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Dear Readers,
From the Editor
Welcome to the Valentine’s Issue everybody, also known as the “Sex Issue.” Many of my catholic friends complained to me that this issue is always too dirty, and makes them feel “uncomfortable.” As the self-appointed headmaster of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at Binghamton Review, I feel bad. Not even my $250k salary can make it better. To that end, I promise that there won’t be ANYTHING smutty in this issue, not one tit—I mean, BIT! So to the PERVERT named “Piuex,” if that is your real name: You cold-emailed editor@binghamtonreview. com with the subject-line ‘advice.’ You asked “how i do i sexually satisfy my girlfriend.” YOU just need to find out for yourself, buddy.
There’s nothing funny about S-E-X. It’s disgusting, really. One time, I saw a guy with leprosy exit a motel with a prostitute. You know what I heard him say to her? “Keep the tip!” It was worse than when I saw a hardened criminal with an empty bottle of Viagra! It was worse than when I ran out of prophylactic at Pipe Dream’s “Russian Roulette” orgy, just like I’m running out of space in this editorial!
Anyways, check out our readership survey linked below. If my puns don’t excite you, maybe the questions will. Let me just say, you won’t last five minutes taking this survey.
Sincerely,
Arthur O’Sullivan
Our Mission
Binghamton Review is a non-partisan, student-run news magazine founded in 1987 at Binghamton University. A true liberal arts education expands a student’s horizons and opens one’s mind to a vast array of divergent perspectives. The mark of true maturity is being able to engage with these perspectives rationally while maintaining one’s own convictions. In that spirit, we seek to promote the free and open exchange of ideas and offer alternative viewpoints not normally found on campus. We stand against dogma in all of its forms, both on campus and beyond. We believe in the tenents of free expression and believe all sudents should have a voice on campus to convey their thoughts. Finally, we understand that mutual respect is a necessary component of any prosperous society. We strive to inform, engage with, and perhaps even amuse our readers in carrying out this mission.
Views expressed by writers do not necessarily represent the views of the publication as a whole.
“Sexapalooza” Makes Me Shudder
By Arthur O’Sullivan
LateNite bought over one thousand dollars worth of sex toys for Sexapalooza this year.”
So spoke my source from inside Binghamton University’s “Late Nite” organization, which provides food, programming, and all other forms of entertainment to those students awake and alert enough to enjoy them. As someone with the social and sleeping habits of a reclusive retiree, my experience with Late Nite is limited. On some occasions, I have enjoyed the post-9-P.M. fried food at C4 and Appalachian dining halls— usually purchased with friends after a long-running Binghamton Review meeting or party. Usually, however, I’m spending my “late nights” (the ones I have free, anyway) watching episodes of What’s My Line on YouTube or Frasier on the cheapest Hulu plan imaginable (or, if I’m feeling frisky, “Family Guy Funny Moments” by IllyrianGhost on YouTube). It may not be as social as Late Nite, but it keeps me rested. And thanks to this Epicurean walled garden I’ve maintained between myself and Late Nite, I’ve written nothing about nor criticized their shenanigans… until now.
“Sexapalooza” is an event I only noticed from my Sophomore year on. (Apparently COVID cancels sex, in the world of college administration—or at least renders it virtual.) Their advertising left little to the imagination. That year, “Sex Toy Bingo. Sex in the Dark. DIY Sex kits.” and something ominously titled “Entanglement Twister” were oh-so-tastefully advertised on a peach emoji.
The following year’s advertisement was kind enough to add “Queer Sex Positive Button Making” to its suite of events. (What we would do without it, I shudder to imagine.) Both, interestingly enough, advertise over $700 in “prizes.” Apparently they hadn’t heard of Bidenflation. (Or perhaps they had heard the term, but only got aroused.) In their day, $700 may have bought a top-of-the-line Japanese sex robot, including shipping and handling. In this economy, it would hardly afford my lightly worn cum sock.
Fortunately for the poor students of Binghamton, the penury of Sexapalooza’s prizes has ended. In addition to the “Free condoms, Chocolate fountain, Sex education” et cetera, Sexapalooza 2024 offers over $1,000 in “prizes.” So says the most recent advertisement, decorated with charming imagery of barbed-wire-hearts and fire burning below. Perhaps the sponsorship of Planned Parenthood, with its tens of millions in federal funding, allowed for this modest increase in the purchase of “prizes.”
I’ve been largely sarcastic up to this point, but seriously: When did it come to this? I hate to be “that guy” at the queer-positive-entangled-twister-button-making orgy, but is this all really necessary? Whenever I see these ads, I constantly think of the “groooomer” meme from a number of years ago. It’s of course ridiculous to compare a collegiate event strictly involving adults to actual cases of sexual exploitation. Still, this overbearing interest that the university and all its partner organizations—especially groups like ResLife and Planned Parenthood—take in our sex lives gives me the creeps. I suppose, by the conventional collegiate model of sexual morality, there’s technically nothing wrong with this. Yet “technicality” is far from a great defense.
Don’t mistake me for some sexless puritan. As cynical as I can be about sex and sexuality, I still smile at every romance I see—in fiction and in real life. I just don’t need the gory details. Half the “fun” of sex, in my view, is that it’s undertaken with some secrecy: the wink, nod, and giggle—and maybe a light elbow jab in the ribs; the kiss and pan away in those classic films… there’s a magic in that, otherwise missing from these pornographic displays. Those who attempt to make sex an “open” thing seem hell-bent on stripping all the romance and mystique from it. Can anyone tell me with a straight face that there’s more romance in the “Sexapalooza” than the mold on my shower curtain?
Sexapalooza’s 2024 advertisement.
