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The newest sales tool for the Raleigh newspaper? College campuses. I was walking merrily along to my office, thinking about the fact that it was Friday and that a three-day weekend was coming up and that we're going to a football game this weekend, where I will get to see friends I haven't seen in years, when I was summoned over to a little newspaper kiosk by a very disinterested looking man. Normally when someone on campus sets up a kiosk, I avoid it like the plague because for the most part, they either want me to buy a product or buy an idea and really, if I wanted a product? I'd go to a store. And if I wanted an idea? I'd go to the library.

But this time, I was sucked in by one, magical sentence: "Do you want a FREE newspaper?" Yes, yes I do. Free things are my friends. And when the free thing is a newspaper, it becomes even more my friend because newspapers are quite possibly the most fun inventions EVER. Watching the news requires for me to be able to tolerate the newscasters' atrocious grammar (which I just can't do) and reading the news online is just overwhelming. There's too damn much of it and by the time I finish a section, all the headlines have been updated again. Newspapers, on the other hand, do not require listening to people who say "good" instead of "well" and there's a finite amount of information and plus, it's really, really fun to fold.

So of COURSE, I took the free newspaper. And carried it happily across campus, thinking the entire time about how much fun it would be to get a paper EVERY DAY. So when I was walking back to the parking deck, I warily approached the man again, certain that it would cost at least about $20 per month. Imagine my surprise when he informed me that it would be $30 FOR THE ENTIRE SEMESTER. That's three-and-a-half MONTHS worth of feeling like I know at least a tiny bit about what's going on in the world. And moreover? It's three-and-a-half months worth of Sunday coupons. My scissors and I anxiously await.