FROM: Hell Maintenance

Dear Sir or Madam,

It appears the that coolant we use to keep Hell at an unbearable but livable 400 degrees Fahrenheit* has been leaking uncontrollably onto the central furnace thing.  We really don’t know anything about the central furnace thing. We’re essentially glorified volunteers. Please stop sending us texts, emails, Facebook messages, wall posts, voicemails, tweets and other ridiculously modern social network communications about the central furnace thing.

Look, we’ve tried just about everything, and the big guy downstairs is not being very helpful. We’ve found that his response to most questions is an angry guttural reply followed by an obnoxiously loud and really unnecessary whip of his fiery tail.

It looks like you’ll be living with the terrible convenience of comfortable temperatures for the time being. There is a SMALL possibility for snow. We’ve been assured by Charles Darwin and that other guy who made the Weather Channel music that snow is highly unlikely. We’re probably just looking at golf-ball sized hail instead. That’s probably better than some of the horrible precipitation we’ve been getting recently:

Sunday:                     Flaming television sets playing Sarah Palin’s Alaska

Monday:                     Fire

Tuesday:                    Molten Iron

Tuesday Night:         Molten Lead

Wednesday:              Molten Alaska

Please be patient as we try to figure this out.

Also, the anti-Holiday party is coming up and Galileo is REALLY excited about it. You know how he gets sometimes. We’re just asking you to let him know you’re coming and sign up for the Secret Satan. Also, the anti-Holiday Party Planning Committee wants to remind you that we need someone to bring a zesty, “fiery” dip. Their words, not ours.

*Celsius is for Commies.

- John Hoffman

Flickr photo by Logan Ingalls.

The Late 1400′s Around the Globe: Same Old

“Indians” and Europeans started trading.

FRENCH TRADER: I’ll trade you twenty knives for the enslavement of some of your people.

INDIAN: …

FRENCH TRADER: Twenty knives for taking your land and forcing you to live on reservations?

INDIAN: …

FRENCH TRADER:  I’ll throw in a few malaria-ridden blankets if we can stamp out your religion.

INDIAN: I’ll give you a beaver pelt.

FRENCH TRADER: Deal!

INDIAN: And you won’t do any of that other stuff, right?

FRENCH TRADER: Right.

West Africa: Ancient and Complex Societies

West Africa had ancient and complex societies.

Trade in Africa

PORTUGUESE TRADER: I’ll trade you twenty knives for the enslavement of some of your people.

AFRICAN LEADER: All right. *They shake hands*. This is a great day for Africans everywhere. No one will ever wish I hadn’t made this trade.

PORTUGUESE TRADER: I’m sure glad slave-trade raises absolutely no ethical issues.

Europe about to Conquer Places

Europeans really wanted to go to the West because Classical writers said that the Atlantis and Greek heavens were supposed to be there. Europeans also believed in using leeches to cure people of a vile, disease-causing substance known as “blood.” The phrase “Don’t believe everything you hear,” had not been around then. Though, if it had been, they doubtlessly would have believed that too.

Vikings sailed to America, set up settlements, and left. No one noticed.

The Middle Ages happened in Europe. There were a lot of plagues.  It was, presumably, bad. Then the Renaissance materialized, leaving people to scratch their heads and wonder what happened to the Middle Ages, which were just called the “Ages” back then. King Henry the Eighth reminded everyone of the good old violent days by cutting off his wives’ heads. Isabella and Ferdinand married and become monarchs of Spain.

ISABEL: Let’s drive the Jews and Muslims out of Spain!

JEWS: Oh, yeah. We can totally afford to be kicked out of another country. That’s fair.

MUSLIMS: It is so unfair that we Jews and Muslims are picked on all the time.

JEWS: I agree. Let’s be friends forever!

MUSLIMS: Pinky Swear!  *They hug*.

The printing press was invented in the 1440s by Johann Gutenberg, sparking a communications revolution blah blah blah.

- Ilana Strauss

Flickr photo by Hans Splinter

“I figured, that I’ve got what, 16, 18, something years between the end of Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope?” Lucas said. “That’s at least three movies right there. That, and a cartoon spinoff and a couple dozen video games.”

