The Idol Bat

Honestly, I don’t know what’s in the Idol Bat’s future. Obviously, I’m no longer at Whitman, and since everyone who participated in the creation and maintenance of the Idol Bat is also no longer at Whitman, I don’t think it will remain Whitman’s online tabloid.

I’m certain that I’ll do something with the Idol Bat; it’s been too much fun for the past four years (despite suffering terrible neglect from time to time) to just drop it. But what the future holds is something that I am as yet unsure of.

For the near future, I’m going to let the Idol Bat lie fallow. Thanks to the readers who were the reason that I kept writing such terrible lies!

Introduction

Download the Guide to Stopping Duck Rape in awesome PDF format!

It is the beginning of spring. The weather is getting warmer and leaves are starting to appear on the trees. Spring is a joyous time for everyone…except female ducks. Hundreds, if not thousands, of Whitman students have been traumatized by having to witness the awful act of “procreation” to which the mallard drakes subject the female ducks every year. For those lucky souls who have not had to witness this act, you may take it from us: it is horrible. The female duck is chased by three to four males who, when they catch her, hold her down while they take turns forcing themselves upon her.

Some innocent-looking ducks in spring

Many at Whitman try and rationalize it by saying that it is natural, that duck rape is the ducks’ way of reproducing. They say that there is neither reason nor way to stop it, but we at the Idol Bat care too much about our female duck friends to stand by and do nothing. Who is to say that change can’t be made? Who is to say that we cannot stop the practice of duck rape? We cannot in good faith let them suffer any longer. We must take a stand together.

Thus, in order to assist those people who are for acting on the part of the helpless creatures, we have come up this Guide to Stopping Duck Rape. In this guide you will learn proven tactics and strategies, along with more…theoretical ones, to stop duck rape once and for all. The like-mindedly socially progressive must band together to stop these atrocities. (In order to show your support, you might consider getting your own Anti-Duck Rape apparel, located in the Idol Bat Online Store, to show everyone that you are a crusader for the defenseless).

The following guide is split into three categories, or levels of intervention: Lovey-Dovey Liberalism, Proactive Steps to Prevention, and New Mallard World Order. Which category you choose depends partially upon your commitment to the Cause, and mostly upon how far you are willing to take matters into your own hands.

Our female duck friends must be helped somehow, and we can be there for them. You must ask yourself whether or not you are willing to fight for what is right! Studying for your upcoming midterms or finals is nowhere near as important as dealing with this issue, so drop what you are doing, read this guide, and be prepared to make this spring the last duck-rape season at Whitman College.

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Whitman College, WA Disaffected Whitman senior Edward Zenner, disgusted with the Undergraduate Conference and all it stands for, has announced the first soon-to-be-annual Whitman Antigraduate Conference to be held at various undisclosed locations around campus on April 10th at the same times as the Undergrad Conference.

The Antigrad Conference celebrates the excesses and iniquity of the Whitman student body through a day devoted entirely to students’ self-destructive behaviors, and will feature a number of talks starting the morning of the tenth and continuing through the afternoon and early evening until everyone is either passed out or someone overdoses.

Beginning with a conference prefunk, the first antigrad sessions will begin after all presenters have taken a couple of shots. Morning conferences include Rolling Your Own Cigarettes: the Lost Art, Marijuana in Maxey, Erlenmeyer Meets Mixers, Study Hard and Party Harder: a Case Study, and Problematizing the Essay: the Reification of Gender Roles by Bullshitting Assignments While Intoxicated. After the morning sessions are through, there will be a brief lunch/smoke break during which a small number of students will demonstrate disgustingly biological party tricks for the entertainment of the attendees.

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The Whitman College campus was put under an emergency lock-down this past week due to the careless actions of Whitman freshman Emmett Barras who accidentally popped the Whitman bubble. Although the situation caused some severe anxiety on the part of Whitman staff and students alike, everyone’s naiveté got through the incident unscathed, and the only casualty was a senior’s loss of his feelings of being totally sheltered. Since this normally happens to seniors on track for graduation anyway at some point or other, the loss was not too serious, and experts expect her inaccurate worldviews to survive. As of Friday the bubble was reinstated, likely thanks to the copious amounts of alcohol consumed by students and staff alike in a concerted effort to keep the outside world from intruding into their affluent fantasy of the academic life.

