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| Our intrepid reporters have been thoroughly fascinated as of late in mysterious wastelands. Tejas immediately comes to mind, but other places like Refrigerators, Boys' Dorms, and Refrigerators in Boys' Dorms also immediately come to mind. In fact, there were so many mysterious wastelands to be fascinated thoroughly by that our intrepid reportors had to draw straws to see which one would get to report on all of them while the rest play online poker.
There was only one straw, and since this intrepid reporter pulled it, here is the report you have been waiting for.
MYSTERIOUS WASTELANDS and the WOMEN who LOVE THEM!!
Necessarily, one must begin with the greatest, most mysterious, wastefullest land of all, and that would be an elementary school.
Intelligent Reporter: What would you say is the greatest challenge to making your institution a wasteland?
Principal of Elementary School: That would have to be keeping the teachers looking "lively." Teachers who are confident of their boss's expectations rarely produce wastelands. Instead, to keep things "fresh," I constantly add rules for them to follow which contradict earlier rules, but without rescinding the old rules. I just launched another 40 or so on them today. Hahaha! The Fun. And I got it uploaded to YouTube already. You should see their faces.
Very Intelligent Reporter: Why do you think faces are so important for teachers and the wastelands you create for them?
PES: Without their faces, it's difficult for me to judge exactly how hard they're trying to not look confused. It's when the eyebrows twitch involuntarily but the mouths stay the same that I know I've REALLY accomplished my wasteful goals.
Superior Reporter: Tell me about your greatest waste.
PES: That would be every Saturday, when I make them get up to come to school and listen to me add new rules. My favorite part is when I accuse them of ruining the chances for these children to ever have a normal life. Then the guilt starts flooding in. Sometimes tears. I keep a box of tissues handy and charge them 10 cents per sheet, so it's in my interest to make them feel as awful as possible.
Superlative Reporter: How do you prepare for these Saturday meetings?
PES: My favorite way to create new rules is to play online poker and then write down my opponents' handles. When I have six that could make a sentence, I throw in some meaningful words like "expediate" and "activiate." Then I translate it into Spanish and translate it back, to see if it still makes sense. If it does, I still have my last minute resort: using wingdings as my font.
God's Reporter: Why do women love your wasteland so?
PES: It's the mystery.
Stay tuned for more in this fascinating series!
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| Thousands of entering Freshman have walking into Cone Bottoms and stood in front of the provocative antique mirror located there since it was first hung in the new building. Hundreds of those students, it seems, have taken their fascination with the silver-coated glass to another level. Those students and former students, all members of the recently defunct MirrorWorldFic.com, have marched on the president's mansion and demanded that the situation be ret-conned to match the vast quantity of fannon that has been generated over the years. One of our alert correspondents managed to interview a leading protestor, who asked to remain anonymous:
OBUWWN: So what do all those words mean anyway?
Fan: Well, a fan is like, a fanatic, only not crazy. And fannon is the stuff they write about their fandom, which is what they are a fan of. Fannon comes from cannon, which is what the original authors wrote about whatever. It's not related to, you know, the weapon.
OBUWWN: What is ret-conning?
Fan: A ret-con is done when what the writer's write is not what the fans want, so it is changed. There are a lot of us out here today that have devoted their lives to writing the story of the Cone Bottoms Mirror World, and what they are telling us actually happened...is totally lame. We are out here today asking for a ret-con--[crowd says, "Woo!" obscuring what the interviewee is saying]--not leaving 'til we get one!
OBWWN: What changes would you like to see made?
Fan: Well, I think everyone agrees that Sen_n_Rimpy's 197-part ongoing saga of the explorers of the mirror world...it has a totally developed love triangle, and action, adventure, great world-building. The characterizations are so deep and totally realistic. It echos Jules Verne, has ninjas, pirates, dinosaurs, hollow people who resemble centipedes, and there are these spiritual overtones...it could be read as an allegory, and some people really want that...we all voted, and everyone agrees it is the best one. And there are so many people that have built off that concept. There is just, like, a body of literature and evidence. It totally makes sense unlike...[crowd says, "Woo!"]...here today.
OBWWN: What would you like to say to the real explorers of the mirror world?
Fan: I don't know if you can say, "real." This, what we have, is clearly better. Everyone agrees that those incidents can be totally ignored, and the body of literature is richer for it.
Many of the fan-fiction sites, including MirrorWorldFic, have recently been shut down, their creators fearing libel lawsuits. Some of the "fannon" is still available on the Internet Way-back Machine, and individual creators' blogs.
The President has yet to respond to the protestors' demands.
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| A survey team launched in 1950 to investigate the world beyond the antique mirror in Cone Bottoms Hall has returned this week. The original team, along with some 30 descendants, reported in over 50 years late in their original expected 8-year mission. Doctors have examined the team and found them free of ill-health and the right/left reversal.
