Hit List

Good morning, Jumbos, and welcome to the fourth straight semester of everyone’s favorite column. If you’ve had your coffee this morning, you may have already discovered that although you’re reading S&S, it is in fact Thursday, and not Monday. This is because S&S has been such a smashing hit that we have been moved to Thursdays, so as to allow the anticipation to build all week long. Now the undeniable amusement this column provides its readers can be used to catapult them into weekend after weekend of incredible enjoyment and productivity (or at least one with lots of coffee). We are now in the big leagues, as they say. Time to step up my game.

I feel a little weird introducing a column that I’ve been writing for over a year, but there are always people late to the party. However, I do not encourage lateness except in my own case, and therefore if you’d like to know who I am or my views on any of the 30+ topics I’ve already covered, check out the Daily archives online.

Now, to business. I have recently acquired a new Enemy who is so important that she has knocked everyone else on the Hit List down a peg. This is of course tremendously exciting, and I am absolutely thrilled to begin my next campaign of terror. Since this is such a recent development, I don’t yet have the sordid details of how exactly I have kidnapped, tortured and dismembered this person (but keep reading S&S and I’m sure they’ll pop up along the line), so today I thought I’d discuss the concept of hit lists in general.

Someone -- too lazy to Google who exactly -- once said that you can tell the size of a man by the size of the things that bother him. This quote seems to support an overall approach of letting things go (perhaps it was Elsa?). But that is ridiculous; this Disney queen could not be more wrong. Au contraire, I say. Rather, you can tell the intelligence of a person by the length of their hit list.

An average Joe might see his friend’s new facial hair as vaguely creepy, but only the sharpest of us would recognize the perverted offense of wearing a goatee without a license (illegal in Massachusetts). A plebian might not notice when an acquaintance asks them what their major is, but anyone with a halfway decent memory will immediately recall the first time the acquaintance asked (seven-and-a-half months ago) and make a mental note of such an insulting transgression.

So, therefore, embrace the lengthiness of your Hit List. My own is impressively extensive, but hard to describe because those on it are always succumbing to exotic tropical diseases or injuring themselves in creatively excruciating ways. And if yours is on the shorter side, not to worry -- there is an easy remedy: step up your attack methods. One must never be too subtle when systematically destroying one’s enemies, or there is simply no point. If no one connects the dots that the three people who succumbed to anthrax last week were all members of your group project last semester, all that work was for naught. (Previous group members of mine: watch your backs.)

But enough about me. Hopefully, I’ve inspired you to get out there and do some dirty work of your own. However, as fun as it might be, I must advise against boasting of your past take-downs, as this is a fast pass to the slammer, and, contrary to popular opinion, orange is not the new black.