I found this list of notes I made on the back of an envelope but can’t for the life of me remember why I made them. In fact they make no sense whatsoever. I’ve been puzzling over them for days and thought maybe they had something to do with something I had seen online and so in desperation I turn to you. I wrote them during or after 2003.
Maybe you went to the future, then wrote those notes so that you could see them in the past to avoid making a mistake that will someday destroy the planet. If this is the case, then you’re future self acted in vain because what happened shall, and what is done will someday become what is.
mmmmm… oatmeal.
Let’s re-examine the bolded one and see if the others don’t start to make sense.
They sound like humorous photo captions but I think I like **harmless’ **beer theory better.
What he was doing with my pencil in his ear, I’ll never know.
I’ve seen notes my man wrote on post-it notes stuck to the outside of video tape cases, to explain which episodes of the X-files or Simpsons or whatever had been recorded on that tape which might be pretty random-sounding (Giant underground mushroom; Barney gets flying licence). Maybe something like that?
This reminds me of a scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, but that was released in 1975 and not 1986.
What type of envelope is it?
Are you sure it’s your hand writing?
Is it written in pen, pencil, or something else?
We need details!
“pea green boat obs. ref.” is an anagram of “onset of a pee grabber”
I think Imight be onto something. Or maybe I just need help.
I’m with Regallag on this. You gave yourself notes from the future to take back with you in the past. Only is you missed your cue to Do Something Profound:
12/18/80 Ahab Spears boot Clearly this has something to do with Britney Spears. Her birthdate is 12-2-81. There is some kind of apocalyptic corrolation there that I am missing.
**9/14/91 pea green boat obs. ref. **IYou are right.
8/4/84 Shot elephant w/ pencil in ear Got nothin for either the date or pacyderm.
Could they be references to dreams? Or racehorses?
They’re on the back of a Delta Sky Miles envelope for my Grandma. It was unopened till just a little while ago so I could see I date. It would have come in the mail July 2003. I wrote them all at once and in pencil, probably within a few weeks or that date. With a mechanical pencil. And it’s most definately my handwriting. Looking at them nothing sounds familiar.
The beer sounds interesting but I would have been only 8 at the notice. Notice it’s the only one out of order too.
Maybe I went mad for a while and don’t remember it?
Thread headings from past Straight Dope topics?
[QUOTE=Shirley Ujest]
12/18/80 Ahab Spears boot Clearly this has something to do with Britney Spears. Her birthdate is 12-2-81. There is some kind of apocalyptic corrolation there that I am missing.
But it is the birthdate of Christina Aguilera. Hmmmm…
12/18/80 Ahab Spears boot
9/14/81 pea green boat obs. ref.
8/4/84 Shot elephant w/ pencil in ear
3/15/82 beer that causes giant spiders to come through walls
8/2/86 Just a flesh wound
double 9/10/86
5/22/91 double
Whoops, I had transcribed the wrong number in the 2nd entry. It’s 81, not 91
Were you thinking of writing a weird comic literary play? Ahab goes after Moby Dick but spear himself in the foot and yells D’oh!
The Owl and the Pussycat go to see in a pea green boat
Groucho Marx tells a joke about shooting and elephant . . . I’m loosing it from here.
What kind of things were you doing in 2003?
Some of these sound like Harper’s puzzle clues.
A good example of one is “Train with energy tears around green.”
The answer is celery.
I imagine most of you are now going .
The El is a train. Energy is E. Tears around is c—ry. And celery is a green.
Tricky, eh?
How about page references to a book? I’m thinking Hemmingway might have shot an elephant, with possibly either he or the elephant with a pencil behind his ear.
or perhaps they are nursery rhymes references:
pea green boat - owl and the pussy cat
beer that causes giant spiders to come through walls - little miss muffett
Shot elephant w/ pencil in ear - ummmm
Just a flesh wound - Dracula?
double 9/10/86 - ummmm
5/22/91 double - ummmm
draculae
[Holmes]Quite possible.
It is also quite possible that around this point in time you were watching a show called Last Comic Standing. And while watching said show, you observed a comic named Dat and how "He has this book where he’s cataloged every joke in every show he’s ever done ".
Perhaps you wrote this as an example for someone, or perhaps logged a few of your own that you had managed to remember for that long only to forget now.[/H]
Yeah, I got nothing. 
To me they read like ideas for short stories, songs, poems or jokes. JAT.