AP Government Quiz

These three rather dismal quizzes come from an AP Government & Politics course offered to seniors. I have no idea what the first question was, because every one of the respondents was so off the mark I can't cobble together what they must have been responding to. It probably had something to do with the abolition of some federal program. The second question, I believe, was "What program was passed along with Medicare in 1965?" and the third was "What program replaced AFDC in 1996?".

That most-represented star of the Archives, Travis, appears here again. (I should note that Travis and I were not the closest of friends in school. It's not that he was constantly feeding me his daily doings as best-chums; it's that he kept making an ass of himself on paper, over and over, and subsequently generating such laughs among his peers that I would inevitably be handed the work for safekeeping.) He only got the third question right; he was simply off the mark on the second question, and to the first question, he responds tersely, "FDR, because he no likey".

Erika had a lot of trouble recalling the acronym of the government program which superseded Aid to Families with Dependent Children in 1996; the real acronym is TANF (for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families). Erika scribbles out NABF at the top of the page, tests out NAFR again at the top, then tries out simply NAF before settling on NARF, a catch-all interjection from the TV show Pinky and the Brain (and one that we used locally as a synonym for "barf" or "snarf"). She also did a humorous two-step over the time when aid recipients in NARF must obtain jobs. Her answer for #3 is transcribed below.

3. NAF NARF (not neccesarily [sic] in that order), it allowed for aid to poor families. It would only last for five years. Those recieving [sic] aid must get a job after before after between the time they start aid and the second year and must keep it. After those 5 years no more aid is given unless thier [sic] are extenuating circumstances.


Ollie (of Catcher in the Rye fame) also had trouble with the acronym, coming up with TEDF and TADF, but his real contribution was in his answer for question 1, which is transcribed below the image.

1. Bert and Ernie halted Medicare because Big Bird was not given enough benefits. Myguess is George Bush because he felt costs would be too high

Ancient Roman Art

We'll conclude our Latin series with two pieces of visual art drawn by aesthetically precocious middle schoolers. The medium of both works is pencil on copy paper.

The first, by Nimish, is a drawing of Hercules carrying out the Labor of the Cretan Bull. Instead of the great hero wrestling the bull to the ground, though, he is depicted as a cigar-chomping, fatigues-sporting Rambo toting a fully automatic weapon, which he uses to direct a stream of bullets at the (now fire-breathing) bovine. The bull responds with a tender "ouch", as the jets of flame emanating from his nostrils fail to reach Hercules but succeed in searing a few shrimp on a nearby barbie.

The second is a collaborative effort by the fertile minds of Adam and Travis, who laid out an elaborate strip comic in order to make a cross-linguistic pun about "spanking the monkey". The monkey, in this case, played by Diddy Kong. Full credits are given for the work, including, for unknown reasons, inspiration by Coolio. Translations of the captions follow below. This image is copyrighted; all rights are reserved, and the work may not be used for commercial purposes or reproduced in any way without the express written consent of Mackhouse Productions, Inc.

1: While Marcus sleeps in the house, his chariot is in the road.
2: A monkey approaches the chariot.
3: The monkey climbs into the chariot.
4: The monkey drives the chariot on the road.
5: Marcus hears a great noise and gets up.
6: Marcus sees the monkey and runs to the chariot.
7: Marcus spanks the monkey and scolds it.

Quiz #7

Our perennial star Travis returns yet again with his lackluster Quiz #7, clocking in at a failing 48%. There's a spot in the translation section where he takes the phrase "effusum est oleum in strata" and renders it "the effusum is oleum in strata"; perhaps he thought he might confuse the teacher into thinking it really was English. The best part, however, is the grading comment at the bottom of the page: "Travis, you have done no homework for two weeks, and now you get the lowest grade you've ever gotten. Do you see the connection??"

 He expressed his own frustrations on the back, with another occurrence of the inscrutable local term of abuse "bash zool":

Ovid Quiz 3

If memory serves, the follow-up to Quiz 2 went better for most of us. The exception was Adam, who decorated his quiz in even more gaudy ways than on the previous one. At the top of the page, he writes "illigitimas non caparundum est" (which is close to, but not exactly, "don't let the bastards grind you down"), identifies himself as "Adam a.k.a. Bacchus" (the Roman god of being drunk and disorderly) and frames the name "Ovid" with a skull and crossbones.

The real treat is in the lower translation section. You'll note that Adam has drawn a tank firing off a shell, and the reason he was able to do so is that he probably had rather a lot of free time on his hands after completing this section. Our teacher had given us a chunk of Ovid beforehand, and told us that we would need to translate some sections of it for this quiz. Adam, along with several other students in the class, decided that Ovid's Latin was too difficult to translate on the fly, so they took to memorizing the passage translations. This strategy worked well for most, but Adam misidentified the section and ended up regurgitating something completely different. The teacher notes, "Wrong section - at least look at the Latin!"

On the flipside, he created another stunning work in the DOOM series, this time with a depiction of the video game's nameless hero: