beancounters

Lemme hear a big

Hooraaaaaay!

Papers are done and gone!

No more depressing ten:ten photos of my desk!

Best of all,

no more economics! until, you know, next semester.

Countdown

I have just one. more. paper. to do. It's short, but it's giving me ... what's that word when you can't sleep very well?

And I can't decide if I should go into work this morning, or just finish the damned thing. What do you think? I have been averaging way less sleep than I could really use, and have been so distracted that I can't even remember to clip my fingernails.

Well, so? I know how that sounds but it's true. There are a lot of steps to clipping one's fingernails, you know, when you consider it. It takes concentration just to walk around, with intent, to the various places clippers could be, find the clippers, find a wastebasket, sit down with them both, etc. Sequential thinking, folks - another trait that separates us from the lower orders. And I can only do so much of it at a time.

Insomnia.

I don't know ... if you were my boss, would you want to see me this morning?

"Insurance agent"? Oh, suuuure!

Is it us, or is Mark Trail developing a decidedly, er, adult subtext?

Yeah, he's too old to get in on that "insurance" action, but he really knows how to show hospitality to a couple of handsome young fellas in the woods ...

And there's Mark in the background, taking off his jacket. "Mister, I got some jewels right here ..."

::wacka-chicka-wacka-chicka::

Meanwhile, large woodland creatures, drawn by the scent of male phermones, are beginning to converge on the cabin.

Courtesy of the Beeb: Spot The Fake Smile

This was a fascinating quiz. Carefully watch each person smile. Can you spot the fakes?

Especially interesting because at the end they explain exactly what you're seeing. Good ol' BBC!

I scored 16 out of 20 - how did you do?

Life in the Hogshead

The Budgets paper is about 99% done, and I'm happy with it. But econ is crap, crap, crap. My outlines are in desperate need of some structure and a little inspiration. I think I'll call my assigned study partner this morning and beg/plead/cajole an audience with her. We really need to sit down together - thought we could just carry on by e-mail but now I know if I don't see her in person it'll all fall apart on us.

"I'm seeing another woman," I told BB just now. "That's why I've seemed so distant lately." He was pretty casual about it, only requesting a few pics, so that was a lucky break for my home life.

Also, I'll use as much boss good will and vacation time as possible in the next few days so I can write at home. One way or another, it will be all over on Thursday; after that I will return to being a good state worker, timely in my responses, no trouble for anybody in my aquamarine cubicle world. Back to writing the definitive parody of Har/ry Potter #5, sung entirely to the songs of the album Hotel California. How simple life will be again, this time next week.

The need for tet

I thought I'd broken myself at last from the painful bonds of my tetris addiction, but holy frejoles, tetris shelving just brought it raging back. [via BoingBoing]

Isn't it bitchen? The site gives specs too, if you don't want to shell out $350 for the small module. And there's a large blank wall in my study room, too. Hmm, let me think ... is there anybody in this household who likes woodworking ...?

Don' mess with the squeeka

This is Daisy. The black and white item is her favorite squeeka toy. And all that stuffing is what she's pulled out of the squeeka in the last half hour. As you can tell, she's brutal to the toys she loves! Squeekas don't last long in our house.

I ought to restuff it and sew up the hole. Mwheh-heh. We all know tha-a-at's gonna happen this weekend. Besides, she's having such a good time destroying it. It's so boring here otherwise; this is the least I can let her do.

<--- exhausted after a morning's squeeka brutality ...

Pumping irony

Help! I'm being held prisoner in my own home by an 8 - 10 page budgets paper!

I'm alone except for Daisy, because BB and Bunny wisely bugged out and went up the hill to visit family. BB, who is working on somebody's computer right this moment, will soon read this blog post. Will he call and express sympathy, or will he have Bunny tell me to get off the damned internet again?

God, this paper is crap. I just wrote that the voters should sponsor an initiative to force Governor Arnold to read the book Catch-22, as a means of teaching him irony. Why did I do that, why? I'm going crazy from not talking to humans. Must go outside and see the sun. Walk to convenience store. Buy chocolate. And a proper diet Coke, caffeinated and everything.

Whoever wrote these is a parent

It's Saturday, so you have time to sit down with your little ones and read Bob's altered children's book covers, part one and part two. They'll just love it! Remember, it's quality time, not quantity time! Or so the family law judge will remind you, eventually. [Via Batesline]

Me? I'm probably not here. I have two finals due this week, and that means a lot of facts and statistics to invent.

