Black chick, white guy

Last night at pub trivia:

Question: In the book Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, what was the name of the runaway slave who teams up with Huck on his voyage down the Mississippi River?

Friend 1: It's Nigger Jim*.

Me: I'm just going to put Jim.

Friend 1: I think you have to put down the whole name.

Friend 2: But I don't like that word.

Me: I don't either.

Friend 1: Just put it down so we don't lose a point.

Me: Fine.

Friend 3 (who is African American): I can't believe you wrote that. Racist.

Me: If I have sex with you later will that make up for it?

Friend 3: Sure.



Later she passed me a note: You ready to pop the cork on this bitch?








*Apparently this is the name used by many critics and has been perpetuated ever since, but never appears in the book itself. Thank you Wikipedia!

Time to sit back and unwind

One of my friends who recently moved away came back to town this weekend. Of course you know what that means: Pool party!

We all met up at one friend's house, then went to the grocery store to pick up a few things. While there, they decided they needed to make rum drinks, so we ventured into the liquor section.

My friends were discussing what they wanted to make when a guy came into the aisle and asked us, "Where's the cheap shit?"

We looked at each other, then shrugged.

Fortunately for him, he didn't need our help. He found a large, plastic bottle of vodka that cost $9.

He grabbed it, looked at me, and said, "There ya' go. Throw some cranberry in that bitch and you straight all day."

I would not want to be his head this morning.

Buenos Tardes, Amigo

Question: Would you pick up this hitchhiker?



I didn't either. I called Border Patrol.

Waiting for Superman

If you've ever wondered how my kids and I entertain ourselves while waiting for overpriced pizza to come to our table (and you know you have), it's by pondering the important questions of life, such as these:

Who would win in a fistfight, The Incredible Hulk, or The Thing?

Who has a firmer handshake, Ice Man or the Human Torch (from Fantastic Four)?

Who would win in a staring contest, Cyclops or Magneto?

Who would make the best ice cream sundae, Ice Man or Wonder Woman?

Who would win in a Derek Zoolander style walk-off, Wonder Woman or Spider Man?

Who would be the bigger alcoholic, Batman or the Incredible Hulk?

Who would be most likely to cry after being dumped, Spiderman or Aquaman?

Who has hooked up with more guys, Lois Lane or Mary Jane Watson?

Who will be the first to come out of the closet, Robin or the Wonder Twins?

All the kids are staying fat

The problem with me spending time with my kids is that the only posts you're going to see in the near future are going to be about them. Like this little tidbit from Mr M while we were driving to my sister's wedding.

Mr M: Dad, if a fat girl was lost in the forest, what would a tree say?

Me: I don't know, what?

Mr M: How about lose some weight, fatty.

I probably should have explained to him that it's not nice to make fun of people. Instead I just laughed.

If you dare

What's worse than returning to the office to 130 unanswered emails?

Returning to the office to find this propped up in your office chair:





Does anyone want a sucker shaped like a penis? It's still wrapped.

Shakin' like a dog shittin' razor blades

This morning I baked a cake. For those of you keeping track, that's three cakes in the past ten days. In other words, not enough cake. (Is there ever enough cake?) As I poured the cake batter into the pan, I wanted to find out if any of my kids wanted to eat the rest of it that wouldn't come out of the bowl.

Me: Alright, who wants to lick the . . .

Tortellini: Me!

Mr M: I do. I do. I get the bowl. I get the bowl.

Me: Neither of you let me finish my sentence. As I was saying, who wants to lick the dog's butt? You both do. Ha ha!

I know you tried, I know you're cursed, I know your best was still your worst

The day before my sister's wedding I administered an exam in the night class I'm teaching. I didn't grade them until I got back. When I did get them graded, I saw something that depresses me greatly. It involves the following question (which I'd gone over three different times in class):

During aerobic respiration, which of the following molecules directly donates electrons to the electron transport chain at the lowest energy level, and thus only generates two ATP molecules?
A) NADH
B) FADH2


Two students chose D.

I wish I was joking.

Do you wanna dance? Will you wear my ring?

My youngest sister got married last weekend. I couldn't leave until Friday morning because I had to administer an exam on Thursday night, so it was a shorter trip than I would've liked, but you do what you can. It was nice to see all the family members that made it, even if I didn't get to visit with many of them as much as I would have liked. My kids and I spent a lot of time in the car (as usual - they're going to have such rotten memories of all the road trips with their dad).

Unfortunately for my sister, it rained all afternoon and evening. Luckily, her reception was indoors, and the place still looked nice.



The roses probably looked even better with the raindrops on them anyway.



My sister was such a beautiful bride. And my nieces made such cute little flower girls. The youngest one started running around and picking up the rose petals that the older one had scattered around and putting them back in her bucket. It was so cute.





Here's a picture of my sister holding the youngest flower girl later. Probably the only really good photo I took all night.



From a more selfish perspective, all her bridesmaids were either married already, or had boyfriends, so I asked her, "Would it be bad if I ditched your wedding reception and went to the one next door to see if there are any hot bridesmaids over there?" She encouraged me to go ahead, but alas, I couldn't bring myself to channel my inner wedding crasher, so I just stayed at my sister's reception.

