Seriously. And no, we are not talking about the wannabe gangsters who were recently served a 4 yr jail sentence. WCAV reports a couple UVa students were arrested for allegedly kidnapping and robbing a fellow UVa student last April.
- Gabriel Rust-Tierney
- Chase Wager Whitlow
- Joseph Uzcategui
- Jordan Vinsant Davis
I just don’t get it. Has teenage life become so dull that one has to turn to kidnapping? In my day an evening with Blockbuster and a couple beers was considered a cheap thrill.
[chase whitlow pic from facebook]
[pic from sindesign on Flickr]
Popularity: 20% [?]
Tagged as: Chase Wager Whitlow, Crime, Gabriel Rust-Tierney, Jordan Vinsant Davis, Joseph Uzcategui, kidnapping, UVA
UVA is a pretty third-drawer school intellectually with a long and illustrious history of criminality.
this episode comes as no surprise, really. Shocking and sad, my how sad, but it’s no real leap to go from rampant plagiarism (an entire CLASS in one incident), underage drinking everywhere, DUIs a go-go, wholesale drug use (the six kids still in prison for dealing killer-weeeeeed), the massive undercover op and coke bust of frat X, the chick talking her boyfriend into murdering parents, the various slashings and stabbings on the football team over the years, the guy who stole the porsche and 60 bazillion dollars from a bank-account using fraudulent ID, to this sort of teen antic. A blanket contempt for laws and the rule-of-law.
more on the story?—was it violent or prank-ish gone bad? last APRIL? are we scooping CVILLE NEWS in reporting this in SEPTEMBER? Or did the popos JUST discover the crime and release the poor kid in a daring SWAT incursion into the kidnapper’s stronghold on JPA?
generally—since 97% of UVA’s student body is kids of obscenely affluent low-brow kids with middle-to-low-range SATs from NoVA and no intellectual life—how much of this sort of thing goes on in the tony private schools and nouveau-riche McMansions in Reston, Vienna, etc.
Does this seem like a fun after-school gag to you YoooVeeeeYAYyers out there, with echoes of the homeland?
from the WCAV article it sounds like the popo’s just got this thing taken care of. I guess it would have been a higher priority had the kidnapped victim been missing this whole time. It does sound like some sort of prank…kidnap, rob and leave in a dumpster?
Actually sounds more like a second date to me..
@2
some guy was kidnapped from the restaurant where Zocalo is now, forced to take out everything from his ATM, then left in a trunk at Pantops. But i think locals did that (perhaps aspiring UVA students, going the Piedmont-to-UVA transfer-track?).
UVA students though typically culturally dim and intellectually vapid ARE politically saavy.
Perhaps the kidnapped lad in question watched the Republican National Convention, saw the great political hay McCain was making of his Hanoi Hilton years… and this UVA student figured that stories of a stretch of imprisonment/held-against-will might aid him in his later run for City Councillor of Manassas–and arranged the whole thing through vegan cupcake-eating lesbian supermodel outsourcers from India who were vacationing in US to avoid Monsoons/tropical storms????
You should be ashamed of yourself, posting complete garbage like this.
Otterdung clearly has a massive chip on his shoulder due to being rejected from UVA or something of the like. What the author neglects to mention is that it was a fraternity prank, the “victim” knew the “attackers” and told the police it was just a prank war. The state is pressing charges, not the “victim” The “victim” had pranked the “attackers” eariler and the “attackers” followed up with a classic UVA frat prank. These boys have been portrayed as terrible criminals when in reality it is just a prank gone poorly. I am disgusted with the author and Otterdung.
I find the practice of posting names and pictures of people who are not even convicted of the crime yet utterly irresponsible. This is not directed against cVillain but at the practice in general. I mean, imagine they don’t get convicted, their life at UVa or basically anywhere is ruined.
@5,6: Y’all chill, he’s being ridiculous on purpose.
@7: I agree!
@5, @6, @8
sorry guys. i’ve been putting my foot in my mouth all day here. and thanks, Shen, you are as always dead-on.
i did make up the 97% statistic—the actual percentage is much lower, as UVA is VERY good about diversity in recruiting and admissions (big plus), however much the tone of the place may be set by the popped-collar NoVA classroom all-stars.
It is, however, a limited and limiting environment for intellect–never has been the focus of the school. Almost all of its programs are third-tier, as I said, and the tone set by the faculty and students is either 1) rabid lit-crit marxist in imitation of better schools that also teach substance and books and stuff, or more prevalently 2) rabid anti-intellectualism in imitation of worse schools that at least make no pretense of having top-drawer academic programs but instead compete well in Playboy’s annual Nude Coeds issue.
The Lawn Residents and The Jefferson Society, allegedly the best and brightest there, have a reputation more for dunkenness and boorishness, sexual harrassment rivaling Tailhook, than for recorded academic achievement, publications while students, etc. Take a stroll down the lawn and read the postings on the white-boards of the lawn-residents… fart jokes and ‘i was so trashed last night’ predominate, and the reek of 151-vomit overwhelms the musty smell of old books. Graduates are prouder and more vocal about having streaked-the-lawn than of anything even remotely scholastic.
