what is...

black and white, black and white, black and white and green?

three nuns fighting over a cucumber. I've done a lot of non-work "reading" today, some things funnier than others. First the Not Funny, lifted from Scott's blog:

A recent Pew Research Center study shows that people who watch The Colbert Report and The Daily Show correctly answered 54% of questions about current affairs, whereas viewers of regular TV news correctly answered only 35%.

I do love the Daily Show and the Colbert Report, but it still strikes me as kind of a sad state of affairs.

And now the funny, meta-funny in fact, because I found these jokes on a facebook group started by one of my old philosophy professors from college. I'm glad to see this guy and some of my other old professors are spending just as much time doing non-work as I do. I guess I really could grow up to be just like them.

From a Latin American Studies professor:

Q: How many atheists does it take to change a light bulb?

A: None: "Light bulb? What light bulb? Clearly this "light bulb" is a construct of your primitive imagination to help you cope with reality. I know this is darkness and I can deal with it. Obviously, you can't because of this light bulb delusion of yours."


From one of my Human Rights Program professors:

This cowboy is in a bar and talks about how lonely he is. "You know, it's just me and the horse out there. Now my horse is very smart, but you can really have a philosophical discussion with it. You know, you just can't put Descartes before the horse."


A seal walks into a bar and asks the bartender for a drink.

The bartender asks the seal, "What's your pleasure?"

The seal replies, "Anything but Canadian Club."

roo roo's meme

What were you doing 10 years ago?
I was 15 and had just started working at my very first real (not my dad's store) job. It was a truck stop/diner/bakery on route 20 in Worcester. It was actually kind of cool, in the front we served meatloaf and american chop suey, but in the back they were making these incredibly elaborate wedding cakes. I started off washing dishes and eventually got to wait tables. ah, the beginning of my long and illustrious waitressing career. good times, free food, learning dirty jokes from gnarly truckers. then right before school started, I got fired because the owner's daughter was back from 'maternity leave.'

What were you doing 1 year ago?
It was my first summer off the Cape in 4 years, and it was motherfucking hot in Lowell. I had just inadvertently signed myself up for a world of pain, working two impossible jobs at the same time, yet still managing to accomplish very little. I was at the office for like 9 hours a day, the first three of which I spent on email or the phone with boss #1, trying to coordinate a seminar series that never quite went according to plan. The rest of the day I sat outside writing in a notebook, pretending to work for boss #2 and freaking out because she was coming back from vacation and I had done nothing in weeks, making phone calls and socializing with passersby.

Kelly had just had Croix, so that was pretty exciting. there was a girl from Spain who had just arrived to live at my house for a month. Amanda and I spoke drunken Spanish to her at the Folk Festival. she kind of sucked, but there were way better foreign exchange students to come.

Five snacks you enjoy
1. string cheese
2. granola bars
3. string cheese
4. string cheese
5. string cheese

Five songs that you know all the lyrics to
1. "shoop" - salt n pepa. no self-respecting girl between the ages of 23 and 33 will ever forget a line of that one.
2. "ripple" - grateful dead. same as above, except by "girl" I mean "hippie"
3. "meet me in the morning" - bob dylan
4. "el baile de los que sobran" - Los Prisioneros
5. all of Remain in Light - Talking Heads

Five things you would do if you were a millionaire
1. buy a regular car
2. buy the house I live in right now
3. quit my job
4. go to Morocco
5. do something, uh, philanthropic with the rest

Five bad habits
1. spending money I don't have
2. vanilla kreme donuts
3. chronic, debilitating procrastination
4. constantly indulging my desires to escape (from the house, the office, work, thesis, responsibilities, awkward situations, consciousness, etc.)
5. self-indulgence part II: drinking, smoking, eating and sleeping as much as I want, pretty much all the time

Five things you like doing
1. road trips
2. iced coffee
3. writing
4. frolicking, preferably in nature
5. escaping/eating/drinking/smoking/sleeping

Five things you would never wear again
1. champion sweatshirts over white turtlenecks
2. jelly shoes
3. bodysuits with the snaps
4. blossom hats
5. legwarmers. kidding!

