I grab your transient attention by opening with a meaningless anecdote that I will extrapolate into what I think is a profound message about life for my fellow students. Or perhaps I’ll go with an out-of-context Gandhi quote. Either way, you are unable to resist my eloquent introduction, and I’ll hold you captive for the remainder of this extremely important column.

Next, I summarize the happenings of a recent “controversy” or big news story unfolding around campus. I am expressing my deepest dissatisfaction with the situation, and disagree with all notions associated with it. You must know how terribly dissatisfied I am with the situation, for you will better appreciate my insights later on.

I am quite giddy with excitement as I prepare to convince you of the truth of my opinion. First, I offer incontrovertible, completely unbiased evidence that supports my opinion. Now, I am rigorously analyzing said evidence. Because I’m not much of an analytical thinker, I simply explain the example in great detail.

I offer another example, to assist my feeble-minded readers in seeing the light. Some more rigorous analysis follows this second example. Don’t you see what the examples mean? They mean that I am right.

In this paragraph I will make a logical pole-vault, connecting my sloppy argumentation to my far-superior opinion.
Here, I make an empty concession or two about the opposite opinion. However, I follow them with sarcasm aimed at the preposterous notion that any opinion contrary to mine exists.
I assure you, you really don’t need to know the other side of the argument. It’s wrong anyway. I hope this paragraph has explained to you why the opposition to my opinion is foolish and just plain wrong.

This paragraph is explaining to you why I am right, and always will be. In fact, I’ll devote the next several paragraphs to explaining why I am right. That is, after all, the purpose of having my opinion column. I include multiple hypothetical questions to drive home my correct opinion.
I wish I could bang my fist on a podium right now. You must know how emphatically right my opinion is.

As my enthralling opinion piece boils towards a rollicking climax of rhetoric, I offer this rally cry for my fellow students to accept the truth of my holy opinion. My opinion is so much better than yours, because I am so much better than you.
I’m getting quite excited now!
Fuck the Man! But I still want to maintain the status quo! I should write a gospel. ‘The truth according to me.’
Do you think a collection of my angelic opinions will be canonized one day?

As I am grasping for relevance, I offer these cautionary statements warning of the disastrous consequences of not following the wise teachings of my opinion. I assure you, the world will be a perfect, sunshiny place and we’ll all pee rainbows if you would just acknowledge the correctness of my opinion.

People always tell me, “Hey Robert, you’re funny. You’re in Tongue N Cheek (Come see our show on the 28th, by the way). You should write for the Slant!” So I thought, “Sure. I’ll do it.” They definitely needed my help. So for the last issue, (You know, the one with the clock on the front for no reason.) I took time out of my busy schedule to co-author an article with my boy Brendan Gray about a beer shortage. The thing was gold, and if you didn’t read it you should have.
Now, you should know, the only reason I went through with it was to see my name in print. And guess what? THE FUCKING EDITORS MISPELLED IT! What the hell? I mean, I grace this shit publication with my considerable talent and they can’t even take the time to check the spelling on my last name? I mean, Jesus; it’s only six letters. Even more, it’s just two one syllable words put together. Hi. Land. Not that hard people.
The Slant is a model of unprofessionalism, and it starts at the top. You know Dan King, the editor-in-chief? What a hack. And look at that picture of his by the “from the editor” section. Go ahead, look. I’ll wait.
Oh, cool, you’re back. Took you long enough. How long does it take to flip a few pages? Anyway, back to my point: the guy looks like a child molester. I think it’s the crazy look in his eyes. Or maybe the fact that he isn’t wearing a shirt. And I heard he wants to be a teacher. I’m not sayin’…I’m just sayin’.
And then there was that article about Tom Green on the first page. What a piece of garbage. You can’t think of a better subject of an article than Tom fucking Green? The guy whose biggest accomplishment was called The Bum Song? And since when has three days only been 36 hours? Invest in a fucking calculator, for God’s sake. Twenty-four times three is seventy-two. You don’t have to be an engineer to do math at a third grade level.
You may ask yourselves, “Hey Robert, if you hate The Slant so much, why keep writing for it?” First off, mind your own damn business. You don’t know my life. But actually, I’m glad you asked. I did it for the same reason James Franklin took the head coaching job for the football team. Anyone can be great when there is already a tradition of excellence. Legends, however, make their own history. And that is what I plan on doing. I am going to turn this piece of shit publication into comedy gold. So keep an eye out for future issues. I figure my stories will be featured more and more until I’m basically writing this whole thing by myself. Then, in a few years, I’ll hide off into the sunset. And by that I mean I’ll go write comedy professionally and The Slant will fall back into obscurity.

