Showing posts with label random. Show all posts
Showing posts with label random. Show all posts

Friday, March 13, 2009

From Russell the Blogger

Just a random observation: lately I've grown very fond of referring to people in conversations as "[First name] the [Occupation]".  I started doing it ironically when Joe the Plumber was a running political joke.  But now I'm starting to like it. It's useful shorthand for referencing someone who is not known to the audience; it establishes both their name and function.  That way I almost never need to answer followup questions about who I'm talking about and why.

Thus, people at work are "Susanne the Analyst," "Gary the Boss," "Yolanda the Carpooler," etc.  Then I've got Elliott the Contractor, Dan the Financial Adviser, Calvin the Friend of Ben, and so on.

By the way, be sure to check out my recent post about Ayn the Author.  ;)

Thursday, January 17, 2008

Ten things I've done that you probably haven't

One of those blog meme thingies; I got wind of it thanks to Martin.

  1. Completed a master's degree program while also working full time
  2. Visited a live studio taping of Sesame Street
  3. Skied on a Double Black Diamond hill
  4. Drew a salary for teaching a class in which all but one student was older than me
  5. Starred as comic relief in an amateur (but professionally directed) performance of The Mikado
  6. Argued for atheism while in kindergarten
  7. Attempted to sabotage an Amway meeting
  8. Actually engaged in conversation with Jehovah's Witnesses for the better part of an hour
  9. Launched an internet audio show before podcasts were hip
  10. Conceived a child right around 9/11/01

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Comic strip triage

Since I keep filling up my Google feed reader with more stuff than I have the will to slog through, I'm deleting a few comic strips from my feed rolls. If you read comics, you can follow along with me.
  • Goodbye, Doonesbury. I've always sort of liked Doonesbury, but only in a "That occasionally makes me smile" kind of way. Most often, when I'm a week or more behind on my comic strips, it's Doonesbury that has the most unread entries. I presume that if there is a Doonesbury cartoon that's especially insightful, someone will point it out to me. In the meantime, I'm bored of reading about veterans in counseling and Mike's whiny college-attending daughter.
  • Goodbye, Fox Trot. I think there's an unwritten law of comic strips that says that by the time a cartoonist goes into semi-retirement, they already suck so much that it's too late to recover. Fox Trot was once one of my favorite cartoons, but I could already see the writing on the wall before Bill Amend decided to transition from a daily cartoon to a Sundays-only strip. One of the side effects of having idiosyncratic characters who never age is that eventually you start telling the same jokes over and over and over again. Jason is still a little geek who deliberately makes simple tasks more complicated with advanced math. Paige is still obsessing about making a splash in her freshman year, every single year. The mom still insists on making healthy food that everybody hates. Ha ha! Bye bye, Fox family.
I went through another round of comic strip triage last year and it was oddly liberating. Back then, I got rid of
  • Dilbert. I should have seen that it jumped the shark YEARS ago. Not that it was ever truly hilarious, but somehow I failed to notice exactly when the office humor stopped being slightly interesting. Besides, there's so many Dilbert strips on office doors around the IBM buildings, that reading the strip just feels like actually working. And also, Scott Adams is a creationism promoter, and an obnoxious one at that.
  • Non Sequitur. Used to be a truly funny cartoon in the spirit of The Far Side - which, by the way, was authored by the much smarter Gary Larson, who quit while at the top of his game. Non Sequitur went into a slow tailspin when it started doing multi-strip story arcs. The tailspin accelerated massively when the story arcs were all about Danae. Even now, as I look at it today, the story is about god damn Danae again. I'm glad I gave up that habit.
  • Calvin and Hobbes. Sadly, I had to finally let go of this one when it occurred to me that I've already read all the reruns like, five times. I'll miss you, Bill Watterson.
I still have plenty of comics to keep me amused, though, and here's what survived the RSS-eliminating scalpel this time around:
Wow. I just realized... with this latest round of cuts, I now officially read NO daily syndicated cartoons that get printed in actual newspapers. It's all online.

Nevertheless, I still read Comics Curmudgeon daily, so I won't completely lose touch with the world of crappy corporate comics.

