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Worth the call! This is hilarious AND disturbing.
Call the following number: (704) 377-4444. When the recording comes on, hit extension 1955. Then listen. The voice you'll hear belongs to a guy who reads the school lunch menu for kids in Charlotte, North Carolina, and he is completely out of his gourd. A true blue loon. But be patient. For the first minute or so, he sounds relatively normal. Then, all of a sudden, he starts reading the items on the school menu -- French fries, green beans, hot dogs -- and the effect is deeply disturbing. So disturbing that the guy is becoming a cult figure in New York media circles.
Yo Mama's so Stupid...
She spent twenty minutes lookin' at an orange juice box because it said 'concentrate'.
She has one toe and bought a pair of flip flops.
She put lipstick on her forehead because she wanted to makeup her mind.
She got stabbed in a shoot-out.
She told me to meet her at the corner of "Walk" and "Don't Walk".
When the computer said "Press any key to continue", she couldn't find the "Any" key.
She thought 2Pac Shakur was a Jewish holiday.
When I was drowning and yelled for a life saver, she said "cherry or grape?"
She tried to put M&M's in alphabetical order.
She sat on the TV and watched the couch.
She thought St. Ides was a Catholic church.
She sent me a fax with a stamp on it.
She was on the corner giving out potato chips yellin' "Free- Lays!"
She tried to drown a fish.
She thought a quarterback was a refund.
If you gave her a penny for her intelligence, you'd get change.
They had to burn down the school to get her out of third grade.
She took a spoon to the Super Bowl.
Under "Education" on her job application, she put "Hooked on Phonics".
She thinks socialism means partying.
She tripped over a cordless phone.
She took a ruler to bed to see how long she slept.
At the bottom of the application where it ways "Sign Here" she put Sagittarius.
She asked for a price check at the dollar store.
It takes her 2 hours to watch 60 minutes.
If she spoke her mind, she'd be speechless.
She stands up on an empty bus.
She studied for a blood test and failed.
She died before the police arrived because she couldn't find the "11" button in "9-1-1".
She thought Boyz II Men was a daycare center.
She thought Hamburger Helper came with another person.
She thought Meow Mix was a record for cats.
She thought she needed a token to get on Soul Train.
She invented a solar powered flashlight.
She sold the car for gas money.
When she saw the "NC-17" (Under 17 not admitted) sign, she went home to get 16 friends.
When she heard 90% of all crimes occur around the home, she moved.
She went to Dr. Dre for a pap smear.
She thinks Taco Bell is where you pay your phone bill.
She ordered a cheeseburger from McDonald's and said, "Hold the cheese".
When she missed the 44 bus, she took the 22 twice instead.
When she took you to the airport and saw a sign that said, "Airport left", she turned around and went home.
She peels M&M's to make chocolate chip cookies.
She got locked in Furniture World and slept on the floor.
Subject: The Grad Student
You might be a grad student if:
...you can identify universities by their internet domains.
...you are constantly looking for a thesis in novels.
...you have difficulty reading anything that doesn't have footnotes.
...you understand jokes about Foucault.
...the concept of free time scares you.
...you consider caffeine to be a major food group.
...you've ever brought books with you on vacation and actually studied.
...Saturday nights spent studying no longer seem weird.
...the professor doesn't show up to class and you discuss the readings
anyway.
...you've ever traveled across two state lines specifically to go to a
library.
...you appreciate the fact that you get to choose 'which' twenty hours
out of the day you have to work.
...you still feel guilty about giving students low grades (you'll get over
it).
...you can read course books and cook at the same time.
...you schedule events for academic vacations so your friends can come.
...you hope it snows during spring break so you can get more studying in.
...you've ever worn out a library card.
...you find taking notes in a park relaxing.
...you find yourself citing sources in conversation.
...you've ever sent a personal letter with footnotes.
Subject: Reading between the Lines
Subject: When professors say this . . . They really mean this . . .
* This needs some minor revision.
I never actually got around to reading this.
* My office hours are by appointment only.
I like to get out of here early.
* Ten percent of your grade is based on class participation.
I'll be fudging your grades.
* This won't be on the test.
Nap time!
* Bring the text to class.