When I go to the cinema, my goal is to view a movie. I don’t plan on being thrust into the action, nor do I expect to jump in my seat as my childhood is literally thrown in my face.
Yeah, that’s right – The Lion King 3D, and all 3D at that, is a completely insane idea.
What does it say about us as a society that we are no longer content to VIEW engaging, dramatic SCENES without some degree of boredom? It is pathetic.
Movies are art; 3D movies are like watercolor Monets designed for the lowest common denominator. Redesigning classics like The Lion King into 3D for a quick buck and cheap satisfaction is a slap in the face to anyone who values the integrity of the original masterpieces.
Soon, we will be further insulted when even subpar movies are reincarnated into 3D. Just imagine; it will only be a matter of time until The Lion King 2: Simba’s Pride is rereleased in 3D, and we, as a consumer base with rapidly declining standards, will probably flock to see it, despite knowing what a flop it was the first time.
Need more proof? Consider some of your favorite movies from over the years. Star Wars, for instance, because everyone loves Star Wars. Right now, we have people complaining that the remastered versions of Episodes IV – VI are losing integrity just because of modernized graphics on lightsaber clashes, lasers from ships, etc. What would happen if they tried to implement 3D, with Star Destroyers flying out at the audience and so forth? The franchise would collapse under all the criticism.
People may say they are pro-3D, but when it actually affects something they care about, they realize how it could actually ruin everything loved about cinema and the movie theatre.
The thought sickens me, just as watching films jump off the screen at me does. You can keep your hypothetical profits and silly-colored glasses; I will not be going to see any 3D movies.

Going to the cinema has been way cooler since 3D movies started coming out. I have only seen a few dozen 3D movies so I’m no expert, but I could never see enough fireballs coming straight at my face! It gets me every time. Movies like Resident Evil: Afterlife, which would otherwise just be the latest sequel in a series, really stand out from the others by including a zombie carrying a huge axe just so it can fly at my face.
3D hasn’t even reached its prime yet. As the technology evolves, more and more genres are getting released in 3D. Who knows how soon it will be until we see 3D porn, where the jizz flies right at you? Just imagine Jenna Jameson’s boobs popping out—even more than they already do—while it looks like her bra is coming straight toward your face!
It’s not just porn, though; we can also expect rom-coms in 3D within a year or two, where the sexual tension seems to really be right there in the room with you, thanks to the miracle of 3D moviemaking.
I also love how Disney is rereleasing its old movies in 3D now. Lion King 3D is just the tip of the iceberg; if we’re lucky, soon Disney will 3D-ify other gems such as Lion King 2: Simba’s Pride and Cinderella III: A Twist in Time, and I’ll be at the premiere for all of them! I’m pretty sure there’s no movie which wouldn’t look better in 3D.
And who doesn’t love those sick 3D glasses they give you at the theater? I have 20 of those at home, and I wear a pair wherever I go. I usually drive home from the movie in them; tail lights and traffic lights look awesome in 3D, and give a pretty unique challenge.
Sure, 2D movies are still good. They’re not the best they could be, though! After Avatar took my 3D-ginity, I’ve been hooked on 3D. From riding on a dragon’s back to racing on a light cycle, 3D makes cinema much more fun. With 50% more Ds, how could it not?

