A last hurrah... Um. Well... Hurrah.

So it's been a long long time since my last post, and I suspect this may well be the last. This blog is now officially a year old, assuming you don't notice the disappearance for months at a time towards the end - and that seems like a good life for a 'coming-to-a-new-country' blog.

Since I last wrote, a lot has happened, but with long stretches of same-old same-old boringness in between. Life is becoming predictable, and therefore less worthy of blather.

But happen, things have. I went rushing around Canada, I got my brother married (being MC allowing plenty of space for socially sanctioned and appreciated abuse of the poor bastard), I started and ended a rather serious relationship. I travelled around Portugal with my good friend Mike in immediate-having-broken-up mode, which was comforting and nice. There we learned many things, including the important lesson that the very same Atlantic ocean which is numbing-on-contact cold at mainland Portugal, is quite pleasantly warm a thousand km's off the coast at Madeira Island - a beautiful volcanic island that you all should visit should you ever head down Iberia way. And while At Madeira you should rent a car and drive as fast as your mountain gearing will permit (our crappy jeep maxed out at 85 k's an hour) headlong past the massive prettiness, and you should ride the modern gleaming cable car up the mountain at Funchal, and then take the sled back down. And when I say sled, I mean 'large wicker basket with a bench in it and 2 by 4 wooden runners nailed to the bottom'. Two gents in white shirts and boaters will launch the thing off for a small fee, then steer it down windy mountainside streets by strategically dragging their feet. Most exciting, and only slightly expensive. They'll even take an action photo of you half way down and knob you for it at the bottom.

My latest preoccupation lies in the considerably more depressing domain of trying to figure out what in heck I'm going to do next year. I'll spare you the details, and leave you just the emotion. Ahhh! And yes, I appreciate your "there there, it will be alright"s, but there is absolute factual and actuarial grounding for being scared, so.... well... Ahhh!

I am dealing with it by doing some work, looking into possibilities, and getting out for games of ultimate, Pilates, and joining a rock climbing club (just went on a weekend trip to beautiful Arkansas, where we camped packed in tents, existed without showers or socks (you would have to take them off all the time to put your climbing shoes on), exercised extreme-laid-back climber culture, and struggled up cliff faces. Or at least, *I* struggled, beginner that I am. But I do look quite resplendent in my new tight purple leather climbing shoes (with rubber crustings on the bottom). Rrrrr.

But now I shall sign off (oh, short entries! How long you have all prayed for them, and how I have rewarded you of late). I shall not leave you without a bite of wisdom, though: When obliged to wade through frigid Atlantic waters to get from, say, one beach past a headland to another, the critical consideration is whether the water reaches groin depth. If it does, you may become acquainted with our neologism of the trip: "Icticles".

Let the CoMO revolution begin! Possibly in a dress.

Yae, a month since my last post. I think life is slowing down (or at least, the novelty value of it). Lucky you, dear reader, lucky you.

So I did my first ever foot race! It was a 5k run for breast cancer (to cure it, not receive it - honestly, who let you onto the internet?). I *think* my time was under half an hour, but I wasn't wearing my watch, so this depended on asking someone after the end line who may or may not have been confused. Anyway, the old knees gave me a bit of grumbling, but I just ran through that, and since then they seem to be getting better and better. But then they should, as going to the gym seems to be my main hobby these days.

Anyway, the true heroes of the race were these people who forwent the actual running in favour of standing along the course, just cheering the runners. It was all just give give give, so I made a point of cheering THEM on as I went past.

There was an end of term party at one of the prof's houses. Said house is perched on the edge of a cliff, overlooking a smallish lake with a floating dock in it, that is apparently the private domain of these surrounding houses. They apparently also have tennis courts and barbeques and such down there. Keep in mind that this is smack dab in the middle of Columbia, a 5 minute walk from my house.

The list of shows I have seen in the university's auditorium includes a Mozart Opera, two prominent authors reading, and now a drag show. It was fun, but a bit long. Yes, they dragged it out (sigh). Anyway, I learned several things about the world of drag.

First is the importance of a good name. The host was Miss Aida Buffet (hint to appreciating name: she was a self described "fat bitch"), and one of the other acts called herself Miss Frida Bancock. This one was even more rotund than Aida, and billed herself as "Columbia's largest living indoor attraction." Said line being funny the first 8 times it was used.

