back to school

i'm sorry, dear blog readership, but with my blogmate out of town (hopefully having the time of her life), not only are you all deprived the the funnier more articulate blog-half, but you're also also stuck listening to the boring, silly ranting that usually gets directed at her in small spurts of email, text, and phone conversation over the course of the day.

with that... what could be better than being a grad student with a real salary?

yesterday i attended the first of a year-long series of lectures entitled, "essentials of patient oriented research," a class designed to fulfill some kind of educational requirement of subspecialty training that might more aptly be titled, "how to be academic 101," or at least "how to fill out forms."

it's hard to describe the atmosphere in a room full of doctors, all fresh out of residency, who finally thought they got to act like grown-ups, but who are instead sent back to the classroom. imagine a group of fairly attractive, trendy-looking young professionals who have spent some number of years enslaved at the hospital, who now have to sign in, take a cookie, and sit still for an hour and half. they take attendance and make you move the front of the class and actually call on people to answer questions. the funny thing is that no one even tries to look like they're taking it seriously. people just sit there giggling, smirking, sleeping, trying to figure out how they can get out of coming to school every week but still get credit. the only word i can think of that describes it is "campy."

as i sat there, trying desperately to stay awake as a very enthusiastic dr. something-or-other gloriously pontificated about ideas and imagination and hypothesis and, yes, the theory of relativity, and i battled my inner demons. do i come to this class every week, in the continued (yet futile) hope that these lectures will actually be interesting and may even restore to me the smart braininess of my youth, or do i do like everyone else and just rig the sign-up sheet? did you say that you'll have cookies every week?

but then i did another survey of the room and was quite surprised to discover that i was filled with hotties. non-wedding-ring-wearing hotties. throw in the cookies and you got a deal!

return to sender

i think i'm caught in the middle of something sordid... or at least kinda funny.

i've never had the presence of mind to do it myself, but i've heard a slick way to block unwanted suitors is to hand over your digits with two of the numbers reversed.

seemingly, someone named monica has been handing out my number as some kind of decoy and now i find myself caught up in a tangled web of deceit and shadiness... or at least something a little weird.

first there was a phone call, mid-day, from a peppy sounding young girl,
"hi. monica?"
"nope, sorry wrong number."
"sorry, bye."

and then came the texts (exactly as they appeared in my phone):

"Hey whats up little girl. Hope im not interupting or anything. I was talking to sandra and we were talking about going to hooters this weekend and wanted to see if u wanted to go."

and a few days later...

"Whats going on little girl, just letting u know that nobody's getting together today. So do u got any plants for 2nite."

and finally,

"MONICA!!! Whats up? U doing anything 2nite? Any spot worth hitting up?"

i'm sure the right thing to do would be to send a polite text back alerting the sender of my inadvertent interception of this communication. for example:

"dude, i ain't monica!"
or
"hooters? really?"
or
"i don't know who 'little girl' is but i think she played ya"
or
"interrupted has two "r"s and you have the wrong number"

instead, i'm willfully allowing this debacle to continue... because i think it's entertaining and i'm hoping it gets juicier before it lets up. after much speculation, i still can't figure out what sort of relationship would result in these text messages. flirty, awkward, and a little trashy. little girl?! HOOTERS?!? is that a date? i can't even figure out if the sender is a man or a woman, or if there are multiple senders.

what i do know is that someone is going be pretty embarrassed when they find out that i am the recipient of their carefully crafted correspondence.

rules of engagement

where is emily post when you really need her?

a few blogs ago i suggested that the problem with internet dating was people's inappropriate sense that, having already succumbed to such powerful (yet inherently unromantic) forces, adherence to well-established social norms was unnecessary.

but i stand corrected.

it seems this phenomenon has nothing to do with the internet and that single people are just, well, clueless.

i come to this conclusion after a few phone conversations with one of my good friends who has no trouble meeting men and getting dates without any help from cyberspace, but who is encountering as much deviation from protocol.

people just don't know how to behave anymore.

for the record, if a girl gives you her number, the right time for the first phone call is NOT 1 AM on a saturday night. and if you give your number to a girl and avidly encourage her to call you, and said girl actually does call you as promised, RETURN THE PHONE CALL. easy, right?

given this kind of barbaric courting behavior, i have authorized my friend to use any tactics she deems necessary to retaliate, or at least passive aggressively enforce the rules, and decided that any of the following excuses were fair game when she got called on thursday afternoon for a thursday night date:

1) i'm washing my hair
2) i have plans
3) i don't want to
or (the truth)
4) i can't go out with you because the season premier of grey's anatomy is on.

maybe we all need to go back to finishing school...

adjustment

over brats and beer at my blgomate's house last night i decided that twinset, twinset's husband and i had officially become honorary midwesterners. we didn't meet much protest from the chicago/wisconsin cohort - i guess people are always happy to have accomplices in brat eating and beer drinking.

but i still have some adjusting to do, as i had to take pause after reading this sentence in the paper this morning: "[barack] obama, who was the featured speaker at sen. tom harkin's annual steak fry, has repeatedly said his not a presidential candidate for 2008..."

sen. tom harkin's annual steak fry?!?

