email for pics

For his birthday, Ger wants Irish breakfast. Specifically, he wants brekkie rolls, that oh-so-Irish of traditions in which you take an innocent meal and wrap it in a French roll. We’ve made the preparations for importing Irish sausage, rashers, and pudding, but there are minimum orders for these kinds of things and we’re going to need some help.

So if you’re in the PST and interested in helping Ger celebrate his birthday with a full Irish breakfast, come on over to our place Sunday, the 4th of March. Breakfast will be on for 1-ish, since people who are up and out the door before 1 on a Sunday are probably going to church and wouldn’t be able to make it until 1 anyway.

RSVP here or to Ger.

Today I wander into the office thinking ‘hm, must get back to Franck about that weekend in London, maybe I’ll get to see Gwen, must find out what happened to all the French over the weekend, going home on Friday hurrah’ and then on a suspicious rumour I moseyed up to Logistics to check when we’re actually starting our offshore ops – I’d heard filthy rumours that maybe it was happening next week not three weeks from now.

Filthy alas, but true. (more…)

In 24 hours I’ve had two separate linguistic adventures. I suspect this is because I clearly look like both 1. a native English speaker and 2. someone who won’t just frown and keep walking.

The first was in the corner supermarket, where I was carefully considering the cottage cheese selection. A woman accosted me and asked me where she could find the cream. Though it came out sounding more like “clllllleeeem” with a very rolled R. I may have been the worst person in the store she could have asked, since I’ve given up on depending on American sources for decent milk products and I’ve never needed to use, um, cream. I pulled a half pint of “Heavy Whipping Cream” off the shelf and handed it to her with the disclaimer that it probably wouldn’t be as good as what she was used to. “This is cllllleeeem of milk?” I told her “Yes.” I sincerely hope I was right.

The second happened, interestingly enough, when I was retrieving today’s lunch portion of the aforementioned cottage cheese (my choice, anyway) from the group fridge. Another woman with an exotic accent accosted me, asking “You are a native speaker of English, right?” I nodded, and we spent the next few minutes discussing her preposition choices in a manuscript that had recently been rejected due to “some grammatical errors.” Apparently she’d been having a real problem finding a native English speaker in the group this morning.

I told her we don’t tend to make it to the office before noon, if ever. That, coupled with the World Cup fever that’s seized the non-native English speaking population of the lab, means it’s a wonder she found anyone in the lab at all.

All weekend I held in my mind an idea for an emailforpics post. It was a small idea, a grain if you will, of something that might inspire me to write a few paragraphs and (hopefully) y’all to read them. Something happened this morning to change my mind, and although this means y’all will not hear about the young couple who purchased two 50-lb bags of salt at Costco this weekend, the commentary is strikingly similar. “What in the world were they thinking?”

I stood on a street corner clutching my coffee, waiting to cross Colorado (the “main drag” in Pasadena, if there are any non-locals kicking around). There was a queue of cars facing me on the other side of the street. The first one in the queue, a red SUV, had its left indicator on. I smiled and thought Perhaps not everyone in LA is a bad driver and waited for the light to change.

Suddenly, a car horn blared. It was coming from the Civic behind the SUV. I usually try to determine the source of such outrages (in case it might be me), and could find none. No one in the queue was moving. No one was blocking anyone else. The light was still red. I wondered if perhaps I had misplaced the horn, but a few moments later I got a rare opportunity to verify, since the Civic honked again. Beep beep. In that way that suggest the honker is trying to wake up someone in front of them.

I checked the light. It was still red. I noted there was no cross traffic on Colorado, and after once more analyzing the situation in the queue across from me I could only come to one conclusion. The honker wanted the honkee (the red SUV I believe) to go ahead and make the left turn against the red light.

Baffling.

It has been noted here that people will convince themselves that the rules do not apply to them for some reason, and I will admit that I am sometimes one of those people. Especially when driving. I routinely drive above the speed limit (though these days usually not more than 5-10 mph over), and if confronted with a red light at 03:00 at a deserted intersection I will usually stop, look, and drive through. Such a thing has never crossed my mind in broad daylight during the morning rush hour, and I have never considered encouraging anyone else to engage in my illegal activities. The only other explanation I can think of is that the Civic believed (for whatever reason; perhaps the driver was on the phone at the time) the SUV meant to turn right. I’m not sure how the driver could have come to this conclusion, since the SUV was clearly indicating left (and indeed turned left once the light turned green), but I do try to begin with the assumption that all people posess the standard suite of reasoning capabilities and that encouraging someone to pull into an intersection against a red light would be considered an unwise act.

I really have no idea. I will never know. Just as I will never know why the young couple in the queue in front of us at Costco felt they needed two 50-lb bags of salt. Nothing else in their cart gave clues; they did not appear to be purchasing for a business. Do they have a severe slug problem? Have they just slain a vampire and now must salt the earth over its final resting place?

I think I wonder because I know there is a reason…and it’s usually more interesting than anything I can come up with.

One of the slight drawbacks to an otherwise plum pick for an office in the WAG empire is its close proximity to a small experimentalist lab. The lab contains a sonicator, which inspired me to purchase headphones (on the group account) in order to block out the new and interesting form of aural Chinese Water Torture. It also now contains a student who sings.

