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In This Issue

• Scandal Pol Denies It All
• Hipster Ironic Since Age 14
• Baby Names May Be Lame
• AIDS Continues Dance Marathon Win Streak
• Jeff Sachs, Meet Anna Nicole
• Tales of the Inexpressible: Plumbing
• Iraq Gets Improbably Pale Spring Break Vacationers
• Compare, Contrast.
• Pics Worth 978 Words
• A Primer for the Primaries
• SEXILED: The Board Game
• Online Dating Adventures
• Well Bread
• Men Secretly Letting Their Hair Down and Asses Up
• Anthropomorphism
• Lerner Hall: Time to Take Out The Trash
• Fed Bash, Fed Bash, Fed Bash

Christine DeLong

Outperforming AIDS. What, you haven't?

Every year, around this time, Columbia is host to one of the most admirable events of the philanthropic world. This event is known as the Columbia University Dance Marathon.

During the event, various participants from all over the world attempt to defeat international pandemics with their smooth dance moves. Every year, the pandemics have met this competition with a virulent passion. In fact, to this date the dance marathon has yet to defeat a single disease or affliction. Once the competition claimed that it had helped fight a case of the whooping cough, but it has since been determined in clinical trials that the cure actually came from the placebo dance marathon effect of a discotheque on 52nd Street that was having a really hot wet t-shirt competition. Since its inception the CUDM has been dominated year after year by the big Hi-Five (Hi-V) but this year put up some of the toughest competition yet.

The challenge was brought by a slew of new participants who really wanted to win. From CU came a bunch of undergraduates who “just wanted to do the right thing and have a great time while doing it!” When I asked one of the regulars, Hepatitis C, what he thought of the new competitors, he responded with disdain. “What these noobs don’t understand,” it said, “is that this isn’t the fucking U.S. Open; this is CUDM”—pronounced “QUEUE–dam”—“I don’t care that yo’ mama loves to watch you ‘move it move it,’ because this is where the big dogs play.” Poorly imitating a dog, it emphasized the point: “Woof woof.” Most of the other competitors also agreed that the Columbia competition just “wasn’t up to their standard.”

Other new competitors hailed from various small, third-world nations in Africa, and there was even a group of people who thought that “if she costs $150 she probably doesn’t have syphilis.” Everyone present came ready to dance, but particularly surprising showing came from a group of small newly-born Tanzanians. “They brought some fresh moves, I could tell they really didn’t want to die. Too bad they just weren’t up to competition standards,” remarked the Human Papillomavirus. “I mean come on, this is dance competition! Not feel-good-everybody-is-special time. It’s not just about wanting it enough, you also need the talent! Hi-V won’t back down just because of your stupid personal problems. A-Dawg would never trivialize this competition like that. It respects this competition and the sport that much.”

Hi-V has been rocking the scene since early in the 1980s when it was known as Gri-Dees, largely unacknowledged by the mainstream philanthropic marathon dancing community. Dance officiator John Stern explains, “Back then we just weren’t open to diseases that hadn’t yet proved themselves on an international stage. We wanted to make sure that only the hippest diseases with real face recognition and branding were invited to bring it. If a disease doesn’t pull down at least a 75 percent mortality rate, I don’t even want to see it dancing on my floor. I mean, if we started inviting diseases like SARS, who would take us seriously? The Chinese? Puh–leeez. We have a reputation to maintain. Plus, we have had to be really strict ever since the penicillin incident.”

The marathon had a downturn in popularity midway through the 20th century when antibiotics were discovered. Many people started to wonder if dance marathons were actually an effective means of curing fatal, highly-contagious diseases. John Stern continued, “In the 1940s we had such a drop in popularity. People had the audacity to think that medicine and science were more effective at stopping disease than dance fundraisers! Let’s look at this objectively: evolution and global warming are proven with science. Everyone also knows that evolution and global warming are lies. Scientists have also proven that western medicine is effective at fighting disease. Let’s draw some connections. I look back and think how far we’ve come since those days. It makes me proud to be a part of something this important. This is the real deal, not something silly and unnecessary like prayer or chemotherapy.”

This marathon proceeded much like every other marathon. Dancers went out and started to show their stuff, determined to outlast their pandemic competitors. Jazz hands flew like explosives. You had to duck just to avoid the massive amount of energy that was flowing in the room. Everyone who was there definitely brought it and brought it good. Then the final dance came on, the traditional “Baby Got Back.” Then, when the final starving child passed out on the ground, only AIDS remained standing, slowly doing the worm to victory.

This year’s CUDM ended just as expected, with AIDS dominating the competition. Even though millions still have a terminal disease, all of the dancers claimed that they had a great time and felt as if they had done the right thing. Various students even claimed that what they had done was important—in fact the most important thing any student could do. “It’s the difference between studying about curing diseases and actually doing it,” claimed one student. “Vegans don’t eat chickens because they have feelings, but what chicken has ever cared about the Holocaust?” One student remarked, “At least I wasn’t just getting drunk in some bar. I was making a difference. I was changing the world. I was doing the electric slide. I was fighting AIDS.”