The Plumber’s VOLUME XXXV ISSUe Vi MARCH 2019
The Conspiracy Issue
Faucet
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The Plumber’s Faucet - Vol. XXXV No. VI
CONTRIBUTERS
LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
Editor-In-Chief
Hugo Schutzberg
Here is my conspiracy of how this magazine got started...
Layout Editor
Have you ever noticed that McGill has running water on campus? The toilets flush, the sinks flow, the water fountains babble.
Clementine Morisette
Copy Editors
Meredith Charney Jules
McGill was as dry as a desert years ago. Each time it rained people would leave class and fill their carafes. Each room had a corner for students to relieve themselves during lecture as there were no toilets to flush.
Writers
Lisa Vlasova Denbeigh Whitmarsh Stavroula Pabst Steven Greenwood Finn Boyle Yi Fan Li David Lonstein Hannah Glass Ismail Benchekroun Ryan Litvak Daniel Galef Paul Orasanu
A group of students with a strange desire for sanitation and automatic water fountains banded together and called themselves the Plumbers. Going behind the dean’s back, they implemented a plumbing system by taking the melted ice and snow from the mountain and funneling it towards the school, finally giving McGill running water. There was one special faucet that the Plumber’s created. Located in the McConnell basement, anyone who drank from it would feel a sudden onset of elation, laughter and relief of the troubles that once periled their minds.
Illustrators
While the rest of the students and staff were delighted to not shit in corners anymore, the dean was outraged that McGill students were enjoying themselves drinking from this faucet. The first rule in the McGill code is NO FUN. He expelled the Plumber’s. The dean couldn’t get rid of the plumbing that was installed including the faucet that Disclaimer The Plumber’s Faucet is a Publication of the Engineering brought joy to the students. So, he decided to turn a profit Undergraduate Society of McGill University. The opinions by hosting a makeshift bar every Friday in the same baseexpressed in the Faucet are not necessarily those of the ment by selling this magic elixir. Ké Smith (Cover) Ismail Benchekroun (Meme) Claire Rawson-Dannebaum Denbeigh Whitmarsh
EUS nor of any other university body, unless such opinion appears over an authorized signature of a representative of the said body. The Faucet does not print works which are sexist, libelous, racist, homophobic, or violating the copyright laws of Canada. It should be noted that some content is meant to be satirical or humourous in nature. For general enquiries, contact faucet@mcgilleus.ca.
Complaints
As for the Plumber’s they went their separate ways. However, each month they would mail the dean a collection of letters, articles, and cartoons that expressed their hatred towards him and his silly love for blues music. Eventually the dean died but the students thought the letters were pleasant pieces of comedy that made them chuckle at most. They decided to publish them as an on-campus magazine becoming what is known today as the Plumber’s Faucet.
The EUS takes complaints very seriously. All complaints should begin with the heading “Official Your editor, Protest to Content in The Plumber’s Faucet”, and should be sent to Hugo Schutzberg vpcomm@mcgilleus.ca, publications.director@mcgilleus.ca, and faucet@mcgilleus.ca.
The Plumber’s Faucet vol. XXXV no. VI March, 2019
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March 2019
The Mystery of the Missing Penis
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A long time ago (to the very day), a priceless artifact was stolen from the Redpath Museum...
by Daniel Galef That last case fell into my lap like a bowlful of hot soup placed too close to the edge of the table. Actually, no, not hot soup. No siree, this was a vichyssoise, or perhaps a nice spicy gazpacho. That’s right, a cold soup. Because this case was cold. Very cold. But somehow, when George waltzed into my office wearing nothing more than a fur coat and a look of desperation, I knew that things were about to heat up.
The Victim: George
If you’ve been to the Redpath Museum of Natural History, then you’ve met George. That said, in case you need a little memory jogging to pick him out from the other curators and volunteers: George stands 1.68 metres tall and weighs 450 pounds. He is probably the museum’s most famous denizen, and he has been profiled in the McGill Daily, the Montreal Star, and the Montreal Herald. He went to Harvard. Like many of us who thought we would only stick around three years, George has been here since 1940, and has no plans to leave anytime soon. George perches on a ledge above the stairwell, menacing visitors with bared fangs. George is dead. George is a silverback gorilla, given to the museum by Duncan M. Hodgson, who led the McGill Congo Expedition in 1938. A stuffed African gorilla with murder in its eyes probably isn’t the best way to educate the tots about endangered species, but the exhibit is par for the course for the kind of Victorian natural history museum of which the Redpath is one of the last remaining models. George’s is a powerful and threatening presence, and if you look over your shoulder while perusing the mineralogy exhibit to discover his fierce visage aimed at your jugular, you may be excused for assuming that George represents the pinnacle of vitality and virility. In fact, he is somewhat incomplete; this is the result of a daring heist, shrouded in mystery, that lives on in whispered legend among the staff and volunteers of the Redpath Museum.
The scene of the crime.
George circa 1940, with his pride intact. (Redpath Museum)
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The 1938 Congo Expedition also brought back this cursed hat which makes people sexually attracted to ugly hats (Life Magazine)
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Groundbreaking Theory: Eggs Come From Chickens by Stav I know this may sound ridiculous, and I don’t want to come off as a conspiracy theorist, but I just have too much proof at this point that eggs come from chickens. I realize that I may lose support from family and friends by saying this, but at the end of the day there is no way it is not true. I cannot be silent about my hunches any longer and have subsequently decided to write this article in the quest to prove my case to you non-believers.
Oftentimes eggs and chickens are in the same general area
Look, it’s definitely happened before. I went to my friend’s farmhouse once and there were like two eggs (maybe even three!) near a chicken. Suspicious happenings right there.
There are a high number of both eggs and chickens on planet earth There are lots of eggs on Earth at any given time, probably billions. And there are lots of chickens on planet Earth at any given time, probably billions ….again. You can’t tell me that doesn’t mean something.
I think my high school biology teacher said so once Okay, so this was back in 2011 and I don’t remember it all super well (I didn’t take notes either, but can you even blame me? Who takes notes in high school?), but I’m fairly confident my teacher said something like this once, briefly, in passing. Look, I can’t prove this to be 100 percent true (I guess I could call or email her to confirm she did in fact say so?) so you’ll just have to take my word on this one. And in any case, you wouldn’t dare call my high school teacher a liar. Misguided at times, maybe, but a liar, no.