The stereotypical UVA student majors in Econ or more likely Commerce (its insubstantial and fluff kid-sister), or Women’s or American Studies. She drives daddy’s old beamer and can’t wait for the next sigma chi party. She is loud and boorish in bars, snickers at guys in glasses, dresses to a country-club ‘T’, is sitting at Starbucks reading Vogue or Harry Potter not Allende, even Allende, expends more effort dressing for Foxfield than writing the minimal essays required of any student here.
Almost every class is taught entirely by Teaching Assistants who are barely more educated than the students themselves and often have read less, the professors breeze in from time to time to lecture about ‘that idiot’ President Bush in Art History class, otherwise are busying themselves counting infinitives in Dante for scholarly publications that are no more than word-lists, and almost no class at the school requires more than a five-page essay per-student per-semester… these essays read and graded by the TAs and never by the professors.
Name five prominent intellectuals who attended UVA, or name three who form part of the faculty—oops! you had richard-rorty, but he left for Chicago where they teach stuff. Oops! you had Faulkner, but fired him because he wrote challenging books. Ooops! even Mark Edmundson the neo-marxist Marshall McLuhan ran for the hills. Ooops! so did reconstruction-hiostorian Edward Ayers. Well, you have Rita Dove still:
don’t mutter oh no
not another one
get a job fly a kite
go bury a bone
The relationship between UVA and the town of Charlottesville is exceptional. MOST college-towns benefit from having a school in or near them, by the school raising the intellectual timbre of the place. Here, it is the reverse–the intellectuals tend to be in the town, and the school uses that to promote itself, congratulate itself. When Zizek came to speak at UVA, most of the audience was non-UVA, when Shastakovich was recently performed there, it was locals not students who bought the tickets, seemingly. The self-congratulatory Virginia Quarterly (add water for Cville Weekly suck-off) seems to be mostly town, not gown publicants. The UVA Corner has one bookstore (patronized mostly by townies), the Downtown Mall has seven.
The Film Festival is paid for by UVA but run by townies, as is the Book Festival. UVA brings Bruce Springsteen, the Paramount brings the Russian Ballet. Charlottesville gets listed as the 3rd most literary and readerly town in America, UVA gets listed at the 3rd best party-school.
how many establishments on the UVA Corner are places where: 1) you could read a book or 2) anyone has ever read a book.
Anyone sit in Buddha at 11 on an exam-night, or Biltmore or Orbit or or or or or. The closest thing you once had to any place like that was Espresso Corner, 24-hour coffeehouse, which ignominiously closed in bankruptcy because it was patronized almost exclusively by UVA scholars—the ONLY coffeehouse EVER to fail in Charlottesville—ONLY, EVER—because it was designed to cater to people who stayed up late studying or reading books or talking about stuff without a sex-on-the-beach in front of them… and there were a dozen, and half of THEM were townies.
not to split hairs or anything…
@9
and, according to the title of this post, Another Botched UVa Kidnapping, they even f*cked up a simple kidnapping—how hard can it be???
@ 9 oh wow. i love you.
seriously.
- may i ask if you went to UVA for undergrad or grad? i don’t ask to be cheeky - i’m genuinely curious because i agree with you on a lot of this, but i also disagree with you on a few things, and i went here for undergrad and am currently back for grad. though i’m thinking of leaving, for several reasons you outlined above…
Man otterdung you said everything but “GET OFF MY (Jefferson designed) LAWN!” Many things you have said are factual inaccurate or slanted. There is more than one bookstore on the corner and the 7 downtown bookstores are all used. You know what the biggest used bookstore near the corner? Yeah it’s called a library.
Shastakovich was a Starfleet officer serving in the 24th century. Shostakovich died in 1975 and considered to have written old people’s music. There is a lot of great music made for the students and it’s every where. UVA 3rd best party school- you made that up. It ain’t true and you know it. Playboy? There been like one girl in the last few years. And what does that have to do with UVA? One of the highest African American graduation rates is something to be proud of.
24 hour coffee places mean little in a red bull world. You seemed to want to recreate Rome or Paris and when we get that old or that large you would have a point.
Academics judged by measures at your disposal seem lacking. Seriously you did everything but complain about how much UVA spends on sports complexes or how little the state pays for UVA’s budget.
@9 I’m assuming you intentionally neglected to mention Charles Wright so that you could pop-fly that Rita Dove softball. By asking for “prominent” intellectuals, you are attempting to play by the very rules that you scoff.
UVA, like many schools of its nature, is what you make of it. Plus, many townies are UVA alums. I’m not trying to contradict your observations, which might often be true, but pointing out cliches doesn’t really get me anywhere anymore. There were just as many cliches run rampant in one of the sets I used to spend time with back in UVA/Cville undergrad…Sigma Nu hippie/goths with their Avail shows in the basement, patchouli-doused prairie skirts and cheap silver jewelry, tie-dyed tapestry sheets tacked to the walls above beds with no frames. The list goes on for any college group.
