Month: December 2019

As I write this, the western half humanity is only moments away from saying goodbye to the decade that was the 2010s and welcoming in 2020 and beyond.

I find myself going back and forth between whether or not I’m supposed to be doing something sacred and meaningful to bring closure and completeness to the last 10 years.

History is typically a good first draft of a guide, so I that got me to thinking, “Well, how the heck did I close out the first decade of the 2000s?”

It took awhile and little bit of detective work, but I was finally able to reconstruct my final moments of 2009.

Turns out, tonight will mark an important milestone for me as a physicist: it will be my “tin, aluminum” anniversary¹https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wedding_anniversary#Celebration_and_gifts of submitting my first scientific paper!

Well, sort of.

You see, back in 2009, I was in the middle of my 6-year stint as a graduate student. I had spent a good half of that year trying to write my first paper, and it just seemed to be this endless churning month after month.

As the year wound down, my professors and I had worked our way through the 7th, 8th, and 9th revisions of the paper. Though it was never obvious to us, slowly but surely, the story it had been lacking was slowly congealing into something presentable.

I had received that 9th revision back when I went into work on December 30th. As I looked over it, I realized “Holy shit. I think it’s finally ready to be submitted!”

Honestly, this came as a complete surprise to me, as it had just seemed to be the Paper That Wouldn’t Die. I think a part of me expected to still be ----- with it 10 years on, so all in all this was a wonderful revelation.

I spent the rest of that day putting the finishing touches on it, and decided I would work a short day on New Year’s Eve, just long enough to get it officially submitted.

This was a pretty exciting thought, that I would be able to officially have it timestamped with “2009.” Some journals even go by the submission date when determining the year of publication for the official record,²Okay, okay. To the few published scientists out there reading this: ya got me. I don’t think any journals go by submission date. However, since this was my first rodeo, it is entirely possible I believed this to be the case. so it would be a badge of honor I could wear with pride, an immovable token signifying that I had actually accomplished something tangible that year.

New Year’s Day I rolled up into the lab all hopped up on adrenaline. Today was going to be the day. I could feel it.

So here’s a fun fact about the academic world that I learned that day: even with a complete manuscript in hand and ready to go, there is always a surprising amount of bullshit and/or red tape between you and finally pressing the Submit button.

It also didn’t help that I was going rogue just a wee bit. I knew that if I brought the professors back in for any of the process it would just add an extra 3-4 days to the whole thing, so I had made the executive decision to pull the trigger. My paper, my choice, right?

Anyways, the day continued to tick away as I made my way through the labyrinth of online submission forms, and so around 3 pm I decided that I was close enough to being done that it made more sense to go home and wrap it up from there.

Oh, what an ignorant chap³”Ignorant slut.” That’s the term I really want to use. It’s okay, right? I’ve seen it used freely on broadcast TV so it has to be somewhat acceptable now, ya? I was.

Once home, I got back to work, always seemingly 5 minutes away from washing my hands of the matter and being able to relax and enjoy ringing in the new decade with The Boss Lady.

Almost done…almost done…always, “almost done.”

While I sat on the couch, furiously pounding away at the laptop, my companion literally tired of waiting for me and fell into a deep slumber beside me.

But the finish line was RIGHT THERE. It wasn’t a mirage, I was certain of it. All I had to do was persevere, put my head down, and power through the pain. I was too close to admit defeat.

The evening hours evaporated away and when I finally glanced up at the clock, I found myself in the 11th hour.

Actually, it was 11:51 to be exact. And this time, I was pretty sure that there really was only 5 minutes left.

Focused like never before, I clicked that trackpad with certainty and an imperial sense of destiny.

Two-thousand nine in the year of our Lord was going to be the year that I submitted my first paper. Nothing was going to stop me.

Crap–11:57 and I still had a few more fields to go. But there was no time to stop and think–only do and click.

The clock hit 11:59 and I was…almost…there.

SUBMIT!

I had done it!!! I immediately turned on the TV just in time to see D1ck⁴Stupid ----- censorship plugin wants you to only read ----- Clark instead, hence the numbers-for-letters baloney. Clark and the rest of Time’s Square chanting “…9…8…7…”⁵OMFG, I had no idea what I just missed until putting this post together. Apparently all the real fun happened right before 9: https://www.thedailybeast.com/dick-clark-flubs-new-years-countdown. I. Can’t. Even.

I turned to the Boss Lady and shook her awake, fully expecting her to share in my jubilation while the last seconds of the decade ticked away.

“I did it! I really did it! I got my paper submitted in 2009! Now, how about a big ol’ sloppy victory kiss?”