Don't worry, I made up for it afterward when I took my children for a nice post-wedding family dinner at Hooter's.

Hola, my good friend

A few weeks ago, my friends and I got some free sombreros while we were out on a Friday night. Mine has been in my car ever since.

Even this weekend, with the trunk full of bags for our weekend trip to my sister's wedding, the sombrero has stayed in the car. Togers was going to wear it to the wedding reception, but forgot.

Yesterday, on our way to my parents' house, Tortellini put it on.



She joked, "If I wore this in Arizona, we'd get pulled over."

Not only that, she'd probably also be deported since she has no form of identification yet.

The greatest love is always ruined by the bickering

I have my kids for a couple of weeks. It's a constant source of entertainment for me, and therefore, for you too. The other night we went to In-N-Out for dinner, and while we were there, Mr M said something you wouldn't expect a kid his age to understand (I don't remember what it was - but earlier he proved to be the only one of my kids that knew it was a meteor that caused the mass extinction of the dinosaurs).

Tortellini: [Mr M] is really smart. He's probably the smartest of all us kids.

Me: Maybe. What do you think? Who's the smartest kid?

Mr M: Dad is.

Me: I'm not a kid. Who do you think is the smartest of you three?

Mr M: Hmmm. [Tortellini].

Tortellini: I knew it! I knew he'd say me because he hates [Togers].

Mr M: I hate [Tortellini] too, but I hate [Togers] more.

The next day we all went to get haircuts. While Tortellini was in the chair, Togers said something that made Mr M laugh.

Me: Is your brother funny?

Mr M: Yeah.

Me: But I thought you hated him.

Mr M: I do! But he's still funny.

Celebrate good times, come on!

Yesterday was Togers' birthday. My ex-wife said she asked Mr M in the morning if he'd wished Togers a happy birthday. Mr M said that he hadn't, because he "wasn't celebrating [Togers'] birthday."

Later, when it was time for cake and ice cream, Mr M insisted that he didn't want any cake, just ice cream. I asked him about it this morning. He didn't want any cake, because that would've been celebrating Togers birthday.

So if you were ever wondering where to draw the line between celebrating something and not celebrating, it's this:

Cake and ice cream = celebrating

Just ice cream = not celebrating

You're welcome!

Someday back when we were young I guess something just went wrong

Last night while teaching:

Student 1: Have you heard the sound of your voice? I have it recorded. Do you want to listen to it?

Me: Yes, I've heard the sound of my voice. I don't like it, so no, I don't want to listen.

Student 1: You don't like the way your voice sounds?

Me: No, because it sounds different to me than it does to you. When I hear it played back it sounds a lot lower than the way I hear it. I think it sounds like I'm dumber than I am.

Student 2: It just sounds like you smoked a lot of weed when you were younger. That's all.


Lovely. Student 2 confirmed that my voice makes me sound dumb. He might as well have said, "Your voice just sounds like you killed a LOT of brain cells in your youth."

Can I take points off for brutal honesty?

For the record, I've never smoked weed. My stupid voice comes naturally.

You're coming off kind of contrived and pretentious, you're not saying anything we haven't heard before

Once again, it's time to share the highlights from my TA evaluations from last semester. As always, these are taken verbatim from the evaluations themselves.

Laboratory Activities
What was your favorite lab exercise? Why?
- The video, because it doesn't stink.
- Disection*, because it is dirty and exciting.
- Leaving, because it was always late.
- Ugh, none! Labs were just very boring.

Which lab experience was most informative and educational for you?
- Disection because I can do it and touching

What was your least favorite lab exercise? Why?
- Disections, because the stink.
- Anything w/ plants -- hella boring!
- Earthworm dissection and looking at live flat worms because both creep me out.

What is the major weakness of the [biology] lab?
- The only thing I didn't like was the detailedness of the quizzes.
- It's too hard (that's what she said?)

What is the major strength of the [biology] lab?
- Actual action take and tangible to all senses.
- [Minnow] is just a big bucket of win


Laboratory Instructor
In general, how would you rate your lab instructor as a teacher?
- A for awesome
- Damn, he's good (maybe because he's young?)
- Nothing special either way
- Kept me awake

How would you assess your lab instructor's ability in making things understandable and their willingness to help?
- A for always helping
- Godly

Assess your lab instructor's knowledge about the topics covered.
- A for abundance of knowledge
- He's a smartie-pants.
- Knew pretty much everything - I mean he is a doctor!!
- Again, he is a plethora of knowledge, or maybe even a cornacopia.
- Knew more than I knew, answered things

Assess your lab instructor's examination policy, fairness, and grading.
- B for Boy some of those quizzes are hard

What were his/her strong points?
- He got an attitude (in a nice way)

How could he/she improve?,
- Not allow and/or engage in so many loud and disruptive conversations that do not pertain to lab.
- He is at his MAX!
- Somehow make preservatives (for disections) smell like flowers or something.
- "insert mean statement"
- Not to blast the A/C when driving [on the field trip].
- Nothing that I can think of, even my best friend who joined our lab commented on your greatness ;)
- SMILE MORE!
- Maybe go the the gym a little
- talks too much, which wastes lab time
- Be more cool
- psst . . . make the quizzes easier









*Apparently I need to do a better job of teaching these students how to spell 'dissection'