Rehoboth Beach, Delaware.

Ten minutes ago.

She will blog from there.

Our universities’ latest nationally riveting sex scandal, second only to Penn State’s Sandusky thing, has started another one of those Is something wrong with our universities? conversations.

Richard Vedder takes note of “the financial excesses and corruption that pervade college sports,” and calls for the feds to form a national commission on the future of university athletics so we can decide whether we want to keep subsidizing pimps, pedophiles, and the coaches who love them.

Kansas University chancellor Bernadette Gray-Little, chief academic officer at Chapel Hill during years of the now-notorious Nyang’oro scandal, worries in particular about the future of public universities in America.

As well she should, given the way she did absolutely nothing throughout her UNC tenure about immense academic fraud at that school… But she takes no responsibility for all of that; she’s worried that public universities are going to die because of declining state support.

Whenever the heads of public universities condemn the stinginess of their legislatures, they loftily remind everyone that a mind is a terrible thing to waste. Yet as Vedder suggests, when your school looks like a money-hemhorrhaging joke run by idiots (sample headline for the University of Kansas: Kansas Football is Doomed, and the School’s Other Sports are Paying the Price), you make it awfully easy for politicians to shrug you off. When your school uses “transactional sex as a method of recruitment,” when sixteen-year-olds enter the dorms and “are told by people in power and players they’ve seen play on national television that in big time college hoops, women are just another item to be passed under the table,” it’s a little hard for university presidents to maintain their lofty academic airs.

Throughout his tenure as president, [University of Louisville president James] Ramsey has deferred to [vp for athletics Tom] Jurich in all athletics matters. He supported Jurich’s decision to keep Pitino, without punishment, after the Karen Sypher scandal. He supported Jurich’s decision to give football coach Bobby Petrino another chance despite the sex scandal that got him fired at Arkansas. He supported Jurich’s decision to keep football recruiter Clint Hurtt even after he was tainted by his involvement in the recruiting sex scandal at Miami… Already national commentators have lumped together all of Jurich’s controversial personnel decisions and concluded that UofL is guilty of condoning sexual misconduct for the sake of winning.

Talk about rushing to conclusions! Does that seem to you the record of a university that condones sexual misconduct for the sake of winning? Whoa, Nellie!

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But look. Louisville’s is not the record of a university at all, is it? The opinion writer I quote above argues that universities are about this and universities are about that and the University of Louisville has to toss out all its pimps and whores and remember it’s a university yadda yadda.

I’ll tell you what’s wrong with this picture. Think about Donald Trump’s huge success so far in the presidential campaign. The more Trump behaves in a way diametrically opposed to presidential, the more votes he gets. Because a lot of Americans loathe government and love people committed to trashing it.

In the same way, a lot of people loathe academic institutions and love people committed to trashing them. Bring in squads of scummy coaches to run your school, give them complete freedom and the highest salaries in the state, and they will of course run your university into the ground.

To the cheers of thousands of onlookers.

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Where’s UL’s faculty? Have you heard a peep out of any of them?

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The University of Louisville has a permanent hard-on. It’s difficult to think when you’re like that.

But that’s the whole point.

Could it be that one of America’s sleaziest coaches, at one of America’s sleaziest schools, will have to leave? Lots of people are saying that the University of Louisville‘s basketball program has tipped over into Too Sordid Even for Division I and will have to sacrifice its coach, Rick Pitino.

*******

Louisville’s problem is not that it turns its dorms into whorehouses. Big deal. Recruiting 101. Athletics is the university’s front porch. And back room.

“You’re not gonna get players by doing those types of things,” [said Pitino] … what was behind this? What was the reason? An educated person can’t think you’re gonna get a recruit with a stripper coming in. This is University of Louisville, you don’t need any artificial help.” Funny, because you know what the rest of the world assumes? That free, naked, older women in the dorms would be exactly the type of thing that may interest 17 and 18-year-old boys. Why would Pitino staffer Andre McGee set up hooker parties with recruits? To bore them?

No, Louisville’s problem is that the university’s tell-all madam turns out to be a pleasant, articulate, believable person. UL’s last hope was that this woman would be a raving slut rather than a research and publishing genius who could teach UL’s tenure track cohort a trick or two. That strutting pious fraud Pitino will have to go.

The great Sarah Vaughan ushers him out.

