Monday, May 14, 2007
From the Smith College vault: Tangling with the PAGANS
I was reminiscing about good times at Smith earlier today, and then my ex-boyfriend Benzo texted me:
I'm in Northampton and there are smithies everywhere
I responded:
Offend some for me
It seemed relevant to write something about Smith, and I haven't written one of these "From the Smith College vault" things for awhile, so I thought I would relate the story of the newspaper staff's face-off with the Association of Smith Pagans, because every time I think of it, it makes me snicker. And it probably makes everyone else involved snicker, as well. Well, everyone except the pagans, who apparently have no sense of humor.
The Smith pagans were a very active religious group on campus even though there were around 5 or 6 of them in total. It seems they always had some type of equinox, solstice, or other miscellaneous celestial event to celebrate, and they would plaster the campus in flyers and sidewalk chalk trying to recruit people. I would often entertain my fellow editors at the Smith College Sophian with dramatic readings of their flyers. I remember there was some event called Samhain where they were going to be running around campus performing "the laying of soul cakes." We soon deduced that "soul cakes" meant "Oreos or other assorted cookie items stolen from the Tyler House dining room" and I suggested writing an editorial that decried leaving food to molder and decay all over our picturesque New England campus right at the peak of foliage season. I never ended up writing that because 5 or 6 pagans with unappealing yet dogged marketing instincts celebrating some holiday by littering weren't really important enough to make the news, even by our standards, which were EXTREMELY low.
That doesn't mean we forgot about the pagans though. The next spring, we put out our April Fool's edition of the paper. The April Fool's edition, known as the So Fine, was always entertaining (to us), because it was all made up, all written under assumed names (mine was Dr. Unk N. Stoned, of course), and all hilarious. At least the parts I wrote were. One thing we did was make a fake calendar of events, and we decided to have some fun at the Association of Smith Pagans' expense. We included a calendar entry that said something along the lines of, "P.A.G.A.N. rally. The Smith chapter of the People Against Goodness and Normalcy will be sacrificing the virgin Connie Swail at Helen Hills Hills Chapel this Tuesday. BYO Goat Leggings." This isn't the most original thing in the world, since it's entirely a reference to the underappreciated but totally awesome movie Dragnet starring Dan Aykroyd, Tom Hanks, and Captain Von Trapp as the head P.A.G.A.N. We were amused and probably drunk, so we put the paper to bed and congratulated ourselves for putting together yet another brilliant edition of the So Fine.
One thing I should say right here about the paper was that most people did not read it, so we very rarely had anyone take issue with stuff written there. Occasionally we'd get an angry letter to the editor, but for the most part, people largely ignored this fine publication that our tireless staff put so much work into every week. In fact, people generally liked us overall. The Smith cops were always stopping by our office to say hi, we'd get discounts at Davis student center, and our neighbors in Capen Annex, the building where our office was housed, liked us for the most part. There was one incident where I hung a sign on the door that said something like, "New rule for Capen Annex: no vampyres, vampire slayers, demons, ogres, ghosts, ghouls, elves, orcs, hobbits, goblins, dragons, dragonslayers, witches, warlocks, wizards, mages, spaceship captains, time travelers, shapeshifters, shades, or other forms of mythical beasts permitted. BEGONE, beings most foul! By order of the Roman Catholic Church." This was directed at members of the Smith Science Fiction and Fantasy Society (SSFFS), who had their "reading room" upstairs and who had bothered us with several minor complaints about things that interrupted their reading Philip K. Dick novels in peace, like blasting "Armageddon It" while laying out the Features page or me smoking pot in the darkroom. Our managing editor was a member of SSFFS and she immediately tore the sign down and yelled at me, thus ensuring that relations with SSFFS did not further deteriorate. Apart from those types of largely insignificant incidents, nobody really had a problem with us.
One day, shortly after the So Fine dropped, we heard some very authoritative stomping on the Capen Annex front porch. LL Cool Jew, Wmania, myself, and other various members of the newspaper staff had been in the main room, where I was having a field day tearing apart a press kit sent to us by Ani DiFranco's marketing staff that said "Eat pussy not cows" all over it. It took a place of honor right next to the press kit for M.O.T. (Members of the Tribe), a hardcore Orthodox Jewish rap group, on our bulletin board. Suddenly the door flew open, and we were faced with a half-dozen furious Smith pagans.
Their leader was this computer science major named Nicole Shields. She was dressed in her usual style, which was Dune meets The Crow by way of a medieval whorehouse. Nicole was a big girl, and notable for her monstrous breasts. Her tits were like the continental shelf protruding from her chest, and she always strapped them into some kind of absurd corset or something. It was like being set upon by Jabba the Hutt if he were masquerading as some sort of cross-dressing prostitute at a Cure concert. I couldn't find an actual picture of her on MySpace or the internets, but I found a couple close approximations:
You get the idea. Anyway, Nicole was accompanied by her cadre of wiccans, who were likewise clad in crushed velvet capes and Kiss Army boots, and generally looked like extras off the set of The Craft. She got her massive tits right up in our faces and shook a copy of the So Fine angrily at us.
