Mathematical Musings: XVI

Another weekly installment of my pedagogical persiflage.

• I’m not of the high and supreme moral fabric you think I am. I’m more sub-lemon than sublime.
• He who forgets his food in the microwave is doomed to reheat it.
• I like to be fit. I don’t like to exercise though, and when I’m fit, I’d rather have someone else do it, like a Tailor, but it’s very important to be fit. You wouldn’t want your clothes to fit you inappropriately.
• You can bet that that will happen 99 times out of 99 ½ chances.
• My dad used to work in the used car business. It was brutal. He had one day off a week, and when sales were down, he was required to work on his day off. As it turns out, Idiot Shark Logic dictates that fewer sales is a function of lack of salesmen. So what ended up happening is there were 10 guys just standing around most of the day instead of just 8. The neanderthal sales manager who sits on his brain all day, had no clue that low sales was not caused by the lack of salesmen to handle the customers BUT THE LACK OF CUSTOMERS THEMSELVES!!!! Hello!!
  
• I know all the digits of Pi, I just don’t know what order they go in.
• Student: “Mr. Korpi, is the next test going to be hard?” Korpi: “Do you really want me to answer that? What do you think? Have we had one yet that’s been soft? Let’s just say it’ll be darn solid.”
• As much as I dislike teaching Precal, not only because I don’t like the subject, but especially because of the whiny, youth-like, skill-deficient students that take it, if I’m going to keep teaching Calculus, I need to keep teaching precal so that I don’t end up feeling the same way about calculus. I’d rather get the stupidity out of them at a lower level than at a higher one.
• My wife keeps telling me I’m out of shape. I keep telling her that I’m not out of shape, I’m just so malleable and flexible, that I can take on many shapes. Right now I'm a circle.
• I’m about to say something that is not funny in the least bit: “Orbital Sanders aren’t so random as cheeseburgers driving taxis.”
• Have you ever tried to assemble phrases of words that you imagine have never been spoken in that particular sequence before? Phrases like, “Whale aphrodisiacs with chalk and dice,” or the rarer sequence, “Hey! I like math.”
• Have you noticed that all cars now have a starting price of like, under 35 thousand dollars, like $34,999? Then in the commercials, they show the car, and in the small print at the bottom, it reads, “$34,999 base price, $84,999 as shown,” and you’re wondering, “Dang, if that one’s 85 grand and it has all the components of a car, what’s the base model that costs 35 grand lacking? Do the windows roll down? OH! They all have On-Star, so I can find the closest McDonald’s Restaurant. How did we ever get along without these cars? I don’t know, but I’m going to have to keep getting along without them, ‘cause I sure can’t afford them, and I can find McDonald’s by myself, thank you very much. It's right next to Dollar General.
• Do you ever wonder when we are going to run out of original melodies for songs? Or at least when we are going to run out of melodies with G, C, and D as chords? They are already recycling melodies at my sons Pre-K school. Every week he comes home singing a different song to the tune of “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad.” . . . Think about it, you’ve learned 3 different tunes as a tad to the ABC song: ABC, Twinkle, Twinkle, and Baa, Baa, Black Sheep. . . .No, you never wonder that? Well, I’m going to make a prediction: I’m saying in 180.95 years.
• You’re Lazy with a capital “E.”
• My wife’s name is spelled “S-H-E-A-L-Y-N-N.” The P is silent, and noticeably absent.
• I think “Nimrod” is a word that is too frequently underused.
• When I drive places in town, I might as well be a passenger, because it’s all the stupid people behind the wheels of the other cars that DRIVE ME CRAZY!!!!!!!!!
• I Love to play tennis, and I suck at it, so that always happens to be my score, too. But it’s still OK, because I just like to raise a racket.
• Writing jokes is not a joking matter. You must take it seriously or people will just laugh at you.
• “People” magazine: it’s like High School for grown-ups.
• I laugh at people who read magazines like “People” and “Us;” people who watch programs like “Entertainment Tonight” and “Xtra.” I guess the general American public needs to live vicariously through the shallow, idiotic, materialistic people they choose to support. It’s like tracking your stock portfolio; only, you are not earning anything on your investment in celebrities. You go to their games, you watch their movies, you read their books, you buy their clothes, you sing their songs, blah, blah, blah. If you don’t want me to LAUGH AT YOU, you must become one of these people and not the people who are interested in them.
