Baby I'm just a fool

The other night I was having dinner with a friend. I don't remember exactly what exactly we were talking about, but rest assured it was something that would make you think we were intelligent. Like politics. Or coalescent theory.

He was saying something profound when out of the corner of my eye I saw two ladies walk in. One of them had a buzz cut. I couldn't resist, so I nodded in her direction and said, "Speaking of butch lesbians . . ."

My friend looked at me with a horrified look on his face. Not like the horrified look that he'd give if she was a gross looking woman either. This was a horrified look like I'd just said the very worst thing possible. You'd have thought I was singing praises to Hitler or something.

So I sought to defend myself. "What? It's not like she's recovering from chemo or something."

"Actually, I think that's exactly what it is."

"Seriously? My bad."

I used to want it all

I saw '500 Days of Summer' this week. As I stood in line for tickets with the girl I went with, I saw the movie poster for 'Inglourious Basterds' which was opening later in the week.

Me: Ooh. I want to see that this weekend.

Girl: No. I won't go see that with you.

Me: I wasn't asking.

I know it seems like I don't care but something in me does I swear

While lecturing today, one of my students knocked an entire pile of books onto the floor. It was a distraction, but I didn't think much of it. Then another student did the same thing about ten minutes later.

When it happened the second time I stopped lecturing and said, "Am I really that boring today? Everybody seems to be falling asleep and knocking things over."

The first student approached me after class and said, "It's not that you're boring, it's just that I'm narcoleptic and they've just changed my medication again."

Fabulous. Another instance in which I've unwittingly mocked someone for a condition they have no control over.

You're gonna find you'll find yourself alone

So, it turned out that the girl I could've been "guaranteed to make out with" was, in fact, PTSD girl.

How do I know you ask? Because one of her friends asked me if I was going to hook up with her.

Me: No.

Girl: Why not?

Me: Just because.

Girl: You should. I hear she's a really good kisser.

Me: I'm going to have to go ahead and take your word on that.

Girl: I think you two should hook up.

Me: It's not going to happen.

What I wanted to say: "Have you seen me? I can do way better than that!

I recounted that conversation to a couple of girls who were there the night we met those girls, and told them what I wish I had the sack to say.

They claimed that she wasn't all that ugly.

I maintained that she was.

We argued about it for a while, and they eventually asked me what I'd rate her on a scale of one to ten.

I said about a three.

They said she was at least a five or a six.

I vehemently disagreed, and then started showing them pictures of other girls I know so they could rate them. It seemed to me that they would rank many of the girls who I think are cute a point or two lower than I would, and they'd rate the girls I thought were ugly a point or two higher than I would.

Then we shifted things into a higher gear.

Girl: Alright, give me an example of an actress you'd rate as a ten.

Me: Charlize Theron.

Girl: Ok. I'll give you that one. Who else?

Me: Alyssa Milano.

Girl: Really? I don't know if I'd rate her that high.

Me: Well, I've been in love with her since 'Who's The Boss?' so maybe my ranking is a little higher than most people's would be.

Girl: Yeah, probably. Who else?

Me: I'm going to say Jessica Alba.

Girl: Jessica Alba is not a ten.

Me: I'm not saying she can act, because she can't, but she is hot. You have to admit that.

Girl: I don't think so. I'd put her at about an eight.

Me: You just showed a flaw in your rating system. If Jessica Alba is only an eight, there's no way that PTSD girl is a fucking six.

Girl: Ok. You've got a point.

So, to drag this story out even further, I was telling all of this to one of my sisters on the phone. She was laughing pretty hard. So then, thanks to facebook, I was able to steal a picture of PTSD girl and show it to my sister.

She agreed with me.

In fact, she went so far as to say that PTSD girl looked kind of like Shrek, and that maybe I should start calling her Fiona instead of PTSD girl.

So, on a scale of one to ten. What would you rank Fiona?

It's nothing personal, you saw to that, you're just a person who does her best work on her back

I've mentioned before how answering a question with the words "Your mom" can sometimes get a person in trouble. I don't care. I still say it because it's funny. It's one of those things I'll probably be saying when I'm 80.

That said, I recently had another instance where it could've gotten me into trouble. It didn't, but it could've.

My kids' step-dad: You get all that for the low, low price of twenty-five cents.

Togers: Wait. What only costs twenty-five cents?

Me: Your mom.


I have to say that nothing beats implying that your ex-wife is a cheap whore in front of your children**, your ex-wife and her husband, and getting laughs from everybody.






*This just happens to be the song stuck in my head right now, so it's not meant to be a statement about my ex.

