The Zone

The SciFi channel is now a little over twelve hours into a forty-eight hour Twilight Zone marathon.

From traveling to the future in a covered wagon to playing a game of pool with a dead man named Fats, the adventures with which Rod Serling accosts our brains possess a psychological and philosophical depth which seems at once obvious and just beyond the grasp of our conscious minds.

The epileptic cinematography and Shatneresque acting (not to mention Rod Serling's sexy narrating voice) which are so brilliantly displayed on the Twilight Zone distract us from the finer layers of meaning.

This forty-eight hour marathon is therefore the perfect opportunity to immerse ourselves in the Twilight Zone until our minds are so addled by freaky stories and sleep deprivation that we understand EVERYTHING.

So hurry up and start watching, because anyone who watches less than twenty-four consecutive hours of the Twilight Zone is a yellow turdurken.

The Great American Novel: Chapter 2

You leap up towards the quickly vanishing spot of light which is the world and all OK things and reach for the top stair with your pink, grasping fingers. You clamber onto it as it sinks and from there lunge at the unmoving comb-like thingy that scrapes the grooves in the steps at the top of the escalator. Unfortunately it does not provide much to hold onto, so when Steve-o grabs your ankle and starts dragging you down, you immediately lose your grip and tumble down on top of him. Steve-o pulls his arm back to punch you, but you move your head, and his knuckles collide crunchingly with the stainless steel step your head had been on. You kick Steve-o in the face, and he topples over backwards into the dark, leaving a trail of spattered blood along the glass sides of the escalator. You turn and realize that the spot of light is almost invisible now. You run up the steps, taking two at a time, sweating all over the new Abercrombie t-shirt you just stole by putting it on in the dressing room under your Che Guavera t-shirt. As you near the top, a figure appears, holding out a hand towards you. Your eyes have not yet adjusted to the light, so it takes you several moments to realize that the figure is a zombie pirate.

If you would like to hope the zombie pirate is friendly and accept his help up, comment '1'.
If you would like to shoot the zombie pirate in the head with your laser gun, comment '2'.
If you would like to run back down the escalator like a yellow turdurken, comment '3'.

The Great American Novel

Your Sketchered feet patter nervously down the over-waxed hardwood floor connecting Nordstrom Rack to Pottery Barn to Orange Julius to Macy's, weaving your way through loud clumps of post-Christmas shoppers.
"We shouldn't come to the mall on weekends," you mutter. "It's like we're sardines, only sardines that are still alive when they get stuffed in their tin, so they can smell each other." Frank Sinatra's disembodied voice comes at you out of a speaker, melodically advising you that you'd better watch out, not cry, and not pout, which might sound less threatening coming from someone who's still alive.
"What else would we do?" asks Steve-o.
"We could write the great American novel or something," you suggest.
"What would it be about?"
"About life, about...people hanging out at the mall."
"We'll do that next weekend," says Steve-o. "Let's go get a cookie." You and Steve-o turn a corner and step onto an escalator, which descends forever into a thick black slough of despondent, soul-eating Capitalism.

If you would like to try running up the escalator, comment "1". If you would like to continue down, comment "2".

Writing in Food

Welcome back to Writing in Food. We're very excited about this next episode. It's called 'Apple my Apple,' and we think you'll enjoy it's commentary on the relationship between nature and technology. Be sure to join us next time when we explore the perversely subverted spiritual lives of suburban housewives as expressed through their experimental postmodern photojournalism.

Writing in Food

Hello, and welcome to Writing in Food. Today's installment is called 'Play for me, banana.' Enjoy.

Dispatches from the Buckland Common Room: 1.1

At Mount Holyoke, finals come in manila envelopes. Once you've fought your way to the counter where you pick up your final, you take it to a designated testing room, remove it from its envelope, and spend three hours writing your answers in a bluebook. Then you put your test and your bluebook back into the envelope, seal the envelope, and sign it.

I was informed before taking my Art History* final yesterday that not licking and sealing your envelope while you're still inside the designated testing room is a violation of the honor code. I might just be confused due to the fact that my brain is sleep-deprived, over caffeinated, and fed only on what I've been able to steal from the Buckland kitchen, but this seems like a blatant abuse of the power given to honor code legislators.

The honor code exists, because Mount Holyoke has self-scheduled exams, and it would be easy for us to cheat if we weren't guilt tripped out of doing so. It would be reasonable to say "If you don't lick and seal your envelope while still inside the designated testing room, we will assume that you have been cheating, which is a violation of the honor code," but I don't see how failing to lick and seal your envelope in the testing room is, in itself, detrimental to the community. Turning irrelevant actions into violations of the honor code undermines whatever legitimacy the honor code may have.