The other thing I learned is that to win a "Miss Gay State" title, it is not important to be stunningly good looking. What you need, it became apparent, is a killer celebrity impression. We had a former and current Miss Gay Missouri at the show, and one did a bang-on Celine Dion (complete with wig and pant suit), while the other nailed Tina Turner, complete with power tantrum moves. I'm sure this observation will help many of you in your future title-grubbing careers.

The star attraction, though, was Miss Coco Peru. She was, I think, the best live entertainment I have seen in years. She sang, she told poignant stories, she took passing shots at CoMO (having dinner with Mike and UnTexas girl a few weeks back we invented this acronym for the town, and decided that it was so cool we needed to promulgate it widely. Consider yourself promulgatized). She was, in short, fabulous, and if she's ever in your area (and she does get around) go see her. Cancel dinner plans, jilt the pope, I don't care what it takes, go see her. Consider yourself promulgatizicamated about this too.

Now you may think that our coinage of CoMO is just unspeakably cool, and the locals seem to agree - so much so that some of them have even adopted it retroactively, extending their usage prior to our invention! For example, at the drag show, one of the acts (three women dressed quite convincingly as boys) was the "CoMO homo's"... They apparently do a regular gig called the "CoMO homo show-mo" (Missouri styles itself the "show me" state). They did a few songs and a bit of amusingly transparent political theatre, with one of them in a big rubber Dubya head chasing around the statue of liberty, and jumping on a sign saying "Bill of Rights". The funniest part was at the end, where they ripped off their costumes to reveal t shirts that spelled "revolution" across the three of them - except Liberty couldn't get her green wrap off fast enough, and they all had stop and claw away at her outfit. It was a sight to warm an elementary school teachers heart.

Last thing: Columbia put on a "gallery crawl." About 14 places put up art, arranged wine and cheese, and for a few hours let you stagger back and forth collecting clues hidden in each place to assemble a puzzle that you could submit to win one of 5 prizes. The art was pretty good, though it's not REALLY my bag, but here's the REALLY weird part. I won! They just phoned me up and told me so. I am now the proud owner of a $20 gift certificate at a store on Broadway called "Cool Stuff". That's cool! I never win stuff (it's genetic - nobody in my family does). I guess nobody got around to telling the American authorities yet.

Still waiting for the jack-booted guys to kick down my door and rectify the mistake.

Ah well, signing out!
Alex

GRRRRR!!!!!

You know what, it's been a "Grrrr" type of fortnight. Let me explain.

-My phone rang. A girl started talking. So far so good. But then:
"Mr. Newman?"
"No."
"Are you the person who owns Soco Club?"
So apparently I am now the proprietor of the local gay bar. I will update my CV forthwith.

Speaking of Soco's, my gay buddy (GB) here just met UnTexas Girl. Free advice: Never introduce your friends. While they're going through the bonding process they want to explore things they have in common, and the one thing they can agree on is that they both know you well enough to make fun of. It's a 2 on 1. Grrr.

Anyway, when UnTexas Girl expresses enthusiasm for going to Soco, GB gets all excited and says he hasn't had anyone to go with in years. I object, and he accuses me of never having wanted to go. How this confusion? Our prior exchanges on the matter:

GB: "We should go to the gay bar some time. You'd like it."
Me: "Sure, sounds good."

Apparently he "didn't believe me". He should know by now that I have no guile. I do frequently say things that are inaccurate, grossly deceptive, or at the very least wrong, but that's just natural born ignorance. Honestly I can't think of the last time I told an actual lie. [sigh]. Wait till I tell him that I own Soco's now. That'll show him. Grrr.


-The other night I was peddling innocently along a dark quiet side street at low speed, sitting upright with my hands off the bars, and managed to have one of my strangest crashes ever. Normally crashes put holes in me, but do little permanent damage to the bike. This one was backwards. The chain inexplicably flipped off and jammed between the cogs and the frame, jarring my feet to a halt, pitching me over sideways, and the bike end over end. Mr. leather jacket meant no blood loss for me, but the bike had a tri-bar pad ripped off, and a brake lever bent. I was able to fix everything else about it. See picture. Yikes! Hello bike shop! Grrr.
Follow up: Hello pretty warm friendly spring in Columbia. Yaaay! Heeelllo backlog at the bike shop meaning I can't get in for ages. Grrr.



This also has me debating if I need to shell out 50 bucks for a new helmet. They're only good for one hit. I don't THINK my head hit the ground... but what if it did? Grrr.


-Ok, so it's not as earth shattering as buying a microwave (my microwave makes wheezing noises now when it cooks - what does this mean?), but I bought two new appliances the other day. I now have little battery operated fountains installed on my desk that trickle water soothingly down steps, into a puddle of rocks. Joy. Not bad for 5 bucks each.