Where else would chicks come from???? This is kind of a cop-out, but I’d like to hear some explanations from you non-believers as to how chicks and their adult counterparts happen in the first place. After all, there is no way chickens have sex. Chickens instead must just go out there and (and hear me out on this one, I realize this is hard to believe)… lay eggs. And then baby chicks come out of them. I know it’s a hard pill to swallow, but there’s just no other way. As these points illustrate, there simply is no other way that eggs happen. As ridiculous and as preposterous as it sounds, chickens must be behind them. Does this mean that there are chickens plotting something against us with this whole egg thing? Do we have reason to be scared? Maybe. I don’t know. None of us have the answer to that question. Only time will tell, but in the meantime, please spread this ground-breaking news to everyone and their mom.
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A Horrible Truth by David Lonstein
Today is a bleak and dark day, my friends. Well actually, it’s pretty nice out and I’m considering going for a jog later, but figuratively today is a day of despair and disgust. There are a few universal truths that we base our existences around. We use these truths as the driving force in our day-to-day operations. They vary wildly in meaning and purpose, but each one is essential in its own right. They can be something obvious, such as the existence of John Stamos’s immaculate jawline, or a nice surprise, such as the knowledge that The Big Bang Theory is finally dying the death it has deserved for the past eleven seasons. Unfortunately nothing lasts forever, especially universal truths like Newton’s laws of physics, but that’s not the issue at hand here. We’re here to discuss a much darker and sadder realization. One that shook me to my very core and made me question every life decision I have made up until this point. A man loved and respected by all turned out to be a fraud. Beloved gameshow host and TV persona Alex Trebek has confirmed a horrible and, until recently, seemingly malicious rumor today. The thirty-five year Jeopardy veteran has confirmed to all his fans and followers that he is not actually a lizard person. In an interview with Mr. Trebek, if you can even trust that his name isn’t another falsehood, Reptiles Magazine representative Julian Scales asked the following question: “Mr. Trebek, how long does it take for the make-up department to properly cover all your scales and spines?” A simple question that deserves an equally simple answer, but The Deceiver -- his name in my eyes henceforth -- responded with an overtly fake sense of confusion on his face and replied, “I’m not sure what you’re talking about, son.” Always the professional, Mr. Scales restated the question: “As a lizard person it must be difficult to repaint yourself with make-up day after day. About how much time each day does that take?” The Deceiver then took a moment to pause, as if he was savoring the fact he was about to break the hearts of millions of loyal fans, and replied, “Well I’m sorry to inform you that you don’t have all your facts straight. I am not, nor have I ever been, a lizard person.” As a reporter it is my duty to inform you all, despite the amount of pain and suffering it might cause, that that last statement was ended with a chuckle. That’s right, our suffering was emphasized WITH. A. LAUGH. Now my loyal followers, I know many of you are irrevocably broken. You might not be able to love or care about another living soul for the rest of your days. You were horribly betrayed and are feeling the results of that, but I don’t think all is lost. No, despite The Deceiver’s lies and taunts there are still plenty of lizardfolk blessing our communities and ordaining our televisions. There’s Cristiano Ronaldo, Ryan Reynolds, and Deborah at your local coffee shop. They are all scaly compatriots who are here to support weaker fleshy beings like ourselves. So I would like to end this report with one line that will hopefully help all of us who are down in the dumps rise up again and embrace life! Let us shout it from the rooftops and whisper it to our sleeping children: Toss Trebek down a hole! Let Deborah show us our roles!
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Missing Penis cont’d... “Just tell me the facts, ma’am. Who did this?” She took a sip of her martini, the fire in her eyes maybe grief, or maybe something more. “It all happened so fast,” she said. “But you have to believe me! Of course I hated him, but I would never have taken—that!” In 2010, administrator and Science Outreach Coordinator Dr. Ingrid Birker was interviewed for Beyond the Roddick Gates, the house organ of the Redpath Museum. She gave what has become the definitive version of the story: One day, a group of students wearing lab coats came into the museum and claimed to have been sent to collect George on the orders of a professor. They carried him out the front door right under the nose of the museum director, who never suspected a thing and held the door for them as they left. Of course, there was no professor. The heist was a prank, one of the greatest in McGill history , largely because of the many unanswered questions it has left us with. To this day, no suspects have ever been identified. No one knows why George was taken. No one knows what terrible things were done to him during the period of his kidnapping. George’s body was discovered the next morning, propped on the top of the Three Bares Fountain on the Upper Quad—but no one knows what became of the small yet important part of his anatomy that was missing. It has never been recovered. If you thought that this mystery was going to be about something classy, like a lost manuscript or a Fabergé Egg, then you need to take a long, hard look at the publication you’re reading, because that’s not how we do things. Because this long, hard article isn’t about a stolen work of art or the crown jewels—except figuratively. It’s about a gorilla dick.
The Artifact: Codename Smallwood The shelves of the Professor’s dusty study were covered with curiosa and esoterica: strange figurines, fertility idols, grotesque specimens in glass jars. “You see, detective, I am something of a collector—but I acquire my prizes legitimately ... for the most part.” I heard a click, and before I knew it, the giant winged penis in his hand had become a cocked .45. “It is such a shame that you had to be so curious about my specimens, Dick. Because now you will become one of them!” At this point, it may help us to know what we’re actually looking for. Yes, it’s a gorilla penis, the single most crude and sophomoric object imaginable as the topic of a fascinating cold-case heist. But that actually doesn’t answer all the questions it seems to. Have you every heard the expression “hung like a gorilla”? It doesn’t mean what you think it does. It might sound like a missing gorilla penis would be easy enough to recognize. Who wouldn’t remember a behemoth black phallus, taxidermied and covered in hair? The problem is, that isn’t what George’s Johnson really looks like. Unintuitively, most of the big primates aren’t so stunning in the pants department. The largest genital-size-to-body-size-ratio among all the great apes is held by... humans. Other ape species, even the ones that resemble heavy-browed bodybuilders with a testosterone problem, have less of an endowment than a university fine arts fund. Gorillas, in particular, are only about an inch long when fully erect.
