Todd Stadler's blog

Aloooha!

So Julia and I are going on vacation soon. Should be a change of pace.

My office building, it's still cold

So the space heaters running in the office next door to ours once again managed to blow the circuit that my computer runs on.

I suppose that it's exciting in a way, never knowing just when my computer will turn off due to the overloaded circuit that magically connects my computer, and only my computer, to the company next door. It certainly adds an edge to the process of modifying a file — will this change be saved to disk? Huh, will it?

And yet, I can't help but project on my computer — it seems to get so dejected sometimes at how cold our office is that it just gives up. But that's not the case. Given the poor state of the wiring and the heating system in the Haseltine Building, it's clearly the building manager that has given up. And my computer just goes on strike occasionally to protest his ineffectiveness.

So while waiting for my computer to reboot, I pondered the situation. It's not that our company has failed to make our problems known to the manager. But since he seems unaffected by both our official complaints and my last post on the matter, it seemed that the situation was calling for a higher level of snark.

Click to see large version

So I made a poster advertising the many qualities of the Haseltine Building, because I noticed at our building's entrance that there's a big "for lease" sign. And I know that any potential leasers would want to know about the building where they might locate their offices.

I made it intentionally ugly, because it was meant to blend in with the "for lease" sign. I haven't actually posted it yet, but we'll see how cold it is next week.

Operating systems: an analysis

Occasionally the metaphors employed by operating systems don't really work out.

The other day, I had deleted several large files, which of course sent them into the Recycling Bin. Now, I suppose it's all good and environmental-y and non-trademark-infringing to name the folder that holds deleted files the Recycling Bin. Even if the icon looks more like a trash can.

An invitation if I ever saw one

But when I right-clicked on the icon to empty the Recycling Bin (that is, to truly delete its contents, just like when you take a real-world recycling bin and dump all the cans inside into a Dumpster), I found myself strangely amused at the option that Windows offered me: I could "explore" the Recycling Bin.

Oh, wouldn't that be fun! What heady journeys I could have exploring the Recycling Bin. Who knows what I'd find — old documents, um ... more old documents? Why, I could spend all day exploring the Recycling Bin!

And that was all good and sarcastic until I went over to my friends' house for Thanksgiving dinner last night. And I watched their eight-month-old daughter enraptured with the notion I was just mocking — exploring the recycling bin. She picked up a crumpled old pie tin and had a ball with it for several minutes before moving on to the toilet paper tube. I know what I'm getting that baby for Christmas!

Anyhow, I'm not sure what to make of all this. Babies acting out the operating system metaphors I find humorously odd? This means something. This is important!

Severe weather alert!

As a native Texan, I am used to the phenomenon of Extreme Weather, as the kids are calling it. Golf-ball-sized hail, tornadoes aplenty, and the occasional hurricane — you name it, it's probably destroying a trailer park somewhere in Texas as we speak.

A fine way to start your day

So it was with some interest that I noticed yesterday that ForecastFox, the Firefox extension that displays current and forecast weather conditions, was warning me of a "Severe Weather Alert".

As weather in Portland is usually docile enough that the occasional lightning strike is considered fodder for the local news, I was shocked. Severe Weather? Here? Could a tsunami be wending all the way up the Columbia River and into the Willamette? Mayhaps some dastardly cold snap was winging its way here from Canada? Did the Republicans finally screw up the weather, too?

Those were a heady few minutes of climatological climax as I pondered the possibilities. But then I accidentally looked outside and noticed that it was sunny, if perhaps brisk, and I forgot all about the potential for Severe Weather.

But! When I saw the exact same Severe Weather warning today on ForecastFox, well! I had no choice but to investigate, hardened-journalist-like, the why behind that annoyingly exclamatory warning in my browser. So I clicked on the icon.

And as soon as the Web page loaded, my eyes filled with dread and I dove under my desk and waited for the klaxons to stop blaring, assuming they would start any second now. For this is what I had read: an "air stagnation advisory" had been declared! Until 4 p.m. Saturday!!

Ahem. Well, you have to understand, in the typography of the National Weather Service, it seemed a lot more exciting at the time, for it was written like this: "AN AIR STAGNATION ADVISORY FOR THE GREATER PORTLAND AND VANCOUVER AREAS ... THE LOWER COLUMBIA RIVER ... WESTERN COLUMBIA RIVER GORGE AND I-5 CORRIDOR REMAINS IN EFFECT".

But the terroriffic words did not end there, no. "AN AIR STAGNATION ADVISORY IS ISSUED WHEN LOCALLY ESTABLISHED CRITICAL VALUES OF TRANSPORT WINDS ... MIXING HEIGHT ... AND VENTILATION ARE EXPECTED TO PERSIST FOR AT LEAST 36 HOURS. THIS PRODUCT REFLECTS METEOROLOGICAL CONDITIONS THAT LEAD TO AIR STAGNATION CONDITIONS ... BUT NOT NECESSARILY TO AIR QUALITY PROBLEMS." Run!!!

And as I dove under my desk, I took a quick glance out the window, and saw, to my utter horror, that the air outside was not moving, er, enough! We're all going to be, um, ... stifled?

Hmm. Anyhow, that was my excitement for the day.

An open letter to Oasis

Dear Oasis (if that is your real name),

It turns out that I was at college in Houston, Texas while you were getting high.

Now please stop asking me. Good day.

Sincerely,
Todd Stadler

What is the sound of one hand warming itself?

The Haseltine Building, where I work, is old.

And when I say "old", I mean it in the "seventy-year-old car" sense, rather than the "grand tradition of democracy" sense. And when I say "seventy-year-old car", what I mean is this: it may look cool from the outside, given that it looks nothing like what they make today, but you wouldn't want to spend large chunks of time inside, because functionality rarely lasts as long as style.

