The Daily Gravy Essential Back-to-School Shopping List

It’s not too late to finish up your back-to-school shopping before the first trimester starts! Because the Daily Gravy loves you and wants what’s best for you, we have provided below the essential back-to-school shopping list for all your AISU 2017-18 school year needs! Sponsored by Wal-Mart.

 

• Whooping cough vaccinations

After last year’s outbreak at AISU, the official slogan for pertussis vaccinations changed from “It’s worth getting autism” to the more relevant “Vaccinate your students, or you’ll get fired from your own school, Ms. Erica will leave, your brothers will also get fired, Kelly will get fired, everyone will die inside, and eventually the school you created with so much hope and potential will be converted to the new county jail.”

 

• Academic Edgeiblity™ forms by Ekim Hpmuts

Remember last year when the school cracked down on Academic Eligibility forms, which students had to turn in before participating in school activities? Well this year, students can skip the hassle of actually achieving academic eligibility and purchase one of these new Academic Edgeibility™ forms, which teach students the important life lessons that money is more important that qualifications, that buying something is an acceptable alternative to working for it, and that anything worth having is worth paying for (not figuratively but in a literal, monetary sense). Who knows, someday our students may apply these lessons and become President of the United States.

 

• Crayons

No school year is complete without this classic necessity. Although AISU is mostly Chromebook-based, crayons are still important for scribbling cryptic images on the walls and drawing stick figures of your favorite staff members for them to hang on their refrigerators at home.

 

• Kelly

Everybody knows that no school year would be complete without our favorite Kelly Casaday. He is by far the most important item on this list.

 

• 3 extra Chromebook chargers

Because you’ll lose one of them, one of them is going to break, and one will probably be stolen by your creepy neighbor’s garden gnomes.

 

• “I Love Mike Farley” t-shirts

Give fashion a try™

Show your love for (almost) everyone’s favorite superduperintendent and turn heads with this fashionable attire! Available in a variety of custom clothing items on zazzle.com (note: choose a dark color for best results). Get the t-shirt HERE. All proceeds go to Zazzle and the Find the Farleys charity program. (Or get a less stylish, discounted version HERE, if your love for Mike Farley is bound by monetary restrictions).

 

• Edible food

Without Greg as our head lunch lady, school lunches are sure to be extra-inedible this coming year. Get ahead of the game by purchasing your own edible food, such as hot Cheetos and Coca-Cola.

 

This concludes the Daily Gravy’s essential back-to-school shopping list. Failure to purchase any of these items, and the attendant consequences, are now squarely on you.

Student Petition to the School Board AND TOWN HALL MEETING THURSDAY AT 7PM MURRAY LIBRARY EVERYONE WELCOME

If you want to make your voice be heard regarding the unjust termination of great people such as Mike Farley, Steve Farley, Greg Farley (Steve’s clone who worked as a lunch lady), and Kelly Casaday, you now have a great means to do so. Join your fellow students in voicing their disappointment in decisions made by the AISU board of directors in a cool and productive way.

Follow this link to the student petition: Students’ Petition (Conceived and Written by Students)

Note: Mike Farley and all other adults mentioned have no knowledge of the writing of this petition.

 

Also, if you are a parent, sign this petition: Parent Petition (written and conceived by parents)

If you are neither of these, but care about Mike and Steve and Greg and Kelly a great deal, sign either one. I don’t care. No matter who you are, though please do not sign both. We want this to be as honest and legal of a process as possible, as boring as that is. If you are a student AND a parent (we won’t judge), I guess you can sign both. Otherwise, stay honest please.

IMPORTANT UPDATE:

THERE WILL BE A TOWN HALL Q&A WITH MIKE FARLEY, WHO WILL, WITH A LEGAL INFORMANT, BE ANSWERING ANY QUESTIONS THAT YOU, STUDENTS, PARENTS, OR UNCONNECTED COMMUNITY MEMBERS, MAY HAVE.