/Allende? Odd choice.
Also, if you’re talking bookstores (non-used), the best one we had (in terms of content, staff, events, etc) was Williams Corner, and that was Downtown, and neither the townies nor the students could save that one, once Barnes and Noble came crashing in like the jolly green giant that it is. Wms Corner was one of the best Cville/UVA crossroads, with the reading series that hasn’t been replicated since — great published names coming to read, along with the talented MFAs that tread through town, all in a friendly, accessible location.
@11
i was kindof yanking the chain just to see if the hound at the end would bite. no, i attended several other universities in virginia and elsewhere in the states, and abroad. my poor writing and argumentation skills should attest to that my education is on par with that i complain of here.
i like UVA a lot, and have met many kids who were bright when they came here, and were still pretty bright when they left—i take that as a VERY positive sign of the work UVA does in not poisoning them. my many buddies who went to UChicago/Berkeley and Harvard/Yale/Princeton were bright when they went, but came out insufferable, and loudly politicized. i also admire that UVA kids tend to be better ’socialized’ and more comfortable in groups and so on, big hearty handshakes and none of the cocktail-party nervous floor-staring of Amherst grads.
i think UVA English Grad is overrated and mistreats its students—i’ve had so many friends get eaten alive by that program, not because it’s tough, but because it is petty and highly favoritist and neo-crit rather than purely scholarly. most of them went off to places like UMaryland and Southern schools and were much happier and better funded.
i hate to think of anyone attending UVA being unhappy at UVA. I guess my primary complaint is that so many really sharp and quirky students seem so unhappy there, while kids i would characterize broadly and uncharitably as ‘party idiots’ seem delighted. that said, i’m sure you’ll be grateful if you tough it out here, and just ‘finish’ yourself later with a fulbright-to-anywhere or an Oxford-breather afterwards?
@12
sorry, i’m just a poor backwoods country-boy… opining wildly.
i think there are 2 bookstores on the Corner and closer to 9 bookstores downtown, and New Dominion downtown is new books. Downtown has a big-ass library, with branches across the city including one on Gordon Ave where many UVA students study when they don’t care to get hit-on at Club Clemons. I think the tendency with readers is to own books rather than borrow them, and for real students to buy so many that used ones fit their budgets better than new ones—at least that’s how Jefferson (who got kicked out of college for gambling debts and whoring, i believe) seemed to do it.
the rest of the stuff is immaterial, i think, and i agree with you that my objective correlative approach is unsatisfying statistically—but speaking of the tone of the place not the substance, because UVA seems to define itself in the world and the community by that tone and not by substance.
i did say “… UVA is VERY good about diversity in recruiting and admissions (big plus)…”
ever been a novel written about UVA? I can only come up with True Colors, where the UVA grads are liars and naifs, corrupt and without honor, and the descriptions of UVA are exclusively remembrances of drunkenness and cocaine on the Corner.
i’ve often wondered why with its obscenely large endowment UVA can’t afford a couple big-name scholars, and keep them here.
all that aside, what the hell kind of prank is a kidnapping? it’s neither funny nor clever. Alcibiades broke the penises off all the house-god statues in Athens when drunk and pissed-off about having the fleet taken away from him. THAT’S a prank.
@13
yup–you’re right about Wright. and Garrett. and Orr. And Eisenberg, and Blair.
and i had to think really hard to remember a line from Dove as awful as the one i cited, which is even itself from a fairly decent and moving poem, name forgotten.
Allende was an odd choice. i figured none of you would dare make fun of her, or question that a sensitive and scholarly type should be sitting around sipping skinny-latte and reading her. If i’d said Louis Ferdinand Celine or Lionel Trilling….
@14
i agree with you about Williams Corner, and miss it a lot. I also miss the MFA readings at Second Street and the MFAs hanging out at Felinis in the old days. no idea where the current MFAs and Eng-grads congregate. house-parties, dinner-parties i guess.
i think i’ve presumed enough on thor/kyle’s hospitality for this evening… goodnight you two.
i assume they sell alcohol in front of a big-screen teevee SOMEwhere in this town….i’m SO THERE.
@12
“Shastakovich was a Starfleet officer serving in the 24th century.”
this was parlie-quality curt brilliance on your part.
Dear otterdung, i’m appalled by your generalizations regarding the student population and the faculty of UVA. No, I did not attend UVA. However, I did grow up in this burg, and have employed, worked with, and socialized with a goodly number of students and faculty. I have to say I’m really sorry I even read this thread. It’s just flat mean. Do I condone kidnapping or any of the other crimes and misbehaviours listed here, even if they fall under the category of “pranks”? Absolutely not, and the criminal justice system - or kharma - will hand them their consequences. You just don’t have to be so mean. Most of these incredibly intelligent, hard working and, by the way, charming people don’t deserve the venom.
Someone on here is either ancient, out of touch, or both.
@18 I forgot about New Dominion bookstore downtown and as a lurker I’m a little unsure if being compared to parlie is a praise or insult. Of course I have revealed my extreme geekiness with the star trek reference.
