27 October 2006
How to Be a Jerk
about Rejecting a Grant
Application
(In Three Easy Steps)
1. (Evil) - Attack the applicant for her complete and utter lack of
knowledge about the in-ter-web, and assume that flight prices don't
change depending on the season: "With regard to the budget, $1500 for a
ticket to Rome seems
excessive. In a quick check online, dozens of flights were listed at
under $800 round-trip."
2. (Eviler) - Call the applicant's proposed research project a
throw-back to
the
early days of archaeology: "A lot of data will be collected, but it is not
clear how different sources of information will be brought together in
something more than a descriptive study."
3. (Evilest) - Finally, resort to an ad hominem attack on
the
applicant and her discipline: "The urban processes the proposal seeks to
elucidate are not
spelled out in an anthropological fashion, although I would expect that
they meet the standards of
classical archaeology."
These are actual reviews of my proposal. All I can say is,
anthropologists can be a nasty bunch when money is involved.
Posted at 1720.
22 October 2006
I took
my Osteo students to the orthodontist a couple weekends ago to get plaster
casts made of their mouths. I wanted a mold of my own teeth too, so I
hopped into the dentist's chair to get gross purple goo shoved into my
mouth. The kids found this completely amusing and before I knew
it, a couple of them snapped digital pics of me hamming it up. A student
just sent me this one.
Posted at 0929.
21 October 2006
Do you hate those
awful plastic clogs as much as I
do? Then you'll really hate the newest trend:
plastic charms for your plastic clogs.
It's like the unholiest combination of
jelly
shoes (mine were yellow - always yellow) and
charm necklaces circa 1985
(Yeah, an abacus!). I had a little plastic baby bottle on my charm
necklace in third grade, and I thought I was so clever to fill it with
hand lotion. Perhaps I can get one for my next-generation shoes and fill
it with... I dunno, moonshine? Something at least that would dispel the
embarassment of decorating my molded plastic piece-of-shit shoes with
those holiday-themed buttons that librarians sew on their sweaters.
Posted at 1218.
19 October 2006
I let the cats out on the porch because it was a lovely day in Dryden. As
I was taking some cupcakes out of the oven, Poopy ran into the dining room
with Sweetie chasing him. I went to see what was going on, and I noticed
a wiggling little grey mouse hanging out of Poopy's mouth. I yelled and
screamed, trying to get Poopy to go back outside where he could drop the
mouse, but he defied me by running into the bedroom and hiding under the
bed until the last breath was extinguished from the poor mouse. He then
proceeded to run around the house with a mouse that was leaking blood and
entrails until I finally got him to drop it. I had to pick up the oozing
mouse and toss it outside, then clean up all the gut smears. Ew.
Posted at 1645.
I took
my Osteo students to the orthodontist a couple weekends ago to get plaster
casts made of their mouths. I wanted a mold of my own teeth too, so I
hopped into the dentist's chair to get gross purple goo shoved into my
mouth. The kids found this completely amusing and before I knew
it, a couple of them snapped digital pics of me hamming it up. A student
just sent me this one.
