Recent update

Subscribe to RSS feed

Wisdom from the refrigerator

April 7th, 2009 by witherow

We have one of those magnetic word kits for our refrigerator. Here are some of the interesting statements that have somehow appeared …

Some day write the money      then spring me out late at night

Come hurt the graduate student

Inhale no other smoke     smell the one

I like my food loud

This athlete could use more school

Good sciency research borrows my brain

Pizza philosophy can let a jock skip life

Cram paper in roommate

Take all semester to study break dancing

Talk long      learn little       fail test

Make coffee soon after college

High time to give us a job

Smell every professor and you never need a friend

She too pout

Stay in library and cry

Better call this girl or her sister would hurt you

Blow mind here

Posted in Poetry that oughtn't, That's life | | | 0 Comments

The Great Birthday Caper

October 10th, 2008 by witherow

So … Steph neglected to remind us of her birthday last month. Because of this, we (her caring friends) decided to make her pay with an evil birthday scheme that put her powers of logic to the test! Bwahahahaha!

Ahem … But such an undertaking cannot be done without a lot of careful planning. Our first priority was, of course, to play mind games with our dear friend. This entailed telling Steph we were doing something for her birthday, not tell her what that something was, and then make a concerted effort to make her worry about it. *evil grin*

I made her a nice ransom note that read “StEPh—wE kNoW abOUT the biRThdaY. yOU WoN’T geT AwAY wiTh It. BwA-hA-Ha-ha-HA.”

Brian and Mike wrote some lovely email haiku, including:

What plans lie ahead?
Nothing but time can tell that
Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha

Tar and feathers? Worse!!
Birthday cakes with rocks? Better!!
Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha

It’s your destiny,
It is unavoidable
Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha

And our personal favorite:

Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha
Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha
Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha

Mel waxed philosophical:

A Birthday Formula for deep consideration: by Anonymous Party-goer

Birthday + Friends + Party = Good Birthday
Three holes we all can fall in:

Birthday + Friends – Party = Cheap Friends
Birthday + Party – Friends = Lonely Birthday
Birthday – Friends – Party = Travesty

One slight deviant off the Good Birthday…
Party + Friends – Birthday = Procrastinating, or perhaps simply impish Friends

Brian gave me a simply brilliant idea, in which I sent Steph link to a website renting out dunking tanks. A little while later, I emailed her back and said I really meant to send her a link to a picture of fuzzy kittens and that I hoped I hadn’t frightened her.

Steph was sufficiently worried, much to our delight.

So on Saturday morning, Steph arrived at my apartment. I answered the door wearing a trench coat and sunglasses and handed her a clue.


Me: “Agent Lucky, get in position. ETA 15 minutes.”

Steph successfully cracked the code and figured out the clue. It led us to Red Robin out on Woodruff Road, where we found her friend Rachel, waiting with a balloon and another clue.

This one led to P.F. Chang’s Chinese Bistro. where we found Brian, sitting under the giant horse statue and listening to his IPod.

He gave Stephanie a clever “Haiclu” to solve. Part of it read:

Perhaps you like clues,
Although I think that you don’t.
Nice time we’re having.

Eat bread with your friends,
Read stuff online with coffee.
Atlanta? Uh no!

You’ll notice that the first letters of the lines spell out “Panera,” as in Panera Bread, where we found Rebecca waiting with an evil “get the people across the river on the raft with impossibly hard conditions” puzzle on the Internet. And Steph actually solved it—and fast! (I tried a few times and couldn’t do it, so either Steph’s really smart, or I’m really … uh … wow, Steph sure is smart!)

The next stop was Barnes & Noble, in which Steph had a mini scavenger-hunt-within-a-scavenger-hunt, in which the names of certain authors and titles of books led her to spell out the next clue, leading us to Mike in the Snack Shop.

Mike had an unassembled puzzle of a deceptively cute baby polar bear licking his cute little paws. But when we assembled the puzzle, we found a hidden reference leading us to Performance Hall.

At Perf Hall, we were accosted by two suspicious-looking people (Mel and Vanessa) in trenchcoats and sunglasses.

Mel handed the tormented birthday girl a final poem:

On Elusive Parties and Partiers

You seek us here, you seek us there.
You seek your party, you don’t know where.
You’re gaining friends along the way.
(You’ve let them know that they will pay.)

Your birthday came. Your birthday went.
But there’s still some birthday to be spent.
For nothing more do friends enjoy
Then plotting plots and scheming ploys.