Buster, you better back off. He’s MY 89 year-old out-of-touch shoemailing curmudgeon. Don’t make me cutchoo.
@22 ATTENTION OLD DUDES- Shenanigans is accepting AARP cards.
Early bird special anyone?
@19
i like backup planet a ton. sorry i was mean or provocative, backup planet… was just trying to liven up a thread that nobody seemed to want to comment upon, and invite some UVA lurkers to celebrate their school and drown my dyspeptic squeakings in a Sea Of Orange.
i like UVA just fine… i just think it tends to penalize and marginalize very bright students, and dull the edges of very sharp or alternative ones except for the politically crackpot and naively loudmouth. the inelucatable charm and pigroast suave of the generality of them is never in doubt…. but it is not a school for liberal arts or that mindset, nor is it a school for aggressive scholars in disciplines other than engineering or pre-med. I only object that it claims to be.
Excellence without arrogance is a fine motto for a good school; UVA seems to favour the vice to the versa.
@20
unregenerately BOTH
@21
MY comparing you to parlie whom i hold in the highest regard (equal almost to that esteem in which i hold Darren Hoyt, from whom all blessings flow) is an unstinting compliment.
@22
Shen, @9, @15, @16 i tried to make NICEY-NICE, but it didn’t quite ‘take’.
assuming
the first rate schools to be: Oxbridge, Heidelberg, the Sorbonne, Harvard/etc., MAYBE Leuven
the second-tier schools to be: Berserkly, Rutgers, Chicago, etc.
then the third-rate would be: UVA, Hopkins (except for med), Duke, etc.
/”that’s why real men wear gowns…”
ummm, and with two notable and well-spoken, reasoned lurker exceptions and one regular they seem not to care to defend the honor of their fine school?
HAS anyone heard of any good pranks around town?
every once in a while someone will dump a bottle of laundry detergent in the Central Place fountain. that’s about all i ever see. a singularly uninspired and humorless bunch we have around here, downtown and university alike.
about ten years ago someone made HUGE paper-mache testicles and duct-taped them to all the black obelisk-column thingees on the downtown mall.
around the same time, someone took plywood and cut out imitations of those steel people-silhouettes on the Mall—the cops got them away pretty quickly, but i saw one of a bum begging change, one of a guy smoking a crack-pipe, one complex-one of a guy with a popped collar vomiting. imagine the effort.
oops, dang, as usual am up too late to garner any back lash of opinion…
anyway, @24 - thanks, otter, ‘get’ the whole devils advocate thing, and @26, can’t remember any good pranks off the top of my head, which, by the way, ain’t the best conveyor of historical facts, but I digress…
happen to be married to a liberal arts fella who did just fine and has fine memories of said institution of higher learning. We still maintain ties to the faculty (yeah, I just thought of a few off color puns, too) and, from our perspective, we don’t harbor the same bad feelings towards Mr. Jefferson’s university that you seem to have.
In general, I really love that I live in a burg with such a colorful and energetic student population. It’s what keeps C-ville from being ruckersville.
@15 UVA does have numerous big name scholars, but obviously your definition of scholarship includes only a handful of fields and overlooks most of the others. David Germano is a leading scholar in Tibetan studies. Bernard Frischer is practically a demigod in Roman topography and visualization. But you didn’t know that because you probably define scholarship in the rigid constraints of English literature. Most of the rest of us don’t give a flying fuck about that.
Your opinions excruciatingly over-generalizing and, frankly, insufferable. You seem like a constant complainer who tries to cast the appearance of being more educated than everyone else, especially those pesky UVA students. Don’t look now, but your inferiority complex is showing.
Your classification of “tiered” schools shows this. By what definition do you classify these schools. I hate to break it to you, but the world’s greatest mathematical minds aren’t lining up to gain entrance to the Sorbonne. Ivy League schools tend to be humanities-focused. Promising engineers don’t go to Harvard. They go to Stanford or Illinois or Michigan. Penn State is the best meteorological program, bar none. UVA is a damn good school. It has some programs that are among the very best in the world. Other programs are just “okay” or “good.” It’s what someone gets out of their education that defines the quality of the school.
It’s the individual, stupid….
@ 22 you can have him. i’m far too sleepy to fight you…
/put the knife down slowly and back away
@28
sensible, and ‘a leading scholar’ is accurate, but of course the greatest Thibetan scholars are at Amherst, with Robert Thurman leading the charge. I love tibetans and we have a ton of them and a hiostory of recruiting them to our town, but publishing a book of pictures of blue-people isn’t the same as translating or learned exegesis of the original texts. Of course ‘roman topography and visualization’ is again publishing picture-books, which are cool and all, but are more layout in In-Design than scholarship—but again, you’re right—a distinguished scholar. Larry Sabato is on tv all the time, that’s something.
of course that only about twelve people in the world, all in those disciplines, have ever heard of these guys sotof goes along with what i was saying? We also have a ton of high-end defense contracts in computer-modelling and chaos/nonlinear dynamics, particularly in optics for missile-sights, etc.—the same guys who were ground-floor in Artificial Intelligence when that broke back in the 70s/80s. And the Cville said yesterday that we have a swell IT program. But again, i defy anyone out of those fields to name a single known luminary amongst them.
