Actual Quote

Sitting in the K-State Library. Listening to a wanna-be intellectual.

"Really funny story. One of those popular girls in school was a
senior when I was like, a freshman. And she was like dolphins don't
have sex. And I like, think she like meant 'fish'. And I said, 'they
breathe air', and she's like 'no way'. And I saw her on facebook the
other day and I thought of that story. And I like laughed and
laughed."

Holy god. I may shoot myself if I hear 'like' forty more times.

Weekly Report #2

Ahh...life on the road. Too much crappy corporate food. Too little sleep. Random moments of feeling like I'm a bad parent for missing some cute moment from my son's life.

Moo.


The Minnow Report:

Uh...still on the farm. For some reason I'm wedded to this item.


The Baby Report:

Well, he was a little 'sensitive' today. I'm not sure how else to describe it. When the boy gets sensitive, then random little things can just cause him to lose it. Apparently at the day care today, another little baby (the 2nd youngest) took an oversized lego block from him (he wasn't playing with it or anything). And Alton just lost it. Tears, wailing, extended crying. I kinda think this is a lingering effect of his sleep schedule being all screwed up by the sickness. On the other hand, what the heck do I know?


Facebook Monster:

The monster swallowed me back in March or April or something. So far, I'm pretty much just using it to lose fun word games against my friends and family. Oh, and to annoy the hell out of everyone else by posting about politics.


Speaking of politics:

The more I read and hear Obama, the more I wonder: Is this too good to be true? I almost wonder if McCain conceded the race when he picked Palin. "Hey, I don't even think Obama would make a bad president," I envision McCain saying to himself, "But we gotta run some kinda candidate. Let's just appease the damn ultra-conservative nutjobs and kill the campaign."

I'm generally skeptical of all the talk that "this election is so important." Every election is like that. This election is actually a lot less important than 2000, given what we know now. Which brings us to another interesting point.


My abilities to predict the mid-term future are eerily accurate:

Let's just go over some of my fearless predictions from the last ten years:
- "Bush is as intelligent as a brain-dead monkey on crack" (published in my college newspaper)
- "Are you kidding? If Gore had been president, I wouldn't be worried that our President is going to start a war with a random country and get thousands of people killed" (spoken to my sister on 9/11/01; My sister's comment "Right now, I'm so glad Gore didn't become president")
- "John McCain is just supporting Bush because he knows there isn't anyone else in the Republican party that will be able to run in a general election in '08" (spoken to my wife after McCain started campaigning for Bush in '04)
- "Bush will delay any environmental progress to the point where it will cost us ridiculous amounts of money to fix the problems, and since the problems will already be occurring, we might not be able to." (paraphrased quote that I repeated ad naseum from 2000-2004)
- "Well, at least now it will be obvious whose policies turned the country into a disaster." (2 days after the 2004 election...I spent the first day drunk and depressed)
And these are just the big ones. When it comes to political policies and politicians, I have never been wrong. I know, I know. That sounds impressive doesn't it? It isn't. That was the most obvious common sense.


Music:

God...anything but politics please. I am too addicted. I can't stop...I really can't.




The Oxford Comma:

There's a long-overdue discussion that needs to be had about the Oxford comma. Let me first explain what the hell it is. The classic example is the following sentence:

To my parents, Ayn Rand, and God.

The comma of relevance is the one after Ayn Rand. Oxford comma enthusiasts would ask you to consider the same sentence without the comma.

To my parents, Ayn Rand and God.

The problem is that this is ambiguous. Are the parents in question Ayn Rand and God? Or is the author thanking her parents, and Ayn Rand, and God. This kind of ambiguity lead Oxford (and some other significant style guides) to advocate using the oxford comma in all cases. As far as my major advisor was concerned, that's the end of the story. PUT THE DAMN COMMA IN THERE!

But hold on, no rule in english makes any sense, and here's why: The Oxford comma may additionally add ambiguity. Look at this sentence (I pulled this off Wiki):

To my mother, Ayn Rand, and God.

Is her mother Ayn Rand? Or is she thanking both her mother and Ayn Rand? Ah HA (Fuck you very much Council of Biological Editors)! This is where the controversy comes from.

If I could take a step off of my 'anti-oxford' podium here: The problem/blessing is that the English language is the most versatile, confusing, mis-mashed, unregulated, wishy-washy, dialogue-driven language on the planet. (by comparison, French has a single dedicated authority that governs grammar, L'Académie française, and as a result the language is damn idiotic: Further reading in Bryson and here [ug-that was a long parenthetical statement]). Where was I?

