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In This Issue

• Festivalia 2006-2007 (Part One of Two)
• Our Shining Futures
• A Descent into Madness and Confusion
• Outed Characters in Literature Humanities
• Iraq Exit Strategy: The Boardgame!
• Campus Characters
• Ugg Season Descends on Barnard (or: DAS BOOT)
• Drunker Strike
• Scenes from South Lawn
• The Art of Ray Johnson
• ABC: Your Money Is Now Our Money (or the V-Show's)
• A Message From Public Safety
• The Great Scientific Experiment
• Brown Bagging
• THEY Watch
• The Staff
• The Fed Presents: The Spirit Of Giving

Michael Bredin

Presenting...

Sarah-Beth Ruth Goldstein’s (BC ’11) Ruminations on the Nature and Purpose of Uggs, Transcribed While Trying to Keep Warm in Her Makeshift Dorm Room in The Middle of the Quad During the Onset of Winter

They say there’s a thermometer in Brooks that has only one notch: Ugg Time! Each Fall, when the mercury first dips below this mark, the girls dive head-first into their spacious walk-in closets (or so I imagine, I didn’t get housing), and grope wildly for their cold-season boots. Sometimes it gets a little out of control. Last year, someone accidentally broke the Ugg Thermometer and mercury splattered all over the floor. I was in the lobby when it happened, and I helped get Public Safety onto Wikipedia to learn how to clean up the hazardous mess. We all learned a lot that day.

For the uninitiated out there, Uggs are sheepskin-lined boots that originated from rural Australia. They probably will be remembered as the must-have woman’s shoes of our decade, but hopefully their legacy will also homage their hideousness. The tanned sheepskin looks uncannily like the tanned face of a withered and wrinkled Floridian crone. The fur looks as ratty as, well, a dead sheep. And the pale tinted colors and floral patterns aren’t exactly helping.

But Uggs, you defend, are soooo comfortable. And yes, they do have their practical purposes. For instance, maintaining body heat in legs otherwise only covered in tights and a mini-skirt.

Defend this: Ugg boots run from 160 to 350 dollars (the most expensive pair is the hairiest and resembles a Wampa from The Empire Strikes Back, and, like that noble creature, it smells worse on the inside). That’s an awful lot of money.

Even out here in the Quad, there must be a more efficient way to warm yourself up this winter than a $250 pair of dead skin. Once more we will look to Episode V for enlightenment.

Soon after the furry Wampa scene, Luke Skywalker is saved from his frozen snowy death by Han Solo, who cuts open a huge lizard, disembowels it, and stuffs Luke inside. Similarly, in New York you can obtain a hunting license for about $25. This license specifically includes the hunting of bears.

Now, Uggs only warm your feet. How about cutting open a bear and stepping into its steaming hot carcass this winter? Huh? You can even learn online how to hunt things, and skin and disembowel them too! I mean, I did. The idea is to keep the knife under the skin and pull upwards, to avoid cutting any hair. And I suggest leaving the head on. It adds a regal, majestic element to the whole thing.

Some sissies bring the hide to their taxidermist for a thorough cleaning, but honestly, I don’t think that a few chunks of bear fat and congealed blood are a big deal. It’s just like when you wear a shirt from a thrift store with out washing it first. Whatever, right? Uggs. They might be fashionable, but there’s nothing like donning a huge carcass on the 1 train. But this is New York, so maybe no one will notice.

And, in case you were wondering, getting hold of a gun isn’t difficult at all. Certainly not out here in the Quad, where there’s never any shortage of prey. Not bears, exactly, but….

Hmm, she looks pretty warm. I wonder if she comes in a size 9…