-I saw bell hooks talk (note: that's a name, despite (as Ali points out) pretentious lack of capitalization). I was excited because she was famous (i.e., mentioned in the Moxy Fruvous song "my baby loves a bunch of authors"). Without going into a rant, this is the first time in living memory that I have been so bored with a talk that I have leapt up and left as soon as questions started. Grrr. Stupid neo-feminist po mo blather.


-My good friend from Canada phones up and tells me about this girl I have to meet. Apparently she's nice, funny, "looks like me [Alex] with boobs", and lives in Ottawa. For the record, that gets scored as "good, good, yee, good, and oh well". For the geographically challenged, that puts her somewhere slightly under 2,000 kilometers away (or 1,100 miles for the metrically challenged). But I had a nice chat with her on the internet anyway, and it turns out that she is indeed funny, and apparently nice.
Life. [shrug]. Grrrr.


-So the other day my office building caught fire. Well, not literally the building, but some of the mulch and bushes outside, courtesy of a careless smoker no doubt. It was a super windy day (it's a windy town, even before I came here and opened my yap) so the fire was heavily fanned. I admired the smoke and flare ups with a colleague called Wendy while we speculated on the phone number of the campus fire service. Then a grounds guy stoped by, radioed them, and we spent a good 10 minutes dumping buckets and coffee mugs of bathroom tap water over the flames.

Eventually an enormous fire truck arrived. The professionals took one look, cracked out rakes, and did a little impromptu gardenning (seriously, they raked the dirt over). Eventually another grounds person arrived with a hose, and doused whatever fun was left. And that was the official cue to go back to work. Grrr.

Note: Update to classic children's song: "And green grass grew all around and around, and little shrubs too, except in a blazing inferno, AHHHH."*

*Sub note: This is why I'm not in developmental psychology


-Finally the bright spot. I've been learning Perl recently (programming language), so that we can run experiments on the web. It's fun because you get to build things. Here is the first experiment I've ever built. I'm proud of it. It is supposed to give you the impression that it is measuring something profound. (really, that's what it is meant to do).
www.missouri.edu/~gunza/test/start.cgi

-Oh... and addendum: Mike from NYC visited here again... he and his buddy had tickets to college basketball finals in St. Louis. Once AGAIN we had a nice time and good chats, and more importantly, we discovered the vital importance of referring to Columbia Missouri as CoMO. You heard it first here folks.

Revenge of the license gnomes!!!!

I start with good news. Sock gnomes are a well known phenomenon. Wherever socks are dropped into washing machines, sock gnomes are busy at work pinching one of each pair. That's not the good news, but bear with me. Being as the number of black socks I have is small, I am loathe for it to also become odd. I therefore make time to fight the sock gnomes with safety pins (in the socks you ninny! The pins go in the socks. Aye karmuba).

But it seems that Missouri sock gnomes are a special breed; they play tough but fair. To wit: a few days ago, after emptying a small fortunes worth of quarters into my building's dryer, I returned to find an open safety pin and one unpaired black sock. BUT! In recognition of their having to work so hard to beat me, the gnomes left booty. Specifically, a pair of slinky black women's underwear. Yes, they had transmogrified my sock! (or traded for it, science cannot yet tell which). Unfortunately their new form, while potentially more exciting, wasn't very useful (You try keeping your toes warm with string!), so I left them on the washer for somebody else. But at least I learned that Missouri sock gnomes have a sense of fair play - and that makes the world a better and more virtuous place. Which, as I say, is good news.


I also made another happy discovery, this one to be found in the change rooms of my new gym. It is hot and wet, and not nearly as dirty as you are thinking (naughty person!). I'm talking about the hot tubs here for heavens sake!

Anyway, they have a warm one and a hot one, and I find that after doing weights (or otherwise beating the crap out of your body), you can actually feel your muscles unclench as you switch between them. Bliss. I recomend it muchly. And, even better, if you go really late at night (it's a 24 hour gym), they generally forget about charging you the 50 cent fee for renting towels (if you're like me and too lazy to bring and wash your own).


In travel news, I visited my friend Mike in Manhattan, which was a lot of fun. Good times and good conversation as always ensued (yaay Mike). I also gave another exciting rendition of my thesis talk, but this time at the University of Kansas (VERY pretty campus, BTW). I have a friend who did his grad school there, so he set me up, being as I'm kinda sorta local here. Long story short, I met the smart and interesting folks out there (great program), and they even put me up in a hotel for free. And plus the campus was pretty [sigh].

