Wow, I never thought this would happen. I would like to thank the Academy, the director and all my fans who believed in — wait, wait. Wrong speech. Sorry, I’m supposed to give this one tomorrow.
Dean Jinkies. Esteemed faculty, not-so-esteemed faculty, and professors accused of indecent volleyball. Friends, enemies, and one-night liaisons; I know you’re in the audience somewhere. Family and the most important audience members, my pet hippopotamuses Snape and Dobby. Oh and graduates of course, of course.
It’s an honor for me to stand here today. Especially considering my rheumatism. I must confess this honor diminished when your dean revealed to me that I was 7th on the list of speakers. I took comfort in the fact that I wasn’t the 8th. Let that be lesson number one kids: Always look on the bright side of life. But hey, I should probably save that for later. Okay, where was I? Oh yes. It gives me great pleasure to address you, the Proopian School of Business’ class of 2019. It’s greater than the pleasure I feel whenever I see a beautiful butterfly. Or scrape dead skin off my soles. Or when a snotty kid trips onto a landmine and gets blasted into teeny bits of flesh and bone.
For those of you who may not know me, I am a time traveler from the year 2100. My people sent me to inform you MBAs that the world has been successfully destroyed and it’s all your fault. Please go ahead and give yourselves a worthy pat on the back. Don’t pat your neighbor’s back though. We’ve got to be selfish in this hard, cold, cruel world of ours.
I see you all: young, energetic and full of hope. Your dreams are going to be so crushed. Destroyed. Squashed, squeezed and sold by the kilo at the farmers’ market. Some of you already have grey hair. Imagine that pain multiplied by 1000. Your eyes will become weak, it’ll hurt when you pee and pus filled lesions will erupt on your skin. But, 30 years from now, when you see your son marrying a rooster, it’ll be all worth it.
Today you will embark on a journey. With a skip in your step and a song in your heart. Ideally, that song shouldn’t be a Coldplay one. Grin as you begin for this journey will be a difficult one. Like any road trip, there’ll be ups and downs. Lefts and rights. Scary homeless people riding naked on a Lime scooter. This journey will be demanding. It will ask to crash at your place for a couple of weeks, while it gets its stand-up career going. It will cook new, disgusting recipes; expectantly watching your face as you taste them. It might even ask you to try out meditation. But whatever curve balls life throws at you, you should be ready to run offside, checkmate and fry your shuttlecock.
I’m now nostalgic about my own graduation. My supply chain professor, a kindly man with a twinkle in his eye, told me, “You fat bastard! You’ll never amount to anything”. Well, he’s dead now and I’m getting pegged every night by his 97-year-old wife. So, who’s laughing now? No one who watches the Big Bang Theory, that’s for sure.
So yes, now I guess I should give you some advice. It has to be generic and pure nonsense. Otherwise you snowflakes are going to get me trending on Twitter. Oh shit, did I say snowflakes out loud? Oh fuck, did I say shit out loud? Oh damn… Someone stop me already. Where were we? Oh yes, advice.
Y’all should get serious about your assholes. Not the metaphorical kind like your rowdy uncle. The actual, real ones. Show of hands, how many of you wash your assholes daily? Tsk, tsk. Not one. I have never met a person who became successful but didn’t wash her or his asshole every day. If you take anything away from today’s speech, make it this lesson: WASH YOUR ASSHOLES, PEOPLE!!. Also, follow your dreams, find your passion and yadda yadda yadda. You know the usual New Age-y motivational cow dung. Notice how I said cow dung and not bullshit. Think outside the box, my dear graduates.
Also, I would like to add, the world is a challenging place. That’s right, the world. No pulling punches here. It’s world or nothing. It’s funny how I can stand in this small corner and make judgments about something with a surface area of 510.1 million km². But hey, I have an MBA just like you folks. Being narrow-minded and arrogant is part of the coursework. Also, change is the only constant in life. Because of physics, duh. How will you prepare for change? By doing an elaborate ritual dance with a shaved kitten in one hand and a jar of mayonnaise in the other.
So anyway, it seems like I’m out of time. So I’m going to leave you with this one advice by the great philosopher John Waters:
“You have to remember that it is impossible to commit a crime while reading a book.”
So, now you’ll always have an alibi.
Thank you very much.
