Well, I never thought I’d see the day, but after two consecutive semesters of churning out solid gold, grade A columns about … boobs or something … I, Nick Moose, have run out of material.

This may present a problem, as my contract here at the Stater has been renewed for yet another season. By that time though, I plan to have freshly re-juiced batteries (or at least to have become even more insane) from a summer of doing nothing but toiling feverishly at the DQ.

When I found out that last week’s Nick Moose’s view actually was not my last one for the semester, I panicked. Having already stretched my usual whatever it is I talk about paper thin, I was left with only the following list of possible ideas for topics:

1. Vikings

Well, OK, that was only one idea, and it wasn’t very good, but having nothing else, I thought I’d run it up the proverbial flag pole.

I tried to imagine what it must have been like to be Hagar the Horrible. (The real Hagar the Horrible, not the cartoon.)

Remembering I was no Viking expert or anything, I decided to rely on the only scrap of Viking knowledge I had ever accumulated over the course of my existence, which was that I was pretty sure they lived at about the same time as the dinosaurs. (Pre-dating the Civil War by a quarter century.)

I was going to work this angle by attempting to undertake something I never had before — even for a school assignment: actually doing research on a topic.

I went so far as to call the number for what I was pretty confident would be the home-base for the foremost dinosaur authorities in northeast Ohio, Sandusky’s own Prehistoric Forest.

Well, I didn’t call it, but I definitely thought about calling it and probably would have if I could have found out what it was without actually doing anything that involved getting off the couch or not watching TV. I mean, “Driven: Lindsay Lohan” was on VH1!

Any-hoo, I’m pretty sure if I had gotten to interview one of their Dino-afficianados, it would have gone a little something like this:

ME: So, who would win in a fight, a Viking or a raptor?

EXPERT: The raptor of course. It’s a raptor.

ME: What were all of the Vikings’ names?

EXPERT: That hasn’t been confirmed.

ME: Do you think the Vikings were pissed about the Civil war?

EXPERT: Yes.

ME: (Forgetting about Vikings completely.) Who would win in a fight,

a raptor or Colossus from the X-Men?

EXPERT:The raptor would easily shred Colossus.

ME: What if a raptor fought Mr. T?

EXPERT: The raptor would OWN Mr. T.

ME: What if a raptor fought..

It would have gone on like this for some time. Like, probably a LONG time, and none of it would have brought me any closer to composing with any accuracy, a piece about the history of the Vikings. For the record though, if I had, I would have called it “Vikings: Bitch of the raptors.”

I finally decided I couldn’t come up with a single good idea for a column this week. So I didn’t write one.

Nick Moose is a senior who is obviously not majoring in Vikings. If you CAN write a Viking column he’d love to see it. Send it to him at [email protected].