*Taking an Art History exam, as it turns out, is much like being a psychic. You do well by making statements that sound specific but are general enough to apply to anything. For example, "Vermeer lived during an historical period in which artists were reexamining the role that art and the interpretation of art should play in people's lives," or "Caravaggio painted his figures with expressive hand gestures in order to draw the viewer's focus to the emotion of the story," or "Breugel was painting at a time when technological advancement brought economic pressures into conflict with traditional values."

Ethical Dilemma

I've got a hypothetical scenario I'd like the readers of this blog to contemplate. To give credit where credit is due I'll admit that I got the idea from an episode of Boston Legal. Who knew William Shatner could actually act. The problem is as follows:
Suppose you are the director of a medical research laboratory that is working on potentially life saving cancer treatments. Feeling short staffed you decide to add an entry level position for qualified applicants. During an interview with a perspective employee it comes out that he is a devout scientologist who is active in his faith. He believes that human suffering is caused by the presence of alien souls within the human body, and that this is the result of a tyranny perpetrated by the ancient leader of the galactic federation lord xenu.
Clearly his personal beliefs stand well outside the boundaries of scientific logic, and are contingent upon unreasonable assumptions and conclusions. Furthermore if he were to be employed a similar fault in his logic could result in delaying the release of a potentially life saving drug, or some other problem. As an alternative there is a slightly less qualified candidate who is an atheist. Is it permissible to deny him employment even though it could be considered religious discrimination, on the grounds that his beliefs indicate that he is either unable or unwilling (at least in one aspect of his life) to conform to the rules of inquiry required by his job?

Note: I'm not asking about the legality of this action.

Enemies of Richard Dawkins

Richard Dawkins seems like a man who has never had to work hard to survive. He gets paid to speculate and perpetuate basic facts while brewing his opinions. He has been well sheltered by education based reality for so long, he is bitterly confused and frightened by outside concepts and belief systems labeling them as "enemies."

I would not suggest he is wrong, but he has believed he is always right for so long - EVERYONE is wrong to him. Therefore to curtail the surfacing discomfort of not knowing how certain things work, he is set on missions to prove they don't work. The problem is regardless of whether or not they work for him, people need them.

There are in fact, of course, ailments modern medicines have been unsuccessful at curing. Not to mention the many thousands of conditions which change lives post surgery or post therapy. These conditions can only be comforted - not cured and therefore call for alternative programs or "superstitions" To ease the pain of everyday life. So how painful does it get? Heres the latest Opiate.

The medical industry can't help everyone. That would be a monopoly.

Dispatches From the Buckland Basement: 1.9

The snow that was covering the grass has turned to ice, and the future Yale Law students have moved into the library with their sleeping bags and pillows to study without the inconvenience of walking back to their beds at night. They won't eat or shower for a week and a half, so it's important to get your books now, before they start to smell. It's finals season again, that time of year when the Mount Holyoke library becomes a refugee camp with an unusually high ratio of Chanel earrings to refugees.

Dean Bowie was missed by the Philosophy department at their meeting this afternoon, and shortly after the meeting ended, his absence was explained. It seems the first finals-related death of the season occurred this morning in one of the Rockefeller dorms. While students have not been informed of the events which caused the young woman's death, they are a well-educated collection of people and are likely aware that twenty-two year olds do not often die of heart attacks.

It gives one pause to witness the self-inflicted degradation of one's fellow students. It may even cause one to wonder if all of this is necessary. But those thoughts are quickly chased from one's mind by the immediate concerns of research not yet conducted, papers not yet edited, and dates not yet memorized, not to mention the irrefutable knowledge that not getting an A in Art History means you have no future.

Perhaps this culture of panic is purposefully cultivated, or maybe it arises organically from our desire for purpose and direction. Either way, it's a culture one must embrace, at least during finals season, in order to succeed in the ivy-covered world of Mount Holyoke.

Cartoon Caption Contest

Submission Guidelines:
Captions may be any length.
You may submit as many captions as you like.
They must be submitted as comments.
No anonymous captions will be accepted.
Bubbles count as captions, but you must specify who is talking/thinking.
Good luck!

Four Kinds of People

Mount Holyokers can be organized into four groups according to two determining factors: Whether they are rich and whether they were spawned by intellectuals. We can represent this system of grouping as a doubly bisected square (see figure 1.1).

The top left quadrant (quadrant 1) represents those individuals who are rich and were spawned by intellectuals. The top right quadrant (quadrant 2) represents those who are not rich and were spawned by intellectuals. The bottom left quadrant (quadrant 3) represents those who are rich and were not spawned by intellectuals, and finally, the bottom right quadrant (quadrant 4) represents those who are not rich and were not spawned by intellectuals.