Look, the point is that the Haseltine Building can be somewhat crummy at times, or, as real estate agents say, "charming".

The main thing that one notes is lacking in the building is anything that resembles earthquake-proofing. Or, at least, this is what one would note, along with a ton of bricks hurtling towards one, if and when the inevitable Big Earthquake hits Portland.

Of course, if El Grande 8.0 comes a-knockin' while I'm at work, I'll at least have the comfort of having snuffed it in a historic building. Or possibly an historic building. Not sure. I'll have to work that out as I hurtle towards the ground floor.

But it's difficult to get any work done if one focuses too hard on such morbid thoughts, so instead we at work while away our time being annoyed by less mortally perilous features of the building, such as its heating/cooling system.

A while back, the building manager made a big to-do about the new heating/cooling system he had installed. Workers with very tall ladders came and interrupted our work schedules in very exciting ways. We were told: the new system is computer-operated! Each floor can be programmed independently!

And I suppose, in a way, the new system has turned out to be an improvement. Before it was installed, our office was always too hot in the winter, or too cold in the summer. This was, we were told, because the thermostat was located in the seating area of the Thai restaurant on the first floor — notably, three floors below our office — and when it was hot outside, the system needed to produce cold air, and vice versa. Now I'm all for people eating their pla tod lad prik in comfort, but it was never clear why this resulted in my having to wear a sweater in the office when people outside were sweating.

But like I said, the new system improved things — our discomfort became seasonally correct. So it was that when a cold snap hit Portland this week, it was chilly in the office, causing a few of us to ask our operations manager to complain to the building manager. (Apparently, the building manager only allows one appointed person in each office — in our case, the operations manager, the poor soul — to communicate with him; I assume that this is because otherwise he would be busy all day dealing with complaints.)

Now, I used the phrase "poor soul" a few words back because the building manager has a reputation for being difficult at times. It's almost as if he read in a book somewhere that being transparent (that is, open and honest) is a good thing, and so he strove for transparency (that is, having a minimal impact on one's sensory input). Ha!

As an example, when our operations manager faxed the building manager, asking him, "Can you fix the baseboard heater on the western wall? It doesn't work," he replied, "You just need to turn it on." As it turns out, we had thought of that trick before faxing him, and it was, in fact, our attempting to turn on the baseboard heater that had led to our concluding that it was broken. This, in turn, led to our desire to have the heater fixed.

Not that it matters. Even when the building manager understands a problem, he usually tries a Jedi Mind Trick™ — "These are not the solutions you're looking for" and all that.

So when the people in the office next door, apparently as cold as we were, tried to plug in a space heater and blew the circuit for their office (and, conveniently, my desk), our operations manager faxed the building manager to ask, "Can you fix the circuitry so that a space heater in the office next door doesn't blow the circuit in our office?"

To which he replied, "That is intentional. The building would burn down if people were allowed to plug in anything, anywhere." It's possible he was trying to warn us that the building is also highly flammable, in addition to being poorly wired and too cold, but I assume he was merely trying a take on the old saw, "it's a feature, not a bug". What isn't clear is why he hasn't gone the extra mile and put the entire building on one 120-volt circuit, thereby providing maximum safety, as well as energy efficiency! After all, you can't waste power if nothing turns on.

But in the midst of all my sarcastic observation, I paused. What if the building manager wasn't being lazy? What if I simply misunderstood the point of his replies? After all, the way in which he turned our circuit complaint back on us, morphing it into a plead for safety, was almost jujitsoid in nature. Was the building manager hinting at a deeper, more Oriental philosophy?

I pondered this as our operations manager faxed another complaint, this time about the seemingly unnecessary amount of cold air being blown into our cold office on such a cold November day. She wrote, "Can the cold air blowing out of the vents be stopped?"

And when the building manager replied, "There is no cold air blowing before 11:00 a.m.," I realized the genius in his thinking — he was not merely talking about the heating/cooling system of a downtown building, but was instead espousing a neo-nihilistic philosophy, expressed through simple koans. "You complain about the cold air," he said, "But your perceptions are necessarily temporal — consider the cold air that is not, and there you will find peace."

A holy day for giving thanks

I just wanted to say that, now that Halloween has past and Christmas is here, I'm really excited about Thanksgiving! [A note to my Canadian readership: please ignore this, as it makes no sense in your calendar. Your ways are not ours. Also, to my Nigerian readership: I am happy in my current financial situation, thanks.]

On a related note, a friend recently sent me an invitation to her house for Thanksgiving. She wrote, "I am doing the planning part of our Thanksgiving feast a little early. That means I need to get a head count for our turkey order."

I was more than a little sad that she was not, in fact, talking about counting members for some recently begun Order of the Turkey. If I were an officer in the Order of the Turkey, why, just think of the power I would wield! Think of it!

That said, eating carbohydrates and fat until I pass out is probably a fine substitute for membership in a secretive cabal.

Crappy, devolving pop culture observations

Dear Blog,

Sigh. I have to be honest. I'm doing what I swore I wouldn't do and posting out of guilt. We had a good streak going there for a while. At least, I thought so. Those were good times, right? And then — I know — I got busy. Well, not really busy so much as distracted — it's not like I actually accomplished much else while I was ignoring you.

And all I have to offer today are tired pop-culture observations (oh, and let's not forget the too-clever-by-nil ironic self-observatory conceit) that want so desperately to be funny but do very little to add to the level of discourse on the internet. The only thing I could possibly do to better prove the essential worthlessness of this blog (yea, and a so-called blog it is) would be to include a political rant that links to and quotes a third-tier political-rant blog, which itself links to more popular politically ranty blogs, ultimately ending, of course, in a link to a nytimes.com article. And don't think I don't feel that temptation.

But that's not the point. The point is, as already mentioned, ironic, (faux) self-deprecatory, sarcastic, ennui-laden writing. With sprinkles.

