6-8-06

"Priapus is a god of fertility, protector of horticulture and viticulture. His statue, holding a wooden sickle in his hand, was used in the Roman gardens as scarecrow, and his enormous penis as a threat against thieves."

"... If I do seize you ... you shall be so stretched that you will think your anus never had any wrinkles."

Cradle of democracy my ass; the Greeks were screwed up. Read more here.

6-7-06

Until today, Julie didn't know that you can click on pictures in Facebook photo albums to enlarge them.

6-6-06

If anyone wants a free suitcase, there's one lying in the middle of the road on Livingston by the Vernon intersection.

6-5-06

A guy on the board game forums wrote a post about the unfair stereotyping of gamers. The general consensus stereotype of a board gamer, if you are curious, is that of a balding, middle-aged, overweight male who smells bad and has a caffeine addiction. With regards to the odor, the poster wrote:

"For some it is a question of 'to wash or not to wash', for others it is the certain time in their life when they are between childhood and adolescence and their body isn't sure what to do with all the new chemicals, for others it is a medical problem. When I was in my twenties I had that problem. Even if I took a shower only three hours later I smelled like a mediocre torchbearer in the Dungeon of Doom. Thankfully I could take some pills based on natural ingredients to get rid of the problem. Now, according to my wife, I smell very good."

Freshman year we had a guy on our floor who stank like a wet dog in a barrel of rotten human flesh, even directly after a shower. How could this be? Some conjectured that he didn't use soap in the shower; others thought he didn't shower enough; some believed he didn't wear deodorant; others thought he had a medical problem. Previously I wasn't sure whether there really existed a medical condition that could make you smell like ass 100% of the time, but now I know. Poor Don; instead of offering deodorant, we should have given him some pills.

6-4-06

Today I watched a match for the French Open between Sharapova and Safina, both of whom are younger than I am. I feel old.

Sharapova lost in the third set even though she was up 5-1 and is really hot. On the whole, it was a depressing match.

6-3-06

The numbers on a roulette wheel add up to 666.

6-2-06

I finished Complicity by Iain Banks today. It was amazingly average. Who recommended Iain Banks to me? I can't remember, and if it was you, please tell me which of his novels truly showcases his talent, because it seems I picked the wrong one.

6-1-06

My dad caught the national spelling bee on TV tonight and called me over. It was very entertaining, and I regret not having seen any spelling bees earlier. My favorite word of the evening was icteritious, meaning "jaundiced" or just "yellow." I also liked heiligenschein, which isn't in the dictionary but according to this site means "A diffuse bright region surrounding the shadow an observer's head casts on a irregular surface." A really arrogant guy went out on that one, which surprised me given how frequently it comes up in everyday conversation.

5-31-06

If you have one of those crank things that rolls up your garden hose, you should unscrew the head of the hose before rolling it up. Otherwise, the water left over inside the hose will have nowhere to escape and the hose will sprout leaks.

5-30-06

I got the residential teaching assitant job at Case! It'll only be for one month, leaving plenty of room for board games and Oblivion, but at least I won't be a loser ALL summer.

5-29-06

The next executive chef at the White House will be, for the first time in history, a woman.

5-28-06

"Starry Night," the famous painting by Van Gogh, resides in the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Other famous paintings in that museum's collection include Picasso's "Girl Before a Mirror," Wyeth's "Christina's World," a canvas that's entirely blue, a canvas that's entirely black, a canvas that's entirely white, a canvas that's entirely olive green, and a giant square blue canvas with OOF written across the middle in capital yellow letters.

5-27-06

New York City isn't split up into multiple school districts like Columbus is. The entire city is one big district. Admission into the top public schools is therefore determined by scores on standardized tests.

5-26-06

We'll be coming back Tuesday, not Monday, and I only brought three pairs of socks. This worries me. Recall the lesson learned on 2-16-06: "If you pull an all-nighter and neglect to change your socks, by the end of the second day they start to smell really bad." I won't be staying up all night, but you can see the related problem here.

5-25-06

White chocolate chip macadamia cookies are my favorite type of cookies, even though I like neither white chocolate (which isn't real chocolate) nor macadamia nuts (because they leave an unpleasant aftertaste).

