It has begun. Again.

The students are back, and many of them brought their parents. I confess that I'm a little jealous. Although I didn't feel that way at the time, I think going away to college is a very exciting time. Still, Ithaca is a madhouse. I heard a story about an argument about dishwashing soap between a student and his parents had in the grocery store.

"I don't understand, why can't I get this?"
"Because we don't believe you'd use it."

Good stuff.



I went shopping at Wegmans earlier tonight, figuring that most of the frenzy there would have died down. It had indeed, but it had left its mark on the store. In this life, we get used to taking certain things for granted. Like the fact that Wegmans will always have lots of bananas in stock. And yet, behold the picture above, of my beloved banana stand, ravaged almost bare. Most unfortunately, my beloved shelf of beloved cases of cans of seltzer water was also cleared out.

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Yesterday I heard someone mention the World Health Organization on the news. I imagined the following situation.

"Blah blah blah the World Health Organization."
"The who?"
"Right."
"Right, what?"
"No, not what. W.H.O."
"Huh?"
"What?"
"You're talking about who?"
"Yes."

And so on. (If this pattern is unfamiliar to you, please see this article.)

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I also recently heard the phrase, "The cheese stands alone." I was unfamiliar with its origins, and found that it's the final lyric in the nursery rhyme The Farmer in the Dell. I was honestly hoping for a little bit more. It seems like such a dramatic statement. Imagine a deep voice speaking the words slowly, with great reverence.

And the cheese ... stands alone.

Oh well. I still can't wait to use it in conversation. I only hope I have enough patience to wait until it makes sense in the context, and that I don't just blurt it out. Only time will tell, I suppose.

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In other news, I recently created a Tim-avatar in the Simpsons style.



I really do own that hat, and wear it quite often. I tried to find a picture of me wearing it, but was unsuccessful. Still, those who know me can surely attest to my honesty in such matters. I NEVER joke about hats.

This isn't nearly as good a likeness as that of the avatar (or Mii) I created on my brother's Wii. That resemblance is downright uncanny. It's by far the most handsome character I've ever seen in a video game. I'll see if I can get an image of it to post here.

Here I go, here I go, here I go again.

(Title inspired by the lyrics to Salt-n-Pepa's hit song, "Shoop".)

My goodness, I am prolific today. On the one hand, this can be attributed to the fact that, before today, it had been almost a year since I posted anything on this blog, so I have a lot saved up. But something closer to the truth is that, after finally finishing teaching a summer course, and getting all the exams graded and grades assigned, I am once again on a bit of summer vacation. Having finished reading all of my unread comic books, I find myself with a little leftover time and energy.

Of course, after leaving this blog alone for so long, I'm not sure if anyone still reads it. Hmmm. Well, never mind.

Two more funny things.

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Several weeks ago, I had coffee with a friend in one of the coffee shop/cafes on campus. I had just finished telling a funny story, my friend told me I was funny. I told her she was funny, too. She was excited about this, and asked, "Really? You think I'm funny?"
"Sure," I replied. "Funny looking!"
She thought this was pretty humorous, and as people often do in these situations, she laughed and repeated the punch line: "I'm funny looking!"
Of course, she repeated it QUITE loudly, so that everyone else in the shop turned and looked at her. There were literally half a ton of people there, too!
Fantastic, just fantastic.

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Several years ago, I suggested that it would be fun to have action figures of some of our Cornell math professors. I still think this is a very good idea, but it is probably prohibitively resource-consuming. Nonetheless, we did put some thought into the designs. For instance, one of the figures would have to come equipped with a fanny-pack, as well as a switch on its back that would allow you to raise and lower one of the figure's eyebrows. Another figure would come equipped with a huge black coat and hat, a large wooden staff/walking stick, and be coiffed with a wizard-like beard and mane of hair. Yet another could come with lots of different outfits, all of them green.

And of course, they would all include a "kung-fu grip", as defined in the following passage from Wikipedia.

"In 1974, named after the increasingly popular martial art, Hasbro introduced 'Kung-Fu Grip' to the G.I. Joe line. This was another innovation that had been developed in the UK for Action Man. The hands were sculpted in a softer plastic that allowed the fingers to grip objects in a more lifelike fashion."

Perhaps you can guess to whom these figures correspond. Perhaps you cannot. That's okay. You can imagine your own designs.

What would your action figure look like and come with?

(On a related note, perhaps you are one of those unfortunate people for whom the line between action figures and dolls is not clear. Apparently there is now a legal difference.

Little thoughts.

