Right before I signed the lease for the apartment I will be living in during my junior year it dawned on me:  I will only be spending one year of my entire college experience living in a house.  Living in an off-campus house is a rite of passage in college, and it's up to those who dare to experience life beyond the residence halls to provide a place for others to make memories that will last a lifetime until they wake up the next morning.  Here are some ideas for theme parties that will add some variety to your weekend festivities.  

Andrew W.K. Party:  For those of you who don't know who Andrew W.K. is, I want to close your eyes.  Now imagine a homeless person who just escaped one of Jigsaw's deadly scenarios from the Saw movies banging on a piano while discussing the intensity required to accompany him to a social function.  If you don't have a vivid imagination, here's a picture:

Whenever I need to let loose on the weekend I try to blast some Andrew W.K. right before I walk downtown to get in the mood to rage.  Having an Andrew W.K. themed party would require some thoughtful planning and accepting that you won't get your security deposit back at the end of the year, but the end result could yield one of the best parties you ever attend.  All you need to do is tell everyone to wear a white t-shirt and bring a piece of furniture.  Find that kid in the library who hasn't showered in a few weeks and ask to borrow his external hard drive so you can fill your iPod with classics like "Party Hard", "It's Time To Party", and my personal favorite, "Party Till You Puke".  From there, all you need to do is buy a few kegs, hide all of your expensive china, and make sure someone brings a few beer bongs, a ladder, and a slip n' slide.  The only rules are you can only play music by Andrew W.K. and you have to constantly be doing one of three things throughout the night:  drinking, jumping up and down, or breaking furniture over each other's head.  

Cake Party:  I heard about this during my first year of college and I've wanted to try it ever since.  Here's an excerpt from an article in the New York Times about a party held by some George Washington University students in 2005 that used Facebook to get even with some cops who had broken up one of their previous parties:

Mr. Stoneman and his friends decided to fight back. Their weapon of choice? Facebook, of course.

Once again they used the site, which is visited by more than 80 percent of the student body, to chat up a beer blast. But this time, when the campus police showed up, they found 40 students and a table of cake and cookies, all decorated with the word "beer." "We even set up a cake-pong table," a twist on the beer-pong drinking game, he says. "The look on the faces of the cops was priceless." As the coup de grâce, he posted photographs of the party on Facebook, including a portrait of one nonplussed officer.

While this party would require that you actually monitor underage drinking, reading the next police log in the school newspaper would make up for it.  They key to having this party would be to stir up lots of gossip around campus so that the campus police hear about it beforehand and think they have another opportunity to bust another unsuspecting group of underage drinkers.  You might get hit with a noise violation, but other than that, I'm pretty sure eating cake is legal in most states, and while the repricussions of eating too much sugar might hurt your tummy, it's much better than the feeling you get after spending too much time standing around the keg.  Turning down an invitation to this party would essentially be admitting that you don't have a soul; come on, does anyone not enjoy eating cake?  

Silent Rave:  Though your school might pride itself on diversity, chances are most of the students you see around campus aren't much different than you.  The average college student mooches off their parents enough to be able to afford an iPod, but most of the time they are used in solidarity, as a way to make their walk to class feel more like a scene in a movie.  Sure, you plug it into your speakers when you have a party, but too often this results in a click-wheel war between the girls who just want to dance to Lady GaGa and the ones who want to hear Flo Rida's latest hit.  I propose that before you graduate you should come together with your peers and celebrate the fact that your parents make enough that you can buy an iPod with money that isn't actually yours.  All you have to do is send out a playlist for people to load onto their iPod and make sure that everyone brings headphones.  Just look at how cool you'll look to someone who didn't get the memo:

<object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/Dxem_KtrAzg&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/Dxem_KtrAzg&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object>