My deepest apologies

According to the mountains of hate mail I've received, my last column was outrageously offensive, highly tasteless, and in all respects beneath the dignity of this newspaper. I have no excuse for it; I owe many of you an apology.

To the Nassau Weekly, I apologize for suggesting that you only have two kinds of articles: narcissistically self-indulgent and superciliously self-indulgent. I have been informed by your staff that you have a third type, intellectually masturbatory self-indulgent. I regret the error.

To D.J. Bob, I must apologize for calling you an "earsplitting purveyor of lousy music and sloppy crossfades." As far too many of your fans have explained to me, this is an inexcusable, hateful act of intercultural assault on my part. I beg for your forgiveness.

I must apologize to the the Fields Center for quoting Belloc, observing that "Whatever happens, we have got / The Maxim Gun, and they have not."

This was, in retrospect, highly insensitive.

To Tiger Inn, I apologize for speculating that your Bicker process was derived from the ancient rules of jus primae noctis. I have been informed that that I must have been thinking of Cottage Bicker; TI's Bicker rules follow from Old Icelandic vomiting contests. The factual sloppiness was my responsibility alone.

To the USG, I apologize for questioning the integrity of candidates for office who trot out the same unlikely campaign promises every election year — from free course packets to radical late meal reform to a purge of non-undergraduates from the Fitness Center — and never deliver. This observation, I have been informed, created a hostile environment for the new officers, making it difficult for them to carry out their duties. I withdraw my question, beg for the forgiveness of the officer corps and hope that they can recover sufficiently to continue their work.

To "Upstart 2," the sculpture in front of the E-Quad, I apologize for suggesting that you look like a gigantic, skyward-pointing ebony penis. I have been told that this is just a manifestation of my culturally-indoctrinated europhallocentric worldview. I now understand that your sculptor had envisioned an ambitious sea cucumber when he designed you, and have been informed that only a bigoted chauvinist would find irony in placing a sculpture of a penis outside the E-Quad. You can stop emailing me now.

To the actresses and promoters of The "Vagina Monologues," and especially to Eve Ensler, I apologize for suggesting that it was in poor taste to raise money for battered women by staging a play in which an underage girl lionizes an older woman for sexually molesting her after plying her with alcohol. I now know that I am chromosomally incapable of understanding the difference between this and alcohol-fueled heterosexual sexual assault; I now withdraw my criticism.

To the Gallic Union of Princeton, I must apologize for my when-in-Rome suggestion that your members consider wearing non-sleeveless T-shirts and working antiperspirant to Stephens Fitness Center. I now realize that this was cultural imperialism on my part, and that asking either your members, or the nonmembers who embrace your philosophy of tailoring your exercise outfits for maximum body odor emission, is tantamount to asking a Scotsman to wear pants.

I must also apologize to the older denizens of the men's locker room at Dillon. I observed in my last column that many of the 60-plus set indulged in the immodest habit of wearing towels around their necks, rather than on their waists, and speculated that "if I didn't know better, I would think that the locker room had become a meat market for superannuated townies." It has been explained to me that this is just an externalization of my irrationally heteronormative belief system, and my subconscious neo-Freudian el-dersexuphobia. I apologize for my words, although, in fairness, I have also been informed that they were manifestations of a subconscious prejudice beyond my direct control.

And on the subject of clothing, I must apologize to to the cutting-edge fashionistas on the campus. My suggestion that wearing backwards baseball caps in precepts couldn't be helping your participation grade was, as I now understand, rooted in my hopelessly outmoded knowledge of fashion. Thank you for explaining to me, as did so many others, that this column is an inappropriate forum for my personal prejudices. Joseph Barillari is a computer science major from North Canton, Ohio. His column appears on alternate Tuesdays. He can be reached at jbarilla@princeton.edu.