The Inspiring Musings of Mr. Peppe
compiled by his 2005 second period biology class
also with contributions from the 2004, 2006 and 2007 classes



WATCH Mr. Peppe sing I'm My Own Grandpa!!

Mr. Peppe pretending to be different things
  • "Pretend I'm a NADH2."
  • "If I want to be a one-celled creature..."
  • "If I'm a green plant..."
  • "If I'm a hydrogen..."
  • "If I'm one of the chlorophyll molecules..."
  • "If I'm a heterozygous..."
  • "If I'm the nucleus..."
  • "If I'm the giraffe with a shorter neck..."
  • "If you're a famous hospital..."
  • "I'm the food. I've just left the stomach and I'm very acidic."
  • "If I'm a cell in your leg...or say I'm a brain cell up in your head..."
  • "If you're in here you might be urine someday."


    Mr. Peppe's threats, warnings, instructions & advice
  • "There are going to be some nasty phone calls home!"
  • "Be quiet, or I'll sing again!"
  • "All of you take your proper seats right now, before I, er, rip your fingers out."
  • "If you get a low grade after a whole period of me explaining, I'm going to throw you out the window."
  • "Be quiet, or I won't explain anymore!"
  • "Next time I see a note passed, you're going to eat it...It's good for you, it's carbohydrate."
  • "Cara, are you hungry?" (see above)
  • "Last person to stop speaking gets a spanking!"
  • "...Or else I'll block your active site!"
  • "If I see you throw it, you eat it!"
  • "You can't open a lysosome inside a cell!"
  • "You don't want to expose your cows to radiation."
  • "Use one end for blowing and one to put in the bubbles. It doesn't taste very good."
  • "Don't throw anything except your voice."
  • "Don't rub my bald spot!"
  • "Any time you're breathing, put goggles on."
  • "In little letters here you can put '90% water', even though I'm not going to tell you that."
  • "Alex, the sharpener works better if you do it fast."
  • "If you have no idea what you're doing, continue doing it."
  • "Dan, don't be influenced by her. She's a bad girl."
  • "You can use lighter fluid to clean your shoes."
  • "You don't get the clean table award."
  • "Remember it if you've forgotten."
  • Mr. Peppe: "Put away the book." Student: "What book?" Mr. Peppe: "Don't speak out, OK?"
  • "If you're all done, you can meditate on all the things you learned today."
  • "You want to use numbers that are multiples of one."
  • "Don't worry about the full sentence. That's English teacher nonsense."
  • "When reading a question, don't pay attention to the question part. It might throw you off."
  • (about a wasp flying around the room) "Is he taking notes? He's one of my students. That's what happens when you talk too much."
  • "You take the names I give you."
  • Brian: "I see." Mr. Peppe: "Don't see, just listen."
  • "That's two. Three, you get an award for silly comments of the day."
  • "Let me speak, and then laugh."
  • "Read the directions carefully"
  • "Don't go anywhere, of course."
  • "If you like something I say, express it in glee to yourself after."
  • "Have a nice steak!" (at end of protein slideshow)
  • "I know you don't want a break, but take a quick two-minute break."
  • "...and if you're lucky, later this year we'll act out the menstrual cycle." (This actually happened. He called it "The Menstrual Show".)
  • "Pretend the people grading the test are really stupid. This should be easy for you because I am one of the graders."
  • "You guys have to drink some tea before you come in."
  • "You can talk all you want as long as I can't hear it."



