Showing posts with label comedy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label comedy. Show all posts

Saturday, July 7, 2012

Reading Define Print

I don't want to say I've been neglecting this blog, but since the last time I posted, I got a girlfriend and the Higgs Boson was discovered. It's been a while. Also, I'll get to the punny title in a second.

Why has it been something like 3 months since the last time I posted? Well, three reasons.

One: university. It hogs your time. You think you're out and it keeps pulling you back in. It's not like at high school where you do your stuff, then go sit down. You're going and going. Free time becomes a commodity.

Two: Karin, the aforementioned girlfriend. I can assure you, when it comes to priorities, make no mistake in that I place Karin far above my blog. Thus, it suffers.

Three: I have Twitter, which has become my vent to the world. I also go on Facebook, but Twitter is much more of a window into my world. If you're visiting the blog, you get to see my Twitter feed on the right. I use Twitter because I can easily get it through my phone.

So: for all those of you who have been eagerly awaiting my return, I have some good news and some bad news. The good news is, I have returned! The bad news is*, all of those three things up there still exist. So no guarantees on scheduling. But you knew that already.

So what does someone who hasn't posted in three months talk about? Well, whatever the hell I want to. Today, I've decided to talk about words I like. Because I can. And I suppose my blog title gets to live up to its title every now and then.

Bayard - noun - A person armed with the self confidence of ignorance. It sounds like something from "The Devil's Dictionary", but in fact it comes from the OED, by way of "Reading the OED" by Ammon Shea*. It's this sort of word that amuses me - it says so much in so little. I, in fact, have written quite a few myself about university. And now you have an explanation for the title of this post. But first, allow me to show you how it's done with some excellent quotes from "The Devil's Dictionary."

Admiration - noun - Our polite recognition of another's resemblance to ourselves.
Bore - noun - A person who talks when you wish him to listen.
Philosophy - noun - A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing.
Scriptures - noun - The sacred books of our holy religion, as distinguished from the false and profane writings on which all other faiths are based.
Year - noun - A period of three hundred and sixty-five disappointments.

Yes, Ambrose Bierce (the author of said Dictionary) hated everything, but damn, that dry wit is hilarious. Why do I particularly enjoy this sort of thing? It involves clever, concise wordplay, and that is one of the things I really enjoy, comedy-wise. Douglas Adams was a master of this, as was Joseph Heller. In the field of modern novelists, Bill Bryson is also great at this.

Now, without further Apu*, I present my very own attempt at making something like this.

All-nighter - noun - slang - A ritualistic celebration of caffeinated beverages.
Asia - proper noun - Where UNSW students come from.
Brochure - noun - See "bookmark."
Chemistry - noun - See "physics."
Class - noun - Where one is if not climbing stairs.
Computer - noun - The most effective study tool; the least effective study tool.
Distraction - noun - See "fail."
Examination - noun - The period following an all-nighter.
Holiday - noun - See "sleep."
Ink - noun - That which runs out during examinations.
Lecture - noun - An optional class.
Lecturer - noun - A person employed to move through the slides on a PDF
Lunch - noun - food eaten at 3 p.m.
Non-examinable - adjective - invisible; irrelevant.
Non-trivial - adjective - Excruciatingly difficult.
Reference - noun - a way of increasing the length of an assessment.
Russia - proper noun - Where mathematics lecturers come from.
Physics - noun - See "mathematics."
Study - verb - The act of checking Facebook with a myunsw tab open.
Trivial - adjective - Obvious to the lecturer.
Upstairs - adjective - Not worth going to.

OK, that's all for today. A final note that I wanted to slip in somewhere - at the time of writing, this blog had 493 views. The great and powerful Arceus approves. Also, Googling 'Wayward Letters' gets you this blog as its first link. Move over, Daily Mail. Anyway. Thanks for reading, and with any luck, I'll be writing again soon.

