Some observations about the X-people

So I was watching X-men for the sixth or seventh time a few nights ago, while my wife was hanging out with her chick friends in the other room.  And I may not be the world’s biggest X-men expert.  OK, I am definitely not the world’s biggest X-men expert.

But how about Wolverine’s claws?  Where do they go when they retract?  If they only go back right beneath his knuckles then there’s no way he could bend his wrists.  He would be Stiff-Wrist Logan, the Canadian Mystery Guy.  Think about all the things you couldn’t do with adamantium wrists.  Like play the fiddle or deal cards in a smooth and attractive manner, or chip.  (As in golf.)  Or hold out your hand in the universal gesture for “stop”.  He would just be giving the sign for “I punch you in the face” or “I poke you in the throat”, which would make directing traffic awkward and give him a bad reputation.  Come to think of it, how would he arrange his hair in that swirly horn pattern without some repeated circular wrist action and a lot of product?

Or if they retract all the way into his forearms, he has to make sure his wrists are straight when he extends them or they would poke through the wrong spot in his hands.  Even with instant healing powers that would get annoying over time.

And cyclops.  OK, what’s the advantage of having laser eye beams if you have to use your hand to make it fire?  That’s like just carrying around a laser gun, which any storm trooper or GI Joe cartoon character can replicate.  Or it’s more like a laser gun that is attached to your face all the time.  Gunhead McGee is what they’d call you in school, and you couldn’t do anything about it because if anyone ended up with a laser hole in their chest, you know who they’d blame every time.

And why doesn’t Rogue steal her own powers when she touches herself?  And why are Storm and the frog tongue guy just all-around lame?

Don’t get me wrong; I believe we could all use some gratuitous genetic mutation that would bestow amazing powers or double jointed-ness in our knees and elbows, or the instinctive mastery of the semi-colon.  I just think the creators could think through the implications of some of the mutants they invent.

For example, you could invent a guy named Plastic-Face Alan.  His face looks regular, but it’s genetically really plastic.  So in addition to being able to change his face into whatever he wants it to look like, he could also absorb any face-punch ever, and trap your fist in liquid face-plastic.  That’s a double payoff for a single mutation, which is exactly the kind of thing we need to be working towards here.

hello, you’re failing

If you are getting this email, it is because you have a D or an F in this class.
Some of you are working very hard to bring your HW grades up, and this will undoubtedly help.
Many of you, however, are doing nothing that I can see.  Many of you are not showing up regularly to class, do not come to office hours, and repeatedly hand in no homework.

This is a warning.  You may be under the impression that at the end of the semester, one or more of these things will happen:
1.  You will suddenly find not only the time to make up all of your homework, but also a magical understanding of all the concepts that you have missed, without any help from anyone else, and without ever having studied them.
2.  I will then be glad to take all of your old HW assignments in a heap and quickly re-grade and return them to you.
3.  You will (in spite of zero preparation and study) suddenly do amazingly well on your second quiz and final exam, which will rescue your grade.
4.  Or, when none of these comes to pass, I will be overwhelmed with pity, and either give you a C- with a bow on top, or come up with some extra special plan just for you, because I simply can’t bear the thought of you failing.

None of these things is even remotely possible.  I want you to be aware of this NOW, because when you do come to my office at the end of the semester, needing a grade of 205 or above on your final and having 12 hours left before the test, it will then be too late.
The way to bring your grade up is to get in old HW assignments. You need to begin doing this NOW.

I am happy to help during my office hours, or to make an appointment with you if you have class during my office hours.  I really DO want you to pass, but I really CAN’T see how that will happen unless you EARN a passing grade by kicking it into gear.
If you begin working now, there is no reason why any of you should fail this class.  Everyone is still in reach of a passing grade.
Please email me or come by my office with any questions or concerns.
Have a nice weekend,
Mr. Thompson

Come on, Autozone

photo by jurvetson

So many men will find this totally irrelevant, because they either know enough about cars that they can hold their own in a conversation about dual overhead cams, or because they are wise enough to know their own limits and pay someone else to maintain their vehicle. I neither know enough, nor am I smart enough. Hence many of my problems in life, including the Autozone factor.

Let me ask you this, O faithful reader: auto parts stores–what the crap?

For many of you that says it all. For those who have never ventured beyond the outer sidewalk and through the double doors of the mechanical Purgatorio that is my experience every time I need a part, I will explain further.

