SugarCube

The Muslim student was so clearly innocent that it makes SCANDRON's prejudice all the more unjust. Any other student who cloned a dolphin would have been looked upon as a prodigal marine biologist. But on the off chance that the dolphin //was// a bomb, SCANDRON stole it and cloned its own army of potentially detonating dolphins, all [[ticking|comeup]] and [[clicking|comeup]] just off the shores of America. All this just to defend against creative minds, anti-testing advocates, and test opt-outers.

//Give up, Louie. You're never going to see that SCANDRON again.// This seems to be a good chance to consider the life decisions that have brought me to this point. Growing up in a place not unlike Poisson Butte; a port of call; frying dead animals for fun and profit before SCANDRON recruited me and made me their proudest vegetarian chef. Then getting exiled here. I know I shouldn't make mention of alcohol during school hours, but I could really pop open a cold one. Unfortunately, the closest thing in my food van is a lifetime supply of [[FACTCAT|hood release]] brand lemonade cans, all of them empty. <<if visited("hood release") gte 2>>And another crate of [[FACTCAT|hood release]] lemonade cans.<<endif>> <<if visited("hood release") gte 5>>And yet another sixpack of [[FACTCAT|hood release]] lemonades.<<endif>> <<if visited("hood release") gte 7>>I know it's my duty as a food vendor to sell these on behalf of Dr. Sourpuss, but honestly, how much [[FACTCAT|hood release]] merchandise does one cat need?<<endif>><<if visited("hood release") gte 12>><h1>[[FACTCAT|hood release]]</h1><<endif>>

<div class="drsd">Playing wiffle ball doesn't resemble writing a math test just because both have "scores". But if you //could// reduce something complicated, like a sport, to a matter of multiple choice... just think how much choice that would involve. Everyone, entirely immersed in standardized testing 24/7. </div>\nWhat? You honestly think "lots of choices" is SCANDRON a trade secret that we'd get fired for discovering?\n<div class="drsd">Yes. In P.E., every thought and action would be a choice needing validation. And if I'm right, that's why SCANDRON sent us to Poisson Butte--we've become part of a prototype for that. This mascot was pumped up and plumped up, gorged on multiple choice until it grew to the size of a park plaza. Kind of scary when you think [[about it]]. </div>

I appreciate that you want to cast out the SCANDRON machines to sea like carrier pigeons in a bottle, or some other equally plausible plan. You're clearly not running the company! What did you give SCANDRON in exchange for your name in the password? \s\n<div class="drsd"> Oh, that's easy. Word of mouth. I agreed to tell everyone I met that SCANDRON's marking machines existed in the first place.</div>\s\nNo SCANDRONs at all...I thought you just made that up so that Louie could tell you that you're wrong.\s\n<div class="bubble">\s\nQ3. Are our careers just a shaggy dog story?\n[[T|how]] Yes, I don't think we'll ever //find// the SCANDRON marking machine...\n[[F|how]] No, I think that choices are all around us\n</div>\n

<<ckp>>\nTo support my "Stuck in Starch" laundry theory, I can show you that the most recent amendment to the school dress code got <<mnk "[[waterlogged|corporate espionage]]">>. Left in Mark's pocket during the wash cycle. You'd better get this down on paper before I forget...\n<div class="bubble">\s\nQ10. What amendment should be made to the dress code?\n<<print either("[[A|QQ6t][$ans = $A1]] $A1", "[[A|QQ6t][$ans = $A2]] $A2")>>\n<<print either("[[B|QQ6t][$ans = $B1]] $B1", "[[B|QQ6t][$ans = $B2]] $B2")>>\n<<print either("[[C|QQ6t][$ans = $C1]] $C1", "[[C|QQ6t][$ans = $C2]] $C2")>>\n[[D|QQ6f]] None of the above\n \n\n/% \n[[A|QQ6t]] Revealing clothing should not be punished or covered; people own their own bodies\n[[B|QQ6t]] Sexual assault survivors are often blamed for the way they dress; this is wrong\n[[C|QQ6t]] Clothing is closely tied to a gender binary; we should make an effort to advocate that transgender, and gender non-conforming, students should not be stigmatized\n[[D|QQ6t]] Pink Shirt Day should be mandated as a stand against homophobic bullying\n[[E|QQ6f]] A bizzare tangent about James Bond\n[[F|QQ6t]] Dress codes may prevent religious expression\n[[G|QQ6t]] Baggy pants are usually okay \n[[H|QQ6t]] Some/all/any of the above, except E\n [[J|QQ6t][$answered = 1]] <<textbox "$answer" "Your personal response">>\n[[I|QQ6f]] None of the above\n%/\n\n</div>

<<ckp>>\nBut //then// a nearly naked Mark Passingrad double-checks this plan against the dress code. But instead of saying Mark is suspended, the dress code just says to put on a SCANDRON School Unity Uniform and get back to work. Mark finds no uniforms in the lost and found, just a tattered mouse mascot suit. Mark launders the suit in the <<lnk "[[drinking fountain]]">>, but uses too much starch, slowly stiffening the suit. Mark becomes immobile and falls to the floor.\n<div class="bubble">\s\n[[A|QQ5]] Of course. That makes so much sense\n[[B|QQ5]] There is a simpler explanation for a motionless costume\n[[C|QQ5]] I hope whoever is in the costume is okay\n</div>

<<ckp>>After all, I'm just a cat. I <<lnk "[[don't even wear clothes]]">>...hang on, there is a //second// piece of paper flying out of Mark's back pocket! It's plastered itself against the glass of the test tube! Aw, Mark, you know better than to pass notes in class. Well, I hope it's the sort of thing I can read in front of the entire class and faculty. Oh, it's about [[me|QQ8]]. A+ on the first cruel couplet. Second half is a bit nonsensical.\n

<<ckp>> <h1>PART TWO</h1> \s\nUh, Principal Louie. If you're <<lnk "[[listening|are]]">>, and of course you are. Marie, you too. Mark is not "in the dark". I have squeezed into a <<mnk "[[sun-lit]]">>, above-ground part of the tunnel. This part intersects with the school itself, for observation, like a medical theater. Far below, <<mnk "[[through the glass]]">>, I see that Mark is in fact our school mascot. Presently lying face-up having a staring contest with the ceiling.\n<div class="bubble">\s\nQ7. Mark? Mark? //Mark?//\n[[T|QQ2]] True, our students often wear the mascot costume\n[[F|QQ2]] But not Mark! Mark lives for the test! With every breath!\n</div>\n

<<ckp>>So how can Mark <<lnk "[[be the mascot]]">>? My guess: the mascot arrived without any clothing. Let's say exam anxiety finally got to Mark. Forgets to study for one of many tests. So Mark deliberately shows up wearing nothing but underwear. If you get suspended for a dress code violation, you don't have to write the exam 'til later.\n<div class="bubble">\s\nQ9. Plausible?\n[[T|QQ4]] Plausible...students have "streaked" during exams in the past\n[[F|QQ4]] But not Mark! Mark gets dressed for the test!\n</div>

<<ckp>>Right. Other students take turns as our mouse mascot. Maybe it changes them, trying to represent an entire student body, trying to care for something more than oneself. Mark, on the other hand, writes exams. Even though I'm not multiple choice's biggest fan, I gotta begrudgingly admit that Mark scores off-the-charts on stuff like SCANDRON's acclaimed <abbr title="Normalized Evaluation of Competency Quotient on a Bell Curve">NECQ-Bell</abbr> test. Like Louie says, Mark is the best at the test. Caring about other people, frankly, is for other people.\n<div class="bubble">Q8. So how can Mark be dressed up as an altruistic mouse, you're wondering?\n[[T|QQ3]] Do tell\n[[F|QQ3]] You're going to tell us anyway</div>

<table>\n<tr class="hide">\n\t<td>Left paw</td>\n\t<td></td>\n\t<td>Right paw</td>\n</tr>\n<<itemX "wid" $widV>>\n<<if visitedTags("bru") and $bru neq "used">><tr>\n\t<td><<radiobutton "$pawL" "bru">></td>\n\t<td id="bru"><<print $bruV>>/%brush%/</td>\n\t<td class="hide"><<radiobutton "$pawR" "bru">></td>\n</tr><<endif>>\n<<if visitedTags("hlv") and $hlv neq "used">><tr>\n\t<td><<radiobutton "$pawL" "hlv">></td>\n\t<td id="hlv"><<print $hlvV>> /%Half a lemon%/</td>\n\t<td class="hide"><<radiobutton "$pawR" "hlv">></td>\n</tr><<endif>>\n<<if visitedTags("rod") and $rod neq "used">><tr>\n\t<td><<radiobutton "$pawL" "rod">></td>\n\t<td id="rod"><<print $rodV>>/%rod%/</td>\n\t<td class="hide"><<radiobutton "$pawR" "rod">></td>\n</tr><<endif>>\n<<if visitedTags("sun") and $sun neq "used">><tr>\n\t<td><<radiobutton "$pawL" "sun">></td>\n\t<td id="sun"><<print $sunV>> /%Sunlight%/</td>\n\t<td class="hide"><<radiobutton "$pawR" "sun">></td>\n</tr><<endif>>\n<<if visitedTags("dip") and $dip neq "used">><tr>\n\t<td><<radiobutton "$pawL" "dip">></td>\n\t<td id="dip"><<print $dipV>>/%vial%/</td>\n\t<td class="hide"><<radiobutton "$pawR" "dip">></td>\n</tr><<endif>>\n<<if visitedTags("wir") and $wir neq "used">><tr>\n\t<td><<radiobutton "$pawL" "wir">></td>\n\t<td id="wir"><<print $wirV>>/%wires %/</td>\n\t<td class="hide"><<radiobutton "$pawR" "wir">></td>\n</tr><<endif>>\n<<if $rod eq "used">><tr>\n\t<td><<radiobutton "$pawL" "key">></td>\n\t<td id="key"><<print $keyV>>/%clean key%/</td>\n\t<td class="hide"><<radiobutton "$pawR" "key">></td>\n</tr><<endif>>\n<<if $bru eq "used">><tr>\n\t<td><<radiobutton "$pawL" "ink">></td>\n\t<td id="ink"><<print $inkV>>/%brush, dipped %/</td>\n\t<td class="hide"><<radiobutton "$pawR" "ink">></td>\n</tr><<endif>>\n<<if visitedTags("crt") and $crt neq "used">><tr>\n\t<td><<radiobutton "$pawL" "crt">></td>\n\t<td id="crt"><<print $crtV>>/%A sheet with Dr. S's invisible printing%/</td>\n\t<td class="hide"><<radiobutton "$pawR" "crt">></td>\n</tr><<endif>>\n<<if $hlv eq "used">><tr >\n\t<td id="bat"><<radiobutton "$pawL" "bat">></td>\n\t<td><<print $batV>> /%lemon battery%/</td>\n\t<td class="hide"><<radiobutton "$pawR" "bat">></td>\n</tr><<endif>>\n<<if $crt eq "used">><tr>\n\t<td><<radiobutton "$pawL" "wmk">></td>\n\t<td id="wmk"><<print $wmkV>> /%A watermarked certificate%/</td>\n\t<td class="hide"><<radiobutton "$pawR" "wmk">></td>\n</tr><<endif>>\n</table>

<<set $pawL = null>><<set $pawR = null >> \nHere you go. I've fabricated a SCANDRON document for you, but it's just a [[blank sheet|QQ8]] of paper--the watermark will only show up under proper lighting. Only then is it a watermark, Mark.\n<<item "crt" $crtV>>

<<set $pawL = null>><<set $pawR = null >> \n<div class="poem">I'm Sourpuss, the factual cat, <br>\nI think choices are a pox!<br>\nI <b>thINK</b> I'm the cat's pajamas,<br>\nBut I smell like unwashed socks!<br></div>\nYou wanna find the SCANDRON so you can make all those choices you crave? Alright, I'll help you. But first let me see your SCANDRON credentials. \n''(AN EXPERIMENT IN TWO PARTS)''<br>\n1. Give me some writing utensils and I'll forge some credentials for you. <br>\n<<if visitedTags("crt")>>2. Make the invisible watermark appear.<<endif>>\n\n<div id="popup"></div>\n<<display "equip">>\n\t<td><<radiobutton "$pawL" "non">> <<print "None of the above (start over)">></td> \n\n<span class="menu-validate">\n<<click "Validate">> \n<<if $pawL eq "ink" and visitedTags("crt") eq 0>>\n\t\t<<goto "QQ9">>\n<<elseif $pawL eq "non">>\n\t\t<<goto "QQ1">>\n<<elseif $pawL eq "wmk">>\n\t\t<<goto "QQQ1">>\n<<endif>>\n\n\n<<if $pawL eq "bru">><<replace "#popup">>I can't write with a dry brush, Mark.<<endreplace>>\n<<elseif $pawL eq "dip">><<replace "#popup">>I can't just pour that on the paper and hope it forms words, Mark.<<endreplace>>\n<<elseif $pawL eq "crt">><<replace "#popup">>Reveal the words on the certificate! Apply something in the lab!<<endreplace>>\n<<elseif visitedTags("bru") and visitedTags("dip") and $bru neq "used" and visitedTags("crt") lt 1>>\n<<replace "#popup">>You've got everything you need...mix 'em in the lab .<<endreplace>>\n<<elseif visitedTags("bru") and visitedTags("dip") and $bru eq "used"\nand visitedTags("crt") lt 1 and $crt neq "used">>\n<<replace "#popup">> <<comE>> <<endreplace>>\n<<elseif $crt eq "used">>\n<<replace "#popup">><<comE>><<endreplace>>\n<<elseif visitedTags("crt") gte 1>>\n<<replace "#popup">><<colE>><<endreplace>>\n<<elseif $pawL eq null>><<replace "#popup">><<defaultE>><<endreplace>>\n<<else>><<replace "#popup">><<defaultE>><<endreplace>>\n<<endif>>\n\n\n\n<<endclick>> \n</span>\n\n\n\n\n\n

Though putting it that way seems to conflate the subtleties. To the best of my understanding, the most pressing social issue is that American schools are compelled to participate in high-stakes [[standardized testing|testing]] in order to receive the funding they need to remain open, and indeed, for teachers to keep their jobs. Structural racism is an aspect of this problem in that students belonging to racial minorities so often have to attend the most resource-stressed schools. Intersectionality certainly plays a part: gender, gender identity, and economic class all affect the "achievement gap" between students. In all cases the system is set up to ignore the strengths of each student.

<div class="drsd">Interesting? And that would be...?</div>\nI don't know. The only thing anyone ever says to me is "yep, this veggie burger tastes just like an all-beef burger". You've got a real meat substitute on your hands. Look, I just flip [[the burgers]]. Stop asking me the [[tough questions|coreL]].

