I have an announcement to make:
It’s cold. It’s snowy. Winter sucks.
I just wanted to clear that up for everybody, once and for all. Now all of you who thought it necessary to write “it’s snowing!” on your IM away messages for the last two months can rest easy. EVERYBODY KNOWS.
We need to get used to winter. But if there’s one thing I’ve noticed about Yalies, it’s that they can never stop complaining about anything. On-campus students hate the dining hall food. Off-campus students can’t stop whining about how the MexiCali Grille has been “Opening in 10 days” for two months now. And locals 34 and 35? Complain, complain, complain!
So here are a handful of rules to help guide you gracefully through the last weeks of winter:
1) When you come in from the outside, for God’s sake stop trying to think of clever ways to describe how cold it is. I don’t care if you’ve been walking from Prospect to Park thinking of the perfect metaphor for the freezing weather. If the first thing you say when you walk into a room starts with “Jesus Christ, it’s colder than –” stop right there. You won’t be funny, and whatever you were going to say, I guarantee Greg Yolen has already thought of it.
2) If I have to experience another tiny Asian girl look upward into the falling snowflakes and say, “It looks like I’m flying through space!” I’m going to strangle myself with my keychain lanyard. Plagiarism is illegal, girlie, and you stole that from Fox Trot.
3) Stop bothering to take off your shoes before you go into the common room — screw the “clean suitemate.” Did he ever take his bitter pants off for you? I don’t think so.
4) Stop putting penises on your snow sculptures (ahem, SILLIMAN). I always assume these are the same people who do things like play intramural sports and know the fight songs. We don’t need more giant phalluses at Yale — we already have the Morse Lipstick, Dick Cheney, and Dave with whom everybody agrees.
5) Stop remarking about how pretty New Haven is during the snow. Never has there been such massive delusion in one place since Tufts University was founded. This city gave birth to Benedict Arnold and that Bob guy from the furniture ads, and the only thing that could possibly render it more unattractive is muddy snow and ice. For the love of God, it looks like an elephant had diarrhea on the walls of Ezra Stiles, and you think it’s pretty?
6) Stop being polite when people fall down in the snow. It’s been here since November — it’s time to start laughing, folks. The other day I slipped so spectacularly that my entire body was horizontal in the air before I started traveling downward. Instead of chuckling, other people actually had the balls to pick up my books for me. Not only did I feel bad, but they felt bad, too. Someone should have at least gotten a smile out of that.
7) Please, at least one of you, don’t get new boots at Thom Brown. I would like to know in my heart that at least one person here knows what the inside of Barrie Limited Booters looks like. (I used to imagine that there was a little sweatshop for shoemaker’s elves upstairs — now there’s a sign in the window for the Yale Entrepreneurial Society. Coincidence? I think not–)
8) Don’t leave by the side doors of Commons. That card swiper may have a mustache to keep warm, but I shaved today and you’re making my English Breakfast cold.
9) Don’t make out at the Winter Ball. I swear to God, it was like CCL relocated to the Morse dining hall, and someone dropped a hormone bomb — not a pretty sight. I know this was the first time you and your posse have gone out this semester, but that’s no excuse. And don’t pretend you weren’t making out. I was there; I saw you. Use less tongue.
10) When Annette tells you to go put your hat on, tell her to go get a job.
Then we’ll see who’s warmer at 3 A.M.
The winter is so overdone here that it’s passe even to complain about it. Bitching about the cold is so December. This is February, folks; we’re supposed to be complaining about “Joe Millionaire,” Academy Awards, and spring break airfare by now. It may even be time to start whining about Spring Fling —
You want something to complain about? I’ll give you two words:
Avril.
Lavigne.
Discuss.