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In This Issue

• John Jay Elevator Acquires New Residents
• H.B. Reese Murders Lovable Monkeys
• Chief Editor Whipped On Fed Date
• Honest Fred: The Death of an Icon (who appears only in our print version as of yet)
• Reporter finds "Plantation Mentality" at Columbia Security
• Ruggles Haunting Investigated
• Sam Brown hates Picasso, Draws Better than Three Year Olds
• New Sandwich Names Makes 212 Even Worse
• Go Ask Alice, You Big Fucking Fattie
• Designer Vaginas: Everyone's Doing It
• Man Fights Cancer with Cancer
• Columbia, Hamiltron Defeat Burr, Princeton with Laser Cannon
• University Writing Just as Bad as L&R
• The Fed Kicks Yore Ass
• Anti-Life Comics
• Time Travelling Gussie
• Ragdoll Lollipop
• Adventures in Rush Week
• A Tribute to Edward Said
• Wacky Fun Whitey

Matt Holden

Every time I check my mailbox for my Mexican-strength Lamisil, another Columbia 250 postcard full of history trivia falls out. Then I punch through the mailbox and de-life whoever just put that pointless garbage all up in my zone.

Columbia's history bums me out because it's all about loss. First, the King of England lost the American colonies, and King's College had to rename itself to escape humiliation by association. Imagine telling someone you went to King's College -- a.k.a Syphilitic, Colony-Losing Pansy's College, the biggest joke school in America.

Ever since then, we've been racking up losses faster than a one-legged man in a "Having Two Legs" contest. We lost the rifle range once located underneath Philosophy Hall; Columbia could have been a pioneer in tragic school shootings, long before Columbine or Wolfenstein 3-D, but alas, the range is no more. Barnard got rid of its bowling alley, citing something about the phallic imagery and testicular symbology, blah blah blagina blah. The sundial ball also vanished. And don't forget all the lawns we gave up for the construction of a bunch of science and engineering facilities. So now my squirrel buddies face the mortal peril of pedestrian traffic in their ever-shrinking quarters, and the Fu School doesn't even teach martial arts like its name says it should. Where's the benefit in all this?

It only gets worse. In 1968, we lost the chance of having our very own gymnasium in Morningside Park, overlooking Harlem. Blueprints placing the gym's backdoor on the Harlem side were seen as racist, and the construction was halted when the famous student protest got rolling. But aren't rich, nerdy white people the ones who really need to practice basketball? Sorry, crackers, no dice.

Next, we lost forty-four straight football games from 1983 to 1988, earning the Lions fourth place on the espn.com list of worst college football teams of all time, ranked by noted sports historian and "Boo-yah!"-ologist Stuart Scott. And we're only fourth on the list, because we can't even be the best at failure.

If we're going to deal with this historical humiliation we've all inherited, we're going to have to change these stories and make our own history. We need to take the same classical revisionist route that tells us that Abraham Lincoln was a fairy, that Gandhi was not a tool of the vast Zionist world conspiracy, and that Santa Claus freed the slaves (not the American ones, just the Canadians).

Now if losing 44 football games, our balls (for bowling and sun-dialing, you pervert), a bunch of rifles, the Caucasian slam-dunk, and vicarious control of the New World still isn't enough to make you hang your head in shame, then dust off your flux capacitor. Let's speed the DeLorean up to 88 MPH and zoom back through time, all the way to the beginning of the 19th century, where we'll find a perfect example of how Columbia's history needs a little editing. Cue hyper-speed time travel sequence and/or interdimensional bong hit!

The date: July 11th, 1804. The place: Weehawken, New Jersey. The event: Alexander Hamilton is shot by Aaron Burr. Good ol' Alex spent his life writing esoteric Constitutional defenses and doing financial bitch-work, only to get gatted by a Senatorial tie-breaking chump. Pathetic.

The Jersey duel disaster adds the worst stain to a school history already dirtier than my Daredevil underoos. But with revisionism, we can repair Hamilton's legacy. To save our school's integrity, we can freshen up this humiliating anecdote by viewing the duel not as Hamilton's extremely lame final screw-up, but as an awesome, kill-or-be-killed showdown, i.e. through the lens of pop entertainment.

I like to think of Hamilton as being a 18th century version of Megatron, the evil leader of the Decepticons in the classic cartoon "Transformers: Robots in Disguise." Megatron, for those whose memories fail them, is a half-tank, half-robot, all-hardcore ass-stomper who doesn't take bullshit from anyone on Earth or Planet Cybertron.

Hamilton should now be referred to as HamilTron. Aaron Burr takes the role of Optimus Prime, the tough but annoyingly moralistic leader of the Autobots, a group of dipwads who oppose Megatron's robo-pimping of the universe.

Witness the new legend of Weehawken. HamilTron shows up late and immediately inverts his torso and extends his legs to become a giant robotic schooner. Optimus Burr, caught off guard, quickly yells "Activate!" to transform from a talking carriage into a titanium gavel. But then HamilTron, ninety feet tall and shooting lasers from his eyes, unveils a plasma cannon powered by the extracted souls of Irish immigrants. Holding his cannon sideways, like a true Harlem android mack, HamilTron roars, "Good sir, MY POWER IS YOUR DOOM!" and fires. But the shot bounces off a sacred amulet on Burr's chest (because he's the kind of good guy douche-sack who probably would wear an amulet), and zings back to wound HamilTron in his central mainframe circuits.

Like the annoying Princeton prick he is, Optimus Burr comes to HamilTron's side to revive him. But then everyone's favorite King's College bad-ass stealthily injects his operating system into Burr's head, causing him to pursue evil. Possessed, Burr betrays America's fledgling government, pursuing an east-west schism and alliance with Mexico, while clever HamilTron dies a hero, accomplishing his intricate, malevolent scheme for honor, respect, and his mug shot on the ten dollar bill.

This is what careful revisionist history can give us. To Hell with "Stand, Columbia." I prefer "BOW, HUMANS, TO HAMILTRON, THE ANNIHILATOR OF WORLDS!"