Random: Funny Edition
1.
Andy Samberg is one of the best things to happen to SNL in a looong time. Justin Timberlake is pretty good when he's on, too. I know what Bly's getting for Christmas!! (not for work just to be safe)
2.
Will it blend?! This blender could make a mean margarita. The marbles, coke can, iPod, and bottle beverage are all awesome.
3. Question: How many psychologists does it take to change a lightbulb?
Answer: One, but the lightbulb has to want to change. Ah, heeee.
That's it for now.
Labels: funny, jokes, random, videos
Altoids are good
I couldn't think of a title for this so I went with the first thing I saw on my desk. Anyway, here is my new generic holiday greeting instead of "Happy Holidays." I still plan on saying "Merry Christmas" in a totally disrespectful of others' possible beliefs way, but something you need generic so here it is (psychology humor warning):
Happy seasonal festival of your adopted social context.
Via
MindHacksLabels: Chicago, funny, random
Weird Science
Xon tagged me after being tagged by Jmac, so here are six "weird" things about me:
1. As an undergrad, I painted the fingernails of my left hand for a couple of years, off and on usually during fall/winter. Sometimes I would paint the right hand fingernails, too, but mostly just the left and never the entire nail -- usually a stripe running diagonally across or straight off my fingernail. I used dark blue polish mostly, and I think my sister gave me some dark purple/shinyish polish that I used from time to time. Bly would sometimes paint flowers or somesuch on my big toenails, too. After noticing my fingernails, people often asked me if I played the guitar and when I said no they just looked at me blankly. Sometimes I wish I could still do that and get away with it in the professional settings in which I work. The settings of my work are also the reason I took out my earrings and stopped dying my hair.
2. Food weirdness. I do not like peanut butter and never have. I have never eaten a PB & J sandwich. I have also never liked milk, but I do like chocolate milk. I prefer if my food does not touch at all on a plate. At this point it is a preference and not that big a deal (I don’t actively try to keep the foods separate), but years ago it would have met criteria for impairment. The texture of certain foods stops me from eating them even though I like the taste -- canned pears, cooked onions in large slices (not diced or chopped tiny), tomatoes (I blame my sister for that one -- she gave me a cherry tomato when I was young and told me it was an apple), casseroles, and most soups. Recently I found out my paternal grandfather does not eat foods with what he calls a “wet crunch” such as lettuce and pickles.
3. When I have some sort of medical procedure done that only needs local anesthetic, I like to watch whatever it is the doctor is doing. I had minor surgery on my foot twice and I watched everything both times, insisting that I be allowed to sit up so I could see. I watch when nurses give me shots, I watch when the docs make incisions, and I watch them closing up the incisions. But, watching most any surgery on TV makes me queasy and freaks me out a bit. The best word I can think of to describe the feeling is skeevy.
4. Grooming: I am a big fan of manscaping certain areas with clippers. I haven’t gotten to the point of waxing or shaving anything yet.
5. I have a high threshold for pain and while I wouldn’t say I “enjoy” it, I definitely don’t mind in certain contexts what some would consider painful. Getting shots, being bitten, getting tattoos, receiving “Indian” arm burns, et cetera doesn’t bother me and I sort of like the sensation. When we were in middle school we used to have contests to see who could take the most pain by having someone stomp or punch a hand while it was laid flat on the ground. We would also jump off of high places onto pinecones without shoes on. I seemed to win these contests. I should have turned this into a lucrative career by joining up with Johnny Knoxville, but I didn’t have the foresight to see the money in stupid stunts.
6. I want to someday buy a skull from a medical supplier.
Addendum -- OCDish type stuff (
Jmac’s list and mention of his teeth brushing ritual reminded me of these): I dry off the same exact way after every shower at home and if I don’t do it I don’t feel like I dried off correctly. I don’t dry off in this particular way after showering at the gym, though. I can switch it up on purpose sometimes, but I prefer not to. If a TV’s volume is listed by numbers, I like to have it on multiples of five on most TVs, then even numbers, then multiples of 11, then numbers ending in 7 -- in that order. Bly likes to tease me by turning up the volume one number so it doesn’t match the pattern. If there are no numbers, but words above the volume lines I like to match up the lines with either the beginning or ending of a letter (like even with the first leg of ‘M’ in VOLUME or at the end edge of the ‘E’). Same thing goes for my iPod -- I match the volume bar up to a letter in the album title of the current song if I turn it up or down.
