Bedtime

I use 7Notes to convert handwritten notes on my iPad to text for later use in lectures or whatever. It's usually quite good, but every now and then it generates hilarity. I've taken this most recent example as a sign it's time go to bed.
I promise I didn't teach it that word

Where the Wild AntiChrists Are

I had no idea Maurice Sendak did frescoes
Source

The past few days

I think this quote says it best:

“There are no words for this — it is just nuts,” said Dr. Michael Greene, a professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive biology at Harvard Medical School.

Health Experts Dismiss Assertions on Rape - NYTimes.com

Anywho, I think most of you can guess how I feel about Todd Akin and his, shall we say "eeeeenteresting" view of reality.
And you can probably also guess that I would think it was awesome if my uterus had magic powers. I mean, beyond the capacity to wander through my body and make me crazy.

I mean, wouldn't this be cool?

Duuuude

Source, minus my artistic additions.

Identity Crisis

Image via Wikipedia
How did they do aerobics in those robes?
And what exactly is dude measuring with his hands?
And is Jesus pearl-clutching?

So I finally got around to checking the academic schedule to see when I'm teaching next term. I thought I'd have to be ready to go on the 2nd of January as long, painful, sometimes hung-over experience at the University of Chicago had taught me, but it turns out I have until near the end of January to procrastinate updating my lectures and junk. My textbook samples arrived last week (I had requested them in September) and after a grand total of 5 minutes examining them, I adopted two of them for this term in the hopes they'll be slightly less confusing than the textbooks I used last time.

Cool.

It occurs to me though that I am not quite sure what to say when people ask me what I do. I already had a preview of this after my Nana's funeral. Someone asked what I did and my uncle told them I was a teacher. So the guy asked what grade I taught. And I said "college." And there was sort of awkward silence.

Ahem.

Then the guy asked what class I taught and I said "ancient Egyptian history" because that's the easiest answer. And every few minutes for the rest of the afternoon he kindly (and loudly) warned me to watch out for mummies. Why, yes, there was drinking involved, why do you ask?

I decided that was probably not the best time to bring up excavating cemeteries and storing skeletons under my bed for safety (of the skeletons).  Seriously, though, that got really damn annoying.

Anyway, thus my identity crisis.

I'm not a professor. Technically I'm an instructor. But I can already see the hilarity possible in that conversation.

Random person: So, what do you do?
Me: I'm an instructor.
Random person: Of what?
Me: (Gripping cane tightly) Aerobics.¹

Also, the campus where I teach is in a mall. As in next to JC Penny's. Because surreality is my reality.

---

1 Other potential responses include: "Karate" and "Your Mom"

I would like to apologize

to the people who got here via the last search phrase on this list

And wound up with this:

From this post.

Two unrelated but awesome things

Image by Stephen Rees via Flickr
Edit: Formatting on the quotes got super weird. Trying to fix that:

The first is this amazing article by Toni Bernhard, author of How to Be Sick: A Buddhist-Inspired Guide for the Chronically Ill and Their Caregivers (also amazing, by the way). Toni has a gift for explaining the common lived experience of people with chronic illness and their caretakers in a way that is clear, empathetic, and elegant without drifting too far into the "oh woe is me" or the "I will tough everything out and pretend everything is just fine." Definitely worth the read.
A few quotes in particular resonated with me:

Yes, it's okay to get sick or be in acute pain due to an injury or a surgical procedure, but then we're supposed to get better. Everyone expected that of me and I expected that of myself. For years, I felt embarrassed that I wasn't living up to the cultural norm

And:

Many of us believe that we've let our family and friends down.

And:

The dilemma of how to "present" to the world. Should we spruce ourselves up and risk people erroneously thinking we can participate fully in whatever they're doing?  

Also:

We're often misjudged by others if they see us looking nice or being active in any way. Healthy people tend to assume it's all or nothing: we're either sick or we're not; we're either in pain or we're not. And so, if they see us doing anything "normal," they assume we're 100% well. This has happened to me many times. Someone will see me at an espresso place with a friend and assume I've recovered, unaware that I came from the bed and will collapse on it after the visit. People aren't deliberately being insensitive. They just don't know.

And:

Caregivers face their own set of stressors. They must live with the frustration of not being able to make their loved ones better. They're suddenly thrown into the role of patient advocate in the medical system, a role for which they have no training or expertise. They often have to take over the running of the household. Caregivers see us at our worst, as we put on a good show for others (for me, this means running on adrenaline), only to collapse when we're in the privacy of our own homes or apartments.

