This Shit Has Moved

Saturday, October 03, 2009

We've said goodbye to Blogger. The new blog site is here: http://www.georgetownheckler.com/blog

New Issue Sept '09

It's up. Along with the new site. Drop us a line if you have any trouble with this site. Hopefully we've made the correct blood sacrifices and such to the correct WordPress gods.

Leo's Employee Cumpolsary-Appreciation Week

Friday, September 25, 2009





Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this weird felt propaganda wall. Sorry, I just came from Russian Foreign Policy. Anyway, the first Heckler issue of the year is going to be up early next week. And we will have a redesigned, hopefully more functional website. I apologize that it will go up right away without interruption, and we will not have to take our site down for four months like The Hoya.

The Hoya Racism Watch, Making Fun of the Disabled Edition

Friday, September 18, 2009

Things have been going strong for The Hoya the past couple weeks in the racism department. But in its soul, something has died. Todd Olson doesn't get it! The Hoya is a RAUNCHY, IN-YOUR-FACE, UN-PC comedy gift to the world. And if you won't let them make fun of black people, THEY'RE JUST GONNA HAVE TO TAKE THEIR JOKES TO ANOTHER HISTORICALLY DISADVANTAGED GROUP. It's called attitude, and The Hoya has it in spades, unless by spades you mean black staff members.

This week: the disabled! The Ed Board writes a bland editorial in favor of that wheelchair guy suing Mr. Smith's for allowing him to be a fire hazard and then not. "Big deal." OH YEAH? Well, you just have to look a little harder, my friend! The title of this story? "Standing With Taylor: Solidarity Counts." Get it? They can't stand with the guy in the wheelchair because, by definition, he cannot stand. SATIRE.

Uggggggggh. Seriously, they had to have realized what they did, right? That has to the most inane title for the piece they could come up with. Nobody writes a headline that poorly unless they're trying to make a joke. Uggggggggh.

While we're at it, does anyone know this kid? I will withhold vitriol because I've really maybe only said a word to him once or twice, but everyone I know who knows him thinks he's, well, whatever polite word for douche bag exists that I can insert here. And, "I thought he was supposed to graduate last year, isn't he like 25 by now?" Small sample size, so who knows, he may not be a d-word, whatever. Anyway, the interesting thing is, if you go to his website, it's pretty much a chronicle of what happens when you're a rich, well-connected disabled kid.


"LEMON!!!!!"

(See what I did there? I could write for The Hoya!)

Before you leave the site, make sure to donate to his trust fund. Don't look at me like that! It's a special needs trust fund. Special needs people need more than one trust fund. That's why they call it special needs.

Thankfully, we've learned from this Hoya article that this guy "has not ruled out pursuing a monetary settlement." God speed!

And remember, if there's anything you learn from this courageous individual, it's that the Hamptons are a very dangerous place. You could jump into a sandbar and come up suing a landbar.


EDIT 9/20: Reader Will Sommer notes that since publishing this article on Friday, The Hoya has changed the title of the article on their site to "Solidarity Counts," though Will notes "the URL is still standing with Taylor."

EDIT 9/22: And now they have moved the article to a new URL. It's true, anonymous commenter, the printed version of the article was entitled "Standing Behind Taylor." But that's still pointing out he can't stand, no?

Letters to University Administrators: Blue Cup Redux

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

As always, if the administrator responds, we will post it.


Josetta:

Let's skip with the pleasantries. A year ago, when the nation was gathering together to celebrate Patriot Day, I sent you a letter about blue cups, blah blah blah. Things didn't go well last year for the Georgetown University Soft Drink Society (GUSDS). Once again we were turned down for SAC funding, and when you didn't return my letters about the blue cups, the board began to see me as a weak leader, and a rebel group led by Paul tried to wrest control, in violation of the GUSDS Constitution, the accepted stance of the National Collegiate Soft Drinkers Association, and the good will of soft-drink lovers across the nation's capital. I was able to keep my position, expel Paul, and force the other insurgents to drive up to his house in Connecticut and hang a white sheet stained with grape juice in the big oak tree in front of his family's porch.

I am stronger than ever before.

Obviously, you felt some degree of fear in responding to me last year, but please remember that, despite my power as president, I am just a student like anyone else. I noticed that the blue cups quietly returned, and in turn, you have been allowed to keep your job as Beverage Director up to this point.

However, we again have a problem. Every time this year I eat lunch in the "Down Under" section of Leo's (more commonly known among students as "Leo's Australia") at your restaurant called The Diner, which is to say every day I eat lunch, I have yet to see the blue cups. This is an abomination.

And at this point, I'm about ready to call it racism. Just kidding. You assumed I was a black person because I always eat in The Diner when in fact I just like eating unhealthy food and want to be near it at all times. Shame on you. Stop reading The Hoya.

Just bring back the blue cups, no questions asked, and my group will forget the whole thing happened. I assume you like your position as Food and Beverage Manager and would like to continue to manage providing food and beverages to your children. We hope for the same.