While LucasArts employees indicated that the project is still in its earliest stages of development, they revealed that many aspects of the films are already in place.

It is clear that the stories will focus around the childhood and adolescent lives of Luke and Leia, but many other characters will make additional cameos and have subplots based around them. Some confirmed cameos are Han Solo, Boba Fett, Indiana Jones, the shark from Jaws, and Steve Holt.

There are also reports that Lucas has many cast members picked out, with Natalie Portman returning in an unspecified role, Jake Lloyd (Anakin from Phantom Menace) playing Luke and Robert Downey Jr. voicing as Jabba the Hutt.

Fight Club star and 30 Seconds to Mars front man Jared Leto will also star as Luke’s alcoholic uncle, Owen Lars, but only as part of a deal ensuring that the soundtrack for all the films is written by 30 Seconds to Mars.

It is reported that when asked for his reaction, former composer John Williams exclaimed, “The fuck is this shit?” broke a nearby harp into two and grinded the remains to sawdust in his teeth.

“We’re making some big changes around here,” said Lucas, who has vowed to direct and oversee every aspect of production of the new films. “Some people aren’t going to like it, but that’s after they pay to see it twice.”

- Brian Levine

Flickr photo by Dr. Mohammad Bahareth

Most people don’t think much about dreidels and their feelings. They’re the sort of people who say, “Ilana, dreidels don’t have feelings. They’re just inanimate pieces of wood, or sometimes plastic if your synagogue is low on funds.”

To those people, I say, keep your science to yourself. It’s that sort of anti-dreidel bigotry that got us into this mess in the first place.

You see, dreidels spend most of their lives in cupboards. People ignore them for months on end. They have no sunlight, no company, no basic human dignity.

“Ilana, dreidels don’t need human dignity,” you might say. “They aren’t human.”

To that, I must emphasize that the phrase “human dignity” is just an expression. You can replace it with a synonym if you must.

Dreidels are brought out of their cupboards for only eight days a year. And during those days, people take them and spin them. That’s right. They twist them around, forcing them into a dizzying haze of Hebrew letters.

And things aren’t much better for the menorahs. Sure, they sometimes get to sit out in shelves as decorations. But on Hanukkah, people stuff them with candles, which they light on fire. Then the menorahs end up covered in burning hot wax.

Even after the wax cools, menorahs are forced to endure the indignity of being coated in chipping gunk the color of rotting crayons. Have you ever tried to get wax out of a menorah? It’s near impossible. Sure, moving around a pen in there helps get some of it out, but never all. And using your fingernail is downright painful.

So you end up leaving some of it in and packing the menorah away for the year, only to be brought out, humiliated, in another 12 months.

“But Ilana,” you say. “What about the story of the oil burning for eight days? Don’t we need to commemorate that?”

Well, sure, you can commemorate it. Maybe instead of recreating the event with wax, you relive it. At the beginning of Hanukkah, send out a younger brother or whoever happens to be annoying you at the moment to find magical kosher oil. Continue on with the holiday. When you get to the eighth day and said younger brother still hasn’t returned, because let’s face it, he’ll never find the stuff, just tell yourself that you did your best and let the little hairbrush-stealing twerp continue his worldwide search. Jews are used to wandering, right?

And if he does return by some literal miracle, you can probably sell the stuff on Amazon for thousands. Win-win.

- Ilana Strauss

Flickr photo by Julie V.

My name is Mr. Wheeley

And yes, indeed, I’m back

I’m working on a case

One I’m about to crack

A murder has taken place

Mr. Holmes has no clue

I went to him for help

And he asked me, “Who the hell are you?”

This ain’t no ordinary crime

I know Dr. Evil is behind it

But I won’t fail this time

If there’s a clue here, I will find it

Torn apart into pieces

I’m so sad, I don’t feel like eating

I mean yeah, I had a heavy breakfast

But that doesn’t really count as cheating

The first thing I need to do

Is find the body’s head

After I get over my grief

At finding out the victim is dead

The victim was very close to me

He helped me when I felt low

He never really talked about his problems

So I never really got to know

I’m telling you this time I won’t fail

This time I’m totally ready

I’ll do what it takes to find out

Who killed my favorite teddy

Left alone on my bedroom floor

His fluffy body feels so cold

With a fatal tag around his neck

Saying, “Won’t be exchanged once sold”

- Ayush Kumar

Flickr photo by Kelly V

Think about it: would an overweight office worker with diabetes and a bad case of Dorito addiction survive in a world of natural selection? No. If he was living on the savannah, he would have been eaten and violated by rabid baboons in five minutes. His genes wouldn’t get passed anywhere.

