South Korean puppets immediately began gearing up for war. Commodore Finger Puppet was promoted to Admiral of the fleet, while Brigadier Sweaty Sock Puppet was expected to head the army.

North Korea has made threats before, but never so forcefully towards the puppets of South Korea. In light of recent unsuccessful nuclear tests, pundits are confident that the U.S. could easily fend off a North Korean attack. “Kim Jong-Un doesn’t have the [resources] to attack us. President Obama has bigger [resources] than his whole country combined,” CNN political correspondent Charles Tien said. “If I ever saw him I would probably kick him straight in the [resource] sack.”

However, experts are concerned for puppets in South Korea. Statistics show that the South Korean Puppet’s army cannot sustain a war for more than a few weeks. With a limp force of just 3,400 marionettes and 4,000 hand puppets, South Korea will need considerable help from its allies.

President Barack Obama has decided to send aid to South Korea with a special team of thousands of trained American puppets. The elite members of Sesame Street and the Muppets have decided to put aside their differences to help their allies in South Korea.  “After a long career in entertainment, I have decided it is the right life choice to go into the U.S. Army Puppet Division,” team captain Elmo said.

In addition, South Korea’s president Park Geun-hye has ordered a draft of all puppets between the ages of 18 and 25. Puppets and puppeteers alike are distraught at the prospect of a full-scale war. “He’s just a boy! I can’t let him go off to war! He won’t last a day!” puppeteer Mister Geppetto said of his son. “No, actually. He literally can’t do anything without me. He’s made of wood.”

Yesterday, the North Korean government released a follow up statement that revealed its true reasons for declaring war on South Korea. The North Korean people are deeply angered that Psy’s new hit single “Gentlemen,” is topping the charts while Kim Jong-Un’s rap career just cannot seem to get off the ground.

“Normally we help out by writing five-page essays on the quality of every teacher in Stuy in the Facebook groups,” junior and Big Sib Rosalie Campbell said. “This time, the administration was afraid we’d tell them the truth about Stuy’s workload, so they banned us from speaking to the incoming freshmen. I’m pretty sure we came off as mutes when we resorted to hand gestures.”

Due to a lack of adequate tours, many incoming freshmen found themselves lost in the school.

“I’m still trying to find my way out,” incoming freshman Rakim Mayers said. “When I asked a Big Sib for directions, she just blubbered hysterically that she didn’t know anything about the cheating scandal and to never go into the Hudson Staircase.”

The open house left many incoming freshmen wondering if they should choose to attend Brooklyn Tech instead.

“How can this school expect to produce our future leaders if they don’t even test the applicants on the most important language?” Supreme Leader, First Chairman, Beloved Father, and Chief Dentist of the NAACP General Tso said. A “state of war” between the NAACP and the state of New York has been declared, and the NAACP has also established a quota on fried rice for as long as city and state officials refuse to comply with its requests.

The class of 2017 also includes many budding musical prodigies, including one who has been referred to by critics as the “Korean Chief Keef.” With songs like “Don’t Like (Homework)” and “Laughing to the (Library),” this brilliant poet captures the rebellious side of Stuyvesant students. His debut album “Flushing Style” is highly anticipated, with countless Koreans waiting by the wall every day after school for the album.

Balancing this diverse onslaught of musical prodigies comes an influx of melancholy, disappointed snobs from the Upper East Side. Rejected from the city’s elite private schools with only their tutors and servants to blame, these applicants who have turned to public school, or the “realm of filth.” However, they have found that admission into a good public school like Stuyvesant is no cakewalk. “After hiring twelve tutors to help me get ready for the SHSAT but still not knowing enough, I had no choice but to have Jing take the test in my place, but he screwed it up for me big time,” incoming Bronx Science freshman Jacob Weston said whilst joyfully shredding his gold bars.

The administration has made it clear that it wants to fix its current relationship with the NAACP. “Helping more Chinese people enroll at Stuyvesant is a top priority for the 2013-2014 school year,” Assistant Principal of Organization Randi Damesek said.

This phenomenon has caused many leading high school educators to voice their concerns and wonder if and how they too can “get in on that action.”

“These kids are alive for a good 18 years before colleges start squeezing every penny they can out of them,” College Board president David Coleman said. “I have to say, colleges really have the right idea. All that extra cash we could bring in would allow us to move forward with our Gold Plated Scantron initiative, not to mention sprucing up our YouCanGo! Campaign.”

The problem is now being addressed by a new measure that was approved by the College Board, which raises AP exam fees to upwards of $9000 each. At a press conference attended by several respected news organizations and the New York Post, a spokeswoman for the College Board said: “Extensive research has shown that AP credits help poor and middle-class students attain scholarships and attend traditionally upper class universities with manageable amounts of debt. Here at the College Board, we think that is an abhorrent waste of capital and are dedicated to taking all that money out of the students’ pockets and putting it right in our own wallets.”