"This is RELIGIOUS INTOLERANCE!" she shouted. "People WILL NOT TAKE US SERIOUSLY if you write stuff like this."
I wondered whether there was a chance anyone would ever take these pentagram jewelry aficionados seriously, but bit my tongue.
"We do not wear GOAT LEGGINGS," she continued. "This piece is full of misconceptions and bigotry. We are a LEGITIMATE RELIGION, and it is totally unacceptable to mock us."
Someone, probably the diplomatic editor Coolbeans, then advised them that the So Fine is obviously a parody, so it was doubtful that anyone would change their opinion of paganism or wicca or whatever based on a three-line joke from the fictional event calendar.
Nicole shot back, "Well, you wouldn't make fun of other religions, would you?! You wouldn't, say, write that Hillel is making matzoh with the blood of Christian children! "
I blurted out, "Of course not. That isn't funny."
"Funny? You call being persecuted FUNNY?"
We all looked at each other, and said, "Well, yes. In this case, it is."
"We demand a retraction."
I started snickering derisively. The pagans stared at me furiously. Coolbeans then stated that we only made retractions for factual errors, and not for anything in the So Fine. Defeated, Nicole gathered up her angrily heaving bosom and stalked out with her coven in tow.
"Dude, Razzy, they're probably forming a sacred circle and invoking the spirits of fire and wind or whatever against you right now," cautioned Coolbeans.
"Yeah, if by that you mean organizing a panel discussion/teach-in that nobody will attend," I said. "Regardless, bring on the hexing. I've got Jesus Christ and all the power of the Vatican on my side. We smoked their idol-worshipping asses during the Inquisition, and I'll have no trouble destroying them in a rematch."
Unfortunately, the Smith chapter of the People Against Goodness and Normalcy never bothered us again, so I didn't get the opportunity to put any of them in an Iron Maiden or otherwise elicit confessions via torture like an accomplished Inquisitor. Nicole Shields graduated that year and took her giant cans off to California to write code for PlayStation games. I have yet to experience the ill effects of any curse they may or may not have placed upon me.
I'm in Northampton and there are smithies everywhere
I responded:
Offend some for me
It seemed relevant to write something about Smith, and I haven't written one of these "From the Smith College vault" things for awhile, so I thought I would relate the story of the newspaper staff's face-off with the Association of Smith Pagans, because every time I think of it, it makes me snicker. And it probably makes everyone else involved snicker, as well. Well, everyone except the pagans, who apparently have no sense of humor.
The Smith pagans were a very active religious group on campus even though there were around 5 or 6 of them in total. It seems they always had some type of equinox, solstice, or other miscellaneous celestial event to celebrate, and they would plaster the campus in flyers and sidewalk chalk trying to recruit people. I would often entertain my fellow editors at the Smith College Sophian with dramatic readings of their flyers. I remember there was some event called Samhain where they were going to be running around campus performing "the laying of soul cakes." We soon deduced that "soul cakes" meant "Oreos or other assorted cookie items stolen from the Tyler House dining room" and I suggested writing an editorial that decried leaving food to molder and decay all over our picturesque New England campus right at the peak of foliage season. I never ended up writing that because 5 or 6 pagans with unappealing yet dogged marketing instincts celebrating some holiday by littering weren't really important enough to make the news, even by our standards, which were EXTREMELY low.
That doesn't mean we forgot about the pagans though. The next spring, we put out our April Fool's edition of the paper. The April Fool's edition, known as the So Fine, was always entertaining (to us), because it was all made up, all written under assumed names (mine was Dr. Unk N. Stoned, of course), and all hilarious. At least the parts I wrote were. One thing we did was make a fake calendar of events, and we decided to have some fun at the Association of Smith Pagans' expense. We included a calendar entry that said something along the lines of, "P.A.G.A.N. rally. The Smith chapter of the People Against Goodness and Normalcy will be sacrificing the virgin Connie Swail at Helen Hills Hills Chapel this Tuesday. BYO Goat Leggings." This isn't the most original thing in the world, since it's entirely a reference to the underappreciated but totally awesome movie Dragnet starring Dan Aykroyd, Tom Hanks, and Captain Von Trapp as the head P.A.G.A.N. We were amused and probably drunk, so we put the paper to bed and congratulated ourselves for putting together yet another brilliant edition of the So Fine.