Yours again,


Jack Stuef
President
Georgetown University Soft Drink Society

The Hoya Racism Watch, Day 1

Thursday, September 03, 2009

I have counted on a few things being constant during my stint at Georgetown: John Thomson III is the basketball coach, chicken fingers are served at Leo's on Thursday, and The Hoya is protested for doing and publishing things a lot of students find racist. Now, I haven't always been able to keep my life stabilized on the assumption that I will see chicken fingers on Thursday, but the other two seem pretty solid. So this blog will be on watch all year following The Hoya as it attempts to restrain itself from inevitably publishing the issue that will spur this year's anti-Hoya-racism protests to break out. Thankfully the Media Board suspended The Hoya's bid for independence this year, because the Media Board has proven to nurture the kind of journalism from The Hoya the past couple years that results in really nice, full anti-racism protests.

So far, after the first day of classes, The Hoya has officially not been protested yet. Tuesday's issue, the first of the year, is very careful not to make jokes about "good old vanilla-chocolate swirl interracial fucking." In fact, they were so careful not to make Jessie Sapp seem light-skinned, they darkened a picture so much that he and much of his surroundings are nearly impossible to make out.

A good start, but how long can the passive-aggressive protest-avoidance be sustained?

And We're Back

It feels dusty around here. Not because we haven't posted anything in awhile. It's Blogger. It just feels so... 2004? Is that even a year? I am not sure that is even a year that exists it was so long ago. We should probably be beaming HD-tweets into your Heckler-branded content reception devices, not hanging around here. I mean, once in awhile, every four months or so, The Hoya will try to launch itself into the blogosphere, and you just feel uncool typing out thousands of words about college homepage websites. Does the blogosphere even exist anymore? Spell check is telling me that is not a word. I can't be sure.

This blog will be attempted again, though. I can't promise much, but it will be attempted.

There is also a goal to put an issue out towards the end of the month. You can read that too.

Also, I was heartened to see the lower section of Gaston Hall filled up today for a lecture fund event with comedy writer David Javerbaum. Granted, the event was not called "A Noted Comedy Writer Discusses His Craft." It was called "Behind the Scenes of 'The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.'" And it was freshmen's first opportunity to see a non-NSO speaker in Gaston. But perhaps it is a sign that somewhere on campus, in some dark crevice of social anxiety and Easy Mac, there exists students who have some vague ambition to try their hand, or maybe even hands, at humor writing.

Come visit our table at SAC Fair on Sunday from 12-4 PM (or, if you want, for just a minute or two during that time span) to sign up for our online paper thing and the various advertisers to whom we will sell your e-mail address. We'll be in Red Square with the other misshapen, pale, non-university-funded student groups. Who knows, maybe we'll even pass out free GUGS burgers we've taken from the GUGS grills across from us!

Heckler Summer Blog '09! Or not.

Tuesday, June 16, 2009


Remember when we strained to bring you a blog last summer and then in the two semesters after that? That was fun. But it's not happening this summer, we're pretty sure.

Not that we really blogged about anything last summer. It was mostly just Jack Stuef writing boring updates of his writing fellowship and copy-and-pasting rejected Onion headlines. If you want to read more about his boring life and the occasional rejected Onion headline he deems fit for the world, follow him on Twitter. In an incredible accomplishment not befitting a scarcely published, constantly on the brink of death, narrowly focused college humor magazine, another of us, just-graduated Heckler editor Jon Rapoport, got this summer's writing fellow job at The Onion. He's probably not going to be writing a diary of his magic Onion journey on here, but we just wanted to brag. Seriously, there are much more established, better run, and university-supported humor mags out there. We should not be the one producing the best writers.

Our DeGioia Twitter account from our last issue continued on for less than a month, got some nice press, and then was shut down after the school complained to Twitter. Sorry.

If you want, you can take a look through our archives. A lot of the links don't work anymore, so we have obviously won our wars with The Hoya and stupid-college-homepage things! We haven't heard back with the ever-Googling-on-the-job Heather A. Maginnis, but we have taken over her immaculate Google results. Blue cups finally returned to Leo's. And John Q Pierce remains at large, though we've won his Google results as well. There you go, closure.

In closing, the federal government apparently considers both the Heckler and The Hoya (I KNOW!) real campus newspapers.

Now go buy our sandwich. And e-mail us if you have any desire to write for us next year. We're having a lot of turnover of writers, and well, hopefully, with your help, this thing won't die out before it sees the new decade.

NEW ISSUE APRIL '09

Thursday, April 23, 2009

We're going to do a THIRD issue this year! Look for it early next week this Thursdayish DEFINITELY WEDNESDAY 5/6 AT THE LASTEST right here on the Internet.

Also, if anyone has any disgusting remarks about children to share, put them in the comments. I actually don't have enough time on my hands to come up with these, so I need your help to reach the necessary college humor magazine disgusting-remarks-about-children quota for this month. Thanks.

UPDATE: It's up.

Obama Requests J.T. DeGioia Mess Around With His Daughters

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Photo taken from Georgetown University's Flickr account without permission.


The transcript:
SPEAKER: PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA

OBAMA: Thank you so much. Please, everybody be seated.

Well, to President DeGioia, thank you so much for the gracious introduction, and thanks for bringing your family, including J.T. Appreciate you.

(LAUGHTER AT OBAMA PRETENDING TO APPRECIATE DEGIOIA)

The -- we're going to invite him over to hang out with the girls.

(LAUGHTER)

He's a pretty good-looking young man.

Eww. Eww. Eww. Eww. What does that mean, and why would he want DeGioia's son to do that to his daughters? I mean, it's kind of gross that DeGioia even has a son. Some people probably even question if he is the father...