Figure 1.1

................Rich............................Not Rich...........

Spawned by Intellectuals






Not Spawned by Intellectuals







We can go about determining which quadrant particular people fall into by watching a documentary with them and noting how they respond.

Members of Quadrant 1 will say something like "They should have found a better camera guy. The part where those people were trying to get away from the police was really shaky. Why were they running away again?"

Members of Quadrant 2 will respond with something more like "It sucked when the police were mowing down protesters in the streets and then indiscriminately shooting people. You can't have a functioning democracy without free speech."

Members of Quadrant 3 will say "I've never seen a movie like that. How did they get it to look like it was actually happening?"

Members of Quadrant 4 will say "It was good."

Nina is the Pink Block

And here are three alternative captions for that cartoon:

"Nina sometimes wondered if God was playing games with her."

"Nina briefly experienced a falling sensation."

"Nina was beginning to wonder whether her life had any real meaning or was just an inevitable descent into predetermined conformity."

And another bit of news along those lines is that the "blog" will soon hold its first biweekly "blog" cartoon caption contest. Put on your luckiest captioning cap, because everyone must enter. I will not choose a winner until I have at least three entries.

The top three reasons intelligent people prefer the "blog" cartoon caption contest to the "New Yorker" cartoon caption contest:

Your caption does not have to be something one of the characters is saying.

Selection of the winning caption does not involve democracy in any way, shape, or form (we're classier than American Idol).

Unlike the "New Yorker", the "blog" has never endorsed the heinous and subversive act of reading of an abridged edition of Moby Dick.

I mean it about entering captions, you guys. We at the "blog" may regard democracy as a failed experiment based on the naive assumption that people are competent enough to tell what's in their best interest, but this whole competition thing won't float without your participation. For that reason I will suck up condescendingly as such:
We at "The Essential Works of Julia Uhr" feel that it has been too long since we thanked our valued readers for their ongoing support, without which we would have no reason to do what we do. In a world full of blogs on every subject, by every crackpot on unemployment, you have proven the quality of your character and taste by choosing to read this blog. It is your dedication that keeps us from giving up and hurling ourselves into the abyss of studying for finals. We thank you from the bottoms of our hearts and hope you will continue to enjoy "The Essential Works of Julia Uhr" for years to come.

How the Walrus Got His Tusks

How the Walrus Got His Tusks

Feminism: Part 1

Another week has passed. Another crepe day has meandered its chocolatey way into history. The last of the clingy brown leaves have been pummeled out of the trees by chunks of ice which are still raining down out of a white South Hadley sky.

On mitten-inducing days like this, Mount Holyokers are rarely seen outside, and only the most attentive of peoplewatchers will spot one in an 8:35 class. Nevertheless, a motivated few existentialists were able to drag their cold, sleepy brains into Skinner 116 this morning to discuss the beginning of Simone de Beauvoir's "The Second Sex."

Professor Wartenberg began the discussion by asking the feminists in the class to raise their hands. About half the ladies in the class nervously put their manicured mitts in the air, looked around quickly, then averted their eyes so as not to be called upon to respond to the inevitable "why?"

So Professor Wartenberg instead turned to the lowered-handed half, who talked about the negative implications of the word 'feminism.' Some people didn't want to identify themselves as feminists, because they didn't want people to think they hated men. Some had concluded that feminism was simply not relevant anymore, and several more just didn't like the idea of putting themselves in a box by identifying with a group; Hell is other people, after all, and no one wants to be stuck in a feminist Hell box.

It's all good and well to discuss problems with the implications of 'feminism,' but what about the alternative? What are the implications of 'not-feminism'? This is one of the questions we will address in "Feminism: Part 2," so stay tuned.

Post 100

The blog entitled "The Essential Works of Julia Uhr," formerly known as "The Essential Works of Julia Uhr and Micheal King," has, since its inception in August 2007, amazed and inspired readers with a unique combination of academic rigor and witty realism.

From the second post, "Save the Straws," which examined the most serious but least talked about implications of America's depleting oil supply, to the eighty-ninth post, "The Batchelor," which discussed interpersonal psychology in reality TV, Ms. Uhr has fearlessly tackled the toughest problems of our age.

But historians will surely agree that no post better embodies the spirit of "The Essential Works of Julia Uhr" better than the hundredth post, "Post 100." With a degree of narcissism which would be repellent if presented by a less personable writer, "post 100" glowingly reviews the blog and "Post 100" itself.

This self-referential piece of literary ingenuity is the perfect example of Ms. Uhr's writerly cunning. There is no doubt in this reporter's mind that Julia Uhr is one of her generation's greatest assets. I highly recommend her work to anyone interested in hearing the blogosphere's new voice of truth, intelligence, and style.

