The tribute clip was crap, so I’ve picked a couple of clips I like. This first one is from around ’77, the second one I’ve posted before (about 3 years ago).

This is with Roy Rogers (seriously, that’s his name)…

RIP Norton.

This assignment was actually (WT: supposedly) turned in by two of English students:

Rebecca [redacted] and Gary [redacted]
English 44A, SMU
Creative Writing:
Professor Miller: In-class Assignment for Wednesday:

One of you will write the first paragraph of a short story. The partner will read the first paragraph and then add another paragraph to the story. The first person will then add a third paragraph, and so on back and forth. Remember to reread what has been written each time in order to keep the story coherent. The story is over when both agree a conclusion has been reached.

At first, Laurie couldn’t decide which kind of tea she wanted. The chamomile, which used to be her favorite for lazy evenings at home, now reminded her too much of Carl, who once said, in happier times, that he liked chamomile. But she felt she must now, at all costs, keep her mind off Carl. His possessiveness was suffocating, and if she thought about him too much her asthma started acting up again. So chamomile was out of the question.

Meanwhile, Advance Sergeant Carl Harris, leader of the attack squadron now in orbit over Skylon 4, had more important things to think about than the neuroses of an air-headed asthmatic bimbo named Laurie with whom he had spent one sweaty night over a year ago. “A.S. Harris to Geostation 17,” he said into his transgalactic communicator. “Polar orbit established. No sign of resistance so far…” But before he could sign off a bluish partical beam flashed out of nowhere and blasted a hole through his ship’s cargo bay. The jolt from the direct hit sent him flying out of his seat and across the cockpit.

He bumped his head and died almost immediately, but not before he felt one last pang of regret for psychically brutalizing the one woman who had ever had feelings for him. Soon afterwards, Earth stopped its pointless hostilities towards the peaceful farmers of Skylon 4. “Congress Passes Law Permanently Abolishing War and Space Travel.” Laurie read in her newspaper one morning. The news simultaneously excited her and bored her. She stared out the window, dreaming of her youth – when the days had passed unhurriedly and carefree, with no newspapers to read, no television to distract her from her sense of innocent wonder at all the beautiful things around her. “Why must one lose one’s innocence to become a woman?” she pondered wistfully.

Little did she know, but she has less than 10 seconds to live. Thousands of miles above the city, the Anu’udrian mothership launched the first of its lithium fusion missiles. The dim-witted wimpy peaceniks who pushed the Unilateral Aerospace Disarmament Treaty through Congress had left Earth a defenseless target for the hostile alien empires who were determined to destroy the human race. Within two hours after the passage of the treaty the Anu’udrian ships were on course for Earth, carrying enough firepower to pulverize the entire planet. With no one to stop them, they swiftly initiated their diabolical plan. The lithium fusion missile entered the atmosphere unimpeded. The President, in his top-secret submarine headquarters on the ocean floor off the coast of Guam, felt the inconceivably massive explosion which vaporized Laurie and 85 million other Americans. The President slammed his fist on the conference table. “We can’t allow this! I’m going to veto that treaty! Let’s blow ‘em out of the sky!”

This is absurd. I refuse to continue this mockery of literature. My writing partner is a violent, chauvinistic, semi-literate adolescent.

Yeah? Well, you’re a self-centered tedious neurotic whose attempts at writing are the literary equivalent of Valium.

Asshole.

Bitch.

Everything went well except for the inquisition my knuckle-heads put me through when I’d get home. They’d go into a sniffing frenzy, and there wasn’t one square inch of clothing left unsniffed (of course I played with the working dogs!).

But the worst thing happened on the last day that I looked after them. Seeing as Buddy is pretty well behaved, I decided to take him with me. At first everything was fine, he sprung out of the car and pranced (you’ve got to see it to believe it) along with me on the 500ft walk to the kennels in his normal cocky style, peeing on everything as he went. He’s one tough little dude, and then I opened the kennels and he was immediately surrounded by dogs that were at least 4 times his size. Not so tough now.

But that wasn’t the worst part (working dogs by nature are very friendly). No, the worst part was the drive home. Buddy sat in the front passenger seat pushed hard against the door, staring malevolently at me. Trust me, I know Buddy’s malevolent stare when I see it, plus I also know what he’s thinking most of the time (it’s mostly “Is that food?”), but in this case he glared at me the whole way home while accusing me of having a second, bigamous family on the next farm.

“Come on,” said the laptop, “just hit the keys, let’s see what you’ve got.” (Although in truth WT suspected that the screen wasn’t actually talking to him, but who knows…)

He sat there for a while, staring blankly at the blank screen. Unwavering in his resolve to show the lappie who was boss, he strained his brain muscle to the point of migraine, then it came to him. An epiphany in the midst of severe writer’s block.

With elation rising in him for having come up with what he considered to be the pinnacle of his literary achievements do date, WT was filled with excitement as he placed his fingers ever so gently on the keyboard and tapped the following reply to the computer’s taunts…

…Fuck you.

The reply was both stunning in its eloquence and awe inspiring in its structure.