Hiebner Teaches Ian About the Midwest: A Play in One Act

IAN and HIEBNER sit working at computers in adjacent cubicles.  On IAN’s screen are pictures of farms and farming equipment.  He considers one photo with confusion and, after some thought, pokes his head over the cubicle wall.

IAN: Hey Hiebner, what do you call those long things with the wheels that farmers have in their fields.  I think they’re for spraying or something.

HIEBNER (nonchalantly): Those are pivots, or you can call them circle pivots.  They’re for watering, and what’s really cool is when you see pictures of fields with circle pivots taken from the sky and the whole field is just these huge circles of green.

IAN: Okay, thanks.

IAN returns to his computer and types something.  Several beats later, he pokes his head over the cubicle wall again.

IAN: Hey Hiebner, what do you call it when the machines are gathering up hay from a field, and they bundle it up in this big roll—like a really big one?

HIEBNER: A bale?

IAN: I thought bales were for rectangles of hay.

HIEBNER: Either one.  You can call it a circle bale if you want.

IAN: Okay, thanks.

IAN returns to his computer, types something, and this time immediately pokes his head over the cubicle wall again.

IAN: Hey, what do you call…

REPEAT performance until audience gets up and leaves.

An Open Letter to the Marketing Executives at Super 8 Motels

Dear Sirs:

I'm writing to complain of your recent advertising partnership with Pizza Hut restaurants. Though your use of the red-roof Pizza Hut logo on your motel room keycards is itself mildly intrusive, more egregious is your obliviousness to said logo’s resembling a large arrow that would appear to designate the proper direction for inserting the keycard into the lock, when it reality the roof’s direction points toward the back of the keycard. The problem is worsened by the actual card insertion indicator, a small, dull triangle banished to a lower corner of the keycard where tired guests can easily miss it and (guided by the more massive and eye-catching Pizza Hut logo) insert their cards in the wrong direction. The likelihood of this mistake is such that during a recent stay, even the senior motel desk clerk inserted our card incorrectly and determined our door's lock to be low on batteries.

I recommend that you either A) Switch the direction of the Pizza Hut logo so that it matches the direction in which the keycard is inserted, or B) Make the insert directional arrow larger and the Pizza Hut logo smaller to avoid confusion.

I appreciate your prompt attention to this matter.

Sincerely, &c, &c.

(will post reply if one is received)

Modern-Day Recounts of Bible Stories: Samson and Delilah

Samson, drained of his man-seed (not shown) enjoys a satisfying nap in the garden.

Back in the day, before the Jews had a city of their own, they spent a lot of time hanging out in the hills of Israel trying to keep a bunch of Canaanites and Sidonians and Perizzites and Hivites and Jebusites and Moabites off their land, so they were always getting into fights and slaying a bunch of enemy soldiers they had to cart away after every battle.  Because they were God’s chosen people, it was pretty much a guarantee that they would win every time, but sometimes they got cocky and decided to worship other gods like Baalim and Ashtaroth that had more interesting names and fewer rules—plus, the people worshipping those gods were usually beautiful, large-breasted women.  (Back then, the Israelites were always getting cozy with other gods as an excuse to sleep with women from other tribes. They were pretty clever that way.)  So the Isarelites met some heathen women through the pink-light classifieds and started visiting pay-by-the-hour hotels and getting drunk on weeknights even though they weren’t supposed to.  God (as you might expect) didn’t like that very much, and lo and behold, the Israelites get royally fucked when the Philistines (and the Gazites, who pledged with most of the same fraternities as the Philistines) rolled in, and soon, no Israelites were going out to sleep with anyone.

Around this time, out comes this dude Samson from the hills and rips a lion in half with his bare hands.  He didn’t want anybody to know he did it, so he turned the whole thing into a riddle and tried to swindle the Philistines overlords out of a whole bunch of sheets and changes of garments (which were basically like money back then).  This doesn’t go so well, so Samson catches three hundred foxes, ties flaming torches to their tails, and sets them loose in the Philistine’s cornfields.  Then the fire spreads to the vineyards, which makes the Philistines really mad.

After the flaming foxes incident, the Philistines had it out for this Samson guy, though they still didn’t know about that whole ripping a lion in half thing.  They got revenge by killing Samson’s wife and father-in-law (which was kind of a good thing, because the father-in-law sometimes wouldn’t let Samson go in unto his own wife), but then Samson came right back and slew a bunch of them hip to thigh (think about this for a second).  For revenge, the Philistines tricked the Israelites into tying Samson up, but of course he escapes, grabs an ass’s jawbone (no other weapons being available) and slays a thousand dudes by himself at Ramathlehi because he’s so freakin’ strong.

