The wide world of competitive distractions has been up on ends this past season, as newcomer Angry Birds has made it all the way to this year’s Procrastination Bowl and will duke it out with defending champion YouTube for the title of “Biggest Goddamn Waste of Time.”
Angry Birds, new to the inattention circuit this year, is the world’s best selling cell phone game. Developed by Finnish company Rovio Mobile, the objective of the game is to fling a flock of birds at entrenched green pigs who have stolen the birds’ eggs. Despite its seemingly noble cause, this game has essentially halted productivity across the world.
Stanley Carpazzio, Vanderbilt Associate Professor of undergraduate-level Archaeological Bullshit, said, “When my three students come to class, they’re supposed to be listening to ME! What do they do? They sit there rubbing their thumbs on their phones for fifty minutes. One of them even has the nerve to play with the sound on.”
Defending its position as the top distraction in the world, YouTube is confident that it can beat out its opponent’s avian assault. Since its creation in 2005, YouTube has essentially dropped productivity by 69% internationally. When asked about its challenger, YouTube founder Jawed Karim said, “Look, there’s videos of how to beat Angry Birds already on YouTube. I think we have the clear advantage.”
YouTube advanced to the big game after a controversial close win over Facebook. While Facebook is the world’s second most popular website, YouTube being the third, it was not expected to overtake the video-spam website as YouTube features content from more creepy adults and Europeans. However, in the final second of last week’s conference championship, Facebook took the lead by forcing mandatory profile changes upon everyone thereby giving people something to bitch about. In the closing seconds, YouTube scored enough wasted time by countering with a 25-second video of a puppy falling over backwards on top of a girl in nothing but underwear.
On its path to the title, Angry Birds recently defeated Twitter in a blowout in its most recent playoff game.
Game Designer Jaakko Iisalo said, “Well, Twitter is just worthless anyway. It never had a chance against us.”
The Procrastination Bowl is set to take place on February 29th in the New Orleans Superdome. Each team will be randomly assigned ten everyday people ranging from students to construction workers to stockbrokers. The citizens will attempt to do their work for one hour of game clock with a fifteen-minute halftime. YouTube and Angry Birds will have to do their best to waste as much time as possible. A perfect score is 600 wasted man-minutes.
Angry Birds Head Coach Teemo Rofflefoffleson said, “Our strategy is to use all of our levels possible. Since the last update to the game, we certainly have enough to get close to perfect.”
YouTube Quarterback Johnny Rocket was slightly skeptical of his team’s ability to pull off the clutch victory. “We’re too arrogant. Watching videos is such a passive activity. People want to move their thumbs,” Rocket said. He was then promptly removed from the team for “copyright violations.”
Whichever team will win the game is unclear at the moment, but productivity monitors are already weary of the large number of people sure to bet pennies on the game at centsports.com.
Angry Birds to Face YouTube in the Procrastination Bowl
Stunning New Developments in Beer Pong Theory Baffle Enthusiasts
Results from a recent study conducted at Fucdisgaem State University have put the world of Beer Pong on edge as many findings contradict everything that avid players have held dearly for centuries. The publication is being compared to Einstein’s theory of general relativity, Newton’s Principia, Darwin’s On the Origin of Species and Snooki’s bestseller A Shore Thing.
Describing his revolutionary text, How to Be the Best: Fuck You, a Study of the Science of the Silky Smooth Shot, Dr. Tony Peesashiet flowed, “Look, all ya pussies and nancy boys have been doin’ this shit wrong. Sit down, open ya ears, and lemme teach ya this true shit bout the pong.”
The report primarily focuses on the placement of beer pong cups after initial setup, or “rerack,” and how some commonly-used formations actually lead to one’s own defeat. The two most common misconceived cup setups are the “Tight Vagina” – four cups in a diamond lengthwise – and the “Power-I Formation” – three cups in a vertical line. Peesashiet’s work proves that the often ridiculed “Loose Vagina” and “Play Button” are more appropriate for the four-cup and three-cup situations.
“Yo, like, I know people gonna give you shit ‘bout that loose vag, but look, bro, it’s all related to the Heisenberg fuckin’ uncertainty principle. Your goddamn ball is like a fuckin’ photon, and you ain’t got any idea where that shit’s goin’. That fucker’s gonna go more left and right than it is back and forth, if you got any goddamn skill at the fuckin’ game. Same shit goes with the play button. You use these fuckin’ racks and your bitch-ass opponent’s gonna be drinkin’ that shit and doin’ naked laps like Usain Bolt.”
