Pariah

Humorous, but painful to watch. "His trainer takes him off the field like a moustached lion dragging a gazelle through the Serengeti."

"King of the World" by Toto (A song about the Enron scandal.)

I'm reminded of the time traveler story from the first Callahan's collection, the guy who went into a third-world prison in the mid-sixties and was released ten years later into the Nixon seventies. Talk about a different world. (A late fifties to late sixties transition would probably have been even more jarring, I suppose.)

Is the fact that I live in the Rockies and not on the Gulf Coast an answer to this question? (Hurricanes? Screw that. I'll shovel snow all winter long, thanks.)

Q - Why did Doctor Doom order 300,000 liters of liquid nitrogen? A - It's the quickest way there.

A conversation from one of yesterday's classes, wherein we watched the Cosmos revival episode "Deeper, Deeper, Deeper Still": “So Mr. Pariah, the video said that light takes time to travel, so when we look out into space, we’re looking back in time?” “That's right.” “So if we could travel faster than light and then look back at the Earth, would we see the Earth’s past?” “Yes, we would.” “Whoa. That is so cool!” I love conversations like this.

Q - Okay, we've got around three kilometers' worth of baling twine and twenty-three liters of WD-40. What else do we need? A - The last thing I needed the first thing this morning.

Why didn't we get snow this week?

My ancestors were Vikings. I used to love to tell people, "A thousand years ago, my ancestors were kicking your ancestors' butts." Then I started working with a guy who's full-blooded Native American. Alas, Vinland....

Don't drink the milk there. (Unless you have acid reflux.)

The Oakland Raiders still have fans in all fifty states. New Topic: Subtle signs that Richard Castle has grown tired of your antics.

Seasons 1-18 of Dancing with the Stars. Turns out he's a big fan of the quickstep. New Topic: It has just been announced that the next season of Dancing with the Stars will feature superheroes. What happens?

Kangaroos, maybe? Who ever heard of fascist kangaroos?

Lots and lots of booze.

Q - Being a science educator is sometimes a thankless job, is it not? A - There's really no such thing as 'the square root of stupid'. Other than that, it looks fine.

She's got a great body, but having a Brain-in-a-Jar would give her the complete package.

What the [expletive deleted] are we talking about now?

Quoted for truth.

Who would?

When I was in middle school we were learning to program in our math class (BASIC on a TI-994A, for the curious) and we had an assignment to write a game program. I wrote a text-based quiz game. Since I was, humility notwithstanding, the best programmer in the class, everyone wanted to look at my code. So I let them. I printed out copies for them if they wanted them. I knew several of them would use my program to cheat. So in the middle of the code, I embedded a comment line that read "This program was created by <Pariah>. If there is any other name attached to the program, they copied it from me." Apparently a large number of my classmates typed in the comment letter by letter, because a bunch of them were complaining about getting zeroes when I got full credit. Morons.

You've never played co-ed Basket-Sock-Ball, then?

In 'honor' of the arctic air mass that's hanging over most of the USA right now we have a new topic this morning. New Topic: Three songs about cold, snow, ice, storms, etc. [Degree of Difficulty: No Christmas songs. It's still November, dammit. There's plenty of time for that next month.]

Q - I just can't get rid of this stinkin' kudzu. Any suggestions? A - Certainty of death. Little chance of success. What are we waiting for?

You've played before, have you?

Making sock basketballs?