The Slant» Jim Gillin

Pink Ribbons on Campus Trees Summon Powerful Archdemon

Jim Gillin — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 01:50:30 +0000

Does your day go by without egregious pestilence, warfare, famine, and death? Well that’s about to change, now that a bunch of sorority girl wannabes have summoned the foul demon overlord Gozta to campus.
Worshippers of Gozta have been appearing around campus lately, making known their usually underground presence at high-traffic areas like at Rand lunch, in an effort to recruit the necessary additional acolytes for the summoning of Gozta. Handing out the symbol of Gozta—a bright pink ribbon—and tricking girls with their innocuous smiles, these succubi have successfully filled their ranks with the numbers they need for their blood rituals. They target women who didn’t make it into any sororities, counting on their low self-esteem and desire to exact revenge on the rest of campus.
The final step in this cult’s summoning ritual involved coating trees around Alumni Lawn and other parts of main campus with their symbol—broad pink ribbons—with a written invocation of Gozta’s name on them. An aerial view of these ribbons would reveal that they make the shape of a pentagram.
Preceded by the intense lightning storms which wracked campus for several days, Gozta emerged from his sulfurous prison below the earth’s crust and into the Marriott hotel on the evening of February 2nd.
While it may seem curious to an outsider why these women would want to subject themselves and the rest of campus to Gozta’s fiery rule, cultists assure us of their firm belief in his supreme righteousness. One follower spoke to us regarding her convictions:
“Yeah, I like got cut from all the sororities during rush. I cried for days, but then the cult of Gozta appeared and offered me a place to fit in. They accepted me for who I am. And if part of that belonging means slashing my hand and using my blood to summon a demon, like, get over it!”
Asked why she wanted to bring death and destruction to campus, she said, “I don’t need like a bunch of fake friends. Gozta is the only friend I need. I couldn’t care less if everyone else didn’t exist!”
Enemies of Gozta can expect fear, plagues, fighting, and more as the demon wanders campus, spreading his ill-will. Even his worshippers are not safe, being subjected to horrors such as forced anorexia/bulimia, dangerous levels of forced drinking and use of cocaine, and nonstop harsh judgment by Gozta of everything they do, including everything they say and wear, and whom they hook up with.
Campus has seen such horrors on campus in the past, though most still exist, and have been simply accepted as the status quo. Another senior worshipper tried to help us understand the reasons for Gozta’s summoning:
“Gozta’s mission is to bring friendship, good will, and service. We trust in him to provide all that we need. Whether he actually manifests all of these or not, at least he claims to…”
Gozta is a notoriously powerful demon, and is expected to stay. Until Gozta can be reimprisoned in his hellish cage, Vanderbilt will have to suffer the consequences of allowing him to appear.

British Police Make Arrest in Brutal Murder-Suicide

Jim Gillin — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 01:20:30 +0000

British police have made an arrest in the February 3rd murder-suicide which claimed 4 victims in Essex. Mary Chambers, accused of murdering her husband and two of her three children before shooting herself in the mouth with a shotgun, was arrested briefly after the incident and awaits trial for the brutal crime.
Police found all four bodies lying headless on the floor of the Chambers family home, the husband and children lined up on the living room floor execution style, and Mary’s body on the couch opposite, still clutching the gun. After neighbors heard the shots and called the police, Authorized Firearms Officer Peter Beatson was first to arrive on the scene, and after a brief struggle, placed Mary’s body in handcuffs. Beatson had this to say about his confrontation:
“I walked in to the scene of a massacre, and there she was–still holding the gun in her hand, with a cold, dead look in her eyes and soaked in blood. She wouldn’t drop it, so I was forced to fire multiple shots into her torso. She didn’t drop it, so I emptied the clip. She still wouldn’t drop the gun, so at that point I ran in, spent a minute prying the gun out of her hands, then placed the suspect under arrest.”
Events after her arrest got even stranger. Mary refused to comply with the officers on scene, and had to be carried like dead weight out to the police vehicle, earning her charges of resisting arrest. During her preliminary court appearance, Mary spoke no words, looking straight ahead as if in a different world. When asked how she pleads, Mary gave no response, and was then declared to be in contempt of court.
Friends and family of Mary spoke out to police against her arrest. “No way she killed her family,” says Mary’s brother, Garret Lamb. “Mary would never do that. Please let her go so she can try to rebuild her life after the heartless murder of her family.”
The Slant attempted to speak with Mary, but her lawyer has advised her to make no comments about the case to anybody. At least, we think so. She hasn’t said a word in a week, apparently.