As a matter of fact, the bubble gum is called <b>Dubble</b> Bubble. Silly Dr. Sourpuss seems to have eaten Mark's eraser, the similarly named (and similarly pink) <b>Double</b> Bubble. I should know: I [[designed]] the eraser specifically for use on SCANDRON tests. I named it the Double Bubble, because you use it if you need to erase an answer on a bubble sheet and fill it in a second time--for example, if one of your options mispells the word "double."

This is the game show that test composers like me often derive questions from, and--yes--sometimes plagiarize. There is no cash prize, and contestants compete for the honour of answering questions about their own experiences. There is no cash prize but they have a chance at interpersonal connection. Contestants start out on easy questions with right answers, then move on to difficult questions for which nobody can invalidate your answer (ie. gender, sexual, and racial identity). Finally, it ends with difficult questions that everyone gets wrong, such as what did you have for [[dinner twelve and a half weeks ago]]?

Say, Doctor Sourpuss, I don't mean to pry, but how is it that you can talk?\n<div class="drsd">Well, Louie, you talk, and that doesn't seem to surprise you. Maybe something similar applies to cats. I should be asking //you//: how is it that humans are able to speak?</div>\nWell, the [[SCANDRON Corporation|$ckp]] force-fed everyone speech-synthesizing smart phones. Mixed 'em in with our water supply. It's a far cry from text messaging, but you get used to it after a while. \n<div class="drsd">There you go then. Nanotechnology. That right there is how I can talk.</div>

<<ckp>>Ah, Poisson Butte. A small <<lnk "[[fishing village]]">> inconveniently located atop a tall hill. Only thing to do around here is model slow-moving geological processes. Mayoral candidates debate subsidizing a municipal mudhill model versus funding a mashed potato volcano. Controversy simply //brews//.\n<div class="bubble">Q4. Which metaphor best describes boredom relating to geological inactivity, Mark?\n[[A|Q5]] Watch the grass grow\n[[B|Q5]] Wait for the paint to dry\n[[C|Q5]] Watch the glaciers melt\n[[D|Q5]] Both A and C</div>

Dr. Sourpuss Is Not a Choice-Based Game

<<ckp>><<if $ans neq null>><<print $ans>>?<<endif>>\nYeah, that's a good answer, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. <<if $ans neq $A2>>Actually, they can't: Louie is in the middle of a <<lnk "[[bureaucratic nightmare]]">> following a recent campaign, which asked students to burn copies of //50 Shades of Grey//, the erotic novel, and to pick up "wholesome test prep manuals" instead. Louie's campaign overshot the mark, as students began to burn copies of //50 Shades of Grey//, a HB pencil ordering catalogue used only by people without Internet access. Due to the local pencil shortage, Louie has been <<mnk "[[unable to interpret]]">> bubble sheets for months now.<<endif>> The important thing is your answer should be amended to the dress code. You're right, even if, maybe, I'm [[not the best|QQ7]] person to hear that from.

<<ckp>>You'll believe it when you see it? Well, then, we just need a higher vantage point. To broaden our horizons.\n<div class="drsd">Louie, I just searched all of Poisson Butte for the SCANDRON. Anyhow, what are you going to do, untie the guy wires and float the entire van upwards? You'd be blown away, right out of town! No telling where you'd end up!</div>\nRight. Plus, I wouldn't leave, even if you wanted me to. I didn't get exiled here to see the world. Tell you what: I can stoke the furnace until this balloon is pulling the guy wires to full tension. Feel that, cat? That is //altitude//.\n<div class="drsd">Oh, but surely you can fine-tune the height. No harm in getting a little higher. Purr-haps if I climbed onto the hood of the van, then you could catapult me onto the balloon itself.</div>\nYep, you can't get higher than that. Look, I'll sit in the drivers seat and push the hood release. A [[cat catapult|hood release]], got it?

<<if $zipper eq "pull tab" or $zipper eq "pulltab" or $zipper eq "pull" or $zipper eq "tab" or $zipper eq "8" or $zipper eq "PULL TAB" or $zipper eq "PULLTAB">> <div style="background-image: url(wiffle.png), url(grn.png); width: 225px; height: 225px; margin: 20px; float: right; background-repeat: no-repeat, repeat; background-color: rgb(105, 164, 35) !important; box-shadow: 0px 0px 44px rgb(51, 95, 0); border-radius: 200px"></div>The pull tab fits perfectly. I climb in, and make my way to the mascot's mouth, where it is still holding a giant wiffle ball. I enter through a hole. It appears to be an escape capsule, which will be launched when I press [[FIRE]]. \n I've tried to leave the island of Poisson Butte on a raft many times, but the tides always returned me here. A capsule, shot into the air, might just be the way out. And just as I'm about to press [[FIRE]], Louie emerges from under the fallen food van.\n<<else>>Funny way to fix a zipper. No, that just [[won't work|against]].<<endif>>\n\n

<h1>[[CRASH|passwords]]</h1>\n<h1> GOES THE HOT AIR VANLOON</h1>

<<ckp>><h1>INSIDE LOUIE'S FLYING FOOD VAN</h1>\s\nAh. Now that I've hoisted you, Dr. Sourpuss, into my flying food van, I demand that you return the SCANDRON marking machine to me immediately. \s\n<div class="drsd">Uh, Louie. I have a paradigm-shifting hypothesis. I don't think you need the SCANDRON after all. How to put this to you? Well, you like multiple choice tests...</div>\s\n<div class="bubble">\s\nQ1. Which is the most plausible, Louie? Pick the best answer.\n[[A|R2]] Mark is writing a test in the dark\n[[B|R2]] Mark is a starch-immobilized school mascot\n[[C|R2]] Mark is a test-grading robot\n[[D|R2]] Mark graduates every single year\n[[E|R2]] None of the above\n</div>

<<ckp>><div class="drsd">That's right, Louie! Mark isn't here anymore. Mark Passingrad left. That's what happens when people graduate. They //leave//! Someone else has been writing Mark's tests.</div>\s\nNow look here, Dr. Sourpuss. The SCANDRON CORPORATION exiled us here years ago, and I intend to win them back by making sure Mark gets a nice even 100% on internationally recognized tests like the Katz-Gogh <abbr title="Polyverbal Reading and (W)riting Reversal">PVRRR</abbr> exam. Not that //you'd// appreciate that. But it makes the testing industry look good.\s\n<div class="bubble">Q2. And what if Mark //was// gone, Louie?\n[[T|R3]] I would want to know where my SCANDRON machine is, regardless\n[[F|R3]] Impossible! Mark, my star student, must be graded //immediately//! Give me the SCANDRON!\n</div>\n

<<ckp>>Where is my SCANDRON marking machine?!? \s\n<div class="drsd">Okay, Louie. You might want to sit down for this. I did find your SCANDRON, sort of. I was thinking about all those EXPERIMENTS WITH CITRUS, and I realized: I spent so much time trying to make those different from multiple choice...</div>\s\n...and yet, in the end, they were just like multiple choice. \s\n<div class="drsd">You do 'em cause you want to get 'em right. So, Louie: maybe choice, as we know it, isn't a SCANDRON machine. Maybe it's bigger than a bubble sheet. Maybe it's a feeling all around us, in the air--a feeling in our //guts.//</div>\s\n<div class="bubble">Q3. Louie, when you make a choice about what to do or say, does it feel like you are regurgitating facts you've learned or have known?\n[[T|R4]] Maybe I do feel it in my gut--but I know that the SCANDRON exists!\n[[F|R4]] My basic belief is that a machine can do validation, maybe even better and more efficiently, than people can. Incidentally, that's also the SCANDRON policy.</div>\n

I'm Loudmouth Louie, right? A necessary misnomer for a food vendor who has to attract customers. I work [[alone|the burgers]]...the loudest thing, that I can hear, anyway, is some unnamed force of nature out there that tells me I want to be right. All the time. \n<div class="drsd">You want to be told you're right even when you're not? I can arrange for that. I can offer you validation beyond your wildest dreams, Louie.</div>\nAnd yet //feeling// right has little to do with //being// right. I mean, the feeling of being right can range from feeling vindicated to feeling patronized.\n<div class="drsd">Oh, Louie, if you have honestly ever felt patronized, I would be fascinated to hear about it.</div>\nUh...aren't you being patronizing //right now//?\n<div class="drsd">Maybe. Maybe not.</div>\nWell, I think you are. Patronizing me, I mean.\n<div class="drsd">Ugh...and now what, Louie? You want me to //agree// with you, just like everyone else allegedly does?</div>\nYou can [[do that|or think]]?

In fact, I don't even know where my keys //are//--\n<div class="drsd">Under the orange doormat, behind your [[old office|food van]].</div>\nThe doormat? The one that says HOME SOUR HOME? The one that you wove for me while you were shedding? The one with //fleas//?\n<div class="drsd">That's the one.</div>\nIn that case, the keys are no good now. Probably rusted during the rainy season.\n<<item "rod" $rodV>>

A little open-mindedness, Louie? Although I do wonder about your <<lnk "[[reservations|begging]]">> around reassuring someone else and telling them they're right. But that's okay, you don't have to reform the dress code if you don't want. I'm [[not biased|QQ7]].

<div class="drsd"> Tasteful, Louie? Not at all. This is water conservation. The point is that students //don't// want to taste the water. The merest thought should swear 'em off H2O for life.</div>\s\nSo remember: to conserve water, drink from the cat, not from the tap! It's your [[choice|coreL]].

Dr. Sourpuss, at my request, has configured a [[P.A. system|are]] made of paper cup telephones connected to a network of copper wires. But the wires do not quite connect, and Dr. Sourpuss sits between each cup and acts as a benign eavesdropper, relaying each part of a conversation. Dr. Sourpuss hates it, complaining that the cups are stamped //biodegradable// and therefore degrade our quality of life.\n<<item "wir" $wirV>>

<<ckp>><h1>HOOD POP INITIATED</h1>\nAhem! Louie, you have succesfully flung my fluffy feline form balloonwards! Congratulations! I imagine that was a tremendously validating experience. On a related note, I hereby commandeer this here hot air balloon. \n <h1>PRICK</h1>I'll steal SCANDRON marking machines and airdrop them on or near deserving children all around the globe! And you're going to take me where I need to go, Louie! Or I'll take a big ol' bite out of this balloon! \n<h1>POP</h1> Uh, premature popping. Remind me to get declawed next time I try and hijack a hot air balloon! \n<h1>HISS</h1>Don't worry, I stuffed the van's hairbags, ahem, //airbags// with extra fluffy hairballs years ago. Just in case it came to this.\n<div class="bubble">[[T|crash]] Great, the airbags! I'll just strap myself in with the seatbelts! Farewell, feral factcat! <br>\n[[F|crash]] Sourpuss, I don't trust you! You're a spy for SCANDRON, or a slave to SCANDRON--or something! I don't //care//! I'm bailing, I'm jumping!</div>

It eventually transpired that the <b>nutria</b> is a beaver-sized rodent which has of late devastated our American swamplands. It eats the grasses which are the very fabric of the swamps, resulting in flash floods and such. For over ten years, the American government has attempted to cull the nutria with a bounty program targeted at pet owners, who train their housecats to hunt and eat the nutria. The housecats usually return the less-edible [[legs]] to their owners, as trophies, and each leg fetches a $1.25 bounty from the government.

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Look, I spend a lot of time marking tests alone. To switch things up, distract myself, break the monotony, sometimes I flip some mushroom burgers, and toss them down to the students. And sometimes I stare at the burgers as they fry in my flying food van, until the burgers blur into [[greyish circles|coreL]], and all I can think about is how much they look like a filled-in bubble sheet.

This is the section of the tube that gets the full heat of the sun, and where I once sundried fruit from a sympathy basket that SCANDRON had airdropped long ago. But I feared the Doctor would eat my food if it was left out in the open. So, hoping that Dr. Sourpuss would leave the healthiest, most nutritious food for last, I had labelled each of my fruit pouches N-U-T-R-I-A-S-H-I-N. I misspelled the word "nutrition", of course, to look like Dr. Sourpuss' own less-than-legible pawscrawling. I congratulated myself for being clever, as though I had tricked an overeating ogre out of devouring me by disguising myself as his son. A [[few days later]], I made sure that Dr. Sourpuss was not eating my nutritional "nutriashin."\n<<item "sun" $sunV>>

<div class="drsd">And what if this has nothing to do with race--the human one or otherwise? Look outside, Marie. The Godzilla-sized gerbil has tunneled out of the Test Tube and is sprawled across the sports field.</div>\nIt's chomping on a giant wiffle ball. I see. It's a sports mascot. Great A.P.E. is meant to say "great [[A in P.E.|sport]]!" To tell the students they got a good grade in gym class, an excellent grade in exercise...\n<div class="drsd">My theory is that this mascot was SCANDRON's secret foray into standardizing gym class, and that they've been growing it, plumping it up, here in Poisson Butte.</div>\nYes. People are starting to stand up to the CORPORATION because they can see the trends. Achievement gaps. "Teaching to the test"--single-minded fixation on memorization and rote learning. And now SCANDRON wants P.E. to be restricted like that, just like so many other subjects. But how do you make a [[sport]] a matter of [[multiple choice|sport]]?\n

<div class="drsd">There are more important things than being told you're right, you mean.</div>\nPrecisely. Right now, we have to lift ourselves by the <<boot "bootstraps">> to justify standardized testing. The best students get the highest scores, and those tests are judged worthwhile simply because the best students score high on them. There's no room for change in a system like that.\n<div class="drsd">We're part of it, Marie.</div>\nExactly. Part of a system that works for students like Mark Passingrad, who can reduce themselves to rote learning for a little validation. But it invalidates anyone who feels the need to express themselves [[against a system|against]]. \n

Those little metal doodads that look like [[number eights|against]].

The Test Tube is a sort of glass observation tower, demarcated into segments, like a ruler.\n<div class="drsd">A graduated cylinder, you mean.</div>\nDon't remind me Dr. Sourpuss. With my star student--Mark Passingrad--missing, the only thing around here that's graduated is that cylinder. I'm begging you: [[find my marking machine\n|looking for the SCANDRON]].\n<<item "dip" $dipV>>

I, Dr. Sourpuss, am not going anywhere! I am the American testing industry's fuzziest feline, and I'm sitting atop a balloon the size of an EMP weapon. If I so much as shuffle my fluffy butt, I'll burn out all of the electronics in the vicinity with a [[static]] burst! \n

You know what, Dr. Sourpuss? Art is like burgers. Some people might say that art is something that involves emotions, and is usually about relating to other people--maybe, sometimes, people unlike you. \nSometimes true. When you eat a hamburger, it's all good to try and relate...was this burger raised humanely and all that. But I serve mushroom burgers which don't and have never had emotions of their own. It just doesn't make sense to try and relate to a mushroom. You have to wonder what it is that makes mushrooms [[interesting]] in their own right.

