Thursday, April 24, 2008

7 days in a row? A curse from hell!

M. is here now, physically. Verbally. The evening's conversational coup de grâce is her non sequitur: "I am a gerund." Stop reading here if you want to retain the sanity that allows you to recognize that as a strange sentence. I lost that a few hours of conversation ago.

Together as mother and daughter, we explored this surreal masterpiece of culture. The key step is omitted from the instructional animation, and I for one wanted more of the cute dog(?) and less of the stupid teenage girl lingo. Despite missing two of the questions (one for kicks, and one out of heartfelt horror -- see title), we were assured at the end of the voluntary pop quiz:
you got 100 points! It's a red letter day. U R brainy indeed.
This drives me to ask: is it possible to get more than 100 points? I took the quiz again, getting every question right, and discovered that 100 is no longer the limit:
you got 120 points. Ur a genius. Period. or period genius.
On a scientific bent, I took the vapid quiz again, this time carefully picking only incorrect answers. I was chastised:
Better crack the books girlfriend! U still have alot of learning to do about the scarlet 7.
This was accompanied by an adorable animation of the dog(?) carrying a stack of books. The animation rewarded me far more than the verbal praise of actual success.

Do men ever undergo such public, open humiliation of their gender? Is it plastered on billboards? Are there analogous bubbly blue Flash sites where a cartoon dog talks about wet dreams or erectile dysfunction?


This post's theme band: that new band from Sweden. ... because millions of ancient women can't be wrong, though they can apparently exert more biological self-determinism than modern women.

2 comments:

Ernie said...

Gerund---fantastic! Has M started contributing to your thoughts on complexity theory yet? Has she forgotten what the ubiquitous squares are for yet?

RP said...

The thought of Mrs. Fontes (Hi Mrs. Fontes) declaring herself a gerund brought me considerable glee, which I made audible for like two minutes (ie, LOL). Also, there are no bubbly blue flash sites dedicated to ED, and there should be.