Wednesday, July 06, 2005

Vegetable House



Hanna Rosin's recent piece in The New Yorker, in which she finds an odd humanity and pathos in the home-schooled android student body of Patrick Henry College, evinced in your humble and ob'd't sv't a damned nearly irresistible desire to stuff my mouth to overflowing with mashed potatoes, run up to the first PH student I see, and violently extrude the whole load in his face: "Get it? I'm a zit!"

The drive to the grocery takes me past Patrick Henry. This somnolent time of year, "the men and women who will lead our nation and shape our culture with timeless biblical values and fidelity to the spirit of the American founding" are to be found on the campus quad playing a suspiciously polite game of Ultimate. Well, no, hold on, it's only the fellas. The women aren't much in evidence, which would follow because they're inside convincing each other that "committing to Christ" is like "sticking to a long-term business plan," and that business plan emphatically does not include the sweaty torsos and dewy loins of the breathless boys. They're laboring to take to heart the nine-page e-mail sent out to the entire student body by one of the (male) students this year: “Lust is sin. It is sin for you to tempt us. It is...unloving. Unsisterly. Un-Christlike.”

I'm glad to see that the future of Christian rape counseling is in such capable hands. You'll enjoy being succoured by such a fine, empathetic mind, ladies. Welcome to it. What a catch!

Says Rosin:
Girls talk about not “stumbling” a guy, the equivalent of tempting him, and resident advisers keep a close eye on them to make sure they don’t wear shirts that show any bra. If they do, they’ll get a friendly e-mail—“I think I saw you in dress code violation,” followed by a smiley emoticon.... Smoking, drinking, and “public displays of affection in any campus building” are forbidden. Matthew du Mée, who was an R.A., told me that if he saw a boy and girl sitting too close for too long he would pull the boy aside and tell him to stop, because “the guy is supposed to be the leader in the relationship.”
[A momentary digression, if I may. The chink in the armor of the Christly home-schooling cult -- and cult is exactly the right word for it -- is the women. If you were to set up a table at the nearby Giant supermarket offering Deprogramming Services to Patrick Henry coeds, business would, I'm certain, boom. These girls know damned well what's being done to 'em, and at least half of 'em won't stand for it if they see any kind of alternative that doesn't make 'em think they're headed straight for Hell. They're not stupid, just enslaved.]

Wistfully, I close my eyes and conjure up the future Misty Memories that these youngsters will enjoy years from now: the awkward home-schooled maladroit's dread of using the wrong fork at the Liberty Ball, (whee doggies, that looks like a good time!) or at the annual school Hoedown at which the rigidly sexless student body, glass tubes firmly inserted, mills about drinking decaffeinated apple cider, noshing saltless popcorn and scrupulously ignoring the 800-pound gorilla glowering in the middle of the room.



It's the goddamned Omega House. An eternal, ceaseless, permanent Omega House, where extravagant displays of the prissiest, most nauseating virtue are rewarded with (let's not beat around the bush) status, favor and privilege. Which in Real Life means Money.

An Omega House, that is, that has managed to completely eradicate the Deltas from the face of the earth. Expelled. Double Secret Probation. Dean Wormer Triumphant. Thank you, Lord, may I have another?

A house that's all Apollo and no Dionysus just can't stand. It must collapse. And collapse it will, spewing forth all the deeply repressed libido and id that it built up inside, like mashed potatoes in Bluto Blutarski's mouth.

Particularly since the 2004 election, the bastards have managed to nullify our most potent weapon: our sense of humor. Goddamn it, under most circumstances, we are the funny people. We use satire, sarcasm, ridicule -- merciless, pitiless ridicule -- to expose the ludicrous and risible pieties of the Omega House. Would Hunter have left Patrick Henry College's lawn untorched? Hoffman? Zappa? Al Jaffee's Private Doves?

The first order of business is to nip that goddamned Ultimate thing in the bud. These little bastards are NOT ALLOWED to play Ultimate Frisbee. That is OUR game, and they are NOT WELCOME to it. Henceforth, when I drive past them, they will be reminded by a leather-lunged heckler that Junior Fascists do not play Ultimate. They need to be TOLD.

But that's only a drop in the bucket. What needs to happen, what desperately needs to happen, is a cataclysmic prank, something so truly desperate & weird that the little androids will be absolutely convinced that the End Truly Is at Hand, something that permanently fucks with their well-ordered little Apollo-minds and declares the triumphant return from exile of Bacchus to Purcellville.
Bluto: Over? Did you say "over"? Nothing is over until we decide it is! Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? Hell no!

Otter: [whispering] Germans?

Boon: Forget it, he's rolling.

Bluto: And it ain't over now. 'Cause when the goin' gets tough... [thinks hard] the tough get goin'! Who's with me? Let's go! [runs out, alone; then returns] What the fuck happened to the Delta I used to know? Where's the spirit? Where's the guts, huh? "Ooh, we're afraid to go with you Bluto, we might get in trouble." Well just kiss my ass from now on! Not me! I'm not gonna take this. Wormer, he's a dead man! Marmalard, dead! Niedermeyer -

Otter: Dead! Bluto's right. Psychotic, but absolutely right. We gotta take these bastards. Now we could do it with conventional weapons that could take years and cost millions of lives. No, I think we have to go all out. I think that this situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody's part.

Bluto: We're just the guys to do it.

D-Day: Let's do it.

Bluto: LET'S DO IT!!


I am willing to entertain suggestions.

19 comments:

handdrummer said...

I think that this situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody's part.

We're just the guys to do it


By the ghod I don't believe in, I'm with you on this Neddie. Count me in.

