Alas, Stanford University is currently mascotless, after the debacle involving a tree drinking a little too much of its own sap. We're not Stanford folks, so we can't explain to you why their mascot is a tree when they're called the Stanford Cardinal -- Cardinals/Trees, please feel free to provide the story in the comments.

But the tree must go on -- this week is Tree Week, the annual event where the Stanford band picks next year's tree, based in part on the audacity of their antics. Today, the Stanford paper reports that psych professor William Dement's "Sleep and Dreams" class was interrupted by a tree aspirant wearing ripped tights and a green shirt busting a move to "Come Sail Away," with a backup team in bunny tails, who then laid out a bed of leaves for the tree to fall asleep in. The sports editor of the Stanford Daily paper performed a striptease in White Plaza, at which point, two people known as The Chicken and The Rabbit then proceeded to wax him down, like in the 40 Year Old Virgin. And a junior walked down Palm Drive wearing nothing but green body paint. We're not even getting into the Kool-Aid and the medieval torture stunts, they're too hard to describe.

You know, we write a number of odd posts (Chris Daly said what? Gavin Newsom's dating whom?) but this one has got to be the weirdest post ever. The Chicken and the Rabbit?

New Tree gets named March 4. The winner is being encouraged not to drink.

Picture of this year's deposed Tree by Rod Searcey from the Stanford Alumni Magazine