Occasional Tales

Or how much more intelligent I am than you? I had the Ass classes write a review because it’s one of the InterBac text types which they might have to reproduce in the exam. I don’t know if there’s an official structure for this text type. I pulled a model off the Net which consisted of four parts: intro – summary – critical assessment – conclusion. I knew the critical assessment section would probably crash and burn, which it has in the reviews I’ve read so far. It’s ended up being an extended version of the summary, and with a few exceptions, I don’t expect to see anything else. I’ve already had one instance of plagiarism this year, and I’ve now had another. The review in question started off ineptly enough as Plagiarising Penny (aka Snoozy Suzy) commenced by announcing that she was going to talk about some graphic novel. Did I say, “Write me a speech”? No, but don’t let that stop you from being an intellectual embarrassment. I had doubts about the verb tenses in the fi...

And a detachable brain. Term resumes. I wish it could’ve waited another week while I recover from a fairly noxious dose of the flu which has me coughing, aching, and wilting, but has – small mercy – not inflicted copious streams of green snot squirting out of my nose. Mind you, there’s been digestive squirting as the virus attacked other parts of me. I spent almost all of Sunday in bed and disinclined to eat, and went to the doctor yesterday, who prescribed some penicillin. I’m mostly feeling better, but it hurts to cough and my voice makes me sound like I’ve been trying to eat ground-up concrete. Anyway, I’m not just here to talk about my health, but also about the student whose response to the topic “What three things would you take with you to a desert island?” included “my feet”. The little darling in question does a good rabbit-in-the-headlights impression in class. She got a good C overall in the end-of-term exam, but that’s like an E in real terms (where native speak...

I thought of it first. At the school of Greytowers, Dobbin ran a lunchtime club called Curious Questions from which he noted down various strange facts about the world, and he had the idea of putting them into a list also called Curious Questions . They were popular with the club, but although the editor of the school magazine, Flash Bagman, thought they were a bit dull, a teacher put up a copy of them on the notice board. But one day, Dobbin’s mum read out a story from the news paper about how a certain Flash Bagman had won a prize for Curious Questions , much to Dobbin’s great vexation. Flash had also set up a club called The Curious Questions Club , which, when Dobbin said he’d take the matter to the teachers, he changed to The Curious Questions’ Club (the apostrophe making all the difference). The material which Flash had used was, by and large, similar to Dobbin’s, barring a little rewording, but when Dobbin challenged his rival, accusing him of intellectual theft, he was dismis...