I'll be on vacation tomorrow through Monday, so I won't be able to update until Tuesday. Sorry!

5-24-06

You should wipe clean the top of canned goods before opening them. The rat poop that collects on top of the cans during warehouse storage will get into your food if you don't remove it.

My source assures me, however, that licking the inside foil of yogurt covers is perfectly acceptable.

5-23-06

During free-fall, the force of air against your skin is so great that oxygen diffuses into your bloodstream. Thus, when you go skydiving, you don't need to breathe.

[Steven Bouyack claims he read this somewhere, but it's probably a load of crap. -- Ed.]

5-22-06

Lila kindly pointed out to me ("bor, that is wrong. you are stupid") that 500 sheets of paper do not weigh 24 pounds (See 5-19-06, below). I got this erroneous fact off the 500-sheet package of paper by our printer that says "24 lb" on it. lb != lbs, it seems. I weighed myself with the paper and then without it, and the difference was a mere seven pounds.

5-21-06

After seeing "The Da Vinci Code," I am saddened to conclude that Paul Bettany, one of my favorite actors, works much better as a jovial imaginary beer-loving roommate than as a psychopathic murderous albino monk.

5-20-06

http://ph.otogra.ph is a great place to kill time looking at pretty pictures. Lots of good candidates for desktop backgrounds here.

5-19-06

500 sheets of standard white printing paper weigh 24 pounds. I guess that explains why I had so much trouble carrying 3000 pages' worth of tests in a box, on foot, twenty minutes across campus (see 5-5-06, below).

5-18-06

When I play Oblivion on my laptop, everything works fine except the graphics are white. Everything in the game is a funky shade of white. I tried playing the game on my parents' computer, and it works, except I have to set the graphics so low that the water isn't rendered (it's black, though, instead of white) and all the monsters are shapeless blobs of colored slime. All of the textures are composed of pixels as big as my fist.

I think it's time for a new computer.

5-17-06

My mom has several crowns on her teeth and today one of them broke. She called the dentist and explained the problem as follows:

"I don't have one of my crowns anymore. I mean, I have it. But it's not in my mouth."

People with imperfect mastery of a language often find funny ways to say the simplest things.

5-16-06

Scorpion bites, though not as bad as, say, rattlesnake bites, are still pretty serious and require hospitalization.

5-15-06

In Asian culture, the numbers 6 and 8 are considered lucky. Numbers composed of lucky digits are lucky, too, so skyscrapers will have 88 floors, and 666 is a very lucky number.

5-14-06

My cat is shitting all over the brand new white carpet we installed in the basement.

5-13-06

According to the official rules of foosball, a shot isn't scored if it hits a wall or a defender on its way into the goal. It's a good thing nobody actually plays by the official rules because otherwise 98% of my shots would be discredited.

5-12-06

"They say there are two kinds of losers: bad sports and good actors." -- Larry Evans

5-11-06

The subjunctive voice and the passive voice are not the same thing.

5-10-06

My chemistry students averaged better than my Java students. This is in spite of the fact that A) the chemistry class is hard, B) the Java class is a breeze, C) I was shaky in my knowledge of chemistry and made horrible mistakes while teaching it, and D) I taught Java very well. How strange! Next semester I must be sure to instill more fear into my Java students.

5-9-06

Today I had an interview for a residential TA position at an academic summer camp for high school kids. At one point the interviewer asked me, "How would you handle the situation if one of the students had a crush on you?"

Dave's suggested response: "Depends on if she's hot."

Lacking Dave's wit, I desperately tried to think of something good and failed. I challenge somebody to think of a more horrifying interview question.

5-8-06

Upwords is a stupid game. I'll stick to Scrabble.

5-7-06

Try www.easybib.com the next time you have to write a works cited page. You just enter in all the information you know about a source and the site arranges it in bibliographic format for you.

5-6-06

"Last summer, my friend O. and I went sailing. He is a quit dry, tight up person, working in public sector. In the evening, safely moored in a quiet place, we started a game of Settlers, and - because of the temperature. we played naked."

Read the rest of this (and other funny stories) here.

===

Two facts: 1) Kevin and I happened not to play in any of the same games at board game club today. 2) Both of us won both of our games.

Now I don't propose that these facts are in any way related, but there it is.

