Northwestern Administration Gets Caffeine Rush, Excitedly Re-Allocates $3.75 Billion to Intangible Buzzwords

(via Northwestern)

Northwestern declared that they will raise 3.75 billion dollars to improve the University after yesterday morning’s “Dollar Coffee” deal at Java Café.

There was reportedly a “Super Scholastic Brainstorm” which consisted of several administrative members pacing around the presidential office enthusiastically pitching ideas.  Reports have confirmed that the group members were thinking of ideas so fast that they did not even have time to write them all down.

Chris Combe and Adam Karr, two Co-Chairs of the initiative, reportedly

Sherman Ave Interviews: Gary Saul Morson

The Sherman Ave Editors Ross Packingham and Sir Edward Twattingworth III sat down with Professor Gary Saul Morson for an interview.  It was in Cosi. Everyone had fun.

He doesn’t care, he loves it.

Twattingworth: Where are you from?

Morson:  New York.

Twattingworth: Oh.  I think it was Pushkin who called New York the “concrete jungle where dreams are made of.”

Morson:  Oh come on.

Twattingworth: Is that an accurate description of your hometown?

Morson:  Pushkin never said any such thing.

Packingham:  It was either Pushkin or Jay-Z.  I understand you went to Yale?

Morson:  I did.

Packingham:  Is it weird being an alumnus of an institution that most of your students wanted to attend but weren’t smart enough?

How to Feed Yourself and Your Unpaid Internship

There’s nothing like the sweet flavor of an unpaid internship.

Seriously. There literally is nothing like that. Unpaid internships taste like shit, because most internships boil down to three-plus months of ass kissing and there’$ nothing to $weeten the deal.

Plus, you’re starving. Because when you’re in New York, San Francisco or any other city where each square foot of rent costs the sum total of Dolly Parton’s plastic surgeries, do you have the cash to spare for sustenance?

$ign$ point to n0.

In Which I Wax Poetic on Hamburgers

You’ve gotten me through so much, Edzo’s.

Hamburger you disgust me.

Hamburger I don’t care where you came from.
I don’t know where to find you on a cow, or a horse
or whatever else you may be made of.
Secretly I find the mystery exciting.

Hamburger I know you’ve been getting fatter over the years
but that’s alright.
I had a brief affair with Subway and she’s been good to me,
but you’ll always have more to love.

An ode to Northwestern memes

In the great Northwestern University student tradition of never doing anything original ever, we have succeeded in completely ripping off funny Madison students and made our very own Facebook group for Northwestern-themed memes. And even before Madison made their group, Sherman Ave’s very own Evander Jones and Ross Packingham engaged in a daylong meme duel on Facebook, laying waste to the timelines around them with their brutal label-based humor bludgeons. If you were Facebook friends with them and missed out on these two wunderkinds making memes of each other and generally raping newsfeeds everywhere, I feel bad for you. It would be akin to taking Professor Bailey’s Human Sexuality class and skipping the optional after-class discussions.

But even though it’s not original, Northwestern Memes is awesome. I mean, nobody cares if you’re copying someone else as long as you do it better, and we are definitely doing it better. My complete and utter lack of interest in Madison has prevented me from even perusing their meme group, but I can’t imagine it being anywhere as good as Northwestern Memes.

I love memes. Who doesn’t? They’re hilarious. In our modern ADD society, they offer quick, digestible little nuggets of insight and satire about our modern culture. They are the Internet at its greatest, smartest, and funniest. Sometimes they even reference such awesome things as Game of Thrones and Lord of the Rings, which if you haven’t seen or read Lord of the Rings then you probably aren’t a Nerdwestern Northwestern student.

As a result, I love Northwestern Memes. I’m going to break down why I love Northwestern Memes into a list for you. Here’s why:

1. My last three articles have been thousand-word slogfests about coffee and/or Newt Gingrich, and I’m sure you’re all tired of it.
2. Sherman Ave is even better at doing lists than we are at making YouTube videos that get 10,000 hits in two days, so this is pretty much guaranteed to be awesome.
3. I want to write an easily digestible reflection on the easily digestible nature of memes.