I am driving to the store, rehearsing my lines over and over in my head. I will have to say clearly but in a casual way, like I am totally comfortable with the jargon, “Yeah, I need an accessory belt for a 92 Honda Civic.” You have to say it just like that, just like you’re saying “yeah, I need a quarter pound of thin-sliced honey cured ham” from the deli people (which is a much easier process, both because I feel at home with sandwich meats and because I come out with something I am sure is the right thing and not some foreign object that I have to nod wisely at in faked recognition).

You have to say it like this, because the guys behind the counter can smell fear. And they know you’re coming; they see you in the car, breathing heavily and rehearsing your line over and over again. As soon as you walk in, they deliberately start doing something else, so you have to interrupt them to get what you want and so now it’s clear to everyone who doesn’t belong and shouldn’t really be allowed in here in the first place.

So you lean in casually, knocking over the jar of tiny multi-colored flashlight keychains with laser pointers on the end, and you say, “Yeah, uh [voice crack], I’d like a pump. I mean a belt. A belt for…uh…my car.”

Now they’ve got you on the ropes. “Do you know what kind of a belt [or is your memory full after storing that one word in it]?”

“Yeah, OK, an accessory belt.” [Confidence is building, but they only want to set you up to knock you over.] “There are 17 different kinds of belts on most standard vehicles. [pansy] Do you know what kind it is?”

“Uh…[cotton mouth]” “Did you bring it in with you [for show and tell, or did Mommy forget to put that in your My Little Pony lunchbox with your Hi-C juicebox]?”

“No, I forgot [my brain was full after memorizing the word "belt"].” “OK, well, I’ll look it up and maybe we can find it [we really can't, but I want to prolong your awful experience so that you'll never come back here again]. What kind of a car do you have?”

“The one I drove here or the one at home?” [disrespectful silence while he waits for it to click home.]

“Oh! Yeah, stupid of me. The broken one.” “Yeah, that one. What kind of a car?”

“It’s blue. My car is blue, but it has gray interior.” Silence to make the disdain evident. “What’s the make [you don't know what that means, do you?]?”

“The make? [No, I guess I don't know what that means.]” “Like Honda, or Ford, or Subaru.”

[Something clicks and the rest comes pouring out]: “I need an accessory belt for a 92 Honda civic.” [internal sigh of relief.]

“Four cylinder or six?” [Thought you were home free, didn't you?]

“Uh, six cylinders.”

“Are you sure [because we both know you totally made that up on the spot, and it gives me one more chance to humiliate you], because the belts are different for different engines.”

“Yeah [busted], I’m sure. Definitely six [and I can bring it back if I'm wrong but please get me out of here].”

“OK, six cylinder accessory belt of some sort. There are four options here. Do any of these pictures look like it [they're all the same picture, but if I can actually get you to pick one I win $5 from my co-worker for serving the lamest customer of the day]?”

“It’s definitely the third one, yeah that one [let me go home I want to go home my wife will come back and get the right part let me go home i shouldn't be here].”

“OK, normally you need to replace them in pairs [there's only one on your car, but why stop having fun now?].”

“Yeah, I knew that. I meant I need two. I’ll take two. [maybe I can buy my way out of this.] And two more for a friend of mine; he has the same car I do. His is red though [I am six years old]. And one of those keychains [wow, a laser].”

“OK, that’ll be $90.98.”

“The price here says $16.30.”

“Yeah, but you ordered four, and there’s a disposal fee for old parts and an oil recycling tax [and you owe me for putting up with you].”

“OK, well, thanks for your help [I will go home and cry now].”

“You’re welcome, have a good one [I can't believe I have to breathe the same air as you.]“

On days like today I remember that the pain of Jr. High never really ends; it just relocates.

I am a tramp

Photo by Danielle Scott

At the Panera near my place, they usually have this nice free selection of bread samples on a plastic lunch tray with breads I would never buy but will eat a bite of for free, and they have these tongs that I never use too.

So I was in there on Tuesday and I walked by the special counter where they make your special coffee drinks and milkshakes and frozen lemonade, and there was a plastic tray of bready-type samples on the counter next to the exotic tea jar. Normally the free bready samples are near the front of the store, and normally there are about 30 bready pieces instead of what looked like two raggedy pieces left on the tray; but I am one who adapts to change quickly and without fuss, and so on the way by to fill my cup with fountain-made Dr. Pepper I grabbed one of the two bready hunks and popped it in my mouth. It was about 11:30am.

