Intro-explaining the Soul Porpoise

Hi all,

First I guess I should give a quick note about the title of this blog. The other day I was eating dinner at Stevie Dining Hall (a wonderful establishment whose name I am a big fan of since I have an older brother named Stevie) and I thought for some reason about the phrase "sole purpose," like "my sole purpose for taking this biology class was to see diagrams of the mammary glands" and I thought about a sole porpoise, like a beluga searching around in the middle of a cold lake like "Guys? Guys?" But that seemed like it was too depressing what with people so concerned about polar bears and stuff so I changed it to a Soul Porpoise (all while waiting for the ice cream cart to clear up, you believe that?) and imagined a narwhal, no longer alone, but chilling with some cool shades and maybe an alto saxophone. Oh, and lots and lots of soul.
Giggling like crazy, I returned to my table, hardly able to keep my porpoise thought to myself, and waited for an opportune break in the conversation to interject a snub-nosed whale joke. I don't know if I explained it well, because four of the five people I told just kind of looked at me. I got a lot of "yeah, okay, so back on the subject of cork..." but my new best friend, a girl on the cross country team whose name I have not learned yet, laughed a hearty laugh and asked, "Did you just think of that? Oh my God, that's funny!" Oh, that was rewarding. I should really learn that girl's name.
I've been watching a ton of movies lately, five in the last five days actually, which was made possible by the Oberlin College library, boasting some 4000 DVDs on campus and bunches more through OhioLINK, which allows loans to Oberlin from any library in our solar system, as far as I can tell. Before I took home No Country for Old Men and Life is Beautiful the helpful lady at the library counter told me "you better have a whole box of tissues for that one" I assumed she meant Life is Beautiful, and so I watched this one first. A whole BOX of tissues? I didn't even need one, I didn't come once during that movie.
One thing I really enjoy about Oberlin is the number of people with a good appreciation for irony. Now, rape is never funny. It couldn't possibly be funny and I think it's terrible when it happens in real life. But among friends, in the context of a joke, when someone is moving around a dark house and accidentally has sex with a person he might not consent to having sex with under normal circumstances, it IS funny. People at Oberlin tend to get that. There are places in this world where irony just seems to be lost on people. If you had a friend with an unusually large posterior, and you nicknamed him Bubble Butt, some people who take things too seriously might stop and say "Well now why would you call him something like that? That could hurt someone's feelings!" and make every one of Bubble Butt's friends feel like bad people for using a funny nickname. Not to say that Oberlin isn't politically correct, but they definitely don't take themselves too seriously, which I definitely appreciate.
At dinner the other day I started to think about the phrase "my old man" I don't do this kind of thing that often, thinking about well-worn phrases, but I have been lately I guess. What if, when a person said "My old man always says 'If it ain't chocolate, it ain't worth it'," that person was actually talking about an old man that was theirs, not their father. Just like a pet senior citizen. Again, my dinner mates weren't as into it as I was. I think it would be a really good source for sage wisdom. I want one.