“Well, either the x-rays lied to me or you are spontaneously creating teeth. I’m going with the second one because it’s way cooler.”
“When was the last time you flossed? Your gums aren’t bleeding which means I’m either not doing this hard enough or you actually floss your teeth regularly”
“You don’t need to do a fluoride treatment I just want to go check my facebook for a second and this is the best excuse I can come up with. Don’t worry your insurance will cover it.”
“Take a whole handful of toothbrushes, I can’t order new ones in less ugly colors until these ones are gone.”
“Remember not to eat or drink anything for a half hour…or actually you know forget that go eat lemons and drink coffee right now. I make money based on peoples bad decisions, you should probably stop brushing your teeth too.”
“I became a dentist because I like making children cry and they don’t let you do that as a regular doctor.”
This is a Jack Handey quote, actually. People talk about certain writers shitposting before shitposting was a thing, but Jack Handey practically invented shitposting. He wrote these short nonsense one liners and they published them in the National Lampoon and played them on SNL in the 90s. There’s a shit ton of them and they all sound like shitposts. Here’s just a few:
“I hope if dogs ever take over the world, and they chose a king, they don’t just go by size, because I bet there are some Chihuahuas with some good ideas.”
“Contrary to what most people say, the most dangerous animal in the world is not the lion or the tiger or even the elephant. It’s a shark riding on an elephant’s back, just trampling and eating everything they see.”
“To me, it’s always a good idea to always carry two sacks of something when you walk around. That way, if anybody says, “Hey, can you give me a hand?,” you can say, “Sorry, got these sacks.“”
“If you saw two guys named Hambone and Flippy, which one would you think liked dolphins the most? I’d say Flippy, wouldn’t you? You’d be wrong, though. It’s Hambone.”
“I think a good novel would be where a bunch of men on a ship are looking for a whale. They look and look, but you know what? They never find him. And you know why they never find him? It doesn’t say. The book leaves it up to you, the reader, to decide. Then, at the very end, there’s a page you can lick and it tastes like Kool-Aid.”
“If trees could scream, would we be so cavalier about cutting them down? We might, if they screamed all the time, for no good reason.”
“If you’re an ant, and you’re walking along across the top of a cup of pudding, you probably have no idea that the only thing between you and disaster is the strength of that pudding skin”
“I wish I lived on a planet that had two suns—regular sun and “rogue” sun. That way, when somebody asked me what time it was, I’d say, “Regular time?” And they’d say, “Yeah.” And I’d say, “Sorry, all I have is rogue time.” It’d be fun to be a stuck-up rogue-time guy.”
“If you’re a cowboy, and you’re dragging a guy behind your horse, I bet it would really make you mad if you looked back and the guy was reading a magazine.”
“I hope some animal never bores a hole in my head and lays its eggs in my brain, because later you might think you’re having a good idea but it’s just eggs hatching.”
“If your friend is already dead, and being eaten by vultures, I think it’s okay to feed some bits of your friend to one of the vultures, to teach him to do some tricks. But ONLY if you’re serious about adopting the vulture.”
“If you ever fall off the Sears Tower, just go real limp, because maybe you’ll look like a dummy and people will try to catch you because, hey, free dummy.”
“We tend to scoff at the beliefs of the ancients. But we can’t scoff at them personally, to their faces, and this is what annoys me.”
There were so many of these, and they were all hilarious. Still are.
“It takes a big man to cry, but it takes a bigger man to laugh at that man.”
“The face of a child can say it all, especially the mouth part of the face.”
“I bet one legend that keeps recurring throughout history, in every
culture, is the story of Popeye.”
“Anytime I see something screech across a room and latch onto someones
neck, and the guy screams and tries to get it off, I have to laugh,
because what is that thing.”
“The memories of my family outings are still a source of strength to me.
I remember we’d all pile into the car – I forget what kind it was – and
drive and drive. I’m not sure where we’d go, but I think there were some
trees there. The smell of something was strong in the air as we played
whatever sport we played. I remember a bigger, older guy we called
“Dad.” We’d eat some stuff, or not, and then I think we went home. I
guess some things never leave you.”
