Anguished English
(by Richard Lederer)
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A few extracts of actual exam papers submitted by students,  and published a few years ago under the title Anguished English by Richard Lederer.
 


 


    Julius Ceasar extiguished himself on the battlefieds of Gaul.  The Ides of March murdered him because they thought he was going to be made king.  Dying, he gasped out: "Tee hee, Brutus".

    Anchient Egypt was inhabited by mummies and they all wrote in hydraulics.  They lived in the Sarah Dessert and travelled by Camelot.    The climate of the Sarah is such that the inhabitants have to live elsewhere.

    Nero was a cruel tyrany who would torture his poor subjects by playing the fiddle to them. 

    Then came the Middle Ages. King Alfred conquered the Dames, King Arthur lived in the Age of Shivery, King Harlod mustarded his troops before the Battle of Hastings,  The victims of the Black Death grew boobs on their necks. 

    Actually, Homer was not written by Homer, but by another man of that name.

     In the Olympic games, Greeks ran races, jumped, hurled the biscuits, and threw the java.  The reward to the victor was a coral wreath. The government of Athen was democratic because the people took the law into their own hands. There were no wars in Greece, as the mountains were so high that they couldn't climb over to see what their neighbors were doing.  When they fought the Parisians,  the Greeks were outnumbered because the Persians had more men.

    Socrates was a famous Greek teacher who went around giving people advice.  They killed him.  Socrates died from an overdose of wedlock.  After his death, his career suffered a dramatic decline.

    Eventually, the Romans conquered the Greeks.  History calls people Romans because they never stayed in one place for very long.

    Joan of Arc was burn to a steak and was canonised by Bernard Shaw.  Finally,  Magna Carta provided that no man should be hanged twice for the same offence.

    The Renaissance was an age in which more individuals felt the value of their human being.  Martin Luther was nailed to the church door at Wittenberg for selling papal indulgences.  He died a horrible death, being excommunicated by a bull.  It was the painter Donatello's interest in the female nude that made him the father of the Renaissance.  It was an age of great inventions and discoveries.  Gutenberg invented the Bible.  Sir Walter Raleigh is a historical figure because he invented cigarettes. Another important invention was the circulation of blood.  Sir Francis Drake circumcised the world with a 100-foot clipper.

    The greatest writer of the Renaissance was William Shakespear. Shakespear never made much money and is famous only because of his plays.  He lived in Windsor with his merry wives, writing tragedies, comedies and errors.  In one of Shakespear's famous plays, Hamlet rations out his situation by relieving himself in a long soliloquy.  In another, Lady Macbeth tries to convince Macbeth to kill the King by attacking his manhood. Romeo and Juliet are an example of a heroic couplet.  Writing at the same time as Shakespear was Miquel Cervantes.  He wrote "Donkey Hote".  The next great author was John Milton.  Milton wrote "Paradise Lost."  Then his wife dies and he wrote "Paradise Regained." 

    Bach was the most famous composer in the world, and so was Handel.  Handel was half German, half Italian and half English. He was very large.  Bach died from 1750 to the present. Beethoven wrote music even though he was deaf.  He was so deaf he wrote loud music.  He took long walks in the forest even when everyone was calling for him.  Beethoven expired in 1827 and later died for this. 

    The body consists of three parts- the brainium, the borax and the abominable cavity.  The brainium contains the brain, the borax contains the heart and lungs, and the abominable cavity contains the bowls, of which there are five - a, e, i, o, and u.