Passages North's Junk Drawer!
Some of the silly lines we've had in our header, and their origins:
"Smells like burnt popcorn (but still yummy!)" comes from an incident where Acting Webpage Guy was asked to watch out for the microwave popcorn of one Dr. Allison Hedge-Coke as it was popping, but Acting Webpage Guy was so involved with reading one of his women in politics texts that the popcorn got a little burnt. But yes, it was still yummy.
"Pleasing one-sixth of the population one-sixth of the time" is just a variation on the old adage, but with emprical evidence gathered in creative writing classes to back it up! More seriously, however, it's not really an accurate statistic. Consider for instance that one-sixth of the world population speaks and reads primarily in Chinese, while (for now) Passages North and its online companion are only available in English. We'd be ecstatic if we could reach even one-sixth of the population of the United States, let alone a China-sized chunk of the world stage. How can we please those who don't yet know of us, or can't read us? Thus a more accurate silly line might be "not displeasing five-sixths of the population five-sixths of the time."
"Watching words dance in their flashy underpants" comes to us from the old childhood rhyme, "I see London / I see France / I see..." and, well, you know the rest. But Acting Webpage Guy was reading an article on phonological shifts in the English language the other day, and this particular rhyme was cited as an example firstly of how quickly native English-speaking youths pick up on the rhymability of the English language, and secondly how "France," when pronounced the way the French pronounce it, doesn't really work as a rhyme with "pants."
"Like finding a potato where a potato shouldn't be" recalls
an afternoon by Harlow Lake, when our humble protagonist, Acting
Webpage Guy, and his dear friend of the image hunt, Mr. Michael Fegel,
came upon this mysterious potato. Somei.e.,
Acting Webpage Guy, who actually wrote a short story about it aptly
titled "An Alien Lifeform that just happens to Look like a Rotting
Potato." have speculated, however, that
this may not be a potato at all, but rather an alien life form that
just happens to look like a potato. Further speculation suggests that
this alien lifeform that just happens to look like a potato appears
inanimate simply because the gravity on its homeworld is much, much
less than that of earth's, and that the lifeform hasn't attempted to
communicate with us because on its homeworld everything is just implied
rather than overtly communicated.
"Happily making up one 1/4,256,762,235th of the internet" just shows Acting Webpage Guy's obsession with arbitrarily writing really long numbers. And for those who arrived here quite randomly, we may not be the lotto, but the odds of winning the lotto are much higher than arriving here randomly. You should be proud of your accomplishment, however trivial and unspendable.
Did you know?
(o) The office retains only one copy of the Winter/Spring 2004 issue of Passages North. It has its own special spot on the windowsill, and wears a crown made of orangish paper slips.
(o) The hearts on the walls in the office of Passages North have been up at least since Valentine's Day 2005, if not longer, and may in fact be why there's so much love in the office.
(o) The office of Passages North is located in the same building as the university health center, which proves to be quite convenient when disagreements break out.
(o) Editor-in-Chief Jennifer Howard abhors ellipses.
(o) She also has a thing against licking envelopes.
(o) Sometimes the whole staff goes out and hits the pavement together on an invigorating walk. Like a gang of literary bandits, we're the Passages North Posse!
(o) We particularly lament the number of trees the office goes through in paperwork .