Perdido, we look for our coach he’s perdido
We misplaced our coach Rick Pitino
While chancing a dance fiesta.

He’s perdido!

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UD thanks John.

Tenured American university professors have a kind of built-in public relations problem. Many people view them as rather unpleasant entitled sorts — they’ve got permanent jobs with enviable conditions, they’ve got a remarkable amount of time to themselves (including paid sabbaticals), they are highly respected and pretty well-compensated, and they don’t seem to have bosses or supervision of any kind, etc., etc.

We can quibble about how accurate this description is, but there’s no denying that a lot of people think it’s accurate. And there’s some truth in it.

Given this problem, it seems to ol’ UD that tenured professors should make at least teensy efforts not to play right into the stereotype.

Among the academic units at her own George Washington University, there’s one that seems to your blogger to engage in this play — and with reckless abandon.

The business school.

There’s the reckless abandon of its last dean having overspent his budget. By thirteen million dollars.

How shall it be repaid?

Robert Van Order, the chair of the school’s finance department, said the about 60 faculty members at the meeting discussed where the burden should fall. Some faculty thought the University should forgive the $13 million budget deficit altogether because it was incurred two years ago.

UD understands that this was some faculty. She’s just saying that it’s real unfortunate any faculty at all said Hey ancient history fuck it. Make someone else pay.

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You’ve got a dean who just spent the school into the ground. You’ve got some faculty there who think the school shouldn’t have to pay anything back. So far, so bad.

It gets worse. Tenured professors who teach in the business school’s masters in finance program have now refused to teach in it (it’s not clear whether all, or many, have refused) because, as part of paying back the money the last dean overspent, they’re taking a pay cut. Here’s how it works, as the new b-school dean explains.

[The full time] professors who teach [masters in finance] courses were paid “a rate substantially higher than their counterparts” in other masters programs. She said faculty, who were teaching two-credit courses for the program, were compensated the same amount as faculty who are paid for three-credit courses.

Okay, so that’s already pretty amazing. Three-credit compensation for two-credit courses. That’s a lot more money.

But look again at my headline. The chair of finance explains that, first of all, faculty have to teach on Fridays. And Saturdays! No self-respecting professor will teach on those days without extreme compensation…

But wait. Let’s look at the program’s website.

In the first year, classes are held all day on Saturday; and in the second year, classes are held on Thursday and Friday from 6 to 10 p.m.

Okay, so the chair of finance forgot about the Thursday classes. And in the second year there’s no Saturday teaching at all.

Does this seem to you hardship duty? I mean, virtually all Americans work a full week, including Fridays. Millions and millions of Americans work on Saturdays.

And then there’s the chair’s “more technical and time-consuming” argument. What does this mean? Are some of these on-line courses (more technical)?

UD has trouble following the chair’s reasoning about these courses, as reported. (It’s possible that the journalist got some of this wrong.)

“From the standpoint of just thinking about the market, from the standpoint of faculty, for the same credits and the same credit hours, it’s easier to teach a core course than to teach an MSF course,” he said. “And so a lot of what’s been the debate over the past few years is how much extra should people get for teaching it.”

He added that the program was originally created to give faculty in the finance department more time and pay to do research – which officials have historically said is key to boost the school’s reputation. But without the original benefits from the program, there’s no motivator for those faculty to participate.

So these courses are harder to teach than core courses – though the chair doesn’t really say why this would be true… But okay. In all departments, some courses are harder and some easier to teach. UD has never heard of faculty getting paid more for harder courses. Perhaps it is a common practice, and UD didn’t know about it.

But if these are harder and more time-consuming courses, why does the dean go on to say that the program (she assumes he means here the masters in finance program itself rather than the financial incentive ‘program’ set up to attract tenured professors to the program) they’re in was created to “give faculty … more time and pay to do research”?

I mean, put aside whether it’s a bit tone-deaf to say a program was created to give faculty more time and pay to do research…

I mean… UD doesn’t see this in the program’s mission statement… We created this program in order to free up our staff for more research and pay them more…

Ask in any case why a program whose courses are more difficult and time-consuming to teach was designed to give faculty more time for their research…

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So to pay back some of what’s due back from the b-school to the university, the decision’s been made to start paying faculty at the two-credit rate.

“We have now aligned the credit hours compensated for with the actual number of credit hours taken by students in the MSF program,” [the dean] said. “This alignment matches the MSF faculty compensation with that of our other specialized master’s programs in a reasonable and equitable manner.”

