2005-12-15 - Fall Orgo Night
Ladies and Gentlemen, and organic chemistry students, back despite the Transit Workers Union Strike, it's the most immobilized band in the world, the Columbia University Marching Let's be honest, we never leave Morningside Heights, anyway.
[Fanfare]
featuring:
J. Catholic Church: Homophobic
J. Ruggles vandals: anti-Semitic
and
J. Orgo Night: Equal opportunity offender
[Fanfare]
Welcomes itself back to spirited, saccharine, strangely antiseptic, sedulous, sententious, sesquipedalian, semicircular, semi-centennial, solipsistic, recently renovated, yet still in need of renovation, College Library, where the shelves are long-lasting, but sadly not the men, and the women are checked out but long overdue. As well as the panda population going up, Chinese dissidents going down, and the Chinese birth rate remaining strikingly linear, the Band now presents its 42nd Consecutive, 69th semi-annual drive to lower the curve in Organic Chemistry while consummating the world's largest simultaneous Orgo.
[Who Owns]
Recently, it seems that M. Dianne Murphy has been having a bad day. With alumni in an uproar over the new alcohol policy, several Op-Eds in the Spectator calling her all sorts of synonyms for poopie-head, and frat brothers grunting in unison and throwing feces at her whenever she passes by, the Band thinks that M. Dianne could use a hug. This semester was not a complete loss for our Director of Athletics and General Suckiness, however. After all, hundreds of students signed a petition saying that they supported the team, not the policy, making Ms. Murhpy the first AD in recent memory to get hundreds of Columbia students to admit in writing any sort of support for the football team; a football team, mind you, that ended up being much worse than any of her policies.
Further, with the winter season approaching, things are looking up for "Culture of Losing" Murphy. This week Athletics announced that it had found a new head football coach: Norries Wilson, the man that can do no wrong....unless he has three losing seasons. Then his ass is grass. The student councils have hailed the hiring of Mr. Wilson, though they have expressed disappointment that they were not consulted in this decision. After all, it was bad enough to have to change their t-shirts to read "Support that team and the NEW policy, not the old policy, which sucked" but now it must read "support the team and the NEW policy... AND the new and improved head coach, who won't cheat on his wife." Bob Shoop must be left with the consolation of knowing that his contract was for four years, and thus he will still be getting paid $230,000 for next fall's season, despite having a job description consisting entirely of deciding what to have for lunch. In honor 365 days of salaried masturbation, the band now forms Bob Shoop's massive severance package and plays "Beat It."
[Beat it]
Columbia's campus once again played host this past fall to the World Leader's Forum. This, much like SEAS, consists of a bunch of old men with incomprehensible accents speaking to an audience that's bored out of their fucking minds, except that, for some reason, there are quite a few men with guns standing on the roof of your dorm. The list of scheduled appearances for this year's Forum included a few big names like Iraqi President Jalal Talabani and Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez. Chavez, however, stood Columbia up for his speech, telling President Bollinger that he "had to wash his hair." Lee spent the next few days calling Hugo and leaving him long messages, just saying hello and checking in, wondering what he was up to, and letting him know that he could come speak at some other time, if you know, he wanted to, but it wasn't like Lee was just going to sit in Low waiting for him to call back or anything, because he was busy with lots of other world leaders, and really having a great time, but, of course, he could probably squeeze him in, you know, if he wanted to come, so he should feel free to call back, anytime, though Lee might not be there, because he's got lots of other world leaders to see. Hugo has yet to called back.
The Dalai Lama was also part of this year's World Leaders Forum, as anyone who has ever been to Columbia's website in the past two months could tell you. There has already been discussion of which religious leader to bring to campus next year. Many have suggested that Columbia simply book 20 homilies by the Reverend Jeffery Sachs, Lord of Sustainable Development and King of all things Macro-Economically righteous. The band notes that, while 20 speeches within four weeks is quite a cross to bear, there would be no problem filling the pews, since the throngs of undergrads that would follow Sachs from Nazareth to Judea and back again would surely come to every single sermon, and even offer to wash his feet afterwards. In honor of his disciples preaching the good news of an end to poverty in 20 years, the band now forms Jeffrey Sachs turning water into an advanced socio-economic infrastructure and plays "Sweet, Profitable Dreams."
