Actual Texts From Last Night Not Very Funny

Evening's best text: "ready to get WASTE?"

MCCONNELL HALL--Engineering first-year Noah Schumer made the disappointed declaration Sunday morning that nothing in his phone’s inbox was funny enough to merit submission to the popular website Texts From Last Night.

Upon arrival in late August, Schumer was certain that one morning he’d find “the perfect text” describing a drunken exploit or a sexual faux-pas in the hilariously concise fashion customary to TFLN’s daily offerings. A month later, however, Schumer faces the bleak possibility that his frosh experience may not have yielded any site-worthy texts.

“I’ve been writing down all the possible contenders,” Schumer said, brandishing a notebook labeled INTRO TO MECH ENGINEERING, “but the offerings are still pretty weak.” Schumer’s current top three:

“In no dunk I sware” Eric, 9/18, 21:58
“A homeless man saw me puke.” Kay, 9/26, 00:04
“Whaleftis do im in the gone di. Its” Eric, 9/19, 01:31

Schumer attributes his string of semi-interesting text messages to various circumstances. In many cases, the situations described seemed ripe for submission but were not communicated hilariously enough. Classmate Ana Harel’s period coinciding with Frosh Week, for instance, was “golden”, but communicated in a depressing series of about fifteen short texts rather than one cynical exchange.

“It seemed like one of those classic TFLN situations where a stroke of bad luck makes you miss some major hookup opportunities,” Schumer said wistfully. “But by the time I texted her to say ‘So what’s the problem again?’ she had dropped her phone in the toilet at Tokyo.”

In other cases—“like convincing the German exchange student that Café Campus was a no-pants bar”—the participants neglected to actually text-message details of the situation to each other. Still other texts regrettably described hilarious incidents hand-in-hand with their grim conclusions.

“That text about [roommate] Luc [Dufresne] chugging the Jager to impress [classmate] Alice [Chernick] would have been perfect,” Schumer said, “if it hadn’t ended with ‘do you know if mcgills insurance covers stomach pumps?’.”

Schumer refuses to attribute the lack of witty, attention-grabbing texts to his own lack of witty, attention-grabbing friends. “There’s this one great message where [floormate] Dana [Maincent] called her boobs her ‘bobs’,” Schumer said, still chuckling at the memory, “but it was cushioned in this incoherent Pita Pit ramble. If I could cut and paste, that’d be great, but TFLN has a certain integrity to uphold.”

While Schumer still faithfully records every drunken text, his fruitless September has dampened his hopes of ever seeing a 514 of his own on textsfromlastnight.com. Schumer quipped, “The people on that website seem a lot more verbose and witty than my friends and I usually are after partying.”

Mused Schumer, “I guess maybe we’re not drinking enough.”

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RCMP lays off guards, puts sign-in sheets at US-Canada border

US-CANADA BORDER--The under-staffed Royal Canadian Mounted Police trimmed its budget this week by replacing the majority of its border guards with sign-in sheets. "The RCMP is currently in a hiring freeze--however, we cannot close down any more border crossings without severely handicapping the Canadian tourism industry," said Canadian Minister of Public Safety Charles Van Deere in a press release last Friday. "The sign-in sheet solution allows us to minimize our expenses while maintaining full border inspection standards." Van Deere added that each sign-in sheet includes an attached pen and performs all of a border guard's functions--asking in English or French for guests' passport numbers and the details of their visit--with the added bonus of a friendly, trusting attitude. The sheets themselves, Van Deere said, will be rigorously inspected "at the end of every day, or at least every other day".

Former RCMP constables are naturally critical of the sign-in sheet solution, notably former RCMP Commissioner Edmond R. Hunt, who calls the sheets a paltry replacement for actual border guards. "What happens when the pen runs out of ink?" Hunt demanded at an Ottawa police banquet on Saturday night. "And those clipboards are really awkward to reach from your car." Criticism notwithstanding, the introduction of the sign-in sheets has led to a 23% rise in Canadian tourism and, according to the sheets' "Any illegal merchandise?" column, a 99% decrease in smuggling. The sheets also act as a national guestbook for the nation of Canada, allowing visitors to see who else crossed the border today; recent guests at the I-87 crossing into Quebec, for instance, include Mortimer Snuffleupagus, CANADA ISGAY, and Daffy Duck.

E-mail broadcast regarding obliteration of Bronfman building completely ignored

BRONFMAN BUILDING--Announcing the Bronfman building's total destruction primarily as one of the Administrative Coordinator's mass e-mail broadcasts left virtually all summer Management students shocked today to find a smoldering crater where the building used to be. Despite being used at least four times a week to warn students of late-night water shut-offs and new trash can locations, the faculty's universal indifference to the e-mail broadcasts was evidenced this morning by the hundreds of students standing dumbfounded around the heap of flaming wreckage the Management building has become. "The maintenance e-mails?" asked Finance major Sharon Shiu, approaching the McTavish-Sherbrooke corner upwind of the Bronfman crater's toxic fumes. "I get so many of those I had my friend in IT set up a filter to route them right to the Trash folder. Hey, where's our building?"