New Handicapped Gold® Memberships Offer Even Better Parking Spots

Jim Gillin — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 07:23:59 +0000

Handicapped? Tired of only getting the 2nd or 3rd closest parking spot at the iHop, while some poser with a sprained ankle gets the best spot? Well you’re in for some good news: new Handicapped Gold® memberships can guarantee that YOU are the one sitting pretty in parking spot numero uno!
Participating government buildings, restaurants, churches, and other public locations now offer additional handicapped parking—even CLOSER than the regular parking—for subscribing members. Starting at $7,000 a year (tax exempt!), you get access to the even-better parking spots, featuring extra-wide berth, shaded awnings, and other benefits varying by location.
Wal*Mart’s Gold® spots, for example, are physically located inside the store, right by the motorized courtesy shopping carts, guaranteeing that your shopping is off to a smooth start while everyone else walks, wheels, or what-have-you through the harsh outdoor climate from their “superior” parking spots. And Gold® parking spots at Red Lobster are located in the lobby, by the aquariums, so you can start choosing your lobster while the non-Gold® jokers are still out to sea.
So visit your DMV today and sign up, and you’ll be leading the race to get the best pew in church every time. And that value is Gold®.

God’s opinion on: the pope hat

Jim Gillin — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 07:16:08 +0000

This is pretty awkward, and I feel bad about publishing this in the Slant instead of visiting you in person, Benedict, but I never meant for the whole “pope hat” thing to take off. I only gave the idea to some really really short guy who wanted to be pope in the middle ages so people would pay attention to him.
It looked pretty good—back in the days when it was acceptable to wear fox pelts and silk on your head. Here was some guy, acting literally holier than thou, and he had a clean, tall, white hat to wear, so you’d better listen up! And it worked. Too well. It has just gotten out of hand today, with the tall-ass Abraham-Lincoln-stove-pipe-hat-inspired thing that sits on your head. A few inches of pope hat would be all you need to look smashing with the rest of your wardrobe, don’t you think?
I was kind of going for a bit of a joke, anyway. That’s why I modeled the pope hat after the bishop piece from chess—a bit of church hierarchy irony, get it? Hah, hah. I’m sorry to let you know like this, I really am. I just had a feeling if I told you the news directly, you wouldn’t pass it on to the world, and you’d keep wearing that God-damned hat. This way, I can tell not only you, but all the cardinals and bishops too that they should tone it down a little bit. People might take us a bit more seriously about the abortion thing if we didn’t look like such try-hards.
Just tone it down a little, ok, Ben? For me.
Xoxo,
God.

It’s Now Uncool to be Uncool Again

Jim Gillin — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 01:55:53 +0000

Well-dressed, athletic, and social people everywhere confirm that it’s once again uncool to be uncool, and conversely cool to be cool. 
Uncoolness, frequently a problem for the lower-middle class, has been a drain on society from the 1950s, up until the late 1990s, when geeks grew some nuts and decided that it was cool to be uncool.
Donning their parents’ dusty jackets over ironic thrift store t-shirts, dorky kids took on a new identity—hipsters—and spent the past decade and a half trying too hard to look like they weren’t trying, in order to convince society that uncool was the new cool. 
Well, it worked… for a while. Poll results this year indicate that after increasing and plateauing for many years, the popularity of artsy haircuts and skinny jeans has finally taken a downward turn, signifying that the nation believes it is once again uncool to be uncool.
Mothers are breathing sighs of relief, echoed throughout the entire American South, as their kids look in the mirror and decide that baggy flannel looks terrible, and a nicely fitting collared shirt would be a better choice. 
Aside from the fact that “Kool” was the new cool for a while with these cigarette-smoking hipsters, cool has not been cool since approximately 1990.
Cool people today are ecstatic: “Finally, I don’t need some greasy twit judging me for popping my collar and wearing a Patagonia jacket with my pressed khakis… or showering daily… or going outside… or listening to rap!” commented one man who self-identified as “always been cool” in our survey. 
Of ten thousand participants in our nationwide poll of cool people, 15% claimed, like the above man, that they have always been cool, or have been cool since the early ‘90s. 9% claimed they hadn’t been cool before 2012, but have changed habits and recently become cool for the first time in their lives, and the remaining 76% checked the box for “Was uncool (which I thought was so cool) for a while, but I’m back to normal now.”

