Title Envy

Great minds think alike?

Also, I'm sure this is ancient, but I'm happy that someone figured out what the heck they were singing:

Beware A Stiff Wind

It looks like the last of the voluptuous sex-symbols has gone Twiggy on us. Angelina Jolie on the Daily Show looked frikkin' skeletal. Ok, so she was never of human proportions, but at least she used to have curves aside from her boobs.

And she didn't really seem as bright as I had been led to believe.

Sigh...

Ugh

I loath sending the "You didn't get your 'A'" emails. I actually don't mind the "You failed" emails or the "You plagiarized so I'm hoping to get you kicked out of the university emails" nearly as much. It's so hard to explain to students - the ones I respect and know that worked hard - that they did really well, but slipped up on a minor but testable item. I know that so many students at my school just don't get A-s. Their parents are going to freak out. They think their chances for grad/med/law school are completely shot. I hate being the guy that gets to explain it to them.

It would be so much easier if I really didn't like them.

Kinda makes Deal or No Deal seem Pathetic

Won't My Mommy Besoproudofme?

Funny story. So yesterday I went wandering and found a funny sign. Here it is:

Ha ha very funny, right?

I think I offended the bee gods. Out for a morning run, they had obviously set a trap for me. I'm sure they scouted my path. I run it often, so there'd be no problem there. The best place for a special assault ambush would be on the part of the trail that weaves around the shrubbery (ni!). I was completely unawares, happily bopping along while a lone courageous bee made her final arrangements.

Finally I passed the go-point and she rushed at me. Into my mouth! I reflexively coughed her out, but by then it was too late. She had made her glorious attack striking deep at the back of my throat and would no doubt be a heroine mourned well and long at one of those honey-soaked bacchanals we've heard so much about.

So. Anyway, it doesn't seem too bad. I'm not allergic, thank goodness. I checked my throat in the mirror and I can see where I got stung. It's a bit swollen, but it doesn't seem to be affecting my breathing or swallowing. The cool thing is that my voice has dropped an octave.

Personally I think this calls for ice cream and movies.

Bonus points for anyone who can sing the rest of the song from the title.

The Luring

Ah yes and again. Ahem... I am attempting to lure an old and dear friend out from the darkness into the blogworld. Well, she has a blog, but it's only got a couple of entries. Anyway, the excuse I'm using to post about her is that she's coined one of the bestest words evar. In her excuse for probably not posting, she said that she was blogshy.

Blogshy. Genius

Ok, a quick googling show that she ain't the first to use the word, but it's the first time I've heard it so, I say she wins.

Feel free to use the word in your daily conversations.

That is all.

For Crying Out Loud

Mini-rant:

Ok, I know you are terrified of the students coming back to argue grades. I know we must have evidence of all the ways in which we evaluate students despite the fact that we are in a very subjective course. However, I simply do not understand your eldritch tome of GRAADBUK. Seriously. I'm ok in excel, I'm good in all the possible online versions you could be using, I would even be happy with a pen and piece of graph paper, but ye gods, what we use is a monstrosity. I know it was lovingly crafted for you years ago by an OCD TA you must have truly loved, but well, I must simply fall far short of that person.

So after round one going over my grades, I am chastised. I return home to repent and call on the spirits above and percentages below to reform my numbers. I shall return to your office and begin round two.

Honestly?

Proof That I Must Be A Lesbian

So, Maxim put out their Top 100 Hot Women of 2007. Hot, sure. Pretty, but pretty shallow. I much prefer the Top 100 Hot Women list provided by AfterEllen.com voted on by their much more lesbian-friendly audience. Well, I guess I should say that the readership of Maxim is also probably pro-lesbian, but not in the same way.

Proof here: Maxim's #1? Lindsay Lohan. Yeah, there's nothing hotter than a coke addict.

Also in objectification news, China, ever the bastion of equality and haven for the oppressed, has decided that hostesses for the Olympics are not allowed to have big bottoms. Or tattoos.

"Bone structure and height should be uniform," she said. "For example, we don't want any wide bottoms."

Good lord, the US will never be allowed to host again.

Know Your Blogger

I know most everyone got done with spring classes a long time ago, but I just got done with mine. Well, all but the grading. So thus ends my first academic year at USU. I don't think I'm ready to put together a full review of the year. Hopefully that will come later.

That being said, when I thought the blog was gone, I figured I would start a new one. I was going to start off with a State of the Overread. Anyway, the blog was saved, but I still feel like I should do a bit of a status report.

Overread, one each.