The lunatic is in the hall

One of the most twisted comics around is now cleverly cyber-formatted for the People. Go Hence And Build Your Own Meat.

This one is my first effort. Whaddya think?

[via Elayne and Norbizness].

B is for betrayal

I've been suspecting subterfuge; tonight I'm finally convinced I'm right. I got up the nerve to ask two or three students in my Budgets group what grade they got on their midterm papers. They all got the same as me: B. "Wouldn't it be weird," I asked, "if he gave us all B's just so there would be room for improvement when we revised them for the final?" We looked at each other. Then we turned to the rest of the group and made them confess. Yep. All B's. Between this group and my regular study group, I am beginning to think everybody in class got the exact same grade.

If so, this would explain a lot. You guys, you don't know what it was like when I got my paper back. He was so positive in his comments, but suddenly on the last page - wham! B!

"I'm going to confront him," I declared.

Some guy named David forbade it. "NO! If he knows you know, you might ruin the system for all of us."

"I'll tell him that I know after the grades are posted."

"NO! Then you'll ruin it for future students!"

Peer pressure still works at my age. Damn.

So what'll happen for the final paper? Will grades be as arbitrary? Will he even read them? He'll probably just draw a target in chalk out in the courtyard, then stand three stories above, at the railing, with all our papers in hand. Toss 'em, and whichever ones land in the target get A's!

Update: I met a guy who got higher than a B. Whew - no scam going on after all. We're just lame. :-)

Snarky goodness

Who wants to spend quality time with their childhood memories of those old McCall's patterns here at Threadbared? Anybody? Okay, you can come along and borrow some of my memories.

The year, 1969. The place: TG&Y, our Northern Ohio department store, in the fabric and notions section.

The characters: me, age 6; my brother, an infant in a basket; my mother, age ??. Mother is sitting on a stool in front of a long angled table, poring over these giant catalogs of patterns. I am idly flipping through a book of my own, twisting on my own stool, desperately bored but not allowed to leave the area (not for fear of kidnappers in those days - for fear I'd knock over something breakable, or wedge myself into a fabric display).

I'm also thinking that my Barbie dolls seemed downright fat compared to the twiggy illustrations. The clothes would never look the same on me as on the pattern envelopes. What was a chubby little girl to do?

Suddenly I twist too far on the stool, fall off and accidentally kick the baby's basket. He cries. My mother snaps. All hell, etc. So, let me at those Threadbared patterns! I have some more laughing to do.

[Via Snowball]

Strange Ball

Tvindy says this giant ball appeared on his campus, and then disappeared a few days later. No explanation.

Stealth art?

Plug in the hi-fi, Pa

Wow! It don't get much better than a Christmas birthday no-occasion-needed box of music and books from afar!

Anthony just sent us a whole slew of operatic recordings and other events, including one that is (sensibly) named NTA. I snagged the DVD of Boris Godinov, but for the car we also have two non-operatic (I assume) Joe Jackson live albums. Plus, inexplicably, a book of bad poetry ... where do I start? Shall I share? Any Vogons around here needing hitchhikers tortured?

Thanking you from across the miles. And sweetie, it couldn't have come at a better time.

Remembering the siege

The company that owns the Good Guys chain of electronics stores has closed its 7020 Stockton Blvd. outlet, the scene of a bloody 1991 siege and shootout.

Three gunmen, two store employees and a customer died and 11 others were wounded in the eight-hour standoff. The sole surviving gunman was sentenced to 41 consecutive life terms without the possibility of parole.

The way Larry Carr sees it, the store was doomed ever since April 4, 1991, the day it was taken over by four gunmen. Carr, executive director of the Florin Road Partnership, said he is not surprised the store closed.

"Ever since that day, the news coverage has never ended. Every year on the anniversary, the television stations were out in front of that store, doing another story and reminding people of it. All the media did it. That's a really good way to get somebody to go out of business," he said.

Fourteen years earlier, the gory ordeal began on a clear bright Thursday afternoon when four young Vietnamese refugees stormed the store waving pistols and presenting a wild array of demands, including millions of dollars and a large helicopter. They took 41 hostages, killed three and wounded 11.