It would seem that the world is configured to validate <<if $priv neq null and $priv neq "men" and $priv neq "white" and $priv neq "financially successful">><<print $priv>> people<<elseif $priv eq "white">>white people such as myself and Louie <<elseif $priv eq "men">> <<print "men such as Louie">><<elseif $priv eq "financially successful">>financially successful men such as Louie<<elseif $priv eq null>>people like <<endif>> and rarely anyone else. I certainly do not wish to be told I am right all the time, as Louie seems to need, but I do need to know that it is alright to feel the way I do about some things. I also know that some of my more marginalized students feel similar things, and need safer and more inclusive spaces to work in. Then they come to contribute to a community when they [[choose|coreM]]. And that is what I intend to devote my career to.

\tBut then a lot of what Dr. Sourpuss says //does// seem to gloss over its professed race-related thesis in order to lead into a diatribe in which [[multiple choice|coreM]] turns us into [[automatons|QQQ3]] that regurgitate rote information. That is not okay, and it is everybody's responsibility to ensure that students are empowered to express themselves, and have a say in the composition of multiple choice tests, if they wish. Racial bias is precisely the opposite of this: students currently have to take tests that //do not// take into account their cultural backgrounds and abilities.

<div class="drsd">Yes, Marie, I sold out. Beneath my option-opposing exterior, I'm secretly a multiple choice magnate!</div> \s\nWell, we can all use a little validation now and th-- \s\n<div class="drsd">Not just standardized tests, mind you! Quizzes, game shows, trivia, censuses, polls, vending machines, television remotes, dashboards, two types of HTML form control, several varieties of lightswitches, and the buttons in every elevator worldwide! They're mine! All mine! For, uh, purely altruistic purposes, of course.</div> \s\nQ2. I see. And how do you plan to redistribute them? \s\n<div class="bubble"> \s\n[[A|altruistic]] Airdrop 'em on or near deserving children\n[[B|altruistic]] Put each one in a crate\n[[C|altruistic]] Cast 'em out to sea\n[[D|altruistic]] Like a message in a bottle</div>

Sometimes I //do// feel like a marking machine. On my first morning in town, I awoke to see Dr. Sourpuss perched atop an old television set--an absolutely cretaceous CRT--that I had seen in the hotel lobby. Did you steal this, Dr. Sourpuss?<div class="drsd">Uh, how about you don't complain about me "borrowing" from horrible hoteliers, and I don't complain about the shows you watch?</div>Dr. Sourpuss was right about one thing: [[WHO WANTS TO ANSWER A QUESTIONNAIRE]] was on. A guilty pleasure; everybody loves it. Except for Dr. Sourpuss, of course.\n

We keep Dr. Sourpuss on a strict [[citrus|toenails]]-and-rodent diet. Just a whiff of citric acid has been scientifically shown to reduce negative emotions dramatically, which one must feel quite a lot when you are eating rodents the rest of the time.\n<div class="drsd">It's only humans that find citrus pleasant, Marie. Cats are //allergic// to citrus. But I'll tell you what I could go for right about now--a deep-fried dormouse. Got any?</div>\nNot at the moment, no. Perhaps you can find some other use for this bottle of lemon juice I prepared earlier.\n<<item "dip" $dipV>>

So the escape pod is shot directly at me instead. It scoops me up without grazing the balloon, like when you pull a table cloth out without disturbing the dishes on top of it. And we're hurtled over the sea, and on the horizon is a grid of grey hot air balloons.\n<div class="loud">We've been living on a bubble sheet this whole time! </div>\nThat's right, Louie. You got what you wanted. Stay still. I'm going to nuzzle my nubby pink nose against you like an eraser. Yep, just as I thought: your skin brushes away, turns to grainy grey graphite dust. We're all just marks on a piece of paper. <div class="loud">This place is more of an answer sheet than it is a school! More of a punchcard than a playground! We were living inside the SCANDRON machine! It exists!</div>\nNo, no. The //machine// doesn't exist yet. We're going to [[become]] the SCANDRON marking machine.

But I'm not //always// listening. Sure, the P.A. system is basically a surveillance system (it was installed backwards), but sometimes I <<boot "put my feet up">> and read a copy of //Choicemopolitan// magazine, which SCANDRON markets towards teens who like to answer questions such as \n<h1>IS THE SCANDRON CORPORATION<br>\nJUST NOT THAT INTO YOU?<br>\nTAKE THIS QUIZ AND FIND OUT</h1>\nThis month's covermascot is some cartoon character. You know, I sometimes think that Dr. Sourpuss would make a good SCANDRON mascot, what with those full and juicy Far Side jowls and a bristly body that Garfield merchandisers would die for. Bristly as a paintbrush! If only the Doctor wasn't so [[hostile|coreL]] to multiple choice, and could appreciate something like the <abbr title="MRE-OW">Multiphasic Rubric for the Expansion of Obscured Words</abbr>. One of my all-time favorite tests to mark, no contest.\n<<item "brush" $bruV>>

<<set $priv = "men">>Thousands of tourists were admiring their own reflections, in which they saw themselves just as they wanted to appear. But none of the tourists had ever climbed the mountain, and when I called for help, they became outraged, fearing that if I took a single step down that I would shatter their mirror to pieces. That seems to be what I am up against each and every day.\n<div class="drsd">I don't think there's anyone, regardless of class or privilege, who likes to hear unpleasant truths.</div>\nMy point is that Louie seems unwilling to even consider the possibility of change and empowerment. And by entertaining what Louie says, it seems like you're enabling Louie to perpetuate that [[unwillingness to change|configured]] one's beliefs.\n<div class="drsd">I'm <<boot "boot-licking">>, you mean? No, Marie, you got me all wrong. I can consume twice my body weight in capybaras, which I'll have you know are the, yes //the//, largest living land rodent! I could let Louie flatter my ears off with falsehoods! Agree one moment, then gobble up Louie in one bite the next!</div>

/%makes a checkpoint if you haven't visited one%/\n\n<<if $ckp eq null>><<set $ckp = "Start">><<endif>>\n\n/%designates a passage as a checkpoint; no args, just use $ckp in a link %/\n<<widget "ckp">>\n<<set $ckp = passage()>>\n<<endwidget>>\n\n/%variables to be changed only by the author%/\n\n<<set $rodV = "A rusty rod">>\n<<set $dipV = "A vial of lemon juice">>\n<<set $bruV = "A brush of fine hair">>\n<<set $hlvV = "Half of a lemon">>\n<<set $sunV = "Sunlight">>\n<<set $crtV = "A blank piece of paper with Dr. Sourpuss's invisible printing">>\n<<set $wmkV = "A watermarked certificate (darkened by sunlight)">>\n<<set $wirV = "A bundle of wires">>\n<<set $batV = "A battery">>\n<<set $keyV = "A clean key">>\n<<set $inkV = "A brush dipped in invisible ink">>\n\n/%<<set $hgrV = "A coathanger">>\n<<set $boxV = "A box of nine oranges (at least)">>\n<<set $mobV = "A solar system mobile">>\n%/\n\n<<set $A1 = "Revealing clothing should not be punished or covered; people own their own bodies" >>\n<<set $A2 = "Sexual harassment victims should not be blamed for the way they dress">>\n<<set $B1 = "Clothing is closely tied to a gender binary; we should make an effort to advocate that transgender, and gender non-conforming, students should not be stigmatized">>\n<<set $B2 = "Pink Shirt Day should be mandated as a stand against homophobic bullying">>\n<<set $C1 = "Dress codes may prevent religious expression">>\n<<set $C2 = "Baggy pants are usually okay">>\n\n/% 0: Item name, from passage tag; 1: Verrbose item description \n<<item "tag" $tagV\n%/\n\n<<widget "lnk">>\n<span class="lnk">\n<<print ($args[0])>>\n</span>\n<<endwidget>>\n\n\n<<widget "mnk">>\n<span class="mnk">\n<<print ($args[0])>>\n</span>\n<<endwidget>>\n\n/% on discovering an item%/\n\n\n<<widget "item">>\n<<if visitedTags($args[0]) eq 1>>\n<div id="popup"><<print $args[1]>> has been added to your scientific equipment /%<<click "Okay">><<remove "#popup">><</click>>%/\n</div> \n<<elseif visitedTags($args[0]) lte 3>>\n<div id="popup"><<print $args[1]>> has <b>ALREADY</b> been added to your scientific equipment /%<<click "Okay">><<remove "#popup">><</click>></div>%/ \n<<elseif visitedTags($args[0]) gt 3>>\n<div></div>\n<<endif>>\n<<endwidget>>\n\n/% marks an item combination%/\n\n<<widget "new">><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 117); border-radius: 5px; font-size: 50%; color: #000; padding: 4px; margin: 5px; vertical-align: 5px; border: 2px solid orange"><<print "NEW!">></span><<endwidget>>\n\n/% 0: link title, creates a "broken link" until visited a few times %/\n\n<<widget "boot">>\n<<if visited() lte 1>>\n\t<<click $args[0]>><<endclick>>\n\t<<else>>\n\t<<print ($args[0])>>\n<<endif>>\n\n<<endwidget>>\n\n<<widget "triboot">>\n<<if visited() lte 2>>\n\t<<click $args[0]>><<endclick>>\n\t<<else>>\n\t<<print ($args[0])>>\n<<endif>>\n<<endwidget>>\n\n/% must be used inside <<replace "#popup#">>%/\n<<widget "defaultE">>\n\t\t\t<<print either("You're not giving me much to work with, here, Mark","Now you're just guessing...quit while you're ahead","Go get more scientific equipment","Go get more scientific equipment")>>\n<<endwidget>>\n\n<<widget "colE">>\n\t\t\t<<print either("You've got all the ingredients, Mark","Mix something up in the lab", "That's not going to work, Mark")>>\n<<endwidget>>\n\n<<widget "comE">>\n\t\t\t<<print either("You've got everything you need, Mark", "Just select it below", "You're getting warmer, Mark")>>\n\n<<endwidget>>\n\n\n/% 0: Item name, from passage tag; 1: \n<<widget "itemX">>\n<<if visitedTags($args[0]) and $dip neq "used">><tr>\n\t<td><<radiobutton "$pawL" $args[0]>></td>\n\t<td id="dip"><<print $args[1]>></td>\n\t<td class="hide"><<radiobutton "$pawR" $args[0]>></td>\n</tr><<endif>>\n<<endwidget>>\n%/\n

<div class="drsd">Note that the mouth of a mascot is the wearer's visual field.</div>\n<div style="background-image: url(wiffle.png), url(grn.png); width: 225px; height: 225px; margin: 20px; float: right; background-repeat: no-repeat, repeat; background-color: rgb(105, 164, 35) !important; box-shadow: 0px 0px 44px rgb(51, 95, 0); border-radius: 200px"></div>\nThrough a perforated wiffle ball lodged in the mouth of the mascot...everything in the world would appear to be a [[choice bubble|coreM]]! That's certainly a trade secret worth exiling us over. Yet it's also truly beautiful and full of potential. And now it's ours...if we play this right, and set it free from Poisson Butte, we can share it with //everyone//. Whatever my misgivings towards SCANDRON, I [[do love multiple choice|coreM]].

I would also like to take this time to remind you to always use masking tape rather than thumbtacks. This is not, as our fascist fifth-grade hall monitors\n<div class="drsd">That's a bit harsh, Louie</div>\nwould have us believe, to "prevent damage to the walls," but because each corner of a piece of paper corresponds to one of my [[chalkra]] points. Like a voodoo doll. The thumbtacks are, as they say, getting on my nerves.

<div class="drsd">Speaking of your office, that's quite a networked bulletin board you've got there, Marie. Pages from Italian (<<boot "boot-shaped">>) travel guides, [[tied|unable to interpret]] to newspaper articles about ballooning burger chefs and youth activism. Seems scattered and unacademic.</div> \nI can understand how you might not recognize this, Dr. Sourpuss, but my role is to compose tests for an often oppressive educational system. To do that, I need to //express// things so others can do the same. Louie has all the answers, literally, but I compose the questions that produce those answers. What the SCANDRON CORPORATION fails to realize is that what we laughably call "correct" answers are only good once. For each "correct" answer, I must also produce several of what we regrettably call "[[incorrect|coreM]]" answers.

<div class="drsd">To look like this cat's very own self, urinating into a litterbox. Tastefully obscured with all those mathy geometric angles. Good idea, or what?</div> \s\n<div class="bubble"> A urinating kitten statue is ...\n[[T]] Tasteful, like a cherub or cupid\n[[F]] Grotesque and gargoyle-ian\n</div>

<div class="drsd">Louie! I've found a solution for the local drinking water shortage. Like taxing bottled water, as a certain David Suzuki would suggest, it's a disincentive that discourages drinking.</div> \s\nBut my students have never even seen bottled water, not since our vending machine broke. They drink from the tap. How do we get them to cut back on //tap// water?\n<div class="drsd">That is why I've redesigned our drinking fountains to [[look like]]...</div>

Once we made our discovery, SCANDRON "transferred" us to this tiny island. Louie had the honour of being airdropped like foreign aid. Dr. Sourpuss was "lost like luggage" and arrived by unknown means before Louie. As for myself, I fell asleep at my desk during a particularly boring report. Two SCANDRON officers folded up my corkboard cubicle, which had the fortunate property of floating upon water, and tossed it over the side of the CEO's luxury yacht.\n\nI was adrift towards the tiny town of Poisson Butte. I had lived in a small town before I was recruited by SCANDRON, and was [[not especially|water]] eager to return to another. I won't say that bigotry bubbled beneath the surface; I will just say that such places are not exactly conducive to diversity. I hollered, demanding from the two officers whether they thought that this was the right thing to do. They simply muttered that SCANDRON had said it was right. \n

Sweet little Sourpuss was the [[result|finders]] of a gene-splicing mishap. The orange trees delivered to a SCANDRON HQ [[luncheon|when]] were meant to be cloned from genetic material preserved from the gardens of the Palace of Versailles. Instead, the toenails of a dead housecat, discovered in a graphite quarry, got into the genetic mix, so to speak. An understandable mistake, since nail clippings look so very much like orange pips.

