The friday before spring break is also st patrick's day. And it's also dragon day. See how they pack holidays and celebrations together to make us go to school more times than we really need to?
Dragon day is an old school tradition; it's our mardi gras. Every year, the architects team up to build a dragon, which they'll parade around campus. The engineers, on the other hand, build a phoenix, although I heard that they built a penguin last year. I was all ready to join the phoenix society right after winter break, but now as we shall see, I'm really glad that I didn't.
So usually they will supposedly 'fight', and the dragon will win or something, and then they burn it down.
The architects really brought it down this year. A few days ago, they went running half naked around school, bodies sprayed with green paint. They drank alcohol to keep themselves warm, and so that they can do things like humping the windows of the engineering library. Yesterday, they draped toilet paper all over the trees of the arts quad. It's public art man.
The dragon float was spectacular as hell. It had wings and its head and tail could moved. It started its procession at 1pm and it's perched on a mockup of rand hall, which is where the architects spend day and night in. It's a really tough life-- the bright fluorescent lights in the studio supposedly suspend your ability to tell the difference between night and day. Perhaps one day of coolness makes up for a year of architorture. I always wanted to be an architect, but that's a long story.
Our phoenix was downright pathetic. It doesn't look completed. It looks like a chicken. Or a toilet duck. It just sat there while the architects chanted 'engineering sucks'. I guess it's called dragon day for good reason, although I also heard that they needed help with the dragon head from the engineering students. It was a hoot.
Quoting from a random person, I just love that the freaks came out. Even better than halloween. I'm telling you, they were all high on something.
Then at the end of the procession, the crowd formed a big circle around the dragon while the dressed up people went insane. They began to demolish the float, hitting the walls and plucking out the fixtures.
It's also awesome to see the fire people take a break to take pictures.
And then a guy in a toga put the torch to it. The metal skeleton lasted a long time, but the fabric skin burned away in seconds. As it burned, the people continued to run circles around the bonfire.
So now the next big thing to look forward to is slope day, before summer, when some big star will come perform. Maybe the black eyed peas.