I went in to redeem that kiss I had just promised myself, only to be met with a healthy dose of Side-Cheek of Rejection.

ACCESS DE-NIED.

Um, yeah…so it turns out that putting off a beautiful woman who only wanted to spend a romantic evening with you and instead ignoring all reason to focus on a completely arbitrary deadline…listen well, Young Grasshoppers: that is not the way to turn a woman on. Or even endear yourself to them. In any way. At all.

She more or less told me that if I loved my ----- paper so much than I could kiss that instead. Ouch.

The victory I had worked so hard for wasn’t tasting so sweet any more, now was it?

Oh, and the best part? I got an email from the journal a few days later, kindly informing me that they only accept submissions from current Ph.D holders.

“But what does that even mean?” you may be wondering.

It means that, as a grad student working on–but still a few years away from–a Ph.D., my submission was totally invalid, and that I would have to have one of my professors start up the submission process afresh…in 2010, obviously.

In the end, the paper didn’t even get its 2009 submission timestamp–the one prize I was really after.

The Universe has one ----- up sense of humor, that’s all I gotta say.

Anyways, the point of the story is this:

As you near the countdown,
Please, put the computer down.
Young man, don't be daft--
Put away that final draft!
And never leave your dear wife waiting,
Unless, of course, you prefer...

Remember what’s important is the people in your life and the moments you share with them.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to play bubbles with my 2-year-old and enjoy a round of Uno with the Elder.

Happy 2020, my ninjas!

Content created on: 31 December 2019 (Tues)

Unlike the wholly unauthorized Boss Lady’s Edition of the Best of 2019, this time around I have actually commissioned a Top 3 list from a dedicated reader. These picks come to us courtesy of my pensive friend and former colleague, The Doctor.¹As a bonus for the dedicated few who actually read these footnotes: “also the guy who couldn’t find Connecticut on a map”. You may have seen his comments floating around here on occasion. So many thanks to him for taking the time and effort to put this together.

The Doctor says:

…I think your best stories are those that make us think about how our presuppositions about the world are plain wrong. As humans, we tend to want to make things as simple as possible, because complicated is hard. You’ve had more than a few stories that illustrate the nuance and complexity of all the other people we share the planet with.

Here are [a few of] my picks along with some of my accompanying thoughts.

– The Doctor

3. Lawnmower Man

The Doctor says:

More and more, context matters. Not just when you do something a bit goofy in the shower, but when you’re making judgments about other people choices, culture, religion, etc.

Like John Stewart said, “Actually, that joke was brought to you by… Context. Look at how silly the world would be without context.“²Watch the video here: http://www.cc.com/video-clips/o90eth/the-daily-show-with-jon-stewart-win-city

2. F*ck Bob Ross

The Doctor says:

Just like context is important, so is the realization that we experience the world differently. Two people can have completely different reactions to something or someone because of different backgrounds and experiences.

Even more than that, how we experience and react to the world is based in our biology.We can all look at the same picture of a dress and come way of radically different ideas about what color it is³https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dress...

1. The Olde Timey Wheelchair

The Doctor says:

So, we like to think that we are master’s of our own destiny, and that if we do everything “just right”, stuff will work out. The world is not so simple. Small events, circumstances, and comments can have far reaching effects. We just can’t anticipate everything. (Although, I guess it’s important to realize that general principals still can tell you something…)

Editor’s note: If you really want to nerd out a la The Doctor, watch this video about The Butterfly Effect:

As the year–and the decade–draws to a close, it’s only appropriate to partake in the time-honored tradition of substituting new and original content with Top 3/10/100/etc lists and other asinine countdowns.

This first Top 3 list comes to you courtesy of The Boss Lady, aka my wife (if you haven’t picked up on this by now). This is an unauthorized list, put together without directly consulting her; nonetheless, I’m pretty sure that she rather enjoyed the following ramblings of her husband.

If you are reading this and are NOT The Boss Lady, feel free to share which posts you have particularly enjoyed thus far in the comments below. Perhaps I will compile a new list of fan-favorites–sort of a guide for newcomers to the community.

Without further ado, I present to you Posts Which Have Caused The Boss Lady to Expel Liquid from Her Body:¹Usually we’re talking tears here, due to laughing so hard she cried, but I like to hold out hope that on at least one occasion she has peed herself a little bit.

Have a Happy 2020, Everybodies!

Editor’s Note: This is a continuation of the loose theme introduced in In Soviet Russia (spoonerisms/transpositional humor…and basically just more abuse of the English language). While not essential, go ahead and read it anyways. Also, for your sanity, the title simply refers to the fact that we’re getting back to that original post that started this trainwreck of thought.