The Bronfman maintenance staff's Twitter account was also used to broadcast the building's annihilation, but had too few followers for the Tweet "Breaking out HAZ-mats to clean up Bronf wreckage" to reach anyone but the custodians' friends and family members.

Cash-strapped student tries to pass off outdated history textbook as "alternative"

HAVEN BOOKS--Following Haven Books' refusal to buy back the twenty-year-old history textbook whose resale proceeds were supposed to be Jerry Pausner's beer fund for the weekend, the U2 Linguistics student is currently accusing the bookstore of refusing to resell his father's high school copy of Modern World History due to its "unpopular" stance that Ronald Reagan is the current President of the United States. According to bookstore sources, Pausner has questioned SSMU's integrity for running a bookstore that would censor textbooks promoting the "alternative" viewpoint that the year is 1987. "This is a liberal university that is supposed to act as an open forum for critical discussion, so why won't our student union buy back a textbook whose authors choose to recognize the Soviet Union as a functioning nation-state?" Pausner loudly demanded at the Haven cash register in a brash demonstration that as of press time was fooling no one.

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Value Village opens retail outlet in Candiac

New Value Vale offers refuse, rags, calls it clothing
ValueVale.com, which allows customers to put third-hand items on online reserve

CANDIAC—Value Village, the popular Pacific Northwest second-hand shopping chain with 200 locations worldwide, opened its first "Value Vale" factory outlet in Candiac last Wednesday morning to offer clothing items whose irregularities and imperfections make them unfit for ordinary thrift shops.

“We are very pleased to open the first of what we hope will become a household name for fourth- and fifth-hand clothing,” said Value Village CEO Ken Alterman, who sported one of the outlet's top-selling oil-stained suit jackets for the Value Vale ribbon cutting. “If you're looking for bargains on the best of what the bottom of the barrel has to offer, look no further than Value Vale."

Value Village, currently the top choice among Canadian consumers seeking used clothing at fair prices, hopes to use the Value Vale outlet to offload the small portion of its retail stock that genuinely horrifies even these consumers.

"Our motto is 'No givebacks'," said Harold Barrens, Value Vale's sales manager. The sales staff is trained to haggle with consumers--with negotiable discounts ranging from 15 to 99 percent--or, failing these techniques, to stuff the clothing into the customer's purse or bag when they are not looking.

Value Vale is already facing scathing criticism from its upscale competitors, including Montreal thrift franchise Second Time Around and the Salvation Army, who have decried its offerings as "low-quality" "ragged" and "poisonous". Barrens, however, stands behind the quality of the store's merchandise.

"Personally, I think age just adds character to clothing," Barrens said. "Take these boxers. What's the history in their folds? If this leopard-print pattern of stains could speak, what stories would it tell?"

Like other Value Village locations, which boast the ability to furnish a room for under $50, Value Vale also offers a wide variety of non-clothing items, including three-legged chairs and deflated soccer balls.

“Take this gizmo,” Barrens said, holding up a conical aluminum object with a rusty metal hook hanging from it. “Ran over it on my way here this morning. Could make a great lawn decoration or a unique Christmas tree ornament, only two dollars!”

Inspecting the rust on the hook's sharply bent end, Barrens paused and affixed a bright orange "Half-Off" sticker to the item. "We'll give this a seasonal discount."

Value Vale's early customers have responded positively to the store's unique convenience features, including a vending machine full of torn neckties and a coin-operated "Play 'Til You Win" game that allows shoppers to pluck unmatchable socks with a lever-operated claw. The latter is especially popular with Value Vale's younger clientele.

"The trick is to grab the socks by the big holes in their toes!" said Jean-Philippe Bardot, 7, who accumulated over a dozen faded white Sportsocks while his mother examined the store's latchless bras.

Local students, who have long appreciated the "hipster" appeal of Value Village's quirkier offerings, have flocked to Value Vale for the opportunity to emphasize their individuality through their garments' crippling flaws.

"It's refreshing to find a place so far outside of the mass-manufactured fashion mainstream," said Rebecca Wiviott, a 22-year-old Greek Theatre major at Concordia who calls shopping at Value Vale "second only to dumpster diving" in terms of offbeat findings. "I'm glad to recycle this clothing with so many of my classmates getting uppity about who's wearing what brand name. When you think about it, does anyone really need a blouse with both of its sleeves intact?"