Well, I guess I have a lot of ridiculous topics today. So I threw a few in the title and stuck "And More!" at the end, like some kind of ridiculous... umm... ridiculous... dumb thing. I dunno.
Anyway, for starters, we have yesterday's story. It actually turned out to be rather nice, but I dunno if I'll have time to continue it today. It was great how I got going, though. I was just sort of like "'Once upon a time.' Once upon a time what? 'There was...' There was what? '...a cactus.'" The next sentence came pretty naturally; "'he was a sad little cactus.'" And, thus, a legend was born... Well, not really, but some sort of ridiculous folk-taley thing was.
For some time now, I've been thinking I want to publish a lot of stuff like that, in some kind of large collection with some of my other strange writings. I figure it shouldn't take too long before I have enough to fit in a book; I could probably steal some other stuff from this blog too. Of course, I've never had anything published before. I dunno how that works exactly. I imagine everyone does it slightly differently, but I wish I could just find some publisher and be like "Here, book. As long as you put my name on the cover, I don't care what you do with it." Because, really, that's pretty much true. I just want to be able to say "See? Look at that book. I wrote that." Unfortunately, that's probably not going to happen. I probably have to pay some kind of initial fee or something to help cover the printing costs, and then have it paid back over time through royalties...
Anyhow, today I got to thinking how messed up our educational system is. Why? Because it involves far too much unlearning. We are taught stuff in elementary school that isn't really correct just for the purposes of simplification. For example, we divide a number into another, and if it doesn't work out evenly, we say how much is left over rather than using fractions or decimal numbers. Also, it would be so much more understandable to explain what exactly a fraction is earlier on. Like, "Oh. 1/2. That means one half, because it's one part out of a total of two." Why aren't we taught earlier that 1/2 is just saying one divided by two? We wait far too long to teach people decimal concepts too. Our number system is base ten, and, thus, decimal. But as far as your average second-grader knows, there's nothing less than one. Except maybe one-half. But what is one-half? No clue, probably. Also, there are other, even worse things. What about mass? In elementary school -- and even up into middle school, sometimes -- kids are taught that mass and weight are pretty much the same thing. The terms are used interchangeably. Why not just avoid the term "mass" altogether, along with the units used to measure mass, until they can understand what it is? I could go on, but I'm sure you get the idea, so I'm going to move on to something less rant-y.
So, today, Seth used the word "flabbergasted." John asked, "What is a flabbergast, anyway?" It occurred to me that there was no noun form of flabbergasted, and I just said "Uh, it's a rubber ghost?" John thought that was funny and said "Oooh, you could melt it! Fwooosh!" but I assured him it was "astral rubber." That gave me a good idea. I've now decided I'm going to give some words much more practical and logical definitions; here you go:
Flabbergast: N. A ghost composed of astral rubber.
Undine: V. To throw up one's meal immediately after eating it.
Dealer: N. An active prohibitionist [as in alcohol].
Parabola: N. A spherical object that is the companion to another spherical object.
Icicle: V. Apple's process of continually reviving their products by making newer, "better" versions of them.
Macrography: N. The study of maternal ravens (and other birds of the genus Corvus)
Adenine: V. To actively oppose the removal of the number 9 from mathematical formulas.
Sacramental: A. Something or someone that maniacally mocks Egyptian gods.
Well, I figure that's good enough for now. Cookies to whoever can figure out how I came to those definitions (some of them are kinda tricky, heh)!
So today, in Economics, I was answering a question that said: "Do you think people will ever use anything besides the cash we use now?" I answered, of course, "One day, we will use purple and green slime instead of paper. It's totally true." It got me thinking about how fortunate I am to be homeschooled. I get to put the most ridiculous answers, because I have both the time to do them and a teacher with the patience to deal with them (nowadays my "teacher" is pretty much just me). Most of these answers are for English, because the questions/requirements are so open-ended, but I haven't had much opportunity for weirdness there this year... Economics has got some nice questions, too, though, so here is an example. I was supposed to be giving an "example of a voluntary exchange," and most people would have just said "I go to the store and give some money for a candy bar." But I'm not most people....
So there's this big Mafia boss guy, right? His name is Bullet Tooth Charlie. Or, at at least, that's what people call him. Now, Bullet Tooth Charlie hears about this guy, Waldo Jabazinski. Waldo owns a store that sells pretty much everything... you know; bubble gum, canned food, screws and nails, soft drinks, soap, guns and knives.... So Waldo has a lot of business, and he makes a lot of money, right? Well, Bullet Tooth Charlie doesn't like this. So he has his two thugs he's got working for him, Big Moe and Slinky, take a big van and pull out all of the seats. Then they fill it all up with bowling balls. Now, the van is really old, and it doesn't run anymore, but it's parked next to the river. So now Bullet Tooth Charlie has Big Moe and Slinky get Jabazinski and tie him up. Then they take him and lock him in the van. Then Bullet Tooth Charlie comes (And you can tell this is important to him 'cause he shows up in person) and he says to Jabazinski: "I see you's sorta in a per-dica-ment, isn't you? Well don't let anybody ever tell you dat Bullet Tooth Charlie isn't a nice guy. 'Cause I is a nice guy. So I's gonna tell you what I'll do. I'll let you buy dis van from me. 'Cause it's mine, see? And all it's gonna cost you is forty percent of your profits from now until... oh, about when you's dead. Dat sounds fair, right? Now, you don't hafta buy this van if you don't want to. But if you don't buy it, it's not yours. It's mine. So if Big Moe and Slinky decides they's gonna push dis van inta da river, I's probably not gonna stop dem. But if it's your van, then they need your permission, right?" So of course Jabazinski buys the van, and that's a voluntary exchange, because he didn't have to buy it, right? Nobody was making him. And Bullet Tooth Charlie, he's such a nice guy, he gives Jabazinski a knife, too, to cut himself loose, with no extra charge. So don't let anyone ever tell you that Bullet Tooth Charlie isn't a nice guy. 'Cause he is.
...So now I think I'm done, because I don't really want to do any more with the Ilhicamina story right now. Later, though.
:::Source= Paul M-unit 19.91 MKII
...Information finalized...
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