As a non-teenager living in a college town and working at a university, I live in kind of a weird anti-reality bubble. Bizarre trends often get this far and no further, freshmen (and seniors) wander about helpless as neonates, and annoyances pile turtle-stack high for anyone who has a limited appetite for bullshit.

We employees maintain our sanity by viciously kvetching about the kids, agreeing that the whole system would be much better off without them (but please continue paying tuition anyway okay thanks bye). That’ll do for some people, but to maintain my own personal sanity in the face of overwhelming teenagers, I prefer to describe things in theremin tones. Evoking the sci-fi/horror gods of old is way more entertaining than just saying that kids are stupid even though the latter is so true that I think it’s rrisen to the level of fundamental natural force (Strong, Weak, Electronagnetic, Gravitation, and Stupid Teenagers).

So when the trend requiring everyone with more than one X chromosome to wear Ugg-brand boots, even in 104° heat, I didn’t just complain about adolescent sheepmindedness. Rather, I deplored the recent invasion of the Anklions from Sororité Prime who were sucking blood from the evolutionarily vulnerable ankle region. Said blood loss also explained most mid-semester test scores from those so parasitized.

The askance ballcaps and part-popped polo protrusions that still form the unofficial uniform for rampant and unchecked male douchebaggery among SMU’s rank and file? It’s actually a first-stage symptom of a degenerative motor-neuron condition: first coordination goes, then color vision, then human empathy. In latter stages the condition leads to host death through douchbaggery, usually through alcohol poisoning or raging STDs, after which the unfortunate will rise from the grave as a zombie and reserve their former station (assuming anyone even notices). Far more merciful to put ’em down semi-painlessly with metaphorical 00 buckshot when the first symptoms appear, right?

I’m still of two minds on the recent trend of wearing things that are not true clothing as true and major clothing: tights, sweat pants, pajamas, wifebeaters, swimsuits, bras, tracksuits, scarves, shawls, and dozens of their quasi-clothing brethren. On the one hand, it could be a manifestation of a neural parasite from a warm planet. On the other, it could be a warning sign of an emergent human subspecies, homo sapiens inappropriatus.

I guess it could also be parasites infecting a new subspecies, but that’s just going too far.

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