• Physical Characteristics:
  
• Body:
• Shortish, a touch on the heavy side.
  
• Hair:
• Brown hair everywhere
  
• I can sing most of the musical 'Hair.' Badly.
• Other:
• bad eyes (also brown)
  
• legs that can run for a long time when forced
• Family:
  
• Older brother, Older sister, mother and assorted others that aren't online and thus won't be mentioned. All amazing people. Some even have blogs if you know where to look.
  
• Personal Life:
• Undetectable by modern scientific means. It's probably time to head to the online matchmaker site, or.... the mail-order bride sites?
  
• Point of Origin:
  
• Smack dab in the middle of the US
• Current Location:
  
• Urban Sprawl University
  
• Education Status:
• First attempt at university (Kashyyyk U) with a theatre degree terminated due to opportunity to make fame and fortune in NYC.
• Sidenote: fame and fortune not made in NYC or elsewhere. Well, yet.
  
• BA (Partyschool U) in Gruub Studies
  
• MA (Partyschool U) in Gruub Studies
  
• 1 year of PhD completed in Gruub studies
  
• Current Projects:
  
• Paper on [REDACTED] due in the spring: Very interesting, possibly dissertation feed-in material (which is very cool and terrifying at the same time). Unfortunately, only partially finished and most likely to be delayed
  
• Paper on [REDACTED] due in the fall: Also very interesting, but a very big stretch for me (You mean I have to research what? Umm... How exactly?), and probably not particularly useful for the dissertation.
• Plans for the Future:
• Summer: still up in the air. There are hopes for a 8 week trip to [To be announced later]
• Fall:
  
• Seminars out the wazoo
• Another year of TAing (the same class I TAed this last year. Hopefully that means less class prep)
• Lottery win.
  

Link Dump

While the blog was gone, I accumulated a few links. Enjoy!

1. Most of those movie junket interviews are pretty pathetic, but here's one from the Ocean's 13 crew that's really hilarious. More actors should take things that seriously
2. Ever wanted to know what it would look like if Las Vegas teenager drew the US mainland from memory? Sure you have. Thank goodness for the internet.
3. The coolest thing ever is attaching a camera with a timer onto your cat and then letting him out to roam the neighbor hood. Mr. Lee is here
   

I Get Knocked Down!

But I get up again! (insert slam dancing here)

So, after a very odd week, the Overread Empire returns! I'm still in the dark as to what exactly happened, but here's what I do know:

1. Last Friday (the 1st, right?) afternoon, I suddenly couldn't log in to gmail with my Overead login. The error was something like "the login and password do not match. You typed 'Overread.'" The entire account was just gone. Odd.

2. Then I checked the blogs. Poof-gone. They all showed up as 404 errors. "These are not the blogs you're looking for."

3. After some forum-diving, I discovered that this has happened to several people in the past and they are all unsure of what's causing it. Some are saying that their passwords were compromised and some griefer came in and deleted the accounts, but that seems very improbable to me. Others are saying it was an overactive 'bot that Google uses to shut down spamblogs. That sounds a little more possible, but not much more plausible.

4. An email to googlehelp first returned a not-too-helpful note saying that they could only restore access if I asked within a reasonable about of time. So I reminded them that the original email I sent was sent the same day as the outage.

5. Today's email from Google told me they had restored access. It looks like the blogs survived, but the email from my Overread account is all gone. I'm lucky because I didn't keep anything too vital in that account, but if my main email were zapped like that I'd be in big trouble. One of the reasons that I switched over to gmail (and it sounds like Scrivener is in the same boat) was so that I could have a near-bottomless pit for searchable old emails. So now I'm wandering if I need to start backing up my gmail somewhere else. What a hassle.

I'm really not sure how to react to this. When they were gone, I thought this was going to be a good zen exercise in letting go of my attachments. Maybe it was time for a rebranding of the Overread name. I'm certainly glad that Google got my access back, but my emails....

In any case, I'm back now. Thanks to all of you who sent me notes through flickr and other ways to ask about me. I am very touched by the sentiments.

Edited to add that although there are no real emails in my overread account I have 333 spam emails going back to May 1. Thank goodness those were saved.

Overread in Green Part 2

This edition: The cast of characters from my army days.

The Gomer
He was simply incapable of doing anything right. He couldn't make it to formation on time. He wasn't prepared for inspections. No one counted on him to do anything correctly, with one exception. He was very good at one of the main jobs we were supposed to do. So that's what he did. He was a really nice guy though. It actually really worked out really well for him. Everyone knew better than to give him important jobs, so he didn't have to stress about anything. He'll never need to worry about screwing up too bad because the army will take care of him. We came in at the same time, and when I was screaming at the walls in frustration, he was getting ready to sign up again. He could still be in for all I know.

