Today was such a marvelous week, ladies and gentlemen! Just other day, I wake with my harem of Shooters Females—of course representing a proportional distribution of the races, religions and sexual orientations found at Duke so as to not even slightly suggest that I have specific, ravenous desire for bisexual Flemish-speaking women, still sticky with sweat and feeding me green olives, only to see that it is not just desk of mine that looks like winter wonderland, but all of East campus has also become blanketed with snowy white goodness!
With great excitement, I flip open my Duke blue Razr and see that I have received email from our esteemed and stoic student leader, Mr. Laurence Moneta! I am moved by the prose of his email. His words possess Nabakovian beauty. His use of ellipses are plentiful like Zemblian oil reserves. His jokes are funnier than the thought of Ukrainian autonomy. Mr. Moneta’s patriotic announcement of Duke Snow Day moves me to tears. At once, I shoo females out of my Randolph bachelor pad, and I clear off the many contents of my desk. Then, I open the crate under my bed to release my best friend slash translator, Dobroslav, and we pledge to celebrate school cancellation in the same way that, as I have learned, Duke Students celebrate everything: self-medication!
Since I am still used to scientific Zemblian names for chemical medicine, I put my faith in hands of Dobroslav to prescribe my enjoyment. Together, we drink crimson potion that Dobroslav calls siestich nohami sikodelik alligator zvodkyna. It tastes like combination of Aristocrat fine vodka, Marketplace gravy and bleach. After my second helping of this glorious medicine, Dobroslav and I escape Randolph dormitory and embark on savage journey to the heart of the Duke gardens.
It is when we arrive at Duke Gardens, that the beauty of life, the universe and Duke Campus becomes so apparent to Dobroslav and me. There is suddenly aura of happiness that washes over the maelstrom of typical Duke anxieties that normally trouble me—the low GPA, my inability to find private equity internship, the women who constantly objectify me and lack of squirrel stew served at Duke dining halls. Instead of these troubles, Dobroslav and I are mesmerized by the snowy microcosm of beautiful life in the Duke gardens. Small, capped children run, like in slow motion, across fishbowl field. They are so careless, so free of worry. Plump parents watch their children with adoring smiles. A handsome, man-sized lobster and his beautiful, hirsute girlfriend drink tea under the kaleidoscopic seahorse-shaped clouds. The frosted earth breathes with happiness.
“Dobroslav, do you feel that I am living a meaningful life?” I ask in my mother tongue.
“Of course my comrade. You are Duke Blue Devil. You scored 2230 on SAT and you live life full of great promise. Methods of inquiry, basketball victories, private equity, large inheritance—these are all within our grasp! Ishmael, white spiders may be falling from the sky, but look in the distance! Don’t you see the grand and imposing neo-gothic architecture of our campus? Surely you must know that it was built to validate our collective feeling of self-importance?’
“But Dobroslav, we must go deeper. Yes, it is true that my life is bountiful with dance floor makeouts and dreams of private equity, but is this it? Look around yourself, Dobroslav. We stand on a field glazed in delicious white icing. In distance I can beautiful crowd of small, androgynous bodies endowed with heads of our lord and savior, Larry Moneta. How can I let mere material things like money and women possess me without thinking about the utter splendor of every minute thing which surrounds me? What if I were to stop a moment and appreciate the simple presence of my underling translator? Don’t you ever feel this constant pressure at Duke, This unnamable force that feels like it is crushing your bones?
There must be more to life than sex and grades and money!”
“Ishmael,” says Dobroslav in tone of deep exasperation, “I fear you are not well. You are speaking nonsense like stupid child. I do not know what you are trying to tell me. There is no reason to worry about all of this meaning-of-life gobbledygook. You are living a happy life and you will leave behind a hefty inheritance to your Duke-bound children. It is time to go home.”
Dear, readers I will not tell you what I experienced next, for I fear that you would think of me as a lunatic. But, as I sat in bed cowering in fear of the Duke construction cranes during this glorious snow day, I was so very grateful that the mighty L-Money granted us students this day off to reflect on what it is that we love so much about our precious University.
Ciao!
Ishmael loves snow days. He has sent many Facebook pokes to Larry Moneta to plead for more snow days this week.
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