UVA not known for big names, all i’m saying…these things establish a university’s reputation nationwide. Nor for great graduates other than Tina Fey and …. ummmmm… the Kennedy kid who raped that gal down in Florida.
i think i said above that i’m in fact far less educated than most on this website, fighting out of my weight, and in a more scattered and useless way, and that i write poorly as a result.
I love having UVA here, and i love having UVA kids around. they have a certain specific charm, and they have and spend the money to keep this rural backwater alive…i think i started out by saying that en masse they are not seen as a terribly intellectual bunch…. one has a hard time finding a UVA kid grad or undergrad with whom to speak of books, whether lit (about which nobody cares) or even about meteorology (who DOESN’T like to talk about the weather????).
Harvard is harvard, ne plus ultra. Stanford is known for the best and most promising geeks, to be sure, and you omit MIT for same. Against neither of which UVA competes, intellectually. And neither of which has a Freshman Fifth, cryin’ shame. A fine school UVA but not an intellectual one. Some fine programs and fine scholars, but not the impression it succeeds in giving to the world, no matter how often it claims to have the best Religious Studies or Food Ethics programs.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with attending a third-rate school and taking a first-rate education from it, which is of course possible but exceptional in these parts. I think schools are ranked when not ranked by a specific program, by their overall offerings and the value/prominence of the scholars they launch or employ. Again, Harvard is Harvard. UVA is Rita Dove and Tina Fey.
how the hell did we get on this subject in the first place—i think i started by making a joke about pranks and the political value of being held prisoner, even if by acquaintance-peers, then someone lured me into all this school talk.
@30: You can have him. He’s a PLAYER.
@32
hunh? not me. boy-oh-boy, not me.
@32 you said he was gay yesterday
Ok, he’s bi. NTTAWWT.
@34
hunh? not me. boy-oh-boy, not me.
@35
hunh? not me. boy-oh-boy, not me.
STFU THE BOTH OF YOU. BACK TO IDIOT UVA KIDS. WTF WERE THEY DOING?
nice, we’ll call @37 “THE ENFORCER”
@37 this is a dead topic and we will play with it as we see fit.
This is Thor and the other mods fault for not keeping the FFA in a easy to find spot on the front page.
I’m not looking for the FFA so this is all their fault and the fact that this topic SUUUCCKKS!
@39: HERE’S YOUR FFA BEE-OTCH
HERE’S YOUR FFA, love the BEE-OTCH
Fixed that for you
i think i submitted 10,000 words to this already, on topic, about what irrepressible dolts and boors UVA students are, and how typical it is of them to botch a simple kidnapping, or to think that a kidnapping is a clever practical joke when they could’ve been breaking the dicks off statues winning mass-public lauds and laughter.
ROUND OF APPLAUSE FOR OTTERDUNG
@43 psst the caps lock is still on. Makes you like like a newbie. Either that or you forgot to yell “GET OFF MY LAWN!”
@31. I think you’ve fingered the wrong Kennedy. UVA’s is the one who drove off the bridge in Massachusetts just to see a girl die (or something like that). UVA will also claim Katie Couric and the world’s preeminent crossword puzzle-maker, Will Shortz.
UVA has tried to buy some preeminent scholars over the past few years, including spending a boatload to create a research lab for one. I seem to recall UVA believing it had a handshake agreement with the researching to bring his team from UChicago (? Northwestern?) and getting left at the altar. But at least they have a brand new lab going for the, which is nice.
@44: THE LAWN IS AT UVA. WAY TO STAY ON TOPIC!
@45
Did Comrade Teddy go here undergrad? How cool.
The Kennedy I was thinking of, the florida rapist (was he convicted or should i say ‘alleged’—apologies), i think may have done law school here briefly. I also think that in the trial he tried to brush the whole thing off as harmless frat-fun, so we’re still on-topic with this.
I had hoped when Duke English department all dissolved a while ago, scattering Stanley Fish to the wind, UVA might have scooped some of them up. Stanley was a real rake and prankster himself, and i thought he might encourage the kids in that way. Mark Edmundsun—see his great Harper’s article The BubbleGum University about how UVA kids are dolts and boors and prefer GameBoy to Gibbons but still f*ck up a simple prank—was the same, but i’m pretty sure left UVA for soemwhere fancy with name-recognition in scholarship, etc.
original?
“UVA Prank-Whole Contents of Dorm Room Moved to Bathroom”
http://technorati.com/videos/youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DCnDSsKN23Wg
“There was a rig set up above the door that made some water balloons pop.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3caSet1aew&feature=related
i still don’t understand why we hate uva kids so much? i mean, as long as we’re casting aspersions on a group of people based on some second-hand observations and thusly skewed conjecture, can’t we just say that they’re just about as doltish and boorish as the rest of collegiate america? even i, parlington wordswaddle ix, esq, was a boorish dolt in college. it was all “bottle rockets” and “handles of beam,” so i don’t get what the big deal is, bro.
sorry i gotta run, i think they need me over in racial and gender stereotypes thread. bro.
