Tropers / Capt Hayfever

Since The Powers That Be saw fit to burn down the forest to catch a few bandits, I've saved as many of my relevant Tales as I could remember to find.

Accidental Pervert (with others' replies):

• My acting class used to play a game called "Keys" in which everyone's eyes are closed, & the person with the keys tries to find & tag everybody else. One of my friends was the key-man, & he held his hands in just about the worst possible position as he probed blindly about the room. Every female member of the class got accidentally groped (since the game goes on until only 1 non-keyperson remains), & the key-man felt so bad about it that he bought them all cake. Also, that person was directly ordered to keep his hands lower next time he was the key-man.
  • So basically: A Cake = Grope a certain group of females. Seems fair.
  • Well, to his credit, it was due to an oversight on his part. He was probably making up for his screwing up.

Analogy Backfire:

• I sometimes do these on purpose to regain the attention of the College Algebra class I'm teaching. It's just like when you're trying to attract a squirrel to feed it a piece of bread, except instead of bread, I'm trying to feed...knowledge...to the squirrel...

Bavarian Fire Drill:

• This troper once survived a round of zombie tag just by acting like he'd already been turned: Chasing after known-humans & casually asking known-zombies (& status-unknown players) if they'd seen any humans recently.

Blind Without 'Em:

• Subverted for me, as most other glasses-wearers who have tried mine on end up asking if they're even prescription (including my sister & both parents). The other way around, though, I try theirs on & wonder how they can even perform basic functions without 'em.

The Cobbler's Children Have No Shoes:

• Subverted with my father being a (now-retired) videographer; he taught me camerawork, lighting, tape editing, audio dubbing,....

College Radio:

• My school, Truman State University, has two radio stations, detailed suchly:
  • KTRM 88.7 FM "The Edge" (stream info on the page) is the larger of the two. They have a pretty standard broadcast radius, reaching well outside of town, & operate under an talk/alt-rock format with full FCC regulation & frequent commercials.
  • 107.5 FM (site is out of date), the station I worked for, is free-format, nearly commercial-free, & very small; our broadcast radius is about 1-2 miles^note  in a car; thick dorm walls blocked us out, & we were officially given permission by the FCC to broadcast & webstream without a license, call letters, or their regulation. Then the RIAA sent a cease-and-desist letter demanding $500 every semester & a full log of every track we played (even the ones they don't control) if we wanted to continue webcasting. We don't make $500 a year. We no longer have a webcast. We've also been bounced between homes for the last couple years due to ongoing renovations. We do, however, maintain a pretty good campus presence; partnering with two out of three school periodical publications & the HVZ crew, as well as sponsoring an annual musicfest & semesterly concerts. My own show, which ended last spring after 11 semesters, was one of our most popular, and back in the webcast days, a friend on the night shift had a regular fanbase in Arabia.

CMOF:

• You didn't have to be there for this one: In 8th grade, my friends & I went to a lot of Trivia Nights around town. We liked hanging out and eating free concessions, and we tended to win a lot (two 1st places, two 2nd, & a 3rd), despite usually playing shorthanded. Anyway, at one of the later ones, as we'd gotten really comfortable with the format & we were already getting goofy at the beginning of the game. The first category was "Animals," and the first question was "What is the largest mammal on Earth?" Without missing a beat, our team Wacky Guy shouted "YO MAMA!" We lost it, as did all of the adjacent tables, while the protor just glared at us like an adult with no actual authority over you will glare. We wrote the right answer on the response sheet, of course.
• Another one from me: In World History class, we were presenting our projects on the Seven Ancient Wonders. One of my classmates was talking about how his particular golden Wonder was destroyed when it melted in a fire, when a less-bright classmate asked why it didn't burn instead. The presenter began his response as the questioner was still finishing his last word, "Because gold's a soft metal; go back to chemistry class, Einstein!" Everyone but the teacher found it hilarious.

CMOH:

• My sister mocks more or less everything that I do or like. She's especially fond of criticizing my fandom of The Monkees in general & Michael Nesmith in particular. This past Christmas, she got me THREE Nez albums.