5-5-06

If you carry something really heavy long enough, your muscles get completely shot and stop working for a while.

Whist is better than bridge.

5-4-06

"According to a recent survey, only about a quarter of the population of the United States understands that evolution is about as well established as the fact that water is H2O." -- Daniel Dennett

5-3-06

"I would like to become a diva." -- Professor Koenigsberger

"I'm going to go home and put my balls away." -- Professor Koenigsberger

My postcolonial lit class went to an Indian restaurant today to celebrate the end of the semester. I ordered a "classic" Indian dish (I forget what it's called) and it was absurdly spicy even though I asked for the mild version. Apparently "mild" in Indian cuisine means that it will merely set your stomach on fire, as opposed to disintegrating your tongue instantaneously.

5-2-06

I played Mario Party for the first time today and was profoundly unimpressed. Imagine what Fuzion Frenzy would be like if all the minigames were terrible and the final winner was determined entirely by luck. Literally: in a four-player game, a monkey trained to press the A button over and over again would have about a 20% chance of WINNING. I'm not joking. I may not be a monkey, but I lost every single mini-game and still won overall.

Lesson: flipping a coin achieves the same result as playing Mario Party, but in 1/3600th of the time. I think next time I'll take the coin.

5-1-06

Avuncular means "uncle-like."

I got an A on my last English paper. I suppose I still have some of my old magic touch after all.

Subway subs get really salty if you leave them in the fridge for half a day. I don't get salt on mine, so I have no idea where the salty flavor came from.

4-30-06

I am no longer capable of writing a paper without staying up all night. This is a distressing development.

4-29-06

No matter how much I want to like them or how hard I try, White Cheddar Cheezits are just plain awful.

4-28-06

"Fugly would be 'fucking ugly,' but what's fularious?" -- Professor Emmons

"Only when we hear English on the lips of Americans do we fear for its integrity." -- Basil De Selincourt

4-27-06

If there are k people in a group, it is possible for each person to select a random number and then compute the product of all the numbers, without anyone learning the secret number of anyone else.

4-26-06

In England, writers don't pay income tax.

There is a hole in my right pants pocket just big enough for a pencil to fall through. As a result I have had to transfer my pencils and pen from my right pocket to my left pocket.

4-25-06

Hitachi developed a method for increasing the recording capacity of a hard drive by 1000%. Naturally, the first thing they did after achieving this incredible technological accomplishment, was make an animated cartoon music video about it. Check it out.

4-24-06

Sean Connery passed up the chance to play in both Lord of the Rings and The Matrix.

4-23-06

One intense evening of four-square is sufficient to leave you sore for several days.

4-22-06

Torus games! Click here to download.

4-21-06

Over twenty countries, such China and Australia, print their money on plastic instead of paper. Plastic money lasts four times longer and is much harder to counterfeit.

4-20-06

Do your homework the night before it's due. Otherwise, you worry so much about getting it done before class starts, that you end up forgetting about the meeting you were supposed to have with your advisor...

4-19-06

Phil's glasses broke a few weeks ago and have since been held together by Scotch tape and strips of paper. Today I saw he added a ring of red beads around the entire frame.

I sure hope he doesn't have any job interviews in the near future.

4-18-06

I take entirely too long to write papers.

Intrigue is an awesome game. Simple, elegant, cheap, compact, and best of all, you get a nice dirty feeling when you win, like when you screw someone over really badly and you know they'll never trust you again. Because that's pretty much what you spend the entire game doing.

Congratulations to Kyle for making the first "I'm intrigued!" joke. Julie came in close second, Dave was an abysmal third, and Kevin made a particularly poor showing, finishing in fourth.

4-17-06

A subset of a regular set is not always a regular set.

4-16-06

Julie is the ONLY PERSON who doesn't like Fist of Dragonstones.

4-15-06

There are people out there who take pictures of extremely bad Scrabble hands and post them on the internet.

4-14-06

Freecell is NOT a theoretical win. Fire up Freecell, go to Select Game, and type in -1 or -2. You will see a setup which is obviously impossible.

4-13-06

One of the members of chess club, who I thought was German, is actually a Croatian refugee from Bosnia. He's a cool guy. And I'm not just saying that because I trounced him in chess.

