Pop Quiz - For Ron2

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    Pop Quiz - For Ron2

     So, my husband is a math and computer sci instructor at the local community college and the fall semester just started this week.  Patrick starts every course, each semester, with a pop quiz.  It's the same in each class:

    1. What is your name?
    2. What is your quest?
    3. What is your favorite color?
    4. Extra credit:  What is the wing speed of a coconut-laden swallow?

    Most of these kids are not quite hip to Monty Python, so he gets a lot of blank looks, nervous giggles, etc.  A couple times he's gotten the "right" answers. 

    In his precalculus class this semester, one kid answered #4:  "Wing speed is irrelevant.  A swallow can't lift a coconut."

    His answer to question #2 was, "To become an electrical engineer."

    Big Smile 

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    African or European swallow? 

     

     

    Blue, no Red.......AHhhhhhhhhhhhhhrrrrrrgg

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    Patrick said he always hated that part because he would have been blown off the bridge for sure.  He never had a favorite color.  He finally picked one arbitrarily (blue).  

    He also likes to see what answers he gets, just as a way of seeing what people say - and (in his math-obsessed way) he's enjoying tracking the data - so far green is far and away the favorite color of students at this community college in the rural Southeast.

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    I do something quite similar actually, as a student.

    When the class or seminar is wrapping up and people have gotten to know me a bit there always comes a moment when the teacher asks for general questions.  I raise my hand and ask...

    "What is the answer to the question of Life, the Universe and Everything?"

     One person has ever answered my question correctly and I married him!

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    VanMorrison

    "What is the answer to the question of Life, the Universe and Everything?"

     

    42 Stick out tongue

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    Yes, but what is the Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything?  (bonus round)

    I'm kind of meh about Monty Python (Patrick's a much bigger fan) but I have read everything by Douglas Adams I can get my hands on.  I even labored through the Doctor Who episodes he wrote.  I see something funny I missed the first time every time I re-read his stuff.  And I'm not really that big on modern lit - meaning anything after about 1930.  Big Smile

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    brookcove
    • What is your name?
    • What is your quest?
    • What is your favorite color?
    • Extra credit:  What is the wing speed of a coconut-laden swallow

    I am responding before looking at the other replies so that you will know that my answers are genuine and I have seen "Holy Grail" way too many times.

    What is your name? King Arthur.

    What is your quest? I seek the Holy Grail.

    What is your favorite color? Blue.

    What is the average velocity of a coconut-laden sparrow? Is that african or european?

    I don't know that. Aaaahhhhhh!

    How did you know that? You have to know these things when you're a king.

    (At work, a co-worker, John, would pull this routine on me because of any one at the company that even knows the movie, I can most closely match the accent and cadence of the actor in the movie.)

    Brave, brave Sir Robin. He quickly ran away. He turned his tail, he buggered off ...

    Stop saying that!

    There you go again, talking about the masses.

    What's he doing? He's lobbing cows at us. What a strange person.

     

    We seek the Holy Grail.

    I've already got one.

    You do?

    Yes, it's very nice.

    Your mother was a hamster and your father smelled of elderberries. Now, go away or I shall taunt you a second time.

     

     

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    VanMorrison
    "What is the answer to the question of Life, the Universe and Everything?"

     

    42.

    Perhaps someone asked the wrong question. Ah the brilliance of the late Douglas Adams.

    Just remember the words the Hitchhikers's Guide to the Galaxy. "Don't Panic."

    And always have a towel in case you encounter the Blatterbeast. If you wrap the towel around your head so that you can't see it, it will figure it can't see you, either. A voracious appetite but daft as a brush.

    One of the most horrendous tortures is to have a Vogon read poetry at you, rivaled only by the poetry of Elizabeth Browning.

    Yes, I've read the first four and plan to read the fifth that was finished posthumously.

    There was:

    Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

    Life, the Universe, and Everything

    Restaraunt at the End of the Universe

    So Long and Thanks for all the Fish

    When the newest Hitchhiker movie came out, everyone thought if me when they saw Zaphod.

     

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    I read So Long first.  Can you imagine how weird that was?  Especially since it was called, "The fourth novel in the Hitchhikers Guide Trilogy."  I had no idea what was going on, but I was still crying laughing all the way through it.  Marvin was just perfect.  Many have imitated, but none can master, the hilarious melancholy that is Marvin.

    The first DA book I ever read though was The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul.   The man's grasp of the humor of absurdity makes some weird dark part of me so happy.  Most postmodernists are so full of themselves - that was a guy who was passionately attached to a philosophy and yet could laugh at it.

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    Then you might also like the fiction of Tom Robbins.

    Another Roadside Attraction

    Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (which was made into a movie)

    Jitterbug Perfume

    Still Life with Woodpecker

    "When he pulled up to the building, he turned off the motor of his Harley-Davidson motorcycle and it died with the sound of a midget choking to death on a burning rag."

    Such imagery.