.

The application’s hanging out here (dailpennsylvanian.com/opinion); it’s due on August 10, 2008. If you have any questions, just email blogapp@dailypennsylvanian.com and I’ll get back to you ASAP.

Have a great summer!

– Lindsey Stull, Spin editor

*Pillow fights not guaranteed.

Apparently, our generation is lazy. Or at least too serious to expend precious brain cells making ha-has anymore.

A columnist at LSU, Caitlyn Scott, bemoans our growing laziness, but not because of decreased productivity or initiative. No, instead — in “Rickrolling shows laziness of generation” — she writes that the laziness problem is actually most easily illustrated by this no-longer-new internet meme:

The rickrolling phenomenon leaves me with one burning question: Is this the direction practical jokes are headed?… Will dipping a sleeping friend’s hand into lukewarm water no longer be the established way to prank?

Heaven forbid we put the old hand-in-warm-water prank to rest. Nothing funnier than a dampened bed sheet!

(For the uninitiated: rickrolling involves misleading people to the YouTube video of the 1987 Rick Astley hit, “Never Gonna Give You Up,” by disguising the link as something relevant. How’d I do?)

Granted, rickrolling takes much of the creativity and effort out of pranks, but good old-fashioned pranking is still alive and well — especially among students.

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Every morning, approximately 2.5 million women with a “voracious appetite for what’s next, new, cool, and must-have” receive a Daily Candy e-mail newsletter in their inboxes.

I possess no such appetite, but I get DC Philadelphia anyway — mainly because I derive some sort of sick pleasure from reading about clothing and spa treatments that cost more than my apartment.

So imagine my surprise when the latest Daily Candy Weekend Guide included this — smack between limited edition “cutesy” tees and a “brunch and shopping” event:

Glock Day
What: Free rentals and range time, discounted memberships, and crazy deals on Glocks — Philly’s gun of choice.
Why: It’s how Charlton Heston, God rest his soul, would’ve rolled.
When: Sat., 10 a.m.-7 p.m.
Where: Philadelphia Archery & Gun Club, 831-833 Ellsworth St.

Shoes, gruyère omelettes, sea salt facials, and… guns? One of these things is not like the others.

But this was no joke.

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Should the Olympics come to Philadelphia and Penn (and I hear there is a bid in the works), a cautionary tale. Remember to never trust the French.

For those who don’t know, the symbol of world unity, the Olympic Flame, passed on from runner to runner and lit by the Sun in ancient Olympia, was extinguished. Multiple times.

Shock horror, my friends. Millions of dollars go into developing the torch. It is the uber-torch. It withstands gale-force winds, oxygen deprivation and torrential rain. You can stick the damn thing under a power shower and it won’t go out. The designer, however, forgot to protect it from one particular factor - a mistake of staggering proportions.

The French.

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A few weeks ago, The New York Observer ran an article called “Nerds of Steel” — suggesting that the “new nerd is a beast” and pointing to celebs like Daniel Radcliffe and Steve Carell as proof. Evidently, the great American geek has gotten bigger and stronger in what appears to be a statistical attempt to garner the attention of the ever-elusive female sex. Is it working? Ha, that’s like asking if pi is finite.

But all joking aside, I think the rather toned study body at Penn serves as further evidence for this phenomenon. Just last Thursday, for example, Pottruck held another annual bench press competition — where University Hospital employee Richard Scarlett put up 425 lbs (!) before growing extremely angry and bursting into flames.

(To put things into perspective, 425 lbs is approximately equivalent to 8 sorority girls.)

Scarlett wasn’t the only standout at the event; College senior Kaelin Ainley put up 95 lbs, the most among female participants, and Engineering junior Michael Provenzano won the sub-150 group by benching 235. Again, the idea is that Penn’s geeks are in the gym while its athletes excel at academia.

This is unlike, say, Penn State — where the only athletes in the library are there for entirely different reasons.

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So it has been brought to my attention that, in fact, we are a bunch of nerds. And, as usual, I blame Princeton.

For it was they who hosted a team from Middlebury playing Quidditch. Oh yes, Quidditch. I don’t care if we hosted them first, I still blame them, mainly to avoid despairing at our own sheer idiocy. Thankfully Ivygate blames them, too.

For those of you not cool enough to know, Quidditch is the game of the wizarding world, as described in the Harry Potter novels.