The Family Man
This guy was unique. He was a young guy, but already married and had 3 kids. He was a big good-ol' boy with a perfect southern twang. He was a cussing, poker-playing SOB who would backtalk the officers and get away with it. He was famous for convincing the NCOs that there was no need to go on the long runs - a good basketball game would be just as good for us. He had been a hard blackout-style drinker, but when his wife asked him to quit cold-turkey, he did. He also had a MA in the history of Arabic people in southern Spain, but he didn't like to talk about it too much. The trick was that he was pretty convinced that he would never be able to leave the army. Even with his army salary and benefits, he was still on food stamps. Without the army services (childcare, health, family support etc...) he said there was no was he could survive on the outside. He hated the army, but he knew how to game the system. He's probably still in, but doing fine.

The Closet Cases
Don't ask, don't tell, my ass. There are plenty of homosexuals and bisexuals in the service, and they're asking and telling, at least where I was. The trick is, that nobody really cared unless you wanted to make a scene. For example, even the woman who went to the middle of the main room at the air force bar and played tonsil-hockey with a civilian woman probably wouldn't have been an issue if she hadn't really wanted out of the air force anyway. On the other hand, one of the strongest, most gifted, most motivated soldiers that I knew in the service got so frustrated with the way things were being run that she went to her superior and simply told him. Of course, he already knew and told her that she shouldn't 'tell.' Then she told him again, and said she meant it. He had to start up the paperwork.

Volunteers
Speaking of trying to get out, I would be remiss if I didn't include the others who got kicked out for one reason or another. The sad case was the guy who was brilliant at the job we did as well as a very important related field. The thing was, that he was a big guy, tall and a bit overweight, too. Now, all soldiers are soldiers first, so he had to be able to do all the soldiering tasks, one of which is a whole lot of running. He ran and ran and ran. We ran with him and tried to encourage him, but eventually, he just couldn't run fast enough. Boot. Then there were the eating disorders. If you tend to obsess over your weight, the army is not the place for you, because, just like if you are unable to run fast enough, if your weight is off, then you're out. So, for the woman who just decided the army wasn't for her, there's one easy (but nasty) way out. Drink ranch dressing. Drink a lot of ranch dressing. Weight goes up, poof! She goes civilian. Of course on the other end of that was the young officer who ran a little under 10 miles per day and once guiltily admitted that as a treat for herself, she didn't peel her 5 grapes that she had for lunch. She was pretty short, but might have weighed 85 pounds soaking wet. The last I heard of her was that the navy 'reassigned' her so she could do a different job while receiving some counseling.

And then of course, there was me :)

Overread in Green Part 1

Funny, I mentioned that I was in the army in the last post. The funny part is that I almost always feel I have to explain that, and I still have mixed feelings about the whole thing. So, poof - a fitting post (or 2) for this weekend!

I'm not the kind of person who I think seems like an army guy. I really don't like guns. I'm generally against military adventures abroad. I'm not religious (a huge part of the modern US Army). I really don't care for the regimented military-style brainwashing either.

So, what was I doing in the army? Well, there was the fact that I hadn't finished school. The GI Bill ended up getting me a whole lot of cash so I could go back (thanks taxpayers!). There was also the fact that my attempt to make a living as an actor was fallen apart (another post for another day). I didn't have a whole lot of options.

Now, that's all well and good, and plenty of people join the service for those reasons. The army is brimming with people who felt at the end of their rope. That's one of the problems with our army as well as one of its advantages.

But, well, the other reason I joined up... It's pretty funny because I always feel a bit silly bringing it up. I really wanted to serve. I truly feel that people should do what they can to help their nation.

There's a bit of me that wishes we had a mandatory program of service in the US. Everyone would serve in the military, peace corps, the state department, or some other office for a couple of years. I really think that it would help to allow regular folks an idea of how things work there, and there's no doubt the nation would be better off for the service.

The volunteer army is a really impressive thing, but perhaps if a more broad cross-section of people were in BDUs, we wouldn't be so cavalier about sending them places where they shouldn't go.

A Herculean Post

Could we please, as speakers of English, stop overusing the word "hero?" Please?

The crossing guard at your school is not a hero. The librarian who stops your child from watching internet porn is not a hero. Politicians are not heroes. Pilots are generally not heroes. Not all soldiers are heroes. Some, perhaps, but not all. Trust me, I was in the army. I know.