That’s when the Philistines went to Delilah, Samson’s new girlfriend from the valley of Sorek, and offered her eleven hundred silver pieces each if she could figure out the secret of Samson’s crazy strength. (In comparison, all Judas got for betraying Jesus was enough to buy a measly field.)  Samson, having recently carried off the main gates of Gaza on his back, was pretty tired and wanted to spend some time in bed with his girl, who immediately got on his case about where his strength came from.  To make her happy and get her on her back, Samson told her that if he was ever tied with seven undried withs, he would lose his strength.

Delilah was pretty confused about what a with was, but went out and bought some undried ones to tie Samson up with.  Samson woke up from his post-coital reverie the next morning to find himself tightly bound, but he snapped the withs like dental floss because that wasn’t really the secret.

So Delilah tried again, and Samson told her that if he was ever bound fast with brand-new ropes, he would lose his strength.  Ropes were more expensive than withs back then, but Delilah went out and bought some to tie Samson up with the next time he spent the night, but of course that didn’t work either.

Now Delilah really wants those silver pieces, so she puts on this huge sob act and tells Samson that he if he honestly and truly loved her he’d tell her the secret.  Samson really wants Delilah to sleep with him, so he makes up another cock and bull story about putting his long Fabio-hair through the loom and weaving it into seven locks to get rid of his strength.  You’d think, that when Samson woke up the next morning with his hair in a loom and a closetful of Philistines to contend with, he would recall the previous two incidents and realize that something’s up.  But Samson apparently doesn’t realize this, and the next night tells Delilah that his strength actually comes from his long Fabio-hair.  Why does Samson tell her the truth?  I have a few theories:

1. He was so comically stupid that he just couldn’t figure out what was going on.

2. He loved and trusted Delilah so much that he wanted to tell her his secret, like when people play that game where one person fall backwards and the other person catches them.

3. Delilah wouldn’t have sex with him unless he told her, and he’d run out of stories about ropes and withs.

I don’t have any proof, but I’m guessing it was that third one.

After Delilah promptly shaved off all of Samson’s hair during the night, of course the Philistines popped out of the closet again (internet porn hadn’t been invented yet, so there was a pretty long line for who got to hide in the closet all night listening to Samson and Delilah do it) and beat him senseless.   Instead of killing him, they tore out his eyes and dragged him back to the Philistine palace, where they got really drunk and brought the now-blind Samson out to make fun of.  Unfortunately for them, a few weeks had passed, Samson’s hair had started to grow back, and he’d recovered enough of his crazy strength to knock down the pillars of the Philistine palace and kill everyone inside.  This was more people than he’d slain in his whole life—pretty impressive if you recall that thousand men with an ass’s jawbone thing.

Apart from the timeless lessons that Samson and Delilah have to teach us about trust and honesty in relationships, the story’s ending has roused much debate among Biblical scholars over the precise correlation between hair growth and Herculean strength, as well as the maximum occupancy levels of Phillistine palaces during the Mesopotamian era.

Click here for an all ages-appropriate version of this story.

On the Temperature-Diminishing Effects of Simultaneous Bodily-Cleansing Apparatus and Laundry-Scouring Appliance Usage When Connected to a Single Hydrogen Dioxide Boiling System

(or, Will Running the Washing Machine While Taking a Shower Make the Water Go Cold?)
 
Background:
In older residential dwellings built with older plumbing systems, simultaneous use of two plumbing fixtures utilizing hot water will often cause a sudden drop in temperature in both systems, though the drop is most noticeable (often painfully so) to an individual taking a shower.  


Purpose:
To determine whether an inhabitant of a two-person apartment will have to suffer through an icy-cold shower if the washing machine is turned on during said shower. The ability to bathe oneself concurrent with one’s weekend laundry cycles would be a valuable time-saving asset to both roommates, so long as the showering roommate is safe from sudden bursts of debilitating cold.  


Hypothesis:
In the experimenter’s apartment, water pressure in both sinks (kitchen and bathroom) and the shower has been colloquially described as “very good,” with both occupants commenting on the extreme temperature when the faucet is turned to the hottest position. Routine conversation with the building's landlord has revealed that all three of the building’s units utilize separate boilers, with no interference from the other units having previously been reported. Though a formal test has not yet been conducted, neither occupant has reported a significant decrease in shower temperature due to the other’s use of the kitchen sink.

Materials: 
The apartment occupies the entirety of the second floor of a three-story building. Date of construction is unknown, but predates 1952 (the date of purchase by the current owners). The apartment utilizes a standard shower system (dimensions and yardage unknown) with pipes running down to a boiler for the individual apartment (specifications unknown) located in the building’s basement.