The Kansas trip, however, did have a hitch. I had planned to rent a car and drive there. I've been driving for something like 12 years now, so this seemed like a natural thing to do. But it turns out that to rent a car here you need a valid drivers license. Jerks!

Now understand that I do have a license, but it's so out-of-State that it's not even from a state. Sadly it seems that if you are here for more than a few months you have to get a Missouri license, otherwise ixnay on the ivingdray. I've already gambled with this a few times by driving friends' cars and praying that I wouldn't get pulled over, but it would definitely have been no dice at a rental place.

I needed to do the test, so spent a few days of total futility making phones in testing offices ring endlessly. Stupid American bureaucracy! Then my friends explained that you don't do that here, you just show up and do the test. In Canada I recall having to book tests 6 to 12 months in advance. Stupid American bureaucracy one, stupid Canadian bureaucracy zero.

I persuaded a very nice friend to drive me in her car to the local exam center, and then, in an extraordinary feat, unrivalled by any but the most hardened of adolescents, I passed! First time! With an almost perfect score.

This latter part was not an accident. Having conferred with friends beforehand I knew that the test here was the opposite of the Canadian one. In Ontario the written part is a joke ("at a stop sign you should: a) stop, b) speed up, c) display a valid license for any sock gnomes in the vehicle, d) not use the hot tubs"). The Ontario driving test, though, is brutal, with an incredibly high fail rate. Here, apparently, the driving part is pretty easy (I got nothing but a 3% deduction for backing up too close to the middle of a road), but the written tests involve specific and detailed knowledge. Highly credentialed people have been known to fail them.

As someone who had cleared better than 20 years of formal education, with racks of variously capitalized letters after my name (6, not including "JerK"), pride does not allow me to fail anything that comes in multiple choice format (with the possible exceptions of algebra and purity tests). I therefore spent a solid night scrutinizing the driver's handbook, and memorizing things like "rear lights have to be bright enough that you can see them 500 feet away" (asked), and "a floppy hat is an excellent accoutrement for pimping" (not asked, but should have been).

Anyway, long story short, I was first in line at the testing office, cut the written test short by getting 20 questions in a row correct, looked through a little window to read signs for a nice desk person (vision test), and was dispatched directly to my friend's car for the driving bit. All in all, I had a new photo license in my hand within 45 minutes of entering the office. I'm told that this all can normally take up to a few hours, but that still kicks Ontario's butt up and down any odd numbered (North-South) or even numbered (East-West) highway you can find with vision-test worthy eyes. See how much useless stuff I know now?


The last piece of news I will impart here is that I officially didn't win the CBC short story contest. It seems that the prizes went instead to published novelists - as the maxim goes: "to those who have shall be given". Ah well, it's probably my fault. I forgot to mention on the application that I am living in a State where concealed firearms are legal. Ah well, next time, Heston willing!

Depressing: movies, holiday, dating life. Not-so-depressing: Gym, SPAM DOGS. Upshot: movie recomendations from an increasingly fit person

So first off... go see Hotel Rwanda. Take your friends, take your acquaintances, take random people off the street. Holy shit, it's amazing, and if Don Cheadle doesn't win best actor at the Oscars it is only because not enough people went out and saw this film. I haven't seen many of the competing actors, but they just can't have been better.

It also rather puts your life in perspective. For example, I should probably be whining here about how Valentine's day is approaching and I will once again be bitter and single (went out for a while with Un-Texas girl, but recently she has run into some personal issues - there's no bad blood between us, we're still on excellent terms... they're just excellent SINGLE terms now). But... really... Y'know what, I'm just going to have to come back and write more of this later. It's hard to find stuff to make fun of when you're just thinking "wow, nobody is coming to kill me! And if they did, other people would be professionaly obliged to stop them. I'm so lucky." If this sounds like a wacky exaggeration to you, it is because you haven't seen the film yet. Go watch it.


Now... One of the drawbacks to being a Post Doc, is that I don't get in to the student gym for free any more. I have to pay now. On the upside, being a post doc pays well... or at least, better than being a grad student (side note: if you want to be as happy as a clam, the key lies with choosing the right comparisons. Of course, to be as happy as a clam is also to put yourself on a par with brainless, virtually immobile invertibrate, frequently eaten by obnoxious tourists at seaside resorts. Think about it, you're way better off than a clam! There, don't you feel better already? QED).

