HOLY SHIT! HOLY SHIT! HOLY SHIT!

Michael Phelps is what happens when a fish makes love to a jet engine.

Seriously, this is the most utter and complete ass-whipping since Hannibal rolled into Cannae. Well done young man.

The scarlet G

It was, in fact, 30 years ago today that the letter was sent to the house informing my parents that I was eligible for “special educational services.” Ultimately it was the first step down the long and winding road that ends up with me here tapping away on this laptop in this house in this state.

In years past, I might have been prouder of this. Or angrier about it. As it stands now, I think James said it best: “If I hadn’t seen such riches, I could live with being poor.” The ride may not always be smooth, but the view is spectacular.

A slightly bigger deal is that this is very nearly the first thing I can think of where I can say something happened 30 years ago. This is me, circling the drain…

Flashback, part 3 of n

I know I’ve written before about that first autumn at Vanderbilt, but I stumbled across my entire “Old Vanderbilt” playlist a couple of days ago and was swept right back in again. One memory clearer than any others: on the morning we left to drive up, I walked out into the back yard with a Mason jar, out to the patch of yard where once lay the sandpile I played in as a preschooler, and scooped a jarful of earth to seal up and take with me. It would be over a decade before I could open it again…

Continue reading “Flashback, part 3 of n”

Animal House, via H.P. Lovecraft

Read this and then contemplate the meaning of the phrase “Frathouse America.”

I half expect the Attorney General to go up there and say “Ladies and gentlemen, I’ll be brief. The issue here is not whether we broke a few rules, or took a few liberties with our female party guests – we did. But you can’t hold a whole fraternity responsible for the behavior of a few, sick twisted individuals. For if you do, then shouldn’t we blame the whole fraternity system? And if the whole fraternity system is guilty, then isn’t this an indictment of our educational institutions in general? I put it to you, Greg – isn’t this an indictment of our entire American society? Well, you can do whatever you want to us, but we’re not going to sit here and listen to you badmouth the United States of America!”

Everybody thinks they can hook it…

“Senator Edwards, I knew Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton was a friend of mine. Bill Clinton got off with my cousin’s roommate’s sister’s BFF in the back of an El Camino back in ’73. Senator, you’re no Bill Clinton.”

/bentsen

(Ladies and gentlemen, start your blogs. We just looooooove to jone.)