Not everyone has been pleased with these recent waves of change in the beer pong community. Local frat champion Chad Cranderson was furious at the doctor’s work.
“LOOSE vag? What the fuck is that crap? Hahahaha…” Cranderson said, right before the cup he held in his left hand was promptly sunk on the second turn by the good doctor himself.
Giving a brief post-victory interview, Peesashiet boasted “Yeah, punk, don’t even try to insult my loose vag!…Wait, don’t print that.”
Things Not Understandable
There are many things in this universe that I don’t understand, and as a result, these things annoy me quite a lot. Whether it is sports, music, food, cultural geography, spark plug design or Australian Rules Football, I just don’t get some of it.
I don’t understand why people who live in a college town are diehard fans of the school they didn’t attend. People who live in Nashville who are UT fans confuse the bejebus out of me. Is it the age-old debate of Proletariat vs. Plebian? Most likely so except not stated as snobbily as I just did. Are all Catholics required to be Notre Dame fans even if they live miles away? What makes even less sense to me are fans of pro teams from states in which they do not live. In high school, I knew a guy who loved the Broncos. The only problems are we lived in Nashville, not Denver, and his family had never lived in Colorado. His reasoning was based on the fact that they should have been good with Jay Cutler. At least he has the dignity to stay loyal to the franchise – something that can’t be said about most Patriots or Red Sox fans.
I don’t understand when people use the first person when talking about their favorite sports team. Are you on the team?? The only appropriate situation for doing so is if it’s the school you’re attending.
I don’t understand lab reports as a teaching mechanism. I don’t think I’ve learned anything useful other than that there are many ways to fudge data, there are many heavy-duty machines on campus that have a very specific use, and that most of them don’t work. Well, fudging data has made a lot of people successful in life…
I don’t understand free-form jazz. It’s cool and all, but I’m not going to remember it later despite my best intentions.
I don’t understand people who eat cheese pizza or don’t like spicy food. Sack up; stop being a little bitch.
I don’t understand anything about California. Shit’s messed up.
I don’t understand the appeal of diet soda. It does NOT taste good, and it’s made of Aspartame. That’s way too much chemistry going on, and as a Civil Engineering student, I’m against that. Always buy Mexican sodas from the K&S World Market, because they’re made with delicious sugar. SUGAR!
I don’t understand how I was able to fill this box with so much fluff and still impress my good friend Lady GaGa.
Newest Slant Prints Most Offensive Sentence Ever
On Wednesday December 8th, The Slant’s most recent printed issue contained within its pages the single most vulgar sentence ever published by a Vanderbilt student-run publication. The news broke prompting unprecedented student response, as many students found themselves skipping class to protest the senseless degradation of the English language and the Vanderbilt community as a whole.
“I’ve never in my life seen words that have inspired such a fervent, grassroots reaction,” Political Science professor Johan Pulitsar said.
In addition to angering just about everyone, the immensely rude sentence’s existence postulated questions that not even the university’s most heralded academic scholars could answer.
“To think that a human being could bring himself to think – let alone print – such a statement really puts my entire career as a researcher at an impasse,” Philosophy professor Frederick Aristotletes said. “No, there’s more to it than just that… What if I had been the one to pen the unspeakable phrase? Would my humanity cease to exist as I descend to become one with the demons? All these years of mankind, have morals just been a façade covering our dark, sadistic reality?”
A student who wished to remain nameless said, “Man, I dunno ‘bout these pussies who can’t take a joke, but it was hilarious.”
When reached for comment, the entire staff of The Slant was unable to be located by Vanderbilt Student Communications, VUPD, Nashville Metro Police, Vanderbilt Dining, the FBI and the International Criminal Court. President of Interpol, Khoo Bun Hui, has sent out an all-points bulletin to the law enforcement agencies of the world asking that The Slant staffers be apprehended, jailed and tickled mercilessly until they say they’re sorry and sit in time-out for a while.
Private Investigator Dick Larjebalz has recently been hired directly by Chancellor Zeppos to get to the bottom of this mystery.
In response to our reporting, Larjebalz took a long drag from his cigarette and said, “I dunno what kind of answers you’re looking for, doll face, but I’ve seen a lot of dark stuff in this unforgiving town… This gang, though, they make Al Capone’s boys look like a bunch of goddamn Dudley Do-Rights.”
How to blog from iPad
Dear world I sit here today typing poorly and
Unable to find my tv remote. The food network is on st 3 am and it is now infomercials please please someone stop this awful awful torture. There are no keys in this thing how am i typing st sly thus is ridiculed . Oh i found it criss severed i almost stepped on my iPad youth that would have bucked. Oh sweet man tracker is on sciene channel oh wait something about sex on g4 yes here we go.
