Chimera Watch

Unfortunately I don't mean the TVR variety (hello there, you sexy thing... rrrr).

No, I mean the irony of killing them if they become too much like us. JD or not, Mr. Greely seems a little on the fuzzy side.

This concludes the (semi) serious portion of the blog.

Ohmigod!

Not only is there trouble in paradise, but a pattern emerges as well. My faith is shattered.

Pope Mail # 9

Dear Pope:

This feels a lot like I've stolen your lawn gnome and am now photographing it in front of various international landmarks, then sending you the pictures, except you don't have a chatty, overweight wife to gasp at the one where the lawn gnome looks like it's mooning you and then tell all the neighbors that some person stole your lawn gnome and is posing it rudely in front of the Pyramids.

Just me?

Sincerely,
Z

P.S. 9/1000

Fun Fact

Evidently, the brain activity of a baby being circumcised is equivalent to that of a man being shot.

Hmm... I dunno. Could be.

I do know that out of a class of fourteen people only three actually stayed to watch the entire circumcision being performed. And that baby was purple from screaming.

Someone remind me why I'm doing a paper on this.

Something Different

Should your needle point repertoire become too bland, there are ways of spicing it up.

Perspective

Is Dr. Bob any worse than the ancient history professor who would periodically declaim things in Spanish?

The religious studies professor would would mumble and drone about 3/5 of every sentence, then yell (no, I mean YELL) out the remaining 2/5? Who'd do THIS even outside of LECTURE?

The math professor who had seniors write out the lesson content on the board (for extra credit), then she'd sit there and read Cosmo or chat with whoever her pet students were?

The English Lit professor who had no idea who wrote The Goblin Market? Or even what it was? And who pretended that wasn't the case later in the semester?

All those sorry damn professors who delight in using stupid phrases like "we religious historians", or "we in anthropology", or "we writers"?

Oh, wait. Bob does say "we writers" sometimes. Meaning himself. Whose publishing credits are suggestively absent from a comprehensive search. Yet who claims to have been "a mainstay in the cultivation of young [...] writers for some 20 years." Is this guy worse than all the others?

Yes. He's still present tense.

I'm Going To Kill You

Yes, you, Dr. Bob.

I'm going to shoot vodka up your veins. Then I'm going to skewer you and roast you over a slow fire. And while that's going on, I'm going to pay Ben Stein to read The Stand out loud, making sure that Ben stops every three sentences to ask you if you see where things are going.

And I'll laugh. Maniacally.

Take that, Dr. Bob, you ridiculous fraud. Oh, and by the way, you pathetic windbag. Remember that paper you lauded as the very soul of diligence? The very spirit of excellence? A few hours of work, unrevised.

I laugh and point. That is all.

Pope Mail #2

Dear Pope:

I thought that since he endorsed you, heartily at that, you should see this. Think of him as your little buddy, sort of the Gilligan to your Skipper.

Sincerely,
Z

P.S. 2/1000

So far, this is a lot more fun than folding origami cranes.

Pope Mail #1

Dear Pope:

I didn't know whether I should surf for internet porn or mail you, but being that I don't surf for internet porn, I decided to drop you a line.

Congratulations on being chosen, even though you scare me.

Sincerely,
Z

P.S.: 1/1000

Thus concludes my first epistle to the Pontiff. The road toward improving my karma shall be a long one indeed.

Um... Right.

I'm speechless. Of course, it would only make sense that I'm speechless, being that I'm typing, not talking.

Pope Mail?

Now that's exciting. The former Cardinal Ratzinger is proving just how open minded he is by introducing Pope Mail.

benedictxvi@vatican.va

I wonder if sending him 1000 e-mails is anything like folding 1000 paper cranes.

On The Street

I ran into my old homeless boyfriend today.

He's still homeless. Still looks like a filthy Hallmark Jesus. Still thinks I should have black hair.

He doesn't have anyone to drive him around but didn't want to me give him a ride either.

"Come back when you're thirty," he said.

Hah. That number will always go up. Eight years ago, he said twenty five. When I'm thirty, he'll say forty.

He's the sanest bloke I ever met.

Interpret This

There's this radio show where, in addition to music, there's also a dream interpreter, and boy do I use the term loosely, who interprets the dreams of various callers. It might have started as a gimmick, it might not. That's not the point. The point is that no matter what kind of touchy-feely junk the interpreter spouts, people buy it.

This could say that yes, the interpreter knows how to actually interpret dreams. Or it could say that because the interpreter speaks in such crass generalities, like "where in your life do you feel overwhelmed?", "where in your life are you stretching too thin?" and "it might be that you're not spending enough time on yourself," there's going to be a match no matter what. It seems that a lot of people are hell bent on dicarding self examination in favor of gimmicky platitudes fed to them by some hack on the radio.

This interpreter means well. I should say that. But I'll also say the interpreter has made it as far as the interpreter has using the time honored skill of bullshiting. I should know. I used to be a psychic phone friend not once, but twice. A damn good one, before my stupid conscience kicked in.

