Commencement is almost upon us, and I thought I'd give everyone a quick guide on what to expect.

The first graduation speech was very frightening, because the speaker had no graduation speeches to plagiarize. Robert Frost quotes were not yet existent, let alone mercilessly flogged by pimple-faced valedictorians, as has become the modern custom.

In addition to words, occasionally the speaker would do interpretive polka moves. The main topic was not what the future held, but how to clean a fish. It took a while to get better. Hendel Klinges, speaking at the Berlin College graduation in 1495, titled his speech: "My Lederhosen and that Strange Rash."

This is why initially graduation numbers were so small: Graduation speeches were so bad that dozens of students would literally self-immolate during a speaker's anecdotes on the finer points of weather proofing. Thankfully, later Robert Frost came onto the scene, and saved many a graduation speaker from coming up with their own material.

The idea of a commencement address is to point forward while looking back at all we have accomplished, and it is generally considered bad form to discuss alternate realities, strange dimensions where goat-men rule the world, and suggesting time is not an arrow, but a swirling vortex not unlike a toilet bowl. Considering most of the audience will be hung over, this last image is to be avoided at all costs.

At a graduation, there are the commencers, who oversee the events, and the commencees, who get commenced. If neither group shows up, then there's a large number of empty chairs and stages lying around, and that means it's dangerously close to becoming an a capella concert.

Controversial speakers are usually avoided. People do not wish to be reminded of hard battles over dining hall food, labor strikes on campus or the Hindenburg. They prefer images of snow falling on cedars, beautiful creatures in nature that have a lifespan less than reality show stars, and people who did not take the right path in the fork in the road, but avoided traffic altogether by taking the 280. You do not see many massive failures speaking to graduating seniors, telling them equally important information on how to avoid failure: Yes, I should not have bought drugs from the hooker; no, arsenic doesn't 'preserve' flavor. In retrospect, joining the Band has only brought me misery.

There has been controversy with our own commencement speaker. I'm an English major and I haven't heard of Mr. Gioia. But I can see the choice from the administration's perspective: getting this Bush appointee to speak before he, too, resigns. Gioia is a man of integrity who will, when faced with further scandal, bravely fall on his pen (mightier than his sword).

Perhaps, in the far future, his name will come in handy. Maybe at some future gallery opening (the kind where everyone eats bits of congealed whale on toothpicks), some turtleneck-wearing fop will mention that he's read Gioia. Then I will say, "Yes, Dmitri, doesn't he have a soft/girlish/troll-like voice? I assume that you, too, have heard him." Dmitri, that emotional hemophiliac, will be humiliated.

Finally, I'd like to leave you with my thoughts that my father gave me: "'Nothing gold can stay,' eh? That's baloney. Investing in gold is just good business. And expensive cars aren't bad either. Oh, and the real estate market is great right now...I have no idea why I spent all this money on you."

Chris would like to thank the LSJUMB, VIS, SSC, KO, DB, BL, OPs, and any other acronyms he may have forgotten that has helped him along the way. After five years writing this drivel, you meet a lot of amazing and kind people. Send complaints to cholt@stanford.edu