Completely Missing The Point (my reply & another's reply to it):

• This troper was once talking to a friend about Dr Horribles Sing Along Blog when the friend said "I would have liked it, but Penny's death was pointless and mean and ruined it." My response was "Ummmmm...did you not catch the last three minutes of the program???"
  • That's a sad trend I've seen with a lot of the stupider viewers of musicals; they forget to pay attention to the lyrics.
    • ZOMG! There are lyrics now?!?!!??? Like, sense whens?

Death Glare:

• So there's this girl at my university who lives in the same building as me. I once unsuccessfully asked her out, but we remained friends. The rest of her Girl Posse, however, intensely distrusts me for no adequately explored reason & greets me with Death Glares whenever I encounter any of them. Normally I can shrug off things like that, but the frequency of triple-glares makes my friend totally unapproachable unless they aren't around.

Drink Order:

• This captain swears by A&W, though almost any root beer will do in a pinch (preferably not Mug, & never Diet Vess). I love trying more obscure or homemade versions, too.

Evil Laugh:

• This troper was once asked to record his evil laugh for the sound effects loop in a haunted house.

Gosh Dang It to Heck!:

• This captain is fond of "bleep", both as a word & a sound effect. He also enjoys the mild forms like "dang", "shoot", "heck", "stinking", "freaking", "screw", etc., as well as throwing in a few odder choices like "scrub you" & some complete gibberish from time to time. Once he was in a silent movie, & got away with just mouthing his character's profanity during filming, though the cast did actually speak most of the dialogue while on camera (for the sake of cues, reactions, etc.)

Headphones Equal Isolation:

• This troper sticks to open-air headphones to play with this trope. Sometimes I have them on even after my music or YouTube video or whatever has finished, & people think I'm still not listening. (This sometimes leads to hilariously failed sneak attacks on my friend's part.) Also, people underestimate exactly how powerful my hearing is (& it is) even with music on. (Of course, sometimes I'm listening to something loud & really can't hear what people say, but then if they think it's important, they'll get my attention visually, & if I think it's important, I'll ask for repetition.)

Henway:

• One time, yon troper was carrying several crates of jewel cases, which were quite obviously CD jewel cases, down a dorm hallway. A friend came out of his room about (30 feet away) & asked what I was carrying. I answered without skipping a beat:
  Friend: What's all that?
  Me: A sketch comedy that ran on Nickelodeon from 1995-2006.

Incriminating Indifference:

• Also inverted in my Intro to Theatre class in college. My professor, an experienced actress & director, showed a newsreel clip of a woman bawling uncontrollably over the death of her child. My professor, again, an experienced actress & director, said that the candid emotional breakdown in the footage looked artificial to her, & that ALL such breakdowns look artificial to her, because real people try to restrain their emotions in public. I wanted to slap her. If she'd been at my uncle's wake a decade prior & accused my hysterical grandmother of crocodile tears, my father & his 2 living brothers would've done worse than slap her.

Innocent Cohabitation:

• Yon troper has plenty of friends doing this. It's easy when the residence has multiple bedrooms, even easier when one or more of the housemates is in a happy relationship with a non-resident, & crazy easy when the parties involved are Like Brother and Sister. Heck, I almost did this with a female friend one year, but we wanted a dorm room (don't worry, we fit my 2nd & 3rd conditions) & Residence Life wasn't too keen on the idea. (They just wouldn't believe we were The Straight Will And Grace. They also wouldn't believe that gay couples were rooming together).

Loophole Abuse:

• When your captain was in 8th grade, our school uniform code demanded that boys wear long slacks between October 15th & April 15th, no matter the weather. For years, we had complained about the impracticality of the rule, especially since the girls had the option of a skirt for hot days during the no-shorts season. One of our teachers sardonically pointed out that there ain't no rule saying a boy couldn't wear the skirt...so the next day, one of my friends did. (Though technically, there was a rule against it, but since a teacher had challenged him to do so, he still got through the day with impunity.) The next year—when we had all graduated—the rule was amended to allow boys to wear shorts whenever it was warm enough. The administration liked our idea; they just didn't like that a bunch of preteens had come up with it & didn't want us to benefit from our own "defiance."

