Month: December 2018

Opinion: Why Cathy Should Have a Festivus Pole

pitifulnews festivus, Uncategorized

By Blair Kriz

It’s that magical time of year. The campus has been decorated since before Thanksgiving, it’s a cold and rainy wonderland outside, and the crows have decorated the ground with various shades of grey and white. It’s almost Christmas! Or Hanukkah! Or some other holiday! Or nothing, if you follow another religion or if you’re just that really boring kind of atheist. If you’ve been to the Cathedral of Learning recently, you’ll notice that it has been appropriately decorated for the season. Well, almost. I propose that Cathy should be decorated for Festivus.
 If you’re unfamiliar with Festivus, go watch season nine episode ten of Seinfeld. This article will still be here when you’re done. For those of you pretending to have better things to do, here’s a summary of the holiday: Festivus is celebrated on December 23rd by having dinner with your friends and family and participating in the “Airing of Grievances,” in which you tell everyone how they’ve disappointed you over the past year. After dinner, the head of the family challenges a member of the feast to a wrestling match known as the “Feats of Strength.” Easily explained occurrences are referred to as “Festivus Miracles,” and the holiday’s decorations consist solely of a plain aluminum pole in contrast to the flashy consumerism of Christmas.
 This wonderful holiday should be celebrated and promoted at Pitt for a variety of reasons. Recognizing Festivus would help bring about the spirit of inclusivity here on campus. The kind of people who think they’re funnier than they actually are (e.g. everyone who writes for the Pittiful News) dig this holiday for its irreverent jabs at our culture. Those atheists I mentioned earlier who are the super stuck-up kind and not the kind who’re just about breaking the rules will finally have a perfect secular December holiday. Ultra-hardcore liberals will find solace in its anti-consumerist messages. Which leads us to the next big reason: we’re all broke college students. We just can’t afford to buy expensive gifts for our loved ones for a mega-commercialized holiday that was once about Jesus or something. With the exorbitant tuition we pay, the option to celebrate a holiday that doesn’t require us to spend any more money should be included in it. And finally, I think that a Festivus pole would be perfect in Cathy because they are both vaguely phallic. I performed a ritual with the Pitt Necromancy Club to reanimate Sigmund Freud and ask his opinion on the matter, and he said they absolutely are.
 The only reason I could see the campus not wanting to spread Festivus cheer is that we might air our grievances about Chancellor Gallagher. But the truth is we would just do that anyway. Just look at any issue of this paper. Pitt has no reason not to adopt this wonderful holiday that will bring endless happiness and feats of strength to our campus.

Human Race Welcomes Giant Ball of Cum Hurtling Towards Earth

pitifulnews apocalypse, Uncategorized

By Ernie Tremper

The final report had just come in over the wire service. Star anchorman Edward Mobley took a long drag on his cigarette. In a few moments, he’d be breaking the news to a whole city of people who tuned in to see him every night.
“Five seconds, Mr. Mobley,” said a young cameraman with curly hair that reached down to his bare nipples. Mobley looked at him with disdain. Then he extinguished his cigarette. It was time.
“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.” As was his custom at the start of each broadcast, he lit a fresh cigarette.
“This is a somber occasion for us all. We’ve just got word that the giant ball of cum hurtling towards Earth will definitely wipe out all of humanity, probably within the hour.”
He took a long drag on the cigarette, then extinguished it, then lit another one.
“The scientists never were able to answer the questions on everyone’s mind. Where did the ball of cum originate? Whose cum is it? And so forth. Now it looks like those questions will never be answered. NASA has shuttered its doors, following the lead of the military, and the U.S. government.”
Mobley extinguished his second cigarette and lit a cigar.
“You might ask, why has everyone given up so quickly? But you know the answer. To try and evade the ball of cum would only be to prolong this long, cosmic mistake in which we’ve all taken part.”
Here he chomped on his cigar, and leaned forward in his chair paternalistically, as if he were about to warn his audience, as he often did, of the dangers of “musician drugs.”
“Dear friends, imagine a harried father, taking his family on a vacation. The quarrelling of the children, the nagging of his wife – it gets to be too much for him. He ends up driving his station wagon off a bridge. That car, about to plunge into the river, is humanity. We’ve just gotten worse and worse. We’ve been sliding closer and closer to the end for centuries now. The ball of cum has shortened our wait, and that is a tremendous gift.”
He extinguished his cigar and lit a corncob pipe.
“In just a moment, I’ll be signing off for the last time. After that, you’ll see on this station, as on every station in America until the end arrives, the Four Singing Brennans – one of those musical hippy families from San Francisco – performing their rendition of John Lennon’s ‘Imagine.’ Michael Brennan, who plays an acoustic guitar, his wife Sandy, and their two children, Yoni and Phallus, will sing ‘Imagine’ over and over again until everyone is dead. I can’t think of a better way to snuff out the human race.”
Then, the red light on the camera switched off. In the ensuing silence, Mobley extinguished his corncob pipe, and lit a huge Indian peace pipes. He dreamed of beating up hippies as he awaited death.