The Desperate Times

GOEs, OWLs and some extremely unhelpful advice

It’s your favorite time of the year! And by favorite time of the year, we mean that for thirty of you, it’s time to take a once-in-a-lifetime exam that both is extremely important to the ordination process and not actually a barrier for getting ordained. For the rest of us, it’s a time to feed you snacks and say encouraging things like “you’ll be fine” and “seriously, you’re still gonna get ordained” and “When I WAS a seminarian…”. We at The Desperate Times wanted to read, mark, and inwardly digest, or maybe we just wanted to mark this monumental time in the lives of seminary seniors by providing a helpful review of all six exam sections. Please hold the word ‘helpful’ lightly. After all, Dolores Umbridge was ‘helpful’ to the protagonists of a certain popular fantasy series by providing an exact template of what not to do when you’re trying to save the world. GOEs are not at all related to saving the world, but after listening to this episode, you may be spurred to heroic acts of armchair theologian-ism and angry emails to those idiots behind TDT. Speaking of angry emails, we welcome comments, criticism, spam calls, excommunications by anathema, and wildly misleading Twitter subtweets. All publicity is good publicity when the concept of fake news doesn’t apply to our completely-true news reporting. Any tips, tricks, and information about things we should cover on campus can be emailed, voicemailed, or Facebooked to us. We are everywhere, at all times, like the Illuminati, and will gladly respond to your wild ravings with wild ravings of our own.

St. Nick is not a heretic, and other Christmas discoveries

Just when you thought we'd disappeared for good--defeated by too much eggnog or run over by reindeer, perhaps--here we are again, slipping into your inbox like the Boxing Day sales that you just can't unsubscribe from, no matter how many times you click the unsubscribe button. We present to you, on this St. Stephen's Day, our Christmas episode, featuring an abnormal amount of really stupid jokes that are absolutely true depictions of life at the Virginia Theological Seminary. While we know it is the second day of Christmas already, and you're all very busy as you slowly inch your wise men figurines towards the manger and contemplate whether you're going to put on Frozen again (we see you, parents of small children), we hope you'll take the time to send in an entry for our Epic Very Special Zoom Background contest, as we seek to supply the VTS community with a new stock of obscure and "where the heck is that?" backgrounds for your Zoominary classes. The winner, or some other person they so nominate, will be given a true-to-life depiction on the TDT podcast. Check out more contest details here [https://www.facebook.com/TDTNewsPodcast/posts/112846394022504]. Feedback, questions, concerns, riddles-that-unlock-secret-treasure, glitter bombs, and theological squabbles about Mary Did You Know can be sent to our email, podcast voicemail or communicated by messenger pigeon. Please know that it may take some time for our intrepid copy editors and marketing novices to get back to you, as they are still quarrelling about whether to call today Boxing Day or St. Stephen's Day.

Gander Reveals, Retractions and Regrets, oh my!

We at The Desperate Times would like to confess to a gross injustice, which has come to our attention through various murmurings of discontent over the last few weeks. Although the seminary administration is certain that this discontent—manifesting itself in the form of particularly vicious attacks of procrastination around final exams—is due to the unduly distracting influence of our humble podcast, we are sure this cannot be the case. The injustice we have committed is, in fact, not providing ENOUGH slightly-suspect-but-definitely-true conjecture about the state of Virginia Theological Seminary in these Desperate Times. Therefore, we, the staff heretics at the most widely-heard audio publication at VTS, resolve to make our amends by supplying you with more of the rumor mongering and meme-making you have come to expect from us. To unlock additional fodder for procrastination on your final papers and end-of-year reports, please visit us on Facebook at The Desperate Times: Radio Edition [https://www.facebook.com/TDTNewsPodcast]. We promise we will not disappoint you again, unless you’re a member of the VTS administration, in which case we will almost certainly disappoint you again and again. As always, please be in touch with any questions, complaints, or wild ravings (we particularly like those). You can write to us via email, message us on Facebook [https://www.facebook.com/TDTNewsPodcast], or leave us a voicemail on Anchor [https://anchor.fm/desperatetimes]. We particularly welcome tips from campus informants who would like to be added to our network of spies-er-“friends”.

Who let Gollum go to seminary(?), and other VTS mishaps.

Another year, or week, or decade, another episode of The Desperate Times. Time no longer has any meaning. After the rousing success of our first episode of TDT's radio edition, we are delighted to return to your inbox with more definitely-factual news of life at VTS, since we're pretty sure you haven't read enough real news over the past few weeks. It's a slightly longer episode this time, because Hillary (our Zoom analyst and heresy moderator), forgot to tell the editors that they were only allowed to talk about geese and molepeople once during the episode. The entire staff would like to apologize for this oversight, except for the editors, who are firmly convinced that you, residents of the VTS campus, must know the truth of what's happening amongst our furry and feathered foes. As always, we welcome all feedback, critical commentaries, subtweets, and general expressions of disdain, which you can express to us through email or by submitting a voicemail through Anchor. You don't have to send us a take down order like some unnamed person did last week, but if that's your preferred form of communication, well, be our guest.

We've Lost Q, and Other VTS Conundrums

Welcome back to the Desperate Times: Radio Edition! Just when you thought the world might actually be coming to a complete end with no laughter in sight, we're pleased to fulfill all your worst nightmares by reappearing with no hermeneutical or ethical or institutional explanation. If we're being honest, we missed you.  It's been fine, really. After assuaging our disappointment over the lack of memes to be created upon the conclusion of TDT's print publishing run, and the stunning drop in cease-and-desist letters from the seminary, we tried to move on. Herbert, former assistant to the editor of the Trotter Bowl dog-culture section, hitchhiked to California to begin an indie publishing company for esoteric heretical misprints of the BCP. Emmaline, our very-reliable faxing assistant, took up amateur goose-stalking and we haven't seen her in.. a while. So anyways, we hope that you enjoy this very first episode, recorded in a very secret place in front of a fake live studio audience, with all the latest and greatest and definitely-truest news from VTS.