And this anecdote: I was at the doughnut shop today, and the song playing was Def Leppard's "Pour Some Sugar on Me", that epitome of late-80s head-banging, and when the line "Do you take sugar?! One lump or two?!?!" came on...

No, I can't. The song is stupid — of course the song is stupid! And this whole story is stupid. I can't go on writing about this. Or rather, I won't. I will, however, post this diary-entry-of-a-tortured-blogger, just to spite myself and those poor souls who pass through these backwaters of the Web. Ha!

And just to get it off my chest, lest I feel tempted to write another blog entry on this only-slightly-different story, I also recently heard "The Girl is Mine", and yes that song is, in retrospect, also quite silly. "The doggone girl is mine," indeed! And let's not even focus on the singers of the song and how more ridiculous things become when you take them into account. Yes, let's not.

I'm sorry, blog. I really am. You've become a dumping-ground for half-written tirades, a place where guilt clouds pass over, dropping hyper-self-referentialismic rain and the occasional neologism. And twisted, cracked, and hastily-glued-together-again metaphors. And an overabundance of conjunctions.

Love,
Todd

Astros' win calls for prancing

Okay, I'm not a sports fanatic of any sort, much less of any particular game or team. But I couldn't help notice the photo in today's newspaper that showed jubilant Astros celebrating their win over the Atlanta Braves in Game 4 of the National League Division Series. Maybe it's that I have family-in-law in Houston, so their joy is my joy, or at least my pleasant indifference.

But then again, maybe it's that the photo featured Luke Scott captured in the middle of what appears to be his "jazz hands" routine.

Which doesn't really explain why I spent so much time making the stupid animated GIF at right, but what did you expect?

Fake but short dialogue

Skinny guy: Jumpin' Jehoshaphat! You're incredibly obese!

Fat guy: Hm. Must've been something I ate.

ROTFESL

My friend Gerry has a wife, Wai Yee, who is Malaysian. Though they met and married while she was working in America, she is currently back in Malaysia, wrapping up her job, with the intent of moving to the States permanently in a little while.

So it was that while she was visiting Portland for a short trip this summer, someone asked Wai Yee, "So, are you here for good now?"

To which Wai Yee replied, with a wonderfully straight face, "No, this time for evil."

Which makes me wonder if one way to consistently be funny is simply to find a language's idiomatic expressions confusing or odd.

I've certainly done my part to amuse people in a foreign (for me) language. One time in Mexico, I tried to talk to someone about cogiendo un tren — which five years of high school Spanish and several years of forgetting same led me to believe had something to do with catching a train.

As it turns out, the action I mentioned performing with a train that I actually conveyed to that surprised Mexican was not a subject that any of my Spanish teachers had ever brought up {clears throat}.

Pun contest!

For some reason, I recently found myself reading the BBC's Magazine Monitor, whatever that is, and I came across the Punorama entry form, with the following instructions:

The rules are straightforward — we choose a story which has been in the news, and invite you to create an original punning headline for it.

The story for this week is the inventor who has come up with a pedal-powered washing machine. Alex Gadsden, a keen cyclist, designed the machine in an attempt to improve his fitness while keeping fit.

Well, no one likes a pun more than I (my favorite sandwich is the punino — you might even call me a punivore!), so here are my entries for the Punorama contest, which you will be sad to know I didn't actually submit:

• Rinse Cycle [this is the obvious choice, no?]
• Inventor Of Cycle-Powered Washing Machine Is Out Standing In Field
• Pedal (Which Sounds Like "Petal", Which Is Part Of A Flower) Power!
• Washing Ma-Schwinn™
• Spic and Spandex Shorts
• A Laundry Basketcase!
• Washing Ma-Shimano™ (Components)
• Stacked Washer/Tire Combo
• Giving His Bike Wheels A Whirl(pool™)
• Surf(actant)'s Up! [Admittedly, this works better if the washing machine is surfing-board-powered, but that invention is left as an exercise for the reader]
• Tour De Tergent
• Starch Trek™
• Human-Powered Laundry (But It's Not By The Chinese!)
• Clothes Washed By Hamstring [as opposed to "by hand" — trust me, this is clever]
• Cleanondale™
• Set This Washing Machine On "Bicycle"!
• Downy™ Tube
• A Bicycle Built For Two Medium Laundry Loads
• Laundro-hel-met
• Washing Clothes By Hand(lebars)
• This Man Is A Washing Machine (Literally! ... Well, Sort Of)
• Machine Wash, Seventh Gear
• Greg LeMondromat

Note to the random reader who does not know me: yes, I know most of these are painfully stupid. Thanks.

A series of unfortunate puns

Suzanne at work pointed at the silver circle around my finger and asked, "Is that your wedding band [1) a flat ring worn to denote that one is married, and 2) a musical group that plays at a wedding]?"

"Well," I replied, "not really. The full band [a group of musicians] would also have horns [1) brass wind instruments, and 2) bony protrusions]."

"Oh," she said, slowly. "So then that, on your finger, is ... ?"

"This," I said, relishing things more than I probably should have, "is just the ringmaster [the leader of a performance, including perhaps of a band]."

I expectorated better of you

In my mind, I am a rather effective force for public good, pointing out loudly and clearly when someone in my sight has done something stupid or offensive, and thereby shaming them into stopping or correcting their behavior.

So it was that yesterday, when I saw public mores being transgressed, I had the perfect idea of how I would handle the situation — all in my mind, you understand. I would walk right up to the man who had just spit on the sidewalk and say to him, "Excuse me sir, but you dropped your saliva."

Supplication

At work, our administrative assistant sends out emails every Wednesday asking people if they need any supplies. As this is a repetitive task, she has taken to reminding people in poetry to email their pen and paper needs.

