The article is from The Stagnant, The Current‘s annual parody issue. It is not factual, so please do not consider it as such. If you have any questions regarding The Stagnant, e-mail us at thecurrent@umsl.edu.
SLUM’s very own Center for Nanoscience is getting a major overhaul. And it’s about time.
“What in the goddamn hell is ‘nanoscience’?” J.Q. Vauxhall Jr., new Chancellor of SLUM, said during a press conference that he called but apparently had no memory of doing so.
“This ‘nanoscience’ business is all hokum and witchery to me,” Vauxhall Jr. continued after swigging something from a nondescript Mason jar.
“We should be focusin’ on buildin’ big shit! Like wimmin. Robot wimmin. Fer lovemakin’.”
The employees at the newly christened Yosemite Sam Center for Macroscience on SLUM’s campus are a little bewildered at their sudden profession change, but nevertheless are eager to begin work.
“What…what the fuck is ‘macroscience’?!” Edwin Fenwin, YSCM’s lead scientist, said.
Fenwin’s 12 years spent learning the incredibly intricate and exacting procedures of nanoparticle manipulation and creation are now utterly useless.
“Like, the Latin doesn’t even make sense! The science of big things? What does that even mean?!” Fenwin added desperately.
According to YSCM employee and resident homeless man Reginald Watterson, the Center’s first task is figuring out what is for lunch.
“It’s some kind of soup, I think,” Watterson said, sniffing at a steaming vat in a corner of the building’s cafeteria.
“I’m not 100 percent on that though.”
“Hey, don’t drink that!” shouted Fenwin from across the room. “That’s Anderson!
He accidentally liquefied himself with the POOR collider earlier today.”
Gross neglect for human life aside, YSCM employees are striving to maintain the hard-working, can-do attitude the former Nanoscience center used to be known for.
“Well, I’m gonna have lunch anyways,” Watterson continued, helping himself to a big steaming bowl of Anderson.
The Center building itself is undergoing a few renovations in order to aid in the research of “macroscience.”
The doors are being removed, all of the formerly whole glass windows are broken, and anything that is not bolted down is being moved offsite by some moving men wearing masks and gloves.
“Oh, and we turned the entire basement into a test chamber for vital apparatuses,” Watterson quipped between big spoonfuls.
“I don’t know exactly what that means, but it sounds pretty sweet.”
Now that all of the computers and machinery inside the Center have been sold off to repay the new Chancellor’s old gambling debts, Fenwin has some pretty grand ideas on what to do with the vast empty space.
“I don’t know what the hell we’re supposed to do,” Fenwin said, sobbing to himself in the derelict men’s restroom, now devoid of all its porcelain as well as copper piping.
“I have two doctorates and three grants from the government! I hate this! I just hate it!”
Several of the Center for Macroscience’s undergraduate interns set up a room off of the main hallway that they have dedicated to doing good, honest experiments.
“Rick, here, is going to see how many Russians he can sneak up on in ‘GoldenEye 64,’” Manny Righa, senior, English, said. “Yeah man, I got this shit,” responded Rick Derega, junior, Spending His Parent’s Money, as he judo-chopped yet another Russian guard from behind.
While the new Center for Macroscience’s goals are not quite clear yet and its vision for the future hazy at best, Vauxhall Jr. seems confident in his decision to repurpose the nationally-renowned Center.
“They made my goddurn metal wimmin yet?” Vauxhall asked during a follow-up interview with The Stagnant. “Better have. Better have made her look like Angelina Jolie, too.”
