October at Ohio University is a mystical time. The borogoves are all mimsy. There's ample opportunity to both gimble and gyre if you have the wabe. OU students delight in commemorating the infamous Supreme Court case Humans vs. Zombies. Halloween is so close the anticipation is palpable.
However, there lurks a seedy trouble in the Athens streets. Too often its bricks are stained in pulp. Too often its sidewalks are spattered with melted wax. Too often a partial triangle, which was lately an eye, stares up lifeless from its vandalized body. I speak of smashing pumpkins, my friends, and it is a crime like no other.
Especially as our most beloved OU holiday draws near, students enjoy the fine art of carving pumpkins. Each descends to his or her produce stand of choice, fastidiously selecting a squash of proper hue and girth. The thing is then whisked away to a warm and loving domicile where its innards are removed and a rakish grin carved out. Carving is a personal and hallowed tradition, being complete only with the prominent display of a finished product on a front porch.
Just as there lives a cadre of joyous carvers to fill our streets with the amiable glow of jack-o-lanterns, so too do a vile beast known as the smasher. These rapscallions delight only in the destruction of personified, corpulent orange vegetables.
It pains me to see so many fine works of love and skill raped and crumpled in the gutter. Only a villain of the most heinous sort could commit such a crime. They are recalcitrant specters, working in shadows only, never listening to reason.
Because normal avenues of the law cannot stop them, we pumpkin carvers must do our part to protect our squashes from the squashing powers of the pumpkin smashers. Keep a watchful eye on your autumnal friend. Never give up the joy of carving. Ensure the flow of Halloween spirit through our streets.
Alexander Marietta is a junior studying magazine journalism and columnist/cartoonist for The Post. Send him a reason not to stomp you for smashing pumpkins at am310906@ohiou.edu
We thought we were safe after the nineties. We were wrong. Granted, it's not like the old days, when people wore their affliction on the fronts of their shirts and proudly plastered it to their bedroom walls.
Yes, the days of brothers and sisters in sob adorning themselves with Zero tees and feeling the darkness in dank, incense filled rooms have come and gone. But listen up, Athens: The Smashing Pumpkins is still very much alive, here and abroad.
Halloween time in Athens is the perfect time to remind everyone of the dangers of supporting over-produced, insincere, melodramatic goth rock.
Billy Corgan and his merry band of nobodies taught a generation how to cry, jam nu-metal riffs and wear tight reflective trousers all at the same time, and for this he deserves nothing short of exile. Yet, a walk down one of Athens' numerous party roads will many times yield the sordid tunes of1979
Bullet with Butterfly Wings or Zero being belted from a packed house.
Is it nostalgia? Perhaps, but a person is still a scoundrel for contracting the plague just because it's from back in the day right? It gives me chills to think of the masses of Halloweeners (ha!) that will fall upon this town in mere days. How many of them will drunkenly play The Smashing Pumpkins on their host's iPod? If the answer is one
then that is too many. But! I have a solution. Meet me at the next paragraph (there are studies that say you guys are too dumb to read more than a few sentences per paragraph, you know) for more!
Hello, again. Let's continue. My solution is simple. Delete The Smashing Pumpkins from your computer, iPod, mind and life. Let us all enjoy a Halloween weekend without The Smashing Pumpkins.
Kent Clements is a junior studying journalism and columnist for The Post. Send him your whiny defense of The Smashing Pumpkins at kc376907@ohiou.edu
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Opinion
Alexander Marietta and Kent Clements
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