EVANSTON – In a daring move Monday night, Jessica Engel of 1835 Hinman decided to skip the theatrics for Halloween and simply go, as she puts it, as a “straight-up whore.”

While her friends decided to go as traditional sexy characters like naughty nurses and French maids or wear nonsensical sexy inanimate object costumes, like a sexy Mrs. Potato Head or a slutty pumpkin, she made the bold decision to just go as a slut.

“I figure, what’s the difference? We’re all going to do the walk of shame tomorrow, but instead of having the extra layer of humiliation of carrying a pirate hook, I’ll have the same base level of indignity as any other weekend,” Engel commented.

This decision hasn’t gone over well with other aspiring Halloween hoes.

“It just denotes a lack of class,” said Brittany Lera, who wore a hot dog vendor uniform-minidress with the words “I love wieners” printed on the backside of the skirt.

“She’s really showing a complete disregard for what this holiday is meant to be,” Ashley Brown said. Brown says her plans for the night included going as a sexy ghost (“like Casper, but with more cleavage”) and “hitting up dem bros.”

When asked what they thought of Engel’s audacious decision, Phi Psi Junior Allen Maki reported that he does not give a fuck, as long as there’s tits.

TRIPOLI – An autopsy performed on the body of Muammar Gaddafi revealed that the former Libyan premier died not from a gunshot wound as was originally believed but instead from blunt force trauma sustained when he tripped over the spelling of his own name. He promptly went tumbling down the stairs in his Sirte safe house, causing internal injuries from which he would not recover.

One of Gaddafi’s right hand men, Tarek Al-Abgari, confirmed this finding. “He was just standing at the top of the stairs, shouting ‘all power to Gaddafi!’ when he suddenly stopped. “’Or wait,’ I remember him saying, ‘is it GA-daffi or KHA-daffi with that hard throaty sound?’ As he contemplated this his legs began to wobble and we all began to worry for his safety.”

Al-Abgari claimed that he, along with Gaddafi’s other assistants, attempted to move in and steady their leader, but they failed when they too had to stop and contemplate the proper spelling of his name. “I was reading the New York Post the other day and they used ‘Khadafy,’” Al-Abgari remembers thinking, “and I had to ruminate about whether or not it was kosher to just substitute in the y at the end like that.”

Gaddafi finally lost his balance as he tripped over the symbols used in the written form of his name. “What is that squiggly thing over the second a in ‘Gaddafi,’” Al-Abgari remembers him saying, “and how do you pronounce the apostrophe in ‘Mu’ammahhaaaaaaaaahhoofowoofowuh—” Gaddafi could have been saved with immediate attention, but his aides were too busy attempting a Sporcle quiz that asked for every acceptable spelling of Gaddafi’s name and thus could not attend to their leader.

In other news, a Gaddafi sympathizer died of asphyxiation after the sounds of his choking were mistaken for a mourning cry of “Gaddafi!” and thus not given proper medical action.

EVANSTON – Evanston junkies were outraged yesterday when they found out Northwestern University’s beloved Rock is, in fact, just a rock.

A recent increase of recreational crack-cocaine users on the Northwestern University campus has stirred up some talk on campus. However with all the work, the cold settling in, and the football team unable to stop any team’s offence, their presence isn’t quite at the top of anyone’s worries list.

It turns out the drug users have been flocking to campus because of widely-distribute promotional materials mentioning the Rock. Local crack-fiend Doug Nealon stated, “Well, I heard about some crack rock out here on the Northwestern campus from my man Steve, who read about it on some website. I thought to myself, ‘Free crack?! Damn, I shoulda gone to college!’ So of course I got my crew together and we came through to check it out . . . but nah, that ain’t no crack rock, man . . .that ain’t no crack rock.”

Clearly devastated, Nealon and the rest of his posse abandoned the Rock, leaving to mill aimlessly around campus “doing hood-rat stuff.”

In other news, 43 Northwestern University students were mugged last night. No information on the muggings is available.

The following document was discovered on the bathroom floor of the North-Mid Quads Hall on the morning of November 1, 2011. Written in a hurried scrawl on parchment, our editors did their best to decipher the piece, allegedly written after the local Psi-Phi Fraternity’s themed party:

I think the scar really did the trick. Through the glow of the club lights, I could tell Beth was down for some snogging. We locked eyes from across the room, she in her buxom button-down Hermione shirt, me in my Gryffindor-colored sweater and thick-rimmed glasses. You could say sparks flew. As I floated across the dance floor avoiding dougie-ing Slytherins, my heart fluttered as she beckoned ever so gently with a Pumpkin Juice in her hand. I strolled over to the bartender and asked for two more potions. I could tell he didn’t really mean it when he responded: “Fuck off, dipshit.” Must have been some kind of spell.

I swept my bangs out of my eyes narrowly avoiding the Maybelline lightning bolt etched onto my forehead. She looked so sexy in that Hermione outfit. This was my night.