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Missing: Have you seen this man? (A. F. Dixson, Primate Sexuality, Oxford University Press)
Detective K. demonstrates the popular misconception of the artifact as part of a criminological exercise. She has been hunting this dick for years.
One concern is the state of the artifact: Fifty years is a long time for organic matter, and just look at what it did to Bob Saget. For every Keith Richards there’s a Sean Connery, who looks exactly the same today as he did in 1995, 1985, or 1885, down to the very last hair. Remember, George isn’t a rotting carcass. He’s a preserved museum piece. You can walk into the foyer of the Redpath Museum today and see him, lifelike as the last duchess. Taxidermy is surprisingly durable, and is essentially a form of mummification. What’s more, George’s Johnson isn’t like yours or mine: Gorillas, like many non-human mammals, possess a bone called the baculum. For raccoons, dogs, and most great apes who don’t drink frappuccinos, their boners actually contain a bone. In a gorilla, the baculum, which is four inches long in adorable little raccoons, is scaled down proportionately. George’s would measure only about half an inch. Finding such a small and inconspicuous piece after decades may sound like looking for a dick in a haystack. But greater breakthroughs have happened at McGill.
The French explorer Paul du Chaillu about to shoot an ancestor of Harambe. No organ is visible, which says a lot.
As in any theft report, the public must be informed of what to look out for, the appearance and measurements of the stolen goods. Davis (1951) describes a specimen of a baculum from a mountain gorilla (Gorilla beringei) as being 11.7 mm in length, 3.5 mm in greatest width, and about 1 mm in “dorso-ventral thickness.” Hill and Matthews in a 1949 article mention a mountain gorilla baculum that is 12.7 mm long. According to the literature (Dechow et al., 2012), gorilla bone density is significantly greater than human bone density, and, multiplying by the higher values reported, the Smallwood Artifact may weigh around 0.11 grams (which, as WolframAlpha helpfully contextualizes, is the equivalent of about 70 mosquitoes).
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Mystery Surrounding Gandhi’s Identity Revealed… and it’s Hilarious by Ismail Benchekroun Gandhi was without a doubt a confusing guy. The former president of the Indian National Congress has sparked tons of controversy since as far back as the 20th century, it seems. Everyone is split up fighting over whether he was Mohandas or Mahatma. Well we can finally chill, everyone; Gandhi was a cyclops. The United College London alum was indeed a huge one-eyed beast. I honestly was flipped too when I found out... but then I wasn’t? I knew it was true when I heard the YouTube clip of him saying the following: “An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind.” Clearly, an eye for an eye would still leave most of the world with the other eye. We may no longer have 20/20 vision after the loss of an eye, but I’m pretty sure 10/20 vision doesn’t mean you’re blind. It is transparent that Gandhi is a cyclops who fails to see that not everybody is like him and some of us aren’t creatures of Greek myth. The response to Gandhi’s revelation was NOT held back. Winner of the Genesis award and host of Ellen: The Ellen DeGeneres Show, Ellen DeGeneres, countered a decennium ago: “Sometimes you can’t see yourself clearly until you see yourself through the eyes of others.” Can you say, “Saaavage!”? She obviously wasn’t having the late lawyer’s false generalization that we are all cyclopes, and quite frankly, we’re not having it either. It’s okay, though. I’m okay…
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Why Sex Did Not Exist Before the Saxophone Solo by Finn Boyle
We’ve all been there before. You’re at a bar, talking to someone who caught your eye. They’re pretty, and you don’t want to make a fool of yourself, so you’re playing it cool. All of a sudden, Gerry Rafferty’s Baker Street starts playing and all you can think of doing is hunkering down and getting busy. But why? Why do saxophone solos make us want to do the dirty so much? Well, listen up, sheeple, because I’m about to make passionate love to your minds. We only want to have sex because of saxophone solos. Without them, sex would not exist. Now, I’m not just saying we wouldn’t be having sex without saxophone solos – I’m saying sex as a form of reproduction wouldn’t even exist without them. Think about it, what proof is there that sex existed before the saxophone solo? Where’s the video evidence? Where’s the audio recordings? “Oh yeah, but, but, there are carvings and books about sex? What about that, huh?” Simpleton. You think my glorious mind hasn’t considered that? You pathetic fools. Anything that could be interpreted as sexual in the past previously wasn’t, but was retconned as part of the conspiracy. The Kama Sutra? Just an exercise book. Adam and Eve getting it on in the Garden of Eden? Not without Careless Whisper they weren’t. “B-but, but, but, what about the dinosaurs, huh? You’re saying they didn’t have sex? They didn’t reproduce then? Huh?” You little cretins, dormant to the way the world actually works. Sex isn’t the only way to reproduce. Most life on earth still reproduces asexually, and that’s how all lifeforms reproduced before the saxophone solos. Time for you shills to wake up and shut up. You morons not convinced yet? Well what about this? Adolphe Sax, the creator of the saxophone, survived over seven near-death experiences before he invented the saxophone at 32. Someone knew what he was doing, and was trying to keep it down. They knew that if the saxophone was created, then the saxophone solo – and thus, fucking – would soon follow. “But who is they?” You might ask. And a good question too, for once. The answer is; I don’t know. That’s part of the conspiracy too. But there are several culprits: Big Piano, the Illuminaughty, the Babysitters Club. One stands out above all though – the King of Denmark1. Mischievous little shit. Dude has got to go. There, that enough cold, hard, facts and logic for you? I’m sorry you pathetic dweebs aren’t blessed with the great intellect of I, but perhaps I might help you someday. 1
I have a personal vendetta against the King of Denmark. He knows why.