4-12-06

Dave got an X-Box 360 for his birthday. And a cake. The cake is gigantic and covered by a one inch-thick layer of unbelievably delicious chocolate frosting. His mom baked it herself and mailed it all the way from Minnesota.

Some parents just love their children more than other parents.

4-11-06

Blue Raspberry Jolly Ranchers turn your tongue seriously blue. It doesn't come out easily, either, not even when you brush your tongue.

4-10-06

Most airplane fuselages are made out of plastic. They're painted to look like aluminum so that people won't get scared.

4-9-06

Connect Four was solved independently by two people in 1988. The game is a theoretical win for the first player if he plays in the middle; a theoretical draw if he plays to one side of the middle; and a theoretical loss if he plays elsewhere.

4-8-06

There have been many recorded pictures of galaxies colliding, but we have never seen two stars collide. That's because relative to their sizes, galaxies are much closer together than are stars.

4-7-06

Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo. This is a perfectly legitimate sentence.

4-6-06

Phil, my chess club buddy, was at the Kaidanov Chess Camp with me in 1999. I don't remember him, but he vaguely remembers me. He didn't realize it, though, until he saw me in my super stylish "Kaidanov Chess Camp 1999" maroon t-shirt.

Lesson: never throw away your old clothing.

4-5-06

www.woot.com is a website that sells one nifty gadget every day. One. The next day, it sells something else.

4-4-06

In English class today we did Powerpoint presentations about old English texts.

Confused student #1: "Why won't my attachment open?"
Sean: "I think your megapixel output is corrupted."

Confused student #2: "Where do I insert my memory stick?"
Sean: "Check under the converter."

"And I was like, why is there sperm EVERYWHERE?!" -- T. It was an absolutely legitimate statement in the context of his presentation.

"I had no idea sex with cows would come up today." Professor Emmons, at the completion of the aforementioned presentation.

---

Poke the penguin.

Irrumator in Latin means "one who forces others to give him head."

4-3-06

Being drunk doesn't make a guy impotent, but it does make it hard for him to finish what he starts, if you catch my drift. The same applies to girls. The lesson here is that you should drink a lot if you have a habit of dropping out of the race early, or if you plan to indulge in threesomes.

4-2-06

A. You can throw up from drinking too much water. It makes your stomach swell, which your stomach doesn't approve of, especially when it's irritated after a night of heavy boozing.

B. Having thrown up the water as described in (A) above, it is generally not wise to then drink more water. "Tempering" it with orange juice doesn't help.

Source: being awoken twice on Sunday morning by the sound of Jim vomitting.

Note: I did not partake in the aforementioned boozing because I was gone all day at a chess tournament, but it is very frightening to enter your suite at midnight and find that all of your suitemates are splayed out on the ground because their temporary absence of motor functions prevents them from assuming a standing or even sitting position.

4-1-06

The Auk isn't just a creepy made-up mascot designed to terrorize gifted young children who are participating in the Knowledge Master Open. It is a real bird. Auks are similar to penguins, but they can fly. They live in the Arctic.

3-31-06

"I refuse to use a calculator mod 7. Anybody who has to use a calculator mod 7 should go back to GRADE SCHOOL."

-- Professor Singer, whilst stumped on a difficult computation, upon being advised by a student to use a calculator.

3-30-06

Dave always carries a comb in his back pocket.

"Play fast and loose," "make a virtue of necessity," and "a foregone conclusion" are a few of the many idioms invented by Shakespeare.

3-29-06

Tigris & Euphrates, though an excellent game, depends deceptively on luck. Poor Dave, who can never draw any red tiles...

3-28-06

Perl isn't very convenient when it comes to handling big numbers. Oh well, I guess no language can be perfect :(

Ryan and I had to write a fairly simple program to do crypto homework, and we tried Perl and Lisp before we finally gave up and turned to C++. Other languages may be cool and snazzy, but none are as homey, as comfortable, as good ol' C++.

3-27-07

If you must fall asleep in class, do so in a position that ensures your head is stationary. You're still a jackass, but at least you don't have to deal with the embarrassment of flailing every fifteen seconds.

Sorry, CS professors. It's not your fault that you're bo--oh wait.

3-26-06

Steven: how the hell are you a computer science major?!
Steven: this stuff sucks!!!!