I don't have a clue how to lecture -- we'll just kill time with group read-alongs.
* He's not fully up to speed on that.
He's got his head up his ass.
* I don't have the latest department guidelines. . .
I've got my head up my ass.
* Let's check with Dr. So-and-so on that before we proceed. . .
I've got my head up HIS ass.
* Talk to the department secretary.
Fuck off.
* Talk to me in my office after class.
Get out of my face.
* The tests will all be multiple-choice.
I take questions directly from the study guide and have grad students do
all my grading.
* Don't come in late during my lecture.
I have the attention span of a fruit fly.
* Save your questions until the end.
See above.
* The final will be comprehensive.
I'll expect you to recapitulate in two hours everything I couldn't fully
cover myself in 15 weeks.
* Everyone will prepare in-class oral presentations.
This course is outside my specialty -- I'll just bluff it and let YOU teach.
* There are two TA's available to help you.
I can't be bothered.
* This year I'll be scaling the grades.
I just passed tenure review.
* Let's break up into quiet discussion groups.
I have a hangover.
* Let's have class outdoors today!
I had beans for lunch.
* You won't be able to sell back the text to the bookstore.
My contract wasn't picked up.
* Please note the last day to withdraw.
The midterm's gonna suck.
* The answer to number 4 is "b," and just skip number 17.
I only got around to making up the test last night.
* The second list is optional reading.
I have a rich fantasy life.
* I haven't had a chance to make up the syllabus for this course yet.
The asshole department chair stuck me with teaching this course at the
last possible minute.
* Well, it was on the syllabus.
I'll hold you responsible for this even though I forgot about it myself.
* We'll just skip the term paper this semester.
There wasn't enough in the budget for a TA.
* Bring a number 2 pencil to the exam.
See above.
* Attendance is required and will be counted in your grade.
I'm so boring that no one would show up otherwise
* Read chapters 5 through 10.
I'm not coming in at all next week
* We'll have to cover this chapter quickly.
I fucked up the lecture schedule.
* Let's go over the exam.
Half of you failed.
* It was in the textbook.
I pulled it out of my ass.
* Extra credit is available
I need some shit work done
* I'm postponing today's exam.
There's stuff on the exam I forgot to cover.
* Don't write on the question sheet.
I'm so lazy I just use the same exams every semester.
Subject: Chickens
WHY DID THE CHICKEN CROSS THE ROAD?
Plato:
For the greater good.
Karl Marx:
It was a historical inevitability.
Timothy Leary:
Because that's the only kind of trip the Establishment would let it take.
Nietzsche:
Because if you gaze too long across the Road, the Road gazes also across
you.
Oliver North:
National Security was at stake.
Carl Jung:
The confluence of events in the cultural gestalt necessitated that individual
chickens cross roads at this historical juncture, and therefore synchronicitously
brought such occurrences into being.
Jean-Paul Sartre:
In order to act in good faith and be true to itself, the chicken found
it necessary to cross the road.
Albert Einstein:
Whether the chicken crossed the road or the road crossed the chicken depends
upon your frame of reference.
Aristotle:
To actualize its potential.
Darwin:
Ralph Waldo Emerson:
It didn't cross the road; it transcended it.
Johann Friedrich von Goethe:
The eternal hen-principle made it do it.
Ernest Hemingway:
To die. In the rain.
Werner Heisenberg:
We are not sure which side of the road the chicken was on, but it was moving
very fast.
Saddam Hussein:
This was an unprovoked act of rebellion and we were quite justified in
dropping 50 tons of nerve gas on it.
Henry David Thoreau:
To live deliberately ... and to suck all the marrow out of life.
Mark Twain:
The news of its crossing has been greatly exaggerated.
Joseph Stalin:
I don't care. Catch it. Cook it for my dinner.
Captain James T. Kirk:
To boldly go where no chicken has gone before.
Machiavelli:
Moses:
And God came down from the heavens, and he said unto the Chicken, "Thou
shalt cross the road." And the Chicken crossed the road, and there
was much rejoicing.
Fox Mulder:
You saw it cross the road with your own eyes. How many more chickens have
to cross the road before you believe it?
