Beardie Weirdies

Those of you who know me will be aware of the fact that I am not a fan of facial hair below the nose. Eyebrows are great, I just take issue with stubble. And any mustache other than a Stalin. Because foreign policy aside, the man had a great mow.

This dislike of stubble is so profound that I avoid university campuses like the plague during exam time, because they're flooded with guys rocking their 'beard of knowledge' - namely the bum fluff that roves about their faces as they try to convey the fact that they're studying so hard they don't have the five minutes max per day it would take them to shave.

All the St Georgians out there will remember when Mr Mo went from clean shaven to stubbly back in '09. It's not like we'd never seen him with stubble before, each year at LSS he was rocking the 'holiday beard' as we called it, and so imagine our horror when the holiday beard persisted for two entire years of school. It must be said in his defense that the beard growing might be an attempt to break out of the boyish persona he developed from starting teaching at St G fresh out of university, and at a school where he was a good 10 or more years younger than everyone else on the teaching staff, because now that he has a daughter, he now has to conform to his role as paterfamilias. Perhaps this contributed to his being kicked out of the Under 30s club growing at St G because he was too mature.

Regardless, this post is here because I saw the most marvellous thingie on a blog I follow - a chart ranking the trustworthiness of male facial hair.

Enjoy.



Click it and it gets bigger (which is kind of what she said...) alternately, go here to find it in its natural habitat.

The Week

There isn't much by way of the funnies this week due to the fact that I've been knitting and writing parody songs for AUJS (Australian Union of Jewish Students - it's a uni thing that Sarah's directing) Revue 2010: The Shulshank Rejewsion.

No, I jest. The likelihood of it being called that is minimal at best. Other name options are:
Jewno (Juno)
Jews (Jaws)
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Jew (guess which movie we got that idea from)
No Country for Old Jews
Gentlemen Prefer Jews
The Jews Brothers (Blues Brothers)
etc. Basically if there's a Jew pun to be made, we've tried it.

And onto The Week!!!

We were in Latin, as we are wont to be when something funny happens. I had asked Sir when the song Mambo Number 5 had come out.
Sir: It would have been the late nineties. I remember it playing at my year 12 formal.
Soap: (in an amazed tone) You had formals back then??
Sir: (in that bitterly ironic tone he tends to use a lot around us) Yes, Sophia. We wore our best loincloths and draped the hide of a freshly slaughtered deer over our backs.
I laughed for a solid five minutes.

Later that lesson, Sophia put her headband over her eyes, turned to Elsa and whispered the following:
Soap: Elsa, I'm a cyborg.
She assumed none of us could hear her. Unfortunately for her, she whispered it at the exact moment our class was completely silent. So sir responded thus:
Sir: (stage whisper) Sophia, we can hear you.

And then on friday in LEX...
Sir: I can't afford to give you wine, you boozehound.
(That was the gist of a Horace poem about Virgil... Well my class found it funny.)

The Week

Having returned to the loving fold of school, I'm back to writing The week.

Hells mother-expletiving yeah.

There was a thing involving Mentos wrappers on the fans. Long story there. I was absent at teh time. Anyway, the next day, when I was in attendance...
Soap: You're really fun on a sugar high [Sir]. We should get more mentos. Sorry, mento. There's only one.
Me: Wouldn't it be mentus?
Soap: Don't even go there.
Sir: Mentus is greek. It would be mentoi.

Sarah: Lustfuel.
She meant lustful. We think.

Horace: A girl, not of your sort, has captured the young man Telephus whom you seek, rich and lustful [this is where the lustfuel comes in], and she holds him chained in pleasant fetters.
Soap: Is he handcuffed.
Sir: *Pinches the bridge of his nose*

Sir [regarding the chariot of the sun, as part of a longish segue about Apollo]: The chariot of the sun is pulled by horses of flaming...
Me: Fire?

Sir: Cicero has two Cs. Ninja has two Ns. Perhaps it's a clever pseudonym.
Sarah: Adela has two As.
Me: I'm not a ninja *Shifty eyes*
Sir: Kafka has two As.
Me: I'm definitely not Kafka.