Feeling a need for something different, I composed an acrostic for next week's email:

Somewhere
Under all those
Piles of paper is a
Passion for something more.
Live life bereft no longer!
I will fill that void.
Email me your needed
Supplies.

I realize that the degree to which this is interesting is only matched by the frequency with which I post items here, but hey.

Irony, retro-style

Julia and I were at the grocery store yesterday, when "Walking on Sunshine" came on over the in-store speakers. I said — mainly to myself, since I didn't figure that anyone else would care — that I didn't expect that anyone would play this song at this particular time.

The employee restocking sausage in the freezer case raised an eyebrow at me, but Julia kept looking for whatever item she was looking for.

"Because," I noted rather deliberately, "this song was performed by Katrina and the Waves."

To cover up the muffled sounds of frozen sausage logs being laid on top of each other, I continued. "You know. As in Hurricane Katrina. And the waves it is producing even now. In and around New Orleans." I gave up.

Later on I did a Google search for "Katrina and the waves" and found I wasn't even the first person to think of this. Of course. I'll get you yet, Internet!

Jalousie

My friend Beeman is in France now on a two-week vacation. He recently wrote me an e-mail which told of how well the trip is going, especially his good fortune in staying in the houses of very nice locals: "Provence has been fabulous, a very enlightening look at why people yearn to be very wealthy. This house is a palace, the countryside is beautiful, the pace of life is slow, and the food is rich."

I always make sure to write to my friends when they're traveling, because I know what it's like to check your e-mail when you're abroad and find that nobody seems to have noticed you're gone. Below is an excerpt from my e-mail to Beeman.

Anyhow, since you left, America in general and Portland in particular has become fabulously fascinating. Don't bother looking for any mentions of the fact on any Web sites — it's all so fascinating here that nobody bothers mentioning it, either because they're having so much fun or because they don't want any losers coming over here and mooching off how great it all is. Anyhow, the food is just amazing, ever since that new cuisine style was discovered and perfected last Saturday. Wow! In fact, the since-last-Saturday cuisine (as I call it) was just certified as "five times better than even the best food in France", which is pretty amazing, since until last Saturday, I had heard French food was pretty good. And it's interesting that you're in France now. What a coincidence. Anyhow, all the French restaurants in Portland have closed (yes, all of them), because all people want to eat is the since-last-Saturday food. I think all the French restaurants were sold to a sanitation company, because now when people think of French food, they think of garbage, so it was only natural for people to take their trash to the French restaurants.

Let's see, what else? Well, the Democrats finally got the 15-hour work week approved, although right now most people are enjoying their mandatory eight weeks of vacation, so it's just really relaxed here. Of course, Bush is threatening to overturn the whole so-called "relaxed legislation" sometime within the next week or two. We'll see.

And finally, the housing bubble in Portland finally popped — big time! — and Julia and I were able to scoop up a nice 4,000ish sq.ft. place up in the West Hills for just under $150,000. It only has three bathrooms, though, and I'm not crazy about the giant Italian marble soaker tub.

Anyhow, it's a pity you've missed all these changes. I guess I'm happy for you that you're on vacation, but frankly France just seems so provincial now, I'm not sure I'd want to go. I hope I'm not making you feel envious of our fun time here in America. I'd hate to make you feel jealous while you're over there, slogging through the boring French landscape and choking down French so-called food. I mean, I know what it is to feel jealous, and it's a real bummer, so I hope you're not feeling it — jealousy, I mean. Because it sucks. Jealousy does. Or so I hear.

I find that subtlety is often the best way to get a point across.

Least appealing spam subject line

I found a spam in my filters the other day with the subject line "Experience puberty again (the sex part)".

Ah yes, thank goodness for that parenthetical clarification. Had they not added it, I would have assumed they were peddling a cream that made pimples break out all over my face and made hair grow in places it had not previously (forehead? palms? what's left?) And clearly, the demand for such a cream would be great.

But no, they're talking about the sex part of puberty. Oh, those heady days! Yes, whatever product they're selling, it allows you to relive that halcyon era when I had no sex whatsoever and was, in fact, terrified by the same girls to whom I was attracted, living perpetually in fear of kissing the wrong way. I think I'd actually prefer the acne.

I suppose that there are those for whom puberty was, sadly, the high point of their sexual life, but I imagine they are few.

In conclusion, this spammer clearly lacks marketing acumen. This subject line has none of the appeal of, say, someone telling me "declaimg Med Hist PLo", as another spam recently enticed me. I can only assume that this poorly crafted spam signals the end of the spamming era.

Gettin' snarky with the journalists, part 3

I don't know which is more pitiful: that I continue to be contacted by journalists wanting to write stories about Twinkies (especially the Twinkie's 75th anniversary), or that I continue to rely on my correspondence with them to fill up my otherwise terribly sparse blog. I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader.

Date: May 16, 2005 10:02am
From: xxxxxxxxx@newspress.com
To: Todd Stadler
Subject: Story for Santa Barbara News-Press

Hello,

I am working on a story about the 75th anniversary of Twinkies. I saw your Twinkie PROJECT Web site and thought it was hilarious! Would you be available to talk to me by phone briefly about your experience?

I'll let you call me, but I'll be more straightforward with you than I have been with most other journalists: while I'm always excited about the possibility of milking this thing even further, I'm a really lousy interview. I tend to respond to questions as if they aren't really exciting, because, well, usually they aren't. I may have made some people laugh with what I wrote over a decade ago (!), but I rarely get those kind of chuckles when I'm talking to people.

This is likely because when I'm writing, I'm able to edit and re-edit my wit down to a razor-sharp edge that slices through the tedium of people's lives, causing the blood/laughs to flow freely, and eviscerating, the, um, fun. See, that metaphor, which is funny because it's crude, took me some time to think about. And sure, it was worth it. But when I'm talking, I'm stuck with my first draft, and people realize me for the boring fraud I am. Oh sure, I've tried editing my conversation while I'm talking, but people get really tired of my saying the same thing over and over, changing a word here and there, and the impact is lost. Of course, that's a lie, but the point is it's the kind of clever lie I can never come up with when responding to a request to describe "what the T.W.I.N.K.I.E.S. Project is all about" when it's my opinion that the Web site explains that much better than I ever could.

I'm also a terrible interview because I can never decide if I want to suck up to the media — in the hopes of making it my friend and having it tell everybody how great and funny I am — or if I want to sarcastically dismiss the whole lot of journalists who write about snack foods and those who play with them as if they were news. The latter path, of course, allows me to earn near-infinite street cred with all my fellow Web Celebrities, who might otherwise decry me for "selling out" and forever refuse to invite me to any more of their Web Celebrity parties. But seeing as I'm making up the whole Web Celebrity thing anyhow, the suck-up path has lots to recommend it, such as yet another possibility of seeing a banal quote that only somewhat resembles anything I said being attributed to me in an article that is largely indistinguishable from all the other articles written about me. Aha! I fooled you, because I was talking about the suck-up path, but I managed to be snarky in doing so, thus traveling down the sarcastic-dismissal path. This is what it's like to be a conflicted member of Gen X, or so I've read.

Anyhow, irony and self-reference aside, it's my opinion that this e-mail is likely the most interesting thing you'll get from me, but I'll probably be much nicer on the phone and more likely to say something that resembles what you're looking for. I'm just like that. It's the magic of personal interaction, so easily ignored in an e-mail.

The not-so-secret secret is that what I really do these days is not work on the T.W.I.N.K.I.E.S. Project, but rather write rabid screeds to journalists who contact me for information on said project, not so much because I bear any antipathy towards said journalists or even journalism in general, but because it's an excuse to write, and I don't have much else going on in my life to fill up what I suppose I'd call my blog. Which is to say that I just have too much free time, something that people have been telling me ever since I got famous for putting something on a Web site that allows them to waste their copious free time.

You may be interested, if you haven't looked already, in reading my other correspondence with journalists about the T.W.I.N.K.I.E.S. Project on cockahoop.com. Not all of them get snide, late-night tirades — some of my e-mails actually contain information!

Oh, and you can call me at 971-XXX-XXXX, preferably at hours that are almost certainly not when you want to call me, which is some time after 5:30pm. Before that, and I'll be more reticent than usual, because my co-workers find it odd when they overhear me talking about Twinkies so much. I've heard them whispering about my "Twinkies problem", and I think they're planning an intervention.

To summarize: this e-mail almost certainly shouldn't have been this long or this snarky, and you really should ignore everything except the phone number. Thanks.

A short history of Julia

I've figured out that perhaps one of my best talents is the ability to make up crap and keep making it up until I get tired of doing so. I'd like to say that this talent has proved useful in some extraordinary way, but all I've ever really done with it is waste space on Web pages like this one.

So it was that I recently found myself writing an "about us" page for Julia's and my wedding site. For reasons that aren't clear to me, I found time to dash off several paragraphs of space-filling hooey, while deciding I didn't have the time to write anything serious. This is how my days often go.

But since Julia likely won't let me keep the filler text, I figured I'd copy it here, to preserve its, er, genius for all time.

Julia was born in Houston, Texas, in 1978.

She sprang fully formed from the thigh of her father, television's Ted Knight, who decided that living in his all-powerful celebrity shadow would be too much for the little child to bear.

She was then shipped off to Bangalore to be raised by itinerant goat farmers until she reached what they called the "age of goat-knowledge". At that point she left them to wander the earth (like Caine in Kung Fu), hoping to find her purpose.

That purpose was soon to be revealed when she was found herself meandering past a sleepy little town called Cape Canaveral, which back then was called Cape Cadaveral, owing to its reputation as the city with the greatest number of mortuaries per capita. Julia, inspired by the majesty of the Skylab program, found herself thinking that with just the right technology, a really good mission statement, and a name change for the town, it could be the locus of a revolution in space travel. And thus was born the so-called "space shuttle" program.

Julia's role in the space program — which she worked on when not attending preschool at the Doogie Howser School for the Mind-Bogglingly Precocious (after which a certain hit TV show was later named) — naturally brought her back to her hometown of Houston.

By 1983, she grew weary of the glamorous life she was leading and traded in the jet-setting and her celebrity-riddled Rolodex for a quiet life that she hoped would be full only of normalcy. Little did she realize that the then quiet villa of Houston was soon to become the nation's fourth-largest city, with all the attendant traffic, pollution, and, yes, even humidity that one would expect. Fortunately, this rapid urbanization was to have little to no effect on her life.

It was at this point in the fake biography that I realized I had enough text to keep the page from looking empty, and so ran out of steam.

Comicstry

As a chemistry teacher, Julia is not unfamiliar with the joke about two atoms, one of whom loses an electron, causing the other to ask if he's sure it's lost (I'll leave the hilarious punchline for those of you who bothered to click on the previous Google link). In fact, her students often remind her of said joke.

Frankly, I'm sick of that joke. I decided there needs to be another joke that chemistry teachers can tell their students. So here's the bon mot I came up with:

Three atoms walk into a bar: a German atom (germanium?), a Polish atom (polonium?), and a Swiss atom (oh, I don't know ... Ytterbium?).

The German atom says to the Polish atom, "I want der SudetenElektron! Give me der SudetenElektron!"

To which the Polish atom replies, "No."

But the German atom is adamant: "I need der SudetenElektron to complete my vaterla ... er, valence frontier!" But still the Polish atom refuses.

Realizing that this is going nowhere, both atoms turn to the Swiss atom and ask him what he thinks.