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Fat Squirrels: It’s Not Because Tourists by LISA VLASOVA Give Them Peanuts… Our investigative team of one1 is still reeling from a discovery that blows all of your reasonable guesses about the McGill squirrel obesity epidemic to smithereens. Contrary to popular belief, neither tourists’ peanut-smuggling practices nor weather-driven fluctuations in feeding patterns are to blame for the dramatic rise in the prevalence of overweight squirrels on campus! The Faucet has exclusive info on the true culprits: a group of BCom students trying to get a pet squirrel startup off the ground in time for their Dobson Cup pitch. “We’re hoping fat squirrels will be the next big thing,” confided ringleader Erin, a Desautels U3 Honours student, “given the general soft spot for chunky cats and even stocky dog breeds like pugs.” When asked how her team was planning to address provincial and federal laws about wild animals as domestic pets, she informed us that “thicc racoon memes have been blurring the boundary between disease vectors and lovable pets in the eyes of the public since 2004 anyway. Also, we’ve hustled a law school grad onto our side.” At this time both the squirrels and Finn Jacobs, BCL/LLB, very charming and competent and looking for a job right now, not that he wants to seem desperate, are being kept on a diet of that third samosa you were too full to eat. 1
Where were you when I needed help monitoring the squirrels at the Y intersection, Tina?
Guys That Didn’t Make the Cut by Claire Rawson-Dannebaum Try Again Next Year
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March 2019
Op-ed: Pigeons Have been Spying on us for Decades by Hannah Glass It has come to be public knowledge that the government, Russia, and the ghost of Steve Jobs (RIP) are constantly spying on us through our phones and computers. They hear and see everything. All of our darkest secrets are at their fingertips (unless you click “private browser,” then you’re definitely all good, don’t worry). It is easy to bemoan this situation, but the truth is, the government, Russia, and alive Steve Jobs had been spying on us long before the widespread use of phones and laptops. They did it in plain sight. Right under our noses. They did it with the mightiest weapon they could find: pigeons. This is not a conspiracy theory because it is the truth and I will hereby explain the historical evidence. The introduction of pigeons into our society coincided with the beginning of the Great Depression in 1929. Civilians were preoccupied with being greatly depressed, so no one seemed to notice when a few pigeons appeared on the sidewalk, in shady alleys, and on the windowsills of mafia members and people who talk about communism. As the pigeon population began to grow, people developed a sense of disgust surrounding the creatures and thus did not take notice of their robotic nature and the cameras and microphones lodged in their eyes. It should also be noted that pigeon populations are larger in big cities. Big cities = bigger crime rates. Bigger crime rates = more need for surveillance via pigeons. Not convinced yet? Answer me this: have you ever seen a baby pigeon? That’s what I thought. I know what you are all thinking. What about roadkill? I, too, am frequently thinking about roadkill, so I am glad we are on the same page. More specifically, if you are asking “How is a dead pigeon festering on the side of the road if pigeons aren’t real?” Well, let me ask you something. Do you think the government, Russia, and Steve Jobs (alive and ghost version) are stupid? No! They’re the best in the goddamn business! Dead pigeons come from a highly revered matrimonial breed of birds known as doves. They are kidnapped and dyed black and grey in order to keep up the illusion that pigeons are real. And people keep falling for it. But no longer! Now that you have all the REAL facts, I hope you will join me in spreading the word and put an end to the reign of the government, Russia, and the ghost of Steve Jobs (RIP) once and for all. If you want to join the resistance first: throw away your Apple products and buy an Android (cuz they’re like way better than Apple. Stop saying I’m just insecure, like they’re really better. No I swear, they have so many cool features, like they can take pictures now and also other stuff...) Next, join our community in the middle of the jungle where no pigeons are found. You’ve been warned.
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Épigiraphes by Denbeigh WHitmarsh (n) épi (from Greek: “on top of”) + giraphe (polka dotted long necked horse) There’s so much knowledge in books these days, but it’s just so marginalized and hard to get at. Ever since the Academia Police entered into an agreement with Melvin from Madagascar, Now, every time some humble civilian wants to look up something in the encyclopedia, Before they can even open the book, They have to move the giraphe. If I didn’t have those damn long-necked polka dot horses on top of my dictionary, maybe I would know if I’m spelling giraphe good. Maybe I’d have been able to understand that science report on flux capacitors. Maybe I’d have finally understood where Atlantis is, and who made the Cahokia mounds. Maybe I’d have gotten a gooder job, if I’d known how to read and right real purdy, Like those lucky giraphe keepers at the zoo Who have the giraphe nuggets to luer those polka horses off the books So they can read them. I wish I had giraphe nuggets. Épigiraphes. It’s not a conspiracy theory. Get the épigiraphe off my edumacation already.
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Missing Penis cont’d The Pattern I took a long drag and stamped out my cigarette on the scratched-over page of my notepad. Another dead end! If I was ever going to recover the Smallwood Artifact, I was going to have to wise up and start asking the right questions. I had gotten so caught up in “How” and “Who” I had forgotten the most important one of all: “Wait, a penis? Seriously? Like, an actual, literal penis?”
In the name of science and comedy, investigation must continue. The proper criminological question, of course, is not “Who seems the most suspicious” but rather “Have there been any similar crimes?” This is for the best, otherwise the prime person of interest in every case would be my freshman roommate, Ian. Sketchy guy, is all I’m saying. Anyway, establishing a solid modus operandi is the best tool for catching a crook, and just because this crime is about as weird as it gets, it’s no exception. It hardly seems likely that we’d find more than one crime in a lifetime that fits the bizarre facts of the case of George’s dick: “Mysterious and never-apprehended students purloining a taxidermied animal body part.” Crime of the century! Except that there have been similar crimes. The same peculiar pattern pops up again and again.
Dwight D. Davis. “The Baculum of the Gorilla.” Fieldiana: Zoology Volume 31, No. 54 (1951): pp. 645–647.
Unfortunately, due to the reward offered, eye witnesses refused to come forward.
On January 31, 1975, the stuffed head of Ralph the Moose, the mascot of the McGill Debating Union, was stolen from their club offices following the exact same modus operandi as in the theft of George. The Union took out a classified ad in the McGill Daily pleading for his safe return, but, unlike George, his body was never found. Over the years, case after case has shown the same hallmarks: Disappearing mascots, specimens, and university memorabilia. Generally the quarry is never recovered, or is recovered in a damaged state. But only George has been returned with a missing piece. And only George stands a chance of being reunited with a part of him so cruelly taken away. It’s time to round up the suspects.
