– It has secret passages.
– More often than not, you arrive by train. (On the underground tunnels from the outlying office buildings, the conductor’s bell jingles merrily along.)
– Rooms appear out of nowhere when you think you are lost. For weeks I’d been subsisting on vending machine food, until I found the immaculate tablecloths of the members’ dining hall, where a polite man offered to sell me a bento box.
– Some of the residents have been there for almost a hundred years. The corridors are haunted with them.
– There are chandeliers. Everywhere. There are statues as well, but as proper Americans they do not wear suits of armor.
– A spiral staircase leads an attic room that only reporters know about, or at any rate they are the only ones who bother to go there.
– The membership is comprised of a great variety of personalities, alternately befriending and feuding with one another as they jostle for position. A few of them are good, some are evil and most are in between.
– Participants are sorted into two chambers, and therein into two parties, each with its special rooms and private codes.
– There is a dark forest in back stocked with centaurs and giant spiders.
– Well, okay, there isn’t.
– To succeed, one has to memorize arcane terminology and follow counterintuitive rules of procedure, but the results of your obscure incantations will be very real.
Why it is not like Hogwarts:
– There are no teachers.
– However, there is a headmaster of sorts: The president of the Senate, Dick Cheney.
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Haha clever. How long did this take your to compose?
Also like Hogwarts the members leave every summer to return to live among the muggles/constituents.
Posted by: Jeremy | July 31, 2007 at 04:23 PM
Great list. Also--good for you to look up words. So many people don't do this anymore.
Posted by: the historian | August 01, 2007 at 02:02 PM
I only hope I can set an example for the children.
Posted by: Avery Palmer | August 01, 2007 at 03:46 PM
Omigosh. Is there a sorting hat for the Hill? What members got sorted into Slytherin, BTW?
Posted by: Boulder Tourist | August 06, 2007 at 10:12 PM
Omigosh. Is there a sorting hat for the Hill? What members got sorted into Slytherin, BTW?
Posted by: Boulder Tourist | August 06, 2007 at 10:12 PM