Education

English 44A
SMU
Creative Writing
Prof Miller

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 reread 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.

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.

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.

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.

Little did she know, but she has 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!"

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

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

You total $*&.

Stupid %&#$!.

---

[exerpted from "The Collected Works of Chris Welty" by Chris Welty. The events described here are slightly embellished versions of the true story of his graduation.]

Many many many years ago, I finally finished my Master's Project. It had always been a sore point, a dark cloud hanging over my head, and I finally sat down and handed something in. Done, complete, history. What a relief. Of course, just to check on everything, I went down to the Pitts (for the benefit of those non-RPI readers, this is the place where all our administration is housed - the `Pittsburgh Building', known fondly as `The Pitts') to check that all things were going smoothly with my diploma and my impending graduation to `Master.' Faint strains of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony echoed in the background as the registrar said, "I'm sorry, but there is a Bursar hold on your diploma."

My bright, cheerful, expression dropped. Of course - an administrative failure. "Why?" I asked in desperation. "I don't know, you'll have to go to the Bursar's office. Next!"

So I ventured down into the dismal darkness of the sub-basement (no wonder these people are so cheerful) where the Bursar's office is located. "You have outstanding tuition due from the Spring semester." "But I'm staff, I don't PAY for courses." "Go see Human Resources. Next!"

Human resources, ask any employee about them. Sure, they had it in for us, and now they were getting me back for not reading the `Human Resources Bulletin.' HRO is located BELOW the Bursar's office, so you can imagine how happy and peppy they are there. "I swear I filled out the proper form for employee scholarship for Spring, but the Bursar tells me I still owe money for tuition." After disappearing into the vault of employee records for a few minutes, the little gnome reappeared, "We have your form on record. You shouldn't owe anything. Here's you receipt. Next!"

Could it be HRO was not against me? Carrying my RECEIPT like a victory banner, I marched into the Bursar's cellar and declared, "Ha! I DID fill out the proper form and should have all tution waived." The receptionist frowned in apparent defeat. "Wait here," she said. Going to call in the big guns. I shifted the receipt from banner to shield. Out came the associate assistant undersecretary to the bursar. "You are registered for THREE courses this semester, staff scholarship only pays for TWO. You owe us for the other one." An evil smile began to creep onto her face. "But I'm only taking two courses this semester." "Then go see the registrar. Next!"

The registrar was at least helpful, "Our computer is down. You'll have to come back in about half an hour." So I came back. "You are registered for three courses," she said. "But I dropped one of those," I replied. "Did you keep your receipt?" She shook her head in response to my blank stare. "Next!"

I walked dejectedly back to my office at the top of the hill, like a recursive program I was back at the top, yet there was no solution in sight. On a desperate whim, I checked to see if I had retained my drop receipt. Defying all known laws of chance and Murphy, I found it, tucked neatly in a file labeled "RPI Admin." Once again my expression retained a tinge of triumph, as I proceeded down the hill again and into pergatory. This time, with experience behind me, my banner was not flying so high.

"I have here a receipt that I dropped that third course," I declared to the registrar person. "Hmmm. So you do, hmmmm...." After conferring with the rest of the Registrar staff, each of whom would shrug, look at me, and shake their head, she said "You'll have to go see Jenny, right through that door. Next!"

Jenny. I turned slowly towards the infamous doors that led to "Jenny's Office". Jenny. Dread crept into my heart and slowly spread up and down my spine. Jenny. I've seen the horror in the faces of students sentenced to "see Jenny." Many have even gone to community college rather than meet this fate. I took a deep breath, and swallowing my fears, stepped through the doors and into the back rooms of the registrar's office. This is the place where the decisions about people's very lives were made. There were screams audible in the distance, and the foul, dank stench of death was hanging in the air like an ominous warning to any who dared walk these halls. My drop reciept, my only reminder that there was life outside, shown like a beacon as I crept through the passage into the dark room known only as "Jenny's Office".

"I have a receipt here saying I dropped a course but I am still registered for it and the Bursar is hold..." She held out her hand, signalling me to shut up, and I reluctantly surrendered my drop reciept. "Uh huh," she nodded. "Hmmm. Ahh, hmmmm," she mumbled. "Well, there it is." "Eh?" I responded, quizzically. "Right there," she pointed at the numbers on my drop receipt. "You filled in the zero instead of the one box, so the scanner dropped you from another course. Let me fix that for you." Her fingers went flying over the keyboard, and then she said, "You're all set." Still too stunned to accept this result, I managed to say, "The bursar has a hold on my diploma because they want me to pay for that extra..." She pulled out a memo pad and wrote a memo to the Bursar saying I was only registered for two courses this semester.

