What Would Phoebe Do by Phoebe Maltz
The Hell edition
It only took three installments of “What Would Phoebe Do? (WWPD?)” for me to learn that I am, in fact, going to hell. Danielle Stella wrote a response to my last column in Tuesday’s MAROON, stating that accepting Jesus Christ is the difference between heaven and hell. Ergo, since in my last column I revealed that I am not a Christian, now all the faithful readers of the Maroon know for sure that my afterlife will be spent in conditions that will make my un-air conditioned room in Pierce look favorable.
Stella also pointed out something that I find remarkable—that I am biased. As a writer for Viewpoints, I suppose I should have known that I am to hold no opinions whatsoever. Opinions are inherently offensive, and, as I have argued in my column earlier this quarter, the fact that debate is now running rampant at colleges marks the chief fault of our generation. The people who must be most careful to avoid expressing opinions are, obviously, those who present their opinions to the public on a regular basis. Clearly Stella, who follows the “word of God,” has no opinions, per se, since the word of God is understood by all people to mean the same thing.
Though it is not in Jesus Christ, I too have blind faith—in the applicability of a Seinfeld episode to nearly any situation, in the eternal beauty of Rufus Wainwright, in the failure of Suave as a shampoo, and in the harmlessness and edibility of the dirt that collects on the cups in Pierce. Anyone who challenges these beliefs is challenging the word of Phoebe, and is thus condemned to a life of suffering from my continual disapprobation.
Unless I am to abandon my unjustified bias against knee-jerk Christianity, I will have to accept my fate as a hell-bound individual. I must immediately reconcile myself to this future. During the four minutes I spent free-associating on hell, I came to the following conclusions as to what it might be like:
1. The U of C takes great pride in its alleged resemblance to the underworld, as witnessed by the many shirts worn around campus declaring the school “The Level of Hell Danté Forgot,” “Where Hell Freezes Over,” and of course, the perennial favorite, “Where Fun Comes to Die.” The thing is, I like this school, so I could think of much scarier things than being condemned to eternity in a place that is the model for this one. I might only fear its similarities to this school if hell is catered by Aramark.
2. I’d imagine that the worst thing about hell would be the fact that, due to the immense heat, all people would walk around in various states of undress. Since it is a given that most people look best when fully clad, one can imagine just how dreadful hell could be. Picture a mix between an amusement park on a hot day and a middle school dance.
3. Lots of hot, unrepentant gay men hanging around for me to try to make ex-gay.