When I lost my Catholic faith in Spring of freshman year, I lost many moral justifications for my conservative sexual beliefs. Often, this is where people proclaim their “liberation” from benighted religious mores, and brag about masturbating every other hour or something. As much as I admire their prostate cancer prevention program, that didn’t exactly happen with me. Then as now, I see this obsession with sex and think that it’s—if nothing else—missing the damn point. We live in a society so oversexed that few now remember real romance—real love. “Sexapalooza” simply stands as its symbolic gravestone. O tempora! O mores! etc. etc.
Remind a forgetful old man: what are these “prizes”? If your answer was “expensive sex toys a la the $100 Sasha Grey pocket pussy (including both realistic holes modeled after her own)” congratulations! You’ve won one as a prize! (It seems like there’s plenty to give away.)
Maybe I’m being a bit dramatic. Creepy administration events aside, plenty of people—young and old—find romance at Binghamton. (Must be something in the spiedies.) And who knows? This is written before this year’s Sexapalooza event. Maybe it’ll end up being a wholesome, family-friendly event which ends in a mass-wedding of its newlyin-love attendees. I won’t hold my breath, but I will say this: If you’ve found love this Valentine’s Day, I’m happy for you. I sincerely hope you two lovebirds enjoy yourselves. I just don’t need to know how much
Have You Got “The Right Stuff”?
By Logan Blakeslee
Dating culture in the 2020s is an unmitigated disaster. Too often we hear reports about rising loneliness among men and the worsening effects of sexual objectification on women. Dating apps like Tinder, Bumble, or FarmersOnly.com once promised a tantalizing alternative to the task of talking to someone of the opposite sex. Instead of fumbling a pickup line at the bar or the workplace and facing a humiliating rejection, millions of Americans could comb through endless profiles and fall in digital love with someone who matches all their interests and desires.
Sounds perfect, right? That’s what I thought when I signed up for a number (half a dozen) of these dating apps in 2018. I won’t deny that I was lonely after a sad breakup during my time at SUNY Broome. I won’t deny that I invested way too many hours each week swiping left and right in the manic hope that I could find that special someone out there. I’ll even admit that I have no idea how to talk to women and the fact that I’m dating one right now is a total anomaly. Even on the rare occasion that I did find a match, the other profile was a scammer 60% of the time, and I was either ignored or ghosted the remainder of the time.
One of my several mistakes on these apps was that I never hid who I was. By that, I mean that I was always upfront on my profiles about how I was a conservative. I am a Republican. Sure, I saw hundreds of women on Tinder declare that they would never “swipe right” on a conservative like myself, but that never deterred me from being honest about it. Clearly, I was doing myself a disservice as, according to reporter Alejandra O’Connell-Domenech, “Eighty-six percent [of Americans] think it has grown more difficult to date someone who supports the opposing political party in recent years.”
Roughly half of Republicans, independents, and men altogether have expressed a willingness to date someone with differing political opinions, based on a 2020 YouGov poll. That number drops to a little over a third of Democratic women, who express the least willingness to date across the aisle, so to speak. On the generational level, younger women are more liberal than ever before, skewering chances for conservative or religious men to find a partner in person or online. So, what might be the solution for patriotic men of America looking for a bride and having innumerable children with her on a rustic farmstead?
The eggheads behind “The Right Stuff,” a dating app exclusively intended for conservatives, thought that they held the answer. The app was created by former Trump aide John McEntee, who joined forces with various other minor officials of the Trump administration to answer the prayers of isolated Republican men nationwide. My personal idol Peter Thiel bankrolled the project. However, interest in “The Right Side” died almost as soon as the app was released.
While I have not had the pleasure of using The Right Side, there is a pattern in its faults that prevent it from competing with the dating app giants. It employs much of the same rhet-
oric as Turning Point USA—in other words: inflammatory catchphrases that are obnoxious to moderate conservatives. Its tagline is “Profiles without Pronouns.” Women on the app are eligible for a free premium subscription, which goes to show how few women sign up in the first place. Additionally, users must be invited by another user in order to sign up, restricting access to an even greater degree.
If you’re reading this and you have the same internal doubts that I once did, don’t lose hope. The dating market is the worst it’s ever been, but I urge you to steel your resolve and take a chance on real people instead of online profiles.
Even worse, there are some allegations that users have been contacted by the FBI after revealing their stances on the 1/6/21 riot on the app. If this is true, the whole thing might just be a clever, if unintentional, psyop by the deep state. (This speculation is purely jest on my part, and I am not at all paranoid about the unknown activities of federal agents against depressed young men who have been ideologically radicalized online.) Anyways, The Right Stuff is widely regarded as a commercial failure with a total user base estimated to be in the tens of thousands.
This is quite disappointing. I sympathize with the right-leaning men and women out there who wonder each day if they’ll ever find someone to love. I held such doubts myself for a long time. I want us to use technology for noble, humane purposes and to bring the world together. For those with traditional beliefs, however, we must be brave enough to use time-tested methods in attracting a partner. Rather than jumping on a dating app, we can ask out our crushes in real life and treat them with real kindness.
In my years of doubt, I wasn’t brave enough to talk to the lovely lady with whom I was smitten. While I was honest about my politics online, I was still giving a deceptively simplistic impression of myself on these dating apps. A profile with 100 words or less can’t capture a person’s value or their true selves. That is why, on this year’s Valentine’s Day, I want to say that I am glad that I did the manly conservative thing and I started talking to the girl I liked in person. Eventually, I asked her out, and we’ve been together for around two years at this point. My love for her is traditional and absolute.