• One of my favorite bands is “The Cure.” Listening to their music is like a big Vicodin pill for the troubled soul: it provides acute, temporary comfort to a chronic, incurable illness.
• I’m so tired, I can almost sleep, but not so tired that I can’t.
• I’m so bored, you can use me to build a piece of wood.
• I was very precocious as a child. When I was 1.9, I really acted like I was terribly 2.1!
• I like to say funny things, especially when people are eating; it’s fun to watch mashed potatoes and root beer shoot out of someone’s nose, unless you are sitting across from them, then it’s just gross, but funny to others. I like people laughing with me, not at me. This is why I always sit across from librarians.
• My wife tells me I’m delusional; that I think I’m funnier than I really am. That’s OK. I’ll have the last laugh when I get someone else to play my wife on my sitcom: someone like . . . Lassie!
• I don’t know what I’d do without my wife. I love her to death. But sometimes she drives me crazy, so instead of getting mad, I just try to love her more and more and more and more, hoping that I really do love her that much.
• I don’t know what to say in a situation like this, so I’ll just say, “Skitelbitsemkarft.”
• I’m not a good comforter. If something tragic has happened in you life, you can expect a “there, there” from me. If you have died, you can guarantee an extra “there.”
• Congratulations!!!!!!!!!!!!! I always knew the results of your test would come back Pos . . . err (cough) I mean Negative! Look at that alien over there!!!!!!!!!!!
• Writing is easy. It’s coming up with what to write that is a bit more challenging.
• If I ever wrote a book, people would probably be amazed, since the advent of the typewriter and keyboard. They would probably ask, “Why didn’t you just type it? That would have been more appropriate. Then you could have just emailed your editor your manuscript as an attachment.” True, but how many people can say that they have typed a book?
• My new favorite band is “Los Lonely Boys.” Everyone else I introduce them to, which means tape them to a chair while the band plays in the background, says that they will “never give it up” and that the band sucks!! You know, Willie Nelson is touting them as “His favorite new band.” I guess that makes me and Willie honorary members of the band.
• I’ve said a lot of profound things in my life, and many funny things, but none as profound and funny as the claim I just made.
• In 1943, America was preparing for World War II, but my Dad was a Sophomore in High School thinking, “If I can only land that rural farming girl, our son can drive a standard automobile. Oh the gene pool potential, because the spaceships of the future will have standard transmission, and that girl can drive a tractor.”
• I’m a very dizzy fellow. I guess I shouldn’t spin so fast in my own boots.
• Life sucks: if you’re lucky.
• Wife-n-someone who tells you what to do, when you want to do otherwise.
• When we graph Supply and Demand curves, we measure price on the vertical axis and commodity quantities on the other. An example of a commodity could be a commode. It works well as a commodity, but it works better as a toilet.
• At my house, we reserve the second-story for the upstairs only.
• I don’t care much for polka music; it’s like crazy, annoying polka music with words I don’t understand.
• In mathematics it is impressive to be able to navigate through a long problem and perform all the necessary long and drawn-out computations successfully; however, it is even more impressive if you can find a way to do the problem more efficiency and actually do less complex and lengthy calculations. Efficiency, after all, is nothing more than intelligent laziness.
• My wife and I have a three-year-old son and an 18-month-old daughter who was born about a year and a half ago.
• When I went for physical therapy after my knee surgery, I was the only patient there who didn’t like playing dominoes.
• My surgery on my knee went so well, I think I am going to have the other done to match, but not just yet. I figured I wait 100 years or so.
• When it comes to enforcing my knee-bending exercises, my wife is very inflexible.
• The only thing worse than having to use crutches, is needing them and not having them. But I have to admit, I rely on them pretty heavily. I'm embarrassed to say that I use them as a crutch.
• I’m so tired, I could sleep with a horse.