Survey Captain Bill Whitterson and associates Philmore Richards and Mary Richards (nee Gregson) stated that the actual world behind the mirror was quite small, and so they were forced to deviate from the original plan and shrank themselves to explore it. They then became involved in what Whitterson described as, "an epic chess game with the laws of physics," which they were unable to sort out because one of the party members (Whitterson) had been turned into a pig. Richards-Gregson added that the party was able to return to reality only by "removing the 'wh' consonant from the English language," an act for which she appologized on behalf of her team.
OBU officials believe that this story can be partially explained by the party's diet, consisting entirely of mushrooms since approximately 1965. Logs and journals recovered from the team consist mainly of metrically regular, but nonsensical, poetry.
"We are just glad to have them back," said OBU president Rex Horne, "Our professors will have their job cut out for them for awhile trying to figure out what actually happened behind the mirror, and our business offices will have theirs cut out for them trying to figure out how to pay these extra thirty people."
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| Programmers in the OBU Math and Computer Science Department have finally identified the mysterious computer ailment that has quite literally rocked the campus. Programmers are calling the new virus the westMrelnd42.pxr virus, after its filename. The virus, which is transmitted via email messages with the subject line, "Greetings from PRes Westmoreland," (and, more rarely, "Form er President Westmorrreland Named US Treasureer"), attempts to match the spin speed of the infected computer's DVD drive to the resonant frequency of the computer box and the computer surroundings. If enough computers in one location are affected, they can cause a slight earthquake-like tremor which can build to catatrophic levels under ideal conditions. Fortunately, damage on campus is limited to the Jones Science Center, where a number of broken light-bulbs must be replaced.
The OBU programmers who discovered the virus have already submitted it to the Symantec corporation for testing. A virus-removal tool is forthcoming.
Viruses which affect the physical world are rare and usually difficult to transmit due to their size. The programmers OBUWWN interviewed speculate that this virus was spread primarily by older students suffering from nostalgia. "The subject heading was well-chosen," said one, who asked to remain anonymous. The Computer Services Center and the Comp. Sci. department both urged students to take normal precautions when opening email. Any student who notices a shimmy or groove in his or her laptop should take it outdoors or at least away from any major support structures immediately. Affected laptops should not be held for longer than an hour since the human body can also be affected by the resonance of the computer. However, continual relocation of your computer should keep the virus guessing long enough to permit emergency studying for finals, if necessary.
Other notable physical-affecting viruses are the Grinch Virus, which causes the read head on a hard drive to move too close and scratch the surface, and the parNoya.brt Virus, which affects unpatched computers running Windows 95 or earlier as well as their users, causing both to display increases redness and run hot.
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| OBU recently received a memorial plaque from MUFON when president James Carrion declared our beloved university a UFO Safety Zone. Despite being invaded by hoards of zombies, colonized by futuristic subhumans, visited by hell beasts, haunted by ghosts, and subjected to the horrors of an unregulated recombobulation chamber, OBU has not once in its long history been troubled by UFO citings. The plaque reads,
Presented
in 2008 to
Ouachita Baptist University
and
President Rex Horne
by
the Mutual UFO Society
and
President James Carrion
in honor of
OBU's Distinguished Record
as a
Haven for the UFO-Beleagered
since Eighteen Eighty-Six
"ROTC programs are positively corrolated with UFO activity," said a statistics professor who asked to remain anonymous, "It is remarkable that OBU has remained so bereft."
OBUWWN considers it our privilege to inform the OBU student population of the honors bestowed on our fine institution. To this end, we polled some Freshmen on their feelings about the plaque, which will be placed in the Student Center. "Like, it's totally difficult to concentrate on tests and stuff now that the Zombie Alert Level has reached Oozing. It's like OM*; who's going to be eaten tonight. We're, like, really lucky that we don't have this UFO thing to worry about, too, like so many universities have," said one, identifying himself as "Z." Student Rebecca Hornbrook had a different opinion: "I've always wanted to see a UFO. It's on my Bucket List. Just one more college experience I'll be missing...like MTV and national sororities."
Professors also are in disagreement about the honor. While Scott Bearclaw thinks the plaque is "great fun," Dr. Houligan of the Composition Department said, "MUFON is not the largest or the most distinguished UFO support group. The fact that we accepted this plaque might proclude a future and more comprehensive honor. Besides, I think this whole thing is a political power play, with the various organizations jockying to identify the patterns in UFO citing quickest and most thouroughly. If OBU experiences a future citing, MUFON will be disgraced, but as long as the UFO activity remains at zero, the other organizations will believe that MUFON's prediction algorithm is working, and that will increase their prestige and mystique..."
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