What kind of food have you got there, Dr. Sourpuss?\n<div class="drsd">Just some good old [[nutriashin|nutria]], Marie.</div>\nNutrition? Oh, but Dr. Sourpuss, wouldn't you rather eat a juicy, robust rodent? A fattening fieldmouse? No, I don't think you'd like [[nutrition|nutria]]. It's very, well...it's very healthy. Are you sure that's what you're eating? Nutrition?\n<div class="drsd">Sure thing Marie. I wrote N-U-T-R-I-A-S-H-I-N on the pouches myself. Spelled it [[all correctly|nutria]] and everything.</div>

<span id="lab">\n<<click "Lab">>\n<<goto "lab">>\n<</click>></span>\n<<return>>\n/%<div id="popup" ></div>%/\n<div id="who" ></div><div id="whosm" ></div>\n<div id="esc">[[DBG]] [[ESC|$ckp]]</div>\n\n

<div class="drsd">It's meant to encourage the entire student population--indiscriminately--to get a great A in P.E.--an A in [[Phys. Ed.|wiffle]]</div>\nA good grade in gym? An exceptional grade in exercise? I get your drift. Totally off-base though. You're saying that my feelings are an overreaction to being fired? Well, look outside. The twelve-storey tall rodent suit is choking on a wiffle ball!\n<div class="drsd">Wiffle ball is a [[sport|wiffle]], which only supports what I've been saying. SCANDRON wants to make a foray into grading gym class.</div>

When I finally washed ashore, it was late summer, so school was not in session. I visited Poisson Butte's only B&B, and found Louie at the desk, unfolding several cots. Louie had taken a secondary summer job in the hospitality industry until the school required a principal in the fall. I presented my SCANDRON travel voucher, which read PRIVATE ROOM.\n<div class="loud">Look, Marie, it's the last week of summer, and I'm expecting an influx of food vendors visiting these parts. I can fit about three more futons into this cottage's only room. If you want a private room, pay triple. Or find another hotel.</div>\nThose options aren't making me feel very safe, Louie. Is this an offer you make to all women, or just the ones you believe can afford it?\n<div class="loud">To //anyone// who can afford it. Well, so far, just you...[[and]]</div>\nWell, the discussion is purely academic. The SCANDRON CORPORATION only gave me a single travel voucher before I left...

Do you feel the g-force pressing down on us, flattening us like a piece of paper? That's us accelerating upwards. We're going to become the most vital part of the SCANDRON machine, which will only exist for a fraction of a second. Soon we'll reach the speed of light. <div class="mard">SCANDRON didn't fire us like faculty! They fired us like photons! For a moment, I can feel myself become the beam of light that a SCANDRON machine uses to validate everything under the sun...</div>...sweeping over all the [[land|THE END]].\n\n<h1 class="endfont">THE END</h1>\n

Disparities are a sacrifice I'm willing to make. Look, Dr. Sourpuss, we live in a time of high stakes testing. My job, Mark's academic future, the very funding of this school--it all depends on how we do at the test. Which is why I'm not entirely enthused by what Marie is doing, enabling the self-expression of minorities. I'm all for it, amongst themselves, but I just don't have what it takes to be part of it. I mean, if I tried to appeal to just how tough it is to make Mark a success at the test, I'd either get told that I'm [[wrong|wrong2]] to feel that--that getting bad grades isn't really comparable to what minorities experience. Or I'd get told I'm [[right]], and get my fifteen minutes of marginalization.

Louie thinks we were fired because you discovered that SCANDRON was concealing tenuously racist imagery in the form of their mascot--namely, a five storey-tall field mouse--with the acronym GREAT A.P.E. \n<div class="drsd">And Charles Darwin spent a lifetime trying to become a honorary howler monkey. Or something. You're both reading too much into this. </div>\n...but the words "great ape" don't describe the mouse mascot. I think it's a cheer. It's telling the students, every single student, that all humans are great apes. \n<div class="drsd">Just like how a KISS THE COOK apron directs the diners how to feel, not the cook wearing it.</div>\nPrecisely. It's as if a cat or mouse forgot that humans use phrases like "common humanity", looked in the thesaurus for a near synonym, and then simply grouped us all as "[[great apes|race]]." It's a technical truth that is suited to biology tests...\n<div class="drsd"> And you think that's why we were fired?</div>\nYes. SCANDRON created a motto, a slogan, that is just off-key enough that I can understand their desire to keep it a secret. The mascot is a misguided attempt at unity. It isn't a problem, but Louie continuing to defend it //is// a problem...

The lunch party agreed that I would keep and care for Dr. Sourpuss under the finders-keepers principle, but I like to think that this was because I was the first to recognize the kitten's unique potential. As Louie and I raised and fed the kitten over the next few years, Dr. Sourpuss became increasingly bitter, and righteously so, after chancing upon a [[master key]] and unlocking [[SCANDRON trade secrets|$ckp]]. Yes, we were (and are) embroiled in the Poisson Butte Project.

A much-publicized high point was recently broadcast. Louie was incidentally the guest host, asking a person in poverty the dinner question. \n<div class="bubble"> \s\nWhat did that person have twelve and a half weeks ago?\n[[A|showsover]] Loudmouth Leftovers® Cream of Portobellow® mushroom soup\n[[B|showsover]] Loudmouth Leftovers® Cream of Portobellow® mushroom soup\n[[C|showsover]] Loudmouth Leftovers® Cream of Portobellow® mushroom soup\n[[D|showsover]] A, B, and C, from the food bank, as always\n</div>

What Dr. Sourpuss fails to appreciate is that the pencil shortage has actually increased student interest in multiple choice: writing in the margins of expired bubble sheets with crayons, experimenting with [[reflective materials|attempt]], creating secret codes with hole punches, and distributing very personal [[mock test]] forms which would never have otherwise seen the light of day. All this shared by a secret student club known only as the Didactic Wildcats, intricately [[networked]] like a\n<div class="drsd">cat's cradle you would make out of twine?</div>\nWhat Dr. Sourpuss <<print either("fully","faintly")>> appreciates...\n<<item "bru" $bruV>>

It is an unfortunate fact that the testing industry does indeed use the term [[beige box|$ckp]] to refer to electronics produced in the 1980s and early 1990s, which were designed to match the skin tones of the users of that technology. The demographics of technology consumers in the U.S. have since undergone an important shift towards diversity.\n

Look here, Dr. Sourpuss. If you meant for this newsprint to be used to absorb...uh, what you said...you'd have made that clear in the title. But the title is clearly <b>Cross-America Top-Performing Public Schools</b>. Look, I get you: multiple choice has its limits. If you're trying to run, say...\n<div class="drsd">A series of science fair experiments!</div>\nthen multiple choice is not the man for the job. You just can't do it. But when you need to tell people something is true, and then have <b>them</b> tell <b>you</b> it's true, well, nothing beats multiple choice. Anyway. We've just got to find another school with 100% multiple choice scores. Which there won't be, because Mark's the best at the test! Therefore: Mark's still here. Q.E.D. [[Start looking|$ckp]].

<<set $priv = "white">>Where do we even begin? Well, 35 teachers in Atlanta were arrested for modifying test scores. Massaging marks. Caressing the test. But even the name "erasure parties" is something of a misnomer from the media: only one "party" took place at a recreational gathering, and few involved groups of people conspiring together--just the day-to-day intimidation of individuals who had nobody to turn to. Black educators, many of them women, were coerced and harassed into modifying marks in a "culture of fear". All because American schools are compelled to participate in high-stakes testing in order to afford to stay open, and for teachers to keep their jobs, all because everyone was trying to survive in a system that is not [[configured]] for them. My experience in exile is simply not comparable.\n

[[$ckp]]\n

Just as the string N-U-T-R-I can represent different things to different people, so can bubbles labelled A-B-C-D. The SCANDRON Corporation cares only that a particular sequence of lettered bubbles are filled in. They //only// look at the bubble sheets, not at any underlying meaning. The supposedly standardized questions that I compose--//had// composed--could in fact be tailored to my students, could carry many meanings, could actually come in as many flavors as you like--just so long as it resulted in the same string of bubbles being filled. Indeed, I wouldn't even have to compose the questions--my students could compose [[mock tests|mock test]] for each other. If I could exploit this, I would be mounting an insurrection against standardized testing, and reclaiming [[multiple choice|coreM]] for everyone.

<div class="drsd">I mean we're living in a bubble...</div>\nYes. Yes we are. And our best chance at changing that is to give SCANDRON machines to as many people as possible. I know some people who need that kind of external validation, even if I don't. But you're telling me that the SCANDRON doesn't exist. That this is a dead end. A wild goose chase.\n<div class="drsd">More of a pyramid scheme. The SCANDRON doesn't exist...//yet//.</div>\nThat's the secret that SCANDRON fired us over? This place, this enchanted island, is where the SCANDRON machine will come to be? Everything I see, do, and touch turns to multiple choice: the [[mushroom burgers|grey]] and [[pile of cans]] that spill from Louie's van, even the [[wiffle ball|grey]] in the [[mascot's|mascot]] mouth.

<h1>HOOD POP FUNCTION</h1>\n<table style="background-color: #74C2FF">\n<tr>\n\t<td></td>\n\t<td>True</td>\n\t<td>False</td>\n\t<td>A</td>\n\t<td>B</td>\n\t<td>C</td>\t\n</tr>\n<tr>\n\t<td>1</td>\n\t<td><label><<radiobutton "$fst" "T">></label></td>\n\t<td><<radiobutton "$fst" "F">></td>\n\t<td><<radiobutton "$fst" "A">></td>\n\t<td><<radiobutton "$fst" "B">></td>\n\t<td><<radiobutton "$fst" "C">></td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n\t<td>2</td>\n\t<td><<radiobutton "$snd" "T">></td>\n\t<td><<radiobutton "$snd" "F">></td>\n\t<td><<radiobutton "$snd" "A">></td>\n\t<td><<radiobutton "$snd" "B">></td>\n\t<td><<radiobutton "$snd" "C">></td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n\t<td>3</td>\n\t<td><<radiobutton "$trd" "T">></td>\n\t<td><<radiobutton "$trd" "F">></td>\n\t<td><<radiobutton "$trd" "A">></td>\n\t<td><<radiobutton "$trd" "B">></td>\n\t<td><<radiobutton "$trd" "C">></td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n\t<td>4</td>\n\t<td><<radiobutton "$rth" "T">></td>\n\t<td><<radiobutton "$rth" "F">></td>\n\t<td><<radiobutton "$rth" "A">></td>\n\t<td><<radiobutton "$rth" "B">></td>\n\t<td><<radiobutton "$rth" "C">></td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n\t<td>5</td>\n\t<td><<radiobutton "$fth" "T">></td>\n\t<td><<radiobutton "$fth" "F">></td>\n\t<td><<radiobutton "$fth" "A">></td>\n\t<td><<radiobutton "$fth" "B">></td>\n\t<td><<radiobutton "$fth" "C">></td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n\t<td>6</td>\n\t<td><<radiobutton "$xth" "T">></td>\n\t<td><<radiobutton "$xth" "F">></td>\n\t<td><<radiobutton "$xth" "A">></td>\n\t<td><<radiobutton "$xth" "B">></td>\n\t<td><<radiobutton "$xth" "C">></td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n\t<td>7</td>\n\t<td><<radiobutton "$nth" "T">></td>\n\t<td><<radiobutton "$nth" "F">></td>\n\t<td><<radiobutton "$nth" "A">></td>\n\t<td><<radiobutton "$nth" "B">></td>\n\t<td><<radiobutton "$nth" "C">></td>\n</tr>\n</table>\n\n<span class="menu-validate">\n<<click "Validate">>\n<<if $fst eq "F" and \n$snd eq "A" and \n$trd eq "C" and \n$rth eq "T" and\n$fth eq "C" and\n$xth eq "A" and\n$nth eq "T">>\n<<goto "fall">>\n<<else>>\n<<replace "#output">>You answered <<print $fst>> <<print $snd>> <<print $trd>> <<print $rth>> <<print $fth>> <<print $xth>> <<print $nth>>. INCORRECT.<</replace>>\n<<endif>>\n<</click>> \n</span>\n<div id="output"></div>\n\n

<<ckp>>\n<h1>HOOD POP FUNCTION</h1>\nOkay, so I'm going to pop this hood, so that you can land on the balloon. Then we'll find the SCANDRON, and we'll know I'm right. However, there is one complication that is making my head hurt. You know how this hot air vanloon is SCANDRON property?\n<div class="drsd">Yeah. Let me guess: the [[dashboard|SAT test]] looks like a sobbin' SAT test.</div>\nThat's right. The only ones who could possibly [[pop the hood|SAT test]] are our //students//. Not the people who compose the answers, like Marie, and not the people who grade the answers, like me. And not the people who oversee the test, like you do. The students, Dr. Sourpuss, the students, like Mark, who is //missing//! [[I give up]]!

But, you say, how can the SCANDRON be missing? Am I not writing a [[multiple choice|coreL]] test //as we speak//? Are my answers not being validated //at this very moment//? Well, you see, Mark, m'boy, there's a very simple answer to that. And it's probably A, B, C, or D.

Dr. Sourpuss oversees the students who are writing exams. If you listen closely, you can just about hear //hissing//, as the Doctor barely supresses the urge to reveal the answers. I suppose that some students do write tests that way: hovering their pencils over the bubbles like a divining rod or metal detector, and waiting for Doctor Sourpuss to twitch. Even I am sometimes tempted to stuff the Doctor into a manilla envelope, which I would sell like a cheat sheet so that my students can find the [[correct answers|coreM]].

<div style="background-image: url(wiffle.png), url(blu.png); width: 225px; height: 225px; margin: 20px; float: left; background-repeat: no-repeat, repeat; background-color: rgb(15, 52, 90) !important; box-shadow: 0px 0px 44px rgb(15, 52, 90); border-radius: 200px"></div>Nonsense. The wiffle ball--see left--is lodged in the mascot's mouth. That wiffle ball, ''ROUND AND GREY LIKE A CHOICE BUBBLE'', clearly represents all those Average Joes like me and Mark who have ever "choked" on a test, even though they were ''perfectly capable'' of writing it. And it proves ...\n<div class="drsd">...that you got fired for standing up to those who make "accomodations" to "political correctness"? Sounds like a fever dream of your ideology-laden imagination!</div>\nOh, really? Well, your opinions about this monolithic mouse mascot are pretty idiosyncratic, maybe even...incoherent!\n<div class="drsd">No, I'm simple. When I come across a vole of this volume, I endeavour to devour it in it's entirety. I'm a cat. I eat mice. You're a chef. You want to help me prepare this mouse mascot [[foodwise|used to not]], Louie?</div>

<div class="loud">and...stray animals whose parent company might provide a lucrative reward...</div>\nYou tried this trick on //Doctor Sourpuss//?\n<div class="loud">Hey, the Doctor is just a cat. What's a cat going to do? Scratch my furniture?</div>\nOh, Louie, if only Dr. Sourpuss was merely a cat. No, the Doctor is a scientist, and would vivisect your mattresses as if they were vat grown veal. Just to see if those beds were vital to the operations of this B&B. A hotel is nothing without beds...\n<div class="loud">And a hotelier is nothing without a hotel.</div> \nNow, Dr. Sourpuss and I are leaving. If I may open this cupboard...\n<div class="drsd" id="drsa">Ah, Marie. Just the person who can reach doorknobs I wanted to see. Why do people like to install these one-way catflaps everywhere?</div>\nCome on, Doctor Sourpuss. I'm sleeping in my [[new office|networked]] tonight.

