All Posts Tagged With: "Sex Issue"
Canadian university humour not dead
Our coast to coast review of campus satire
Last month, in true Chicken-Little style, I declared the death of the student newspaper satire issue.
I will admit that my panic was only partly a sincere response to an allegedly controversial spoof issue, which I will not name again here because I’ve already given them a hard enough time. My panic was also a very clever ploy, designed to goad writers and editors of student papers to send me their funniest articles and their best humour issues, so I can post them here to inspire future generations of student humour writers.
I was not disappointed by the goadability (Editor’s note: not a real word) of the student press. Our offices were inundated by responses from literally hundreds of thousands of Canadian student newspapers. We had interns working around the clock sifting through the submissions until my editor pointed out that they were not actually interns, but customers of the café next door who got lost while looking for the washroom and blundered into my office, where they were bullied into working for free.
As a result of the unfortunate emancipation of my interns, I was forced to research this article myself. It was an enjoyable task; it really was. You people are funny. But there was really a lot of stuff, and there are only so many jokes about Catholic sex scandals and the menstrual applications of iPads that a guy can read in a day. Consequently, there’s a chance that I didn’t read every word of every newspaper that was sent to me, nor did I use Wikipedia to puzzle through every pop culture reference and inside joke those newspapers contained.
So if you think your spoof issue was funnier than the ones I’ve posted below, please don’t organize a picket outside of the Maclean’s office at the Rogers Building, One Mount Pleasant Road, Toronto; there’s just the tiniest chance that I overlooked that one nuance of your humour issue that made it funnier than the ones I’ve posted below.
And if you’re easily offended, do both of us a favour and just close this window now. Seriously, there’s nothing innocuous to be had here. It’s pretty much all potentially offensive to those with delicate sensibilities.
Best Sex Columnist: Di Daniels at the Fulcrum.
She’s frankly filthy, but she never gives the impression that she’s saying dirty stuff to show off or get laughs. Her article on how to have better sex foregoes all of the foreplay and intimacy stuff and goes straight to bondage, exhibitionism and group sex. Absolutely filthy — but practical!
Best Shit Disturbing: The Athenaeum, Acadia University.
Their cover story for their April 1 issue this year announced that McDonald’s will be opening in the student union building and take over the food service for the campus pub. Wing night at the pub will be replaced by nugget night. In response to the new McDonald’s, student health plan fees will be increasing next year.
I can only imagine the knee-jerk uproar this caused among students who only read the first half of the article. Well done, Athenaeum.
There’s plenty more good stuff in this issue, and I’d love to send you a link, but the Athenaeum hasn’t updated their website since October ’09, so this one is just for me to enjoy. Or, you guys could wake up, update your website, and my editor will post a link here.
Best Cartoons: Nexus, Camousun College
I’m not going to try to describe these cartoons. You’ll just have to look yourself. The only good way to see them is to follow this link and scroll down to page 15. I first read those cartoons three days ago, and I’m still waking up in the morning, laughing about that cat. That cat made my week. Thank you, Shane Priestley and Cam Wright.
Best Photoshopping: The Gateway`s Metraux Spoof, University of Alberta
There’s actually a lot of great stuff in this issue, but the photoshop of Ann Coulter in a hijab on page 6 takes the cake for me. Too much. The photo is accompanied by an article quoting newly converted Islamic extremist Ann saying, “we should invade the west, kill their socialist leaders, and convert them.” Also worthy of honourable mention is the article, “You will always be a repulsive slob: study” on page 13.
The student editors among you will also want to take the time to admire the Gateway’s advertisers. I swear, these guys must have better ad revenue than Maclean’s.
Best Fake Ads: The Sheaf, University of Saskatchewan
Taking a more principled and independent stand on journalism, the Sheaf’s spoof issue contained no real ads at all, I hope. Instead, they squandered their potential revenue-generating space on ads for underage night at a pub, and the 19th annual skinhead picnic, down at good old Rotary park.
Best Spoof: Martha Student Living by The Fulcrum, University of Ottawa
To really appreciate the design work that went into this masterpiece, you have to download a PDF of the entire issue, and scroll down about a dozen pages to get to the spoof insert. I can only marvel at the discipline it must have taken to write an entire Martha Stewart-style spoof issue, without ever breaking voice or straying from the subject matter.
This issue contains advice on how to throw an elegant kegger, how to decorate your beer bong using stencils and beads, and how to make origami claws so you can unleash your inner Wolverine. To avoid looking haggard on your “walk of shame” home from partying the night before, Martha Student Living suggests placing “cucumber slices on your eyelids 10 minutes before passing out.” To spruce up your dorm, you’re instructed to put potpourri between your garbage bag and the can it sits in, so “your overflowing garbage can will smell like a cornucopia of flowers!”
