Recent update

Subscribe to RSS feed

Ask not for whom the bell chingeth …

December 13th, 2008 by witherow

Well, here I am. My church’s Christmas play, A Jerusalem Story, will be performed tomorrow morning. After a months of researching, writing, gathering props, learning how to direct and act at the same time, and ordering fake beards online, I just won’t know what to do with my time once it’s all over.

Wait, I just remembered. I will sleep.

A lot.

Until like March.

In all seriousness, I am excited how God has allowed everything to come together, even when I doubted this all would work. I have to keep reminding myself that it’s not about the acting or the set or the fake beards (which I am SO glad I don’t have to wear) — it’s about showing a little glimpse of how wonderful Christ really is. Soli Deo gloria.

Midway Bible Church doesn’t always do a drama at Christmas, though. Last year we just had a small program of Scripture reading and singing. I found another old instant message conversation from last Christmas, this one with my friend Mike, in which we allude to this program. Among … other things.

MIKE
do you hear the bells?
for whom do they toll?

ME
the silver bells, or the big scary church bell?

MIKE
um…

ME
Ask not for whom the bell tolls

MIKE
the little ceramic ones shaped like snowmen and things
except little bells don’t toll
they tinkle
or ringle
or go ching ching ching

ME
Ask not for whom the bell ching ching chings

MIKE
hmmm
it chingeth for thee
somehow that doesn’t make chills go down my spine…

ME
it’s the kid-friendly version.

MIKE
who wrote that anyway?

ME
Um, I was about to ask you that.

MIKE
rats

ME
I am a failure as an English major.

MIKE
oh well
uh..
I mean
that’s too bad. I fully commiserate
here’s a virtual hankie

ME
thhhhhhhhhhhhhhhttttt!
That was me virtually using said virtual … oh, never mind

MIKE
my friend made fun of me the other day and I asked him if it was possible to send whooping cough as an e-mail attachment
he said to try

ME
Did it work?

MIKE
I didn’t try
I’m too nice
WE’RE GOING TO COUNTRY CUPBOARD TO GET THE BREAKFAST BUFFET TOMORROW MORNING
oh what happiness

ME
Fancy!!!

MIKE
I can eat breakfast sausage until it comes out my ears

ME
I’M GOING TO MY MOM’S HOUSE TO GOOF OFF ALL DAY TOMORROW.

MIKE
cool
I was going to ask if you were there already yet

ME
I went home earlier this weekend, but came back here so I could go to Midway today for the Christmas program.

MIKE
how’d the program go?

ME
I was reader number three. nothing fancy, but it was little and good.

MIKE
I’ve always wanted to be the Third Reader
kind of like Shakespeare’s Second Murderer
Only not

ME
Hee hee. Becky and I thought of a prank to outrank last year’s refrigerator decorating

[[To explain--The year before Becky and I had decorated the refrigerator on Christmas Eve. We tied dozens of little ribbon bows around the pickles, ketchup, steak sauce, everything. On Christmas morning, my mom sure was ... wondering about the mental health of her daughters.]]

MIKE
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooh
I have just written the longest “ooh” in the history of English literature
what is it?

ME
I doubt that’s the longest one, but I digress. we are going to string yarn across the kitchen. It will be so obnoxious and we will be in such trouble! oh boy!

MIKE
can I help?
I could maybe create some sort of diversion

ME
can you send us some virtual yarn?

MIKE
I can try
I’m going to get going
I need to go to bed early if I’m going to get up and eat all that food in the morning
it takes a lot of energy

ME
Wow. That’s intense.

MIKE
yes it is rather
I’ll send an attachment with some yarn

ME
say hi to Judith for me

MIKE
I will and I will tell her that you’re super offended cuz she hasn’t called

ME
Great idea! adios and merry Christmas!

The yarn stringing did work. Now we just have to come up with another Christmas Eve prank … one that is funny, random, and will make my mom laugh, instead of one that will irritate and anger my mother and make her want to return all of our gifts on the spot. Christmas morning is a sensitive time to do things like this.

Oh, and right after our conversation I had to go look up the poet. Because I’m dorky like that. And if I can’t match random lines of poetry with their poets at a moment’s notice, at least I have some pretty amazing Google-fu (that’s like kung fu for nerds).

It was John Donne.

Posted in Hijinks, Strange E-mails, That's life | | | 5 Comments

Strange emails: Heavily Armed Raisins

July 25th, 2008 by witherow

Here’s yet another strange email interchange with my sister Becky. In this one, we reference the Great Raisin, whom we talk about a lot but don’t exactly know who or what he is, and our sister Molly, who a). likes Raisin Bran and crackers, and b). had this joke about wanting to be First Lady some day. You’ll notice Becky signs with her alias, “the great f” (it’s random; don’t ask), and I sign with my initials, erp.

In the email before this, I referenced the Great Raisin, to which Becky replies,

BECKY:

i know the GREAT RAISIN quite well, after all of the business i’ve done with him in the past few weeks, so don’t even try it. he will obviously side with me because i supply him with all of the laser guns he could ever need. so ha! beat that, if you can. >: )

f

EMILY:

Raisin armys armed with laser guns? Scary beyond all reason.

BECKY:

duh! what else would raisin armies be armed with? and duh! once again. it’s supposed to be scary beyond all reason. resistance is futile. surrender now.

ffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff

EMILY:

I have bran flakes and an army of Mollys who will voraciously eat your raisin army. Even their meager lasers cannot withstand a Molly’s hunger for Raisin Bran!

