The Interpreted Past

One item I received for Christmas this year was Non Campus Mentis: World History According to College Students. In this book, Professor Anders Henriksson draws together some of the most entertaining and absurd test answers and paper excerpts he (and a few of his colleagues) has collected over several decades of teaching undergraduate history courses. Each section of the book pertains to a major period in Western history. I'm not finished with it yet but here is a primo selection of the humorous offerings I have read thus far:

*Plato invented reality. He was teacher to Harris Tottle, author of The Republicans. Lust was a must for the Epicureans. Others were the Vegetarians and the Synthetics, who said, "If you can't play with it, why bother?"

*Christianity finally became official after the Emperor Constantine's famous Decree of Consternation. Constantine became a Christian himself after being persued by a neon cross on the battlefield. The entire city of Constantinople rose up with a tremendous ejaculation every time the emperor came.

*Medieval people were violent. Murder during this period was nothing. Everybody killed someone.

*The crusades enlarged opportunities for travel. These were a series of military expaditions made by Christians seeking to free the holy land (the "Home Town" of Christ).

*Finally, Europe caught the Black Death. The bubonic plague is a social disease in the sense that it can be transmitted by intercourse and other etceteras.

-It was spread from port to port by inflected rats.

-It was then passed around by midgets.

-Victims of the Black Death grew boobs on their necks.

-Death rates exceeded one hundred percent in some towns.

*This was the beginning of Empire when Europeans felt the need to reach out and smack someone.

*Columbus came to America to install rule by dead white males over the native peoples.

*John Calvin Klein translated the Bible into American so the people of Geneva could read it.

*Deism was the belief that God made the world and then stepped on it. In Deism God has no direct influence on daily life, but just watches like a movie, eating his candy and munching his popcorn.

*[Concering the Industrial Revolution] The social structure was Upper Class, Middle Class, Working Class, and Lowest Poor Scum.

*Sigmund Freud was a shrink who came up with sex reasoning. He said that if the mind says not to have sex and the will will not listen, then the mind will go crazy. Leaders of the women's movement included Florence Nightengail, Susan B. Anthony, and Crystal Pancake. German feminists furthered the whatnot of women. Sufferance was the major goal.

-Feminists argued that sex outside the family would make you go blind or lose your memory.

*Liberals insisted on a lily fair economy where it was hands off the lily.

*The major cause of the Civil War is when slavery spread its ugly testicles across the West.

*Picasso was the famous artist who painted the Mona Lisa. Benito Mussolini was an artist who became overly famous.

*Oscar Wilde, the author of Doreen Gray, was probably the riskiest personage in England at this time.

*Friedrich Nietzsche was a German movie producer who wrote Triumph of the Will and Superman.