This English weirdness means that no rules exist in English with exceptions. Those exceptions are granted not by some authority, but by just being used and to hell with the authorities. The Grammer Nazi's [SEE!]in this country are fighting that battle for consistency for good reasons (how else are we going to understand each other), but they are constantly losing that battle for reasons related to common sense and necessity.

I think Lynne Truss in Eats, Shoots & Leaves said it best:
"There are people who embrace the Oxford comma, and people who don't, and I'll just say this, never get between these people when drink has been taken."

Needless to say my advisor was in the former category, I in the latter, and we were lucky that alcohol was rarely served in our Monday morning lab meetings.


Random comment I made to myself when watching cable in the hotel room:

“There’s a place called hidden valley where kids don’t only eat their vegetables, they love them.”

That’s a very hidden valley.

Final thought:

The older I get the more I don't care about pissing people off. Based on my experience with people older than me, this is just going to get worse.

Christmas List

We're doing this early this year, because otherwise I'll forget and just want everyone to buy me "world peace". Pretty boring gift if you've ever gotten it, I always end up taking it back.

The list almost ended up being in completely reverse order. I'll add to it in time. Remember, if we don't spend recklessly, the economy will suck.

1. An Angry Minnow Brewpub hat (http://www.angryminnow.com/). The black one.

2. An XCKD t-shirt. Specifically, the one that says "Stand Back, I'm going to Try Science" (http://store.xkcd.com/)

3. Help is on the Way. A collection of comics from Basic Instructions.

4. Some Bob the Angry Flower Books: This one and this one.

5. The Free Darko Book.

6. Books 2 and 3 of the Bartimaeus Trilogy (by Johnathan Stroud).

7. A digital scale for the kitchen (like this one...ooh, or this one!).

8. Some of those salt cellars that Alton Brown uses.

9. This should be much higher on the list, because I want it so desperately, but the entire Red Versus Blue boxed set is now available. Somebody please buy it for me!

10. This image of a walleye.

11. This comic book creator program.

12. This old copy of Frank Cross's Handbook of Fishes of Kansas.

13. This poster for the kitchen. Or this one. Or this one. Or this one.

Weekly Report #1

Remember when I used to do these via email?  No?  Well I did...although I didn't know as many people then.  Anyway, since I'm barely keeping up with life, but I'd like to keep friends/family in the loop, we're re-instituting this exciting and fun-filled format.

The Minnow Report:

Still living in exile on the farm.  I assume everything is fine with her.


The Baby Report:

Where to begin?  After 2 weeks of a cold and a severely lacerated tongue, the baby started off the week with a fun day at home with mom (thanks to Columbus day) and then came down with a fever.  And just kept having a fever.  The baby who's never been sick for more than 12 hours had a fever for ~40, and has never been more cuddly in his life.  Thankfully, it appears the worst is passed us.  But I swear, the guys at the ER are going to remember us now.


The Election Report:

Too much politics already...moving on...


The Cool Stuff on the Internet Report:

Doesn't Yao Ming look a LOT taller than Shaq.
Pictures for Sad Children.

Ok, that's it actually.


The NBA Report:

Nobody cares...but hell yes!  I'm going to be at the first ever Oklahoma City Thunder game.  Does anyone have a Sonics jersey I can borrow?


The Last Word:

Healthy...We're focusing on getting Healthy here.

Screw up

Whenever I think I've screwed something up of a particular magnitude,
I have the most amazing sinking feeling. I'm basically paralyzed and
unable to think. I can't imagine how I could be so stupid.
Unfortunately, I get this feeling a lot.

Amazingly enough, if I realize that it wasn't a screw-up after all, I
feel a brief wash of relief....BUT I STILL FEEL MISERABLE. A few
weeks ago I thought I had inadvertently racked up hundreds of dollars
in charges on a work phone. When the bill came in and I realized I
had been using my personal phone (no charges, incidentally), and
therefore hadn't screwed up at all...I felt pretty much exactly the
same. I'm so scarred by this incident in particular that I quit using
my work phone entirely. Ugh.

For all my bluster and external exuberance, I _always_ feel like I'm
screwing something up. Needless to say, today was one of those days
where I was right.