[Sweet Dreams]
And now, due to contractual obligations, we move on to Barnard:
Barnard women are strong, independent and beautiful.
And now, to pick on another group of students too inarticulate to defend themselves, the SEAS joke:
Recently, it seems that nobody gives a fuck about the engineering school. There are reports that this is pissing the SEAS students off, but no one has been able to confirm, because as soon as one of them starts talking about it, students from CC, Barnard, and GS immediately start thinking about the social contract, women's studies, and being old. The Engineering Student Council has noted complaints from its constituents and is taking aggressive action. In a public-relations minded move, the ESC has purchased a life-size, life-like, VERY EXPENSIVE, cardboard cutout of Zvi Galil. (This is true...they spent $300 on a piece of cardboard....I'm not kidding)
(This is when the man in charge of buying said cut-out shouted from the back of the library, “And he’s still sexier than you.” To which our script-reader rather deftly replied “That’s not what you said last night.” Nothing like a gay joke to shut down a would-be heckler)
The idea was that students could take a picture with the cut-out, and then could show the picture to their friends, making it look like they took a picture with Zvi himself. This idea is not panning out, however, mostly because it's hard to send a picture over the World of Warcraft server. So, much to the chagrin of the purchasers of Cardboard Zvi, it now remains in the Engineering closet, sitting next to Cardboard Mr. Spock and Cardboard Stephen Hawking. However, there have been small signs of improvement for the engineer's plight. That bastion of social justice, the Columbia Spectator, has started publishing Sudoku daily next to the crossword puzzle. Sudoku, which is Japanese for "Crossword puzzle for the illiterate," has been received positively among the SEAS student body, who now finally have something to do in class besides play with their TI-89s. But they say it is not enough. As a last resort, SEAS students have started threatening to replace the "C" in the newly formed CUIT with a "Q". This is, apparently, an engineer's idea of clever word play. But we're not scared! After all, if SEAS students stop fixing our computers, who do they think is going to hook them up with all the reefer they go through at LAN parties? In honor of symbiosis, the band now forms a Calc homework-mary jane swap and plays "Happy Together."
[Happy Together]
Where are all the liberals in room? (cheers, applause, blah blah blah) You heartless, hypocritical motherfuckers. You CLAIM to stand up for things like free speech, civil rights, and hugs, but in fact there is one minority on campus that you've been oppressing, silencing, and intimidating for YEARS. I'm talking, of course, about conservatives. Come ON people. You can't completely disregard their feelings just because conservatives don't technically HAVE feelings. Right-minded students have been fighting back this semester, utilizing such powerful tools as Dennis Schmelzer. Columns, letters to the editor, and visiting lecturers all shouted that conservatives were under-represented in the faculty, and that, to promote diversity, the University should consider political views as a "plus factor" when hiring new faculty, thus making this the first time that conservatives have supported affirmative action. They are being realistic, however; they recognize that they will never have equal representation on campus, and are willing to settle for a three-fifths compromise.
Hiring underqualified professors isn't the only issue that has conservatives all hot and bothered. With all you liberal pinko commie bleeding-heart French pussy-ass faggity-fag surrender monkeys running around campus, who knows what changes might come. Due to compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act, Low Steps may end up becoming Low Ramp, which, due to the need to have a shallow incline, will run all the way from the door of Butler. Conservatives certainly aren't looking forward to "40s on the inclined plane" day, but upon hearing the news that CUSnacks is planning on adding do-it-yourself aborting kits to its menu, the CCCC could not take it anymore, and decided to bring to campus the one man they knew could really speak calmly and intelligently about conservative issues, and actually hold an informative dialogue that might change some minds on campus: Former Attorney General and Professional Loser to the Dead, John Ashcroft. Satan, as he is popularly known on campus, spoke about the need for more family values and morality in America, such as school prayer, heterosexuality, and whiteness. In honor of putting the right back in righteous, the band now forms a red, white, and blue chastity belt and plays "Fly Like an American Bald Eagle."