    Mr. Peppe's analogies & examples
  • "I've got a really cool analogy for this one."
  • "Want to see me release energy?...Want to see me do it again?" (ATP cups analogy: small cup is ADP, big cup is ATP. To get energy, you blow the little cup out of the big cup.)
  • "Ready for my fork analogy?"
  • Forks analogy (you need 2 forks to eat. In an ionic bond, one person steals another's fork. In a covalent bond, they share forks.)
  • "Let's share two forks!"
  • "Could one atom steal a fork?"
  • "I've got 3 forks and I only need 2."
  • Hand analogy for enzymes (hands are the substrate, a person representing an enzyme has to put them together)
  • Balloon inside of a box (cytoplasm inside cell wall)
  • "A girl and a boy are dancing, and another boy and girl are dancing, and they switch!"
  • "You cut the girl's arm off and switch it with the boy's arm...I like this analogy, you'll get the idea now." (crossing-over of chromosomes)
  • "Once upon a time, I had 10 kids on this side of the room. I told them to run around randomly...So they were running around like madmen, like a bunch of 8th graders going to lunch...running around, banging their heads together...The end. Lovely story." (from the diffusion story)
  • Miscellaneous mold left in the microwave for two months (he showed us the picture and we had to guess what it was)
  • Dead lentil plant (example for lentil seed lab)
  • Sam Starch, Gary Glucose, Ian Iodine
  • "One day, you know, the Henry the Hydrogen Molecule stories will be published. You'll see."
  • "All these guys are climbling up the well, and the guys in the middle are sinking a little." (about the meniscus)
  • Sodium hydroxide is dancing
  • Baby fatty acids = chubby acids
  • Bilipid dance
  • "Starch is made up of many glucose molecules, represented by this piece of tissue paper." (attempts to rip paper but can't, then throws it on table)
  • "My butt is negative."
  • "My butt is oxygen...now I remember why I said that."
  • "This is the way your kidney cleans your room."
  • "While the sperm's killing himself trying to get up there, the egg is sitting and putting on her makeup."
  • "So the sperm's had its swimming lessons and has its packed lunch, and now it puts on a raincoat."
  • "Unfortunately there's no public transport inside the female. If there was, the sperm could take a bus."


    Mr. Peppe on enlightenment
  • "You know I pause when it's something extremely enlightening."
  • "Put that away. You're being enlightened. Marc - you can see he's already being enlightened."
  • "As you become amazed, try to control your excitement. Try to control this incredible enlightenment phase."
  • "You're being enlightened by the enlightener."
  • "If you listen carefully you will be enlightened. Judah, do you want to leave today not enlightened?"
  • "Do you mind if I enlighten you for just a moment?"
  • "I can see you are all awed by this phospholipid knowledge."
  • "Can I hear silence and amazement?"
  • "This is what your body does. You're going to be amazed."


    Mr. Peppe on the obvious and contradictory
  • "I bought these timers for timing things."
  • "I'm going to use my brain to figure this out."
  • "You see it branching? It doesn't actually show that."
  • "We want to use it as a building block, to build something."
  • "C is a muscle of an animal."
  • "We have a lot of table sugar on our tables."
  • "We have these nitrogen bases - they're called that because they're made of nitrogen."
  • "It separates out immediately afterward. It takes a while."
  • "It's not complete dominance, it's more incomplete dominance."
  • "By enlarging the picture, the picture got enlarged..."
  • "You must have a partner, unless you work alone."
  • "It's basically much more complex."
  • "It's not used for photosynthesis. Yes, it is."
  • "...which we'll learn about in a sec - next Tuesday or Wednesday."
  • "The plasmids have only several thousand base pairs. They're very very small."
  • "There are only 2000 genes."
  • "There are maybe a trillion billion trillion trillion billion to the trillion trillion of these, but only a trillion trillion of these."
  • "As far as we know, plants don't have a nervous system."
  • "Either the T goes into the gamete, or the T goes into the gamete."
  • "These are the 3 things I brought in." (holding up 4 fingers)



    Mr. Peppe on Mr. Peppe
  • "I could have a mutation in my brain that makes me really intelligent. I think that's what happened."
  • "Even when you're old with no more hair, and you have a mustache like me..."
  • "Let's say my father gave me the allele for curly hair and my mother gave me straight hair. I of course have no hair, but if I had it would be curly."
  • "It's nothing to be concerned about - it's called degeneration of brain cells. By the time you send your kids to me it'll probably be a problem."
  • "Excuse me, I'm lonely up here."
  • "I've decided what's going on."
  • "Obviously, this is me."
  • "In June, before the exam, I had a full head of hair."
  • "That's my hair joke...for the day."
  • "When you have big muscles like I do..."
  • "I like to show different pictures of the same thing."
  • "I have one more stupid thing to say! Listen up!"
  • "Excuse me, I'm saying profound things!"
  • "I'm the new Ms. Kent."
  • "I did make the best review of the systems ever created by man."
  • "Considering you just received the best review sheet made by man, I should be hearing awe."
  • "I don't know what this is, but I'm going to pretend it's practical."
  • "I don't know what the problem is, but I consider it a problem."
  • "I make enough stupid comments, we don't need yours."
  • "I'm not doing my job as a biology teacher unless I tell you certain cool things about the systems."
  • "I might've done this wrong."
  • "Maybe I'm dead."
  • "I don't want to be mathematical. I can't do it."
  • "I'm just like you. If you put me in a room with a person talking, I won't hear anything they say."
  • "I'm not going to think. I learn when I'm thinking. You think."
  • "When I steal things, I want to steal all of it."
  • (while eating spaghetti at his desk as students are at the door turning lights off) "Don't leave me in the dark now!"
  • "Now, I didn't know that trick!"
  • "I'm going to say enough stupid things myself. You can be quiet."
  • "My analogy, which is of course excellent..."
  • "The second most important thing that happened in 1953 was the discovery of the genetic code. Does anyone know what the first most important was? Anyone?...Mr. Peppe was born!"
  • (after misspelling mitochondria) "I've only written it once or twice in my life."