Wait, where have I seen that hair before?


AHHHHHH! THERE IT IS! OBAMA IS SECRETLY LINKED TO BLAGOJEVICH! AHHHHHH! AND HE WANTS BLAGO'S SECRET SON TO SPAWN WITH HIS DAUGHTERS AND CONTINUE THE DYNASTY! Eww.

Anyway, I stopped watching the video at this point:
To Georgetown University students, it is great to see you.

(LONG, RAPTUROUS, BOASTFUL APPLAUSE)

Calm the fuck down, people. Your biggest cheer during the speech should not be for yourselves. Uggh, Georgetown.

Georgetown Waitlist

Friday, April 10, 2009

People searching for that term on Google has led to an explosion of visits to this blog, via this post.

Look kids, the Heckler is here to help. Just give me your information, I'll go over to the admissions office to argue your case, and they will be sure to not let you in.

Now scram. You'll love it at Tufts.

Also, can the person who googled "provost georgetown beanie baby" shoot me an e-mail? I really, really want one of those.

MyNostradamus

Tuesday, April 07, 2009

I generally dislike MyAccess (can't they at least put up the old-style Schedule of Classes if they're going to put up the old-style Course Catalog?), but it can see what your schedule will look like up to THE END OF TIME:


In the City of God there will be a great thunder, Two brothers torn apart by Chaos,
while the fortress endures, the great leader will succumb.

The third big war will begin when you decide to take ARTP-080, Public Speaking.

The Hoya Gets Theirs

Monday, April 06, 2009

NOTE: There is no humor in the following rant. Move along.


This blog's annoying need (on my part, and probably yours) to call The Hoya on their endless bullshit and lapse of duty as our "newspaper of record" can perhaps finally come to an end. They fucked up big time.

On Wednesday I first tried to write this post, but it's really hard for us to respond to The Hoya's April Fools' issue. First, one of our writers was asked to write most of the thing for them in 2006, and The Hoya couldn't manage to find a place between making in-jokes about themselves on their masthead to at all acknowledge him. Second, their crude "jokes" have been hypocritically allowed to be printed once a year despite us being denied the permission to become an official student organization in part because we wouldn't be allowed to write any strong satire. Third, the issue is a clear embarrassment to The Hoya and is demeaning to Georgetown and the art of humor in general.

This issue has for years been a reflection of The Hoya's bizarre but previously concealed views about what they have covered for the past year and their contempt for certain groups and people on campus, but somehow the issue has always come and passed without widespread outrage (especially easy last year, as they released the issue weeks late when people were starting to study for finals).

The Hoya generally defends the April Fools' issue, as many have this year, as a "joke" that everyone should "chill out" about. Satire, however, is more than just a joke. Whether The Hoya realizes it or not, it has a point, and if you're going to write it, you have to be ready to defend that point, because it's yours. I think they put together what they thought were jokes without realizing, in these articles, the latent racist and insensitive assumptions and ideas that made them funny to them.

We shouldn't be surprised that these notions exist in the writers of The Hoya. I've seen it a lot in certain members of the Long Island-New Jersey triangle, the great mass of the student body that to a high degree defines what Georgetown is at the present. I would hazard a guess that some of it comes from of their parents and a lot of it from a general isolation from people who are different from them. This is not to say that all students from that area are like this, or that all students with such racial notions are from that area, but I think that these notions are out there in the student culture, and that culture is largely defined by them.

It doesn't surprise me at all that The Hoya wrote these articles because we've received so many submissions to the Heckler that I've found to be not only unfunny, but also racist. One particularly baffling article that we like to pass around amongst ourselves was about Tiger Woods being arrested for rape. The reason he won so many trophies, the article alleged, was not golf skills, but raping people. On at least two occasions, I've had to rewrite an article I thought had a good premise but seemed racist or homophobic in how it was carried out.

Another striking thing about this April Fools' issue, one that relates to charges of racism, is The Hoya's obsession with vigilante justice. It's something I've also noticed in the culture here. I don't know if it's fueled by superhero movies, Catholic ideas about justice and punishment for straying from a code of acceptable practices, or a suburban fear of outsiders and the need to purge them. But it is a rampant belief, displayed in the comments here and here and elsewhere over my three years on campus.

And in this same vein, it has surfaced that some in GUSA are trying to find a way to get The Hoya punished for what they did.

As much as I detest what The Hoya did, that may be even more distressing than latent racism bursting onto its pages. The Hoya's freedom of speech may have been used hatefully, but we cannot let our selves or the powers that be get in the habit of punishing people for this type or any type of speech, save the extreme cases of slander and libel.

And hopefully, journalists will learn to stay out of humor. It's a bad idea.


NOTE: We're lazy, but we are planning a new issue of the Heckler in the next few weeks. One that, as always, we can stand by, and one that hopefully has real jokes.

Hoya Ed Board Endorsement Overcomes Lamb-Breen's Disqualification Momentum

Thursday, March 05, 2009

So this happened. It was remarkably close given the traditional model of GUSA elections: The Hoya endorses a ticket, and students who vote, i.e. freshmen, sign off on The Hoya's choice. The last time The Hoya's endorsed ticket did not gone on to win the election was back in Bush's first term of office. And that only happened because the ticket that narrowly won had fines (something they had back then?) that exceeded the $75 limit on campaign spending and had the balls to put flyers refuting the Hoya endorsement inside of each copy of The Hoya, but their disqualification was overturned months after the election. Current seniors have never seen an election in which the Hoya-endorsed ticket did not win, and neither did the class graduating before them.

