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PROPS: To IvyGate blogger Maureen O’Connor, whose “Epistolary Drama in Three Acts” follows the cyberfoibles of a famous actress’s quasi-douchebag brother. I won’t give too much away, but know this: it involves a young upstart prompter looking to make it big at a Princeton theatre event, the aforementioned quasi-DB’s intense repulsion for Reply-All, and some hot and steamy OED-citation.

DROPS: To myself, for writing a satirical piece of tripe that pissed off the majority of internet-using Cornellians. Sorry, guys… Next time I decide to write something that’s unnecessarily inflammatory, incredibly insensitive, and cringe-inducingly crass, I’ll send it off to the (now-defunct) Cornell American. (P.S.: I think I’m addicted to adverbs. And parallelism.)

The first edition of Props & Drops seems to have caused quite a stir, especially among fans of Tina’s “Bias Cut” column, so here we are with the second edition, which gives props to heaven, the sacred, and God and drops to hell, the profane, and the Devil.

PROPS: to the Daily Sun’s heavenly columnist Katie Engelhart, who wrote a wonderful piece about meeting God in the form of an “overly embroidered old hag” sitting next to her on an airplane. The column isn’t actually about the grandma who was reading Becoming God, however, it’s about religion and spirituality in the modern age:

Kids these days just aren’t interested in stuffy sermons and pushy proselytizers anymore. Please! The Facebook generation is “spiritual, not religious.” We’re yoga-worshipping, kabala-bracelet-wearing, oriental-herb-consuming horoscope readers. We’re children of the pagan earth one day and born-again virgins the next. We dress as “Slutty Santa” for Halloween, but keep it real with orthodox Jewish rap. We’re more concerned about whether or not Jesus was black than about his purported teachings.

Granted, Engelhart is making some broad generalizations, but she buffers her anecdotal evidence with a study from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life stating that one in four adults has changed their spirituality or left it altogether and that three in four young adults still have some sort of religious affiliation. In my opinion, she’s spot-on in characterizing today’s youth as affiliated with some sense of spirituality, but not in the dogmatic ways of our parents and grandparents. What I wonder is if this lack of doctrine is good or bad, for example: does it lead us to fling away capriciously every set of beliefs that contains something difficult or unappealing to us? Is picking and choosing at the salad bar of spirituality liable to give us an ultimately unfulfilling, unfocused smorgasbord of beliefs?

DROPS: to IvyGate’s devilish Jacob Savage, who made some broad generalizations too, but poorly founded ones. In his recent post “What the Fuck Happened to Decency Standards at Ivy League Dailies?” he cites dodgy evidence of “shitass Ivy Dailies” printing “fuck and shit for no good or extenuating reason.”

Item #1: A post from Daily Sun’s 2007 Halloween joke edition: “I’ve evolved to fuck, shit, and eat, but it’s odd that while I’m doing these basic things I have the ability to think.” Doesn’t a parody edition cover that “extenuating reason” idea? They even have a disclaimer in boldface at the top of the story saying that the story is “intended for entertainment and parody purposes only.” Pretty hard to fucking miss, shithead!

Item #2: An editorial in the Harvard Crimson from 1969 (”The End of Obscenity”) about how “recently ‘fuck’ has been thrown around publicly in all kinds of ways, and it has suffered accordingly.” First of all, 1969? Savage makes it seem like this is a new sensationalist trend sweeping college dailies, but apparently someone else beat him to the idea that fuck is being used for no fucking reason 40 years ago…

IvyGate is always being such a vanilla preppy little bitch, about Jenna B.’s “ickiness” and about “obscenity.” Stop being such fucking prudes!

I came up with this idea all of one minute ago, but here goes: Props & Drops rewards various Cornell-related agents with either Props (you go, girlfriend!) or Drops (ich don’t think so…) based on a complex calculation of parameters (fame, ridiculousness, sexiness) that looks something like this:

fame equation

PROPS: to the Daily Sun’s Jenna B. and Julie Block, for writing a cleavtastic piece that “plunges into the implications of our boob fixation.” After seeing a girl whose “chest was ostensibly on its milky way to exposing a bit of her caramel-colored niblets,” the fearless femme fatales show some cleavage themselves in order to gauge the reactions. They also explore the Western world’s obsession with boobage as well as its social and political “showings.” Classic, gals–I’m a big fan.

DROPS: This week’s “The Bias Cut” with Martin Ambrose. A couple preliminary notes: first, we don’t get your column’s name and we never will; second, looking like a transgender MTF is not fashionable; lastly, we think the Sun’s copyeditor hates your column so much they won’t touch it. I have to admit—this week’s column is not terribly bad content-wise. Martina discusses swimsuits in preparation for Spring Break, recommending decent brands no one has ever heard of (Ralph Lauren, J. Crew, etc.) and providing the unheard-of advice not to wear Speedos like “your sixty something year old dad who passes out by the pool with the New York Times in hand.” What really annoys me about his column isn’t its insufferable banality but its awful lack of a copyeditor… some “gems” follow:

“Let’s start with the men out there. You’re job isn’t so bad.”

“And no, a speedo isn’t a bathing suit unless you’re an athlete whose sport requires it, European and over forty, or you’re name is Arnold and you’re a politician in California.”

No, no, no! I think this is an apropos time for a “And you go to Cornell?”

Below the fold: an unsolicited opinion on the wonders of Jenna B… »