A band of mysterious vigilantes just swept through the ref room posting pictures of naked (“nude” for you sophisticated Art History major you!) people. It turns out they are leftover drawings from Artist Society’s weekly life-drawing classes. They’re there for the taking, but we’re obviously all watching you, so good luck!

But wait! There’s more fun sexy time for you. Tipster Christine Hsu sent us some art she found in Lerner; another commenter says there’s art in John Jay lobby. Seek, and you shall find.

In case you’ve been in Butler recently (though really, there’s no need for such rash behavior this early on in the semester), you may have noticed the new graphic novels exhibition in the 3rd floor display cases. The exhibition is designed to showcase Butler’s graphic novel collection, which apparently has over 1300 titles. It also happens to coincide with Will Eisner Week, which celebrates graphic novels in the name of the guy who is credited with legitimizing the format. Each of the four themes – Sexuality and Gender, Perceptions of War, Visual Rhetoric, and Society in Crisis – is presented with one image of traditional artwork and three images from graphic novels. The display will be up for the rest of the semester.

More photos after the jump!

Read more…

Because Bored@Butler – that great giant of anonymous heckling, hookups, and hate – finally got tired of being splattered with your blather. Since yesterday afternoon, visits to the site yield only a message from the site’s creator/moderator, Jonathan Pappas CC ’06, lamenting the “hate speech” and “racist comments” (read: trolls) that have caused him to temporarily disable the forum. Bwog sympathizes.

Though devoid of capital letters, Pappas’ letter is strongly worded and shows genuine interest in the good use of Bored@Butler and other anonymous “Boredat” sites which are down as well. “i will not allow boredat to exist,” writes Pappas, “if:
1. it does not accurately represent the general opinion of its community.
2. it does not have the ability to self-moderate.”

The letter ends with a call for programmers to join the good fight to create the “right codes” (which Bwog can only assume means “spam filters”) so that this problem can “take care of itself.” Encourage thusly skilled friends to help out, or let go dreams of one day enjoying the company of a stranger deep in the darkness of the stacks.

Full text of Pappas’ letter after the jump. Read more…

Okay, so you have been in Butler for three days straight, living off Cup Noodle and the occasional funny YouTube videos that your bored friends have been sending you. But the pseudo-soup, dramatic prairie dog and ‘I’m on a Boat‘ are just not cutting it anymore. What is a poor finals studier to do? Bwog Slowly-Going-Insane Expert David Berke has some suggestions.

The answer is to learn the golden lesson of extreme boredom  from DMV employees: when the going gets tough, fuck with people. Spice up your soulless hours of study with these mind games…none of which we endorse or take responsibility for.

The Larry Craig 2.0: While you’re in a bathroom stall and a neighboring stall is occupied, slide your foot under the divider a little bit. Then slip a piece of paper under the divider that says, ‘That means I want to have sex with you.’

Ipod Madness, Option One: You know those Butler-ites who play their Ipods so loud that you can hear the song lyrics across the room [ed. note: sorry]. Play this song at their volume and see how people react. Read more…

Butler corresponent Sara Vogel breathlessly reports the following: Around 11 PM, in 209 Butler, the following Dramatic And Exciting Events Occurred: A book fell to the ground. A bunch of students stood up and pointed finger guns at each other, as if holding everyone hostage. They all pointed their fingers and then said “bang” and shot each other. And then everyone clapped.

According to Bwog Media Analyst Jon Hill, we can expect the following coverage from Fox News:

“Where does the final casualty count stand today after a surprise hostage stand-off at a Columbia University library last night? We’ll have the details of the shocking incident and the crazed students that sparked it at the top of our 9 o’clock hour…”

Anyway, Bwog has been promised video of this Dramatic And Exciting Non-Standoff soon. 

UPDATE 1:49 PM: Dramatic Video can be found here.  Be patient, it takes a few tens of seconds for the action to start.

From the “Not Again” Department: Bored@Butler has internal competition.

For those of you holed up in Purgatory Butler last week for midterms, Bwog’d bet that you saved a tab in your browser for Bored@Butler (boredatbutler.com).  The site is an anonymous message board for Columbia students stuck in the library to post their thoughts.

According to WikiCU, founder Jonathan Pappas (CC ’06) wanted to see what Columbia students would say if the social filter were removed.  An easier approach would be to read Youtube comments, however; even without complete anonymity, there’s hardly a filter.

Though the site quickly hosted thousands of posts in the days after its launch in February 2006, it has since degraded into the repetitive drivel of sex-starved students.  As of the publication of this article, the current topics included general hate, the possibility of random hookups, and  Stephan‘s hair.  More telling are this week’s “best”: “Oh, I need a blowjob.  Really” and a girl reportedly giving herself a breast exam in Milstein.  Honestly, Bwog is amazed by the introspection shown by Ivy Leaguers.

Read more…

Midterms are here and procrastination season is in full swing, so Bwog wants to help you make the most (make the least?) of your wasted time.

We’ve created a bingo game for everyone studying in Butler to play. The game board is filled with 25 of Butler’s most common annoyances and quirks around exam season. Everyone is eligible—simply click the screenshot of the game (right) to open up the game board.

