Objection! Counternarratives

Dorm Room

by Tess Molkette

http://mith.umd.edu/arguing/items/show/17

Look at this blog post. Now look at the picture. Now back this blog post. Now once more at the picture. Did you notice that?

No?

Look closer. Not me silly, I’m just a blog post. Look at the picture. Closer. Closer.

Do you see them?

Still no?

Look at the picture

Now look at your dorm room.

Now look at the picture.

Now cover one eye while looking at your dorm room.

Now flip your monitor upside down and look at the picture.

HA!

I didn’t say Simon says.

But in all seriousness, look at the picture. Notice how this is no ordinary picture of a dorm room. What we have is a class 3B ninja invasion on a single room scale. This is poor Tess’ cry for help. She was able to capture three ninjas on film. Peer very carefully under her chair. That dark square shaped shadow is ninja number one. Because I am an expert in ninja tools and technologies (NTaT), I can recognize a cloak of shrouding almost three hundred yards away.

Ninja number two is a very stealthy one. Upon closer inspection of Tess’ apple laptop, one can spot the second ninja in the act of crawling up the webpage she is viewing. Using a ninja disk drive (NDD), a ninja can digitize himself into any device that has a USB port.

Thanks to my degree in the NTaT field, I immediately picked up on the third ninja. He is the one holding the camera. Even ninjas like to be social creatures.

Tess if you are reading this, I believe you have nothing to fear. They should vacate your dorm room by Thanksgiving. They themselves cannot resist the taste of hone hame and turkey.

 

White MITH mug

by Amanda Visconti

http://mith.umd.edu/arguing/items/show/7

This is not just any ordinary picture of a mug. This appears to be a story of a manufacturer of cups and ceramics that has seen better days. At first glance, the mug appears to be clean and possibly brand new. Take a closer look at the lettering. The organization that Amanda works with is known as the Maryland Institute of Technology, or MITH for short. It is almost as if the mug is mocking her because it is printed backwards spelling HTIM.

As of now, there are a few theories behind the “miss-print” of this artifact. One popular theory is that an innocent intern made a mistake while operating the printing press that slapped the big bold letters onto the shipment of mugs one by one. Once the company figured out the issue, it was too late. The case of hundreds of mugs were already on their way to Hornbake Library in University of Maryland College Park. This theory is commonly referred to as the hipster mug theory.

Another common hypothesis is that during production, Amanda and those at MITH had a quarrel with Kirsten Keister, the original designer. No one can imagine what the argument was about, but many speculate that Ms. Keister was a duke fan. In order to throw salt into the wound, Keister and her team of designers decided to spell the name backwards on purpose.

There are many other theories other than these two. However, none have been completely validated.

 

One thought on “Objection! Counternarratives

  1. I’m afraid you’re wrong, Emil. My dorm room does not contain any ninja. Not a single one. You live in Queen Anne’s as well, so you should know that the residence hall has a 24-hour service desk and one resident assistant on each floor. Besides, all entrances of the building require swipe access. It is almost impossible for creepers to sneak into our rooms, not even ninjas.

    However, you were right about one thing: my dorm room is not an ordinary dorm room. I was hoping no one would find out, but it doesn’t matter anymore. I guess I could share this secret with a few people.

    If you take a closer look at the picture, you may notice that the walls in my room have slightly different colors. This is not caused by natural light, but rather it is because I can control the color of the walls using my MacBook Pro and iPad 2. The master control routine is installed on my computer. However, I also downloaded an app with similar functions onto my iPad 2 so that I can change the color of my walls whenever and wherever I am, usually depending on my mood. As you can see, the walls in the photo reflect a soft blue and pink gradient. It is the new feature of the app, known as “Aurora,” which changes the wall colors to those of polar lights.

    Now that the misunderstanding about ninjas and such is clarified, you no longer need to worry over my safety. I assure you that Queen Anne’s is one of the safest residence halls at our school.

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