You'll have to excuse newbie RagTimer Juli for mistaking the Cornell Daily Sun's joke issue for reality. The unprecedented candor of this "joke" editorial totally threw us:

[W]e are committed to providing the Cornell community with the most biased and slanted news coverage we possibly can. We uphold our commitment to bringing you news stories that fail to localize national events, op-ed pieces that "opine" on issues too lofty for a collegiate audience (i.e. funny Halloween costumes and casual sex) and sports coverage that fails to straddle the delicate line between fact and fiction. If we could print on toilet paper, we probably would.

Actually, since "biased and slanted" presupposes original thought (not the Sun's strongest suit, nor that of any other publication run by college students, this one included), we'll give them a free pass there. Nonetheless, there was some thoroughly titillating stuff on the cornellsun.com domain today. We found it by following the "Click here for real articles" link.

Non-fiction giggle-getting strategy of painful obviousness and gross underestimation of readership intelligence left us in stitches over an opinion piece called "Cornell Must Discuss, Question Iraq," which opens

Let's talk about Iraq. Wait, you ask, isn't Iraq just a hot button campaign issue? Is it even news anymore?

So Iraq isn't an election-time buzz phrase like "champagne squadron" or "Minneapolis airport men's bathroom" (a location that ceases to exist after November)? It ain't no Harvard, but we're pretty sure students at Cornell don't ask questions like that. At least, not when their TAs are watching. At least we know that the 891 other Iraq-related articles in the Sun's online archives never actually counted.

But the real gut-buster was yesterday's groundbreaking report on the fact that -- omg! -- RAs just LOVE being RAs! One RA "described her favorite part of the job as getting to know her residents, and her least favorite part as disciplining them," dispelling the popular misunderstanding of RAs as antisocial masochistic misanthropes. Informative tidbits included the following:

Resident Advisers live in the undergraduate dorm buildings on campus and are considered resident hall community leaders, a position that involves both fun and responsibility.

Can you imagine the pitch meeting where someone suggested a 500-word definition of "Residential Adviser" for the front page? "Listen up, guys, I know what will really blow people's minds: an investigative report proving the fact that RAs tend to be nice people!"

Of course, the joke issue has something to say about the journalistic strategy of undergrad dailies, too, in a column on the art of pooping:

I've just finished writing this crap out on the page (pun intended) and I can only wonder if what I've written has any value or validity. ... You might not give a shit (pun intended again), but I just did.