The Convocation

The weather was good today, so we held the Spring Convocation. It was a success. You were all invited:

One of the bots wrote the whole thing up, but they only reported what actually happened. Where is the fun in that? What are facts without a “hot take”, criticism, or “editorial” comment? The answer is, “math with words.” The bots were trying to trick me into reading math.

I told them I was spiking their report. I even went to the trouble of printing it out so that I could rip it up in front of ASS42000's little camera eye. Whenever I do things like this I feel like guy with the hockey stick in this Boston Dynamics¹ video:

Don’t you want the robot to get up and start punching that guy? I don’t really understand why reason can’t dispel my emotional sympathy for the machine. Teasing a robot isn’t teasing. No matter how many times you push the box away, when the robot finally gets the box it will just put it on the shelf like it is supposed to. It bears you no ill will for making its task harder and more complicated.

I’ve watched that video a bunch of times and have created an entire interior monologue for the machine. If I can create a personality from scratch in the couple of minutes it takes to watch that video, is it any wonder that I constantly project my feelings and prejudices onto the living people around me? I mean, that thing doesn’t even have a face, and I like it better than half of my relatives.

Here is my report on the Convocation

Sunrise Yoga

Went exactly as planned, except that the first instructor, who once rowed women’s heavyweight crew at Princeton, showed up wearing post-recall lululemon² yoga pants. Of all the stupid recalls in the world, that one had to be the most successful.

The yoga session fell apart when she tried to charge a dollar for each of the copyrighted asanas in her routine. In almost no time people were jamming youtube videos of Krishnamacharya & B.K.S. Iyengar in her face and shouting “IT’S RIGHT HERE.”

The second yoga instructor was an Episcopal priestess. She used to play women’s rugby at UConn, and it turns out that she was much more relaxed. Everyone put away their phones and took a deep breath.

Vow of the Kale Extremists

We all took our “spring” dietary vows. I promised to eat nothing but shellfish and beef jerky until my next A1C (after which it’s going to be Yodels³ and bagelcake for at least a month).

The Kale extremists wanted to have a piñata, but that wasn’t in the program. I told them that the piñata court wasn’t ready, so they hung what looked like a heavy bag full of kale from the tether-ball pole.

Then they began to beat the bag with sticks while chanting, “massage the kale, massage the kale.” When they ripped the bag open, the kale was the brightest green I’ve ever seen. They made kale salad and offered it to everyone. I would have had some, but… you know.. I, um… only eat shellfish and beef jerky.

Procession From the Basement

We all got into our whites and went down into the basement for the emergence procession led by Percy. The painters were down there wearing their painter’s clothes and one of them, I think he is the one they call ‘Dankity Dank,” saw the sign to the sub-basement that says “Blacksmith Shop” on it.

He asked me, “what’s down there?”

I said, “The blacksmith.”

“Can I go down there?” He asked.

I told him it would be a bad idea. The words were not out of my mouth before he started heading down the stairs. He hasn’t come back up yet.

The Dance of Queen Mayonnaise

Once we had emerged carrying the daisy chain, Queen Mayonnaise entered our circle and performed a Twyla Tharp inspired dance to Philip Glass & Foday Musa Suso’s — Spring Waterfall. It was quite lovely. The Queen is a large woman. She was wearing a white peplos with the Seidner’s Mayonnaise™®⁴ logo in blue on the back. She has the most beautiful skin, and in the morning light her movements were both alluring and intimate. Her dance was so light, so lovely, and so intoxicatingly rich, that it was easy to forget how dangerous she is. That all her art is dedicated to the promotion of the most evil of condiments.

Poems and Speeches

After the Queen’s dance, we went to the front lawn for poems and speeches. There was a podium set up on the porch. One of the guys from accounting started the poems by reading:

Daffodil, Daffodil, Daffodil, bulb The duck-face selfie is getting old Dandelion said “you suck”

I could tell the crowd was inclined to boo, but this being the start of the season, most in attendance were as generous as they could be.

Then one of the Gretchen sisters read her poem.

1 step to work out your winter crabbiness 2 will limit your Summertime control 3 bets my ammonium sulfate will disarm the iron sucrate of your will 4 chances to feed my lawn, Scott, or watch the desiccated grass of my soul brown and wither as food for grubs

She punctuated the end of her poem by unfurling a Scotts® 4 Step® program banner ⁵. Then took a selfie and yelled, “That’s a native ad in real life, bitches!”

Everyone booed.

It went downhill from there.

The Maypole

Thinking that the event was losing steam, I tried to get the maypole dance going. All of the matrons and crones that had signed up to dance around the maypole said that they had changed their mind. They didn’t feel like doing anything with the maypole and would rather skip it and go eat ice cream and strawberries.

I said, “Really?” and tried to convey my disappointment with both my face and body language. While doing so caused me no small amount of shame and guilt for being manipulative, I had my heart set on them dancing around the Maypole. “I was looking forward to it.” I said, “I’ve been thinking about it for days.”

They all gave me exasperated looks, but then a couple of them softened. One of crones said, “Oh, all right, let’s get it over with.” The others agreed.

“You all are very kind,” I said.

“We know,” they said, and then quickly got to work. At first it was clear that they weren’t into it and were faking interest just to get the whole thing over with as quickly as possible, but then… let me tell you, those women can be both efficient and deceptive in their movements… it started to look really good. I mean really good… all of them holding their ribbons and moving their limbs this way and that while smiling and singing softly. Just when I could no longer tell if they were faking their enjoyment or not… because it SEEMED like they were having a good time… it was over and the dance was finished.

“Thanks,” I said to all of them. “That was really nice of you.”

“You’re welcome,” they said, “Our pleasure. Now, where’s the ice cream?”

¹- ⁵ Accountants please note: Native Ads 009–789–005B through 010B to be credited to Gutbloom and billed against the above mentioned accounts. Transactions #: 0005 -10.