Art school hires empty coke can as new professor

Students at North Hampton College of Design will have their chance to participate in one of the art world's most creative gags as they attend lectures from a silent literal coke can that was hired as part of a creative prank by school administrators. 

"You've seen the banana taped to the wall, the abstract paintings where children say, "I could have done that," and of course Duchamp's clever little jokes.  Our school wanted to exemplify those same strides in modern art, so we hired an ordinary object from every day life to teach our studio art majors.

 

Some students dropped the class when they found out their professor was a coke can.  "I just cant sit there in silence for two hours," said Janine Dawkins, a sophomore art student focusing on painting and drawing. "There's only so much you can learn from staring at a piece of junk from off the street.

 

Others actually felt that they were participating in art history by indulging the school.  "I totally get it," said Fred Smith, who creates time lapse videos of books not moving at all.  "It's like okay, you say the teacher is a piece of trash, and then it really is.  And if the can gives you a C, what do you do?  If that's not art, I don't know what is.

 

Some parents were mad that their children's tuition dollars were spent on something like a coke can for a teacher.

 

"Well actually," said the dean, "it didn't cost us that much.  It was only a dollar fifty and then one of our grad assistants drank it before we hired the can.  We've saved a lot of money and can pass this along to the school in other ways."

 

The thing that the school didn't think about was having to ask students to take the coke can back and forth from its office to the classroom.

 

"Well, it's kind of not my job," said Samantha Earl, who transports the can from time to time. "But I'm trying to be a famous artist."

Mensa announces decision to base membership on Candy Crush scores instead of IQ tests

Mensa, a worldwide high IQ society, announced Tuesday that they will stop admitting members based on IQ test performance and will instead require top Candy Crush performance for acceptance.

We realized that the IQ tests just don’t correlate as well to actual IQ as the ranking of candy crush levels on people’s phones,” said Fred Wilkins from Mensa headquarters.  “Like what is more telling, completing a pattern in a test center? Or wiping out the whole candy crush board with two speckle candies that just “happen” to be next to each other?

Sonia Gomez, who was admitted to Mensa at nine years old, agrees with their decision.  “I made it to level three hundred on Candy Crush and no one even gave me an award at school.  Finally I feel like the grownups see what my mind is capable of.”

Some mensa members who tested to qualify are skeptical of the new policy.  “Can’t you just buy gold bars to beat the levels?” said Lin Chung, who joined Mensa based on a perfect SAT score ten years ago. “I am not sure they can proctor the phone games as well as a standardized test.”

Mensa disagrees. “Deciding which bonus candies to use and budgeting for online gambling is surely as much an act of genius as any kind of medical research or literary achievement,” said Wilkins. “The top 2 percent of intellectuals will probably be winning the unicorn challenge if they really are serious about joining our organization.”

At mensa conferences, members used to try out new board games and work puzzles.  “Now everyone is just on their phone,” said Gomez.  “And who knows, maybe we are playing against each other with the different avatars.”

“Many folks have asked us if we also accept scores for Royal Match, Worldle, or Block Blast,” said another Mensa spokesperson.  “All I can say so far is ‘of course not.’”