**Not that they'd understand the implication.

Feels like a midget is hanging from my necklace

If you ever needed a reason to not leave your cell phone unattended while in my presence, here's one for you: I was at a party Saturday night, someone left their phone on the table, and I just couldn't resist playing around once they received a text - even though I didn't know for sure whose phone it was or the girl they'd received the text from.

Girl: Whatcha doin' tonight?

Me: A couple of midgets and some creamed corn.

Girl: What a strange coincidence. I'm doing the exact same thing! Who's with you?*

Me: Two Asians, a Mexican and a parapalegic.

Girl: You should come over here.

Me: I'm trying, but the parapalegic makes things difficult.

Girl: You're not really hanging out with a parapalegic. If you are, bring them along.

Me: But what will the midgets think?

Girl: They can come too. We love midgets AND parapalegics.

Me: What about trannies? A few of them just showed up.

Girl: We've got way better than trannies over here. Trust me.


That's about the time that my friend realized what was going on, and made me straighten things out by letting them know it wasn't him that was texting. He suggested that if things were as good as they claimed, maybe we should head over to where they were, but we didn't.




*I'm going off memory since I don't have the actual texts, so many of these aren't verbatim, and I'm probably forgetting a few of them, but you get the point.

School's out forever

Me: I always get so bored teaching this lab because nobody ever asks me any questions. So, even if you don't have questions, could you guys ask some anyway?

Student: Don't you have something else you could do?

Me: Yeah, but I want to make sure that I'm not neglecting anybody.


None of them had questions, so I started downloading DNA sequences.


Five minutes later:

Same Student As Before: I have a question for you.

Me: I'm sorry. I'm busy.

If you're down with P, well then you're down with me

Well, since everybody seems to want to hear that one story about that one time that one guy ate that one perch and then went to that one hospital to get that one stomach pumped, I s'pose I'll tell it.

I took a biology class my freshman year of high school. My seat was at one of the tables in the back of the room (which really has no bearing on this story at all other than to let you know how the 'planning stages' of the incident got as far as they did before the teacher found out). One of the kids at the very back table, we'll call him PerchEater, was constantly trying to do things so that people would think he was cool. You know the type: He came from a broken home, his family was poor, his mom worked a lot so he was attention starved*, so basically just like my kids.

Fridays were dissection days. Or maybe Mondays were dissection days. Or Tuesdays. Who cares? The only point of relevance is that one of those days of the week we dissected things, and one of those weeks of the school year the thing we dissected was a yellow perch. Midway through the class period, PerchEater went around asking those of us who were seated around him how much we'd give him if he ate the perch. Of course, none of us were thinking about the possible ramifications of what injesting something that had been fixed in formalin and preserved in carosafe were, We just thought it'd be gross to watch him do it, so of course we all offered to pitch in. I told him I'd give him $10, some kids said $5 and others as much as $20 - adding up to a grand total somewhere around $200.

Once the total he had coming to him for his performance had reached the max (i.e., nobody else was willing to add to the pot), PerchEater decided it was time to deliver. However, our teacher began to suspect that something was up and started asking what was going on. Somebody told him and he put the kaibosh on it right then and there. Noone was going to eat a perch in his classroom. We were all disappointed, and justifiably so. We'd just had what would probably be the grossest thing we'd ever see anyone do throughout the course of the entire year yanked away from us. What a Quaker.

Well, then, imagine our surprise when the bell rang and we all filed out in the hallway only to see PerchEater procure the specimen from the pocket of his blue jeans. It seemed that there might be a show after all. After briefly asking around to make sure the deal still stood, PerchEater tipped his head back and lowered the fish into his mouth headfirst. I don't know exactly how he thought it would go down, maybe he'd seen to many movies with bachelors swallowing goldfish**, but I guess he thought it would slide right down his esophagus. It didn't. It just got stuck. Then he gagged, and the whole fish came flying up out of his mouth. PerchEater must have had very good reflexes, because he caught the perch mid-air, looked at it and then bit its head off and began chewing. About three bites in, our biology teacher came out of the classroom to see what all the fuss was about, found out that he'd eaten about half a perch, and grabbed him and ran down the hall. Later we found out that he went and called an ambulance and had PerchEater taken to the hospital to get his stomach pumped.

PerchEater missed the next couple days of school. Presumably because he was recovering from either the procedure at the hospital, the beating his mom gave him when he got home, or both. When he came back to class, there was no mention of the money we all owed him. I figured I'd wait until my next paycheck (my paychecks were very small in those days, so $10 was a lot of scratch) and then pay up, but by the end of the month had pretty much forgotten about it. PerchEater moved a month or two after that, so I never gave him the money I owed. If I had a current address I'd mail him the money today.







