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Prophecies from writers past for a new age of Plague
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Vol. C, no. 19 • April 27th, 2020
Plumber’s Masthead Editor-in-Chief David Bailey Writers William Farrell Daniel Keresteci Daniel Galef David Bailey Brigid Cami Morgan Mattone Daniel Dicaire Liam Duff-Meadwell Luis Pombo Illustrators Celestine Hong (cover) David Bailey** Morgan Mattone **if you can seriously call David’s drawings “illustrations”
Disclaimer
The Plumber’s Faucet is a Publication of the Engineering Undergraduate Society of McGill University. The opinions expressed in the Faucet are not necessarily those of the 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 facuet@mcgilleus.ca
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the plumber’s FAUCET vol. C no. 19 April, 2020 ISSN (print): 1707-7478 ISSN (online): 2291-3513
Letter from the Editor August 27th, 2010 It is 4:30 am, and I wake to the smell of stale beer. It wafts from my clothing, which clings in tatters to my battered body sprawled across my bed in New Rez. Sharpie ‘d names and profanities lace along my arms and my shock-green shirt, surrounding the Bandit-O-Week logo. I have had a vision. Sometime between my sodden return from Olympic Stadium and now, I was visited in my drunken slumber. He did not say his name, but he was me. Less hair, and some of the hairs he had were grey. Smelled like stale wine. And his ramblings had echoes of my own. He commanded that I remember what he had to say, and to set it to paper when I awake. Though I only remember flashes of the debauched “Secret Location” fiesta atop Olympic Stadium, the drinks from which still cloud my mind, I remember every word he told me with perfect clarity. He insisted this was a “fever dream” of utmost importance. I do not understand the significance of everything I am about to set down tonight. I believe they relate to the world of the future, and to the school I have just joined. Though I will obey the commands of my nighttime visitor, I must hide these records away. I do not think the world is ready for them yet. Yours faithfully,
David Bailey U0 Mechanical Engineering, Editor-in-Chief-to-Be
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The Plagues of 2020 by Brigid Cami Class of 2015, Civil ‘Twill be the year of double-double,
Of the twenty-first century. And no, not the coffee couple, But that year of twenty-twenty. In my crystal ball I see, That in that year there’ll be nary a laugh. Yahweh’s ten plagues will return to thee. Well not all ten, but certainly half. Thunderstorms of hail and fire! That was already on the horizon. First of course, with global warming dire, And then with the fires upon the island. Locusts, locusts like a storm! Go and Google this if you can. Africa is in for an even worse swarm! Twenty times bigger than what we saw in Jan!
Lice and gnats? We know these well. Our omnipresent friend, the bedbug! In truth, in all times he will prevail. Montreal well knows his hug. Breathe this soot and ye will catch, Many a festering, bubbling, boil! Maybe boils are a bit of stretch. But still corona will make your lungs recoil. Here are four plagues of which I warn. But I say five will this year be! So, what’s the last and worst of all? Water to blood? Death of your firstborn? ‘Tis the indefinite closure of the OAP.
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How I Learned to Stop Worrying And Love by William Farrell
Class of 2011, Civil I too was once a McGill engineer—my blood red, my heart young and free. How I fondly remember those nights in the park doing research after dark, drawing figures, tracing curves, and the like. From the highs of drinking far too much Moosehead to the lows of drinking far too much Boreale, the intervening decade feels less like a distant memory and more like a recent hangover. But engineering offered more ways to get drunk than dollar beer at Blues Pub. The intoxicating sense of superiority and impish spirit of engineering were equally seductive. When in 2010 federal and provincial governments seized $18,0001 in unpaid taxes from the AUS, that very same day we mustered a band of dutiful engineers to plaster Bars des Arts with bankruptcy sale price tags. Did they continue to receive inquiries to purchase couches and speakers in the weeks that followed? Who’s to say. And I felt it my civic duty to bring four motions to a single SSMU GA, each motivated in rhyming verse, ranging from a requirement to print all SSMU materials at Copi-EUS to mandating Gert’s to lower the volume of music if a majority of patrons polled were in favor (all passed). It might’ve even been five had the VP UA not withdrawn her signature upon learning that our innocuous request for a structural support column in Gert’s may have incidentally resembled a pole for exotic dancing.