Cave Monks

In Georgia, I visited some monks. They live in the Caucasus Mountains, which look like this:
Fifteen hundred years ago, they lived in caves that look like this:
With paintings on the walls like this:
And this:
Now their monastery looks like this:
They're still living in the same place and still using many of the caves that their predecessor cave monks dug into the side of the mountain centuries ago. They have a windmill now for electricity, but still. It takes gumption. Georgia cave monks must eat a lot of buttermilk biscuits.

2 Vast 2 Spurious

When I am a senior, I will write an honors thesis. I will call it
"2 Vast 2 Spurious: A Postmodern Feminist Critique of Objectivism in an Absurdist Paradigm." I will make you read it. Then I will make you tell me what you thought.
HA!

Bangs 2

This is a picture of my bangs for those of you who expressed curiosity about them. They weren't in my eyes when I first cut them, but now they are.

How the Walrus Got His Tusks

How the Walrus Got His Tusks

Well done

I was recently at The Attic a nice old bar with a familiar smell and shape to it. It was Monday night and they always have five dollar burgers on Monday night (for future reference.) I often order burgers well done because it is fun to say, but my order came back to be RARE! Now this was not infuriating can't complain about a 3 dollar price break. What occurred to me was that this always happens. Every Restaurant at which I order my burger well done, comes back rare. This to me calls for a name change, why do they even call it rare, let's call it common or not-done. It is definitely not rare. On a brighter note Stephen Colberts new book is out I Am America: And So Can You in which he adequately demonstrates abundant stupidites throughout our great nation.
including but not limited to:
The family, old people, animals, religion, sports, sex & dating, homosexuals, higher education, hollywood, the media, class wars, race, immigrants and science.
proving things are really only as funny as you can make them...
He makes them hilarious.

Dispatches From the Buckland Basement: 1.8

There will soon come a time in your innocent little life, dear reader, when you will have to make a very important decision.

You will be spending your Thanksgiving break at MIT, eating turkey cooked by geeks and cranberries out of a can. You will be planning on taking the bus back to your own school on Sunday night, being conscientiously terrified of the possibility of missing a single one of your Monday morning classes. You will compact all of your clothes and books back into your big grey duffel bag. You will check under the bed. You will make sure that you aren't forgetting your toothbrush.

And then, dear reader, something will be brought to your attention. This will happen purely by accident, but it will put an unapologetic kink in the hectically unexamined life you have been leading over the course of the fall semester.

You will happen to spy, dear readers, a flier for a talk that Noam Chomsky is giving on Tuesday. Your sweet little heart will leap with anticipation as you imagine seeing your favorite lefty linguist in person and listening to him talk with your effervescent admiration unimpeded by the intermediary of National Public Radio.

Immediately thereafter, your poor fickle heart will drop, as you imagine Professor Wartenberg's face scrunching unnaturally with frustration and disappointment while he asks you why you missed two days of class.

This will possibly be, dear reader, the most difficult decision you will have ever been faced with. You will learn for the first time that your professors and the things that your professors profess are not the same. Your professors are not simply embodiments of knowledge. They are not just the sum total of the ideas that they impart to you. Your professors are people with feelings that get hurt when you ditch class or turn in a stupid paper or make fun of their plaid jacket behind their back. And this will be the time when you must choose between the professors and the ideas.

Professor Wartenberg tells you that you are always free, whether you want to be or not, and that doing things simply because it's what other people want or expect is a pathetic way to go about living your life. He also tells you that, by confronting the fact that you're going to die, possibly soon, you can lead an authentic life. But what Professor Wartenberg wants, dear reader, is for you to get to his Existentialism class every Monday and Wednesday morning at or before 8:35, turn in a five-to-seven page-double-spaced-twelve-point-font-paper every now and then, and not make too much noise, because it's early.

He does not care whether you become fully conscious of the freedom you inherently possess as a human being. He does not care whether you live an authentic life. He does, however, decide what your grade will be at the end of the semester. And you will have to decide for yourself how much that matters to you, because sometimes the unfortunate truth is that getting an A in Existentialism and being a good Existentialist are mutually exclusive eventualities.

I'm sorry that life is so full of hard choices, dear reader. If I could make it easier for you, I would. If I could help you choose, I would do that too, but this choice will be essentially and necessarily yours. I just thought you ought to be warned.

