My butt feels papery

Hey everyone, it's been a while. I know, I know, you've been waiting with baited breath for this observation. I could tell by the overwhelming silence of comments I have gotten lately. Thanks for that, by the way. Makes me feel loved. And why does a blogger blog if not for unsolicited and unearned attention?

I am puzzled by a fixture on many a public bathroom wall. (No, not toilet paper, smartalec. That does not puzzle me at all anymore.) I remember as a child that some relative suggested that you put strips of toilet paper down on the seats in order to not sit on foreign toilets, and there has been a proliferation of doughnut shaped tissue paper in dispensable containers in bathroom stalls to achieve that end. They have it where I work, at air ports where TSA rifles through your things without really accomplishing much other than increasing the inconvenience in the world (like government paid entropy generators) and disgusting gas stations (I'm sure).

I have a question, though. What good does it do? What kinds of toilet borne plagues are out there? And what is that paper thin barrier really going to stop? I can understand wiping down before landing, because there are certainly contaminants that can be removed. But sitting on top of them? It's like the sneeze guard at salad bars if those guards were completely permeable to sneezes. What they should really have are something to keep the struts warm, because, well, sitting down on a cold morning makes me feel bad for girls every winter.

I wonder how big an industry that useless paper thing is. I think I have a brilliant business concept: some of that alcohol hand sanitizer strictly for toilet seats. It might not exactly keep you warm, and it might be weird when you try to put your pants back on, but you wouldn't have to worry about getting motaba virus on your bum.

You can't shorten "title"

I was watching 30 Rock the other day (fantastic show, by the way) and a speech practice that was used that made a character purposefully look like a douche bag for comedic effect. Now, I'm all for laughing at douche bags, but even this practice makes me leery because a friend did this very same thing "ironically" recently. As far as I know, he is not otherwise a douche bag, (I have never seen him use a Bluetooth headset or cheer for a Boston sports team, for instance).

I have previously discussed shortening phrases and I think we can all agree that I was totally right: shortening phrases is an affront to God. Now, looking a little bit further, like we saw on 30 Rock, there is a practice of shortening words, too. The character on the shjow asked his personal assistant to make room on his "schedj" for a date with Liz Lemon. Good for him, but his assistant's proper response should have been, "If you ever say 'schedj' again, I will walk out of here in two shakes of the lammie's tail." He later does, and she does not quit. At least, not on camera. (I sometimes like to fill in what happens in other scenes not shown for the ancillary characters during commercials, and in my version of the episode she quits by peeing on his shoes.)

Other words that follow this patter are sitch (situation), natch (naturally), offish (official[ly]), delish (delicious), and so on. My mom has always had a problem with poli(tical) sci(ence), but my brother deicded to major in it. College class names are trickier, too, because they have long and absurd names that probably need to be shortened. My college classes all had nicknames (the most delicious of which was Meatballs), beyond the ordinary things like calc, chem and freshman comp. For whatever reason, these were never particularly offensive to me. Although, differential equations was a battleground between two factions: those enlightened scholars who favored "D.E." and the rampaging and uncouth barbarians who pushed for Diffey Q. Clearly the latter are fools and deserve no more of our attention.

This could have also probably been filed under dealbreakers. I don't quite know how you justify a pronunciation as an invention, or you better believe this would be in the terrorists' aresenal. Feel free to add any shortened words that deserve to be punishable by waterboarding in the comments and watch 30 Rock this week.

Stunning realizations

This weekend, I opted to escape my apartment briefly to the mighty Atlanta. I saw mighty because it is bigger than Augusta, they have Fellini's pizza, and word on the street is that they want to steal our water. Those big cityfolk shan't have it! I don't really feel that loyal to Augusta just yet.

But it snowed this weekend. All of you northernfolk are probably saying, "So? It's January." January isn't supposed to work like that down here. It snows like once every two or three years. Guess how many times it snowed this week? If you said twice, give yourself a cookie, because that's how many times it did in the State of Georgia. I'm not particularly ok with that, and if I have to look for an engineering job in the Bahamas to get away from this weather, I guess that may just have to be the price I will pay. Then while watching all those football games where the temperature is smaller than the number of right thinking people in the Spears household, it makes me wonder how people live like that. I feel the same way about winter the same way I do when I look at pictures of mud huts in National Geographic. It's a shame, really.

The bloke in whose apartment I stayed, though, had a rather interesting feature in his bathroom that made me a little uncomfortable: a full length mirror. It's a little unsettling because as I was standing over the toilet, if I looked up BAM there I was. Right in my face. I don't think I'm necessarily a nervous goer (but then again, it's never really come up), but I don't like the idea of a person standing over me as I do. Even if it's me, especially considering the unnatural angle of me having to watch what that other me is doing. What exactly is the purpose of such a tall mirror? Is it for little people? I hope they appreciate it, because it is creeping me out.

It's like my kryptonite

You folks already know about my various superpowers (if you have forgotten, you can read about them here, here and here. But it's only fair if I tell you about my superpowers I start mentioning some of my weaknesses. After all, I'm Observant, not vain. Well, not so vain that I think this blog is about me.