The thing in my mouth was cinnamon-esque and nutty, a clear breakfast type taste. Good, but a little out of range of the lunchtime palette. Then, as I thoughtfully munched on my free cinnanut bread sample on my way to the carbonated pleasure dispenser, I wondered why a) the sample tray was in the wrong place, b) it was an unusual selection, and c) there were only two crummy samples and what might have been a used napkin under the tray.

“Hmmmm”, I munchedly thought. “I believe I am eating someone’s leftover breakfast pieces. I wish, both that this was not so sticky and hard to quickly chew and swallow in my mouth, and that my fellow customers would not look at me like that. I will keep walking.” It was a tortured 20 seconds of too late to spit the bite out, but not yet time to swallow.

So in a dignified manner, I carefully chewed somebody else’s food and rinsed with my own Dr. Pepper, hoping the pressurized CO2 bubbles would, like the cartoon bubbles on DOW liquid bathroom cleaner commercials, scrub my mouth clean of foreign saliva and DNA like they were soap scum and hard water stains.

On the way back, I noticed the tray had been discreetly removed from the counter by the thoughtful but unhurried staff of “Panera which is Italian for ‘We Cater to Idiots Who Eat Things They Find’ Bread”, and I grabbed a sample of strongly flavored rye-type bread from the properly placed front counter tray on the way to the door.

The squeaky wheel in my pants

so I’m walking the library yesterday, and you know how when it’s really quiet you can hear the stuff around you that you don’t really ever notice but it’s always there?

So as I am walking, every time I put my right foot down, I hear this squeak.  Like the squeak of a squeaky wheel every time it comes around, on a grocery store cart or one of those A/V carts in high school that hauled around those TV/VCR sets and had the curled up extension cord around it.

Squeak.  Squeak.  Quiet enough that I never heard it outside of the library.

I thought it was in my shoe, so I tried putting my foot down toe-first.

Squeak.  Then I tried stepping on the side of my foot.  Outside and then inside.

Squeak.  Squeak.  I could not make it stop except by standing still.  But every time I started walking I squeaked again.

It wasn’t in my right shoe, or my left shoe (which can often happen, if your left shoe makes a noise when it is lifted up from the ground at the same time as the right one hits the ground, and you’ll spend all day looking at the right shoe when it’s the noisy decompression of the left one that is giving you fits).

I finally realized that it had to be in my pants.

So that’s when I realized I was probably a cyborg.  And let me tell you humans, that is one of the more irritating things to learn about yourself.  I’ve got enough things to worry about in my life without the added stress of being robotic.  Whoever my designer is out there, how about a little heads up next time?  Or at least a laser cannon in my left arm, which otherwise I rarely put to good use.

Raisin Bran and the Greater Good

This is a post for all of the General Mills/Kellogg’s industrial engineers and VP’s of distribution out there who read my blog.

Yes, every one of you.

So here’s a good idea that I felt compelled to share with you, for your great financial and personal benefit. You know how by the time the Raisin Bran gets to my house and I open it, all the raisins have sifted to the bottom, so the first bowl is almost all Bran and the last few bowls should be called “Raisin Milk”? (Of course you do; this is your job. And of course it’s the bane of your industry as the complaints flood in by the twos and threes.)

I know, I know. Contents may settle during shipping. It’s technically right, and legally protective, but not really satisfying for anyone, except maybe a raisin whose dark and cellophane-wrapped life may be extended by a few days. So anyway, here’s your long-awaited solution: Get the dudes in the warehouse to put the cereal boxes into the big shipping boxes upside down.

Yes, sir/ma’am. I did say upside down. Now follow closely:

As the boxes are shipped, all the raisins will settle – to the top!! See, because the boxes are upside down (see above), gravity will actually reverse itself in the limited field of the inside of the box, and pull the raisins to the top of the box. It sounds complicated, but feel free to try it on your own at home and observe the astounding results. The sugar-dusted raisins will be sitting at the top of the box, grinning wrinkled-ly at you.