Turkeys

As some of you may be aware an American holiday widely known as "Thanksgiving" occurred recently. It consists of an annual systematic genocide of the countries turkey population and the use of other agricultural abundances during this season. Well, thanks to our brave democracy in the wonderful United States our leader, the President proudly looked past tradition and allowed two turkeys to live. Yes, President Bush in his kindness and loving nature Pardoned two turkeys before thanksgiving so they would not be condemned to the fate of the rest of their families. Hopefully no one saw that while they were sitting in prison.
Well, too bad - C.B.S. ran the story for two hours straight and just happens to be one of the only channels allowed in most prisons. I felt this was worth mentioning because a friend of mine missed his Thanksgiving dinner to watch this in Jail after getting arrested for violating a court order which outlawed the action of feeding people who live in trees to protest their logging.
Yes, searched and arrested for allegedly feeding people.
Almost a violation of the fourth amendment. Oh right, the fourth amendment was practically nullified in 2001 when the USA Patriot Act went through congress in a matter of hours.

Imagine how many people are being put in prison or killed right now for being "suspected terrorists" due to their ethnic background or anti-authoritarian behavior.
Democracy truly prevails and "the decider" wins again as these wonderful Turkeys survive another Thanksgiving and the death toll rises in the middle east.

Call your congressmen.

So Juvenile and Definitely Not about Economics

A hooker was walking with Superman
Through a rain-spattered Paris one day.
Superman said "You got time for a lay?"
She said "This time, you've got to pay.

You didn't last week
Or the month before that,
And the phone company canceled my service today.
I have children to feed, bills to pay,
And on top of everything
My boyfriend decided he's gay."

Superman let out a sigh
As she tried not to cry.
Then she screamed in alarm
For he'd zapped off her arm
With a laser from out of his eye.

Things Teenagers Do

1) Run around in the snow wearing flipflops and little shorts that say stuff on the butt.

2) Fight with their parents.

3) Experiment with their sexuality.

4) Dye their hair funky colors.

5) Read The Catcher in the Rye.

6) Contemplate the sheer awesomeness of being them.

7) Get all angsty about how maybe life is meaningless and nothing matters and they aren't the awesomest thing in the universe after all, then realize they are thinking very deep thoughts which no one else thinks, because everyone besides them is shallow and stupid.

8) Contemplate the awesomeness of being them.

9) Watch Mean Girls.

Now let's see how many of these I can get done before midnight, when my ontological state shifts from that of being-nominally-a-teenager to that of being-nominally-an-adult.

The Bachelor

A few nights ago, I had a dream that I was on ABC's reality dating show, The Bachelor. Coincidentally, the season finale of The Bachelor was on tonight, so I decided to watch it. It was just about the saddest darn thing I ever saw. For those of you who haven't been keeping up with the show, here's what happened:

After six weeks, Brad Womack has narrowed down his group of twenty-five bachelorettes to the final two, Jenni and DeAnna. They are both conventionally attractive brunettes who've had nothing better to do with the past six weeks than humiliate themselves on cable, so it's no surprise that Brad, our handsome Texas millionaire, is having so much trouble choosing one of them. We're just impressed that he can tell them apart!
Brad goes on a final date with each woman. DeAnna makes him dinner and then tells him she's falling in love with him. Then Jenni makes him dinner and tells him she's falling in love with him. Brad goes shopping for an engagement ring. Who will he pick?
We think our curiosity is about to be sated, as Brad stands on top of a decorative lump of concrete on a grassy hill with the final rose laying on a tiny corinthian column next to him. Jenni gets out of a limo and walks up to him. We hold our breath. He says some nice things about her, and then...he dumps her! She walks off in tears.
DeAnna gets out of the limo and walks up to him. He says some nice things about her and tells her he dumped Jenni. DeAnna's eyes glow with vicious triumph, and then... Brad walks off! He paces and walks around in circles. He comes back to DeAnna and... tells her he doesn't love her!

Poor Brad. Poor Bachelorettes. So many tears. After six weeks, he has not been able to decide who he wants to spend the rest of his life with. If reality TV can't find his soul mate for him, I'm afraid Brad is doomed to die alone. But the question on all our minds is surely... will Brad be back for the next season of The Bachelor?

Metacookie

I ate an oreo cookie today, but it wasn't like a normal oreo cookie. Someone mashed up a bunch of oreos, made cookie dough out of them, and baked it into cookies. Then I ate one. It was awesome.

Philosophy Day

I know Philosophy day was supposed to be Thursday, but I've had all these papers and registration times and roommate mediations. I know you're disappointed, but I'll try to make it up to you. Today, instead of telling you about one philosophy major, I'll do two!

It might not seem at first like David Duchovny and Pope John Paul II have much in common. David Duchovny is the sexy star of The X-Files, and Pope John Paul II is dead. However upon closer examination, they may be more alike than we all suspected.

David Duchovny was born in New York City in 1960. As an undergrad, he majored in Philosophy at Princeton and wrote his senior thesis on The Schizophrenic Critique of Pure Reason in Beckett's Early Novels. He went on to Yale for a Master's in English Literature, and he started work on a PhD that he never finished. Tragically, in 1997, he married Tea Leoni and proceeded to have two children with her. He named his second child Kyd, and his filmography includes such classic as Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead and Space: Above and Beyond.

