Sometimes, Trendy Just Doesn’t Work out Properly

Take for example the latest trend dominating our roadways – the curlique’d faux monogram stickers that I’m seeing more and more often attached to the rear window of family-mobiles. The letters are all curvy and stylized, and the monograms are usually done in pink or green. It’s all very preppy, and gives me PTSD flashbacks to 7th grade, when I lived in button-downs and had one of those Papagallo purses where you could buy the different covers for it in order to coordinate with your outfit. I KNOW. Toss in a hairdo that copied Pam Dawber’s Mindy and a pair of penny loafers, and you have my 7th grade fashion statement, a.k.a. the stuff of nightmares.

Anyway, so I’m seeing these little mongrams everywhere nowadays, and usually I just roll my eyes and move on. If traffic is slow, I amuse myself by making up horrible names for these letters, like Rotunda Phonebone Smithee, or whatever, and then see if the person behind the wheel matches the name I’ve created.

And while I will argue that monogramming your car is asinine, it doesn’t evoke the same sort of rage in me that bumper stickers do. After all, the only thing I have to confront about the driver of the mongrammed car is the fact of her initials – I’m not also being invited to take a stand for or against any of a myriad of the latest political or religious issues of the day.

That said, however, I do have words of caution for the mongramming wannabes among you. Please remember that monograms put your MIDDLE initial first, followed by your first initial and last initial. So do us all a favor and think about what that might spell, in order to avoid the following scenario:

The Boy: (riding merrily along in the car) “ASS!”
Me: (manages not to swerve into the guardrail, oncoming traffic, or a ditch) “WHAT?!”
The Boy: “That car says ASS on it! See? A – S – S!”
Me: (scouring the bumper of the minivan in front of us for obscene bumper stickers and finding nothing) “Where?”
The Boy: “Up on the window, see those pink letters? Except they capitalized the wrong one.”

Sure enough, emblazoned upon the back window of the Ford Expedition, was a curly pink monogram that read: aSs.

I pondered this for a moment, informed the curious Boy that the word referred to the driver of the car in front of us (I know, bad mommy, no cookie), and left it at that, though I was tempted to preface the word in question with “dumb.”

I also ran the initials of every family member (including the one that’s still baking) through my head to make sure that in the event of a mongrammed gift, no one in the Big Arm family would have to walk (or drive) around with an embarrassing word embroidered (or stuck) to their person or belongings.

Recent Events Summary, 7-Year-Old Style

“Oh, no!  The Oxy-Clean guy died!  That’s really sad.  He was the only person that old people could hear on t.v.!”

Thursday FYI

Yeah, just so you know – if I come to your house and happen to notice that you’re using compact flourescent bulbs instead of incandescent bulbs, I probably won’t think that this makes you a good person, or a better person than I am.

Sorry.

Of course, this presupposes that I would actually give a rat’s ass what kind of lightbulbs you’re using to begin with.  Or what kind of car you’re driving, or whether you recycle.  I don’t care about that.  At all.  Why?  Because, to paraphrase my wise old dad, it’s really none of my g.d. business, is it?

If you want to be the greenest people on the block, well rock on.  But I hope you’re doing it because you actually think it’s the right thing to do, not because you’re some sort of loser poser who wants to impress me.  If you are the latter, then here’s another FYI – I’m not easily impressed.  And if you’re the kind of person who goes around judging your fellow humans based upon what sort of lightbulbs they use, then I don’t want to know you anyway.

Just, you know, FYI.

College Rankings Are Crap.

In case you didn’t already know this. If you work in higher ed, I apologize for beating the dead horse.

My favorite thing about rankings is when someone comes out and says what everybody already knows–that they’re a game that can only be won by manipulating the criteria–and everyone acts shocked about it.

Here’s the latest iteration of that particular event:  Clemson alums, hate to break it to you, but your university hasn’t actually gotten better as an institute of higher learning, it’s gotten better at gaming the system.  And I say that as someone who has absolutely no problem with Clemson’s blatant statistical manipulation, because I think the whole rankings game is a bunch of crap.

Perhaps this new cynical honesty will start a trend that will either lead to a) accurate assessment formulae, or b) the demise of that stupid US News issue.

It’s Monday – Have some Spinning Ninjas and Wine Drinking Douchebags

Stupidity, Flying Pig Carcasses, and Spike TV.

Apologies for the absence – but there’s been so much stupid going on in the world that I honestly wasn’t able to focus my energies on just one item.