At this, virtually the entire tenured faculty (it appears) resigned from teaching in the program, leaving it in the hands of less qualified adjuncts, and the quality is apparently going down the tubes.

Keep in mind that these programs charge students a fortune. If you start taking the program now, taught by adjuncts, some of whom have never taught in the program before, you are paying $77,280 for the privilege.

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And oh yeah. If you design an expensive degree and you can’t get your own faculty to teach its courses without amazing incentives, a degree program your faculty dump in seconds if you take any component of those incentives away, you need new degree designers.

The latest econ professor to squawk about his or her university’s sports program – Colorado State’s Steven Shulman – reminds UD to mention that she thinks we’ll see, in a few years, at some schools, litmus tests for new hires in this field.

Are you an avid fan of football and basketball? Will you sign a pledge attesting to your intention to attend home games into perpetuity, your willingness to cancel class when a match-up will take place within 72 hours of a scheduled course session, your commitment to give C or higher grades to revenue athletes in your classes, and – most important – your promise never to subject the athletic program to economic analysis or talk to news outlets about your economic analysis of the program?

Econ professors are a seriously weak link in the American jock school chain. This blog has covered tons of economists who, with their specialized knowledge, subject their athletics departments to withering critique and then tell everyone about it. Here are some instances of professors, who, like Shulman (‘“Of course it sucks resources out of the academic side of the university,” Shulman said. “And it’s dishonest to deny that it does that… We are a land-grant university, and our mission is grounded in service to the citizens of Colorado. And to me what that means is keeping tuition low and affordable.”’), go after the game boys.

Remember Reed Olsen? Back in 2010 he told everyone at Missouri State University that their expensive new JQH stadium would not only not be profitable (the university insisted it would be profitable) but would hemorrhage money, and he caught hell for it. But of course he was right. As he explained in an email to UD at the time:

Let’s say that we are looking at a $2M ongoing loss in the arena. This is slightly more than 1% of the operating budget of the university. The university, because of a new state law, cannot raise in-state tuition more than [the] increase in the CPI. And for the last 2 years all universities in the state have agreed to not raise tuition at all in return for mostly stable state funding. So that means that most of this $2M must come out of cuts from other parts of the budget or the small increases in student fees from increased out of state tuition or other types of student fees. Students are assessed a fee for [the arena] which supposedly pays for free student seats at BB games. However, that revenue is included in the accounting, still leaving $2M left to pay. Faculty concern is that it comes out of our pocket.

If you’re Missouri State you definitely do not want people like Reed Olsen on your campus – people with the capacity to reason about the finances of your sports program. A simple interview questionnaire teasing out Olsen’s prejudice against sports programs would have saved MSU a lot of grief.

Then there’s Mark Killingsworth at Rutgers, a person just as persistent and tough-skinned as Olsen. Here’s a sample Killingsworth editorial. Excerpt:

The program is a financial disgrace. Since 2003-04, it has racked up $287 million in deficits. The university’s financial plan for sports calls for $183 million in additional deficits through 2022 — despite new revenue from the Big Ten Conference.

These deficits have been funded with subsidies from student fees (students have no say about that, of course) and university general funds. As even the university president concedes, athletics is “siphoning dollars from the academic mission.”

Then there’s Dick Barrett, once a University of Montana econ professor and now a state senator. He routinely offends UM regents by pointing out that their accounts of the athletic budget are full of shit.

Barrett called “bogus” the regents’ argument that millions of dollars in tuition waivers for athletes shouldn’t be counted as subsidies because no cash changes hands.

Tuition waivers for athletics totaled $8 million last year for all campuses, including $2.8 million at MSU, according to Frieda Houser, University System director of accounting and budget.

The university could have decided to “sacrifice revenue” in other ways, Barrett said. “It could decide not to charge other students as high a tuition.

“Students are subsidizing athletics, not just in their (athletics) fee, but they have to pay higher tuition so athletes can pay lower tuition,” he said.

There’s UD‘s pal Bill Harbaugh, econ, University of Oregon, exploding the myth of the program’s self-sufficiency. Vanderbilt econ professor John Siegfried is amusing on the subject of his and other schools’ prisoner’s dilemma. There’s Marilyn Flowers, chair of economics at truly sports-fucked Ball State:

… Ball State has more than $14 million budgeted for its athletics programs. Approximately 80 percent of the budget is paid for from student fees – almost $9 million – and institutional support – almost $2.5 million.

