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In This Issue

• Club Cash, with Catches
• When Friends "Go Greek"
• Father Christmas Found Dead
• Czech Patriot-Citizen Shot
• Promised Floor, Chosen People
• Best of Times, Worst of Times in Manhattanville
• Borat Movie’s Frat Boys Got Love for Hos
• The New Holy "Trinity"
• Interspecies Tension Outside Low Fuels Vicious War
• Vampire Christ
• Tales of the Inexpressible
• Jew Ruins Christmas, Ramadan Up Next, Kwanzaa Left Alone
• Seas Trek: The Next Generation
• SEAS: Survivor
• Thanksgiving: The Last Supper of the Wampanoags
• CAVA Saves Christmas?
• The Evolution of Ashlee Simpson's Face
• THEY Watch

Michael Bredin

Vaclav Havel, playwright and former president of Czechoslovakia, was shot dead yesterday.  He was a suave and eligible 70.

The murder took place in the evening, as Havel addressed a crowd consisting exclusively of pedants, nerds, and those who were able to comprehend his unintelligible Eastern European accent.  His podium was situated between John Jay and Hamilton halls, on the grassy knoll that lies next to the walking path between the two buildings.  

At 5:25 p.m., as Havel crescendoed to a particularly emphatic and gratingly satirical point, his elocution began to morph into something more and more like how a normal person would talk if his cheeks had been stuffed with slabs of unleavened Slavic bread.  Then three bullets scissored through the air, and at least one entered the back of the bohemian's head.  He stumbled several steps towards the Health Services office in John Jay and then fell to the ground, before being whisked away by a CAVA team, who immediately asked him, "Have you been drinking this evening?"  Receiving no response, the stoic pre-meds wandered around for a minute in a state of uncertainty and then decided to rush Havel to St. Luke's hospital.  He was pronounced dead on arrival.

As these events transpired, the nerds and pedants stood mesmerized, awed by the tragic turn of events and the incredible catharsis that it had produced in their souls.  But their pseudoreligious ecstasy was shattered when, minutes later, forensic scientists and conspiracy theorists converged upon the scene. There they swiftly formulated two hypotheses regarding the nature of Havel's death, namely the single and two-shooter theories. A subsequent investigation gave the latter a vote of no confidence, removing it from the higher strata of pre-Communist Czech society-er, list of plausible descriptions of the modus operandi of the plotters.

Following the assassination, the leadership of the University held an impromptu press conference in the Low Library Rotunda. "We see Mr. Havel's death as an extraordinarily timely culmination of having his work added to the Core Curriculum, as it would be extreme apostasy to include the work of someone who satisfies only two of the three criteria of being a dead white male," said University President Lee Bollinger.  He continued, "In fact, being alive is an advantage, one that we all share and one that contributes to the pervasive culture of privilege and homogeneousness at Columbia.  I would like us all to reflect on that."  

Other university apparatchiks joined in offering their condolences, with the exception of M. Dianne Murphy, who, in addition to being uncharacteristically silent, sported a new leather jacket and androgynous haircut for the occassion. She has not elaborated on the decision-making process that led her to do those things.

The alleged murderer, also male, but not white, was apprehended two hours later in a Hamilton classroom, in the midst of a Lit Hum seminar where he was seen in a Bacchanalian frenzy, tearing a copy of The Garden Party to shreds and screaming, "Fourteen fucking dollars!"  He cited Havel's hubris as the main factor in bringing about the tragic downfall, describing his play as "the red-covered bastard child of 1984 and The Importance of Being Earnest," and "a self-hating satire suffused with tortured metaphors waiting to be liquidated and liberated from their author's bumbling hands."  Currently in custody, the suspect awaits trial by jury, where he will enter a plea of not guilty.  If acquitted, he plans to return to his hometown while searching for the "real killer."  Otherwise, he feels assured of a book deal, hopefully one that will allow him to bask in the stuffy academic immortality of having his own memoirs, If I Did It, appended to the Core Curriculum.