[Fly like an Eagle]
Sucks to be George W. Bush right now, huh? Gone are the days when all our illustrious leader had to do was spell out "Mission Accomplished" with the smoke from his fighter jet, keep a brain-dead woman alive, raise the terror alert level to orange, stop the gays from having little gay babies, say the word freedom, and not be John Kerry to keep his approval ratings in the high 60s. But these days, he can't even take a four month vacation without some whiny woman camping out on the road to his house, complaining about her son being red, or head, or something.
One of the more surprising and disappointing developments for the Bush administration these past few months was a rather sudden and vehement rejection of their policy of appointing people to positions for which they are staggeringly unqualified. If it were only Michael "heck of a job" Brown, that would be something he could handle. I mean, the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency actually having to manage an emergency? That's just bad luck. Who would have thought that a city built 6 feet below sea level on a former swamp in a tidal estuary on the Gulf of Mexico with levees that are mediocre at best, built by the FRENCH, mind you, would ever flood from a hurricane? But the real shocker was Harriet Miers. President Bush learned the hard way that, even if you appoint a woman, people still want her not to make up entire sections of the Constitution. (Alternative: after all, she IS a woman...how qualified did we want her to be?) But George, eternal optimist that he is, looks on the bright side; at least people have started this whole "Must be qualified" thing NOW instead of during the 2000 primary season. In honor of Harriet Miers calling President Bush the baddest motha fucka around, the band now plays Shaft.
[Shaft]
Recently, it seems that a member of the Saudi royal family donated $20 million each to Harvard and Georgetown Universities, to finance Islamic Studies. Harvard's Middle Eastern Studies department was elated by the gift, and was sure it would vault the department ahead
of Columbia's. Before now, Middle Eastern studies departments could only focus on the theoretical applications of hating the Jews, but now Harvard hopes to lead the field with a more hands on approach, hoping to offer workshops on crushing Zionism, seminars on cleansing the Holy Land, and colloquia on the finer points of denying the holocaust. The band has to wonder, however, what good the donation will really do to encourage applied anti-Semitism at
Georgetown. After all, it's *already* a Catholic school.
And speaking of intolerant Catholics, how about that Benedict XVI? Sure, he used to be a Nazi, but who would have thought that, after all these years, he could still manage to be as closed-mindedly self-righteous as the days of his Hitler youth? We in the band knew when he was elected that it was going to be a rough time for the gays, but we have only recently understood the full extent of Benedict's fuhrer. This summer, it seemed that every week brought another "clarification" of the Vatican's policy on homosexuality, be it in the home, the seminary, or the alter boy's dressing room. In honor of the time when heterosexual priests could molest little boys in peace, the band now forms the knee-padded floor of the confessional and plays "I'm addicted to you, but I know that you're thirteen."
[Toxic]
Well, that's all for us tonight. But before we go, we'd like to leave you with a few study hints for that big Orgo exam tomorrow:
When you add an -OH group to a carbon chain, it becomes an alcohol, whereas when you add alcohol to Carmen chain, they all start shouting OH! OH!
The R-group on an amino acid is the part that determines its properties, whereas the ARRRRR group on facebook is for people who know someone who is fighting, has survived, or died from pirate attacks.
Scientists use organic chemistry to build models of compounds, so they can study what they look like. Engineers use advanced programming language to build models of women, for the same reason.
And finally, Arsole is the arsenic equivalent of a pyrrole carbon ring, where as "asshole" has the Columbia equivalent in Kwame Spearman.
Goodnight and good luck, folks. Don't break any bookshelves on the way out.
[Raw]