If you’re reading this and you have the same internal doubts that I once did, don’t lose hope. The dating market is the worst it’s ever been, but I urge you to steel your resolve and take a chance on real people instead of online profiles. Be honest about yourself, face rejection with dignity, but also be open to acceptance. Maybe your crush is just as shy as you are, or the gal you bump into at the library might just be your soulmate. You are loved by Providence, and you will be loved by someone special.
Mitski Songs for Your Romance
Woes
Valentine’s Day is full of variety: while some people look forward to gifts and dates, others stress over situationships, delusionships, and relationships so troublesome that they may begin to research their attachment style. It can be difficult to grapple with the emotions that come with bad romantic situations. One way I find helpful to work through any feeling is music. It may sound cliche, but shouting, crying, or even simply listening to a good song with lyrics that resonate can be therapeutic! But maybe you’re hesitant for reasons besides the “coming-of-age-protagonist” feel of it all; perhaps you don’t want to listen to the typical heartbreak-associated artists. If you’re more of an indie fan, allow me to direct you to one of my favorites: Mitski.
Mitski has been an indie artist with profound, mellifluous music since 2012, who regained virality after her “TikTok-ification,” which brought about new fans who both misunderstand her music and have no concert etiquette. Regardless of this irritating subset of listeners, Mitski’s music is beautiful and its meaning is not one to downplay. While not all of Mitski’s music is love-related and her work is much more poignant and insightful than simply being “sad girl music,” many of the songs Mitski writes are perfect for people with complicated emotions in all types of romantic contexts… the sheer amount of examples causes me to occasionally wonder if she’s doing okay. Mitski has a knack for exploring her emotions, even the uglier ones, and translating them into songs that range from catchy to soul-crushing.
I would like to present some of my favorite Mitski heartache tunes right on time for Valentine’s Day. Come allow the musings of Mitski to soothe your love troubles, whether you’ve come to cry, rage, feel, or simply learn about a musician! And before anyone questions my authority in recommending heartbreak-related songs as someone in a good relationship, I’ll have you know that I have spent many Valentine’s Days alone! ...Oh so many… so there! Ha! Besides, I can still recognize a great song when I hear one. All seven of Mitski’s albums have songs highly worthy of a listen, but for the sake of keeping within the limit of these pages I sadly will not be able to include them all. Maybe the songs I have included will intrigue you, in which case you should check out her other work! Anyway, here are some Mitski highlights for anyone who needs them this Valentine’s Day:
It can be fun to say that someone “completes” you, but I don’t like the implication that you’re less than a full person without them. Let’s “supplement” each other instead, as silly as it sounds!
“Francis Forever” from Bury Me At Makeout Creek (2014) I remember when I was younger and, whenever I had a
By Emily Portalatin
crush on someone, I would try my best to grab their attention. It was fun to wonder what, if anything, that “special someone” thought about what I was doing. I know others who have done the same (i.e. posting subtle social media hints and attempting to come across as fun, cool, and well put-together), but some people may take the act too far. Whether it’s appealing to the “male gaze” or simply wanting approval from someone you care about, some run the risk of feeling “less than whole” when they’re not in their crush’s presence. Mitski describes this in “Francis Forever,” in which she can’t get over someone and constantly ruminates about her interactions with them as well as interactions that she wishes they could see. She does not need approval from anyone when it comes to the things she does… except from this particular person. She wants them to see how “well” she’s doing, and for her to occupy their thoughts constantly.
“Bury Me at Makeout Creek” album cover
A case like this makes me sad, as you are seemingly living life for someone else instead of for yourself—extrinsically instead of intrinsically. “WHO CARES if I improve as a person and do great things if that ONE person isn’t there to see it???” While it can be sweet to get the attention of someone you like, pining for that attention 24/7 even when it is irrelevant can become unhealthy. Whether you have a crush or are in a relationship, I would like to stress the importance of remaining your own person. Cultivate hobbies! Spend time with friends! If you stay true to yourself instead of trying to assume the personality of someone else for their approval, someone who loves your true self will come along! You can always share parts of your life with the one you love, but remember that your life is yours. It can be fun to say that someone “completes” you, but I don’t like the implication that you’re less than a full person without them. Let’s “supplement” each other instead, as silly as it sounds!
“I Bet on Losing Dogs” from Puberty 2 (2016)
A crucial facet of love is being willing to stick together when times are tough. No life is perfect, and relationships take effort! It is great to have a “teammate” of sorts to forge through life with. However, there is a fine line one must tread when putting this into practice. While relationships take effort, they should not necessarily be difficult, and both partners should generally be putting in the work together. Perhaps you have been in a situ-
ation where this isn’t the case; perhaps you have desperately wanted to stick by someone that you know deep down is not right for you, whether it be out of loneliness or delusion. Mitski appears to have this issue in “I Bet On Losing Dogs,” a song from her album Puberty 2. Mitski knows that the “dogs” she consistently bets on are not going to win, but she goes for them anyway and experiences the downfall with them. The metaphor is clear — she’s investing in people that she knows won’t be good for her in the end, but can’t help but stay.
Even if you don’t need to release your romance woes into a Mitski-fueled breakdown, Mitski is a fantastic indie artist that I would recommend regardless of your relationship status.
“My
But how can we tell the difference between a “losing dog” and a rough patch that will improve? In my experience, the answer is patterns, words, and actions. Mitski here appears to stick to relationships that are doomed from the start, knowing they won’t work and going with it anyway. Pro-tip: Maybe DON’T do that? At least, not if you want to cultivate something strong. I understand that this is easier said than done, as sometimes it is hard to accept that a relationship won’t work out. It’s always worth it to attempt to work through things as opposed to simply leaving, but if someone makes false promises from the beginning and never actually changes, don’t invest in it. Words are comforting, but if one’s actions don’t match then you are essentially sticking with someone on a foundation of falsehoods. Never adopt the “I can fix them” mentality! It’s great to support a person, but you should not always be doing all the legwork. Do not let something meant to be a good thing, be it a relationship or anything else in life, cause you pain!
