Excerpt.

I present to you an indignant quote (verbatim!) from a letter to the editor in today's Daily Universe (BYU's official on-campus newspaper):

"BYU dances are made in the image of Babylon with psychedelic strobe lights, darkness, and pulsating noise enough to make your body tremble."

(cue laugh track)
Seriously? No, seriously?

Check it:
1. The reference to "Babylon." Ah, Babylon, the ancient Mesopotamian city-state famous for the precocious development of psychedelic strobe lights. The author fails to mention, though, that the technology died with the Assyrian takeover; Sennacherib never mastered the Macarena and phased out the craze in favor of laying siege to Jerusalem. The downward social spiral continued through Nabopolassar and by the Chaldean era, no one would be caught dead with a rainbow flasher. Oh, you meant the reference as a second-century Biblical metaphor? MY bad.

2. I bet your only experience with the word "psychedelic" is as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle slang. That is, if you were allowed to watch them as a child. Admittedly, those pizza references walked the nutritional line. *twitch*TRANS FATS*twitch*

3. Darkness. Oh, so you'd rather watch your 30-year-old single male friends do the Funky Chicken to "Cotton Eye Joe" in the LIGHT (inspiration: Elna Baker)? Let's just keep upping the level of "morally offensive," shall we? Eleven IS louder than ten.

4. "Pulsating noise enough to make your body tremble." Props for imagery, man, because every time I walk into a Mormon-approved dance, I too feel like I've just been defibrillated.