Suggestions:

100 simultanious strippergrams to random students

the overnight 'erection' of an appropriately priapian sculpture on the clock tower of the admin building

Err, kind of lame huh? Always was too much of a goody two shoes.

Well, I'm available for the skulking and lurking about. Let me know.

LET'S DO IT!

Neddie said...

>> 100 simultanious strippergrams to random
>> students

>> the overnight 'erection' of an appropriately
>> priapian sculpture on the clock tower of the
>> admin building

Good, good start! Something very pornographic dropped from a low-flying helicopter? Or something deeply offensive to the Obsessively Reverent?

Obviously nothing illegal, or anything that's gonna earn me another lifetime in maya.

How about some super-subtle PsyOps worthy of the OSS...? Come on, you evil bastards, get your prank on!

Anonymous said...

After reading the New Yorker article I decided to drive into Purcellville and check it out. That place has Suburbia pegged. I remember thinking what an perfectly flawless lawn. All the banding in in parallel rows.

After reading your post I just had a great idea. Take a lawn spreader; fill it with fertilizer; heavy on the nitrogen, and spell out “EAT ME” in 6 foot letters. Hapless passers-by would think Patrick Henry was making a statement to the rest of the heathen world. We would know better and chuckle smugly to ourselves.

Anonymous said...

how about e-mails to students and staff saying, "screw jesus -- mary magdalene did"?

because if i know my right-wing repressed christers, the one thing that bugs them is sexual desire. and the thought of their lord and savior having sex ...

btw, i'm a deist.

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Neddie said...

Nonny:

Your idea was so astonishingly simple & good that it had to be destroyed at the risk of -- well, you know. In fact, none of you should be surprised if all the comments to this post don't suddenly just disappear. But believe me, they've been noted.

Ned

Bobby Lightfoot said...

exctasy. water supply. next.

Anonymous said...

how about e-mails to students and staff saying, "screw jesus -- mary magdalene did"
Riffing on this, there are some excellent t-shirts over at tshirthell that could be sent to selected students. Of course, that would require cash. Or a donation from the proprietor, which is, shall we say, unlikely. Ah well, keep us posted.

H. Rumbold, Master Barber said...

Ciao baby, this is Major Hit in the cockpit of the Enola McLuhan, flagship of the Seventh Airborne Peace Corps and Lending Library. We're now over the center of rebel resistance in northern Nigeria and preparing to drop literature.
Do the bombay door thing.
Bombay doors swinging and open, baby.
Groovy and out.
Bombardier, it's your karma.
We're almost ready to drop it.
I can see the entire rebel force running out of their huts, looking up at the sky.
*radio chatter*
Target ready.
Books away!
There they go! The literature is in a tight pattern.
The rebels are beginning to scatter, but-- it's too late!
On target!
God, this is an awesome moment!
The last stronghold of unhip resistance is out of sight,
under eight million hardbound copies of The Naked Lunch!
It's all over - we're coming home!

The Firesign Theatre - Waiting for the Electrician or Someone Like Him

Kevin W. Baker said...

I'm glad someone else thought that article was totally protarded. I love how all these big magazines will send out a reporter to check out some crazy people, and then said reporter discovers that the crazies are (surprise!) human beings, and so they write a softball article making the crazies seem reasonable.

Newsflash: Being human, sympathetic, or even really nice doesn't prevent one from also being wrong, wrong, wrong! All my enemies are human! Except my cat!

And lets be perfectly clear - this bunch of home-schooled slabs of earnestness are the outright enemies of everyone who loves individual liberty in an open society.

Kevin W. Baker said...

By the way, if you go to the Patrick Henry College website and look at the core requirements for a B.A. in "Classical Liberal Arts" (No Judith Butler here!), you'll notice that the core math requirement for undergrads is "Euclidean Geometry". Umm...is algebra satanic or something?

handdrummer said...

Well, Al Gebhra is an islamic invention, after all.

The Viscount LaCarte said...

When someone tells me, "I'm home- schooling my child," with this tone of self-righteous superiority, I now ask them:

"Are they going to be 'home-lifed' too?"

Anonymous said...

In the spirit of Akatabi's post, may I suggest an airdrop of a couple of thousand copies of Penthouse and Playgirl...preferably during commencement!!!!

buckeyepride said...

I guess I fail to understand your logic. While you won't see ME enrolling at PHC (EVER!), who am I to tell them what to do, how to do it, what to believe, or how to believe it?

I don't like them telling me what type of Christian I have to be. I don't like them telling me that the Roman Catholic Church is a cult. I wouldn't like it if they told me that when I hold my girl's hand or kiss her I'm behaving inappropriately. I damn sure would be ticked off if some nutjob I don't know wrote me a nine page email to tell me how he's "sinning" because of the way others dress. I say, go develop some self-discipline! But I digress...

My point is this: I thought we believed in freedom in this country. Until their beliefs infringe on yours, why worry? They're just a bunch of dumb college kids who, like their liberal counterparts, will probably wake up in a few years and realize that they need to chill out a bit. The young girls you spoke of have every right to run screaming from the campus IF THEY SO CHOSE, and yet strangely, they don't. So what? Let 'em go.

Why is it that some people believe in choice as long as the choice that is made is the one that they support? Why do these same supporters of choice express outrage at half of the population's choices? I'll never understand that. The basis of the word "liberal" is freedom, but many who consider themselves to be "true" liberals are closer to being fascists than the conservatives they deride with the same term.

Wait until you have a REAL Dean Wormer to act out your "Animal House" fantasies. They'd be wasted on a bunch of kids who haven't done anything to bother you except hold different beliefs.

buckeyepride said...

BTW, I like your writing style. It's clean and conversational. I just disagree with you on this one.

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