Richard M. Nixon:
The chicken did not cross the road. I repeat, the chicken did *not* cross
the road
Jerry Seinfeld:
Why does anyone cross a road? I mean, why doesn't anyone ever think to
ask, "What the heck was this 'chicken' doing walking around all over
the place anyway?"
Freud:
The fact that you are at all concerned that the chicken crossed the road
reveals your underlying insecurity.
Bill Gates:
I have just released the new Chicken Office 2000, which conforms to industry
standards and will not only cross roads, but it will lay eggs, file your
important documents AND balance your checkbook.
Unfortunately, when it divides 3 by 2 it gets 1.4999999999.
Oliver Stone:
The question is not "Why did the chicken cross the road?" But
is rather "Who was crossing the road at the same time, whom we overlooked
in our haste to observe the chicken crossing?"
Martin Luther King, Jr.:
I envision a world where all chickens will be free to cross roads without
having their motives called into question.
Grandpa:
In my day, we didn't ask why the chicken crossed the road. Someone told
us that the chicken had crossed the road and that was good enough for us.
Buddha:
Asking this question denies your own chicken nature.
Andersen Consultant:
Deregulation of the chicken's side of the road was threatening its dominant
market position. The chicken was faced with significant challenges to create
and develop the competencies required for the newly competitive market.
Andersen Consulting, in a partnering relationship with the client, helped
the chicken by rethinking its physical distribution strategy and implementation
processes. Using the Poultry Integration Model (PIM) Andersen helped the
chicken use its skills, methodologies, knowledge capital and experiences
to align the chicken's people, processes and technology in support of its
overall strategy within a Program Management framework. Andersen Consulting
convened a diverse cross-spectrum of road analysts and best chickens along
with Andersen consultants with deep skills in the transportation industry
to engage in a two-day itinerary of meetings in order to leverage their
personal knowledge capital, both tacit and explicit, and to enable them
to synergize with each other in order to achieve the implicit goals of
delivering and successfully architecting and implementing an enterprise-wide
value framework across the continuum of poultry cross-median processes.
The meeting was held in a park like setting enabling and creating an impactful
environment which was strategically based, industry-focused, and built
upon a consistent, clear, and unified market message and aligned with the
chicken's mission, vision, and core values. This was conducive towards
the creation of a total business integration solution. Andersen Consulting
helped the chicken change to become more successful.
Subject: Classified ads
These are clips of actual ads in newspapers:
Illiterate? Write today for free help.
Auto Repair Service. Free pick-up and delivery. Try us once, you'll never go anywhere again.
Our experienced Mom will care for your child. Fenced yard, meals and smacks included.
Dog for sale: eats anything and is fond of children.
Man wanted to work in dynamite factory. Must be willing to travel.
Stock up and save. Limit: one.
Semi-Annual after-Christmas Sale.
3-year old teacher needed for pre-school. Experience preferred.
Mixing bowl set designed to please a cook with round bottom for efficient beating.
Girl wanted to assist magician in cutting-off-head illusion. Blue Cross and salary.
Dinner Special -- Turkey $2.35; Chicken or Beef $2.25; Children $2.00
For sale: antique desk suitable for lady with thick legs and large drawers.
Now is your chance to have your ears pierced and get an extra pair to take home, too.
We do not tear your clothing with machinery. We do it carefully by hand.
For sale. Three canaries of undermined sex.
Great Dames for sale.
Have several very old dresses from grandmother in beautiful condition.
Tired of cleaning yourself. Let me do it.
Vacation Special: have your home exterminated. Get rid of aunts. Zap does the job in 24 hours.
Toaster: A gift that every member of the family appreciates. Automatically burns toast.
For Rent: 6-room hated apartment.
Man, honest. Will take anything.
Used Cars: Why go elsewhere to be cheated. Come here first.
Christmas tag-sale. Handmade gifts for the hard-to-find person.
Wanted: Hair cutter. Excellent growth potential.
Wanted. Man to take care of cow that does not smoke or drink.
Our bikinis are exciting. They are simply the tops.
Wanted. Widower with school age children requires person to assume general housekeeping duties. Must be capable of contributing to growth of family.
And now, the Superstore - unequaled in size, unmatched in variety unrivaled inconvenience.