The game involves flying around on broomsticks with three different kinds of balls - one type (the Quaffle) to throw through hoops, one type (the Bludger) that renders you unconscious and the Golden Snitch, a tiny little ball that whizzes around, the capture of which ends the game and earns you 150 points (usually winning you the match). The rules are important for what comes next.

In the Middlebury version, the Snitch is played by a “hyperactive college student” in a yellow jersey, sporting a sock from his behind in the hope someone grabs it and ends the game. I think he’s also asking for feel-up, but that’s just me talking. I mean, kid, what the hell is wrong with you? You are not a Snitch, you’re an idiot hoping no one catches the sock flapping invitingly in the region of your arse.

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Coming out of a haze of birthday celebrating, I glanced at the calendar, and apparently it’s almost April. Wait, what?

That means it’s spring! A time for reproduction! Or even just production.

I’m sure you know where this is going (and no, I’m not using the Spin like a certain part of craigslist): a call for guest blogs.

Whether you want to oppose something uberpublicly, feel an overwhelming urge to give everyone some useful advice, or just have remarkably random Penn factoids to share, the Spin might be your place to do it.

200-350 words, humor suggested, wit required, opinion infinitely preferred to none, pictures/YouTube/inventive media always appreciated. If you have an idea for a post or already wrote something out, shoot me an email me at stull@dailypennsylvanian.com and we’ll see what happens.

Because even if you have that paper due tomorrow, wouldn’t you rather write 300 words of entartaining wit than 2500 of that “academic value” crap?

I thought things were pretty bad: violent crime is up, we’re nearly in a recession, and massive polar ice regions are being reduced to raisins in the sun.

But whatever — all that shit doesn’t matter today, because for just $29.99 (and a lab fee of $119) you can finally find out who your baby daddy is.

Go to your nearest Rite Aid — actually the one on Broad Street — and an over-the-counter paternity test can be found in aisle six, on the shelf close to the condoms and under the Excite Female Sexual Stimulating Gel.

If the cheek swab test is done correctly, these tests are 99.9% accurate. That’s pretty impressive. It sure takes the fun out of “Guess Who” whomp whomp.

But seriously, this is a pretty big deal for a lot of Americans. Research has shown that about 10-20% of Americans incorrectly assess who their real fathers are. Let’s do the math. 15% of 300 million citizens = 45 million who may now be able to call the right guy “papa.”

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So The Colbert Report is coming to the Zellerbach theatre from April 14 to 17. Want tickets? Too bad. I think they sold out thirty minutes before Stephen even made the announcement.

But alas, this column is not about Stephen Colbert. Nor is it about selling out. It’s about Doritos — as in the sponsor of Colbert’s visit, officially titled “The Colbert Report: Doritos Spicy Sweet Pennsylvania Primary Coverage from Chili-Delphia — The City of Brotherly Crunch.” And this column is about America. And maybe, just maybe, it’s about a collision of the two. (Missy Elliot not included, but we might just be able to get OK Go.)

Doritos, you see, are an American snack food. For one thing, the Doritos headquarters are located in Dallas, Texas — the most American state we’ve got. (Despite that whole “annexation” thing.) For another, the execs over at Frito-Lay have managed to come up with a wide array of Dorito flavors to parallel this country’s diversity: Blazin’ Buffalo & Ranch (delicious), Nacho Cheese (traditional), even Cheeseburger (fire that guy).

But perhaps most importantly, Americans consume more Doritos per capita than any other nation on any other continent. And sure, that might make us the most obese country in the history of the universe — but that can’t be blamed on just one snack, can it?

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After having a recurring observation or performing an inexplicable action, I often brood over the most pressing existential question to ever face teenage sit-com characters: am I weird?

Below are a few thoughts I have had over the past few weeks. Ideally, you, the reader, will comment and let me, the blogger, know if we have a shared musing or if I’m just weird. Let’s make this relationship work.

1. Shortly after I facebook stalk someone, they will inevitably appear in real life. I’ll see someone on Locust Walk, and their Facebook profile seems to appear over their heads, as I quietly judge them for their laughable music taste (Nickelback? For real?), embarrassingly contrived profile picture (your heavily-Photoshopped default with your eyes gazing to the far left is neither unique nor hip), or their “Hot or Not” application (if you have to ask, the answer’s “not”). Occasionally, I will meet someone for the first time in reality, even though I have already seen an entire album of their dog wearing clothes. I suspect that this new acquaintance remembers that “Dude, Where’s my Car?” is listed as one of my favorite movies. Neither of us mention anything.

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