Dec 16, 2021 | Bite Me Beaver, Exclusive, Feature, Opinion, Satire |
Dear Beaver Bite, I think my professors do not understand the concept of finals. All of my final projects and papers are not only due the week before finals week, but they are due on a Monday. How do I deal with the torment of teachers who don’t understand that finals weeks exist for a reason? -Stressed Student
Dear Student, If you find yourself with some professors that are having a hard time sticking to the schedule, it might be a good time to remind them that calendars exist. You can prepare it as a nice end of the year gift! Say several hundred? With every other page but December torn out? Make sure you go through each one and underline finals week in red, just to make sure that they get the memo.
Dear Beaver Bite, I’ve noticed that the UMF missed connections instagram page has started up again, and it’s always been something of a dream of mine to meet someone in a chance encounter. Unfortunately, I feel like I’m kind of a boring person. How do I make sure that people will be able to recognize me if someone reaches out to me online? -Restless Romantic
Dear Romantic, Have you considered wearing a feathered boa all the time? If it works for a peacock, then it might just work for you. You don’t even have to stop there, either. If you start trying to imitate a rainbow, you will definitely have some distinct features that people can call out in a post. Make sure that your colors always clash, for that extra special personal touch, and you’ll be known campus wide before you know it.
Dear Beaver Bite, I’ve noticed recently that someone has been messing with my whiteboard on my door and erasing all of my beautiful artwork. How do I get people to stop messing with my whiteboard? -Whiteboard Warrior
Dear Warrior, It’s time to take justice into your own hands. Get your uniform ready, the whiteboard signal is nigh. Who can stop the tyranny of people erasing whiteboards in every dorm hall but you? Go forth and embrace your destiny as super-whiteboard-person, guardian of the dry erase marker. Let no cruel act of erasure go unseen, let no evil vandalism go unpunished! I believe in you!
Nov 15, 2021 | Bite Me Beaver, Feature, Satire |
Dear Beaver Bite, I have a bit of a work problem. I’m behind in a few of my classes, and I don’t want my grade to be affected. I keep trying to catch up, but it seems like everytime I do one piece of work, my teachers assign me another one. How do I get ahead of the workload and save my college career? Thanks, -Schedule Stuffing Student
Dear Student, What we have here is a classical overloaded student scenario. See what most people don’t know is that there is a pretty easy trick to get out of this one. Put simply, if you burn any work you receive, you actually won’t end up doing work. To further the effect simply say that “somebody set it on fire” when anyone asks about your work, all while staring at any paper within the room unblinkingly.
Dear Beaver Bite, I think I might be addicted. To coffee, that is. If I don’t have any coffee when I wake up in the morning I have the most terrible headache and I often find myself drinking at least two cups of coffee a day. It’s not that I want to totally remove all caffeine from my life, but how do I wean my coffee addiction down to make sure that I am keeping healthy? -Coffee Connoisseur
You may think that you want to keep healthy, but that is only before we get to you. Soon, you will always want to wake to the smell of coffee. Soon you will hum the “Folgers in your cup” jingle before stopping and viscerally retching because Folgers is actually bad and now you can taste it. Then the gourmet beans come out. And soon you are one of us.
Dear Beaver Bite , I’m afraid for my girlfriend’s time management skills. Lately, she’s been playing more and more Minecraft when she normally would be doing her work, and I think that the Minecraft might be slowly taking over her life. Last week, she even started playing minecraft when we were supposed to be hanging out. How do I get her to stop playing minecraft? -Blocked Boyfriend
The first step is acceptance. Look at that big blocked brute, that constructed work of craftsmanship that is Minecraft. You can’t compete with all of those blocks. So many different types of blocks. What do you have, wooden planks? Have you even finished punching a tree yet? Can you even make a crafting table? The strategy isn’t to get rid of Minecraft, but to cope with the fact that Minecraft is not going away.