Five favorite toys
1. coffeemaker
2. coozies
3. cell phone
4. the internets
5. my brand new mortar and pestle

deep thoughts

• it's f-ing hot and gross
• it's been pouring rain for 15 minutes
  
• 20 minutes ago I put a bunch of clothes on the clothesline
• I'm sitting at a window from which I can see the clothesline
• again, it's pouring rain
• and it just occurred to me that I should take the clothes down
• they are already soaking wet
• I'm leaving them on the line

• I am sweating over boring power point presentations
  
• I hate work
  
• more than work itself, I hate the fact that I'm spending a Sunday catching up on work that I was supposed to do this week
• even more than that, I hate that I was expected to do this work during 4th of July week
• 4th of July is not allowed to happen on a Wednesday ever again.

• an NPR commentator just called someone a "jackass." whoa.

• I just made some clams stuffed with
• ritz cracker crumbs
• celery
• onions
• chorizo
• white wine
• cholula sauce
• butter
• and clams
• they look delicious, but it's too f-ing hot and gross to eat
  

and another thing

the Police SUCKED when I was growing up, and they continue to SUCK now - at least as much, if not more than before. they don't suck as much as Sting does on his own, but seriously, they suck more than enough.



yes, that's a mesh shirt. I really, truly hate you Sting. But I digress.

WHY, radio station owners of the area, do you think that just because the Police are reunited, you should start playing their crappy music ad nauseum? the people who have paid money to go see them live are doing us all a favor, taking one for the team if you will. there's no need to subject the rest of us to extra Police music on the radio. STOP, please, or else I'm sending you a message in a bottle. and by 'message' I mean 'flesh-eating bacteria.'

and quit with the f-ing Bono-worship too, while you're at it. that is all.

various internets

I spend a lot of time sitting at a computer pretending to work, but others don't have that luxury. so just in time for Monday morning, I wanted to share with you, the kind taxpayers of the Commonwealth, a few of the things that have been keeping me "busy" while I'm getting paid to reduce toxics. some call it webjunk, I call it a way of life.

• Erowid: a website about drugs, "providing access to reliable, non-judgmental information about psychoactive plants and chemicals and related issues." we're talking all 'psychoactive' drugs, both plant-based and chemical, legal and illegal: alcohol, MDMA, caffeine, morning glory, cannabis, heroin, chocolate, opium, LSD, and all manner of pharmaceuticals. the stories in the experience vaults are pretty f-ing fascinating.

• Gröûp X: thanks to Mr. H for bringing to my attention the best (and probably only) fake Arabic rap group ever. The Mario twins: they look so goddamn the same, if I ask them if they want an ice cream, they BOTH say yes!

• Personal DNA: it's that colorful little box in the sidebar. You take a long-ish test (good for when you're serious about procrastinating but want to feel like you just "did" something for the past hour) and it gives you a personality analysis. Then if you're really bored, you can Psych You/Psych Me and take tests for other people. No more work, EVER!

• The Sublime Philosophical Crap Test: like the Spark tests I used to do instead of writing my undergrad thesis, the people who wrote this are pretty funny, but you get that sinking feeling that they really do know what they're talking about. They give you a painfully long analysis - the very short version of mine was: You scored 55% Non-Reductionism, 11% Epistemological Absolutism, and 100% Moral Objectivism! You are an N-S-O: a metaphysical Non-Reductionist, an epistemological Skeptic, and a moral Objectivist! yay?

emergencia!

so I just got an email from my errant boss... He's already back in town and wants to meet with me first thing Monday morning! It's all over for me. I'll be underground for the next 72 hours, and then I'll either survive Monday... or... not... it's been nice knowing you all.

micro-management

the other day I was talking to a certain human resources specialist I know, and she said that during job interviews the HR people will often ask "what type of manager do you work best with?" as someone who has never had a real job interview, that really piqued my interest. is there a "correct" answer, or are you really supposed to tell the truth?

roo roo made a good point - the "correct" answer would be to describe the management style of the potential new boss, but since the interviewee has no way of knowing the new boss' style, it's better to tell the truth. if the management is going to be so different from what you work well with, why would you want that job?

anyhow, what I found most interesting were the two categories of management she mentioned: hands-off or hands-on. I've never really had a boss as hands-off as the one I do now, and it's KILLING ME. I always thought I hated to be supervised and took it as my boss somehow doubting me. however, now I'm seeing that 'management' is a two-way street. when no one is around to watch me, when I don't have to check in and report my progress, I just don't do anything.