@45 I believe otterdung’s haterade comes from being in his dotage- the co-eds no longer buy his act- therefore they are flawed.
@49
i dunno. i think i accidentally mentioned that some (subset x) college kids aren’t the sharpest drawers in the knife, then all hell broke loose. an insider had to call me at home to tell me the thread was on fire, and that i needed to rush back to the web and apologize to everyone.
/loves UVA kids, hates the game
What is the game? Is it because you are now on the senior circuit?
i still don’t understand why we hate uva kids so much?
meh. i say why stop the hate there?
indy hipster with ironic tattoo and perfect flick on your fixie. uva chuckle bucket with your popped abacrombie. sundressed cdc socialite dangle earring, looking for your tan in a can man. white t-shirt micro mafioso with rhinestone dollar sign necklace and empty wallet. equestrian elite jodper sporting skinny latte sucking haver of square feet. hot topic mall emo flotsam cutting the wounds that never heal. fabulous pointy toed fashionistas and sleeveless flannel mullet mommas. waistline hiked sensibly shod volvo soca evangelicals…
i hate you all for sacrificing your individuality and opting to live in a box that not only wraps your exterior, but molds your interior. you are all the starbucks of humanity, and though your wrappers may vary, your content, essentially, does not. what a waste.
it was all “bottle rockets” and “handles of beam,”
you’ve matured so much since then, I hardly recognize you in this description. I was all about bicycles and PBR in college and look how far I’ve come since then.
incidentally, I haven’t read any of this thread because holy shit, you guys write some long winded nonsense. I used to know what was going on around here… now, I have no idea what’s going on around here. I think my commentary is the same.
@52: cherry, it’s important that you, cherry, know that you, cherry, you’re an i n d i v i d u a l . No, no. You really, really, really are. It’s true. And no one can take that away from you. Not even Santa. Not ever.
I think Cherry O is Belmont Yo. Or at least his female equivalent. Me likey.
i am an individual, just like the rest of you.
I kidnapped a horse in college. And kept it in my dorm room.
@56 I was kinda of hoping we could be a mob-Individuals losing individuality. Half the thought; twice the fun.
@57 perhaps you were a big fan of Catherine the Great?
@60: I didn’t fuck it.
Why no one says you did. I just knew Catherine was famous for the way she pamper her horses with super comfy digs and the use of royal vets. She keep her favorites in the palace, that is the probable source of that terrible rumor that you crudely referred to.
@52
what the hell did i do to you? whatever it is, so so sorry…
am i old, am i blue?
a tad ad hominem there, sport-o.
@ the post, the subject
i was hoping the thread would gradually lead to descriptions of funny pranks, and an incitation for folks here, some of the clevererest i’ve encountered recently in this town, to perform some and report-back. got distracted by questioning of my assertion that uva may not be a really intellectual place.
the funniest pranks i’ve seen were at, one might assert, opposite ends of the intellectual spectrum: at prep-school (bored young people under a repressive order in a closed-space without access to sex or alcohol) and in the military (bored young people under a repressive order in a closed-space without access to sex or alcohol).
Both involved low-level explosives (wiring smoke grenades to the back of desk-drawers), things done to sleeping people (painting them colors, shaving eyebrows, drawing bizarre scenes on the inside of their eyeglasses, adding erroneous notes to their class-notes), to rooms (gluing furniture to ceiling, making fish and seaweed and other stuff and suspending from ceiling to make the room look like ocean-floor), etc.
the examples i gave above—gluing paper-mache testes to black poles on the mall, making cutouts of bad stuff to mock the steel silhouettes on the mall–seem the same sort of thing and for the same reason—young funny people who are bored. that stuff seems to have dropped off since the Mall exploded commercially and with people.
i NEVER see pranks in the office, ever. so sad—i thought the TV show The Office would get people going on that. The one prank i ever pulled at work nearly got me fired for destruction-of-property, the humorless f*cks.
so, boredom breeds pranks?
I think UVA kids though bright and energetic, probably have what they consider, perhaps justly, better uses for their time (sex and alcohol).
@58
that’s magnificent!
anyone else?
It is really hard to get a horse into an elevator btw.
i’m audi. too mean in here. you youngsters behave now.
@66: OD you should offer your services to UVa, giving kids ideas for silly smart pranks so they don’t have to resort to boring old law-breaking.
I like how otterdung marginalizes the academic contributions of everyone at UVA that he’s never heard of by saying they publish picture books. He’s one of those people who defines his own superior status on having read all the “classic” literature, and anyone who doesn’t share his opinion on scholarship is therefore inferior to him. The kid who reads astronomy books or teaches himself computer programming isn’t a scholar. That’s a technical field–not an academic one.
get some chairs in here STAT.
