Ruthless

So it would seem, judging by some of the kill reports on CU Assassin’s website. While some are as descriptive as last year and others blatantly to the point, one thing remains constant as the obvious thought and dedication that was put into each of these ambushes will show: these assassins take their jobs seriously… except for maybe Spicy’s guy—”killed him while walking randomly on campus.”

Victim: Kobe
Time of Death: Thu Mar 3 19:03:32 EST 2011
Summary of Death:
Lesson learned: fix your privacy settings for Facebook. I knew who your Big was in your sorority, who our mutual friends were, and, as if you were damned from the start, I could see all of your profile pictures, making it very easy to spot you in these cold, unforgiving streets. (Of course, it also helped that your friend happened to “make you” walk by Lerner just as I happened to do the same. I appear more impressive than I actually am. Still impressive, though, if I do say so myself.)

Victim: Yoshi
Time of Death: Wed Mar 2 14:20:42 EST 2011
Summary of Death:
Partner and I acquired target’s schedule, hid in target’s closet for 40 minutes, and terminated target as she walked into the room.

Victim: Rowena Ravenclaw
Time of Death: Sat Mar 5 14:40:28 EST 2011
Summary of Death:
Fair Rowena Ravenclaw sat down for a a feast her strength replenished through the flesh of a beast with the thought of death on her mind the least She forgot to check every crack, every crease A worthy opponent, three times a winner She killed without mercy, no remorse in her But karma always catches up with a sinner And tonight, Ravenclaw is for dinner Back in the present the hunt is on Rowena eats as Helga yawns She feels as safe as if she’s in her back lawn A sitting duck soon to be gone There crept Fresh, he approached from the east Calm and prepared, his gun was greased Rowena’s time was clearly leased And with the pull of the trigger her breathing ceased. Read more…

Attention assassins— Uma Thurman aspirants and the less ambitious, college student variety—CU Assassins starts today! Happy hunting! Here’s a little inspiration from The Bride herself. (Bwog also stands for bloody wall of gore…viewer discretion advised).

Update: Registration for Assassins will indeed still be open during Closing Ceremonies. It’s your last chance!

Stealthy. Deadly. Channel your inner assassin bug.

Today marks the commencement of Engineering Week, a 7 day long event featuring a discussion panel, speed networking and …we know you’re skimming right by this to the item of most interest to you non-engineers (and in all likelihood, engineers) signup for CU Assassins starts today!

Registration for the ESC’s annual ‘game of stealth and desire’ continues all this week, at every E-Week event.

For all freshmen, transfers and people oblivious to the unusually high levels of schizophrenic behavior round this time of year, check out the rules.

Image via Wikimedia

Image via Flickr

Bwog has received word that until midnight tonight, CU Assassins has been suspended. According to tipsters, there was a security hole in the website that allowed other players to gain valuable knowledge about their targets with little information required. We’re assuming ESC is frantically doing engineer-y things to fix this.

“The Management” advises players to log in to the site and change their passwords. So if you haven’t done so already, do so! Then enjoy your last few moments of carefree ambling around campus until midnight tonight.

Full email after the jump.

Read more…

Today marks the start of Columbia Engineering Week, and SEAS kids are all excited about their annual seven days in the spotlight. To formally usher in E-Week, ESC is holding Opening Ceremonies tonight from 6pm to 8pm in Roone Arledge Auditorium, where there will be free food and shirts (likely rife with silly engineering puns!) for SEAS students.

Perhaps more importantly though, the start of E-Week signals the return of a campus tradition, CUAssassins. Yes, the campus-wide water pistol-shooting game that makes legends and shatters dreams starts again this week. So grab together your team of four and round up $20; registration for CUAssassins starts today at Opening Ceremonies and continues at every E-Week event until Saturday, February 20th, when the game officially commences during E-Week’s Closing Ceremonies. Registration tables will be outside events in Roone or elsewhere in Lerner.

Bwog knows that now begins a time of anxiety when one even fears to walk to class alone and wishes all happy hunting! …If only to provide us with fodder and other mischief generally associated with anything related to people older than 10 and water guns.

Full E-Week schedule after the jump.

Read more…

CU Assassins has finally come to a bloody, ruthless end. “The Commissioners” have informed the participants via email that Team “Teamname” officially won the game with three Agents still alive when Agent Claytoya murdered Agent bearclaw at 1:30pm today.

Though the last kill appears to be a clean one, the recent animosity over unclear kills persisted to the very end. The second to last of the kill reports contains an exerpt of an angry email sent by the victim to her murderer:

Time of Death: Monday, March 23 at 08:32 PM

Location of Death: Vine

Summary of Death: A great team, a great sport, a great kill. Also, i would just like to post part of an email sent to us by our previous victims… Enjoy. “Dear Douchebags, “I don’t know exactly who’s cock you sucked on the rules committee, but seriously, could you be any more of a bunch of jackasses?” skip to the end. “All in all, I’m just amazed that you kids can turn a few tiny drops into a clean shot to the back in each case. That must be some fantastic head for the rules chair. But I don’t want there to be any hard feelings, so I want to get each of you a consolation prize: a travel-sized bottle of Scope to get the taste of fresh cum out of your mouths. Enjoy your victory, you’ve certainly earned it. “Sincerely, A person who enjoyed this game until some douches took it over. (Aka Agent Tiger Steelrail)” Vined em. Then END.

