The Minutes of the Committee on Mandatory Student Extracurricular Activities Concerning the Discussion and Historic Selection of the Name of the Student Sports Teams, Since You All Demanded to Read It
A transcript of the committee session in which the members decided, with absolutely no input from the students, what to name the sports teams—seemingly inspired by certain perils of home ownership.
Committee Chair, Associate Professor of Cultural Conflict: “Well, it’s a fact that organized sporting events with set times and locations and rules, refereed by impartial third parties, gives institutions with long-standing rivalries an acceptable outlet for settling scores, as they say, without mean-spirited pranks and escalations into violence.”
Research Fellow in Game Theory: “Sure, but it’s a stupid fact.”
Lecturing Professor in Mayhem: “I’m a long-time fan of escalations into violence as a means of settling scores. It’s a matter of public record.”
APCC: “It’s a matter of criminal record.”
LPM: “That’s what I said.”
RFGT: “What sport is Il-Qasma proposing? Debate? Or something more gladiatorial? Not football, I hope. That’s such an endurance rally. That sort of thing is only for the living. Or at least the warm-blooded.”
APCC: “I proposed formal debates, but they claimed that something so dry and academic would clearly favor ‘dry academics’ like ourselves. They did indeed propose soccer, or football, or whatever you want to call it, but I ruled it out because watching a side full of the newly undead working out how to be physically athletic during a sporting event would be pointlessly cruel. Like scoring stroke victims at their physical therapy sessions while everyone else fielded gymnasts.”
LPM: “Amusing, though.”
RFGT: “Seriously. I’d watch the hell out of that.”
APCC: “Quite. However, we can be pointlessly cruel to our own students on our own time. It’s not an activity I’d care to outsource to Il-Qasma. It sets a bad precedent.”
RFGT: “You didn’t counter with baseball, did you? That’s largely standing around, but it puts me right to sleep.”
LPM: “Don’t you teach a number of forms of meditation?”
RFGT: “My argument stands.”
APCC: “The subject of cricket came up.”
RFGT: “Why don’t we just pretend that I just now combined my responses regarding boredom and endurance rallies in some clever way. I’d prefer not to bother in actuality. But the idea of that adequately sums up my opinion of cricket. How do mortals watch or participate and not sense the overwhelming weight of how that time could have been better spent in some even minimally constructive activity?”
LPM: “Like an opiated stupor?”
APCC: “Harsh. But your opinion is noted.”
LPM: “And seconded.”
RFGT: “Also cricket requires eleven. We have only ten. Would we open up another spot for an athletic scholarship?”
APCC: “Perish the thought. Whittles things down to bowling and chariot racing, I’m afraid.”
LPM: “Why be afraid? I like both of those.”
RFGT: “At the same time? Do we set up pins at the finish line?”
LPM: “I was thinking alternately, but I’m literally angry that you had that idea instead of me. Perhaps the positions of pins could be assigned as punishment to those who have committed infractions. Civil or school or otherwise.”
RFGT: “There it is.”
LPM: “There what is?”
APCC: “Your bloodthirst. We absolutely count on it.”
LPM: “Happy to oblige. Should we suggest both? So there will be more opportunities for the students to participate?”
APCC: “I’ll suggest it. I suspect the idea will be met with little resistance. But there is a further issue.”
RFGT: “Why the drama? Out with it.”
APCC: “The ‘drama’ is because the more apparently minor the issue, the longer and stranger and more pointless the discussion gets.”
LPM: “If there’s still any room to suggest sports, I suggest hair-splitting. We train only the best.”
APCC: “Maybe that idea will do for the next issue. The name for the teams, or the mascot, or representing sigil, or emblem or whatever it’s called.”
LPM: “Is this a requirement?”
APCC: “I suspect it will be.”
RFGT: “You want to call our sports teams The Hair-Splitters?”
APCC: “Not with any enthusiasm. If you like, we can put it on the table as the name to beat. A low-ball opening bid to start the auction, as it were.”
LPM: “Isn’t it traditionally some sort of fierce animal?”
RFGT: “Or a racist caricature of some theoretically fierce tribe adopted in ignorance. That’s popular too. Typically something native to the local area is best.”
LPM: “The library staff can be downright savage if you’ve been careless. Do they count as indigenous?”
RFGT: “When you mentioned mascot, I immediately thought of old Azag. He’s always been a bit of a school pet, has he not?”
APCC: “What?”
RFGT: “Surely you’ve met him. Chthonic fellow. Downright plutonian, actually. Terrifying personification of volcanism at one point. I say ‘personification,’ though not exactly anthropomorphic.”
APCC: “I know him. So ugly that puddles of water would rather boil than reflect his image. Is that the face you want to have embroidered on the back of the bowling shirts? I should point out that we haven’t had a lot of luck recording that visage anywhere else, even on specially treated parchment in the library, for similar reasons. It’s not like we could sell stuffies in the gift shop.”
RFGT: “I’m just … rather fond of him. That’s all. Shame we can’t use him.”
LPM: “If you say so.”
RFGT: “Do you have any ideas?”
LPM: “Local. Indigenous. Wrongly rumored to be fierce. There’s always the dead.”
RFGT: “Just … The Dead.”
LPM: “Okay, then. The Unquiet Dead.”
APCC: “Well, it’s not terrible. It just lacks … I don’t know what. Lacks, generally.”
RFGT: “It sounds like a problem with the household and grounds. Like something that keeps you from getting the price you’d like in the real estate market. Like ‘Noisy Plumbing’ or ‘Black Mold.’ ”
LPM: “To the extent that I actually care about any of this, I’m okay with either of those too if you want to put them on the list.”
APCC: “Black Mold can be fairly fierce if you still rely on lungs. Most of our would-be opponents do.”
LPM: “Or if you sell or repair houses.”
RFGT: “And that would be better as a stuffie than Azag?”
APCC: “Only in that it wouldn’t spontaneously combust or shatter or liquefy or whatever when you completed enough of the design for it to be recognizable. Believe me, I’m not married to it.”
LPM: “What about Rising Damp?”
RFGT: “I am ashamed for all of us. Is this the best we can do?”
LPM: “Absolutely not, but it’s as much effort as this silly task deserves. How much more work do you feel this is worth?”
RFGT: “Black Mold it is, then, for my vote.”
APCC: “Black Mold then?”
LPM: “Fine by me. Black Mold.”
APCC: “Black Mold.”