So, those are six things about me that are probably “weird” by most people’s standards. I could probably think of more, but these are the first ones that jumped out at me. I’m not tagging anyone, either, because I think everyone I would tag has done this already. Maybe not Charles. So, Chuck, if you want tell us why you’re weird.
Thoughts
I just read
this article and I had some things occur to me. Here they are.
Circumcision appears to reduce a man’s risk of contracting AIDS from heterosexual sex by half, United States government health officials said yesterday, and the directors of the two largest funds for fighting the disease said they would consider paying for circumcisions in high-risk countries.
Wow. So there is a reason beyond vanity, "it's cleaner," and a reduction in penile cancer (a rare thing anyway) to circumsize men. Of course, this is good news for people who downright refuse to wear condoms or can't get them, but maybe circumcision and condoms can help decrease the rates in Africa and other places where HIV is on the rise. It's amazing to think that it cut the risk by half!
“Private practitioners also do it,” Dr. Halperin said. “In some places, it’s $20; in others, much more. Lots of the wealthy elite have already done it. It prevents S.T.D.’s, it’s seen as cleaner, sex is better, women like it. I predict that a lot of men who can’t afford private clinics will start clamoring for it.” (S.T.D.’s are sexually transmitted diseases.)
Do readers of the NY Times really need an explanation of what S.T.D. stands for? I mean, really? And how do we know sex is better? Have there been pre and post-snipped men filling out surveys about this? I mean, I find it more attractive and sex is plenty pleasurable, but I'm biased because my yoyoma isn't fond of the turtlenecks.
and men’s insistence on dangerous “dry sex” — with the woman’s vaginal walls robbed of secretions with desiccating herbs.
OUCH! For everyone involved, OUCH! I would like to know more about why this is insisted upon. I have a feeling it's some sort of African trendy thing to do. Like, "Hey Umbahwah, I hit it last night dry style," he said as he limped through the door. "Ah yeah, Zanbewe, friction high five," replied his friend who was preparing herbs for later that night. Maybe people in Africa have sex differently than we do, but I don't see how this works. At all. For some reason, I'm reminded of the SNL skit "Appalacian Emergency Room" and that guy that always comes in with something stuck up his keister or something attached to his zanzibar. Last week it was a melon. The term "desiccating herbs" and the image of shoving something like that up your ham-wallet is horrifying.
As is the term, "ham-wallet."
My Pupils Are Full
A recent
article on
Developing Intelligence is very interesting. It details research being conducted in cognitive neuroscience that focuses on the eyes as indicators of underlying neurological processes. Here's an exceprt:
In the most compelling finding from this literature, pupil diameter has been observed to increase with each successive item maintained in memory, up until each subject's working memory capacity - and then to contract incrementally as each item is reported back to the experimenter. Some recent work suggests that spontaneous eye blink rate - how quickly the eyes blink in normal, everyday situations - may also be an index of prefrontal or executive processes.
That's just freaky. As you retain more information, your pupils dilate. As you report the items back, they contract. Of course, one study does not reality make, but it's still pretty cool. I do quite a bit of testing for attention and concentration and much of that testing is word list, story, and number sequence memorization. I'm wondering if the increments of dilation are on some set ratio to the number of items memorized. I'm also wondering how story memorization would work. Maybe you could predict how much of a story someone is going to remember by how big their pupils get. I'm going to be gazing into the eyes of assessees to see if it's noticable. I love science, it's so rad.
Random: News Edition
1. Throw the frat boys down the well so my country can be free! Update on
Fratty McFrattersteins versus Borat.2.
This man lead one of the most interesting lives. Monastery, good friend to John Lenon, Second City member, movie actor, sitcom star. Sad.
3. I will be watching
this show. I read his autobiography several years ago and it was very interesting. He seems pretty genuine and well adjusted given what he witnessed and went through. I don't agree with everything he has to say, but then again, I don't really agree 100% with any one person.
4. A great mind and father to what I do once again
holds court. You can access the story via bugmenot.com for the user and pass.
5.
Pauly Shore gets tagged by fat cowboy. Whether this was real or not -- who knows? But if it was, it shouldn't happen. We saw him in Athens and it was a good show (albeit vulgar and offensive).
6.
Too many crash landings if you ask me. I remember hearing something about him being racist years ago. I also remember when David Blaine met with him before his "I'm a goldfish" stunt. Weird.
7.
Good idea via Mindhacks and good reads via Pubmed. People are weird. People also shove their cash and prizes into some interesting places.