We may all think the Hoya Ed Board made a strange decision this year on their endorsement, but we have to remember it's our duty to vote how they say to vote, no matter how bad a choice it may seem. So Georgetown, enjoy your new GUSA executives:



You deserve them.

More Hoya Ed Board LOLz

Friday, February 27, 2009

http://blog.georgetownvoice.com/2009/02/27/one-of-these-things-is-exactly-like-the-other-hoya-misprint-in-friday-edition

And thus our beloved Ed Board continues its silence on the biggest news of the year.

I understand, though. We printed our print issue with Silver Communications last year, and our shipment somehow ended up at somebody's house on 36th St. Luckily somebody at the house knew what the Heckler was and correctly guessed that 2,000 issues of the Heckler were not meant only for him.

Lamb-Breen and Dagher-Ibrahim Emerge with Huge Boost in Name ID

Thursday, February 26, 2009

Well, it looks as if what it looked like was going to happen with the GUSA election happened. The disqualified tickets are back on the ballot. And boy, they sure have the momentum going for them! Who can name another ticket in the race now? It's all Lamb-Breen and Dagher-Ibrahim, Dagher-Ibrahim and Lamb-Breen. There's no oxygen left in this race for the tickets who weren't disqualified.

One of these two tickets would certainly win, but Nick "19 Years In The Making" Troiano's hilarious decision to re-instate instant-runoff voting was enacted for next year's election. Now that we have a regular ol' plurality election here for this year (or is this one a Cajun-style runoff? who knows), their high profile won't matter as much, but I think all the attention will still probably bring one of them the victory. That is, if the Hoya Ed Board doesn't strike again with its annual pick, although I have a hard time seeing how anyone but the Ed Board would like their pick this year.

I think the key to this race, though, will be who gets disqualified next. Will it be Lamb-Breen? I think so. They seem like the favorites, and they know that the attention of another disqualification, this time without some of it being diverted to a second ticket, would probably seal a win for them. I'm guessing the weaker Dagher-Ibrahim will hang back and hope that Lamb-Breen's second disqualification won't be overturned, because even a second disqualification for Dagher-Ibrahim may not be enough to raise their name ID to winning level. But who knows? It's anyone's race. After seeing these two tickets get all the attention, tickets who were too shy to get disqualified last time might do it this time. Maybe every ticket but Dagher-Ibrahim will get themselves disqualified. Who knows?

However it plays out, the important thing to remember that it is your duty as a student to vote in this election, which is more important than national elections, because it takes all of us working together to keep this charade going. Do it for the douchebags who want to be Bill Clinton.

On a side note, has anyone been following the Hoya's coverage of this? They've had all the developments from the past week slopped together in one article that is getting extremely long and incoherent. It's great. And check out the comments, which now stand at over 50. One guy alleges that friend of the Heckler Will Dreher is a member the leader of a secret society called the Wolf's Head Union, which the poster says is in an eternal struggle with the (Second? Sixth? Sexless?) Stewards and of which I've never heard. Can that crazy guy comment here on what this wolf taxidermists' guild is? Are they these guys who capture wolves and make them sit on boxes of motor oil? Because wolves hate that.

Just look at that wolf howl. Wolves fucking hate fossil fuels. Or maybe the other Stewards finally just gave in and rename themselves. Who knows? Who cares? Well, yeah, obviously me.

Finally, can we please tack a superfluous keg ban referendum onto this ballot? That was so much fun.

GUSA Election Problems Come Early this Year!

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Play this as you read this post. I MEAN IT.



Wow, how long has it been since we had election disqualifications? Twistah? That was like three years ago! Anyway, the happy news came late Monday night that two tickets were disqualified for illegal flyering! Yay! Usually we have to wait until after the election for issues to flare up that question the legitimacy of the election, but here we are, on election eve, getting to open our presents early. Does this mean we get to have additional problems with the election after students vote today too? A boy can only hope!

Really, though, I have to thank the Election Commission. I wasn't sure it was worth it for me to take Lamb and Dagher posters and stealthily put them up in Darnall, ICC, Village B, and Leo's in the dark of night, but the Election Commission showed us that dreams do come true, and now I have blog material.

I am sure the Hoya Ed Board will back up this decision. "On the national political scene, putting campaign posters in places where they aren't allowed does not disqualify a candidate; in student goverment, however, we believe such rules are necessary so that nobody sees a campaign sign within 500 feet of a tray of chicken fingers because, as science tells us, those people will invariably vote for the names on that sign. The smell of chicken fingers is just to strong for us to perform our democratic duty."

Unfortunately, the Hoya website seems to have exploded in the wake of this GUSA news:


So I will have to wait until they can compose themselves.

EDIT: Well, the site is back up, but there's nothing from the Ed Board. I guess they're pretty backed up over there, because the two editorials this week are about stuff that was news a couple weeks ago. AND SO WE WAIT.

New Issue Feb '09

Hey, look at that. It's a new issue of the Heckler. I'm not sure how it got here, but be nice to it. It tried.

