The offending email that went out a few hours ago:

Dear students,

At the end of July and the beginning of August, University Information Services will be moving faculty and staff to a separate e-mail system. We will require two weekend long outages to accomplish this, scheduled for:

July 25 at 6:00 PM to July 28 at 8:00 AM
August 1 at 6:00 PM to August 4 at 8:00 AM

During these outages, you will not be able to access GUMail e-mail.

If you have a critical need for e-mail during these outages, please contact the Student Help Desk for assistance…

What constitutes a “critical need for e-mail”? Weekend tasks from your Devil Wears Prada-esque boss? Love notes from your significant other? The secret code word for a Kidz Bop concert presale? UIS doesn’t provide any criteria for what makes an excuse legit. Everyone should apply for a dispensation just to see if they’re favored students.

It’s good that Georgetown is attempting to improve faculty and staff email service; students should be next. And for most students, any important messages of a non-Georgetown nature are probably going through Gmail anyway. But 62 email-less hours in a row, two weekends in a row? It’s going to be rough.

Wondering what life at Georgetown would be like if the color-coded terrorist warning rises above Yellow? The university’s preparedness plan knows and will tell you, in an ominous yet understated way.

At Orange, not much happens besides tighter security. But at Red, the shit gets heavy. Everyone has to wear an ID card, campus visitors have to be signed in, and buildings are locked down to one entrance, and a 24-hour “Emergency Operations Center” opens up. Fortunately, we won’t probably won’t hit Red unless something big happens, like bombs going off everywhere or an Iranian person attending graduation.

Flickr photo from djwhelan used under a Creative Commons license

The conservative writers over at The GW Patriot aren’t so bad–more David Brooks than Michael Savage, they know waterboarding’s torture. Plus, when one of them eats a vegan cinnamon bun and discovers to his horror that he likes it, the resulting cascade of self-doubt and overcompensation is far more exciting than any Brooks column.

Writer WHP, the offending bun-lover, opens by explaining which herbivores are in trouble with him, and which are not:

The first and most common, Vegetarianism, is just a simple refusal to consume animal flesh; I find this to be most acceptable considering that people do it for a whole variety of reasons, not just because they are against consuming animal flesh on “ethical” ground. The second, and oddest, is Veganism.

I’ve heard the same thing–”Vegetarians are cool with me, but vegans, get out of here!”–from at least three different people at Georgetown, and the implication that anyone is waiting for their approval about someone else’s diet is baffling.

A crisis of faith, after the jump

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You eat peanut butter because it’s cheap. You drink at home before going out to bars because drinks at home are cheaper. You’ll take any free furniture that’s offered, even if you know five people who had sex on it.

Did you think that penny-pinching would end after college? Putz.

In the most depressing read since I got my tuition bill, Joel Achenbach writes about, among other maudlin things, how he is going to have to borrow money from his young daughter to afford her older sister’s college tuition. It’s hyperbole, but geez, still. He also discusses his cripplingly depressive fear of appetizers:

One of the worst moments is when the waitress asks if you want to start out with an appetizer, and you say no, because over time you’ve become the kind of person who can’t afford appetizers. It’s a clear line in the sand, or, more precisely, a socioeconomic stratum, clearly delineated right there on the menu.

Later, Achenbach proves there’s a thin line between humor writing and a cry for help: “My own plan is to acknowledge that fate has chosen for me a path of decline and shabbiness.”

And this guy works at the Post! Maybe I should just face the inevitable and be a hobo.

It’s the middle of July already and your DC routine–9-5 internship, drinking games, and rotgut TV–is getting old. Your body and mind are revolting, and the National Gallery has the perfect thing: an exhibit of Martin Puryear’s minimalist sculptures.

The sculptures are elegant and simple but have enough complexity to hold viewers’ attention through the 48-piece exhibit, and the NGA’s classy, hands-off curation–one or two pieces per gallery, few guilt-trippy art history lessons stencilled on the walls–is a treat.

Martin Puryear runs from June 22 to September 28, 2008 at the West Building of the National Gallery of Art. Archives/Navy Memorial Metro on the Yellow/Green Lines, or take a crosstown 30s bus.

Photo from the National Gallery of Art