In addition to politely apologizing for any judgments players might (just maybe) have found unfair, the email from on high awards Agent bearclaw the prize for most kills, Officer Darwin the award for best Police Officer, and Agent the candlestick a big hug from the ESC president for being the first agent killed.

Many congratulations to the various winners – may your aim always be true and your trigger fingers muscular.

(Photo above is of next year’s winners. No photo available of this year’s winning team)

Those of you following CU Assassins may have noticed that in place of the mocking, playful, and egotistical tones of early kill reports, many killins of the past week have been described with malice and aggression. Water-gun-in-your-face aggression.

There are now only two teams remaining in the game – one with two players, and one with three, and the road to the last round has not been an easy one.

Kill reports bear witness to some heated disagreements on the legality of the kill. Bwog also has reports of a vicious email from the realm of the dead accusing murderers of cheating. But let’s be real, history is DEF written by the winners.

Deceased: Diamond Dreamsizzle

Time of Death: Tuesday, March 10 at 03:34 PM

Summary of Death: The Dancing Beauties thought they could outsmart us, but having lasted so long, they didn’t really put up much of a fight. Tiger Steelrail was the first to go, and he pleaded for mercy. You were shot in the neck? I think not friend. Firmdriver was the next victim, and he tried to deny that he was playing. Try having your back fully against the wall, and not partially. Dreamsizzle thought she could outsmart us by standing side by side with her identical twin, but she was no match for us. I’m so sure the water “ricocheted” onto your back. Nice try. R.I.P. THEN END.

Deceased: Buttscratcha

Time of Death: Sunday, March 08 at 12:39 AM

Summary of Death: I’m not funneling kills, I’m just a master of disguise. You gonna dispute this one?

Of course, there were also some traditional kill reports quoting gangsta rap

Read more…

When we last checked in with Columbia’s favorite hose, point, ’n’ laugh competition, the kill reports sounded like the best creative writing assignment you never turned in. This week, the killers lay on the literary as we hit notes of tragedy, romance, and Tupac. The following noir nugget wins Most Evocative for bringing together Tracer Bullet and John Jay dining:

Time of Death: Sunday, March 01 at 10:42 PM

Location of Death: John Jay Dining Hall

Summary of Death: My cigarette smoke mixed with the smoke of my .38. If business was as good as my aim I’d be on easy street. Instead I’ve got an office on 49th street and a nasty relationship with a string of collection agents. It’s a tough job but then I’m a tough guy.

While fans of star-crossed love will sigh prettily over what might have been:

Time of Death: Monday, March 02 at 09:55 PM

Location of Death: Broadway Elevators

Summary of Death: After spotting the most handsome stud walking out of the Broadway elevators, I turned to get another glimpse and realized that this man of steel is the enemy. One shot to the back didn’t even phase him, but it got the job done.

Read more…

Just a few days after the start of the beloved ESC festival of waterguns, over one third of the agents have been officially as dead as Empanada Joe’s, and CUAssassins is starting to get nasty. 

Less violent but just as serious as the war in the street is the competition between killers for the best kill report. Since our first look at them, the reports have only gotten more and more entertaining, sophisticated, and zing-y. One of Bwog’s favorites is even quite lyrical:

Deceased: rosestitos

Time of Death: Tuesday, February 24 at 05:12 PM

Location of Death: 114th between Broadway and Amsterdam

Summary of Death: I saw da Raj I killed da Raj I put his dead body in ma garage

Though few others attempted rhyme, also vying for the position of most poetic report is a more sophisticated stripe of snark

Deceased: Eleanor

Time of Death: Monday, February 23 at 09:34 PM

Location of Death: Outside of Havemeyer Hall

Summary of Death: We lay in wait for this great dame. We sent him to the Whitehouse in the sky.

Close to half of the killers chose to make their report original and quirky by poking fun at their victim’s agent name – some more colorfully than others

Deceased: BAMF

Time of Death: Monday, February 23 at 09:37 PM

Location of Death: Broadway

Summary of Death: When a BAMF gets PW3ND, does it make a sound?

Read more…

A new year means a new session of CUAssassins. Assassins reports for those unlucky souls who have been “killed” since the game began on Saturday at midnight are beginning to filter in from the front (aka “everywhere”).

Among the lessons learned from the first batch of kill reports: Agent “Cinnamon”  learned “Never say, ‘come in!!!’” and Agent “Potato” learned “CU democrats meetings arent so safe afterall…”

But the best kill report (so far) is of course the most extensive: Agent “iPod” was tragically killed while eating at Ollie’s, with his nameless assassin reporting that “Guilt, panic and utter shame warred on his increasingly suffused complexion. The realization of the irony of his own comments while eating, “I don’t want to be the first to die…” His last words before departure were, “Thanks for ruining my entire second semester.” A little bit dramatic, but it made me feel good.” Keep ‘em coming, would-be 47s.