The food channek is awesome but i eish i coukd eat the food on the tv in the real life. Kinds sucks doesn’t it??? South park creme fraiche was really funny though.
So it’d thanksgiving teak noe and i really Should sleep but wow I’m on a real Sofa in a real house that doesn’t smell like a cross between popcorn beer vomit jets pizza and bacon. School has unlimited hot water though so i ended no shave November s few days early. Sad sad sad.
Do i buy call of duty back ops im afraid if i do ill die like srtioudly my life will end i csnnot believer it had to corm to this. Death awaits me in the form of s call of duty.
Late night commercials are the worst idont eant to see the only erectile treatment covered by medicare how bout you cover up eith my fisticare in your faceinsurance.
I heard a table of Japanese people st dinner. Couldn’t understand what all they were saying. Too loud in place. Wow im a failure at my favorite language of course English is still #1 in the hood g.
I have a gift csrd to davis kid but it is going out of business i cant believe this i will buy scott pilgrim booked.
Wwell this is the end of the line for my iPad typing this has taken me like 15 min. Yeah buddy.
Thanks fore reading the least clever thing vie written ever. This has ben an experiment in socials media I a cannot believe socsisl autocorrected to socks.
Kanye West vs. The World
Not that it needs to be said explicitly, but it keeps becoming more and more apparent that heavily-circulated music keeps getting worse and worse. Case in point, Far East Movement’s “Like a G6” might be the absolute worst song I have heard in many years, and that is saying a lot. It’s as if someone took a computer and made a song, but forgot to put the song part into the .flac file. Many claim that T-Pain is to blame for the computerization of music, but I believe he redeemed his ways by collaborating with the genre-bending “I’m on a Boat.” However, even the fact that T-Pain has become less relevant clearly hasn’t stopped the multitude of hack jobs from making “music.”
Over the past few weeks, I have come to the conclusion that the downfall of contemporary pop music can be experimentally traced to Lil Wayne’s 2008 single “Lollipop.” As the 90s officially died in 2001, it can be deduced that hip-hop entered a strange era of being popular, yet still being distinctly rap. Ludacris, Kanye West and 50 Cent were able to use old-school sample-based beats with gangster-esque vulgarity to create a bastard child of creativity that somehow still managed to be pretty dang cool. As a certified white-boy, I am obliged to be in love with Madvillain’s 2004 Madvillainy – the most critically acclaimed hip-hop album of the decade, which naturally means it’s not popular and that no one has ever heard of it. Lil Wayne shook up the scene by being so goddamn strange, but “Lollipop” was the definitive “jump the shark” moment.
Consider the other songs on Tha Carter III. They are mostly all classic Weezy, especially the bad-yet-still-good “A Milli.” “Lollipop” had Lil Wayne using Autotune prominently for the first time, and its popularity still has all of us reeling in the consequences.
After “Lollipop” blew up, everyone and their producer’s brother was booking Lil Wayne to be featured on a single. Kanye West took the idea and made an electronic album that was clearly too advanced for Top 40 listeners’ brains. The Autotune epidemic became so inundating that not even Jay-Z could fully kill it in his tracks.
As hip-hop becomes more and more like pop, it disturbs me that artists are trying to come up with catchy choruses rather than a complete song. One of my roommates, bless his heart, often falls victim to the ruse. He knows the words to choruses of every song in the Top 40, but ask him to sing a verse and he has know idea what’s going on.
The truly, scary part of this is that I have no idea who has the ability to revive 90s hip hop. Jay-Z failed, Lil Wayne gave up, and Kanye West is a jackass. I think if we’re ever going to see another Straight Outta Compton or a Big Willie Style for our own generation, then one of us is going to have to step up. That’s right Slant readers, I’m calling on each one of you to put together a sample beat from your favorite James Brown song and spit some bars over it. And act quickly, we don’t have much time to spare.
Doppelgänger Presence Devastates Campus Daily Life
Reports across campus show that more and more students are encountering a higher number of people that look exactly like their friends up until a certain visible distance. In a recent response to their heightened presence on campus, it has been leaked, somehow, that these spectral and mortal apparitions known as “doppelgangers” are members of the University of Vanderbilt Doppelgangers (UVD). The organization, supposedly founded in 1873, strives to maintain its motto of “For everyone, a double. For everyone else, an awkward moment.”
