As Bwog knows all too well, there’s nothing a Columbia student hates more than bad grammar. This Bwogger figures a kitten must die with every its vs. it’s error (I mean, why else would these lil’ mistakes always get everyone’s panties in a twist?). In response to the Philolexian Society’s recent grammatical gaffe, one Columbian thought the group might want to change its tagline to this: “Philo: Taking the Literary out of Literary Society since 1802.” It’s okay Philo, we still think you’re swell, even if grammar isn’t always your strong point. Solidarity!

George W. Bush: Livin’ With Shame Since 2001

UPDATE: Bwog received the following e-mail this evening:

subject: Philolexian Response: ComparativeGate.

Dear Bwog,

Since your estimable news organization has recently exposed that a phlier (read: “flyer”) printed under our name contains a marked grammatical error, the Philolexian Society is committed to launching the most serious of internal investigations, most rigorous of soul searchings, and a frisking to put the TSA to shame. We can assure you that we are taking this matter as seriously as is humanly possible: we consider words our children, and to find that we have so misused them we feel can only be compared to a tragic anagnorisis—say, of Seneca’s Thyestes. We have established a Truth and Reconciliation Commission; they have their work cut out for them, as we’ve never been much for reconciling ourselves to the truth. We have also assembled crack teams of experts on the writings of the Marquis de Sade to suggest penalties toeing that fine line between Eighth Amendment violations and a night at a kink club. You might also have expected that the author of this letter—responsible for keeping the Society literary and, on some occasion, literate—to have taken the metaphorical and literal axe for this gaffe on top of whatever sentencing we might hand out to those actually responsible for this gross mishap—but that the Society refused to pass its most recent proposed resolution, “Resolved: It is better to die with dignity than to live in shame.” (Lucky breaks: take them when you can.) We assure Columbians, above all, not to panic: we will soon be back to producing syntactically impeccable, stylistically unparalleled, and thoroughly absurd strings of syntagms for your aural pleasure.

Yours most humbly,

Gavin McGown

Literary Czar, the Philolexian Society of Columbia University.

The world’s best known former Ruggles inhabitants, Vampire Weekend, released their new album Contra yesterday. The album has received positive reviews so far, including a shockingly high 8.6 from notoriously picky Pitchfork Media. The band was recently interviewed for a Wall Street Journal music blog, Speakeasy. The band talked about books and wore cardigans.

VW also discussed their temporary move to California, and about Columbia’s reputation. Said frontman Ezra Koenig: “I feel like Columbia is a very different place than Princeton or Harvard, but to a lot of people writing about our band it might as well be George W. Bush at Yale in the ’60s. So it doesn’t always pay to be nuanced.”

Koenig even held forth on on Murakami’s Wind-Up Bird Chronicle: “I felt like the central theme was identity.” Uh huh…maybe he took Interpretation of Culture, too!