Alternate Universities and Small Institution Syndrome

 

   I have long since believed that there are alternate universes where I am rich and successful.  But that idea also makes me ask “why the hell couldn’t I be rich and successful in my universe?  And also, I don’t remember if I thought about alternate universes being in books before I read about the idea in fiction, but I just finished a book called Ashley Bell by Dean Koontz that deals with this idea and is about a young writer of about 22 who gets brain cancer and then determines she will be better and wakes up the next day feeling great and realizing that the brain cancer is gone.  Her parents hire a sort of seer who performs “scrabblemancy”, a sort of communication with the spirt world using scrabble letters to form words that are answers to questions posed to the spirits, and it turns out she has been saved in order that she might save the life of a young girl, Ashley Bell.  All this went on in an alternate universe and in this one she was comatose dying of cancer.  

Another thing I have been considering is the small college complex.   Some people have and idea what a university’s compensation committee is all about.  As far as I can tell, it helps decide if the college a  problem with a too small organ structure, and if so, how to compensate for it.   An institution that got along for forty or fifty years as a college suddenly feels the need to be a university.  The University of Compensating for Something Too Small, or UCSTS.  

I’d like to also mention that UCSTS has a basketball team and were hoping once the NCAA expands the Division I tournament to 128 teams that we might get our invitation, which will be celebrated like we won (because let’s not kid ourselves, Duke will shred us with their 3rd team).  If we can’t get in the basketball tournament, there’s always a sport with fewer teams to compete with.  I guess lawn bowling would be a good sport or perhaps ladies field hockey.

Now it’s time to tie in alternate universes and universities.  For every university out there there is an alternate university that is strikingly similar, but with some eerie difference.   It’s creepy looking at your mirror image. Think of Stanford University.   Stanford's mirror image university is the University of Colorado.  Stanford is private.  CU is public.   Stanford is a highly regarded university that has put leaders in all facets of life and is well respected across the country. CU is also well respected and has placed leaders throughout the nation.   Stanford is great in football.  CU sucks ass in football.  That’s fuck’n scary looking at that school.  Going from Stanford to Colorado would be like Star Trek’s Captain Kirk beamed up to the Enterprise and he found The Federation had it’s ass handed to them year and year out by the Klingons.  Or it would be like if Captain Picard beamed up to a place where people were greedy and got off having their ears massaged.  In other words, Las Vegas.  If you don't get it, just know it's a Trekie thing.