Folks, you don't know what "sucks" MEANS until you've had to program recursive binary search in assembly. Quit whining.

3-25-06

There is a card game called Bang! To shoot people, you play Bang! cards.

"I bang you!"
"You can't bang someone if they're out of reach."
"His gun has a long barrel, so he can bang you from far away."
"Can you get banged when you're in jail?"

Bang! jokes never get old, either.

3-24-06

"So dividing by 2 is easy, right? Dividing by 2 is like multiplying by 51." -- Professor Singer

Modular arithmetic jokes never get old.

3-23-06

The faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences called a Vote of No Confidence on the president of my university. Next September he's going to resign. That's what you get for creating a 40 million dollar deficit and not letting the English department hire any more professors, asshole!

3-22-06

My board games arrived in the mail today and Kevin and Dave and I played Tigris & Euphrates. It was awesome.

Cocaine produces three main effects:

1) It coats the brain with dopamine. This makes you happy.

2) It reduces the brain's ability to remove dopamine. This makes you even happier.

3) It reduces the brain's ability to make its own dopamine. This makes cocaine the only thing that makes you happy.

Conclusion: cocaine is awesome. Just like Tigris & Euphrates. And you thought these were unrelated, didn't you?

3-21-06

The whole semester that he was in Germany, Dave didn't get a haircut because he was too afraid of having to explain, in German, how he wanted his hair to be cut.

Two people can generate a secret key while talking over an open communication channel. It requires too much math to show here how it's done, but it can be done.

3-20-06

Semaphores are more than just shared memory objects made in Unix to breathe hell into my weekend. The word semaphore refers to a system of visual communication involving flags.

3-19-06

People Magazine has it wrong. This is really the sexiest man alive:

3-18-06

www.brainyplanet.com has a lot of nifty puzzles.

3-17-06

The phone in our study broke. It rings, but the line is dead when you pick it up. My dad replaced it with the Garfield phone that Andy gave me as a present over ten years ago.

3-16-06

Stuck for a gift idea? Go here to purchase the exciting game Shocking Roulette. Four players; four holes. One lucky finger gets a hefty zap of electricity. Who said board games were for pansies?

The profoundness of this game has been immortalized in haiku by a poster on the boardgamegeek forums:

My groin is aglow!
I should have used my finger,
and not my penis.

--Chad Krizan

3-15-06

When you place a harbor during the setup of Settlers of Catan, you sometimes have to choose which way to align it. As it turns out, this choice should NOT be random -- you should turn the harbor so that it is in line with the longer chain of land tiles.

3-14-06

No paraphrasing of mine can possibly do justice to Timur's dazzling insights, so I'll let him speak for himself:

Timur (1:32:17 AM): I really want to see the world, dude
Timur (1:33:17 AM): I like to get out of America
Timur (1:33:27 AM): and then tell people I’m Russian (but really good at English!!!)
Boris (1:35:51 AM): why?
Timur (1:35:06 AM): people just hate Americans
Timur (1:35:11 AM): and tend to be ambivalent to Russians
Timur (1:35:19 AM): although I guess there are some places Russians are hated more than Americans
Timur (1:35:36 AM): if it's a really serious situation, then I just choose a random European country that doesn’t do anything but is kinda famous
Timur (1:35:38 AM): like Holland
Timur (1:35:42 AM): that’s my backup, always
Boris (1:35:51 AM): what if the person speaks Dutch?
Boris (1:35:55 AM): you're in a pickle
Timur (1:36:01 AM): well this is usually toward Asian folk
Timur (1:36:10 AM): not cultured people

...

Timur (1:42:36 AM): also in Holland there are literally something like 20 different types of mayo
Timur (1:42:39 AM): and they put it into everything
Timur (1:42:47 AM): I’ve had French fries with mayo
Timur (1:42:51 AM): hot dogs with mayo
Timur (1:42:53 AM): people with mayo
Timur (1:42:58 AM): they have some good mayo, no joke

3-13-06

In fourth grade the teacher had us do a business simulation. Everyone received a hefty wad of paper money and brought in goods to sell; you had to sell your crap to other people and buy fun things yourself. Most people crafted nifty items and set up elaborate displays.

