Good luck to Dr. Y on her press conference! Here's hoping that "moire-ing" doesn't "interfere" with her pinstripe jacket and cause her boobs to appear saggy and conical!

Presentation Suggestions:

(1) Greet your audience. For example, you may say:

*I am delighted to be here in front of ASS today. (Now is not a good time to joke about how you generally ARE in front of ass.)

(2) Then, spend most of your time developing your greeting. For example:

*I have been interested in ASS since I was an undergrad.

(3) End by repeating your conclusion and repeating, where appropriate what you think the next step in this line of research will be.

*The next step will be for ASS to get behind more research into holes and things holes should be doing, but aren't.

:) Good luck sis-tor.

Today was a very stressful day at HQ. Wobbler and I had to move home base. What with the moving, roof smells, and mice/mice accouterments, dear Wobbler and I went off on a complaining jag.

"The smell of burning tar is tickling my nostrils."

"Is a burning sensation normal?"

"Do mice lay eggs? I mean, I know they don't normally, but I don't have any other explanation for THAT."

And then, our orphaned IPU student with muscular dystrophy -who stays with the Wobbler and I because his own spymaster doesn't want him- looked out the window and said, "Oh, look. Isn't that sky pretty?"

And it was. So pretty.

And Wobbler smiled at me, and that was pretty, too.

So overall, a good day.

As has been pointed out to me by than more than one source, my last post was a bit MOPE-ISH. Lest you think I am succumbing to the mulligrubs, I thought I'd reassure my dear readership that I am indeed PILOT of the GOOD SHIP LOLLIPOP and demonstrate my carefree joie de vivre with a discussion of a most life-affirming topic: bad smells.

As you may or may not know, HQ is being renovated. This entails peeling off the outer shell of the roof, and apparently, revealing a layer of primordial ooze that smells "perhaps like rotten eggs." Our brave leader directs the troops "not to complain." Finally, he reassures us that "this is not an unhealthy situation just a smelly one [SIC]."

Perhaps not PHYSICALLY unhealthy, but mentally DEVASTATING. Have you ever smelt rotten eggs and tried NOT to comment on it? The mind searches for remarks that are not complaints...to no avail. There is no way to say "my, there seems to be the overpowering odor of fetal chicken death" in a manner that does not suggest that really, you'd rather not have that offense to the very nature of sensory perception invading your nostrils.

And you CANNOT refrain from remark in the face of such remarkable olfactory belligerence.

So I am trying to think of the least complain-y remarks I can make. Like:

Ah, the smell of progress.

Who left the eggs out? Who? Who?

or my personal favorite

This does NOT smell like an unhealthy situation.

Being an international playgirl, I have very few shortcoming, but the one I do have is a doozy:

I do not handle disappointment well.

Like when I was in the 7th grade and I wanted a hamster for Christmas so very, very bad, and then it wasn't under the tree, and then it wasn't wrapped in a box. I held out hope until mid afternoon when my father went out to get something from the car. 'My hamster!' I thought, and then he came back with kerosene or something, and my pubescent heart was crushed against the rocky shoals of bitter disappointment.

Yes, a 12 year old should not have her heart set on a hamster. It's weird. But still!

And every time I face disappointment as an adult, I feel it as a personal affront, like God is spitting in the wind directly in front of me ON PURPOSE, and that one day -if I am good enough and work hard and quit being so gossipy- I will never be disappointed again.

Which is unlikely. I will be disappointed over and over, sometimes because I want the wrong things, sometimes because I didn't earn it, and sometimes because the wind is just blowing the wrong way.

It is an imperfect world, and someone should fix it.

