Category: Humor

Catholic School Classroom Desks

Humor / Spirituality / Teaching

Genesis of the Catholic School Year

This year I was asked to lead our school’s retreat. This was the opening I wrote for it. Genesis of the Catholic School Year In the beginning God created the school year. The school year was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the classroom; and the Spirit of God was moving over the summer vacation. And God said, “Let there be fluorescent lights”; and there were fluorescent lights. And God saw that the light was good. And there was evening and there was...

Darth Vader in Recording Studio

Humor

It’s Star Wars Day

Today is Star Wars Day (May the 4th be with you), so here are Darth Vader and Yoda recording their voices to be used with Tom Tom GPS devices: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ljFfL-mL70   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdcJVuylmsM

pencils

Humor / Teaching

Teaching Humor

This email has been making the rounds lately, and I enjoyed it so much I thought I’d share it: After being interviewed by the school administration, the teaching prospect said, “Let me see if I’ve got this right: You want me to go into that room with all those kids… correct their disruptive behavior observe them for signs of abuse, monitor their dress habits, censor their T-shirt messages and instill in them a love for learning. You want me to check their backpacks for weapons, wage war on...

books

Books and Reading / Humor / Poetry

When I Loaned This Book I Deemed It as Lost

The Book-Lender’s Soliloquy by Nick Senger (with apologies to Shakespeare) To lend or not to lend, that is the question: Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of a book lost forever, Or to hoard books against a sea of troubles, And by keeping them hide them? To read: to lend; No more. And by hoarding to say we end The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks That the librarian is heir to, ’tis a consummation Devoutly to be wished. To read, to...

Foulis

Books and Reading / Humor

The Perfect Book?

Are you a bibliophile in search of the perfect book? Are you a perfectionist like I am? Then read on. The following excerpt is taken from a fantasic book for readers called A Passion for Books: A Book Lover’s Treasury, edited by Harold Rabinowitz and Rob Kaplan (Times Books, 1999). The Perfect Book William Keddie The Foulis’s edition of classical works were much praised by scholars and collectors in the nineteenth century. The celebrated Glasgow publishers once attempted to issue a book which should be perfect specimen of...

Don Quixote

Books and Reading / Humor

Another Outbreak of Manchegan Madness?

About a month ago I wrote about Manchegan Madness, and it now appears that certain members of the blogging community may be experiencing early symptoms. Sylvia at Classical Bookworm reports that she has joined Tilting at Windmills, a group of readers who will be spending May and June reading about the exploits of the famed Don Quixote of La Mancha. I’ve seen this before. It starts as a reading group but ends as a support group. Pretty soon they’ll be naming their pets Rocinante or Sancho Panza. Be careful! Manchegan Madness takes...

Edward Bulwer-Lytton

Humor / Writing

Fiction So Bad It’s Good

I just came across the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, and if you want a good laugh you should really check it out. The goal of the contest: write a single sentence of awful prose. Here’s last year’s winner, by Jim Guigli of Carmichael, CA: Detective Bart Lasiter was in his office studying the light from his one small window falling on his super burrito when the door swung open to reveal a woman whose body said you’ve had your last burrito for a while, whose face said angels did...

Don Quixote and Sancho Panza

Books and Reading / Humor

Do You Recognize the 7 Early Signs of Manchegan Madness?

One of the biggest risks facing readers today is the danger of falling prey to Manchegan Madness. Manchegan Madness is an obsessive compulsive desire to act out the events of a fictional story and/or become a fictional character. The first known manifestation of Manchegan Madness was documented by Miguel de Cervantes in Don Quixote. If you are a habitual reader, you should learn to recognize these early signs of the onset of the disease: Naming your pets after literary characters: Our dog’s name is Pippin, and we constantly...