I'm a fast talkin' hell raisin' son of a bitch

Immediately following my sister's graduation ceremony, my brother and I were talking about what a good job she did with her valedictorian speech. He couldn't remember what he said in his, and I couldn't remember what I said in mine, but we know that neither of them were as good as hers.

Thinking back on it though, I'm pretty sure mine went something like this:

Hey there buckaroo and buckaroo-ettes, as we sit here on this graduation day many of us have come to the realization that the days of roping miniature rocking-horse type bulls in the halls are over. It's time for the big rodeo of life. Many of us don't know what the future holds, but it's time to cowboy up, take that bitch by the horns and ride that sucker for all she's worth. We're talkin' the full 8 seconds baby. Now, go out there and git 'er done. Yeeeeee haaaaawwww!!!


At least that's what it looks like I'm saying in this picture*:

*I don't know who took this picture, I'm pretty sure it was my friend's mom, but I love how they didn't bother to try and move a few inches to the side in order to miss the back of someone's head.

Evidence is definitely mounting

My friend Mike pointed out yesterday that there is another piece of evidence that I am indeed a sexy man. In fact, he was surprised I left it off the original post (for those of you who don't know me, I assure you that this is a big joke-I don't really believe it).

A few years ago when I was working on my master's degree, I applied for a scholarship that would help me to pay for some of my research over the summer. It was a fairly small applicant pool as the only people who could apply were grad students from my university who had an interest in studying natural history. In fact, I may have been the only applicant, but I can only speculate on that. Nevertheless, I was lucky enough to be a recipient of the award, which was a $1000 check that would be presented to me at a nice luncheon. There was to be a little ceremony where my advisor got up and said something nice about me, then they would call me up, hand me the check and take a few pictures. The man who had set up the scholarship fund had passed away several years before, but his children had decided to keep the fund going in his name, and one of them was on hand (along with her husband) to present me with the award.

Unfortunately, during the presentation, there was not a lot of time for us to talk, but I wanted to make sure that I had expressed my gratitude before they left. My wife and I (we were still married at the time) went up to them afterward to talk a bit more. We thanked them again for providing the opportunity to get such an award, and they said they were very happy to be in a position where they could do it. The daughter then began saying things along the lines of how they had expected me to be smart, but had not expected me to be so good looking. It was rather embarassing, but I thanked her for the compliment. She continued to go on and on about it, even going so far as to say that she thought I was the most handsome recipient of that award that she had ever seen. It got to the point that her husband started looking at her sideways, my wife started looking around for an escape route, and we eventually went our separate ways.

Of course, this became a big joke in the lab, and I even went so far as to list it on my curriculum vitae as I was getting ready to apply for Ph D programs (of course I deleted that before sending any of them out).

I'm wondering how much more evidence I need before I can start referring to this as Native Minnow's Theory of his own sexiness. I somehow doubt that will stand the test of time.