“Puberty is a modification of the child body which involves various organs, chiefly the brain”

“The researchers note that poltergeist encounters have been reported around the world and across different cultures, but tend to have one thing in common. ‘Poltergeist disturbances often occur in the neighbourhood of a pubescent child or a young woman,’ the authors note in their paper.”

[via]

Look, I don’t want to put too fine a point on it but this is horseshit.

20,000 pounds

I used to work at NASA Langley Research Center and one of the things that always cracked me up was the attitude there. Most people don’t know that the various field centers do different kinds of work. Hell, most people don’t know there even are a bunch of field centers. At Langley, the attitude was that the aeronautics centers were the best and that Langley was the best of those. I think probably all of the centers feel that way to a certain extent about what they do.

Anyway, the point of all this is really to show you this photo that makes me extremely nostalgic:

It’s the Orion Space Capsule Mock-up. Constructed at Langley, it has been flown to Dryden for testing at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. Orion is part of Constellation, which is kind of a big deal and touches on every aspect of the work the agency does, which is myriad and astounding by the way.

29

What’s happenin’ white folks?

Did I mention that I bought myself the Season 1 DVDs of WKRP in Cincinnati as a “You finally have a full-time job” gift? Awesome, I know.

These are just some of the lines that have thus far cracked my shit up:

• The Pinedale Mall has just been bombed with live turkeys.
• He used to be scared to death of me and I thought that was good relationship.
• I don’t like it; it’s too quiet. Do you think the Indians are going to attack?
• Did I say send in the clowns?
• I’ll cry in the car on the way home. That’s the way men do it.
• Are you here to…create an opening at this station?
• Actually, they’re very polite boys but extremely vicious.
• So far, two recreational vehicles and Woody Hayes.
• I think you should know I’ve killed a lot of old people in my time.
• What’s happenin’ white folks?

And I dedicate this image to Elsa. She knows why.

The terrorists win

…if you have nipple piercings, apparently.

To be perfectly honest, I cannot imagine getting my nipples pierced. Just thinking about it makes me want to grab my breasts in a comforting and not at all sexual sort of way to reassure myself everything is okay and intact and NOT PIERCED, but I don’t care if other people get pierced, and I fail to see how nipple piercings could be a threat to anyone under any circumstances, particularly while on an airplane.

If shoving an entire tissue into my right nostril to stave off the ceaseless dripping is wrong

…then I don’t want to be right.

I have another suburban resentment: excessive and unnecessary amounts of tree pollen. There are a slew of flowering trees out here and they are all out to get me.

Out of control

Flair, out of control
I can’t control my flair. That is to say, I cannot control its inevitable entry into my life. Although it hasn’t happened yet, flair will apparently start appearing on my cubicle nameplate without my consent. I am told there is nothing I can do about this and so I must resign myself to it. What I will not resign myself to is allowing said flair to be haphazardly applied in an inelegant and nonlinear manner. This I can control. As I have walked around the office, I have noticed that almost everyone’s flair is haphazard, AND IT IS DRIVING ME CRAZY. I’m actively stifling the urge to rearrange it all in a more orderly fashion. Honestly, the urge isn’t that difficult to stifle given how quickly my attitude would go from obsessive and deranged to “fuck it.”

Potluck, out of control
There was a spring potluck lunch today. I skipped it on the grounds that I didn’t know about it and would have felt weird eating food without contributing food. I also skipped it on the grounds that potlucks are full of fellowship and germs. I’m not particularly a germophobe, but if we are having an office potluck, and you prepared food and I saw you in the ladies room where you didn’t wash your hands, I can’t get that out of my head. Hasn’t happened here (yet) but it is burned into my brain nonetheless. It is one thing to accept as an article of faith that the food was prepared by the hands of someone who feels strongly about hygiene; it is another to grapple with the very real possibility that you are ingesting the bodily fluids of someone you just aren’t that into. Also, the silent army of chairs lining the hallways (so people would have places to sit and chat…that fellowship thing I mentioned) creeped me right the hell out.

Pressure on self, out of control
Although it is completely invisible in this forum (or, I would imagine, in probably any forum in which you people interact with me), I like to be 150% competent at something immediately. That isn’t really an option in this new job because there’s so damn much to learn. So I find myself a little stressed out at what I perceive to be my stupidity and thick-headedness. Everyone is extremely helpful and patient, and I love that. But it makes me feel like a nuisance, and I hate that.

Horned rodent

I asked for and received this book for Christmas, and I have to say that it is beautifully crafted and full of little gems like the epigaulus:

Got plenty. Thanks.

I have some photos in my office. Some are taken by me; some are not. Most people have been pretty quiet about them (including some extra-quiet bafflement at the werepigeons) but I knew it wasn’t going to last.

Hi! Do you like marbles?

…hi. What?

Well, I was walking by and noticed you’ve got this photo of marbles and I thought you might like marbles. I love marbles! See my ring? It’s an actual marble but I’ve got others in other colors! 5000¹ of them! I love marbles. They’re so pretty. You can get them at gotallyourmarbles.com. Got…all…your…marbles…dot…com.²

Great. …Thanks.

Sure!

There will never be a time in my life when I think I need marble jewelry. I wish I’d been fast enough to say, in that very serious, crazy way, “No, I only like these three marbles. They’re very important to me. Perhaps I could talk to you about that.” And then hope that ran her off because I wouldn’t have been able to follow through.

1. Or some such ridiculous number.
2. Don’t go there. You’ll just end up hating yourself. I will also hate you.

I feel like Arthur Dent

“The Babel fish, said The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy quietly, is small, yellow and leech-like, and probably the oddest thing in the Universe. It feeds on brainwave energy not from its carrier but from those around it. It absorbs all unconscious mental frequencies from this brainwave energy to nourish itself with. It then excretes into the mind of its carrier a telepathic matrix formed by combining the conscious thought frequencies with nerve signals picked up from the speech centres of the brain which has supplied them. The practical upshot of all this is that if you stick a Babel fish in your ear you can instantly understand anything said to you in any form of language. The speech patterns you actually hear decode the brainwave matrix which has been fed into your mind by your Babel fish.”

I desperately need a Babel fish at work right now.