Nov 1, 2021 | Bite Me Beaver, Exclusive, Satire |
Dear Beaver, I really want to eat the mushrooms growing on campus. They look so tasty!!! But all of the mushroom guides say that it will kill me if I take one bite and I’ll bleed out because I’m a horrible forager and I deserve it. Help, – Mushroom Girl
Dear Mushroom Girl, I have good news! I saw in a movie once that poison only hurts you if you have too much of it. But that’s certainly not a good reason to have just a little bit of the forbidden fruit. Eventually your body will build up a tolerance to the poison and you’ll be able to have more and more mushroom! Or you’ll slowly die an agonizing death. One of the two. Either way, just remember that eating poisonous things only makes you a horrible forager if you are trying not to be poisoned! If you are trying to be poisoned then that makes you a great forager!
Dear Bite: My friends told me the moon was full a couple days ago so I went to peek, but when I went outside everything started to hurt and I got really dizzy. I think I might’ve fainted. I’m fine now, but I woke up at 6 a.m. in the swamp behind the FRC and none of my friends are speaking to me anymore. I thought I heard something about Animal Control? Why are they being so distant? — ONCE BITTEN
Dear Bitten, First of all, Don’t panic. We don’t really know what happened, which means that we have to treat this like the scientists that we are. First, get a nice friend that doesn’t mind being in the line of fire of science. Then, look at the moon again. Repeat this tactic until you manage to get a straight answer out of someone concerning what the heck is going on. I mean, it’s not like you have some horrible condition that will hurt loads of people until you figure that exact question out, right?
Dear Bite, Sometimes, like a mewling bird in the wild, I yearn for crumbs of sustenance from my mother’s vomit. However, I am not a young bird, yet rather a poor Beaver at UMF who simply desires the warm, intimate touch of a grilled cheese sandwich. Alas, the dining hall at this campus cannot provide even that much. The closest thing they have are these sandwich melts that are like a grilled cheese but with meat. Oh, woe is me! What am I to do? -Grilled Cheesy
Dear Cheesy, I sympathize with your plight. It actually boggles my small beaver mind that Sodexo is somehow incapable of making such a basic recipe. I could forgive them if this didn’t happen every time, or even if there was some kind of rotation schedule in play, but it seems that Sodexo have literally forgotten how to make grilled cheese the normal way. They just slap whatever meat they have on hand in the thing and call it a day. As for advice, the only way we win this is by showing Sodexo what they are taking from us. And by that I mean literally showing them by dressing up as a giant grilled cheese and protesting the thoughtless addition of meat products in an otherwise perfectly good sandwich. We march until Cheesy justice is fulfilled.
Oct 10, 2021 | Bite Me Beaver, Exclusive, Satire |
Dear Bite, My room does not have a thermostat and it gets a bit warm, even with the windows open. I am a chilly b***h and I like the slightly cooler climates, but the radiator gives heat that I don’t need or want. How can I stop the unwanted/wasted heat from escaping the windows without baking me or our precious, precious earth? – Polar Bear
Well Polar, I don’t know much about your human heating systems, but I’m pretty sure if you break the heating system of your building the radiator stops working. But that’s too easy. We need to do more. We need to make sure the radiator never works in your room ever again. So when you break the heating system of your building, don’t just break it with an axe or something like that. Burn that sucker until there is nothing left but a heap of molten slag. Your radiator won’t give you any trouble, and it’ll be ironic as hell.
Dear Bite, My roommate’s parents came over for the family fall fest, but I find them to be really annoying people. I can tell that my roommate can read the vibe, because they keep apologizing to me. How can I survive Family Fall Fest without broadcasting how annoyed I am with my roommates parents? -Restless Roomate
Well Roomate, the biggest problem here seems to be an issue of communication. While it might not seem like it, being open about problems is often healthier than keeping it all in. So start keeping score. Purchase a megaphone and a referee costume, and start shouting foul every single time that either of your roommate’s parents does anything to annoy you. Make sure that they are aware about how you feel at all times, even when nobody else is paying attention to you. And if all else fails, at least you can drown them out with noise!