With the advent of modern medicine, we can’t even depend on disease to weed out those who aren’t proficient in spear-throwing, fire-building, or even an aggressive grunt. Cholera, smallpox, bubonic plague, Ebola – each one systematically and mercilessly cured, like crushing a delicate butterfly into the dust.

How can the human race ever expect to mutate into new and exciting forms? Will we ever get super powers? Giant, absurdly large foreheads that make us look the lovechildren of Mahatma Gandhi and Mr. Potato Head? Stretchy limbs? Will the human race ever progress past a fleshy burlap bag of guts and bones, and transform into something a little more comfortable (perhaps something closer to, say, a sentient leotard)?

Obviously, our current evolutionary situation is intolerable. The purpose of natural selection is to remove from the veritable toxic waste dump of humanity those traits that make being slowly digested by a giant squid an acceptable alternative to the bother of living. Therefore, what I suggest is artificially inducing natural selection, not for traits dictated by survival of the fittest, but rather traits that are advantageous in our world.

For example, John and Tim are both mature, virile human males. Both have been raised in suburbia and, because of modern medicine, will not be succumbing to any illness in the near future. Left unchecked, both John and Tim will pass on their genes to the next generation. But mere survival does not mean that their traits are worth passing on; if we want the human race to advance, we need to make sure only the best traits survive.

A scenario: John and Tim are watching a football game while simultaneously dipping chips in dip, drinking beer, yelling at their spouses, and other assorted manly things. This ability to multitask is a very desirable trait, and its proper perpetuation will probably lead the evolution of humanity into super-powered psychics who fly on unicorns, so it’s of the utmost importance to make sure that it gets passed on to future offspring.

But suddenly, Tim loses control of his dip bowl, causing his beer to spill into his lap. As a result, spring-loaded doors in his basement open, and mongoloid white tigers rip Tim’s limbs off, leaving him to die a pool of blood, beer, and salsa.

Tim was obviously deficient in the trait of multitasking, and in order to make sure that our species improves with each generation, we had to give Tim the boot. His deficiency would only hamper our genetic destiny. Such an unnecessarily violent (yet highly entertaining) ending to the lives of those like Tim could be a deterrent to those would-be diluters of our future.

Had Tim been allowed to live and reproduce, in a few million years, instead of being highly-evolved spheres of pure energy, we would be -gasp! - exactly the same! How would that look to the inevitable visit of alien, super-advanced beings from another dimension? Just imagine…

It is the year 7999 and the human race is living in peace. Disease and war have been completely eradicated, and culture and good will abound. On the eve of the eighth millennium, the Earth is visited by a highly-advanced and benevolent race from the stars.

ZORGBLATT THE GREAT enters with his retinue, and greets World President HARRY LASSBOTTOM.

ZORGBLATT: Greetings, Earthlings. Many light years have we traveled to greet you and to welcome you into our galactic fold. We believe your race is ready to accept the greatest gifts the universe can offer. All of our secrets are open to you now.

An alien suddenly makes a small grunt. Then, after a moment, disembowels himself, spilling cream-colored organs and geysers of sticky blood all over the room. LASSBOTTOM, horrified, cowers behind a chair, whimpering.

ZORGBLATT: Forgive my attendant. He failed to gerflunneke correctly, and to protect the evolutionary future of our race, he nobly removed himself from our gene pool. Why are you so alarmed? Surely a race as advanced as yours knows that such things are necessary for the advancement of your species? Surely you don’t let natural selection run according to nature?!

LASSBOTTOM (nobly): The human race sanctifies all life, regardless of their supposed advantages. Our nature, nay, our souls speak to us in the language of all that is sacred, and it commands us, “thou shalt not kill.” Life is like a fragile and precious flower: it needs to be tended and allowed to bloom. This is the core of our very existence, and our love of all that is living, all that breathes and worships and weeps, is the very fire that drives us to the heavens and back.