AB

Saturday, January 14, 2012

The Story of Him

From around the globe to your frontal lobe, this is Wayward Letters!* In today's post, I excavate another random Word document from the dark depths of my external hard drive (and that was probably a mixed metaphor; I don't especially care). Also, several apologies for not yet posting that fanfic I'm working on; mostly because the fic itself isn't finished, and the typing up what I have isn't finished yet either.

OK, so this piece of writing is going to seem utterly bizarre, and that's because it is. It is going to seem like completely and utterly nonsensical, pseuedorandom gibberish, and that's because it is. It was written by my friend Eric and me one word at a time, so naturally it turned out like... well, you'll see. Eric's been pushing to put this one up on the blog for a while, so without further ado, hold on to your seats for "The Story of Him"!
____________________________________________

The end of the story begins with a man who does nothing because he is a zombie. His story is very interesting because it is not a story. Technically, it is a story because it has an ending. Anyway. His name is very important because it is a word. But it won’t make any sense to say it. So that’s why we shall call him ‘Him.’ This shall not be confusing because it is Him. Our story starts here…

* * *

Once in a land where Him was living, he saw orange goblins. They spoke of a mystical, faraway sheep.
‘Go away to eat the sheep and come back to where to we live,’ said G, the goblin who was big and little at the same time.
‘OK, I shall go and look for the magical lamb which will grant me magical magic,’ replied Him. And so he set off to go to the beach, because he said “Because.”
‘That is not applicable!’ said the other, electronic goblin. ‘You have to edit your sentence.’
‘But I don’t give a money,’ answered Him.
‘You must give us twenty-three,’ said the leader of the goblin who looked like mangoes.
This was a start to his long and tiring and adventurous and dangerous and hard and heroic and serviceful and colourful and playlike and green and blue and failing and successful trip. He did many things along the way, which shall require us to inform no-one. He walked until he found the Forest in the Sky.
‘This is a Forest in the Sky!’ exclaimed Him. ‘I should be jumping to the biggest.’
‘Hello! I am P’toodle!’ Him heard through his left ear. ‘I am here in your nostrils to eat any ants that live inside the Forest.’
‘Good luck with eating all ants. You are welcome, my tiny little adventurer!’
Together, they journeyed to the bottom of the city that we found next to the Forest. They came to the gates of the rainbow, whose name is Gary. Gary was at the front of the cinemas, and he spoke:
‘I am Gary, the Gary who is Garily a Gary. I know how to open the path to the city of Gary. Can I be Gary?’ asked Gary.
‘No,’ said Him. Suddenly, Gary turned into Gary the Gary.
‘You are fools to deny my Garyness! You shall feel my wrath of wrath! Eat!’ shouted Gary the Gary. ‘Eat a sheep and you shall be given three moneys!’
‘OK! I will go and do the stuff which requires eating sheep sheep. So show me the way to my grandmother, named Gary!’ demanded Him, shaking his fist and other fist.
‘Alright,’ answered Gary the Gary, ‘she shall be found with a rock whose agents don’t have any names. Except Gary, who is the friend of the other friend.’
And so they took their path with honour and, once they took the path, they flew into the wide fence because Him couldn’t grow any feet.
‘Blast!’ cursed Him, ‘I do not own any moneys! How am I responsible for getting this to not be madness?’
‘Because Gary has our storage that we put in our biggest mouth,’ P’toodle babbled.
This led to the next instalment in their pioneering for the Mystical Orb of Sheepaliciousness and the three moneys and the Imaginary Accordance of the Twenty-Three. They encountered random battles between France and the French lowlives that are the United States. They carried themselves while venturing through the invisible Swamp of the Zombies. This was the place that Him arose to the throne of the zombies.
‘I am the thing that rules over the disfiguring thing of the Thing Swamp,’ announced P’toodle.
‘No, I fulfil my duties, so that I am what you think you are. Therefore I am not the king I thought I wasn’t.’
‘Yet you are what is to me a figure of all imagination,’ remarked P’toodle.
And they then continued upon their adventure to find the thing that looked like a sheep but it was a sheep that didn’t look like much of a sheep. It was now time for their adventure to come to a brief break while the others had to take an intermission.
‘Let’s get food to have dinner,’ suggested Him, ‘for me requires fuel.’
‘Food is an item that does metabolistic things, and gives me some,’ answered P’toodle, scratching his knees that wobbled like his tentacles that were non-existent.
They looked at the screen. They watched the recording of themselves, and saw a person who looked at Him. It was Gary, eating fried beef.
‘Hello,’ yelled Gary, ‘it is me, the Gary who has the authority to tell you to call my name to me, and you must also wear my undies.’
‘But you have to eat the undies, which I have already hidden from you,’ said the person in the television, whose hair is pinkish.
‘Curses! Why did we stumble upon such normality of normalness that we stumbled over?’ complained Him. ‘We must eat from his buckets of holding sand?’
Suddenly, out from somewhere, Gary grabbed the person in the screen, and vanished vanishingly into themselves.
‘I wish for our wishes to be true,’ sighed Him, ‘and for roast fish to appear.’
‘And our moths to be cooked thoroughly in a washing machine!’ shouted P’toodle, with pork in its mouth.
Thus, they slept, while the others, who finished their break and dinners, subsequently returned to the place where they were. Unbeknownst to the pair, Captain Squish was taking a bath. The two people arose from their unawakedness with style, ready to begin their glorious adventure again.

