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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

“Ironic, isn’t it?” said Paint Dry, CC ’08, “like Alanis Morissette, I think.”  Such wry wit peppers conversation with Dry (born James Silverton).  But “peppers” is not quite the right word; “overwhelms” is probably closer.

“No, No, I like ‘peppers,’” Dry commented, “especially Brian Peppers, about whom I wrote a song recently.  Would you like to hear it?  It goes like this:

“Brian Peppers, he loves bell peppers!

Brian Peppers, I made this joke up myself!

Brian Peppers, you’re the man now, dog!

Brian NOOOOOOOO!”

Dry sang this while accompanying himself on a five-string guitar.  “It’s supposed to have six strings,” he explained, “but I really feel like I can do more with five.”

After a conversation with Dry, it becomes impossible to argue against what his friends maintain about him: he has not said, done, or even thought anything unironic in the last seven years.

“The last sincere thing he ever did,” one of Dry’s friends explains, “was to buy his mother flowers for Mother’s Day in eighth grade.  Ever since then, he’s only bought her cards that were inapplicable to the situation at hand.  He bought her one recently that said ‘Get Well Soon’ on the front, and he wrote, ‘If you ever get cancer’ inside it.”

Most of Dry’s friends say that his mother “doesn’t get it.”  According to Dry, there’s nothing to get.

“I don’t understand what people say about me being ironic.  I just like what I like and do what I do.  I really do hope that if my mother ever gets cancer, she gets well soon.  I changed my name because, well, honestly, I like being the center of attention; I guess I just wanted more people to be watching me.”

Dry has certainly received his fair share of attention, and not all of it good.  “[Dry is an] asshole,” submitted an acquaintance who wished to remain anonymous.  “He’s spending his life making us wait for a punchline that will probably never come,” claimed another.

Paint Dry’s band, the Britney Spears Fan Club, will be playing at the Ding Dong Lounge this Friday.  Asked to name his musical influences, Dry responded, “Well, Britney of course, if that isn’t obvious.  But I guess a little bit of Wowee Zowee-era Pavement, too.  And I’m a really big fan of the Shaggs, but I just don’t think I have the musical talent to incorporate their songwriting into mine.”

The Fan Club is best known around campus for their cover of the Electric Six’s “Danger! High Voltage,” in which Dry pronounces “Fire in the Taco Bell” as if it were “Tack-oh Bell.”

“It’s because I’m from Minnesota,” Dry explained, “That’s the way I naturally pronounce it.  I can’t help it.”

Also in the Fan Club’s repertoire is a cover of the same band’s “Gay Bar,” in which Dry pronounces “Let’s start a nuclear war” as if it were “noo-cyoo-lur.”

“It’s because I’m also the president of the United States,” Dry explained, “That’s the way I naturally pronounce it.  I can’t help it.”

In response to the criticism that the president of the United States is not, in fact, from Minnesota, Dry quipped, “In the words of Henry David Thoreau, ‘Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.’”

Pointing out that the quotation was, in fact, taken from the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Dry explained, “This is exactly the kind of shit I’m talking about.”

Dry is planning to major in Comparative Literature and Society.  “I chose the major,” he explained, “for the large number of job opportunities that will be available to me after I graduate.  I considered pursuing my dreams and transferring to SEAS to major in Financial Engineering, which is really what I enjoy studying most.  But I decided to go the safe route to, you know, make sure I can pay my bills once I graduate.”

“And if the CLS major somehow doesn’t work out, I can always fall back on the Fan Club,” he continued, “At least I know that the money from making independent music will always be reliable.”