November 04, 2009

Old. old joke (repost)

Think of a repost as a rerun of an episode of a much beloved television series. Or not. Whatever.
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I first saw this on rec.humor eons ago. Not exactly sure what made me think of it, but I couldn't resist posting it.

By the way, don't take too seriously the "it's real" part.


Tandem Writing Assignment

The following is a true story received from an English professor.

You know that book "Men are from Mars, Women from Venus"? Well, here's a prime example of that. This assignment was actually turned in by two of my English students: Rebecca (last name deleted) and Gary (last name deleted).

First, the Assignment:

English 44A
SMU
Creative Writing
Prof. Miller

In-Class Assignment for Wednesday:
Today we will experiment with a new form called the tandem story. The process is simple. Each person will pair off with the person sitting to his or her immediate right. One of you will then write the first paragraph of a short story. The partner will read the first paragraph and then add another paragraph to the story. The first person will then add a third paragraph, and so on back and forth.

Remember to re-read what has been written each time in order to keep the story coherent. The story is over when both agree a conclusion has been reached.

And now, the Assignment as submitted by Rebecca & Gary:

Rebecca starts:

At first, Laurie couldn't decide which kind of tea she wanted. The camomile, which used to be her favorite for lazy evenings at home, now reminded her too much of Carl, who once said, in happier times, that he liked camomile. But she felt she must now, at all costs, keep her mind off Carl. His possessiveness was suffocating, and if she thought about him too much her asthma started acting up again. So camomile was out of the question.

Gary:

Meanwhile, Advance Sergeant Carl Harris, leader of the attack squadron now in orbit over Skylon 4, had more important things to think about than the neuroses of an air-headed asthmatic bimbo named Laurie with whom he had spent one sweaty night over a year ago. "A.S. Harris to Geostation 17," he said into his transgalactic communicator. "Polar orbit established. No sign of resistance so far...". But before he could sign off a bluish particle beam flashed out of nowhere and blasted a hole through his ship's cargo bay. The jolt from the direct hit sent him flying out of his seat and across the cockpit.

Rebecca:

He bumped his head and died almost immediately, but not before he felt one last pang of regret for psychically brutalizing the one woman who had ever had feelings for him. Soon afterwards, Earth stopped its pointless hostilities towards the peaceful farmers of Skylon 4. "Congress Passes Law Permanently Abolishing War and Space Travel." Laurie read in her newspaper one morning. The news simultaneously excited her and bored her. She stared out the window, dreaming of her youth -- when the days had passed unhurriedly and carefree, with no newspapers to read, no television to distract her from her sense of innocent wonder at all the beautiful things around her. "Why must one lose one's innocence to become a woman?" she pondered wistfully.

Gary:

Little did she know, but she had less than 10 seconds to live. Thousands of miles above the city, the Anu'udrian mothership launched the first of its lithium fusion missiles. The dim-witted wimpy peaceniks who pushed the Unilateral Aerospace Disarmament Treaty through Congress had left earth a defenseless target for the hostile alien empires who were determined to destroy the human race. Within two hours after the passage of the treaty the Anu'udrian ships were on course for Earth, carrying enough firepower to pulverize the entire planet. With no one to stop them, they swiftly initiated their diabolical plan. The lithium fusion missile entered the atmosphere unimpeded. The President, in his top-secret mobile submarine headquarters on the ocean floor off the coast of Guam, felt the inconceivably massive explosion which vaporized Laurie and 85 million other Americans. The President slammed his fist on the conference table. "We can't allow this! I'm going to veto that treaty! Let's blow 'em out of the sky!"

Rebecca:

This is absurd. I refuse to continue this mockery of literature. My writing partner is a violent, chauvinistic, semi-literate adolescent.

Gary:

Yeah? Well, you're a self-centered tedious neurotic whose attempts at writing are the literary equivalent of Valium.

Rebecca:

Asshole.

Gary:

Bitch.

My guess is that they have 5 children now.

Posted by: Physics Geek at 02:48 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
Post contains 769 words, total size 5 kb.

1 the last line when i read it several years ago made me lol (TEACHER) A+ - I really liked this one. Only group to get an A

Posted by: deadcenter at November 04, 2009 05:05 PM (oUaBK)

2 Love it. I emailed your link to a couple of friends and one responded - I suggest this as a more appropriate ending: Of course, being a Democrat, his actions were too little, too late. While he had stuck his finger in the air gauging public opinion and had his Chief of Staff commission countless polls, the Anu'udrians had been busy. So what if they had to enter the earth's atmosphere illegally? There was plenty of precedent to believe that the Dems would try to put them on the voter rolls rather than expel them, so they forged on with their diabolical scheme. They had successfully borked Harris by linking him to Sarah Palin, so his demise was a mere technicality. As their ship hurtled through space towards the blue planet, their leader gave the command and the second lithium fusion missle streaked towards America's capital city. At that precise moment, the President gazed through the bulletproof glass of the Oval Office and was terrified at the realization that the flame streaking towards him was the tail of the missile. "Shit," he said to himself, "the Republicans were right. Why was I such a wimp?" A moment later he was pulverized as Anu'udrian weapon found its target. The American experiment was over. The Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave was now an ashheap, having fallen to the enemy because Congress and the President did not have the cojones to do the right thing but preferred instead to cave to the radical left who insisted that we could indeed buy the world a Coke and sing Kumbaya in perfect harmony. I replied: Sarah Palin unexpectedly rose from the ashheap like a phoenix, wielding a strange weapon cobbled together from spare snowmobile parts by a team of Alaskans in a fit of patriotic ingenuity when they'd seen what a pantywaist the President was*. The ghost of Ronald Reagan appeared, glowing with the hope and optimism he had not just talked about in soaring rhetoric, but backed up by acting as though he actually believed America was worth defending. "You can do it, Sarah! No arsenal or no weapon in the arsenals of the world is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women. They counted on America to be passive. They counted wrong.** " Sarah's jaw set, she aimed carefully, and with a quick prayer, pulled the trigger. The weapon emitted a beam of light that vaporized the Anu'udrian ship. The rest of the Anu'udrian fleet collectively wet their pants and flew home at Warp 9, leaving a beacon orbiting Earth that proclaimed, "Don't screw with these people. They'll mess you up. Seriously." Palin was elected President by popular acclaim, and although Washington remained a slag heap thanks to the lithium fusion missile, nobody really missed it. *The Brit press really has called him President Pantywaist. Truth is stranger than fiction, eh? **actual Reagan quotes. Well, except the Sarah part.

Posted by: Laura at November 05, 2009 04:40 PM (96l0v)

3 Laura, I think that I'll have to update my post with that gem. Mheh.

Posted by: physics geek at November 09, 2009 08:39 AM (MT22W)

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