We will oil your sewing machine and adjust tension in your home for $1.00.
Sung to the tune of Beauty and the Beast's "Be our guest"
Abbreviation glossary:
P: Professors
S1, S2, S3: Distinct students
S: Students in unison
TA: Teaching assistant
P: Mes chers tuition-payers, it is with deepest sadism and greatest
power that we welcome you this morning. And now, we require you to get
tense, let us pull up a chair, as the faculty proudly presents - your final!
P: Take your test
Take your test
Are you nervous? Are you stressed?
Summer's just around the corner now
We love this time the best
Physics laws
English lit.
Why, you'll never want to quit
What's the formula for vinyl?
Don't you love to take a final!
Classic film
Modern dance
All the kings and queens of France
You'll be writing with such energy and zest
Go on and take some blue books
You'll at least need two books
Take your test
Fake your test
Take your test
World War I
World War II
You'll be chugging Mountain Dew
As you scram back home to cram
And stay awake the whole night through
If you're here
And you're scared
Then you're prob'ly unprepared
Don't tell me about your party
You should study, Mr. Smarty
Distant stars
Shakespeare's plays
Let us run you through our maze.
S1: Did you ever get the feeling we're oppressed?
P: Don't question our regime
How could you dare blaspheme?
Now take your test
(You've BSed,
But you'd rather say you've "guessed")
Take your test
Take your test
Take your test
Life's all smiles and smirking
For a student who's not working
It's a gas without a class to load him down
Ah, those good old days way back in grade school
Suddenly he wants his cap and gown
While he's been busy learning
Curiosity's been burning
What's it like to have a minute to himself?
He won't know 'til after graduation
They came here so lazy
Now we're driving them all crazy!
S1: It's a test!
S2: It's a test
S3: This can't be! I still need rest!
P: You want sleep, you little creep?
That's very good. That's quite a jest
Ancient worlds
Complex math
And we won't withhold our wrath
Yes, we'll give you quite a beating
If we catch you while you're cheating
Chinese art
Civil E.
Anesthesiology
S3: Help me please! I'm having cardiac arrest!
S1: Somebody check his heart!
P: Then label every part!
It's on your test
S: That's our test?
P: That's your test
S: What a pest!
TA: Here's a test
There's a test
I'm so very much depressed
Have to grade each one of these in just a day
And I'm hard-pressed!
Biochem
Japanese
Why our "quarters" come in threes
While the deadline still is looming
I'll keep grading
I'll keep fuming
P: Course by course
One by one
'Til you shout, "This isn't fun!"
Then we'll laugh at every place that you digressed
We've done our best to pester
See you next semester!
Take your test
Take your test
Take your test
Now, take your test
Manfred Mickleson Applies for an 18th Century Lit. Job
The Association of Literary Scholars and Critics
We have had numerous requests for an authentic copy of the famous letter sent by Manfred Mickleson when seeking an appointment in 18th-century literature.
What makes Manfred amazing is that he is an imaginary candidate. He was created in a moment of sheer giddiness by several members of a search committee who had, collectively, just finished reading the dossiers of over one hundred candidates for an actual 18th-century position. Manfred is, therefore, more than a product of the ironic or satirical imagination. He is a kind of "composite candidate" representing the newest PhD's being produced by English graduate programs.
The other thing that makes Manfred amazing is that a number of the departments to whom he applied did not realize that he was an imaginary candidate. He received over forty dossier requests, and six invitations to be interviewed at the MLA convention. (We still have not learned whether or not, despite being unable to show up in person for his MLA interviews, Manfred received any actual offers.)
Dear Professor _______:
I am writing to apply for the position in Eighteenth-Century literature announced in the October MLA Job List. After having taken an M.A. at Cornell University, I am in the process of completing my dissertation -- "Commerce, Homosociality and the Engendering of the Body in Defoe and Wollstonecraft" -- under the direction of Terry Castle at Stanford University. This year, I am a visiting assistant professor of eighteenth-century literature at Wagenknecht University. I expect to defend my dissertation in March. The manuscript is under contract to Routledge. As my vita shows, I have given over forty papers at various conferences on literature and cultural studies in the last three years, and have articles under consideration at twelve scholarly journals. (A portion of the first chapter, "The 'Eeek' of Literary Sentimentalism: Does Eco Echo Eco?" will be published in PMLA this coming spring.) I also have several other book-length projects under contract to Verso, Methuen, and Cambridge University Press.