Many are very critical of the College Board’s new policy. “This undermines the very essence of public education,” freshman Zoe Leaf said, with a $14 check for the rights to use locker 9-402 in hand.

This new policy will likely hit Stuyvesant students especially hard, as they have been known to take 4 AP’s a year. “Four times 9,000 is almost 20,000 dollars! How can I afford to take my BC Calculus exam?” senior Muki Barkan said.

Some of the more ambitious Stuyvesant students have begun major fundraising efforts in the hopes that they will still be able to afford to take these long, tedious examinations. According to rumors, the famous SU clothing sales will be expanded to include a new underwear line. These newly designed briefs, which include an “ST” on the left buttock and a “UY” on the right buttock, are expected to raise a ton of money for the students. “One pic’ of me in these tight little things and, trust me, they’ll sell,” SU President Adam Lieber said.

Over at the College Board Headquarters in Guam, where strippers and fondue have become as common as suits and ties, SAT test writers are having the times of their lives. “It’s been unreal,” Coleman said, wearing Kanye West glasses. “I haven’t had this much fun since my Bar Mitzvah.” The College Board, a not-for-profit organization, has listed the festivities as a business expense.

The most famous example is the music industry. Music today is almost completely made by machines. Auto-Tuning, though I’m not sure I would call it performance “enhancement,” gives everyone the ability to make low-quality, get-popular-quick “music.” All the so-called artist really needs to do is pick a chord, sing an off-key note, and some nerdy guy turns it into a song complete with drums that no one played and even a droning synthetic note throughout! How are actual artists supposed to compete with that?

There are also plenty of other occupations that are based on lies. For example, with new automatic weapons, hunting has become much easier (for the hunter, at least). But how are the animals supposed to compete? Survival is a sport that hunters are cheating at. Outsmarting your game has been replaced by overpowering it.

Even we students have found ways to cheat without actually cheating! We need to stay awake as much as we can each night so that we can study and get better grades than everybody else, right? But if you have a good energy drink or even just coffee, you can study as much as you desire and still be peppy for that math test the next day. Is that fair? Isn’t that cheating?
So it’s obvious that cheaters are everywhere. Our modern society is full of them. People using computers to make sounds that they call their own, hunters walking through the forests with machines that will do everything for them, and even editors of The Spectator using Microsoft Word’s autocorrect option to avoid actually doing their jobs. What cheaters! And you, Stuyvesant student, reading this newspaper and holding a Red Bull in your hand, prepared for a quick and easy all-nighter—you should be ashamed of yourself, because you are a cheater too.

“Parents never encourage their kids to be garbage men,” Sanitation Commissioner John J. Doherty said. “But this could finally make a child stand out at Stuyvesant.”

This was a point of concern for many students. “I was getting quite desperate for ideas,” senior and Environmental Club President Geyanne Lui said. “Last time, I was the only one who showed up to clean the portable toilets.”

The Environmental Club members have become adroit at separating trash. For some overachievers, though, this opportunity has been life-changing. Like everyone else, sophomore and Red Cross member Andrew Lee had “always wanted to be doctor,” he said. Rather than presenting a generic Intel project, Lee decided to spend some time hugging trees.

In addition, Lee was assigned to a trash can, and met the love of his life while protecting his turf. “We cuddled inside the trashcan, and it was awesome,” Lee said as fluid dripped from his body. “She told me that I have a manly, bad-boy scent.”

Student Union Chief Financial Officer Jack Cahn has been hooked by the Environmental Club’s green initiative. “There is a fortune to be made here,” Cahn said as he frantically dug through a trash can. “[TerraCycle] has made life so much better than before, when we had to dig through unsorted trash.”

Still more ambitious students look toward the future. Senior and Environmental Club member Kenneth Zheng appreciated the opportunity, but he had greater things in mind. While taking a desperate dump, Zheng was inspired by a message in a bathroom stall: “Hope everything comes out all right.” Zheng knew he spoke for everyone when he said, “I have always wanted to inspect sewers.”

Though Scalabrine’s statistics were less than stellar for the Nets, Celtics, and Bulls, his playing time was limited by the league’s Scalabrine Rule, which states that players of his caliber must play a maximum of five minutes per game, so as not to humiliate their teammates. Advanced metrics also show that Scalabrine was the first player in the NBA to lead the league in bench minutes and high fives in the same season. Scalabrine, therefore, believes that this game’s outcome is being taken out of proportion. “If you honestly believe that I would lose to a high school kid after carrying the Celtics to an NBA championship just five years ago, then you’re an idiot,” Scalabrine said.

Regardless of the legitimacy of Hssan’s victory, the Student Union (SU), doing something meaningful for the first time since they were elected, is now selling “Brown Mamba” t-shirts, which can be purchased in front of the SU office for $30 each.