One time in high school, I entrusted my best friend, Phillip K. Ballz, to give me a very simple haircut that only required a single snip of the scissors. He proceeded to “accidentally” cut it at a sharp angle, resulting in the very front of my hair being notably shorter than the rest of my mini-puff.

Although I had enough historical data to know that I don’t look good at all as a human cue ball, he left me with no choice but to completely shave my head¹Actually, we didn’t go straight to a complete buzzcut, but that story merits its own post. Patience, Young Grasshopper……which he proceeded to do with a little too much gusto.

Later on in front of some other friends, he made a frankly unimaginative attempt at mocking me for the follicular predicament that he had put me in:

PKB: “Hah hah! You’re like a Head and Shoulders commercial: Great hair can’t have flakes!“

Me: “Bitch, please. I think it’s much more accurate to say Great flakes can’t have hair…”

Duly Quoted

Legend has it that, when asked by an editor why she had missed a deadline, writer and mistress of wit Dorothy Parker replied:

Tell him I was too f*cking busy–or vice versa.

Notable Badass Dorothy Parker

I mean, we’ve all been there, right? But now, now you finally have the words to properly express yourself…

As I previously stated in In Soviet Russia, spoonerisms can be a real fount of wit and humor, even if it’s not premeditated. Out of habit I will often find myself taking whatever phrase is in the moment and uttering a spoonerized version of it, just to see what pops out.

It blesses my heart that I have been able to lead by example and have successfully imparted this habit to the Elder.²My eldest daughter, to those unfamiliar with this nomenclature. On a regular basis I will overhear her applying the spooneristic algorithm to whatever phrase is currently on her mind.

However, if you are thinking about trying this out for yourself, I should caution against mindlessly spoonerizing aloud.

Please, it behooves you to workshop them in your head first.

I just know one day, when we’re at the theatre to watch the latest Disney/Pixar money-suck, the Elder is going to call loudly across the lobby to me:

“Dad, don’t forget the c0ck porn!”³If you’r curious, I had to spell ‘c0ck’ with a zero instead of the letter O on account of the fact that my Censorship plugin will censor it. It’s not as funny reading —– porn, especially if it’s not immediately clear that we’re spoonerizing “popcorn”. Here let me show you: ----- ----- cock-a-doodle-doo!

Or, maybe if I’m lucky, she’ll merely ask for “cop porn” instead…

That is the better option of the two…right?

Speaking of the Elder, I am usually responsible for getting her to bed.

I will routinely lay down with her and chat a bit before chilling next to her while she says her nighttime prayers.

She will sit there silently, [presumably] praying, and then when she’s done she will loudly proclaim “Amen!”

At one point I got the notion to introduce her to another favorite mental pastime of mine, taking ideas waaaaay past their logical conclusions.

Since she was at that age where she was all about ABCs and patterns, I asked her what she thought should come after “Amen”, et cetera.

Several nights later, it was the Boss Lady’s turn to lay down with her.

They chatted for a bit and the Elder said her silent prayers as per usual.

I about choked on my laughter when from the living room I could hear her excitedly bark in the Boss Lady’s ear:

“A-men! B-men! C-men! D-men!”

A 4-year-old

Needless to say, I got in trouble with the Boss Lady for corrupting our daughter’s soul.

But damn, was that spanking every bit worth it, though…

Content created on: 12/17/18 December 2019 (Thurs/Tues/Wed)

As one whose thoughts often outpace his mouth, I have experienced my fair share of unintentional spoonerisms.

At some point, though, I realized that spoonerisms weren’t something to be ashamed of, but rather embraced. There is much bemusement to be found therein, and sometimes by intentionally spoonerin’ it up one can result in getting easy credit as a humorous person.

Hell, Yakov Smirnoff made a whole career out of it. If you’re old enough, you may remember his whole line of In Soviet Russia… jokes, featuring such classics as:

In Soviet Russia…cars drive you!

Maybe Yakov smirnoff

or:

In Soviet Russia…TV watches you!

Also Maybe yakov smirnoff

A few interesting side notes here. First, this specific type of literary construct is officially known as a Russian Reversal.¹https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_reversal Yes, a bit racist. I know.

Second, technically a spoonerism refers to transposition of the initial sounds of a multi-word phrase, whereas this falls under the broader informal category of transpositional humor–NOT to be confused with the more narrow trope of transpositional puns.²https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transpositional_pun Got it? Super.