If you’re in Butler and you see something happen that’s on the board, reply to this post with a comment describing what you saw and where. Bwog staffers will then check off squares and update the ButlerBingo board as the comments roll in.

Can Columbia score a bingo? It’s up to you, loyal Bwog readers!

(Oh, and try to get some studying done, too.)

Bwog just received the following Shocking Report from Lecture Hop editor Pierce Stanley, who’s currently staked out in Butler:

“There is a pigeon in the reference room right now, flying around trying to get out and walking alongside the books on the walls. Everyone is sort of watching and laughing.”

Quickly! What should we name him? Stanley suggests Webster, “in honor of one of the most seminal reference books ever.”

And if you’re in Butler and you have a camera, snap a picture of this delightful avian distraction and send it to bwog@columbia.edu.

UPDATE 9:14 PM: Saakashtweety it is!

Too much to sift through on YouTube?  Life’s hard.  Bwog’s here to help.

There’s nothing as bad as being in Butler on a Saturday night.  But, instead of wasting your study break tonight on another disappointing episode of SNL, Bwog suggests checking out Sarah Dooley’s (BC ’11) delightful YouTube series, AndSarah. 

Sarah’s face may be familiar to you, but her acting and writing will surprise you.  In each of the series’ three episodes, Sarah offers clever and carefully crafted portraits of the life and times of college freshman.  Her character is a caricature of herself, awkwardly idiosyncratic and simultaneously accessible to all undergraduates.   

Her self-conscious fidgets and sputters are well-timed and reinforce her ridiculous, and often poignant, blunders. Although it takes a couple of minutes to get used to Sarah’s mannerisms in the first episode,  it’s impossible to resist her lessons in people watching on College Walk and lunching alone in Hewitt.
Read more…

Boredatbutler is back, but it’s not just for Butlerites anymore. A while ago, founder Jonathan Pappas, CC ’06, relaunched the site as BoredatColumbia, in conjunction with duplicate sites at a whole host of not-quite-as-bored schools across the country. Recently, he added listings, which may just fill the void of Dogears and supplement Facebook and Craigslist for your random shit/spontaneous hookup needs. 

Bwog had a few questions for the man behind Columbia’s id, posed and answered via e-mail.

How and why was boredatbutler originally shut down? What have you been doing in the interim?  

Boredatbutler was never actually shut down. Last January, Columbia approached me and asked me to discontinue using the Columbia Crown for the site’s logo after someone complained to the administration. It was not a problem and I made the change accordingly. After I graduated, I continued to run the site out of my tiny Harlem apartment until Silicon Valley dragged me from NYC. I spent the whole summer out there building and playing around with the concept of anonymity, meeting some really cool people in the industry, and evolving the site into what it is today: boredatcolumbia.net. Read more…

Taking the tempera to the walls of McIntosh just wasn’t enough to satisfy a (few) vandal(s). A tipster alerted Bwog to the brightly colored trails currently on the scaffolding at the south side of Butler Library. The tipster speculated students (who else?) could have heaved paint out of the top floor windows. 

Bwog is unsure when this happened — we could have missed this for months now — but judging by the poor, now turquoise tree (below) we’d say the marks are pretty fresh.

- SEV 

Spec is only running Monday and Wednesday on this sunny, gloriously action-packed midterm week. So in the absence of our usual morning recap, we present this motley roundup of completely unrelated miscellany…

• 
  Behold the latest email from the CC ’09 class council, proving to seniors, perhaps, that they don’t have it so bad. The missive begins by observing “Wollstonecraft is a hotty,” and quickly goes downhill. A section  titled ”Free Food Just Doesn’t Get Any Freer” describes the purchase and movement of the Broadway farmer’s market a few meters inside, to Lerner. To wit, soon will be your “Last Chance to SEXIFY” the student center. Add an announcement for a campus group J. Sachs project called GROCC, at least three misspellings, four instances of triple exclamation points, and three announcements copied and pasted from other emails. Coda? “BEST OF LUCK ON THE MIDDIES”. Beware, sophomores – it’s never too early to start worrying about Class Day.

• You’ve probably only visited if you’ve taken the English department’s seminar on children’s literature, or if you’re a GS student with a full house. The rest of us, apparently, are missing out: Bank Street Bookstore was recently named by New York magazine as the best indie book vendor (well, for kids) in town. Come to think of it, where else would you find a place featuring picture books in Urdu, Vietnamese, and Bengali – not to mention an edition of “Winnie the Pooh”…in Latin?

• Material on college sex finally running thin, the Daily News calls out Columbia students for throwing “narcissistic” parties. Which deadly sin will the tabloids tackle next week?

• Meanwhile, Dartmouth students discover a new way to be bored…as if they needed it?

-CJS

Well, as promised, Bored at Butler is back up before the school year has started…or a generic, universalized for other universities, less usable version thereof. Now called ChatterU, it’s, um … a really cool name? 

Cheers! Bwog won’t have to start the school year without its third favorite study distraction (after Facebook and this craziness). Bored at Butler, which went underground shortly after the end of classes, is gathering input for a relaunch, and wants to hear from YOU! (For the uninitiated in Generation ’10: the site, affectionately known as B@B, is what all these library rats are really peering at on their laptops).

Go forth and feed back.