On a lighter note, I enjoy watching jackasses get their comeuppance and boy has that happened with a vengeance with The Bloggess and a particularly clueless PR company (not the one that tried to recruit me to write for a "Mommy Blog" who had obviously not read much of anything here).
I sort of regret not being in Chicago anymore as I would have given serious consideration to dressing up like Beyonce the metal chicken and going to the PR company's offices downtown to tell them "Knock, knock, motherfuckers." Pretty sure that would have been the best bus ride EVAR.

Hero of the Day?

We moved so neither of us would become this guy

Also, I prefer Cocoa Pebbles.

John Belushi would be proud.

Justine and Tom Rebooted

After a few hours getting the wiring for towing fixed we are finally on our way. 
So expect Cylons that look human and random religious hallucinations and dark, tortured characters.
No, wait that's Battlestar Galactica and Batman.

Um, randomness, torture, and hallucinations then.

Zoologically Improbable and/or Terrifying to Small Children

Zoologically Improbable and/or Terrifying to Small Children : funny

This was the inspiration for my latest online avatar thingie.

Haaaayyyy, y'all

Well, one of the photos in this line-up.

I think "taxiderpy" is my new favorite word. And should possibly become a category on Regretsy.

Hero of the Day

Whoever added their commentary to this poster in my old department.  (I swear it wasn't me, because I would TOTALLY take credit for it)

ZOMG They Have Tribbles Glued to Their Boobies

If you hadn't already guessed, I did some knitting and watching of Star Trek this evening when I wasn't being creeped out by IKEA catalogs.

The colors are even more garish in the remastered episode.  I think I may have gotten sympathetic hives. 

Shore Leave is another one of those "really, WTF?" episodes in terms of dialogue and interaction between members of the opposite sex.

Most painfully creepy moment:  McCoy telling the yeoman she should try on the princess dress because he'd like to see her in it.  While they're both on duty.  On a mission. 

Also, people must have really damn short attention spans in the 23rd Century.  Kirk sees a guy he was at Starfleet Academy with and just takes the time to get in a fistfight with him because, um, the other dude was Irish and kind of a dick.

Then he runs into an old girlfriend and is all googly eyed and mushy while at the same time he's loosing communications with the ship and the rest of the shore party. 

Sulu finds a handgun and is all "pow pow pow" (what the hell is the gun version of "pew pew pew"?)  Because that is ALWAYS what you want to do when you find a random weapon under a rock for no apparent reason. 

Serial Killers Shop at IKEA

You may commence betting on when I'll receive a take-down order in the comments.

But seriously, I like fabric painting and printing, especially on hand towels or tea towels or whatever, but this?  This is kind of creepy

All hex wrenches and no screws make Jack a dull boy.

It's on page 40 of the most recent catalog.

Also, Zemanta seems to think that multiple photos of menstrual pads are appropriate to this posting.  o.O

Smartphone

I has one.  I have already taken several pics of my fingers and taught it that I use the word ass a lot

Large Quantities of Spray Texture

Today's blog title answers the question posed by the Star Trek episode What Are Little Girls Made Of?

While this episode is probably most notable for a screencap that appears after the break, it was also set in an underground cavern system on an extremely cold planet.

Apparently the set designer must have been heavily invested in the spray texture industry, given that every "natural" surface is coated in the stuff.  It's also used in other "ice planet" episodes, of which there seems to be quite a lot, now that I think about it.  They may also have been anticipating the Lisa Frank ¹ craze of later years as all the surfaces are also pink and purple.  Because, um, alien ice is purple?  Or is this supposed to be rock surface?  If it's ice, then WTF is up with this outfit?

I mean, she is an android, but still

Things that must be shared

I'm still working on writing lecture material for the day-course archaeology thing I'm teaching later this month and then again in August.

I'm trying to find examples to illustrate various points.  At the moment, I'm trying to come up with an artifact or other archaeological thing that was/is explained or mentioned in an ancient text, thus making it easier to identify.  Pretty much, the idea is to show the back-and-forth nifty-ness and exchange of ideas possible in archaeology and history.

Been trying various Google searches.  His Alien Holiness up there was the first image result for one of them.  I'm about ready to give up.  On everything.  I will become a hermit.  Hermits can have husbands and dogs and books and yarn, right?

Chicago Tribune Fail

So there was a story on the Chicago Tribune about a pilot program trial thing for dementia patients in Illinois.  I hit the "like this on Facebook" button on and went on my merry way.
The I checked Facebook today and a friend had commented that the photo with the story was sort of priceless.