Misplaced Kindergarten Teacher:

• My English teacher when I was in 8th grade was a piece of work. First off, she was only even certified to teach second grade, spoke to us like we were that age. (Our principal later admitted the applicants were sparse that year.) My school being full of Deadpan Snarkers, Jerk Jocks, Commander Contrarians, & both the top and bottom ends of the perception scale, this approach was ineffective. She also was horribly gender-biased, letting the girls get away with doing whatever the heck they wanted while the boys were loudly chastised for even the slightest infraction (not that her reprimands were at all effective; she apparently couldn't even stop two 7th-graders from hanging one of their classmates out the 2nd-story window in the middle of her lesson). I ended up explaining more grammar & mechanics lessons than she did, as she couldn't understand many of the rules in the textbook (yes, she was a native English speaker like all of us). Her due dates were never enforced, & after November, she was just glad when anyone turned in anything (I kept doing work 'cause I wanted the A & actually liked a pretty clever short-story system she had devised but abandoned). She spent most of the last quarter of the year reading to us aloud from this terribly-written Narm-filled biography called She Said Yes which had just been published, & crying over her boyfriend dumping her...while revealing she still lived with her parents at age 29-30. My last story for the class directly, albeit subtlely, insulted her inability to teach or comprehend the material we were covering, & when she tried to call me out on it, I was able to throw off the suspicion without actually denying it. Again, remember, she was twice my age & allegedly "better educated", & I out-talked her in less than a minute after also out-teaching her all year long.

Multicolored Hair:

• In fall 2008, I developed a single golden hair in my otherwise pitch-brown bangs. It hasn't spread at all, but it also doesn't go away after haircuts.

"The Reason You Suck" Speech:

• I actually gave one of these at a poetry slam (my 3rd), in the form of a beat poem, expressing how much the following things sucked: The format of the slam, the predictability of the poems' themes, the poor information given to newcomers, the bias in the judging, & the poetry of one specific recurring slam-attendee (intentionally mimicking & lampshading his style). Got my best audience response from all 3 slams, but also my lowest scores from the judges. Go figure.

Take a Third Option:

• Your captain was once asked by a friend, "The Dark Side Of The Moon or The Wall?" He answered, without hesitation, "Wish You Were Here."

Throw It In:

• This troper has a few; sit tight:
  • In 8th grade, two friends & I recorded a radio adaptation of part of A Wrinkle In Time for a class project. One of my friends had the line "What are you doing out? You shouldn't be," as in the heroes should not be outside. He read the line perfectly in rehearsal, but then when we recorded, the emphasis was "You shouldn't BE," as in the heroes should not exist. We could have gone back and taped over it, but we all thought it was too hilarious to change (we were punching up the script with humor anyway), and "You shouldn't BE!" has become one of our in-jokes.
  • In high school, my director was the Queen Goddess of Throw It In. Nearly every show we did (6 comedies & 1 mystery) had lines and even whole CHARACTERS added in for a laugh. The only show we did that wasn't changed was Judgment at Nuremberg. Examples:
    • Witness for the Prosecution: The protagonist had a bandage from eye surgery added. The forensic scientist became a pirate, with "Margaritaville" references added as well as a "Blood Type ARRR—I mean O!" joke. A court clerk had a cold. The judge wore a Dolly Parton wig. My character, the coroner, had a neck crick added and became Italian (the accent was literally added between final dress & opening night...I only warned the 2 lawyers beforehand to keep them from flubbing lines; everyone else's reaction was genuine). A stenographer who couldn't understand non-English accents was added.
    • Androcles and the Lion: The title characters danced to "Tea for Two." The menagerie keeper lip-synced "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" during curtain call. A fake-blind beggar was added.
    • Curious Savage: A 3rd Savage brother was added, named after our mayor (who was an alumnus of our school). The protagonist became male (though this was more because we were an all-boys school; female parts were usually played by girls from other schools). Florence claimed that her—imaginary—son's father was Hannibal (the actress & actor were dating at the time). My character, the psychiatrist, became German.
    • George Washington Slept Here: Hester the maid had a large red A on her costume, a Shout-Out to Hester from The Scarlet Letter.
    • The Man Who Came to Dinner: Beverley Carlton picked up an old photo of our then-Dean of Language and proclaimed "Oh. My. God. This man had hair!"
    • The director herself snuck into performances from time to time, sometimes as a bonus character, once just randomly hiding in a sarcophagus.