So anyway, Mizzou just finished building a brand sparklingly new gym that is so exceptionally nice that it would be foolish not to use. There is also a commercial one that is so much closer to my house that it would be foolish not to use. Fortunately I've had years of experience at the whole fool thing. After a little mulling I signed a year long contract with the 24 hour commercial one. Upshot?
Pro: Signing a long term contract makes me feel all growed up and mature.
Con: I don't know if I can sustain this illusion for a whole year. For me, 'mature' and 'manure' don't just rhyme. But! I do expect a big pay off from the gym, to be delivered in regular instalments of rippling muscle, stiff shoulders, and joints that crackle like a firing squad every time I stand up.

While I was buying my membership, though, I did manage to totally disconcert a crack sales representative. This guy was apparently a top salesman for Xerox before dropping out the corporate life to slow down and hang about in gyms. What he didn't know was that I had already scoped things out and made my decisions before I walked in the door. Clearly this doesn't happen much, because in mid-sell, as I acquiesced point after point, he suddenly came over with a wave of uncertainty, paused, knitted his brows and asked "are you always this relaxed?"
"Uh huh."

On a professional front I gave my first brownbag to the social psych division here in Columbia. For the pitifully ignorant few of you not conversant with academia (lucky bastards), a brownbag is a semi-formal presentation of research, in which some poor (usually) student talks for 45 minutes or so while everyone else watches, asks questions, and potentially eat their lunches, potentially out of brown paper bags. Hence the name. That said, I've never physically seen a brown paper bag in any of these. Ever. I've seen Tupperware, I've seen clear plastic bags, I've seen (in one very special professor's case) a lunch box, but never the eponymous bag. Perhaps in recognition of this, the folks here have renamed theirs to "SPAM DOG". Why "SPAM DOG," you ask? Some sincere mid-western appreciation for processed meat? A misguided belief that any given word from a Monty Python skit makes your seminars funny?

Sadly no. They used to hold their SPAM DOG at 4pm on Fridays, and then go drinking afterwards. They therefore concocted the acronym "Social Psychology Area Meating (my spelling, not theirs), Delay of Gratification". Unfortunately, these days too many faculty have kids that need picking up from school on Fridays afternoons, so it got moved earlier in the day. Voila, no more gratification, just a room full of people suffering through slides about my thesis - said thesis, my inner marketer would like you to know, now not available in bookstores anywhere!

Future plans: I'm going to rent a car and give another performance of my thesis talk at the University of Kansas next week. This should be cool as I'm told Lawrence Kansas is even nicer than Columbia. Also, some time in March I'm going to head out and visit my buddy Mike in Manhattan (hey, whaddaya want? You can't go to Lawrence every week).

Oh... update on the valentines day thing (yes, this entry written over several days). I ended up going out that night to do some sad-bastard-single-guy-drinking with a buddy. After a few drinks we went to this place for food, and discovered that they had table cloths down and candles on the tables. So there we were, the two of us having our private candle lit dinner on Valentines day, slowly realizing that to the rest of the room we were now officially gay. I think this notion was more alarming to him than to me though, because he really is gay, and so would have a harder time explaining it away to anyone who wasn't supposed to know.


over and out
Cheers
alex

If God had wanted this entry to have a title, he'd of given me a little box to write it in to.

Sorry, this entry is a little bit long too. Don't blame me, I actually cut stuff out already to shorten it. Anyway, here goes:


I got a very exciting magazine in the mail. It's the "Blackhawk product group catalogue", and it wants to sell me outfits to kill people in. Also it sells numerous pouches, belts, packs, "dynamic entry" devices (for hacking up doors), and had a multi page advert for the Gladius. The Gladius is for "Night-Ops", and is an "innovative handheld tactical illumination tool... designed primarily for handheld use... to be immersed into the realities of close quarter conflict and should significantly enhance the capabilities of those operating in low light environments." The Gladius has a lot of exciting features such as "an excellent center of gravity" and "a patent pending multifunction tail cap."

If you look at the picture, it becomes apparent that the Gladius is, in fact, a flashlight. Except, like, it will like totally help you flip out and kill people man! In night-ops!

Seriously, these guys are great. They also sell a "tactical caffeine transfer unit," which is a coffee mug, except it "can also double as a bludgeon in an emergency." Maybe later when I've climbed back onto my chair I'll tell you about their travel mug version, which has a tapered bottom "to stay secure in the cup holder of your vehicle." Because, you know, when you're driving your Ford Focus on a classified mission through a tactical supermarket parking lot environment, you wouldn't want to get a stain on your pants.


