Cutting the cord

So, on a Hacker Dojo mailing list, a note went out today that read:

When I came in today, I saw the toaster was written on "MORONS LEFT ON ALL NIGHT SOLUTION ->" with an arrow pointing to the cord which has been cut. I'm wondering if anyone knows more information about it.

With a picture attached:

It reminded me of college, and, in fact, of the Ride of the Valkyries.

It was tradition during finals week to play the Ride at the loudest possible volume at 7:00 am. I was dating Frank my sophomore year. He had access to the giant speakers from the music room sound system located at the Student Center. By "giant" I mean the cabinet for the subwoofer was a meter tall. And he had a particularly good amp that could power two of these speakers.

So, at the end of the school year, on the first morning of finals, we dragged those speakers up the stairs, set them up at the end of the freshman hall, set up the amp, attached the CD player, put in ear plugs, and promptly at 7am, launched the Ride of the Valkyries at volumes not previously heard in the previous two years (I have no idea if someone else had done this same plan, I just know it was the loudest I had heard). As soon at the song started, we hustled to the far end of the hallway to see the carnage that would follow.

Not very long later, I really don't recall how long it was but it wasn't very long, Prince, the tiny freshman that no one in the house liked, walked out of his room next to the speakers. With scissors, he proceeded to cut the cords on the speakers.

*snip*

*snip*

Silence.

There was a certain amount of anger and finger pointing that happened immediately after that. Frank ended up paying for replacements for the now unusable speaker cords. We filed a complaint with the MoSH, though, in retrospect, I'm not really sure what argument we were trying to make. We were tormenting the frosh, but doing so in an accepted tradition, they responded in a destructive way, who is really at fault here? Had Prince just unplugged the speakers, I'm not sure we wouldn't have just plugged them back in, though I also don't recall the "rules" with the Ride.

Maybe Andy or Charles can help me out there, I should ask one or both of them if it was verboten to start the Ride back up once it was legitimately shut down on a morning, or if we could play it until the end.