ZORGBLATT: Well…I guess we’re done here. Hope you enjoy being our slaves forever. Losers.

The alien horde decimates the human race completely. Six millennia of modern civilization are wiped out overnight, and humanity is reduced to common cattle, without language, history or hope. They are shipped off to the freezing wastelands of Pluto where they are raised as food for the alien aristocracy and to the subterranean mines of Uranus where they mine precious Uranusium for their alien masters.

CLOSE CURTAINS.

Now you understand what our future could be! The very survival of our species is at stake, and if we don’t act now, we will surely fall to a B-level sci-fi movie ending that my agent has informed me makes Attack of the Clones look like Macbeth.

Therefore, I and other respected leaders of the scientific community have begun petitioning the government to begin enforcing unnatural selection, and to incorporate its teachings into school curricula across the country. Soon, our glorious race, once bogged down in the quagmire of unimpeded human survival, will rise to glory like a serene chicken, rolling down a conveyor belt into the gaping mouth of Mother Evolution, and to transform, nay, be reborn, like a phoenix into a glowing, evolutionarily-advanced McNugget.

- Danny Wicentowski

Flickr photo by Ted Murphy

“I’m nineteen,” Steinberg was reported saying three minutes prior to puking all over the stripper pole at Cly’s. “You better believe I can do whatever the FUCK I want.”

With only three friends, two bottles of Captain Morgan, and a short blue dress in two (what does “short blue dress in two” mean?), Steinberg burned down all three bars, not before clearing two bars out of alcohol, exchanging spit with fifteen boys, stealing corn from the Morrow Plots and running around sans clothes for forty-five minutes. Her BAC at the end of the night was around 0.2

“I don’t know how a girl of her short stature could start that much trouble,” said Kyle Hartney, bartender for Joe’s. “She literally destroyed half the town’s beer supply in thirty minutes. I am not sure whether to be impressed or disgusted.”

Steinberg’s enthusiasm for bar life is spurred on by the fact that she is the last of her friends to turn nineteen. Having skipped the third grade in 2000, Steinberg was still 17 when some of her friends already started to turn nineteen, or of legal bar age, last year, said Jessie Mahone, friend of Steinberg.

“She kept on saying how we were all going to get ‘fucked up,’” Mahone said. “She literally dragged us down to CU during break and had us pounding 15 shots apiece to start out with. Then she pissed all over Champaign with drunken excitement over being bar age. Metaphorically. And literally.”

Champaign’s police finest were on the case and all over Steinberg, said police chief Max Smith.

“We needed to get to the source of all evil and get on the scene of the crime as soon as possible,” Smith said. “Plus, we couldn’t ignore a special case in a blue dress.”

Steinberg took up two hours of police time, made out with seven officers, and slept with three to get off without a drinking ticket, according to eye witnesses.

In other news, three accounts of theft went unnoticed in the city of Urbana that night.

- Tolu Taiwo

Flickr photo by Carmelo Speltino

“I could definitely write an eighth, ninth, tenth” the celebrated author Rowling told Oprah Winfrey, during an interview on her show.

Speaking about O’Donnell’s rise in politics, Rowling said “It’s hard to choose what is scarier, Christine O’Donnell in a position of power, or an actual Dark Lord out on the loose,” Rowling said.

When asked about possible characters she would include and plot lines she would develop, she quickly mentioned O’Donnell. She explained the role she could see O’Donnell playing, hinting at a position of power in the Wizarding World, perhaps as the Minister of Magic.

“She would be a Minister of Magic, promoting fiscal responsibility which means cutting down Wizarding Welfare, a program which gives wands to those who cannot afford them, and she would focus a lot on curbing mudbloods immigration to the world of magic.” Rowling said. “O’Donnell would also lead the Ministry of Magic with her vast expertise of the Wizard Constitution.”

Oprah, intrigued by the possibility, questioned if O’Donnell were fit to a hold any power, even in the alternate Wizarding World. Oprah brought up that O’Donnell has lied about her education, in fact being sued by a did he mean to say “a”? Fairleigh Dickson University, and lying about working towards a master’s degree at Princeton, a claim The Washington Post called misleading.

