I WILL NOT MAKE NEW METAFILTER TAGLINES

December 1, 2009 8:38 AM

I WILL NOT WASTE CHALK
posted by Pants! (40 comments total)

VIA MEFI PROJECTS
posted by mathowie at 8:40 AM on December 1, 2009 [2 favorites]

I like the part where he wrote on the chalkboard.
posted by empath at 8:40 AM on December 1, 2009 [2 favorites]

I will not make pages and pages of screencaps when I could just post a one page text list.
posted by Burhanistan at 8:42 AM on December 1, 2009 [2 favorites]

Ah, having to write things 100 times to try and make it sink in... (500, 1000...)

I remember having to do this in grade school. Usually on a Big Chief tablet, not the chalkboard, tho.
Do they still do this?
posted by Balisong at 8:43 AM on December 1, 2009 [1 favorite]

PEOPLE CALLED ROMANS THEY GO THE HOUSE.
posted by The Bellman at 8:46 AM on December 1, 2009 [14 favorites]

Something about seeing angry Bart writing it out makes them better. And having pages and pages of screencaps means I ration them and read them slowly, rather than just skimming through a list, looking for chuckles.

They're a lot funnier than I remember.
posted by mccarty.tim at 8:54 AM on December 1, 2009

I'm surprised this hasn't happened yet. I like it.
posted by The Devil Tesla at 8:57 AM on December 1, 2009

I remember in grade school having to write 100 or so iterations of a sentence about what I'd done wrong (on paper, not blackboard, fortunately) and I always turned the thing into a grid system, writing an entire column of the first word, then an entire column of the second word, etc. It was a lot easier to write 100 'will's because it became automatic and required zero thought.

A secondary result of this method was that I didn't learn the sentence I was writing at all, and I didn't learn a damn thing except efficient approaches to busywork.
posted by shakespeherian at 8:57 AM on December 1, 2009 [25 favorites]

VIA MEFI PROJECTS

Pretty cool. I found it in the wild.
posted by Pants! at 9:00 AM on December 1, 2009

I didn't learn a damn thing except efficient approaches to busywork.

Sounds like school primed you for the modern workforce perfectly.
posted by slimepuppy at 9:01 AM on December 1, 2009 [4 favorites]

I always turned the thing into a grid system, writing an entire column of the first word, then an entire column of the second word, etc.

I also did this, and even would draw lines down the length of the page for letters such as L and T. One teacher caught wind of this and demanded that we write each sentence linearly. I don't think anyone had any illusions about this being some kind of ad hoc neuro-linguistic programming or some such nonsense. It's purely a punitive measure with the combined bonus of shutting kids up for a few minutes.
posted by Burhanistan at 9:02 AM on December 1, 2009

In forced writing "lines" of text on paper, we used to hold two pencils simultanously as a primitive polygraph.
posted by exogenous at 9:03 AM on December 1, 2009

I mean we the pencils together in one hand so that two lines were written, one immediately above the other. Pencil diameter matched pretty well with the ruled paper.
posted by exogenous at 9:05 AM on December 1, 2009 [1 favorite]

Love the idea.
Also, the server appears to be dead at the moment.
So, the idea is all I have to love.
At the moment.
posted by _dario at 9:05 AM on December 1, 2009

exogenous: In forced writing "lines" of text on paper, we used to hold two pencils simultanously as a primitive polygraph.

Goddammit I wish I had thought of that.
posted by shakespeherian at 9:13 AM on December 1, 2009

I WILL NOT LOAD
posted by oulipian at 9:15 AM on December 1, 2009

When I had to do this, the entire class would have to do it for one or maybe two students' infractions (Thanks a lot, Ms. Martin! The peer-pressure thing didn't work. Loved you anyway!).

The sentence would be really long, so it would take several lines on a page, and we'd all start writing smaller and smaller until we got the sentence on one line. By then it was pretty much unintelligible. Good times.

Also, yeah, the site is borked. It was Fireballed yesterday, now it's Mefi'd. But thanks to the comments, I don't need to bother.
posted by dammitjim at 9:17 AM on December 1, 2009

You can always make one yourself.
posted by oneswellfoop at 9:19 AM on December 1, 2009 [1 favorite]

My mother, a retired teacher, never saw the point of making kids write lines. She made them copy out pages of the dictionary. Now that was a time-consuming punishment with no possible hacks.
posted by orange swan at 9:29 AM on December 1, 2009 [4 favorites]

I mean we the pencils together in one hand so that two lines were written, one immediately above the other. Pencil diameter matched pretty well with the ruled paper.
I remember doing this too! Also, when writing sentences on the chalkboard, we would load up the five-chalk holder used for drawing a musical staff, and write five sentences at a time this way. I laughed when I saw Nelson teaching Lisa how to do just this in one episode. :)
posted by xedrik at 9:30 AM on December 1, 2009 [1 favorite]

It's interesting that some of them ("My homework was not stolen by a one-armed man," "No one is interested in my underpants") are repeated. What's especially perplexing is that they've apparently been rewritten each time.
posted by Sys Rq at 9:38 AM on December 1, 2009

One of my favorite history teachers in high school said he stopped giving writing assignments as punishment after he told a kid to write 1000 words on his life inside a ping-pong ball.

The kid handed in 1000 words as requested: "My life inside a ping-pong ball is ping, pong, ping, pong, ping, pong..."
posted by zap rowsdower at 9:49 AM on December 1, 2009 [7 favorites]

I AM BART'S RAGING BILE DUCT
posted by GuyZero at 11:08 AM on December 1, 2009 [1 favorite]

Has there been any articles explaining the creative process for these?