B'More Careful Explores Alternative Lifestyle As A Chain Email

1. WERE YOU NAMED AFTER ANYONE - Kate from Taming of the Shrew
2. W HEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU CRIED? when my b/f and i broke up. sniff.
3. DO YOU LIKE YOUR HANDWRITING? it's alright
4. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE LUNCH MEAT? roast beast
5. DO YOU HAVE KIDS? no (spinster with dubious fertility)
6. IF YOU WERE ANOTHER PERSON WOULD YOU BE FRIENDS WITH YOU? yes
7. DO YOU USE SARCASM A LOT? i don't think so
8. DO YOU STILL HAVE YOUR TONSILS? Yes
9. WOULD YOU BUNGEE JUMP? No
10. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE CEREAL? Kashi's Good Friends
11. DO YOU UNTIE YOUR SHOES WHEN YOU TAKE THEM OFF? no
12. DO YOU THINK YOU ARE STRONG? emotionally, yes. phsyically, no
13. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE ICE CREAM? mint chocolate chip
14. WHAT IS THE FIRST THING YOU NOTICE ABOUT PEOPLE? voices and smells
15. RED OR PINK? i think either is an okay color for a healthy tongue
16. WHAT IS THE LEAST FAVORITE THING ABOUT YOURSELF? slow metabolism
17. WHO DO YOU MISS THE MOST? my grandma
18. DO YOU WANT EVERYONE TO SEND THIS BACK TO YOU? you damn well better
19. WHAT COLOR PANTS AND SHOES ARE YOU WEARING? jeans and no shoes
20. WHAT WAS THE LAST THING YOU ATE? bread
21. WHAT ARE YOU LISTENING TO RIGHT NOW? The AC
22. IF YOU WHERE A CRAYON, WHAT COLOR? cornflower blue
23. FAVORITE SMELLS? Old friends' perfumes
24. WHO WAS THE LAST PERSON YOU TALKED TO ON THE PHONE? Betsy
2 5. DO YOU LIKE THE PERSON WHO SENT THIS TO YOU? Absolutely
26. FAVORITE SPORTS TO WATCH? i don't
27. HAIR COLOR? brown
28. EYE COLOR? blue
29. DO YOU WEAR CONTACTS? yes
30. FAVORITE FOOD? bread
31. SCARY MOVIES OR HAPPY ENDINGS? happy endings. heh heh.
32. LAST MOVIE YOU WATCHED? the lives of others
33. WHAT COLOR SHIRT ARE YOU WEARING? blue and white floral
34. SUMMER OR WINTER? summer
35. HUGS OR KISSES? kisses
36. FAVORITE DESSERT ? cake
37. MOST LIKELY TO RESPOND? Chompers
38. LEAST LIKELY TO RESPOND? Dr. Y
39. WHAT BOOK ARE YOU READING NOW? Virgin Lies (it's awful)
40. WHAT IS ON YOUR MOUSE PAD? Dell logo
41. WHAT DID YOU WATCH ON T.V. LAST NIGHT? didn't; don't have T.V. capabilities
4 2. FAVORITE SOUNDS? wind in trees
43. ROLLING STONES OR BEATLES? Beatles
44. WHAT IS THE FURTHEST YOU HAVE BEEN FROM HOME? Paris
45. DO YOU HAVE A SPECIAL TALENT? not fit for print
46. WHERE WERE YOU BORN? Westminster, MD

Now we'll see how tolerant the readership really is...

Well, Chompie, since you asked...I did have a date with Boris, the Romanian astrophysicist, last night. We ate at Cazbar, which I picked because they have a BELLY DANCER on Saturday nights.

Which in retrospect, maybe shouldn't have been the guiding criteria for my choice. I mean, she was a very good belly dancer...lots of...rippling...and butt shakin'. What I didn't know/consider was:

a.) you are expected to put dollars in her genie-string.
b.) very AWKWARD having a woman's butt rippling over your baklava on a romantic date

But Boris was quite lovely. He held my hands, and said, "gaze longingly into my eyes until she goes away." Which was quite chivalrous. Or cheap. One or the other.

Anyway, he is the new god of idolatry because he makes telescopes and accidentally tells the time in Romanian. And he's quite delicious. Very delicious. :)

The astronomer writes poetry.

About astrological phenomena.

Am I mad to think that's kind of sweet?

I do wish all men could understand what I am saying like Robin did. I wonder if you have to give up somethings to get other things. Probably.

The astronomer asked me out to dinner. I bet that afterwards, he'll invite me upstairs to look at his globular clusters. (He already sent me a picture via email.)

Alright, dear readers, I have a question for you.

First, the set-up: I am considering the suit of a Romanian physicist. He has "been going some side work on X-Ray spectroscopy" and is now doing post-doc work with a "Plasma Physics" group, "nuclear fusion research mainly." Of course, I promptly emailed Dr. Y to be my Cyrano de Dork-erac, and she pointed out that since the physicist is doing his post-doc work at the same university at which he earned his doc, he might not be the brightest astronomer in Nerd-dom.

So, here's my question:

How dumb can a physicist be?

Also, I would like to hear your opinions about Romanians. This is not racist since Romania is a multi-ethnic country.

Has B'more Careful Gone Gay? Again?

What with all the talk of theologians and gender neutral snack snarfing (a euphemism if ever I heard one), I thought another anecdote from International Playperson University (IPU) was in order.

To prepare my charges for international intrigues with the capricious rulers of Princess-rich nations , I read them Franklin Stockton "The Lady or the Tiger?"

The first paragraph includes this description of the capricious ruler:

When every member of his domestic and political systems moved smoothly in its appointed course, his nature was bland and genial; but, whenever there was a little hitch, and some of his orbs got out of their orbits, he was blander and more genial still, for nothing pleased him so much as to make the crooked straight and crush down uneven places.

"What does the author mean by this?" I asked.

"Ummm. That he doesn't like gay people and wants to make them straight?" a playboy replied.

I assume that in this world view, theologians would be the "uneven places."

The education of every young international playgirl or playboy includes a good dose of THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE. Which is why my proteges and I were reading "Pursuit of a Dream," a gripping biography of Rosalind Franklin. (For a less gripping biography, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosalind_Franklin)

Since every gripping biography is followed by literal recall questions, my proteges were asked to respond to this penetrating query, "Who won the Nobel Prize for discovering DNA?"

My future Gloria Steinem answered thusly:

Wilkins, Crick, and Watson won the Nobel Prize for not discovering DNA.

She gets to use the Lear jet next week.