i might regret this in the morning

originally posted May 4, 2007

6:00:00 – Searing uterine pain.

6:00:30 – Vicodin.

6:00:33 – Beeeeeeeeeer…..

6:45:00 – Party with faculty!

So there I was, talking to a woman who had never ridden a bike. She had never heard of Lizzie Borden either. I guess I can see the Lizzie Borden part happening, maybe, but the bike part? I mean, never? Where did I find this person? I'll tell you – at a party full of math computer people and computer math people and (if it happened they were the variety who has been able to successfully simulate human-human interaction) their spouses. And this woman was none of these people. She was a new faculty member from a seemingly normal area where you assume people ride bikes and know stuff. Naturally, because I was full of merriment and substances, I thought it would be a good idea to tell her about my house ghosties and the zombies I fear. I'd already told another complete stranger who complimented me on my dress that I found dresses to be awesome because they are handy for a person like me who doesn't spend enough time doing laundry – you never need pants! It was that sort of night.

I soon found myself at the cheese table. The good BS had interrupted my conversation with the bike-eschewing luddite to present me with a glass of green tea liqueur, which I promptly seized and ran away with. I needed to figure out the alcohol content of said liqueur so that I could establish an appropriate rate of consumption. Standing about the table I found the following:

1) the guy who at some point may have been a philosophy professor, but now is just the guy who shows up at colloquia all the time and asks long, ridiculous questions;

2) the undergraduate guy who manages the pigeon lab;

3) the new-to-us faculty guy who is supposed to a) be a really big deal, and b) be a really big ass. To wit: The whole reason for this party was to lure another big deal guy to come to our school. Earlier in the day the big deal guy we were luring had given what I've been told was an awesome talk in which he discussed affordances – the idea that objects have affordances, and so you look at objects and appraise what you can do with them and such (I would tell you more, but I wasn't there. I just asked BS to tell me about the notion of affordances, briefly, so that I might better explain it, and he's just going on and on and on. I listened for a while, but now I've given up. He's still talking as I write this. Jeez, now he's just invited me to join a reading group because there's an article I might be interested in and blah blah blah. Note to self: do not ask BS stuff.) Anyway, Awesome Talk used as an example a chair. He explained how you could use it as a tool for flinging a rattlesnake off a porch, for fighting off a lion, etc. I've been told this involved him actually picking up a chair and flinging imaginary rattlesnakes around and fighting off imaginary lions and things like that. I've been told that the momentum he'd built was incredible, and everyone was completely enthralled – I mean, do you know how often that sort of colloquium occurs? A colloquium in which there is a really good talk that involves chairs being hoisted in the air and lions attacking?? Not bloody often! So I've been told that just when Awesome was really making his point, and who knows what was about to happen, Guy 3 Smarty Smart yelled out, "What about a CLOUD? A cloud has no affordances!" Thwap. That is the sound of the gauntlet hitting the ground. Consider it thrown. You have been challenged by Guy 3. Of course this cloud question wrecked the momentum Awesome had going and I'm sure pissed the bejesus out of everyone there because suddenly Awesome had to address the issue of cloud affordances and this put an end to the chair waving. Yes – Guy 3 is THAT guy.

Now, returning to the scene: if you are picturing these men and have conjured up some sexy professorial types, or dorky-sexy busmen (ahem, Kristin, I am talking to you), please stop. These men are not those men. Let me help you with your mental image. First, be sure that Guy 1 is carrying a book bag, the sort you get for free in the mail with address labels from the World Wildlife Federation, and be sure the book bag is crammed full of wrinkled papers and journals from 1973. Now, cover the lower half of Guy 2's face with an enormous, bushy beard, and make it red, but allow him to continue wearing the dorky-sexy bus glasses. Finally, make sure Guy 3 is dressed like Bob Ross, and stop imagining him bald and goateed. Rather, give him hair that has been cut by a flowbee. A homemade flowbee. Your image of me is probably already sufficiently developed – remember, I'm the one who never needs pants, and I am sauced.

The conversation turned to me pretty quickly when I approached the table and smiled at this motley academic crüe. I will spare you the details of the actual conversation, as it wasn't that interesting. As you might have predicted, Guy 1 appeared easily startled, Guy 2 was a pleasant pigeon enthusiast who seemed afraid of me, and Guy 3 was a complete ass. Some words were exchanged as we established who I was, what program I was from, and what I studied. I steered the conversation away from me and on to the topic of pigeons, and Guy 2 was more than happy to wax on about the joys of the lab. I was fixing to ask him if he had a paperclip fetish, but then thought better of it. What I actually thought was "Fuck this", and so I began initiating the nice-to-have-met-you-handshake-goodbye activity so that I could leave. I wanted to go back and find No Bikey and engage her in a conversation that did not involve references to popular culture or those new-fangled penny-farthings.

Before I could get away though, there was a wonderful moment of dork-waddery in which Guy 3 distinguished himself as King Dork of Cheesetable – no easy task, mind you, as he was in the company of some of the finer specimens of D, myself included – by forgetting the name of the only female in the group. (Ahem. Me). Not only that, but he thought my name was Merick. Yeah – Merick. I said, "Dude, that's not even close. That's just his name with an 'M' on it." I pointed my finger at Guy 2 (a.k.a. "Erick"), smiled and shook my head sadly at Guy 3, tipped my glass to Guy 1, and wandered away.

It seemed the conversation wasn't over. Guy 3 followed me outside to where I was attempting to hide in a group with BS and other quasi-normal people. I tried to blend into this bunch, but Guy 3 saw me hiding in a chair, marched up to the group, interrupted the conversation and said to me the following:

"So. You're in the quantitative program? Tell me then: in multidimensional scaling, given that it's a linear model, what circumstances would give rise to a toroidal space with a wrap around?"

Jesus. That question again? I should mention that in six years of graduate study, the only time the term 'toroidal' has come up has been during my attempts to plot jumps through hyperspace.

Qwanty: "Yeah, I don't study multidimensional scaling."

Guy 3: "Well, surely you've heard of it."

Q: "Yeah. But I don't study it."

That was all. Flick. Like a tiny, pesky gnat. Get your flowbee'd arse off my arm. I turned and resumed conversation. It was later reported to me that Flowbs looked like he'd been kicked in the chest, so uninterested was I in his little beer spattered gauntlet. Hooray Vicodin!