Today I learned that it was Australia Day. That's about it, I reckon.

Today I learned how to use Constant Contact and Google AdWords. I also learned that Big Brother is watching like whoa. Did you realize that they know whether you click on the links in an email??

What I learned in, err, life today:

I can make two dozen delicious blintzes for about two dollars. Also, wrapping an old Christmas tree in pink sheeting is difficult, and Hecate's ring is not in the lockbox that Duncan puts in the second Mrs. DeWinter's suite.

Not you, Weinbl.

My adviser told me I couldn't take his limited-enrollment studio unless I agreed to not dominate the conversation and let the other kids try to answer questions even if I know the answer. How do you respond to that?? Hold on while I go look up the answer in my diary from middle school. Jeez...

I told him to give me a cue when I should back off. I'm imagining a variation on Jim Marvin's hand-wave of "More alto! More alto! More alto! Not you, Weinbl."*

But if nothing else, I can always find a way to blame Ben. To wit:

Me: so my program has this required session tomorrow on how to play well with others.
Ben: is there a follow up session called "what to do when you discover the others are idiots"?

This is the source of all my problems. File under: What I'll Learn Tomorrow.


*using my fas surname as a super-sneaky pseudonym for the googlebot

What I Learned In School Today:

The plural of planetarium is planetaria. The plural of stadium is stadia. The plural of penis is penes.

What I Learned In School Today

This semester, I am going to write down one thing that I learned every day. I'll do it here, so that we can all learn together. Yay learning.

Today I learned that the Graduate School of Design is way cooler than the Graduate School of Education, and has far more interesting classes and far more attractive (and plentiful) men. I also learned that chocolate-covered Goldfish are awesome.


. . . I am hoping that once classes start, I'll be learning things slightly more academic. But I won't hold my breath.

Micro-travelblogging

Traveling alone and domestically is a perfect opportunity to get hit by a bus while texting a tweet. I'm in Los Angeles for the first time, for truly no good reason, and I've been keeping a running commentary via Twitter. Sporadically updated to here, for those who don't do the twitter thing, is my mini trip told through mini comments.


There is a totally steampunk dude waiting for my flight. Goggles and all. He is kinda cute in that Probably Crazy way.

Perhaps Goggle Guy is flying the plane! That would explain it. Ill know if instead of boarding a 747 they have us board a red dog house.

I only just realized that even though its warm in LA, it is still technically winter and therefore will get dark early. D'oh!

Chasing the sun across the Rockies. :-D

Los Angeles is surrounded by mountains! Who knew?

Ohhhh thats why they call it The Valley. I am a moron.

You can see the Hollywood sign as you fly in! Until you fly under the smog cover anyway.

Just passed an office for Animal Dermatology. Wow LA.

So far, LA bears a striking resemblance to Long Island...

Unimpressed with Santa Monica. Looks like Sheepshead Bay. And the fog is giving me triangle hair.

Day 2

Worst. Pedestrian. City. Ever.

Vitamin D is AWESOME.

Visited the Huntington gardens with a friend I haven't seen in six years. Lovely afternoon! ...now what?

There are pricklies in my finger. This is what I get for feeling up the cacti. This, and a Darwin Award.

Been wandering Pasadena for twenty minutes and still have not found any Mexican take-out. This IS California, right?

First sidewalk star I see, as I step off the bus, is Gloria Swanson. How appropriate. I can go home now I guess.

Hollywood Blvd makes Disney MGM Studios seem exciting.

Just bought shoes at Frederick's of Hollywood. I'm doin' it wrong.

Is there a Raymond Chandler museum in LA? Prob not, same dumb way New Orleans has nothing for Tennessee Williams.

There is an 800 number you can call to ask an operator how to get somewhere on public trans. Why don't we have that?

Saturday

In the hostel courtyard, two french girls are enthusiastically video chatting with friends and a puppy in Paris. This is like a commercial for The Future.

En route to the Getty. The bus infrastructure here is actually fantastic. They just need to make a schematic map and provide free transfers.

LA women make me feel ugly, but I am receiving a higher than usual rate of compliments from strangers. Culture? Or Blonde-in-Japan effect?

I get inappropriately emotional when i visit museums alone. I just welled up at a photograph of workers erecting Eiffel's tower.

Also if you have never looked closely at Dorothea Lange's Migrant Worker, you should.

Just ran into someone from Uchoir. World = ridic.

Went to the Magic Castle. And guess what guys?? MAGIC IS REAL.

Sunday

DISNEYLAND DISNEYLAND DISNEYLAND DISNEYLAND

Monday

Disneyland recap: DISNEYLAND IS AMAZING. Sure, it's more cramped than DisneyWorld, but the Indiana Jones ride makes my life. <3>

More importantly, how do you get to be an Imagineer? Do you have to already be one of those other things that end with "-gineer"?

