Cougars & Mustangs 

Thunder. That’s the first thing you hear. You aren’t used to the sound, really, in a town where the weather is the comforting flat line on the monitor of your darkest nightmare, but the startling blip reads: “Danger. Run. It has awoken.” It seems so childish, really. Why would a grown, mature adult like yourself ever fear the signature calling card of a force capable of beginning raging wildfires and immediately throwing an animal into full-body paralysis? Your eyes are open now. You shrug off the explosive chill of the night air. ... So I was woken by the screaming of Mother Nature, you say to yourself. Whatever. I was having a bad dream anyway. And so you were. A hearty binge-reading of Jenkins’ Undead Under, the true facts (and not, as widely believed, egregious fan fiction) about those zombies below Mission SLO that Cougars and Mustangs continues to faithfully warn newcomers to the area about.

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To clear your head of the terror, as it’s already noon o’clock, you decide to call up your buddies for a nice hangout. As it turns out they’ve already got plans for this evening, though you’re perfectly free to come, if you want, they guess. After telling them that anything is better than staying here, they inform you that they’re on their way to pick you up, make sure you’ve got money for lunch and $10 for—but then the power outages. Assuming that you are reading this on: Oct. 23, 24, 25, 31, or even, dare I say it, Nov. 1, the power returns halfway through a lunch that you already had to order cold, and you find that you’re on your way to a relaxing production of Dracula at Cuesta College, said production beginning at 7:30 p.m. In the event that you are reading this instead on Oct. 26 or Nov. 2, the production was at 2 p.m. If you’re reading this on neither of those options, then it was too late to send help. Apologies.

In any case, you enjoy the way the classic tale was adapted by William McNulty, and the direction of bree valle gave you chills aplenty. You hadn’t realized that in the original story there was far more to be afraid of than Hollywood leads you to believe. You need to stop listening to Hollywood. It was a good use of $10, you think—even $15, if you aren’t actually a student. You just wish there hadn’t been a power outage so you could have just bought your tickets online at cpactickets.cuesta.edu. As you fall off into slumber again that evening, you wish yourself a very Happy Hallowe’en!

You never wake up.

Intern Chris White-Sanborn passes out excuses instead of candy. It’s because you didn’t submit collegiate news to [email protected]. Yep. The blame’s all yours.