I love language. This wordy linguistic list of “sayings” has been around for a long time; I started using it with my students back in the late seventies. It’s all over the web now. I’ve got one for nursery rhymes, too; when I find it I’ll post some of it here.

Actually, I’m going through all of my files – actual file cabinet files made of paper and stored in manila folders with labels made of tape that is rotting and falling apart – and discarding things, storing things online, and just generally kind of living the past. This isn’t good for me, so I’m hurrying to get it done.

I need the storage space; there’s a file cabinet in the laundry room that I’ve avoided for four years and two more in the garage. I haven’t looked inside THOSE in twenty years. There are probably raccoons dwelling in them. If any of you teach and live nearby, come on over and help yourselves to the piles of quizzes and tests and worksheets and handouts and novelty “thinker” stuff. It’s all original, except, of course, for the cool stuff I stole borrowed from other teachers and secret places. Teachers don’t explain about the secret places.

I never used, and still don’t use, a teacher’s edition. I figured that if the teacher didn’t already know the answers to everything in the textbook just by looking, then maybe that teacher has no business standing in front of learners pretending he/she’s an expert in the subject. I work all the problems and fill in all the blanks, etc, myself. Besides, half the time, the answers in a teacher’s edition are wrong. I can understand better how the students see the book when I am looking at the exact same book myself. But that’s just how I do it.

I also hated book tests, quizzes, and worksheets. I wrote mine myself.

Anyway. . . living in the past. . . get over it. . . .

I have to use the college’s tests and quizzes now, but they are extremely good and I don’t mind. In fact, the textbooks I use are absolutely amazingly excellent and I love them. It’s too bad so many of our public schools go with the lowest bidder or somebody’s uncle when it’s textbook selection time. Almost every time I was on one of those committees, the books we agreed on were never the ones we ended up with. The choice had already been made by “somebody” in administration, and those selection committees were jokes. Parents, when it’s selection time at your child’s school, call and TELL them you want to be on that committee, and that you and your friends will be checking back to make sure the committee’s selection is the one your child ends up with. It won’t do any good; the kickback is terrible in many schools, but it will let ’em know that you’re WATCHING.

See how many of these you can get, WITHOUT using a dictionary and without looking elsewhere on the ‘net cheating.

1. Similar sire, similar scion.

2. Tenants of vitreous abodes ought to hurl no lithoidal fragments.

3. It is not proper for mendicants to be indicatrous of preferences.

4. Compute not your immature gallinaceans prior to their being produced.

5. It is fruitless to become lacrymous because of scattered lacteal fluid.

6. Glean gramineous matter for fodder during the period that the orb of the day is refulgent.

7. Pulchritude does not extend below the surface of the derma.

8. Not all coruscating articles are fashioned from aureate metal.

9. Each canine passes through his period of pre-eminence.

10. Freedom from guile or fraud constitutes the most excellent principle of procedure.

11. Consolidated, you and I maintain ourselves erect; separated, we defer to the law of gravity.

12. You cannot estimate the value of the contents of a bound, printed narrative or record from its exterior vesture.

13. Folks deficient in ordinary judgment scurryingly enter areas on which celestial beings dread to set foot.

14. A feathered creature clasped in the manual members is equal in value to a brace in the bosky growth.

15. The individual of the class Aves, arriving before the appointed time, seizes the invertebrate animal of the group Vermes.

16. Socially oriented individuals tend to congregate in gregariously homogeneous groupings.

17. One may address a member of the Equidae family toward aqueous liquid, but one is incapable of compelling him to quaff.

18. Forever refrain from enumerating the dental projections of a bequeathed member of the Equidae family.

19. One Pyrus Malus per diem restrains the arrival of the Hippocratic apostle.

20. Fondness for notes of exchange constitutes the tuberous structure of all satanically inspired principles.

21. Supposing one primarily fails to be victorious: bend further efforts in that direction.

22. Be adorned with the pedal encasement that gives comfort.

23. Prudence and sagacity are the worthier condiments of intrepid courage.

24. He who expresses merriment in finality expresses merriment excellent either in equal quality.

25. A beholden vessel never exceeds 212 degrees Fahrenheit.

26. A rotating lithoidal fragment never accrues bryophytic plants.

27. Everything is legitimate in matters pertaining to ardent affection and armed conflict between nations.

28. Exercise your visual faculty prior to executing a sudden transition in podiatrous position.

29. An excess of individuals skilled in the preparation of edibles impairs the quality of the fluid porridge-like fatty deposits retained in the vessel for steeping purposes.

30. An over-avid thirst for knowledge destroyed the life substances of a small, soft-furred, flesh-eating mammal often domesticated and kept as a companion.

