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PHILOSOPHY - Closing time

Random thoughts on strange phenomena at the University of Arizona as the school year begins to wind down on this crazy campus:

Dial-A-Prayer.

I was walking down the UA Mall last week when a surly stranger forced me to take a flier. I didn't acknowledge the guy's presence, but he stood in my face and forced the piece of paper into my hand until I gave up and grabbed it.

Boy, was I glad I did. The flier told me how I could have any prayer I desired repeated non-stop for four consecutive days. With all that harassment, God's sure to break down and decide to transform my 10-speed into a Lexus, just like I've always wanted him to.

Here's how the system works: you dial a 1-800 number, leave your prayer on a voice mail system and this church will make sure your prayer is repeated continuously for four days.

But ultimately I decided not to dial in my prayer, mostly because the thought of religion over the phone lines kind of creeps me out.

What's next? Dial-A-Confession? On-line circumcisions?

Influence of the Devil.

When I first came to the UA as an innocent freshman, the first thing that struck me as odd was the name of the bookstore: ASUA. Sounded a little too much like "ASU" to me. When I heard that ASUA was also the name of the student government organization on campus, I thought it represented the combined governments of both of our schools.

That was a valid assumption. Think about it - if you were going to combine UA and ASU, what else could you come up with besides ASUA?

The thought that we might be joined at the hip with our mortal enemies disgusted me.

Only months later did I learn what the anagram actually stood for - Associated Students of the University of Arizona.

Can we please change it to UAAS or at least AS-UA?

And another thing - the campus museum is called "Arizona State Museum." We might as well call it "Sun Devil Museum."

Mo' Money.

When the university wants money from me, they usually send me bills in ominous-looking envelopes that say "Invoice Enclosed." This tells me that it's time to take out the ol' credit card and run myself a few hundred more dollars into debt.

But they've gotten sneakier recently. They sent something to me a month ago asking me to donate money for a "Senior Gift" of $20 or "as much as I am able to contribute."

To justify this random demand for money, the letter was included in a sappy plea that whined about how poor the UA is. Then they hit me with this whopper: "Only a small percent of the money it takes to run the university comes from tuition."

Damn right only a small percentage comes from tuition. The rest comes from the $15 I pay when I need to replace my CatCard, the $25 I hand over when I want to use the Student Recreation Center over the summer, the $400 I spend on books each semester, or the $160 I shell out for a Zone One parking pass.

And then there are the millions the UA got when it sold its soul to Pepsi and Nike.

The letter went on to brag about the obscene collective senior gifts left by previous classes.

But just because those idiots in the Class of '99 decided to fork over $20 more after their wallets were raped for the last four to six years, it doesn't mean I should. But I won't let my alma mater down.

I've got a senior gift for the UA, all right. But if I were to scoop it up out of the toilet, it probably wouldn't fit in that little envelope they provided.