The Peak

Support your student paper

By Gary Lim

So you’ve finished reading this week’s newspaper, you’ve been opinionated by Opinions, humoured by Humour and, uh, Sports . . . that’s a section too. But now what? I mean you’ve already read the paper front to back and found all the subliminal right-wing messages we hide in the articles. So I guess all that’s left to do is throw it away. But wait! Before you do, you should know that The Peak is good for so much more than just reading. Why, it may surprise you to know that there are as many uses for it as there are people who read it! So, at least 10. But I wouldn’t expect you to believe me without some sort of evidence, so here it is.

Use No. 1: Keeping things from touching you. Throughout our lives we come across things we’d rather not have come in contact with ourselves. Maybe it’s keeping the rain off of you while you sprint for the bus. Perhaps you’re walking Mr. Scruffaduff, in the park when he decides to leave you a freshly coiled surprise as revenge for giving him such an awful name. But who cares what we’re avoiding specifically: how are we going to deal with it? Luckily The Peak is uniquely suited for these situations being printed on a highly malleable, biodegradable material, newsprint, which forms a nigh indestructible barrier between you and the object in question. But you don’t just get one layer of protection with the good ol’ Peak. No, your copy of the newspaper, the one in your hand right now, comes with an astounding 28 to 36 pages, which you can double by simply folding it in half. Don’t believe me? Try it. I know, it’s totally amazing, right?

For ever bigger jobs, like say keeping a bear away from you, roll the paper into a tube, by grabbing the outer edge with . . . on second thought, if you can’t figure this out, chances are you deserve to be eaten by a bear. Once rolled into a sturdy tube, your newspaper will be able to keep larger things up to an arms length away from your person, as well as providing several new applications in the field of prodding and poking things.

Use No. 2: Getting out of awkward social situations. Since the dawn of man, the newspaper has gotten many a person out of an awkward encounter. For example, you’re sitting in the lecture hall waiting for your next class when you spot someone walking in that you may know through a friend of a friend of a friend. You think his name might be Mark or Mike or something. Then, the unthinkable happens while you’re trying to figure out Mike-Mark’s name: you inadvertently make eye contact, and he starts walking toward you. “DANGER! DANGER!” your brain screams, as you fumble through your pockets searching for some sort of pocket-sized miracle. Then you see it, a copy of The Peak left on the seat beside you by some student, and you grab at it and shove your face into the newspaper, all of a sudden that article on the cultural ramifications of neo-feminism, in Yemeni society becomes so interesting, in your peripheral vision you spot Mike-Mark veering off. Success!

But gee, couldn’t you have whipped out your cell phone or iPod? Sure that might have worked, but electronic devices are still inferior to the good old newspaper in one important way: when you open a newspaper, you are creating a wall of paper between you and your adversary. This keeps you from seeing them and vice versa and as we know, out of sight, out of mind. Even if they tried to get your attention through a vocal cue, if you don’t react they’ll just assume you were too engrossed in whatever you were reading to hear them and move on. The larger and more unwieldy the newspaper, the greater the chance of your success. Hell, if you had a copy of the Vancouver Sun you could probably unfold it, and escape the lecture hall completely undetected.

Use No. 3: Gift wrap. So you got your friend that DVD of that movie they like for their birthday. Now, you could start the tedious process of searching through the Christmas supplies in your basement for some wrapping paper, and then hastily explain the design on the paper aren’t reindeer, but in fact traditional horned birthday horses. Or, you could use a page from readily available, industriously designed Peak newspaper, that all the editors do their darn-tootingest to make look pretty. For even more fun, try picking something relating to the gift at hand. Are you getting them a novel from their favourite series? Try wrapping it in a news article on the W.A.C Bennett Library. A gift card to a local restaurant? Try a recipe from the arts section. A letter bomb? Errr, I guess you could probably spring for the real wrapping paper in that case.

So there, three ways to get the most out of your weekly copy of The Peak. Although, it should be noted that these suggestions are just a just a drop in an enormous bucket. I haven’t even touched on other uses, such as building material (already employed by the futuristic Japanese), or you could even use it as really, really, really low-income housing. Quite frankly, the possibilities are endless! What you hold in your hand, dear reader, is not just a newspaper. No, it’s whatever you want it to be!