BECKY:

Molly will be too busy to eat my raisin and laser army. I will distract her with a fake invitation to the white house to see if she likes the carpet color. you know she’ll be there. what now?

the great f who will slurp the erp

EMILY:

I will promise a lifetime supply of crackers to the Molly who eats the most Raisin Bran. They will not be able to resist, nay, not even to look at White House decor. Ooo–what now?

the unslurpable erp

BECKY:

There is a chance to escape the hunger of the Molly. While they are all distracted and on their way to Washington, D.C., my raisin army will zap all of the Mollys with their laser guns, making them forever hate raisins and anything with a significant amount of fiber. they will no longer want to eat my army or my lasers. they will, in fact, be terrified of the dried fruit and be conquered. i win. (again)

the f the f the f the f the f the f the f

EMILY:

I will lure the army of raisins into Curves, where they will be devoured by health-conscious people looking to fulfill their requirement of 5 fruits and veggies a day. Or I’ll lure the raisins into my giant industrial-sized microwave. I haven’t decided yet.

Erp eRp erP

BECKY:

whoa! if you were a health-conscious curves member would you eat a raisin bearing a laser gun? i don’t think so. and what kind of raisin army do you think that i am training? they would never step into a gigantic microwave unless, well, nevermind. think of something that might actually work this time. or don’t.

happy f laser f raisin f bran f jello f great f becky f

EMILY:

Fine. I will appoint the battle at the parking lot in front of Toys ‘R Us. But I will keep putting it off because of schedule conflicts (dentist appointments and podiatrist appointments and meterologist appointments and such) until the only time we can fight it is 5:30 a.m. on November 24th. Your raisins will realize only too late that it is the Friday after Thanksgiving and Toys ‘R Us is having a big 95% off Early Bird Sale of Insanity and will lament their ignorance as they are trampled into raisin paste on the sidewalk by masses of shoppers. And for any who try to escape, I will have attack goats.

E.R.P. (Exultant Raisin Pummeler)

BECKY:

but what will stop my raisin army from attacking your army while you are at the podiatrist and such? what kind of toys could my vicious laser-zapping raisins possibly want? aren’t the lasers enough? like my army would be sitting around in the parking lot while they could be sun bathing at the beach!!! your scheme has holes, emily, lots of holes. you could never cut it as a criminal mastermind. i could. resistance is futile.

G.R.E.A.T F. (giggling raisins eat all the foes)

Posted in Most popular posts, Strange E-mails | | | 0 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

Emoticons–Stephanie style

June 11th, 2008 by witherow

Yep, here are some more from an email today. Can somebody say … too much time on our hands?

ME

Long-lost roommate! Can I crash your Taco Bell party with Rebecca tonight?

:=3) That’s a guy with a big flabby nose smiling at the thought of Taco Bell.

Uh, he’s not invited, though.

:=3( [frown]

That’s better.

STEPHANIE

Hee hee. Yes, you can crash our party. We like it when you do. :)

:=>) that’s a guy with a roman nose who is smiling at you because he likes you.

but you don’t like him back.

:=>( [frown]

that’s better. :)

ME

oh boy!

Cl:oB that’s a hillbilly with buck teeth who also isn’t invited.

he’s frowning , but you can’t tell because of his large dental units. :)

STEPHANIE

>8} (evil man)

{:E)8 (a 1900s man with the straight part, a mustache, and a bowtie)

Posted in Strange E-mails, Uncategorized | | | 0 Comments

Emoticons

June 10th, 2008 by witherow

Emoticons. We all know what they are—those little faces made of colons and parenthesis and lower case p’s and all sorts of other symbols that don’t really look what like they supposedly represent, but we all pretend. Becky and I, in our many emails back and forth, have started experimenting and inventing our own system of creative emoticons, usually competing with one another to come up with the best. Here is a very small sampling of what we’ve created. (For those of you accessing this blog through JAWS, I’m not sure exactly how to describe the emoticons, but the comments we make about them should keep you entertained nevertheless.)

Typical email 1:

BECKY: -{( :-o )

that, my friend, is the face of the queen of england saying “so what?”

ME: Cl:-p}

That is the face of a portly English gentlemen in a derby hat sticking his tongue out at you. That or licking crumbs off his chin. It’s hard to tell.

BECKY
Which chin?

ME
All of them.

Typical email 2:

ME: :? / (that’s a guy with a big round nose)

BECKY: :*o (that’s a guy who is lamenting the fact that his nose is not centered)

ME: :@/ (that’s a guy who has a pig snout and isn’t sure how he feels about it).

[Becky then draws a very elaborate picture in punctuation that is quite impressive]

BECKY:
v
(¨) I
\/:\_I
[:] I
/ \
_/ \_

(that is a roman soldier who is kind of bored)

[I respond with a single hyphen]

ME:

-

That is the Amazing Mr. Imperceptible. He is completely invisible except for his bottom lip. It’s too bad you can’t see the rest of him, because he is very impressive.

BECKY:
cheater.
and my roman soldier was more impressive before i sent him. but in cyberspace he must have fought in some sort of mortal combat, which explains his now out-of-joint hip and broken legs.

Posted in Strange E-mails | | | 2 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

    •