Here are some little thoughts I've had recently, which I found entertaining.


Consider the statement, "That's a ton of apples!" In most circumstances, this is an exaggeration. We mean that there is a rather large number of apples, not that the totality of these apples actually weight one ton (although that would indeed be a very large number of apples).

Consider now the statement, "That's a ton of people!" Assuming that the average person weighs about 150 pounds, one ton of people is probably just 13 to 16 people, (depending on which ton unit you are using). If you say, "There were a ton of people at that dinner!", then this might be accurate, but if you say, "There were a ton of people at that concert!", then you are probably massively under-exaggerating! Isn't that interesting?

(This thought was not my sole creation. I share the credit with my good friend Mike, who I have mentioned before.)

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I was recently in the mood for ice cream, so I went to the supermarket to buy some. As was perhaps inevitable, after picking out some ice cream I found myself searching for some whipped cream. Next to the canisters of whipped cream, (Reddi-wip, to be exact), were some canisters of Cool Whip. These were on sale (by about 7 cents), so I bought one.

I like Cool Whip, but I realize that it is only tangentially related to the superior whipped cream, even the stuff in the canister. That's why I was so amused to find, at the end of the list of ingredients on the Cool Whip canister, a warning reading something like, "This product may contain some milk."

I realize that this warning is there to ward off people with relevant allergies or intolerences, but I couldn't help but feel that it was also some kind of plea. "We're really very much like real whipped cream. Really! You might even find some milk in here somewhere."

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My good friend Josh, who was not long ago a fellow math graduate student with me at Cornell, recently did the following Things.
(1) Accepted a postdoctoral research position at a very prestigious institution. (Hint: It starts with an "S" and ends with a "UNY Stony Brook".)
(2) Defended his thesis, whose title I cannot currently remember or locate, but whose presentation was very good.
(3) Got married, the presentation of which was also very good.
(4) Moved. (See Thing (2).)

I had a dream last night about Josh and his new wife, Hannah. In my dream, part of their moving and him starting his new job was that they had to go into witness protection. (I have no idea why, although it made sense in my dream.) I recall suggesting a number of different new names for him. He was due to choose his name the next day, but he wasn't allowed to show any opinion about the names I came up with, in case he ended up using one of them. Apparently his and Hannah's new identities had to remain secret for a little while, until they got settled into their new lives. He promised to get in touch with me and tell me their new names, when he could. One of the people helping him set up this new identity was his advisor, who in addition to being a very well-respected mathematician, in my dream was also a liaison to the Federal government.

I have the best dreams, sometimes.

A tough year, and strawberries.

It's been almost a whole year since I last posted something. This past year was a busy time. Working to finish my dissertation and getting ready to graduate. Applying for jobs. Not finding a job. Applying for more jobs. Figuring out what I can do if I don't find a job. Still not finding a job. Deciding to postpone my graduation for another year.

So here I am, still a graduate student, (or a doctoral candidate, if I want to sound fancy), and now the whole process is about to start all over again. Hopefully, however, I'm in a much better position for all of it this time around.

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I am currently visiting my parents. On their back porch they have a little strawberry plant. I picked a couple of the little ripe berries, washed them, and tasted them. They were still warm from the INTENSE sunshine, which was a little odd. They were the tastiest little things I have ever eaten! Fresh strawberries, my god.

It's funny to think that I never used to like strawberries when I was little. From fairly early on, I liked strawberry-flavored things, but not the berries themselves. When I got older, I would eat strawberries if they were put before me, but I never really saw the appeal. But in the past several years, I have started coming across the good stuff. Tasty, juicy strawberries. Not necessarily fresh, but not too old or preserved.

When he was still in grad school with me, my friend Mike and I would often eat at the cafe in Wegmans Supermarket. One day, he realized that besides the delicious offerings of their cafe, which includes Chinese food, vegetarian, sandwiches, pasta, soups, pizza, chicken wings, and varying dinner dishes, we actually had available to us the full wonders of the rest of the market! He took advantage of this more than I did. He would almost always, in addition to a couple of items from the cafe, get several packages of berries of different sorts. He ate more berries more quickly than I had ever seen before.

Even if we were just grocery shopping, he would often buy, for instance, two large cartons of strawberries, and finish off one before I dropped him off at his apartment afterward.

Mike would be very proud of me. I recently brought a large carton of strawberries to school with me to munch on, (as opposed to "to throw at people", I guess). Except for one or two berries that I shared with friends, I ate every last one of them, all within about two hours. I know this isn't too impressive by his standards, but everyone has to start somewhere.