Sir invoked the name of Chuck Norris.
Soap: WHat would Chuck Norris do?
Me: What would Chuck Norris do... Probably roundhouse kick you, sir. In the face.

I know it's not much, but since I only have 6 hours of class time per week this term, it's all I can do.

The small portion of the week I enjoyed before admission

This is my notes of The Week from prior to my admission: basically there’s somewhere around two and a half days of funny.

To begin with, period one on Monday is English, where I sit next to Yvette.
On Monday (praise unto the heavens) Yvette pulled out her Frankenstein before Mr Turner even managed to finish articulating his request for us to do so.
Yvette: Frankenwin.

For the past few weeks, whenever anyone mentions or references the monster’s desire for Frankenstein to create him a mate, I always turn to Yvette and make some kind of joke about ‘crazy monster sex’.
This information will become pertinent below:
Mr Turner: …desire for connection.
Yvette: If you mention that one more time, I will murder you.
Me: What?
Yvette: Crazy monster sex.
Me: Oh. Yeah. That.

Later, during triple Latin, which includes a lunch class, Monica was eating a banana. It was bruised.
Sophia (to Monica): Your banana has herpes.
Me: I’m thinking syphilis. You have a syphilitic banana.
Monica: And how.

Durign period 8, by which time it’s our third period of latin and our brains are slightly fried, Mr Morrison stretched out his arms.
Monica and Myself: You’re an albatross!!!
(Air high-five because we’re too far away to reach each other.)
Mr Morrison: Go home and measure your arm span and compare it to your height. They’ll be about the same.
Me (deducing logic): You’re an albatross in height!!!
Mr Morrison: There are so many places to start with that.

On Tuesday, during double English periods seven and eight, I was being my usual mature (sic) self.
Me: I’m so mature.
Yvette: Like old cheese.
Both: *high five*

Then, during Latin in periods 10 and 11 (I didn’t even know they existed until I started having class during them), Mr Morrison was making a point. What it was exactly escapes me, but whatever.
Mr Morrison (to Monica): I gave your mother a kiss.
Monica: No! I refuse to listen until you find another example.

And then on Friday, I received this text message. It was from Yvette:
Double English faggot. How dare you be so selfish and bail on me for hospital!

What a darling. I passed my phone around the class for everyone to read. We lolled muchly.

The Week

For a while now, Mr Morrison has been slightly glittery. This is because he has been marking year 7 assignments, and such assignments are outstanding in nothing other than sheer sparkliness.
We’d been making jokes about his glitteriness for a while when he eventually said “Every day I fly to school and I just need a little sprinkling of fairy dust. Are you happy?”
We were. Astoundingly so.

Later in the lesson, we were discussing History Extension major work essays.
Mr Morrison: I once had to write a 4000 word essay in German in one night.
Monica: Go on…
Mr Morrison: That was the climax of the story.
Me: Why did you leave it to the last minute? Were you out partying with Alex?
Mr Morrison: Yes.
Much lols following that. Alex was Mr Morrison’s hard-partying roommate when he was at uni in Vienna. Any story involving Alex generally turns out to be an interesting one.

Whilst translating us some Cicero
Mersini: I can’t spell today.
Mr Morrison: T. O. D. A. Y
Me: But… oooooh. Right. I didn’t think there was a T in ‘defence’

Mr Morrison: opportere
Mersini: That just makes me hungry.
Me: Why would indirect statements make you hungry?
(you can tell I was really concentrating that lesson)
Sophia: indirect STEAKments.

As I stated back in the holidays, our class spent a day trying to translate the Cicero. We got a bit unmotivated towards the end, as can be seen by our marvellous translation of a certain sentence as read out by Monica.
“Which you do not make to/against the strong military, but the way which you keep the hands off the other money.”
The actual translation goes something like this:
‘That it is necessary to be proved by you not that you did well in military affairs but how you kept your hands from other people’s money.’

Now onto history extension, where we are learning about the historicity of Jesus. We’re watching a documentary from the PBS during which Dominic Crossan expresses numerous opinions regarding Jesus and the like. One of the better ones was:
“That’s the terrible price of an apocalypse. There’s going to be an awful lot of dead people.”

