Don't worry about me baby, see you when I get there

Girl: You're still here?

Me: I'm stalking you.

Girl: You are?

Me: Well, this is the second time you've seen me today. But I guess that would make me a bad stalker.

Girl: It would?

Me: Yeah. If I were a good stalker, you wouldn't know I was stalking you until I was standing in the bushes with a piano string.

Cocaine and sushi on the lower east side

In case you're wondering what graduate students do all day, here's a small taste of what goes on in academia.

Our department has an email listserv that sends emails out to everyone simultaneously when someone posts to it. Usually these emails consist of boring stuff, like announcements for the next snoozefest seminar, but it was put to good use yesterday. Two nights ago a storm passed through, so yesterday the air was very crisp and clear (unusual for this city). One of the professors went to the top of the parking garage and photographed the surrounding view. He sent them out for anyone who wanted to use them(I doubt he meant for my blog, but whatever). Here are some of the pictures he took:





His initial email started a flurry of other emails, talking about whether or not we could use these pictures for the department's web page. Without going into all the details of those, the result was two brilliantly photoshopped pictures put together by two different graduate students (at the suggestion of another professor). Here are those pictures:




As far as I'm concerned, you can never have too many pictures of oversized, fire-breathing rodents attacking Las Vegas casinos.

She drags his body to the edge of the swollen river wrapped in a red velvet curtain stolen from the movie theater where she works

As you well know, Halloween is just around the corner, and anybody who has ever seen a horror movie knows that this is the time of year when friends and loved ones become possessed by evil spirits and become homicidal. When this happens, you will have no other choice but to kill your friends and/or loved ones who become possessed. Of course, we live in a time when the police generally don't buy the excuse that you had to commit murder because the victim was possessed (after all, this is 2007, and that excuse is sooo 1692), so, you're going to have to dispose of the body yourself in order to avoid a life in prison.

You could try dumping the body by the roadside, but really that's the lazy man's way of disposal. Plus, it's very likely that the body will be found within a very short period of time. Once the body's been found, the police are going to start investigating things and will eventually find their way back to you. Especially since it's real easy for someone to see you push the body out of your car. You really should be more careful.

You'd probably be better off weighting the body down and throwing it into the deepest body of water within driving distance. On second thought, that didn't seem to work out so well for Scott Peterson, so maybe you should try other options.

You could always place the body in your bathtub and then fill the tub with acid. The only problem with this is that it's going to take a while for everything to dissolve. You most certainly couldn't have anyone over to the house for a while. This is obviously a bad move if you don't live alone, or if you only have one bathroom. If you go that long without bathing yourself then people are going to talk. They may even send a plumber to your house if you get smelling too bad, so you really ought to think this out more.

Burning the body in your back yard is probably not going to be a good choice because surely the putrid stench of burning flesh and hair is going to give the neighbors cause for concern. They may even call the fire department, and the last thing you want is a bunch of nosy firemen snooping around.

A good way to dispose of the body is to feed it to the hogs. Of course, in order to do this, you have to own some hogs. This in and of itself would give people reason to suspect you of foul play. Also, hogs can't digest teeth or human hair, so you'd need to either get rid of those before, or sift through the pig shit so that nobody else finds them. Last I checked, the police could still use dental records and/or DNA to ID the victim.

Alternatively, you could bury the body in your basement. That would most certainly cut down on the risk of being seen by someone and getting turned in. However, that bag of lyme you bought at the hardware store will only help with the smell of decomposition so much. Not only that, but you can also never, ever sell your house, because if you do, sure enough the new owners will start poking around when they notice the dirt floor in the basement, and then the police will be knocking on the door of your new house.

Yup, if you find it necessary to bury the body, you're better off burying it somewhere in the forest (or desert - whichever is most convenient). This way you can still sell the house if you ever get the urge to move (which you probably will because you'll be haunted by the ghost of your recently deceased friend or loved one). Of course, you'll need to make sure that you dig a deep enough grave that wild animals won't dig it up. Unless you own some heavy farm equipment, that's going to be a lot of manual labor. I'll leave that one up to you. After all, it's your back.

On second thought, maybe you should just call a priest to come and perform an exorcism.

Trying to tell me something?

I might be a supplementary character in a new horror movie. I haven't seen the cameras, but when I got out of the shower this morning I saw that someone had written "Eduardo will eat your eyes" on the mirror.

I can't think of another logical explanation for that.