No he just says publishing books on Tibet with pictures are picture books, and so are books on Roman topography. This is a true statement. They are books. With lots of pictures. You’re just being defensive since you work there and that’s your field.
whoah, fun. I like Spuds. A lot.
(if Spuds is a girl, the above = “Let’s have sex”, if a boy, the above = “buy me a beer sometime”)
/actually, if Spuds is a girl, it means “Buy me a beer sometime, and then Let’s have sex”
i forgot Doctor Seuss graduated uva–he’s like immanuel-f*cking-kant compared to what we have now.
tempting to let this drop, but it’s sorta fun how uptighty folks are getting–while the stakes could not be lower.
think i’ve repeated sixty-nine times that i am markedly in-ferior to most posters, have a mediocre and scattered education at best, and that i am not an academic or intellectual by trade or training, and that i write very poorly as any will attest who’ve read my posts. and that i like UVA and its students.
classic literature sucks; gibbon is the only author even remotely classic that i’ve mentioned.
and it’s because i AM somewhat familiar with the contributions of prominent UVAers that i know at least the picture books they publish. perhaps not their others. but because i know that field somewhat, i know and have read slightly more text-y and substantial books in it like those of Robert Thurman, America’s foremost scholar and translator of Thibetan religion, lit and culture, just e.g.?
the basic assertion was that UVA though a swell place is not seen as an intellectual mecca. if Mom bless her heart set me up with a recent UVA grad, i’d think “margaritas and jetskis”, but if she foolishly set me up with a recent Harvard grad, i’d think, slouching, “goddam Ibsen play and a boring sauterne”.
i think you may not be reading–my constant assertion is that UVA is not an intellectual place–not generally considered as such, and not generally referred to as such in the popular mind. this in no way implies that it has no intellectuals in pay, or in classes, just that those few make less of a splash in the community than do the sundressed foxfielders or professional-track kids, and less in the world than say Ralph Sampson or Tina Fey or Dr Seuss.
and, generally, i’m not sure how we got from me mentioning in passing while commenting on UVA kidnappers the place being weakly intellectual in the public mind, to me being accused of not getting any ass from UVA undergrads. seems like if i wanted uva undergrads, i would want them to be LESS intellectual (like me), or statu quo, and not more.
i’m sure morgan-stanley will hire you guys into their trainee program either way, but afraid not one UVA kid made Rhodes Scholar in 2007, you may have to wait for that one another year, and the MacArthur Genius Grant went to a talented local blues-musician and blues-author, not that UVA student doing jello-shooters at St Maartens.
in vain do i try to get anyone talking about pranks.
/looks through files for that UVA rejection-letter you mentioned
/gets called old again
@72: Don’t put yourself down. You know a hell of a lot more than Ethan. Not attacking him, it’s the truth. You have over a decade of learning on him, and have lived in C-ville way longer than he has. But it’s fun watching the two of you battle it out.
Please. Stop beating me. Please!
@47 and @72 - I know for sure that John F. Kennedy attended UVA, he and Jackie hadda house somewhere around 14th/15th and Grady. Also, I hadda man-handle Bobby K., Jr. one night when he got a little too out of hand at a local bar/musical establishment… Had ‘im by the jugular, too. Ah, what fine memories…
@74 just for you!
http://img201.imageshack.us/img201/3811/deadhorseho2.gif
@71 oy that so sweet of you. I already know who you are
oddly enough, I now think I know who you are
well give it a shot without breaking the code
we discussed a similar business experience at Kiki one evening
was that our latest conversation?
nope. We also talked at Crush
@72 jello shots were on the list of 100 things to eat before you die. so don’t hate.
That must have been some other boy/girl
You are quite the man around town, so many villains to remember
With all due respect Spuds…. that .gif looked more like a llama. Do I sound allamist?
@72 The University of Virginia places #1 among state-supported universities in the United States [29] in the production of Rhodes Scholars.
Your rant about UVa is tedious and should I take it apart assertion by assertion it would waste my time and you would learn/admit nothing. Like your hero Derrida you practice the method of obscurantisme terroriste.
Foucault’s explanation of the term as the following:
He writes so obscurely you can’t tell what he’s saying, that’s the obscurantism part, and then when you criticize him, he can always say, “You didn’t understand me; you’re an idiot.” That’s the terrorism part.
Of course you never call anyone an idiot, manners would not allow such a thing. It seems to be implied like your sword of damocles during each obscure rant. I think you are funny and have added to the group as I hope I have. But seriously, change the channel to something where your bias isn’t so stark.
@85 I think you mane objection has some merit. I’ll pony up something else to amuse.
Omg. Ow. Owww. Please stop.
@88 She neigh neigh, you do go on
So do you unfortunately.
I love when threads on this blog runs the gamut-equivalent of trying to re-write the movie/book Fight Club, to trying to re-act the movie Fight Club, to trying to reenact two people talking about seeing the movie Fight Club, to making a parody of the movie Fight Club. Where is B-Yo with a new list of rules when we need him?