One thing I should say right here about the paper was that most people did not read it, so we very rarely had anyone take issue with stuff written there. Occasionally we'd get an angry letter to the editor, but for the most part, people largely ignored this fine publication that our tireless staff put so much work into every week. In fact, people generally liked us overall. The Smith cops were always stopping by our office to say hi, we'd get discounts at Davis student center, and our neighbors in Capen Annex, the building where our office was housed, liked us for the most part. There was one incident where I hung a sign on the door that said something like, "New rule for Capen Annex: no vampyres, vampire slayers, demons, ogres, ghosts, ghouls, elves, orcs, hobbits, goblins, dragons, dragonslayers, witches, warlocks, wizards, mages, spaceship captains, time travelers, shapeshifters, shades, or other forms of mythical beasts permitted. BEGONE, beings most foul! By order of the Roman Catholic Church." This was directed at members of the Smith Science Fiction and Fantasy Society (SSFFS), who had their "reading room" upstairs and who had bothered us with several minor complaints about things that interrupted their reading Philip K. Dick novels in peace, like blasting "Armageddon It" while laying out the Features page or me smoking pot in the darkroom. Our managing editor was a member of SSFFS and she immediately tore the sign down and yelled at me, thus ensuring that relations with SSFFS did not further deteriorate. Apart from those types of largely insignificant incidents, nobody really had a problem with us.
One day, shortly after the So Fine dropped, we heard some very authoritative stomping on the Capen Annex front porch. LL Cool Jew, Wmania, myself, and other various members of the newspaper staff had been in the main room, where I was having a field day tearing apart a press kit sent to us by Ani DiFranco's marketing staff that said "Eat pussy not cows" all over it. It took a place of honor right next to the press kit for M.O.T. (Members of the Tribe), a hardcore Orthodox Jewish rap group, on our bulletin board. Suddenly the door flew open, and we were faced with a half-dozen furious Smith pagans.
Their leader was this computer science major named Nicole Shields. She was dressed in her usual style, which was Dune meets The Crow by way of a medieval whorehouse. Nicole was a big girl, and notable for her monstrous breasts. Her tits were like the continental shelf protruding from her chest, and she always strapped them into some kind of absurd corset or something. It was like being set upon by Jabba the Hutt if he were masquerading as some sort of cross-dressing prostitute at a Cure concert. I couldn't find an actual picture of her on MySpace or the internets, but I found a couple close approximations:
You get the idea. Anyway, Nicole was accompanied by her cadre of wiccans, who were likewise clad in crushed velvet capes and Kiss Army boots, and generally looked like extras off the set of The Craft. She got her massive tits right up in our faces and shook a copy of the So Fine angrily at us.
"This is RELIGIOUS INTOLERANCE!" she shouted. "People WILL NOT TAKE US SERIOUSLY if you write stuff like this."
I wondered whether there was a chance anyone would ever take these pentagram jewelry aficionados seriously, but bit my tongue.
"We do not wear GOAT LEGGINGS," she continued. "This piece is full of misconceptions and bigotry. We are a LEGITIMATE RELIGION, and it is totally unacceptable to mock us."
Someone, probably the diplomatic editor Coolbeans, then advised them that the So Fine is obviously a parody, so it was doubtful that anyone would change their opinion of paganism or wicca or whatever based on a three-line joke from the fictional event calendar.
Nicole shot back, "Well, you wouldn't make fun of other religions, would you?! You wouldn't, say, write that Hillel is making matzoh with the blood of Christian children! "
I blurted out, "Of course not. That isn't funny."
"Funny? You call being persecuted FUNNY?"
We all looked at each other, and said, "Well, yes. In this case, it is."
"We demand a retraction."
I started snickering derisively. The pagans stared at me furiously. Coolbeans then stated that we only made retractions for factual errors, and not for anything in the So Fine. Defeated, Nicole gathered up her angrily heaving bosom and stalked out with her coven in tow.
"Dude, Razzy, they're probably forming a sacred circle and invoking the spirits of fire and wind or whatever against you right now," cautioned Coolbeans.
"Yeah, if by that you mean organizing a panel discussion/teach-in that nobody will attend," I said. "Regardless, bring on the hexing. I've got Jesus Christ and all the power of the Vatican on my side. We smoked their idol-worshipping asses during the Inquisition, and I'll have no trouble destroying them in a rematch."
Unfortunately, the Smith chapter of the People Against Goodness and Normalcy never bothered us again, so I didn't get the opportunity to put any of them in an Iron Maiden or otherwise elicit confessions via torture like an accomplished Inquisitor. Nicole Shields graduated that year and took her giant cans off to California to write code for PlayStation games. I have yet to experience the ill effects of any curse they may or may not have placed upon me.
Labels: Dumb Smith bitches, intentional buffoonery, nerd alert, overcompensation, Smith College Vault, stank vaginas
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You know what, you're a stupid bitch, mmk? If you think that Pagans are funny, then you just need to go die, right now.
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# posted by 
: 7/08/2008 5:12 AM
: 7/08/2008 5:12 AM Links to this post:
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