JACK BAUER'S BIDET is lonely-his one female friend "found a nice Pratt boy."
Quite frankly, JACK is confused. What would propel a lovely young Trinity student toward an engineer? It's like Romeo and Juliet, except Romeo isn't attractive, well-dressed or good at lovemaking.
JACK BAUER'S BIDET needs answers, and where better to get them than from renowned sexomatholigist and Duke University's William H. Chafe Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies, Dr. Turgid Humpinson?
Humpinson, author of Taken from Zero to Infinity: Evaluating Your Partner's Inner Integral, explains that so-called "inter-disciplinary dating," or IDD, is becoming more common at top universities offering both real educations and four-year day care programs. Humpinson goes on to explain the phenomenon: "Engineer boyfriends are like S&M gimps but with better earning potential."
If you look hard enough, you'll find plenty of prominent campus power-couples that follow this new trend-Jessebeth Longisill (Elizabeth Rudisill and Jesse Longoria), MILLI and VANILLI or Engineering Student Government and Delta Delta Delta Sorority.
IDD should not come as a surprise, according to JACK's inside source in the engineering faculty. In the interest of anonymity, JACK will refer to this man, whose mystery is only exceeded by his power, as Dr. "G":
"In my tenure here, including a 54-credit undergraduate career lasting between 1989 and 1992, Duke students have always loved to 'work hard, play hard.'"
Before continuing, he pauses for a few seconds to staple together his presentation for a unified field theory, do a 27-minute long keg stand and give a lecture on wine appreciation.
"IDD allows for an efficient division of work-play responsibility between two partners. In fact, Dr. Humpinson and I derived a few equations. They're somewhere around here."
Dr. G clears away a pile of undergraduate teaching awards and produces a plain manila folder. "See, for any person 'n', the amount of work 'Wn' and play 'Pn' for that person equilibrate to some constant 'Kn': Wn x Pn = Kn What this means is that the amount of play and work in one person's life are constrained inversely and there exists the 'root-k' solution for balanced life.
"For two persons, we can separate this equation, which allows for a decoupling of P and W among the two persons, person 'a' and person 'b'. The new solution is Wa = Ka,b x Pb. Person 'b' can increase his play without bound, and the work will be absorbed by person 'a'.
"Hence, dating an engineer is a great way to jack around for four years while your parents pay a quarter-million dollars and your boyfriend does a bunch of work. Q.E.Dizzle."
When JACK BAUER'S BIDET asked what would happen if a second engineer were added to the couple, Dr. G began to vomit and shudder. "We don't think about things like that. Such darkness can haunt the very dreams of humanity's one precious collective soul."
JACK isn't so sure it's that simple. JACK found this love note in Sanford, presumably from a computer science student to an actual attractive girl:
include "us.h"
static int STAMINA = 10;
int main(int argc, char** argv)
{
for(int i = 0; i < STAMINA; i++)
{
Insert();
Remove();
}
Finish();
return 0;
}
The miscommunication goes both ways. JACK overheard the following break-up conversation near the classics department:
"Thy sweet protestations of tender affection are marked by a surfeit of vainglory! The very sabre of Damocles has long lofted 'bove our nuptial bed, its aetherial nocturnal combat with sweet gravity finally prov'n to be for Vanity! All is for Vanity, unto the ends of the earth, as the sands of time slip through our entwined bodies; O' Vanity!"
But JACK doesn't think the communication barrier is insurmountable. Mechanical engineers are at a particular advantage, as their lexicon is full of phrases that make great pillow talk. Guaranteed winners include: "load-bearing member," "modulus of rigidity," "slot-and-key configuration" and "laminar fluid flow." Plus, mechanical engineering is the Pratt world's bad-boy motorcycle gang.
Biomedical engineers can use their knowledge of "in vivo implants" and "motor-assistive devices" to communicate with their clown-college partners.
Though electrical engineers are slightly more limited in their terminology, JACK thinks they'll enjoy more success when initially pursuing women, due to extensive practical lab work with mixed-signal analysis and faulty logic analyzers.
Civil and environmental engineers are, for all intents and purposes, Trinity students. They also tend to be attractive women in the first place, and consequently need little coaching and assistance. That said, JACK BAUER'S BIDET would be remiss in not pointing out the boudoir-puissance of a working knowledge of structural resonance, transportation networks, soil erosion, water treatment and municipal piping.
Though IDD typically involves a man-gineer, there are some cases of role-reversal. Many women enter Engineering expecting a favorable M/F ratio, but according to the Social Division Of The Society For Women Engineers (Motto: "The odds are good . but the goods are odd") most of these men turn out to be either emotionally unavailable, boring, overworked, taken or Asian.
Often these women are forced to attend E-kegs in order to meet single Trinity guys.
This development, while expected, is not well-taken by the male Pratt community. JACK sat down with Kevin Wang, ECE '07, organizer of this year's anti-interdisciplinary rally, "Protect Our Essence 2006". "These A&S-holes are stealing our women!," explained an infuriated Wang.* "Wait-that's wom-a-n, not wom-e-n - you got that, right? Singular. Damn. I have to go to lab. We'll talk later."
*The use of the phrase "infuriated Wang" was deliberate.
This Valentine's Day, JACK BAUER'S BIDET wants you to heart an Engineer.
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.