See? Wasn’t that an awesome little list? Wasn’t it easily readable? Yes it was. Everybody loves lists, just like everybody loves memes. So without further ado, here’s a list of why I love Northwestern Memes:

Some of Them are Funny
Since Northwestern is full of people who are smart and aware of trends, some students have significant experience with memes, and it shows. Some of these memes would be genuinely funny even by the standards of the greater Internet, just as there are some students here who would be considered hot at any college. Just not many. Which leads me to my second reason for loving Northwestern Memes…

Some of Them are Spectacularly Unfunny
Yes! Hoo ha! Most people posting pics to this group are clearly making memes for the first time. Thus, we find ourselves faced with people who don’t understand memes, people who don’t understand specific memes, people who are just not funny, and people who are kind of funny but are fitting long-winded jokes onto a small meme template. It’s always fun to watch people fail. This is why everyone loves this year’s GOP presidential race.* What’s that? I sound like a condescending hipster? Well, I’m not the only one…

Meme Haughtiness
Some people hate hipsters. I love them. I find them hilarious, especially when the thing they’re being hipster about is silly and meaningless. Like say, the ability to make memes. Some of the very first posts in Northwestern Memes were warnings about how we were in for a flood of bad memes. And we kind of were…but it was still hilarious that people decided to lord their knowledge of the Internet as if it made them intellectually superior.**

It’s All a Giant Conspiracy
Turns out that all these “___ Memes” groups were started by one guy as an advertisement for an all-encompassing “Campus Memes” website he’s making. It’s a conspiracy! As if you didn’t already have enough reasons to love Northwestern Memes, here’s another: it has something in common with the assassination of JFK!

Ah, yes. But as much as I love Northwestern Memes, I do have one suggestion for improvement. Two words: more fucksaws. The memes are coming a mile a minute now, so maybe one slipped by me, but I have yet to see a single meme mention a single fucksaw. What’s the deal, Northwestern? Jokes about Asians are funny enough, but “I’m tired of talking about fucksaws” was probably the last line cut from the “Shit Nobody Says” video. I know the Keg is gone and Lodge is closed and stuff, but c’mon guys. Fucksaws, I tell you.

Other than that, keep on tracking.

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*Sorry, I just couldn’t stop myself from referencing it. I’m done now though. I promise.
**Morson alert!

Newt Gingrich, South Carolina, and the Abortion of My Career in Political Commentary

And I don't think I want to. Except for understanding your disproportionate ability to get laid.

The GOP primaries are like Chicago weather: completely, utterly, and insanely unpredictable.* Just when you think you understand the day-to-day realities of winter in Chicago, BAM!! Thunderstorm in January. Just when you think you’ve figured out the winner of the GOP nomination, BOOM! Newt wins South Carolina.

I mean, what the fuck, Newt? I thought we were done. I really did. I thought Silly Time was over and it was time for some Real Talk with Obama and Romney (or at the very least, an Al Green-themed The Voice-style sing-off). Not so fast. But I guess I should’ve seen this coming.

Here is a Facebook status I wrote a few months ago, when Newt Gingrich was polling in first place while his opponents floundered, as Herman Cain struggled to fight rape charges and Rick Perry struggled to remember things and Mitt Romney struggled to be interesting: “Newt Gingrich is in first place. That’s it. It’s all a farce. Let’s stop pretending that all of this is real. I throw up my hands.”

Newt polling in first was to the GOP race what Sam and Frodo reaching the end of the Shire was for LOTR. We were now farther from political sanity than we had ever been before, and there was no telling where we would be swept off to next.

Google his name. GOOGLE IT!!!

Two months later, Rick Santorum won Iowa.

Rick Santorum! His name has been successfully Google-bombed and EVERYBODY KNOWS IT and he still won Iowa!

I underestimated the GOP. And not in a “wow I underestimated how good this Nutella milkshake from Fran’s would be” kind of way. Oh no. It was a “the 1984 Portland Trail Blazers underestimated Michael Jordan so much they decided to draft Sam Bowie instead of him” kind of underestimation. Half of me understood that the Newt poll meant the Brotherhood of Dada had dragged us into an alternate universe where ‘politics’ was synonymous with ‘freakshow’ and words lost their meaning and anything was possible…but half of me kept thinking that every crazy development (“oops,” Herman Cain’s Pokémon obsession, Ron Paul’s status as the voice of reason) was the zenith of absurdity, that there remained no further depths to which we could plunge.

But you best believe Newt Gingrich always had an answer for me. Once again, for the record, in case you were too busy this weekend dancing to polka music or playing cards with guys who have the Teen Titans tattooed on their arm to hear about it, Newt won South Carolina! Once more for the record: aaaaahhhhhhhhh!

Is this year’s GOP race the result of some twisted alternate earth they dragged us into?