Monday, June 25, 2007

I've been tagged

As Ginny pointed out, she and I are both now two times removed from PZ Myers: Possum Momma got tagged by him to write 8 random facts about herself, and we got tagged by her. So here you are.

The obligatory rules:

  1. We have to post these rules before we give you the facts.
  2. Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
  3. People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.
  4. At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
  5. Don't forget to leave them a comment telling them they're tagged, and to read your blog

1. I am a really good skier, or at least I used to be. It's easy to get the practice when you spend eight years living ten minutes from the base of a popular ski mountain. I've skied numerous trails rated double black diamond, and I loved moguls. I don't think I've skied in about ten years, although I still have my my own skis stashed in my garage. They are red and significantly taller than I am. The better you are, the bigger skis you use (adds speed but reduces maneuverability).

2. At one of my first real jobs in college, I worked in a La Jolla office that had a big window overlooking the beach. At the time, I didn't fully appreciate how unusually awesome that is.

3. I hardly drank alcohol at all until I was of legal age. I didn't have a major moral objection, I just didn't much like drinking and saw too many people thinking they were being witty and interesting while they were drunk and I was sober. There were ten guys living in my freshman dorm suite, and only two of us never drank. The other one was a Mormon.

4. I almost injured myself very badly while climbing down a fairly treacherous path cutting through a cliff to Black's Beach in San Diego. I made the trip pretty often. This one time, I was trying to hang down over a low drop, but I lost my grip. I fell a short distance and would have hit my head on a rock, but instead my head landed on my backpack, which had a towel inside. And yet I still don't believe in God.

5. At my bar mitzvah, the Torah portion that I read in Hebrew and gave a speech about was the passage containing "An eye for an eye."

6. The first girl I ever loved had been my friend since we were born two weeks apart in the same hospital. The friendship ended the day I said I was in love with her, because she didn't take that information well. Today she is a TV actress, who gets a lot of bit parts on popular shows. I've seen her on three or four shows but I'm long since over her.

7. I once got roughly yanked away from a museum display case by a guard in Paris, because I couldn't understand him when he told me I was standing too close.

8. I can't stand football, but I used to live in Auburn, Alabama, where college football is a major focus of the residents' social lives. My parents and I used to drive around fraternity row during the days leading up to football games, so we could look at all the incredibly elaborate motorized paper mache sculptures of Aubie the Tiger who was brutalizing the opposing team's mascot somehow (i.e., cooking them in a pot, running over them with a car, etc).

Now I'm supposed to tag some more people, but since most of the bloggers I know have already been tagged, there won't be too many. Sorry, but some of these require membership or special access.

  1. Keryn
  2. Gil (he doesn't seem to have a blog yet, but since one is available, it's high time he used it)
  3. Jeff Dee
  4. Martin Wagner
  5. Azzurra

If I forgot that I know more untagged people with blogs, please don't feel slighted, just email me! There's room for a few more.

Thursday, April 12, 2007

Glug glug

I hate to say it, but I'm becoming quite addicted to bottled vanilla Frappuccino. During the weeks when I've been regularly staying up late on homework, such as this week, it has been my caffeinated beverage of choice. My dad has been brewing his own coffee every morning since I was a kid, so he's kind of a connoisseur, and I bet he'd be disappointed in me. I have simpler tastes, though: you buy the bottle and you drink it.

It's not a very frugal choice compared to, say, Mountain Dew. But it is both cheaper and easier than actually going to Starbucks or Seattle's Best down the street and buying something from them.

Of course, as everyone knows, Starbucks is evil. I guess I should start feeling guilty now.

Tuesday, March 06, 2007

I'm a cowboy;on a steel horse I ride

Fine. Every other blogger is hyping this stupid test, so why shouldn't I?

Cowboy Lawman

You scored 6 Honor, 7 Justice, 7 Adventure, and 3 Individuality!


You don't just want to explore the open plains, you want to tame it. You're a person with scruples and the steel nerves to back them up. You'd fit well with gunslingers like Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson. You're a Cowboy Lawman.

Wear your star and sixgun proud, Marshall. You're gonna do just fine!

This test tracked 4 variables. How the score compared to the other people's:
Higher than 26% on Ninjinuity
Higher than 83% on Knightlyness
Higher than 55% on Cowboiosity
Higher than 11% on Piratical Bent