 

If you can't make it out, it's a photo of a building on fire.  That was a different Tribune story.

I am going to hell for laughing so hard at this.

I figured my head couldn't hurt any more...

Mudd is apparently part evil, evil chipmunk.  Via Wikipedia

Some time ago I got Star Trek:  The Animated Series from Netflix.  The DVDs, because they are so not available on streaming.  Actually, I got the most recent disk in July.  I haven't finished watching it because, well, damn are they bad.
The animation is cut-rate cheese.  And the voice-acting, despite being from the original cast, is so clearly one-take only, has my check cleared yet, that it's painful to hear.  I have the novelizations of the episodes.  I really, really wish I had just stuck with those.  The stories are actually good (some of them), but oh man, the actual shows are super bad.
(Snarkier readers will probably say that the same is true of the original series, to which I give a hearty single-finger salute.)

Anyway, tonight we watched Mudd's Passion.  The premise is that they run into their old con-artist buddy, Harry Mudd.  This time he's selling "love potion."  Taking advantage of Nurse Chapel's huge crush on Spock, Harry tricks Chapel out of her phaser.  Chapel takes the love potion and goes to touch Spock, which leads to painful awkwardness as, apparently, it takes a few minutes for the potion to work so he's all "What the hell, human, why are you touching me?"  This snaps her back to her senses, she figures out the phaser is gone and goes to kick Harry's ass.
Hijinks ensue, Harry kidnaps Chapel, the love potion kicks in and Spock starts being all emo, plus a bunch of it gets spread through the ship's ventilation system, so the ship turns into a giant rave for a while.
There's also some weird Spock-Kirk hugging (the love potion creates "strong friendship" between men or women, because apparently the future is like Iran and has no gay people).

"Thanks, Jim, it's good to have a friend like you."
"Strange, that's how I feel about you, too. My dear friend Spock."

I wonder if this is to blame for Kirk-Spock slash fiction?

Anyway, there's a monster on the planet and stuff, but they manage to rescue Harry and Chapel and the love potion wears off.  Yay.



Awesome quotes:

I wish I was a three-eyed giant poop slug.  - Tom, when the episode's monster appears

Oh my god, that was horrible.  - Me, roughly every 2 minutes.

Spock, can't you take your hands off her? -Kirk

"Captain, Doctor... I... uh, wish to report a number of strange... emotions."

That is an outstandingly stupid idea.  - Spock, apparently echoing my thoughts about watching this show.   You can actually hear this quote here.

Blog-cation

Image by Getty Images via @daylifeTom and Oreo and I are heading out to visit my family in Nevada.  Wooo!  I love air travel so much (/sarcasm)!
Anyway, I'm not sure what or when or if I'll blog while I'm actually gone, but hopefully I will have hilarity and photos to share when we get back home if not before.  At the moment, I've got my bed covered in clothes I am likely to pack, along with 2 books and at some point I plan to gather up some crochet hooks and yarn and some patterns to take to keep me occupied.
I'd rather not push my luck at security with pointed sticks, especially since we'll be having enough fun with Oreo (who has to be taken out of his carrier and have his harness taken off so he doesn't set of the metal detector), me with my CPAP, and me in and out of a wheelchair to get through security.
(The Double-Stuff Oreo mascot showed up via Zemanta as a possible image to include and it was too horrifying not to share.)

What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas...

So, the Luxor casino, hotel, etc. in Las Vegas decided to abandon their Egyptian theme, or at least the "museum" part of it a few years ago.  I don't pretend to understand why.  I managed to visit the place once before the decision and there was much hilarity.
I did not, however, pay the admission fee to see their "museum/reproduction of the tomb of Tutankhamun" because a) I'm cheap and b) I figured the odds of being thrown out for being snarky were fairly high.
Apparently, the contents of the Tut tomb imitation are now in the possession of the Las Vegas Natural History Museum.
I'm not sure how I feel about this.  In some ways, it's awesome to make these types of objects more accessible to the general public.  But they aren't authentic.  I'm not sure how carefully the original objects were reproduced.  I'm not sure how well curated the exhibit itself was at the Luxor is is now.  While providing access to objects is important, providing accurate information is at least as, if not more, important.  As it is, I figure we'll go have a peek next time we visit my family in Vegas.  I do find it curious that while the various stories stress the "care" with which the objects were recreated, I can find no reference to consultation with an Egyptologist for the exhibit.

Some news articles about the new exhibit:
Las Vegas Sun
KTNV
Las Vegas Review Journal