– The guy in front of you in class is shopping for a charcoal grill on ebay. why. sir. we have a test next week.
– Squirrels just….have no fear. None. Only on college campuses though. Are they okay?
– Finding condoms, packaged and not, in various places. 9 times out of 10, if there’s something inside, it’s not what the condom is supposed to have inside of it.
– Water balloon condoms. See above.
– That one guy who wears the same hat every day and you see him every day and you don’t understand why he’s so attached to this hat what is he hiding
– *single flake of snow appears* “Maybe campus will shut down tomorrow.”
– Campus doesn’t shut down. There’s three feet of snow and the wind chill is below zero.
– That one corner of the library basement that no one goes to. It smells old and there’s probably a ghost there.
– When you’re a pedestrian, you hate the cyclists. When you’re on a bicycle, you want nothing more than to run every single person over.
– You see someone violently acting out a music video with their headphones in. You leave them alone because you were doing the same thing thirty minutes ago. You hope it goes well for them.
– Theater majors. Just…theater majors.
– do the science kids???? ever leave the science buildings???? where do they sleep?
– There’s a dog. It’s surrounded in seconds by over-caffeinated, under-hydrated students who haven’t slept in three days.
– you find articles of clothing in really weird places and just. stop caring. glove in a tree? Cool man. Sock on the street? Hope no one needed that. Pants on the stairs of the dorm? Use a condom bro.
– The dorm lobby television only ever plays sports, news, or The Food Network. No one is ever actually watching what’s on.
– how are the art students even alive
– that one professor that EVERYONE on campus knows, even if they have a completely different major than what they teach.
– there’s a class. you know you had it. you know you have a grade for it. you can’t remember a single second of your time in it.
– Where did that cat come from? No one knows. It’s always been there. You can’t pet it. Only stare from afar.
– what is tipping? how does it work? idk tip the pizza guy five bucks for the ten dollar pizza. he looks tired. he’s dying on the inside. he saw a guy naked tonight.
– Inevitable “pinned condom on the bulletin board goes missing” gag
– Your whiteboard markers are missing again. You put them out yesterday.
– someone stole an entire skeleton from the science buildings. it got returned a week later without the skull.
– Vocalist majors. Almost as bad as the theater majors. At least the theater kids don’t sing during breakfast.
– there’s a piano in the student lounge. no one can play anything but Chopsticks and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.
– your garbage is four feet tall and has been there for two weeks. you add more to the top. you took the recycling out yesterday.
So if my students finish a quiz/test early, I ask them to draw me stuff on the back (partly so those who need more time are less self-conscious about still having the test out, partly because fuck yeah, pictures), and it may be the single best decision of my career.
In the past couple of weeks, I’ve told these kids that (a) the Romans believed there were demons in their public toilets and (b) the word for “janitor” comes from “ianitor”, which means “(door) guard”.
So now I’m getting drawings of superhero janitors taking on toilet demons, and it’s so beautiful.
Aaaaand today a student showed me a video of himself lighting a fire in his toilet while chanting the conjugation of the word “to be”.
He said he wanted to recreate the ancient toilet demons, and I have concerns.
K… but why conjugations of to be?
My students kept forgetting how to conjugate esse, so I turned it into a rhythmic chant that I had them say over and over. The problem is that when you chant ANYTHING in Latin it sounds like you’re summoning a demon, which they decided was awesome, so uh. Now I’ll just be randomly walking through the hallway and hear voices chanting, “sum es est! sumus estis sunt!”
I’m 99% sure my colleagues think I’ve started a cult.
Keep doing what you’re doing. I’m sure everyone will turn out all the better for it.
Today a 27-year-old man I was taking care of in the hospital asked if I could help him get boosted up in his hospital bed because, and I quote, “You look strong. Like, you look like you could take a motherfucker out.”