And when a Daily columnist accused the O-Week I had co-organized of misogyny for the gratuitous chants that were sung, I vigorously defended the spirit of levity and camaraderie in which they were intended. We even asked the girls—they said they were cool with it— even miffed at the condescending tone of the complaint! I mean, didn’t you hear the verse where she walked into the department store? But intent doesn’t get you very far in engineering if ignoring a mountain of consequential evidence. Encased within that hubristic foundation of engineering were also the seeds that ultimately crumbled it for me. Universal to most engineers is our shared belief that a better society is possible through cooperation and working towards the common good. In my network theory class I learned that individuals each seeking to minimize their own costs yield worse results than optimizing costs for the system as a whole. It was this kind of systems thinking that is so integral to engineering broadly that eventually upended the liberal individualism that fueled my ignorance to systemic oppression. In the real world, systems bind the choices individuals can make. In the real world, consequences count far more than intentions. It turned out that the Daily was right about a lot of things we dismissed at the time. They were right about misogyny2. They were right about
https://www.mcgilldaily.com/2010/09/aus_back_taxes_seized_by_government/ https://www.mcgilldaily.com/2012/02/dresses-drinks-and-misogyny/ 3 https://www.mcgilldaily.com/2010/09/hundreds_rally_to_save_arch_caf/ 1
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fighting tuition increases and striking for better student pay. They were right about indigenous rights and divesting from fossil fuels. But we did actually have a moment of unity when engineers and artsies alike fought alongside one another to save the Arch Café3. When the administration forced the closure of our beloved student-run café in the basement of Macdonald-Harrington, paving the way for Aramark to fully monopolize food services on campus, we all received a taste of how little power our institutions have when they fall on the wrong side of monied interests. In my waning tangential awareness of what the kids in engineering are up to these days, I never cease to be impressed upon hearing how students now challenge demeaning traditions that perpetuate sexism, racism, or any of the other isms we might’ve invoked sarcastically ten years ago. Sure, many traditions are great, creating a thread of shared experience across the quadrennial churn of undergrads. But I think many of you understand now what I was oblivious to then: that this shared experience cannot be built around the dehumanization of classmates, even if only intended in jest. I love seeing the continuity of these traditions, and I’m grateful that you seem to know better than I which songs to keep singing and which pranks to keep pulling so that our iconic spirit of camaraderie is enjoyed by all.
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Covid-19 Alternative Conspiracy Theories by Liquid Giggles
Class of 2015, Mechanical Sinister Communist Party influence. 5G towers. 5G towers constructed by Huawei under sinister Communist Party influence. Natural viral evolutionary processes. Wild theories abound for the cause of SARSCoV-2. But they just obfuscate the truth, which I have narrowed down to these possibilities: 1. Windows 7 support ended Jan 14th, and the Matrix needs some time to update to Windows 10. The world is running off an old iPhone for now, so better keep people inside to reduce processing demand. 2. The Animorphs have been hard at work. By morphing into the virus and spreading, they have influenced governments to keep us at home. The Yeerks are doomed if they can’t get to the Yeerk Pool in the next 3 days, so #stayathome! 3. Attempt by the Toronto Maple Leafs for their best outcome since 1967. 4. Cyclists. They hate cars and the commuters who use them. If they can’t get their bike lanes, they are going to clear the roads another way. 5. We were headed for a major shortage of oxybenzone, avobenzone, and other essential sunscreen ingredients. 2020 is awful, but no one wants a 2050 skin cancer pandemic. 6. Part 2 of Trudeau’s marijuana legalization scheme. Drive down demand for party drugs, and get everyone hooked on Mary-J (see footnote). Feed world demand with expanded domestic industry, to be centered in Alberta. Pipeline crisis becomes moot, and harmony spreads across the land. https://www.economist.com/britain/2020/03/26/ coke-is-out-weed-is-in
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Face Masks are the Future by Daniel Keresteci
