OSL Publications Advisor Reynolds commented on the Squelch in the latest issue of the Californians.

The "mildly risqué" cartoon that Rube Goldberg '04 drew for the 60th anniversary issue of the Pelican ("Calzone," February) would hardly raise an eyebrow in today's student publications scene. The campus humor magazine since 1991, the Heuristic Squelch, is totally uncensored. Continuing in the tradition of the Pelican, but with far more freedom, the Squelch roasts the chancellor and the administration, uses profanity freely, and specializes in explicit sexual spoofs.

I never knew my Squelch was so smutty! Or so anti-administration... Searching back, I can find this this this and this, plus the paper doll Chancellors of awhile back. We mock Chancellor Berdahl about three times a year, more in the top tens. And lately, it's been me doing most of the Chancellor-mocking.

Using profanity freely? We used the word 'fuck' in six pieces in the last issue, 3 times in issue 5, 4 times in issue 4, and so on. About normal for College usage, and probably not a defining part of the humor, unlike many college humor magazines I could name. (Among other things, we've never written a piece mocking Islam called 'Jizzlam.' )

Porn-wise, we've only had a few naked girls, to my knowledge, and they were used in the context of subtlely mocking Supreme Court decisions. Everything else has been drawn, and we've had more testicles then freely-hanging nipples. I'm not sure what an 'explicit sexual spoof' is. What part is explicit? The sexual part or the spoof part? Or both? An 'explicit sexual spoof' sounds like a description of a lighthearted French comedy being shown at Sundance.

Honestly, most Squelch material is PG-13 these days. And this runs contrary to what has typically been popular with college readers. As former Editor Roscoe once noted,

Another problem is that nobody reads anything in the Squelch which exceeds fifty words in length, unless the first fifty words contain multiple references to sodomy, bestiality, the human penis, boobies, sex toys, skullfucking, the Hegelian Dialectic, or scrotums

Word.



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