Gone Manny Gone

After weeks of speculation, Manny Ramirez has been traded to the L.A. Dodgers.

I'm disappointed. I've always been a big fan of Manny's and believe that the majority of criticisms stem from minor misunderstandings and media hype.

Goodbye, Manny. Thanks for the hits, the memories, the fun, and the World Series victories.

Is there anything more annoying....

that having an eye twitch? Especially if, like me, you have a weird eyeball phobia. Opthamologist or wearer of contact lenses I will never be.

I might have to start wearing a patch, though, if my eye twitch doesn't stop soon. It's driving me crazy!

Here's a link with everything you ever wanted to know about eye twitches, a.k.a. blepharospasms.

Sunday Stories

Since I've recently curtailed most of my blogworthy activities, I've decided to delve into the past for new posting material. Every Sunday, I'll share a story about a hilarious, bizarre, or otherwise memorable incident. Obviously, I can't compete with Dave Secretary, but we'll start out this with a bang:

The Strangest Thing I've Ever Seen
I spent a little over two years of my life as a Peace Corps volunteer in rural Nicaragua, during which time I saw a lot of crazy-ass shit. The following may have been the most shocking incident of them all.
One day, I'm at home with my host family, and the five year old grandson, Wilder, has something in his eye. A piece of dust, or something, and it's scratching and irritating him. He complains to his grandmother Chila, who instantly comes up with a remedy: we need to "echar una leche," the literal translation being "pour some milk." Sure, yeah, pour some milk. I don't really get what she means, but it sounds innocuous enough. They're going over to Rosa's house so she can echar una leche. Do I want to come? Curious, I decide to tag along. Wilder, meanwhile, doesn't look so thrilled about the plan. He knows what echar una leche means, and he wants no part of it. We tromp over to visit the neighbor Rosa, a big, loud, buxom woman who had a baby a couple of months prior.
Chila explains the purpose of our visit: Wilder has something in his eye and could you please echar una leche?
I still have no idea what is going on.
Rosa: "Ven, niño, y te voy a enseñar la teta!" Translation: "Come here, boy, and I'm going to show you my titty!"
Wilder: looks terrified and starts crying.
Me: Whaaaaaa?

Next thing you know, Chila grabs Wilder, drags him over to Rosa, who promptly lifts up her shirt and squirts breast milk in his eye.

Echar una leche. So that's what it means.

A savory confession

When people describe something as tasting "savory," I have no idea what they mean. In my mind, it's sort of become a synonym for "meaty," but I think that's just because I've heard people describe meat pies, but not fruit pies, as savory.

Apparently when it comes to taste buds, I only possess the Big Four.


These are the sort of posts that happen when you drink a margarita and then start reading Cooking Light.

Na na na na ....Batman!

Took a break from all the science to catch The Dark Knight. I liked it- spooky as hell. It's funny how Batman has been done in so many times, but in so many different ways: campy, cartoony, Tim Burtony, poorly, and in the latest, darkly.

I mean, just compare this:

to this:

I'll skip the plot summary as to not bore those of have seen it and spoil things for those who haven't. Heath Ledger is tragically excellent, and Aaron Eckhart is great as well- that guy just exudes charisma, no matter whom he's playing. Weird that they replaced Katie Holmes with Maggie Gyllenhaal and gave it the Two Darrin treatment, just pretending like nothing had happened.

I enjoyed The Dark Knight, but I must say, I liked Iron Man better. Anyone else seem them both?

And now for something cheerful and bizzare

If you're a fan of Found Magazine, you'll probably enjoy this portal from Houseplant Picture Studios. Click on an individual book to glimpse the set of described photos, many of which were purchased at swap meets. My personal favorites were the Photos of an Unknown Family Who Probably Owned a Liquor Store, The Player, and the one on the very bottom. Phyllis Diller's wig room? Crazy awesome.

And I need to check out a swap meet one of these days.

I'm back! Well, sort of.

Okay, so earlier this week I had an important thesis committee meeting (For you non-academics, the thesis committee is a group of faculty members in charge of overseeing my thesis project and scientific development. We meet every six months.), and I thought that things would lighten up after that. In fact, the exact opposite occurred. I thought the last meeting was bad, but apparently I had no idea how much worse things could get. To make a very long story short, they are unhappy with my progress and are considering kicking me out of the program. I have until September to complete a specific set of experiments, at which point we'll reconvene and they'll reevaluate my status.

Balls.

I'm not ready to give up, so my only option is to work as hard as I possibly can to generate data and rectify the situation. So, I just wanted to let you all know that I'll be slowing down to one post a week for the foreseeable future, and for those of you who know me IRL, I'll probably be MIA for a while. (and yes, the overuse of acronyms is a side-effect of stress.)

I'll definitely pop in time to time, because where else can you satisfy your craving for interspecies friendships, polygamyst fashion, and bizzare canned goods? Nowhere.

We interrupt this hiatus to bring you an important announcement

Remember those crazy broads from the Texas polygamist cult? They've started their own clothing line. I shit you not. FLDSdress.com. OMG.

Well, other than that, things are still busy busy over here, mostly in a stressful sciencey sort of way, with a couple of weddings sprinkled in. I'll be back in a couple of weeks. In the meantime, have a happy 4th of July, everybody!