Class of 2012, Electrical One of strangest things that I noticed immediately after moving to Asia 3 years ago was the not-uncommon sighting of people wearing surgical masks in public. I distinctly remember on my third day in Hong Kong, when asked by a new acquaintance about my views on the city, I said, “yah it’s great and all, but what’s the deal with people wearing masks everywhere?” – “it’s just a cultural thing, don’t worry about it” replied the European expatriate. I had only seen masks being used in hospitals, doctor’s offices or nursing homes, yet suddenly it was totally the norm to find yourself sitting across the table in a work meeting from someone in a mask - and the weird thing was, nobody else seemed to mind. Maybe this was the biggest gweilo (foreigners, literally “white-ghost”) faux-pas ever but my immediate assumption was that any masked person must have been discharged from the hospital this morning and was attending this meeting out of some misguided loyalty to our corporate overlords. My reasoning was that if I were ever so sick to need a mask, then surely I’d also be too sick to leave
my bed, there-by negating the need for a mask (and that happened more than a few times in my first year). This selfassuredness was further reinforced by the fact that nobody among my peers (see: white people) ever wore a mask. But alas these were the halcyon days, before the greatperil, before the world went home for the weekend and never came back. As I’ve witnessed recently, in Asian cultures, particularly in Hong Kong, people are super serious about masks. In February 2020 when COVID-19 was still a “China thing” and the rest of the world was blissfully gallivanting around with no disruptions (remember the Super Bowl?... remember sports!?!), Hong Kong got real with it. Offices and schools were closed when the city had less than 10 new cases per day, and almost instantly stores became sold out of masks. The majority of people here remember the SARS crisis in 2003 and wearing a mask is as much about personal protection
as it is about showing solidarity for the collective struggle - like those little red-squares that were all the rage during the 2012 education protests in Montreal. A little viral history. In the “first wave” of the outbreak, most of the cases in Hong Kong came over the boarder from China (Wuhan is two provinces away). This caused all the rich people to flee to their villas in Italy, chalets in France, and second apartments in New York. When those places became harbingers for the next wave of the apocalypse, all the globe trotters then promptly returned to Hong Kong (along with any errant children studying abroad) carrying a “second-wave” of the virus with them, which we are currently experiencing. So while the first wave was blamed mostly on working
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class labourers coming from the mainland - already not a popular group - the second was blamed on the rich expats - who have never a been popular group, aside from a source a revenue via heavily marked-up cheese from France and bottomless champagne brunches. Explain this to me Daniel, “What’s the deal with all these expats, why don’t they wear masks?” said my former roommate Fred, a Hong Konger with a degree from UCL, who speaks with a proper English accent and likes to go “watch the ponies” (gamble on horse racing) on Wednesdays at the local track. He was genuinely puzzled as to why certain demographics were not wearing masks, and went so far as to wonder if they just didn’t know how to find them. McGill’s alumni association even got in on the action, procuring a shipment of masks from South Korea that were available only to alumni (what a perk). The social pressure to wear a mask became very real, very quickly. There is literally graffiti near my apartment that reads “What’s wrong expat, too poor to buy a mask?”. Suddenly, I became the weird one for not wearing a mask everywhere. You would get weird looks on the street, especially on the metro if you weren’t in a mask. Within the span of a few weeks everyone
in my neighbourhood started wearing a mask outdoors. It certainly didn’t help that two of the biggest outbreaks were linked to popular expat hangout spots. There was an infected bar band in a late-night club, and a particularly outgoing asymptomatic foreigner who transmitted the virus to three different “companions” over the course a very successful weekend. As it turns out, mask wearing is very effective at stopping the spread of a super contagious virus when coupled with diligent hand washing and social distancing. From early on, Professor Yuen Kwok-yung at HKU and other academics have recommended wide-scale mask wearing for the general public and have urged the rest of the
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world to follow the example set in Asia. Ultimately, mask wearing is a cultural phenomenon as much as a public health directive. I certainly don’t wear a mask because I like it (though a black one gives me a bit of a streetwear tactical vibe). I wear one because it promotes the greater good, and they won’t let me into my favourite corner beer shop without one. If you are living in North America, this might be glimpse of your future. Even after the crisis I think you will find mask wearing become more socially acceptable globally. Just maybe don’t try it on a first date or for that big presentation to your VP.