Whether you have a crush or are in a relationship, I would like to stress the importance of remaining your own person. Cultivate hobbies! Spend time with friends!
“Nobody” from Be the Cowboy (2018)
Oh come on, how could I NOT talk about “Nobody”?! It may be an overplayed Mitski song, but it’s well-made with great depth and emotion (and I would like this article to be beginner-friendly anyway). As the title suggests, Mitski feels an immense loneliness, as though she has nobody. This feeling follows her regardless of her appearance; she feels that she cannot find love or comfort in any physical state. She just wishes she could feel love from somebody—anybody. Despite the depressing lyrics, the song is quite catchy. I’m sure I have been pumping my fist to “Nobody” while simultaneously having some sort of breakdown. Speaking of breakdown, I would like to point out Mitski’s repetition of the word “nobody.” The lyric’s simplicity and repetitiveness are intentional, and the way Mitski emotionally renders lyrics like this makes up for their repetition tenfold. The whopping thirty-six uses of the word exhibit (at least to me) a spiraling sense that has you repeating the same thing to yourself over and over, especially as the key changes near the end in a distressing climax. While what I am about to say is another example of something “easier said than done,” I hope that everyone who feels the pain of “Nobody” will feel relief at some point,
knowing they are not alone. I know it’s easy to feel lonely and unwanted on a day like Valentine’s Day, and that this feeling can materialize on numerous other occasions. I’ve been there too, and am thinking of every last one of you!
Love Mine All Mine” from The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We (2023)
“This Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We” album
cover
Geez, this has been sort of bleak. Is there ANY good love out there? Do all attempts at connection result in dysfunction or heartbreak? Considering the themes in her music, one may assume that Mitski finds good love scarce, or even that she has now rejected the pursuit of love altogether. However, this could not be further from the truth. Not all of Mitski’s songs are necessarily critiques of romance (although a lot of them are); her music portrays an array of nuanced emotional states and features songs about the undeniable power and importance of love as well. Take one of her newest hits, for example, “My Love Mine All Mine.” It is a song which maintains that, despite the fleetingness of life, we all have the capacity to love and be loved—something that is ours alone to claim. We have a finite period of time to live life, a life which does not promise ease. Yet there is a beauty in being able to love despite it all and see that the love you put into the world has a real effect. Everyone has the opportunity to experience and express some level of love—even if not romantic love—a beautiful fact attesting to our human autonomy. Despite our mortality, we can always find things to cherish during the time which we do have, and this arguably makes life’s pains worth it in the end. It may be scary to get close to others, whether you are worried about facing heartbreak or eventually losing someone you’ve cared about… but maybe a good love is worth the risk.
Conclusion
Even if you don’t need to release your romance woes into a Mitski-fueled breakdown, Mitski is a fantastic indie artist that I would recommend to everyone regardless of relationship status. I could shout her lyrics every day of the year if I had to, even if I can’t always relate to a song. A great album to listen to first is Be The Cowboy, her fifth studio album; it contains some wonderful Mitski hits and is also widely acclaimed. Give it a try if you’d like! I know that listening to music is not all it takes to truly heal from love’s troubles, but it can help to take solace in the fact that there is beautiful music out there that may resonate with you and make your heart feel a little less heavy. Happy Valentine’s Day!
Sex and Sexual Behavior Survey
Results
From Our Wonderful Respondents
Every February, we here at Binghamton Review follow a tradition typically held among most campus publications: the sex survey. This survey was sent out to the good people of Binghamton, and the following are our responses (n=36):
(Additional responses to the sexual attraction question)
Abbreviations:
(3) Japanese cartoon drawings known in their tongue as “Hentai”
(5) Binghamton’s Dumbest Students Masturbate
(6) do NOT look this up on the Binghamton Review Website
(7) Print Edition
(8) Social Media
(14) there’s at least one of you who keeps submitting weird drawings to the Bing Review email. Please identify yourselves.
(15) as long as feet are visible (17) English major (18) Nikocado Avocado
(23) The Nina Portman Mika [sic] Kunis scene in Black Swan
Abbreviations:
(6) The former Binghamton Review office (RIP)
(7) East, West, North, South (10) The tunnels dug beneath campus (12) Innovative Technologies Complex (ITC)
(19) don’t know who’s reading this, just know that I’ve fucked someone in your room
Responses to “Any weird or unusual turn-ons?”
(Additional responses to the vaginal size question)
Feet, Hair pulling, eye contact, British accent, french accent, Reading the Binghamton Review Sex Edition, Yogurt. No elaborating., naur, Goths, being emotionally abused, honesty, demon horns, eyepatches, medieval armor (like platemail none of that weak chainmail shit), and people who are a noticeably different height than me., really ugly men like cillian murphy, I will not allow you BIGOTS to use this survey to push your RACIST and HOMOPHOBIC agenda! EVERY. KINK. IS. VALID., Custard cup with tadpoles, Taking the bing review sex surveyyy arghhahh *cums* Maid uniforms. Not the Spirit Halloween variety of maid costume, but like a genuine 19th century French maid outfit that covers the whole body., my boyfriend, Biting, but don’t bite me that shit hurts, I’m a big fan of black or Chinese., Ur mom, This form has a glitch, Myself, ears, No, women, reslife, Yeah., bad at taking driving directions, bad at giving driving directions. bad at explaining arguments. listening to da rizz more than the words that come out my mouth., That guy in the Hughes window when you leave the Hinman dining hall and go to the lecture hall, Hinman Cardboard cutout
The Lecture From Hell
By Angelo DiTocco
BINGHAMTON, NY, Feb. 8 – A local mathematics professor at New York’s “Premier Public Ivy” has reportedly held one of the most excruciatingly long class sessions in history, according to Jack Hutchington, a student in the class who had been planning to make a move on his female colleague that day. “What I went through has to fall under cruel and unusual punishment!” exclaimed Jack in an interview, still in traumatic shock from the incident.