All the birds sing words and the flowers croon!

Tuesday

I have 14 hours left in Los Angeles. What should I do? Because hanging around Chris's apartment is looking tempting...

At the Getty Villa, where they are so flummoxed to have a pedestrian visitor that the parking attendant had to call security to check what to do about me.

I am not so much hiking as i am clambering. Or perhaps "aerobic trespassing."

Using a display laptop in Office Max like a homeless person.

This In 'n' Out thing really is pretty okay.

Chronicle of a Thanksgiving

-----

[Jenny points at a large piece of driftwood on the beach - it is a good six feet tall]

Jenny - What's that?
Mom & Dad - [simultaneous] Pizza box.

-----

[we are staying in an A-frame house. Jenny got the loft, which has five twin beds in a row]

Jenny - How come you all get bedrooms, while I have to sleep in the Tenement Museum?
Me - It's a hard knock life.

-----

[Jenny is studying abroad in Bulgaria in the spring]

Me - Are you taking Bulgarian?
Jenny - You think SUNY New Paltz offers Bulgarian? No one offers Bulgarian. Even Harvard doesn't offer Bulgarian.
Me - I bet they do.
Jenny - I bet they don't.
Me - Five dollars says Harvard offers Bulgarian.
Jenny - You're on.

[ten minutes later, from the other room]

Jenny - Son of a... There's a goddamn Bulgarian dance team!

-----

Jenny - I accidentally said one of our strange family expressions to a stranger yesterday.
Us - Uh oh.
Jenny - I told a lady in the restroom that she's a better man than I, Gunga Din. She left muttering to herself "Gunga Din?" This was at the therapist's office, by the way.

-----

Mom - I see, said the hammer.

----

Jenny - I told JRB about the time you played Mama Rose when you were 8. He said that he was writing a himself note to call Arthur Laurents tomorrow and tell him.
Me - That's awesome! I have to tell Ben.
Jenny - He'll just be pissed that Arthur Laurents knows who you are and not him.
Daddy - Not if Arthur Laurents sues you for performing Gypsy without the rights...

-----

And a re-post of the classic, from Thanksgiving 2006:

Mom: The Salvation Army is coming at noon to take the sofas.
Me: What?
Mom: The sofas in the living room. They smell like the dog, it's time to
get rid of them. So the Salvation Army's going to come get them.
Me: But... we have 14 people coming for Thanksgiving tomorrow...
Mom: Right. Can't have them sitting on smelly couches.
Me: So instead they'll stand?
Mom: We have folding chairs.

- one hour later -

Salvation Army guy: The big sofa is too stained, sorry.
Me: Mom, why don't you give them twenty bucks and ask them to carry the
sofa outside so the city can come take it?
Mom: I don't want a sofa on the front lawn when we have people coming.

- two hours later -

Me: Mom, what are you doing with the sofa?
Mom: I changed my mind.
Me: We'll never get it through the door ourselves.
Mom: Your father will be home in an hour.

- one hour later -

Dad: #$^$%&@#$%@!

- one hour later -

Dad: Wait, tilt it towards me... no tilt the top... now pull the bottom
left towards you...
Me: We're gonna die.

(Jenny: Keep it down, I'm sleeping.
Mom: It's four in the afternoon!
Me: We're gonna die.)

- one hour later -

Dad: Maybe if we saw the legs off...

- one hour later -

Buttons: ::finally notices we're taking his sofa::
Buttons: ::freaks out::
Buttons: ::goes back to sleep::

- finally -

Mom: We did it! The couch is gone!
::everyone does the "Friends" couch pile-on::

- later -

Neighbor: Do you guys know there's a couch on your lawn?

Ahoy vey!

Ahoy Vey!

The story of Rosh Hashana / Talk Like A Pirate Day

(which, to clarify, fell on the same day in 2009)

There was once a tiny shtetl in the old country; so inconsequential that no one bothered to persecute it, so unremarkable that no one gave it a name. And anyway, the elders argued, how can you order a pogrom on a place when you don’t know what to call it? Sure, the mail was always lost, but who wrote to them anyway? Not their good for nothing sons, that’s for sure.

One Rosh Hashanah, the esteemed rabbi of the little town stood in front of the shul. The rabbi’s emotion on the holy days was greatly renowned, and the whole town – from Abram the mostly-honest butcher to Shlomo the skill-less liberal arts major (may your family be spared such indignity!) – packed the shul to witness the rabbi's single dramatic tear as he beseeched the Lord God to forgive his people for not setting foot in His house since the previous Yom Kippur, and would He remind them of the Sisterhood potluck next Shabbos as well?