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What Great Writers Wrote in Quarantine by Daniel Galef
Class of 2017, Philosophy and Calssical Studies “Shakespeare wrote King Lear while quarantined,” they say, even though you only asked what time it is. Isaac Newton discovered how to make a passable-tasting cookie out of figs. When typhoid ravaged Montreal, Stephen Leacock braved the twin bugbears of death and boredom to write his humor book “Everything Is Just Dandy and Isn’t Rural Ontario Cute?” The message is clear: artists have no excuse to slack off just because the world in is disarray. Get up, get your thinking mask on, and set your shoulder to the
grindstone and your nose to the plow because someone’s going to get the first big Covid-themed movie deal and it might as well be you. Shakespeare didn’t even have Zoom, so where’s your excuse? Get started on your own King Lear or you don’t deserve to wear the mantle of artiste! So I tried it. I wrote King Lear. I’m pretty proud of it, too—it isn’t the most original work (for example, the plot bears a number of unmistakable similarities to King Lear), but you can’t argue with the quality. I’m thinking of trying
to get it performed by a local Shakespeare company. More commonly, though, today’s authors are dead in the water. Free time seems like it would be a godsend for writers’ block, but the lack of stimulus, combined with overwhelming distractions, make putting pen to paper all but impossible even if I hadn’t used up all my manuscript paper when the toilet paper ran out. In this, we are no different than the great writers of the past, except maybe we smell better and know what TikTok is
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(I don’t, but that’s okay because I’m a VSCO man.) Here is a quick rundown of what some of the greats were really up to when they were holed up: When Edgar Allan Poe was hiding out from a mysterious wasting illness in 1847, he attempted to compose a sequel to “The Raven.” Although the notes weren’t discovered until last year during the excavation of a wine cellar in Charleston, the mad scribblings show he got no further than a title, “The Raven II,” and a single crossedout line: “Quoth the Raven, ‘Nevermore,’ again.”
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to the lost chapters of the text. One page of the “Yeoman’s Tale” was rediscovered when the inn was renovated into a Wetherspoons in 2002, but the folded-over vellum was considered “too gross” to study. The Roman poet Ovid spent decades alone in exile, where he wrote many of his most famous works. The almost twenty different poems and satires composed during this period are known to classicists collectively as the Ovid 19.
The French absurdist philosopher and novelist Albert Camus contracted a stomach disease in North Africa in the 1940s at the funeral of a friend’s mother. Alas, whatever masterpiece he labored on during his subsequent self-isolation has been lost to history—he burned the manuscript in a fit of rage, noting in his diary at the time: “It just feels like I’m rolling a boulder up a mountain again and again and again. How could anyone be happy like that?”
Isaac Asimov, considered one of the most prolific authors in history, lost almost an entire month to a nasty epidemic of robotulism that struck Boston University in 1957. He felt creatively stymied and his literary output was decimated. In the whole month he wrote only six novels, two hundred short stories, three collections of comic verse, a groundbreaking chemistry paper, a set of tenets for a fictional religion that was adopted as gospel by an actual cult, a pamphlet of instructions on how to use a barometer, and an eight-volume encyclopedia of Roman history.