An posthumous rendering of Ralph in a Daily from 1980.
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14 The Plumber’s Faucet - Vol. XXXV No. VI The Suspects I knew I was getting close. I was so close, I could almost taste it. But before I could finger a perp, I had to find out who had the sticky fingers. The only way to go was to take the dirtiest bastards I could find, line them up, and go through them one by one.
A Secret Society I needed to dig up more information on McGill’s checkered past. Like all the best movie detectives, I threw myself into long hours of thankless research. But unlike a movie detective, I couldn’t put on a bouncy pop song and get through with it in a few seconds of montage. Since 2014, the McGill Library has been archiving and digitizing over a century of McGill campus publications. So I read them all. I spent long nights smoking in seedy library carrels and roughing up bookkeepers for dirt on adjuncts’ illicit gambling habits. I went digging through hundreds of yellowed pages of old McGill yearbooks, and what did I find? Elected officials wearing blackface. Hundreds of them—governors, mayors, judges, dog-catchers—every conceivable politician from every corner of the ideological spectrum—all slathered generously in makeup darker than America’s past. For some of them, it was plainly a malicious racism. For others, you might almost think that it was a deeply, deeply misguided joke. At least one of them I’m pretty sure just didn’t get that there was anything wrong with it at all. I still don’t get how that works. In wading through the stacks, and I mean just full-on stacks of incriminating photographs of powerful men and women who absolutely should have known better, I almost forgot why I was really here. But that wasn’t the case I was trying to crack. I was looking for a clandestine organization that might pilfer a primate (or a part of one), and, soon enough, I found exactly what I was looking for. For more than a hundred years, McGill has been plagued by rumours of secret societies, shadowy student organizations dedicated to causing mayhem across campus. Some are well-attested, while others are merely myths. The Key and Castle set as its mission the poisoning of the hearts and minds of McGillians everywhere. The Ordo Fabrorum Plumborum is content to poison their own minds and call it a day. The Renard Noir mostly spend their time drinking absinthe and spray painting the more slow-moving of professors, but there are more sinister forces at play. The library archives go back over a century, to the earliest student journals. And this conspiracy went right back to the beginning. The first record I found of secret societies at McGill came in the very oldest McGill publication on the books: The McGill University Gazette from January 1, 1874. On the front page of the yellowing broadsheet is an ominous hint at the beginnings of what would, over the decades to come, turn into a vastly powerful deep-state of student life: “We understand that a secret society, similar to those in other American colleges, is now being formed in our midst.” The report ends there, presumably as the typesetter was gruesomely murdered by agents of the Society. That very first newspaper is full of tantalizing details and potentially coded messages, many of which may pertain to this case. Directly underneath the report about the secret society is the obituary of one Professor Charles Smallwood, M.D., LL.D. Could this be a sign? Undoubtedly. Only a few pages following Smallwood’s obituary, however, is an even more shocking revelation, one which threatened to blow this whole case wide open. The article “My Last Experience Resurrectioning” is a scandalous memoir, a true account of the perverse and unholy things some McGill students used to get up to in the long winter nights. In it, a guilt-stricken medical student recounts being sent out to dig up fresh corpses for dissection, and even quotes a ghoulish song about the “subjects” that was in common circulation in the days when such crimes were common: “Nobody knows from where they come, but there they always are.”
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The Medicos I studied the cryptic note one last time: “Midnight, in the old medical building. If you’re looking for something hot, you’ll come. Wear that little red number.” Doctor Steinmetz’s office was darkened, and the door swung open at a touch. Something was wrong. Whatever secrets the good Doctor had planned to tell me he had taken to the grave, as he lay slumped over a microscope with a Congolese gorilla harpoon embedded in his back. I heard footsteps behind me and reached for my revolver, but it was missing. I cursed. The little red number had no pockets! The account of George’s theft in Ditkowsky (2012) as well as in most of the other oral sources all seem to imply that the pranksters were either medical students or posing as medical students. If you doubt that such a lowdown trick would be pulled by a faculty with so much dignity and professionalism, then a brief history lesson is in It can’t be an affront to God if there’s a jangly order. song about it. In years past, the medical school was a neverending bacchanal of drunken partying and casual destruction of public property. John Irwin Cooper, a McGill Professor of the 1940s, sums up the faculty thusly: “The ‘meds’ were a strange and virile race, who, in popular opinion, divided their time between body snatching and fighting the police.” (Luce, 2011). In particular, the Medicos had a long record of stealing dead bodies to be torn apart in the classroom—often a lot worse than just a stuffed gorilla. Following on the infamous “Anatomical Murders” across the pond, shortage of medical cadavers led to decades of shady dealings that became so ingrained into McGill academic culture that it became the subject of stories and songs for decades after the practice was (publicly) ended—ended because of the national outrage caused when, following an epidemic of typhus, a pair of McGill medicos dug up and stole the bodies of several Grey Nuns from the convent near the college. Could a man who would steal a nun steal a gorilla’s penis? Could he download a car? The coats, the corpses—everything seemed to be pointing to the medical school. Would we find George’s dismembered member in some neglected drawer of the Anatomy Building? Then I remembered every single thing about engineers and everything suddenly shifted into perspective.
The Plumbers I’d cracked a few cases before, but this mystery I was about to blow wide open. I had experience with a nice crack, but wide open blowing was totally new to me. Damn. Looking for clues would be so much easier if there wasn’t so much fog everywhere and everything wasn’t in black and white.
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Body-snatchers in the dead of night. Was this George’s fate?
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Medical students aren’t the only campus troublemakers who wear white lab coats. This very faculty has a long history of pranks and heists, including stealing all the toilet flush mechanisms from Concordia’s George Hall and replacing the flag on top of the Arts Building with a Jolly Roger. The dear, departed Plumber’s Pot Magazine was banned in 1989 after McGill engineering students removed the seats from every chair in Leacock 132. The final piece of the puzzle came when I found this article in the 1975 volume of the Old McGill yearbook. In “Engineering Week ‘75,” an old Plumbers’ tradition is described known as The Rip-off Contest, where teams of engineers were tasked with pulling off the most impressive and the most daring heists. For just a taste of the sort of things that were considered good targets: “The Rip-off Contest was difficult to judge. Among the entries were the juke-box from Gertrude’s (plus license plates from a station 10 cop car), Loyola’s campus sign, a jeep from the Physical Plant, Snookum’s costume, a stuffed gorilla from the Redpath Museum, and the Shitmobile, appropriated from Sir George’s engineers.”