I wasn't anywhere near this store on the day this happened, but in 1991 we had just moved to Sacramento, and I had actually just gotten a job at the Good Guys at the store up in Citrus Heights. That day, I wasn't at work. I was in downtown Sacramento, babysitting my nephew. He was in his stroller, and we were happily taking in the sights of the downtown, out of touch with anybody who might have news to share.

I got home around five that afternoon and found about eight answering machine messages, all from family, all in this eerie forced-casual tone of voice, telling me I really should call them and remind them which store I work for, right now please.

Sat at the TV for hours, until it was all over. The hostage-takers had agreed to let one girl out the front door - when the door opened, the SWAT team opened fire. Three gunmen died, along with two employees.

Later, several of the survivors were my coworkers. They didn't like to talk about it, but they would say things like this: they didn't like that the press always called that day an incident. The Good Guys incident. As if there was nothing more than a clean-up in the aisle that happened.

Anyway, an old memory came up today. I sincerely hope this is as close as I ever get to real violence.

The Ladder Theory

This treatise has probably been around a long time, but a) it's new to me, and b) it made me smile, so up it goes.

Kind of sexist, but as a woman and a former chick, I can see where this guy would get the idea we really think like this.

Why there'll be no tomatoes at Chez Bean

Saturday afternoon around 2:00 p.m.

Me: Hmm. Should I study, or put in the new tomato plants?

Bunny: You should STUDY, Mom. You were out all morning, and you just had lunch and now you're hanging around and blogging. You haven't done any real work and you've got a paper to write.

Me: [chastened]

Bunny: You should actually go to your study right now and get to work. And no blog! Now go!

Me: This has nothing to do with the fact you don't want to help me weed the garden, does it?

Bunny: Go!

You will know us by our Mos Eisley tourguide books

It's Saturday, so you have plenty of time to ruminate about this wonderfully nerdy article on the type of willing suspension of disbelief needed to be a lifetime sci-fi fan. [Thanks, Pops.]

For you see, any story must have a certain amount of internal coherence if we are to achieve suspension of disbelief. And we must achieve suspension of disbelief. For most people, that just means that a given fictional universe must hold together for the space of two hours ... It is only the grandeur and majesty of a fictional universe the size and complexity of one like the Star Wars universe, the Star Trek universe, the DC Comics universe, or the Marvel Comics universe (and perhaps soap operas) that is truly difficult to maintain.

Yet sometimes the editors and writers responsible for such series barely care about maintaining continuity, so busy are they with more mundane tasks such as writing entertaining dialogue and coming up with interesting new characters. That is why such universes desperately need the obsessive, crank-like fan.

Comic books are soap operas, don't you think? Over the years, the characters burn through storylines as fast as any TV daytime drama. Imagine how hard it must be to keep the X-Men from making temporal goofs right and left after 42 years. (Hey! Those teens are as old as I am!)

Marvel Comics used to award something called a No-Prize to the geek who spotted a paradox that couldn't be explained within the context. The honor was rarely won - those cats were on the ball. I used to write in with what I thought were goofs, only to be reminded by the editors that such-and-such really conveniently happened to Johnny Storm in the Negative Zone, where the laws of space and time have no meaning. Thus the coveted No-Prize ever eluded my grasp. Pesky Negative Zone! I curse thee!

::ahem::

I don't mean to sound cranky, but ...

Tinfoil and timelords

We're not timely in discussing this. But then, what is time?

The Time Traveler Convention

May 7, 2005, 10:00pm EDT (08 May 2005 02:00:00 UTC)

East Campus Courtyard, MIT

3 Ames St. Cambridge, MA 02142

42:21:36.025°N, 71:05:16.332°W

(42.360007,-071.087870 in decimal degrees)

At this late date, none of us are going (at least in the present time), but we can dish. I bet between us, we've read hundreds of different sci-fi stories dealing with the issue of time-travel. What do you think will happen at this convention?

a) Nothing - oh, except lots of MIT kids will get roaring drunk in their tinfoil costumes.

b) Time-travelers will appear but, upholding a strict code never to reveal the secret of time-travel to an unsuspecting past, will pass themselves off as 21st c. citizens. Refer to a).

c) Time-travelers will appear but, because the future is so grim, there will be bootjacked Time Police on hand to arrest anybody who tries to alter events of their past at the convention.

d) Time-travelers will appear and give us all the goods, i.e., cures for diseases, the shoe size of Christ, the Bombadil scene, etc.

e) Other? Discuss.