“When it costs so much for kids to go to school, and you charge them $800 a year and most of them don’t go to any games, that I think is really unfortunate,” Flowers said.

Even Auburn hears occasional squawks from its econ department. The chair of economics there warns that sports is so autonomously powerful on campus that it represents “a second university.”

As jock schools escalate their policy of robbing students and taxpayers to give multimillionaire coaches raises and pay back crushing stadium debt, the last thing they need is financially literate people exposing their … complex… bookkeeping. The entry interview is their only opportunity to head these people off at the pass.

That period reached its culmination when her mother posed nearly nude in French Playboy and told interviewers that her ex-husband had a rabid hatred of Jews and privately referred to Adolf Hitler as Uncle Dolfie.

A few blasts from Marine Le Pen’s past.

UD‘s been attempting to follow that university since 2009, and has gradually discovered that it’s so bad it’s virtually impossible to understand.

She means that in any given newspaper article about this school, you cannot really make sense of what is being reported. (Here are some earlier attempts.)

So now there’s

Alabama A&M Chief
Operating Officer Arrested,
Charged with Theft

And with “possession of a forged instrument.”

Kevin Rolle, also the school’s executive vice president, last year sued a bunch of other people at the school who said something bad about him. The case was thrown out of court. Now he’s been arrested (okay, read the following slowly…):

The allegation against Rolle appears to center around a dispute over more than $6,000 he received as a reimbursement for moving expenses after he moved to Huntsville in 2009 to work for the university.

State auditors claimed earlier this year Rolle had been paid $6,534 to cover moving expenses, but they could find no moving company records to related to the move.

Alabama A&M initially said Rolle should not have been reimbursed. [This is where things start to get woozy. No records because no moving costs ….?] The university told auditors Rolle had repaid the money in January. [Okay.] But the university later changed its position. [Position is maybe an odd way to put it. Changed its story?] In a response to the state audit the university included an invoice from a moving company for the amount in question. [Ah! Here it is after all!]

Alabama A&M also included statements from two people claiming they were present when the moving truck arrived from Spartanburg, S.C. [Wow. Witnesses. Looks as though after decades of malfeasance Alabama A&M is anticipating that the state might not believe them.]

The statements were from the assistant to Alabama A&M President Andrew Hugine and and an executive with Aramark, a company that has a number of service contracts with the university. [They both happened to be standing around when… ? ]

I’m not the only one confused. The governor’s confused.

Gov. Robert Bentley questioned the university about moving expenses among other issues in a June letter. The Governor asked the university to provide the “front and back” of the check to pay the movers or the reimbursement check to Rolle. The Governor also asked for a copy of the check Rolle gave the university for his repayment. [So the succession of events is this: Rolle understands the university will reimburse him. He sends in his payment check, and gets reimbursed. Years pass. An audit happens. It turns out he should not have been reimbursed for the move. He repays the university. At first there is no paperwork to back up anything claimed here other than the payment of six thousand plus by the university to Rolle. In response to the audit, however, the university now hands over an invoice from the moving company.]

Bentley also questioned why an Aramark representative was at Rolle’s house on the day of the mover’s arrival. [Something smells fishy to the governor.]

Remember: This arrest is about forgery – or possession of forged docs – as well as theft.

And of course more details will emerge as the trial proceeds. This story is exactly one hour old.

But let’s speculate. Don’t you think it likely that the school has been trying to get rid of this guy ever since he initiated the lawsuit? Isn’t it likely that the theme of retaliation will play an important role in his courtroom defense? And isn’t it also possible that the governor has for whatever reason decided to do something about the larger corruption of Alabama A&M?

If so, this trial will mark the beginning of a lot of revelations.

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So as the story builds, I’ll provide updates. Here’s one:

Rolle produced an invoice to examiners that the moving company could not verify, the report said. Examiners also said the moving company did not have Rolle’s name in their database.

… as Tom Lehrer calls the south, and ain’t it the truth. UD loves her a good university sports scandal, and aint nuthin like a southern university sports scandal.

And hell. Even by southern scandals, the cast of characters at the University of Louisville, known to one and all as the U of Smell, is way past southern gothic.

