By Jeffrey Carl and Paul Caputo
April 13 1995
More hyper-topical college humor! We combined our personalities into one to save time. You probably won’t get the “haircuts” joke unless you know that we had just finished the UR production of Tom Stoppard’s brilliant play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead which requires the whole cast to grow out their hair. Either way, I think it’s the best column we wrote at the University of Richmond. That’s probably not saying much, though.
We, Jeff and Paul, are busy people. Busy enough, in fact, that we recently considered merging into one person named “Puff Carpluto,” who would have more than $600 in parking tickets, to save time in our daily chores. We figured that no one would notice, since for the last three weeks we have exchanged identities anyway and each of us pretended to be the other person. Jeff’s girlfriend was reportedly unhappy, although Paul’s girlfriend was elated.
The point is that busy people like ourselves — constantly running about from class to meeting, appointment to interview, accident scene to cheap brothel, etc. — are desperate people. To prove our point, we obtained the “things to do” list for Monday of two local busy people who may sound very much like Paul and Jeff but who in fact are not Paul and Jeff, and so you should sue them and not us if you are offended.
Paul and Jeff [not their real names] are busy people. Busy enough, in fact, that they have an enormous number of things to do on their list of things to be done, which is called their “things to do” list.
Paul and Jeff’s Things to Do:
• Get haircut: This has been six months in the making. We are never acting again. All of our hats fit funny now.
• Find people with long hair, call them freaks: Hey, at UR, that’s a sport. And we can afford to make fun of people with long hair because we’re clean-cut and pleasant-looking. Plus they are, by nature, freaks.
• Kill that screaming kid on the “Sheik” Condoms commercial: This kid needs to die. That kid from the old “Encyclopedia Brittanica” commercials is next.
• Knock down Jepson school to increase parking space: We need parking. Nobody needs a leadership school. It makes sense. If we could knock down cheerleaders to make even more space, we would do that, too.
• Irritate administrators
• Return messages from irritated administrators: We’re columnists. That’s our job.
• Sign up as “Mark Ramos” for credit card offers in Commons, get free gifts: Is it possible to have too many slinkys or water bottles? We don’t think so.
• Offend last three people in school: We noticed that there were three people left at the school whom we have not offended. Those three, chosen at random, are Richard A. Munneke, J. Anderson Screws and John E. Reigle. These people are all lame. Nyah-nyah. Plus “Anderson Screws” is a funny name.
• Hoard thousands of “sporks:” This should be self-explanatory.
• Steal toilet paper from science center bathrooms: Just our way of sticking it to the man.
• Thank Pope for the brownies
• Sell Collegian equipment, pocket the money: As far as we’re concerned, the paper didn’t exist before we started writing and it won’t exist after we’re gone, [see “solipsism,” Scott Shepard, Dec. 5, 1993] so we’re selling all The Collegian’s expensive computers, photo equipment and lace doily collection–cheap— and pocketing the profits, then driving to Mexico.
• Play “Wheel of Term Papers:” We write ambiguous papers that all begin with “Knowledge is an exquisitely problematic paradox,” then pick at random which paper is for which class.
• Feed the fish
• Call “911” to report Honor Code violations
• Visit sweatshop full of underpaid illegal immigrant Norwegian joke writers in basement: Where did you think we get our jokes from?
• Sign autographs
• Call Senior Campaign, earmark our donations for construction of “Gottwald Taco Bell”
• Pay off parking tickets in new Mexican currency, the “Poncharelli”
• Eat whole quart of mayonnaise
• Join the Sirens: We do a delightful duet on “You Make Me Feel Like a Natural Woman.”
• Learn “Gym-kata”
• Publish The Collected Wit and Wisdom of Jeff Waggett: Thus far, some of our favorite examples are “To thine own self be true,” “Being quasi-Greek is like being half Macedonian and half Swedish, but different,” and “The pledge of allegiance sucks.” The book is a weighty six pages, with five and a half pages for autographs from your classmates.
• Steal Senior Gift name-engraved bricks, throw them through windows: We can put threatening messages on them, and the people will blame the person whose name is on the brick.
• Get new nickname, “Sparky” : It sounds much better than Paul’s current nickname, “Pooter,” or Jeff’s nickname, “Dickweed.”
• Win lottery
• Return to NBA after 18-month hiatus
• Make Mike Nimchek honorary member of “9 Divine:” If we’re going to make fun of people, we might as well kill two birds with one stone.
• Call up registrar’s office, declare fake majors: Such as “Hasselhoff Studies,” “VCR Repair,” “Refrigeration Technology” and “Leadership.”
• Don’t be That Guy
• Solve crimes with help of a talking car
• Believe it’s not butter
• Send ransom note for Lindbergh Baby: Hopefully, with our police department, it’ll just send the money before it figures out the case was solved in 1937.
• Come up with slogans for new fine arts building: Our favorite so far is: “They really kinda suck, but Jason Roop sure looks good in tights.”
• Track down and kill people who left Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead during intermission: Don’t think we didn’t notice.
• Return frantic phone messages from King of Canada: It’s something about declaring war or something. We’ll get around to it.
• Tape Quantum Leap and watch it six times
• Go to class: Oops. Well, you can’t do everything.
(Miki Turner contributed to this column. Don’t blame him, though, we forced him.)