I was a lazy bastard. I brought in a package of paper cups and some Coke. Before class started I hastily scribbled "Coke 1 dollar" in pencil on a lined sheet of paper and propped it up on a textbook. The writing was invisible from three inches away. People saw that I was selling Coke but nobody had a clue how much it cost.

By sheer luck, I was the only beverage vendor. Many students brought in candy and home-baked items, however, so while I didn't make any money at first, the orders started rolling in once everybody had had their fill of cupcakes and cookies and pie. I sold tiny-ass cups of Coke for a dollar. I was raking it in. Then I ran out of Coke. My pathetic stand teemed with hordes of willing customers begging to be ripped off and I was out of Coke. It was heartbreaking. I could have been rich. I'll never forget the valuable lesson I learned that day: fourth grade sucks.

3-12-06

The difference between zoophilia and bestiality is that bestiality is forced, whereas zoophilia is human-animal mating conducted in an atmosphere of mutual love and understanding. Some people like to have sex with dolphins. Read more here.

Thanks to Andy for the highly entertaining link (whether or not it's true).

3-11-06

"I'm a whore, what can I say?" -- Sarah

One hundred dollar bills are currently the largest denomination being printed. From 1934 to 1946, however, the treasury did print $500, $1000, and even $10,000 dollar bills, some of which are still around today and can be legally used.

3-10-06

Nostalgia originated as a medical term in the 19th century for the homesickness felt by soldiers on the battlefield.

"The Wizard of Oz" was actually written as an allegorical defense of the gold standard. Frank L. Baum used extended metaphors to show why U.S. currency needed backing, and why gold was better for this purpose than silver or other metals. "Follow the yellow brick road," etc.

In Saskatchewan, voting centers are required by law to provide water for horses. Banks too.

3-9-06

In the morning today I was asked if I was a professor. A few hours later somebody confused me for a freshman. Is my age that difficult to pinpoint?

3-8-06

With the aid of a few libraries availabe online, it is not too difficult to write a Java program that lets you send emails from completely bogus addresses. Dave sent me an email from ridiculous_fake_address@case.edu.

3-7-06

"How did they name Canada? C, eh? N, eh?" -- Professor Emmons

"What sorts of puzzles are we unlocking?" -- Professor Emmons
Leave it to a linguistics professor to mix up her metaphors.

"Air is cheaper than polystyrene." -- Professor Blackwell

"But of course, back to the ancient Egyptians." -- Professor Blackwell

"Higgledy-piggledy." -- I swear, he said it.

3-6-06

Computer fonts are broken up into two types: serif and non-serif. Non-serif letters end in stubs, while serif letters trail off into thin lines or other designs. Times New Roman and Book Antiqua are serif fonts; Comic Sans and Arial are non-serif.

Non-serif fonts read faster, but that doesn't mean they're better: since serifs slow down the reader, they also make him better remember what he's reading. This is why Times New Roman is so popular while Comic Sans is considered "not serious."

The font this blog is written in, Verdana, is a non-serif font. That means you can read this entry in twenty seconds and forget it all in twenty more. Maybe I should switch.

3-5-06

If you think your spouse or significant other is cheating on you, head on over to www.cheaters.com. For a modest fee, private investigators will tail your boyfriend or girlfriend and obtain video proof of indiscretionary acts. There is a Cheaters reality TV show. The website also conveniently doubles as a dating service.

3-4-06

Fermat's Last Theorem wasn't actually Fermat's last theorem. It was only the last one to be proven.

3-3-06

Milk jugs and plastic bags are made out of the same material. The difference lies in how fast you cool it after melting it.

3-2-06

In Old English there was a prefix for- which intensified the verb that followed it. The influence of this prefix can be seen in some words today -- forbear, forgive -- but it isn't being used to make new ones.

I think for- deserves a comeback. And not just verbs: adjectives too.

"Board games are forawesome."

"Programming in C is a forhorrifying experience."

"Sing that song again and I'm going to formutilate your mother."

3-1-06

Last night Jim asked me to wake him up in the morning. I woke up and was about to go knock on his door when I realized that he never really asked me; I just dreamt it. Thinking it'd be sort of creepy to go knocking on his door I opted not to.

Turns out it really was a dream. But Jim did oversleep and miss all his classes.