You might also remember that my purchasing cycle of underwear had reached an increased blip a few months ago, and I neglected to mention a key feature: the button fly. Up until that point, I had been rocking with just ordinary open fly boxers. There are, of course, pluses and minuses for both of those. The pluses of the button fly is that makes you feel fancy because they cost more and the button keeps your peep from popping out. The pluses of the open fly is that it doesn't have a damn button.

I didn't think this would be all that revolutionary before I found myself in the midst of this new sort of fly. But it is. The departure from open to button makes every trip to the urinal a furious race to open the fly, and that takes the experience of relieving oneself in a semi-public place to the next level of awkward. Especially if there is a line, because not only are you taking up valuable real estate, but you are fumbling with your hands on your underwear. Not only that, but afterwards, there is the effort of putting the button back in the eye. Sometimes you just have to abandon ship and forget about the button, reverting back to the open fly arrangement.

I feel, though, that while the button is inconvenient, I never know when I'll need it. Like if my pants are suddenly lost in a horrific tragedy involving a swarm of insects that eats khakis. I'd feel pretty silly in that case if my fly were unbuttoned, wouldn't I?

Out of my brain on the 5:15

Hey guys, I wanted to offer a little bit of an explanation as to why the output has been down a little lately. I am so close to finishing up with grad school I could pee and hit it on the up-arc from here, and I don't want to be held up by much. I am taking a break right now because my eyes hurt and I'm pretty much at the end of my day. I might be back in the lab wondering if this decision was worth it when I just talked to a college buddy who's married with a kid and sounds the happiest I've ever heard him. Most of my thoughts have centered around Fortran, finishing my paper, and trying to decide if I want to trade down from the Sharp Aquos to the Vizio in order to better justify the purchase of an iPhone.

So, I cannot guarantee when the next update will come. But once I'm out of this mess, I can guarantee that they will be funnier. For example, I realize I have to shop for car insurance, and that means I have to negotiate the ever expanding field of the Geico Cavemen, Erin Esurance, and the guy the Unit/president from 24. That's got all sorts of hilarity potential right there. Will it really prove to be so easy a cave man could do it? Will I be won over by the sex appeal of a pink haired cartoon? Not if Jack Bauer's boss (ex-boss?) has anything to say about it. I don't know if he termed out or died or what.


Anyway, I'll try to get some good stuff out. I don't want to lose any more of my six (or was it five?) readers that I had before. Anyway, hope all you guys are staying awesome out there this summer. Word on the street is that there's a weekend coming up...

We'll have a sleepy time time

I'm pretty sure I'm a little bit defective. I have been for as long as I can remember. You know how on Saturdays you love to sleep in till like 1:30, wake up and have pop tarts for breakfast at 2, and then maybe even roll back into bed for another hour or so of sleep? I can't do that. It has nothing to do with pop tarts, I just can't sleep in very late. It's not for lack of trying or want, though, I can assure you that.

I usually get up during the week at around 8-8:30, unaided. On the weekends, if I stay out late, I can push it out to 9:30 or so, usually. I'm pretty sure this makes me a mutant. Except not a cool one, like Wolverine, but a dumb one with stupid powers, like Toad. I don't really know what I can do about it. Although I would have enjoyed sleeping in an extra or so this morning, I can't really say that I feel like I'm missing out on all that much. Except when I'm staying at a friend's place and I get up like an hour and a half earlier than they do I never know if it'd be rude to wake them up and make them go get lunch. Usually I'm hungry and it's noon by the time I get tired of waiting, so I want a hamburger and they want pop tarts.

I've never been able to get back to sleep once I'm awake, unless it's something like a mid-morning pee break. That's different, but I try not to turn on any bright lights because that does make getting back to sleep harder. Naps, though, were something that I had to learn how to take in college. I'm pretty sure I never took naps as a little kid and definitely not during high school. I also typically wake up in a confused stupor, especially when it's a long nap. So, really, if I am woken up from a nap by a phone call, they get theirs because I am pretty much incoherent. I imagine the way I act in that situation is a lot like a drunken bear would. Curious, confused and not yet angry enough to be aggressive. Also, I like to eat a lot of honey.

Anyway, this morning was a prime time to sleep in a little more than usual, but no. My body decided that 8:15 was the time to get up and it'd be damned if there was anything I could do to stop it. So instead of waking up right now (I'm not even asking for much!), I am awake and showered now. I'll have to figure out some way to get my body back later. Maybe I'll use roller coasters.

I write about the bathroom oddly often

There is something about urinals to me that is inherently funny. Like zebras. It's basically a sink held up on its side into which I pee. It's so elegantly simple, but such an unusually shaped device and it carries a lot of baggage. Do you think it would be appropriate to strike up a conversation with someone you barely know about a urinal? (Exception: while drinking in a bar.) And why not? I don't know if I know you (but chances are, I probably d0), but I'm going to talk about urinals now.