Also, thanks to all the reassuring commenters on the last post.  For now, the rational brain is in charge.  This will, of course, be subject to change as the next hormonal wash approaches, but whatever.  I’ll just eat some cheese and crackers and move on. 

Or maybe I’ll watch another episode of “Deadliest Warrior,” my new favoritest show EVER!  And no, I am not being sarcastic.

It’s got grown men hacking up flying pig carcasses with ancient weaponry in an attempt to answer deathless questions like, “So in a battle between an Apache indian and a gladiator, who would win?”

I’m not kidding.  The latest one I saw had William Wallace putting the serious smackdown on Shaka Zulu, complete with re-enactors and lots of fake blood.  Because we all know that should Wallace and Shaka ever encounter each other while randomly wandering the California countryside, conveniently armed to the teeth,  a huge deathmatch involving Claymores and spitting poison would ensue.

I love this show.  It’s like everything I ever wished would happen while watching those lame History Channel re-enactments of battles, where a bunch of pudgy dudes pretend to get cut down on Pickett’s charge.  I mean, they have EXPERTS!  In a LAB! A doctor who pokes his fingers into the slash marks made in the lifelike human torsos and confirms killing blows! A computer programmer whose name is Max Geiger!  And a bunch of dudes who really, REALLY like hacking up pig carcasses that are being propelled across the room at them at high speed!  The hilarity, it does ensue.

Next week, the IRA will take on the Taliban.  I am not making this up.

Oh, and FYI?  In a fight between a pirate and a medieval knight, the pirate totally wins.

Life Update – Knee Replacement and Springsteen Edition

First up, a brief response to those of you who have expressed interest in borrowing the cat – she’s not terribly effective with squirrels, though she is hard on birds, snakes, frogs, small rodents of the mouse and vole variety and of course, bunnies.   Also, if you like hummingbirds, you might not want her around.  She has been known to catch and kill them as well.  On a related note – KITTEN CAM!  In case any of you are in the market for a small mass-murderer of your own.

And now on with your regularly scheduled post.

So mom had a knee replacement last Friday.  It was supposed to be last Tuesday, but the surgeon (who is something of a ginormous flake-ball) got “stuck” in California.

I know.  Unless you’ve had an unfortunate accident involving a wooly mammoth fossil and the La Brea tar pits, you really shouldn’t get “stuck” in California.  Especially if you’re a fully grown man and professional surgeon in possession of both a brain and a dayplanner.

However,  the concepts of “planning” and “prior ticket purchase” on those  newfangled airbirds escaped him.  And yet he was allowed to hack bits off of my mom’s femur, ram some metal crap in there, attach a plastic kneecap, sew it up, and call it good, and my mom had to pay for the privilege.  No one ever said life was fair.

Anyhoo, mom did great, we hung out with her at the hospital, and Hublet and The Boy took the opportunity to go see Bruce Springsteen on Saturday night.  And the only casualty was Hublet’s Disney souvenir hat, which we trekked the entire Magic Kingdom to find.  Not that I am bitter, nor that I am reminding him of this fact with the occasional pointed stare at the procession of lesser ball caps which he has been forced to wear in its stead.

And now for your, “Well, duh!” moment of the day:  Paula Abdul admits to 12 year painkiller addiction.

Regular blogging will resume tomorrow.

A Haiku Dedicated to those Random Telecom Men Who are Always in our Telecom Closet

Hi, telecom men
Why always in our closet?
Secret stash of drugs?

It Has Begun

Hormones are funny things, and affect different women in different ways.  Some folks get weepy, others get really calm.  Here’s a little-known but perhaps not-so-surprising fact about me when I’m pregnant – I turn into a raving psychopath with a hair-trigger temper.  Shocking, I know.

Oh, I Almost Missed This!

Via Taxprof via Instapundit, an editorial in Inside Higher Ed wherein the writer draws parallels between the failure of AIG execs and the professoriate.  The larger point he’s trying to make (I believe) is that both the private sector and research universities have managed to incentivize failure–in academia’s case, by privileging research and the ability to get grant money over teaching.  Read it and draw your own conclusions.

The real fun, as always, is in the comments, wherein we get to see examples of missing the point, hyper uber-umbrage that anyone would dare question the sterling character of academe, sniffy attacks on the messenger of the “oh, he’s a mere educational consultant, dahling,” variety, and the amusing inability to recognize that all this money currently being handed out by the NIH and NSF is every bit as much of the bailout package as the AIG funds.

That government research money, by the way, is only for 2 year grants, so expect our researchers to be back EXACTLY where they were two years from now, fighting tooth and nail for funding - unless, of course, there’s another bailout package passed…