Since this school year began last September, “Humor” has turned out a series of offensive, provocative, and insulting columns, which have been anything but funny. Their insinuation that Barack Obama was smoking a federally banned substance along with his wife and children was egregious. Their suggestion that former Assistant Principal of Pupil Services Eleanor Archie is Pope was distasteful and insensitive to Stuyvesant’s Catholic population. Furthermore, their satirical article about steroids being used in lieu of actual exercise was wildly inappropriate given the current landscape of drug abuse in athletics. And these unpleasant, upsetting articles are only the tip of the iceberg.

The constant jokes about marijuana have no place in a high school newspaper. Frequent mention of Adderall and other illegal drugs is equally disturbing. Moreover, the sexual jokes and references are appalling. This isn’t HBO; subjecting young freshmen boys and girls to gross jokes about ejaculations or teen pregnancy is not just unprofessional, but immoral. Who allows this? Who is supposed to preview these articles before they are published? Has the teacher adviser for this newspaper gone blind? Does he have a degenerative mental illness? It is simply appalling.

Talking about specific parties and “hook-up” culture reflects poorly on the whole school community; this simply has no place in the official school student newspaper. Is there nothing more reasonable to joke about? In addition, the recent Humor article supporting gun use was deeply misguided; attacking republicans, Christians, and supporters of the second-amendment was tactless and destructive. What would Peter Stuyvesant say if he could saw the intolerant and offensive material currently being published? The Humor Department isn’t just a disgrace to New York City; it is a disgrace to our Dutch forefathers as well.

I’m a funny guy myself; I have a sense of humor, and I value the importance of laughter. That being said, the recent humor articles have not just crossed the line—they have gone miles past it, and show no signs of stopping. To make matters worse, they aren’t remotely funny; what could possibly be comical about a violent, racially charged war between two Chambers Street food carts?

The Spectator should cherish its pristine reputation, not risk throwing it away because the new Humor editors lack decency and decorum. The Humor department has become an embarrassment, and it’s time someone did something about this. If the Editors-in-Chief act briskly, their paper could still escape more or less unscathed. If they don’t, it won’t be long before the entire paper becomes a lewd, dirty, disrespected cesspit of a publication.

Dear Ms. Zhang,

Last month, with great shock and surprise, we received your e-mail recounting delinquent activities in the park. We spat out our leftover pizza at your frightening news that Battery Park might be closing in the near future. You have already displaced us from the alcove, the bathrooms, and even the Hudson Staircase—so many places with so many great memories. If we cannot cyphe in the park, where, oh where, do you want us to go? You have left us with no viable options, and on account of that we are extremely exasperated.

Ever since we were rejected from ARISTA, drinking and smoking in the park have been our favorite pastimes. We have spent warm spring days and frigid winter blizzards huddled in small packs. We have disregarded toddlers, park rangers, and policemen. (Thankfully, stop-and-frisk doesn’t apply to whites or Asians.)

We have bought all the Terry’s baked goods and so many delicious donuts, not to mention scones, excellent scones; we have scoured King’s Pharmacy for their eye drops; we have discussed aliens and national politics (for instance, E.T., our favorite alien); we have pretended we want White Castle, even though most of us have never been there, because “Harold and Kumar” is our favorite movie. Without Battery Park we would be dehumanized. There is no trash receptacle like the Hudson River. We love throwing our J’s there, and it’s like recycling because the fish eat the leftover weed and then we have high fish just like in Junior SING!.

From a dime to a dub, an ounce to a pound, a degree Celsius to a degree Kelvin, smoking weed is just what we do. It’s what makes us true Stuyvesant students, unlike the new, nerdy ones who stick to Adderall. As grasscity.com states, marijuana is an “incredible, edible herb,” and we like to eat it in cupcakes, brownies, peanut butter, and even milk.

You have no say in where we can smoke, mean lady. What use is there for a park that you can’t even blaze in? We Stuyvesant Potheads have been here for longer than you were even alive, with alumni including Attorney General Eric Holder, front-man of Ravens and Chimes Asher Lack, and even Peter Stuyvesant himself.

Furthermore, we agree wholeheartedly about the trash. Littering is a disgrace to the entire Stuyvesant community and an utter disrespect to Battery Park. I hope that the litterers are properly disciplined, as there are ample trash bins in this park and there is truly no excuse for their inconsiderate, churlish actions.

Wait, we can get arrested for this stuff?!

Love,

The Stuyvesant Potheads

- Principal Jie Zhang was caught cyphing with several other members of the administration last month. When asked to comment, she said, “Damn, that stuff was dank.”

-The Bronx Science Track Team was collectively selected as the next Pope.

-Junior Jiten Patel entered the Boaz Weinstein library 16 minutes after second period began on Thursday, March 7. He was promptly shot twelve times for trespassing. Funeral services will be announced shortly.