Someone forwarded us this message from a Penn undergrad who shall remain nameless:
Greetings,
This is an automatic reply being sent because I am currently studying for Final Exams at the University of Pennsylvania. The end of this semester is Wednesday, Dec. 17, 2008. I will be unable to reply to any e-mails until after that date.
Thanks for your understanding,
-[Redacted]
Totally unacceptable virtual impression management, kid–you seem to have missed several important memos re: appropriate usage of Microsoft Outlook. Heh. We almost didn’t post this, but then a voice of reason reminded us: “He’s out of his office for a while, so he probably wouldn’t notice.”
We trust that you all got this e-mail last week:
The City of Philadelphia has notified Penn that the South Street Bridge will close for reconstruction beginning Monday, December 8, 2008.
The demolition and rebuilding of the bridge requires the complete closure of the structure between Convention Avenue and 27th Street, including the on-and-off-ramps connecting South Street and I-76.
Please be prepared for significant vehicular congestion throughout University City, as well as periodic traffic and parking changes in the vicinity of campus for the duration of this 24-month project.
Yep, two years without the bridge! It may not seem like this is going to have much of an effect of your lives, but trust us, this is going to be an epic pain in the neck. Seniors and juniors, use these next few weeks to say goodbye to a congestion-free campus for good, or at least until your first reunion.
The cherry on the sundae that was yesterday’s awesomeness (an awesomeness that largely stemmed from me finding new websites to procrastinate with) was being sent a link to this article by a friend. Unfortunately, I couldn’t copy and paste this thing no matter how hard I tried, but trust me, this link is definitely worth clicking on. To whet your appetite, the article is called “Man tries to pay bill with spider drawing.” Enjoy.
My personal favorite part? “I am currently away on leave, traveling through time and will be returning last week.” Genius.
So the big question is: is this real? So far the vote seems to be split about 50/50. Tell us what you think!
Do you possess brute strength, a superior grip and the desire to strong-arm our neighbors to the north? Then congratulations, you may be eligible to participate in the epic tug of war, billed as the “Battle of 33rd Street,” that PennRec is organizing in conjunction with next week’s Penn-Drexel basketball game (set to be part of ESPN’s all-day college basketball marathon). The following e-mail is currently winding its way through Penn’s most muscular listservs:
A couple of weeks ago, I sent out an email regarding a tug-or-war that PennRec is organizing against Drexel the night before the Penn-Drexel Basketball game during ESPN’s 24hrs of basketball. They’re looking for 20 guys and 10 girls to participate in this event and all participants get free tkts to the game the next day.
I know I got a couple of responses about this earlier, but are other people interested in doing it? You simply have to be an Penn Undergrad. If anyone is interested, please let me know.
Continue reading »
Cultural critic John Leonard died last week. One of the requirements of being a Street editor is being totally and irrevocably obsessed with New York Magazine, and Leonard was NYMag’s TV critic, so we were greatly saddened to hear of his death. The following e-mail just came in over the Kelly Writers House listserv via its director Al Filreis, and it details the year Leonard spent teaching creative writing at Penn:
I’m sure you’ve seen the news that John Leonard died last week. Did you know that he had a connection to Penn? In the 1980-1981 school year he taught a creative writing class at Penn for undergraduates.
At that time, Penn had few outlets for writers in general and almost none for fiction writing. Having a well known essayist, book critic and novelist come to campus to teach undergraduates created a lot of excitement in Bennett Hall.
Continue reading »
If you’ve picked up your copy of the DP Thursday, you probably read about the single greatest thing to hit the Internet since Scrabulous: inSPOT.org. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, now you can remove all of the discomfort and unpleasantries from having to tell a former partner that your last encounter was a bit more lasting than either of you probably would have liked.
There are some unfortunate limits on the Web site. Perhaps the most important, you’re going to have to know your former companion’s name and e-mail address. Might I suggest that for a minimal extra fee, inSPOT takes down what few details you can recall of your one-time bed buddy and tries to find said partner a la Law and Order? After all, this is an important pubic public health crisis. If inSPOT is really trying to help you manage your one night stands, it’s not fair of them to hold out.
Continue reading »
You’ve probably already seen this e-mail that’s been making the rounds, a warning from the ominously named Committee of Seventy:
If you first push the button for the presidential candidate you want and then push the straight party button, you will cancel out your vote for president on the voting machines used in Philadelphia. This is because it will be as if you had pushed the presidential nominee’s button twice: the first time selecting him and the second time unselecting him. If you want to vote the straight party ticket, just push that button and it will include that party’s nominee for president. If you want to select a nominee for president individually then you need to select all of your candidates individually.
We find it a little disconcerting that we might somehow unwittingly void our own vote, so please heed this warning and be careful! Everything’s going to be so much easier in the future when we can vote by text message.
Welcome back to Over It, the occasional feature that consists of a UTB contributor ranting about something they are so totally over.
Over the past year or so, we’ve noticed an insidious element creeping into e-mails from our peers: first it was just a line or two at the end of a message, something like “Joe Studentstein, Penn ‘09.” But over time, it grew to include phone numbers and other contact information, eventually reaching its current state of bloatedness: a block of text that includes as much information as a resume, sometimes finished off with the ever-loathsome “Sent from my iPhone.” We’d like to just point out the obvious and say that interminable signatures are pretentious.