Concerning one run-in with a member of the organization, perpetually astonished neuroscience major John Ditto said, “One day, I just got out of Rand brunch, and I thought I saw my bro J-Rod, but when I threw him into a headlock, he was all like ‘What the hell, man?” and proceeded to slug me in the gut.”
Negative student response to the increased level of confusion has led to many normal undergrads seeking to banish their creepy and usually smelly look-a-likes. Opposition groups such as The Young Adults for Normal Culture have been criticized for their overt anti-doppelganger stance.
Defending her existence, the Student Government of Vanderbilt president Moria Lurphie said, “America is a country of doppelgangers. In colonial times, everyone tried to blend in by wearing powdered wigs. Would you be able to tell the back of George Washington’s head from that of King George?”
Even the mere idea of doppelgangers has posed many problems for the school’s population.
Vanderbilt Football star Warren Norman said, “I keep hearing about a guy out there named Norman Warren. Look, Norman, you’re making my life pretty miserable; coach keeps expecting me to be everywhere on the field. If you’re out there reading this, I’m gonna get you!”
In the most recent issue of The Huslter, the doppelganger student humor publication, Editor-in-Chief Navid Van-Damme lambasted the student newspaper, The Vanderbilt Srant for printing an unprecedented 16 crosswords in a single week.
Srant Editor Carlos Cristiano replied, “Our readers want to be entertained. No one does Sudoku, and reading without interaction is such a passive activity. That, and you usually have to socialize to finish the puzzle. You can’t just sit on the toilet for an hour looking at words.”
While the future of campus doppelgangers, just as their very presences, remain uncertain, one fact remains clear and irrefutable: This article wasn’t the one you were expecting.
Vanderbilt Seeks to Increase Sexual Health Ranking
In a press release sent to The Slant’s office via The Vanderbilt Hustler, the Trojan Condoms company ranked Vanderbilt University 66th in the BCS in terms of sexual health and awareness. Not to be outdone by the likes of Columbia, Duke, Harvard, West Virginia, Alabama, IUPUI and Gordon Gee’s very own The Ohio State University, Vanderbilt’s Dean of Students Office has begun a new program to increase sexual behavior on campus.
“While our incoming freshman classes always outshine any previous collection of students, we feel that they are becoming less and less promiscuous,” Dean Mark Bandas said. “We are pleased to announce that effective immediately, every Vanderbilt student will have a sexual interaction quota to meet on a weekly basis.”
This new scoring system, aptly named Commodores Understanding Nature’s Tendencies, or CUNT for short, is designed to reward students for being adventurous. However, the system also penalizes social blunders and general awkwardness.
“The points system is incredibly simple to understand,” systems analyst Rodney Labian said. “We award students points for hooking up, heavy petting, and getting frisky, but there’s a lot more to it than that. For example, if you romp under the sheets on a Monday rather than a Friday, you receive a three-times multiplier and even a four-point bonus if it’s before 5:00 pm.”
The CUNT program has been painstakingly designed over the previous three weeks not to reflect any possible points of sexism or sexual discrimination. The scoring rubric does not differentiate between gay or straight encounters, but it does award the student points on a logarithmic scale based on how much discomfort an experimental encounter can generate. This discomfort reward is explicitly stated not to apply to large-bro-on-drunk-girl scenarios in order to prevent excessive outbreaks of conspicuous frat hopping for points.
Students will have to meet the sixty-nine point minimum per week if they wish to stay enrolled in the CUNT program, but not all groups on campus feel that this experiment is as all-inclusive as the administration claims.
“Most members of the Vanderbilt Undergraduate Warlock Traders Guild are discriminated against and unable to receive the benefits of this program,” High Elder Linus Fortran said. “There isn’t even a bracket for self-gratification! How is my student org supposed to keep up in the season standings?”
Following spring break, the Dean of Students Office will tally up the weekly score sheets by student organization to create a swingers’ bracket of 65 teams seeking to create a true March Madness/Spring Fever atmosphere. In the spirit of the NCAA’s first round play-in game, the lowest ranked groups to make it to the big dance will have to compete in a volumetric bodily fluids contest to take on the overall first seed.
Filbert Siemens, captain of the flag football team Caligula’s Concubines said, “Well, I don’t think our team will be in that situation, but you really have to be willing to take advantage of the Masturbation Station in Rand or Commons to maximize your man-juices.”
With Vanderbilt’s overall sexual health ranking poised to increase 65 full positions, administrators in Kirkland Hall are already looking for the next list to conquer. Early candidates include crime rate, overall population density, and likelihood for grads to become crack addicts.