/multiple people trying to be assholier-than-thou is fun to watch. and boring. and fun. sigh.
@91 “run the gamut”
/before Shen tells me to “suck it” en Francais and Stanley turns on me.
@ 61 oh, but i did!
no, really, you can keep otter. wait, are we now fighting over _not_ having someone? cos that’s just silly.
Stanley turns on me
Your gender-neutral ecrush status is safe.
/for now….
@90 you cut me to the quick, I like otterdung just not the diatribe against cville’s mothership. I don’t cotton to people bad mouthing DMB either. You want real sport, go to Boston and say you think the Red Sox suck, let me know how that goes.
I think you’re charming and feisty, good qualities to be sure. But on this one we shall have to disagree. Otterdung asked for conflict and on this topic I was happy to oblige. What would you do if someone came after OXO and said what a mediocre menu it had and what small town dance scene it was? You would kick their ass and I would laugh at the poor bastard who tried it.
oxoxoxoxoxoxo,
Spuds
@general
think what i asked for was to have people talking about pranks? and condemning a uva collective convinced that kidnapping is funny?
Dude, i’m not sure i’d use foucault to claim derrida is obscurantist and meaninglessly po-mo. just a thought. for the record i loathe derrida and have read very little of him, tolerate foucault and have read most of him, but adore gadamer and have read all of him.
it’s gadamer who makes me love this website.
it’s being called an old gay terrorist who can’t get freshman pooty that makes me think uva may be… wellllllllll… differently-educating of its wards, past and present.
/is it safe to assume then that you emergent lurkers (smiley welcome to you!!!) are and have been too intellectual and self-serious from your wahooooooo years on to have perforrmed or noticed a prank about which you might tell us????
@73 You’re just jealous I don’t argue with you anymore because you’re vacuous and callow.
Not attacking you, it’s the truth.
also for the record, i just won a bottle of Maker’s on a bet that i could make this lame, ignored post run to 100 comments.
i couldn’t give less of a fuck about uva’s reputation nor about pranks.
[insert dick joke and Shen flirtation here]
1. U.Va. is a good university because it has good talent and good prospective talent.
2. U.Va. has a lot of smart people teaching and learning. It also has smart people you may disagree with on any number of issues; these people are teaching and learning there, too. And they’re all usually all too willing to discuss these issues.
3. There’s a also metric schload of shitheads who were bound for golden parachutes and trophy-wife status from the moment they walked into their first-year dorms. These people are dumb, off-write-able, and already out-of-discussion for the serious debater.
The problem of over-representing #3 is a problem of choice. Leave those cads out already.
wow, stanley, just wow - i totally e-crush you…
oops, it’s late enough that bp is now up commenting - hurry home, folks, it’s bedtime!
It sure is late. Make a point quickly, backup planet. The wine is running out, and mine eyes grow sleepy.
ok, get it - too late for you oldsters…
@99
thank you all, lurkers and regulars alike, for helping me to achieve my 100-comment prank on the prank thread.
now if the real Belmont Yo will come forward, or the sainted and aether-dwelling Darren H will take corporeal form and manifest himself terrestrially, we can get down to the more serious-minded task of destroying this lovely bottle of Maker’s Mark, to be delivered unto me i hope shortly.
/dick-joke here.
dick-joke here.
otter dung you’re being too hard on yourself- self loathing is never attractive
@105: I’ve got a bottle of Basil Hayden…
@106: Being a dick isn’t attractive either
@107 you calling me a dick-tater? worried about a coup d’état ?
Nulla poena sine lege
You need to be worried about a coup de pied dans les couilles. Your iCouilles anyways.
@my dick
frangas non flectes
@109 would have thought that they would be e-Couilles for I’m sure Apple has trademark your version
.
I should hunker down behind my firewall and prepare for your torrent of bon mots, something from Balzac perhaps?
@111: Touché. I meant e-Couilles. And no Balzac, I prefer dirty street French.
never late enough for the francophiles…
hey otterdung- god forbid someone have smarts AND like to drink!
that just isn’t allowed!
…
also, mister otter, when was the last time you walked by the lawn rooms?
i walk by them everyday, and as far as i’ve noticed there are more signs on the lawn rooms for organizations such as:
alternative spring break
honor counsel
clubs relating to cultures/religions
peer awareness
etc.
than ANYTHING about being drunk. and so what if they get drunk from time to time?
they obviously still have everything together.
did you know that uva sends more people to the peace corps than any other school?
@114
humor and un-serious provocation on the internet? god forbid.
search my screen-name on this site and you’ll find
1) ample evidence of me being relatively bright and educated
2) scores of references to me swilling alcohol in various
3) formsdozens of comments about how great UVA and its students/faculty/programs are
4) mention of kennedy who started the peace-corps and of his family at UVA
5) several explicit denials of my having been serious about any of what i said about UVA in this thread.
that said, i AM miserable, but personally, not intellectually or post-wise.
@114, that said, of @ 9
“Name five prominent intellectuals who attended UVA, or name three who form part of the faculty—oops! “