By Jeffrey Carl
Thanks to a bare modicum of writing skill and a more obvious fondness for bourbon which aligned with that of my journalism professors, my putative career advanced rapidly through my undergraduate years. I went from a practicum story writer for the University of Richmond Collegian student newspaper in my freshman year to Assistant News Editor in my sophomore year, then on to Greek Life Editor and IT Manager (I read MacWorld magazine!) in my junior year, and ultimately to Opinion Editor in my senior year.
For some reason that escapes me now, I acquired a humor column during this process at the beginning of my junior year. This column, titled “Over the Cliff Notes,” eventually ran for 22 installments and was over the course of two years was read by literally dozens of actual humans, only most of which where KA pledges I forced to do so. Its literary influence was quite literally incalculable, and I’m just going to leave it at that.
It occurs to me now that topical humor from college campuses nearly 30 years ago does not age well. I’m sure it was absolutely hilarious at the time, though. Enjoy!
Or, for those of you who don’t speak German, like I don’t, welcome to The Collegian, student newspaper of the University of Richmond, which I assume you are already familiar with.
My name is Danny “Dan-O” Noonan, and I am the Opinion section editor. This means, roughly, that I am paid a teensy amount of money “every so often” for editing other columns and occasionally recycling jokes from other places I have read them. I also carefully read all of the reader mail sent to us, considering its suggestions (most of which are “die in flames, you maggot”) and then respond to our concerned readers in a curteous, appropriate fashion (usually short letters that say, “Yeah, well, you suck too.”)
This is because we here at The Collegian pride ourselves on being responsive to our readers. And, for those of you who are New Readers, we wish to present a brief introduction to our fine college – in fact, sort of an “Everything You Wanted to Know about the University of Richmond but Were Afraid of the People Who Could Answer Those Questions Because They’re Scary.” So let’s dip into the reader mailbag here – for those of you who have read this column before, just follow along with the gag – and pull out some of those Most Oftenly Asked Questions. By the way, for those New Readers out there, since you don’t know any better – everything in any of these columns is absolutely 100 percent true.
Q: What is the easiest way to remember my long-distance access code?
A: Well, I’m glad that you asked about social life here at college. If you’re asking yourself the normal freshman question, “will I meet nice people here?” then you can relax. The answer is no, and you’re not going to have any friends unless your mother sends everybody checks like she did for you in high school.
For those of you who are international students or just not familiar with English, try the following hip American greetings to get you noticed at parties:
“Greetings, Senator. I am the Arch-villain ‘Frogface.’”
“I am glad to meet you [insert person’s name here] and I sincerely hope that the gelatin is no longer in your hovercraft.”
“Will you dance with Mr. Wiggly, Sir?”
“Take my wife – please!”
Ha, ha. Just kidding. I didn’t really mean that. That stuff is actually as crazy as a football bat. But why print it, then?
That’s because we here at The Collegian pride ourselves on thinking that we’re funny. But (sigh) down to business. Now we’ll actually answer a letter sent in by a student at the end of last year.
Q: Whom do I get in touch with if I have a medical emergency?
A: I’m happy you asked about dormitory cable services. All of the dorms apparently have cable now. This improves the quality of life, and leaves you with a few new options for your leisure time and several hundred bitter seniors who had to wait until they got out to the apartments to get cable and feel that this little turn of events really just bites ass.
Of course, I meant “really bites ass” in the strict biblical sense.
But the point remains that back when I was a youngster, the dorms came equipped with exactly two amenities: cold and colder running water in the showers, and large or larger scurrying rodents in the halls. We had to walk to class in snow that was eight feet deep, even if we had both legs broken and it was a Saturday. And did we have “Skinemax” to look forward to when we got home (Channel 2)? Hell, no! So just put that in your hat and smoke it.
Now, for those of you that have gotten this far or even read the other columns in this section, both of you will be happy to note that there is a roughly 15% overall decrease in bitching about the lake and the coordinate system from the same time last year.
This means that our columnists are not up to par and we will be searching for new ones. If you are interested in writing for the Collegian, go to hell. Ha ha. Just kidding. If you are indeed interested, please call and let us know.
By the way – enjoy your year. It’s actually pretty fun here.