I have a great idea for a reality show: American Idle. Each episode will showcase 10 real Americans sitting around inertly, eating Bugles, and watching tv. Viewers can call up and vote for one of the contestants, and whomever receives the most votes has to go outside and run around the block a few times.
Give me a call, FOX: I’ll let this one go for a song.
The bus pulled away from the stop, but immediately came to a halt behind a queue of cars at a red light. Two women outside began pounding on the back doors and yelling “wait! wait!”. As a chorus of “back door!” arose from the passengers, the driver allowed the women to enter.
A minute later the bus still hadn’t moved, and a third woman arrived upon the scene, slapping the flat of her hand against the bus and yelling “wait!”, just as the traffic light turned green. The driver hesitated for a moment, glanced at the wailing woman in his side mirror, and then took off. Grumbles rippled through the coach, with one young man loudly pronouncing the entire situation “lame!”
After we got onto the freeway, the driver spoke over the intercom. “Ladies and gentlemen, ” she said, “We do not allow people to board the bus after it has left the curb for reasons of saftey. People who run into the street after a departing bus often fall under the wheels and sustain injury or death.
“Last year, five people were killed while trying to catch a bus that had already left the curb,” she continued in an ominous tone. “Unfortunately for those people, they caught their bus … for the last time!”
2. Catcher in the Rye: “I’m not the kind of person who reads a lot of books and this book is a reason why.”
3. The Grapes of Wrath: “Unfortunately i had to read this book for my american literature class. it went on and on and on about absolutely nothing!yes mr. steinbeck is verydescriptive, by he goes completely overboard in almost every chapter. i mean, does it really take a whole chapter to describe a turtle?!!”
4. To Kill a Mockingbird: “I’m sorry everyone. I don’t see why this book is so fabeulos. I would give it a zero. I find no point in writing a book about segregation, there’s no way of making it into an enjoyable book.”
5. The Color Purple: “This book is the collection of sick perverted ravings of Alice Walker. I started reading the book thinking it had to be great to win the Pullitzer Prize, but I couldn’t even finish it because it was so grossly sickening. I urge you to not read this book because it will subvert you and defile your mind with unwanted perverseness.”
6. Ulysses: “It is the only book I can think of where the reader deserves more credit for finishing it than the author.”
7. Beloved: “Toni has a comon failing among female writers, unfocused ideas and flat characters. the subject matter wasnt something that particlarly intrested me. I guess it would be possible to like this book, but someone like me, I think Ill stick with sci-fi.”
8. The Lord of the Flies “I had to read this book for literiture class I hated it. my teacher rattled on about the symbolizm in this book.It was so boring and kinda gory. Plus no girls, wasnt they susposed to repopulate the world after nuclear war so not possible wih only boys. The one thing i found interesting was how they acted like wild animals after they had been on the island a while.that was kinda cool.But it was to confusing.”
9. 1984: “The fall of Communism has erased nearly every trace of relevance this book may once have had. ”
10.The Sound and the Fury: “What was up with all the words in italics?”
Update, 10/31/06: Hi! A lot of folks are coming to this dusty old entry from a link on Boing Boing. Just so you know, I wrote a second (and better) installment of this for The Morning News.
Raptureready.com says “The rapture is going to strike without warning. The rapture is going to happen suddenly. The rapture is going to be one of the most astonishing events to ever occur.”
The Rapture may not be the most astonishing event ever to occur, but it’s gonna be, like, in the top ten. Right up there with Richard Hatch winning Survivor and the release of Vanilla Coke.
Underpromise and overdeliver — now that’s how you run a religion!
I have been the victim of an orchestrated and refined scam at least twice. (By “refined” I mean “more elaborate than a guy who doesn’t really need bus fare hitting me up for a dollar”.) I may have been bilked on other occasions but, if so, I am blissfully unaware of it.
The two:
Short Change: I got nailed by a quick-change artist when I was 17 and working as a cashier of a restaurant. A guy comes in and asks me to make change a $20 bill. As soon as I took the bill he began talking a mile a minute about nothing in particular, and after he received his change (a ten, a five and five ones) he suddenly pulled a wad of money out of his coat pocket and said “Shit, I didn’t need change after all, I have all these ones in my coat.” So he shows me “ten” ones and says, “Here, just give me a $10 bill for these.” I give him a $10 bill, he hands me the ones, I count them and find only nine. “I only gave you nine? Well, here,” the guy says and hands me another $1 bill. Then he says “Fuck, this is a nightmare. Take back this $10 bill too and just give me back my original twenty bucks.” I do so, and he leaves while I stand there thinking “waaaaaaaait a minute ….” I had to write all the transactions onto a piece of paper to figure out that I had lost $10.
Wallet Drop: I was walking down a sidewalk in Bolivia when I see the guy about 20 meters ahead of me pull his wallet out of his back pocket. He does something with it (walking all the time), and then goes to shove it back into his pocket — except it doesn’t go it right and falls to the sidewalk. Instinct compelled me to take a few steps forward with the intent of picking it up, but then I remember that a million South American scams start with the classic “dropped wallet maneuver,’ so I pull up short and glace around. Sure enough, the shifty-looking Other Guy is standing right there beside me. “Hey,” Other Guy says lamely, “You, uh, oughtta return that.” I immediately knew something was up, so I said “you return it,” and hightailed it out of there. I suspect the plan was for Other Guy to pick my pocket while I stooped, but I’ll (thankfully) never know for sure.
Now you can make your very own Red Meat comic strip with the Red Meat Construction Set Go’wan, make one: It’s fun!
Yes! defective yeti is the #1 Google search result for the key phrase drunken shenanigans. I have never been prouder.
The Seattle public transportation system has a groovy program called The Poetry Bus Project. Every year they announce a theme, poets (and would-be poets) submit short verse relating to the theme, the best are printed onto placards and displayed in buses throughout the city.
Last year’s theme was “One to One: Points of Contact”. Here is one of my favorites from that set:
Apparition on 15th NW Driving home from the P.O., a route
I know well; already in the right lane
for the turn on 75th when I spot an
orange sign: CAUTION: OVERHEAD POWER
Electrified, expecting a vision — Father
Zeus or Santa Claus — I say, Okay, I
subscribe to that. Just show me.And he comes down at the next corner:
larger-than-life suspenders. Full beard.
White cloud of hair. He disappears in my
rearview mirror, but I believe the sign.
He’s real. He’s there.
— Madeline DeFrees
You can read all the 2001 winning entries here.
And if you live in Washington State, you can find details on how to submit poetry for next year’s competition (“Lost & Found”) on The Poetry Bus Project website.