Over Thanksgiving break, I had dinner with a friend from high school, Mary Kate. She lives in L.A. and works as an actress, among other jobs. We have written some things together, and, through collaboration, have gotten to be good friends, on the basis that we know things about each other that few others do. When you write with someone, you learn about things that don’t come up in conversation. Like where the dinosaurs really went. But I actually use that bit in regular conversations, so it’s not a good example.
Month November 2009
It Is Finished
At my house, we don’t have a television, or internet. We’re off the grid, just in case the robots come looking for me. Therefore, I don’t play video games during the semester. I [SARCASM BEGINS] focus on school work [SARCASM ENDS] instead. This was the original purpose of the Pankration – to provide a video game binge after a semester in rehab. Thus, I spent months (literally, months) of deliberating which game I would play, oscillating between titles like Dragon Age: Origin and Fallout 3. Last week I sat down with my little brother in the fraternity, Tim Yopp, and asked his advice. After a solid half hour, we decided on Final Fantasy VIII, a RPG released in 1999 for the original PlayStation. I had to go back a decade to get the proper Pankration experience. That’s why I’m the Laser Wolf (which I just decided is the title of the head of the Pankration. I’m shooting from the hip, but I think it will stick).
Today is the Pankration
Two years ago tonight, I created a monster, and by monster I mean the acronym M.O.N.S.T.E.R., More Oreos, No Strong Tea ETERNAL RAMPAGE! (exclamation mark my past self’s emphasis, not present self mine). I acknowledge that I threw out grammar for the sake of the final acronym, and yes, I’ll come close to but not entirely follow through with admitting that I started with the word monster and worked backwords. However, I can explain.
Two years ago tonight, I bought a gallon of Arizona Iced Tea and a package of Double Stuffed Oreos, along with several double-A batteries for my 360 controller and the game Mass Effect. This was the first Pankration, as I played from sundown to sunup the Monday before Thanksgiving. I skipped all my Tuesday classes.
Last year, with the same supplies, I logged twelve straight hours into Final Fantasy X. That Pankration heralded a new era of holiday, as I finished celebrating a week later. I played over thirty hours that week.
Previously, I have been the only person to honor the Pankration. My goal this year was to raise participation at least 10%. Even the Olympics can’t claim to do that. Instead, through an aggressive marketing campaign that enslaved the pledges to promote my holiday, there’s now over 250 people from multiple states and college campuses that will pankratronize. That’s several month’s worth of video games, in one night.
I got the name from my Classics teacher, Dr. Levine, who has hair like Kid from Kid ‘n’ Play, and huge black rimmed glasses that someone could punch through without touching the frames. He told me that the Pankration was an ancient Greek combat event where the only two rules were 1) no gouging of eyes, and 2) no biting. As apart of the Olympics, all nations competed in the event except the Spartans, who would never surrender and thus died in competition whenever they lost.
Piggybacking on the historical validity of the old Pankration, I linked from its Wikipedia page to create my own, which was sadly deleted. However, the talk page is still open. Visiting it, you will notice there is a strong and honorable fight between the editors of Wikipedia and some unknown elements. Those are pledges. I told them of the movement to delete the page, and they led a valiant crusade to keep the page legitimate as well as existant.
You can witness the argument go downhill, however, at the point where a user with the name “Half Man Half Rancor (Mancor)” enters the arena and challenges the editor who was our main antagonist, “Singularity42,” to “prove that he is in fact a human and not a cyborg trying to infiltrate the plans for a mass expansion of the Pankration sensation.” He then demands that Singularity42 cite his sources as to his humanity. At another point, he attempts to appeal to Mr. Wikipedia, and upon discovering there’s no such person, he tries to spin that fact into the argument that made up things are still legitimate.
I haven’t yet identified Half Man Half Rancor (Mancor).
I am proud, though, that we put up enough of a fight that one of the head editors of Wikipedia thought the issue had enough relevance to sum up the arguement after the page was deleted. He said this:
“The result was a snowball delete. The discussion has spawned a lot of confusion and some rancor. As for the confusion, the repeated references to [the article] Wikipedia is not for things made up one day made it appear that Wikipedia’s standard for inclusion is existence. It’s not. Instead, the issue here is notablity…But that has not swayed the consensus in the discussion, which is trending heavily and irreversibly delete. Where a discussion is certain to lead to only one outcome, it’s time to close it.”
