Who’s there?
Question #17:
You have won a prize. The prize has two options, and you can choose either (but not both). The first option is a year in Europe with a monthly stipend of $2000. The second option is ten minutes on the moon.
Which option do you select?
vs. 
Order a salad on the first date? Cut! I like food. You should, too. It tastes good and provides all the nutrients you need to maintain a healthy body weight. Sarah Jessica Parker is NOT a healthy body weight. And she’s ugly.
Dear Undergrad,
I received your paper via email today. I’m very impressed that you turned it in on time. The clever little joke at the end about it going to be late, I have to admit, made me laugh. But let’s get down to business shall we.
I asked you to write an essay that related your experiences during spring break and to then evaluate those experiences within the broader context of what it means to be an American student. In regards to describing your spring break, you did a okay job. When I said feel free to use a little “truthiness” I certainly did not expect this level of “creativity” from you. Continue reading…
I guess instead of penpal they should call it pen-yourself. Ha! You know, because I’m writing to myself. But that’s not entirely true either. I’m writing to you, you being my ideal imagined audience. And who is reading it in actuality is 50% a mystery to me. Which is kind of exciting, but mostly predictable. And predictability is something we seem to mostly underestimate, or ignore completely. I am more and more convinced that much of my life is completely predictable. Pushing the obvious aside, like that I will set my alarm for 8:30am tomorrow but won’t wake up till around 11am, eat a bowl of oatmeal while watching something I’ve already seen on HBO. Continue reading…
I must tell you, this isn’t going exactly how I imagined it. I really thought that by this time I would have received a response from you. But as I reflect upon it now, that’s completely ridiculous. You’re Mila Kunis! I’m some anonymous dude on the Internets. Ha! There’s so many crazies out there, it would be easy for you to just lump me in with them and never have to think about me again. So, I don’t blame you, really. Perhaps I should tell you a little bit more about myself, you know, to allay your reservations.
My real name is Kiren. Continue reading…
Knock Knock.
Question #16:
You are sitting in an empty bar (in a town you’ve never before visited), drinking Barcardi with a soft-spoken acquaintance you barely know. After an hour, a third individual walks into the tavern and sits by himself, and you ask your acquaintance who the new man is. “Be careful of that guy,” you are told. “He is a man with a past.” A few minutes later, a fourth person enters the bar; he also sits alone. You ask your acquaintance who this new individual is. “Be careful of that guy, too,” he says. “He is a man with no past.”
Which of these two people do you trust less?
See that man to the right? What’s his name? No, not Clint Eastwood. I mean the character. What’s his name? Can’t remember, can you? Don’t worry, your brain isn’t melting from one too many acid trips. He doesn’t have a name. He’s the Man With No Name. He has no past, and therefore no name. No one knows from whence he came and for what he keeps on keepin’ on for. He just does. He just is. And if he walked into the bar, I would leave immediately because people are gonna straight up be killed.
But you see this guy, to the left there? He does have a name. It’s William “Bill” Munny. He has a name, and a past. In his past he killed everyone. And I mean everyone, including children. If he walked into a bar, I would also leave immediately and rush home to change my diaper. Yes, if I lived in the Old West, I’d wear a diaper. But mostly because outhouses are gross. Plus scorpions are known to hide out in outhouses. And really, who’s gonna suck out that poison? No one. That’s who. NO ONE.
So it seems like I don’t have much of a choice. A man with a past, and without, can be equally terrifying. But I’ll make a decision, no cop outs ’round here. I trust the man without a past less. A man with past has a reputation, and though it’s no guarantee, it’s better than knowing nothing. And I hate knowing nothing. What do you know about it anyway?
Hello. My name is…well, just call me RJ. Kind of like Ray J, but not really. You don’t know me, and actually, I don’t know you. I know of you. Or I know you as the dumb, yet lovable Jackie Burkhart on That ’70s Show; the sassy and sexy Rachel Jansen in Forgetting Sarah Marshall; the dangerous femme fatale, Mona Sax, in Max Payne; the misunderstood angst-ridden Meg Griffin on Family Guy; and most recently, the, uh, Solara in The Book of Eli. I’m sorry, I can’t figure out how to describe your character in that movie. The character wasn’t written well. How would you describe her in no more than two words? Impossible, I tell you.
I should get to the point. Would you like to be my pen pal? I’ve never had a pen pal, and have always wanted one. You Continue reading…
It’s about time.
Question #15:
Someone builds an optical portal that allows you to see a vision of your own life in the future (it’s essentially a crystal ball that shows a randomly selected image of what your life will be like in twenty years). You can only see into this portal for thirty seconds. When you finally peer into the crystal, you see yourself in a living room, two decades older than you are today. You are watching a Canadian football game, and you are extremely happy. You are wearing a CFL jersey. Your chair is surrounded by books and magazines that promote the Canadian Football League, and there are CFL pennants covering your walls. You are alone in the room, but you are gleefully muttering about historical moments in Canadian football history. It becomes clear that—for some unknown reason—you have become obsessed with Canadian football. And this future is static and absolute; no matter what you do, this future will happen. The optical portal is never wrong. This destiny cannot be changed.
The next day, you are flipping through television channels and randomly come across a pre-season CFL game between the Toronto Argonauts and the Saskatchewan Roughriders. Knowing your inevitable future, do you now watch it?
Dear Undergrad,
It was good to see you in the university gym that was built for all students to use at their discretion. I love it when you sit in the weight machine that exercises your inner and outer thighs and talk to the Sigma Alpha Epsilon president about where you might go out that night and whether Brandon is going to be there because he was acting so weird the other night after you two made out at the Pimps ‘n’ Hoes party. I agree, it was so not a big deal and he should just get over himself. And you’re totally right that Lauren has no right to be jealous, she dumped him 3 weeks ago! Slut.
Anyway, I received your email asking me for a recommendation for graduate school. As I understand it, you’re planning to apply for a Master’s degree elementary education. That’s excellent. I think you’re the perfect candidate for teaching young minds how to keep up with the Kardashians. I’ve attached the letter below. I wish you way more than luck.
Dear Undergrad,
Please refrain from sending such informal emails to me, your instructor. For your learning pleasure I’ve included your original email followed by an example of how it should have been composed. Enjoy. And Learn.
Subject: [withheld]
From: undergrad
Date: 9/9/09 10:51 AM
To: Graduate Student Instructor
I don’t want to be that one student who is a pain in your ass
constantly missing class and generally fucking shit up. I just
woke up. My rough draft is done. I will find one of my classmates
to do a peer review of it. I live literally 5 minutes from class.
I woke up when my roomate [sic] came in at 9:20 and then layed [sic] back down
for a second only to pass the fuck out. If you could please read
my paper for no other reason than personal enjoyment please do.
Its an analysis of a cosmo article and I tear this bitch up.
Please read it.–
Undergrad
This is what you should have written:
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