binkey (not the horse)

when we were in college, the director of the honors program gave us this lovely farewell speech at the spring banquet. celebrating the entire honors class from the university of puget sound, 2001, i bet you were not expecting this to come back and bite you in the patootie. this is what we get for me moving and cleaning and rediscovering lost paperwork. shame. acres of shame. and also a befuddled regret as to why erica and i don’t have a club already. what the hell.

The Dream of Binkey � 2001

After a very long silence, Binkey the Prophetic Python has spoken once again. It seems that Binkey is back to eating too many mushrooms, although he was warned to stay away from then by his shaman. He had had a very strange dream recently, the contents of which he asked to be conveyed to you at this august gathering. The dream has to do with the future of the Honors program class of 2001.

Binkey dreamed that shortly after graduation from UPS Michele and Erica opened a nightclub in San Francisco whose main attraction was John Vann doing the Brazilian Dance-Fight. So popular was this act that it was being turned into an animation film by Sam MacIntosh, the script for which was composed collectively by Julie Miller, Nancy Case, and Jenny Nessel. Anticipating a world-wide audience, the script was being translated into Persian by Sarah Hashemi. And it had the good fortune to be promoted by the public relations firm of Erickson and Liz Coen. Its producer was Jason, not because Jason knew anything about animation or Brazilian Dance-Fighting, but because he lived in LA, and that�s what people who live in LA do.

One night unfortunately Monica Clark broke her arm after a particularly wild set of Brazilian Dance-Fighting. On the way to the hospital, Monica realized that she should have stayed in Singapore, where you get twenty years to life for square dancing in the privacy of your own home. In any case, in the emergency room of the local hospital her arm was set by classmate Ryan Bennett, and her lab work was done in Lori Luke�s lab.

After this incident, the EPA decided to close down the joint for repeated violations of the noise pollution code. The EPA squad was led by recent law school graduates Hanna Aoyagi, Erin Vranas, and Kelly Briggs, all looking for a big break in their careers by busting the Brazilian Dance-Fight craze in San Francisco.

In spite of this set-back, Sam�s film was released and even shown at the Cannes film festival, where it was presented by Marina Green, now heading an international organization promoting world peace through the viewing of animation films of Brazilian Dance-Fighting. The president of this not-for-profit organization turned out to be Laura Handy (she likes the work, even though she does not get paid for it). Amy Levad, another member of the staff offered accompanying seminars on the religious and ethical significance of Brazilian Dance-Fighting. Her seminars are simultaneously translated into French by Anna Joujan (Cannes is in France, after all).

Because their joint is closed, Michele and Erica are forced to flee the country. They book a slow boat to Australia through Kelly Doxey, now the president of Princess Cruise and Tour Lines. On the way, however, they abandon plans for Australia, and instead open a new club on the desert island governed by Jacob and his merry henchmen, who are seeking world domination and basic evil through molecular biology.

In any case, viewer responses in Cannes to Sam�s Brazilian Dance-Fight animation were mixed. Greg Lois said he liked the music, but that he had seen better plots in string theory math textbooks. Doug disagreed, however, claiming that the film was (and here I quote him directly) �more fun than a barrel full of monkeys.� When asked his view of the film, Bill Altig said he did not attend.

That�s all the news from Binkeyland, where all the pythons are prophetic and all the mushrooms are above average in hallucinogenic properties.