Pope John Paul II was born in 1920 in Poland. According to CNN, he may have been the only pope to have his life portrayed in a comic book. He went to Krakow to study Philosophy and Literature at Jagiellonian University in 1938. He also joined an experimental theater troupe. In spite of the Nazi occupation, he managed to get two MAs and even finish his doctorate. During his reign as Pope, he was known for speaking against Communism, kissing babies, and canonizing people like he was running out of saints.

So you see? Philosophy majors are really all the same. Happy Philosophy Day!

My Week So Far

Me: Shoo bee doo wapiddy bee doo bee shoo bee doo wap.
Roommate: Die die die!
Me: Yikes!
Professor W___: You must confront the inevitability of your death in order to live an authentic life. I should have been a physicist.
Heidegger: Hyphen hyphen hyphen.
Me: What should I do with my life?
Karl Marx: Exchange value and the fetishism of commodities and variable capital and ROBOTS!
Professor W___: Would you ask a marker what it wants to be when it grows up? No. That's because it's essence precedes its existence.
Me: No, professor W___ , I wouldn't ask a marker what it wants to be when it grows up, because I don't talk to markers.
Heidegger: Hyphen hyphen hyphen.

Defensive

I don't care what anyone says. 'Beauty and the Geek' is a classy, intelligent, and entertaining show with psychological depth up the wazoo. However, if the next season doesn't have female geeks, I'm going to stop watching.

Also, the day after tomorrow is the penultimate Thursday of the month, and I'm sure you all remember what that means...Philosophy Day! Tune in to find out which Philosophy major we will be honoring for November.

WWMMD?

A very wise person once told me that eating salad with your fingers does not conform to the standards of common etiquette, and it is with this stinging critique in mind that I have formulated today's "B"RFO question. If you are the first person to answer correctly, you will be entitled to a gold star (ten gold stars are redeemable for an all-expenses-paid cruise to the Caribbean) and a free one year membership to "B"RFO. So with no further ado, the question is...

If a train traveling east at sixty miles per hour collides with a train traveling west at twenty-two miles per hour, which fork does Miss Manners use to eat her first course at dinner?

Paranoia

I think I'm succumbing to paranoia
Last night I was chased by a giant sequoia
This morning a fellow named Montoya
Followed me, hiding behind an uprooted soya

So distressed was I that I moved to Nagoya
Where we all rolled over and one fell off
There were seven thousand, two hundred, and eleven on the bed
And we all yelled
"Salt, salt, salt," at Jimmy Buffet, because he's old
The scene was immortalized in a painting by Goya

Excerpt

NaNoWriMo takes a quantity over quality approach to writing. You simply won't have time to finish your 50,000 words in 30 days if you think about what you're writing as you go along. Trying to cram as many words as possible into as little time as possible leads some people to write sentences like this:

One day, Oliver, the strongest and sweetest cup of Earl Grey tea to have recently returned from the dead, was meditating in his favorite spot on his favorite tuft of grass under his favorite cork tree next to his favorite chrysanthemum, and the world, if he had been thinking about it instead of meditating, would have seemed very nice indeed, when all of a sudden his meditation, because he must not have been meditating very hard after all, was interrupted by a biscuit, the English kind that’s actually a cookie, grazing its way over to him through the clump of flowering bushes that framed the front of his hermit-cave so prettily.

I just thought you all might like to know that my NaNo is progressing slowly and disjointedly. It's day 9, and I'm already 4000 words behind, so I hope you feel better about yourselves, knowing that even my superior awesomeness falls short of perfection.

Having Just Watched 'Stranger than Fiction'

I can be your auditor
And you can be be auditee
I'll take you where we'll be alone
To muse over the oddity

Of how new skis relate to work
Or why the Gap's a charity
Of how your eyes are cute and blue
Or the fetishism of my commodity

When my buddies at the IRS
Threaten to tell my boss on me
I'll stick your receipts right up their ass
And yell something vaguely obscene about how professionalism
is overrated

Revelation

Nicole Richie's father is black!?!

Disclaimer

The opinions and mathematical calculations expressed on the "blog" are solely those of the individual contributor and do not reflect the opinions or mathematical calculations of the "blog" or its affiliates.

post 100

There is nothing wrong with the mercury content of fish these days, it's all in your perception really.
The other day I ate enough sushi to accurately tell the temperature.

Thought I had more to say but nothing lives up to the fact that we have accomplished a mile marker of 100 posts!

