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

I take attendance by asking the students a question.

If you had to organize a parade, the theme would be: ________. (previously)

Some sort of traditional or otherwise straightforward suggestions:

• floats
• pirates
• latinidad --- with lots of latinx artists
• sharks
• fantasy
• clouds
• candy
• happy
• guava
• turkey
• seasonal I guess?
• puppets
• [assorted suggestions of trademarked characters, by name]

Suggestions became increasingly wacky:

• astronaut penguins
• baby shark
• cheddar popcorn
• running (so it'd be a marathon)
• guava
• ME.
• apocalypse
• parade-themed parade
• weather
• awkwardness
• Turing Machine

Frankly these parades seem aggressively impossible:

• food allergies
• algorithms
• topological sort
• Agoraphobia Awareness

That last one... wow. I guess we might be able to schedule a parade indoors, like in an enclosed mall space? Agoraphobia does seem to be inherently at odds with parades, which take up a lot of space and are usually held outdoors.

The "most reasonable impromptu declared parade" award goes to the "People who are reasonably competent at walking" Parade, which ... could be happening right now! It's low-key, so you'd never know.


This post's theme word is bathophobia (n), "a fear of depths or falling from a great height." We should not have hired the bathophobia support group to steer the parade floats from the in-cockpit controls...

How much wood would a woodchuck chuck?

I take attendance by asking students a question.

How much wood would a woodchuck chuck? (previously 2017 2016)

Many people picked just a number. No units, or at least no helpful units.

• 3
• 5000
• 2
• 5
• 0
• 4 wood
• 7
• like 8 woods

One person said "1 lbs", which wins them the Accurate and Valid Answer Award.

Other people went with heuristic amounts:

• how many it wants
• many
• enough for the winter
• enough lol
• not enough to feed its family
• as much as it could throw
• go ask the woodchuck (on Google)

The Tautological Award for Those Awarded for Their Tautologies goes to:

• a wood chuck would chuck as much wood as a wood chuck could chuck if a wood chuck could chuck wood

And the creativity awards go to this collection of replies:

• A woodchuck doesn't have time for your silly games
• Probably a couple trees but don't hold me to this
• segfault
• As much as Chuck Norris wants
• It wouldn't
• Honestly chuck should cut back...

This post's theme words are asyndeton (deliberately chopping out the conjunctions between successive clauses) and polysyndeton (adding more than necessary). The woodchuck's poetry featured many asyndetons, placing it opposite the purple Lovecraftian polysyndetons at the poetry symposium dinner.