filterless survey

given the success of our previous call for the opinions of our loyal readers (see animist electronics: reprise), i'd like to put forth a new question for discussion, banter, and hopefully insult and mockery.
there's always lots of talk about what makes good hangover food, but for all the lying around on the couch you'll do after you've avoided vomiting (or gotten it over with), what movie should you watch? this issue came to mind after i heard about an obviously bad choice for this kind of predicament. i started making a list in my head of better alternatives, and came to the conclusion that almost anything would be a better idea than "happiness" (except for maybe "the hours" or "fear and loathing in las vegas").

i head off my list with:

office space
the big lebowski
better off dead
real genius

i'd like to invite the members of the academy to make their nominations in the category best (and worst) hangover film.

mockery turned on its ugly head

mb has been busy at work lately with many projects, at least one of which seems to involve training on patents and involves the creation of an "inventor's notebook" which i have been mocking ruthlessly. an inventor's notebook? what's that for? i have been composing mb's potential daily entries, which go "dear inventor's notebook: rob is such a tool! i couldn't believe what he said to me today..." and so forth.

but today over dinner, while mb and i were discussing vegetarian cooking (yes, mb, who believes that bacon is not a meat but more of a seasoning, was talking about vegetarian food), he wondered aloud, "you know, with all the advances in technology, i'm surprised that someone hasn't come up with a plant that grows meat." he envisions trees with bacon strips hanging from them, or perhaps a large shrub with coconut-like shells that, when cracked open, bring forth hamburger.

#1: i'm not sure if genetically engineered plants that grow meat would be better or worse for society.
#2: i take back everything i said about the inventor's notebook. mb might actually be the next thomas edison.

boring vortex of despair (you know who you are)

biking home from the dentist this morning i listened to a matchbox 20 song that i've always secretly liked, until i noticed the line, "i'm bleeding and broken."

(subject for another day: aren't fillings supposed to be made of some kind of creepy, indestructible polymer that shouldn't just randomly chip, mandating more dental visits?)

i then started thinking about jessica simpson (who i saw on "the view" while i was sitting in the waiting room at the dentist's) and nick lechey, both of whom are currently plaguing the airways with dueling pop ballads of loss, strength, and redemption.

while i myself am presently stewing in a miserable funk (because my friend offered me her extra ticket to the killers and i can't go because i'll be in dallas doing homework), i'm concerned that black holes of mundane, gloomy drivel are taking over the universe.

rob thomas, jessica simpson, and nick leshea can sort of get away with it because, well, they're too rich and fabulous for anyone to stop them. but such behavior is not for lay people! unless you're david boreanaz (angel), brooding is not attractive. unless you're ben gibbard (death cab for cutie front man), content misery doesn't work. in short, unless you've a whole lot of sex appeal, you don't get to go around flaunting your vague, dysfunctional sadness.

content, discontent

back from a lovely "weekend" in northern wisconsin, if one can describe sunday through thursday as weekend, avoiding all the "wait, why aren't you at work?" questioning. for the record, we weren't at work because our jobs are awesome.

for four days i loved everything.

it was all very informative. i visited the well known tourist spots of shawano, embarrass, and green bay, and learned all sorts of interesting things at my blogmate's childhood home. though i'd been warned about refrigerators that outnumber humans, i still got a good laugh at "the zucchini bars are in the beer fridge." i got to meet nate rohan, fallen blog hero, at a bar where beer was 75 cents (at that price, the seven dollar all you can beer special seemed a bit ambitious). i played lots of cribbage and acquired my own cribbage board, made at least two trips to wal-mart, ate a very satisfying amount of breakfast meat, and somehow over the course of the week worked up the nerve to make myself an online dating profile.

it's taken a little revision to make it a little less redneck - perhaps trying to find a mate while you're in an "oh my god i love wisconsin, farms, and cheese curds!" phase isn't the best idea, but suddenly the iron was hot and it was time to strike.

and now i'm right back to hating everything, and possibly everyone.

with the help of my blogmate i specifically wrote my blurb to sound a little mean and sarcastic hoping to repel a specific kind of earnestness, but i failed miserably. why does everyone have to be so disgustingly nice? and also boring? and also have absolutely no sense of humor?

i don't mean to be harsh - clearly it takes some guts to accept your fate and join the online dating pool, and probably takes even more guts to actually send out messages, but dear god people, keep it together.

i understand that it's fashionable for men to have feelings (and for the most part i'm all for it), but "i am looking for my soulmate" is totally uncalled for. just because you're vulnerable enough to use a dating service doesn't mean you have to put it ALL out there for everyone to see all at once. sooner or later you can tell me all about your parents' marriage and your last relationship and your love of puppies, but the rules of social engagement can't all get suspended just because it's the internet.

and can we ban the use of the words, "cuddle," "romantic," "big heart," and "teddy bear?"

"i am looking for my soulmate," has become so generic that i'm putting in the category of "my style is pottery barn." it goes without saying. also going without saying are, "i like sports," "family is important to me," and "i want a girl who doesn't play games."

so here it is:
swf iso emotionally stifled, slightly angry, sarcastic guy who is appropriately self-deprecating about reading personals ads and will tolerate my love of buffy the vampire slayer. will negotiate with social smokers. please submit avatar.