GRADING!

[Other installments of Sekocom, Inc. games include DISADVENTURE!, DISADDENDUM!, DISMORALIZED!, DISINSOMNIA!, WHARTON!, GRADING!, DISBELIEF! and DISCONVENTION!.]

Copyright (c) 1980, 1982, 1983, 2009 Sekocom, Inc.  All rights reserved.
GRADING! is a registered trademark of Sekocom, Inc.
Revision 28 / Serial number 8940728

West of Apartment Complex

You are standing in an open field west of a white apartment complex, with a boarded front door.  There is a small mailbox here.

> go inside

It is such a beautiful day out.  Why not explore awhile?

> go inside and grade

You throw caution to the wind and amble aimlessly around fields bathing in inspirational pastels swaths that compel poets to compose poetry and—

> kill kinkade

Your inability to access the adumbral profundity of—

> kill alliteration

You are exploring a verdant meadow whose vertiginous pleasures verily—

> stop crap poem go inside and grade

You reluctantly return to the white apartment complex and—

> damn right hippie

And decide you would rather not grade so you—

> hippie must grade now GO INSIDE

So you begin to skip to the blessed beat of some auscultated thrum—

> hippies made for dying

Idle threats will do you no—

> hippies good at dying

I said—

> inside and grade or else

You enter the white apartment complex and begin to grade your students' final papers.  The good ones are predictably good.  The poor ones are predictably poor.  The hours drag like sleds pulled by drunk slugs.  You think you fall asleep when in fact that is what your student thinks language is.  You grab a pen and—

> JAB IN EYES JAB IN EYES

You must grade or el—

> JAB HARDER MAKE SELF DIE

If these grades are not turned in by—

> NO CARE WANT DEATH 

You try to ignore your responsibility to your students but—

> NO BUTS BRING DEATH BRING DEATH BRING DEATH

The grue devours you before you have a chance to scream.

(Thanks to Joran Elias for reminding me how much I enjoy venting via text adventure.)

Comments

[Vance Maverick]

The hours drag like sleds pulled by drunk slugs

Nice. There's a Chandler echo (minutes piling up like pennies?) but I can't recall it, quite.

[Sisyphus]

I'm so sick of grading I willingly took a break to fill out job applications. :( That's how sucky it is.

[CP]

Vance: I remember something from Chandler like "The minutes passed by on tiptoe, fingers to their lips"? I also think I remember a striking simile for time dragging from Marlowe's narcotic stupor in The Long Goodbye, but my brain is a sieve.

[JPool]

Maybe someone slipped those sled dogs a mickey.

[Ahistoricality]

That's sled slugs, JP, and they're hitched to my clipboard, too....

[JPool]

That's sled slugs
Ah, I had missed this the first time through. "Drunken" seems like overkill, slugs not being very good sled pullers at the best of times. But, perhaps in spring (or whatever season Californians are pretending to have now) a young Scott's thoughts turn to garden defense.

[Ahistoricality]

That's a great link....

[jme]

Holy crap, I'm famous! ;)

Sadly, this reminds me that I have grading to do.