    Mr. Peppe on bio class
  • "You have the advantage of not being the guinea pigs for this lab."
  • "More, are you kidding? Yup."
  • "We still have the last two points, can you believe it?"
  • "Oh, this is fun, isn't it?"
  • "That thing that happens on tests...high low low high..."
  • "This is so cool. This is why you have to take AP biology. This is why you all have to be biology majors. This is why you all have to be biologists."
  • "You know when you're praying and you say 'please God let me get better grades in biology', and God answers and says 'you need to study more'..."
  • (about a demonstration) "I don't know why I threw it up on you yesterday."
  • "Let's pretend we learned absolutely nothing in the last unit. Maybe it's not that hard to pretend."
  • "If someone sneezes, no one has to bless anyone because you're all blessed just by coming in this room."
  • "I still have 30 seconds left of the period!"
  • "I had students pouring glucose indicator, and I said 'You idiots!'"
  • Student: "We never did that." Mr. Peppe: "Oh yeah, you guys were a little restless that day, I remember..."
  • "People came up to me and said 'there's no bubbles', and I said 'you need to put water!' Don't laugh, it might have been you."
  • "Soon it will be vacation/Isn't that really swell?/You don't have to learn about photosynthesis/Or about the parts of the cell." (song before Christmas break, to tune of You Better Watch Out)
  • "We had a lovely chat about control groups."
  • "Every once in a while you learn something really important in this class, like artichokes in Italy."
  • "What's fun is that we're supposed to be learning but we're just playing."
  • "What could be better than hearing me talk about biology?"



    Mr. Peppe teaching
  • "A histogram is when a line graph marries a bar graph and they have children."
  • "The glucose says 'I'm coming too!' Bump. The glucose can't get through."
  • "It's a high-energy electron - whing!"
  • "The chlorophyll says 'I can't believe I lost an electron!'"
  • "The oxygen goes away, says 'Tough luck for you guys!'"
  • (explains) "These are details you don't need to know." (explains more)
  • "I have created a baby protein. Awww...cute!"
  • "...to create something called 'soap'."
  • "The neutral goes in and grabs it, and then the charged pulls it out." (on soap)
  • "Chlorine must be big, it's a monster!"
  • "The cell controls the activities of the cell...wait! No! The nucleus..."
  • "All of you - er, half of you - have a day or two of menopause a month."
  • (mitotic cleavage) "I looked up pictures of cleavage online, and you wouldn't believe what I found." (after which he Googled it on the projection screen)
  • "The foxes are having a wonderful time now, with all these moose around - having a barbecue every night."
  • "If your liver takes ammonia and puts it in your blood, it will kill you. You will simply die."
  • "Regular good old cool cells"
  • "This is a Peppe heart...This is easy to draw, but if you had a heart like this you wouldn't last more than a minute. It looks like the head of a giant ant."
  • "It makes kind of a murmuring squishy sound."
  • "We get our energy from plants, who get it from the sun. Thanks sun!" (on a handout)
  • "In C12 there is an atomic mass of 12, and in C14 there is an atomic mass of 12...wait, no, there is an atomic mass of 14!"
  • "One thing to know about proteins..." (before listing a ton of stuff)
  • "Heart sounds (dub-dip)" (on a homework assignment)
  • "We're in the small, small...well, we're actually much smaller than that."
  • "The leaf is smart."
  • "Animal cell is happy :)" (on blackboard)
  • "Just think of all the money you can save not having to buy false eyelashes."
  • "Now we're in trouble, because now we're going to die."
  • Lecturing about the polarity of water, then lecturing about an annoying college professor who lectured on the polarity of water.
  • "This may not be right, by the way. In fact it isn't."