A question for all those dog lovers out there: What the fuck do dogs think?
I’ve never owned a dog before, so placate me here. My parents used to have two when I was a little kid, and when I say little, I mean really little, as in “one year for Halloween I dressed up as a cowboy and rode our golden retriever around the neighborhood like he was a horse” kind of little, so I haven’t really given it much thought until now.
While visiting my older brother for Fall break, I met his newly adopted dog and watched my brother’s girlfriend, a trained veterinarian, as she daily enjoyed playing a game with the dog that essentially equated to “jovially slap the dog in the face a few times and immediately afterward demand a kiss.” Yes, she is an educated professional in the animal world. I’ve seen her white coat.
It was in this moment of witnessing this quadruped getting repeatedly smacked in the snout and then gleefully licking its slapper’s face like nothing had happened that I couldn’t stop asking myself, “Dog, are you dumb? Doesn’t that hurt? Don’t you know what the five fingers said to the face? If you didn’t before, you should by now.”
Granted, this is the same dog which months before had managed to bite off half of her own damn tail so that now she only waggles a nub. She’s a beautiful black lab, but she’s obviously not the paramount of doggy acumen. But, if I were the dog, I know for damn sure what I’d be thinking: “Bitch, you slap me one more time and I’ll bite off six of your fingers. Try eating that whole sandwich you never give me a piece of after that.”
However, the bark-translator collar, like Dug the Dog’s from Pixar’s UP, hasn’t been invented yet, and so we’re left to ponder what the bitch-slapped pooch was really cognating until all the spots fall off the 101 Dalmatians…or are we?
Over at Duke University, one mutt-loving professor founded the Canine Cognition Center more than 15 years ago. Yep, that’s right. Vanderbilt invents the first automated bionic leg; Duke studies Lassie’s erratic brain sparkles. (Cone of shame for you, Duke.)
Here’s what lead researcher and director Dr. Brian Hare had to say about the lab lab: “The last decade of research has shown that dogs are more than mere learning machines: they have a rich understanding of their world, which allows them to be flexible problem solvers. Some of their skills even resemble those we see in young children.”
To paraphrase, your fat and flabby bulldog, who we’ll call Cletus in this example, is leaps and bounds smarter than the fat, flabby, young child, who we’ll call Percival, of the most well-to-do Yuppie couple. The so-ugly-he’s-funny smile plastered on Cletus’ face is because even though he can’t speak human, he can still walk and intuit signals before Percival ever gets his thumb out of his ass.
Okay, but what about when their human owners are gone? To quote one of my professors, English extraordinaire Michael Kreyling, without his prior knowledge and approval of my doing so, who had a like-minded query, “Whenever I come home from the grocery store, I wonder if my dog starts jumping all over me with excitement because she was just thinking that I was dead right before I walked in the door. What, does she think something like ‘Oh, I can’t see him anymore, so he must have been hit by a bus’ whenever I leave the house?”
Never satisfied with simply trusting the information spread by a blue devil poking around in canine craniums, I sought a second opinion elsewhere. I read the first chapter of the book Inside of a Dog by Dr. Alexandra Horowitz, and knowing that the rest of you are too busy to read it – or don’t care about what Fido thinks as long as he fetches the morning paper for you – I’ve summarized and extracted the true meaning of her work.
Here’s the watered-down gist of her shared wisdom: “Hey people, dogs are not people, so quit anthropomorphizing them. They couldn’t give two shits about you when you leave them trapped inside all day as you go off to work or leave to find a tolerable human substitute for them. In fact, they may have shat on your expensive oriental rug simply out of boredom. When you find the contents of your kitchen trash can spewed all across the house, you can bet your candy ass that the dog is sleeping soundly in his own bed.”
Like humans, dogs don’t really “think” too much. They rely on internal biological rhythms (“Boy am I hungry. Isn’t it time to eat yet?”) and react to external stimuli conditioning (“Hey, Pavlov, disable your doorbell, man! I’m tired of always salivating for no reason.”). If canines spoke instead of barked, your child would be far dumber than your dog until the kid reached the age of four.
Unlike humans, evolution didn’t give dogs the capacity to perceive the invented structure of time. The magical ability of episodic memory (“Sallie-Anne, didn’t we make a baby ‘round this time last year?”) is something that enables our species to recall the reasons why we continue to hate our mothers-in-law and still run from the angsty bully who stole our lunch money last week.
Thus, what can we conclude about the thoughts of Cletus the bulldog and Percival the Yuppie child? Puppies are cute; children are annoying; both are pretty stupid. And if all else fails, just distract them with shiny objects and sugary treats.

