That'll be barbecue, if my state stereotypes are accurate.
Our campus smells like mildew. Too bad there's no way to even things out.
My cousins in College Station just evacuated. Very scary.
I'm sick of climate change already. At least I don't have any kids to worry about the future of.
3: Halford, were they ordered to evacuate or just being careful? The closest fire I see is about 25 miles away. Not that it's not alarming, but it seems far for an evacuation order.
I'm not totally sure; I just got a cryptic email from my Dad. They live pretty far out of town, on a "ranch" with horses.
That may explain it; evacuating the "ranches" (as well as the ranches) is a big deal. Everyone is scrambling to find places for horses and livestock.
This must be the result of Rick Perry praying for rain.
8: Maybe to God's ears, Texas accents come off as sarcastic or something.
I was down in southwestern New Mexico this weekend. They had a really bad fire this spring, and the extent of the burning was amazing even several months later.
We're pretty smoky today, again. We got a total of .14 inches of rain in August. Just .01 so far this month.
Tornadoes galore around here. Also: obtuse grad students are obtuse.
Acute graduate students are trouble.
I fell that 13 would have been more successful with a singular noun and, to match, a singular verb.
Nosflow thinks Moby is acutely obtuse.
SEE as Nosflow fells the mighty trees of opacity!
14: Because there's not more than one acute graduate student since you finished?
I fell that 13
Neb is a burly lumberjack of grammar.
17. Clue. If Stanley had posted 14 you might have got it.
19. Shit. You're right. And so is Neb. It should have been singular.
In a time of shrinking budgets this is the kind of out-of-the-box thinking that higher education needs:
"An erstwhile associate kinesiology professor at California State University at San Bernardino remains on the lam after police raided his home last week and found a pound of methamphetamine and a cache of guns. Police are charging that Stephen Kinzey, who had been on the San Bernardino faculty for a decade, was leading a double life: teaching and researching by day; directing the local chapter of an outlaw biker gang, and its drug business, by night."
(from IHE)
Huh, so instead of there being one person in San Berdoo who isn't a meth-dealing biker, there are no such people. Stereotype CONFIRMED.
28: Between that and the physics prof who had a sideline as a pimp I'm beginning to think that this is one of those higher education trends we all wind up getting roped into, like outcomes assessment or something.
28, 30: As long as they complete their syllabi adequately...
Took the dogs swimming today, in a creek and a separate pond. A little shallow, but over their heads in places and not stagnant.
Feel so lucky to live in Dallas-Fort Worth, which is a little dry but has been spared the worst of the drought. Not some burning hellhole like Austin.
I feel so sorry for those Austinites who made the choice of culture over nature, of the bright lights and loud music over simpler pastoral pleasures.
32.3 see 6. Although I suspect you're mostly just deliberately being an asshole.
I would think that extolling the pastoral pleasures of Dallas is likely tongue-in-cheek.
Dallas must be pastoral or why does everybody talk about the grassy knoll.
Meanwhile in godless secular Britain, no drought, no wildfires. WHERE IS YOUR GOD NOW PERRY.(nb I would love someone to ask him this question on camera in a massive Large Ham voice.)
Also, my sympathy to HG and all the other Texans. I hope you see rain or similar good news soon.
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Is it weird that sometimes I imagine that unfogged at large is there commenting on the events of my actual life? I swear, you guys would have had a collective field day at the presentation I attended today.
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39 -- I was at a conference a few weeks ago (complete with a powerpoint presentation with a giant skull and crossbones indicating PIRATES) and kept imagining you and Trapnel at the table, freaking out.
That's better than a giant skull and crossbones indicating potted meat product.
40: actually, I have no idea how you would have reacted at this meeting. You probably would have been sort of amenable to the broad outlines, at least.
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I didn't think I was particularly averse to bugs, but between my cat trying to eat a tarantula, finding an earwig in the tissue I was blowing my nose with, and realizing the couch I've been sleeping on for the last week is home to at least 4 spiders, the last 24 hours has seriously creeped me out.
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44: a.) championed my cat's veldt-like skills while deriding the ownership of such creatures
b.) laughed at my girly scream and told me to eat more steak
c.) ran away like a little girl, very quickly thanks to all the Crossfit
(I'm really not very good at parody. But I definitely have those moments where I imagine y'all commenting in real time.)
(c) is kinda realistic.
Also, why are you sleeping on a couch in a haunted house?
I'm visiting my parents and sleeping on the couch in my mother's office; the guest room flooded right before I showed up. It's attached to the garage and not used super heavily, thus allowing for spiders. No ghosts, but there is a Screech Owl out there making lots of creepy noises at night. And I have to walk across tarantula-infested grounds to use the bathroom in the middle of the night.
/over-earnest answer
Clearly you guys should never come to my house.
Today I learned that the departmental administrator at my new job has an accent I thought was long dead. She sounded kind of like Katharine Hepburn.
50: hah! It really is mostly dead, although I suppose I have a couple of relatives with hints of it.
I think I mentioned that the place I was staying in DC had a bunch of spiders, especially in the bathroom. They seemed to be catching flying insects I wanted caught, so as long as they stayed in their areas and didn't bother me, I didn't bother them.
Various insects and spiders showed up in the bathtub and ended up down the drain. Once I'm about to turn on the shower, I'm not going to take the time to put my clothes back on (or just stay undressed) and catch them and take them outside. By far the creepiest was some largeish many-legged thing that had been in the faucet, suddenly got propelled onto the tub, frantically tried to keep out of the current, and then disappeared.
Oh god, I know the largeish many-legged thing you're talking about. I had to kill it -- no way I could cohabitate with that one. In the end I had it cornered and it was trying to climb up the wall, but it kept falling down because it was too big.
I've been killing spiders since I was 30.
Halford's unlicensed imaginations are an infringement.
If I were a bug, I'd prefer to die quickly and suddenly. Being obliterated by Andy Roddick's tennis ball at 150mph would do nicely.
Non-Texas update: We've had about 8 inches of rain since noon on Monday.