Image via plasticless.com

Just as you’re feeling comfortable with this new semester, you feel a sudden wetness. 

Yes, CU Assassins is back, launching with E-Week 2009.  ESC has more information in a blog post thing, awkwardly titled “Oh Snaps.”  Clearly, this is going to be a killer event, as it involves multiple snaps “from behind.” 

We’ve already shared tips on being merciless in this competition, so hurry and sign up all this week at any E-Week event before hearing about the rules and regulations; the explanatory meeting is on Friday.

CUAssassins, ESC’s finely crafted squirt-gun war, is returning to campus next weekend. Although we don’t have a web link this time, VP Kim Manis wrote in to inform us that registration takes place next Friday and Saturday (February 15th-16th) on the ramps at Lerner.

The games begin on Thursday, the 21st. It’s $20 for a team of four to play. It’s not an event to miss — unless you enjoy feeling safe and relaxed. And who does, really?

Two months after hundreds of kids set out for their one crack at stealth warfare, one team has emerged alive: C-Unit, composed of MCPants (Max Czapanskiy, SEAS ’09, also with the most kills), Der Meister aus Deutchland (Luis Quinteros, SEAS ‘09), Doublestuf (Oriana Isaacson, C ’09), and PollockandLoad (Alex Rudnicki, SEAS ’10, who, for the record was supposed to be PolackandLoad). The two fencers, Czapanskiy and Rudnicki, had a legacy to live up to. Flush with victory, they and Quinteros sat down to relive the war.

Bwog: What have the last 55 days been like, and how do you feel with it having ended?

AR: Stress. It was just stressful.

MC: He just moved into our suite after a certain period of time.

LQ: He’s just been living there and sleeping in Max’s bed. Showering there, everything.

AR: I did lead a normal life. I went out every weekend, pretty much, but it was just heightened paranoia.

MC: The worst thing was someone was out running, and you could hear them behind you. You would just freak out and slam your back up against a wall.

So you [Quinteros] got killed earlier, right?

LQ: I was the second one dead.

MC: Luis really came through for us. That one weekend. Everyone on disavowed, right?

LQ: My whole team was gone, for two days, it was just me.

MC: Because we had a fencing tournament then. Ivies, right?

LQ: The night they got back, I happened to run into Rob Trump on my way home, through the falling snow. I immediately recognized him, I knew he was on the disavowed list, so I just walked up behind him coolly and shot him.



You are a snow killer, aren’t you?

MC: Yeah, he got you [Bwog] ten minutes later…that morning, he got two more kills, four kills in 14 hours, and that kept us off the disavowed list.



Was there a gradual ramp up in tension as the numbers dropped?

AR: Yeah, I think so. When it got down to the top third, it felt like the game was ending. Everybody was after you. When the game got down to the top ten, even though there were less people, it felt like someone was going to be around the next corner. Read more…

1)  Finding the Columbia search engine less efficient than manually locating wanted pages? Google through all of the columbia.edu pages here.  It works like a dream.

2) Cents and insensitivity:  Moneycontrol India asks whether Indian students may be deterred from studying in the U.S. following the massacre at Virginia Tech.  Columbia’s cited.

3)  The beacon of hope and UN Millenium Villages frontman, Jeff Sachs, may be drinking from a quarter-full glass.  In this BBC lecture, the future looks bleak.

4)  CUAssassins…is over!  The Commissioners write, “The game lasted a whopping 55 days, but congratulations are in order for team C-Unit for coming in first place, team OB GYN Kenobi for coming in second place, and Agent MCPants of the team C-Unit for assassinating 17 of the rest of you.” 

Less than a week after the start of CU Assassins,169 of the 240 agents have fallen, with more soon to come. Dissapointingly, the death reports show few exotic locations. Probably the closest to an exception is this all-caps report:

Deceased: Red Devil

Time of Death: Tuesday, February 27 at 09:39 AM

Location: A GATED COMMUNITY

Summary of Death: THE BOURGEOIS KILLER WILL NOT STOP UNTIL EVERY LAST ONE OF YOU BLOOD, SWEAT, AND SURPLUS-VALUE SUCKING VERMIN ARE WIPED OFF THE FACE OF THE PLANET.

For a show of equality, however, another killer eliminated a more helpful member of society

Deceased: Havarti

Time of Death: Thursday, February 22 at 11:48 PM

Location of Death: St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital

Summary of Death: After I infiltrated St.Luke’s posing as Agent Havarti’s friend, an unsuspecting doctor led me through the ER straight to my victim and even pointed him out to me. I made certain my target and approached for the kill. He now joins the ranks of those he had so kindly attended to as a volunteer. Oh, the irony.

Read more…