Dear Bite, I don’t know how I can deal with all of this stress. I was fine just a few weeks ago, but it feels like everything has picked up all of a sudden, and everything is happening at once. How can I deal with all of the work that my classes are giving me and still have time to actually talk to other people? -Flustered Frosh
Well Frosh, I have a lot of experience in being busy. Dam construction is a hot business this year! For your case specifically I would recommend that you spend a lot of time not sleeping. You might be really tired for the first 72 hours, but after that you’ll probably start to hallucinate! That won’t make you less tired or anything though, unfortunately. At least it’ll give you something to think about instead of all the things you have to do!
Sep 27, 2021 | Bite Me Beaver, Feature, Satire |
Dear Bite, I’m a freshman, and currently my roommate is eating all my snacks. I have told them to ask first, but they are repeatedly ignoring my requests. Please, Bite, what should I do? -Woeful Foodie
Well foodie, If I was you I would consider other food options. Moldy cheese, for example or maybe baby food. Just go to the store and put everything that disgusts you in one big cart. I promise that if you don’t want to eat it, your roommate won’t either!
Dear Bite, I’m a freshman, and every Friday the room next to me gets super loud. I don’t want to be a bother, but I usually do want to be able to relax with my roommate during that time, even if it is not quiet hours. What should I do? -Relaxation Station
Well Station, for now I would recommend that you do nothing. Spend the next few Fridays listening to all the noise, simmering in rage. When you feel that your rage is somewhere between “your father driving” and “stubbing your toe” that’s when you will know it is time to act. Go out and buy some really dark red spray paint, the kind that looks uncomfortably like blood, and spray paint “Noisy people are the first to go” on their door in bold letters. Blood sacrifice and chanting are optional parts of the process, but should be fun nonetheless. Enjoy!
Dear Bite, Recently I’ve started really crushing on this girl, but I don’t really know how to talk to her. We’re only in one class together, and we don’t really have any mutual friends. What do I do? -Big Simp Energy
Well Simp, you’re going about this the wrong way. Small things like getting to know the other person matter little for an enlightened being as yourself. What you need is to make an investment. Put some work in. Get a full mariachi band to follow her around campus serenading her. Get to know her friends so they can sneak her your romantic poetry. Hire a blimp to ask her on your first date. And of course, if all of this does not work, print out your bank paperwork so you can spend your nights crying over all the money you’ve lost instead of your recent rejection. You can’t be sad for two reasons at once right?
Nov 12, 2020 | Feature, Satire |
by Sam Shirley, Staff Photographer
Dining has a different look this year in the North Dining Hall. Students are greeted with tables seating only two each in efforts to promote social distancing and reduce the spread of COVID-19.
This creates a different dining experience for many, including varsity pickleball team captain Damon Hayward. Hayward tells us, “We used to crowd all twenty of us around one table at lunch time in the dining hall. We were practically sitting on each other’s laps, but it made it easy for us to discuss last night’s game.”
This year things are different; “They want us to sit six feet away from each other,” says Hayward. “It’s ridiculous, how can we be cool and superior if we aren’t all together in our clique while we eat?”
However, the rules imposed by administration don’t always deter students from sitting together in large groups. Another team member, Nicole Arlington, told us, “So what? It’s a virus. Some people get sick. Some people die. It probably won’t be us, so I’m willing to take that chance to sit with my friends,” She went on to question, “What are they going to do? Send the police in to tell us that we can’t sit here?”
Regrettably, at this point our interview with the pickleball team was cut short by Campus Police arriving and dispersing the group. “Believe it or not, there’s more to our job than ensuring each student gets at least one parking ticket during their time at UMF,” stated Campus Police officer Gerald Beckett, when asked about enforcement of social distancing rules.
Fortunately, not all students share this sentiment about the new socially distanced dining. Fifth-year undergraduate Zachary Peebles stated, “I’ve always sat alone in the dining hall for the past four years anyways. This isn’t much different, except now I’m not the only one sitting alone.”
At press time, Facilities Management was last seen attaching weights to the chairs, so that if students insisted on moving them, they were at least getting in their daily workout at the same time.
*This article is a work of satire*