31. A person who seldom has occasion to utilize his mental processes, plus his units of current exchange, are very shortly required to depart each other’s company.

32. Circumstances sometimes compel a person who lives by relieving others of property and units of current exchange to seize and control one of his own kind.

33. An opportune application of a well-honed steel sliver penetrated by a fine, stringlike length of spun cotton preserves one from similar applications of an odd composite number.

Let me know how it went?

Mamacita, Scheiss Weekly

This quiz has been floating around the internet for a long, long time. I used to give this test to my 8th graders at the end of the year. You will not be surprised to learn that most of them. . . . passed it.

The quiz consists of four questions that will gauge whether or not you are qualified to be a professional. SCROLL DOWN for the answers. There is no need to cheat. There is NEVER a need to cheat. The questions are not that difficult. You just need to think like a truly educated professional. This is not a “joke test.”

1. How do you put a giraffe into a refrigerator?

Answer: Open the refrigerator door, put in the giraffe, and close the door. This question tests whether or not you are doing simple things in a complicated way.

2. How do you put an elephant into a refrigerator?

Incorrect answer: Open the refrigerator door, put in the elephant, and close the door.

Correct answer: Open the refrigerator door, remove the giraffe, put in the elephant and close the door. This question tests your foresight, and your ability to think about the repercussions of your previous actions.

3. The Lion King is hosting an animal conference. All the animals attend except one. Which animal does not attend?

Answer: The elephant. The elephant is in the refrigerator. This tests if you are capable of comprehensive thinking.

4. There is a river wherein dwell thousands of crocodiles. How do you cross it safely?

Answer: Simply swim through it. All the crocodiles are attending the animal meeting. This question tests your reasoning ability.

So. . . .

If you answered four out of four questions correctly, you are a true professional. Wealth and success await you, and rightly so.

If you answered three out of four, you have some catching up to do, but there’s hope for you. You can do it!

If you answered two out of four, consider a career as a hamburger flipper in a fast food joint. I mean, REALLY!

If you answered one out of four, try selling some of your organs. It’s probably the only way you will ever make any money.

If you didn’t get ANY correct answers at all, consider a career that does not require any higher mental functions at all, such as law or politics.

Studies have shown that 90% of managers/administrators tested got all four questions wrong. However, many preschoolers got all four answers correct. This pretty much disproves the theory that most administrators have the brains of a four-year-old.

Mamacita, Scheiss Weekly

I was in high school when Donovan released “Atlantis.” I was already obsessed with interested in mythology, and this song struck a chord with me that is still resonating.

“Atlantis” was on the “B” side of “To Susan on the West Coast Waiting,” which I also liked a lot.

Do I need to explain about a record’s “A” side and “B” side? Yes? No? Well, let me know.

The continent of Atlantis was an island
which lay before the great flood
in the area we now call the Atlantic Ocean.
So great an area of land, that from her western shores
those beautiful sailors journeyed
to the South and the North Americas with ease,
in their ships with painted sails.

To the East Africa was a neighbour, across a short strait of sea miles.
The great Egyptian age is but a remnant of The Atlantian culture.
The antediluvian kings colonised the world
All the Gods who play in the mythological dramas
In all legends from all lands were from fair Atlantis.
Knowing her fate, Atlantis sent out ships to all corners of the Earth.
On board were the Twelve:
The poet, the physician, the farmer, the scientist,
The magician and the other so-called Gods of our legends.
Though Gods they were –
And as the elders of our time choose to remain blind
Let us rejoice and let us sing and dance and ring in the new
Hail Atlantis!
Way down below the ocean where I wanna be she may be,
Way down below the ocean where I wanna be she may be,
Way down below the ocean where I wanna be she may be.
Way down below the ocean where I wanna be she may be,
Way down below the ocean where I wanna be she may be.
My antediluvian baby, oh yeah yeah, yeah yeah yeah,
I wanna see you some day
My antediluvian baby, oh yeah yeah, yeah yeah yeah,
My antediluvian baby,
My antediluvian baby, I love you, girl,
Girl, I wanna see you some day.
My antediluvian baby, oh yeah
I wanna see you some day, oh
My antediluvian baby.
My antediluvian baby, I wanna see you
My antediluvian baby, gotta tell me where she gone
I wanna see you some day
Wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up, oh yeah
Oh glub glub, down down, yeah. . . .

P.S. Yes, I am familiar with Futurama’s “The Deep South.” However, I was fully aware it was a parody. Were you?

Check out this video.

Now, sing along with this one.

Now, ask your teenagers if they know what “antediluvian” means.

Mamacita, Scheiss Weekly