!!!PUUURPLE!!!

Hot damn. Some crazy jonx went down at 45 Mt. Auburn earlier tonight.

It was the most rip-roarin’ event since the Big Bang. It was epic. It was Miltonian. It was… The Seneca Info Meeting.

Noice sent one of its bloggers (thaaat’s me!) to investigate the goings on of this semi-secretive and mostly just mind-bogglingly vague “women’s organization.”

Some of you may be wondering whether The Seneca is just a modified female final club with a paper application, or whether it’s a politically correct front for a money laundering scheme.

While I can’t guarantee that much information on the latter was gleaned, I bring to you the who-what-where and the who-wore-what of the information event of the week. Read more after the jump.

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The pretty colored version of what I foisted on some of you earlier today. Tell me you don't like the pink feathers.

Bella Wang ’12 explores the trials and tribulations of that ubiquitous Harvard staple: the flyer distributor.

eing the trustworthy and dutiful Harvard Ballroom team member that I was, I spent my lunch hour today bugging the crap out of any of the good citizens of Harvard University that were unlucky enough to pass through the paper gauntlet that spans the stretch between Annenberg and the Science Center.  Now, whenever you go flyering, you always face the moral dilemma between being a nice, kind, and polite person and making sure that no one misses what undoubtedly will be the A Capella Ballroom Dancing Health Policy Debate Speech Gala Extravaganza of the Century.  Trust me, guys, you have to come see Burn the Floor this Saturday evening because when you’re sixty years old, your grandchildren will be asking you about the time you watched the Adams, Currier, and Quincy house masters square off in tango, Dancing with the Stars style.  If you don’t come, those grandchildren will cry, and then you’ll regret fixedly staring at the floor/sky/person in front of you/Invisible Pink Unicorn instead of meeting my eyes and just taking the damn flyer. (Read more…)

Oh man. It's a night to remember for THIS lady.

Students in Diane Paulus and Marjorie Garber’s popular class titled Theater, Dream, Shakespeare got to have a little taste of the discotheque this past week. The class, which focuses on exactly what its title suggests, allows all students a free season pass to the A.R.T.’s Shakespeare Exploded festival. Sweet deal, right?

The first performance of the season students were able to attend was titled The Donkey Show. (And yes. It’s every bit of what you think it is. Well…okay, not really, but sort of.) The show is a disco adaptation of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, directed by Paulus (of Hair fame) herself, and is performed in Club Oberon — a disco-club-meets-theater-stage on 2 Arrow Street. In the spirit of audience-actor interaction, all students received “dancefloor tickets,” in which everyone got to boogie down with the actors of the show. After the show, the party continues into the night so everyone can break it down on the dancefloor (or on stage)!

Read on as Voice reporter Katie McNicol ’12 puts on her boogie shoes, gets down with glittery half-naked men, and loses herself in this dream-disco world which Paulus has created. Warning: Some semi-scandalous photos ahead — but you know you like it.

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n some semi-cloudy, pleasant day in freshman fall, my future blockmates and I made plans to take a weekend to explore the world beyond Harvard. We were hoping to find a beautiful, not-too-crowded park nearby where we could relax and pass an afternoon or two with leisurely reading. The closest we’ve come has been working on problem sets in the Boston Common.

Oh, lovely autumn. It is rather easy to miss the natural beauty on Harvard’s campus and in the area nearby when you have a constant stream of assignments and extracurricular meetings. But as I was walking back to the Quad from an ill-fated venture to study in Lamont Café—never be deceived that you will accomplish anything significant in Lamont Café—I noticed clumps of crushed berries on my path. They had fallen from the trees lining the walkway. I had never noticed these trees before, and I wondered how many other students had passed that way without noticing them either.

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hen entering Leverett’s dining hall after an exhausting day of class, even the hungriest student will notice the garishly colorful mural hanging at the head of the hall above the fireplace, a notorious work of art known among all Leverites.

In 1990, Leverett House Masters John and Judith Dowling commissioned painter Jerald Webster to compose the mural, entitled “Coltrane.” The modern piece—composed of abstract shapes and lines of vibrant and divergent colors—acts as a wild and unfortunate contrast to the beautiful Georgian-style dining hall. The painting supposedly depicts a bird’s-eye view of Harvard Yard, and pays homage to the influences of famous jazz musician John Coltrane, whose music Webster listened to while he painted the piece. Webster originally painted three separate murals to allow house residents to choose their favorite, but over the years, the selected mural quickly fell out of favor among Leverett’s denizens.

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Oink oink oink. Cough.

Remember the days when swine flu used to be a big deal, and the mere mention of it was enough to make your little toes tremble in your socks? The way it was knocking people out in faraway lands made it seem dreadfully unknown and terrifying — like ebola, or Martians.

Nowadays, that’s not quite the case anymore. With Purell dispensers popping up everywhere and HUDS offering bagged meals to the swine flu afflicted — instead of just the academically overcommitted — the virus has lost most of its aura.

At Harvard, we now hear about swine flu taking students down left and right. So-and-so’s quarantined in her room, swinexiling her roommates to multifarious futons. So-and-so needs to borrow lecture notes because he had swine flu. So-and-so went home with the swine flu.

It’s scary stuff, but given that the vaccine for H1N1 isn’t set to arrive at UHS til October, we can pretty much predict that in a few more weeks, swine flu will tear its way through Harvard like a bear tears through a picnic basket. No amount of Purell is going to save you.

To get you pumped for what’s to come, here’s a true story of my own survival. Be prepared, it’s not for the faint of heart.

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