Hoya Ed Board Endorses Sophomore MSB John McCain Dadaists for GUSA

Friday, February 20, 2009

Last year's Hoya Ed Board struck the correct note in their GUSA endorsement:

GUSA is a joke. A tragically, hilariously, hyperbolically, theatrically side-splitting joke. A joke whose punch line we will never fully understand.

Correct. But this year's Ed Board is not going to give up the enormous power they have to pick a GUSA president so easily:

About a year ago, the editorial board of The Hoya (then differently composed) offered an answer of its own — not much.

OOOH! BURN! BURN! ED BOARD FIGHT! ED BOARD FIGHT!

Then differently composed. BAM! Take that, old Ed Board! You want to go, old Ed Board?! Huh? You think you can just call GUSA a joke and undermine the goose bumps we get interviewing GUSA candidates and arbitrarily picking a pair of them?!

Vitamin Water drinking contest.
ICC 116.
6:45 P.M.
Monday night if you guys don't have a midterm to study for or anything.
OLD ED BOARD, YOU'RE GOING DOWN!!!!!!!!!!!

As much as I love the hilarious intrigue of a Hoya Ed Board fight (hold my North Face fleece, Marissa, it's time last year's Ed Board meets Mr. Old Pocketknife My Grandfather Gave Me), we have to move on to the endorsement:

Calen Angert (MSB ’11) and Jason Kluger (MSB ’11).

Okay, despite this Ed Board TRYING TO DENY THE GLORIOUS CLASS OF 2010 A GUSA PRESIDENCY OF ITS OWN, there is admittedly one good part of their platform:

They also aim to enliven extracurricular life on campus by asking the GUSA Senate to devote half of the $60,000 GUSA budget to a “Georgetown Fund,” which would enable student groups to host events that SAC couldn’t or wouldn’t fund.

Hey, maybe then we could have Heckler parties besides that one earlier this year that quickly became too crowded and everything, but actually, this funding thing will never fucking happen.

But let's move on to the real reason the Ed Board picked them (depsite, of course, the MSB and FUCKING SOPHOMORES TRYING TO KEEP 2010 FROM A GUSA PREZ biases):

Both men know student government well. Angert has served in the GUSA Senate and as secretary of student life in the GUSA Executive Cabinet ... Kluger has served in the Executive Cabinet as director of advertising, and has helped to organize successful events like “May the Best Man Win” (a panel discussion and subsequent presidential debate watch) and an Energia lecture.

I don't think these positions seem very impressive, and I don't remember that election thing happening. Or what the hell an "Energia lecture" even is. Neither of them turn up anything in searches of the archives of my Georgetown e-mails for the past year, so I call bullshit. But anyway, you were talking about experience?

Angert and Kluger’s experience in student government will prove valuable if they are elected. On the national political scene, outsiders are often welcome; in student government, however, we believe that experienced leaders with the skills necessary to meet achievable goals are ideal.

YES! They just basically said that Obama was okay to become the leader of the free world with little experience because, you know, the ability to handle the U.S. presidency pales in comparison to the skills needed to run GUSA. What?!

And the editorial ends:

They are ready to lead, and we endorse their candidacy.

Ready to lead... Ready to lead... Where have I heard that one?



Oh right.

McCain-Palin-Angert-Kluger '09. COUNTRY FIRST.

Ed Board, please go back to writing syllabi for wine-tasting classes.


Also, on a side note, look at their abomination of a campaign video:



Classic MSB creativity! (Our MSB readers, uh, you're cool, though. Really. Just don't go making a collegey homepage web-portal thing.)

Now, it's pretty unoriginal for you to just change around the words of that viral Lonely Island dick-in-a-box video to suit your GUSA campaign, but the winning campaign two years ago weren't comedy writers, and they were at least able to kind of sing their own song without it sounding like a cross between an Alban Berg opera and a bad American Idol audition. But it's very, very unorginial, though highly business-minded, to try to do the same thing with the most recent polymorphously perverse Lonely Island video, which seemed like it just became sort of viral because media outlets assumed it had to be another dick-in-a-box thing, and they would have to report on it one way or another.

Angert has even used this ripped-off idea as evidence that he is not a Pat Dowd Manchurian Candidate (McCain!).

The best part of this video, though, is this comment underneath it:

darktrinity1911 (1 day ago)
This video sucks. Poor audio quality, poor candidates dancing like douches.

And the candidates', shall we say, douchey reply:

calenandjason (1 day ago)
haha you're right darktrinity we will do a much better job representing the student body than we could ever do dancing

haha ed board you're right ready to lead country first haha haha haha haha haha haha haha haha haha haha haha haha haha haha haha


NEW HECKLER ISSUE SOMETIME MONDAY. I PROMISE. PROBABLY.

And then the Stupid-College-Homepage-Thing Controversy Goes Too Far

Thursday, February 12, 2009

This admittedly ridiculously long rant I wrote last week upset some people in the comments and our inbox, but I thought I had heard the last of these failure-bound college-homepage-peddlers until this evening, when I returned from class to find this banner hanging between the first- and second-floor windows of my apartment:


Hey look, it's somehow yet another stupid college homepage thing, this time set up by Campus Corner Connection, Inc., whose website, at first glance, adorably manages to look like one of those search-engine infested abandoned URL-address placeholders. "For the People, By the People..."