I feel like this is an equivalent of a Supreme Court decision, which provides a precedent for all other similar minded cases. This is the Pankration’s legacy. Also, no word yet if the editor meant to pun when he said the discussion spawned some rancors.
Capture the Officer
The pledge mission this week was Capture the Officer. For three days, from noon to midnight, pledges had to track down, chase, tackle, and tie up the executive officers of the fraternity. We did not go quietly. The police can attest to that, in at least one case.


I Wish I Had a Picture of This Sweater
Several years ago, cleaning out Mrs. Ureckis’s garage, I found her old Arkansas sweater. It’s knitted grey wool, with several red A’s on the front and an anthropomorphic razorback on the back, leaning on an oversized basketball. The buttons are plastic footballs, and the sleeves fit a woman roughly 5’3″. I knew what I discovered was more precious than gold, even if I can sell it for cash.
These Pancakes Have No Regard For the Law
Last night my fraternity, Beta Upsilon Chi (BYX, bucks) threw it’s fifth annual Uncle BYX pancake dinner. The event is a fundraiser for our philanthropy, Life Source, which is a food bank and resource center for the impoverished section of Fayetteville. There were over six hundred people, and we ran out of pancakes.
My Nightmare is Banished
I posted earlier a story about my high school nemesis, who was appointed Kappa Kappa Gamma house chef and subsequently my boss. This is the A+ Number One nightmare of geeks: that those who abused them in high school really will be cooler than them in twenty years.
A Real Life Video Game Character
Until last week’s Halloween game against Eastern Michigan, I hadn’t attended an Arkansas football game in over a year. This is due in part to listlessness, in part to the small amount of homework that I put in the upper cabinets of free time, and in part because I simply forgot to buy tickets. I can’t force pledges to give me their ticket vouchers every week, can I? (I actually can, but the listless part of me always makes it seem like too much work to make them do so.)
I Would Have Gotten Away With It, If It Wasn’t For Daylight Savings Time!
Yesterday, my alarm went off at six forty five and I got dressed. I brushed my teeth, put in my contacts, and ate some ice cream. Then I drove to Rick’s Bakery, to meet with a couple tenth graders that I mentor.
When I arrived, not only did I realize that there was no one in the Rick’s parking lot, or that Rick’s itself was locked, but that the sky was uncharacteristically pitch black for seven in the morning. As I sat in my car, I tried to rationalize this with the explanation of Daylight Savings Time, but I’m still not exactly sure how that works (I know I’m supposed to move my clock, but the past two years I’ve put it under my bed and it’s done nothing). It may have taken sixty long seconds for me to look at my phone and realize it was actually five in the morning.
For Christmas my senior year of high school, my parents bought me a semester spanning series of sessions with a personal trainer. Worst Christmas present ever, outside of the Batman shirt our foreign exchange student’s parents sent me in the sixth grade. At the time, I was considering collegiate football, and so it made sense to train. But not like that. Not like that.
My trainer was Jessica, the only woman ever to throw the shot put and discus in the same Olympics. She would laugh when I threw up, and the only conversation we ever ventured into outside of weight lifting was Gatorade flavors. I hated going there. Our sessions were at five in the morning, but I was so conflicted about attending that some mornings, I would wake up in a daze, dress, and drive to the Fayetteville Atheletic Club, only to realize it was three o’clock. Then I’d drive home, get back in bed with my shoes on and watch the clock travel from three to five.
At that time in the morning, reactions are sluggish enough that the obvious signs that it is not the time you think it is are hard to catch, like your favorite morning show isn’t playing, or your car radio clock says three a.m. (mine actually said three a.m. yesterday. Like I said, I’m not exactly sure how Daylight Savings Time works). I think this may be what hangovers are like. You can stare at your hand for thirty seconds and not be able to tell if its the left or right hand of someone else, or yourself.
Save the Pankration!
I’ll admit – I have never posted about the Pankration before. I promise to explain it in full, but I’m assuming if you’re reading this blog, I’ve probably told you in person, so anything I write on this website I’ll just embellish. But that’s why you read it. Because when I write, I turn my brain off and write ridiculous things like this.
However, you must act quickly to save the Pankration from wikiocide! That’s right, I wasn’t thinking, I just turned my brain off and the word “wikiocide” came out. If you’re curious how I come up with posts, that’s a perfect example. Rechecking Wikipedia this morning to calm the fears which I had hoped were unfounded, fears that told me the article I wrote concerning the video game holiday I made up called the Pankrationhad been deleted, I found this: