Attention to detail not required

Rule #1 of classified advertising:

Do not misspell the name of your company.

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.

Wait... what?

I enjoyed a lovely grape Popsicle this evening, and I was rewarded for my brain-freezing efforts with the following oxymoron-masquerading-as-a-joke:



Uh...

Inservice, part 2

I should preface this by admitting that I am a spelling champion. By this I mean I won the school spelling bee when I was in the fourth grade (and still have the trophy somewhere to prove it).

And now, with the aforegoing disclaimer: Please do not write "parody" when you mean "parity." For, honey, this makes my teeth hurt.

A parody pokes fun at something by imitating and exaggerating its style.

Parity, on the other hand, refers to identical coverage of mental and physical conditions under an individual's insurance policy. In my humble opinion, this ought to be more of a standard than it actually is.

Sometimes parity only applies to specific disorders, often referred to as serious mental illness (SMI) or biologically based mental illness (BBMI). Parity diagnoses may include major depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, obsessive-compulsive disorder, panic disorder, anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and developmental disorders; as well as emotional disturbances in childhood.

Parody diagnoses, on the other hand, include Intermittent Hook-Up Disorder.

Ya think?

This entry is in memory of my grandmother, who passed away suddenly last week at the age of 90. I owe much of my sense of humor to her influence.

Last weekend, Mrs. Gerbil and I found ourselves taking an unexpected trip to Philadelphia. It was a strange, strange time.

We flew Southwest, so of course we were each presented with the famed Box of Carbs during the flight. Happily, Mrs. Gerbil and I are both carb monsters.

We also received several little packages of peanuts.


Now, I appreciate allergy warnings as much as the next person. I have food sensitivities, but I have to read ingredient lists because no one prints handy warnings for things like echinacea, bananas, and flowers.

Mrs. Gerbil, however, is allergic to peanuts. She's not allergic to the extent that she has to avoid things processed in facilities which also process peanuts. But even if she were that allergic, I would hope that she wouldn't need to check the back of the little package to find out whether her peanuts were produced in a facility that processes... peanuts.

Half-baked ideas

I like baking. I even wrote a parody about it once.

I'm generally pretty exact about my baking, although occasionally I will experiment with ingredients. Usually this is out of necessity--for example, once I was making a quick bread which called for prune preserves, and I neither had nor wanted to obtain said. Ah, but I had unsweetened applesauce! The same recipe also called for buttermilk, which I didn't have either; and so I stank up the house with vinegar and milk. And everything was really quite fine in the end.

Last night's substitution adventure was also out of necessity. I had everything to make Cheerio cookies... except for the Cheerios. But I had Kashi Mighty Bites. So I thought, hey, Mighty Bites are pretty much the same as Cheerios, except for their shape; why not use those instead?

Well, it worked, although I probably should have decreased the sugar somewhat on account of the lightly sweetened nature of the Mighty Bites. However, extra-sweet or not, the finished product was just a little on the disturbing side.

You see, Mighty Bites are shaped like little people. And my cookies came out looking like the ruins of Pompeii.


But as volcanic disaster cookies go, I have to say these are mighty tasty.

A case of severely mistaken identity

Mrs. Gerbil reports that a funny thing happened to her on her way home from work today. While was stopped at a light, a fellow she describes as "a very attractive black man with shoulder-length dreads" pulled up beside her and started honking.

Mrs. Gerbil rolled down the window to see what the fuss was all about.

The man clapped his hands over his mouth. "I thought you were a guy!" he said. "I wanted to know if you saw those girls over there!"

Mrs. Gerbil looked up the street and saw three teenagers in very short skirts.

"I'm so sorry!" said the man. And off he went.

(For the record, Mrs. Gerbil does not look particularly androgynous--and The Big Gay Subaru identifies itself with a rainbow sticker in the back windshield.)

Hot Live Local Singles Strike Again!

Racy Wrong Numbers: Not just a San Francisco treat!

The mayor of Edmond, Oklahoma, handed out tens of thousands of flyers upon which was a rather unfortunate typo. The flyers, prepared by the Oklahoma Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services, were intended to discourage underage drinking but accidentally advertised a phone sex line.

I am not making this up.

Your call cannot be completed as dialed

When I moved apartments in Cleveland, I was very excited that I could keep the same phone number. I liked my phone number. It had been all mine since early July of 2001, and it was all mine through at least last December, when my free informational recording ("This number has been changed. The new number is...") was set to expire. I was very proud of my phone number.

I moved to a new place in June, 2003. Shortly thereafter, I began getting messages on my answering machine:

Hi, Mrs. Johnson, this is Dr. So-and-So's office, just calling to confirm your appointment tomorrow at 1:30.

Sometimes the messages went like this:

Hi, Mrs. Johnson, this is Dr. So-and-So's office, just calling to follow up on your appointment from yesterday. We missed you. Please call us back so we can set up a new appointment for you.

No one named Johnson lived in my house. I got tired of this pretty quickly, and I also felt some sense of obligation to help care for Mrs. Johnson, whoever she was. But the doctor's office never left a phone number, and the doctor had a rather unusual last name. So one afternoon I star-69'd the doctor and played the Good, Vaguely HIPAA-Compliant Samaritan:

Receptionist: Hi, Dr. So-and-So's office?
Me: Yes, I keep getting messages on my answering machine for a Mrs. Johnson, and I wanted to let you know that I have no idea who that is and maybe you should ask her again what her phone number is.
Receptionist: Uh, did you just move in?
Me: No, I've had this number for almost four years now.
Receptionist: We've been trying to reach Mrs. Johnson about her--
Me: Hey, I don't know who she is, and I don't want to intrude on her privacy. Just make sure you have the right number for her, in case you actually have to reach her by phone.

And that was the end of that.

Here in California, I have a different problem: people think my cell is the "pharmacy." One afternoon I got extremely bored and used reverse lookup on similar numbers. Oddly, all conceivable misdials were also cell phones owned by Verizon Wireless. I ask you: what pharmacy operates by cell phone?

I, too, am guilty of misdialing on occasion. Once, I thought I was calling Comcast, and instead I got one of those Chat Now with Hot Live Local Singles! lines. I figured I'd called 1-900-COMCAST, instead of 1-800-COMCAST, so to assuage my mortification, I put a 900/976 block on our line.

The other day I got a call at home which was eerily reminiscent of the tale of Mrs. Johnson:

Hi, Christina, this is Dr. Such-and-Such's office. We haven't seen you in a while and are wondering if everything is okay. Maybe you moved, or you got a new number, but please give us a call and let us know how you are doing.

So I called Dr. Such-and-Such's office. I've owned this number for a year and a half, and as far as I know, I'm the first to have it. I was all set to tell Dr. Such-and-Such's receptionist that I didn't know any Christina and that maybe they should double-check their records...

...but who should pick up but an overly enthusiastic recording, encouraging me to Chat Now with Hot Live Local Singles!

Either every unclaimed phone number in this area redirects the caller to Chat Now with Hot Live Local Singles, or I just have extraordinary luck in stumbling across such opportunities.

Trick or treat, dudes.

Public transit story #8: No keyboard detected. Press F1 to continue.

On Wednesday I pulled an 11-hour day at work.

Well, to be precise, I pulled a 12-hour day at work, but I took an hour and a half for dinner between my actual work day (which ended at 5:00) and my stupid late meeting at another agency (which started at 6:30). Since I didn't take a lunch break, I decided that half an hour of my dinner break ought to be on the clock.

Most of us at the late meeting had to be back at the same location twelve hours later for another meeting. That totally sucked, and not just because the late meeting was two and a half hours long and the morning meeting was three hours long and none of us was very happy about any of these arrangements. We should've had a slumber party. Giggling into the night might just have made us slightly more productive the next day.

But alas, no slumber party for us.

Thankfully, these monthly three-hour meetings come with starch, fruit, and caffeine. I was able to get up a little later than usual, roll into some clothes, roll out the door, and roll onto the train without having to make coffee or breakfast, and still have both coffee and food before having to say vaguely intelligible things.

So there I was, having rolled onto the train that was rolling toward the Caldecott Tunnel, when I heard the conductor come on the PA system.

"Um, folks, we're having some problems with the PA system in the first car. Those passengers in the first car might want to move into another car in order to hear the PA system."

Huh? Did he just say what I thought he said, or was I asleep and/or hearing things?

Said the conductor, "Again, those passengers in the first car might want to move to another car in order to--"

SCREEEEEEEEEEECH RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR
SCREEEEEEEEEEECH RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR
SCREEEEEEEEEEECH RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR
SCREEEEEEEEEEECH RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

We had just entered the Caldecott Tunnel. The noise level in BART's tunnels is such that people who turn up their iPods to drown out the sounds of their commutes are at risk for hearing loss. And yet the conductor yammered all the way through the tunnel and then some about how people in the first car might have trouble hearing the malfunctioning PA system.

Suddenly I felt a lot better about showing up at my meeting sticky-eyed and stupid.

Primary sources

I was in Galveston this past weekend for a wedding.

Oh yeah, and the weekend before that, I was in the Land of Cleve for graduation. I left Berkeley as Ms. Gerbil and returned as Dr. Gerbil. A few years ago I thought I might spring for a vanity license plate once I received my Ph.D. I thought I'd apply for one that said GRBLPHD. But then I realized that very few people would be able to parse that one, and vanity plates aren't supposed to be esoteric, you know? You're supposed to be able to figure them out almost immediately, as every millisecond you spend decoding a vanity plate is a millisecond you're not spending paying attention to the road.

Speaking of paying attention to the road, while I was in the Land of Cleve, I was walking up this long hill when these two women in a Subaru Outback passed me on their way down. The one in the passenger seat hung her head out the window and said, in an unmistakeable tone, "Hey there." That pretty much made my day. Usually I get this sort of thing from guys in penis cars sports cars or pick-up trucks. But I got hit on by two chicks in a big gay Subaru with Ohio plates!

Anyway, when I discarded the idea of GRBLPHD, I came up with DRGRBIL instead. Easier to parse, definitely. But also a little, well, unsavory as a vanity plate.

So no vanity plate for me just yet.

The Land of Cleve gave me a rhinovirus as a parting gift, and of course I got bronchitis after the cold. So in addition to a strict inhaler regimen, my doctor also prescribed cough medicine with codeine. I am no stranger to this stuff; I got codeine every time I got bronchitis from the time I was a toddler to when I was finally diagnosed with asthma at 13. It still tastes like ass and makes me stupid and clumsy, but at least I can sleep. So could the two pals with whom I shared a hotel room in Galveston.

Alas, on its final descent into Galveston, my plane had some pressure problems. My head did not explode, as I'd feared; but my precious bottle of controlled substance did. About a third of it soaked through my toiletry kit and sopped around in my bookbag. The novels I brought became a sticky mess. (The wedding was sticky, too, but this was due entirely to the humidity.)

On the way home, I stopped by a cool used bookshop to get some new(ish) reading material. I picked up this novel by Lisa Alther, Other Women. It's a fun (and fast) read about a lesbian nurse with a certain Cluster B personality disorder and her heterosexual therapist, a woman with her own traumatic past. I'm impressed with the therapist-client dialogue, but not so impressed with the vast number of sentences that go "As she [insert mundane task here], she recalled how difficult it was to [insert description of vaguely traumatic life event here]."

I'm also less than impressed with the obligatory reviewer quote on the cover:

"AN ABSORBING
AND TOUCHING NOVEL...
SHARP, FUNNY, AND
DYNAMIC."
-PEOPLE

Um, which people are these?

(Yes, yes, I know, the magazine. But cut me a break. My snark's not getting enough oxygen these days.)

Bad slogan! Bad, bad slogan!

First of all, I should state that I absolutely love Target. Because I do.

But here's the thing about Target: Their current slogan ("Expect more, pay less") sucks.

It is, however, sometimes exactly true.

Often I go into Target to find a specific item. Often they have this item. But sometimes they do not. I indeed expect more and pay less, but it's because I expected to buy something they didn't have.

Other times I go into Target to find a specific item, and they have it for quite a nice price, but it's not of the quality I wanted. Like my favorite pair of khaki pants. In general, I have a hard time buying pants because I (a) have no butt, (b) have a short waist, and (c) have longer legs than the average short person. But I found this pair of khaki pants in an Ohio Target about a year and a half ago that were absolutely perfect in terms of fit and price. I love these pants. No, let me rephrase that. I loved these pants... until the legs shrank after a number of washings, and way too much of my (cute) socks started to hang out. I expected more out of these pants, but at least I paid less.

Sometimes I expect more parking, and I end up paying less because I'm frustrated and want to leave as soon as possible.

Or I expect more checkout lanes to be open, and I pay less because I put stuff back on the shelves so that I meet the criteria for the express lanes. (I have large problems going to the grocery store alone because I get so overstimulated that I have the urge to leave my cart in the middle of the store and run away. So I have to make myself wait in line, and by the time I get out, my cognitive functions are on a par with someone with mild dementia. I am totally not making this up. Ask my wife. She has to do most of the grocery shopping.)

Oh well. At least it's not Wal-Mart, where I expect less and pay nothing. Political issues aside, I will not patronize an establishment that fries my brain more than the grocery store does.

