Wednesday, December 13, 2006

 

The Beast Belongs At Baylor!



As is my habit after many long days, I was spending some time this evening relaxing on the couch with a nice glass of port and reviewing the prophesies contained in the Book of Revelation. At the same time, I was thinking warm thoughts about the success of Chris Fahrenholdthe in seeking the role of commencement speaker. Troublingly, however, the two began to merge as I read. Prophecy, indeed! It would appear that with the appearance of Mr. Pharenthold on the scene, we may well be in the end times. Consider the following, which pairs the prophesies of Revelation regarding the Beasts of Hell with certain known facts relating to "The Candidate:"

Rev. 13:2- "It's feet were like a bear's..."
(Obviously a reference to Baylor as the site of the Beast's appearance)

Rev. 13:5- "... and it was allowed to exercise authority for forty-two months..."
(Including his "sabbaticals," exactly the period of time Mr. Fahrhenholdt has spent with us)

Rev. 13:7- "Also, it was allowed to make war on the Saints and to conquer them."
(Let us not forget the glee he expressed when his USC Trojans defeated Notre Dame)

Rev. 13:15- "And it was allowed to give breath to the image of the beast so that the image of the beast could even speak..."
(Clearly a reference to his blog, So The Beast Says.)

Rev. 16:2- "A foul and painful sore came on those who had the mark of the beast and who worshipped his image."
(Propriety forbids me from further discussing this)

Well, it should be an eventful commencement! Plus, we may get to hear his band. Don't forget to attach your special ticket to either your forehead or the back of your right hand before entering Waco Hall!

Comments:
Since when do you drink Port? What, are you too good for Meister Brau and Milwaukee's Best, the beers of a true struggling academic? Must be a bad habit you picked up at Yale. At least pretend you're drinking a Shiner.

Are you going to have a port when you're playing foosball next week? If you are drinking port when playing foosball, no wonder Bates beats you every time!

The most disturbing thing I've come across, as an outsider, in this whole discussion, is that you have a hall called Waco Hall on campus. Did we have a Williamsburg Hall at W&M or did you have a New Haven Hall at Yale?

Can't you find some rich fancy pants Texas oilman who wants a monument to himself who will donate enough money to get a hall named after himself? Jerry Jones Hall, for instance. Or even a company in Texas? Maybe Brown & Root Hall or something like that.
 
Wow. You truly are a Talmudist of SoTheBearSays. I was hoping that I wouldn't be uncovered as the anti-Chris until after the speech.

I was relaxing after dinner with a nice Scotch and the Bardo Thodol, and I came upon a couple creepy allusions to Prof. CrimPrac/PR:

"At that time--when the tormenting furies will be in pursuit of thee, and when awe and terror will be occurring--" Book II, Part 2

(Clearly, this is a reference to Prof. CrimPrac's history as a federal prosecutor, one of the "tormenting furies" in "pursuit" of criminals, as well as to his teaching in the PC program, where "awe and terror" occur regularly.)

"O ye Compassinate Ones, let not the force of your compassion be weak; but aid him [in need]. Let him not go into misery. Forget not your ancient vows; and let not the force of your compassion be weak." Appendix, Section 1.

(Clearly, this is a reference to Prof. PR's having delivered the invocation at the Summer '06 commencement, as well as no doubt the closing soliloquy he will give us on the final day of Criminal Practice.)

"When the consciousness-principle getteth outside the body, it sayeth to itself, 'Am I dead, or am I not dead?' It cannot determine." Book I, Part 1.

This is most certainly yet another reference to the terrible stupefication that Prof. PR rains down on his students in the Practice Court exercises. For how many times have we left a mini-trial saying "Am I dead, or am I not dead?" and not really known the answer?

Coincidence? I think not. Apparently the Tibetan Book of the Dead is good for both aiding acid trips (per the esteemed Dr. Leary) and understanding the phenomenon and the duality that is Prof. CrimPrac/PR.
 
And for the record, I'll clock out at exactly 36 months, thank you very much.

All the other stuff was spot on, though. You might as well laugh your way to oblivion like Slim Pickens on the nuke.
 
Oh, Mr. IPLawGuy... Have you forgotten the idiotic predelictions of our alma mater? That despite having rafts of distinguished graduates, from Thomas Jefferson to Linda Lavin, hundreds of students lived in housing with names like "Unit B?" [In fact, I believe you lived in "Unit C"]. On top of that, we went to events, including commencement, in the wildly-creatively-named "William and Mary Hall."

