Sometimes, I Pretend I’m the Floor

Since the days of my youth, I have been frequently told by well-meaning adults, “You shouldn’t let people walk all over you.” But they don’t understand. Nobody does. The truth of the matter is, I like when people walk all over me. Sometimes I even pretend I’m the floor.

I think it all started the day I was born. I was dropped, as many babies are (considering how slippery the average baby is), and upon impact my baby brain was filled suddenly with a lust and yearning for floors, and with a desire to become one, feelings which would grow exponentially with every passing year.

My earliest memory is of that very desire. I was laying down playing with my dinosaur toys, as usual, when I decided I wanted to become the floor. I put the dinosaurs on my back and stayed there motionless for upwards of two hours. My mother found me, and asked me what I was doing. I didn’t know, I just knew it felt good.

I would indulge myself a few times a week for years, just laying on the floor of my parent’s living room, or in the kitchen on special occasions. At first my parents didn’t know to watch out for me, so they would step on me or kick and trip over me. I liked that, but after a month or so they learned, and they stepped over me effortlessly, wherever I was. Then I would whine, and beg them to step on me. If I was lucky, I would get a light foot on my back out of pity.

That was the state of things for some 15 years, but now I’m at Pitt, and everything has changed. I’m a couple hundred miles away from the floor that I loved so dearly. This has, it seems, only increased my urges.

You may have seen me last semester, prostrate in the middle of the Commons Room in our beloved landmark Catherine. The problem was, of course, that no one would step on me there. They would see me lying there and step around, except for a few merciful frat boys who made a game out of stepping on me. There was one instance, though, that stands out exceptionally in my mind: a tour group, led by a Pathfinder, who was walking backwards as she spoke to the prospective Pitt students about the Honors College or something. And, facing the other way, she didn’t see me laying there, and she stepped on me!

The feeling was something incomparable to all the steps I had experienced before. This was unintentional, so I felt all the more floor-like. People don’t step on the floor out of pity, or out of jest, they step on it because it’s there, and for the first time since the very depths of my youth I experienced that. I felt like a true floor.

My life has since been a desperate struggle to reclaim this feeling, which I call ‘euflooria’. Yesterday I positioned myself just outside one of the elevators on the first floor of the WPU, and though only one person ended up stepping on me, I had an absolutely genius idea as wave after wave of groups with very specific shared interests gathered around me: I’ll start a club.

So, this is what this article is ultimately about: if you also like to pretend that you’re the floor, join my club and we’ll pretend to be the floor together. Maybe we’ll even step on each other from time to time, depending on where the mood takes us. If this interests you, please contact me.

 

By: Eric Brinling

“Would you like to switch to Renewable Energy?”

A man in a Green Mountain Energy shirt stops you in the street. He asks if you want to switch to renewable energy. You tilt your head. He tells you it changes the power they send you, but not the source of the power. You take a pamphlet. you realize you don’t know exactly where your power comes from. “The source is the same!” he calls after you in a vaguely taunting tone. “The source is the same.”

 

A man tabling for Red Mountain Energy stops you in the grocery store. “Would you like to switch to renewable energy?” Before you can get a word in, he assures you that “nothing will change, except the source of course.” You still don’t fully understand. You smile at him and he smiles back, wide and uncanny. The smile doesn’t leave his face as you walk away. You feel his eyes follow you as you shop.

 

You are sitting at home when you get a call from Blue Mountain Energy. They ask if you are happy with your new renewable energy plan. Silence. You don’t remember switching. Whatever is on the other end of the line is breathing heavily. It doesn’t seem like anything has changed. Your heart is beating out of your chest. You don’t remember giving them your number. You say yes. “Good.” You exhale. You didn’t realize you were holding your breath. “The source is the same.” The line is dead.

…

By: Laura Stockler

Textbook Industry Sends Hitman After Professor Who Didn’t Tell Students to Buy a Textbook

On the morning of February 7th, 2019, professor Michael Hawk finished going over the syllabus of his Organic Micro Marine BioChem III class by mentioning that the textbook was available at the bookstore, but not necessary for the class. This did not go over well with the author of the textbook, Sue King-Cox. Ms. King-Cox had previously sent a check for $100.59 to the professor, and executives of the textbook industry sent him a bottle cheap wine which had aged about as well as his racist tweets from the 1890s. Refusing to repay them for these generous gifts by making students buy an unnecessary textbook led to the industry hiring a hitman to deal with the problem, who probably would have succeeded had Professor Hawk not gotten fired for said racist tweets.

On January 11, that Friday, Agent Y, the world’s most renowned hitman, showed up in disguise for Professor Hawk’s class. He sat in the back, took his sniper rifle out of his backpack and assembled it, then waited for the students in front of him to move their heads so he could get the perfect shot. However, listening to the lecture caused him to fall asleep until the class was over and Professor Hawk was long gone. Agent Y tried this method a few more times before ultimately deciding to just kill the man at office hours instead. Unfortunately, the professor was not at his office hours, because no one showed up for them anyway. The agent ultimately decided to just kill the man when he wasn’t at work, but a new problem appeared when the news broke about the professor’s racist tweets.

As soon as the tweets were discovered, protesters descended on Professor Hawk’s house, preventing Agent Y from getting anywhere near it. At first it was just protesters who wanted the man fired for tweeting racial slurs in 1894, but a flock of counter-protesters joined the fray a couple hours later to defend the man’s job, citing reasons such as how “everyone was racist back then” and “he was just 65, young people make mistakes like that all the time.” However, those who stand by wanting the professor fired insist that 125 years just isn’t enough time to change one’s racist views. But these protesters didn’t just block hitman physically, but also in a deeply emotional way. “I couldn’t even get within sniping range of the house because those people were so damn annoying!” Agent Y reportedly told the Pitt News, although we here at the Pittiful News question their credibility as a news organization.

Ultimately, the textbook’s second edition was published a few weeks later and the industry called off the hitman. Professor Hawk has since written his own competing textbook/memoir titled “Biology and Blackface: Science Meets Deep-rooted Prejudice” which is to be released this Friday.

By: Blair Kriz