I made this one night when I was half trashed after a party. Some friend
had asked me, for the fourth time in as many days, if I could drive him
down to Fort Wayne for the day. Again I told him, No no no no NO! I decided
I had enough dodging people trying to bum rides (I'm one of the few people
in this group of friends with a running car) and making up excuses
why I couldn't...and the Excuse-O-Matic was born.
What it is &
what it does
The Excuse-O-Matic is designed to be hung
on your door, to facilitate the easy generation and automatic conveyance
of lame excuses. It allows you to leave mix-&-match excuses for anyone
coming to your door, and also allows them to leave the same lame-o excuses
for you. (Due to the mix-&-match nature of the Excuse-O-Matic, many
'interesting' constructions are possible...be creative ;)
How it works
The Excuse-O-Matic consists of four tables containing phrases that
can be joined together. Thus, by selecting and marking one phrase from
each table an excuse can be formulated.
First Table: Person
Second Table: Can't, won't, etc.
Third Table: Verb/action (e.g. Take you to Ft. Wayne)
BECAUSE
Fourth Table: Reason (e.g. My car won't start)
Once the Excuse-O-Matic is printed out and stuck to your door there are
plenty of creative ways to mark the appropriate phrases. If there's corkboard
underneath it on your door (or you don't mind holes in your door) thumbtacks
or push pins are good. If your door happens to be magnetic, a refrigerator
magnet or something like that works nice. Any adhesive sticky things are
also good. Whatever method you can think of to mark the things, basically.
This copy of the Excuse-O-Matic is the one I use on my own door at
TSU and is customized for me by me. Most of the stuff on Excuse-O-Matic
is pretty universal among college students, but be sure to read thru and
change things if they do not apply (e.g. change where it says TSU to your
own college, etc. If you don't have a car/stereo/scanner, make those
changes too). There are a bunch of blank spaces left in the first table,
that's so you can fill in your friends' names (and enemies), top-dawg school
administrators, the BOFH... Then just print
& tape to your door. (Please be so kind as to leave the authorship
tag attached, if you know what's good for you ;)
Get your Excuse-O-Matic
Click here for Excuse-O-Matic.
Use File/Save As... to save it to your hard drive (don't forget to save
the Excuse-O-Matic image too). Edit. Print. Stick
to door.
tm