My last article was not only a celebration of the ridiculous hilarity of the GOP campaign, but also an elegy for that craziness, which I thought was about to vanish in a cloud of sanity. I thought Mitt finally had this all locked up after winning New Hampshire, and I was sure we were finally transitioning from Perry-Bachmann-Cain-Paul-Gingrich to Romney-Obama, to real political debates between two sane candidates. But then Newt charged back to metaphorically punch me in the mouth and remind me that America isn’t going to stop being a hot dysfunctional mess anytime soon.

My possible career in political commentary hasn’t even started and I’m already thinking of quitting forever. I just cannot wrap my head around Newt Gingrich. Can anybody? If you thought Rick Santorum was vulnerable to a casual Google search, try taking Newt’s name for a virtual walk some time. Newt probably has his closet bolted shut with a chair against the door and that still isn’t enough to keep the skeletons in. There is absolutely no possible way that Newt can win the GOP nomination, much less the presidency. But if this campaign has taught us anything, it’s that the possible is impossible and up is down and America is fucked up. In the real world, Newt could never win. But I don’t think we even live in the real world anymore.

Newt

My sense of surprise is utterly gone. For the rest of eternity I will believe any story, any event that involves the GOP. Nothing is too nonsensical for a party where Newt Gingrich is a viable candidate. I probably won’t even bat an eye when Bristol Palin wins the Iowa caucuses in four years and becomes the favorite to win the GOP nomination. The Republican Party has moved beyond my paltry comprehension ability.

I think I’m just gonna have to stick to the fiery anti-coffee invective. I can’t do this anymore.

——————————————————————————————————————————
*And for those of you scoring at home, “Chicago weather” is the third thing I’ve compared the GOP primaries to during my career. The list also includes Doctor Who and NBC’s Thursday night sitcom lineup.

Things That Suck: Coffee

Coffee: Sir Twattingworth's anti-heroin

Fuck coffee.

I feel like a stranger in a strange land. Not because I’m the protagonist of a Robert Heinlein novel, but because I don’t drink caffeine. I’ll pause a moment to let your mouths fall agape as you shout “WAIT WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAATTTT.”

True story. I’ve never drunk coffee in my life. Okay, wait, there was that one time when I was a curious young four-year-old and my dad let me taste his coffee and I was so horrified that I jerked violently and spilled it all over my Charlie Brown pajama pants. But other than that I have usually abstained from the black stuff. And from Red Bull. And Monster, too. Fuck that shit.

Final exams may be over at Northwestern, but I know there are a bunch of other poor unfortunate souls out there who still have to cram months’ worth of learning into their skulls before exams. As a result they may, in all their mortal vulnerability, be tempted to turn to the evil that is caffeinated beverages. I am here to hold up my hand and say the same thing I would say to anyone planning to read Roberto Bolaño’s novel 2666: Don’t do it!

My body is like this temple, in that it is a temple.

That’s a picture of a temple. I included it in this article because, like the Baha’i Temple, my body is a temple. When I stay up till four in the morning writing a six page essay about what Henry David Thoreau would think about the Weather Underground, I do so simply on the sober strength of my own fucking willpower. I understand that if you start thinking about this metaphor, some obvious contradictions might jump out at you like the T-Rex face in my old dinosaur pop-up book. But I’ll remind you that most temples have alcohol in them. You can put wine into a temple without damaging it, and Christians have done so for ages. But something tells me that if you shot lightning at a temple to “give it energy,” you would really just blow up the temple. That’s my visualization of inserting caffeine into a human system.

Shoot a temple with lightning and it will never be intact again. Give me Red Bull and I will never sleep again. I have enough trouble as it is. The first time I stayed up past midnight on a day that wasn’t New Year’s Eve, it was all over for me. Once I crossed that threshold, it became impossible for me to ever fall asleep before midnight again. At night my productivity goes up, and I suddenly remember all the Grantland articles I wanted to read and all the episodes of Dragon Ball Z that I wanted to watch that I somehow forgot about during the daytime. Before I know it, it’s 2:30 and somehow the knowledge that I have to telemarket for three hours the next day doesn’t stop me from looking up YouTube clips of old Martin Luther King, Jr. speeches until my eyelids finally take executive action and shut themselves, only to be jarred awake hours later by an alarm just in time to swallow a mouthful of Cocoa Puffs before huffing it to my French class with all possible speed. No rest for the weary, and I am nothing if not weary.

I am not alone here. I have friends who drink coffee like it’s water. As a result, they go to bed at midnight and wake up at six every day. They think they’re fully functioning modern human beings. I think they’re more like zombie robots in danger of falling apart at any second. I don’t want to see that happen, so I’m finally coming out against the horrid black stuff.