With that said we would like to thank and coongratulate all of the loving participants for the persistence and consideration toward reading this blog and we hope to bring you more of the same quality you expect and deserve.

As a tribute to this special occasion we ask our readers to comment with any hopes or concerns about this already highly acclaimed on-line series.

Thank you for participating and thank you for reading;
The Essential Works of Julia Uhr and Michael King

sincerely,
Maya Dentity

Massachusetts

One thing I've learned about Massachusetts is how it's spelled. Another thing I've learned is that, when it rains in Massachusetts, it pours, and when it pours, your roommate makes you go out in the rain to buy new sheets, because yours got stolen from summer storage, and you've been using her extra ones, which she now wants back, even though she still hasn't given you that sixty bucks you loaned her like two months ago.

Furthermore, I'm working on a fairly self-contained chunk of The Pirate's Wench right now, so you can look forward to reading that in the next couple of days. However, I feel I should warn you before hand that there is no sex. There is no groping, licking, ogling, or footsie playing. There is also no underage alcohol consumption, smoking, or il/licit use of controlled substances.
You needn't be too disappointed though, because there is a bit of dancing. If you're the parents from Footloose, it'll definitely get you riled up.

It's Guy Fawkes Day, and the Pope is Still Dead.

Remember remember the fifth of November
The day when I gave myself bangs
Because I'd rather dismember
A kitten in a blender
Than listen to pseudo-phrenological harangues

Since Democracy is Clearly Overrated...

I decided to go with The Pirate's Wench: A Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Romance. But don't stick your fingers in your mouths and pretend to gag yet. I registered it as a genre novel in the 'thriller/horror' category. To prove that my novel is not in any way mushy, here is the ending to one of the stories:

“Fuck those misleading ass holes on the Discovery Channel’s original series, Myth Busters!” You yell as your life drains out of the hole in the top of your head, percolates through your hair, and oozes into the dirt where it leeches into the ground water to be consumed by everyone who doesn’t filter their tap water.

Monogamy and Rodentia

It occurs to me that if you are reading this, chances are you are already disappointed, because I am not Julia. Coincidentally, me too. However, I thought I'd share with you some of the epic knowledge bestowed unto me through the magical lesson vessel some of you may identify as the television. I call it professor.
It was after nine o'clock and I was late for my lecture on the animated future, when the Discovery channel interrupted with cute footage of beavers.
Here are some gems of knowledge I feel necessary to pass on:

Beavers are included in a surprising 3% of all mammals which remain with a single mate through out life. (no humans are not members)

Beavers are 2nd to Human in environment manipulation, and often compete for the opportunity. Damming drainage tubes and flooding sidewalks among other methods of letting us know they are still here (necessary).

Their front teeth never stop growing.

They produce oils for the purpose of waterproofing and marine-dynamics.

In conclusion Beavers are natural wonders and marvelous example of evolutions better accomplishments.

This Star is Dedicated to Hargobind.

Another Chance to Win

The first person who can come up with a good explanation of why this argument is wrong will win a gold star and a free "B"RFO membership:

If horrible events, like the Holocaust, lead a person to believe that the world is absurd and meaningless, it would be silly for that person to commit suicide for that reason, because by doing so, he would be saying that living in an absurd and meaningless world means that life is not worth living. If life is not worth living, horrible events, like the Holocaust, would not be depriving their victims of anything worthwhile by killing them, and horrible events, like the Holocaust, would therefore not be so bad after all, and he would have no good basis for the opinion that the world is absurd and meaningless.

Something Important

Dear Readers,

There's something important that I need to talk to you about.

It's not that Michael and I don't love each other. We just can't write the "blog" together anymore. The most important thing for you to know is that we both love you very much, and we're going to try to make this transition as easy as possible. We know it's important for you to read both of your bloggers, so Michael will get his own blog, and you can read it every other weekend. I know this all seems strange right now, and you have every right to be upset, but we're still a family, and I promise we're going to make this work.

And one other thing.
Maya Dentity will be writing some posts for the "blog" now. He's not trying to replace Michael; he knows that no one could ever replace Michael in your lives, but he hopes that you will find a new place in your hearts for him. Maya is an important person to me, and even though things are confusing right now, I hope you can at least give him a chance.

I think this talk went really well, and you can ask me if you have any questions. I love you guys, and no matter what happens, we're going to stick together. Just without Michael.

My NaNo

I've narrowed down my list of possible NaNos to Wri for NaNoWriMo. The three finalists are...

1) 'Shrek 4,' a screenplay for the exciting new installment in which Fiona is sentenced to death by lethal injection for performing inhumane experiments on Puss-n-Boots in the name of theoretical physics, and Donkey sings a snappy tune called 'I Have Mixed Feelings about the Teleological Suspension of the Ethical.'