I imagine there's a whiteboard somewhere with a million iterations, contributed by everyone on the office, and the producers kind of just run out and pick a few, toss 'em around, and decide on the winners.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 11:25 AM on December 1, 2009

No wonder I was confused. I thought it said, "I WILL NOT WALK CHASTE"

I just got these glasses made too....
posted by Ruthless Bunny at 12:04 PM on December 1, 2009

man growing up we had the shittiest television so when i watched all the words were a blur. amazing to find out from others later on that they changed each episode and were actually pretty clever.
posted by cristinacristinacristina at 12:11 PM on December 1, 2009

One of my favorite history teachers in high school said he stopped giving writing assignments as punishment after he told a kid to write 1000 words on his life inside a ping-pong ball.

The kid handed in 1000 words as requested: "My life inside a ping-pong ball is ping, pong, ping, pong, ping, pong..."

Not to derail but I had a boss who swore that when he was taking philosophy in college, the professors final was one sheet of paper with the word "Why?" written on it. My boss said he wrote "Why not?" on it and handed it back in. He swears he passed.

And I like this post
posted by paddysat at 1:08 PM on December 1, 2009

Can someone whip together something that takes random sentences from MeFi comments and puts them on the chalkboard repetitively?

I WILL NOT ASK FOR PEOPLE TO WHIP THINGS TOGETHER
posted by davejay at 1:22 PM on December 1, 2009

I WILL NOT SPANK OTHERS seems like an ambiguous statement to me. Does this mean it's okay to spank yourself? Is it even spanking if you're spanking yourself?

Further research will be carried out after the watershed.
posted by the cat's pyjamas at 1:27 PM on December 1, 2009

Not to derail but I had a boss who swore that when he was taking philosophy in college, the professors final was one sheet of paper with the word "Why?" written on it. My boss said he wrote "Why not?" on it and handed it back in. He swears he passed. - Posted by Paddysat


I'm afraid many, many people knew someone who told that story.

Snopes - One Word Philosophy Test
posted by Babblesort at 2:21 PM on December 1, 2009 [3 favorites]

I never had to write lines, because I was a Good Boy. But in the beginning of third grade I was forced to spend every recess period, for a week, drawing keep-your-pen-on-the-paper swirlies on a pad, because this one old bag of a teacher was shocked, SHOCKED!, that I wrote in print rather than cursive.

She never asked me why I wasn't writing in cursive, she just hauled me out of class and told me I'd be sitting with her every recess and drawing swirlies. So I did, and she stood there scowling at me for my Willfulness and Poor Penmanship.

After the week was over she did that self-satisfied Have You Learnt Your Lesson Young Man thing. I said no. She cocked an eyebrow wayyy up and her Shar Pei face went beet red. I then mumbled that I had just transferred (school district rezoning bullshit) and my old school hadn't taught me cursive. She stayed red, eyeballed me for a few seconds, then left without a word.

The next day, my main teacher gave me a cursive workbook and special homework to catch up. And told me to just never mind grumpy Old Mme. Dogface.
posted by CKmtl at 2:38 PM on December 1, 2009 [1 favorite]

Once my teacher made me write lines. I went home, turned on my c64, and did something like this:

10 OPEN 4,4
20 FOR I=1 TO 500
30 PRINT #4, "THE SHOWER HEAD IS NOT A TOY"
40 NEXT
50 CLOSE 4

…then went away and read a book while the printer clattered away.

Surprising no-one, I had to do it again by hand. But I never got punished that way again.
posted by egypturnash at 3:18 PM on December 1, 2009

The smart teachers have you copy out a paragraph. Even 5 copies of a long boring paragraph is pretty good punishment. Hard to write those like graph.
posted by clvrmnky at 8:49 PM on December 1, 2009

In grade four, our teacher gave us a spelling test every Monday. If we misspelled a word on a test or screwed up the cursive letters, our teacher would make us write it correctly ten times. On Tuesday he'd do the same test over again, and if we got anything wrong a second time, we'd have to write it twenty times. The next day it was thirty times, then forty, then fifty. If something hadn't drilled into us by then, we'd have to copy it a hundred times over the weekend.

I hated it at the time, but in retrospect it was a very clever and effective system.
posted by Sys Rq at 10:59 PM on December 1, 2009 [1 favorite]

Snopes - One Word Philosophy Test

The first time I heard that story was from a Harvard tour guide.
posted by empath at 11:01 PM on December 1, 2009

The first time I heard that story was from a Harvard tour guide.

Yeah, Oxford or Harvard for me, too. The other one that was going around was the "Kid mails shoe" legend. Oxford has some legends that are legends themselves (google "mead during exam").
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 1:05 AM on December 2, 2009

Someone I vaguely used to know, an adult with no kids, left a sheet of lines among the debris of his eviction:
I WILL NOT BE SO LAZY
I found that rather depressing.
posted by zoinks at 1:10 AM on December 2, 2009 [1 favorite]

In fifth grade, it was copying Emerson essays, whether on obedience, forthrightness, or thoughtfulness or some other such crap.
posted by grubi at 6:08 AM on December 2, 2009

I will not make pages and pages of screencaps when I could just post a one page text list. - burhanistan

In 1997 or so, there was a text listing of these online. (I know because I printed it up and posted it in my apartment.) Could've been usenet? I can't muster the energy to seek it out now, but I will eat my hat if it isn't out there somewhere.
posted by LobsterMitten at 11:48 AM on December 2, 2009

Someone posted a link to the list as a comment in the Projects post.
posted by exogenous at 12:36 PM on December 2, 2009