I got this job just a few weeks ago, and due to that whole cubicle incident I have been doing most of my 'working' outside the office. most days I hang out with Homero in Patty's office, talk about Mexican soap operas, and consider it work because we are speaking Spanish. then yesterday he had to go out in the field and collect samples, so I was left alone in the office. for the first time in weeks, I actually WORKED. it was crazy, I don't even know what came over me. but don't worry, it only lasted for about 20 minutes.

today I came to my actual office and assumed my position in the cubicle. it's actually not that bad - there is AC, unlike in Homero's office, and my desk is high enough that I can cross my legs under it, which is pretty much all I want out of life. but the atmosphere here is very different from anywhere I've ever worked before - it's SILENT. you could hear a pin drop in here. at first I thought maybe a lot of people were out today, but I took a walk around and saw that there are at least 25 people in the office, but no one talks to each other!

in the office where I worked last summer, it was nearly impossible to get anything done because everyone was constantly chatting - and not about work, not even a little. that place was a total zoo, there were always students coming and going, people having meetings in any spot they felt like it, visitors from out of town who had to be introduced to every single person who worked there, etc. in particular, my office roommate was addicted to the conversational arts. his entire job consisted of talking on the phone to people, networking and finding jobs for students, and any time he wasn't on the phone he was chatting with me... or having visitors, such as the Vietnam vet/talk radio personality/masseuse, who went by "David the Painkiller," and stopped by frequently to sing us his latest tragicomic social commentary song. he was the man.

but I digress. I'm trying to get to the whole micromanagement thing, but my ADD is off the charts lately. (ironic?) so I was messing around on myspace and my boss' secretary walked by... I felt a little twinge of "oh crap, I'm supposed to be working." so I did work, for nearly an HOUR. it was awesome. and it made me realize that the very thought of a boss-type being around is enough to make me work. this whole "I have a boss, in the abstract sense, but he doesn't give a shit what I do or where I am, and also he's abroad for a month" really isn't what I need to be productive. I honestly do need someone looking over my shoulder. not necessarily like "telling me do do stuff" or anything like that, oh no. but existing, yes, and being present, yes.

i got sick of that after a while and returned to Homero's office where I can blog and otherwise procrastinate in peace. my conclusions: I enjoy being in an office where I talk to people all day, but I don't get anything done. I can only work, however, under circumstances of complete silence and oppressive micromanagement. so, I have no choice but to admit what has been obvious to everyone else for a long time: I'm not cut out for "work." It's true, a "job," no matter how you slice it, is simply not the best use of my time.

if you'll excuse me, I have to go have some drinks downtown with my RESD peeps. it's been a long day here at the office.

"work"

so here I am, on a beautiful and sunny Friday afternoon, at "work," in my "office," wearing my "shoes." this BLOWS. there's good news though - when I got to work today no one tried to move me to a different location, plus I now have my very own PHONE and MAILBOX. yes, i have truly arrived. then my boss' assistant, who is quite possibly the only nice person in the entire place, showed me how to use the fax machine and the copier. believe it or not I was already familiar with those devices, but it was sweet of her anyways. everyone else in the office kind of looks at me like "who the fuck is that" but no one actually introduces themselves, so their loss, they'll never know who I am and why I'm the awesomest.

anyhow, having my own mailbox really gave me the sense of permanence I needed to feel comfortable at work. comfortable enough, anyways, to sit there for a few minutes, take off my sensible shoes under my desk, fill out my hours for the week, and leave. I'm in my other adopted office now, which belongs to Patty. her office is way nicer, it's painted in soothing tones and Homero is right next to me so I can pester him endlessly with translation issues. today we went over guinea pigs, which in case you were wondering, are NOT delicious.

