The U of Me

For all I know, just about everyone has gotten jumbo postcard mailers from a company called Ink Pixi suggesting that they've founded a university. But today's mail was my first experience with being told that I could order a t-shirt with "Stribling University" on it. Or a long-sleeve shirt, or a sweatshirt or a hoodie or a cap.

I think it's a little late in life for me to aspire to become a robberbaron, and most of the good monopolies and cartels are taken anyway. That's the way to found a university. I doubt that I could get enough scratch together to endow a correspondence art school, much less a university.

Though it's impossible to read in this scan, the motto that Ink Pixi selected for my university -- and probably everyone who orders this kind of shirt -- is "Intellectus, Scientia, Sapientia." All fine virtues with a Thomist flavor, I guess, but we need to add the Latin for "fundraising" to acknowledge a more modern context.

On the back of the card are ordering instructions, including the line, "We can print any name!" Oh, yeah? What about Hitler University?