Throwing Your Sword Always Works:

• Your captain totally pulled this off against his own instructor. It was a 3 HP sparring match at the end of a long group session, & we were tied at the last hit. I was exhausted & knew my reflexes were fading, so I just launched my boffer at the man, scoring the game point. He pointed out what I had been betting on, that the sufficiently experienced (like himself) are occasionally susceptible to mind-numbingly stupid tactics like that by the sufficiently inexperienced (like myself) because they just don't expect anyone to do anything that dumb. It Only Works Once, of course.

We Need a Distraction:

• This troper once won a boffer sword sparring match by hitting on his opponent, confusing her just long enough for him to land the winning point.

Word Salad Lyrics:

• This troper, attempting to create a completely discordant song (it's even called "Dischord"), took the first verse of "Diddle Diddle Dumpling" (in Common Time) & wrote four other 4-line stream-of-consciousness verses in four other time signatures, then scrambled up the respective lines of each one. And then I rearranged the five 4-line verses into four 5-line verses, cycling between each time signature for each line of the new verses. And then I paired them with an entirely-unrelated chorus (with a randomized tune each time I reach it). It's hard to sing.

You Fail Biology Forever (with other folks' replies):

• Seen on Facebook as an argument against homosexuality being genetic: "Genes are passed down from parents and well...gays don't have kids." Right, because recessive genes don't exist & no gay person has ever had a biological child with a beard spouse. Makes sense.
  • Although, with America and Canada's politics towards homosexuality changing massively over the last few decades, it makes sense that more gays will be coming out of the closest and never end up having children. A few generations and even the recessive genes could end up "going extinct" so to speak, and, well... That's only if homosexuality is genetic, of course, which I personally don't believe in, but it's interesting.
    • I don't claim to know whether it is or not; I was just pointing out the guy's complete misunderstanding of genetics.
    • It has been observed that promiscuous women have more homosexual male relatives than women who are not promiscuous, and an Italian biologist suggested that the two things are related. In other words: the same genes that make women more attracted to men, make men more attracted to men.
  • He seems to have a point. Homosexuality shouldn't be selected for, since it reduces the chance of one's genes being passed on to the next generation. The gene wouldn't die out after one generation, but it would die out after some time.
    • ...couldn't it just be an exaggerated expression of whatever makes most people mildly to moderately bisexual? Or something like that?
  • There are actually interesting arguments that it does get selected for. Phenotypes aren't binary, after all, they're a combination of gene and environment (siamese cats for instance). It could be (not that I've researched it) that there's a gene that expresses when there's low availability of potential partners to make people comfortable with members of their own sex. There are certainly some advantages I could think of to part of a population being comfortable sexually and emotionally with their own sex.

You Fail Geology Forever:

• This troper once saw some girl protesting the diamond industry thusly: "FYI, there is no chemical difference between cubic zirconia and diamond. Don't be silly and support a dirty, bloody, industry." Now, it is true that some diamonds are mined under violent, oppressive, inhumane conditions, but that's no reason to ignore the fact that diamonds are pure carbon, while cubic zirconia is made of zirconium and oxygen. In other words, they fulfill the exact definition of "chemical difference." (Kinda geology, kinda chemistry.)

Alt Itis:

• This unidentified troper has 4 Facebook accounts. One is actually him; the other 3 are original fictional characters.