The F.R.A.T. Party
I'm not sure what brought it to mind, perhaps the beginning of the college football season, but all day I've been thinking about the grand old time that was the F.R.A.T. Party, the Friends Rebelling Against Tyranny Party, a publicity stunt for the Gargoyle humor magazine that took on a life all its own. Spending all day in the center of the Diag armed with a keg of root beer and a fishbowl full of condoms, a kid named Ryan insisting that he be called Galaxor Nebulon as he ran for student body president, the electioneering (sadly, we weren't the one who thought of it, just the unlikely beneficiaries) that resulting in me actually winning a seat on the student council, those were the days.

One evening, while I was chalking in the Diag, writing "Vote F.R.A.T Party" with the anarchy symbol replacing the A in F.R.A.T., a fellow student came up to me and said, without preamble, "Would you call your country a cunt?" What? "Would you call your country a cunt?"

"No," I said, still mightily confused, "I guess I wouldn't."

"Then why would you call my fraternity a frat?" He then walked away and I resumed defacing the campus with graffiti promoting the F.R.A.T Party and the Gargoyle.

Here's the thing, the frathole's example was a non sequitor, though this was only to be brought to my attention later. If you take "-ernity" off of "fraternity," you get "frat," a term used both by fratholes and frat-haters. If you take "-ry" off of "country," you get "count" not "cunt." Stupid fratboy.

Earlier that evening, a cleaned-up hippie stopped me, "Fraternal order, anarchy symbol. I don't get it." Once I explained to him that I was not in a frat and what F.R.A.T. stood for, he expressed his support for our important work and wished my comrades and me well in our electoral endeavour. He was truly a friend to our rebellion against the tyranny of pomposity.

F.R.A.T. Party forever!