Freshmen don’t know everything already?

College is about to begin, which means it’s time for the annual Beloit College Mindset List. Every year, Beloit College composes a list of technology, fads and people that incoming freshmen never learn about because high schools spend an entire month on the Civil War* and a week on everything after World War II.

This year’s freshmen, the Class of 2014, for instance doesn’t use email because it’s too slow and generally requires something more substantial to write about than today’s lunch. They also don’t know:

  • Snoop Dogg’s middle name (Doggy).
  • How Clint Eastwood’s “tour de force” as an old, violent racist gun nut in Gran Turino was just a reprisal of Dirty Harry where he didn’t have to run so much.
  • That communism was once an entrenched and very real threat hiding behind a wall in Berlin, not just the side effect of Glenn Beck’s masturbation guilt today.
  • That Band-Aids were once only sold in a universal peach-colored shade that matched everyone’s skin. Now they have to prove that Band-Aids are for everyone–black, white or green–by selling black, white and green ones.

Good luck with this bunch, professors.

_______________________________

*A whole month, yet they never learn it was about slavery.

Red Madness sweeps U.S.!

In case your calendar doesn’t update to include every observation ever conceived by people with charities to fund, February 5 is National Wear Red Day.

National Wear Red Day was organized by the American Heart Organization, which doesn’t realize that red is already the color of:

  • HIV/AIDS
  • Communism
  • Wrist Awareness
  • Sixth Grade Literacy (What? You didn’t read The Red Badge of Courage?)
  • Republican Washington Nationals Fandom
  • Khurramite Succession Over the Mazdak Religion
  • Anthropomorphized Kool-Aid

Basically, we’re saying they could have received better notice if they chose a less used color.

By the way, we’re sorry that we reported everyone wearing red to the FBI for possible ties to Khurramite extremism. We got spooked by the sudden numbers.

The McBournie Minute: History That Happened in the Past (1950-1959)

When I was in school, in history classes they only taught us up until the end of World War II. This was not because I was going to school in the 1940s, but the teachers just ran out of steam or did not want to cover any of the controversial topics of the rest of the 20th century. The Nazis were evil, we beat them, America is a super power, the end. I had one high school American History course that made it to the Marshall Plan.

Still, I feel like something happened in those remaining 55 years that could better explain where we are today. That’s why I, Bryan McBournie, who minored in history, am here to help you learn about what happened through the decades since World War II. If you watch enough television  or listen to enough music ,you should know some of this yourself.

I’m starting with the 1950s. Why? Because nothing happened from 1946 to 1949 and you know it. Continue reading The McBournie Minute: History That Happened in the Past (1950-1959)

Take it from Snee: I will be safe again

For eight years–eight years–I believed we had created a safer United States, a bomb-free and non-terrorized America.  I thought that, by taking my shoes off at airports and picketing Muslim schools, we were safe.

All of that was thrown out the window this morning thanks to CNN and Bryan Schools (but mostly Bryan Schools). Now I’m terrified, which is terrorism. (Bryan Schools is a terrorist.)

If 10 U.S. government agents could sneak bombs into U.S. government buildings past other U.S. government employees, then every step the U.S. government has taken to protect me was all a lie. I’m not safe, nor was I ever.

But, I’m going to change that, you Take it from Snee. Continue reading Take it from Snee: I will be safe again

Give credit where credit is due

It’s a new year, in case you were wondering why everyone was hung over yesterday. We would like to begin 2009 on a bright note, but alas, battles wear on, and the War on Animals continues because our enemies do not recognize the Gregorian calendar (we mean animals, not the Chinese).

A Russian scholar is making waves lately, madly claiming that humans did not kill off the woolly mammoth but merely had a part in killing off the woolly mammoth. Sergey Zimov of the Russian Academy of Science claims that there were three factors that doomed the hairy elephants. This probably communist says that climate change, a meteor and of course, we humans, created a perfect storm that made them go extinct.

Really, Comrade Zimov? A meteor? Haven’t you alleged scientists already used that excuse to explain away the disappearance of the dinosaurs? Get real, Russkie. Our ancestors kill those bad boys off and it remains a legacy every human can be proud of.

Charles Dickens is a huge jerk

We know you’ve been wondering it since you were a child, and the results are in. The answer is no, Oliver Twist would not have needed more gruel, thus asking for more would have been unlikely. Thus, he never would have been kicked out of his orphanage and set on an adventure filled with thieves and murderers eventually coming out on top and being reunited with relatives.

Take that, Dickens!

Just in time for Christmas, scientists figured out that recipes of gruel that have been lying around since the first have of the 1800s actually provided good nutritional value and had a pretty decent serving size. You may know Dickens’ work from his attempt to rob a famous magician of his stage name with his book David Copperfield.

Until recently, Dickens was regarded by historians as the creator of the modern Christmas. As recently as a few years ago, he was given credit for instilling the spirit of giving to others and creating the Victorian version of Christmas that spread throughout the Western world. Today, we know his Christmas books, A Christmas Carol in particular, were nothing more than communist propaganda.

Think about it, an old rich business owner against a worker who demands health benefits and paid vacation. Much less the fact that a welfare state must be created to support Tiny Tim, or the ghosts of Christmas, which are obviously Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels and Vladimir Lenin.

Bay of Pigs: Mission Accomplished

We did it!  The operation launched by Kennedy in 1961 to overthrow the Communist “government” has finally succeeded: Castro is calling it quits.

Yes, Fidel Castro sent a letter–presumably from the spider-hole he’s hiding in–to the Cuban Communist Party newspaper, Granma, announcing that he is too old and unfit to run the island nation any longer.

A lot of you naysayers out there said it couldn’t be done, that the initial CIA-invasion was an “unprecedented disaster” (imagine we’re pinching our noses while saying these things), that the United States military would remain in Cuba for the next century. Well, it only took 47 years, so don’t you feel like a coward now?

This blog has received no word from our government as to when Guantanamo will be shut down, but rest assured, our boys are comin’ home soon!*

*By “soon,” we mean as soon as a flourshing capitalist democracy is in place.