As the rabbi finished a thinly veiled comparison of the binding of Isaac to the binding of his digestion – thanks to the prune rugelach offered by certain congregants in lieu of membership dues – a commotion was heard outside the shul. People were gathering at the door.

“Uch,” thought Abram, “the lazy-bones are only showing up in time for the Part With The Stuff They Know."

“Uch,” thought Shlomo, “I could have slept later after all.”

“Uch,” thought Carlos the shabbos goy, “I hope they don’t ask me to tear their toilet paper.”

A rough voice outside shouted “amen!,” and “amen,” the congregation hastily assented, with a caterwauled descant provided by Chandleh the thinks-she’s-a-soprano show-off. “Arrrr, men!” repeated the voice with clearer diction, and a strong scent of highly un-kosher grog filled the air as a crew of pirates shoved into the shul.

The pirates were ill-shaven and well-armed, apart from the hook-handed one who was well-shaven and ill-armed, and their captain tottered atop a wooden peg leg.

“Ahoy, me hearties!” said the pirate captain.

“Oy, my heart!” said Ephraim the kvetch.

“We be needin’ some assistence from ye landlubbers. We may be the meanest, dirtiest, ugliest blackguards ever to sail the seven seas,” the pirate said (“You should see my wife,” added Samuel who-thinks-he’s-funny), “but the scurvy czar (may he prosper on someone else’s back) be refusin’ to issue us a general pillaging license.”

He paused for a moment of general tutting and commisseration.

“So we be sailin’ under the radar, pillagin’ only that which the czar don’t bother to pillage himself." The pirate smiled with black teeth. "And we be noticin’ that this speck of barnacle is long overdue for a good pillage.”

There were cries and gasps, and a few of the women in the balcony took the opportunity to get better seats by fainting onto the lower level.

"On to the ship!" cried the pirate. The townsfolk were herded towards the door, though in a moment of highly uncharacteristic bravery, Tevye the milkman took a swing at the pirate, who tripped his attacker with a well-placed peg leg.

“You fight like a dairy farmer,” the pirate spat. “Now come along, so's I can make ye walk the plank.”

But at that moment Mordecai the whittler grabbed the pirate's peg leg.

“You have this peg long?”

“Arr. A mosquito bit me thigh." Mordecai looked up. "It was me first day with me hook."

“You think that’s bad? You should see my goiter,” said Ephraim.

“That peg’s not gonna last long, way it was constructed. Allow me.” And Mordecai grabbed the arm off the end of the pew, and quickly whittled it into a fine new peg leg.

“This be a fine new peg leg,” cried the pirate, dancing a little jig. “But don’t be expectin’ that will save ye from the plank.”

“Oh no,” said Mordecai. “For the Cossacks, sure, a leg will cost an arm and another leg. But for you? For you, I make a deal.” He gestured to the rabbi to come forward.

“This is our rabbi, the wisest scholar in our land. Pose him a riddle. If he cannot answer it to your satisfaction within three days, we will happily offer up our plunder to be pillaged. If the rabbi can solve the puzzle, then we request that you allow us to remain un-pillaged. I’ll even throw in an extra peg leg."

The pirate thought for a moment, but finding himself unaccustomed to such strain, he slapped his knee in consternation and cried "shiver me timbers!"

"We accept!" said Mordecai.

"Huh?" said the esteemed rabbi.

"Wait, that warn't any riddle" protested the pirate, but Mordecai put up a hand.

"Captain, let me offer you some counsel, free of charge. If even you don't know the answer to the "riddle," how can our rabbi hope to solve it?"

The pirate paused. "I accept! Rabbi, ye have three days to shiver me timbers." (The wife of Samuel-who-thinks-he's-funny pre-emptively smacked her husband) "I'll go ready me plank."

The pirate stomped off.

Mordecai turned to the rabbi with a smile, expecting praise for his quick wit and genre savvy. Instead, he was met with several dozen pieces of stale prune rugelach flying at his head.

For three days and three nights, the rabbi prayed. For three days and three nights, the rabbi studied. For three days and three nights, the rabbi fasted, not that his other options were much better. And after three days and three nights, the pirates met the townsfolk at the shul, and awaited the esteemed rabbi's solution.

The rabbi stepped up to the bimah, and began to speak. "The Rambam wrote of the many names of the Lord our God," he began, and proceeded to argue that if "shiver" is broken down into its numerological designation... but we’ll never hear the brilliant conclusion that proved "shiver me timbers" to be the lost fourteenth attribute of Hashem, for by that point all in attendance were fast asleep.

T'kiaaaaah! A loud horn bleat from outside woke congregants, pirate and Jew alike. T'kiaaaaaah!

"What fool is blowing the shofar three days late?" the rabbi muttered, throwing open the doors of the shul to chastise the tardy horn-blower. But when he looked out into the town square, he saw none other than the whittler Mordecai, cheeks blushed scarlet from blowing a strange-looking shofar.