UD’s own name for UL is Mount Louisville onaccounta most of its troubles got to do with men mounting women. Bobby Motorcycle Petrino, Rick The Table Pitino, Andre Dorm Couch McGee…

And now we can add the procurer’s procurator, the lawyer hired by Katina Powell, Counsellor Larry Wilder. Larry’s interior of choice, if you will, is a little different: He likes trash cans.

I think the problem here is that the University of Florida coach wasn’t precise enough. He needed to speak to his team about not shooting guns at your pregnant girlfriend.

… her gentleman callers.

“The UMass/Amherst campus has a game plan for this and I think we should see how it plays out,” said [president Marty] Meehan when we asked him about [the university’s football program] in an interview …

Does that game plan include continuing to play games at Gillette [Stadium] in front of tens of thousands of fans disguised as empty seats?

“Some have been attended pretty well,” claimed Meehan, but the record shows only two UMass games at the stadium have drawn more than 30,000 fans…” [The stadium holds 70,000.]

It happens. When La Kid graduated from George Washington University, now-disgraced honorary degree awardee Brian Williams gave an address in which he lectured UD on personal ethics.

UD‘s kinda hurt because Williams lied to her in his speech: He said it doesn’t pay to cheat, but it does pay to cheat, and he knows it cuz he’s back at his old job after suffering only un p’tit peu for being a cheat.

University coaches are of course – if they’re any good at all – cheaters. Americans know this and love them for it. Coaches do what they have to do to get ahead, just like Brian Williams.

It almost always does pay to cheat in college sports. Wins matter more than integrity. This isn’t exactly a revelation. As Jerry Tarkanian used to say, “Nine out of 10 schools are cheating. The other one is in last place.” …Cheating pays. We’ve learned this from roided-up baseball players who walked away with tens of millions of dollars, and from white-collar criminals whose sentences paled in comparison to those of small-time crack dealers.

You can blame it on a toothless NCAA, or on a college sports system that values the almighty dollar over platitudes of integrity, or on an American culture that values winning over all else.

I’ll call it something else: The fact that schools cheat – and that they get away with it – is a natural result of the odd marriage in America between big-money athletics and academics.

The reference up there to white collar criminals reminds me of one of my all-time favorite commencement speeches, from Allen Greenspan to the young eager hedgies of Wharton. It’s a fascinating address rhetorically. Greenspan knows he’s talking to many of the most-honed, highest-level cheaters America has to offer the world, people who can barely stay seated in their chair before peeling off and starting a Ponzi scheme; and indeed he knows that the background of his talk is the most recent immense number of immense American corporate scandals… So what’s he going to say? Isn’t it all rather… futile….?

I do not deny that many appear to have succeeded in a material way by cutting corners and manipulating associates, both in their professional and in their personal lives. But material success is possible in this world, and far more satisfying, when it comes without exploiting others. The true measure of a career is to be able to be content, even proud, that you succeeded through your own endeavors without leaving a trail of casualties in your wake.

All the herbal viagra in the world won’t make this less limp.

Just as it’s especially amusing to watch the winningest coaches shovel the moral shit in their books and speeches, it’s a special treat to watch income inequality’s biggest boosters dish out the do-goodery.

The only trouble mondo cheato ever runs into is when pesky university students decide to get all judgmental about some of the important inspirational people on their campus. It bothers Yalies that Bill Cosby has an honorary degree that their school refuses to revoke. Why does it refuse to revoke Cosby’s degree? Yale says two things in response to this question:

1. It’s never revoked a degree before. (And we all know that timid backwater places like Yale can never do anything new.)

2. It doesn’t want to talk about it. Shut up.

UD rather admires Yale’s unwillingness even to try to argue the point. (Northwestern, where UD was an undergrad, is also opting for silence.) Tons of universities have revoked Cosby’s honorary degrees, and they’ve stated their reasons, but Yale’s like eh I don’t know didn’t I tell you to shut up? It’s like Yale acknowledges what UD has been saying which is like Hello? Everybody’s an asshole and the biggest assholes get honorary degrees. Nuff said.

One university leader has, however, been willing to go there. One leader has ignored the wisdom of the keep-mum crowd and gone there. Let us consider Stephen Trachtenberg’s opinion piece in the campus newspaper. Scathing Online Schoolmarm will interrupt his sentences with her commentary.

