If you had to organize a parade, the theme would be:

I take attendance by having students answer a question.

If you had to organize a parade, the theme would be:

• trans pride
• colors
• running
• birds
• women in STEM!
• [name of another student in the class]
• birds
• gumby
• SPOOKY
• Poros
• elephants
• Gudetama
• all of the above

Some people chose things which already have parades:

• Thanksgiving 
• pride
• parade-themed
• sports
• parades
• mummers

And a lot of students were thinking about food:

• buttered toast
• coffee
• tacos
• szezhuan [sic] sauce
• instant noodles
• gummy animals
• cookies
• seafood
• cuisine
• sushi
• elephants
• sandwiches
• food

I'd like to see an "existentialism"-themed parade, but... maybe it would take place at night? I don't know enough about existentialism to interpret it through the weird cultural lens of "theme of a parade", but this sounds like the setup to a joke over at Existential Comics.

This post dedicated to the future students who make a useless-blog-themed parade.


This post's theme word is mise en abyme (n), "self-reflection in a literary work, work of art, etc." e.g. a play within a play, a dream within a dream... The hyperlinks on the mise-en-abyme post were infuriatingly both nested and circular.

What word makes you turn your head because you think it's your name?

I take attendance by having students answer a question.

What word makes you turn your head because you think it's your name?

Publishing the answers that students wrote would go against my general policy of "don't publicly identify people by name without their explicit consent." So instead of writing their actual responses, let me give you a gloss:

• [student's name, but an alternate spelling]
• [description of sneezing in another country with different typical accents]
• [commonly-uttered phrase in a computer lab]
• [student's name, verbatim]
• [word that rhymes with student's name]
• [non-grammatical sentence/series of words that, if spoken quickly enough or muffled, might rhyme with student's name]
• [list of nine one-syllable names rhyming with student's name] "and eight thousand others"
• "[student's name] but it's a different [student's name] than me"

I am glad, as always, to have an unusual-but-mostly-pronounceable name. I continue to resolve to name my child "Robert');DROP TABLE Students;--", unless that name becomes too popular among database-saboteur parents.

Today's "I don't think you got it" Award  goes to the student whose attention is grabbed by "Anyone yelling anything and staring at me". You got it, buddy, good job.

This post is dedicated to the diligent and compulsively thorough student readers of the future, who are reading every post here for a reason inscrutable to me. I know you exist. Hello!


This post's theme word is asterismos, "the use of a seemingly unnecessary word or phrase to introduce what you're about to say." Hi-ya! Good morning class, I'm Lila! (<-- be="" delivered="" must="" p="" pronounced="" rhyme="" singsong="" to="">