The professor in question, Malcolm Forrester, is one of two instructors for Analysis of Number Systems, also known as MATH 262. Students’ opinions indicate that he does a decent job of teaching the class. “He’s not great, but at least he’s better than Lindenberg,” one RateMyProfessors review said, referring to the professor for the other section. “All that guy does is read off the slides.”
Yet this fateful Thursday afternoon has caused Jack to lose the respect he once had for his professor. “I thought this guy was alright, but now I’m not so sure. I never thought he’d do anything like this. If only the Add/Drop deadline hadn’t passed already.”
“I was gonna get around to it, but then Forrester decided to start lecturing at 12:29 instead of 12:30. How dare he?” Jack complained to us, making sure to also emphasize that it was not his lack of confidence that prevented him from carrying out his plans at that moment.
Many would think that holding a class a few minutes after its scheduled ending time is just an honest mistake. However, Jack claims that Forrester should have taken greater consideration when deciding what material to cover that day to avoid causing any undue stress on his students.
The class began at 12:30 PM, as students were filing into their seats in Classroom Wing 146 and preparing to spend the next hour and a half doing various activities such as playing Tetris, doing work for other classes, and checking social media. Seated in the middle of the room was Jack, and next to him was Rachel, the girl to whom he had been talking during the past few class sessions. The first unit test of the class was the following week, and while the other students were fearful of how difficult it might be, Jack was apprehensive for an entirely different reason.
“I figured I’d try and ask for her number so that we could study together. It would be a good way to see her outside of class and get to know her more,” explained Jack. But the task of acquiring those ten magical digits can be a difficult one, even when you have the perfect excuse.
With a couple minutes left before the beginning of class, Jack started off by saying hello to Rachel and making light conversation with her as usual. But he wasn’t able to ask the burning question on his mind just yet. “I was gonna get around to it, but
then Forrester decided to start lecturing at 12:29 instead of 12:30. How dare he?” Jack complained to us, making sure to also emphasize that it was not his lack of confidence that prevented him from carrying out his plans at that moment.
But Jack did not let this small setback affect him, because he knew he had other opportunities. Forrester’s class is structured in such a way that halfway through each lesson, he puts some example problems on the board and lets the students work on them together. It was there that Jack could hopefully resume the conversation and get the job done. He recounts, “So I’m sitting here, pretending to be paying attention to the prime factorization algorithm or whatever, just waiting for him to get to the examples.”
But the examples just weren’t coming. 1:15, the halfway point for the class, came and went. Then 1:20. Then 1:25. The professor continued to present slide after slide, equation after equation, bullet point after bullet point.
Already unnerved by having to wait nearly a whole hour, Jack was alarmed when a certain slide showed up on the projector. “You wanna know what it said? ‘Section 2.2!’ He just skipped the examples and went straight to the next lesson! Was there really that much material that had to be covered?”
But there was one beacon of hope for him. Upon starting this new section, the professor told the class that this lesson would be “a short one.” Maybe, Jack hoped, Forrester would end the class early and spare him from the agony of having to keep the nerve-wracking question in his head for another whole half hour. So he did the only thing he could and kept waiting for Forrester to adjourn the class so he could make his move. His slightly shaky handwriting had started devolving into what looked more like aimless scribbling.
A page of the notes Jack took during this lecture
It was at 1:40 when Jack noticed that Forrester was reaching
the end of his presentation. “I saw that he was on slide 47 out of 49, and that was good. It was all gonna be over soon.” Yet his lesson still seemed to go by extra slowly for the now-perspiring student. “He got to the last slide, and he was going on and on. He just wouldn’t shut up!”
At 1:45, the professor went back to his computer and moved his cursor over to the ‘close’ button on PowerPoint. At last, it was Jack’s time to shine. Or so he thought. Because as Forrester closed the application and noticed some students packing up, he said something that would quell their excitement and prolong Jack’s suffering in particular. “Hold on; I’m not done yet,” he assured the class, proceeding to open Visual Studio so he could go through a C++ program he wrote that was supposedly related to the lesson.
ERFUCKER!” Jack yelled to us as he slammed his fist into the table. “THE LOOP GOES FROM ZERO TO NINE! NOT TEN! THE TEST CLEARLY STATES THAT THE INDEX MUST BE LESS THAN TEN! NOT LESS THAN OR EQUAL TO! LESS THAN! And what does Forrester do to try and make this dumbass understand? He decides to WALK THROUGH EVERY SINGLE ITERATION OF THE LOOP AGAIN! WHAT THE FUCK, DUDE!? DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHAT I’M GOING THROUGH RIGHT NOW!?”
“It’s like he read my mind!” an increasingly irate Jack told us. “And why does the class have a coding component anyway? It’s so stupid! Just teach us the math stuff and move on!”
In the next act of Forrester’s plan to seemingly torture Jack, he ran the program and proceeded to explain his code in excruciating detail. “Why did he feel the need to remind us how a for-loop works? I already know how a for-loop works! I’m a CS major for fuck’s sake!” It was at this point that our protagonist had reached unprecedented levels of anxiety. He described his heart rate during that time as being “absolutely not normal.” For all he knew, the class could end at any moment, but he had no idea when that would happen.
