{"id":547,"date":"1995-03-06T11:13:36","date_gmt":"1995-03-06T19:13:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jeffcarl.com\/?p=547"},"modified":"2020-07-08T19:01:02","modified_gmt":"2020-07-09T02:01:02","slug":"i-lied","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jeffcarl.com\/index.php\/1995\/03\/06\/i-lied\/","title":{"rendered":"I Lied"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Jeffrey Carl<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n
\"Jeffrey
University of Richmond Collegian, March 6 1995<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Thanks to a bare modicum of writing skill and a more obvious fondness for bourbon which aligned with that of my journalism professors, my putative career advanced rapidly through my undergraduate years. I went from a practicum story writer for the University of Richmond Collegian student newspaper in my freshman year to Assistant News Editor in my sophomore year, then on to Greek Life Editor and IT Manager (I read MacWorld magazine!) in my junior year, and ultimately to Opinion Editor in my senior year. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

For some reason that escapes me now, I acquired a humor column during this process at the beginning of my junior year. This column, titled “Over the Cliff Notes,” eventually ran for 22 installments and was over the course of two years was read by literally dozens of actual humans, only most of which where KA pledges I forced to do so. Its literary influence was quite literally incalculable, and I’m just going to leave it at that.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It occurs to me now that topical humor from college campuses nearly 30 years ago does not age well. I’m sure it was absolutely hilarious at the time, though. Enjoy!<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Editor\u2019s Note: I\u2019m back.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We here at The Collegian pride ourselves on being responsive to our readers. We also pride ourselves on the fact that we are all ex-members of \u201cMenudo.\u201d We are even more prideful that most of us have never been on a David Hasselhoff Pay-Per-View special. What we do not, however, pride ourselves on is our occasionally tense relationship with the University community. How do we know people don\u2019t like us? When the \u201cLetters to the Editor\u201d written in flaming dog-doo that simply say \u201cCollegian must die ha ha\u201d begin adding up, you just get that feeling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Furthermore, people sometimes get so irate that they threaten direct action, like beating us up to prove that athletes aren\u2019t big dumb guys after all, or even sending vague death threats with absolutely dreadful grammar. And sometimes, somebody says that he or she is going to sue us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I do not react well to lawsuits. They make me break out. I\u2019m not going to tell you where. They make me grouchy, irritable and they give me that \u201cnot so fresh\u201d feeling. As far as I\u2019m concerned, lawsuits can lick me. So, normally I do everything I can to stay away from possible lawsuits, like degrading, humiliating and insulting everyone I can think of in the newspaper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So you can imagine my surprise when, a few weeks ago, Iget a message that Ihave been threatened with legal action. And by a fellow columnist, no less. I don\u2019t feel free to betray his identity here, but it was Mike Nimchek. So, anyway, I was informed that he was considering suing me for libel, in regards to scandalous remarks that Imade about him in the midst of a \u201cretirement\u201d column about how nobody has a sense of humor anymore. I imagine possibly that Mike, being helpful and seeing that perhaps not everybody got the point, felt he should be kind enough to illustrate it graphically by threatening me with the possibility of legal action.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is a dumb move.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Never try to sue me. Why? Because I\u2019m a struggling young college student! Ihave no money! Never sue poor people! If you win, what are you going to get? My soul? My collection of \u201cSqueegees of All Nations?\u201d My three-foot-tall laundry pile\/biology experiment? I don\u2019t even have pledges anymore to barter or sell. In fact, if you took me for everything Ihave, considering my current Visa bill, you\u2019d probably lose money. So, basically, \u201cDuh.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Furthermore, lawsuits (the state sport of Pennsylvania) are such a horribly uncreative way of exacting revenge. If you want to get back at somebody, you certainly don\u2019t want to do it in some way that involves lots of paperwork and Judge Wapner. Consider perhaps the following:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 Pour superglue in their locks
\u2022 Using the awesome power of the Death Star, destroy their home planet of Alderaan
\u2022 Staple stuff to their foreheads
\u2022 Call upon Papa Legba to destroy their loa in the spirit world, or call upon Vito the Fish to destroy their car in the real world
\u2022 Blackmail! Blackmail!
\u2022 Get everyone to start calling them \u201cSpanky\u201d or something equally embarrassing-sounding
\u2022 Kill everyone in their family
\u2022 Whenever they approach you, maintain a sullen silence, then when they leave the room, stick your tongue out at them
\u2022 Casually invite them to stand underneath a 16-ton weight suspended by a pulley, then drop it on them
\u2022 Stage an elaborate set-up brutal triple murder and frame them for it, watch as they are convicted and given consecutive life sentences, and then start sending their cellmate \u201cHuggy Bear\u201d love letters, supposedly from their new roomie
\u2022 Trick them into opening the box which they think holds the remote control for detonating the nuclear missile speeding towards the San Andreas fault, but which in reality contains pure Kryptonite, which will kill them
\u2022 Make a \u201cpeace offering\u201d of brownies made with Ex-Lax
\u2022 Casually invite them to stand in front of a particle accelerator, then annihilate them in a 10-billion-degree burst of proton\/antiproton collisions
\u2022 Clean their dishes, but spit on them
\u2022 As soon as you get out of prison, shadow them everywhere, hang on to the bottom of their car when they try to drive away, climb on to their boat, and then sing the entire score of \u201cThe H.M.S. Pinafore\u201d by Gilbert and Sullivan to them
\u2022 Replace their computer\u2019s processor chips with \u201cChips Ahoy\u201d
\u2022 Vomit on them, or
\u2022 Write a snide column about revenge methods. The ball is in your court. Next time you consider suing someone, try doing something a little more creative. Or better yet, get a sense of humor and a life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Good night and God bless.
\u0001\u0001\u0001\u0001\u0002\u0001\u0003\u0001\u0004\u0001\u0005\u0001<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Jeffrey Carl Thanks to a bare modicum of writing skill and a more obvious fondness for bourbon which aligned with that of my journalism professors, my putative career advanced rapidly through my undergraduate years. I went from a practicum story writer for the University of Richmond Collegian student newspaper in my freshman year to … Continue reading I Lied<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":57,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62,7],"tags":[70],"class_list":["post-547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-humor","category-ur-collegian","tag-collegian"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.jeffcarl.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/URC_logo_header.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jeffcarl.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jeffcarl.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jeffcarl.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jeffcarl.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jeffcarl.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=547"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.jeffcarl.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":548,"href":"https:\/\/www.jeffcarl.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547\/revisions\/548"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jeffcarl.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jeffcarl.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jeffcarl.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jeffcarl.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}