Sunlight came streaming in the windows as the heavenly host descended on the office, singing joyous and awe-inspiring melodies of triumph and glory, and pushing the odor of death away. Momentary thoughts like, "Gee, doesn't the software check if I'm actually registered for a class before it drops me?" and so on were dispelled by the multitude of voices singing in perfect harmony around me. As if completely unaware of this, she held the memo out with her signature and calmly said, "Next!"

With the chorus of angels behind me, I once again delved into the depths of hell, and arriving at the Bursar's office, I held out the memo, which radiated a light as pure as gold. The receptionist, also seemingly completely unaware of the choir, which was now doing the choral section of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, ("Ode to Joy"), quickly signed a memo releasing the Bursar Hold on my diploma, actually smiled in response to my "Thank You", which was barely audible over the majestic German verses, and said, ever so nicely, "Next!"

---

MORE EXCERPTS FROM STUDENT SCIENCE EXAM PAPERS:

    Charles Darwin was a naturalist who wrote the organ of the species.

    Benjamin Franklin produced electricity by rubbing cats backwards.

    The theory of evolution was greatly objected to because it made man think.

    The dodo is a bird that is almost decent by now.

    To remove air from a flask, fill it with water, tip the water out, and put the cork in quick before the air can get
     back in.

    The process of turning steam back into water again is called conversation.

    A magnet is something you find crawling all over a dead cat.

    The Earth makes one resolution every 24 hours.

    The cuckoo bird does not lay his own eggs.

    To prevent conception when having intercourse, the male wears a condominium.

    Parallel lines never meet, unless you bend one or both of them.

    Algebraical symbols are used when you do not know what you are talking about.

    Geometry teaches us to bisex angles.

    A circle is a line which meets its other end without ending.

    Artificial insemination is when the farmer does it to the cow instead of the bull.

    An example of animal breeding is the farmer who mated a bull that gave a great deal of milk 
    with a bull with good meat.

    We believe that the reptiles came from the amphibians by spontaneous generation and study of rocks.

    English sparrows and starlings eat the farmers grain and soil his corpse.

    By self-pollination, the farmer may get a flock of long-haired sheep.

    If conditions are not favorable, bacteria go into a period of adolescence.

    Vegetative propagation is the process by which one individual manufactures another individual by accident.

    A triangle which has an angle of 135 degrees is called an obscene triangle.

    A person should take a bath once in the summer, and not quite so often in the winter.

    The hookworm larvae enters the human body through the soul.

    When you haven't got enough iodine in your blood you get a glacier.

    It is a well-known fact that a deceased body harms the mind.

    Humans are more intelligent than beasts because the human branes have more convulsions.

    For fainting: rub the person's chest, or if a lady, rub her arm above the hand instead.

    For fractures: to see if the limb is broken, wiggle it gently back and forth.

    For dog bite: put the dog away for several days. If he has not recovered, then kill it.

    For nosebleed: put the nose much lower than the body.

    For drowning: climb on top of the person and move up and down to make artificial perspiration.

    To remove dust from the eye, pull the eye down over the nose.

    For head colds: use an agonizer to spray the nose until it drops in your throat.

    For snakebites: bleed the wound and rape the victim in a blanket for shock.

    For asphyxiation: apply artificial respiration until the patient is dead.

    Before giving a blood transfusion, find out if the blood is affirmative or negative.

    Bar magnets have north and south poles, horseshoe magnets have east and west poles.

    When water freezes you can walk on it. That is what Christ did long ago in wintertime.

---

A high school English teacher reminds her class of tomorrow's final exam.

She tells the class there would be no excuse for not showing up, except for serious injury or illness, or a death in the student's immediate family.

A smart-ass jock in the back of the room asks, "What about extreme sexual exhaustion?"

The entire class does its best to stifle their laughter and snickering.

When silence is restored, the teacher smiles sympathetically at the student, shakes her head, and sweetly says,

"Not an excuse. Write with your other hand."

---

                       City of Los Angeles
                 High School Math Proficiency Exam

Name:_______________________________    Gang:___________________________

 1. Johnny has an AK-47 with an 80-round clip.  If he misses 6
    out of 10 shots and shoots 13 times at each drive-by
    shooting, how many drive-by shootings can he attempt before
    he has to reload?

 2. Jose has 2 ounces of cocaine and he sells an 8-ball to
    Jackson for $320 and 2 grams to Billy for $85 per gram.
    What is the street value of the balance of the cocaine if he
    doesn't cut it?

 3. Rufus is pimping for three girls.  If the price is $65 for
    each trick, how many tricks will each girl have to turn so
    Rufus can pay for his $800-per-day crack habit?

 4. Jarone want to cut his 1/2 pound of heroin to make 20% more
    profit.  How many ounces of cut will he need?

 5. Willie gets $200 for stealing a BMW, $50 for a Chevy, and
    $100 for a 4X4.  If he has stolen 2 BMWs, 3 4X4s, how many
    Chevies will he have to steal to make $800?

