I wrote this song for the Revels 2011.  It’s a recitation of one of the University of Chicago’s notorious ScavHunt lists (and of course for everything to rhyme, I had to make up my own list.)  The authors of this annual list are well known for their self-satisfied inscrutability and scatological tastes, and I like to think I captured some of that in the lyric (luckily, those are two of my strong suits.)

A pork-pie hat
I’ve got one of those!
A bump on a log
I could find that!
A laboratory rat – oh! –
And the toilet where he sat – ugh! –
And a perspicacious insight on a blog.
Oh come on, that doesn’t even exist!

A Welsh nun’s habit
Why, there’s one in my closet!
Some live New Hampshire Mooses
Mooses? It’s ‘Meese’!
Hum a tune by Milton Babbitt,
Eat a prune with pickled rabbit,
Which is lovely if you dab it in its juices.

REFRAIN:

Yes, we’ll persist on this list
And we really must insist
That we not just get the gist or the brunt.
There’s no point to resist
So enlist and assist
‘Cause how could we exist without a hunt?

A brassiere – ooh! – from Zaïre – ugh! –
Which I fear, we must be clear
Isn’t worth a point if its clasping joint is unlinked.

A chronology of astrology
With a catalogue of terminology
Which you’ll enhance with a dance where each stance
Takes a clear position on the superstition –
Be it haughty, naughty, thoughty,
Brainy, grainy, zany,
Easy, breezy, sleazy –
Please-y, be succinct.

Oh perfect! – What? – That was my junior thesis!

REFRAIN

A pork-pie hat that’s made of real pork,
A bump on a frog on a log that’s a stump,
A soap-box sports-car, a Snow White dwarf star,
A minor key cantata on a chicken enchilada,
It’s so insane and so inane to wrack a brain just to obtain
The many items on this list.

And if we grunt, it’s no affront – it’s quite a stunt that we confront
And to be blunt, we can’t exist
Without a hunt!