I love giving quizzes in my writing/literature classes. I find that the less time people have to think, the funnier their writing tends to be. Snippets:

I am very obstinate. And I don’t always like to change my opinion…

As opposed to the more common breed of obstinacy that is dying to change.

The color in this ad is very vibrant and alive. It makes the reader feel calm and serene.

The only explanation I have is that the colors at first energize you so much that you feel alive, but the effort that goes into being alive exhausts you and eventually calms you down.

We cannot censor speech until we censor the words that come out of our mouths.

Infallible logic.

I hate writing. I would much rather use words.

It’s true! Writing without words has always been puzzlingly difficult for me as well.

Chinua Achebe wrote Things Fall Apart to show Africa had a rational past. African was not a wild ferret.

I have to say, I was stumped by this one. Africa, latest studies have shown, is in fact NOT a wild ferret, and might never have been.

Verbal responses can be equally funny—sometimes more so since students process their thoughts even less. For instance, once this student raised her hand after I’d given about a 15 minute lecture on history and relevance of the Berlin Wall. Her question was, “So is the Berlin Wall the same thing as the Great Wall of China?”

Days like that, I’m proud to be a teacher.

This is the kind of album that isn’t bad on its own terms. Mono plays moody, atmospheric instrumental rock that would have made a good soundtrack to The Lord of the Rings if Peter Jackson were as innovative as everyone says he is and didn’t bow to convention with a full-blown orchestra and choir. Several of the six songs stretch into the ten-minute range, the better to incorporate thrilling sequences of crescendos, climaxes, and decrescendos. The shorter, quieter songs are welcome interludes between the epic-battle, tragic-death compositions that dominate the album. And the art is great—the blue booklet imitates the texture of a cloth-bound memoir, the watercolor portraits inside remind me of Genesis’s We Can’t Dance, and the whole CD comes in a cardboard sleeve like Interpol’s Antics, with a different painting on each side so that you can choose your cover.

No, the issue with Mono is that I already have a Sigur Ros album in my collection, and it’s actually by Sigur Ros.

In other news, I see that Penis Enlargement felt it necessary to weigh in on Pulao’s prelims-vs.-virginity post.  I offer our guest this humble suggestion:  get some better search algorithms.