Don't Come Back
It’s Spring Carnival, meaning our campus is once again clogged with the shambling corpses of alumni who refuse to die with dignity. This is a group that includes you, probably, and if it doesn’t, it will. Every April, you ooze back onto campus in your quarter-zips, grinning like dim-witted Golden Retrievers recalling where they buried a bone during the Obama Administration. “Wow, they haven’t torn down Donner yet?” “I haven’t painted the Fence since SAE held it for two weeks in the freezing cold.” “I remember when Jim and I …” Shut the fuck up. No one cares.
We …
A Freshman's Guide to Carnival
You and I have one thing in common: We’ve both never been to Spring Carnival. Fear not, because my expert sleuthing over the past few days has allowed me to gain insight into this mysterious campuswide event. What does a midway taste like? Who’s in the doghouse? I’ll answer all your questions and more in the guide below!
Spring Carnival came to be when CMU administration realized that the student body may revolt without bread and circuses. Hence the tradition of selling snacks so unhealthy they make Stack’d Underground look like a dietician’s haven. The rest of Carnival’s events …
A Grad Student's Guide to Carnival
Me and the freshman from the other page have one thing in common: we have never been to Spring Carnival. If you’re a first year Master's student, you need to lock in, because there’s a good chance your program (which also has a 1 in 5 chance of having the word “AI” in it) runs for three semesters. This means that this might be your one and only chance to participate in Carnival as a student. If you’re a Ph.D. student, why are you reading this? Go back to your lab, bitch. If you did your undergrad here and came …
New job opportunities for recent graduates.
Dear Recent Graduates,
Now that we have your attention, have you made your way into the terrifying depths of the real world? Do you long for the days when the biggest fear was looking at your grades instead of making a mistake on your taxes and being arrested? Whether you escaped Pittsburgh or are still creeping around this city like a stalker at parties, you are now officially old and withering away. The sweet embrace of Wean Hall during Carnival season is your highlight of the year, and it’s time to accept that.
You aren’t getting any younger, …
Nine-and-a-half theses on comedy
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When the humorist writes, he ought to will the entire piece be one of intelligibility.
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Satire cannot be understood as merely the presence of references and proper nouns; artificial intelligence, Farnam Jahanian, Palantir, and Charlie Kirk do not a joke make.
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When references are to be made, timeliness is of utmost importance.
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More generally, timing is essential. In writing, this is achieved through punchiness and restraint.
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They preach only false doctrines who teach that a sentence becomes funnier by being made longer, stranger, and more subordinatedly …
Introducing Tall Booth
As students, staff, and alumni flood the Midway this Carnival, they’ll notice the usual arrangement of booths, each with its own unique design. Navigating through the Midway, entranced with the artistry of Spring Carnival, they’ll walk slowly into the shadow lurking at the back of the Midway. There, they’ll find the newest addition to the Booth competition: Tall Booth.
The point of Tall Booth is not simply to build a sound structure with a nice exterior. Instead, the simple objective of Tall booth is height. Build the tallest booth imaginable. How tall? To space and beyond ideally.
According …
There will come soft Tanks
“The bathrooms are down to your left, past the staircase,” he threw out to no one in particular. His hardened grey face stared, with a thousand-yard stare, into an assortment of broken glass, bent metal, and the vandalized remains of a few abandoned bikes that had been left for far longer than seven days. He waited. Then another. “If that’s all, I’ll get back to work.” His misshapen ears couldn’t hear the wind jostling up the dust outside. His prominent nose couldn’t smell the lingering stench of fermented noodles, rotten chicken, and broken bodies in various stages of decomposition. In …
Tales from Frick Park IV: They have a mouth and must not scream
“Alright everyone, if we could gather in a semicircle—yes, perfect— watch your step there. Welcome to Carnegie Mellon University! My name is Victor and I’ll be your tour guide today.
Behind me you’ll see one of our most iconic landmarks: Walking to the Sky. Feel free to take a photo, just no flash. Sudden stimuli can … interfere with the finish.” Everyone squints upwards. “Yes, it is quite tall. The sculpture represents aspiration, forward motion, the limitless potential of CMYou.”
A faint, papery crack as one of the figures shifts almost imperceptibly. “That lifelike texture is intentional,” Victor …
We're broke
Today, Readme spent the last of our meager budget purchasing kibble from PetSmart to stave off the death throes of one of our small, orphaned staffwriters. On our way out of the PetSmart, we were attacked by a man with a knife who took all of our print quota, forcing us to outsource this issue’s printing to one of our parents. To put it simply, we are pitiful, abject, and loathsome. Please give us money. Even a penny would go a long way; we need copper to fix the wires for the 5W generator that powers everything we own, so …
Hostile Booth Architecture
As Carnival season closes in on us, it is important to impress upon the larger Carnegie Mellon community the necessity of intelligent booth design. Of course, building codes and safety regulations are all well and good, but student organizations must be aware of a more fundamental factor affecting the quality of their booths. The only way to ensure a booth remains pristine and functional is preventing unwanted interference by hostile forces. And, by potentially hostile forces… well, let’s just say: the students.
Our honest booth builders and their structures are always threatened by the conniving influences of Carnegie Mellon …
Kill Phil
The average lifespan of marmota momax, the common groundhog, is 2 to 3 years. That is 2 to 3 years too long. I don’t remember what that fuckass rodent said or did back in February, but whether that little prick saw his shadow or not is really irrelevant to the fact that, twice in the last two weeks, the temperature dropped 40 degrees from one day to the next. If this had happened once, I would have forgiven him. It wasn’t bad the first time. I spent my entire day going “wow, will ya believe the weather?” to people, …