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.
Three Issues: Anti-Todd Olson E-Mail Rocks My Parents' Inbox
Thursday, December 18, 2008
1. My dad mentioned today that an impassioned e-mail from a Georgetown parent showed up on their ancient (dating to 1993) AOL account, which, I kid you not, is STUEF4FUN. Yep. Anyway, the Voice blog had a right-up and the text of the e-mail, but they didn't seem to know whether this was from Ivan Batishchev, a student, or his parent. Or maybe it was from someone pretending to Ivan Batischev, because apparently the author spelled his name incorrectly, according to the Georgetown directory and The Hoya, for whom the guy has been an alternatingly incomphenisble and dull cartoonist and, I think, some sort of editor. However, on his two Facebook accounts, the guy does spell it "Ivan Batishchev," with an extra "s" in there.
All of this is to say that I was playing on a wet Healy Lawn with a stolen box of frisbees from McDonough Arena at 4 am one night my freshman year during finals and I met a guy hanging around Lauinger who said his name was Ivan Batishchev. And he also said that he had just drank an entire bottle of NyQuil.
All of this is to say that I may have just drank an entire bottle of NyQuil myself that night and Ivan Batishchev is a figment of my imagination. And then I drank an entire bottle of NyQuil a couple years later and reprised the character in an angry e-mail to parents. And created one or two Facebook accounts for the character.
So we really don't know anything about the authorship here. But I'm going to guess it's either me or J.T. DeGioia.
2. I didn't know about these Todd Olson newsletters until I was searching around for photos of Todd Olson to use in the last issue, but they're pretty much exactly as you'd expect. For example, the person fulfilling work sanction hours by writing this Fall 2008 newsletter made the first paragraph almost exactly the same as the one from last year. The main difference is that performing arts had a "busy round" this year rather than the "inspiring round" they had last year. Also, "It is a time of summing up, and preparing for the joyful holidays ahead" now, not "It is a time of great energy and possibilities."
The most important thing, however, is that they used the same picture as last year. And in this picture it appears that Todd Olson has been Photoshopped into a picture of the ICC Galleria. Man, this picture made my holiday.
Nice.
3. If Ivan Batischev / Ivan Batishchev / his mom doesn't get in trouble for this e-mail, tell your parents they can look forward to my rebuttal to each of Todd Olson's e-mails from now on, along with poems I write under Jack DeGioia's name, cookie recipes, and crude Todd Olson Photoshop jobs:
I have always wanted to send an e-mail of some of my bullshit to gustud@georgetown.edu. Eventually, with this list of Georgetown parents, I hope to tell Sonia Jacobson she can authorize mass Georgetown e-mails on behalf of my cock because I don't need the provost's authorization any more!
Unless I was high on NyQuil and was the one who wrote this Ivan Batishchev e-mail. In that case, I need to stop being so preachy and learn how to write funnier e-mails when I drink bottles of NyQuil.
Letters to University Administrators: John Q Pierce
Tuesday, December 09, 2008
After my worst semester in most regards, last week really fell into place for me. I had about ten things that could have gone terribly wrong before I left for the holiday on Friday afternoon, but none of them did. None. This was a semester in which everything went wrong for me, often in ways that would have seem contrived for a Vince Vaughn Christmas movie. But look, my crazy part-Maori professor actually liked my half-assed paper on Smash Palace. John Glavin actually liked my half-assed short film that was the opposite of what he asked it to be. Ray Danieli did me a solid on the "ten" work-sanction "hours" I "did" for him. And, somehow, I got all the classes for which I registered.
This is a travesty.
Thus, I turn my attention to University Registrar John Q Pierce. Who the hell does this guy think he is? He knows he's not supposed to give me the classes I want. He's supposed to give me the two classes I changed my mind about taking after submitting the pre-registration and not give me the classes I really wanted to take and ranked up near the top. This is the biannual tradition: I try really hard to try to guess which of the classes I want to take people will be interested in, but it doesn't even matter if I'm right because the registration computer finds a way to completely fuck up my schedule.
According to the directory listing for Pierce, the letter "Q" is his middle name. Not even a period; that's it. Who is he, Harry Truman? A secret agent? Well, this is the first result for a Google Image search:_Izabella+Scorupco_JamesBond11-1995CentralPark_GoldenEye72dpi.jpg)
So Q is a double agent now? Why has he betrayed James O'Donnell and Her Majesty (actually, the same person) to give me, Britain's enemy, a perfect, impossibly easy yet undeniably major-satisfying schedule? There's only one way to find out: Go straight to the top, to Q himself!
The following e-mail was sent to John Q Pierce. If he responds, I'll include it later.
Mr Pierce:
I have a major complaint about your registrarring. This upcoming semester, seemingly when I needed it most, I wound up with a perfect schedule. Everything that I wanted. Multiple classes that filled up quickly and now have people suffering on their waitlists, I got in.
I ask you: What is your angle, Mr Pierce?
I have always wound up with poor pre-registration results. I have always had to completely re-work my schedule with the classes that still had open space after pre-registration. I have tried to get the popular professors, the professors you are supposed to take in your given field before graduating from Georgetown, and I have always been stuck with some second-rate foreign import or inexperienced doctoral candidate. Mysterious, is it not, that you chose this semester to make everything perfect?
Mr Pierce, I managed to get the worst grades of my academic career this fall. I managed to have not one, but two, MacBooks of mine self-destruct, destroying precious notes needed for upcoming exams and academic papers and freelance writing that had not yet been handed in to their respective parties. And yet you decided to make things easy for me all of a sudden?
Starting to feel nervous, Mr Pierce?
Either you have a dark sense of humor, or you are working for the Russians. And if you do not tell me what the "Q" stands for, I will report you to the CIA.
Please remove me from all the classes I got into.
Jack Stuef
Also, let me note that there will not be another new issue of the Heckler before spring semester. Not that either of us cares.