* * *

‘What shall we be doing this for, as Simon hasn’t said?’ asked Him.
‘Aha! That was boring…’ replied P’toodle. ‘We are two, but we are not men.’
‘Verily so.’
They set off on their trip once they had stopped for a quick shower. They were adventurous because Him liked to go forth. P’toodle leapt, for the ground had it by the ears. Consequently, Him had to punch himself.
Together, they flew over the land towards the centre of the land that was the home of the orange whose shape was peculiar. Its skin was smooth and thorny. They saw the orange and took off its shoes and socks.
‘Greetings, one who is a fruit. We have come to eat an orange whose name is Doug,’ said Him. ‘Do you know a muffin man who lives on your divine bathtub?’
‘Indeed I do,’ answered the orange. ‘He is over there. But he is not a he: he is an it. Call it Twenty-Three.’
‘Thanks, this wasn’t not unhelpful,’ Him replied.
‘Thou shalt be most gracious and incandescent,’ exclaimed the orange, who was an apple, and smiled.
They looked for Bob, who was the real impostor of Twenty-Three.
‘I am Bob, the Twenty-Three who is Twenty-Five,’ mumbled the person whose teeth are broken.
‘Can you direct us to the sponged named Billy-Bob?’ questioned Him.
‘No, but he can be directed away from himself,’ cackled that guy. ‘The travels itinerary for you shall show you the true me.’
‘But it is not as nerdy as an arachnid that is brainless. It won’t be settling in a large secondary system of the Tree of Someone, which belongs to nobody except anybody who is somebody,’ announced someone.
‘Who was that?’ cried Him with vigour. ‘It must have come from the hole that the people who are living in holes call holy!’
‘This is true indeed,’ agreed Him.
‘Yes it is,’ justified Bob and ran away, never to be away again.
With a song of love and villainy and a benchchair, Him and P’toodle sat upon a man, who spoke of a toilet in a place that is relevant to this story that was a story. They continued through this land, but stopped in the sky, where trees grew on invisible land. They walked across a bridge for sixty-seven.
Ladies who wore matching skin travelled parallel to Him, perhaps showing Him the route to the spot where anything is happening. Him took the womens to a factory to show them how to make clothes for themselves.
They continued on after that misadventure, battling stationery and stationary stashes of moustaches that could strike with hair of the fury of themselves. Him and himself, not to mention his little other companionship thing who was really his little imagination guard, strolled briskly with intention of committing mass hysteria, for the path was brisk in nature. This is what might be expected to be happening, and not happening to these.
____________________________________________
I apologise for the lack of indents when it comes to dialogue and so forth; I'm yet to figure out how to do that in blog form. If need be, I will put a link up to a Word document with these indents, but until then, we're all going to have to grin and bear it. Well, that's that I suppose. Cave Johnson, we're done here.*

AB

Monday, December 12, 2011

How Not To Answer an Exam Question

Another random Word document from the depths of my external hard drive. This one I did a couple years ago (and thanks to the magic of my first blog, I know the date - say what you like, that blog was good for some things.), and essentially I was given a School Certificate exam question (if you're interested, it's Question 47 on Page 32 of this exam paper) on the last day of term because why not. So I answered like an idiot because why not.