*I really have no idea if any of the background information I gave you about PerchEater is true. I barely knew him - I don't even remember his last name.

**Not the crackers.

I'm only happy when it rains

Yesterday I walked outside my office and felt myself cheer up a little when I looked at the sky and saw that things were about to get miserable. Once it started raining I felt even better knowing that others were probably upset about it.

How's that for altruism?

I hate my generation, I offer no apologies

I was standing at the urinal, taking care of business, when another guy came in. He obeyed the unwritten rule of the men's room, and took the furthest urinal away from mine, but after standing there for a few seconds began to speak. "It's really raining here."

I thought to myself, "Great. Why is it that people feel the need to carry on cell phone conversations in a bathroom?"

A few seconds later he added, "The roads are really wet too. Everything's wet."

Slightly annoyed, I finished peeing and washed my hands.

I vaguely heard him say something else, but I wasn't paying enough attention to hear what it was. It wasn't until I turned to open and walk out the door that I realized he was talking to me.

I still didn't say anything. I just walked out.

If you don't know me, and see me peeing in a public restroom, go ahead and save the idle chit chat at the urinal for someone you know.

You can come over to my place if you want to, you can do anything you want to do

It's time for another example of why you shouldn't open your mouth unless you want an honest response to what it is that you're saying.

The other day a girl came over and I ended up making some banana pancakes for us. I had music playing the whole time, and one of my favorite songs came on.

Me: Do you know who sings this song?
Her: I don't know. Wilco?
Me: It's They Might Be Giants.
Her: I figured it was one of your favorite bands.
Me: But you didn't know which one. I'm going to have to ask you to leave now.
Girl (looking at her plate): That's ok. I'm almost done anyway.

My flying saucer, where can you be?

I'm not sure what reminded me of this, but when I was six years old my family moved from Montana to rural Utah. At first, my parents couldn't find a place for us to live, so we ended up staying in a hotel for the first month or so in our new town, dining in restaurants when we weren't at school.

One day we were eating, and there was a man who'd had a tracheotomy sitting at a table near us. I kept hearing his robotic voice, and was fascinated by it. I had to leave our table to go to the bathroom, and on the way back I stopped by his table, looked up at him and asked, "Hey Mister, are you from outer space?"

He wasn't. Who knew?

If you see her say hello

Me: Yeah, that girl was crazy. Actually, all women are crazy. All men know that. Yet, for whatever reason, we keep trying to make ourselves believe otherwise.

Friend: I could go for some craziness right now.

Me: I could see about setting set you up with the crazy girl.

Friend: I don't mean that kind of crazy.

Me: Regardless, that's the kind you're gonna' get.

Telephone call for Mr. Horrible

Me: Did you hear about the shooting over the weekend?
Friend: No.
Me: Well, I guess there were a couple of them, but I'm talking about the one on Friday.
Friend: What happened?
Me: They said on the news that a mom was driving with her 11 and 15 year old kids, and somebody pulled alongside the car and shot her in the head.
Friend: With the kids in the car!?
Me: Yeah. Pretty nuts, huh?
Friend: That's cold.
Me: I know. At least wait until she's dropped the kids off.
Friend: . . .
Me: Or kill the kids too.
Friend: . . .

I know it's not mine but I'll see if I can use it for a weekend or a one night stand

Me: I got tickets to the Mountain West tournament.

Rural Murder: Cool. That should be fun.

Me: Yeah, but I have to give away my Thursday night ticket because I'll be teaching during that game.

Rural Murder: Too bad.

Me: But I still get to see both games on Friday, and the men's and women's finals on Saturday. Although, I haven't decided if I'll go to the women's championship game.

Rural Murder: That's because you're misogynistic.

Me: Yeah. You know me. I hate women. The only time I love them is when my penis is in their vagina.

Rural Murder: Classy!

Me: I know!!!

Somebody save me, I don't care how you do it

Sometimes it's best to think before opening your mouth so as not to seem like a jerk.

For example, it can be funny to say, "Again?" if somebody tells you they ate all the cookies. It can be funny to say, "Again?" if somebody tells you they think they're pregnant. However, it's not very funny to say "Again?" if that person has recently had a miscarriage.

Also, it can be funny to say, "Your Mom" when somebody asks who you were just talking with on the phone, or asks who that was with the basketball team, or even what you did last night. However, that response is completely inappropriate if the person you're saying it to lost both parents when they were young.

Learn from my mistakes people.