We know you’re going to use long, toolish signatures when applying for jobs and stuff, but in your day-to-day casual e-mailing, please spare us the listing of your “mobile” phone number and the fact that you’re a member of Penn’s save the whales advocacy group (Penn4FreeWilly | Secretary, in fact). A simple class year and unlabeled phone number (we can all guess what 10 digits in a row signifies) will usually do the trick. And you should avoid including a quote in your signature. But if something compels you to do so, you should never, ever, quote one of your professors in an e-mail to that professor and the rest of your class, as we once saw a classmate so egregiously do.
Signed,
UTB
Ranter and Angry Person | UnderTheButton.com
University of Pennsylvania | Class of 2009
E-mail: underthebutton@gmail.com
Mobile: (215) you wish
“A small leak can sink a great ship.” -Benjamin Franklin
Who subscribed us to this McCain/Palin e-mail list? We are not laughing. DO NOT WANT.
We were reading The Spin yesterday, as we are wont to do, and we have to agree that Gmail is totally awesome. But we also have to play devil’s advocate for a sec and point out that we sometimes find Gmail a tad bit… oppressive. In fact, we’re afraid it’s taking over our lives. Consider this: for the past year or so, we’ve had a recurring dream about our Gmail inbox. Nothing much happens, and the whole thing pretty much consists of us either getting or not getting mail, but it is still one goddamn stressful dream! Because the thing about Gmail is that it’s always on. You don’t have to press reload; it updates itself. You don’t have to add people to your buddy list; everyone you e-mail magically appears in your contacts. If you use Gchat (and more and more people do everyday), your contacts can always tell what you’re up to–you can be halfway across the world, but if that green light is on, everyone knows that you’re sitting in front of a computer, available for chat.
Continue reading »
Amy Gutmann just sent out a looooong e-mail to all Penn undergraduates. This only happens once or twice per semester, so it’s safe to assume something’s up, despite the fact that all said e-mail seems to say is that Penn has $476 million in cash-money but we should all try to be a little thriftier. Um, ok…care to read in between the lines?
Dear Members of Our University Community:
Over the last few weeks the world has seen the American capital and credit markets experience their worst turmoil in three generations. It is no wonder that the state of the economy is on everyone’s mind, even as we go about our day-to-day work of studying, teaching, conducting research, volunteering in our communities and supporting the mission of this great university.
I would like to take this opportunity to communicate with you about how we at Penn are being affected and how, together, we will weather this challenging time in our nation’s history.
Continue reading »
Anonymous UTB moles tell us that one Sacha Baron Cohen may pop up at Penn some time in the very near future to work on his follow-up to Borat, Bruno the Movie. Dorm staffers have been given strict instructions not to let his pesky faux-documentary camera crews inside any buildings:
We have heard, through University Communications, that rumors are afloat about Sacha Baron Cohen (the producer of the movie Borat) coming to the Penn campus to shoot some footage. If you are familiar with his work, including his newest project called Bruno the Movie, you know that it’s unlikely the production crew will contact the University for permission to shoot. In fact, it is his trademark to pose as fictitious characters and dupe people into being filmed in compromising situations.
Emphasis ours up there. Subtext: Don’t embarrass Penn, dammit!
Continue reading »
If you’re a SAS student like me, then you recently received this email gem:
Dear SAS Student,
We are excited to announce that SAS Computing and The Weigle Information
Commons will be hosting a wireless setup event on Wednesday, October 15,
from 5pm - 7pm at the Weigle Information Commons. You can come by and
get hands-on help from SAS Computing staff with configuring your
computer to use AirPennNet.
If you are having problems getting connected to AirPennNet, we hope you
will bring your laptop to our wireless setup event!
School of Arts & Sciences Computing
It’s not that this is bad. It’s that it is SO bad. OCTOBER 15! Why wasn’t this workshop held during the first week of classes? And has anyone else noticed that some of the crappy IBM laptops for rent in Van Pelt aren’t configured for AirPennNet either? SAS Computing: you need to catch up to the same speed as your internet.
Have something you want to sound off about? Email us.
What happens when you google Google? This.
Understandably, banks have lost some of their luster as the most prestigious and douchebag-esque thing to do after graduation. What’s taken their place? Oh, just this search engine thing, Google. Oh, you’ve heard of it? You were one of the bazillions of people who submitted your resume?
Hmmph. Us too. Check out the cease and desist letter Career Services sent out to all Seniors in the College:
Please note, the Google Initiatives in Africa session scheduled for tomorrow is now CLOSED and they are no longer accepting resumes.
This event is by invitation only.
While Google appreciates the large number of students who are interested in this initiative, ONLY STUDENTS WHO RECEIVE AN EMAIL CONFIRMATION from Andrea Powers WILL BE ADMITTED TO THE EVENT.
fig. 1
Our understanding of the current state of the economy is essentially a picture of a downward-sloping arrow (see fig. 1), but you know things must be bad when even the right-wing voodoo economists of The Wharton School are holding a teach-in. Check out the e-mail Dean Robertson just sent out to all Wharton faculty and students:
Subject: Wharton Faculty Discuss Financial Crisis
Please join us for a “panel discussion/teach-in” session led by prominent Wharton faculty who will reflect on the still-unfolding turmoil in the financial services industry.
The faculty panel will include Professors Franklin Allen, Joe Gyourko, Jeremy Siegel, and possibly others. The session will begin with brief opening comments by each panelist, followed by a question-and-answer period moderated by two MBA students.
The session will be held tomorrow, Tuesday, September 16, 5:00 – 6:30pm in Zellerbach Auditorium of the Annenberg School.
Regards,
Thomas S. Robertson, Ph.D.
Dean