And now the interpreter, with nothing but spare credentials and a lot of nebuspeak (what candidates do in election years), has managed to teach a course, albeit at a community college (yeah, I'm a snob), on lucid dreaming.

It looks like I'm wasting resources on higher education after all.

Send In The Clown

The worst part about it is that he's hugging some sort of goat. (invalid link)

Grumble. Stupid eBay. The item # is 5574643706. eBay Search: Find Items

More Numbers

15: Minutes Dr. Bob talked about advertising.
07: Times during those 15 minutes he said, "you see where this is going?"
06: Minutes he spent on story from his bartending days.
04: Times he's told that story since start of semester.
20: Minutes he spent reading out loud from book.
02: Games of tic tac toe I lost to myself during all this.

I'm not sure I want to figure out how much of my tuition goes to tonight's babbling.

Love Connection?

So I'm at the university library looking up some extra material for one of the papers I have due, when a shadow falls across the mound of mostly medical journals in front of me. Medical journals being such riveting reads, I'm happy to have a legitimate reason for a break, so a shadow across the table is good enough.

I look up. Standing in front of my table is a guy, a not bad looking blond guy. The split second I have to take him in before he speaks tells me the following things: he's likely younger than me, he probably goes on a lot of dates and whatever he's about to say is utter bullshit. Okay, I'm game. This is going to be more entertaining than looking at circumcision diagrams and bar graphs of infant mortality data.

"Hi," goes Blondie, "aren't you in Dr. M's class?"

I've never heard of Dr. M. "Yeah." One of those smiles. "How did you know?"

"I saw you coming out of there."

That's interesting. "No kidding."

One of those pauses. I let go of the journal, making sure that the nasty circumcision diagram shows. Of course he sees it.

"You pre-med?"

Once upon a time, before chemistry vanquished me in a not so gallant fight. "Nah, it's a hobby."

Blondie stares, I stare back. A moment is shared. What makes it special is that my hair isn't clean. This makes sense, if you're female.

"Good one," says he. "Am I bothering you?"

"Not so far. Did you want to bother me?"

"Maybe. Do you want to do something sometime?"

Oooh, straight and to the point. No wonder he gets dates. But then, the creepy guy who accosted me in the candy aisle of Walgreens around Valentine's Day was direct too when he leered at me and said, and what a classic that was, "Hey, how you doin." I doubt he had many dates. But I digress. Back to Blondie and his question.

"That would require knowing you."

He grins like a fool. His teeth are super white. I'm not sure how I feel about that. "No problem. I'm Dylan."

This is my cue to tell him my name, exchange information and so forth, and I did tell myself I would play along. Which I do. Sort of. "Ohmigod, you're, like, the fourth Dylan I met this week." He's the first Dylan I met in a couple of years. "Must be a sign, or something, all leading up to you. What's your e-mail?"

He doesn't look at all confused as he tells me what it is. Point for Dylan.

"So okay then, Dylan number 4. I'll e-mail you, k?"

He grins again. His teeth are rather disturbing, they're that white. "And you'll tell me your name?" He must get more dates than I thought.

"Sure thing, Number Four."

He walks off without losing a beat and I go back to my journals. I'm not sure who was toying with whom, which means I have to mail him and find out.

I think I'll call myself Daphne.

Not My Poison

Today was the most boring Saturday in recent memory. My day consisted of the following three activities: lounging, yawning and dozing. All mostly outside.

I tried reading, but it required focus I didn't have. I suppose I could have tried watching TV, except I really don't watch TV. I could have also gone to the park, or someplace similar, but by the time those thoughts lumbered into my consciuseness I was already brain damaged from watching the first flies of the season buzz.

Some people might consider all this relaxing, but the only thing I can say for today is I lost more brain cells staring at the sky than I ever did during my Smirnoff-in-the-freezer phase.

Haiku After Nap

Cherries in my mouth.
Your doppelganger's fingers.
Whoa there, Keanu!

Priorities

I should be napping, not doing this. I stayed up re-reading The Sorrows of Young Werther last night. This may sound boring, but it's a special book for me. It allowed me to discover the joy of saying "fuck off" without saying "fuck off."

Trip down nostalgia lane: this was the book I tormented my French teacher with in high school. Nothing like burying your face in a book by a German writer to give the finger to a middle aged, faded woman who couldn't stop talking about the lovely pastries she ate when she lived in Paris for a year. It worked well enough to let me change from French to Latin late in the semester, but it gained me no friends.

Luckily for me, I've since reformed my attitude on education and refined my tactics. These days, if I feel like flipping professors off, I'll either demolish one argument or correct one statement. All in the most cordial possible way. It's the pc equivalent of hunting big, dangerous game in the Serengeti.

Ah, the joys of living on the edge.

More Frivolous Information

Just in case we couldn't figure this out by ourselves, here comes yet another pseudo scientific opinion to confirm the obvious. Although if you ask me, the respondents were entirely too generous.

Now this guy, he's got IT. He's charming, diffident, smart and playful. Word.