Just before I start: if this column is conspicuously short, rest assured it's because some of my Sofka-related jokes were cut.
Ever since this whole Sofka saga played out in the Cavalier Daily last week, everyone is offering up their own second-hand tales of their professors' alleged sex lives. I keep hearing stories of English professors getting together, piano teachers accidentally e-mailing their love notes to the class instead of their mistresses, and plenty of teaching assistants doing more than "assisting." This place is looking more like the Playboy Mansion than an Academical Village. Keep it in your pants, people.
I don't care what my dear friend television tells me, Fig Newtons are not fruit and cake. If it was my birthday and you put a candle in a Fig Newton, you would no longer be my friend. I would immediately take your gift and ask you to leave.
In my book, cake is only cake if it has icing. Pound cake? Not a cake. Icing is not a special add-on, it is a prerequisite. The phrase "icing on the cake" has absolutely no meaning to me.
This weekend the Honor Committee voted down a notion to submit a referendum to the University student body that would have added a "forgiveness clause" to the Honor constitution. This is a tremendous victory for single-sanctionites, and a devastating loss for Sofka, who assumed that there was a similar clause in his pre-nup.
While walking around at night, everyone has their own self-illusion that if necessary, they could fend off attackers with a barrage of martial arts moves stolen from a lifetime of Jackie Chan movies. That whole imaginary field of security vanishes when there's the slightest amount of ice on the ground. I'm nervous of the 90-pound first year in heels coming my way, because I know all it takes is one drunken push and I comically hit the ground. I feel completely vulnerable when I'm on ice. I'm like Superman, and ice is my kryptonite--except slightly slicker, and not green. And unless "a sense of balance" counts as a super-power, I don't have any. So really, the only way I'm like Superman is that when I have glasses on, I feel like I'm in disguise. Now I'm depressed.
Last week researchers around the world announced they had begun to blur the line between man and beast, creating animal-human hybrids in Petri dishes in order to run medical tests. Stanford University announced that it had even begun a program to develop mice with human-like brains--that part's actually true. When asked what the Stanford research team was going to do next, one scientist replied, "The same thing we do every night, Pinky... try to take over the world!"
I know a lot of people are gonna get up in arms about that sort of thing, but not me. If someone can develop a pet that can understand English and fetch me a Coke when I want one, I'm all for it. Or, while we're at it, maybe some kind of dog that could play basketball. Man, I love "AirBud" more than anyone over twelve should.
But don't even get me started on "Air Bud 2: Golden Retriever." Where were the characters I fell in love with in the original? Despite alienating their core fan base (me and the animals-playing-basketball movie enthusiasts), I hear the producers are developing "Air Bud 3," where our lovable hero travels back in time to the Old West for some reason--hopefully to play dodgeball.
Alderman's automatic doors don't open for me anymore. I'll walk up and play a little game of chicken with the building, hoping at the last second the sensor will see me and let me in. But it doesn't, and then I'll have to push on the door harder than normal to overcome the automatic gears, which is just adding insult to injury. Or icing on the cake. I still don't quite understand that phrase.
I think it's actually the spirit of Thomas Jefferson holding the door closed in order to tell me that there is no good reason to be going to the library this early in the year.
I have the feeling that alcoholism as a social disease is on the way out. This generation's "ism" will be "compulsive-away-message-checking-ism." People get addicted and can't stop. It breaks up friendships and families. In the future, college kids will have interventions for each other. "Listen, you've got to stop this. You're destroying your GPA. You're wasting so much time sitting here trying to think of a good away message. Look at how many profile windows you've got open. The little task bar has an arrow to show a whole new row!"
If you rearrange the letters in "Dean Sofka," you get "Naked Sofa." There's a joke in there somewhere, I'm sure. Or at the very least, a disturbing mental image.
Eric Cunningham may be reached at cunningham@cavalierdaily.com
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