30 November 2008

Conspiracy? You Decide

Conspicuously missing from this list of reasons why I might be so tired is "because it is the week before finals, your applications to PhD programs are due in two weeks and you've been pounding out the final version of your twenty-page critical writing sample, and you're training for another marathon. Oh, and you have PMS, so you keep waking up in a puddle of sweat."

Why is that?

28 November 2008

Admitting You Have a Problem Is Only the First Step

Whilst Christmas shopping from the comfort of my jammies, I found a post at Amazon.com titled I'm a Wagner Addict: Now What?

Sadly, from the sounds of it, Wagner is merely her gateway drug.

It's the Hap-Happiest Season...

Conversation regarding the three minutes of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade for which we all gathered, following which we turned on Alice's Restaurant and sang along to that, instead:

Me: I can't believe they have to have a girl carrying a sign. Anybody who doesn't know this is Andy Williams doesn't deserve to live.

My forty-year-old sister: Well, dear, there are young people in the world.

Me: And until just now, I'd thought I was one of them.

14 November 2008

Behold the Irony.

Got the following email from my sister this evening. This is the sister, it must be said, who has her PhD in some subfield of physical anthropology that I can't even pronounce, let alone spell, and the father who has two master's degrees, and a juris doctor.

Yeah, that sounds like Dad. He's a lot cleverer than you'd think for someone who can't spell colandar. Of course, I can't spell colandar, but I'm not nearly as clever as Dad.

Um, yes. That would be colander of which you write? Or would that be making my point altogether too obvious?

Yes, Semicolons.

Um, thanks Jess?

Rules:

1. Link to the person who tagged you.
2. Share 7 random and/or weird facts about you.
3. Tag 7 random people at the end, and include links to their blogs.

1. I darn near caused a riot in last night's COM 101 class at College A, from an impromptu combination of Aristotle's theory of rational souls, Scott McCloud's comics, an American flag, and altogether too much Coke Zero. It was one of my finer lectures of the semester. I'm so proud.

2. My favourite bedtime ritual involves a long, hot bath and a New York Times crossword puzzle.

3. This crazy marathon runner? Once flunked gym class in high school.

4. I have more grey hair at 35 than many people have hair, period.

5. During grad school, I suffered from a recurring nightmare about semicolons.

6. This morning my dad left me a note on the grocery store receipt that said, "The butler was in the pantry." I laughed for about half an hour. On his way out he'd asked me if I needed anything, and my response had been, "A clue." Be careful what you ask for around here.

7. I have a deep and abiding fear that if I ever move to Ithaca, no one will ever be able to make me move anywhere else ever again.

Last time, I failed on the tagging other people part, so this time I tag fiat, Zanne, the Matron, and....ummm.....uh......I'll get back to you on that.

07 November 2008

Even the Toaster Is Frightened

Ever have one of those days where you're driving home from work, pondering the nature of electricity, and light waves, and those telekinetic people who allege to bend spoons, and idly wondering whether brainwaves can actually in fact physically affect objects....and as you're pondering all these things in your little noggin, the nearest transformer blows up in a searing shower of blue sparks, shorting out the traffic light as you're driving through it?

I'm thinking maybe I should stay under the bed this weekend.

06 November 2008

The Rest of the Equation

So let's get this straight. While we're all standing around, whooping it up and dancing in the streets, storming the White House fence and partying, honking our horns back and forth across 125th Street, being all self-congratulatory?

While we're all, Look at us, we can elect a black man, prejudice is a thing of the past?

The most liberal state in the Union is out there quietly voting in favour of Proposition 8.

That's right, folks, we can let a man of a different colour into the White House, but God forbid we give equal rights to all those gay people.

The fuck is this? A democracy, or Animal Farm?

05 November 2008

Equation: Basic Fractions

It only took us as a nation 140 years past the legislation that decreed it, but last night one man found, once and for all, those missing 2/5. Welcome home, America.




Yes
 We 
  Can.

For the Next Time I Think I Had a Crappy Run

from the Associated Press

PRESCOTT, ARIZ. — Authorities in Arizona say a jogger attacked by a rabid fox ran a mile with the animal's jaws clamped on her arm and then drove herself to a hospital.

The Yavapai County sheriff's office says the woman told deputies she was on a trail near Prescott on Monday when the fox attacked and bit her foot.

She said she grabbed the fox by the neck when it went for her leg but it bit her arm.

The woman wanted the animal tested for rabies so she ran a mile to her car with the fox still biting her arm, then pried it off and tossed it in her trunk and drove to the Prescott hospital.

The sheriff's office says the fox later bit an animal control officer. He and the woman are both receiving rabies vaccinations.