That is the most flattering thing that a patient has ever said to me, and I’m counting the little old lady who told me my eyebrows were beautiful, and the very deaf old German man who yelled at me that I was “WONDERFUL!!! MADE BY GOD TO BE A NURSE!!!!!”
i’m at the bookstore and i just met a very serious eight-year-old boy in a tiny tweed suit and a light pink button-down shirt who asked me to help him find:
-crime and punishment
-eugene onegin
-a hero of our time
-the call of cthulu
-end of watch by stephen king
also met his very tired mother, who was wearing a purple fleece jacket. the little boy exasperatedly corrected her on her pronunciation of “onegin.” i promise you i am not making up one word of this.
i asked him if he wanted recommendations and he said, in a deep, forceful voice, “NO”
ultimately i think kindness is the most radical thing you can do with your pain and your anger. it’s like, you take everything awful that’s ever been done to you, and you throw it back in the world’s teeth, and you say no, fuck you, i’m not going to take this. you say this is unacceptable. you say that shit stops with me.
humans are fucking terrible and this awful world we live in will fucking kill you but if you are kind, if you are brave and clever and try really hard, you can defy it. you can impose on this bleak and monstrous structure something beautiful. even if it’s temporary. even if it doesn’t heal anything inside you that’s been hurt.
i’m gonna sleep and i’m gonna wake up and i swear by everything in this deadly horrible universe i’m gonna make someone happy.
i’ve seen a number of comments and tags where people feel that they must swallow or repress their anger in order to engage in kindness. that is not at all what i am recommending here. radical kindness is an expression of anger. it is not passive. it is not repressive. it does not require you, in any way, to forgive those that have fucked you up. it does not require you to be quiet.
it just requires that you be kind. viciously. vengefully. you fight back. you plant flowers. give to charity. play games. pet someone’s dog. scream into the dark. paint and write and dance, tell jokes, sing songs, bake cookies. you have been hurt and you don’t have to deny that hurt. you just have to recognize it in other people, and take their hand, and say: no more. enough. fuck this. no more.
have a cookie.
i will say this again: we are all going to die. the universe is enormous and almost entirely empty. to be kind to each other is the most incredible act of defiance against the dark that i can imagine.
i will say this again: we are all going to die. the universe is enormous and almost entirely empty. to be kind to each other is the most incredible act of defiance against the dark that i can imagine.
3. Two good quotes by Kurt Vonnegut: “Hello babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the
winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. On the outside, babies, you’ve
got a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of,
babies-“God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.”
And: “Be soft. Do not let the world make you hard. Do
not let pain make you hate. Do not let the bitterness steal your
sweetness. Take pride that even though the rest of the world may
disagree, you still believe it to be a beautiful place.”
there’s a lot of evidence that the iliad and the odyssey were actually composed by a variety of poets through an oral tradition rather than just by one poet, so what if the homeric texts are actually just a very long game of D&D
homer, the dm: okay achilles, agamemnon has just taken away your war prize, what do you want to do achilles’ player: i roll to have a diplomatic conversation with agamemnon achilles’ player: *rolls a 1* homer: you throw the staff of speaking at agamemnon’s face and storm off to sulk with your boyfriend
Homer, the DM: Your beautiful Patroclus is dead. What do you do? Achilles’ player: I fight everyone. Homer, the DM: You can’t fight everyone. How would you even– Achilles’ player: *rolls a 20* I fight everyone. Homer, the DM: *sighs* Fine. You cut a path through the Trojan army, enemy dead strewn in your wake. Achilles’ player: How many? Homer, the DM: …lots. Enough to clog the friggin’ river with bodies. Achilles’ player: I fight the river. Homer, the DM: You. can. not. fight. the. river. Achilles’ player: *reaches for dice*
Homer, the DM: Okay guys, so the war’s over, you had a bunch of losses but you won in the end. Time to go home, let’s roll to see who gets there firs—
Odysseus’s player: I got a critical failure.
Homer: The cyclops asks you who you are. What do you do?
Odysseus’s player: I say, “Who me? I’m nobody.”
Homer: Roll for deception.
Odysseus’s player: I got a natural 20.
Homer: The cyclops now completely believes that your name is Nobody. He shouts for help from the other cyclops but they ignore him because he’s telling them that “Nobody hurt him.”
sparksoffandommagic 