And lastly, according to an uncited source on Wikipedia, while Comrade Smirnoff is most commonly associated with Russian Reversals, they long pre-dated him, and in fact, he rarely employed them.³https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_reversal

The point of the story is that if you’re going to blog about a poorly or misconceived notion of yours, maybe you should at least do a Wikipedia/Google-level of research before you manage to live-blog proving yourself to be an ignoramus,⁴I’ve noticed the phrase ignorant slut used on several occasions recently. Like, is that a thing? And is that a phrase that is certified cancel-culture proof? Asking for a friend… yeah?

Also…the joys of going down the rabbit hole of a Wiki-venture, amiright?

Well, my half-ass mental associations notwithstanding, I’m determined to forge ahead with my praise of transpositional humor in general. I present to you, in no particular order, a handful of spooneristic/In Soviet Russia musings.

One of the best ways we can contribute to society is by passing on our values to our children.⁵This point is actually quite debatable, given the subjective nature and wide spectrum of “values”, which pretty much statistically ensures that for an given value held, there is a non-zero portion of society who is diametrically opposed to it. My misguided adulation of Yakov is one of the many values that I’ve attempted to pass on to my offspring.

This transference of ideology began at my Elder daughter’s bedtime, for which I am typically responsible. At first it was a bit confusing to a 4-year-old why, whenever she told her Daddy she needed to “say her prayers,” she would be met with the retort:

In Soviet Russia…prayers say you!

A Very responsible and thoughtful father

In fairness to me, this was a step up from “Your mom says her prayers!” Side story: after enduring more than enough of my overplaying the your mom trope, she finally had enough: “You keep saying that. What does that even mean?” Oh, the wisdom of a child…

Anyways, she eventually grasped the general concept…except she didn’t quite nail the execution. For example, she graced me with this little nugget:

In North Carolina…you sleep in your bed!

The elder

I quickly figured out that she was actually doing a double-spoonerism in her head, somehow skipping to the spoonerified version of the phrase as her starting point, and ending up with a phrase in which the two spoonerisms just cancelled each other out.

She was thinking herself funny when, for all practical purposes, she was just stating very obvious things. Bonus points for switching “Soviet Russia” with “North Carolina”, though…

While not an exact analogy, and not quite transpositional in nature, I can relate to the Elder’s error, having done something similar with a familiar pun. An actual transcript from a conversation I had with myself this past year:

Some random external source: “Blah blah blah…Ships, Ahoy! Blah blah blah…”

Me: ” ‘Ships, Ahoy!’ Ha ha. That’s very punny, saying ‘Ships, Ahoy!’ You know, like ‘Chips, Ahoy!’ the well-known name-brand cookie…”

Also me: “It does seem odd though that the maritime/pirating industries would go out of their way to make a baked-good based pun…”

Me, again: “Oh…right. ‘Chips, Ahoy!’ is the pun. Yeah. That makes waaaay more sense.”

Overly objective me: “Good lord, I’m a ----- idiot…”

Normally, I’m a law-abiding citizen, always using crosswalks at the appropriate time and never jay-walking.

However, a few years ago, I really needed to catch my bus that was sitting at a red light, with the bus stop only a 50 yards or so past the intersection. Both of which were on the opposite side of the street from me.

With the bus’s light about to turn green, I knew that it would be impossible for me to catch it if I waited to properly cross in the crosswalk.

So, carefully dodging oncoming traffic in the lanes closest to me, I angled across the street from the corner of the intersection directly towards the bus stop, hoping to cross right behind the bus as it came to a stop, and then hopping on just in time.

As I made my way across the last two lanes of traffic and with the bus almost directly in front of me by now, I took one last look to the right to ensure that no more traffic was coming from that direction.

Seeing that it was all clear I continued along my path-of-least-distance, but as I turned my head back straight ahead–HOLY SHIT, THE BUS IS STILL IN MY PATH AND MOVING FASTER THAN EXPECTED!

Apparently, I had anticipated it to have been out of my path and stopped by time I needed to cross the far lane. Instead, I came within about 4 inches of losing part of my face to the back corner of a moving bus.

In other words:

In North Carolina…bus gets hit by you.

my inner yakov smirnoff

Having been part of a Scholar’s Bowl¹Also known as Quiz Bowl, Trivia Bowl, Knowledge Bowl, Clash of the Nerds, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera… dynasty in high school, I have ingested many a nugget of cultural knowledge. However, this knowledge tends to be rather shallow, and while I have plenty of trivial trivia tid-bits permanently half-baked into my consciousness, very few of them are accompanied by enough context to keep me out of trouble.

Case in point: I really wanted to incorporate a literary reference into the title of this article. You know, everyone has their own burdens to bear in this life, and I wanted a title that signaled that I was willing to open up about one of my own in particular.