Swag from the Rip-Off Contest, 1975 (Old McGill)
There can be no mistake. This is an account of the same incident from a different perspective. The ‘75 yearbook provides illuminating context, but makes no mention of the Smallwood Artifact itself, probably because vandalizing the Rip-off Contest entries before returning them violated the Contest rules. “Students in lab coats” easily fits the Plumbers as well as or better than the meds, and it would perfectly answer the difficult questions in Ditkowsky’s narrative about how the massive beast was hoisted up onto the Three Bares Fountain: After all, who else on campus could possibly pull that off, and who would know more about levers and pulley systems? Clearly the engineers are not only the best matching the description, but also the best qualified to pull off the stunt. Even the timing works out perfectly: The Engineering Week article places George’s abducBut surely no one could claim that engineers have tion in the same year and the very same month as the disappearance an unhealthy phallic obsession... of Ralph the Moose. Ralph may well have been another victim of the same Rip-off Contest. Only one issue arises from making this connection. The legend as told by Redpath Museum curators tends to place the theft in the ‘50s or ‘60s, but the Rip-off Contest first started in 1973 (Kratsios, 2015). However, I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to suggest that the story, like many urban legends, got pushed further back into the past through multiple tellings. This is the end of Part One. Hugo only let me write an article this long because I promised that I’d keep working the case, keep asking the hard questions like a good private dick ought to do, keep my ear to the ground and my back arched and never give up until I’m holding the Artifact in my hand. So if the next installment of this thrilling caper doesn’t come out in the next drugstore issue of the Astounding Faucet, then that could only mean that They got to me and it’s too late. But meanwhile, now that we’ve determined who took the Smallwood Artifact, how, and when, we can get started tracking it down. As a certain professor once said: “It belongs in a museum.”
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Don’t worry, buddy. We’ll find it
March 2019
How Astrology Changed my Life by David “l. Ron” Lonstein Now I just recently got into astrology after my Wiccan ex-girlfriend told me to look to the stars for the answers to my problems. I didn’t know what the stars could teach me about tax fraud, but Allison, or as she now refers to herself Moonsprite, was pretty insistent upon it. I took my first step into the world of astrology like many before me: skeptical, confused, and hoping I didn’t end up being the one that looked like two dancing sperms (Alli-I mean Moonsprite just told me that one is Cancer). And by the grace of god, Thor, or whatever deity you believe shaped the stars I was blessed with the best astrologic sign: Aquarius. Despite it looking like an alcoholic’s signature, being an Aquarius is an amazing thing. Sure you were born in the middle of the winter and before the invention of the radiator would have had 50% chance of survival as a baby. And yes, you might have been conceived as a byproduct of you mom’s week long spring break sextravaganza, but don’t worry about it! There is one fact that makes up for all the depressing realizations that surround the circumstances of your birth: Astrology signs don’t matter! The truth is that the arrangement of these random constellations won’t determine your personality, and that’s ok! That just means you can pretend to believe them and use it to your advantage. Imagine a world where all personal responsibility can be tossed aside, all your mistakes aren’t your fault, and if someone doesn’t like you it’s because it was determined billions of years ago. That world is real and if you embrace sciento-I mean astrology that world could be now. Your older brother just got promoted and you’re still working a day job waiting for your acting career to take off? Tell everyone it’s because he’s such a Leo and they always look like they’re succeeding. Had several bad dates in a row? Blame it on the fact that Venus is in remission. I have no idea what anything I just said meant but that doesn’t stop it from working. Since my discovery and use of astrology all of my problems have been tossed aside and I have become a better person. People think I’m spiritually connected and come to me for advice in every aspect of their lives. I have more friends than ever because I tell them exactly what they what they want to hear! And if anyone ever calls me out I just call them an Aries or something like that and everyone takes my side. Basically if you want to be a manipulative unaccountable person like me that everyone has no choice but to like, then astrology is for you! Now if you’ll excuse me I need to go to my tarot card reading.
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10 Untold Truths about McGill University by Steve Greenwood 1
2
Suzanne Fortier is actually just 5 owls in a trench coat.
McGill was originally the first Auntie Anne’s Pretzels location in Canada until Pierre Elliot Trudeau decided that a university would serve the community better. This allowed for Mr. Pretzels to develop the substantial foothold it now has in downtown Montreal.
3 The sacred rule of “1 for $1 and 3 for $2” was actually inscribed by James McGill himself on a golden tablet just hours after he played the first ever game of basketball. The original tablet has never been found.
4
5 The reason why McGill repeatedly fails to provide adequate healthcare and mental health services to their students is because the buildings on campus are actually powered by the stress and misery of the students. If the students were to start being healthy the school would have to switch over to hydroelectric power and pay electricity bills.
People have had trouble deciding whether it’s racism or sexism that’s preventing McGill from changing the men’s varsity teams’ racist mascot and just giving them the same, non-racist mascot as the women’s teams (and literally everything else at the school that’s not men’s athletics). While the obvious truth is that it’s a combination of racism and sexism, the untold truth is that the university is also hesitant because the 5 owls that make up Suzanne Fortier have turned the Redmen mascot into a horcrux and will no longer be immortal if we destroy it.
6 While the Tribune may see McGill as a “comedy desert,” there are actually magical and hydrating comedy faucets around campus if you know where to look.
7 If you stare long enough at the Arts Building, you will begin to glimpse eternity.
9
8
The reason why McGill students continue to refer to the Milton-Parc area as the “McGill Ghetto” even though it already has an established and non-offensive name (Milton-Parc) is because an ancient curse exists that prevents students living in the area from fully developing perspective and empathy. This curse is at its strongest on the nights of Science Games, Carnival, and Hype.
