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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Pielorinho" data-source="post: 1249105" data-attributes="member: 259">I went to Evergreen, a hippy school in Washington State. What do I mean by hippy school?* Somebody, rumor has it, actually did two credits of underwater basketweaving, just to prove it could be done.* Somebody else in my class actually did sixteen credits in creating an herbal first-aid kit.* <a href="http://www.fungi.com/" target="_blank">Fungi Perfecti</a>, an awesome mycological center, is founded by an alum.* Matt Groening, Lynda Barry, and the actor who plays Kramer on Seinfeld are among our illustrious alumni. Hippy school. How hippy was my first class there? It was called Humans and Nature in the Pacific Northwest, taught by a biologist, an historian, an economist, and a complete flake whose qualifications escape me.  The flake scheduled a Council of All Beings to follow an essay test (the essay, incidentally, was decidedly non-hippy: it was an analysis of The Origin of Species, and was administered by the very cool biology professor). In preparation, the flake led us through a guided meditation, which she prefaced by saying: Now, if any of you are, what do you call it, "stoned" [here she actually made little quote marks in the air with her fingers] I want you not to do this meditation, because I don't want to lead you anywhere you can't come back from. "Lady," I thought, "You couldn't lead me out of a paper bag. Don't worry about the stoners." The point of the meditation was to find your Spirit Animal, on whose behalf you'd speak during the Council of All Beings. Once you'd found your animal, you'd create a mask to represent that animal. Some people were straightforward: a raccoon, an eagle, a salmon. Some people were stupid: "Can I be a butterfly, as a symbol of feminine power?" asked one fool. Some people just didn't get it: "I want to be the wind!" said one biologically-challenged student. Have you ever heard of a botworm? They're quite possibly the grossest creature alive. They're a parasite that enters baby animals through the ears or rectum and live inside the creature. But they need to breathe air, so they burrow a hole through the animal's skin and poke their little maggoty heads out. An infested animal has a maggot's head sticking out of its back. Infections are usually, and mercifully, fatal -- would YOU want to stay alive with a worm growing out of you? I knew what my spirit animal would be. Of course, a mask wouldn't really get the concept across. A sock puppet, however, would. I made a sock botpuppet. Cut a hold in an old T-shirt, and stuck the puppet through the hole, as if I were infested by the botpuppet. And spoke, during the Council of All Beings, in a squeaky maggoty voice, moving the puppets mouth. I was, you see, a Botworm. As a symbol of feminine power. Daniel</blockquote>

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