After explaining his first run-through of the program, Forrester thought it would be necessary to change the numbers inside the program and run it again to show the class how it would affect the results. This proved to be quite redundant: “What do you think is gonna happen when you change the number inside the loop from 5 to 10? The loop is gonna run 10 times instead of 5!”
Forrester repeated this process several times, each time over-explaining to the class how each and every line of code would process the data. Time ticked by ever-so-slowly for me– I mean, Jack. It was 1:57, then 1:58, then 1:59. Then 2:00, the time the class was supposed to end. Then 2:00:15, then 2:00:30, then 2:00:45…
At 2:01, the professor finally figured he was satisfied with how many different combinations of numbers he tested the program with. So he turned to the class and asked, “Any questions?” With everyone all packed up and ready to get out of class by now, surely no one would be asking any questions over such a simple program. Seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, Jack prepared to get Rachel’s attention and finally get his question over with. But when he saw a hand raise at the front of the class, he was put on the edge once again. The slow-witted student asked, “Why doesn’t the loop run 11 times if it goes from 0 to 10?”
“YOU IDIOT! YOU MORON! YOU STUPID MOTH-
As Forrester finished his long-winded walkthrough, he turned back to the unintelligent student and asked if his explanation was sufficient, as if it wasn’t ten times longer than it needed to be. The imbecile sat there in silence for nearly a whole hour, wearing a confused expression on his face as he tried to get the concept through his thick skull and into his hollow brain. “I swear to God, if he still didn’t understand it, I was gonna have to drag his ass all the way to the East Gym so I could shove him into one of the lockers there.” But it seems that the single-celled organism was able to read the room and notice that he was wasting everyone’s time with his stupidity. “Okay, I get it,” he said. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief, except for Jack, as he was so distracted by his own thoughts that he could barely process what was happening at this point.
for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++) {
The line of code that single-handedly made the class 15 minutes longer
At 2:03 PM, the professor uttered his final four words: “Have a good weekend.” Chairs began to move. Students began to rise from their seats. Noise began to spread throughout the classroom. And it was finally time for Jack to do what he had been waiting to do for the longest 90 minutes of his life.
So he turned to Rachel, only to find her completely absent from her desk. It seems that at some point during Forrester’s de facto tutoring session with the knucklehead, she had taken the initiative to leave the room early, unnoticed by Jack. “I can’t believe it! That bastard took away my chance!” Jack complained to us as if he had any chance to begin with. “Now I have to wait a whole month for the next test!”
I’ve decided to publish this story as a warning for all professors, especially the rambly types. As easy as it is to get into the groove of explaining topic after topic, it’s just as important to recognize how much lecturing is too much. Looking at my—I mean—Jack’s perspective, you can see that sometimes people have extenuating circumstances that need to be taken into account. And I can guarantee that no student has ever been disappointed to hear the words, “Let’s just cover this next time.”
Bing Review’s Sex Songs
Some may read this magazine and think, “man, Bing Review must have absolutely NO sex.” To this we say, “nuh uh.” We have plenty of sex, not just with your mom, but with HER mom too. And when we do it, we like to have some music playing in the background because we’re just cool like that. The following is a selection of our favorite songs for our (many) sexual escapades. She Loves Us - Swans
Swans is an experimental rock band headed by Madonna’s former boyfriend and certified madman Michael Gira. In 2014, they released their most commercially successful album, To Be Kind. Just cracking in at the two-hour mark (a somewhat typical length for the band), this album might also be one of their best. We could have chosen any number of songs from this album to do the deed to, from the beautiful bells on “Kirsten Supine” to the clandestine motion on “Some Things We Do” (featuring the all too hypnotic lyric “we fuck” repeated ad nauseam).
But instead, we think it’s safest to choose the seventeen-minute-long “She Loves Us” which introduces the second half of the album. Featuring pummeling guitars and drums in a near tribalistic rhythm, this song’s soundscape seems to inspire visions of an orgiastic sex cult revolving around BDSM and dehumanization. There’s ‘come’ for everyone with lyrics like “I am your girl, I am your son, come to my mouth, come to my tongue.” The song peaks with Gira shouting “your name is fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” over and over again. Well, if you insist, Mike! (Bonus points if you can last in rhythm to the whole song!)
Best lyric: “Your name is fuck! Fuck! Fuck!”
El Scorcho or Buddy Holly - Weezer
Would it truly be a sex playlist without WEEZER!?! The only issue is selecting JUST ONE Weezer song! So I’m picking two of them: “El Scorcho” and “Buddy Holly”. “El Scorcho” is the lead single of Weezer’s cult classic record Pinkerton. The album as a whole is very oddly sexual, raw, and experimental for Weezer’s standards. This song is no different with that weird gargling sound at the beginning and then the funky beat that persists throughout the entirety of the tune. Nothing gets you more in the mood for sex than that! How can we forget the AMAZING first verse “Goddamn you half-Japanese girls do it to me every time.” Totally not a #weird thing to start a song off with… Anyway, Rivers (the lead singer) continues to confess his love for this girl with high-pitched screeching and vocal shifts. What else says sex like screeching into a microphone for four minutes and three seconds...
Next, we have “Buddy Holly”. The only reason I wanted to insert it here was because of how funny it would be if you climaxed when the silly, yet infamous Buddy Holly riff just started projecting out of your JBL speaker. Hehe. Makes me laugh just thinking about it!
