It was perhaps the last thing students of Saturday’s Welcome Day expected to see. Instead of running into the world-renowned, Bobby Beacon, or the still-more-popular support dog, Beacon, incoming freshman and transfer students were greeted by a Gusteau-ass-looking motherf—er pushing around a small portion of spaghetti in a baby stroller with two googly eyes haphazardly slapped on.
Meet Clump: UMass Boston’s brand-new, pasta-themed mascot and the administration’s attempt to spa-get its reputation back after Chancellor Marcelo Suárez-Orozco spa-got himself into hot water with his controversial spaghetti ban.
While Italians and carb enthusiasts were certainly among those the administration hoped to win back through Clump, the group of most concern was the Conglomerate of Campus Pastafarians who accused the Chancellor of religious discrimination and claimed the ban violated their First Amendment right.
For those unfamiliar with the religion of Pastafarianism, it originated in 2005 when the prophet, Bob Henderson, exposed the truth of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, a divine, intelligent and completely invisible being that created the universe on a drunken bender many eons ago. Practitioners of the Pastafarian faith also believe that pirates were the original followers of the Great Noodly One and that climate change, global warming and increasing natural disasters can be directly correlated to their decline since the 1800s.
Despite the administration’s aim to appease them, the Chancellor would be damned if he let a bunch of pasta-strainer-wearing, swashbuckling heretics smear their saucy blasphemy all over his ban. He vowed to destroy Clump at all costs, and central to his plan was what he called his “GBs” or “Growing Boys.”
Two eight-year-old orphan brothers legally named Mangia One and Mangia Two, the Growing Boys were always hungry for a second helping—or a single one for that matter—as the Chancellor had provided them nothing more than one can of Bush’s Baked Beans each week since he adopted them. This kept them nice and hangry, just the way Marcelo liked them.
Whenever the administration sent Clump to an event, the Chancellor ensured his hungry little guys were in attendance. At the whispering of the trigger phrase, “Mangia, Mangia” the juvenile sleeper cells would spring into action to stuff Clump down their underaged gullets. But children aren’t always the most reliable minions, as displayed by the fact that Clump’s culinary handler could simply distract the boys by throwing a handful of loose candies or by putting on the latest episode of “Skibidi Toilet.”
As the Chancellor slithered back to his office to contemplate a new strategy, a rumor began circulating that Clump was somehow his spawn. Key to the theory was the Chancellor’s pasta-fueled nightmare where he dreamt he gave birth to a bundle of noodles only to wake up to a bundle of noodles in his bed. Was this a simple coincidence or had our finally-inaugurated Chancellor taken a page out of Mother Mary’s book and immaculately conceived some sort of pasta Christ?
“The Virgin Marcelo Conjecture,” as it’s come to be called, has been further supported by amateur video footage of the Chancellor outside the West Residence Hall. He’s been living there since he was kicked out of Vatican City due to rumors of having a “spiritual affair with another deity”—and for the time he bit off the Pope’s balls while pretending to be a dog. Although the film quality is poor, he can be clearly seen tossing a clump-like assortment of noodles into the dumpster.
The Chancellor has denied all claims of fatherhood as well as his proposed religious treason saying:
“You seriously think I’d willingly let some made-up spaghetti god pump me full of its savory sauce? I’ve only got room for one G-man in my life, God, and he pumps me full of that holy spirit every night! Besides, Clump looks like something out of ‘Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2!’ You really think I’d pop out something like that?”
Regardless of the Chancellor’s statement, the campus Pastafarians have insisted that if the “Virgin Marcelo Conjecture” proves correct, Clump is most certainly the noodle messiah foretold in the sacred texts said to bring about a golden age of noodly-ness for all. While the likelihood of that happening may be slim, Clump will continue to act as UMass Boston’s official mascot despite the Chancellor’s spaghetti ban.
Will the rift between the administration and the man supposedly leading it tear the University apart? Will the secret behind last week’s miraculously manifesting mystery noodles ever be revealed? Will the origin of Clump bring the Pastafarians one step closer to their fabled Pasta Heaven—one full of beer volcanoes and stripper factories—or send them reeling down to Pasta Hell—same as Heaven, but the beer’s stale and the strippers have STDs.
Join us next week as the Spaghetti Saga continues…