Solve this riddle, and use your brain.
Fix the cube without going insane.
It will lead to a place of rest,
Of cake and party, of no more tests.

All Steph had to do then was solve a Rubik’s cube! … (or just unscramble the letters I’d taped onto it.) (Mel, by the way, knows the secret of how to solve the cube, so she gets like 5 and a half cool points).

The letters spelled out “Pavilion,” where Steph finally found her party and could finally relax without having her brain taxed and tested! Steph passed every test! See how she grins in triumph!!

The best part of the whole party, for me anyway, was seeing my best friend have a good time.
The SECOND best part is that the whole scheme actually worked!! I was quite afraid someone would be left stranded at a restaurant, or have to wait for an hour, or get attacked by wild possums on the way to the next location … any number of things could have gone wrong. So hurrah for a successful party, and hurrah for my new vow never to attempt another birthday this complicated ever! Ah-haha!

Posted in Brilliant ideas ..., Hijinks, Poetry that oughtn't | | | 2 Comments

Return of the Ticket Poetry

July 23rd, 2008 by witherow

The following was left as a response to my last post, but I thought it deserved to be seen here. Thanks go to Tim, I mean, Walt, Bump.

Out of the darkness, endlessly typing,
Out of the mocking burnt trope, the musical chuckle,
Out of the night mail midnight
Over the sterile sand volleyball courts, where psmith’s tickets wandered
Bold-typed, unbound,
Down from the hallowed founder,
Up from the mystic fountains that play dancing and twirling by the founder’s grave,
Out from the hedges of brick and iron fences
From the memories of the bards that chanted to you,
From the voiced struggles of poets long dead and living,
From the thousands laughters of your heart,
From within dusky classroom halls
From such, you, by your smiles and tears a little girl again,
Singer of joy and fear, uniter of spectator and play,
Facing both the world of truth and illusion
An entertaining reminiscence sing.

–Walt Bump

I’m not 100% percent sure what all it’s saying, which means Tim imitated Walt Whitman very accurately :)

Posted in Poetry that oughtn't | tagged , , | | 1 Comments

Funniest post yet: Ticket Poetry

July 20th, 2008 by witherow

As I have mentioned before, my friends and I share the same bizarre sense of humor. This is especially true of my friend Mike DeStefano. A year or so ago when I was in grad school, we tried to get a group together to see Leave it to Psmith by P.G. Wodehouse, a hilarious play I recommend. Securing the tickets was going to prove a little tricky, requiring some advanced planning over email. Normal people’s email might go something like this:

NORMAL PERSON 1:

We need to get tickets for the play. I will save a place in line. Then when I have have to leave and go to class, you and Molly can come take my place and get the tickets.

NORMAL PERSON 2:

OK. And then I will send you tickets through the dormitory mail system, which, as you know, is also called “night mail,” and about which we have a joke about gnomes that try to intercept all things that go through it.

NORMAL PERSON 1:

Yes. This is a good plan. Thank you for your time.

*Normal persons then go on with their normal and somewhat boring lives*

Not so with us. We decided to spice up our correspondence by parodying famous poems. It looked something like this:

EMILY:

Mike and Molly,

Would you, could you, at that time?
Would you, could you, stand in line?

Seven seats, if you don’t mind,
And those of the four-dollar kind.
And recompense shall not be slack–
(I’ll hound them ’til they pay you back).

I’ll try to get there after nine
And save you two a spot in line.
But once the bell shall toll for ten,
I’ll have to go to class again.

If you would help us get our seats
We’ll take you out for ice cream treats!

=0)

Thanks, guys!

[[staring at a computer screen for way too long,
Emily Seuss]]

MIKE responded e. e. cummings style:

I

Will be in line and stuff

…….thanks for

the placeholding….

…..we……will hopefully

getticketsintime

I hope there isn’t           a

big

line

EMILY responds in traditional Japanese haiku:

your cummings-like verse
made me laugh out loud at my
desk, making a scene.

Our good friend Steph may
be able to get tickets–
She has connections.

MICHAEL MANLEY HOPKINS DeSTEFANO:

As the sun shines, slowly
Spanning its warm welcoming width
On the long line loyally latching
With persistence the Psmith passes perilously
Molly and I will with waiting take
The tickets tolling our evening’s
diversion delightful and delicious

(…the audacity of me to parody a well known poet to an English major…I must be out of my mind maddeningly)

EMILY DICKINSON PARK:

Your Madness makes Poetic sense
I like—the Way it Rings.
So remember—not to take Offense
When this non-Music major—Sings

Uncertain we are, but Four tickets
May come—to Stephanie
That she will Purchase from a Friend—
Then tickets we Need—Three.