The Doctor hates Louie's network of paper cup telephones, insistently complaining that the cups are stamped biodegradable, and therefore degrading our quality of life. I patiently explained that "biodegradable" means that living things wear out paper cups, not vice versa. This network gives us a choice of who we [[talk to]], and that choices are good for all of us. Dr. Sourpuss more or less hacked up a hairball and told me to go and genetically modify a grapefruit.\n<<item "hlv" $hlvV>>\n

A pile of lemonade cans is spilling from the wrecked van, each with a [[pull tab]], each labelled "Ice Cold Empties." This was the name of a plan hatched by Dr. Sourpuss when our school's last vending machine broke down. Rather than recycle the cans and buy a new vending machine, Dr. Sourpuss proposed we sell the empty cans, topped up with tap water, to students. At a profit. It strikes me that "ice cold and empty" is a fair description of anybody who would try such a thing.

<<ckp>><h1>PART THREE</h1>\s\nMarie, if you can <<mnk "[[hear me|biodegradable]]">>; Louie, if you're <<lnk "[[listening]]">>: I believe I have found your SCANDRON! New hypothesis: Mark is not the mascot. Mark IS the SCANDRON! Think about it: Mark has this sort of <<mnk "[[pale beige|casing]]">> pallor--just like the casing of a SCANDRON machine. Just like the students who get <<mnk "[[unjustly]]">> and <<lnk "[[disproportionately]]">> high grades on standardized tests such as the <abbr title="Western Hemisphere Insularity and Seclusion on a Quantified Rubric">WHIS-QR</abbr> \n<div class="bubble">Q1. If you'll excuse for asking, what best describes this cultural phenomenon? \n[[A|QQQ2]] White privilege \n[[B|QQQ2]] Racial bias \n[[C|QQQ2]] Structural racism\n[[D|QQQ2]] Intersectionality\n[[E|QQQ2]] None of the above </div>\n\n

<h1><span class="fs">[img[DR. SOURPUSS|logo.png]] </span><span class="mob">DR. SOURPUSS</span></h1>\s\n<b style="font-size: 100%">IS NOT A CHOICE- BASED GAME</b>\n<span class="fs">[img[start.png]]</span><span class="mob"> [img[drsmob.png]]</span>\n<b>or <<print either("101 EXPERIMENTS WITH CITRUS","THE CASE OF THE MISSING SCANDRON","MARK IS MISSING")>></b>\n<div class="bubble" style="position: fixed; bottom: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; background-image: url(orab.png)"> [[A|About]]About [[B|Q1]] Begin [[C|Content]] Content Note</div>

<<ckp>>Right. And if Mark is a SCANDRON, I'm just <<mnk "[[inferring]]">> based on humming and whirring. Could be nothing but a ringing in my ears, but I get the impression that Mark wants to get out of this town and <<mnk "[[meet]]">> <<lnk "[[people]]">> who don't <<mnk "[[look]]">> <<lnk "[[or think]]">> like him. Maybe even travel before getting a job with SCANDRON. Anyway, I'd say the evidence is conclusive. I found your SCANDRON and <<lnk "[[STAR STUDENT|star]]">>--all at once! Hoist away, Louie!<div class="bubble">[[T|QQQ4]] Send up the SCANDRON, Dr. Sourpuss!\n[[F|QQQ4]] I...I...I can't argue with the cat who found my grading machine\n</div>

<<ckp>>Plausible. Mind you, that sociocultural criteria alone would <<mnk "[[make you two|of you]]">> SCANDRONs as well. But we also know that Mark's last name sounds like "Passing Grade," which Mark certainly does with 100% success. Who else deals with passing grades and knows 100% of the answers? That's right, the SCANDRON marking machine. Therefore:\n<div class="bubble">Q2. Mark is a SCANDRON. Right?\n[[T|QQQ3]] Mark is a SCANDRON\n[[F|QQQ3]] Mark is not a SCANDRON, because SCANDRONs don't talk\n</div>

<<set $pawL = null>><<set $pawR = null >> \n<div class="poem">I'm Sourpuss, the factual cat!<br>\nWhen my door gets plunked by fingers,<br>\nWhen my tower's pelt by rocks,<br>\nI'm blind to choice--I'm blinkered!<br>\nNow I am in for SHOCKS!</div>\n<div class="bubble">Okay, Mark. So this mental barrier I'm responsible for...let's short it out with electricity. You just gotta show me a power source for a citric circuit, if you will.\n<div id="popup"></div>\n<<display "equip">>\n\t<td><<radiobutton "$pawL" "non">> <<print "None of the above (start over)">>/%Return bubble%/</td>\n<span class="menu-validate">\n\n<<click "Validate">>\n<<if $pawL eq "bat">>\n\t<<goto "QQQ6">>\n<<elseif $pawL eq "non">>\n\t<<goto "QQQ1">>\n<<else>>\n\t<<replace "#popup">><<defaultE>> <<endreplace>> \n<<endif>>\n\n<<if visitedTags("wir") and visitedTags("hlv")>>\n\t<<replace "#popup">>\t<<colE>>\t<<endreplace>>\n<<endif>>\n<<if $hlv eq "used">> <<replace "#popup">> <<comE>><<endreplace>>\n<<endif>>\n<<endclick>> \n</span>

<<ckp>>Before you hoist me up, appreciate that Mark's been [[writing lines|QQQ5]] on the board as punishment. These lines now offer me figurative, horizon-broadening, shock. Ahem. Excuse me a moment. Okay, Mark, you want Louie here to hoist up the SCANDRON and approve your answers for //real//? Then you gotta do...[[one last|QQQ5]] EXPERIMENT WITH CITRUS!\n

Well, they're arranged in two columns of eight...just like the TRUE AND FALSE BUBBLES YOU SHOULD BE MARKING!!! [[Hoist away|R1]], Louie!\n

//You're in a good mood, Dr. Sourpuss, are you high on catnip,// you're wondering? //Why do I need a mechanical marking device to feel validated, whereas you can achieve ecstacy in a first-grader's container garden?// Well, Louie, let me answer that question with a question...a question about catnip. Catnipp. Cat nipples.<div class="bubble">Q3. Have you ever looked at a cat's nipples? I mean, reaaaalllly looked at a cat's nipples?\n[[T|QQQ7]] Uh?\n[[F|QQQ7]] Can't say I have?\n</div>

Yes, my flying food van. Held aloft by a big grey hot air balloon. Propelled skyward by a blazing barbeque that burns old [[bubble sheets|coreL]]. Tethered to the ground with guy wires. You laugh, but it's cheaper than gas. Haven't turned [[the key]] in the ignition for years.

Dr. Sourpuss is describing is what the testing industry often calls an [[achievement gap|best describes]]. I'm privileged in many ways. In a sense, I partially owe my career to the fact that I've composed tests that have failed some people who shouldn't have been failed. And every time one of us portrays ourselves as [[persecuted]], as Louie does, it reinforces a system that really does have inequalities, both racial and otherwise. And yes, I know how it feels to express an unpopular opinion, such as when I was one of the few SCANDRON employees to defend the educators charged in the Atlanta [[erasure parties|Atlanta Erasure Parties]]. As educational administrators, we don't get to ignore that we benefit from these injustices.

<div class="drsd">But why heap all the good grades on Mark? Why not share the sensation of validation? If it doesn't cost anyone anything to validate you, surely it doesn't cost you anything to validate them.</div>\nRight. For example, I want absolute control over an academy where people are prepared for a tough life of blood, sweat, and tests. I also think that Marie is a subterfuging substitute who wants to pioneer some sort of //paradise island// for people to share their life stories and examine their privilege. I think that you're enabling the latter by talking to Marie, but I still expect you to validate Marie when I'm not listening.\n<div class="drsd">Yeah, you two disagree. But what does it cost you? To see Marie act all open-minded towards minorities?</div>\nCost //me//? Nothing. I'm a patient adult who can wait for your approval and ignore what other people think. Just as Marie can. I mean, it costs //you//--//you// can't escape the fact that //you// can only choose to listen to one of us at a time. \n<div class="drsd">Ah, it costs me my allegiance! Ha! Tough luck, Louie! My job is to tell you what you want to hear, not to [[choose|very well]] sides. Loyalty in humans is lovely, but loyal animals get taken for granted and turned into taxidermied trophies!</div>\nNah, nobody's asking you to pick sides. And if you did [[pick|very well]] sides, if you ignore one of us entirely, you'll get your scientific equipment for those EXPERIMENTS WITH CITRUS.\n<div class="drsd">Well, then, just what //am// I choosing?</div>\nYou're [[allocating|very well]] air time and ad space. How's that?\n

Rather than incinerate the inedible "leg of nutria", the government ships the legs to a pet food manufacturer, which then sells the legs as a sort of dried jerky under the name NUTRIA-SHIN. Dr. Sourpuss had developed a taste for the product and was, ah...\n<div class="drsd">Homebrewing.</div>\nHomebrewing NUTRIA-SHIN by gnawing the legs off of Poisson Butte's local nutria population and sundrying them right next to my own dried fruit. Our two foods were indistinguishable in name, yet very different in taste. Then I realized that this was exactly how [[standardized testing]] works.

<div class="drsd">Gargoylian? Oh, believe me, Louie, the only thing that's going to be gargoylian is all your students, with mouthwash, as soon as they so much as see this thing.</div>\s\nSo remember: to conserve water, drink from the cat, not from the tap! It's your [[choice|coreL]].\n

Marie may be right that the world is set up to validate guys like me, and not so much anyone else. But then I thought, what if validation isn't like power or money--what if nobody has to lose some validation in order for you to gain validation? There's no [[cost|change that]]. Once you find someone or some//thing// that tells you you're right, you can get as much as you want. You'll never run out, not like gasoline or a box of [[burgers|the burgers]]. When I think back to all the conversations I've had, the really good ones, all I remember is the parts where I just begged people to agree with me.

<<ckp>>The mascot costume--that five-storey field mouse that embodies multiple choice--is here, sleeping across several softball fields. The zipper down the front is broken. The teeth of the zipper are mostly intact; a few broken links don't mean anything. What has broken off is the sliding part...but I could probably open it with a <<textbox "$zipper" "" zipcheck autofocus>>.\n<span class="menu-validate">\n<<click "Validate">>\n</span>\n<<goto [[zipcheck]]>>\n<<endclick>>

<div class="drsd">I think you mean chakra point, Louie.</div>\nNo, no, //chalkra// point...the spiritual portion of the limb that an academic such as myself would use to write on chalkboards. Look, I'll wipe off the chalkboard menu in my [[food van]] and show you...

Given that the American testing industry invalidates any attempt at pluralism, and allows the justice system to consume the careers of its most valuable members--often minorities--what can we do? Simple: spread positive stories about those who stand up to the system. Last year, a bright young Muslim student was suspended and arrested for genetically engineering what the media called a "rudimentary dolphin" during a biology test. Brutish SCANDRON supervisors seized the dolphin, because, like all dolphins, it emitted echolocatory sonar [[clicks|bomb]], which could be mistaken for a ticking [[clock|bomb]], which could in turn be mistaken for a [[bomb]].

Yeah, I don't think Mark would do any activism in the sense that Marie would recognize. The closest thing I remember was an attempt to raise awareness for pets locked in hot cars during the summer: Mark's first and last turn in the mouse suit involved bribing Dr. Sourpuss to hotwire my then-groundborne van. The pair attempted a fifteen-hour July joyride with the windows shut. According to the SCANDRON medics that found the pair, the two suffered sunstroke less than ten minutes into the trip. Yes, that's what burnt out the battery in my van, and why I have to fly it now, but I don't begrudge whatever part of Mark believed this was a good [[choice|coreL]]. \n<<item "sun" $sunV>>

Round and grey, like a filled-in bubble on a [[bubble sheet|against]].

I'd get told I'm wrong, or get fired, just like how SCANDRON fired me way back when, after you dragged us down to see that monolithic mouse mascot you'd discovered. And tattooed upon the torso of the mascot were the words [[GREAT A.P.E.|acronym]]. I said, "This? This is TOP SECRET? Once upon a time, we were allowed to have a guy in a gorilla costume host a pep rally without being branded racists."\n<div class="drsd">Louie, they fired me, too, and they don't fire cats for racism.</div>\n"But now I guess we can't even have a Leviathan-sized lab rat inexplicably labelled [[GREAT APE|acronym]] without it jeopardizing the careers of anyone who sees it! If we didn't waste time on these politically correct trivialities, people could actually spend time studying for standardized tests!"\n<div class="drsd">That's not why we were fired. The acronym has nothing to do with [[race|acronym]]...</div>\nAnd then SCANDRON fired me! Airdropped me here like a war weapon they didn't want!

Did I pronounce those right?\n<div class="drsd">Bellybuttons...navel lint...navel hair? I think you got the mirrors of the telescope backwards, there, Louie. You've been doing some nighttime navel gazing!</div>\nUh. Speaking of navels, Dr. Sourpuss, if I give you a navel orange, big and juicy as the sun, will you forget this conversation ever happened?\n<div class="drsd">What am I going to do with this?!? I'm //allergic// to citrus!</div>\nHow about a lemon? \n<div class="drsd">//Hisssssssss...//</div>\nHalf a lemon?\n<div class="drsd">[[Deal|$ckp]].</div>\n<<item "hlv" $hlvV>>

Oh, Dr. Sourpuss, why do you say "meet other people" with such cynicism? Did Louie indoctrinate you with the Mushroom Theory of Art?\n<div class="drsd">"Cooking mushrooms is an art; mushrooms don't have feelings; therefore art does not involve feelings." That sort of thing.</div>\nJust because something doesn't //contain// an emotion doesn't mean it has //no effect// on people. Yes, mushrooms have no feelings, but tell Louie to go hunt mushrooms without a field guide and report back on the "feelings" that the mushrooms produce...no. Do //not// do that, Sourpuss. Do not do that. Tell Louie that it is fine to look at things impersonally //sometimes//. After all, what good is something if you couldn't enjoy it while you were the last person on Earth? But also make sure Louie knows I fully intend for my tests to have an effect on [[people|coreM]].