Chaucer encountered the Black Death only once in his life, during the editing of the Canterbury Tales. With no other parchment in the house, he had to blow his nose with the manuscript pages, which is now believed to be what happened
In fact, the popular misconception that Shakespeare penned King Lear while in quarantine is a simple conflation of the famous tragedy with his equallyfamous lost play, King Bear. (On Rennaissance-era keyboards, ‘B’
OVID 19
Publius Ovidius Nasus
is right next to ‘L.’) This history play follows the tumultuous rise and fall of the bear that chased Antigonus offstage in the Winter’s Tale. The drama played once at the Globe theater, with William Kempe wearing a bear suit inhabiting the title role. Unfortunately, his dialogue was inaudible, and, walking home from opening night, he was captured and sent to the London Bear-Pits. In 1868, smallpox burned through the small town of Amherst, Massachusetts. Emily Dickinson was living there at the time, but didn’t notice. I wrote this during this, so judge for yourself.
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A Visionary Bibliography by Daniel Galef
Class of 2017, Philosophy and Calssical Studies
One week ago, on the twentieth of April, 2014, after self-medicating with a combination of hydroxychloroquine and enough laudanum to make Coleridge blush under his face powder, I had a dreamvision of a whole Faucet article. Unfortunately, the sound of an arts student vomiting in the hall woke me from my reverie, and all but the bibliography was lost. We can never know exactly what my dream-paper was actually about, except from the sparse clues hidden amongst the references.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Beers, W. G. “My Last Experience of Resurrectionning.” McGill University Gazette Volume 1, No. 4 (1 January 1874). Web: McGill Library Archive. Chapin, James P. “Congo Hat in New York.” Life 14 August 1939. Web: Google Books. Cox, Richard. “The Man with the Small Castle: The Gorilla Penis.” Curious Cox: Blog of Animal Penis Scientist Dr. Richard Cox, PhD. 12 April 2012. URL: <https://curiouscox.wordpress.com/2012/04/12/the-man-with-the-small-castlethe-gorilla-penis/> Davis, D. Dwight. “The Baculum of the Gorilla.” Fieldiana: Zoology Volume 31, No. 54 (1951): pp. 645–647. Published by the Chicago Natural History Museum. Web: Internet Archive. Dechow, Paul C., Smith, Leslie C., Choate, Chance, and Curtis, Ben. “Cortical Bone Density Determined with MicroCT in the Chimpanzee and Gorilla Facial Skeletons.” The 81st Annual Meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists. 2012. Ditkowsky, Jared. “The Curious Adventures of Castrated George.” Behind the Roddick Gates Volume I (2011–2012): pp. 30–35. URL: <http://www.mcgill.ca/redpath/files/redpath/redpathmuseumjournal.indd_.pdf> Dixson, A. F. Primate Sexuality: Comparative Studies of the Prosimians, Monkeys, Apes, and Human Beings. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. Web: Google Books. “Engineering Week ’75.” Old McGill 1975: p. 312. Web: McGill Library Archive. Hill, W. C. O. And Harrison-Matthews, L. “The Male External Genitalia of the Gorilla, with Remarks on the Os Penis of Other Hominoidea.” Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London 119 (1949): pp. 363–378. Hodgson, Duncan M., Coultas, William F., Coolidge, Harold Jefferson, et al. Field Catalogue of the Hodgson Mammal Collection, McGill Congo Expedition. Ms. 1938. Web: Google Books. Hodgson, Duncan M. “Interview with Duncan M. Hodgson, December 6, 1978.” Boone and Crockett Club Oral History Collection. Web: University of Montana. Audio. Jasinski, Nicholas. “A Walk through Redpath Museum.” McGill Tribune, 5 Apr. 2017. Web. URL: <http://mcgilltribune. com/redpath/> Kratsios, Michael. “The Evolution of the McGill Engineer.” The Plumber’s Faucet Volume 31, Issue 12, Part 1 (2015): pp. 28–31 and Volume 31, Issue 12, Part 2 (2015): pp. 3–5. Liu, Hatty. “The Many Faces of the Redpath Museum.” The McGill Tribune Volume 33, Issue 25 (9 April 2014): pp. 18–19. URL: <http://www.mcgilltribune.com/features/the-many-faces-of-the-redpath-museum/> Luce, Isabel. “Mad Med Reputations.” The McGill Tribune. 6 February 2011. URL: <http://www.mcgilltribune.com/ student-living/mad-med-reputations/> The McGill Daily digitized archives, 1911–2017. Web: McGill Library Archives. “Secret Science Spots Campus Tour.” Redpath Museum. McGill University, 9 October 2013. Severson, Sarah. “New McGill Student Publications Collection up at the Internet Archive.” The Dark Room: The McGill Library Digitization Team. The McGill University Library, 16 July 2015. Blog. Stockley, Paula. “The Baculum.” Current Biology Volume 22, Issue 24 (18 December 2012). URL: <http://www.cell.com/ current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822(12)01308-5> George the Gorilla. Personal correspondence.
