Extra+Credit

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6: Caption Contest #3
Five points extra credit + more if your response places in the top five when we vote in class this week.** **The extra credit?** Write a caption for the following cartoon What is the man saying while on the phone? Responses will be printed out anonymously and, this week, your peers will vote for their favorites.
 * Available from Monday, June 2 through Tuesday, June 3, 10:00 P.M.
 * All responses will be kept anonymous.
 * Responses only accepted via email: murdockm001@hawaii.rr.com
 * Must be received by Tuesday, June 3, 10:00 P.M.

5: Caption Contest #2
Five points extra credit + more if your response places in the top five when we vote in class this week.** **The extra credit?** Write a caption for the following cartoon What is the man saying to the woman? Responses will be printed out anonymously and, this week, your peers will vote for their favorites.
 * Available from Saturday, May 17 through Tuesday, May 21, 9:00 P.M.
 * All responses will be kept anonymous.
 * Responses only accepted via email
 * Must be received by Tuesday, May 20, 9:00 P.M.

4: The Plums
Eleven points extra credit + more if your response places when we vote in class on Friday.** Believe it or not, what follows is one of the more famous poems of the late twentieth century: by William Carlos Williams** //I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox
 * Available from Thursday, May 1 through Tuesday, May 6, 9:00 P.M.
 * This Is Just To Say

and which you were probably saving for breakfast

Forgive me they were delicious so sweet and so cold//

The poem has been widely parodied. A couple examples, reduced to three lines to make the form of the poem a bit easier to decipher:

//I chopped down the house that you had been saving to live in next summer. I am sorry, but it was morning, and I had nothing to do and its wooden beams were so inviting.

Last evening we went dancing and I broke your leg. Forgive me. I was clumsy and I wanted you here in the wards, where I am the doctor!// (...especially funny since, as we all know, Williams was a practicing physician!)

**The extra credit? Construct a (classroom appropriate) parody of William Carlos Williams' "This is just to say."**
 * All responses will be kept anonymous.
 * Responses only accepted via email: murdockm001@hawaii.rr.com.
 * Poems must be received by Tuesday, May 6th, 9:00 P.M.

3: Caption Contest
Five points extra credit + more if your response places in the top five when we vote in class on Friday.** Simply, write a caption for the following cartoon. Responses will be printed out anonymously and, on Friday, your peers will vote for their favorites.
 * Available from Saturday, April 19 through Wednesday, April 23, 9:00 P.M.

2: Celebrity Six-Word Biographies
Five points extra credit** (plus two? I received nine responses to extra credit #1; seven points per response if I receive at least 14 responses). Remember when we did those six-word memoirs not too long ago? Construct a memoir for a famous person. How famous is famous? If you must, explain who the person is. If you have to do to much explaining, the person is not famous. //**Example: Abraham Lincoln: "Freed the slaves. Alas, not all."**//
 * Available from Sunday, April 13 through Thursday, April 17
 * Responses must be six words and only six words.
 * Responses must arrive in Murdock's email by Thursday, April 17th, 10:00 P.M.
 * All responses are confidential and, if any are posted, will be posted anonymously.

1: Musical Dirty Secrets
Seven to ten points extra credit.** What band, song, or album is your dirty secret? What is the music that moves you that you'd never admit to even your best friends?
 * Available from Friday, April 4th through Wednesday, April 9th:

Talking about this topic over dinner with my 10th-grade son tonight, my son shot me that "you-cought-my-hand-in-the-cookie-jar" look and admitted that he likes Avril Lavigne's "Girlfriend." I never would have guessed. Getting down to some serious self-exposure, I told my boy that I kind of like Abba. Although I don't have any Abba in my collection (calling Limewire! hey, iTunes!), I don't turn off "Dancing Queen" when it comes out of a radio. One can sing along to Abba with no thought whatsoever. Songs like "Waterloo" and "Fernando" seem designed to expunge any thought from one's head. There's war and poverty and death and crime? Who cares? When the lushly orchestrated mechanico-pop emanates from a speaker, the sky's always blue and my shoes are always shined. [//Greatest Hits// [|link]]
 * Responses must be 25-50 words.
 * Responses must arrive in Murdock's email by Wednesday, April 9th, 11:59 P.M.
 * All responses are confidential and, if any are posted, will be posted anonymously.