The Swiss atom, which neither desires additional electrons, nor wants to get rid of any of the electrons it already has, shrugs and says, "Don't ask me — I'm neutral!"

A perfect blend of chemistry, history, and hilarity! I'm so gonna start writing for Leno.

The pluck of the Irish

Today being St. Patrick's Day, I decided to approach people wearing obvious amounts of green. I would say to them, smiling, "Do you know what day today is?"

And of course they would reply, perhaps with a wink, "Yes I do!"

And then I'd give them a big pinch on the butt! And surprised and dismayed, they'd look at me and ask, "Hey, why'd you do that?"

To which I'd reply, "I'm sorry, I'm color blind."

Or at least, I thought about doing that. Because I'd get to pinch everyone's butt.

Punino

A joke, inspired by last night's excellent dinner cooked by Julia:

Q: What is the president of Russia's favorite dish to eat when he's watching the car race?

A: Pasta Putin-NASCAR!

Okay, I guess calling it "inspired" is a bit of a stretch.

But now that I've come to terms with the olives in my life, I really do like pasta puttanesca. Mmm....

PoMo ho-ho's

I got my latest edition of Highlights for Postmodern Children today, and I'm sad to see that they've cancelled this niche spinoff of the childhood magazine due to low circulation.

But, as always, I turned first to the jokes section, and I thought I'd reproduce some of their gags here, seeing as people will no longer be able to enjoy them in printed form.

Tim: If seagulls fly over the sea, what flies over the bay?

Jim: Pardon me?

Tim: If seagulls fly over the sea, what flies over the bay?

Jim: I suppose it depends on where the bay is, but I've been down to San Francisco a few times, and I'm pretty sure I saw seagulls there, too. Maybe a few terns, plenty of pigeons — although I'm sure they don't go out too far, since their wings are shorter than those of seagulls ... I don't know, I guess I'm not too knowledgeable about sea birds, really.

Tim: Baygulls!

Jim: Pardon?

Tim: Baygulls!

Jim: Are you changing the subject or is this one of those "surrealist" jokes where the punch line is always "fish", except you've changed it up and now it's "bagels"?

Tim: No no! Baygulls fly over the bay!

Jim: Look, it's not your diction that's causing me to not understand, so there's no need to overemphasize things. This isn't an anti-Semitic joke, is it? You know I hate anti-Semitic humor — it demeans the Jews, and I don't like that.

Tim: I really can't believe that you're not getting this — children as young as four can usually find the humor in this joke. Look, it's a simple analogy: "sea" is to "bay" as "seagull" is to "baygull", right? The joke is that there's no such bird as a "baygull", but it sounds like another English word, "bagel", a toroidal foodstuff that is actually incapable of flight, which leads to cognitive dissonance with the stated premise, thus eliciting humor.

Jim: Ah, I see.

And here's another gem.

Wilhelmina: Why was five afraid of six?

Billhelmina: Mm-hm.

Wilhelmina: Because six seven eight.

Billhelmina: Sounds good.

Wilhelmina: Get it?

Billhelmina: I hate your stupid humor.

Wilhelmina: Six seven eight! Ha!

Billhelmina: This is stupid. My name's not really Billhelmina, by the way. I took this job because I was told it was a serious acting part. This is demeaning. I hate postmodernism.

Finally, I was pleasantly surprised to see a few foreign-language jokes, including the one below. I really think that this vein could have been mined a lot more, but I guess now the comedic precious metal will remain in unhumorous ore form.

Alberto: ¡Toc toc!

Malberto: ¿Quién es?

Alberto: Bu.

Malberto: ¿Bu quién?

Alberto: ¡No llores!

Malberto: No estoy llorando.

For the record, I'm not really sure what postmodernism is, but from what I can tell, making heavy allusion to it while being ignorant of its basic premise seems somehow in keeping with its basic premise.

What can I say, I didn't sleep well last night.

An exciting story, blogged

I was threatened to within an inch of my life this morning.

Admittedly, the angry man that yelled at me had a right to be upset, since I was passing him on the left, and I know I know that's wrong.

Still, we were just walking down the sidewalk.

Whoops, there's a typo in the preceding paragraphs. He didn't actually threaten me. And he wasn't angry. But I was thinking that it would be funny if he had threatened me, or at least shook his fist and yelled nonsensical gibberish in my general direction. And it's the thought that counts.

To be fair, we did share a few (potentially) tense seconds as we were both walking next to each other at similar speeds. For all I know, he was angry at having to share the sidewalk with me, but if so, he apparently bottled up his frustration.

You see, this is the level of conjectural storytelling (i.e. fibbing) I'm reduced to in order to keep my blog "fresh" and "def".

I swear, if I ever have a kid who comes home one day and says, "Kadizzle, Dad, today in class I made a blog," I'm going to sit him down and have a serious talk.

"Son," I'll say, "You know I don't like that new-fangled slang that you kids use these days," for I assume that "kadizzle" will be a new word that kids will start using in five to ten years. It will be a form of greeting that, although colloquial, is used to greet elders and respected people. I'm conjecturing.

Anyhow, I'll say, "Son, schladazzle," using the slang term I presume will exist for elders to refer endearingly to the young, thereby gaining my son's trust, "I think you need to know that blogs are not to be trifled with. With potentially infinite readership comes potentially infinite responsibility."

I'll continue, "I know that blogs seem like fun — and they can be — but I don't want to see you neglecting your other work because you have a blog now. For instance, just because you're a mature blog-man now, don't think that you're getting out of your trip to Disneyland."

For, you see, I assume that by that time, Disneyland will have evolved into a soulless, corporate environment that is more tedious than fun.

Anyhow, the real point of this story, other than to concretize my predictions for future neologisms, is that having a blog and being stuck indoors in an SQL class on a beautiful day is a dangerous combination. Gads, it's so nice outside.