She is hot. Coffee is awful.

That’s a subjective take on the general suckiness of caffeinated drinks, so I’ll throw in an objective approach as well. I feel like I shouldn’t have to mention this, since it is as inherently obvious as the blueness of the sky or the hotness of Kate Middleton, but caffeine is gross. Coffee is gross, and everybody secretly knows it. I’m not just talking about the people who pour mounds of sugar into their mugs to deaden their sorry souls to the fact that they’re drinking liquid poop. I’m talking about everyone. We all seem to have agreed to forget that coffee is disgusting, the way we all agreed to forget that George W. Bush was appointed President by the Supreme Court.

And not just coffee. Red Bull is gross too. I admit, I’ve tasted it a few times, and I’d sooner hang out with Michele Bachmann for a few hours than repeat the experience. But even if I hadn’t been capable of offering this personal testimony of awfulness, surely the list of ingredients – which looks like something Walter White might cook up in his basement to pay for chemotherapy – would probably be convincing enough. 4Loko actually tastes kind of good, but it’s illegal, so that’s a given. I won’t even talk about 5 hour energy drinks until they make better commercials. If my RTVF roommate could make a better commercial than the one you put on TV, you probably don’t deserve to exist, let alone be talked about in the valuable Internet real estate that is this website.

Would you rather drink coffee or eat poop?

I realize that this anti-caffeine argument is difficult. Sometimes the AP curriculum makes it seem as if the College Board just assumes that every AP student is injecting caffeine into their eyeballs (Either that or no one told them about the existence of time-consuming extracurriculars, but either way they’re a bunch of douchemuffins who gave me too much homework in high school). Then there’s the necessity of being a hipster in order to have any social currency in this hyper media-literate world. That means you need to read Pitchfork regularly and wear clothes originally designed for girls Europeans, but it mainly means that you need to spend a majority of your time in darkly lit indie cafes sipping black energy so you’re wide awake and prepared to unleash a shitstorm of ironic Tweets the next time Bon Iver releases a workout video. Caffeine has been so prevalent in our society for so long that we just accept it as a given fact of life. But the fact that people in the Eighties were accustomed to the idea of nuclear Armageddon didn’t make it okay. Nuclear holocaust is never okay, and neither is coffee, and don’t let Henry Kissinger tell you any different.

Society seems to have ordered its priorities like this:
1. Work
2. Sleep

But that is so, so wrong. Our society has forgotten the value of sleep. Let me tell you, there was one Saturday earlier this quarter when I slept until 3 pm. It was the greatest day of my life. We all need sleep to recuperate from the horrid heinousness of everyday life, and coffee prevents that. It sucks. Finals suck. Life sucks too. But you just need to get over it. Do it all natural or not at all, that’s my motto. Sleep well, my friends.

(And for those of you wondering about the fate of my aforementioned Charlie Brown pajama pants: They did not survive their encounter with coffee, and were promptly retired to the dustbin of history. The world is a worse place for it).

Sherman Ave Freshman Guide: Campus

Just remember: The lake is East

I’m going to be brutally honest: Your first week on campus is going to be awkward as tits. Think of that time you watched Superbad with your parents, combine it with that time Severus Snape’s doppelganger was lurking at The Keg, multiply that by twenty, and that’s roughly how awkward it’s going to be. However, one surefire way to minimize this apocalyptic awkwardness is by knowing your way around campus; the Awk Hawk loves nothing more than watching a lanyard-sporting freshman discreetly approach a group of upperclassmen and feebly ask for directions to Sheridan Road. Therefore, in my never-ending mission to better the world around me and help those in need, I have developed a descriptive blueprint of the nation’s 47th most attractive campus.

KEY BUILDINGS

Tech

Also sporting the least coherent room numbering system known to man

Soon to be known as “that one building we drunkenly roamed three times a week during fall quarter,” the Technological Institute (Tech, for short) is one of the main buildings on campus. This North Campus structure – as any tour guide will obnoxiously boast – is the 2nd largest low-rise building in the United States, right behind the Pentagon (a building which, ruefully, is much harder to get into at 3:30am on a Saturday). Home to science majors, math majors, and a few other majors that appeal solely to Asians, Tech is a very mysterious entity to many South Campus students. I would certainly advise the intoxicated exploration of this building, but beware: Your idea to bathe in the emergency shower on the way back from the Frat Quad is not as brilliant as it may seem.