IT WILL BE AT 7:00 PM MOUNTAIN TIME, THURSDAY JULY 6, AT THE MURRAY LIBRARY (166 E. 5300 S., Murray UT, 84107).

SEE PICTURE FOR MORE DETAILS.

 

An Open Letter From the Students of AISU to Our Beloved Super-Duper-Intendent Mike Farley

OK CAN GOOD IMPORTANT CRUCIAL PEOPLE IN OUR LIVES AND AISU PLEASE STOP LEAVING ALREADY?!?!? Mr. Farley, you deserve your position. Everyone knows this. AISU is your school. Everything good we have accomplished is a direct result of your work and your mind. We hope everything gets worked out very soon and you can return, despite the situation being as it is right now. AISU owes you everything, from the beautiful building (we don’t blame you for the questionable carpeting choice), to the idealistic mindset of the school as a whole, to the hiring and organizing of the great administration and staff we have today. AISU is a direct result of your intelligence, your determination, your problem-solving skills, your creativity, your idealism, your selflessness, and your charity towards us. We know that you and your family have been more than open about all business dealings and that you would never do anything that you find immoral. We also know that AISU would be nothing without you, and that without you as a guiding force, we cannot continue to make the dream you had for us a reality.

Not to mention, with everyone who’s leaving, we seriously have nothing going for us as a school besides the largest outbreaks of whooping cough recently. We’re going to have to remarket ourselves as “The American International School of Pertussis” or something. Nobody wants that. “AISP” doesn’t sound good at all. It’s totally lame.

If what we hear turns out to be correct, and you have been permanently removed from your position, we will never stop relating you to Steve Jobs when he got fired from dumb Apple, so then he went made Pixar and stuff, and then Apple realized how freaking stupid they were, and hired him back. We hope it takes dumb AISU much less time to figure it out, though. We would also like to remind you that if you have spare time, guest articles for the Gravy will always be accepted (wink wink). (Also, please get back in there and stop them from doing early release Fridays. That’s just a really dumb thing.) (Oh, and get Steve back in here, please. Everybody misses him and he is very needed. And get rid of whoever’s got a problem with you guys. We’ll help. We can, like, call them names and stuff.)

As Ms. Erica’s News Finally Starts to Sink in, AISU Holds Its Breath and Takes a Look Ahead

AISU—As everyone outside of the North Korean prison camps and parts of Communist Cuba knows by now, The Erica Glenn will not be returning to teach choir or direct the performing arts at AISU next year. Ms. Erica has been chosen by Arizona State University (that’s ASU, or AISU without I) to receive the largest scholarship ASU has ever offered, take over the ASU women’s chorus, become a goddess, and pursue her education in choral conducting, all while ASU pays her to do it. Ms. Erica has somehow chosen this over her loving, procrastinating, get-all-the-sucking-out-in-rehearsals (but also sometimes in the performance) middle and high school students. The coin she flipped to make this decision was probably weighted somehow by those heckin ASU people.

Ms. Erica has always been incredibly overqualified for the job she held at AISU, but has used her overqualifications and otherworldly connections to make AISU what it is today: a school that, despite failing miserably at everything, somehow succeeds tremendously at the performing arts.

Because of Ms. Erica, AISU’s performing arts program has had the opportunity to perform with incredible musicians and influential figures such as Erica Glenn. Almost as valuable were opportunities to perform with Dallyn Bayles, Kurt Bestor, Aaron Kenny, That One Guy, and other amazing people, as well as some people who weren’t that amazing but are possibly sort of well-known-ish maybe. Ms. Erica led AISU’s performing arts to undeservingly win countless competitions and awards, from the Utah Shakespearean Festival to the Kurt Bestor Competition to State Music Festivals/Competitions and many more.

Ms. Erica has stuck with AISU’s choirs in times of trial and hardship, usually caused by AISU’s choirs, and helped the choirs get through the hard times and make something of it. From the first showcase for the school during week zero to the latest regional music competition, Ms. Erica didn’t give up on her students (and also probably bribed the judges at regions), and practiced them into being better and slightly more deserving of their accomplishments.

