The time has come to do a little peacocking.

Not for everyone of course, only the select few affiliated with the University of Iowa.  For them it is time to puff out those chests and grab their horns and prepare to toot them.

Why is the showboat rolling down the Iowa River you ask?

It is because at long last the U of Iowa is the darling of the Ivy League.  Yep the Hawkeyes have finally been singled out by Princeton Review and crowned.  The ‘Bullies of the Big Ten’ have officially been named the #1 party school in the nation.

Finally the reign of last year’s #1– those posers from West Virginia– is over.  I think we’d all agree that those guys wouldn’t last five minutes at the Field House.  They probably beer bong A&W.  They are the Laura Ingalls to our Miley Cyrus.

Go hawks.

One person who didn’t need to read the Princeton Review to know all about the goings on at the U of Iowa is co-ed Samantha Goudie.  If Miley had a sister she deemed “out of control” she might slightly resemble Samantha.

You probably heard, but indulge me in some back story.

You see back in September Samantha (known as @Vodka_Samm on twitter) was doing her typical Saturday ritual, namely getting blasted, tweeting selfies and heading to Kinnick for a football game.  Only this wasn’t like any other Saturday because on this day the vodka flowed a little too easily.

The end result was an attempted field rushing, a .341 breathalyzer and a trip to jail.  Hey, at least she didn’t have to stay to see the end of the Northern Illinois game. But I digress.

Anyway the rest is pretty cliché.  A cell phone isn’t confiscated and a drunken girl live tweets her prison stay from the drunk tank.  Those tweets are picked up by a dumpster-diving website and internet mockery ensues. 

Why do we care about any of this?  I care because of something that struck me about those tweets.  It was the hashtag Samantha used.

Just went to jail #yolo — Samantha (@Vodka_samm) August 31, 2013

#YOLO

You only live once.

It has become a mantra for all sorts of people like Samantha attempting to justify all sorts of things.  YOLO is an excuse to act poorly because hey, when are you ever going to get the chance again?  

Everything seems to be covered all the way from drunken hijinks to snorting heroine off of a prostitute in Haiti. Who are you to judge, YOLO baby!

I think the world has it 100% wrong.  My take is that as followers of Christ we need to take YOLO back.

Eternal life means an eternity to live with the legacy we build here.  The afterlife is important, but Christ roamed the earth showing us an example of how to live here.  Of course we can’t get it right but what is important is the journey and the effort.

Why do we keep striving to live the best lives we can?  YOLO baby.

Not only does it give us an excuse to strive to get better and meet our full potential in emulating Christ, but it is also much catchier than that tired old WWJD.

So I say to you, help someone, give your money away, volunteer.

YOLO

 

The post script to the story is that Vodka Samm has deleted her twitter account and after all the publicity and embarrassment has reportedly also stopped drinking.

No word if she’s also planning to transfer to West Virginia.