The first thing that came to mind was a hard-to-find German title called Mein Kampf, which roughly translates to English as My Struggle–ah! Perfect for the occasion!

But then I realized, “What just a tick! I’m starting to remember something else about that book. Oh yeah…that’s right. That’s Hitler’s autobiography.²https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mein_Kampf It was probably just about his childhood, so I think I can use it and still be kosher…”

Fortunately, it didn’t take more than about 20 seconds of Wikipedia research to thoroughly dissuade me of that idea. I mean HOLY SHIT, I’m not sure what I was expecting, but yeah, no…Hitler’s “origin story” is about the furthest one could get from being kosher, and I don’t care to be basing any titular puns on His Dark Materials.³Wait, that’s referring to something entirely different, you say?

I figured that this article had enough concerns of it’s own already going on that it didn’t need any unwanted anti-Semitism thrown into the mix, amiright? And in it’s place you instead get a reference to an obscure Czech novel⁴https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unbearable_Lightness_of_Being by Milan Kundera, which, by the way, I’m pretty sure I’ve confused with The Importance of Being Ernest…

Most folks cruise through life without really ever having to really give fellatio much of a second thought.

But when your name is Blow Job? Well, you aren’t exactly afforded the luxury of living a life blissfully ignorant of the true meaning of such hedonistic acts.

In fact, I wasn’t even afforded a childhood of innocence.

For an incoming kindergartner especially, such a term can cause a particular amount of confusion and delay.⁵https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EF_68T9H0UM

You see, thanks to having an ample supply of older cousins and siblings, I was about 5 years old the first time when one of them smirkingly referred to me as Blow Job.

However, none of those jackasses decided to tell me what, exactly, a quote-unquote “blow job” was. I mean, I could at least infer that it was something less than flattering, but c’mon, we all know that no amount of standard logic would have ever led me to its true meaning.

So I spent a good two years of my childhood trying to figure out what the hell a blow job was before someone kindly filled me in.

Actually, I’m not sure that it was even a person who enlightened me. My memory wants to say I looked it up on Wikipedia, but we all know that no such thing existed in 1988, and I can’t imagine that I would have found that information in an encyclopedia. Yet, I strongly feel that I had to do my own ----- research to finally get some resolution in the matter. Maybe it was Webster’s Dictionary…?

Well, regardless of how it was that I found out, I remembering being one pissed off 7-year-old when I finally did.

No, it wasn’t because of the lewd and vulgar implications of those seven letters that had me up in arms.

I was incensed that the term made no ----- sense.

“Blow job”–who came up with that grossly inept euphemism anyways? Seriously, how is that even a remotely accurate description?

I mean, maybe the “job” part is dead-on, from what I understand now. Work is work, right? Otherwise, this choice of words really only serves to obfuscate the phrase’s true meaning…

Okay, I’ll get off my anti-blowjob⁶For the record, I’m very much a pro-fellatio fella–I’m just against that particular term. If that wasn’t patently obvious at this point. soapbox for the time being. You get the idea.

Now I’m pretty sure that it was no later than second grade before I had my eyes opened to this particular side of human nature. How can I be so certain of this timeline?

That’s because second grade was my last year going to school in Rolla before moving to Missouri, and I distinctly remember having a debate with a classmate in the lunch line there. By the time of this age-inappropriate conversation, I recall being well enough aware of oral sex and blow jobs, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

…except the problem was that I was confidently kidsplaining to my friend that, no, no, no, they were not the same thing. Oral sex, you see, is when your uncle calls a 1-900 number and talks dirty to the woman on the other end of the line…100% for sure that’s exactly what oral sex is.

Obviously, I had fallen prey to a common⁷Well, actually it’s probably uncommon. misconception;⁸Reproductive Pun #1. the truth is that neither of these acts of intimacy can lead to pregnancy, so it was more than appropriate that oral sex, to me, was inconceivable⁹Boom! Reproductive Pun #2.…

Now all of this begs the question: what kind of cruel and/or perverse parents name their child “B.J.” in the first place? Who is responsible for inflicting such a trauma-filled life on their own youngins?

Unfortunately for Present Moment You, you’re going to have to wait until Christmas to open the present that is the Origin Story of this particular Blow Job.

But one point of telling that story is that it’s not just a matter of who gets the blame for this whole fiasco–equally important is who doesn’t.

And in this case it behooves me to preemptively declare my dearest mother not guilty on all charges; I can’t afford to lose such a large chunk of my readership at this point…

Content created on: 7/8 December 2019 (Sat/Sun).