Sunday, November 13, 2005

How to make effective presentations

Here's an almost foolproof plan for making excellent presentations:

1. Go in with a sheep and a goat. For effect, have pens ready to hold them, one to the left of the audience and the other to the right. If someone asks a question, say:

"All questions will be directed to.."
>gesture towards the sheep< "My sacrificial Lamb or.." >gesture towards the goat<
"My scapegoat"

2. Go in carrying two baskets: One full of deadly cobras, and another with a couple of mongooses (point of debate: is it mongooses or mongii?), and a troupe of dancers. At the start, release your cobras into the audience till they bite them and half the audience is dead. Once this is accomplished, release the mongooses (or mongii, if you please). They will kill and eat up the snakes. In the end you are left with half the audience and a couple of mongooses (or mongii, if you please) scurrying about the room.

How does one get rid of the mongooses, you ask?

Hmm. Thats where the dancers come in.

Why dancers, you ask?

To seduce the mongooses back into their baskets, what else?

acknowledgements to friend W for contributing to this madness. Coming up: Tips on interviewing in style

8 comments:

Itineranting said...
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Itineranting said...

Perhaps its the afternoon sun, but I see a lot has changed. Mongeese (no, not Mongii) live in boxes now? Ah. Am also curious to know more about the dancers? So what exactly do they look like? Britney in schoolgirl outfit? Or Sridevi in harem pants? Pl to elaborate.

Falstaff said...

No, no - the thing to do is to get the dancers to seduce the audience to climb into the baskets with the cobras. That way you don't need the mongeese.

Of course, the really interesting part of this is if the building you're presenting in has a moat around it which can only be crossed in a boat that can take you and one other item (mongeese / cobras / dancers) at a time and you have to get all three across.

P.S. Correct answer: Put the cobras and the mongeese in the boat and set it afloat. They'll kill each other off and sink the boat and you'll be left with the dancers all to yourself.

Heh Heh said...

Rant, Britney Spears (itty bitty schoolgirl dress a la "kiss me baby one more time"). Now now, you knew i would say that didn't you? :)
falstaff: Thou art God!

Anonymous said...

Beg pardon, but .. since the -ii ending only occurs in the plural of words ending in -ius, it could either be mongooses or mongeese, but not mongii, no? Unless we are thinking Russell Crowe Gladiator-types Mongius Maximus who looks at the snakes and spouts I am required to kill, so I kill.

Anonymous said...

so the gladiator eats the she-snake and the audience goes Glad 'e ate 'er..
my profoundest apologies.

Anonymous said...

clueless - it's all abt reducing cognitive dissonance ... what were you doing in OB class ... studying FORM??
also, can make comment about how with some people one might not know the difference ... ;)

Progga said...

Isn't it "mongeese"?
Anon: that was awful!