This applies to regular toilets too, but why is it that we always seek out the cleanest one for use with urination? I can understand twosies or if you're a girl, but I realize that if there's a cigarette butt or some other contaminant in the bottom of the urinal and/or toilet, it's not getting anything out of me. I wish I could tell you why; it's not like pee is fragile, or a dirty urinal will return fire or something. I guess it's just that I subconsciously think I'm so awesome that even my toilets need to be clean for me to use them. Fortunately, I've never run into a situation where all of them were dirty. That could be uncomfortable.

There are also some urinals which are floor length, in addition to the sideways sinks. They're like the luxury ones, because they seem so decadent. There's no particular advantage from the user's point of view for having the urinal be that long, other than it's easier to avoid the splashback. I think the primary reason is that it becomes harder to miss the urinal. If you've ever worn flip-flops to the bathroom, though, you know how big an issue splashback can be if you're not careful. In fact, one of my engineer buddies and I once discussed a flow solution for urinals to make splashback (and, additionally, flushing) a thing of the past, but I think it would be kind of excessive.

I'll bet if you asked somebody what urinal pose they prefer, you'd get a surprisingly forthright answer. Some people go for the Leaner, where the body makes a right triangle with the wall and floor. There is also the Straddle, which all but eliminates inaccuracy but makes splashback disastrous. The counterpoint is the Marksman, where the user is about a foot away and aims for the cup part of the urinal -- splashback is never an issue but accuracy can be. This one works better with the floor length. For the particularly daring, you can do the Flying V, so named by the shape of one's legs during execution. Hang upside down from the two partitions separating the neighboring urinals and aim downwards.

Sometimes you find yourself looking into a trough that the establishment has asked you to use for your liquid waste needs. It's a strange feeling, because it's kind of fun since it's a different sort of vessel than you use on an everyday basis, but it's also a little dehumanizing since you're going at the same time as one or two other guys right next to you. You don't have the Dave Barry Rules of Separation with troughs. Although, one time I was oddly proud that while going I outlasted two cycles of guys coming through. It was like a 180 second session.

I recently visited an establishment that had a urinal without a lever for flushing, but it didn't have standing liquid in it either, so I imagine it flushed on its own time. I didn't really witness an actual flush, so it's only speculation. I mentioned my observation to those in my party, which led to a conversation that led to me thinking about this post, and one of the guys basically thought by putting some of this information out there I would be doing a service for the female readers in helping them understand a little bit about urinals. I hope this goes towards that noble endeavor.

Dear Alma Mater Be Our Guide / Reveal to Us the Way

I have gone to three schools that have an Alma Mater, and I still don't know why the songs are called that. I understand a little bit as to why the schools themselves are called that, since there is a bit of "nourishing" of a person through education. For all you ignoramuses out there (and yes, that is the plural, it's not ignorami), alma mater is Latin for nourishing mother. So, the school itself sort of makes sense, but the naming of the song doesn't.

Mr. Wagner, one of those teachers you'll remember forever (if you had him) made all of us new freshman in his class memorize the Spruce Creek High School Alma Mater. The totality of what I remember from that exercise is visible in the title bar above, so it made quite an impact on me. We also had to memorize the fight song, the Gettysberg Address, the Constitution, and the 1st and 4th verses of the national anthem. There were probably other things he had us memorize, but I can't remember what they were.

Rose-Hulman had an Alma Mater, too, I'm pretty sure. I must say that after three and a quarter years there if the Rose pep band played it in my living room, I wouldn't be able to identify it. Then again, they could be playing Pinball Wizard and I wouldn't recognize it (that actually happened - not in my living room). They weren't very good, but the point is I don't know the Alma Mater for my alma mater. I think the fight song is called "Dear Old Rose", but I don't know the words. I understand the football team sang it after wins, which I didn't know until halfway through the senior season. The probably did a lot of stuff that they didn't publicize very well. I blame the newspaper.

There is no mistake about Clemson's Alma Mater. They sing it all the time. Before games, after games, before class, when the president goes to the bathroom, etc. It's a fine song, with one glaringly monumental flaw. The first two lines are "Where the Blue Ridge yawns its greatness / Where the Tigers play." So far, so good; Blue Ridge Moutains are right up the street and yawning greatness is a pretty good image of effortlessly being awesome. We are all Tigers, and play is better than work, so I'm ok with this part. The next lines are "Here the sons of dear old Clemson / Reign supreme alway." I hate the missing s in always. It turns out, though, that it is an acceptable archaic or poetic form of the word, but it doesn't make it easier for me. The word looks naked. If it were a sexy, feminine word like curvacious or bassoon, then nobody would be complaining about the word being a little immodest. But with a stubby misshapen word like always, it needs the s to pull off its look.

Spies are everywhere

My roommate has an electric razor that is resting nicely on the sink in our bathroom. It has an interesting feature that has a blue blinking light that operates on a cycle that illuminates every two or three seconds, and accompanying the blink is a very faint hum. All I think about whenever I'm in there is that this thing looks way too sophisticated to be just a shaver and that there must be a tiny camera in there and that people from Braun are watching me pee.