Best lyric: “Watching Grunge leg drop Newjack through a press table”
Sy Borg - Frank Zappa
Frank Zappa was a controversial figure in music. He was never afraid to voice his rebellion to the status quo. In his 1979 triple album, Joe’s Garage, Zappa paints a grand narrative of a guy
Written by our Staff
named Joe trying to find himself in all the wrong places. In the album’s second act, after a few bad decisions with two vagina-having meat sacks who left him for more promiscuous pastures, Joe joins the Church of Appliantology, where founder L Ron Hoover convinces him that he is a “latent appliance fetishist”.
In the proceeding experimentation with his new sexuality, Joe falls in love with a robot sex machine in the church named Sy Borg. His titular song is required sex listening, at a whopping eight minutes fifty, because it conveys their purest expression of love in the form of a sensual reggae backbeat, replete with Zappa’s deep Joe voice playing off Sy’s electronic monotony. Here’s a real challenge for you wild ones out there: try to keep up with our featured couple’s series of sex acts! Be careful your partner’s not a fellow automaton, however: in the song’s thrilling conclusion, Joe’s golden shower manages to short-circuit Sy’s motherboard, leaving him once again with the feeling of love lost. Stay safe out there, guys!
Best lyric: “Blowjob, gimme dat, gimme dat blowwwowwwjob, gimme dat, give me that chromium cob, dude!”
Cantina Band - John Williams
Now, some nerds might justify this with some stupid Star Wars nerd shit about how this genre of music is called “Jizz” in that galaxy far far away, and that the musicians are known as “Jizz Wailers.”* I flushed all their heads down the toilet in 2003 for being nerds. (What the FUCK is a “Wookiepedia”?!) The reason I screw my wife and her boyfriend to this song is because I live in a galaxy that’s close close close enough for me to call this music “Jazz.” And Jazz is for cool cats.
Also, I only last for two minutes and forty five seconds. I have things to do, like restraining the urge to make another “your mom” pun there.
Best lyric: “*intense horn polyphony*”
*Editor’s note: the terms “jizz” and “jizz wailer” are here incorrectly used by the author of this section. “Jizz” is a genre of music that Maximillian Rebo and his band at Jabba’s Palace belong to, and not Figrin D’an and the Modal Nodes. The differences between Rebo and D’an’s oeuvre seems important enough to mention here, as one is a funky style including singing vocals with a focus on bright lights and dancing (much like our world’s own discotech music) while the other features an instrumental arrangement meant to be heard in the context of drinking and talking (and notably reflects our world’s big band music more than anything else). This sentence is retained, despite its lore inaccuracy, for comedic purposes only. Now, the guy above me is calling. He wants to sodomize me again.
La Marseillaise- de Lisle
They call French the “language of love” (le language d’love) but has anyone ever made love to its national anthem? Apparently not, because when I started playing it on my iPhone in a Quebec bar every single person stood up and started a riot that had to be put down with 450 canisters of tear gas and a “Ride of the Rohirrim”-like stampede of horses.
Anyways, after I got out of prison, I went back home to Binghamton and made love to my wife. For old times’ sake, I started playing La Marseillaise. We simultaneously climaxed at the lyric “Aux armes, citoyens!” and I saw the blue-white-red tricolor. I was then hospitalized at UHS for a stroke.
Best lyric: “I love me some France. Ain’t that the truth.”
Honorable Mentions: Blackout - Swans, Whip It - Devo, Wii Sports Theme, My Neck, My Back or Creep- Richard Cheese, touched - my bloody valentine, The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald - Gordon Lightfoot, Gangnam Style- PSY, How You Remind Me - Nickelback, Any 100 Gecs song or tool song
The Scarcity of Love
By Comson Cao
Valentine’s Day is here, which means the usual rigamarole of buying flowers and chocolate, going out to a movie, or maybe draining one’s wallet with an expensive dinner. We have a very romanticized (haha) view of love in our contemporary society, but who can blame us? If given the chance, lots of people would probably want their relationships to resemble the great romances: an unbreakable bond between two lovers, unwaveringly dedicated until death separates them, just like in the movies. Unfortunately, there is often a large discrepancy between the ideal of love and reality. Most already know this, so instead of restating the obvious, it’s more useful to empirically explore the state of modern love and shed some light on its hardships.
Many, for instance, struggle to find love. According to a 2023 report from Pew Research Center, young adults aged 18-29 are the most likely to be single. The issue seems to have particularly affected young men, as 63% of men in that age group reported being single, compared to just 34% of women in that age group. A small disparity might not be abnormal, but a gap this large merits attention. Concerningly, from 2019-2022, the percentage of single American adults actually seeking relationships has declined to just 42% in 2022. Single men are—interestingly enough—less likely to report that they are looking for a committed romantic relationship than single women, and we can only speculate as to why that might be the case. Perhaps younger Americans are just substituting efforts at committing to a relationship with having sex, but that runs contrary to the actual evidence. In a 2020 post from the Institute of Family Studies, it was found that using data from the Youth Risk Behavior Survey, there was a decline in the percentage of who ever had sex among American high schoolers of all grades and races from 1991 to 2019. Similarly, a 2019 analysis from the Washington Post found using the General Social Survey that the increase in the percentage of Americans not having sex was mainly driven by young Americans aged 18-29. Looking at Americans between the ages of 18 and 30, there was an increase in sexlessness for both males and females from 1989 to 2018, but the increase was much larger for males. It seems that instead of being less committed, young Americans are just straight up not even trying. The last few years have seen the rise of internet subcultures such as Inceldom or “Men Going Their Own Way,” often composed of single men who are often fed up with the current state of the modern dating market, so much so that many of them have grown to be completely hostile to women and have at times developed questionable understandings of the power dynamics in dating. Perhaps some of these single men have simply given up on the prospect of securing a lasting loving relationship. It’s easy to point fingers and call out these bitter people and their malevolent sexism, but at the same time, we should also consider that the problem will get worse over time, if current metrics hold. Moving on from single people, romantic relationships face their own difficulties. A 2017 systematic review by Shanhong Luo on human “assortative mating” (i.e. similar individuals forming relationships) demonstrated the similarity of cou-
ples on various traits, with the strongest correlations being for height, educational attainment, and religious and political attitudes. We might expect to see strong similarities in personality traits between couples, especially personality traits that contribute to long-term pair bonding. Yet this doesn’t appear to be the case. Luo’s systematic review notes that while there is evidence of assortative mating occurring on personality traits, the effect is weak in magnitude. Concurrent with this, a 2023 meta-analysis by Horwitz et al. found that among 22 traits between partners, couples are more similar when it comes to alcohol, smoking, and drug use compared to traits relevant for pair bonding like agreeableness or openness. In brief, these studies found that although people tend to pair with similar partners, there are often asymmetries in things important for a relationship’s well-being. A 2023 paper by Stavrova and Chopik observed this in action, finding that in unbalanced relationships, the mental well-being of happier partners declined and approached that of the less happy partner while the well-being of the less happy partner either didn’t change or increased only slightly.