So! News! I went to this conference in New Orleans (aka "N'orlans"). It was a lot of fun, and I went into my usual conference social butterfly mode. The conference experience is changing for me, in part because I know a lot more people now, and in part because I'm getting more efficient at parsing posters quickly for interest /content. Posters are useful and social things. Useful, because presenting them is how most students persuade their schools to pay for their trips, and social because poster sessions are about the only time you get everybody all in the same room. After a few conferences and doing a summer school gig, the game becomes "can I walk down an aisle without meeting at least one person I know". In a crowded session it is a hard game.

I had a poster of my own up though. It was scheduled for 5:30 pm on the very last day, so it didn't attract an overkill number of bystanders. But it did get a few big names stopping by (none of whom anyone outside of social psychology will have heard of, but such is the nature of the beast). One of these luminaries decided that there was some German guy who was working in a similar vein and actually ran off to fetch him. Very flattering for a poor little post doc. It made me happy.


But here I am writing about New Orleans, and it is all boring conference talk. "What about Mardi Gras," You ask? "What about public drinking and vaguely indecent acts?

Well... The first Mardi Gras parade of the year was on the last night we were there, but... um... I missed it by about half an hour. But to compensate I did go on an extensive program of all the other sorts of things you're supposed to do in “N'orlans.” By popular cannon, this consists of meandering around the french quarter, going to Cafe du Monde, drinking 'hurricanes', and going on a ghost tour. I did them all. They were (in order): pretty cool, ok, highly alcoholic, and ok.

Bourbon street runs through the middle of the french quarter, and features lots of semi-old stuff, curlicued wrought iron, two storied buildings with balconies, and shops with cheap stuff for tourists. Much of it is quite pretty to look at, and expensive to eat at (quality not necessarily corresponding well with price). It also has a frat-like party each night, with crowds milling about, drink in hand, throwing beads at each other. Before my arrival I was lead to believe that this was a social exchange thing, where person A would do something lascivious involving nudity, and person B would in return give them beads. It was exactly like that except for the lasciviousness and the exchange. It was definitely social though. There was cheering, drinking, and strings of beads being pitched with indiscriminate alacrity, mostly from balconies. Any time you passed a knot of people there was considerable danger of getting beamed in the head - It was all fun and games, and who ever got slowed down by losing an eye?

Actually I did see one incident of boobs being flashed, but... well, at the risk of being beautyist, they weren't exactly the sort one wants to see. Which is kind of sad really, because here was this ignobly endowed person, soldiering bravely on with the script, trying to get tacky and inexpensive jewellery for free. We're talking shiny plastic that would pretty much have been thrown at them anyway. Ah well, so long as they got an elicit thrill from it.

There was also a dress-up masquerade party on the last night, but there's really not much to write about there. Other than it turns out that masks aren't very practical for partying, restricting vision and ventilation as they do. Most people partied with mask peeled firmly up away from their face.


In local news: I know that many of you stay up nights worrying that the Missouri legislature may sit idle, squandering tax payer’s good money on nothing. Fear ye not! For this is a state where legislators have sat cheek by jowl, hour by hour, painstakingly hammering out massive compendia of Official Stuff. Yes, Stuff. There is an official state bird (bluebird), state animal (Missouri mule), insect (honey bee), flower (White hawthorn), tree (flowering dogwood), and nut tree (yes, a state nut tree - the Eastern black walnut). Also, the state fish is the paddlefish. Sorry, the channel catfish. The paddlefish is the state aquatic animal, silly!

The scope of my imagination is humbled by these people. But lest you think I'm selling my imagination short, the official state fossil is the Crinoid, and the state mineral is Galena - not to be confused with Mozarkite, the state rock. The square dance is the state folk dance. No word if there's a state non-folk dance, but I lobby for moshing. Or the funky chicken. That would make for excellent license plate slogans.

Good people, yes, this is the energy, dynamism, and anal-retentive attention to detail that has made Missouri the great... rural backwater*... that it is today!
(*except St. Louis).

I worry, though, about how American school children can be expected to know all this stuff. That's l4 different bits of information (including the state instrument (fiddle), and slogan (sceptically enough, the "show me state")). Multiply that by 50 states and you can see how a teacher would be tempted to defer multiplication to the 12th grade. There's only so many times a North Carolina elementary school teacher can hear little Johnny confuse South Dakota's aquatic animal with Delaware's folk dance before she gives up and longs for a place that doesn't require metal detectors for entry.

