The good (?) life

When you're running for president, you live in a different world than the little people. That's hard for some folks to understand, but it's true. People come up to you on the street and say things like, "Hey! Here is a hundred dollars," or "Thank you for saving my son's life; how can I ever repay you?" These are just examples, of course; they may or may not have actually happened. Probably. You don't know.

But it isn't all free money and non sequitur praise; the electorate, selfish peons that they are, make demands. They want things.

Listen. What do you think, that the government exists to serve the people? Seriously.

Anyway, the biggest request, repeated over and over like some sort of hypothetical fractured musical disc...object, is: "Will you be the commencement speaker for our school's graduation?"

And the answer is, yes, because you only graduate once. Unless you go to college. But there are rules.

First, Paul Burns decides when your graduation date is. Not you. Do you think he has time to fit his schedule into your schedule? Um, he's campaigning to be President. Of the United States. What are you doing? Teaching? Yeah, good luck with that.

Second, it will not be cheap. However, because Mr. Burns recognizes that not all universities are as affluent as they would be had they pursued other, more meaningful endeavors, he has kindly provided the following price gradient so that each client can find a solution for his/her/its budget:

$10,000 - Distinctly uninspiring
$20,000 - Moderately uninspiring
$31,415.92 - Inspiration. But they'll have to work for it.
$50,000 - A speech that comes so near to inspiration, so heartbreakingly close, that when your students realize that what they thought were their dreams are in fact the deluded imaginings of a futureless, prospectless, deeply indebted soul, it will be much, much worse than had he not spoken at all.
$51,000 - Sublime

Third rule of grad speech: you do not talk about grad speech.

Ha ha! Fight Club reference, everyone.

But seriously, you can't tell anyone about the speech at all. Because that would be plagiarism. And the punishments for plagiarism can be quite...inventive.

Or at least, they will be.

Be sure to tune in tomorrow, when Paul Burns will tackle inflation metaphorically.