Emmett Barras prods the Whitman bubble on the edge of campus in a dramatic reenactment

Barras was highly distraught over the result of his destructive actions, claiming that he never had any intention of harming the Whitman bubble and would never dream of deliberately trying to enlighten Whitman students of their isolated and disconnected existence. Whitman Dean of Students Chuck Cleveland decided not to discipline Barras for his mistake, stating that although his infraction was far more serious than that of most first offenders, he was also not responsible for his actions because his sense of autonomy hadn’t yet been beaten out of him by Core.

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I should have mentioned this earlier, but the Idol Bat is on hiatus while Whitman is on spring break. We’ll resume publishing the weekend of March 24-25.

See you then!

If you’re a student, you probably know the feeling: you’ll be sitting in class, waiting for your classmate to start giving a presentation, when you notice them over by the door, poking the wall and glancing back into the room with a confused look on their face.

And it hits you: they have a PowerPoint presentation. As you scream inside, “The humanity! Dear God, the humanity!” your classmate finally pushes the button on the wall the right number of times, the projector turns on, and they walk over to the computer and load up the presentation.

If you’re lucky, the PowerPoint will be a simple set of slides with a small amount of text or pictures to complement the spoken presentation. But luck is rare.

More often, the presenter walks to the front of the room, hits the mouse button to get past the first slide with the presentation’s title, and says, “As you can see from this quote, my blah blah blah…”

On the screen at the front of the room is a solid block of text, a black squirming mass of academia like the the throng of carnivorous bugs that swarm out of a mummy’s tomb, devouring all in their wake. As your eyes finally wade through the mass, you key back into the actual presentation just in time to hear, “…which is why Jesus was an alien love-child.”

What? That didn’t follow at all. If only they hadn’t thrown up a long and convoluted quote to distract you while they continued talking! But that is the beauty of PowerPoint. Even if the presentation has no need for it, it’s there to divide the audience’s attention.

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Whitman College, WA After three years of publishing nothing but wholesome lies and libel, the Idol Bat has decided to expand its readership by publishing smut.

“People like to be lied to,” said Idol Bat PR agent Aaron McFlannagan. “You just have to turn on the news to know that. The thing is that even though people like lies, the readership demographic for the Idol Bat is still somewhat limited because reading is so old-fashioned. It’s all about TV and thirty-second attention spans these days. Why when I was a kid…”

After a solid thirty minutes of curmudgeonly mutterings, McFlannagan returned to the point. “So the Idol Bat has a somewhat limited readership because we don’t have any television ads. Thing is, those suckers cost serious money, but because our readership is limited we don’t have much revenue, and it just turns into a vicious cycle.

“End result, we’ve decided to broaden our readership by broadening our scope and publishing smut.” Leaning closer, McFlannagan said in a stage whisper, “That’s a nice word for porn.”

Unfortunately, while the Idol Bat’s intention to publish nude pictures of people in compromising and enticing positions is certainly admirable as far as expanding the readership goes, there is one key problem. The Idol Bat staff has no pictures of naked women to publish.

As founder Ian Beck remarked with a shrug, “We’d have pictures of naked women if we knew any.”

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Unless you haven’t taken off your earbuds in the past few months, you’ve surely heard about the Apple debacle by now. Microsoft is pissed that iTunes music won’t play on its iKnockoff, the Zune. Europeans have shed their iPods long enough to rage protests in the streets calling for iFairness. Steve Jobs has blamed the record labels for being unwilling to part with digital rights protection software. Well, in case this sounds boring to you, the Idol Bat is here to make things even more complicated.

On Tuesday a spokesperson for the independent watchdog agency WUAAM (Windows Users Against Apple Monopoly) reported the true reason that Apple has been so unwilling to budge on its iLockdown: subliminal messages!

Yes, that’s right. Apple has been accused of spreading subversive thoughts through its devices, brainwashing an entire society. Why, you might ask? Because they are being paid for it.

Apparently before the launch of the new generation of iPods, Apple signed a major deal with Six6Six Entertainment, the leading firm specializing in subliminal technology since the dawn of time. Head spokesperson, Luc I. Ferre was unavailable for comment on exactly what the arrangement included. He did, however, send us a tape that sounded like static, but after it was done we had a strange urge for donuts and forgot all about asking him questions.

Luckily we have another source here at the Idol Bat. A former employee of Apple has agreed to be our iBenedict Arnold and let you all in on the truth. Following is an excerpt from our conversations with him.

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