I shall use this, my last column, to explain my moniker, and also to thank people. I was planning on writing my usual tripe, but I'm told that this is tradition, and I'm not one to buck tradition because it's old and shit.

So the moniker. I didn't go for the surname pun, because I think you have to be a fan of Everybody Loves Raymond or of Huey Lewis and the News to go down that road. Then I was going to use utter randomness, such as "Grapefruit Shoelaces." To people like me who are too lazy to think very hard, randomness is something to be embraced. But I figured that would be like going into a tattoo parlor and asking for "whatever." Then I figured I'd just use a quote from Thomas Pynchon or Ghostface, who are my two favorite living people. My column was this close to being called "Assiduous Palimpsest" or "I Hit Mics like Ted Koppel." But those didn't seem right either. So I wrote my first column before I even had a moniker. Luckily, that night, after I finished writing, I had a dream that solved everything.

I was having my usual recurring dream, in which I'm on a rollercoaster with Darth Vader, but this time, Mario Lopez was on the ride too, as was the bird that hit Fabio in the face. The ride stopped and, as you can guess, the bird had a long-haired romance novel cover model plastered to his beak.

"Oh dream logic, you so crazy" I said to Slater, who was wearing acid washed pants with 36 pleats on each leg.

"I'm off duty, okay," he responded. "Your generation has too many dreams with Saved by the Bell characters in them. It's a goddamn epidemic. Didn't you have some kind of childhood trauma that would get me off the hook here?"

He was right. Lark Voorhies had been in my dream a few nights ago, looking for something in Vader's lap. No more Saved by the Bell in this dream though. Suddenly, as I exited the rollercoaster, I was in a completely different environment. I looked around and there were all these people yelling about politics, a couple of sorority girls telling interesting and fun anecdotes about campus life and some guy pretending to resign from something and then not actually doing it (the balls!). There was someone named Carlos trying to wrangle with all these characters and someone else named Zach Jones who was laughing at him while leafing through a copy of Finnegan's Wake. Finally I realized I was in the Opinion section of The Sun. William Safire and Dave Barry were there too, which doesn't make sense, because they know how to write. But they were playing tetherball and yelling in Japanese at each other, so maybe it was just incidental.

I made my way into the crossword puzzle, and there were a lot of people hanging out there, like at the Max (the Max wasn't actually in the dream, I just figured I'd use the metaphor - neither Al Alozo nor Casey Casem were there). Everyone was wearing t-shirts that read "I'm supposed to be interested in Post-Colonial narratives and aggregate curves" but they were frantically trying to find out the name of Punky Brewster's dog (Brandon). This was all too much for me, so I machetied my way through the politics, trivia and Garamond font.

Somehow I managed to make it into a comic strip called "Asianman" about an Asian Cornell student who just went around dancing on anthills. It was very explicit and it offended my ant-advocate stance, which I had apparently developed for the dream. I tried to organize a pro-ant rally on Ho Plaza, but then I realized that even the ants didn't care very much. Plus, my dream was referring to something that happened over a year ago.

I finally escaped the commie rag, but found myself in a laundry room for some reason. John Gotti, Whitey Bulger and Paulie Walnuts were there, actually washing money and talking about the odd fact that Good Morning, Miss Bliss took place in Indiana while Saved by the Bell was set in California. That these gangsters were physically washing money left me disappointed in my own dream logic's wit, and I had been so happy about the Fabio/bird inversion! But it was a good thing these guys were there, for they had the answer I needed. Whitey Bulger had spilled chowder on a nice cable knit cotton sweater, and he was asking what cycle to use to get the caked clams out.

"You gotta go with medium water volume, but make sure to use the extra rinse cycle," Gotti offered.

"No no, you got it all wrong." Paulie said "Its all about the water temperature. I got t'ree words for ya … "

And then I woke up and I had my moniker.

Now that that's out of the way, on to the thank you's. I realized I don't really have that many people to thank. Some people have thanked their friends in this portion for giving them a great college experience and whatnot, but I don't really see the connection between my friends and my column. Most of them don't read it anyway. But I will thank Zach and Carlos, who have edited this piece of shit, and people who read it and mostly just wonder why I have my hand on my face in the picture (no answer to that one besides generalized idiocy).

So now I guess I give my column an awkward manhug and mosey on down the road.

Jake Tuck is a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences. He can be reached at jbt26@cornell.edu. Machine Wash Cold appeared Wednesdays.

Archived article by Jake Tuck