Ian "Plinko" Storey comes from that great state where the buffalo roam, where the deer and the antelope play, and where "I loves me some beef" has been a grammatically correct phrase for at least half a century: South Dakota. But some things can be forgiven.

Plinko majored in Unpragmatic, Excessive Idealism modified with Lies, Deceit and Treachery, known to the rest of the campus as the Government major. In fall 2004, the Aires shipped him off to U Chicago to start a PhD program in something ludicrously esoteric. He plans on spending the rest of his life ferreted away in a dark little professorial office, muttering angrily about this or that state of affairs, glancing nervously around himself, and emerging only periodically to give incomprehensible lectures and get his weekly dose of human contact.

God bless academia.