in lieu of actually working, I have been messing around with pandora a lot today. in addition to being a good way to listen to music from anywhere, it's a really cool idea. it's based on something they call the Music Genome Project, which identifies "traits" of songs or artists you tell it you like. then it finds and plays other music that shares similar characteristics. for example, I'm currently listening to my 'Born Under Punches Station.' I told it I liked the Talking Heads song 'Born Under Punches,' and right now it's playing a song called 'Thieves Like Us' by New Order, according to them "because it features electronica influences, extensive vamping, groove-based composition, a dynamic male vocalist..." so when it picks a song you like (or don't like) you tell it, and it gradually modifies the content of the "station" according to what it thinks you're telling it. get it? i'm pretty obsessed with it as a way to discover new music. this thing always plays songs I otherwise wouldn't ever hear, and it's pretty fascinating to explore all the trait categories they use. apparently I'm a huge fan of 'vamping.' who knew?

as you might have already heard, Kerouac wrote On the Road on one long piece of paper. The scroll has arrived in Lowell (see the link to the right), where Kerouac was born. Come see it, then stop by my porch for a beer.

in other beat generation news, this was the quote of the day when I signed in to google:

My own experience is that a certain kind of genius among students is best brought out in bed.

~Allen Ginsburg, who I previously thought would have been a cool professor to have

orbit mint mojito gum

don't buy it. it's gross. alcohol-flavored gum shouldn't exist. also, mojitos are "mint" by definition, so the flavor name is redundant. orbit, you suck. why do you make your gum pieces so large and cumbersome, so that I have to rip them in half, and constantly have half-pieces of gum floating around the bottom of my purse, with nasty debris stuck to them, that I eat anyways because I refuse to waste gum? why, orbit?

but Patty gave me the gum, and she's the shit. she dropped by my porch today with iced coffee and vanilla kreme donuts. a pleasant surprise, and just what the doctor ordered after my long day of "work."

dispatch from tha fahkin gahdin

it's true, I'm hollering at you from my back yard, can you sense the outdoorsiness? I just set up a little office out here consisting of a chaise lounge, beach towel, water bottle, and my cell phone. You know, in case I need to make any important business calls. So far, things are progressing nicely in my newly appointed zone of productivity. I just hope my little old lady neighbors don't come out to do any gardening, because I look like kind of a weirdo out here. Kind of.

so today was supposed to be my first day of work at a new job. I'd tell you who I'm working for but that would violate my self-imposed rule of Extreme Blog Anonymity. Anyhow, I met with my new boss last week and he gave me a bitchload of things to get started on and told me to show up at the office Monday morning (today) to get settled. I spent an hour this morning trying to read all the stuff I was supposed to be perusing over the weekend, then got myself all stressed out trying to figure out what to wear. i read an article in Cosmo yesterday (I swear I do NOT have a subscription to Cosmo, this was a momentary lapse of reason at the supermarket checkout.) so the article said that flip-flops are always inappropriate for the office. I didn't know that. I panicked. I don't own any summer shoes that aren't flip-flops. So I wore flip-flops anyways, and prepared to be judged.

I called the dude on my way in, because the building houses a nuclear reactor and you need a code to get in. Don't worry, my job has absolutely nothing to do with nuclear research. We'll all live to see another day. So the dude was not there, but rather getting his car fixed, and asked me to "refresh his memory" on why we were even meeting. Sweet. It appears this guy is a little different from some bosses I've had in the past. Some people like to keep a tight leash on their grad students and know where they are at all times, preferably within the bosses' line of sight, in case there's an extremely tedious and/or annoying task that needs doing.

This guy would be at the other extreme - he told me I can pretty much do whatever I want as long as the work gets done. While this is good on sunny days like today when I want to be in my outdoor office, or pretending to work when I'm actually at the beach, it's kind of a bad thing in general for someone like me. I tend to be pretty horrible at accomplishing things even when I'm two feet away from whoever I'm working with. I have a feeling I'm going to be doing a lot of procrastinating all week long then doing all of my hours at once in an overnight work extravaganza right before my meetings with him.