This Alteration of our Design
Still teeters—hangs Uncertain—
Wednesday—I’ll be in Line,
And let you know—
Then—

ALFRED, LORD DeSTEFANO:

Half a yard, Half a yard, Half a yard onward,
Into the Lobby of FMA, Up to the P&P window
Marched the two ticket-seekers.
People in front of them, People behind them
Still they marched on
They accomplished their mission
Noble Two Ticket seekers

(P. S. In case you thought my cadences too ambiguous, I wanted to let you know that we got the tickets, all four of them. would you like me to give them to you or shall I keep them? You might be the more organized, safe solution.)

EMILY CARLOS WILLIAMS:

so much depended
on

your ticket-getting
today

I only appear organized
but

I can keep the tickets
safe

MICHAEL R.R. DeSTEFANO:

Seven tickets for the friends going to the play
Four tickets from me who purchased them
Three tickets will I night mail to you
One ticket I will keep for myself
In the Land of Smith, where I reside
One ticket to let me in
One ticket to admit me
One ticket to bring me,
and to Psmith admit me,
To the land of Britain where Psmith lives

EMILY POUND:

In a Station of the Theater

The apparition of these British chaps and all
PSmith in Per form ance Hall

MICHAEL LEWIS CARROLL

Twas brillig, and the lavender gnomes
Did waltz and try to steal the night mail
All chartreuse were the evil gnomes,
And the tickets were black and white

One two! One two! and through and through
the Vorpal spoon went snicker snack!
She left them dead, and with her tickets
She went galumphing back.

(Check night mail tonight for the tickets).

E.R.P. TOLKIEN (okay, I admit, I repeated a poet. oops.)

The hours go ever on and on,
But yet from the Dorm where it began
The night-mail seems not to have gone,
Check the Smith box, if you can.
The night-mail guys with weary feet
Decided not to go the way
Where BJ guys and Siddons meet.
And why is that? I cannot say.

(That is to say, I didn’t get the tickets. I hope they’re still in the box.)

EMILY REBECCA LOUIS STEVENSON (after the tickets appeared the next night):

Under the wide and starry sky
‘Cross campus did the tickets fly,
Borne gladly by a night-mail guy,
And slipped beneath my door.

Into my handbag, way down deep
In cavernous darkness now they sleep,
There have I put them, and safely keep
Where gnomes can reach no more.

Posted in Poetry that oughtn't, Strange E-mails, Uncategorized | tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | | 1 Comments

Anime

May 18th, 2008 by witherow

My sisters and I have seen our share of anime, or Japanese cartoons, which can be extremely weird. Now, to be fair, I will say that I have watched some series that I rather enjoyed, so I’m not knocking the genre completely. But there are some things that are somehow lost in translation and end up sounding very funny to Americans.

Theme songs, for instance. For some reason, every Japanese cartoon has to have a theme song that may or may not be related to the content of the cartoon. This is strange to Americans, whose cartoon theme songs basically tell you the entire plot of the cartoon. That way if the simple scenarios and exaggerated characters confuse us, we can always look to the theme song to help us understand what’s going on.

Not so in Japan. If you have a cartoon about seven girls with blue hair who are trying to fly a spaceship to the Charmeleon Galaxy and make the perfect teriyaki recipe on the way, the theme song will be about riding bicycles through the snow with the boy you like and hoping he will smile at you and say hi. And unfortunately the lyrics don’t quite make sense in English. One series I’ve watched has a very catchy theme song with subtitles reading things like, “If I could be a bird, or the wind, will my dreams come true?” and “When my memories that frolicked made a pinky promise on love, ‘thank you’ distressed my heart.” (I am dead serious. That’s what the translation says.)

So one afternoon I thought I would sit down and write an anime theme song. Thirty seconds later (literally), I pushed back my keyboard and read my creation:

Like a tree, I know my true feelings
But cannot find my roots
But you are there with me
And I can smile
And we can go to the beach
Walking along the water
With pebbles in our pockets
And songs of wings in our heads
And I will cry and you will laugh
Love memory

I sent it to my sister Heidi, who is a die-hard anime fan. She laughed and then sent me the translation to another theme song I had heard. Mine actually made a ton more sense!

Then, of course, there is the extremely popular “Pokemon” series that took America by storm. Children all over the country were pitting monsters that look like fuzzy blue turtles against neckless animals with pincers coming out of their heads. This is all part of cultural awareness.