Wait, what does that ellipsis mean? Oh right, the mysterious terror of their unauthorized banners appearing on the outer walls of your apartment. By the people.

I have to say though, this doomed college homepage thing looks a little better than the others. Look, pretty animated GIFs! Links to your two favorite newspapers, The Hoya and The Georgetown Independent! A forum where you can chat with the people who run Hoya Connection and their various aliases! Promotional pens, calendars, magnets and t-shirts with images that also appear to be from a URL placeholder site and which may or may not be free!

Now, I am flattered that this Brand Ambassador or "marketing intern" must have decided that the attention I've given to these stupid things were worth bothering me by putting up a banner on my and my roommates' apartment without our permission, but this marketing stunt made me angry.

Next time, please make your marketing even more extreme by doing the ultimate desecration-to-a-Village-A-apartment stunt, throwing a brick through our window. At least then I'd achieve my dream of being in a Public Safety Alert.

Thursday Thoughts


— The ridiculousness of this situation on all sides has already been well detailed in the comments on that article and elsewhere, so I only have one question: Other than a complete lack of specific interests and thirst for power arising out of the indignation of having a poor social life, what makes one want to become a SAC leader? I guess maybe we'll find out if there's ever a school shooting here.

— In related news, the Heckler failed to receive SAC funding for the seventh straight year. Not that we asked or anything, but, you know, they seem to have a propensity for odd decisions, and we weren't counting it out, never mind the fact that writing satire about Georgetown administrators or anyone else on campus is against their bylaws, meaning our two previous attempts in years past to become a SAC organization were denied.

Today's Public Safety Alert has to go down in history as having the WORST response to being caught in or at the end of somebody's bed in these reports. If you're not going to give us a hilarious line, at least wear a weird Halloween costume. Reading this report was a complete waste of my time.

— Finally, reading this interview, it's sad to realize that this year will probably be the last that GUSA presidential candidates talk about overturning the alcohol policies implemented before the beginning of last year's academic year. As the Class of 2010 moves off campus next year and will be able to legally go to bars, memories of what Georgetown was like before the policies took effect will probably be forgotten forever. Though there were partial reforms earlier this year, the social scene at Georgetown just hasn't been the same. And just as the Block Party thing before it (which is lamented often on HoyaTalk; it was an epic festival of drinking awesome enough to apparently kill someone), these policies will soon become permanent and the next major administration step towards eradicating student drinking will be on the horizon. Ho-hum.

— Also, Jim O'Donnell reads your blog? I'm so jealous. I'm not a muddle-througher kind of person either, Dr. O'Donnell!

Watch this Stupid YouTube Thing I Made

Monday, February 09, 2009

I rounded up some weird Georgetown-related YouTube videos, but none of them were good enough to post on their own. So, like the kids these days, I made a crappy MASH-UP.



Haha! I just wasted two minutes and thirty seconds of your life.

In order:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1U6zhrdxvvI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izmFPszBOwY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5QJm6W6O8s
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5dxSa9VpGU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONxkk5CibKA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkPt3tKh4XU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krROe10um0Q
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4lFZVC5Utg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFpK6kR4sII
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-dTsjjONB4


This one, though, is actually worth watching:



Look for a new issue of the Heckler next Monday. On the Internet.

Please Fucking Stop It With Your Entreprenurial Collegey Websites

Tuesday, February 03, 2009

I really didn't want to write another post about The Hoya, but I feel it's my duty. I'm the only one who seems to care about their independence and their journalistic integrity. And guess what, fuckers? I took Intro to Journalism (ENGL 481-01) last semester and somehow got an A in it without doing half the assignments, so I know everything about how journalism should be practiced.

Our issue today: this article. It's just depressing.

I really can't take these students and their endeavors to try to become the next Mark (FAIL EDIT:) Zuckerberg. I try. I really do. I actually know some of these people and have to interact with them at parties and such and I try very hard not to make jokes about their websites. But c'mon, look at this website The Hoya thinks is a newsworthy event:


Uggh.

Uggh.

Would somebody actually make this their homepage? I assume even its creators don't use it. Imagine opening your laptop in class and someone seeing that as your homepage.

I'm required now to make a list of things wrong with this situation.


1. The proliferation of this bullshit

Okay, you want to wring some money out of the Internet. Look, many of us want to make websites that succeed. But why this kind of website? Why always this bullshit? Maybe somehow one of these pieces of shit thrown at some HTML will actually stick. But I always know it won't. And you must, deep down, know it won't. But you wanting to become a millionaire means I have to hear about this bullshit all the time and read your job offers for "marketing interns" (an abomination somehow worse than the shilling "brand ambassadors" that let a corporation come between them and their friends), who are revealed in this article to be a couple of sophomores.

Let this bizarre Hoyapedia article be a lesson to you: it's a Corp programmer, crying, because nobody will use his amazing Web 2.0 app thing. It is your future if you try to launch one of these bullshit websites.

But at least Hoyapedia and the Corp's other failing venture, HoyaTrade (one of its only listings is, sadly, for Hoyapedia), have some original thought. I swear to God that I have seen this same fucking college student homepage idea three times before at Georgetown. At least one is iHoyaSaxa, and there's another one below. It's not working, folks, because it's a really, really bad idea. Never mind that HoyaTrade and Hoyapedia show that students aren't interested in these kinds of student-culture websites, but the idea of making money off being a dedicated homepage is an idea that reached its prime in, what, 2001? Maybe even last century? Are people out there really searching far and wide for a new fucking homepage that has their favorite links on it? Especially college students? Do me a favor and think about this for five seconds before you plop down money on a new homepage venture.