The argument of my dissertation, informed by current thinking in feminist theory, queer theory, cultural materialism, eco-criticism, and post-colonial studies, centers on the paradoxes of representation involving masculine authority and feminine desire in eighteenth-century pirate literature, and especially on sentimentalism as a response to the en(gender)ing of the patriarchal body -- which I see as epistemologically equivalent to the "body politic" in eighteenth-century political discourse -- in the figure of the (male) sailor in British oceanic commerce during the first age of imperial expansion. I argue that it is the absence of women from shipboard life that permits Defoe, in his History of the Pirates, to depict seagoing commerce in terms of a normative homosociality -- the all-male society of the quarter-deck and lower decks in both naval and commercial shipping -- such that piracy then embodies the eruption of a transgressive (and, implicitly, anti-imperialistic) sexuality demanding representation in altered or displaced terms in the "literature of the shore," including such genres as the periodical essay, the mock-heroic poem, and the sentimental novel. It is in the sentimental novel, I argue, that this displacement achieves autonomous status as itself a normative discourse, with a representation of emotions in terms of a "feminine" sensitivity operating to compensate for the violated fantasy of all-male sufficiency represented by the boarding or "penetration" of an East India galley or naval three-decker by a depredatory piracy.
Since the background of such scenes is the emergent society of Anglo-Caribbean commerce -- slavery is a leitmotif in many of the pirate narratives popular in Defoe's period -- I also see a proleptic post-colonialism at work in the system of paradoxes evident in the attempt to recuperate African-Americans -- then, of course, not yet Americans, as "America" would not emerge as a cultural and political construction for a number of years -- as normatively transgressive figures in the portrayal both of Afro-Caribbean slave culture and as members of pirate crews.
My most controversial point, I think, concerns the way literary sentimentalism -- I have in mind not only such major writers as Charlotte Lennox and Mrs. Inchbald, but such male writers as Henry Mackenzie and Laurence Sterne -- operates as a compensatory mechanism for the "violated" homosociality of the shipboard crew assaulted by pirates. Far from representing an empowering domesticity, as Nancy Armstrong and other leading eighteenth-century scholars have argued, literary sentimentalism demands to be viewed as the representational equivalent of "the lower deck in drag," striving through a re-assertion of "feminine" sensitivity to reassert the equilibrium of an "onshore" heterosexuality symbolically and practically suspended when the ship leaves shore with an all-male crew.
The entire point of literary sentimentalism, from this perspective, is to insulate the world of normative homosociality from the otherwise disturbing effects of masculine desire represented by the pirate society that boards the "normal" vessel with its cutlasses in its teeth, which on a higher symbolic plane operates to protect the (implicitly masculinist or patriarchal) ideology of an emergent British military and commercial imperialism from destabilization or disruption.
In this sense, works like Sterne's A Sentimental Journey were not only complicit with, but actively agential in the development of, British imperialism in the period following the Seven Years' War. By protecting the normative body of the British mariner through a compensatory sentimentalism -- especially in the ideologically problematic context of Afro-Caribbean cultural development, with the slave figuring as neither "masculine" or "feminine" but as an always-potentially-disruptive 'Other' -- literature was simultaneously insulating the "body politic" of the new post-Hanoverian commercial order from potentially dangerous forms of accidental or unintended demystification.
The description of my dissertation as I have given it covers only part of its first chapter. The manuscript will culminate in a detailed discussion of Mary Wollstonecraft's Pirates of Penzance as a feminist re-appropriation of the piracy motif, together with an account of the masculinist or patriarchal suppression that would for many years result in this work's being attributed to Gilbert and Sullivan -- and does not mention the use made in subsequent portions of work by Foucault, Althusser, Lacan, Deleuze, Bourdieu, Gayatri Spivak, Edward Said, Judith Butler, and others. To grasp its full range, one would have to see a sample from the actual dissertation, which I would be very happy to send you.