Eventually I did go over to the office, met some people, and saw the little grad student containment area. It actually has a window, with a stunning view of the student parking lot. Not as awesome as my outdoor office, but I think I saw a water cooler. Free water is the dopest.

So I decided to call it a day around 1pm, and made the rounds distracting people I know who work on that side of campus. When I got home I toyed with the idea of doing work, but decided it was more important to search for the sunniest spot on the property. A true grad student never quits researching. My findings: the front porch only gets sun in the late afternoon, the side porch only gets sun in the early morning, and the whole climbing-out-the-attic-window-to-sit-on-the-roof thing just seemed like a recipe for disaster.

Speaking of disasters and findings, my thesis isn't happening right now, so if people could just go ahead and stop asking me how it's going, that would be grrrrrreat. I saw a girl from my department today, she was holding that coveted box of watermarked paper, on her way to hand it in to the librarian. I felt a fleeting twinge of motivation to do something with my own thesis, but it was immediately replaced by "who the fuck am I kidding?" I didn't even consider going to get the transcribing machine, it just seemed way more important to work on my tan. And those are my priorities for the next few weeks.

Other than that, things are going well. The no-income thing hasn't been as bad as I thought it would be; my tax return only lasted a few days but two friends just moved away and left me an inordinate amount of free crap. I've been eating a lot of ice cream lately, but I've also been going to the gym. A few of you got introduced to (i.e. forced to feel) my guns on Saturday night, and my rock-hard abs should be ready for peer review in another week or five. Speaking of Saturday night, I'm never starting drinking at 6pm again.

why we banned legos

something fascinating from an article in "Rethinking Schools," check it out:

Carl and Oliver,* both 8-year-olds in our after-school program, huddled over piles of Legos. They carefully assembled them to add to a sprawling collection of Lego houses, grocery stores, fish-and-chips stands, fire stations, and coffee shops. They were particularly keen to find and use "cool pieces," the translucent bricks and specialty pieces that complement the standard-issue red, yellow, blue, and green Lego bricks.

"I'm making an airport and landing strip for my guy's house. He has his own airplane," said Oliver.

"That's not fair!" said Carl. "That takes too many cool pieces and leaves not enough for me."

"Well, I can let other people use the landing strip, if they have airplanes," said Oliver. "Then it's fair for me to use more cool pieces, because it's for public use." (read more)

I think it's great, some people disagree. When I first read this I only found one response to it, written by a fairly reactionary and disingenuous conservative columnist. Now it seems this thing is getting to be a huge deal, and there are so many people talking and blogging and writing about it, it would be impossible for me to choose one or two to put up here. Just Google "why we banned Legos" and you'll get a barrage of opinions.

Anyways, I just think it's interesting that, agree or disagree with the decision to ban Legos, this thing has become exactly what the teachers feared it was - a huge allegory about society. As MRhé might say, it's pretty f-ing meta.

riddle me this

why do people keep asking me what I'm going to do when school is over? I have two obligations a week: class on Thursday nights from 6-9 and a meeting with my professor/boss on Tuesday afternoons. That means I have a total of five structured hours per week. Most people have five times that much structure. Anyhow, the point is, I don't "do" anything now, what's going to change once school ends?

and another thing

this also makes me nauseous, from "A Girl's Guide to Where in the World is Matt Lauer." again, it's a mystery why I was reading this in the first place, but anyways... The female visitor to Galway is advised:

You, my friends, are probably not men, meaning beer will not likely be the focal point of your Irish stay. However, you should know what you're getting yourself into, just in case you're not a regular beer drinker.

• The Stouts - Guinness, Beamish, and Murphy's
• Lager - Harp
• Ale - Smithwicks

Well thank the LORD someone clarified this! Being a GIRL, I would have had no f-ing idea what to do when faced with a situation involving beer. Beer is scary, I've been told it puts hair on your chest. but thanks to this lady, if I ever go to Galway at least I'll "know what I'm getting myself into."

By the way, if your readers don't even drink beer, you know, because they're "probably not men," then how is it helpful to distinguish between a stout, a lager, and an ale, you dumb sexist bitch?