Letter to the editor, from the editors

Please reference Vitamin C for additional ambiance:

Sometimes you start a blog your freshman year just for the hell of it. And sometimes, if you’re lucky, that blog grows in to one of the most important facets of your life, picking up over 50 additional writers along the way and garnering thousands of readers who, for some godforsaken reason, seem to enjoy our heinous publication.

Three years ago, I started Sherman Ave with the idea of making a site devoted to the culture of Evanston and Chicago. Peter Stein and Sir Edward Twattingworth III came along not much later, and took things to a whole new level. The next year brought a new generation of Aviators, including Chandler Dutton, who immediately became one of the site’s most important writers, editors, and leaders.

The Types of Men You Encounter While Abroad

Aren’t we all sick of the typical “Study Abroad Blog”? I mean, it’s #amazing and #lifechanging that you saw the “Le Tour Eiffel” and drank wine in Sicily and went to that weird building in Barcelona. You got a picture with a camel and underprivileged children? That’s really amazing!

I’ve never seen anything quite like it! For the past 6 minutes, that is.

So, just a warning, if you are abroad, I speak for most everyone–no one reads your blog aside from your extended family. If you’re lucky, maybe your mother leaves it open for your cat to take naps next to. But that’s it.

A cat nap: Sleeping on someone else’s electronics and/or fresh laundry. Like an asshole.

Let’s be real, the only blog people would really want to read would be about sexcapades. We don’t want to hear about how you went to a coffee shop in Amsterdam; we want to hear about how you made your cash in the red light district to pay for said coffee shop.

While you’re abroad, as long as you act the 100% opposite of a Northwestern student (aka never step foot in the library and make eye contact with, well, anyone,) then you’re guaranteed to meet some incredible people who will change your outlook on life (#clicheforareason). That being said, these people will likely fall into certain categories, and this is taking a moment to dwell on all of the wonderful men in your life, the ones who won’t quite make the blog.

Sherman Ave Goes Global!

We would like to cordially invite Greenland to suck the fattest dick on the planet.

This is a map of Sherman Ave’s global reach. The countries that are filled in with color have viewed Sherman Ave at least once (obviously, it is the country as a whole viewing it together as part of a ceremony, and not one single person arbitrarily browsing the Internet for fucksaw videos). The color-coding isn’t especially relevant to viewership; it represents the general greatness of the country, judged on the traditional scale of 1 to 32,524.

As part of a marketing effort, we’re making attempts to analyze these global trends of viewership to figure out how we can broaden our appeal, and in all our gratitude and kindness, we’ve decided to show our strategies to you, our dickholders shareholders (remember the other night, when you had one too many and bought $50,000 worth of stock in a blog that doesn’t yet run its own advertisements?).

Let’s start with North America. We’re clearly getting a considerable amount of views from Canada, United States, and Mexico. This is probably due largely to a few shady deals we made in the 1990s when NAFTA was being drafted, shortly after Al Gore invented the Internet.

Even in Central America, some of the rural fruit farmers have found their way onto our joyous blog.* Yes, it may have something to do with the fact that we’ve been actively trading arms to the Sandinistas over the last few years to cover Sherman Ave’s fixed production costs (Miller High Life and Flaming Hot Cheetos), but we also like to think that we’ve managed to score some views in Costa Rica by casually ranting about how much we hate their country.

One of our Brazilian readers, vicariously feeling our sadness at the revocation of The Keg's liquor license

In South America, you may notice that all countries have some level of viewership of Sherman Ave. I know, you might be thinking, “What about French Guiana, Suriname, and Guyana?” In response: Those piece-of-shit countries are not real countries. French Guiana is a territory of France (If the UN Security Council was the Jackson 5, France would be Tito), Suriname’s primary language is Dutch (apparently Dutch is a language?), and Guyana is known best for mass suicide. Although we didn’t get a high quantity of views from countries like Argentina and Brazil, we feel safe in assuming that the views we did came from hot Brazilian models, the Argentinian soccer team, and the corpse of Eva Peron.

Moving onto Europe, you’ll see that we have almost absolute viewership in Europe. This is quite a shocking insight for us; we didn’t realize our writing style crafted such a strong appeal to metrosexual chain-smokers who do nothing but listen to house music and get bailed out by the United States in world wars. Strangely, though, it does seem that there is a small void in Moldova, where the few Internet users are presumably brainstorming ways to make their country relevant and/or dying in abject poverty.

Asia provides arguably the most surprising statistics. Judging from the fact that a) we’ve had no viewers in Yemen or Oman, and b) we’ve gone 1 for 7 with countries ending in “-stan,” our sweeping campaign to appeal to Muslim Internet users has failed unequivocally. We hope to remedy this by expanding our content to be more culturally friendly; in the future, expect continuations of current article series, such as “Point/Counterpoint: Qu’ran vs. Koran,” “Freshman Guide: Finding A Mosque in Evanston,” and “An Open Letter Non-apology to American Automobile Owners.”