I could feel it in the air despite all the Mudblood sweat hitting my face as I approached her. She began to dance on me. Some kind of waltz or something. Things got a little more exciting. Boy, she got me all hot and bothered. Beth wasn’t acting like this at the theater party on Friday. Potter brings out the best in people.

Then suddenly she fell asleep with her arms around my neck. Damn, the bartender must have had some spell in all that ice he was throwing at us. She was so heavy. But so hot. I couldn’t let this get in the way of rounding Diagon Alley and making it all the way to Gringotts tonight. I got her on the bus when we had to leave and she followed me to NMQ where things got raucous. The neighbors complained of shouts of: 10 Points for Hufflepuff, which they heard throughout the night. To my dismay I woke to stubbly-faced Tom. He should have had two shots of Polyjuice to keep the illusion going a little longer. The things I do for horcruxes…

SAN FRANCISCO – After protesting outside the Oakland financial markets for twenty minutes, the last businessman in Oakland stepped outside of his cardboard office and asked if any of the protestors wanted a job. In a stunning response, the protesters immediately left Oakland for San Francisco.

“We’re out here protesting for real American jobs, not Oakland jobs,” said Sarah Smalls, a leader of the former Occupy Oakland movement. “All we’re asking is to make a comparable amount of money as the people on Wall Street without doing much work.”

Smalls also cited a startling inequality: highly educated people are making more money than those who are less educated or unemployed.

“We thought Oakland was the right place to protest because it represents everything that is wrong with America,” Smalls said through a megaphone in a one-on-one interview. “Its name is bland, its police are not the nicest people, and it is the setting of Moneyball.”

“And we just want some of those balls,” the reporter imagines she added.

While all of Oakland’s middle class, who were eating at Chili’s on Fourteenth and Fairmont, were happy to see the protesters leave, the mayor expressed his disappointment in a public statement released on MySpace.

“We are deeply saddened to see the occupiers leave. The movement was a real boon to our economy and helped reverse the population decline in the city. We hope the occupiers come back to protest. Compared to Raiders fans, they were quite civil.”

TOLEDO, OH – Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher, better known as “Joe the Plumber,” unexpectedly announced Thursday his plans to challenge Obama in the 2012 presidential election.

John McCain and Sarah Palin used “Joe the Plumber” as a metaphor for the middle class in the 2008 presidential election, so Wurzelbacher already enjoys nationwide name recognition. His platform focuses entirely on bad plumbing puns and one promise: “They’re not going to catch me in a lie.”

One political commentator pointed out that an unlicensed plumber trying to pass himself off as a pseudo-intellectual with the skills necessary to run the government seemed rooted in foolishness.

“The system in Washington is a toilet clogged by a massive shit,” Wurzelbacher responded. “I’m bringing the plunger. I’m bringing the Drano.”

But perhaps the most shocking revelation is that Rick Perry is still the dumbest Republican candidate.

Perry’s transcripts from his alma mater, Texas A&M, have surfaced—he received a slew of Cs and Ds, including a C in gym and a D in principles of economics.

To help hone his razor-sharp debating skills, Perry requested a challenge of hardline rhetoric with Wurzelbacher in the most valid forum of political machismo: the WWE Championship.

Perry—“The Texecutor” in the ring—is already generating excitement among wrestling fans with his utterly incomprehensible tough-guy talk.

“Do you smell what the Texecutor is cookin’?” Perry asked. “Well it ain’t a last meal, ‘cause we don’t do that in Texas no more.”

Wurzelbacher—“The Plummeler”—has yet to respond. He reportedly seemed bewildered that anyone would challenge him to a fight in his favorite arena.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump is voicing yet another concern about “Joe the Plumber.” “Wurzelbacher? What kinda foreign name is that? I demand to see a birth certificate!”

EVANSTON – Auguste Rault has faced accusations of being French ever since he came to Northwestern University with a backpack full of baguettes and cigarettes in 2010. Rault, a sophomore French major, claims that this stereotyping is evidence of a culture of ignorance prevalent among “fat, American, spoiled” Northwestern students.

Rault, while moodily chain-smoking in the pouring rain, explained that people question him about whether he is French almost weekly.

“It’s almost as if a man can’t dwell on the meaninglessness of life without having accusations of being French,” Rault said, spitting on the ground. “C’est pathétique.”

He explained that he thought things would change from high school, where his peers merely thought he was homosexual. “I view this as offensive to the superior French culture, that I cannot stand here of my own accord and smoke. Americans, you know, they don’t think when they smoke, they’re always in such a hurry,” Rault said, gradually devolving into a thick Parisian accent.

The view that a person can’t stand condescendingly considering all culture around him to be intrinsically inferior without being accused of Frenchness is symptomatic of a corrupt and intrinsically inferior culture, said Rault.

“I curse you ignorant Americans,” added Rault, who, when asked where he was from, vaguely gestured, and remarked “east of here.”

Rault is willing to look on the bright side, though: “At least they don’t think I’m an English swine.”

Northwestern Professor Has No Fucking Clue How to Use a Microphone