Available outside of class

I was just leaving the grocery store, and I remembered a pretty funny story.

A couple of years ago, sometime in mid-September, my sister and I were at the grocery store here in Ithaca. Down one of the aisles I saw one of the students from the class I was teaching, and her roommate. I said hi, and my sister and I kept shopping. We had paid and were leaving the store when we noticed my student and her roommate gathering their groceries together and getting ready to head to the bus stop.

I offered them a ride. We bundled up into my car, and as I drove out of the parking lot I told my student about the Course Evaluation that she would be asked to fill out at the end of the semester. I went on to describe how one of the questions would be "Was the lecturer available to help you outside of class?" And I asked my student to remember this night when it came time to answer that question.

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I drove around Taco Bell tonight, and the cashier at the window had the most amazing voice. When I arrived at the window, I saw that the voice belonged to a beautiful girl. She just looked heart-breakingly sweet. The point of this story is that as I was waiting at the window for my food, I thought to myself, "What a beautiful voice this cute Taco Girl has." This was followed shortly by the thought, "Taco Girl is one of the very, very coolest nicknames I have ever, ever heard."

Taco Girl. My Taco Girl. Sweet Taco Girl. I love the nickname. I am going to have to find a girl who has something to do with tacos, just so I can use it.

Failing that, I am going to have to find a girl and give her a gigantic taco dinner, just so I can call her Taco Girl.

One out of n isn't bad.

How large does n have to be for one out of n to actually be bad?

I've recently taken up playing basketball again. And when I say "playing basketball", I really mean "playing basketball by myself". And when I say "playing basketball by myself", I really mean "shooting at the basket, walking over and getting the ball, and then shooting again".

I used to enjoy this a lot, and I'm finding that I still kind of enjoy it. I'm a little rusty, but then I was never very good anyway, so there's not too much of a difference now.

My very favorite thing to do involving basketball and other people is the game where one person shoots, and if he/she scores, he/she gets to shoot again. Otherwise, whoever got the rebound gets to shoot. Occasionally someone will go in for a lay-up, or start dribbling around a little, and occasionally someone will give them a little obstacle, but it's very easy-going. There are no teams. I love this.

Competition has always made me pretty uneasy, even friendly competition.

Anyway, the thing I realized, or more accurately, remembered, was that my greatest challenge when I'm off shooting hoops by myself is not losing my cool. When I miss ten or more shots in a row, especially when the last eight were from less than two feet from the basket, it is incredibly difficult for me not to give the basketball a good kick. I remember doing this many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many times when I was in high school.

That was a very difficult time for me, and if that stupid ball wasn't going to cooperate with me, then, darn it, the ball was going for a little trip!

I think I'm much better about that now. I'm older, wiser, and more mature. And I'm far too lazy now to go get the ball after I kick it.

Score yet another for laziness!

Little funny things

One of my students has had a nasty cold for the past week. I sent a get-well e-card earlier in the week. I was trying to come up with another get-well gesture the other night. Bringing an actual can of chicken soup to class seemed like too much, so I came up with a more subtle, and much funnier, thing to do. I would bring in the label from a can of chicken noodle soup to class, the idea being that the label probably absorbed some wellness-inducing-vibes from the soup by osmosis.

Unfortunately, although I remembered one-thousand of the things I had to remember to bring to school this morning, I forgot the one-thousand-and-first. So, I was left with no other option but to scan the soup label’s image into my computer, and send the picture to my student. It can be found here.

Here’s another funny.

One generic cinematic sort of situation that’s always stuck in my head is the idea of two people, maybe friends, maybe enemies, maybe a little of both, standing on the top of a mountain during a gathering storm screaming at each other about the fate of the world, or at least humankind. Does this make sense? Do you know what I mean?

I especially like the idea of two people who were friends when they were young, who are now in positions of great power in opposition to each other.

I guess it’s definitely a comic book sort of situation too.

So I told Mike about this, and he immediately envisioned it as the last battle between Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarty on top of Reichenbach Falls, which is certainly a very similar situation, although not quite what I had in mind.

Many months after I first mentioned it to Mike, I was telling him about a particular person that I sometimes really really dislike. This person is also a graduate student.

Mike suggested that maybe I had finally found my partner for this scene of mine. He said that ten years from now me and my enemy could enact this fateful mountaintop encounter, like Holmes and Moriarty. Except, Mike added, that ten years from now me and my nemesis would both be professors. I wasn’t so sure.

“Only ten years? I wouldn’t count on it. I think I’ll probably still just be a ‘Mister’.”

(It’s not entirely obvious to me that I will ever graduate from here.)

Ok, one more.

Riding the bus this morning, (yes, I ride the bus an awful lot), I saw an advertisement above the seats opposite me. It was actually an advertisement for the advertising space. It was a cute cartoony drawing of a view of Earth from the surface of the Moon. There was text that said something to the effect of "Let more people see your adds".

Huh? Who exactly do they think is riding this bus??? Or, how far exactly do they think this bus's route goes???

Well, just one more.

They keep making these movie versions of classic TV shows. I'll admit that I enjoy some of them, but that's not saying much, because I enjoy 99.999% of the movies I watch. But even with the ones I enjoy, I do ask myself why exactly they felt it necessary to make such a movie. Because some of them are pretty awful. AWFUL.

Then the other day I was flipping through the menu to see what was showing on TV, and I saw that Leave It to Beaver was on. But it wasn't the TV show. Oh no. It was the movie. (Don't believe me? It exists. Check it out!)

I had never heard of this movie, or seen any indication that it exists. So I thought to myself, "Considering how bad all the other movies based on classic TV are, exactly how bad does this one have to be to have been beneath my notice??"

And this made me very frightened. I actually had to turn the TV off right that moment.

Ok, now I'm done.

Everything makes me sad

The title of this entry is a quote from Greg Muller. I don’t even remember the context, but it was very funny at the time.

Here is another funny quote about sadness. In an episode of Futurama, Fry is apparently killed in space. When back on Earth, Leela keeps having dreams that he’s still alive, that he still exists. The Professor replies, "Of course he still exists—as a frozen corpse in outer space. Oh…I made myself sad."

So I was riding the bus home from school the other day. I was on one of those sideways-facing seats. There were two undergraduates sitting across from me. They weren’t a couple, but they were totally into each other. You could totally tell. Totally.

The bus stopped at one of its, well, stops, and the kids started to panic. They didn’t know where the bus was, and they weren’t sure if this was their stop or not. They had to consult the driver, a passenger just getting on, and a passenger still sitting.

It wasn’t that they didn’t know where they were going, but it was nighttime and they couldn’t immediately see where the bus was, and they had lost track of the stops. They had completely lost track of where the bus was – that was how into each other they were.

I have never in my life lost track of the bus stops.

I’ve had conversations on the bus, and I’ve even been pretty into people I’ve been riding the bus with, but they’ve never been that into me at the same time. Because I’m pretty sure that if that had ever happened, not only would I have noticed, not only would I have lost track of what bus stop we were at, but I would almost definitely have lost track of what planet we were on.

And yet, I’ve always been pretty darn aware that I’m on planet Earth.