Rowling responded that the people of the world worry little about things like education or intelligence when picking someone who will rule over them and be their voice.

“The American people are too stupid to notice that, so great point Oprah bringing up her extreme stupidity. Those involved in withcraft and wizardry would definitely never allow someone like that to gain any position of power,” Rowling said.

“I’ll still consider putting her in the book, perhaps not as a politician, but perhaps as an activist who is crazy and completely wild, like someone who doesn’t believe in masturbation or thinks being gay is adulterous, but that’s just too much absurdity in my book. People will believe there are wizards, but its hard convincing readers that someone can be as closed minded and mentally inferior they think that evolution doesn’t exist,” Rowling said.

O’Donnell, in the sad muggle world, did not win the Delaware Senate seat, but is still actively pursuing a career in politics to help pay back her massive debt.

Albus Dumbledore, the leader of the Gay Rights for Wizards could not be reached because he was killed by Severus Snape, but then it turned out Snape was not working for He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named when he killed Dumbledore, and was in fact working with Dumbledore.

Editor’s Note: Spoiler Alert in the last paragraph.

- Esteban Gast

Flickr photo by Perfecto Insecto

So, let me start this off by saying I’m aware that I complain quite a bit. And when I say “quite a bit,” I mean, “every time I open my God forsaken mouth.”

As a Jew, I feel like it’s in my nature to take the most beautiful elements of the world around us, and nitpick at their imperfections until there’s nothing left but a pathetic, muddled concoction of guilt and shame. What can I say? It’s a gift. More specifically, it’s a gift that I feel should be used for the greater good. After all, if I don’t address these pressing issues, who will? We can’t make any progress in our society if no one’s there to keep us motivated (i.e., nag) the whole time.

So here it is, world: my most genuine, heartfelt advice to you about the things you do that make me want to drive my head through a wall. Sure, they might be mundane issues, and sure, they might be irrational complaints. But readers, you know that at the end of the day, deep down somewhere, you can’t help but agree.

This week, I’d like to take on a topic that those of you who have lived or are currently living in University Housing can understand: bitchy University Dining Hall workers. Now, I’m not saying that all of their employees suck. In fact, I enjoy seeing most of them on a regular basis. However, there are a select few that come to mind that I wouldn’t mind beating senseless with that blue visor they’re forced to wear. It’s because they think their misery from working a minimum-wage job at unreasonable hours somehow trumps our misery from all of the shit going on in our lives. Look, we’re all miserable. So what makes cleaning up our careless, disgusting spills more aggravating than paying three times as much for our crappy-ass meal plans? This writer says, not very much.

I’ll give you an example: recently, I was eating with a friend who wanted to take some raspberries out of the dining hall with him to make smoothies. One of the Dining Hall workers happened to catch sight of this. Based on her reaction, you would have thought he was trying to deal heroin to second graders. She came over to the table and got right up in his face, hell-fire smoldering in her eyes. She started screaming at him because “he was being horribly disrespectful, had no consideration for others, was setting a bad example, blah blah blah.” (It’s hard to paraphrase; I started tuning her out after a while.) Pounding her fist on the table, she proclaimed that if he didn’t eat every single raspberry before he left, he was going to have to pay for another meal. Without waiting for a response from him, she stormed off to the cashier at the front of the room, and pointed him out like some dirty criminal to monitor. The cashier looked as annoyed as we were.

To her credit, my friend was trying to lift a good 6 lbs. of raspberries. I mean, he had two full-size plastic storage containers that he was trying to smuggle out of there… Not the strongest with foresight, this one.

The idea still remains, though, that it wasn’t that big of a deal. We pay way too much for the food that we’re served here, anyway; if he wants to steal a few extra pieces of fruit, I say let him have at it. Besides, I’m sure that before she was working in University Dining, she was in his place, a student trying to make it on the few resources for food that she had at her disposal. Where’s her compassion for a fellow sufferer?

Look, all I’m saying is, she didn’t have to be such a bitch about it.

- Nikki Kofsky

Flickr photo by Ishikawa Ken