How to Pass Your College Boards

Wetsuits and Ties: In the old days, all you needed to surf was a good board and a decent wave. But in today’s global economy--with corporate downsizing of waves and talk of a possible merger between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans--surfing is much more competitive.

You need a college degree.

Fortunately, the University of Plymouth in England is now offering a bachelor of science degree in “surf science and technology.” We’re not lying.

According to the December issue of Surfer magazine, which is scheduled to wash up on local newsstands later this year, Plymouth’s budding surf scholars will study marine biology, wave dynamics, surfing history and economics. They’ll also earn class credits--up to one-sixth of the units needed to graduate--by actually surfing.

Professor Malcolm Findlay, who co-founded the program and wears a pager that goes off whenever local weather buoys detect major waves, says the course of study was started for two reasons: “student demand . . . and we are probably the closest to decent surf breaks of any university in the U.K.”

Graveyard Crisis Bureau: A new policy to let people walk their dogs in a historic Oakland cemetery could unleash demonic powers, according to a small religious group that recently told the San Francisco Chronicle: “Historically, from a theological viewpoint, Satan possesses dogs. He doesn’t possess cats.”

In other cemetery news, the Chicago Sun-Times reports that a delay in plans to expand a local graveyard in Savona, Italy, prompted town officials to beg citizens to “try to help us by not dying, or at least by remaining alive for as long as possible.”

A third option would be to follow the example set by Erie, Colo.’s deceased town manager, whose cremated ashes were mixed into asphalt this week so he could become part of that city’s new Main Street, according to the Associated Press.

When Flipper Goes Bad: A Norwegian man has accused a dolphin of attempting to rape him, according to the Reuters news service. Surely this story is destined for the pages of the Weekly World News. Or even for Court TV--if the dolphin is arrested.

By the way, this isn’t the first attack on a human by Norwegian aquatic life. In 1998, a huge school of herring that was trapped in a trawler’s net dove en masse for the bottom and capsized the boat.

Meanwhile, other Scandinavian animals appear to be training for amphibious assaults. In Denmark last month, authorities were trying to locate a moose that swam three miles across a bay from Sweden and vanished into a forest near Copenhagen. And in June, a Norwegian cow paddled five miles across the sea to reach another pasture.

In other news, Off-Kilter is investigating reports of militant Norwegian chickens enrolling in Plymouth University’s surfing program.

Slurpee 2000 Bureau: 7-Eleven plans to market its own brand of champagne for the millennium, a move that leads the Chicago Sun-Times to ask: “Is that bubbly available in a 44-ounce Big Gulp?”

Best Supermarket Tabloid Headline: “Haunted Toilet Claims Third Plumber in Eight Years!” (Weekly World News)

Experts believe the commode could be a “porthole to another dimension.”

Unpaid Informants: Melissa Miller, Rachel Williams, Associated Press. Off-Kilter’s e-mail address is roy.rivenburg@latimes.com. Off-Kilter runs Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.