I would also be very happy to send you a copy of my curriculum vitae, which contains full titles of my conference papers and articles under submission, plus a dossier containing letters from Terry Castle, John Bender, Jonathan Culler, Laura Brown, Felicity Nussbaum, Jonathan Arac, and Peter de Bolla.
I may perhaps add, without seeming too boastful, that in the short time I have been teaching here at Wagenknecht University, I have won several Most Exciting Teacher awards, including, most recently, a citation for my creative use of eighteenth-century maps and engineering sketches in my class on "Jolly Roger on the Turnpike," a freshman seminar on the development of the English road system and response to the figure of the pirate-turned-highwayman in eighteenth-century criminal trials. (Basically, I argue that the figure of the former pirate must be viewed in terms of a transgressive sexuality absent from depictions of the shore-based highwayman who, having begun his career on a horse and ended it in a halter, is able to function as an unproblematic ideological support for a depredatory imperialist commerce during the period of the East India monopoly. Several undergraduates have told me that this course changed their lives.)
I will be attending the MLA convention in December, and would be delighted to talk further with you there.
Sincerely,
Manfred J. Mickleson
Red neck humor
YOU MIGHT BE A REDNECK IF . . .
Truck Equipped with: ( ) 4-Wheel Drive ( ) Toothpick Holder ( ) Load
of Wood ( ) Hijacker Shocks ( ) Mud-grip Tires ( ) Big Dog ( ) Raccoon
Hide ( ) Spittoon ( ) Camper Top ( ) Mag Wheels ( ) Air Horns ( ) Mud Flaps
Number of Empty Beer Cans on Floor Board of Pickup: _________
Bumper Stickers: ( ) Eat More Possum ( ) Peanut Butter ( ) Honk if You
Love Jesus ( ) Wave if You're Horny ( ) Redman Chewing Tobacco
Does your truck have a part painted the official state color Primer Red?
( )
Define the following (Must be 90% correct): Grits _____ Muscadine _____ Cobbler _____ Tater ____ Goobers _____ Brogans _____ Fatback _____ Pig Skins ____ Collards _____ Redeye Gravy _____ Tote _____ Pinto Beans _____ Sidemeat _____ Sawmill Gravy _____ Poke _____ Turnip Salit _____ Chitlins _____ Soppin Syrup _____ Cracker _____ Shit-on-Shingle _____ Ramps _____
Favorite Vocalist: ( ) Donna Fargo ( ) Conway Twitty ( ) Loretta Lynn ( ) Hank Williams ( ) Elvis ( ) Slim Whitman ( ) Tammy Wynette ( ) Porter Wagoner ( ) Johnny Cash ( ) Willie Nelson ( ) George Jones ( ) Box Car Willie
Favorite Recreation: ( ) Square Dancin' ( ) Possum Huntin' ( ) Skinny Dippin' ( ) Craw Daddin' ( ) Gospel Singin' ( ) 4-Wheelin' ( ) Drankin' ( ) Bull Chip Throwin' ( ) Blue Grass Conventions ( ) Spitten' backy ( ) Other
Weapons Owned: ( ) Deer Rifle ( ) Bird Gun ( ) Varmit Rifle ( ) Chain Saw
Hat Emblem: ( ) John Deere ( ) CAT ( ) Budweiser ( ) McCulloch Chain Saw ( ) PBR ( ) NAPA ( ) Coors ( ) Skoal ( ) Confederate Flag ( ) Basagran
Number of Weeks Unemployed: __ Number of Welfare Checks Received: __
Number of Dependents (Legal): ______ (Claimed): ______
Memberships: ( ) KKK ( ) NRA ( ) Moose ( ) PTL Club ( ) VFW ( ) American
Legion ( ) Bass Club ( ) United Sons/Daughters of the Confederacy
Are you part of the Missouri Intelligentsia with a measurable IQ? ______
Last year you purchased shoes? ____
Have you ever stayed sober for a whole weekend? ______
Do you know any words that have more than 4 letters? ______
Signature (if any) _____________________________
Fill in as many blanks as you can and mail to:
Mayor's Office
c/o Tanglefoot Saloon
Festus, Missouri 63028
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