The cartoon illustration of Martha Stewart with a beer keg dressed up in doilies, ribbons and flowers is reason enough alone to take a look at this one.
Thanks to everyone for submitting their work. There were many articles I laughed at, but didn’t have room to mention here. Keep on fighting the good fight against mediocre humour issues and tired, old jokes.
And if you’re procrastinating and you want more good stuff to read, try this. Or this. Or this!
Graphic courtesy of the Gateway
A tempest in a C-cup
UManitoba engineers publish nipple measurements; investigation ensues. Send us your joke issues.
The University of Manitoba’s equity services office is investigating the Engineering Society’s annual spoof magazine, Red Loin, to determine whether it is offensive. Naturally, the ruckus is over more than just nipples; this year’s Red Loin is full of explicit dating advice, sexy horoscopes, and dozens of sexual references to things not normally associated with sex.
According to an article in the Winnipeg Free Press, some UManitoba professors are concerned that the magazine creates a hostile atmosphere for engineering students who are not heterosexual males. Not content to take their opinion on the matter, Maclean’s OnCampus asked me to review the magazine.
I’m a poor judge of whether other people would find something offensive, (I’ve been known to tell jokes that would make a pimp blush) but a thorough review of Red Loin left me truly disturbed. It wasn’t the sexual content that shook me; I’ve seen more sexually explicit things written on the walls of church bathroom stalls. My reading experience left me grappling with the fear that Canadian undergraduate students are incapable of producing sexual innuendo above a fifth-grade level.
I broke out in a sweat. My old Cold War fears revisited me; surely the Soviets are gaining an advantage on us in this area. We’ve all heard the reports of a Bulgarian seventh-grader who produced a dirty joke so powerful it offended a person hundreds of kilometers away who didn’t even speak Bulgarian. Meanwhile, our university students are making lame analogies between cross-country skiing and the missionary position in a sexy Winter Olympics article?
Red Loin is packed with lists of tired, unoriginal jokes, such as their list of “funny” porn movie titles, including such topical pop-culture references as “Forrest Hump” (a riff on Forrest Gump, 1994) and “Full Latex Jacket” (Full Metal Jacket, 1987). It is littered with reprinted copyrighted comic strips, and includes a sexy horoscope section, which the magazine unabashedly admits was stolen from the internet.
Much of the original content of the magazine is poorly written, virtually unpunctuated nonsense, informed by shallow stereotypes and juvenile sexuality.. Perhaps the worst example is “Oh-Oh-Olympics,” a barely literate screed making an utterly unsuccessful attempt to relate Winter Olympic sports to sex, which by the third paragraph had already broken down to this level:
“Some of the sports I found to be a bit of a stretch converting them. For example snowboarding and some of the skiing events. I like the back and forth motion of alpine skiing. Swish, swish, swish really rhythmic. But the closest thing I could come up with was ski jumping, free style skiing and snowboarding is like spontaneous sex.”
The only concession I’m prepared to make to Red Loin is that the article “How Not 2 Pick Up Girls” is reasonably well-written, original and funny, and contains jokes about social situations, rather than focusing solely on the plumbing-related aspects of sex. Unfortunately, the article is so riddled with parenthetical asides (like this one) that the writer actually employs two different styles of parentheses so he can make parenthetical asides within his parenthetical asides. One would have to be a math major to follow the order of operations and solve the sentences.
It would be easy to blame the parents, to say that in our fast-paced modern world few people take the time to sit down with their children and teach them the difference between a genuinely clever suggestive remark and idiotically giggling at the utterance of the word “pianist”. Ultimately, universities must accept part of the blame.
Our post-secondary institutions must be prepared to handle students who have fallen through the cracks in their early education and reached the university level incapable of making a coherent sexual pun or writing a dirty limerick. When bad humour is published, it reflects badly on the entire institution.
Maclean’s OnCampus is throwing down the gauntlet. Are you ready to stand up for the reputation of your university, of your country? Student editors and writers, send us your humour articles, your satire issues, your spoofs, your (original) comic strips, your hilarious illustrations, and prove that humour is not dead on Canadian campuses.
The funniest, wittiest, and cleverest articles we receive will be appreciated, laughed at, mentioned in a future column on this website and possibly linked to or reprinted here — I haven’t quite worked this out with my editor yet. I’m not sure what we’re going to do, but I assure you, it will be spectacular.
It will be spectacular.
Email your hyperlinks, scanned documents and .pdf files to carsonjerema@gmail.com. If you are not capable of producing an electronic version of your publication, simply go to your local post office and mail your paper copy to 1992, where I’m sure someone will be happy to receive it.
If you have a spoof issue that you think might be funny, but you’re worried about being exposed to my scathing critique, please refer to the suggestions on the next page and re-evaluate your work.