2. The Hoya enables these people

You know, you don't have to publish this. I realize these people send you e-mails asking you to cover their exciting new Web ventures, but I have a secret: they send those to us too. Yes, they actually write us and ask us to write satire about this crap. And they even sometimes offer money. (For the record, this group never did either, nor would we ever think about doing something like that without vomiting.)

I have to believe there are more important or at least interesting things going on at this school besides these bullshit Web ventures. I just know, deep in my heart, that these things must happen at Georgetown, even if they are never covered by The Hoya, as hard as that is to believe.

We don't need an article on Hoyapedia. Or HoyaTrade. Or College Life DC. Or Debatus. Or any of the other student Web ventures The Hoya has written about that I can't remember off the top of my head.

So why do they do it? Well, one reason apparent by this article, at least, is that somebody involved used to do stuff for The Hoya, and The Hoya is also featured prominently on the CampusLIVE page for Georgetown.

I have a solution: give us a year-end roundup of all the new student Web ventures that have failed in the past year. It'll give us a much more truthful look at these things than the regurgitated press releases The Hoya usually spits out.


3. The Hoya posted almost this exact same article almost exactly two years ago

Here it is: February 6, 2007; the brilliantly named MyKollege.com.

And here is MyKollege.com is in all its glory today.

Now someone at this week's news meeting must have been around back then. So what happened? Did they see the idea for this article and simply forget about the last one? Or, much worse, did they recognize it, yet decide that it should go in The Hoya because the last one went in the paper? I'm assuming the latter. Are college newspapers supposed to print the same stories in cycles, like Nickelodeon Magazine but with even more recycled ideas, or are they supposed to present the happenings of what is in reality a dynamic community?

The irony at this point is too painful, but I have to compare the opening line of this week's article:

It is a common dilemma for the Georgetown student: navigating one Web site for checking your mail, another Web site for posting your homework, and yet another for receiving your grades. However, thanks to the creators of CampusLIVE, a company that has given students the ability to create customized homepages, Hoyas have to look no further for links to all of their educational and social needs.

to the one from two years ago:

For anyone who’s ever had trouble keeping track of all the Web sites they browse, three Georgetown seniors may have just solved your problem.

Is this why you're writing these articles, The Hoya? The thing is, I don't think this "common dilemna" or "problem" really exists, because the homepage thing two years ago, you know, failed. Maybe the author of the new article could have at least mentioned that failure, or if she didn't know about it, am I the only person at Georgetown able to use the search function on their website?

I will make a bet. If CampusLIVE becomes at all a success on campus within the next year, I will quit Georgetown. And if not, I get to have The Hoya.

Photographic Evidence of the Rebirth of The Hoya

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Gen. Zach Rabiroff of the People's Liberation Army of China and children, teens, and college-student minister Rev. Jack Stuef of the Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, California were on hand to officiate the ceremonies on Monday.

Gen. Rabiroff led us off with a reading of the Last Post on the wall of the Save The Hoya Facebook group:

Jack Carlson wrote
at 5:41pm on January 26th, 2008

Right so it was a "well-known Georgetown yell" long before the newspaper... the part about the "decade after" is just when the athletic teams took on the name. But "Hoya Saxas" have been associated with the university much longer than the paper - which the group description mixes up.
That always makes me tear up.

Next was the Moment of Silence:

Some people, those who were not too afraid that they would be arrested by that DPS officer in the middle of the photo for taking part in the revolution, had already showed up. More would come when they heard the booming righteousness of Rev. Stuef's Sermon of Hope that followed. It retold the history of The Hoya since it had been placed in shackles by God in the Garden of Eden and ended with a message of renewal inspired by the revelations of Monday, a reading of the Wine-Tasting Editorial Heard Round the World, and the the Baptism of Hope:

Everyone in the crowd took a copy of The Hoya and ripped it to shreds. Then, in the tradition of John the Baptist, the shredded newspapers were dunked in the Holy Georgetown Student Brita Filter Water, symbolizing the destruction of the old chains binding The Hoya and its rebirth as a free institution. The wet shreds were then wrapped in an American flag, and the people chanted "U.S.A.! U.S.A.! U.S.A.!" before the flag was dropped and stomped on to again symbolize the destruction of the old chains. Then the People departed to get back to their guerrilla warfare.

REMINDER: A Moment of Silence for the Free the Hoya Movement

Monday, January 26, 2009

5:41 PM, today, Red Square.

Reader E-mailbag

Sunday, January 25, 2009

From time to time, we get e-mails from you the reader thinking this is one of those Internet things with which you can interact and be a part. It is not. You are here to listen to what we have to say, not have a conversation with us. It is a lecture, not a seminar. A Bush presidency, not an Obama presidency. A person standing on top of a roof yelling things at passerby, not you walking by and trying to talk with a friend while avoiding eye contact with me up there on the roof.

Nevertheless, the feverish popularity of this blog (Technorati says we're the 2,523,334th most popular!) and of the Heckler in general (we got listed on this high school English teacher's homepage!) has meant there are a number of people that have trouble understanding that.