I got your e-mail

One of the groups at work recently requested that we set up an autoresponder for e-mails sent to a generic e-mail address for their group. You know, the kind of thing that, when you send an e-mail to info@example.com, says "We received your e-mail and will reply as soon as possible."

For all the useful information such fake e-mail contains, it might as well say, "Beep * Transmission complete * Status=14908". I loathe these kinds of e-mails, and I can't understand why anyone thinks they're useful.

I mean, try to imagine an analagous situation with phone calls. You call a company and they don't answer, so you leave a message. As soon as you hang up the phone, you get a call back. It's a computerized voice, telling you that "This is DynoCorp's message system, and I just received your voice mail. Someone will get back to you soon about that." Well, duh. Did you really doubt that your message was recorded? Did that computerized call back reassure you?

Sure, back in the Wild West days of the Internet, I guess you were never sure that any e-mail you'd sent had actually gotten through — maybe e-Indians had ambushed the e-Pony-Express or whatever. But I don't think that happens a lot these days.

Instead, with the ubiquity of internet connections and e-mail usage, it's now less a question of "did they get my e-mail" as "will they actually bother reading it and responding", which of course is entirely up to the potentially capricious human behind the e-mail address, and not at all a technical question.

And yet the autoresponder is not capable of sentience, much less capriciousness, so it blithely replies to everything, from gibberish medical spam to the world's most beautiful poetry, with "We received your e-mail and will reply as soon as possible."

And it's not even necessarily true! The only entity who you can be certain has received your e-mail is the autoresponder, and clearly it's not going to do much useful with your message. Will a human read your message? Maybe. Will they reply? It depends. Will it be as soon as possible? Do I even need to ask?

I guess I have a special place in my gall bladder for such e-mails because, as the person who sends out our company's e-mail newsletter (or rather, oversees the automated sending of the same), I have to scroll through screens of informationless e-mails every time we send out a newsletter. I don't mind the many "out of office" messages we also receive, because that actually tells me something I didn't know (not that I particularly care in this case), but scanning through hundreds of e-mails written by computers can get a fellow down.

I bring all this up because today, something went wrong. I'm not sure why it didn't happen before — I guess we hadn't sent out an e-mail newsletter since we'd set up the autoresponder. Anyhow, I noticed that the generic e-mail inbox for the newsletter was filling up with dozens and dozens of e-mails, all from the same place and with the same subject line.

It was the sort of thing that strikes fear into my heart because something was clearly going very wrong, it didn't seem like it was going to stop, and it there was a good chance it was my fault. Webmasters rarely get to use their "fight or flight" responses in their jobs, but this one certainly set my adrenaline pumping. If I were starring in a show called "Web Master!", a military fanfare would have started playing at that moment.

My mind raced — was there something wrong with the e-mail sending mechanism? No, I hadn't changed anything there, and it had been working fine for dozens of previous newsletters. But why, my mind yelled a little loudly in my ear, are a handful of e-mail addresses continually sending us these e-mails?

Your being the clever type, you've probably figured out by now what was going on. Included in our list of newsletter recipients were a few e-mail addresses that also were set up with autoresponders.

And while most "out of office" functions are clever enough to send only one e-mail saying "I'm not here" per day, all the autoresponders in this scenario were stone-cold stupid (in our case, it's because Microsoft designed it that way — "Who needs an autoresponder that keeps track of the people it's already autoresponded to?", someone said in a meeting in Redmond).

The upshot of this all being that, for several minutes (before I finally just turned off our autoresponder), our server was having a conversation with other servers that went something like this: "I got your message." "I got your message." "Great! I also got your message." "And I got your message." "Okay. Oh, and also, I got your message." And so on.

Just two computers, carrying on their own highly repetitive — if annoyingly polite — conversation, and willing to carry it on into eternity, barring the intervention of any meddling webmasters.

But before I killed our autoresponder, leaving the other servers' autoresponders to wonder what had happened to their new, garrulous friend, I thought for a second about all the meaningless, perfunctory chatter going back and forth and I realized, "You know, that reminds me a lot of blogs".

Math parties

The other day Julia was talking to a girl from church who's in high school. The girl was complaining about things in school at the end of the semester.

Julia, a high school teacher, was interested in how other schools operate, and asked the girl for specifics of what was annoying her. The girl replied with a roll of the eyes, "Well, for instance, tomorrow we're having a math party."

While school parties can indeed be quite lame, Julia was surprised at how annoyed the girl was at this event — she wasn't normally one to complain that things weren't cool enough. "That doesn't sound so bad," said Julia.

"I don't think you understand," said the girl, "What they call 'math parties' are actually tests — they call them parties because they think it's fun for us to be able to demonstrate our math competence."

Well, Julia couldn't help but agree that that was pretty lame.

But I for one welcome this newspeak trend in our schools. What better way for our children to learn that "black" is often white, "up" is often down, and "saving Social Security" is actually a plan to divert funds to a eugenics program that will create a so-called master race?

I look forward to more children talking about, for instance, "donating an organ" when they have to get their appendix removed, or "encouraging life" when they have a bacterial infection. It's the dawning of a beautiful new day.

Pope Rooney

I don't know why I never noticed this before, but when I was reading an article about the pope today, I looked at a picture of him and thought, "By golly, that's Andy Rooney!"

This, of course, goes a long way towards explaining the Pope's recent encyclicals which, usually written in formal Latin, have of late been written in a rambling English voice that some have described as "whiny".

In particular, many thought peculiar the encyclical "What's up with the movies", which contains the following passage:

You ever notice how the movies are showing more and more violence and sex than before? Whatever happened to the days when people could view entertainment that didn't embrace a culture of death, or glorify adultery? I call on Catholics worldwide to embrace a new culture, such as found in more wholesome fare like National Velvet. Do you remember that movie? No breasts jiggling, nobody getting dismembered, just a simple story about a girl and a horse. I guess things have changed since then.