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Screen Writers Most Affected by Set Phasers to Pun
Class of 2014, Mechanical Art imitates life, so the saying goes. In times of war, nations band together around tales of heroism and sacrifice. Around great leaders and their speeches, and around the volunteer lines for the hard task that stands before the nation. Well... shit. The entertainment industry that springs up in response to these tragedies can be viewed as either a coping mechanism, or some strange form of war profiteering, depending who you ask. However you slice it, those in the business of telling harrowing tales of this latest crisis are not going to have an easy go of it. The foe isn’t some mustache twirling sycophant with a penchant for tying damsels to railroad tracks. The great leaders’ briefings and announcements are as predictable and reassuring as retirement plan investments in a roulette wheel. Our hero’s call to action is the sound of the dimly buzzing alarm clock, vanquished with the deft morning fumbles to hit “dismiss”. Suffice to say, this crisis is hitting vulnerable people in the most sensitive of targets - the box office. The early damage was predictable. James Bond has opted to sit this year out. The dashing spy is shaking his own damn martini in a coffee mug so as to not rouse suspicion in the MI6 morning Zoom meetings. Pixar’s Onward is
titled exactly the opposite of what all of us should be planning to do with our weekends. A lone bright spot is that Netflix seems to have triumphed again against traditional media with the breakout success of Tiger King. The film follows a young tiger cub named Timba, who managed to fulfill his destiny as the titular Tiger King despite the murderous machinations of someone close to him. Further evidence that audiences crave feline-centric cruelty is on display in the Horror film Cats. Carole Baskins at least had the courtesy to kill her victim. Current cancellations are only half the matter. Casting a fearful eye to the future invites many questions. What of the media that has been waiting for production? How many screenplays are left untyped at the tables of Seattlebased coffee magnates? How will we survive if we actually have to revert to the games in our Steam
backlog? I don’t know. I just… don’t know. The world makes less sense than it did a few short months ago. We thought SARS was defeated, but it returned out of nowhere, stronger than ever. It’s killing the older generations that have given our society so much. Making things worse, there is no consistency in narrative. First masks were good, then they’re bad, and now masks are good again - I digress. If our crisis is too dull to write about directly, perhaps a story about us, the audience, trying to understand a confusing narrative is exactly what we need right now. May I present - SARS WARS.
12 the plumber’s FAUCET Man jumps off cliff, has last word in argument by Iguana Lay Más Pipeline
Class of 2015, BA Economics
LONDON (the better one, not the duller British version) - After an escalating series of social media challenges that included performing 10 push ups, baking a loaf of bread, and putting on a t-shirt while performing a handstand while a rat was chewing his face, Richard Vahd dove off a cliff as he posted a video of the act to his social media profile.
It is believed that the local advertising professional performed the act as a result of a video nomination from his fitness instructor as well as from another separate nomination from a former roommate. If this allegation is proven to be true, Vahd will have confirmed the veracity of a bold claim he made in the middle of a heated argument with his mother one sunny afternoon in 1997 after he was caught running in a school hallway. That day, Vahd reportedly answered “Yes, mother, if my friends jumped off a cliff I would jump as well” following aggressive questioning from his mother. In the video, Vahd nominated three former classmates, his crush, and his back-up crush.