    On the test about state labs:
  • Which was the control group? D) the group where Mr. Peppe squeezed clothespins while playing the guitar
  • Why is starch converted to glucose in the digestive system? D) Starch is explosive and self-destructs after 10 minutes in the body
  • What is being investigated? D) effect of squeezing clothespins while taking a biology test on final score
  • ...We must try to preserve and protect c) biology teachers
  • Safety goggles must be used because b) they look really cool c) they help you see better if it starts snowing or raining in the lab

  • (about greenhouse effect film) "Quiet, or you'll miss the plot!"
  • "Why? Because - I'm just going to run through this..."
  • "I'm going to leave this up for another 74 seconds."
  • "You feel like you won't be able to keep this up - you see little stars and everything."
  • "major very important observation"
  • "Peptide bonds were made from the famous scientist Mr. Peppe."
  • Always puts things as a question: "they do this, don't they?"
  • "You have all these complex chemical reactions, and you suddenly get Derek! He just pops up."
  • "They had their first child and it was born an A, and everyone was very very happy."
  • "What did it do? Nothing at all. It simply died."
  • "There is a gradual change of things to the final perfection which is us."
  • "The cell membrane is a mosaic pattern. A mosaic is when you stick tiles in soft mud."
  • (When labeling one axis of a graph, switched from product to rate and back 6 times)
  • "What I want to show you next is when it gets fun."
  • Seeds = poor little guys
  • "You are now going to make a discovery."
  • "Then of course there's the magic day when you're born. A very happy day and all that."
  • "Let's say we're all one species in this room."


    Other weirdness
  • "1...2...3...Next!" ("uno...due...tre...la prossima!")
  • "1, 3 - I don't have time for 2."
  • "Life is full of chemical reactions."
  • "Just a little announcement from the Society to Prevent Cruelty to Slugs..."
  • "Achoosneeze!"
  • "This book does a lot of things. First of all, it's blue. Blue's a nice color. I myself like darker blue but this is nice."
  • (after someone said something was ghetto) "Yes, it is ghetto!...Ghetto is a very good adjective."
  • "You and yourself"
  • "This is a serious problem. It really is."
  • "Who's hyper? Everybody."
  • (while screaming at a student) Another student: "Nice tie, Mr. Peppe." Mr. Peppe (calmly): "Thank you. It's European."
  • "Judah, what color is this?"
  • "This is quite a bit better - in fact, mucho better."
  • "You don't get it. I haven't said it yet. You do not."
  • "2, 3, 4...no...1, 2, 3, 4..."
  • "Birds! Finches! Chicky chicky chickies! Finchy finchies!"
  • (sea cucumbers) "I haven't been reading about them recently...If you want to research sea cucumber genetics, I'm sure the class would be fascinated."
  • "Do you remember when you were a sperm and an egg only?"
  • "I made this paper red. Red for energy. Red for...OK, it's pink."
  • "You just don't know! You kids don't hang out in food canning places!"
  • Flatworms (on the first day during attendance, he told us about an experiment with flatworms for no apparent reason)
  • "I'm hearing thinking!"
  • (takes out singing, moving reindeer toy, attempts to sing along, dances a little)
  • Student: "Your sink is on." Peppe: "Oh. That's interesting."
  • "They're gonna have me make a Zen Diagram."
  • "Hi Darwin!"
  • "Oops! I made a mutation."
  • "You're S-L-O-W slow!"
  • "You could say we already said that, and you'd be right. However, no one thought about that."
  • "Make everybody sit down, Molly."
  • "Some like it hot. ...I hope that's not from a pornographic film or something."
  • "It's not as easy to draw upside down."
  • "I don't know why I started with B. I should have started with A."
  • "You are much too happy. I do not like all this glee."
  • "I can bang my head against the wall, but unless you pay attention..."
  • (after accidentally writing that a man marries a man on a genetics problem) "I was trying to be with the times..."
  • "Peppe's Pizza!"
  • "Mustache!"
  • "The moral of the story is, get a better washing machine."
  • "Alex! Stop staring at Cara and pay attention! I know you're in love, and it's a beautiful, beautiful thing, but you need to pay attention in class!" (After going on like this for a while, he then insisted on telling us a story about his aunt who's 92 and is dating a guy she met at her middle school reunion.)
  • (looking over shoulder at this list) "Ah, you liked that, didn't you?"



    As we know, Mr. Peppe is not getting any less weird as time goes on, so send us quotes from your year!