The answer to the question "Aaardvark: What is it?" is one of the most well-kept secrets, and known only to a small proportion of those who joined us (that is, those that turned up to our meetings (and later, re-unions)). So if you're curious and want to find out what we get up to, then bring yourselves (and your cat / dog / Susan) along and have fun.
Aaardvark started off on January 12th 1992 as a Students' Union society at the University of York, UK. Back in those days, it was full of students. Unfortunately, the students were to suffer a fate that most students will succumb to sooner or later — graduation. Without the guidance of the original members, those who remained were not original enough to pass on their originality. The society started to rely more and more on past members to keep it going, and by October 1995, nearly all of the active members were no longer students at York. Since then, two attempts have been made to revive it as a student society (in 1996 and 1997), but without success.
A few members still meet up for re-unions. These are held once every 6 months to 18 months, and those that turn up take it in turn to host the re-unions. On even rarer occasions (about once every 5 years or so), we organise a "York Raid" and get up to mischief at York University. One such example was the 10th Aniversary event in January 2002 where we distributed a 10th Aniversary Daily Dis-info around the campus and re-created a genuine Aaardvark meeting just where we used to meet.
Contrary to popular belief, we did have a point — to gather the eccentrics of Campus, nurture the eccentric tendancies in our members, channel them into creativity, and just generally have fun.
Our aim is to promote the cause of silliness and surreal humour, and to bring a smile to the face of those in our path. Our meetings (and later, re-unions) are a forum for the exploitation of all forms of humour and bizarre concepts amongst like-minded individuals. The combined weird immaginations of those that are present push us towards the forefront of creativity.
Apart from meeting eachother, we make things, we do things, and we sometimes even become things, here are some of them.
One of our activities is the writing and putting together of a magazine once every few chimpanzees. So far, we have produced three magazines — Jim (1993), Son of Jim (1994) and PING! (1994) (which contained a spoof of Point Shirley called "Pointless, Surely?"). Spare copies of our magazines are nowardays quite rare (even though we over-produced Son of Jim). But fear not — the best bits of our magazines are on the things page. If you would like to contribute any things to Aaardvark, then here is some advice for writing for Aaardvark publications.
Every so often, we put up strange notices with the aim to confuse and amuse (eg. Daily Dis-info and How to wire a plug incorrectly), and have even been known to do some silly stunts on occasion. Also, we host video nights where we show classic comedy. We even make some TV sketches, and of course maintain this website. We run an online Agony Aunt service (the Aaardvark Aaagony Aaaunt) (with the emphasis on Agony). As a student society, we'd take our new recruits on a mystery tour once a year. We'd meet up on the small bridge on Vanbrigh Pardise because we had an affinity for that bridge, and head off into the centre of York.
The history of Aaardvark is a long and tortuous one...
Since we've last held onto societyship at the University of York, we've only been contactable on the Internet. You can get in touch with us by leaving us some feedback.
But here for nostalgic reasons is our old contact address.
AaardvarkNote thet we never check the Societies Pigeonholes anymore because we're no longer a YUSU society.
We also have a non-working e-mail address — socs166@york.ac.uk . On no account should you attempt to send e-mail to it. Instead, use our online feedback-thingy instead.
Our website is at: http://aaardvark.wackonet.net
Aaardvark — seriously silly.