He also donated 5 Bolívares to a local charity that will eventually lose money in fees when they decide to convert the sum to a usable currency, like Runescape gold. Local police officer at the scene, Lucas Pigeons, was recorded as saying “usually I see these social media challenges as typical millennial shenanigans, but this absolute mad lad has earned my respect for sticking to his guns after all these years.” He further added “with that conviction, I see a bright future for him” before being reminded that unfortunately, Vahd did not survive the fall. Hell media
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from the Plumber’s Faucet Vault
SSMU Clubhouse of Horror
by Jean-Claude Wham Bam Thank You Ma’am van Damme
Class of 2018, Civil
As an investigative journalist, I am always looking for the next big “scoop”. In addition, as a regular contributor to the Faucet, I understand better than most the rivalry between us and the Student’s Society of McGill University Club, or SSMU Club for short. So, you can imagine my surprise, as I was walking home one night and saw a window slightly ajar on the top floor of the SSMU Club building (also known as the SSMU Clubhouse). My curiosity got the better of me, and soon after that I found myself in the office of SSMU Club President Scott Eevul (photo inset). As I was in his office, I spied a curiouslooking document on his desk. As I began to read it, my jaw dropped to the floor; what had begun as a light-hearted attempt do dig up dirt was suddenly a distant memory. The contents of the document are too shocking to paraphrase, so I have included it in its entirety below. It amounts to, what can only be described as plans for world domination:
Scott Eevul’s Super Duper Top-Secret Plan for World Domination 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019
Blackmail J.J. Abrams into making a Star Wars film so shitty it makes The Phantom Menace look good
Create the greatest reality TV show ever made by getting an orange idiot elected President (Snooki or Donald Trump; whoever’s dumber)
Scott Eevul, SSMU Club President
Close down the SSMU Clubhouse for “maintenance”, including the best part of it. Replace Gert’s with a tank filled with sharks with frickin’ laser beams attached to their frickin’ heads Invest heavily in toilet paper companies and Lysol Watch Phineas and Ferb to learn from the greatest evil mastermind ever, Dr. Doofenschmirtz. Save best ideas for later
2020 Engineer the greatest viral pandemic in a century. Sit back and watch the chaos of people fighting over rolls of toilet paper. Sell our shares in toilet paper companies for a gajillion dollars. Blame everything on a bat (LOL fuck you Batman)
2021 Start WWIII. Impersonatethe US President, and in a live
broadcast call Putin a “scrawny little bitch” who’s “not man enough to throw down” because “he weighs 30 pounds soaking wet”
2022 Hide out in our nuclear bunker, watch reruns of “The Office” and “Tiger King”, and wait out the nukes
2023 Emerge from bunker and install ourselves as leaders of the New World Order
2024 Blow up the moon (for the LOLs) and flood the Netherlands (they smell funny). Force Netflix to run ads to sow further chaos
2025 to ∞ : (*evil cackling*)
Make no mistake dear reader, the information I have shared with you all above is very dangerous. This story will surely be my greatest yet, and as the poets say, the higher you climb, the harder you fall. There will be some who will stop at nothing to prevent this information from being published. I am not normally a paranoid man, but more so than usual I have felt frissons of fear descend my spine, as if a strange or mysterious force was watching me from a distance. As I walk the streets of Montreal, shapes move and lurk in the shadows; I feel as though I am never alone, constantly under watch … Editor’s Note: It is with a heavy heart that we must announce to our beloved readers that this will be the final article published by acclaimed journalist Jean-Claude Wham Bam Thank You Ma’am van Damme. He was found dead shortly after the publication of this piece from an apparent suicide, having shot himself point blank in the back of the head 7 times with 3 different firearms. Our thoughts go out to his family and loved ones.
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Nursery Rhymes for the New Plague by Liquid Giggles
Class of 2015, Mechanical Ring-a-round the rosie, A pocket full of posies, Ashes! Ashes! We all fall down!
