Thursdays with Walter, week 5

I hope I terrified everyone: it's the midterm of midterms!

With the midterm being a big bomber, the end of the year stuff'll be a piece of cake.

This is your midterm. It's like a vision came to me.

For next week, I want you to write a short story that begins, "On the way to the wedding, I drove past a bloody corpse on the highway."

I asked them for a sample, and they send me a bible.

I'm a sham and a pretense, but I admit it.

These are the really unemployable.

Does anybody care about Google to the extent that you want to go there and say "Hi, what's new?" We just use them.

This is a cruel trade! I didn't know conservators were so ruthless!

I cooked up a horrific midterm in order to mask my ignorance.

I ain't never lickin' the tip of a ballpoint no more.

Put that in your "don't" column.

It's alcohol, alright!

If you can drink it, you can breathe it. Ooh! Write that down!

Oh wow, this is horrific, but it's original, so it's 11 million dollars.

Those tricksy conservators are behind all this.

That's what I like about the web: you get what you wanted plus 80 pages of comments.

Next week, I'll show you way more wheels. I have so many wheels now I could build an 18-wheeler.

This is your guide for the midterm. If you have trouble, light incense in front of him. If you want a color version, send me ten dollars and I'll give you a paint by number. Now that you have your totem, let's look at what you've gotten into.

If you're not here, raise your hand.

What's a Hemingway? Oh, about five pounds.

I got all of these from one box, from one dumpster. Student: Are you just hanging out by the dumpster waiting for an old guy with a box of books? Nah, these are all coincidences. I have book radar. I should be a book dowser.

"Salvation is Created" for marching band

David: I'm going to assume (hope, pray, whatever) that it's the warm-up chorale.
Me: Pfft. You know there's gonna be a flag routine with it.
David: No. I will not have that.
Me: I think you mean, "do not want."
David: That too.

Tis the Season

Me: You're so vain, you probably think Adeste Fideles is about you.

Not Helping

Austin: Oh, just what we need, more grainy, out of focus pictures of
Bigfoot. It's people like you who are ruining the field of
cryptozoology!

Could you be a little more vague, please?

Jay: What was that movie, where that guy dies?

Vinny: That’s pretty much every movie.

How's Married Life

Greg: Oh, I don't feel too good about that.
Me: What? I'm just tenting my fingers!

Surf City, It Ain't

Me: Every group going into the bar has one female and two males.
Greg: It's a good night for the ladies.
Me: And a bad day for Jan & Dean.

Jackie Chan at the Salvadoran Restaurant

Me: You're watching a Chinese movie, dubbed into English, dubbed into
Spanish, edited for television, in a mirror.
Greg: I'm not watching it for the plot.

Implausible Deniability

Greg: I deny everything!
Me: Everything?
Greg: No!
Me: Hm, even that?
Greg: No!

Fire or Ice?

Greg: It's the apocalypse, with a vampire. Can it get any worse?
Me: There could be a zombie rising out of the back seat.
Greg: There probably is.

Comedy Tonight

Me: Is there a game on? Why are the stadium lights on? Oh, it says
volleyball.
Greg: Tonight, volleyball. Tomorrow...
Me: Tragedy tomorrow, volleyball tonight.
Greg: I was going to say curling, but that's more or less the same as
tragedy.

Overheard in Port Lavaca

Teenage mother: I didn't drink at all! I had beer at the reception,
and a couple of Jagers, and that shot you gave me, and that's it!

Not Helping

Me: They really have the worst dog toy ever over there. It's the gift that if I gave it to Mike, would once and for all make Jen forbid him to talk to me.
Greg: Lemme see it.
Me, holding horrible dog toy: Look at it. It's like a mess, with a handle.
Greg: It's fantastic. You should get it for Mike.

What was that?

Me: That would be the sound of Greg's heart breaking.
Greg: It'd be kind of a clanging squeak.

Logic

Greg: There we have it: proof that John Tesh is a commie.

Pok e joe's

Me: I don't know what's in these pickles.
Greg: Crack, apparently.

If a theorem falls in the forest...

Me: It's so mathematician of you to be allergic to something outdoorsy
and not know until you're 35 years old.
Greg: I've had poison ivy before! It wasn't this bad!
Me: Actually, it'd be more mathematician of you to never find out.
Because why would a mathematician go into the woods? To get to the
other side?
Greg: It's the only possible reason. And he wouldn't see the forest
for the trees.
Me: Terrible. But there's got to be a joke in there somewhere: why did
the mathematician go into the woods?
Greg: To get to the other side!
Me: That doesn't make any sense!
Greg: That's what makes it a mathematician joke!

Damn Ivies

Me: Okay, I'll say it: Cornell crazy.
Greg: Why?
Me: Beekeeping.
Greg: One word says it all.

Funereal Fun with Mike

(This is from my dad's funeral, June 2007; I just found it on a list of dad stories I keep meaning to write down. Hey: at least I have this, right?)

Mike: We have the photomosaic Christ, the needlepoint Last Supper, where's the decoupage pieta?

Honesty

Greg: I'm speaking from my heart here. My heart says "pickle."