The Spam Files 6: Paris Hilton

According to my spam folder, Paris Hilton has been very busy. Not only has she been getting it on with SpongeBob, but she's entertained various other luminaries:

from: First Gerendasne
subject: Corzine visits Paris Hilton

from: Corbin adfasfwe
subject: Scooter Libby heads for Twin Towers' Paris Hilton Suite

from: Garrison Lucaj
subject: Epidemic Breaks Out in Prisons After Paris Hilton's Release

from: Mason Pietrzak
subject: Paris Hilton Sold Her Soul to the Devil, admits it on Larry King

from: Mae aviles
subject: Paris Hilton Loses Vagina, Blames Dr Phil

and my personal favorite:

from: Mehrdad vulgamore
subject: Paris Hilton sells her special taco!

Satan and Dr. Phil can have their spoils. I want tacos, dammit.

The Spam Files 5: The simple life

from: wlock Skeie
subject: SpongeBob named in Paris Hilton paternity lawsuit

And here James Dobson et al. had me convinced that SpongeBob is gay.

Poor aim

Periodically I have anxiety dreams about being in high school. In these dreams, I'm my current age, but for some reason I have to retake one of my high school classes (usually calculus) and attempt to blend in with kids at least a decade my junior. What makes these anxiety dreams is that invariably I've forgotten something important--such as an assignment, a test, or the location of the classroom. And then my dream-self feels really stupid because I graduated high school in 1997 and yet I can't get my act together to do the same stuff all over again as an adult.

(I must be growing up, though, because I had a dream the other night about having to go back to my doctoral program in order to retake statistics. In my dream, the class was taught by a computer science professor I had as an undergrad, and she'd assigned some gigantic research paper that I'd completely forgotten to do. Most of the rest of the dream was me dropping the F-bomb left and right about having neglected to write this paper.)

In my parents' mail yesterday was a piece for me. Every so often I get mail at their address, where I haven't lived since 2001, and it's usually a Mathcounts alumni newsletter. This piece of mail, however, left me speechless. I have no idea how I became targeted for this mailing, let alone why it went to my parents' address; but anyway, here it is for your amusement:



To the direct-mail genius who thought I might be interested in attending an alternative high school: That's Dr. G to you.

Dutch treat

The English language has the reputation of being notoriously hard to learn, as it's chock full of words whose pronunciation doesn't match their spelling, bizarrely irregular verbs and plurals, and a subjunctive tense that not even native speakers understand.

Dutch, however, is just plain funny. At least, the English-speaking Mrs. Gerbil and I think so.

For example: did you know that "Monsterhouder" is Dutch for "specimen container"?

Support single-payer healthcare!

A cute video from my aunt's colleague's family:

Growing up

Although I'm only 17 months and two days away from turning 30 (ZOMGWTF!), I occasionally still have difficulty remembering, and accepting, that I am an adult. Perhaps it is my baby face. Perhaps it's a lingering effect of having been at least a year younger than my classmates in school. Or perhaps it's a function of just how long adolescence lasts in US culture--some theories of development hold that adolescence lasts until age 26!

But there are some things in my daily life that remind me that yes, indeed, I have achieved adult status. I'm not talking about things like approaching my third wedding anniversary, having a baby, having bought a car, or even having moved out of my parents' house seven years ago.

No, I'm talking about much more quotidian things. Things like...


boiling water for tea...


having a fully stocked medicine cabinet...


and knowing how to make (and ice) cupcakes completely from scratch.

Tea, baked goods, and healthcare--these, I think, are the really important things in adult life.