Readme's production in decline due to Prohibition
The pervasive hum of the printing press putting out Readme’s weekly dreck has finally faltered. A well-meaning administrator, upon hearing the rumor the magazine runs on a 70/30 blend of grain alcohol and caffeine, initiated a campuswide effort to enforce the national ban on spirits. The goal was to improve its output, but the fallout has been dire.
The Readme office, once a vibrant den of inspired madness, resembles a UPMC autopsy center. Editors, now tragically lucid, are unable to reach their highs of maniacal, drug induced criticism. Writers are submitting coherent, factchecked articles that one disgusted reader criticized as “drier than my concepts homework.” They now communicate in hushed, grammatically correct sentences. The most exciting thing to happen this week was a lively debate over the Oxford comma, and no one cried or threw a shoe. Thankfully, most of these poor souls were able to find work at The Tartan.
A handful of others, in a state of catastrophic withdrawal, plug away at their typewriters, producing reams of text that may be brilliant but that editors find utterly indecipherable. One such writer, known only as Jax, was found staring at a blank wall, muttering about “the tyranny of narrative structure.” His typewriter held a single page containing nothing but the word “why?” repeated 4,000 times. This piece has already been claimed for CFA’s latest minimalism installation.
Not everyone is so lucky. The most severe cases have lost the ability to write altogether. These unfortunates sit in a corner of the office, clutching their pencils. Attempts at simple writing prompts, such as “describe this apple,” have yielded only whimpers and blank stares. Medical professionals have been called, but all have declared the situation “beyond the capabilities of science.” Priests would not dare set foot in Readme headquarters, docile as its inhabitants may now be. They are the last surviving members of Readme, if only because no one else will take them.
Meanwhile, the effect on the campus at large has been almost as drastic. The Fence, whose coating had been alternating nightly between praising presidential candidates Harding and Cox (with one interruption calling for a unified “HardCox” coalition) prior to the prohibition, is now a drab grey. Student morale has plummeted even further, which CaPS had previously deemed “a psychological impossibility.”
Not all hope is lost. Rumor has it that one determined student has managed to distill a usable spirit from buggy grease. The Readme team awaits his first batch with the desperate thirst of people who have just read a logically sound paragraph.