And now to modern history where we had just begun the study of Nazi foreign policy. First, my definition of war: war is foreign policy carried out on foreign soil.

Mr Sheldrick drew a marvellous diagram explaining Nazi foreign policy. Here it is, along with his accompanying commentary.
To start with, he drew this.

The small thingy in the middle is Britain, sans Ireland and a large proportion of Wales.
The big thingy towards the right is Europe, lacking all of Spain and Portugal, The Netherlands, Scandinavia, the Mediterranean…

Then he added this

The shaded bit is central/eastern Europe. Germany, Poland, Austria, Hungary, the assorted other nations which are now predominantly post-communist something-stan, or alternately have a civil war or coup every ten or so years. But anyway.
Because when you control central Europe, you can

Branch out and ultimately control all of Europe. And when you control Europe…

…you control the world.
Yes. The smiley face was on the board.

Then there was English.
Mr Turner: Have you heard of Immanuel Kant?
Me (under my breath because I was boycotting class participation): Iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiimmanuel Kant was a real pissant who was very rarely stable, Heidegger, Heidegger was a boozy beggar who could drink you under the table. Nietzsche, Nietzsche was (etc. the philosopher’s drinking song c/o Monty Python)

Later that lesson I was bored. So I put my copy of Frankenstein open on my head.
Yvette: Frankenhat.

FRANKENHAT The one function of a copy of Frankenstein. Sun protection.

The next day in Latin Extension:
Mr Morrison: How did you go in the Easter Show? I forgot to ask you that.
Me: I was disqualified for inappropriate mounting.
Mr Morrison then laughed until he was incredibly red. It took us all a while to cotton on to what he was laughing about, because generally we’re the ones who pick up on it, not him. So that was some unexpected of our normal roles.

A few minutes later, Mr Morrison wrote something on the whiteboard.
Sophia: Is that a new marker?
Mr Morrison: It may be.
Oh the banality…or is it banalité…I never know…is it like naiveté…is it anglicised…oh well.

We were translating Horace I.5 in which Horace is bitching about the guy Pyrrha dumped him for.
Mr Morrison: He’s someone a bit effeminate. Maybe someone who’s into a bit of manscaping.
If there’s one thing guaranteed to make things weird, it’s your teacher talking about manscaping.

And later, whilst making style notes:
Mr Morrison: Black is a word with evil connotations.
Me: Sir, are you being a white supremacist?
Mr Morrison: Yes
Me: picks up pen
Mr Morrison: Don’t write that down.
Disclaimer: Mr Morrison is not a white supremacist.

And today in English:
We’re learning about Frankenstein and there’s a lot of crap regarding the supremacy of nature and such tree-hugging pseudo-bohemianism.
Alagu: When Victor and the monster die in the frozen north, it’s as if nature wins.
Mr Turner: And what gender is nature portrayed as?
Alagu: Female.
Mr Turner: So the women win in the end.
(He was making a point).
Me (to Yvette): well if nature is a woman, then the arctic would be a frigid bitch. Thus in the end, it’s the frigid bitches who win.

Later:
Mr Turner: Are women passive or active in the book?
All: Passive.
Me (to Yvette): Passive like a gerund.
Yvette: Don’t make grammar jokes at me.

We were also given a handout compiled my Mr Morris (an English teaching deputy principal) which dealt with Frankenstein and Bladerunner.
Mr Morris’ handout: [Tyrell] builds [the replicants] well…but in an act of mean spiritedness, they are given a lifespan of 4 years.
Yvette (to me): That’s wrong. He did it because after the 4 years they’d grow emotions.
Me (to Yvette): Especially because most of them were created to be sex slaves. The last thing you want is a sex slave with emotions.
Yvette: Damn right.

And back to class discussion of Frankenstein:
Mr Turner (about the De Lacey family): Boring bunch of Bourgeois vegetarians.
Yvette (to me): Better than being a bunch of cheese eating surrender monkeys.
I lolled at that (internally). I found that lovely term for the French in a book the title of which I have since forgotten. But it’s a good description.

