In Class Assignment at SMU

Remember the book "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus?" Well, here's a prime example offered by an English professor at Southern Methodist University:
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 other 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. The following was actually turned in by two of my  English students, Rebecca and Gary. "
At first, Laurie couldn't decide which kind of tea she wanted. The chamomile, 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 chamomile. 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 chamomile 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 had less than 10 seconds to live. Thousands of miles above the city, the Au'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.
Asshole.
Bitch.

Really Dumb People

The incredibly dumb ATT fired President John Walter after nine months, saying he lacked intellectual leadership". He received a $26 million severance package. Perhaps it's not Walter who's lacking intelligence.
Police in Oakland, California spent two hours attempting to subdue a gunman who had barricaded himself inside his home. After firing ten tear gas canisters, officers discovered that the man was standing beside them, shouting please to come out and give himself up.
An Illinois man pretending to have a gun, kidnapped a motorist and forced him to drive to two different automated teller machines. The kidnapper then proceeded to withdraw money from his own bank accounts.
A 9-year-old boy in Manassas, Virginia received a one-day suspension under his elementary school's drug policy last week - for Certs! Joey Hoeffer allegedly told a classmate that the mints would make him "jump higher."
A student in Belle, West Virginia was suspended for three days for giving a classmate a cough drop. School principal Forest Mann reiterated the school's "zero-tolerance" policy...not to be confused with the "zero-intelligence" policy.
Fire investigators on Maui have determined the cause of a blaze that destroyed a $127,000 home last month - a short in the homeowner's newly installed fire prevention alarm system.
"This is even worse than last year," said the distraught homeowner, "when someone broke in and stole my new security system..."

Student Bloopers - Part II!

This is a collection of actual student bloopers collected by teachers from 8th grade through college.

• The greatest writer of the Renaissance was William Shakespeare. He was born in the year 1564, supposedly on his birthday.
• He never made much money and is famous only because of his plays.
• He wrote tragedies, comedies, and hysterectomies, all in Islamic pentameter.
• Romeo and Juliet are an example of a heroic couplet.
• Romeo's last wish was to be laid by Juliet.
• Writing at the same time as Shakespeare was Miguel Cervantes. He wrote Donkey Hote. The next great author was John Milton. Milton wrote Paradise Lost. Then his wife died and he wrote Paradise Regained.
• One of the causes of the Revolutionary War was the English put tacks in their tea. Also, the colonists would send their parcels through the post without stamps. Finally the colonists won the War and no longer had to pay for taxis.
• Delegates from the original 13 states formed the Contented Congress.
• Thomas Jefferson, a Virgin, and Benjamin Franklin were two singers of the Declaration of Independence. Franklin discovered electricity by rubbing two cats backwards and declared, "A horse divided against itself cannot stand." Franklin died in 1790 and is still dead.
• Abraham Lincoln became America's greatest Precedent. Lincoln's mother died in infancy, and he was born in a log cabin which he built with his own hands. Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves by signing the Emasculation Proclamation. On the night of April 14, 1865, Lincoln went to the theater and got shot in his seat by one of the actors in a moving picture show. The believed assinator was John Wilkes Booth, a supposingly insane actor. This ruined Booth's career.
• Johann Bach wrote a great many musical compositions and had a large number of children. In between he practiced on an old spinster which he kept up in his attic. Bach died from 1750 to the present. Bach was the most famous composer in the world and so was Handel. Handel was half German half Italian and half English. He was very large.
• Beethoven wrote music even though he was deaf. He was so deaf he wrote loud music. He took long walks in the forest even when everyone was calling for him. Beethoven expired in 1827 and later died for this.
• Louis Pasteur discovered a cure for rabbis.
• Charles Darwin was a naturalist who wrote the Organ of the Species.
• Madman Curie discovered radio.
• And Karl Marx became one of the Marx brothers.
• The First World War, caused by the assignation of the Arch-Duck by an anahist, ushered in a new error in the anals of human history.