"So this is your plan, Mordecai?" demanded the rabbi. "Lead us into the hands of the pirates while you sound the battle cry on your cheap knock-off shofar?"

"Actually, rabbi, I completely forgot about the riddle. But I was poking around the pirates' ship, looking for lost dubloons, when I saw a beautiful plank of wood just hanging off the edge of the deck."

"Me plank!" cried the pirate. "Me beautiful plank!"

"And I couldn't help myself - I had to whittle it. But look at this beautiful horn I made! It works, too!” T'kiaaaaaaaaaah!

The rabbi was all set to strangle Mordecai with his own payyis, but he was distracted by a strange wheezing sound. Coming from the pirate.

"Hee hee hee," said the pirate.

"Hee hee hee?" asked the rabbi.

"Your Mordecai - he took my plank and he... He shofar'd me timber!"

The resulting mass face-palm was so extraordinary that the descendents of the townfolk have had crooked noses ever since.

And the pirate was so taken by this extraordinarily clumsy and painstakingly set-up pun that he spared the village, asking only that Mordecai continue to entertain gentiles for the rest of his days. And so he and his descendents did, inventing musical theater and running Hollywood and generally ruining every nice social gathering, unto this very day.

The end.

[re-posts okay, with credit]

Sitemeter is awesome

A recent visitor to this blog reached the page through the following Google search:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&rlz=1T4GGLD_enUS320US320&q=%22harvard%20glee%20club%22%20gay%20sex&aq=f&oq=&aqi=

Yeah, you read that right. Okay, fess up, who was it?

Sometimes Liz Draws

My friends Emily and Bailes are getting married this weekend, and I am chronicling their relationship each day iin an xkcd-style web comic.

It can be found at:
www.xkcEB.wordpress.com

The beginning, Day One, starts here:
http://xkceb.wordpress.com/2009/08/10/4/

To view the alt-text in Internet Explorer, hover over the image. To view the alt-text in Firefox, switch to Internet Explorer.

Sesame Street presents: Mad Men

Sesame Street will be doing a Mad Men parody next season, and over on Jezebel they were fantasy-casting the Muppets in various Mad Men roles. Hate to break it to the Mad Men fans looking for a bit more actual parody in their Sesame Street, but here's how it will actually go:

Grover has a clipboard and a megaphone. Prairie Dawn, a camera.

GROVER
Alright, gather round people, gather round! Now today I, Grover, will be making my deee-rec-torial debut. So don't mess up! Places!

Bert, Ernie, Big Bird, Oscar, and others take places.

GROVER
"Mad Men," take one. Roll film, Prairie Dawn. Action!

The cast weeps. Big Bird blows his beak into a giant handkerchief.

GROVER
Stop! Stop! This is terrible!

ERNIE
Gee, I thought I was being real sad.

BERT
I was very touched, Ernie.

ERNIE
Why thanks, Bert.

GROVER
Quiiieeett! I don't want you to be SAD men. I want MAD! Sad is what you feel when the top scoop falls off your ice cream cone, or when your favorite toy breaks. Show me MAD!

EVERYONE
Oh okay -- We understand -- Yeah sure boss.

GROVER
Alright? Places! Mad Men, take 2. Action!

Everyone grins. Ernie giggles. Elmo dances around.

GROVER
No no no no no!

ERNIE
Was that better, Grover?

GROVER
That wasn't Mad Men! That was Glad Men! Way too happy, yes, far far too happy and glad. No happiness!

EVERYONE
Okay Grover -- Will do -- Not a problem.

GROVER
Okay. Good. Do you understand what I mean by mad? Like how you feel when you get woken up too early, or when you can't find your baseball, or when you have to eat a plate full of brussel sprouts.

EVERYONE
Ew.

BERT
Ooh ooh, brussel sprouts, I want, me!

GROVER
That is mad. Do you all know how to feel mad?

ERNIE
We sure do!

GROVER
Great! Wonderful! Fantastic! Show me the mad! Not sad, not glad - mad. Mad Men, take three. Action!

He looks at his cast, and suddenly they are all wearing plaid shirts.

GROVER
What is-- . Oh. I see. Plaid Men. You're wearing plaid. WHY ARE YOU WEARING PLAID I TOLD YOU TO BE MAD HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE TO TELL YOU--

ERNIE
Mad Men, take four! Action!

Prairie Dawn spins the camera around on Grover and films him going ballistic.

GROVER
--HOW HARD CAN IT BE TO JUST ACT MAD WHY DON'T THEY UNDERSTAND GROVER'S ARTISTIC INTENTIONS WHAT IS THE--

ERNIE
Now *that's* mad! Heeheehee!

Aaand scene.

Sesame Street's Liz Lemon