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In This Issue

• CU Lions Massacred by Ballroom Dancing 77-3
• Sen. McCain: “Just Let Me Retire.”
• From the Archives
• Joey Dʼs Last Word on Not Sweating in School
• Everybody Poops...But How Do They Do It?
• A Scientific Study on the Phenomenon of Pre-Gaming
• A First-Hand Look at the Indigenous Peoples of Butler Library: The Ivy League Gone Wild
• Holiday Greeting Cards
• George W. Bush: The Final Countdown
• CULBA: The Columbia Underground Listing of Barnard Ability
• Donʼt Like Waking Up in Your Own Vomit?
• THE FED’s Reading Week Drinking Games
• Gossip Girl Comes to Columbia University
• Four out of Five Dentists Agree...
• THEY Watch
• The Staff of 24.3

[Note: In memoriam of the legendary anthropologist Smithson Rettiger who passed away last week during his daring study of the mating rituals of the Japanese four-fingered Yakuza, we have chosen to print an excerpt from his last published paper.]

“Pre-Gaming: The Unknown Ideal”

By Smithson Rettiger, PhD

Abstract:

... [M]ales of the “student” caste, in pursuit of forbidden phallocentric activity engage in a regular and covert, yet highly ritualized worship of their patron gods. This rite begins with the ingestion of a specified elixir, followed by ecstatic chants and exclamations…and proceeding until a mystic transcendence occurs.

Background:

During my investigation of Gnostic cultic culinary celebrations conducted at “JJ’s Place” during the spring of 2006 (see Study Breaks: Mozzarella Sticks of Power, Curly Fries of Wisdom, MIT Press, 2007), several subjects alerted me to the presence of a separate but highly curious ceremony, “Pre-gaming,” occurring in complementary distribution to the “JJ’s” rituals. When I asked why this ritual was housed in a different sacred spot, one subject responded that “[we would] get less faded if [we] ate before.” Not finding this conclusion compatible with current schemas of Columbianic religiosity (Chomsky 98), I decided to begin a full investigation regarding the matter after the “NSOP” initiation rite in the fall of 2007.

With consultation from experts in Zoological Phrenology and Applied Chemosynthetic Histiography, I chose to perform a series of field studies with four male initiates of the devotional level, “freshman.” As follows are the accounts of the 37 field studies I performed over the course of the year.

First Field Study, September 5th:

The four subjects of my study congregate in a habitation in the “Carman” Dormitory, the place and time specified via a “Facebook event invitation” created by Subject 1 (“Josh”). After all four subjects arrive, the ritual begins with an invocation to an unknown fertility goddess, as each devotee pledges his desire to “get some pussy tonight.” Subject 3 (“Foegler”) assumes a position of cultic authority, proceeding to extricate the ritual libations from a “backpack” brought to the habitation by Subject 2 (“K-Dawg”), presenting the “vodka” and the “six pack” before the other acolytes. Subject 1 brings to Subject 3 a stack of red vessels apparently used for drinking.

After Subject 3 places the ceremonial components upon an altar at the posterior of the habitation, Subject 1 announces the mystical intentions of the rite, introducing the latent phallocentric content. The acolytes’ most immediate goal, as one subject tells me, is to gain entry to “Campo,” a mythical place of reputedly divine bliss, in which the phallocentric domination of the female element is achieved via a process called “macking on bitches.” Entry to this mystical domain is only possible after the ingestion of the sacred liquids, at which time the patron god—seemingly named “Georgi,” though also referred to as “Natty light”—bestows upon the acolytes the state of “being faded.”

After Subject 3 recites the mythic narrative of the ritual, Subject 2 opens the “vodka” receptacle and pours a small amount of the clear liquid into a drinking vessel. Subject 2 then takes a receptacle from the collection called the “six pack” and opens it. Drinking the “shot” from the red vessel, he quickly “chases” it with the liquid from the receptacle he took. Each of the other subjects follows with the same action. The sacred vocabulary of this act, seemingly derived from the jargon of fox hunting, is another link to the phallocentric underpinning of the ritual.

With each “shot,” a look of anguish followed by gleeful relief washes over the acolyte’s faces, as if the divine “Georgi,” initially trapped with the sacred receptacle is, for a fleeting second, transferred to the bodies of the acolytes. After an unspecified number of cycles of this action, the participants begin to omit the initial stage of transferring the “vodka” to the vessel, instead drinking it directly from the receptacle. At this point, Subject 4 (“The Donglemeister”), perceiving some sort of contamination in the ritual space, attempts to cleanse it by playing “some Weezy” from his portable computing device. Subject 1 attempts to cement the rite of purification by chanting along with the hymn. Feeling satisfied, the Subjects leave the “Weezy” playing for the duration of the ritual.

At this stage in the ceremony, the Subjects’ speech becomes more loud and confused. It is assumed that the gradual loss of any sort of coherence in meaning indicates a transition into ecstatic forms of verbal exaltation of the divine.

As the “vodka” receptacle begins to reach expiration, the energy level of the celebration begins to decline. Apparently perceiving a psychosexual union and the achievement of his phallocentric fantasies, Subject 3 lies down on a bed, because he needs to “sober up a bit,” the next stage in the journey to attaining “Campo.” Waiting for Subject 3 to achieve this, Subject 4 imbibes the remaining “vodka,” in an attempt to quicken his own spiritual journey. After several moments of terrified facial expressions, he vomits.

This action is deemed a “party foul” and is considered punishment from the patron “Georgi” for the Subject’s misconduct. Not wanting to cause any more contamination or jeopardize his chances of psychosexual union, Subject 1, quickly ends the ceremony with the proclamation that he is “too wasted to go out, anyway.”

…

[Note: we have chosen to include only the first field study here for brevity’s sake; the others are eerily similar.]

…

[Ed. Note: Though highly informative and extremely thought provoking, we omit Dr. Rettiger’s inconclusive lab analyses of the liquids involved in the ceremony.]

…

Conclusion:

…[T]his study proves the ceremony of “Pre-gaming” to be a highly ritualized act, a unique and vibrant form of worship, previously thought eradicated by cultic followers of rival deities, the “Finals” and the “Mid-terms.” Additionally…this study shows the existence of a latent form of phallocentricism in the rite, analogous to the Steppe peoples of Eastern Ukraine…The finding of phallocentricism, a necessary part of any civilized people, allows for the concrete discussion…of theories long thought only wild conjecture in Columbianic studies, such as the reason for the lack of heterosexual male mating partners in Columbia College…and the location of Alma Mater’s owl. These questions will be answered in my next study, conducted at which time MIT decides to raise my salary to one befitting of…my stature.

[Note: Unfortunately, it seems now that neither the straight men nor the owl will ever be found, as Dr. Rettiger died before he could start his studies.]