So one day Becky and I were emailing back and forth, and I happened to mention something about Lima, Peru. The conversation somehow degenerated into the following:

BECKY
Lima-chu, I choose you!

EMILY
*A pale green llama with soap powers jumps out of a ball much too small to fit its body*

BECKY
scenes continually cut from my face to your face to the strange streaks of color and then to the Lima-chu in all of its soapy glory.

EMILY
Everyone gasps three and a half times, taking turns to do so, before Lima-chu is interrupted by a commercial break.

BECKY
after countless commercials for other cartoons and unhealthy breakfast cereals, we recap all of the scene cuts and gasping. i then say something clever, such as “who will it be today, villain?”

EMILY
The villain, who has purple and orange-striped hair and a scar over one eye, merely yells “argh” in disgust and calls out his own monster, that looks like a giant olive with big, mean-looking eyebrows. The aforesaid villain then laughs maniacally.

BECKY
a contest of who can make the loudest and longest grunt now begins, until suddenly a third guy with a green mohawk jumps out of the woods and joins the grunting contest.

EMILY
The grunters then send Lima-chu and the Evil Olive and the mohawk guy’s monster, which looks like a dustpan with buff arms, after one another. It appears that the monsters are traveling toward one another at great speed, but actually they’re staying still while the striped background quivers slightly.

BECKY
the scene then cuts to a large
TO BE CONTINUED…
and then the credits roll on for endless hours filled with non-American names

EMILY
In the next episode, the olive monster will explode in a fantastic display of blue, red, and green flashing lights, which will send children nationwide into epileptic seizures.

BECKY
yet the show grows ever more popular…

Posted in Most popular posts, Poetry that oughtn't, Strange E-mails | | | 0 Comments

Radioactive Bran

May 18th, 2008 by witherow

I associate with some very strange people who also happen to be hilarious. Some of the e-mail correspondence I’ve had with them has been downright hilarious. Basically, one of us will say something completely off the wall, and the other reacts like he or she knows exactly what’s going on and adds new (bizarre) details. And on and on it goes, getting weirder all along. So (with their permission) (I hope), I am going to post some of the funniest selections.

The following snippets took place between my sister Becky and I about a year ago. I’ve omitted some of the irrelevant stuff.
BECKY
sorry. was i gloating? :-p

EMILY
I think you were glowing, actually.
You need to stop eating those Uranium-O’s for breakfast. When it was just your tongue glowing, that was one thing . . .

BECKY
but i’ve switched from Uranium-O’s to Radioactive-Bran

EMILY
You really should pay attention to the biohazard symbols and Environmental Disaster Warnings all over the box. They’re not just there for decoration.

BECKY
silly, they don’t come in a box. they come in an unmarked lead vault.

EMILY
Yes, your roommates have been complaining about that. They say they’re not always in the mood for lead poisoning.
Just thought I’d give you the head’s up.

BECKY
all of my roommates are gone…

EMILY
And you wonder why.

BECKY
not really. i know they think my Radioactive-Bran glows strangely and that my pet granola bar is unfriendly.

EMILY
I’m afraid to ask how the aforesaid pet granola bar manifests its unfriendliness.

BECKY
he’s been better now that i’ve given him the key to the sun deck.

EMILY
That might explain why girls are coming down from there with sunburns and oat marks.

BECKY
yeah, well, please don’t tell the RAs… they really don’t need to know.

EMILY
I won’t tell the RAs. Although I don’t think it will be too hard to track down where the oat marks are coming from. I mean, you’re the only one with a pet granola bar . . .

{We then somehow got onto the subject of chocolate milk, which for some reason we’ve taken to calling “cocoa moo”. This week was the national American Association of Christian Schools competition, which our school hosts. This means many, many, many high schoolers on campus and crowds everywhere. So when I mentioned chocolate milk, she responded …}

BECKY
don’t say that. the milk line in the dc was too long today so i didn’t get my cocoa moo with my waffley breakfast….grumble…angry mutterings… >:-(

EMILY
As I breakfasted, my waffles syruping,
Suddenly I heard some burping,
As of high schoolers, slurping, slurping,
Slurping away the cocoa moo
‘Tis some visitors, I muttered, slurping,
Slurping away my cocoa moo.
Sorrow for the lost cocoa moo . . .

BECKY
quoth the becky “please, no more!”

Posted in Poetry that oughtn't, Strange E-mails | | | 2 Comments

  • Categories

    •