You probably don't really need the picture and exam question for this, but you can click that picture to the right for both of them. Anyway, without further ado, the random answer that my brain thought up two and a half years ago to some old exam question.

Firstly, as the trees will have to be cut down, the squirrels who live in the forest will have to move house, and this will mean that as they look for houses, they will have to hire a babysitter. However, with this economic climate, jobs are in short supply, so they will have to feed their babies to wolves in order to survive. This, along with the crippling insurance payments, will make the squirrels frustrated and angry. Combined with the tip, which for some reason has houses on it, and the tip’s dangerous supply of used needles, will make the squirrels evil. This will surely result in the deaths of millions of innocents, and the squirrels will have to be taken out by laser fire, which is of course very expensive and will contribute greatly to the recession that has gripped the world.

The corpses of the squirrels will have to be dumped in the lake, as the tip is currently being overrun by real estate agents trying to sell houses located on the tip to some stupid bastard with more money than sense who would find it fascinating that they can crap out of their window and not get arrested for it. The decaying corpses of the squirrels will release chemicals which will mutate the existing fish into a sentient squirrel-fish hybrid called the Squish. The Squish, being immune to laser fire due to their reflective scales, will render the humans powerless.

So it is written, so it shall be. Or was. Or something. Work with me here.  Next post might be something with a little more substance, and not just a random Word document. Or it might be. Who knows? It's Wayward Letters, baby. Accept no substitutes. Anyway. As always, enjoy the hilariousness.

AB

Sunday, November 27, 2011

Side Effects May Include...

This was an old text file I found on my computer that my friend Aleksa and I collaborated on a while back. He's responsible for most of the good ones, like "intermittent surprise" and "voluntary paralysis." The man is a comedy genius. Anyway, on to the wall of text.

Side effects may include loss of vision, halitosis, anosmia, intolerable whining, sudden dichotomy, anti-folk tendencies, crucifixion, apiary, severe paranoia, electrolysis, hive mind syndrome, use of vernacular, loss of scalp and fingernails, cinematography, myxomatosis, premature emancipation, hypothetical situations, post-hypnotic suggestion, onomatopoeia, self-pollination, nihilistic world view, sequelitis, nitrogen fixation, yeast infection, athlete’s foot, Achilles’ heel, earth tremors, memento mori, desalinisation, fractional distillation, vain attempts at subterfuge, glossolalia, messianic tendencies, total internal reflection, killer dog attacks, sexual dimorphism, mercury deficiency, insurance fraud, metabolism in females, personification, elephantiasis, heliocentricism, unnecessary shouting, pulmonary arthritis, frictional unemployment, defenestration, high stomach acidity, guitar fever, inexplicable moments of badassery, time dilation, reverse bulimia, postmodernism, pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis, sudden onset infatuation syndrome, intermittent surprise, insomnia, narcolepsy, ozone deprivation, hypnic jerks, extradition, chlamydia, centrifugal force, anabolic steroids, voluntary paralysis, stigma, plagiarism, hammer-and-sickle cell anaemia, chemotherapy, neo-conservative tendencies, regression therapy, Stockholm syndrome, acceleration of the uterus, mass-energy equivalence, lupus, diplomatic immunity, skin failure, death and polydactylism. Results may vary. Consult your mortician before use.

And that's that. That was an easier post than the last to write. Expect a lot of this type of thing - both Aleksa and I enjoy the non sequitur style humour and we tend to riff off each other until you get a paragraph's worth of that. Enjoy the hilariousness.

AB