Another Perspective

Hells Bells

In a potentially serious breach of ethics, Michael Atkinson uses his ongoing column to shamelessly promote his bid for the ASUO Exec. Why has no one thought of this before?

I stumbled out of Oregon Hall bleeding from the anus. They don't use Vaseline at the accounting desk. I felt violated and humiliated as I gingerly crept up 13th Street. It was raining supreme, as usual. The worthless storm drains were clogged with dead leaves and the street had flooded, signifying a newsworthy event for the the Emerald front-page, bold-type. A pasty photographer from the Register-Guard snapped pictures while a satellite news van from KEZI roared onto the scene. I had never seen a media frenzy over a goddamned puddle before; the scene gave me a fever and I broke out in dime-sized hives. As I neared Willamette Hall, I gave a strong farmer blow to clear my left nostril, but the snot failed to blow completely and ended up decorating my shoulder. I was in sad shape. There was no relief on the horizon; I was just about to blunder through another awful economics midterm, all to satisfy some peeving graduation requirement.

Just when my college experience couldn't suck any harder, I heard the telltale analog tape hiss wafting from the EMU roof. With a lightning reflex, I pulled my wool hat over my ears, bracing for the wrath of the canned glockenspiels. Their sprightly rendition of the Oregon Fight Song did not jibe with my hangover-I lost all control of my mind and body. I can only describe my experience as a combination epileptic seizure and acid flashback. I began shaking violently and spitting up porridge like Danny in "The Shining." I had twisted hallucinations derived from that file photo of Kip Kinkel and his family posing with the Ducks mascot at Autzen Stadium. As I looked around campus, I actually empathized with Kip, at least until the fake bells were done chiming.

Once the episode ended, I was bound and determined that the phony bells had to be destroyed. Every day at noon and six, that cursed fight song casts a disturbing vibe over the whole campus. On a cold, soggy Eugene day, its cheerful chimes make a cruelly ironic mockery of every student. The soundtrack does not match the picture.

When I first heard the noon glockenspiels on that sunny first day of my freshman year, I was magically transported to Disneyland. The fight song sounded remarkably like the theme from "It's a Small World." I scanned the EMU for a pastel clock tower, expecting a band of rosy-cheeked marionettes to march around the edge of the Fishbowl, clanging cymbals and playing toy trumpets. It wouldn't be that out of place, considering that Donald Duck is our friggin' mascot.

The fake clock issue has been chewing at my ass pretty hard. Why don't we have a real clock tower? Stanford has one. So do Yale, Harvard and Ball State. Where the hell is ours?

Are we not good enough? Maybe we'd finally break into the nation's Top 50 universities if we just had a real clock tower with genuine bells. Besides, we don't really have a campus landmark worthy of representing us on a postcard. There's just Deady Hall, which isn't very visible and looks too much like the house from "Psycho." Another advantage of having a clock tower is that it gives snipers a nice vantage point for their work.to Corvallis, and the low end will cause small earth tremors. They will be tuned to play the traditional Westminster Chimes, or we could do "For Whom the Bell Tolls" by Metallica; we'll take a vote later. We won't be using any two-bit mechanisms to ring these bells either; we'll have a team of real hunchbacks swinging from the ropes. I'm auditioning Quasimodo impersonators from Vegas, and I should have the final cut by the first week in May.

How do I plan to pay for the tower? I don't. Everything will be donated. Grandpa Knight and other filthy rich alumni will buy the raw materials, while the football team will do the labor. We'll let da boyz earn their scholarships during the off-season. What else do they have to do? They play their 13 games in the fall, then spend the rest of the year picking fights at Rennie's and The Mill Camp. Besides, we're gonna need a few strong men to heft those 8'3" stone blocks. But the pyramids weren't built in a day, so we'll need a lot more workers. Ah! Of course-frat boys. You guys seem to have a lot of free time. Here's your chance to earn those bullshit community service hours that you all fudge on your resumes. I know you're sturdy young shavers. You spend all day lifting weights-for what? You're not training for any sports (sorry guys, intramural softball and flag football don't count). You're just working out to preen for each other and look buff in your Shasta '99 T-shirts. I'll put those muscles to good use, before they atrophy into middle-age beer flab.

While the tower is being erected, we're going to need a temporary replacement for the canned glockenspiels. I suggest we have live musicians perform their interpretations of the fight song at noon and six. That would kick ass-a different amusing version every time, just like the national anthem. How wicked would a Hendrix rendition be? I'm dying to see some rocker standing in the amphitheater with a wall of Marshall amps and a Fender Strat, shreddin' the bloody hell out of it. Bitchin'.

So vote Atkinson-I'll provide the erection and good time.

Mike Atkinson, a senior majoring in graduating, is a featured columnist for the Oregon Commentator