You’d think that New Residence was named that because it was newer than the other residences. The truth, however, is that New is the name of the ancient demon that was summoned to spawn the residence building from the eternal void that had once occupied the site, and it is now named after them in memory and fear.
10 Despite all of the curses and dark magic worked behind the scenes at McGill, the owners of McGill Pizza, Panizza, and Chef on Call banded together to create a beacon of hope and light to help guide young students to safety.
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Small Funny Text by Yi Fan Li After a few conversations with international students from China, it has recently dawned upon me that many among us have never even seen a speck of snow, far less found ourselves knee deep in it for months at a time. For this reason, I have compiled a short guide for our international friends, so that they know the dos and the don’ts of the Canadian winter. (Besides, I think we need the revision too, we can’t be expected to remember all of this after a long sunny summer vacation)
Do have a good pair of winter boots, as to not suddenly kiss the ground too suddenly. Don’t shove snow down the back of your fellow friend, no matter how hilarious it might be. Do wear two layers of pants, one is simply not enough. Don’t wear two layers of shorts, I meant full length pants that can cover you to your ankles, unless you enjoy the grip of a white-walker upon your legs.
Do help your fellow man, if he suddenly finds himself flat on the ground. I can assure you, he didn’t do it on purpose he doesn’t really want to be there.
Don’t laugh out loud at the misfortune of your fellow man on the ground, be a good Samaritan and keep that a quiet chuckle while helping him.
Do
use every source of heating you can, go through buildings when possible. Try to imitate a cat and seek out those warm things.
Don’t
have a snowball fight while in said warm buildings, snow melts and you may find yourselves in an unexpected shower and trust me, wet coats are the worst.
Do
go sliding/skiing/snowboarding at least once, you have not truly lived the Canadian experience until you do.
Don’t
try to slide down from Trottier, when I said go sliding, I don’t mean in the campus (though I would be very jealous if you did, it would be so much faster than walking) Of course, only knowing the do and the do not is not enough to truly survive the Montreal winter. As such, here is a detailed guide of the defining feature of winter: snow.
White Snow
Brown Snow
Yellow snow
This is the state of the snow as it comes down from heaven. White, like the color of a Lovecraftian vampire’s skin. It is also the safest kind of snow: like vanilla ice-cream, picking white snow can never go wrong.
As much as this snow looks like chocolate, don’t try to eat it. The snow is mixed with mud, and tastes very much like cold frozen mud… or so I’ve been told. This snow tends to fall on the roads and the sidewalks.
The first time you look at this snow, you may find it exotic, and a break from the bland hell of white that swirls around you. It is exotic for a reason, as it is most likely yellow due to dog piss, or perhaps the piss of a very desperate individual.
Blue Snow
This is perhaps one of the rarest states of snow. So rare that debates still rage on whether this type of snow truly exists. Its rarity has led to its customary use in prayers to father winter for a mild winter (or a harsher one, if you want to be an absolute bastard). If no blue snow can be found, and you have an urgent prayer for father winter, I have found that the standard windshield washer makes a nice blue snow for all of your prayer needs, though father winter might consider it cheating.
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Saturday, March 16th and Thursday, April 4th
Stand FREE Up COMEDY Comedy SHOW
THursdays Bi-Weekly Printed at CopiEUS
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Join Queer Engineer!
Queer Engineer is an EUS Club that works towards promoting awareness and providing a safe and welcoming environment for all members of the LGBTQ+ community in engineering. We organize multiple events throughout the year such as meet and greets, activities and outings, networking events, and study parties. All are welcome to participate, and we greatly encourage anyone who is interested in having a great time to come on by this coming year. It’s a great way to make new friends and learn more about LGBTQ+ culture. For more info, please check out our Facebook page or email us at
queer.engineer@mcgilleus.ca.
Join McGill Improv!
McGill Improv hosts weekly workshops on Saturdays! 1pm-3pm normally in the McConnell Engineering Basement. No prior experience is required and all levels are welcomed! We do both short and long format improv! Check our facebook out at McGill Improv and come to our performances this term! for more info email us at mcgillimprov@gmail.com
WRITE FOR THE FAUCET!! PLEASE READ THIS!!!! We need writers, illustrators, editors, all the help we can get! You should join us here at The Plumber’s Faucet! It’s super low commitment, develops your comedic skills, gets you published in a humour magazine, and is a great way to get new friends and slip into the McGill comedy world. We literally consider ANY mildly humorous submission, beginner or no. We publish our magazine’s once a month! For submissions and questions on how to be more involved, email us:
faucet@mcgilleus.ca
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Reddit, Tumblr, You and Pee a Poem by Ismail Benchekroun
Reddit, Tumblr, Facebook, Me; Ain’t no time to even pee. Snapchat, Twitter, Insta, You; Ain’t no time to even poo.
If success is a jump away, And white men cannot jump, Then why all these damn occasions Of rich male Caucasians?
There’s a word for ‘word’,
And why is it that the people Who like to always have the last word Are the very same people Who never reply to my messages?
When will we realize that we’re blind To hidden truths that’d leave us shook? Why is everything you find Found in the last place you look? Why not the second last? But not a sentence for ‘sentence’. Someone said ‘Subtitles’ is a bad name for what they are. But wouldn’t that mean that it’s “title” is “sub”par? Or fourth? Like why?
Huh?? It’s because I’m annoying, isn’t it? Or maybe it’s something else. Reddit, Tumblr, Facebook, You; Why do we not want to poo? Snapchat, Twitter, Insta, Me; Maybe we just don’t like to pee.