There was a time when AISUers asked hypothetically, almost with a chuckle, “What would AISU be without Ms. Erica?” Now the school must face the horrifying reality: “What will AISU be without Ms. Erica?” And no one is laughing. Truly the school will not be the same without Ms. Erica, who is arguably responsible for all successes and improvements AISU has ever had. In fact, it may well be that without Ms. Erica, AISU becomes, to most observers—including those in Communist Cuba—merely “that school that had the whooping cough outbreak.”

Many students and staff members are expecting AISU to completely shut down not long after Ms. Erica’s announcement. However, in what experts are calling a surprising and risky move, school officials recently announced that AISU will not go hide under a rock somewhere and cry itself to sleep. Instead, plans are to stagger along like a crippled dog and whimper occasionally. Bets on how many days or hours AISU will survive after Ms. Glenn leaves have been circulating throughout the school. Las Vegas has officially placed the over-under at one hour, with most people eagerly taking the under, while others optimistically insist it will last as many as 90 minutes. In anticipation, many staff members and students have already begun looking for greener pastures, such as the Utah Department of Corrections or Alcatraz.

However, some students have a more positive outlook, especially with the news we just received that Ms. Erica’s friend Ms. Sarah will be taking over in Ms. Erica’s place. Ms. Sarah has an impressive resume, and many AISU students hope that she is actually just Ms. Erica in disguise and this whole thing was an elaborate prank gone wrong.

Despite the sense of optimism about Ms. Sarah, Arizona State has reported record numbers of applicants in the past few days, including several AISU students who are nowhere close to graduating. Some students have speculated that this was ASU’s plan all along, and that the school has terminated the recruitment manager, unofficially giving that title to Ms. Erica. In related news, local surgical clinics have reported a sudden increase in men-to-women gender change operations, a trend that is striking similar to the recent increase in the number of audition requests for ASU’s women’s choir.

Ms. Erica has done more for AISU than anyone can ever repay her, and she’ll do the same for ASU. One day, when she is conducting the Mormon Tabernacle Choir or something bigger than that (which is hard to imagine, but then, we once thought the same about the AISU gig), as well as singing every part by herself, and taking whatever she does to unimaginable heights, the one consolation for her former AISU students will be that we can say, with a smile on our face and a song in our heart, “We heard it here first.”

AISU’s Whooping Cough Epidemic AKA “The Plague”

AISU—The American International School of Utah (AISU) has recently been plagued by a strong case of the whooping cough. Doctors describe whooping cough as a rare cough that is potentially more harmful than a regular cough because it causes victims to make a high-pitched “whoop!” sound that doctors find very annoying. Victims are often denied treatment as a result. “I can’t stand it,” one doctor admitted. “It’s worse than fingernails on a chalkboard. So when someone comes to my office and starts whooping, I just make them leave. Sometimes, on their way out, I prescribe an addictive pain killer they don’t need, just to get even.”

Nobody wants that, so school officials have warned students who are not vaccinated against whooping cough to stay home. This decision has fanned the flames of the already-raging debate between parents who believe vaccinations are good because they eradicate deadly diseases and parents who believe vaccinations are part of an elaborate government conspiracy to give everyone autism. It now appears that the vaccinations are also part of a conspiracy to force children to go to school even though people around them will be coughing and making irritating whooping sounds.

AISU’s epidemic has caught the attention of the ever-attentive social media, including a surprising number of gofundme pages for the school, hundreds of Facebook profile pictures that have been changed to little boxes that say “whoops, AISU’s got a cough :-(“, and even a pity-following for the AISU memes page.

However, the most noticeable attention AISU has gotten for being sick has come from Whoopi Goldberg, the inventor of whooping cough. Whoopi tagged AISU in a recent tweet, saying, “When you cough on someone in school, you hope they’ll get sick and cough on someone else. And it’ll become like a wildfire.” Whoopi then added a more personal message: “Congrats to AISU students who didn’t get vaccinations and get to stay home from school! No vaccinations = more vacations!”