But anyway, you'll be happy to know that the legislators didn't spend ALL their time working out the official state bug-that-people-think-is-crawling-under-their-skin-when-they're-on-acid. Oh no, they also made an official flag. I think that they might have been angry with the official flag makers union at the time though.

Think of it like this: It's exactly like the French flag (This makes sense as Missouri was part of the Louisiana Purchase from France - if you say it the French way it sounds even more like "misery," so if I were France, I would totally have sold it too), except sideways and with three concentric circles in the middle. The outer circle has 24 white stars (the number of states when MO joined the union). The next one has two grizzly bears holding a shield with leaves and a knight’s helmet on it. Oh yes, and there are another 24 stars over the helmet, and a ribbon underneath with the state latin slogan, "salus populi supreme lex esta" ("let the welfare of the people be the supreme law").
The innermost circle is the shield held by the bears, and it's easy! It just has an eagle holding an olive branch and arrows, a crescent moon, another grizzly bear, and a ribbon wrapped around the edge with the state's ENGLISH slogan, "united we stand, divided we fall". This slogan narrowly beat out their second choice: "Screw those uppity St. Louis jerks."
I can't really decide how to interpret this flag though. Were the state founders pack rats, or were they just so darn nice that they couldn't bring themselves to leave anyone's ideas out?

"How 'bout a big ol' bear!"
"Jed, we've already got two. We put grizzlies!"
"Well I want me one o' them alsa!"
"Weeell… How ‘bout a brown bear then?"
"No way! If they got grizzlies..."
"Oh geez. Can ya get that in Lou? And see if ya cain't squeeze 'nother rack o' stars on in while yer at 'er. Now what about a french slogan? Don't nobobody round here know none o' that?"

I will give them this though... a maple leaf and two stripes, they sure as heck showed us!

Oh can-ah-daaah.

over and out.

Christmas (from the back end) (Christmas's back end, not mine...) (oh for heavens sake grow up) (ya so, sue me) (um, hohoho, just kidding Americans!)

2005 has officially arrived, and in a major affront to futurists everywhere did so without galactic peace. Or galactic war. Not even a light galactic dust up that turned out to be a misunderstanding. Motorists planet wide drove around Jan 1st 2005, cars firmly attached to the ground as an entire century of prognosticators spun in their (still earthbound) graves. But to them, all, I will say "thanks for trying". I'll even post it up here in the electronic forum that they didn't see coming. I'm that sort of humanitarian.
It is for exactly these sorts of reasons that I rarely make predictions (other than ones like: "Jan 1 2005, I shall be at a party". Futurists: zero, Alex: bragging rights (which he will now spend bragging quite obnoxiously about how well he did in twister at this party. Ah, sweet sweet hubris)). On the other hand we're talking about the same Alex here, who this very morning, in between reading a journal and being brain dead, absently selected a jug out of the fridge and poured orange juice all over his cereal. Yeah. But it turns out that if you strain the orange juice off and replace it with milk the upshot actually tastes pretty good (cornflakes and grape nuts for those willing to try this at home). Ah, sweet sweet serendipity.

Ok, so I had a very nice time in Toronto, had an early birthday dinner (by about 3 days) with my family, then got on a plane and flew home. It ends up being about a 12 hour trip when you include all the flying, waiting in airports and driving to and from at the respective ends. And only once did I commit the grievous offence of being hungry in an airport (if you break down and ask for food there are heavy fines - they know you can't get lunch anywhere else, so they put you over the figurative barrel and do things to your back end that are illegal in many states when done non-figuratively. Seriously, I once ordered a hot dog in an airport, and got all of the fixings on it in order to boost its meagre nutritive value high enough to hold me through - I ended up with a mountain of veggies on a bun with a shred of meat at the bottom, and then they charged me extra for the sauerkraut anyway).

But all that travelling was worth it, because when I arrived back in Columbia there were very nice dinners with people I hadn't seen in a while, obligatory attempts at getting experiments designed at school, and birthday parties. Two of them, as it happened. The de rigueur method of birthday parting here seems to involve going out for a dinner, and then retreating to somebody's house to play games afterwards. I know it's de rigueur because it happened both times, and both times there was only a reasonably brief period of staring at each other over dessert saying "ok, what now? I dunno, what do you want to do?")
So anyway, the first party was mine. At the house afterwards we played this game called "scene it", in the course of which my team was soundly thrashed. Twice. So then we played trivial pursuit, which was much better, because we only lost badly at that one.