What REALLY Happened to the Mars Rover?
by Paul Orasanu
It was a sad day when the beloved Mars Exploration Rover MER-B, more commonly known as Opportunity, sent its heartbreaking final words to the world: “My battery is low and it’s getting dark.” Officially, the rover simply ran out of power and a dust storm prevented it from using its solar panels to recharge. But what if there’s something NASA isn’t telling us? I spoke to my insider source, who leaked me some scandalous information exposing what REALLY went down on the red planet. Two hours before the storm hit, the rover came across what seemed like footprints in the Martian ground. Seeing as no human has ever set foot on the planet as far as NASA knew, this discovery could be groundbreaking. The rover followed the tracks for a while, before finally encountering a cavern along the side of a canyon. At this point, the image feed started to get distorted as the storm continued to approach, interfering with the signal. The next still sent by Opportunity seemed to be of an individual in a SpaceX Mars suit, with what can be made out as “#internlyfe” written along the sleeve. As the presumed SpaceX intern makes their way toward the rover, they pulled out a vape pen and a charging cable and, soon after, the signal was lost. According to my source, the rover’s battery was depleted entirely in the following few minutes, leading NASA to conclude that the unidentified intern indeed killed Opportunity by using its battery to charge his Juul. Their PR team made huge efforts to cover up the embarrassing truth, but there it is. We’ve reached out to SpaceX for a statement on the matter, and here’s what Elon Musk had to say: “I don’t remember sending anyone up there, but we actually have been wondering where our intern Craig went, so maybe you’re onto something.” Next Page
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So does SpaceX send their interns to mars on purpose? Was the mysterious vaper really “Craig”, or was it a shapeshifting Martian trying to stop us from uncovering their plans to conquer Earth? Did Opportunity even exist in the first place or was it just an elaborate ruse to make us all think that Mars is real? Do I even have an insider source working at NASA? Who has the answers? My job is to bring you folks the questions, but the truth is out there for you to find.
Edward Snowden: “I lied, no one is spying on you. Can’t believed you all believed that shit. Lol.”
by Ryan Litvak
Last week Edward Snowden took to Twitter with a string of strange tweets concerning topics including national security and his own financial troubles.
String Cheese… What is it? by SnackKid As I stood to order a sandwich at the deli the sandwich man asked a simple question. “What cheese would you like on your sandwich?” I responded “String cheese please” A silence absorbed the crowded shop. The man behind the counter attempted to decipher what exactly I had just said. He never heard such words exit from the mouth of a sandwich orderer. Not wanting to use up the last bit of patience the sandwich artist gave up and eventually asked me to leave. Wondering if I had said something wrong, I walked out with the cold winter wind hitting my face. Why could I not be understood? Was string cheese something else entirely? My entire life I understood it as an item which frequented my lunch bags that filled me with a joyous time of pulling apart the snack to be eaten in string like form. Was it something more? I decided to find out more about the product by taking a trip to Wisconsin to visit Baker Cheese, the company that invented this delicacy, I left with more questions than answers. I prayed to our lord and saviour Cheezus...I mean Jesus (sorry mom), to no avail. The stress of this path to string cheese discovery forced me to drop out of McGill. A University education was not guiding me along the correct path… or should I say string (I’m sorry mom). My parents put me up for adoption, my landlord kicked me out, and my girlfriend left me for Petey Parmigiano. I was just a Kraft single left in the breeze (sorry mom). My life was unraveling until one day I was hanging around a dumpster, that is definitely not my house, and noticed the packaging of a string cheese. After kissing and licking all of the goodness out it I began to read the words that were printed on it. I had never read the wrapper of my favorite snack. The answer had been mozzarella this entire time.
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Help Wanted Fossil Digger Seeking a fellow intellectual willing to help bury bones to spread belief and evidence of Evolution. Will be paid in reference letters. If interested please call Dr. Charles Forge at 555-212-1809.
Classifieds
by David “For Hire” Lonstein
birthday there’s no need to put a hit out on me. You can reach me at EverydayDad@Suburbia.com
Community
give you my fancy space helmet and you stand on stage for like an hour or Canine Support Group whatever. If you’re down to clown call Are you having trouble wagging your tail? Has no one called you a my agent Paul at 555-420-8008 good boy in a while? Don’t remember the last time you received a treat? Well if you want to bark and Ancient Sumerian Dagger Scarecrow growl about it, there’s a lot like you I found this really old and creepy Seeking a body to replace the who are going through the same dagger in my attic last week and it’s scarecrow in my field. Last one starting to get to me. I’ve been having thing. The Montreal Mutt Associended up rotting due to exposure nightmares, hearing chanting through ation meets for bones and balls in and time. Height Requirement of my walls, and oil comes out of my front of Place Des Arts Metro Sta6 ft. or taller. Paid in a feeling of shower. Please just show up and take tion every Thursday at 3am. Feel fulfillment. If interested drive out it. My address is Peta Babkama Luruba free to stop on by! to any random field by yourself Anaku and honk 3 times then open your Cult Day door. It’s that time of year folks. It’s Bitcoin Montreal’s annual cult day celeTrying to sell a large amount of bitFilm Editor bration. Next Saturday at Parc La coins. I recently got messaged by a We are looking for someone expe- contact in the UN telling me that the Fontaine all your favorite robed figrienced in video and photo editing whole bitcoin infrastructure is going to ures come out of the shadows and software such as Vegas, Final Cut, crash. Trying to get out while I still can. show us all what they’re all about. or Adobe Photoshop, and a willThere’s old favorites such as the Email at BitBite@gmail.com ingness to lie to the entire planet Freemasons who helped build this about a possible Mars landing. If glorious city, and newcomers like interested, please contact your the Children of the Childless who local government official. Actual UFO despite their confusing name have I have spent five decades of my life col- some great plans for our beautiful lecting different extraterrestrial mem- city! So I hope to see you all there Language Tutor orabilia. I have photos of abductions, and remember: Don’t Drink the Require human teacher for language such as Inglesh English, or remnants of a crop circle creator, and Punch! Haha! Pigeon French to instruct power- even a nail from a Grey. What I need ful great nice mole men so we may now to complete my collection is an conquer destroy begin trade with actual UFO. I know one of you have filthy surface dwellers humans. If one or can help me find one. If you worthy interested please email us have any information you can reach me at alienhunter@aol.com at killallhumans@yahoo.com
For Sale
Looking to Buy
Body Double Hey dudes. Looking for a pal to take my place at the Electric Dungeon festival next week. Honestly not feeling this one. Job’s real easy just show up and we’ll
Top Secret Carbon Converter Looking to buy a highly classified and newly designed carbon converter that can be used to destabilize the fuel economies that oil companies prosper from. Don’t worry it’s for my son’s 8th
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GO MAKE LOVE TO YOURSELF