Bam! Hamburger!

First, I apologize for my dreadful delinquency. It's been three weeks since my last post -- I know, I know! I'm beating my head on my desk right now. Seriously. I mean, I was when I wrote this.

Anyway, I'll have a for-real post coming later. Now, let me try to appease you with more wacky massacring of the English language. We've just begun rehearsals for this year's Christmas play: an adaption of Dickens' A Christmas Carol. There were some hilarious misreadings during the auditions, and more than once I had to pretend to scratch my nose to hide my grin.

Student A, reading Scrooge: Why are you here?
Student B, reading Marley: Because I'm crazed!
Me, scratching my nose: That's cursed, girls. Cursed.

Later . . .
Student c, reading Scrooge: Merry Christmas? Bam! Hamburger!
Me, scratching furiously: Bah, like in bottle. And it's not hamburger, it's humbug.

Still later . . .
Student A, still reading Scrooge: Why are you cursed? You were always a good businesswoman.
Student B, still reading Marley and getting confused about my previous correction: I cursed too much about business! I should have cursed more about the people around me!
Me: (Unable to speak, shaking from silent laughter, covering my face and waving at the girls to continue)



That was two weeks ago. Right now, I'm grading another rather humorous assignment. I showed the (very) short film Lifted to my students last week and asked them to describe what was happening; you may remember it as the hilarious animated short that went with the Pixar movie Ratatouille, in which a hapless alien struggles futilely to pass a human-abduction exam while his instructor looks on.

Problem is, the word 'alien' is apparently not in my students' vocabulary. I've gotten quite a range of alternatives, though:

> There are two ET in the UFO.
> The strange person want to take the boy out of his room.
> Two organisms come to Earth.
> One monster want to take the human out.
> Two nonhuman beings download the earth.
> A small creature and a fat creature try to take a person.
> Two frogs come in a UFO.
> There are a big green and a small green.
> The small hero wanted to let a sleepy man come out of the house.
> A stranger animal wants to operate the machine.
> Two cartoons live the UFO.
> The beasts are in a plant. (Plant, plane, what's the difference?)
> The mechian person controlled the real person. (I don't know what she meant either)
> We can see two fingers in a fly ship which is like a plate. (I have no idea what she was going for, but 'finger' was definitely not it)>

. . . but no alien! Such are the difficulties of the English language. Until next time (which I promise will be sooner!),

Dave