Speaking of which, Dr. Sourpuss, I made up some "Lost Property" signs, and I'd like you to [[post them]] around the school. Meanwhile, an announcement: we are looking for the missing SCANDRON. It's about the size of a minifridge, beige, and answers to the sound of scribbling pencils. It is highly coveted by impatient staff members...cough...cough...who may have taken it without signing up on the waitlist.\t

<<ckp>><h1>PART ONE</h1> \s\nGood afternoon. I am Dr. Sourpuss. Let me scratch that on the board with my <<mnk "[[toenails]]">>. I am overseeing your test today, which you are writing in this underground tunnel--formally, the <<lnk "[[Test Tube]]">>. Said tunnel resembles the semitransparent tubes of a Hamster Habitrail or Gerbil Gymnasium, which you have undoubtedly admired at your local pet shop. Of course, this one is larger so as to accomodate my fluffy feline form.\n<div class="bubble"> \s\nQ1. Let's calibrate ourselves, Mark. To continue, fill in any bubble below:\n[[A|Q2]] You are writing the ORANGE TEST\n[[B|Q2]] An interactive demo test from the SCANDRON CORPORATION\n[[C|Q2]] Multiple choice questions will be presented in a linear fashion \n[[D|Q2]] Any and all answers will be given a grade of "correct"\n</div>\n

<<ckp>>\n<div class="drsd"> Yeah. I mean, I've //heard// that the SCANDRON machine exists, but I've never used it, personally. I seriously doubt it exists.</div>\nBut...but...of course there's a marking machine! I've run papers through //some sort// of machine every day of my life for the past five years! What, you think I've just been feeding bubble sheets into this barbecue to keep my hot air balloon aloft?\n<div class="drsd">A machine that marks multiple choice? I'll [[believe it|R5]] when I see it.</div>

<<ckp>>No leads on the SCANDRON yet, but then I'm a paws-on...hands-on! hands-on educator and <<lnk "[[wouldn't notice]]">> a multiple choice machine if it were staring me in the face. But at least I found //you//, Mark! Just guessing, mind you, it being <<mnk "[[too dark to see|inferring]]">> anything in this underground tunnel and all. But you're enthralled in your final exam. You're Mark Passingrad! The best at the test!\n<div class="bubble">Q3. That's why you graduate every year, right?\n[[T|Q4]] That's me--best at the test!\n[[F|Q4]] (blush) Well, not //every// year\n</div>

<<ckp>>But enough about tests, let's talk about ME! I'm a <<lnk "[[talking cat]]">>, yes, Dr. Sourpuss, that's me. And you know what makes me sour? Principal Louie and Test Composer Marie. Mince me up and make me into <<mnk "[[marmalade]]">> \nif those two haven't sent me on the most embittering errand imaginable. They've sent me to lolcat...ahem, locate! locate! TWO things which have gone missing.\n<div class="bubble">Q2. What TWO things am I trying to find, Mark?\n[[A|Q3]] The SCANDRON automated grading machine \n[[B|Q3]] Mark Passingrad, top student\n[[C|Q3]] Both A & B</div>

<<ckp>>You can say that again, Mark. Anyhow, I brought you a present. Look at your <<boot "feet">>, Mark. Now, I know <<mnk "[[food|when]]">> is forbidden during standardized exams. But that is one convention I've got no respect for: if you're gonna graduate, you're gonna need protein. You're gonna get out of this town and get a cushy job with the SCANDRON Corporation. So eat. Not hungry? Suit yourself. Mmm-mmm. \n<div class="bubble">Q5. Oh, Mark, how are you gonna grow up to be a corpse-o-rat fat cat like me if you don't eat your rodents?\n[[A|Q6]] I, ah, just ate\n[[B|Q6]] I'm //stuffed//\n[[C|Q6]] Couldn't take another bite</div>\n

<<ckp>>Sure, you failed that one reading comprehension test way back when. I've <<mnk "[[overseen|inferring]]">> a lot of tests in my time, and I gotta tell you, these things are nowhere near as big a deal as humans make 'em out to be. Misreading one picture book doesn't exactly go on your permanent record. You're the best at the test, Mark! Don't doubt it! If you graduate, you get to leave your tiny town: [[Poisson Butte|Q4a]].

<<set $pawL = null>><<set $pawR = null >> \n<div class="poem">I'm Sourpuss, the factual cat!<br>\nI live in a soundproof box!<br>\nIn a tower of ivory!<br>\nIn a lecture hall that's <b>LOCKED</b>!<br>\nIn an auditorium that's empty!<br>\nThat's where I give my talks!<br></div>\nHow are we gonna unlock this hypothetical locked door that you've accused me of having installed, Mark?\n<div id="popup"></div>\n<<display "equip">> \n\t<td><<radiobutton "$pawL" "non">> <<print "None of the above (start over)">>/%Return bubble%/</td>\n<span class="menu-validate">\n<<click "Validate">> \n<<if $pawL eq "key">>\n\t<<goto "QQ1">>\n<<elseif $pawL eq "non">>\n\t\t<<goto "Q1">>\n<<else>><<replace "#popup">><<defaultE>> <<endreplace>> \n<<endif>>\n\n<<if visitedTags("rod") and visitedTags("dip")>>\n\t<<replace "#popup">>\t<<colE>>\t<<endreplace>>\n<<endif>>\n<<if $rod eq "used">> <<replace "#popup">> <<comE>><<endreplace>>\n<<endif>>\n\n\n\t\n\n<<endclick>> \n</span>

<<ckp>>Ate? Ate? I hear a chewing sound. You're chewing gum, Mark! <<mnk "[[Double Bubble]]">>! During a test? Hope you brought enough for everyone, especially me--<<mnk "[[ackbleaaagh|Double Bubble]]">>! Ack! Ack! One of these days I'm going to learn to like bubble gum. Acquired taste and all. I swear, I'll just keep on eating it until I do. But to add insult to indigestion, you wrote notes on the wrappers--and it's not a cheat sheet--it's a ditty mocking me! Look, I know I'm out of touch and don't rejoice when I see multiple choice, but this sort of thing makes me want to stop <<lnk "[[looking for the SCANDRON]]">> altogether. You want me to keep looking, you gotta do one of my EXPERIMENTS WITH CITRUS!\n<div class="bubble">\s\n[[T|Q7]] Alright then\n[[F|Q7]] Whatever\n</div>

Just [[curious|finders]]: how did you find that key, Dr. Sourpuss?\n<div class="drsd">Easy, really. Humans always hide 'em in those fake rocks that open up. Those bivalved boulders that you see all the time in department stores. Also prevents keys from rusting.</div>\nOh, those. I think I //had// one of those until I realized that they were not much use if they were mass-produced and identical.\n<<item "rod" $rodV>>

<h1>CONTENT NOTE</h1> \s\nRead the following sentence, and answer the question below. If in doubt, pick the best answer.\n//This work concerns social politics. Its handling of topics is intended to be somewhat sympathetic--but frustrating--to any readers, no matter what their mindset.//\n<div class="bubble">Continue?\n[[T|Start]] Yes\n[[F|Start]] No\n</div>

I could tell you how guys like me and Mark who accept the occasional school-provided free meal are doing worse on the GCSE than any other ethnic or racial minority. Or how guys like us are doing worse than young women in a lot of areas.\n<div class="drsd">Those are certainly opinions. But you just condemned Marie for promoting self-expression. Aren't you expressing yourself right now?</div>\nNo, those are opinions I //would// express if I never saw the SCANDRON again. Instead, I'm just going to keep teaching to the test, hoping that the right bubbles are filled in [[all too often|change that]], and try not to think about what [[all those right answers|change that]] mean. I'll turn a blind eye to all those [[100-percent scores|change that]]. Falsify a few grades on behalf of Mark Passingrad. Cooking the books--that's what a chef does.\n

<<set $priv = "financially successful">>The nation was enthralled: we hoped that the competitor would go on to answer more meaningful questions, tell us that there was more to poverty than stereotypical food banks, even--the nation held its breath--//compose// a set of multiple choice questions for the rest of us to answer. \n\nOr so we hoped. But the show producers had prepared for such an event, and by the next broadcast, the contestant had been let go on the [[technical truth|configured]] that there is no such thing as a "half week". But until then, the nation truly believed that--and then the television sparked out, because Dr. Sourpuss had started chewing the [[power cable]].\n

What I mean by "mock test forms" is this. You can take a test about kitty litter and pass a test about calculus, so long as the resulting bubble sheets are identical. So students sell these mock tests to each other, and sneak them in during test periods. You fill the bubbles as quick as you can, then complain to the supervisor that, thanks to a bumbling bureaucracy, you've been given a test about...about...<div class="drsd">...litterboxes instead of logarithms. That's when your trusty test supervisor--that's me--apologizes profusely and gives the kid the //proper// test.</div>\nThank you for that, Dr. Sourpuss. Technically, these mock forms aren't cheat sheets, since they don't contain answers, but rather obvious questions that you can't get [[wrong|coreM]].

Say, Dr. Sourpuss. You act like you're not big on [[bubble sheets|coreL]], but what if you're secretly a SCANDRON auditor in disguise. Making sure I administer Mark's reading test properly and all?\n<div class="drsd">A spy? Well, then I'd have a //disguise//. Bond has a fancy tux. Batman's got a batsuit. I've got nothing.</div>\nYes, but in real-life, ie. //corporate//, espionage you have to blend in. Bond and Batman would make terrible spies. They're overdressed and would draw suspicion immediately. So, I'm thinking, maybe your disguise is to //remove// a famous and prominent article of clothing. Like a hat. Are you...are you the <b>Cat in the Hat?</b>\n<div class="drsd">Oh, yeah. You bet your boots. That's me, the Cat in the Hat! With the hat: educational icon. Without that hat: I look like any other cat. Best disguise ever.</div>\nYou're being sarcastic.\n<div class="drsd">Sarcastic? A-ha-ha-ha-hack-a-hairball! No, Louie, no, I'm secretly a character from a children's book, like you said.</div>\nYeah, sure. And I'm the king of France. I'm sorry I asked.

Wires in mouth, Doctor Sourpuss hopped on top of the TV, which fizzled out as the cat's fur coat discharged static electricity. Come to think of it, that first night was the only night the television //worked//. I spend most time immersed in mental [[reruns|showsover]] as I compose my tests.\n<<item "wir" $wirV>>

Yes, we created a marking machine, just for a second. But then we slow down and get less, uh, poetic, 'cause we collide with a neighbouring hot air balloon. At the last moment I shed my fur coat in sheer terror, and everything explodes in a burst of static, canvas, and cat hair. (It's like what happens when you rub your head against a birthday balloon, except for bigger.) The power surge causes the marking machine to [[reboot|Start]], restoring us to our original states, ready to evaluate us all again.

Ah, food. Now that we have in common. One rotisseried rodent coming right up. You know, Dr. Sourpuss, I used to be like you. I used to not like [[multiple choice|$ckp]]. But then I realized it could validate me, just like it validates the people I disagree with. Dr. Sourpuss? Are you still on the line? Don't make me eat this all by myself again!

The layout of Poisson Butte Public School is very complex. When I arrived, it stood before me like a glass castle, if a castle had towers made from test tubes. The windows were frosted, but I knew which tower was mine, because when the wind whistled over the mouth of the tube, it sounded like someone whispering the words [[test composer|$ckp]]. There was no apparent ground entry to my office, so I dug out the merry-go-round and rolled it to the glass tower, and I spun it around and around until it wore through the glass. The glass shattered into several triangular pieces, so I picked them up, and stuck them together with some tree sap, transforming the merry-go-round into a geodesic dome, or, if you will, a "Geo-Dizzy" dome, and that became my office.

<<set $priv = "white">>The SCANDRON CORPORATION got its comeuppance when journalists discovered that the "clicking" dolphins were in fact relaying a Morse code message lifted from a children's fable: \n<div class="mard" style="background-image: url(grn.png); background-repeat: repeat; padding-right: 10px">"You humans become incredulous and enter denial when you hear of injustices, because you are surrounded by injustice," said the dolphin. "We fish think //only// about the countless human injustices, and still our ocean kingdom is unjust--small herrings are swallowed by terrible whales, even though they have the same right as citizens of the sea."</div>\nThe only thing that exploded, in the end, was the size of the dolphin population. Yes, in its attempts to defend itself by breeding a minefield of marine mammals, the SCANDRON CORPORATION unwittingly propagated a demand for [[justice in testing|configured]]

It's a good day to be an administrator, Dr. Sourpuss. I got a call today from Mackerel-Hill Publishing. Due to a shortage of pencil catalogues, they decided to republish some of your old test score surveys during the hiatus. Behold! This year's edition of ...<b>the Cross-America Top-Peforming Public Schools!</b> I believe it will help you find Mark Passingrad: best at the test!\n<div class="drsd">Louie, I compiled those for the purposes of being housebroken.</div>\nYou broke into someone's //house//?!?\n<div class="drsd">No, no. It was used to mop up...how to put this politely. Piddles. Puddles. Ahem...[[cat pee-pees]]. My point is: I wrote that survey data //in advance//.</div>\nAre you trying to tell me these don't say anything about the scores for this year? That those newspapers contain the predictive equivalent of placeholder text? Lorem ipsum?

When Louie and I still worked at SCANDRON HQ, luxurious luncheons were typically provided, usually featuring genetically modified fruit. Louie worked for their elite catering division, and one day trolleyed in a top-of-the-line custom-grown orange tree. I plucked a fruit that was small and fuzzy, which I first thought was a peach, but which turned out to be Dr. Sourpuss in kitten form. Yes, Dr. Sourpuss grew on a tree, [[just like citrus|toenails]].\n

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. In fact, SCANDRON never even gave me access to a marking machine during my career--I did everything with pencil and paper. And yet I've worked at SCANDRON HQ. That's real enough.\n<div class="drsd">Yes, everything you said SCANDRON has done, good and bad, they certainly did. But it was done by //people//: SCANDRON employees strung along by the promise of a machine that might one day totally validate their work.</div>\nBut I've always tried to [[resist validation]].

<div class="drsd">You humans talk. Why am I a surprise, and you normal?</div>\nI suppose you simply get used to hearing humans talk. But you are the world's one and only talking cat; you seem to speak only to prove that you can. Can you imagine what it would be like to give a voice to people who aren't usually heard in society?\n<div class="drsd">I think my backtalk is pretty good validation. I may not be able to implement affirmative action, but I can definitely do some affirmative chatting.</div>\nSee, it's just that. Slightly off things like that, Dr. Sourpuss, that you say, that don't validate anyone as much as you think. Let me tell you a story. Back when I was an independent test composer, I was designing a geography exam called the CATSKILLS for an anonymous client. As I ascended the mountains to take some measurements, an avalanche destroyed the trail by which I had ascended. Since descending was unsafe, I climbed to the very top, only to find that the valley on the other side was a polished [[mirror]].

