Wednesday, December 04, 2002

Sure, I went to a

Sure, I went to a hoity toity college, not like anyone around here ever heard of it, but it’s old and expensive and has great pretensions if not actual greatness.  Actually, 17 named it one of the top ten “cool schools” this year.  That would not have been happening when I attended.  The most popular (best-selling) t-shirt on campus then was the school seal with a legend around it clarifying which school it wasn’t.  Regardless, or maybe because of, this lack of external recognition, I was indoctrinated there to believe that we had a rival school, one which I was supposed to hold in utter disdain.  When I met people from that school, they had heard of my school but not of the rivalry.  To be frank, I think everybody who didn’t go to this purported rival school wound up with negative feelings about it; Side Show Bob (last item on the link page) certainly did and he’s the final word in my book on this subject.  Or he was until today.  Because today, I learn that the debating squad from rival Princeton University were attacked in their sleep by the fighting and drunken Quakers of the U.Penn.  I guess they wanted to inject some violence into the overly-cerebral world of rhetoric.  Take that, brainiac!  Eat 10W-40, geniuses!  Really, where’s the sport in beating up people who are 1) sleeping, 2) debaters, 3) from Princeton?  Is the frustration of not getting into one of the schools other people have actually heard of so rankling that they had to resort to violence?  And not just violence, but oily violence?  In my day we sang biting satirical ditties and drank ourselves quietly into a stupor.  I guess the problem is that these guys just didn’t drink enough.