Our efforts in Africa, on the other hand, appear to have been successful beyond our wildest dreams. As you can see, we’ve gotten views from every Internet user on the continent.**

No luck with Papua New Guinea, though. We’re discussing the launch of a subsidiary blog called “Pygmy Ave.”

 

*“Rural Fruit Farmer” is incidentally the name of Clay Aiken’s next album.
**We’re assuming the penguins from the movie “Madagascar” haven’t yet figured out how to use the Internet.

Introducing: The Sherman Ave Swag Shoppe

Could it be…!?

Has Northwestern’s premier political/historical/alcoholic-humor blog finally started up a capitalistic endeavor designed to raise enough money to pay off their gambling IOU’s from last year’s Northwestern-University of Chicago Women’s Ice Hockey match by selling you shit with their name emblazoned across it!?

That’s RIGHT!

Sherman Ave has got a great new Swag Shoppe just for you heinous kids running amok in downtown Evanston. Protest authority, sexual mores, your shitty TA, Illinois drinking laws, and more with our brand new merchandise line!

With an ever increasing range of products, there’s sure to be something to please you!

From shirts to sweatpants, we’ll try to cover up as much of your body as possible. Want bootylicious lingerie? We’ve got it. Want to proudly display your affection for Morty or underage drinking at the Keg? We’ve got just the shirts for you.

We even have a bandanna to gag you with if you open your mouth!

Too far? Well, we guess that’s just #HEINOUS.

Check out the new Sherman Ave Swag Shoppe HERE!!!

2011 Sherman Ave Reader’s Poll: Results

With 122 responses and a wide variety of exceedingly gruesome responses,* we were absolutely thrilled with the success of this year’s poll. So, after much anticipation (drumroll please), we present to you: RESULTS!

The hanging chad of our generation

Most Heinous Event of 2011
With 24% of the vote, the winner was: Rebecca Black’s “Friday” Strikes Youtube. This is undoubtedly the most atrocious non-majority victory we’ve seen since November 2000.

Best Place to Find and Enjoy a Hookup
Also with 24% of the vote, the winner was: A Frat House. Notable write-ins include “Baby Bash ski trip concert” and “Deer season in Indiana.” Surprisingly enough, nobody mentioned Sherman Ave HQ…

Favorite Sherman Ave personality?
With 30% of the vote, the winner was: Sir Edward Twattingworth III. We at the Ave have not a shred of doubt that this will result in a power-trip of unprecedented magnitude, but with Sir T-Worth, we’re used to it. Anything less than Putin-esque levels of self-aggrandizement would be a disappointment.

Best Song of 2011
With 15% of the vote, the winner was: “Someone Like You” by Adele. This can easily be understood by anyone who has ever been within a 5-mile radius of any intoxicated Sherman Ave writer. Or felt love.

Most Mouthgasms per Bite
With 33% of the vote, the winner was: Hot Cookie Bar. Notable write-ins include “your mom” and “Pippa Middleton.”

DAMN YOU HIPSTERS FOR RUINING THE BEANIE FOR ME!!!!

Best Coffee Shop
With 52% of the vote, the winner was: Kafein. This would probably not go over well with one of the respondents who wrote in the answer, “Hipsters are sub-humans.” Ross Packingham intends to use this landslide victory as a clear mandate to bring his Buddhism-influenced beat poetry to Kafein’s stage, supported by Brother Jürgen and Eleanor Kinkervoss on the bongos while Evander Jones attacks the chastity belt around his waist with a chain saw. Sadly, it will only the fourth-most heinous act on stage at that week’s open mic.

Best Place to Get Intoxicated in Public
With 27% of the vote, the winner was: Cozy Noodles. Among the many notable write-ins were: “Barnes and Noble,” “10am MENU class,” and “sidewalk.”

Best A Cappella Group
With 26% of the vote, the winner was: There is no such thing as a good a cappella group. A ruefully valid statement indeed.

Best Movie of 2011
With 29% of the vote, the winner was: Harry Potter 7.2. Notable write-ins include Twilight: Breaking Hymen and Pippa Middleton, both of which feature Morty Schapiro and Kate Upton in starring roles.

Best TV Show of 2011
With 17% of the vote, the winner was: How I Met Your Mother. Apparently people identify with drunken assholes frittering away the golden years of their lives chasing after unsatisfactory one-night stands. Far and away, the most heinous write-in was: “Is The Hills still on? I pick The Hills.”

Please Describe Morty Schapiro in 10 Words or Less
This one was actually too much for us to emotionally process. Top answer: “Why limit it to fewer words than his penis length?” Maybe once Ross Packingham’s poetry career takes off, maybe he’ll compose a sonnet using only these responses and youtube video comments.

What’s Up the Evanston City Council’s Ass?
With 35% of the vote, the winner was: a 14-inch dildo made of molten gummy bears. If that’s not already true, it can certainly be arranged.

Ever wonder how I got the name "Packingham?"