I’m fairly sure it’s the student singing and not a recording, as the moo-sounding pitch fluctuation is not constant. It starts rather softly, then gets louder as the singer becomes more confident, no doubt related to the fact that no one has walked in and demanded an explanation for the humpback whale sound. It doesn’t last more than a few minutes at a time. Although I would love to meet the source of this sound, I know it can never be. For as anyone who’s been caught singing in the shower knows, once a private singer finds out there’s someone listening it’s impossible to go on singing. Such personal expression must be done alone. I must imagine who this person is.

I know which research group the person is in, and I can guess what subgroup. I can determine what kind of work the person does. More importantly, however, this person is probably reasonably happy. This person does not know the realities of the wall thickness in the sub basement of the BI, and likely is similarly ignorant to the soul-crushing facts of life as a graduate student. This person inspires me by reminding me of an earlier, more optimistic time. Perhaps I will sing in my office when I think no one is around.

I was in the express checkout line in a local grocery store this evening, and I got stuck behind two people that were having some sort of problem at the cash register. I later found out that they were trying to buy a telephone calling card with a corporate credit card. The store employee was explaining that it was store policy to only accept cash or debit card payment for the calling cards. Credit cards were not accepted.

I have no idea why the store policy is constructed that way. But it was clear that’s what the policy was. The employee called the store manager to the front to help with the situation. One of the two people in front of me was a woman, and she had this exchange with the store manager:

Woman: I understand that’s the rule. Can’t you make an exception just this one time?

Manager: No, ma’am, we can’t. It’s store policy.

Woman: But it’s just this one time!

This exchange cemented in my mind the idea that while people generally seem to appreciate that rules are necessary, many people simply don’t think these rules should apply to them. Rules are for “average folk”, people who simply don’t know any better. But I’m me. Surely you can make an exception for me. I’m not some “average folk”.

The exchange also reminded me of the statistic that an overwhelming majority of Americans believe they are smarter than the average American. People seem to be able to appreciate abstractions, at least in some sense, but for whatever reason these abstractions oh so rarely apply to them.

Go figure.

I have long been a fan of that famed Canadian bacon and pineapple pizza (sometimes seen in the wild bearing the moniker “Hawaiian”), and for this gustatory leaning, I have taken much social abuse. It seems there is a large sector of our society (indeed, perhaps a majority) which decries the use of fruit on pizza.

Considering only from the top of my head, I cannot think of any other fruit (in the popular rather than the botanical sense) which oft toppings a pizza. Perhaps it is simply this uniqueness exhibited by the pineapple which causes so much petty yet bilious animosity in otherwise convivial gourmands; people may simply fear the singular beauty exampled by the delicious Ananas comosus.

What’s more, this animosity seems to be entirely one-sided; I have heard of none campaigning for any pineapple quota mandate, yet many are highly vocal about its complete removal from all pizza-form comestibles. Is this animosity inherent in pineapple-on-pizza detractors or is their argumentative behavior always brought forth by the opposite side’s “How is it that such an otherwise rational and likable person as yourself can have a distaste for and, further, disparage that most companionable of toppings, the sweet, tart, and generically delectable pineapple?

Having only questions but no answers, I open the floor to spirited debate about the issue.

Resolved: that those who dislike pineapple as a pizza topping should fulfill their heart’s deepest desire and go marry that goat they’ve been dreaming of so longingly. That and that they suck.

You knew I had to post this. And, no, it doesn’t really have anything to do with falling in love with a goat. But a Sudanese man was forced to marry a goat after he was caught having sex with it.

Isn’t that priceless? Read the last sentence of the previous paragraph again. “But a Sudanese man was forced to marry a goat after he was caught having sex with it.” Yes, I know, there are websites dedicated to this phenomenon, but we’re talking about a real life man having sex with a real life goat, ostensibly without the intention of taking pictures and posting them to the Internet.

Anyway, the goat’s owner hears a loud noise out back, goes out there, and finds this dude deflowering his goat. The man was ordered to pay a dowry to the goat’s owner, and possession of the goat was exchanged.

But let’s go back to how the goat’s owner finds out about this. “Honey, do you hear that? It sounds like something is scaring the hell out of the goat. I’m going to go check it out; I’ll be back in a minute.” Thirty seconds or so of travel time to the goat’s location follows, and then BAM! You see some dude mounting your goat.

And you know the conclusion wasn’t drawn instantly. It’s not like the guy walks out there and immediately thinks, “Oh my God, that guy is having sex with my goat!” It had to be something like, “What in the hell is that behind the goat? Is that a guy back there? What is he looking for? Wait, what is he doing to my goat? Oh my God, that guy is having sex with my goat!”

I’ll let the goat’s owner wrap up this tale:

“When I asked him: ‘What are you doing there?’, he fell off the back of the goat, so I captured and tied him up”.

Priceless.

I received an email today that was automatically filtered to my junk mail folder. I go through this folder before I empty it, just to make sure that something that is obviously legitimate didn’t get filtered. Occasionally, I find myself bored, and I will sometimes read a junk email or two.

Today, I had the good fortune of reading one ostensibly from abbigale@earthlink.com. Abbigale was polite enough to write me a one word email. The email?

shagface

That’s it. No image. No non-English characters. No misshapen hyperlink. One word: shagface. What in the hell is that? Who arranges a spam bot to send this one word email to hundreds, or thousands or more, addresses on an email list? And why? What in the hell is “shagface”? Is Abbigale calling me a “shagface”? Are there some oral sex under-or-over tones I’m supposed to be getting here?

The Internet is a beautiful place. What other place could you be where someone drops by, looks you in your face, and simply says “shagface”?