The second party was this witty lad Aaron's. At his, we ended up playing this very sophisticated drinking game involving cards and many complicated rules. You wouldn't have thought that complicated rules and drinking went well together, but this is America, builder of a world empire! And American beer doesn't have much alcohol in it (pick your attribution). Anyway, at one point in this game we had to go around the circle providing novel rhymes for the word "frog" until someone came up dry, at which point they were obligated to drink. The second time this came to me I gave the word "slog", which everyone knows means "toiling". As in "look a' tha' poor bastar' sloggin' up th' 'ill thar". But apparently this is an English word, or so I gather by the number of people (i.e. everybody) accusing me of having made it up on the spot. Stupid Americans. Ah well. A few cards later I got one that meant everyone had to go around naming things from a category of my choosing. I chose "Canadian provinces." That showed 'em (actually they did pretty well till someone said "Vancouver"). Incidentally this word problem isn't just an American thing. I spent my new years at a party full of Canadian Waterloo math nerds. There I discovered that nobody understood my definition of "cot". On this continent it is apparently not something you put babies to sleep in. I spent a lot of time in a cot as a baby so I thought I was an authority on the matter, but this argument didn't seem to be persuasive. Here they think 'cot' means "travel bed". I shall say no more about games other than to note that I ended the evening on a winning note, playing charades. This game was clinched by a tie breaker in which I successfully conveyed the movie "Mighty ducks" by skating up and down the living room carpet (with very authentic skating movements I might add) and flapping my arms. And to think some consider grad school easy! Ha!

But "ah," you say, "there you go bragging again. Surely you have more self-effacing stories to balance this out?" Well, um, hahaha, me, embarassing? Gosh no... Well, um... Ok, you know how they put signs on floors saying "slippery when wet"? Well it turns out that they are also slippery when the bottom of your shoes are wet. It's true, I researched it myself! "Surely you can't be serious." You exclaim (apparently you watched the movie 'Airplane' too many times and have become fixated on the word "surely"). And then after I look at my feet and laugh nervously you giggle and add: "Surely not!"

To this I can say only one thing: "I am serious. And don't call me Shirley". Never let it be said that I don't pander to a crowd.
Well anyway, I didn't do very well in physics, but I do have an official bachelors of "science" degree under the belt (PhD's aren't science, they're "philosophy doctorates"... hence the initials), so in this spirit of controlled empirical observation, here is the protocol I used: First, find a large birdbath with an ellipsoid disk of ice floating in it (see fig. 1 - historical note: this figure is accurate in all details other than the appropriate weather, because it was actually taken weeks BEFORE the experiment in question was conducted). Now poke at the ice playfully with a finger, thus making water slop over the edges (for extra credit you can also splash it onto your pants, for that faux-incontinent look). Now that your shoes are good and wet, find a fairly smooth and nearby bit of ground and... well, jump on it. I found it helps to use a playful bouncy jump, but if that doesn't work, just grit your teeth and think of insurance money. You shouldn't have to think for long though, because if you do it right your feet will launch themselves violently outwards, like hot women away from a physicist (stupid physics). The overall effect is like break dancing, except more comic, resulting in sorer palms, and without all that graceful bouncing up again afterwards.



See, isn't science great? Now if you want to make the experience really authentic you should spend a year working on it, then spend another six months writing it up just so. Then you should send your new manuscript to a friend who can play "editor" (i.e. sit on it for 6 months, go out for a lot of lunches, then send it back with a short note saying "do more"). This process can be repeated indefinitely, which is incidentally why scientists are stereotyped as grey-haired. It takes that long before their stuff gets published, and they can leave the lab to mingle with the rest of society - which they then do in a vaguely condescending fashion. This attitude, incidentally, is exactly why society pressures editors so hard to keep all the scientists tied up, rewriting harmlessly away in their labs.


Oh yes, and today as I was walking through the main quadrangle (past the enormous freestanding pillars) I noticed two guys standing in the snow and puddles, throwing a frisbee back and forth. I went and joined them for a while, which was nice. And if the disk occasionally bounced out of my open hands it was definitely because the weather was chilly and my fingers were cold, and not at all because I was rusty. Definitely.


Okay, that's more than enough from me now eh.

Oh, ps. I got my very first issue of the Atlantic Monthly yesterday and it’s very good, but more importantly it had this headline: “An Exquisite Slogger: What to read this month” by Benjamin Schwarz. English word my foot! They just weren’t educationalamizated enough to know it. Even M.S. word here doesn’t think that ‘slog’ is a spelling mistake. So there you have it, the Microsoft seal of approval. Um. So. Right, yeah. Nevermind.