(c) 2016 the SCANDRON CORPORATION\nThese practice tests were compiled and illustrated by P.B. Parjeter for the SCANDRON CORPORATION with the beta-testing assistance of Isaac Aucoin, S. Clavet, and Holly Royer. For more information and feedback, contact [[pbparjeter@openmail.cc|mailto:pbparjeter@openmail.cc]]\n\nNo part of this publication is endorsed by the SCANTRON CORPORATION.\n\nAn acknowledgement to Andrew Schultz--it seems we each created a similar puzzle indepedently, but which he used in a published game first. (Although he claims to have seen it somewhere else as well.)\n\nThe other puzzles at the end of each test section are based on familiar science fair projects, their origins lost to the mists of time, but often attributed to Phil N. DeBlanc and May K. Joyce. \n\nThis work was typeset in Exo2, with Chango and Cinzel used for headings. All fonts are from Google Fonts.\n\nReproduction, in whole or part, for educational and non-educational purposes is permitted. \n\nUpdated: Tue Apr 5 12:51:59 PDT 2016\n \n[[Continue|Start]].\n\n

<div class="drsd">And Dr. Sourpuss, the fiercely independent FACTCAT, lands feet-first yet again!</div>Yes, that's you, Dr. Sourpuss. And yet I couldn't help but overhear that FACTCAT was also the passcode for the SCANDRON van. You don't just get your name embedded in factory-default passwords by asking nicely, certainly not in the SCANDRON company car. All this time you've been rallying against multiple choice, but you sold out to SCANDRON long ago, didn't you? Fiercely independent, my foot! You're a //corporate// FACTCAT! <div class="bubble">Q1. What, ah, tipped you off?\n[[A|sold out]] All of the standardized tests I've seen are named after cats\n[[B|sold out]] Everything you say is posed as a multiple choice question\n[[C|sold out]] Even your EXPERIMENTS WITH CITRUS are multiple choice\n</div>\n

Speaking of stars, I was just adjusting my telescope. How goes the visual [[surveillance|listening]], Louie, you're asking? Are you [[spying|listening]]? Is it for [[security|listening]] reasons? None of the above, my dear cat. I have turned my sights to the //heavens//! Just imagine all the life we have yet to discover amongst the stars and may never meet or communicate with. Each alone, just like us, revelling in our own private insularity...\n<div class="drsd">Speak for yourself, Louie.</div>\s\n...vast networks of burning grey suns, threaded through...\n<div class="bubble">[[A|backwards]] The system of Beleboton? \n[[B|backwards]] The planet of Navelint?\n[[C|backwards]] The great Nyvylhyr nova?\n</div>

Yeah, I like [[multiple choice|$ckp]]. Multiple choice efficiently tells me my administrative decisions are correct. It vacuum-packs the needs of each and every pupil into a tiny test. Then it condenses the complexities of our student body into one robust statistic.\n<div class="drsd">Condensed like a can of cream! </div>\nYep, if you want a vision of the future, just imagine a tin of tuna, bursting with <<triboot "botulism">>, forever. And I'm not just saying that 'cause you're a cat.

Standardized multiple choice //can// be changed. Supposedly "incorrect" answers can be inserted into a test over and over. My students will consider those "wrong" answers ever so briefly, test after test, regardless of whether they pass or not. A few students will have the privilege of being hired to SCANDRON, and they will remember the "wrong" answers. That is how things will change. SCANDRON will be <<triboot "rebooted">>. [[Multiple choice|$ckp]] can be used so that people can relate to each other and engage in self-expression; I have to keep believing that.

<div class="loud"> You've destroyed my flying food van! Both of you! I wanted to rule SCANDRON from that van! </div>\nLouie, I had nothing to do with it. But if your van can't survive a fall from that height, I'd say SCANDRON sold you...''a lemon'', as Dr. Sourpuss would say! Get in the escape capsule!\n<div class="loud"> Marie, that van was the closest thing we had to a SCANDRON marking machine. I wanted to rule the standardized testing industry! They promised me Mark...king of the test!</div>\n//Marking// of the test, Louie? Then I suggest you come with me in the escape pod. I'm going back to SCANDRON HQ, and they do a lot of that there.\n<div class="loud"> Don't act like Mark is just someone I imagined based on some words I misheard! And I can't go back to SCANDRON HQ! I falsified grades! I'd be toast, toast like a Port-o-Bellow burger bun. They'd fire me! Give me the [[boot|bootx]]!</div>\nThe only thing that's getting fired is this escape pod! //Get in//. And Louie finally does just that. Dr. Sourpuss, you too! Get in!\n

Yes, I've relocated my office to Loudmouth Louie's PORT-O-BELLOW BURGER VAN. You've probably seen the van in New York catering to all walks of life. I have "seen serious sh--t", the students say, or so I imagine, and it's turned me into a vegetarian, a tough vegetarian, the kind of vegetarian that lives and breathes iron-enriched steak substitutes. Which I'm not. Truth is, neither I nor any of these kids have left this town and been to NYC. That's where the //van// is from. Truth is, I don't really care. I just want to go to sleep and wake up knowing that Mark Passingrad is going to be writing a [[SCANDRON test|coreL]].

<h1>LARGE CITRON COLLIDER</h1>\n<<set $pawL = null>><<set $pawR = null>> \nYep, Mark, this is where I do all those immersive, interactive, hands-on EXPERIMENTS WITH CITRUS.\n<<display "equip">>\n<span class="menu-validate">\n<<click "Combine!">>\n<<if ($pawL eq "rod" or $pawL eq "dip") and ($pawR eq "rod" or $pawR eq "dip") and ($pawL neq $pawR)>>\n\t\t<<replace "#rod">><<print $keyV>>/%A clean key%/<<new>><<endreplace>>\n\t\t<<replace "#popup">>COMBINED<<endreplace>>\n\t\t<<set $rod = "used">>\n<<elseif ($pawL eq "hlv" or $pawL eq "wir") and ($pawR eq "hlv" or $pawR eq "wir") and ($pawL neq $pawR)>>\n\t\t<<replace "#hlv">><<print $batV>>/%A lemon battery%/<<new>><<endreplace>>\n\t\t<<replace "#popup">>COMBINED<<endreplace>>\n\t\t<<set $hlv = "used">>\n<<elseif ($pawL eq "bru" or $pawL eq "dip") and ($pawR eq "bru" or $pawR eq "dip") and ($pawL neq $pawR)>>\n\t\t<<replace "#bru">><<print $inkV>>/%A brush, dipped in invisible ink%/<<new>><<endreplace>>\n\t\t<<replace "#popup">>COMBINED<<endreplace>>\n\t\t<<set $bru = "used">>\n<<elseif ($pawL eq "crt" or $pawL eq "sun") and ($pawR eq "crt" or $pawR eq "sun") and ($pawL neq $pawR)>>\n\t\t<<replace "#crt">><<print $wmkV>>/% A watermarked certificate%/<<new>><<endreplace>>\n\t\t<<replace "#popup">>COMBINED<<endreplace>>\n\t\t<<set $crt = "used">>\n<<else>><<replace "#popup">><<print either("That makes nothing!","No result!", "Bad combo!")>><<endreplace>>\n<<endif>>\n<<endclick>>\n</span>\nUh, now that you mention it, it <b>does</b> look an awful lot like a multiple choice question. Well, I certainly didn't choose for that to happen. Must've gotten cross-pollinated with Louie or Marie's beloved bubble sheets. The process is simple. You just gotta take one thing in each paw and push the combine button.\n<div id="popup"></div>\n\n

config.disableHistoryControls = true

There's a more meaningful angle as well. A surprising number of answers are wrongly marked incorrect by the SCANDRON machine, just because a SCANDRON gets confused by a pencil smudge--that is, when an answer is "not fully erased." Of course this happens more frequently in economically underprivileged schools, which have subpar supplies: last-generation SCANDRONs that don't distinguish filled bubbles and partially-erased bubbles very well. So the Double Bubble eraser was designed to be an economically inclusive, high-quality eraser for everyone, one which wouldn't leave artifacts and would cleanly erase an answer. I am still selling batches to the Kindergarten Alternative Testing Team, a non-profit organization dedicated to changing attitudes towards [[multiple choice|coreM]] at an early age.

<div class="drsd">Better. Better. Still going to have to call you out. I can't very well validate all those things you said about Marie and minorities.</div>\nCan't validate me? But I thought SCANDRON groomed you to validate everyone whenever they wanted.\n<div class="drsd">Hold your hamburgers, Louie. I didn't say I couldn't validate you. I just said that I couldn't do it very well. So let's split the difference. I'll tell you you're wrong...</div>\nAllowing me to toy with the notion that I'm a fiercely independent thinker?\n<div class="drsd">Yep. It'll cost you though. How about cracking open some of your finest gourmet guinea pigs? And those shrews on shishkebabs?</div>\nWell, reverse psychology was always my favorite. Deal! You have no idea how incredibly [[validating|used to not]]this all is, cat.

<<set $priv = "cisgender">>A series of student-led investigations into gender <<print either("presentation","expression")>>, culminating in the serendipitous discovery that the //lightest// layer of lip <<print either("gloss","balm")>> smudged ever so lightly over a bubble sheet can deflect a SCANDRON lens so that other answers may register as valid. I certainly do not have the authority to tell anyone what they should find [[empowering|configured]], but surely such small feats of self-expression are small victories, and I'm not going to leave those out of the tests I compose, not ever.