The apartment’s kitchen holds a Maytag “Dependable Care Fabric-Matic Heavy Duty Large Capacity” washing machine (purchased used for twenty-five dollars and installed using original parts), with a manufacturing date between 1990 and 1995. The washing machine is connected to the second floor boiler via an adjustable spigot, with drainage occurring via a rubber hose.

The detergent utilized will be a standard two-ounce aggregate of Gain, with no fabric softener or other additives.  


Procedure:
1. Load washing machine and detergent as normal, starting a standard Warm-Cold, Heavy cycle with infinite water level set to maximum.

2. Rotate hot and cold shower knobs the standard number of degrees (hot: eighty degrees counterclockwise, cold: twenty degrees counterclockwise) to heat the water to the experimenter’s typical shower temperature.

3. For safety purposes, conduct a preliminary temperature check before entering.

4. If the preliminary check reveals a suitable showering temperature, execute a standard eleven-minute shower while mentally noting temperature observations for post-shower recording.  


Results:
The experimenter noticed no adverse effects, commenting proudly that it was “just like any other shower.”  


Conclusion:
Though the simultaneous usage of more than two plumbing fixtures will still need to be researched, performing regular loads of laundry with the apartment’s washing machine is not likely to cause a decrease in shower enjoyment, so long as the amount of hot water consumed is not too large. Though endurance tests of very long showers or many showers taken in a row may prove more conclusively how much strain the water boiler will endure, for now, both roommates may safety do their laundry in the morning without the need for shower backup.

Officespeak Dissected: On the Overuse of Myself

From the Journal of Contemporary Linguistic Study, Volume 21, Issue 2:


Because Officespeak as a dialect spoken by middle- and lower-level administrative workers and bearing its own unique vocabulary, idioms, and grammatical structure has only recently come under the close scrutiny of linguists, many of its idiosyncratic uses (or usages, as Officespeakers would say) have not yet been isolated for further study. This journal proposes to chronicle some of the emerging distinctions drawn between Officespeak and our own variety of Common English.

One of Officespeak’s most widespread traits is its use of the reflexive pronoun myself to increase the formality of a sentence. Consider the following Officespeak sentences alongside their common English equivalents:

Example #1:
Mr. Graham and myself are expecting you in the meeting room by 3:30. (Officespeak)
Mr. Graham and I are expecting you in the meeting room by 3:30. (Common)

Example #2:
He gave copies of the guest list to Donald and myself to proofread. (Officespeak)
He gave copies of the guest list to Donald and me to proofread. (Common)

Example #3:
Return this letter, signed and dated, directly to myself. (Officespeak)
Return this letter, signed and dated, directly to me. (Common)

Linguists theorize that Officespeak’s use of myself in place of I or me deviated from Standard English in one of two ways:


Theory 1: Base Uncertainty: As in the first two sentences, Officespeak’s myself often appears when the speaker is referring to both himself and another person. The speaker may have been unsure whether to use I (a subject pronoun) or me (an object pronoun) and thus risk appearing unprofessional by making the mistake. Myself, however, shrouds the sentence in a more formal tone whose grammatical structure is more difficult to decipher (one of the dialect’s main purposes), ensuring that the mistake will not be noticed. Over time, use of myself grew to include sentences in which the speaker refers only to one person, as in Example #3. (For a more thorough discussion of this transition, see Hartwick pp 17-293.)



Theory 2: The Fear of Unprofessionalism: In common English, small children are often criticized by teachers and pedantic parents for making the following error:

X Josh and me got really wet!
O Josh and I got really wet!

The top sentence is wrong because the italicized portion is a subject, not an object. However, using Josh and me is correct when it serves as the sentence’s object:

O Ryan splashed Josh and me with water!

If this is still confusing, try reading the sentences without Josh around to muck them up:

O I got really wet!
O Ryan splashed me with water!

However, through overcorrection, many children learn to shun using Josh and me in both cases, thus transposing the taboo onto both subject (correctly) and object (incorrectly). When attempting to form a sentence that would accurately use Josh and me (see Example sentence #2), the Officespeaker substitutes myself, fearing that any use of Josh and me would be viewed as improper.  Kincaid M. Fowler, the theory’s leading proponent, reasons that Officespeakers attempted to escape their childhood humiliations instead of correcting them, and widespread Officespeak use of myself then grew to include subjects (as in Example #1) and objects without a second noun (Example #3).

Altered use of other reflexive pronouns (yourself, themselves, etc.) has not yet been adequately documented among Officespeakers, though the linguistic community is currently awaiting a promising study of the speech patterns of manufacturing accountants in the 128 corridor of northeastern Massachusetts.

