The Idol Bat

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.

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.

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.”

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.

The newly revamped and relaunched Idol Bat is live! We’ve switched content systems, updated the theme, created user options for font size and color scheme, and changed the publishing schedule. We’ve officially become more better. Click “read more” below for more information (including how to change the font size, etc.).

Whitman College, WA Students in the Penrose Allen Reading Room underwent an unpleasant surprise this past Wednesday when they found themselves suddenly being struck by large white marshmallows moving at high velocity. Whitman senior Alex Andrews, having finally snapped under the stresses of writing his thesis, created a slingshot from household items and took up a position on the balcony overlooking the Allen Reading Room, sending a barrage of sugary lumps at the hapless students below.

Andrews aims a marshmallow at the unsuspecting students below

Whitman security was eventually called to the scene, but remained in a standoff with Andrews until he ran out of marshmallows. Fortunately for all involved, marshmallows weren’t on sale when he went to buy them, so he only purchased a single bag.

“It could have been ugly,” commented one of the security guards who responded to the desperate calls from the library reference desk. “That slingshot of his was pretty high-powered, and we weren’t having any luck talking him down.

“Of course, our failed sting operation when we came up the stairs in a rush behind him might have had something to do with why he was reluctant to listen to reason, but that kind of thing always worked for me in Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon. I think it failed this time because my partner didn’t bring any flash grenades.”

Welcome to the first article for the new column here on the Idol Bat, Things that Hurt my Soul. Every Friday, I will be exploring various things out in the wide world that hurt my soul. This week, I’d like to start off by taking a look at the campus student newspaper here at Whitman, the Pioneer.

To the people at the Pio, let me just say first that you folks are doing a good job. You’re publishing a weekly paper, managing the large number of people involved with that, fighting through all the issues caused by those first two things, and generally making ends meet. I didn’t write this article because of you. I wrote it because, unfortunately, the Pio hurts my soul.

What volume is this, anyway?

Ever since I was a first-year I haven’t read the Pio all that often. I’m not much into factual news when you come right down to it, and even then I couldn’t get through too many articles without discovering several typos or grammatical errors. As I’ve gotten older and more set in my anal-retentive ways, things haven’t improved. In point of fact, I’d say that we’ve taken a turn for the worst. Admittedly, the most recent Pio (Issue 5, March 1, 2007) is a big improvement on past issues. But despite the fact that the Pio is being refined, there’s still some serious room for improvement.

One of my personal favorite Pio screw-ups this semester is the volume number, printed prominently on the top left of the page. The first couple issues claimed to be part of volume CXVIX. For those of you not as familiar with Roman numerals, this is not a number. It might possible be construed to be 114 (100 + 10 + 10 - 6), or maybe even 125 (100 + 10 + 5 + 10), although that’s stretching it. Someone at the Pio finally caught on to the fact that their volume numerals weren’t a number, though, and switched it up to CXX (120). Too bad that last semester’s papers are all clearly labeled CXVIII (118), which means that the volume is actually 119 (and thus should be CXIX on the front page). Oops.

Update: Karla, Caretaker of the Volumes over at Penrose Library, has written to inform us that the current volume number (120) is actually correct! Apparently, the Pio has been printing the wrong volume number since spring 2006. Now not only is my soul hurt from the Pio’s volume-number shenanigans, but I am saddled with guilt at incorrectly accusing the Pio of being wrong when they were, in fact, right! Oh, the burning!