Least favorite holiday candy

So how many candy canes have you eaten this Christmas? I think I'm up to about three or four, which is a lot more than normal. As a kid I used to eat them all the time. I recall my parents limiting my brother and I to a single candy cane each per day in the days before Christmas. As a kid a candy cane was fun, though I'm sure my parents thought that they were just a sticky mess, then again what in the hands of a child isn't?

As the years went on I ate them less and less, but this year I bought a dozen just before Christmas and I've been enjoying them since then. Though I have to say I don't enjoy them nearly as much as I did as a kid, because they are so damn messy!

One thing I want to know is who designed the plastic wrap for the candy canes. Not only does the plastic break with ridiculous ease when you try to peal it off, but it develops a static charge comparable to a super conductor. I swear that the other night I spent a couple of minutes leaning over the garbage can trying to get a finger sized piece of the plastic off one hand, then the other, hoping somehow that I could shake it off me.

The other thing I want to know is when was the last time that you ever got an intact candy cane? Every one I ever eat is always broken in several sections, even though it was packed so that it was almost suspended weightlessly in its box. Now the fact that they come broken isn't that bad, I prefer bite sized pieces rather than sucking on the end of a candy cane all night. But the problem is that they never break cleanly. There are always millions of candy cane shards that will spill out of the plastic wrap, or cling to is desperately (only to fall onto the couch as I try to throw out the wrapping). And I'm quite curious how the shards all stay so tightly together that no matter how closely I inspect the candy cane I never see the breaks until I unwrap it. Even more impressive is how far the shards will go and how sticky they can be. I'm actually rather embarrassed to admit this next bit, but somehow the other night part of a candy cane fell down my shirt. Sadly I didn't find it until I went to bed that night, it managed to get stuck in my belly button...I think I've just reached a new all-time low in candy eating.

Sometimes you just wonder

So it's been a while since I wrote anything on here, what can I say, I'm busy and life is rather boring at times. Plus I don't know how interested you are in hearing that I have students who almost failed my class because they just didn't bother to submit their results for labs that they did. But that would just be mean to the little twits.

What I do what to talk about is a very odd tattoo I saw a month or more ago. I've seen many tattoos, some neat, some just plain dumb, but this one may take the cake for just plain stupid. The guy who had it was sitting across from me on the trolley and I didn't notice the tattoo right away, because it was on his upper lip, at a glance it almost looked like a mustache grown by a fourteen year-old boy. When I noticed that he in fact had a tattoo there I needed to figure out what it was, because being so prominently on display it must be important. Well it turns out that it was writing that said "Will eat pussy". I'm not making any of this up, the guy, about 25 or so, had permanently written on his upper lip (on the outside, unlike the "gentleman" in the picture below) that he will eat pussy.

Now beyond being a sure way to avoid any kind of career with high earning potential I'm still kind of confused why he got this tattoo in the first place (and why he doesn't have a mustache all the time now). After all, to me, if you're a straight guy you should be willing to "eat pussy", so there really is no need to advertise the fact. Frankly, tattooing that to your lip probably ensures that you will not be eating anything but illiterate pussy. The only other reason I could imagine is if this young man was from a culture wherein the men tend not to be willing to give oral pleasure. Then it would make some sense to advertise your willingness to do this, but there are two things wrong with that reasoning. For one, I would imagine that you would be rather ostracized or at least viewed as less of a man by the rest of the men of your culture for branding yourself as a pussy eater. Secondly, the guy was Latino, now not I'm not one to believe in stereotypes too much, but the whole idea of a "Latin Lover" to me would suggest a willingness of the men to go down on their lovers, so once again no need to advertise the fact exists.

Anyway, I just thought I would share that with you guys. If anyone else can come up with a reason why someone would get that tattooed to their lip I'd love to hear it. I'm also curious to know what goes through the mind of a tattoo artist while he is doing a job like that.

I'm still here

So I’m feeling as though I’ve begun adapting rather well to life down in California. I now find temperatures below 12 C feel cold. It really kind of sucks, because I know that most of the people who read this blog are living somewhere that 12 C would seem like a hot day right about now. And in the past I would have agreed, but now that I no longer need to rely on massive amounts of internal body heat to stay warm I kind of feel cold earlier. I just hope that I don’t start packing on the pounds rather than translating that extra energy into heat as I used to.

It also seems that I’m losing track of time without an actual passing of seasons. I can hardly believe that we are closing in on the halfway point of December. What happened to November? I guess that also comes with being rather busy pretty much constantly. My class has been moving along quickly, I still feel that I need to work on my course material a bit, but seeing as there are no more classes left to the semester that’s obviously not a pressing concern. The only thing left is the final exam, which they will have to write on Thursday, so I have to write an exam for them between now and then. And I have to make it a nice one after I sort of accidentally broke their spirits with the two midterms.

On top of all that I was also on a thesis defense committee today. Obviously I’ve only had to defend a thesis before now, so it was a bit strange. I think I may have been almost as nervous as the student before things got started. Partially I was nervous because I felt that the thesis was incredibly poorly written. Sadly it seems I was about the only one with those concerns. Regardless the student will have to correct a number of aspects of the thesis before I sign off on it. Though in retrospect I think I let things slide a bit more than I should have, but it’s not like anyone ever tells us what the standard is for one of these things.

Oh well, I’m sure I’ll see plenty of more less than stellar theses along the way. I have to remember that the bar at this university is set a good bit lower than it was at any other university that I have dealt with since my own undergrad. Of course that doesn’t mean that I’m going to lower my standards as well. When my students hand a thesis to their committee members it’s going to be damn near perfect. Now, if only I had some students to work on a thesis project to begin with...