Congrats on the radio gig, Alex.

And so, in what should not be construed as a blatant attempt to steal Alex’s thunder, I think I should report on the progress of a project here at U of C. For some time now, Zach, myself, and several other folk have been trying to start up The Chicago Shady Dealer. Basically, it’s going to be a U-of-C-centered version of The Onion. We’ve already written bylaws and such, come up with articles, and, against all plausibility, developed an organization. And today we got a faculty sponsor: Ted Cohen, Philosophy professor and the foremost American expert on jokes. I’m not kidding. Read his resume:

http://philosophy.uchicago.edu/data/cv/CohenCV.pdf

His primary work is “Jokes”, which has been translated into several languages, including Finnish and Korean. Within 15 minutes of agreeing to be our sponsor, he sent us a rough draft of an article. We nearly plotzed. My exact words.

It’s going to be one hell of a year. Here are the headlines for a series I have planned:

Leftist Revolutionaries Rise Up, Staff Table
Leftist Revolutionaries Cut Losses, Abandon Table
Leftist Revolutionaries Sell Out, Join Graduate School of Business

Although, in more equivocal news, my bid to enter politics has failed, and I shall not be the fencing team’s webmaster. Ah well. My opponent was far more motivated. And strangely, it was the most hotly debated of the fencing club positions, judging by the time the voting went on.

And finally, let me just add that understanding that all of one’s instincts appear to be horribly wrong provides no help whatsoever, because once you start instinctively distrusting your instincts… well, it gets complicated.