2) 'The Pirate's Wench,' a postmodern choose-your-own-adventure romance.

3) 'Gossip and Lies,' an annotated Venn diagram, based on a sixteen-year-old girl's disillusioning but fashion-conscious experience of being popular at prep school.

Help me complete step 1 of Operation Harpoon by posting a comment to vote on your favorite NaNo.

November

As I'm sure you are all aware, November is National Talk Like a Robot Month. I don't know anything about that. I don't intend to talk like a robot during the month of November or any other month, and I don't understand what would compel others to do so; National Talk Like a Robot Month does not even have a pronounceable acronym.

More importantly, November is also NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). My previous encounters with NaNoWriMo have not been what one might call fulfilling; Two years ago, I wrote an interesting absurdist play but failed to complete my 50,000 words. Last year, I didn't even try.

This year, however, things are going to be different. I may never have a law school diploma hanging on the wall of my office, but I'm damn well going to settle for having a NaNoWriMo certificate of novel-completion taped to the inside of my cardboard box.

In order to ensure that I accomplish my goal this year, I have scientifically developed a plan for success, which I am sharing with you, my loyal readers, in the hope that your novels too may benefit from my wisdom:

1) Find a story.
2) Find characters.
3) Hunt the certificate to the ends of the earth and harpoon it until it spouts black blood and rolls fin out.

I hope you find it helpful. NaNoWriMo starts at midnight, so good luck!

And the Winner is...

John Uhr!
Congratulations, John. You correctly answered the "blog's" LSAT practice question. Please accept this gold star as a symbol of our highest regard.
You have now joined the ranks of "Blog" Readers of the First Order, or "B"RFO, and the "blog" staff would like to remind you that with great power comes great responsibility.
Nice work, John... And for those of you who did not win, stay tuned for more opportunities to earn gold stars and join "B"RFO.

* * *

In other news, I found a book in the Library called "The Unpublished Works of Friedrich Nietzsche." Is the title implying that the book's existence precedes its essence by alluding to Sartre's notion of being what it is not and not being what it is, or does someone need to buy the Stanford University Press a dictionary?

A Note To Firtsies Everywhere:

Kissing in a library is exactly the same as smacking someone's ass in a church. Just keep that in mind.

Because the "Blog" isn't Emo Enough Already...

I know I said I was going to let y'all know what my LSAT practice test score was when I got it, but I just don't want to talk about it right now, so deal. I'll be crying in my room, if anyone needs me, which I'm sure they won't, because I don't have any friends, because I can't do logic.

New Rule

People who answer the questions anonymously are automatically disqualified to receive special smiley faces, gold stars, and any other "blog" prizes that the "blog" awards to readers, defined as people who read the "blog" and also have names.

The Real-World Applications of Existentialism

I took a practice LSAT yesterday. Four hours of trying to answer illogical questions with logic. Being a Philosophy professor is looking better every day. The highlight of the test, however, was a question I'd like to share with you:

If human beings attempt to understand their lives, then they will be faced with certain unanswerable questions. That will lead them to admit the uncertainty underlying all things. If they make that admission, they will conclude that their lives are necessarily without meaning. Thus, if human beings attempt to understand their lives, they will conclude that their lives are without meaning.

Which of the following uses reasoning most similar to that used in the argument above?

(A) If people believe that their lives are meaningful, they must admit that life itself has a discernible purpose, and thus that life itself can be understood. If people believe that life can be understood, they will never give up trying to understand their lives. As a result, if people believe that their lives are meaningful, they will never give up trying to understand their lives.

(B) If human beings attempt to answer unanswerable questions, they will be faced with a decision between admitting that their understanding is limited or that the world is unknowable. If they decide the former, they must admit that their lives are meaningless; if the latter, that the world is meaningless.

(C) Because human beings attempt to understand their lives, they ask themselves unanswerable questions. Because they ask themselves unanswerable questions, they conclude that the world in unknowable and therefore meaningless. Thus human beings should not attempt to understand their lives.

(D) If human beings attempt to understand that which is incomprehensible, they will have to admit defeat. If they admit defeat, they will soon regard their lives as meaningless. If they regard their lives as meaningless, they will no longer attempt to understand that which is incomprehensible. Therefore it is impossible to attempt to understand that which is incomprehensible.

(E) Whenever people attempt to find meaning in their lives, they ask unanswerable questions. When they ask unanswerable questions, they must provide themselves with false answers. False answers, therefore are incompatible with the attempt to find meaning in life.

You have 30 seconds to pick your answer. Post it as a comment, and I'll let you know if you got it right. The first person to correctly answer the question will get a special "blog" smiley face!

Tune in later tonight to find out how I did on the practice LSAT (but don't get your hopes up).