1665. The ringed “rosie” is a rash, “posies” are herbs you kept in your pocket to ward off disease, “ashes” related to cremation, and “falling down” meant succumbing to the disease.
-from the Great Plague Ring-a-Round the Rosie, a mainstay of any self-respecting British nursery, at first appears to be a ramble of innocent nonsense.
...dark, eh? Of course, that’s just a 20th century urban legend. And that’s a shame, because the story is too good not to be true.
However, it has been popularly attributed to the Great Plague of
If only it were? They say you should never
The Covid 19
To the tune of “Hey Diddle Diddle”. Credits to the internet for the title Hey Diddle Diddle, Alone with the griddle, The oil pours onto the pan. Two pounds of bacon, One pound of egg, And I’ll soon be double the man!
Lazy Maisie To the tune of “Humpty Dumpty” Lazy Maisie signed onto Zoom, Lazy Maisie was dressed for the womb. The Dean of Students decided right then, He wouldn’t let Maisie give lectures again.
waste a good crisis. We have a new plague on our hands, and I have wasted no time developing new nursery rhymes for it. Pass these on to your children and grandchildren! After the vaccine is ready, the Global Plague of 2020 will survive only in verse. In a few hundred years your descendents will have a really interesting Wikipedia article to read about their beloved nursery rhymes!
Claire and Clyde To the tune of “Jakc and Jill” Claire and Clyde were trapped inside, Having a bit of fun. Skin-to-skin, Clyde stayed in, And soon they had a son.
the plumber’s FAUCET
Harry Had a Little Cough
Nope! Goes the Weasel To the tune of “Pop! Goes the Weasel” I’ll do a thousand jumping jacks, And then I’ll make a smoothie. I’ll work out ‘til I’m super fit, Nope! I’ll watch a movie.
I’ll make my wife breakfast-in-bed, Then catch-up with my daughter. I’ll be a real family man, Nope! I’ll have a lager.
I’ll immerse myself in literature, And learn about the opera. I’ll become a real Renaissance man, Nope! I’ll drink a vodka. I’ll finish up this earnings report, I’ve got to earn my money. My boss will think I’m on the ball , Nope! I’ll spank the monkey.
Waa, Waa, Walmart To the tune of “Baa, Baa, Black Sheep” Waa, Waa, Walmart Have you Cottonelle? No, sir, no, sir, None to sell; None for your girlfriend, None for you, And none for your little boy Waiting on the loo. Waa, Waa, Walmart Have you Cottonelle? No, sir, no, sir, None to sell!
15
To the tune of “Mary had a Little Lamb” Harry had a little cough, Little cough, little cough, Harry had a little cough He thought was just the flu. And everywhere that Harry went, Harry went, Harry went, Everywhere that Harry went The cough would follow too. He spread the virus far and wide, Far and wide, far and wide, He spread the virus far and wide; His hands were never clean. Harry should’ve stayed at home, Stayed at home, stayed home, Harry should’ve stayed at home And kept a quarantine.
I’m a Little Virus
To the tune of “I’m a Little Teapot” I’m a little virus, Small and round, Here are my proteins That make my crown I’m awful for your body, Have no doubt, So stay at home, and keep me out!
Which Quarantiner Are You? by Morgan Mattone
Class of 2018, Electrical The mom that regurgitates 1. everything back to you that
2.
she reads on Facebook
“I’m definitely on a list somewhere after watching this.”
“Did you see what they’re saying about the malaria drug? I knew it the whole time.”
3.
4.
The ultimate Netflix binge watcher “It’s so obvious that Francesca’s boobs are fake in that underboob bikini.”
5.
The person that swears they had it in December “Bro, remember that one day where I was like super tired. I swear to God I had it.”
The millennial that joins TikTok
6.
The Coronavirus conspiracy theorist “I don’t see why we need more than 3G. Everything after 3Gs is causing cancer.”
The person who’s been “socially distancing” their whole life