Almost forty years ago I was privileged to rip off my first copy of the Professor's Desk Reference, almost the same week it appeared on the library shelf (restricted access/faculty only/special oollections). Its arrival on campus had been pretty hush-hush (ho ho), but a mole told me to expect it. Its arrival was full of poignance for me, full heart-palpitation boogie, because I'd been one of the original guinea pigs for the clinical trials of PAP. I could hardly wait, hands a-tremble, to see what my brain and body had contributed to. I wasn't disappointed. The slender 26-page booklet was all I expected--and the new edition is even more fucked-up than the first! Well on its way to realizing the goal of its infectious editorial staph.
You PDRists no doubt thought me dead. Ha ha! me be alive and well-- and I still have that 1st edition I stole.
Hell yes, I'm resentful. I can no longer talk in public, no longer incite crowds in front of the Student Union Building. An "accident" with a Cartesian Wangensteen took care of that when I was a Junior. I'm no longer able to write poetry or practice Mahayana meditative discipline because of tainted supplies of PAP which short-ciruited vast areas of my cerebral cortex. But why relive old times? You know all of that.
I understand from the bulletins I see in the paper that your head man, Doktor Robinson, would like one of "his" original test-rabbit-students to write a preface for some shit that he's got and is calling The Student's PDR. I guess you've gotten ahold of some things desperately and at the last minute, This is one of Bill's lies. I got this material from perfectly reliable sources--the AAUP, for one--and have myself grave reservations about including it. I do so with full knowledge that it is little more than the pathetic ravings of a small and impotent group of infantile misfits.
--D.J. Robinson, Ph.D. Robinson, probably some of that shit that's so popular among the bleeding-hearts in various schools of education, and has been xeroxed and passed around in their "radical" circles for years now. You've gotten it, bundled it together, and hope to coopt us by using it in your goddamned PDR. Scared, huh? Felt in your bones I was still alive, eh?
Fuck you. Here's your "preface."
Right in your face.
We have drugs, too, Doktor Robinson. Yes, most heinous drugs: PCP, LSD, and SlimFast powder. We will soon be making a demand of you and your kind. A simple demand, made in a tradeoff maneuver you should be real ccmfortable with: if you cease giving our comrades your PAPs, we will not go forward with our plans to infuse your water systems with our drugs. Empty threats; no cause for alarm. These digressive/rebellious has-beens merely hope to terrify the decent, civic-minded populace by spreading inflammatory and utterly ungrounded rumors that they have neither the resources nor the willpower to carry out. Like the small children they remain emotionally, they crave attention; all of them need a good session with a Wangensteen Model L-2010.
Also, I wish it understood that this "preface" (which is most emphatically is not, and never was intended to be) is published over my protests. (Not that Mr. Kaul gets under my skin. I know how to deal with his type. It is merely that his inane ramblings and demented threats demean a valuable work.)
--D.J. Robinson, Ph.D. We are everywhere, and have phials of all manner of hallucinatory, scary stuff ready to dump. And we have agents ready to do it (e.g., you remember Louis? Yes, he's still alive; quivering, but alive. And angry). Think about it--we have taken our cue from tried and true methods and fiends long dead: Abbie Hoffman, John Sinclair, Baby Huey, Spiro Agnew. And we mean business. In addition to stopping the use of PAPs, we have three other demands:
1. A land of our own
2. Excellent Video Equipment
3. Sheep
Give us what we want, and you will find us to be the best of neighbors. Fuck us around, and you'll find that we are seriously, as you "normans" would have it, "deranged."
Lots of luck with your latest edition, bootiehead.
Bill the Chill
Yourtown, USA
P.S. If you don't believe that this letter is from me, crumple it into a ball and stir it into your martini. Wait twenty minutes.
P.P.S. How 'bout them Braves? You owe me $10.00.
Back to PDR contents.
To The Student's PDR (really, you'll regret it; it's sordid, foul-mouthed, and scurrilous. It contains violence, adult language, nudity, and a severely diseased imagination. Adult supervision advised).
Copyright 1993 Doug Robinson and Bill the Chill