I've got something to say, I killed your baby today, doesn't matter much to me as long as it's dead

This past week was the one where my students dissect a fetal pig. Part of the dissection includes identifying all the parts to the reproductive system for both male and female pigs. In one of my labs there was only one group that had a male pig. They were nervous about ruining something, particularly because the rest of the class needed to look at their pig, so I told them I'd help them with that part, mainly because I was afraid they'd ruin something too, and then I'd have to cut open a whole new pig. As I started cutting, they started talking about one of the radio morning shows here in town.

Girl: So, they were talking on the radio today and asked the question, "What would you do for a million bucks?"
Me: I'll tell you right now, there's not a lot I wouldn't do for a million dollars.
Girl: Really?
Me: Yeah. That's a lot of money.
Girl: They were coming up with all sorts of things on the radio. Like, would you punch your Grandma in the face?
Me: Hmmmmm. It sounds harsh, but I probably would. I'd feel bad about it, but I'd give her some of the money later and she'd forgive me.
Girl: Would you make out with one of your parents for at least ten seconds?
Me: For a million bucks? I would.
Girl: Even if it was your dad?
Me: Yeah, but I doubt he would.
Girl: That's so disgusting.
Me: You're talking to a guy with a pig's penis in his hand. And I'm doing that for a whole lot less.

I'm such a whore.

No matter how it ends, no matter how it starts

There's a deli near campus where the food is good, and there are complimentary mini muffins to go along with your meal, and complimentary ice cream for dessert. Free food is always a good thing for poor graduate students, so my friends and I eat there frequently. We have a system where the first person through the line is responsible for picking a table and getting a small plate full of mini muffins. Of course, since we are regulars, most of the employees recognize us, and there are a few that usually engage us in idle chit-chat when we're placing an order or paying at the register.

One lady in particular likes to talk to me. My friend swears that she's flirting with me, but I don't like to hear that. It's not that she's ugly, it's just that, well, ok, she's ugly. When my friend jokes about she and I getting it on, I usually try to deny that she flirts with me. However, he says that she never acts like she even recognizes him, let alone talks to him, even though the two of us are together pretty much every time we go there.

Yesterday I got the impression that he might be right.

Her: Hey you, I haven't seen you in a LONG time!
Me: We've been coming in, but haven't seen you around at all.
Her: I've been working different shifts lately.
Me: I guess that would explain it then, wouldn't it?

(Now seems like a pertinent time to point out that I was wearing a They Might Be Giants t-shirt)

Her (looking at my shirt): So, what's your favorite song of theirs?
Me (thinking funny you should ask that since I just blogged about it the other day, but not saying that): I'm going to have to go with Ana Ng.
Her: Mine is Particle Man. I just love the . . .

(She goes on to mumble something but I wasn't paying attention because all I could think about was my friend standing behind me in line laughing his head off)

Her: Well, can I get anything else for you, Troublemaker?
Me: Just the potato.

I went and sat down in a booth while my friend paid. He sat down and said, "Do I need to go get some muffins, or did you already take care of that, Troublemaker."

Me: All I know is that if she keeps that shit up, we're going to have to start eating elsewhere.

But the Devil's Awaitin'

I've told you before about a little game called not it that I play with my friends. Well, the other night I was sitting with some friends, and called "not it" on a girl that was sitting directly behind one of them.

Me: Not it on the girl at your six.
Friend (after turning around to see who I was talking about): Aaaaagh. I feel like I just stared into Satan's asshole.

Now that, my friends, is the sign of an ugly girl.

Parting of the sensory

This week's lab covers primary and secondary growth in plants. The students are supposed to be able to identify the different types of cells and tissues in the non-reproductive plant organs. A lot of that comes from looking at prepared slides. Yesterday I had a student who was struggling with how to tell the difference between xylem and phloem on this slide:


Me: The xylem is stained purple, and the phloem is stained blue.
Him: I can't differentiate between those colors. I'm colorblind.
Me: In that case, the xylem consists of those big cells in the middle that kind of make an X. The phloem are the smaller cells surrounding that.
Him: Ok, that helps.

A little while later:

Him: So, am I pointing at the phloem here on this stem cross section?

Me: No. You're pointing at the fiber bundle cap. The phloem's blue.
Him: That doesn't help. Remember?
Me: Oh yeah. Sorry.

A little while later:

Him: I can't see that either.
Me: You know, this would be so much easier to explain to you if you weren't colorblind.
Him: Are you making fun of my disability?
Me: Only a little, and only because I know you can take it.
Him: That's it! I'm going to go on ratemyprofessor and tell people to avoid you. I'm going to write: He likes to make fun of people with disabilities. Do not take this guy if you are in a wheelchair.