When I first came to college, fate laughed at me a lot. A whole lot of confusing things happened at once, and I decided to write about them. Back at that time, I actually believed that people outside William Paterson really existed, and I still spoke to people outside my own shoebox. So I used to send out mass E-mails regarding things that happened to me here. These were things like the first registration horror and not knowing which office or which important person to go to for which problem. And things like the condition of my first dorm room here: whenever you closed the bathroom door, the phone fell off the wall, and whenever you turned on a hair dryer, the lights went out. I began to send these E-mails out on an almost weekly basis, and my friends came to know what they were by the title in the subject line: "Horror Stories from the Shoebox". At that time, I had connections from one of my classes to someone who worked for the Beacon. She asked me to join, I brought up Horror stories as a weekly column idea, and a legacy was born.
A short time later, I found myself Diversity Editor due to some changes in job positions up at the office.
The next important event in Horror Stories history was soon to follow. The girl who was my roommate at the time often helped me edit Horror Stories, advising me on what to add, what to take out, and how to make my stories more creative. She wanted credit for this, but did not wish to be named. So we settled on addressing her as Satan's Little Helper. She suggested that I write at the end of my articles, "Written by Jennifer Sinclair, her assistant Satan's Little Helper, and a hard working staff of forty-seven and a half dust bunnies." (Those of you who are long term and truly faithful fans will remember this disclaimer. Those of you who are not, bite me.) Upon telling my friend Jess (currently our own Diversity Editor2) this, she hopped around delightedly, yelping, "Can I be the half dust bunny??? Can I????"
When Jess became my Assistant Editor, Horror Stories was to undergo yet another metamorphosis. Jess and I were 'studying' one day, for a very important History Midterm of Doom, when we decided to draw the dust bunnies. We drew several versions. Dust bunnies in fields, dust bunnies in schools, dust bunnies peeking over fences, before settling on the version many of you are familiar with today. We decided that dust bunnies in a shoebox was, in fact, the most appropriate. The dust bunny peeking halfway out of the shoebox is always labeled the 'half dust bunny', immortalizing Jess for all time. At present, the dust bunny picture appears when there is that small, annoying portion of blank space in layout, too small to write anything in, but too big to leave blank.
Lately, my life has been just too wonderful. Fate has stopped tormenting me. Every week or so I run around in a fury, yelling "Dammit, nothing bad has happened, what am I going to write?!" When this happens, Jess takes over for the week. And if by some miracle fate has decided to be kind to both of us in the same week (which is highly unlikely, since everyone knows that god loves everyone except feminist-atheist-liberalist-sometimes-vegetarians and their roommates), our staff writer Allan Ringler picks up Horror Stories for the week. Between the three of us, there is enough rage, bitterness, cynicism, sarcasm, and general disdain for all of existence to keep a weekly satire column about the amusing and frustrating antics of college students running smoothly for all of eternity, and then some.