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In This Issue

• Celebrate Our Appendix!
• Alternative Motherhood
• Gossip and Nudity: Interview with the Gossip
• Letters to the Feditors
• The Colombia Spectador
• Yowie! How the Brazilians do bikini wax
• Making Waves
• Am I Naked or Nude?
• Marauding Interviewer: Dwarves Fascinated by Own Pants
• Big Nudity Exam
• Point – Counterpoint
• ‘Is It Cold In Here?’
• News Briefs
• News Quiz: Do you know about the important events going on in your world?
• Eight Situations In Which I Am Naked
• Get Your Hands Off Me You Damn, Dirty Apes
• Naked Haikus
• Naked Horoscopes
• This is Not a Naked Santa
• THEY Watch
• The Staff of 16.8

Columbia University kicked off its first annual A-Day with a performance of the off-Broadway smash “The Appendix Diatribes,” a series of monologues created as a response to the prevalent negative stereotypes of the appendix. According to the Diatribe Players, only a frank discussion and acceptance of the organ’s role in the digestive system allows a healthy attitude towards the entire body.

“I’m here to talk about my appendix,” shouted a performer clad in black. “You’ve heard what ‘They’ call it. It’s nothing but vestigial to ‘Them’. Well,” she continued, “do you know what? I like my appendix when it's just vestigial. I bet your appendix stinks from sitting attached to your large intestine, but you've still got one! Maybe you don't know a lot about it, but you know that you've got it and that you need it. And if you need it, who cares if people call your appendix ‘vestigial?’”

“Heck, I want you to spell that word with me right now! I want to hear ‘V’ like in Vacuous! ‘E’ like in Evolutionary Holdover! ‘S’ like in Sanctuary For Inflammation! Oh, I lost my patience. Say it! Vestigial! Vestigial! VESTIGIAL!”

“What a wonderful, animalistic word. Calling your appendix ‘vestigial’ is like acknowledging the part of you that says ‘piss off, evolution. I’m still partly a primitive animal and I know it!’ Love your appendix! Love peace! Goodnight!” The first player exited to steady samba claps, which quickly died off to set the stage for the more somber performance of Naomi Gerhardson, Diatribe Player #2.

Gerhardson entered while toting a plush office chair upon which she sat while holding a microphone. “Some people don't understand,” said Gerhardson, “they don't know what it means to stay up at night, worrying about what might happen to you –or to me–just because we have an appendix.” The performer then tore the midriff off her shirt to reveal a line tattooed between her ribcage and hip bone. “Do you see this mark? This line is the fabled McBurney’s Point,” said Gerhardson as she stroked the side of her stomach. “Whenever your surgeon wants a cheap shot at manipulating your appendix, he'll plunge in right here. According to the  medical lore, he'll find your organ precisely under this magic spot. But I ask you, who can say where my appendix truly lies? Who can say where this “magic spot” is for me? "Maybe I have situs inversus, a rare medical condition in which every organ in my body is on the opposite side of where it is located normally. How does anyone know that my heart isn't on the right of my body, or that my liver isn't shunted off in a rare corner of my abdominal cavity? Wouldn't my doctor be embarrassed when he digs in for that special part of me only to find that he couldn't be farther away? It’s my appendix, and only I know where it is and what makes it happy.”

The production closed with the affirmations of a third Diatribe player. “There are some days when I totally forget that I have an appendix,” said Pat Jinanalan, GS ’08. “Then some days it starts to bleed, and I feel it! It cries out, I’ve been patient long enough. I’m here. Oh, touch-a-touch-a-touch me, hold me, get to know me!' It’s times like those when I know that I can’t deny it: I have an appendix. It's happy on its own, but it needs to be felt. It is part of me, as much a part of me as my hair or my fingernails, and it's totally there! I can't say this enough! In conclusion. My Appendix! Excelsior!”

The audience responded with a five-minute standing ovation and two curtain calls. In the words of appendix enthusiast Bobby Iobst, CC ’02: “I can't wait to eat a good meal and put my appendix to work. Maybe it won't do much to digest the polypeptides found in my foodstuffs, but that crazy organ is still a part of me. Thanks to the Diatribe Players, I know how to start loving it.”

Not every audience member was quite as thrilled, however. “I didn't much care for [the production],” said Sammy Craig, SEAS ’01. “It just seems kind of pointless to me. I mean, maybe back in the day when people were still giving each other oranges for Christmas, the appendix was a thing of mystery. Maybe it was a topic that was dirty and taboo way long ago. But today, who really cares about it? It's just an organ. I think that most people who attend this play are already comfortable when it comes to hearing about their appendices...so who is this play aimed at?”

The performers of the Diatribes were quick to respond. “It’s about awareness,” shouted Jinanalan as the troupe melted into the curtains. Times like those, in which the players held real and spontaneous contact with the audience, comprised the true strength of the play. Perhaps George Hegel best anticipated the advent of the monologues in his depiction of a Geist, the all-powerful feeling that unstoppably sweeps a nation. If there is any listener who is not joyously swept into the appendix of each performer throughout the play, then that person is confused and angry. Let us never forget that ANGER is only one letter away from DANGER.