And then after school, I went to Hurstville with Monica, Sophia, Elsa and Hilary. We were drinking EasyWay (which is a curious product…)
Monica’s had pearls in it.
Monica: Oh My God! I can’t get this fucking ball!

And later, Sophia choked on her easy way.
Me: What happened?
Sophia: I sucked too hard.

The week.

This may become a regular fixture - the assorted school funnies of the week which didn't warrant their own post.

To begin with: FRANKENLORD (expletive) a way to blaspheme obscenely without actually using obscenities.
"You brought Frankenstein today? Thank the Frankenlord!"
N.B. pronounced in a manner akin to 'fuckin'.

FRANKENMOTHERFUCKER (n) As Victor is the 'mother' of the monster (i.e. he 'bore' it) thus, to be a frankenmotherfucker, he would have to be wanking. Thus, a frankenmotherfucker is one who supplicates themselves after creating a monster otu of spare parts.

In Latin on thursday, we had some entertaining segways. One of them involved us speculating as to what animal Mr Morrison (our teacher) would be. Sarah suggested a meerkat. I suggested a giant squid. As it turns out, that's his favourite animal. Who'd have thunk.

There was then a minor discussion regardign the pronunciation of the word command which resulted in teh following conversational gems:

Mr Morrison: You say command, I say potato.

Me: You say potato, I say giant squid.

Monica: You say potato, I say Lady Gaga.

Later in the lesson, as we discussed Cicero's wording, Mr Morrison said "How much authority does this speech have?"

Half the class however thought he had said "How much authority does this bitch have?" something which mildly confused us - because that's not the kind of thing he usually says - at which point we dissolved into giggles.

Today, during Latin extension, we were translating a Catullus poem addressed to Furius and Aurelius - the selfsame men Catullus 16 was addressed to. Namely the guys he said he would sodomise violently (and that was the nice part of the poem).

This led me say "Catullus didn't like many people", to which Mr Morrison responded "Catullus liked his brother."

Utter silence.

And then as we were leaving, he said "My comment for the weekend is be nice to each other." at which point he left the room. The moment he was outside the door he added "And don't get drunk or pregnant."

Well. That was unexpected. All I can say is: I won't.

Latin for the day

Last term I was informed that I am the whore of the Latin Class. Apparently I've been getting a hell of a lot of some lately.

I seem not to have noticed that this getting of some was taking place, but who knows.

This stems from a minor dalliance carried out whilst in New Zealand on school band tour.

Go figure.

Everyone then made some comments that whilst innocuous in context, would sound rather off colour if reproduced. Unfortunately, I don't remember them, otherwise I would most definitely post them. More's the pity.

I did manage to recall these gems from class today.

Mr Morrison: The next day, Verres started playing Silly Buggers.

Me: I just spoonerised 'witty banter'.

Mr Morrison: The slave wars of Spartacus didn't spread across to Sicily.
Mersini: That's probably because he [Verres] paid them.

Why one ought never study Latin in one's spare time.

Today my Latin class went to the state library, with the exception of 16.6(insert infinite sixes)% of the class, because Mersini couldn't make it.

After a few hours of questionable productivity, we gave up on Cicero and went for a walk through Hyde Park.

In doing so, we stumbled upon a fountain which was just a low pool with jets of water shooting upwards.

And being mature young ladies who attend a selective school, we proceeded to take off our shoes, roll up our jeans, and run around in the fountain.

After a few minutes productively wasted, I stepped on something. It was painful.

As it turned out, it was a piece of broken glass I hadn't seen, and it was rather painful. Monica then pulled it out, which resulted in more bleeding than had been taking place directly previously.

So I hobbled onto dry land, and started elevating and compressing while Sophia discovered that although she has a fist aid certificate, she is made uncomfortable by the sight of blood. Go figure.

In the mean time, Monica and Elsa ran off to get Dettol and Band-Aids.

I was then patched up, at which point I hobbled off to St James station with Sophia, Monica and Elsa, then hobbled from Redfern to usyd, at which point my mother berated me for my stupidity as we walked to the campus medical practice.

I then had Betadiene swabbed on my foot, so it's now yellow.

Moral of the story: don't study latin in your free time. Ever.

It will only end painfully.