Rock out with your C*** out
Last Friday I headed downtown to The Riviera theater to see the Deftones. Sparta opened for them. All around it was a very good show. It was COLD outside and waiting in line was brutal, but we made it in and aside from my big toes, I warmed up quick. My toes, however, stayed numb throughout 3/4 of the show. I was actually worried about them as in, "My God, my toes haven't warmed up yet and I'm probably going to lose them."
The face value on tickets was 20 bucks, but I found a dude on ebay selling two tickets with the auction starting at $1. I got the two tickets for a total of 20 bucks, so I made out like a bandit -- half price to a sold out show the day before the show! The tickets were at will call and the lady gave me lip. I told her my name and she flipped through the stack of tickets and I said, "It might be under a different name..." She cut me off before I could give her the info on the guy who sold me the tickets -- I had his name, last four of his credit card, and the confirmation number -- saying, "OH! Another name, huh?!"
She was, let's put it politely, skeptical. Another word that describes her demeanor begins with B. Anyway, I explained the situation and gave her the other info and she replies, "Yeah, did you know that he did this with about 20 other people?"
I said, "Oh, ok. So, my tickets."
She decided to lecture me about how "sometimes they kick tickets back to Ticketmaster when they notice patterns like this." Right. As long as dude paid for the tickets and the same number of people show up for the number of tickets he sold, then just shut up and give me my tickets, stupid hag. I got the tickets after staring at this lady unapologetically the whole time, but while being polite at the same time.
The show rocked, but I manage to find the most annoying people and stand right behind them at all the shows I go to. I knew we were in trouble when she turns and says, "Do you guys smoke?" The venue is no smoking. She follows that up by looking all put out and saying, "OH GAWD! No one smokes anymore. LAME!" She was also "girl who leaves fifty times, but tries to get right back in the same spot even though there is no room." She wasn't a shoulder tapper, either. When she wanted to get by she would grab my shoulder and spin me sideways from behind. Two of her friends were in front of me and the Girl kept trying to return to standing right behind them. She was also drunk from the moment we got there. She had no concept of personal space. Had I been sans pants, we might be expecting a child. At one point, she free fell to a sitting position right on my feet using my shins as back support. I made a "what the crap" face and gesture and her friend, who saw her suddently sit down, did the same. I think her friends were as annoyed as I was.
After one particularly annoying attempt to squeeze back in front of me, almost poking my eyes out when she would run her fingers through her hair, and continual bumping into me and stepping on my feet, I had a decision to make. I could either elbow her hard in the occipital lobe area, knocking her unconscious and potentially getting me arrested for murder, or I could sort of turn and shoulder her midback to let her know that she should refrain from standing on me and threatening my eye area with her talons. I bump her pretty hard and she turns around trying to look all innocent and cute and I just stare her down and say, "Yeah, there isn't very much room right here, is there?" She finally moved to the side after her friends told her to multiple times. Oh yeah, the guy with her had on eye-liner. At a Deftones show.
Enough of that. The show was LOUD and I'm officially old because the pit area did not look appealing to me at all. It was fun to watch from the second tier on the floor, though. I think I counted at least 100 potential TBIs (traumatic brain injuries) and neck injuries from idiots crowd surfing.
Here's a video with really crappy audio and video quality that I took without using the viewfinder so I had no idea how not zoomed in it was. Oh well.
Labels: Chicago, cold, funny, music
You can't win if you don't enter
So, OhGizmo! is running a contest for a bundle of nifty trinkets. The cool factor of a paper burning laser is reason enough to enter.
Go here to find out more.
Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow...
I've tried to post this four times now and each time I need to use the backspace which then acts as though I clicked the back button on my browser. Long story short, I'm tired of retyping each time I forget to save a draft and because of this you're getting a shorter post than intended. Sucks to be you.
Short story: Snowed six to ten inches. Driving in it this morning SUCKED! Slipping and sliding while driving is no fun. Sunday forecast is now 17 degrees for the high.
Pictures:
My truck freshly brushed off this morning.
South from the front porch.
North from the front porch.
South from the front porch.
Bldg 228 -- where I work.
Arty tree shot at work.
Arty sidewalk shot at work.
Another building at work.
So there you have it. That's what the first real snowfall looks like here West of Chicago. Snow is nice for about 10 minutes and then, as an adult, it dawns on you that you still have to do normal routine things in spite of the snow. Shovelling and brushing off your car in the morning is not fun. Driving, even less. It's pretty, though, huh?
Labels: arty, pictures, snow, weather, work
