Action was taken after attendees couldn’t hear the drums echo in the night
One of the deadliest crimes was committed at a local frat party this past weekend. The night started like any other night. “Red Nose” was playing on loop and the whole crowd was getting progressively sweatier but powering through with the magic of friendship and the cheapest vodka Costco could offer. In a glorious change of the tides, the classic beats of “Africa” by Toto began humming through the speakers as a boy who could be anywhere between 12 and 30 years old manned the aux, not realizing what he had just done.
“I felt like… like maybe culture was being revived for the first time since Silly Bandz left us,” said third-year Allyson Yniguez. “Suddenly, I believed in my dreams again.”
The dance floor began to assemble into what can only be described as a battleground of joy and uncultured swine. Alas! Some people did not know the magic of “Africa” and would not stand for this out-of-the-ordinary selection.
“You put on ‘Come Get Her’ by Rae Sremmurd or you set this house on fire!” said fourth-year Freddy Fiddlesticks. “There’s no place for yacht rock in this town!”
The crowd polarized and suddenly it was a scene from an old Western: the non-believers versus the Africans. Wait… no… not accurate… oh god….
Lil’ boy-man at the aux freaked out. The song barely got through its first verse before he pulled the plug and played, “Rake It Up,” their emergency bop.
That was when the Greek god of Chaos peeked through the window.
“Oh, damn…” he whispered.
Suddenly, it was war.
“You didn’t even let it get to the chorus!” said first-year Jack Pollock. “That’s like baking a cake and then choosing to flush it down the toilet instead of frosting it! You monsters!”
One party member shrieked so loud that a police officer heard it from across campus. He had been giving a child a ticket for biking with unregistered training wheels, but this seemed like it might be a little crazier.
“I must go, Timothy,” the police officer said as he stapled the ticket to the bike.
“Is it about ‘Africa’ by Toto?” Lil’ Tim-Tim said.
“With a shriek of that magnitude, that’s damn near the only thing it can be, my boy,” the officer responded. With that, he pedaled into the night all the way to the frat house. He had never used such vigorous hand signals in his life.
When he got there, it was a brawl. Brothers were fighting brothers, that one dog that lives at the house that you always worry about was tearing apart the couch (or repairing it — it was kind of hard to tell, honestly) and the aux was on fire.
“What in Gary May’s name is going on in here?” the officer said.
One brave woman with two stripes of blood under her eyes emerged from the mass with a baseball bat in hand.
“They turned off ‘Africa’ by Toto!” she hollered.
“Oh?” the officer responded.
“Before it got to the chorus!” she screamed.
“Oh!!!” the officer screamed back.
He shut the whole house down for their sin. As he directed the men out of the house, one boy turned back to look at what used to be his home and whispered, “It’s gonna take a lot to drag me away from you….”
Finally, he understood. However, for a crime this severe, there’s nothing that a hundred men or more could ever do to regain their fraternity.
Bless the rains.
Written by: Olivia Luchini — ocluchini@ucdavis.edu
(This article is humor and/or satire, and its content is purely fictional. The story and the names of “sources” are fictionalized.)