Here then are the winner and loser from the past week or so in e-mails.


WINNER

Reader Kent Strader sent us this photo, asking us if it looks like Leo's:


Yes, Kent it does. And it is. And it is a perfect metaphor for Georgetown. It appears someone noticed his golf cart starting to catch on fire, then quickly fled the scene so he wouldn't have to be held responsible. Then somebody else did the bare-minimum requirement of bringing a fire extinguisher to the scene, but she left it about six feet away from the golf cart without actually trying to put out the fire. Then other people were walking and saw it but decided to shift direction away from it so they also couldn't be held responsible.

Read this 2004 Hoya story if you want to destroy that metaphor. And while you're at it, all of the search results for "golf cart" there are pretty good.

Also, Kent and everyone, you shouldn't be reading CollegeHumor. We don't allow our readers to get their comedy anywhere else but this barely-updated media empire.


LOSER

Cretin Justin Riel complained that this story from last year was "Gawdawful." (I was going to use a [sic] there, but I realized that Justin must be a Valley Girl.) "I understand that you're trying to go for offensive humor, but Darfornification just isn't funny. Worst of all it's just offensive," Justin writes. That's sort of a poorly put together thought, but thanks for taking the time to let us know you didn't like a thing that we had on our website last year, Justin.

He goes on: "It fails miserably unless your goal was to make G-town look bad, then good job." Well, that actually is one of our main goals (this is a satire publication about Georgetown, Justin), but I get the point. You're three years out of college and still using your university e-mail address and reading student publications; you're the ultimate vision of a successful person, and so you care obsessively about the image of the name of the school on your resume.

With remorse I must tell you I cannot access Justin's Facebook profile, so we cannot laugh at the stuff on there. Gawddarnnit.

I'd also like to name as an honorable mention in this category the e-mail entitled "Get the longest schlong in two months." Two months?! I expect the male-enhancement pills I buy from spam messages to work much faster than that.

Hoya Ed Board Assasinates Austrian Leader, Orders Georgetown To Give Them Course Credit For Spitting Wine Into Buckets

Friday, January 23, 2009

A lot of history has happened the last few days. So it is only fitting that the lead editorial in The Hoya today asks—no—DEMANDS that Georgetown offer a course in wine tasting!

How long have we suffered without a wine-tasting class?! It is barbaric! Thank God The Hoya can see how its ongoing, blood-soaked, guerrilla revolution is hurting the people. "I don't care about whether or not The Hoya gets to keep its name, I just want to know the right wine to pair with a veal pâté," the constantly-being-raped, malnourished single-mothers cry out in agony on M Street. Well, guess what, proletariat? The Hoya is looking out for you. And they didn't even put "www.SaveTheHoya.com" on their "BEAT 'CUSE" signs this year, even though that is the most important battle in saving their newspaper. They just care so fucking much for you huddled, not-in-a-three-credit-wine-tasting-course masses. Why? Because they are the masses. They are the people. And the people ache for a wine-tasting course even more than they do for The Hoya to not be listed as a student group on the Georgetown website.

Meanwhile, the revolution lives on. Until they forget to renew that domain name.




NOTE: The Heckler will be in Red Square on Monday at 5:41 pm to hold a moment of silence for the one-year anniversary of the most recent comment on the Save The Hoya Facebook group wall.

ALSO NOTE: The university's central intelligence agency has picked up chatter that there may be a new issue of the Heckler in a few weeks.

Georgetown University Hospital Goes On YouTube

Thursday, January 15, 2009

Hey look, that hospital our administration failed to be able to run is not only doing well, but has signed up for YouTube! Let's see what they have to offer!

Oh, it's fourteen videos of some guy talking about kidney, pancreas, and liver transplants. Great...

It looks like this doctor showed up to get his school photo taken but only wanted to talk about how long it takes to get back to work after one of these transplants, and then he didn't pay extra to get his background changed to neon green because his parents hate him and want his pictures to look stupid. I've been there, doctor.

Here's one of the videos:

Waitlist Torture

Friday, January 02, 2009

Still no response to my e-mail to John Q "Public" "Or Terrible 2002 Denzel Washington Movie" Pierce. I guess he wanted to ruin my break even more, because I find this:


I signed up for the waitlist for this class like a week ago thinking I would easily get into a class that had 50 fucking seats open, which, you will note, is ten more than the number of people already enrolled in the class. In the days since, however, more people have noticed this class has open seats and have been trickling in, and for the past 24 hours or so, the number has stood at exactly 50 people on the waitlist for an available 50 seats, making me extremely on edge.

I like to buy my books online before I get to campus because it costs less, and as soon as possible, as the prices go up as people in the class buy the cheapest copies online. So do I shell out $100 now, betting that I'll be one of the 50 of the 62 or so people that are on the waitlist that get in whenever our dashing registrar gets around to letting people in off the waitlist? I don't know. I'm sure he keeps track of my book purchases and will be sure to screw me over if I do.

I'm thinking of just giving in and telling him where my secret terrorist organization has hid our secret bomb. I don't think the jihad is worth the stress, and letting people know that this popular class (note the word "sports" in its title) has open seats on this blog probably means more than 50 people will be on the waitlist by tomorrow anyway.

You win this holy war, Mr Pierce.

 
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