Regardless of this correlation-causation debate, the phenomenon still exists, and we wouldn’t be any closer towards solving the problems it causes.
Even more concerning is the future prospects of love. Mental well-being is important for love to flourish. Yet such a thing seems increasingly scarce. To start, in a 2010 meta-analysis by Twenge et al. which analyzes birth cohorts from 1938 to 2007, the authors found an increase of over one standard deviation on the clinical scales of psychopathy, paranoia, hypomania, and depression, with five times as many now scoring above common cutoffs for psychopathology. Likewise, a 2021 meta-analysis by Buecker et al. found an increase of over half a standard deviation in loneliness between 1976 and 2019 using data from the UCLA Loneliness Scale. Loneliness is an issue that is much more complex to solve than one may initially believe. Intuitively, the solution to loneliness is social contact, but in a 2023 study by Stavrova and Ren, the researchers found across three datasets that the negative association between loneliness and well-being is actually stronger among participants who were with others rather than by themselves. In other words, among participants who considered themselves lonely, the ones who had measurable contact with others actually reported worse well-being than those who were alone. Other trends seem to be more recent and mainly affect younger American adults. For instance, another 2019 study by Twenge et al. found a sharp increase in psychological distress, major depression, and suicidal thoughts, plans, and attempts from the mid-2000s to 2017 among young American
adults below the age of 26, while the increases were either smaller or nonexistent for older Americans. None of these reported metrics bode well for the formation of solid, lasting relationships, both now and in the future.
Another issue that is worth considering is “body count,” that is, the amount of sexual partners one has had over time. While there are conflicting findings on whether or not this number has an effect on divorce or marital happiness, one common finding has always been that men and women with no previous sexual partners are generally the most satisfied in their marriages and have the lowest rates of divorce. Thus, the increase in premarital sex over the past five decades correlates with overall weaker relationships. Whether there’s a cause-and-effect relationship going on is unclear, but at the same time, it also doesn’t matter as much as one would think. If causality was involved, it means the culture has changed to become unfavorable towards pair-bonding, and if it hasn’t, it would suggest that the people themselves have changed over the last several decades in ways that hamper their ability to form lasting relationships. Regardless of this correlation-causation debate, the phenomenon still exists, and we wouldn’t be any closer towards solving the problems it causes.
sible same-ideology partner. One possibility could be that more people will start marrying from across the political aisle (the technical term for which is “heterogamy”), but this is just wishful thinking. The Atlantic’s analysis also notes that the willingness to marry across the political aisle is falling, and this can also be observed from the sharp decline in heterogamy among the married in more recent times despite an initial spike in the 2010s.
Radicals will blame each other for why this has happened, but the truth is that everyone is at fault. Shifting the blame is completely unproductive to any effort in trying to fix the situation.
Finally, there is growing evidence that among young adults across multiple industrialized countries, the political views of men and women are rapidly diverging.
Recall that one of the areas in which assortative mating is the strongest is with regard to political attitudes. If men and women are becoming increasingly dissimilar ideologically, however, then it would be harder for both sexes to find a partner who shares their beliefs, as a 2023 analysis from The Atlantic shows that near 2020, a startling amount of unmarried respondents have no pos-
It’s not unreasonable to see all of this and feel deeply worried about the future. Maybe it’s true that we are living in “the best time to be alive” in all of human history, this is certainly the case materially speaking, but what about beyond that? It seems that when you take a closer look beyond our material Eden, things are gradually starting to come apart.
Love, insofar as we depict it in arts, films, and literature, is something which is uniquely human. Unfortunately, we have done a rather poor job of supporting it in our time. Rather than helping it grow and bloom like a delicate flower, we’ve instead done more to trample and destroy love to the point where the ideal of it seems like complete fiction. Radicals will blame each other for why this has happened, but the truth is that everyone is at fault. Shifting the blame is completely unproductive to any effort in trying to fix the situation. Men and women are made for each other, not against each other. We are two pillars holding up civilization, and civilization requires both pillars to work together to provide a strong foundation for its continuation. To anyone who is actually in a serious loving relationship, on this Valentine’s Day, open up your heart to the one you love and show that special someone how much he or she means to you. If you are fortunate enough to experience something so sublime as love, you should value it dearly and do everything you can to protect it. After all, it’s becoming increasingly scarce.
