Skip blithely between tenses


I sit at my desk with my head in my hands and sighed. It is only three days until the deadline, I think, and I’m going to have had to finished everything before then. If only I have finish this now, I thought and lean back on my chair. Just then, the phone has rung. I am answering it.
‘Hello?’ I am going to have said. It is my boss; he was angry, but not as angry as I remember him being when I am handing in the work late, four days from now.
‘Is this work going to have been finished when it is currently the deadline which, at present, is in the future?’ he demanded. ‘I am planning to have been waiting for it, as I presently am.’

22 comments:

  1. Oh, my goodness, the last line kills. This is excellent terrible writing.

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  2. Hahaha! Amazing! The middle paragraph made me laugh out loud.

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  3. in excellent tradition :)

    do keep up the aweful work!

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  4. I will still be laughing yesterday...

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  5. skipping around in the tenses-very funny-better with each time i have reading it

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  6. Oh man, this got better and better each time I'm reading it!

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  7. Do you mind if I use this in my middle school class room? My students are among the best bad writers around.

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  8. I am editor of a magazine that has been working on a deadline that will have been rapidly approaching and presently missed had I not been sent your blog by my boss which will certainly be a source of joyful procrastination and has subsequently caused me to working more furiously than ever.

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  9. I don't actually ever laugh out loud at things I read on the Internet. Or will having hadn't until now, that was.

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  10. That takes some doing - or possible will take some having been done. WONDERFUL!

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  11. As I read that, it was awesome.

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  12. My heavens, I try teaching ESL to latinos and they have never butchered the tenses like this. In fact, one year later they have acquired jobs, are quite confident (at least in conversation) and surprize me greatly!

    Great blog...

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  13. My college students are doing this in last week's papers....

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  14. Sounds like someone who speaks English as a second language. Or a Monty Python skit. Can't decide which.

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  15. Very funny. But it does also read like the opening of a time travel story, possibly set in an Indian outsourcing centre...

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  16. Sadly, I recently read an unpublished writer's first three chapters. She mixed the tenses all the time. I don't know how I managed to get through all of it, since the thing was riddled with errors, too much backstory and telling of the events rather than showing them as they happen. *weeps*

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  17. Ack, this post caused me horrible flashbacks to time spent tutoring in a college writing center.

    You know you've really written badly well when all the commenters have to try it out...have had to tried it out...will have had try. Yes, that's fun.

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  18. I will find this quite funny as I am reading it a minute ago. I should be working on homework for the past few hours, but instead I am currently posting this in a minute. :)

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