Earth Science department devotes itself to weather control

After the first snowstorm of the year, the earth science department at Century College has declared that it intends to develop functional weather control in the near future.

The snowstorm caused minor inconvenience in the Twin Cities area, but Century was still able to hold classes.

“If we had been able to move that storm system just about fifty miles to the north,” an earth sciences faculty member said, “I could have spent all of Wednesday in bed drinking hot chocolate, instead of fielding emails from students who claimed to be ’stuck in my driveway’ and wanting to know what would be on the final.”

A colleague is similarly enthusiastic for the project. “If we could move storm systems around with, hm, let’s say lasers, just think how cool that would be!”

Although the benefits of snow days on demand were immediately apparent, not everyone at the college was sanguine about the prospect of localized weather control.

“Assuming this works, can you imagine the headache of trying to keep students from getting their hands on it?” a concerned security staffer said. “If somehow they [students] did [gain access to the technology], it’d be ‘test day equals snow day’ all semester long.”

Nevertheless, Century employees strongly supported the new research, and college leaders promised support in funding and other resources.

“Assuming the physics department has a breakthrough with their time travel research,” an administrator announced, “we hope to have the weather control project online by the beginning of last week, just in time to guarantee a snow day on Wednesday.”

Rejected Slogans for Century College

• Century: Smokin’ Hot!
• Feel the Power!
• Shock Your System with Century
• Electrify Your Education at Century
• Get the Spark at Century
• Set Your Mind on Fire
• Now with half-day Fridays

 

How Did We Spend Veterans’ Day?

SurveySays: How did employees of Century College spend Veterans’ Day, when classes were canceled?

12% berating self for making projects due before Veterans’ Day instead of after

7% looking up “H1N1″ on Internet

31% trying to keep raiding party intact after devastating loss to Alliance forces

16% trying to guess own password for open enrollment

19% trying to guess someone else’s password for open enrollment

3% productive work

12% being appreciated, for once

Century addresses key shortcoming

Acting decisively and with purpose, administration, faculty, and staff members at Century College have worked quickly to address a key shortcoming of the school: a shortage of task forces.

Responding to growing concern from the Board of Trustees and the legislature that Century is falling behind other two-year schools in this important measure, Century has formed four new task forces. The task forces are each tasked with a crucial area: meaningless measures, misleading statistics, impossible problems, and dubious solutions.

“While the establishment of these task forces greatly improves our performance in the eyes of people who don’t understand what we are doing,” a spokesperson explained, “alone, they are not enough. Fortunately, we hope these task forces will soon ‘go viral’ and begin reproducing.”

“We will be the task force leader,” an administrator proudly declared. “And we will remain the leader in task forces until the legislature decides they want us to be the leader in something else.”

New technology allows Centuryon to work less

Twitter eagerly adopted by progressive, lazy Centuryon staffers

The Centuryon has eagerly begun posting news items limited to 160 characters or less on http://twitter.com/thecenturyon . The new technology is seen as ideal by staff members who can’t be bothered to invent an entire satirical piece running multiple paragraphs.

The traditional blog at http://centuryon.wordpress.com will continue to be operated for major news items and events that get completely under our skin (e.g., duty days). Meanwhile, breaking news items will be “tweeted” whenever we get around to them.

Stress-free human to speak on stress

Century College has invited the world’s only stress-free human, Dr. Robert Sapolsky, to speak about the dangers of stress.

Sapolsky, the world's only stress-free human

In his talk “Stress: Portrait of a Killer,” Sapolsky will explain how and why he gave up stress. “Well, it’s a killer,” he observed in an interview. “So I gave it up. Along with shaving, or anything else that might create stress.”

Sapolsky is expected to exort the Century crowd to avoid stressors at all costs. “If you have to do anything difficult, or on a deadline, that’s stressful,” a spokesperson explained, “so that kind of thing has to be avoided.”

Bulletin reveals presence of twins at Century

A groundbreaking report by the Century College Bulletin has revealed that among the thousands of students attending the school, two of them are actually twins.

The report sent shockwaves across the campus and immediately caused media observers to speculate that some kind of journalistic award would surely result.

“I don’t know what to think,” a stunned employee commented. “To think that with 15,000 students, two of them might even be siblings seems unlikely. But twins?”

Mathematicians were similarly befuddled at the longshot odds. “I’m not a twin, and my kids aren’t twins, so that seems pretty rare to me,” said an anonymous observer who happened to be standing near the math department.

The Bulletin did not credit the reporter who discovered this rarity nor explain how the facts were uncovered, although it is obvious that significant legwork and online research were necessary to break the story.

Other stories

• Geography department to offer “GPS for parking lot” course
• Bored Centuryon staffers eagerly await next “everyone” email
• Student returns to class, asks if “missed anything”
• Acknowledgement of Century as “Greatest College Ever” unexpectedly delayed

Logo mis-used

Century College officials confirmed today that they are working with federal, state, and local officials in a massive manhunt to find the individuals responsible for deliberate mis-use of the new college logo.

A Century administrator, obviously distraught, told the Centuryon “This is the most heinous act imaginable. While the logo is recognizable, that is not the approved color scheme, and I can’t even tell what font that is. It certainly isn’t Univers.”

The chilling crime has sent shockwaves through a community that has only begun to recover from news of Woody Woodduck’s Facebook page. “It’s just too much to take,” a typically overcome staffer said. “If they’re capable of this, they’re capable of anything.”

FBI agents expressed confidence that their analysis of the faulty logo would swiftly lead to an arrest and possibly some kind of new crime drama, probably on CBS. “I think ‘Logo Analysis Task Force’ sounds good,” an anonymous agent commented.

Until the guilty party is apprehended, members of the Century community are encouraged to be on the lookout for suspicious publications. Training in detecting logos that have been tampered with will be offered soon, and will count for three passport stamps. “These things evolve over time,” an expert explained, “so you have to be trained in how to recognize the counterfeits. Right now it’s color and font, but next it could be a mirror image or some kind of Photoshopping to screw with the image itself.

“You just never know what these bastards might try.”

Employee Reaction: the New Bulletin

Century College unveiled the new Bulletin recently. Here are some employee comments on the new format:

• “This is much more efficient. Now I can delete an entire week’s worth of ‘everyone’ emails with just one click!”
• “I really appreciated the summary of the keynote speaker [at staff development day]. Now if my supervisor asks about it, I’ll sound like I was there!”
• “I’m glad they’re still doing the profiles of employees. We’d hate to have to cancel the departmental betting pool.”
• “Lookee at all them pictures!”
• “What Bulletin?”

New Lot Solves Parking Crisis for 18 Minutes

The newly rebuilt parking lot on the west campus completely solved the longstanding parking crisis at Century College from 7:33 a.m. until 7:51 a.m. Monday morning. During that period, students and employees arriving for the first day of classes had no difficulty locating parking spaces.

“We can now proudly say that there is no parking problem at Century,” an administrator declared at 7:46.

As of 7:51, there were no available parking spaces on the west campus. An hour later, with no spaces available, the number of cars circling the lot nearly exceeded the number parked.

“Obviously there will be a breaking-in period,” a spokesperson explained. “Once students become more familiar with the traffic flow, they will give up on finding a parking space much sooner.”

However, an anonymous source acknowledged that today’s events suggested that the parking problem has not been completely solved. “But we have clearly done the right kind of work to address the issue,” the source insisted. “We only need another four or five similar projects before we can have a lasting solution.”

In the meantime, students and employees were uniformly impressed with the new lot.

“It looks great,” a typical student said. “And I should know: I’ve been driving around in it for an hour.”

“Just fantastic!” an employee agreed. “This is the nicest parking lot I’ve ever failed to find a space in.”