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text-align: center; font-size:100%}\n\n.macro-textbox {background-color: transparent; \nborder: 0px solid transparent;\nfont-size: 100%;\ncolor: black\n} */\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n/*start css*/\n\n.start #ui-bar {display: none}\nbody.drs.start{background-image: url(ora.png)}\n.start .content {\nmargin: 0px !important;\npadding: 0px !important;\ntext-align: center;\nline-height: 150%;\ncolor: #431E00}\n/*\n\n\n.content a[data-passage="okay"] {\nbackground-color: transparent !important; \ncolor: black;\nbackground-image: url(orab.png);\nborder-color: #E56800;\nbox-shadow: 0px 10px 20px #954400 inset\n}\n\n.content a[data-passage="okay"]:hover {\nbackground-color: transparent !important; \ncolor: black;\nbackground-image: url(blub.png);\nborder-color: #316CB5;\nbox-shadow: none\n}\n\n.content a[data-passage="catnip"]:hover {\nbackground-color: transparent !important; \ncolor: black;\nbackground-image: url(hgl3.png);\nborder-color: #327532;\n} \n*/\n\n/*sidebar positioning*/\n\n#menu-saves a {top: 20px; right: 30px}\n#lab a {right: 30px; top: 140px}\n.link-return {right: 30px; top: 140px} /*<--return*/\n.menu-validate a {position: fixed; top: 260px; right: 30px; z-index:3}\n\n/*sidebar changing*/\n\n.tst #lab {display:none}\n.nab #lab {display:none}\n.ret .link-return {display: block}\n.link-return {display: none}\n.error {display:none}\n\n/*sidebar button styling*/\n#lab a:before {content: url(puzzle.png); display: block}\n.link-return:after, #menu-saves a:before {display: block}\n\n#lab a, #menu-saves a, .link-return\n{width: 100px; \ntext-align: center;\nborder-radius: 5px;\nposition: fixed;\npadding: 20px;\nheight: 60px;\n\n}\n\n.menu-validate a {\nwidth: 130px;\nborder-radius: 5px !important;\ntext-align: center;\n}\n\n#menu-saves a:hover, .link-return:hover, #lab a:hover, .menu-validate a:hover {background-color: white}\n\n\n/*sidebar colouring*/\n\n.drs #lab a, .drs #menu-saves a, .drs .link-return, .drs .menu-validate a \n{background-color: #EA8632;\nborder: 2px solid #954400;\n}\n\n.lou #lab a, .lou #menu-saves a, .lou .link-return, .lou .menu-validate a \n{background-color: #98D2FF;\nborder: 2px solid #316CB5}\n\n.mar #lab a, .mar #menu-saves a, .mar .link-return, .mar .menu-validate a \n{background-color: #CEFF91;\nborder: 2px solid #447C00}\n\n.tst #lab a, .tst #menu-saves a, .tst .link-return, .lab .menu-validate a \n{background-color: #E2E2E2;\nborder: 2px solid #808080}\n\n#lab a:hover, #menu-saves a:hover, .link-return:hover, .menu-validate a:hover \n{background-color: white}\n\n\n/**/\n/*\ninput[type="radio"], input[type="checkbox"]\n{height: 30px;\nwidth: 30px;\n}*/\n/*\n.cyclingLink{width: 50px;\nborder-radius: 90px !important;\ntext-align: center}\n\n.cyclingLink[data-cycle="1"] {background-color: grey !important;\ncolor: white;\nborder-color: white !important\n}\n*/\n\n\n\n/*\n.link-back:before, #menu-saves a:before {display: block; text-align: center}\n\n.link-back, #menu-saves a {text-align: center; background-color: white; width: 64px; height: 64px; border-radius: 10px}\n*/\n\n\n\n/*a:before {content: url(locked.png)}*/\n\ndiv#popup, #output {\nposition: fixed; \nbottom: 0; \nleft: 0; \nwidth: auto !important; \nfont-size: 80%; \nbackground-color: #FFFF75 !important;\nmargin-right: 200px;\nright: 0px;\nz-index: 0;\nborder-top: 2px solid brown;\nborder-right: 2px solid brown}\n\n/* old working\ndiv#popup, #output {\nposition: fixed; \nbottom: 0; \nleft: 0; \nwidth: 100% !important; \nfont-size: 60%; \nbackground-color: #FFFF75 !important}\n*/\n\n\n#ui-bar {font-size: 100%;\nz-index: 1}\n\n\n/*the good stuff*/\n\n\n\n#story-title, footer, #menu-restart {display: none}\n\n.content .bubble {border-top: 2px solid black}\n\n.content .bubble a {min-width: 50px;\nborder-radius: 50px;\ntext-align: center\n}\n\nh1 {font-family: Chango;\ntext-align: center;\nfont-size: 150%\n}\n\nh1.endfont {font-family: Cinzel;\ntext-align: center;\nfont-size: 300%\n}\n\nbody {\nfont-family: Exo2;\nfont-size: 150%;\ncolor: #1C0D00;\ntext-align: justify;\n}\n\n#ui-bar {\nwidth: 200px;\nheight: 100%;\nposition: fixed;\nright: 0;\ntop: 0;\nborder-left: 2px solid;\n}\n\n.content {\nmargin: 30px 210px 30px 30px;\npadding: 40px 60px 40px 60px;\nline-height: 200%;\n}\n\n\ndiv#who {\nbackground-repeat: no-repeat;\nwidth: 200px;\nheight: 240px;\nposition: fixed;\nright: 2px;\nbottom: 10px;\nz-index: 2;\n}\n\n.content a {\nborder: 2px solid;\nborder-radius: 10px;\npadding: 3px;\ndisplay: inline-block;\nmargin: 2px;\n}\n\n\n#mobonly {display: none}\n\ndiv#ui-bar {\nmin-width: 10px;\n}\n\n#menu-story, #menu-core {\nlist-style-type: none !important\n}\n\n/*saves styling*/\n\n#ui-body.saves .empty {color: black}\n.mar button, .lou button, .drs button {color: black}\n.mar button:hover , .lou button:hover , .drs button:hover \n{background-color: white;\n}\n#saves-list{color: black}\n\n.mar #saves-list td {background-color: #9ACA5F;\nbackground-image: url(grnb.png);\nborder-bottom: 2px solid #699E2C;\n}\n.mar #ui-body.saves > div:not(:first-child) {\nbackground-color: #70A82F;\nborder-top: transparent;\nbackground-image: url(grn.png)\n}\n.mar button {background-color: #CEFF91;\nborder: inherit inherit #699E2C;\ncolor:inherit;\n}\n\n.drs #saves-list td {background-color: #EA8632;\nbackground-image: url(orab.png);\nborder-bottom: 2px solid #C55A00;\n}\n.drs #ui-body.saves > div:not(:first-child) {\nbackground-color: #C55A00;\nborder-top: transparent;\nbackground-image: url(ora.png)\n}\n.drs button {background-color: #F0B27D;\nborder: inherit inherit #699E2C;\ncolor:inherit;\n}\n\n\n\n.tst #saves-list td {background-color: #FFFFFF;\nbackground-image: url(gra.png);\nborder-bottom: 1px solid grey;\n}\n.tst button {background-color: white;\nborder: 1px solid grey /**inherit inherit #699E2C**/;\ncolor:inherit;\n}\n\n.tst #ui-body.saves > div:not(:first-child) {\nbackground-color: #D8D8D8;\nborder-top: transparent;\nbackground-image: url(grab.png)\n}\n\n\n.lou #saves-list td {background-color: blue;\nbackground-image: url(blub.png);\nborder-bottom: 1px solid grey;\n}\n.lou button {background-color: #A0D5FF;\nborder: inherit inherit #699E2C;\ncolor:inherit;\n}\n\n.lou #ui-body.saves > div:not(:first-child) {\nbackground-color: #9ACBFF;\nborder-top: transparent;\nbackground-image: url(blu.png)\n}\n\n\n\nbutton {background-color: #333333;\nborder: none;\npadding: 3px;\ncolor: white;\nfont-size: 100%;\nborder-radius: 5px;\ndisplay: inline}\n\n#ui-body.dialog.restart {background-color: black;\ncolor: white;\nborder: 2px grey solid}\n\n#ui-body-close {background-color: red; border-color: grey}\n#ui-body-close:hover {background-color: #FF8B8B}\n\n.dg {\nborder-radius: 10px; \npadding: 15px; \nborder: 2px solid \n}\n\n/*Sourpuss*/\n\n.drsd, .loud, .mard {background-repeat: no-repeat, repeat-y, repeat;\npadding: 10px;\nmargin: 10px;}\n\nbody.drs, .drsd {background-color: #EA8632;\nbackground-image: url("orab.png");\n\n}\n\n.drsd, .drs hr, .drs .content .bubble {border-color: #954400}\n.drs hr {border: 1px solid #954400}\n\n\n.drsd:first-of-type, #drsa {\nbackground-image: url("drs-sm.png"), url("ora.png"), url("orab.png");\n}\n\n.drsd {border-radius: 5px; \nborder: 2px solid #954400;\npadding-right: 80px;\nbackground-position: right -22px top 1px, right -125px center, left center;\nbackground-image: none, url("ora.png"), url("orab.png");\n}\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n.drs div#ui-bar{\nborder-color: #954400;\nbackground-image: url(ora.png);\n}\n\n.drs div#who {background-image: url(drsimage.png);}\n\n.drs .content a {background-color: #EABE98;\nborder-color: #954400\n}\n\n.content a:hover {background-color: grey;\ncolor: lightgrey;\nborder-color: grey;\n}\n\n\n/*Louie*/\n\nbody.lou, .loud {background-color: #56A1FF;\nbackground-image: url(blub.png);\n}\n\n.loud {border-radius: 5px; \nborder: 2px solid #4276AC;\npadding-right: 90px;\nbackground-image: none, url("blu.png"), url("blub.png");\nbackground-position: right -22px top 1px, right -20px center, left center;\n} \n\n.loud:first-of-type, #loua {background-image: url("lou-sm.png"), url("blu.png"), url("blub.png");}\n\n.lou div#ui-bar{\nborder-color: #4276AC;\nbackground-image: url(blu.png);\n\n}\n\n.lou div#who {background-image: url(louie.png);}\n\n.lou .content a {background-color: #98D2FF;\nborder-color: #4D7CB7\n}\n\n.content a:hover {background-color: grey;\ncolor: lightgrey;\nborder-color: grey;\n}\n\n\n\n/*Marie*/\n\nbody.mar, .mard {background-color: #8BBD4E;\nbackground-image: url(grnb.png);\n\n}\n\n.mard:first-of-type, #mara {background-image: url("mar-sm.png"), url("grn.png"), url("grnb.png");}\n\n\n.mard {border-radius: 5px; \nborder: 2px solid #447C00;\npadding-right: 90px;\n\nbackground-position: right -22px top 1px, right -19px center, left center;\nbackground-image: none, url("grn.png"), url("grnb.png");\nbackground-repeat: no-repeat, repeat-y, repeat;\n} \n\n\n.mar div#ui-bar{\nborder-color: #447C00;\nbackground-image: url(grn.png);\n}\n\n.mar div#who {background-image: url(marie.png);}\n\n.mar .content a {background-color: #CEFF91;\nborder-color: #6FA034\n}\n\n.content a:hover {background-color: grey;\ncolor: lightgrey;\nborder-color: grey;\n}\n\n/*Test*/\n\nbody.tst {background-color: white;\nbackground-image: url("gra.png");\n\n}\n\n.tst div#ui-bar{\nborder-color: #808080;\nbackground-color: #D6D6D6;\nbackground-image: url("grab.png");\n}\n\n.tst div#who {background-image: url(drslock.png);}\n.puz div#who {background-image: url(drslocko.png);}\n\n.tst .content a {background-color: white;\nborder-color: grey\n}\n\n.content a:hover {background-color: grey;\ncolor: lightgrey;\nborder-color: grey;\n}\n\n/*Black*/\n\n.blk {border-radius: 5px; \nborder: none;\npadding-right: 90px;\nbackground-color: black;\n/* background-position: right -22px top 1px, right -19px center, left center;\nbackground-image: none, url("grn.png"), url("grnb.png");\nbackground-repeat: no-repeat, repeat-y, repeat;\n*/\ncolor: white\n} \n\n.blk h1 {color: white}\n\n\n.blk div#ui-bar{\ndisplay:none\n}\n\n.blk div#who {display: none}\n\n.blk .content a {background-color: #3E3E3E;\nborder-color: grey;\n}\n\n.blk a:hover {background-color: grey;\ncolor: lightgrey;\nborder-color: grey;\n}

body {cursor: default}\na:hover {cursor: pointer}\n\nh1 a {font-size: 400%; padding: 40px !important}\n/*Short fullscreen- no character in sidebar*/\n@media screen and (max-height: 600px) {\nh1 a {font-size: 100%; padding: 10px !important}\n\tdiv#who {display:none}\ndiv#whosm {position: fixed;\nwidth: 80px;\nheight: 80px;\nbottom:0px;\nright: 0px;\nbackground-repeat: no-repeat;\nz-index: 1}\n}\n.drs div#whosm {background-image: url(drs-sm-nosp.png)}\n.mar div#whosm {background-image: url(mar-sm-nosp.png)}\n.lou div#whosm {background-image: url(lou-sm-nosp.png)}\n.tst div#whosm {background-image: url(drs-sm-nosp.png)}\n\n\n\n\n@media screen and (min-width: 500px) {\n.start .mob {display: none}\n}\n\n@media screen and (max-width: 500px) {\n\n.drsd, .loud, .mard {margin-left: -7px; margin-right:-7px} \n\n.saves {font-size: 50%}\n.saves {display:block}\n\n/*validate button over top of char*/\n.menu-validate a {\nwidth: 31% !important;\nborder-radius: 0px !important;\nmargin: 0px !important;\ntop: 0px !important;\nleft: 33% !important;\nheight: 32px !important;\nvertical-align: bottom !important;\npadding-top: 15px !important;\n}\n\n/*stretches and makes room for popup*/\ndiv#popup, #output {width: 100% !important}\n.content {margin-bottom: 30px !important}\n\n\n/*small characters for mobile*/\n\tdiv#who {display:none}\ndiv#whosm {height: 50px;\nwidth: 33%;\nposition: fixed;\ntop:0;\nleft: 33%;\nbackground-repeat: no-repeat}\n.drs div#whosm {background-image: url(drs-sm-nosp.png);\nbackground-color: #954400;\nborder: 2px solid #954400;\nbackground-position: left 50% top -11px;}\n.mar div#whosm {background-image: url(mar-sm-nosp.png);\nbackground-color: #447C00;\nborder: 2px solid #447C00;\nbackground-position: left 50% top -14px;\n}\n.lou div#whosm {background-image: url(lou-sm-nosp.png);\nbackground-color: #316CB5;\nborder: 2px solid #316CB5;\nbackground-position: left 50% top -6px}\n\n/*.tst div#whosm {background-image: url(drs-sm-nosp.png);\nbackground-color: #E2E2E2;\nborder: 2px solid #808080;\nbackground-position: left 50% top -1px;}*/\n\n/* fills out who icon when lab is disabled with tag*/\n.nab div#whosm {width: 66%}\n\n\n\n.start .fs {display: none}\n/*div#who {display:none}*/\n\n#ui-bar {\nwidth: 100%;\nheight: 2px;\nposition: absolute;\nright: 0;\ntop: 0;\n}\n\n\n#lab a, #menu-saves a, .link-return\n{background-color: #E56800;\nwidth: 100px; \ntext-align: center;\nborder-radius: 0px;\nposition: fixed;\npadding: 10px 0px 10px 0px;\nheight: 30px;\nborder: 2px solid #954400\n}\n/**************/\n#menu-saves a {top: 0px; left: 0px; width: 33%}\n#lab a, .link-return {right: 0px; top: 0px; width: 33%}\n\n\n\n#lab a:before {content: url(puzzle.png); display: none}\n.link-return:after, #menu-saves a:before {display: none}\n\n\n.menu-validate a {top: 50px; left: 0; width: 100%; border-radius: 0px; margin: 0px}\n \n#ui-body-close {right: 0 !important; top: 0 !important; width: 100%; padding: 5px; margin: 0; text-align: center}\n\n#ui-body.saves {top: 45px !important} \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n.content {margin: -50px;\nmargin-top: 40px !important;\nline-height: 150%;\nfont-size: 70%;\ntext-align: left}\n\n\n\n/*input[type="radio"] {}*/\n\n.content table {border-spacing: 0px}\n\n.content td {\ntext-align: center;\npadding: 2px;\nborder: 1px solid default;\n}\n\n/*div#popup, #output {\nposition: fixed; \nbottom: 0; \nleft: 0; \nwidth: auto !important; \nfont-size: 80%; \nbackground-color: #FFFF75 !important;\nmargin-right: 0px;\nright: 0px;\nborder-top: 2px solid brown}*/\n\n}\n\n/*end of mobile*/\n\n/*general tables*/\n\n.content table {border-spacing: 3px}\n\n.content td {background-color: #4F94EA;\nbackground-image: url("blu.png");\ntext-shadow: 2px 2px black;\ncolor: white;\ntext-align: center;\nborder: 2px solid #4276AC;\npadding: 4px\n}\n\n/*modded tables*/\n\n/* this hides the right column of the table, ie. disables combining*/\n.hid td.hide, .hid tr.hide {display:none;\n}\n\n.drs .hid .content td {background-color: transparent;\ntext-shadow: none;\ncolor: black;\nborder-color: transparent;\nbackground-image: none !important;\ntext-align: left !important;\npadding: 0px !important;\n}\n.drs .hid .content table {\nbackground-color: transparent !important;\n}\n\n\n.drs .content td {background-color: #E56800;\ntext-shadow: 2px 2px black;\ncolor: white;\nborder-color: #954400\n}\n\n\n.tst .content td {background-color: #969696;\nbackground-image: url("orab.png");\ncolor: black;\nborder: 2px solid #954400;\ntext-shadow: none;\n\n}\n\n\n.tst .content table {\nbackground-color: transparent !important;\nwidth: 100%;\n}\n/*\n\n#ui-bar {\nwidth: 100%;\nheight: 70px;\nposition: fixed;\nright: 0;\ntop: 0;\nborder-left: 2px solid;\n}\n\n\ndiv#menu1 a, div#menu2 a, div#menu3 a, #menu-saves {width: 50%;\nposition: fixed;\ncolor: #FFE4CD;\ntext-shadow: 2px 2px 2px #9B4700;\nbackground-color: #CC5D00;\nborder: 1px solid #DB9C68;\n\n}\n\ndiv#menu1 a {left: 0;\ntop:0}\ndiv#menu2 a {\nright: 0;\ntop:0}\ndiv#menu3 a {\nleft: 0;\ntop: 37px}\n#menu-saves {\nright: 0;\ntop: 37px}\n\n\n\ndiv#menu5 {height: 20px;\nposition: fixed;\nbottom: 0;\nleft: 0;\nbackground-color: #CC5D00;\nfont-size: small;\ncolor: white;\nwidth: 100%}\n\n\n\n.content {margin: -50px;\nmargin-top: 40px !important;\nline-height: 150%}\n.content a {min-width: 40px}\n\nbody {background-image: none !important}\n\n}\n*/\n

MY GOD I LOVE FISH! you might be expecting Dr. Sourpuss to say. But no, Dr. Sourpuss adheres to a citrus-and-rodent diet.\n<div class="drsd">Cats are allergic to citrus, Louie.</div>\nAs I was saying, from time to time I slip the Doctor a burger from my [[flying]] [[food van]]. But if anyone asks, it's all vitamin C, all the time.