It was a quiet Sunday night on campus. The bar of frattiness had been raised again by the weekend’s shenanigans, which is apparently so high our souls need saving. As soon as the play hard was over, the work hard began… or so it seemed. But then, at 11:53:49 CDT, all the hell we raised came back to haunt us.
Vanderbilt Programming Board announced the headliners for this year’s Commodore Quake.
In three little words, our hope for the most fantastically fratty homecoming concert ever were smashed. More-smashed-than-your-Mom was-on-Saturday kind of smashed.
What three words could crush our student body’s soul? President Michelle Bachman? Grins Shuts Down? You’re cut off? I’m sorry to say, dear readers, it was much worse.
My Morning Jacket.
Yes, My Morning Jacket is headlining the homecoming concert. Years from now we’ll remember where we were when we heard the news. Many of you found out by reading your facebook mini-feed, much like myself.
“Out of all the amazing choices that were available, somehow VPB has decided to go with My Morning Jacket for Quake. Lets just hope an additional concert is in the works a la HOV. Otherwise, it would be a seriously disappointing Quake,” said a passive aggressive frat boy. Mass confusion swept over the Vander-bubble, and everyone figuratively barfed on facebook. “My Morning Jacket? Um, I wear my jacket all day,” said some idiot from my VUcept group.

Dear Vanderbilt Students, Staff, and Faculty,

My name is Keith Stone, president of the Beta Rho Omega fraternity on campus. As I’m sure you are all aware, on the weekend of September 10th, a group of Evangelical Christians came to Vanderbilt University and made a video of the fraternities, during a tailgate, before the victory over UConn (Go Dores!). The title of this video was “Caring for the Lost at Vanderbilt.”
When I first heard that a group of Evangelical Christians had come to Vanderbilt and videotaped the tailgating, I thought, like most other students, that it would be funny, so I watched it. Much like everyone else in the Vanderbilt community, I was shocked and embarrassed by the actions of the fraternities and I feel the need to speak on behalf of the entire Vanderbilt Greek system and apologize for our actions.
All of us in the Greek community are trying to put our best foot forward and the video obviously did not do us justice. When I found that the video was already viral and being shown across America, I was humiliated – not only for myself, but for the Greek community and Vanderbilt as a whole. Watching the video and seeing all of the fraternities drinking on their porches and dancing to the music was the lowest I’ve felt during my presidency, even lower than when Kanye said I hated black people more than Bush does. I was mortified when I realized that they didn’t show anything close to our most hardcore partying.
To the people in this video, I have only one question: “Why?”
Why were you able to form coherent sentences? Why were you only sipping on your beers and not shotgunning them like the frat stars we all know you are? Why were none of you naked? Why can I still see the grass? These yards should be covered end to end in crushed cans of frat water. And for the love of God (who despite what these hipster Christians said, we do love), why didn’t anyone get that slam piece’s number? We all know she was trying to get away from her Shamwow-wannabe boyfriend.
Here at Vanderbilt, we are working hand in hand with the university to attract the best frat stars from all around the country. This was a golden opportunity that was wasted. We try to show our best side, and our best side was circle jerking inside the frat house. Why not invite the protestors inside? We have so much more to offer than just drunk students. We have coke heads, pot heads, pill poppers, and alcoholics, frat mattresses, sorostitutes, slam pieces, and even a few straight-up whores.
This could have been our coming out party and instead we look like a bunch of pussy GDIs. Luckily for us, we have been given a second shot to prove our worth: when Barstool Sports comes to visit us on the weekend of October 14th. I encourage the entire university to bring their A-game and prove once and for all that we are truly bitchin’ frat stars from Mars who can party Charlie Sheen under the table.