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‘I was the GW president back in the day when we gave Bill Cosby an honorary degree. At the time, he was arguably the most popular Commencement speaker of my tenure. His remarks at graduation were received with an ovation. All attending cheered him. He was celebrated for his contributions to American culture and for his comic genius. [Spectacular dude. Was his dissertation majorly bogus? Should this matter to a university like yours as it honors him? Nah.]

It would appear, on the basis of information only now revealed, that he had, in addition to his artistic gifts, a dark and troubling and tragic hidden side. [Tragic. Da guy’s a regular Hamlet already!] Had we known of that we would not have awarded him plaudits. But we did not.

All today seem well-informed of Mr. Cosby’s seemingly Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde story. His life and reputation lie in tatters. One can only speculate on the mental health issues that may underlie the behavior that numerous women have reported regarding Mr. Cosby. [There, there. It’s all about his tragic mental issues. Let’s not get all moral about this… But UD can’t help wondering: Why didn’t Mr Cosby, during the century or so during which he drugged and assaulted women, consult someone about his troubling behavior? I guess had he known that he had psychological problems he would not have attacked all those women. But he did not.]

People of accomplishment can, as we know, also have criminal or evil characteristics. I think of Ezra Pound, a man of towering poetic, artistic and critical gifts, and a fascist war criminal who lived out his life in a prison hospital. [Yes. Pound was punished for what he did. And again unlike Cosby, Pound was indeed clinically insane. That’s why he was in a prison hospital. His Bollingen Prize was so controversial that Congress ended – revoked, if you like – the involvement of the Library of Congress in that award program.]

What good would it do to void Mr. Cosby’s diploma? Who actually celebrates it today? He is revealed and reviled. I am not keen on trying to rewrite history. We must own our past and learn from it. There is no Platonic device for awarding honors. We do our best to celebrate the good. We work with the best information available. But being human, we have erred in the past and will no doubt do so again in the future. [Enough platitudes for you? Mr Trachtenberg needs to go back and think about the many forms of public rejection, retraction, and revocation which have been a feature of the moral life of this country – and this country’s traditions – from the beginning. It does a lot of moral good – by way of clarification of one’s principles, and official removal from the community of people who seriously offend it – to void awards whose conferral turns out to have been a sick joke.]

We need to redouble our efforts to avoid such failures of judgement in the years to come but must in humility appreciate our limitations and permit experience to inform our thinking. There is a rough charm to the proposal that we should recall our degree from Mr. Cosby, but it is a blunt instrument that does not do real justice to the dreadful challenge it seeks to address. It does not actually get to right. It provides no real comfort to the abused. [How do you know? Have you heard what the abused have said? The obscenity of their attacker having been protected and even celebrated by the culture has featured prominently in their suffering. One of the reasons it took so long for law enforcement to catch up with Cosby was his many-laureled cultural identity, an identity to which GW contributed.]

Mr. Cosby knows that we no longer esteem him. Everybody knows. He is down. He is out. The degree is as null and void as it can be. It is self-executing. However much he may deserve it, I am disinclined to kick him again to underscore our own virtue. It’s too easy.’ [Oh yes, it’s just our virtue-narcissism at play. How contemptible of us.]

A former meerkat expert at London Zoo has been ordered to pay compensation to a monkey handler she attacked with a wine glass in a love spat over a llama-keeper.

UD finds this Ted Hughes story – whose origin seems to be a chat Janet Malcolm had with A. Alvarez when she visited him while writing her book about Hughes and Sylvia Plath – strange. The story has been picking up steam for awhile – it’s repeated in Jonathan Bates’s new Hughes biography (see my headline) and in other reviews, and has been tweeted hither and yon, etc.

Do you believe it?

Not about the vomiting. The vomiting’s fine. Do you believe that she vomited from sexual desire?

The story itself is a bit shaky. Alvarez identified the woman simply as “this woman I knew,” who told him “many years later” about her lustful spew…

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I think it’s a case of one-upping. The woman must have known the famous story of Plath lustfully biting Hughes when she first met him, and in chatting about him with Alvarez the woman decided to come up with something better.

A few more of these and it’ll be like MadLibs:

When I first met Ted Hughes I __________________.

Bit him
Vomited
Evacuated my bowels
Shrieked Holy Himeros, collapsed, vomited, and evacuated my bowels
Bit him, vomited, evacuated my bowels, shrieked Holy Himeros, and collapsed
Und so weiter.