On Birthday Happenings
By the time you have picked up this newspaper and promptly begun to undo your pants in steamy shit-or-jizz anticipation, something amazing will have happened: today, October 27th, is my birthday. I’m not sure if this has ever happened before in the 124-year history of The Slant, but it is actually a bit strange in that I have written this editorial beforehand. Who am I to believe now that I will still be alive on October 27th? Every Pub lunch I outlast is another wet noodle fight with Death himself.
If one has a birthday on a Wednesday, is it really a birthday at all? In 2008, mine was on a Monday, and I had the gift of a Japanese test. お誕生日おめでとうございますね？ 2009’s edition brought me the unabated joy of Physics B lab from 4:00-7:00, and this year, the English or Japanese languages cannot express how excited I am to have Fluid Mechanics Lab from 1:00 to maybe 5:00 PM. Nothing against any of those classes, well, except the septic tank from hell that is Physics B, but maybe – just maybe – classes should be cancelled on October 27th. First Vandy caves in for MLK day, then Veterans’ Day, then Moon Pie and RC Cola day… How about Clay Day? Just sayin’.
As I turn 21 years of age, let us reflect on the last true birthday that allows for a government-given privilege. Turning 15 grants you the glory of identification in the form of a learner’s permit and 16 – a restricted license. 17 meant you could drive past curfew, and 18 sent you a nice letter in the mail about the selective service act. 18 also let you vote, but 19 and 20 leave you a bit empty. What a cliffhanger! Other countries don’t seem to believe in the tortur- I mean, delaying gratification.
Last year, as The Slant crew was preparing our glorious and much-heralded Payne Award for Ethics in Journalism-winning October 28th, 2009 issue, Managing Editor and spicy Cajun Justin Barisich turns to me and says, “Hey Clay, I just told you it’s your birthday on Facebook.” If there’s one aspect of Facebook that has not been tainted by Farmville, blatant violation of the end-user-license-agreement or ceaseless scavenging for bikini pictures, it’s the little pink present box that appears to the side of the home page. For one day a year, you get to make someone you may not even know feel all bubbly wubbly. My go-to phrase is usually the incredibly terse yet emotional “hb, yo,” yet people still appreciate the deviation from the normal “happy birthday!” as the little red notifications increase.
So, as this editorial makes its way into the library archives to forever encapsulate my age as a brisk 21, hear me out: the next time you see that it’s someone’s birthday and you don’t see them in person, give their online ego a little boost and just say something. It doesn’t have to be profound – hell, the stupider, the better. Your little blurb may rekindle some lost magic. Unless, of course, you don’t want to ever see those people again and relive whatever embarrassment their metaphysical presence brings. In that case, be a man and ignore the ramifications of your steadily declining social prowess!
Kangaroo Week Respect the Decision to Drink Heavily (sponsored by Foster’s – Australian for Beer)
Okay, so I know many of you non-drinkers out there think it’s annoying when that one guy refuses to stop drinking alcohol along with all of his friends at the party. But it’s very important that we respect his rights, for we might not truly understand his complex, hormonally loaded psyche. For example, it’s highly likely that he consumed copious amounts of Tetrohydrocannabinol earlier that day, and he wants to be careful to get the most out of his Thirsty Thursday night by combining a hallucinogen and a depressant. Cross-buzz! Or maybe his main bitch has discovered that he’s been spending her hard-earned money, and he’s dealing with the goddamn loan shark that same Tipsy Tuesday night. Or perhaps he’s trying to lose those last few decimals on his over-2.00 GPA, and he’s just too embarrassed to study, because that’s less time to drink, right? Oh no, I feel sick. Why am I typing this? It’s Saturday… Whatever the reason, I think we can all agree that it’s better to let him drink alone than with the rest of the party. Anyway, come on, this is America. We all deserve our civil liberties taken away from us by a police officer for public intoxication. Just remember what George Washington said, “Pabst Blue Ribbon. Drink it, you assholes.”
Although many people do drink and do so responsibly, please remember that everyone has a different story to tell. Whether they shotgun in the trash chute or are merely enjoying a study-beer, it is only fair that we treat them as human beings, as opposed to treating them as something else, by respecting and supporting that decision…
I need to vomit. Get out of my wa-
For more information about Kangaroo Week, contact The Slant at
eic.theslant@gmail.com or stop by the Student Media Newsroom at Sarratt 130. Kangaroo Week, unlike its competitor, does NOT support splitting infinitives or the font Comic Sans. Seriously?
