People who follow my column: I apologize for being AWOL for three weeks, but you’ll forgive me shortly when you discover that I have solved the human food crisis. Just kidding, I did something way cooler! I created the Moxie Greek Philanthropy Name Generator. High five, bro!
What is the MGPNG, you may ask? Let me take you back to earlier this month, when it all began. You see, where I used to be interested in meeting deadlines and pleasing my editors, I now enjoy dropping classes, buying thrift-store jeans instead of washing the pants I own, and complaining loudly. A requirement of this last interest is that I whine about things, but never take steps to fix them.
So about two weeks ago, I ran out of eye-makeup remover. Five days later, I ran out of Clorox Bleach Wipes and my eyes were bleeding. So I decided to be crafty and look up do-it-yourself eye-makeup remover recipes. The first Google search was pretty confusing, as apparently “DIY” and “DUI” are very different abbreviations; but when I finally found a DIY recipe, it called for jojoba oil. Here’s a hint, Internet: If I don’t have eye-makeup remover, I probably don’t have a toolbox of essential oils whose names I can’t pronounce. As I refused to walk the 16 light-years from Bobb to CVS, the problem went unremedied.
So when I saw something strange in my shower on Sunday, I thought it must be a side effect of the sodium hypochlorite poisoning my eyes. You see, I know it’s not normal for people to molt. Yet that’s what I found: some sort of tattered, dirty and otherwise sexy remnants of a molting on the shower floor. Okay, cool, I thought. I’d suspected that this one chick on my floor was part human, part bastardization of science, so I was excited to finally have some evidence to send the good ‘ol FB of I. An excellent Sunday, by all accounts.
On closer inspection, though, I found the floor of the shower to be covered in dirt and leaves. Walking to my 3 p.m. meeting, I kept passing strange mud-creature people. First, the Internet betrayed me with its jojoba oil. Now mud was betraying me, by being confusing.
But apparently, this was part of Alpha Phi’s philanthropy, “Mud Olympics,” to benefit Cardiac Care, according to the Facebook group. Teams of four paid $25 to participate in an afternoon full of events involving everyone’s favorite wet, packed dirt: mud.
APhi’s Mud Olympics follows Alpha Chi Omega and Lambda Chi Alpha’s May 17 “Watermelon Bust” and Delta Zeta’s “Turtle Tug” of past years. Soon to come? Pi Beta Phi’s “Pi Phi Pie Phight” on May 24. It’s Greek philanthropy season, wallets are getting thinner, and confused, unaffiliated people like me are e-mailing federal bureaus about molting co-eds.
I’m cool with the Greek system for raising money for good causes. Yeah, no one outside of the sorority actually knows or cares what they’re donating money for — just an afternoon of muddy, turtle-y, or delicious pie-like fun — but that’s okay. The college kids get to have fun and make a Facebook album, the people with the medical conditions get help. It’s win-win.
What I don’t understand is how the hell you come up with these events. Turtle Tug? Watermelon Bust? I’m really at a loss about the Greek science that goes into naming these fundraisers. Other than a loose affiliation to a symbol associated with the sorority (which is usually irrelevant and random within itself), the naming is pretty baffling.
But I’ll be baffled no more: I have created the Moxie Greek Philanthropy Name Generator, a device that I believe closely resembles the steaming, hissing machine that frats and sororities themselves use to come up with such events as Kappa Delta’s Demon Dash (this sounds frightening and possibly damning), which celebrates Halloween with a 5K run.
Equation: Frat + Sorority + Irrelevant Animal + Unfortunate-sounding verb-turned-noun.
My personal favorites are “Kappa and Theta Chi Manatee Thrust” and “Gamma Phi and SAE Chinchilla Dry-heave.” If anyone wants to be on my team for any of these fantastic events, just let me know. I can’t wait to see “Lisa Gartner was tagged in an album: FUN AT THE TAPEWORM FLOP – 60 photos” pop up on your minifeed.