New Jersey Bans Sale of Human Meat

Jim Gillin — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 01:28:10 +0000

After a long battle in state congress, New Jersey has illegalized the processing, distribution, and sale of human meat. As of January 2013, no foods with “man” in the ingredients can be sold within the state of New Jersey, including at butcheries and mortuaries.
This new law ends centuries of man eating in the state. The human meat trade in New Jersey dates back to its colonial days, and has been a large factor in the state’s economy since then.
After the Dutch established the colony, savvy trading soon led to a market for cheap and tender human meat. Many other New England states had flourishing human meat markets as well, but with the development of the other states, most of them have cut human meat off their menus decades or centuries ago; New Jersey is the last holdout in this archaic trend. 
The ban comes as part of New Jersey’s project, included in Obama’s economic stimulus package, to elevate its class from historically critically-low levels.
New Jersey governor, Chris Christie, said “We’re not looking for miracles here. We may never have things like clean water or normal levels of trash in the streets, but if we could get people to stop eating people, we’d call it good enough.” 
Those who can’t adapt to inhuman meats, rest assured; the law does not forbid the consumption of human meat already in one’s possession.
Christie says he hopes to prevent meat riots in this way, by weaning the population off human meat. 
Economist Jean Laurie, employed by New Jersey to manage the state’s transition to “Man-Meat Free ’13,” believes this will also benefit the state’s economy during its last year of selling human meat: “Prices will be a lot higher in 2012 as consumers rush to buy up the last of the man meat. The sales rush will help invigorate the economy as we look into other cheap meats to place in our hamburgers.”
Laurie predicts that come 2013, gourmands and rare food eaters may still be able to locate human meat on the black market, but with the heavy charges to be associated with getting caught selling man meat, “it’s going to cost them an arm and a leg.”

Top 10 Christmas Carol Titles, Adapted For Modern Times

Jim Gillin — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 09:17:41 +0000

10. Angels We Have Seen While High
9. I Came Upon The Midnight Clear
8. Santa Claus Is Not Coming To Town, But Your Parents Are
7. Chill Bro Wenceslas
6. Listen Up! Herald Angels Are Singing
5. Rudolph the Brown-Nosed Overachiever
4. Whose Child Is This? Maury’s Paternity Test Reveals!
3. The Six Days of Christmas (2005 “Twelve-days-took-too-long” edition)
2. The Little Sexually Ambiguous Drummer Boy-girl
1. I saw Mommy getting slapped around by Santa Claus

Awkward Moment Made Even More Awkward When It Was Pointed Out

Jim Gillin — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 18:05:20 +0000

Two men doing their weekly loads of laundry at the Wishy Wash Laundromat were made exceedingly uncomfortable Wednesday as one of them pointed out an awkward moment which otherwise would have been laughed off or forgotten right away. 
Ángel Arroyo Garcia was moving his clothes from the washing machine to the dryer late last night. Space was tight at the Wishy Washy, and Ángel is no small man. Bending over to pick up his sock, Ángel graced butts with another launderer who was also bending over to pick up something at the adjacent machine.
Ángel barely noticed it and was moving on with his laundry when the other man, whom we have been unable to identify, turned to Ángel and mumbled “that was awkward. Heh,” laughing nervously. 
Ángel told The Slant that he hadn’t been feeling that the situation was awkward at all until the other guy had the guts to point it out. At that point, “just like Adam and Eve realizing they were naked,” Ángel says, his eyes were opened and he realized how awkward the situation was. 
Onlookers sympathized with Ángel; we were able to speak with Ángel’s other laundry machine-neighbor who witnessed the incident.
Pierre Washington gave us his take on the situation. “I didn’t think anything at the time, you know, accidents happen! But when a brother points out that he butt-touched another brother, there’s no makin’ that NOT gay.” 
Another Wednesday-night launderer who was present at the scene said the awkwardness was so thick she could cut it with a knife. “Yeah, I get how he did it. Sometimes when I’m talking to some guy, there’s a little pause in the conversation. He’s probably just drawing a breath or something, but I usually just say ‘umm, this is awkward’ or something, to fill the silence you know, and it always gets way more awkward when I point it out. Poor guy…” 
Ángel, who had been in the middle of moving a Tapout t-shirt from the washer to the dryer, said his whole night became more awkward after the incident.
“Honestly I didn’t even know what he was talking about at first. I had moved on, but he had to remind me about how our butts touched. I was just thinking ‘really? You bother noticing things like that?’ and it got a lot weirder.”
According to Ángel, the awkward-inducing man finished folding his clothes and scurried off soon after that, but his seemingly innocuous comment left Ángel feeling awkward for the rest of the night.
If the man had said nothing, witnesses agree, the situation would have been barely noticeable. But by pointing out the awkwardness, all he did was irrevocably plunge the two men into homoerotic silence for the rest of their time together. 
Ángel concluded, “All I know is, I’m switching laundry day to Monday. I can’t stand to see that guy around anymore.”

Law Requires California Children To Be Stamped If They Were Manufactured In A Facility Which Processes Peanuts

Jim Gillin — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 23:59:57 +0000

Controversy has been rising among parents in California recently over a new law which requires children to be stamped if they were manufactured in a facility which processes peanuts and some other nut products. 
Despite the discomfort for the stamped children, the law is purported to have saved several lives already. Ten peanut allergy-related deaths on average are reported each year in the state of California, mostly among children, and this extra warning serves to keep allergic children away from those who might cause a reaction. 
The wording of the law may be a euphemism, but make no mistake: this law targets children whose parents conceived them during a sexual encounter in some sort of food production facility which handles peanut products.
Believed at first to be a ridiculous law, surprising numbers of parents have been admitting their strange choices of location and bringing in their children to be tattooed. 
Self-proclaimed legumophile Mary Rollins came forward, proud of where she chose to conceive her second son, John. “Me an’ [my husband] Herschel grew up on the same block as the Jif plant. It was only natural we found a comfy spot in the storeroom, unlidded ourselves a few jars of PB and got busy.”
With respect to her child, Mary said, “sure, he loves it! The kids call him Johnny Cashew at school.” 
Other parents weren’t so nuts about the idea. Grace Polizzi had to withdraw her daughter from school, thanks to incessant bullying from other children: “I didn’t want my daughter to have to bear a scarlet letter for my crime—just for getting it on in a Mr. Goodbar factory. Ever since they stamped her neck with that allergy warning, she’s been coming home crying about guys offering to show her their nuts.” 
Fourteen-year-old Victor Dopico also has it tough. There is only one food production facility in his town which handles peanuts—and it’s an oily little candy shoppe in a decrepit shack at the edge of town, managed by a convicted paraplegic sex offender.
The awkwardness torments him every day, as he is confronted with the reality of the kind of company his mother kept every time he looks in the mirror. The lives of these children have been affected forever, as the stamps are permanent and heavy fines and prison time punish their removal.
For those who get used to them, life can be extremely rewarding, as with every new encounter, they get to wonder whether they would have saved the other guy’s life if he had been allergic.
Some stamped children even love their marks so much that the second generation of “peanut babies” is on the way; teens have gotten pregnant in peanut-processing facilities just like their parents, with the baby scheduled for stamping immediately after delivery.

Foreigners discovered to lag in real life

Jim Gillin — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 23:16:39 +0000

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil—A traffic accident, with no driver claiming responsibility, took place this September. While normally a second thought wouldn’t be given to such an event, something sets this accident apart from all others: both drivers are blaming the accident on lag. 
The American motorist, Zach Jewell, claims he was crossing the intersection, but he could see that the other driver’s car was several yards away and had no chance of hitting him. The Brazilian driver, Yara Melo, says she saw Zach’s vehicle crossing in front of her.
“I could swear it was already past, and then suddenly- crash! Our cars were crunched together in the middle of the road.” Enraged about the accident, which he perceived as Melo’s fault, Jewell screamed “Fuckin’ lag!!!! I swear I drove RIGHT PAST HER.” 
This accident is only one instance of lag occurring between peoples “IRL,” or “in real life.” Lag occurs when events are slightly out-of-sync with one another, causing disrupted activity.
Lag was once thought to be confined to online gaming where slow internet connections caused players to miss shots at their opponents or appear to be stuck in the same spot. However, sociologists at the University of Minnesota, in cooperation with engineers, have released a study linking several previously-mysterious real-life events to lag.
Stephen Turnet, Ph.D., author of the study, traveled around the world with his colleagues seeking evidence of real-life lag among foreign peoples.
He shared with The Slant some of his startling discoveries. “I was walking down a street in the market,” said Joseph Catlin, an American tourist taking a walk through a busy market in Seoul, South Korea, “and all of the vendors were running in place, stuck in their spots. Some of them were running into walls for minutes at a time. I’d never seen lag so bad!” 
Soldiers are having extreme difficulty with lag problems as well. Government sources confided to The Slant that the reason the United States has not committed to the war on drug cartels in South America may be because of lag between combatants which unnecessarily puts soldiers’ lives in danger.
Staff Sergeant J.R. Head admitted, “it’s one thing to have a soldier take a bullet, God forbid, if he makes a mistake. But when he makes it to cover and a bullet magically kills him by shooting through the spot he was in a few seconds ago, that really demoralizes the company. Fuckin’ lag.” 
One man interviewed said he was purchasing a hot dog from a Persian immigrant street vendor. He said the vendor assembled his hot dog in intermittent jerky movements, then just dropped it on the ground, totally missing the customer’s outstretched hand.
“If I was just a second quicker, I would have caught it,” said the man. “It just felt like something was out of sync between us.” 
While the issue can be serious, engineers involved in the study believe the best thing to do is suck it up and provide wider margins for error in all interactions with foreigners.
It may be tempting to blame our mistakes on lag, but we must be understanding and keep our cool in the face of foreigners calling us “n00bs” for screwing up. After all, not every country can afford good internet like America.