Overheard

(1) circa 2002-03, New Haven CT

Student 1: What's your schedule like this year?
Student 2: I'm taking Classes A, B, C, and D.
S1: How's the workload?
S2: Well, it's fine right now, but in the span of three days I will have to turn in eighty pages of writing. Kind of unbelievable.
S1: Huh, well, Welcome to Yale!


(2) October 29, 2008, men's locker room attached to Columbia University pool (in the Dodge Fitness Center)

Background. In the pool there are 2 "slow" lanes, 2 "medium" lanes, and a few "fast" lanes. At peak times there are 4+ swimmers per lane. (This results in unintentional touching and I do not like it and maybe I'll discuss it later? but what is there to say except old man junk?)

General observation. Some of these regular recreational swimmers take themselves pretty seriously. At the beginning of the school year, many complained the pool was so crowded because everyone thinks "if Phelps can do it, they can," and surely this excitement will die down, and won't that be great when it's just us, the authentic recreational swimmers in the pool. (Of course this sort of posturing is often done with certain objects flopping all about. I would argue this adds an extra element of surreality.)

Particular event. Guy is complaining about how another swimmer in his "fast" lane wasn't fast enough, and how he kept having to flip over the slow swimmer at the wall, but it was OK, he knew the lifeguard on duty and therefore wouldn't get in trouble. (You know you've made it when: you can be sort of rude in a pool and get away with it. These corridors of power are sadly closed to me.) He concludes thusly:

"This is an Ivy league university, I think we can spell f-a-s-t."

What's a total jerk and wears a black dress shirt to work?

An unnamed colleague and your faithful correspondent approached a free food event near the math department.

Server Dude: Are you with the School of Social Work?
Unnamed Colleague: No, we're with the math department.
SD: Sorry, this event is for the School of Social Work. (smugly) Maybe the math department will have an event next week.

I love this consolation because it's completely made-up and also totally irrelevant: SD has no idea what any department has planned -- he is after all a server, and in any case I would like free food both now and in the future.

Me: Do you know when you're going to clean all this stuff up?
SD: (hesitates but does not reveal any information) (again, smugly) It's not that kind of event.

I see; it is the kind of event where you are a douchebag and throw away leftovers and feel extremely powerful in your slightly dressy uniform.

UC&Me: (grab cheeseburgers from unguarded tray while leaving)

Is that a Photoshopped moustache?

Our next battle:

Hitler and the Hyenas

vs.

A Sad Old Lady


(Hyenas refers to first-tier candidates; everyone else has his mouth open in an out-of-touch fashion, or is auditioning for the murderer lead in a Woody Allen film.)

Just in case He's not hiring, I suppose.

overheard on subway:

Man #1: (shuffles some objects; a guide to finding employment becomes visible to all)

Man #2: [pleasantry]

Man #1: (shuffles some more objects; Holy Bible now visible)

Man #2: Now that's the real job finder right there.

Man #1: [expresses agreement]

Man #2: You could also check out the internet.

On the bright side...

...it may make sense for Zimbabweans to wipe their Zimbooties (?) with $100 bills:

[Times correspondent] Michael [Wines], last year when Zimbabwe’s inflation was a comparatively enviable 900 percent, you wrote about how the local $500 bill was just enough to buy toilet paper — not a whole roll, mind you, but a single sheet. Now that inflation is five times what it was back then, how are people surviving at all?

Zimbenjis? Too soon?

Of all of the dudes in the world, why this one?

I personally don't have anybody else in mind to lead the Consumer Product Safety Commission, but if I were making the decision, some of the qualities I would look for in an applicant would be:

wise

will not receive gigantic sum of money from people whose behavior (s)he will be regulating

looks good in bathing suit

I mean honestly what are the odds that this guy is the best person in the country for this job come on they can't be that good.

Kind of makes you wonder why a certain math department's IM squad hasn't managed to beat a certain association of black business school students

Doesn't it?