Sincerely,

Keith Stone
(Always Smooth)

I recently lost my mind and bought a copy of Cosmopolitan magazine. After reading it, I realized what a horrible job I was doing at being a girl. But, hark! I have seen the fluorescent light and now I strive to live my life through the teachings found in this holy book. I ceremonially burned every pair of sweatpants I own, and was baptized with a vodka martini. I have been born-again, as a Cosmo woman.
Here is what a typical day looks like in my new life.

8AM – Awaken, hair naturally tousled. Engage in fulfilling morning sex with significant other (stale breath is history’s lost aphrodisiac).

8:15AM – Apply deodorant in the closet to maintain the illusion I naturally smell like a grapefruit.

8:30AM – Hearty breakfast of Greek yogurt and blueberries.

9AM – Recitation of my daily prayers: “Cosmo, grant me the serenity to accept the things about my body I cannot change, courage to botox the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference- Jolie 6:9.

10 AM – Fantasize about the Asian guy from Glee on the way to work.

11AM – Manage the phones while browsing the Good Book’s tips on becoming a “sex ninja.”
NOON – Have lunch at quaint sidewalk café; get “business drunk.”

4PM – Leave work. Contemplate the relationship Michael Kimmel’s masculinity studies draws between a decline in traditional masculine values caused by Third Wave Feminism and Hillary Clinton’s failure to obtain the Democratic Party nomination.

4:30PM – Gush over JT. Seriously, that guy can do everything.

4:33PM – Brazilian bikini wax.

4:37PM – Portuguese face wax.

4:41PM – Mongolian elbow wax.

6PM – Begin to primp for the date with my man friend. Bedazzle lashes for a sophisticated, subtle look.

6:15PM – Decide bedazzled lashes are whorish; painfully remove.

7:30PM – Arrive 15 minutes late to the date AND flirt with the waiter to show he don’t own me.

7:45PM – Laugh at a joke he makes that isn’t funny (and kind of racist? I can’t be sure).

8:30PM – Decline dessert.

9PM – Return home. Give him a blow job while he watches whatever sport is in season.

10PM – Use one of your sultry “sex ninja” moves to trick him to have sex with you. Because, you know, guys only want to do it with you if it’s in a closet, or standing up, or in a space station or something.

11PM – Fall asleep, ravished, and drool free.
Repeat until single or lobotomized.

So, there you go ladies. Living your life through the teachings of Cosmo leads to healthier and happier lifestyles. If this doesn’t persuade you, just ask my stellar history with men.

I’ve known a California gurl before; I knew her for three years and four months and it was the best time of my life. Then it ended.
I didn’t forget her for the two weeks I spent lying in bed crying myself to sleep afterwards, though, and I haven’t forgotten how much of a bitch California gurls can be. They wear you down, weave their way into your life, then leave you stranded. You don’t forget that type of emotial destruction.
Aside from that, California has tons of other unforgettable gurls. Maria Shriver is a pretty awesome chick, having been married to Arnold, and being a political entity herself.
And Marilyn Monroe is the most quoted woman on Facebook. And she happens to be from Cali. Think anyone’s forgetting her any time soon? Doubtful.
Oh, and how about Buffy the Vampire Slayer? She actually inspired an entire television series based on how many times she saved the world. It would be plain stupid and rude of us to forget her sacrifices.
But none of them are heartbreakers like that other bitch. Every nght I remember how she hurt me and how much I hate her. I wish I could forget. But I can’t.
Call me jaded, but I know I’m right. I dare you to go to Cali, get your life stable, find your one true love, and have her leave you.
It’s pretty fucking awful.
You’ll hate your meaningless existence pretty much every day for as long as you live.
And you will definitely never, ever forget that awful, horrible, amazing California gurl.