English Faculty Sublimates Into Pure, Unwavering Bands Of Light

CAMPUS - Local metaphysicians and students of English Language and Literature were baffled last week after hearing that several professors of the U-M English Department had spontaneously sublimated into unwavering bands of photon energy sometime in the early afternoon of Wednesday, October 17th.

"It was this beautiful, imperturable moment of supremely efficacious delicacy," described the intense blue glow once known as Prof. Linda Gregerson. "I just loved it. I would graph out how it felt for you on a blackboard, but I have no hands with which to manipulate the chalk, you see?"

"Only this unbroken line of matterless nothing, and my vox humana," the light-field said, adding, "That means human voice. Did you know that already?"

The transformation was, by all counts, unintentional.

"Most of us were in our offices, trying to figure if race and/or gender played a role in the secretary's decision to cater from Earl of Sandwich instead of Potbelly's," described the curvaceous yellow line identifying itself as John Whittier Ferguson. "I heard [Professor Thomas] Toon claim he wasn't going to be subservient to an Earl, quoting a few strands of Milton."

"Then, our bodies dissolved into their essences."

The Ferguson light-field added that the transformation was, "Perfect, just perfect. Yeah, wow, yeah, it's great, it's perfect." The Ferguson light-field then gave the transformation a C+, saying that it contained awkward syntax and that there were a number of other ways in which the transformation could have occurred, and Gertrude Stein and Ulysses.

Many were surprised that some of the English faculty could get thinner, and the transformation "went largely unnoticed" by several of the faculty's glasses-and-wool-sweater-wearing skinny guys.

Particularly blinding in radiance, the violet-and-crimson phantasma calling itself Ralph Williams opined its lost humanity in a moving lecture on the floor of the Natural Science Auditorium.

"The wind, dear friends, is no longer up," spoke the light-field, its photons crashing in on themselves in an ecstasy of colour. "I cannot feel anymore, good folk. I cannot touch or taste that air - do you know? - that sweet air I breathed as a child, that which once tickled my danglies."

"You'll pardon me for the sexual reference, won't you?" added the phantasmagora. "I used to be a mere humble Canadian."

The resplendent, blue, Gregerson-esque source noted that it hoped the transformation didn't make the Department appear pretentious or out of touch in any way.

"Just because we are now immaterial and beyond reproach won't jeopardize our jobs as professors," several of the photon-beams emanated, adding, "We're still planning to assign the same tripe about diction and syntax for your final papers, only now we'll be using a metaphysical grading scale."

The photon-beams added, "Does everyone know what metaphysical means? Well, I'll write it up anyway: Me-ta-phy-si-cal."

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