Personally, I think we should have renamed Unit C the "Linda Lavin Hall of Destiny."

And Mr. Anti-Chris: I can take no more, and shall thenceforth refrain from exploring the dark corners of your identity, for they scare me.
 
Unit C is once again the home of our proud and distinguished Epsilon Charge. The infidels have been driven away, and without a trebuchet.

Linda Lavin... no. She doesn't rate. Glenn Close and John Stewart, maybe. But first they need to write some checks.

As for William & Mary Hall, they were just waiting for the right fat cat donor. It's now Kaplan Arena at William & Mary Hall. This from the official website:

Other sporting events held here have included the Harlem Globetrotters and the Roller Derby. Fans in the Williamsburg area have seen auto shows, dog shows, Prince Charles, Glenn Close, a Billy Graham crusade, Bette Midler, Billy Joel, speeches by presidential candidates Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford, the Shakespeare Company and more.

-- I missed the Roller Derby! I also missed the Neil Young, the Dead and Foghat concerts, but I did see the Clash, the Police, the Go Gos, Little Feat, Muddy Waters, Eric Clapton, Love & Rockets, the Pixies, Bruce Hornsby, REM, the Stray Cats and 10,000 Maniacs at the Hall
 
It seats 10,000? Wow. That's more than Waco Hall. Way more.
 
Prof. Osler,

I just found a must have for your Christmas music collection: "A Twisted Christmas" by Twisted Sister. I just watched the 80's hair band's version of "Oh Come All Ye Faithful" on Jay Leno, and I thought of you.

-Craig
 
I'll interject a little info for iplaw guy. "Waco Hall" is actually an ingenious ploy by a Baylor president who, like so many Baptist preachers, knew how to pass the hat.

Yea, when Baylor and the rest of the land were in the throes, verily, the throes of the Great Depression, S.P. Brooks tells the very citizens of Waco: "We're pumping cold hard cash into your local economy. It's high time to pay the piper. Pay up, or we're packing up and moving to Dallas." (It should be noted that at approximately the same time, Add-Ran College moved to Ft. Worth and was renamed TCU.)

The tactic worked. Waco's citizens ponied up the cash, and since Brooks effectively passed the hat through town, they named the auditorium / chapel after the town.
 
Wait: Are you telling me that you guys went to college with Linda LAVIN??? TV's ALICE????

Did she ever ride in the Festiva?
 
Tyd--

No, we went to college with Jon Stewart-- Linda Lavin was way before our time. However, she was the grand marshal of the homecoming parade the year I ruined it (parade goes wrong direction), which was three years after IPLawGuy ruined it (burning float).
 
I hardly think we "ruined" one of America's lamest parades. No, I think we enhanced its reputation for whackiness.

This is a parade where the Honorary Grand Marshall my Freshman year was Gordon Jump, the guy who played the General Manager on WKRP in Cincinatti.

Here's what it was like: One fraternity always made a float that looked like a Shark, to commemorate the movie Jaws.. They were still doing this a good 8 years after the movie came out. Another stuck a bunch of tree limbs on a flat bed and rolled it with toilet paper... every year. Yet a different fraternity always had a viking boat that they pulled down the street, while dressed in viking gear. At least a couple of times the southern group sat a flatbed with a big generator driven stereo playing southern rock and the football frat pushed a bunch of lawnmowers.

Us, well, we had a, um, "theme" every year too. One year we had a mushroom cloud on a football field. The next year it was, uh, two shafts, or um "mushroom clouds." The one representing W&M was taller and wider and more upright. The one representing our opponent, Harvard, was shorter, and not so, shall we say, erect. That was the year "a spark from the catalytic converter" set the thing on fire in Colonial Williamsburg. My Satellite was also in the parade. I still have a photo of our friend Roger standing on its hood holding a keg over his head. Nothing says "College" to me more than that photo.

The following year we were banned from the parade.

After I graduated they had a Roman column with a football helmet, a bug spray can with two bugs on the side (the year Prof. Osler backed up the parade), and finally a big brown thing to commemorate the theme of "The Magic of Homecoming." I believe the undergrads were trying to say something positive about the basketball player Magic Johnson's "prowess."
 
I didn't "back up" the parade-- it actually reversed and went the wrong way.

It was quite a moment...
 
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