What is your Gender?
With 58% of the vote, the winner was: Female. AWWWWWW YEAHHHHHH!!!! Hey ladies, how’d you like to spend the night with the fourth-most popular Northwestern-centric blog? No?** Haaaaaaave you met Manua?

What Brings You to Sherman Ave?
With a staggering 70% of the vote, the winner was: Facebook. Needless to say, notable write-ins included “Pippa Middleton” and “all of your fucking Facebook posts.”

In conclusion, a huge thank you goes out to everyone who took this poll. We couldn’t do it without you. We hope that you were pleased with our unnecessary heinousness in 2011, and we will do everything in our power to take it to the next level in 2012. Most importantly, we’re comforted to see in the responses that the people who read Sherman Ave are just about as fucked up as the people who write for it.

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*Allowing for a standard error of approximately 69%.
**Fun Fact: The first time Sherman Ave was ever used as a potential pickup line occurred in line for the bathroom at an off-campus party. It was not successful.

Sherman Ave 2011 Readers Poll

Our readers lining up to take the traditional end-of-the-year Sherman Ave Readers Poll

Who the hell are you!? Welcome to the first annual Sherman Ave Readers Poll. In order to better serve the supposed readers of our humbly heinous blog, we thought that it would be a great idea to ask you a bunch of questions. Please take the time to offer your discriminating wisdom on the best music, food, movies, items stuck up the orifices of the Evanston City Council, and moments of the year. All respondents will be entered into a drawing for the chance to win Sir Edward Twattingworth III for a day, and shall also be showered with our love and gratitude.

Take the survey HERE!!!

Hate a Random Country: Costa Rica

One of the numerous heinous individuals populating this tainthole of a country

A few weeks ago, a member of our presteinous (that’s prestigiously heinous, if you’re wondering) blog was approached at an off-campus party and asked if we would write an installment of our unnecessarily abrasive “Hate a Random Country” series on his home country, Costa Rica. The member of the blog, who was most certainly not Evander Jones, got down from the table on which he was exuberantly belly-dancing and happily agreed to have the article written. That being said, this article is not being written only by request – it’s being written because Costa Rica is home to a massive concentration of twatitude that can be rivaled only by the Seneca Falls Convention.

“Costa Rica” is a country similar to “Democratic Republic of Congo,” in that its name in no way reflects the country itself. Spanish for “Rich Coast,” Costa Rica is truly only rich in two things: Trees and tainthood. I’ll focus mostly on the tainthood.

Red, white, and blue!? BRILLIANT!!!

For those of us who don’t give a flying fuckstick about shithole countries like Costa Rica, it may be a surprise to learn that the currency in Costa Rica is the “colón” – presumably named for either the human colon or Cristobal Colón, a.k.a. Christopher Columbus. After all, who wouldn’t want their currency named after a raging cockbottle who exploited their people? For fuck’s sake, Costa Rica. You don’t see Cherokees running around paying with Jacksons, or Northwestern’s defense running around paying with Anyones. Worse yet, the abbreviation for the Costa Rican Colón is, surprisingly enough, CRC – an acronym that, to Northwestern students, encompasses nearly all the School of Comm’s limitless atrociousness.

Besides their poorly-named currency, the country with a president named “Chinchilla” boasts many more aspects worth scrutinizing. For example, its coat of arms is the feeblest display of culture I’ve seen since Kappa Sig went to the Shedd Aquarium. The image consists of several features:

Contrary to initial beliefs, this is not a 5th Grade Social Studies project

• A landmass.  Presumably representing Costa Rica, the landmass is a strip of land with three unnaturally phallic geographic features.
• Two bodies of water.  Divided by the landmass, they likely represent the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans.  Because clearly, Costa Rica is the only fucking country that borders two oceans.
• Two ships.  Likely representing the Nina and the Pinta.  Or the Nina and the Santa Maria.  Or the Pinta and Santa Maria.  Or maybe just two generic coming-to-totally-fuck-your-people-over ships.
• A banner over the top reading “America Central.”  Apparently, no one ever informed these dumbshits that it’s called “Central America.”

The only thing rivaling Costa Rica's lack of defense is the Northwestern secondary

Perhaps the most unique fact about Costa Rica is that they don’t have a military.  Yes, you heard me.  To show you the full impact of this absurdity, allow me to put it into perspective.  On Monday nights, the backdoor of the Keg is more protected than the nation of Costa Rica.  On weekend nights, Burger King’s line-forming traditions are more protected than the nation of Costa Rica.  Two hammered college students bumping uglies in the basement of ZBT are more protected than the nation of Costa Rica.

You know, you’d think that a country bordering Nicaragua and Panama wouldn’t look too bad. But Costa Rica did it. And to be honest, that’s the one feat of Costa Rica that honestly impresses me. The nation’s four all-time Olympic medals aren’t impressive. The national soccer team’s four visits to the World Cup aren’t impressive. But damn – those Costa Ricans sure do know how to make themselves look like dickbrains. Well done, Costa Dickbrains. Well done.