A Review of P.T. Anderson's film, "Punch Drunk Love," from 2002

Directer Paul “P.T.” Thomas Andersons movie Punch Drunk Love is a film that CLEARLY does not even know what it wants to be. He uses Adam Sandler, who is a great comedian that always makes me laugh with such films as Click and Big daddy, so many people that rent or watched this film thought it would be a comedy when it clearly wasn’t. There are not enough funny parts to call this picture a “comedy.” For example, when the brother in law says that he is a dentist is one funny scene. Perhaps “black comedy” is a better way to describe this movie.

But also the movie tries to be a drama, like when Adam Sandlers character is going to Hawaii to find the girl and we don't know if he is going to get her or not. But this suspenseful point is clearly ruined after this, because afterwards Adam Sandlers character finds the girl and the suspense is ruined! Lots of good drama movies have suspense in them (like “The Shawshank Redemption” for instance), as it were, and suspense is clearly a good thing that drama movies can have a lot of. Also more important however, is the importance of good characters in a drama movie, so that the movie can be dramatic and the viewer can understand the deeper meanings of those characters. In Punch Drunk Love, though, the viewer cannot have these same feelings about the characters because they cannot understand them. Adam Sandler’s character Barry, for example, is the best example because his character changes Throughout the movie. At the films start, he is a plunger salesman who wears a blue suit, which is his business, but we don’t even know why he picked up an organ from the street! Then he gets angry and smashes many windows, but the moviegoers don’t understand why. We can’t understand his character at all! I think the reason is because he hates his many sisters, but this is never proven. Then, however, we start to understand his character more when he starts dating his girlfriend (played by the actress Emily Watson; who also played the blind girl in Red Dragon who couldn’t see) but then Barry becomes angry again at the men who beat him up badly with his girlfriend after the Car Accident Scene, and he runs around crazy because he wants revenge on the person that caused the problem in the first place. Clearly this is to many subplots together to understand his character. Also the sex hotline part makes no sense at all.

Because Barry called the phone sex hotline in the early section of the film, Adam Sandler’s character is considered very unlikeable. Clearly, if someone jerks off to some phone sex hotline, because he found it in a magazine, even giving his Social security number to do it, we think that he is a gross person for doing that. But then isn’t he also supposed to be the protagonist of this film? His characterization makes no sense because we clearly can’t like the films main character for the character that he is.

Also there is another story about the pudding, but in my opinion that part is very hard to understand because they explain it only in the early part of the movie and its not clear whats going on. Then later to his friend. I thought this part was interesting at first but later we never see him get the miles that he wants. This was a big Dissappointment because it was the only part of the movie I was interested in and then we can’t see how it ends. Also the cinematography in the supermarket scenes was pretty well done, I thought, and the director put in lots of good cinematography to make the movie more interesting. It reminded me a bit of the cinematography in “Blade Runner”, where the cinematography is very good and eye-catching. It really grabs your attention when you watch it, and you can clearly see that PT Anderson learned a lot about movies from watching Rildey Scotts films.

So, to sum up, Punch Drunk Love is a bad movie that has some points in it that make it good. It’s director should have picked a type of movie to make and made that movie and chose a different protagonist than Sandler to play his character. However, the cinematography is good, so I definitely recommend checking it out for that. Clearly though, you will be bored and confused by this movie, which is obviously not one of Sandlers best. (Some of the colored parts with music in the middle part were very “artistic” with their cinematography though.)

Chemo Games

I think real life professions would be more interesting if they involved bitter rivalries reminiscent of Twister or Raiders of the Lost Ark:

* * *

DR. ERIKSON

At long last, a surefire cure for cancer is within our grasp!

DR. ALEXI

You’ve said it, my dear man! I’m confident that this final combination of vaccinations will yield the solution we’ve been searching for these past nine years.

They each peer through microscopes.

DR. ERIKSON

Look, sir! The cancer cells are dissipating! We’ve done it!

DR. ALEXI

Yes, it would appear that the radiation is working its magic on the infected cells.

BEAT

DR. ALEXI (cont)

That’s strange...I’m detecting an irregular growth in the R5 sector.

DR. ERIKSON

What is it?

DR. ALEXI

I can’t believe it! It’s a new string of cancerous cells multiplying at an incredible rate of speed!

DR. ERIKSON

What?

He looks for himself.

DR. ERIKSON (cont)

I...I’m not certain, but it looks like the cancerous cells are spelling out some kind of message.

DR. ALEXI

(reading through microscope)

Not...this...time...Alexi.

An EXPLOSION rocks the laboratory, throwing DEBRIS everywhere. Show TITLE:

Chemo Games