A girl I'd been seeing ran away after I said the L word to her

We'd been seeing each other for a little while. It was a strange situation. We both had some baggage, and if you know me, you know it takes a lot to draw me out. But I was finally starting to get comfortable with her. I was letting myself believe that there was something here.

One night, when it felt right, I took a deep breath, and in one long monologue that felt as clumsy as it was rehearsed, I said (to the best of my recollection):

"Look, I know I'm doing everything I'm not supposed to do. I'm not supposed to be the one to say this first.

"And maybe it's too soon to say this to you. You know how some people throw it around like they're saying hello, to people they barely know? I'm not like that. It takes a lot to get me to say it. I hardly ever say it. I can't remember the last time I've said it to someone and meant it.

In fact, I don't think I've even said it to my mother.

All I know is, I don't care. I want you to know:

I would love to have a three-way with you and your best friend."

A Selection of Harvard Lampoon Illustrations From the 1990s

My sister, being smarter than me, went to Harvard. Somewhere along the line, picking at the crumbs of her Ivy League education, I managed to glean a few copies of the Harvard Lampoon from the mid-90s, which I recently rediscovered in a box.

Since getting the entirety of their archives online doesn't seem to be a priority (as opposed to, say, getting their ass kicked by The Onion, College Humor, and, shit, 4chan in any objective measure of humor quotient and cultural influence), I scanned in a few of the more interesting illustrations -- the full set, which I'll probably be adding to, is on Flickr: Harvard Lampoon Illustrations from the 1990s.

First, a few items I'd photocopied (in the pre-digital era) for wall decorations:

Superhero comic strip parody, Vol 182, Issue 3 (Fall, 1992): "Got to push the button before Dr. Bad Guy destroys the planet! Gotta do it! Gotta do it!"

Vol. 180, #2 (Dec, 1989): Bunny ears parody of DaVinci's Vitruvian Man.

Vol. 182, Issue #4 (Winter, 1992): "The Wonderful Treasure in Every Light Socket Which You Can Get Out With a Fork."

Next, a couple of items from the Lampoon's Monday Poster Series:

Vol. 180, #2 (Dec, 1989): "As an animal, Mondays are irrelevant to me."

Vol. 180, #2 (Dec, 1989): "When you are stupid, you do not get embarrassed."

Another comic:

Vol. 182, Issue #4 (Winter, 1992): "Dr. Tom Batchelder's Instant Self-Improvement Courses"

Lastly, here's not an illustration, but an actual advertisement, for some upstart humor publication at some podunk state school that will never amount to anything:

Vol. 183, Issue #4 (February, 1994): Subscribe to the Onion.

Tags: harvard lampoon, the onion

Welcome, You've Got Dammit! 24 in 1994 (Video)

Here's a CollegeHumor.com video that's far funnier than it has any right to be:
24: The Unaired 1994 Pilot (link via TotalFark):

College Humor's 24: The Unaired 1994 Pilot

It's a 24 short that portrays the people at CTU trying to do what they do now, except using early 90s technology -- dialup, one-way pagers, pay phones, dot matrix printers (with tractor feed paper), etc.

As a tech user during that era and a former AOL insider, it was especially fun to pick out the anachronisms (though I could not for the life of me remember the term "anachronism" -- unemployment is making me soft).

If you want to get picky, AOL 3.0 didn't come out until 1996 (I was still using 2.5 when I started); Geocities wasn't really Geocities in 1994; they did, you know, have fax machines in 1994; and people were able to get stuff done before online (And even before computers. Or so I heard.)

Oh, and you can see they're using AIM (on a Windows 3.1 machine?) instead of an AOL client -- AIM didn't come out until 1997:

Since I don't even know if you can run AOL 2.5 or 3.0 on a modern machine (I couldn't, the last time I tried -- don't remember if they were ever officially sunset or just allowed to die... assuming you could find an installer -- need an install floppy?), chalk it up to "revealing mistakes."

The references to Lycos, Encarta, and such, as well as a contemporaneous event or two (Nancy Kerrigan, anyone>) were amusing. I got a few chuckles. (But why did the terrorists just disappear?)

College Humor's production values have been pretty good and are getting better all the time. Good job.

Dammit!

Tags: 24 in 1994, college humor, dammit