OK, here’s the amazing part. When the bag boy/part-time stocker at Publix/Harris Teeter/Market Basket/organic hippy store opens the big box, all the Raisin Bran boxes will be upside down (see above). Then, as any thoroughly trained store employee will do he will (without any prompting or special effort on your part to interfere with unionized labor) turn the boxes right-side up, and put them on the shelf. Perhaps the fleeting thought may occur to him, “Gee, that’s strange. The Raisin Bran is upside down again this week! I sure am glad this doesn’t happen with the Lucky Charms! They’re my favorite.”

But no matter to you, fearless innovator. What consequence will a few mind-numbed and sugary-cereal-soaked teenagers’ opinions be to your own Raisin Bran empire when, lo and behold, the boxes as they are arranged on the shelf, spontaneously begin to re-settle in the opposite direction! As they are set up, knocked off the shelf, put back on, and then dumped in someone’s cart, moved over the conveyor belt to the mysterious scanner-laser, packed in the car and taken for a very bumpy ride home on those terrible New England roads, the raisins, now subjected to ordinary earth gravity, will begin to settle into place. (As we all know, bran flakes are resistant to any form of gravity, earthly or otherwise.) In fact, the longer they move around, the more normal will be the distribution, and the more even the bran-to-raisin ratio throughout your scrumptious product. This amazing normalization process will continue to function even long after the box has been opened.

The above plan requires only minimal training of factory workers on your part. The astounding laws of physics (and the unwitting bag-boy) will take care of the rest! Imagine the happy smiles of your newly euphoric customers as they pound raisins into their faces, getting instant satisfaction out of the first bowl of delicious processed fiber and dried fruit.

But wait! There’s more, so hang on before you send out that inter-office memo that could open the door to a new era of glory in the cereal industry. If the re-settling pull of normal gravity has not reduced the box to original factory conditions by the time of consumption, note that the last bowl from the bottom your pretty purple sun-logo’d box would merely contain a little too much Bran–only making those dupes long slavishly for more Raisin-filled boxes!!! Instead of final raisin saturation, you’ve achieved the product-pusher’s dream: a wistful but insistent hunger for more of the good stuff, fulfilled only by your company’s Raisin Bran’s strong initial hit of sweet black pasty sun-withered goodness.

The side benefits–to your career, marriage, and lately tarnished self-image–in realizing a triumph over the forces of physics that have so long been your own cruel masters, can hardly be overestimated.

Enjoy your new life, and when you make it huge, remember the little people who got you to that nice corner office with the cushy chair.

long distance flavor and a shameful confession

So less than ten minutes ago, I just enjoyed my first country music song.

[long pause to let that sink in to my own head.]

I really don’t like country music. I don’t mind the really really old stuff, or some of the older southern rock, but the newer country/pop style just isn’t my thing. Not only do I not like the sound very much, but I just don’t like the way it tries to tap into the spiritual side of people for effect. I hate it when one song on the album is about your mama and Jesus and your deep roots and knowing right from wrong and being a family man, and the next one on the album is about screwing around or being a badass in a barfight. I know it reflects the hypocrisy in all of us, but it never sits well with me. It’s like whatever’s deep in us we should be proud of or, more likely, whatever’s deep in us can be used to sell us something.

But today I turned the radio on and one of the (wife’s) presets is a country station up here is yankeeland. And you know, it was a good song. I have been breathing the stale northern air for so long that I had forgotten what the deep south tasted like.

And it was tasty.

I think just being this far away makes me more hungry for home, and less nitpicky.

And then they sang this line about Jesus and I got the tingles.

Dang.

Notice

I just wanted to let all three of my faithful readers out there know that I have had two more “encounters” in the last few days, but that I didn’t post them because they both had to do with bathroom material and I thought that would be disturbing.  Honestly, I’m not trying to make that happen.  It just is.

Encounter 6

Another bathroom one (I know). I’ll spare you the stock photo.

Washing my hands and leaving the bathroom, and there, on top of the paper towel dispenser, was a book.

The title was “How to Develop a Super Power Memory”.

Nice.

Encounter 5

Savannah airport, 7am (ish). I am trying to nod off in one of the rows of seats that are all joined together but you try and leave at least one seat between you and the person next to you.

Eyes closed. Drifting…

Then this lady sits next to me. Sits there for a few seconds. Says:

“Are you sleeping?”

I keep my eyes closed, not sure what’s happening.

“Are you sleeping?”

I opened my eyes and looked over at her. What does she want? Turns out she was on the phone with someone else. But we almost had this connection.

Maybe this one doesn’t count.