Thursday, December 4, 2008

The Joint Task Revealed

The Mansion pledges and The House pledges received their joint task last night. The only fault about doing things with only one other fraternity is that inevitably, the sorority always outnumbers the fraternity. Even though we are a pretty Greek school... it's just the way it works. Girls who lucked out were paired with a pledge and the rest were given one hour to find a guy who would complete their task with them. I was proud as every girl who had to find a guy did. Most were friends and we had a few boyfriends and other Greek men in the mix. The Pledge Mom had a little fun making the assignments and paired The Sorority Prodigy with The Guitar Hero's newest little bro, Bloodhound. Don't ask me why they call him that... that's his pledge nickname so I have no idea.

Their task is to learn a ballroom dance by Saturday, when they will perform it for both houses. The pairs all drew dances out of a hat - foxtrot, waltz, tango, or paso doble. Hahaha then we told them that unless they passed the task, they wouldn't be initiated. Always a fun threat that nobody ever actually follows through on. The Social Chair was brilliant for thinking this task up since it requires The Pledges to learn something about social interaction. And pick up at least one kind of classy partner dance that doesn't involve gyrations and simulated sex on a dance floor, great for invites and parties... not so great for respectable functions, date and dinner parties. We had some opposition in The House from some members, including The Vice President of Development, who thought that this task was going to be a waste of time and not be entertaining for the actives. I backed The Social Chair and commented on how ironic it was that this task could be seen as a form of self-improvement and learning a new skill and yet the VP Development herself was against it. Not to mention that this should keep everyone entertained since it's our own version of So You Think You Can Dance. That won out the vote. Girls in The House are addicted to that show... quite possibly even more so than The Dancers... oh the ironies.

Monday, December 1, 2008

Welcome to HELL!!!

Hell Week for our newest class has begun. This should be a good week. The pledges moved into the living room last night to facilitate the organization of events. Their tasks thus far have been relatively tame. It won’t get much more difficult, but it will be interesting. There will be a few late night awakenings and a joint task with The Mansion’s pledges. To start things off, last night there was a midmorning awakening at about 3AM which involved taking flaming shots of Bacardi 151 with their Big Sis’s and taking The Loyalty Oath that rituals would not be revealed. I imagine some of the pledges are still drunk if not hungover from that activity. Thank god I have always been able to hold my liquor. Same with The Sorority Prodigy. I was pleased. That’s the great thing about growing up with brothers and in a Greek family... you learn to drink early on. Granted I also made her take some vitamins and chug something with electrolytes before getting back to bed so I imagine both of us are more chipper than others.

In other news, Thanksgiving was such an ordeal. The Nana glared at me through most of cocktails and dinner. Although, cocktails definitely facilitated the process of dealing with relatives. The Older Brother was distant because someone in the family had told him about the date auction date between The Wine Heir and myself. Not to mention he FINALLY broke up with his girlfriend. Or she broke up with him. It’s not entirely clear but I’m guessing it’s the latter because he seems unusually morose. I felt almost a little bad, but The Older Brother I’m sure will be back to his erratic dating antics before long. He’s like The Flirt in that sense. And as if that wasn’t enough drama for the weekend, The Guitar Hero kept drunk calling me and wanting to talk about us. Why the hell are guys such girls? I had a long conversation with The Sorority Prodigy about it after one of these drunken episodes and she was saying how he’s being stupid and unnecessarily jealous. He really is and it’s a major turn off.

Black Friday shopping was pretty successful though. It was extremely sororitay in the sense that The Sorority Prodigy’s mother called The Mother and all four of us went on a shopping trip together. I got some new dresses, a new bag, and assorted accessories. The Older Brother, The Younger Brother, and The Guitar Hero decided to do the whole camp out for assorted video gaming systems thing. It was all about family bonding shit.

Although, the redeeming quality about family gatherings is that I hear lots of great Greek stories. Among them came the “urban legend” sorority hazing incident that everyone hears about yet it's so ludicrous that everyone hopes that it's not true… the one involving girls stripping down to underwear and a fraternity coming with magic marker and marking any imperfections. This actually happened at The Cool Aunt’s sorority one year. Apparently they had elected this crazy Pledge Mom who was on like fucking medication so she did all kinds of psychological shit like that. I believe it. The Cool Aunt has never been one to lie. But why the hell would the girls ever let fraternity boys do the marking? Of course every guy is going to think that there’s not enough in the ass or the boobs unless some girl is of pornographic proportions. It’s incredibly unrealistic and stupid. And any girl who knows anything about boys would know that.

Luckily, we at The House have better hazing rituals that are less crass. This week should be good.