Even if you do something good or important, that does not make you a hero. It has to be heroic. See what I did there? It's English. It's a pretty wonderful language.

Also, any talking head who cannot make sense of the title "Celebrated Leaping Frog of Calaveras County" should be immediately fired. Seriously, I think she said something like "Calaras country." Yeesh. I'm going to make a great curmudgeon - "Don't they teach Twain in the schools anymore?"

Why do I keep watching CNN?

Finally, President Carter rocks. Could we re-elect him?

Link Dump From Beyond!

Completely random, but they've been lurking in my browser tabs, so I'm putting them here so that I can delete the tabs. Fun eh?

1. Comparative Maps Of Subway Systems - Alas, would that my current city had a London-size tube. My. That sounded very rude, didn't it? Fun for fans of public transit!
   
2. Boomshine Game - I'm pretty sure that I linked this before, but I'm lazy and I don't want to look. Very fun soothing flash game. try to get all the dots to blow up in pretty lights and colors. Fun for those who enjoy pretty lights and colors!
   
3. Who Said It Quiz - try and guess who said the quote. Was it Osama bin Laden or either Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson. Fun for the whole extremist family!
4. Alice and Jabberwocky Over Tea - What would happen if you put two relatively advanced Turing chatting programs in a room together? Funny, and intriguing too!
5. Color Photos From World War I - I've seen a few sites like this one, but this one seems to have more photos and many I haven't seen before at all. It's eerie to look at the people who lived during that time. Fun for... well, not fun really, kind of sobering and fascinating for history-geeks.
6. Archive of Dime Novel Covers - very freaky but a hoot to browse through. Fun for strapping young men of adventure and their winsome women who stay in their place.

Whew. Well, I'm spent.

Maybe, but I Don't Have His Metaclorians, or Thetans, or Whatevertheycallems

Your results:
You are Obi-Wan Kenobi

Obi-Wan Kenobi 63% Yoda 61% R2-D2 60% Luke Skywalker 59% Lando Calrissian 57% Han Solo 56% Darth Maul 56% C-3PO 55% Chewbacca 55% Qui-Gon Jinn 54%

You are civilized, calm, and have a good sense of humor, even when those around you don't. You can hold your own in a fight, but prefer it when things don't get too exciting.

(This list displays the top 10 results out of a possible 21 characters)


Click here to take the Star Wars Personality Quiz


Via the most excellent Phantom Scribbler

I Know It Won't Fit, But...

To quote Scrivener (and I'm going to be doing that a lot):

Fucking Humanities. (although to be honest, I should have added, "Oh the Humanities!")

Here's a cartoon.

Disant Lands and More Distant Salaries

Well, I hinted over at the photoblog that I might be heading somewhere fun for the summer. Now, I'm not quite ready to give too much more info, lest I jinx it all, and because it's still not completely settled. I did get a partial chunk o' funding. I won't cover all my expenses, but most anyway. So all that's really left is getting the arrangements settled with the umm... organization over there. So, I'm optimistic, but there's still a lot of maybe hovering around.

So. Basic info:
Time: 8 week trip (plus or minus a few days)
Place: Very interesting place I've never been before, and I will tell you if I do get to go (you'd know from the pictures anyway :) )
Reason: It's vaguely academic, but I'll keep the specifics to myself.

On a side note, my roommate just got two tech industry job offers with starting salaries that I can only dream of seeing after years and years and years and years of work. Ah. Happy for him, but Ah.

Humanities. Why did it have to be humanities?

Tha's a Lotta Ocelot

I've got an ocelot Daemon. That's modest, spontaneous, solitary, assertive and inquisitive.

That's what this Golden Compass quiz told me, anyway. I wanted to read these back when I had free time, but never got around to it. No big surprise they're making a movie out of it.

What did you get?

(what are the odds I'll use the ocelot tag again? :) )

Edited: for ungolgenizing

Happy Mother's Day

It's more than just pink bats at the ballpark, dontcha know.

Just got off the phone with my mom. She's a wonderful person and deserves more than a single day. Maybe a week or two at least. I mean she raised me and my two wild and crazy siblings, along with a rotating menagerie of neighbors' kids and they more flea-bearing variety (although the difference isn't as great as one might hope, especially where I grew up). That's got to be worth more than a paltry 24 hours. I mean, for crying out loud, Bush declared the dangerous May Day to Patriotism Day. My mom's worth more time than that little political joy buzzer is worth.

Joy and most good wishes to you mom, and Mendi-la and all the other wonderful moms out there among my handful of remaining readers.