 6. Raoul is in prison for 6 years for murder.  He got $10,000
    for the hit.  If his common law wife is spending $100 per
    month, how much money will be left when he gets out of
    prison and how many years will he get for killing the bitch
    that spent his money?

 7. If the average spray can covers 22 square feet and the
    average letter is 3 square feet, how many letters can a
    tagger spray with 3 cans of paint?

 8. Hector knocked up 6 girls in his gang.  There are 27 girls
    in the gang.  What percentage of the girls in the gang has
    Hector knocked up?

 9. Thelma can cook dinner for her 16 children for $7.50 per night.  She
    gets $234 a month welfare for each child.  If her $325 per month
    rent goes up 15%, how many more children should she have to keep up
    with her expenses?

 10. Salvador was arrested for dealing crack and his bail was set at
     $25,000. If he pays a bail bondsman 12% and returns to Mexico, how
     much money will he lose by jumping bail?

---

From a (successful) college application essay:

I am a dynamic figure, often seen scaling walls and crushing ice. I have been known to remodel train stations on my lunch breaks, making them more efficient in the area of heat retention. I translate ethnic slurs for Cuban refugees, I write award-winning operas, I manage time efficiently. Occasionally, I tread water for three days in a row. I woo women with my sensuous and godlike trombone playing, I can pilot bicycles up severe inclines with unflagging speed, and I can cook Thirty-Minute Brownies in twenty minutes. I am an expert in stucco, a veteran in love, and an outlaw in Peru. Using only a hoe and a large glass of water, I once single-handedly defended a small village in the Amazon Basin from a horde of ferocious army ants. I play bluegrass cello, I was scouted by the Mets. I am the subject of numerous documentaries. When I'm bored, I build large suspension bridges in my yard. I enjoy urban hang gliding. On Wednesdays, after school, I repair electrical appliances free of charge. I am an abstract artist, a concrete analyst, and a ruthless bookie. Critics worldwide swoon over my original line of corduroy evening wear. I don't perspire. I am a private citizen, yet I receive fan mail. I have been caller number nine and have won the weekend passes. Last summer I toured New Jersey with a traveling centrifugal-force demonstration. I bat .400. My deft floral arrangements have earned me fame in international circles. Children trust me. I can hurl tennis rackets at small moving objects with deadly accuracy. I once read Paradise Lost, Moby Dick, and David Copperfield in one day and still had time to refurbish an entire dining room that evening. I know the exact location of every food item in the supermarket. I have performed covert operations for the CIA. I sleep once a week; when I do sleep, I sleep in a chair. While on vacation in Canada, I successfully negotiated with a group of terrorists who had seized a small bakery. The laws of physics do not apply to me. I balance, I weave, I dodge, I frolic, and my bills are all paid. On weekends, to let off steam, I participate in full-contact origami. Years ago I discovered the meaning of life but forgot to write it down. I have made extraordinary four-course meals using only a Mouli and a toaster oven. I breed prize-winning clams. I have won bullfights in San Juan, cliff-diving competitions in Sri Lanka, and spelling bees at the Kremlin. I have played Hamlet, I have performed open-heart surgery, and I have spoken with Elvis.

---

\title{Scsh Reference Manual}
\subtitle{For Scsh release 0.3 \\
December 25, 1994}
\author{Olin Shivers and Brian D.~Carlstrom}
\date{12/94}\chapter*{Acknowledgements}

Who should I thank?
My so-called ``colleagues,'' who laugh at me behind my back,
all the while becoming famous on {\em my\/} work?
My worthless graduate students, whose computer skills appear to
be limited to downloading bitmaps off of netnews?
My parents, who are still waiting for me to quit ``fooling around with
computers,'' go to med school, and become a radiologist?
My department chairman, a manager who gives one new insight into
and sympathy for disgruntled postal workers?

My God, no one could blame me---no one!---if I went off the edge and just
lost it completely one day.
I couldn't get through the day as it is without the Prozac and Jack Daniels
I keep on the shelf, behind my Tops-20 JSYS manuals.
I start getting the shakes real bad around 10am, right before my
advisor meetings. A 10 oz.\ Jack 'n Zac helps me get through the
meetings without one of my students winding up with his severed head
in a bowling-ball bag. They look at me funny; they think I twitch a
lot. I'm not twitching. I'm controlling my impulse to snag my 9mm
Sig-Sauer out from my day-pack and make a few strong points about
the quality of undergraduate education in Amerika.

If I thought anyone cared, if I thought anyone would even be reading this, I'd probably make an effort to keep up appearances until the last possible moment. But no one does, and no one will. So I can pretty much say exactly what I think.

Oh, yes, the {\em acknowledgements.}
I think not. I did it. I did it all, by myself.
\begin{flushright}
\begin{tabular}{l}
Olin Shivers \\
Cambridge \\
September 4, 1994
\end{tabular}
\end{flushright}