Commencement-Speaker Order Form

By Bruce McCall

Speaker Selection

Tier 1 Premium Price (check one):

--Ex-President --Nobel laureate --European head of state

Premium-price speakers will charge extra to attend faculty luncheons or receptions, and must have access to a helipad.

Tier 2 Popular Price (check one):

--Washington bureaucrat --TV anchor --Kennedy relative --Retired astronaut --Self-made billionaire --Feminist author

Popular-price speakers will attend faculty luncheons or receptions, sign autographs and pose for photographs.

Tier 3 Budget Price (check one):

--Unknown novelist --Minor poet --Radical environmentalist

Budget-price speakers will expect a complimentary mug, tote bag or T shirt bearing your institution's official crest.

Wild-Card-Speaker Option: --Check here if you wish to order the Wild-Card-Speaker Option* at a 50% discount.

*Do NOT accept this option if an address centered on Princess Anastasia Is Alive/Trilateral Commission Links to the Masons/Earth Is Flat/Devil Worship in the Girl Scouts may be inappropriate.

CONTENT

Your commencement speaker will avoid declarative statements leading to definite conclusions wherever possible. You can help by checking at least three themes below for inclusion in the address.

Awaiting your generation is a world of wonders

-OR-

Awaiting your generation is a world of dangers -AND- Embrace the old values

-OR-

Throw over the old values -AND- The world needs its poets and dreamers

-OR-

The world needs no more poets and dreamers -AND- Yours is a generation of rare daring

-OR-

Yours is a generation of rare complacency

For Small Liberal-Arts Colleges Only Choose one of the themes below for your commencement address:

--Ticking class-war time bomb --Ticking global-warming time bomb --Ticking Central America time bomb --Ticking (please specify) time bomb

QUOTATION

Each commencement address contains eight quotations. Put an x next to the quotations you do NOT want:

--Alexis de Tocqueville --Holden Caulfield --Robert Frost --Gandhi --Seneca --J.F.K./R.F.K. --Yogi Berra --Thoreau

EXTRA-COST OPTIONS

1. A 10% surcharge will apply to each 500-word Mini-Spin-Pak you order for inclusion in your commencement address:

--Putting campus sexual harassment in perspective --Tuition increases for a stronger America --The hidden blessing of plunging enrollments --Shattering the myths about low-ranking colleges --What athletic-department scandal?

2. For a flat $200 fee, you can order the Audience Wake-Up Option to help make your commencement address more memorable. Select any one Audience Wake-Up word cluster below:

--"Four wasted years" --"Moral vacuum" --"Rampant favoritism" --"Diploma mill" --"Hopelessly ill equipped" --"Spoiled brats"

3. For a charge of $1 per word and $3 per phrase, your commencement address can be automatically pre-edited to eliminate words and phrases known to increase the risk of audience narcolepsy. Examples:

--cyber --space travel --United Nations --sing-along --Canada --Ping-Pong --crafts fair --mining the seas

Your commencement-speaker payment will be refunded only if a) an official head count after the first 30 minutes of the address shows that 50% or more of the audience has left; b) six or more vegetables have landed on the podium; or c) the microphone cord has been severed, and not by an act of God.