It goes without saying that I've never seen the pope and Andy Rooney in the same room together.

Consistigoblins

A rather unusual confluence of indie rock and butchered platitudes occurred yesterday, and I found myself singing, to the tune of The Shins' "Kissing the Lipless" the following phrase: "and secretly, consistigoblins in the yard".

Consistigoblins, of course, being the small things that live in hobminds. Sure, it makes no sense, but have you read the lyrics to that song?

Sitting in SQL class

{Submitted while in my SQL class}

Okay, if my instructor refers to Microsoft's SQL Server Enterprise Manager as "Enterprise Mangler" one more time, I'm going to scream. Actually, I won't, because it's a given that he's going to say it several more times before lunch, and screaming that much would be rude.

Same goes for pronouncing SQL Server as "squeal server", though. Gads.

Ha ha, isn't this software we're learning about terrible? No word yet on whether MySQL might be humorously pronounced as "My Suckle". Whee!

Bridge-crossing music

I've been trying to find different ways to walk to work in an effort to get more steps, and today I took one of the more out-of-the-way routes, across the Ross Island bridge.

Walking more is good, but over the course of four miles, my brain needs to find ways to occupy itself. Unfortunately, today it chose to do so by endlessly repeating "Can't Fight This Feeling" by — sigh — REO Speedwagon.

At first, it was amusing to change lines like "You're a candle in the window on a cold, dark winter's night" into "You're a candle in the wind, oh, just like Marilyn and Di", but really, there's only so many times a man can sing — to himself or occasionally at full volume, if the traffic was loud — "It's time to bring this ship into the shore and throw away the oars, forever". What kind of ship is this guy piloting, anyhow? A Viking skiff?

Gettin' snarky with the journalists, part 2, part 2

In keeping with Twinkie-centric (and therefore egocentric, but keep in mind this is a blog) posts, I hereby present the second in a series of e-mails with a USA Weekend journalist who is writing an article on Twinkies.

When last I corresponded with this writer, she had asked some very basic questions, to which I answered expansively. In this exciting installment, we get down to the nitty-gritty: getting my name in print.

Date: Sun, 30 Jan 2005 12:53:33 EST
From: Xxxxxxx@aol.com
To: Todd Stadler
Subject: Your quote for USA Weekend article

Hi Todd,

You are one funny fellow. I've enclosed your quote from the first draft of my article. If you wish to make corrections, please do so IN CAPS.

Thanks,
Xxxx

"In 1995, during finals week, a group of Rice University students conducted a hilarious series of scientific tests on Twinkies called The Twinkie Project. The logo T.W.I.N.K.I.E.S is an acronym for Tests With Inorganic Noxious Kakes In Extreme Situations. According to co-founder, Todd Stadler, the Project was a desperate attempt to stave off sleep and/or the need to study. 'This would have been unremarkable for college students had we not also decided to post our results on the relatively nascent Web,' says Stadler. 'Once you're on the Internet, you're credible. And funny — at that time, the only other stuff on the Web was scientific research. So you didn't have to try hard to be lauded as hilarious.'"

My response is below.

Dear Xxxx,

You had originally referred to it as "The Twinkie Project". However, it is officially called The T.W.I.N.K.I.E.S. Project, or The TWINKIES Project, depending on how you want to display acronyms. I also think you should delete "The logo" from "The logo T.W.I.N.K.I.E.S ...", since I think it's really more of a title than a logo, but I reckon that would out in editing. There's nothing that reflects more poorly on my status as a funny guy than misattribution. Or brand dilution.

Furthermore, I don't think I was really a co-founder of the T.W.I.N.K.I.E.S. Project, since it's not like The Mayo Clinic or anything (mmmm ... mayo). It's not an ongoing project, so I'd rather be referred to as an co-author, or if it suits your piece better, a co-creator. Again, this reflects better on how funny I am. "Co-founder" just reeks of self-seriousness (e.g. "Allan Smithee, co-founder of the Enuresis Eradication Initiative"), whereas "co-author" makes one unable to stop giggling (e.g. "Amanda Huggenkiss, co-author of The Merck Index").

Other than those changes, I suppose the quote is accurate, although I think that it really makes me sound like I was serious about us being the first funny thing on the Web. It kind of makes me sound like a pompous ass, to be honest. I suppose it's up to you to decide if that is an accurate reflection.

If I were you, I'd put in the (hopefully-obviously-sarcastic) line about Highlights for Children, which communicates the true nature of my comments, while at the same time being pure comic gold that you can put for free in your article. If people get to read that line, they'll laugh and probably forget about the state of the world and their finances and donate lots of money to your newspaper. Plus, have you heard of the Pulitzer Prize? If you put that line about knock-knock jokes into your article, when people read it, they'll actually think, "This person deserves the Pulitzer!" (you, Xxxx, not me). Just a tip from me to you.

Maybe you're thinking that your editor is old and doesn't "get" irony or those other new-fangled forms of humor that the kids keep coming up with these days. But you laughed when you read it. Don't you want your readers to laugh, too? Again, far be it from me to tell you how to run your career, but you should go over your stodgy editor's head and show the Highlights line to the CEO of your company, and after he's done wiping the tears from his eyes, tell him you think he should fire your editor and move you into his position, because how could the editor not like that line? Then, while the CEO is still laughing and therefore in the palm of your hand, suggest the line be made the paper's motto, or inserted into the masthead or something. Let's see how far this can go.

But that's just my feeling. Maybe you're afraid I'm going to steal the show (just like that sycophant Raven-Symone stole the spotlight on The Cosby Show and now everyone talks about her and noboby even knows who Bill Cosby is) and your editor is actually going to fire you and bring me in to replace you. After all, I sure do seem fixated o