This product may be hazardous to global health

Been around the world and found
that only stupid people were breeding
Harvey Danger, "Flagpole Sitta"

I've always enjoyed looking at the items in the Impulse Purchase department of the grocery store. All the candy, magazines, horoscope scrolls, sodas, and other things you can't possibly do without, all laid out nicely in the checkout aisles... I confess I've bought a handful of things from the Impulse Purchase department--a box of Tic-Tacs, that issue of Redbook a few months back with Mariska Hargitay on the cover--but I was taught from a very young age that We Buy What We've Come In For, And If We Buy Anything Else, It Can't Come From The Display At The Register; and I'm quite good at upholding that one.

Today I went into Safeway to get an Odwalla soy shake and a thing of yogurt. (Yogurt doesn't come in containers, by the way. It comes in things.) What I really wanted was a Fresh Samantha soy shake, which I haven't had since about 2002. Odwalla just isn't the same. But now I know why I haven't seen Fresh Samanthas in years--Odwalla bought them out and then discontinued them. grrrrrr.

Well, I got my inferior Odwalla soy shake and my thing of yogurt, and I proceeded to the checkout. And what did I feast my eyes upon while in line, but a miniature version of this?


Well, at the very least, this was a blog entry waiting to happen.

The dangers of being professionally gay

I went to the dentist today.

While I was waiting for her to come in, I happened to notice a box of Barrier Film next to the chair.

My first thought: "Dude, I bet that stuff would be really effective as a dental dam!"

My second thought: "That's because it is a dental dam."

Party on, dudes!

Over New Year's, a hotel in Orlando hosted a kids' soccer convention and a hypothetical swingers' party. This booking arrangement apparently got some of the parents' panties in a bunch. (Neither the swingers nor their panties were available for comment.) These well-meaning parents were concerned that their young teenagers saw a lot of adult body parts. The adults in charge of these body parts were dancing, although apparently they were not excessively clothed.

One poor dad found himself having to explain "delicately" to his teenagers what exactly swingers are. He and the other concerned parents were mad that the hotel hadn't informed them of the mixed booking.

Um, where do I start?

First off, all kinds of adults have big New Year's parties in hotels. A lot of these parties involve dancing. And alcohol. And clothing that should really only be worn by college students, and in moderation even then. Many perfectly monogamous people go to New Year's parties in scanty outfits, get drunk, dance with the person they came with, and go home (or to bed) with that same person. So how were these parents able to tell that they were sharing a hotel with swingers, rather than run-of-the-mill year-end revelers? I see two possibilities:

1. There was a sign outside the ballroom that said something like "GIANT DEPRAVED SWINGERS PARTY, 9pm-??"
2. They just knew.

I'm guessing it's #2.

Second, why did these parents have to explain what that party was about? Teenagers value being in on stuff. If they think they're out of the loop, they pester and pester and pester until they get in the loop. So, if their parents had to explain the concept of swinging, they'd most likely never heard the term "swinger" before either.

Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that it was a swingers' ball. I'd bet a lot of chocolate that there was not a sign outside the ballroom that read "GIANT DEPRAVED SWINGERS PARTY." So here is our (mostly hypothetical) situation:

• The teens don't know the word "swinger" or its definition.
• The word "swinger" is not displayed anywhere in the vicinity.
• The parents find themselves explaining swinging to their teenagers.

So how did the teenagers know to ask, "Mom? Dad? What's a swinger?"

Again, two possibilities:

1. The swingers were shouting "CHANGE IS GOOD! SWINGERS IN THE HOOD!" while conga-ing around the ballroom.
2. The parents uttered the word "swinger," either in hushed tones to their perfectly monogamous spouses, or in parental advisory tones to their completely clueless teenagers.

Again, I'm guessing it's #2.

Third, why did the parents think the hotel would have informed them ahead of time, before they even completed their booking? Even assuming an unmarked swingers' ball, this has to be the most ridiculous part of the entire story. Hotels in this country are in business, well, to make money. To make money, you need customers. You can't make money if you turn potential customers away. Hotels can pick and choose their patrons, sure, but if the management really didn't want a swingers' ball under their roof, they wouldn't have allowed the booking. The hotel would lose a lot of business if their reservations desk did something like this:

Employee: Thank you for calling the Crowne-Plaza Hotel Airport in Orlando. May I make a reservation for you?
Soccer Mom: Yes, I'd like to book some rooms for the Happy Castle Valley Youth Soccer League.
Employee: Well, we have some lovely double-occupancy, no-smoking rooms available for $92 per night.
Soccer Mom: Oh, that sounds fantastic.
Employee: But I should let you know that the Panhandle Lovehandled Manhandling Middle-Age Swingers' Legion has reserved a block of rooms here that weekend.
Soccer Mom: Well, I never! I will just have to book these eleven rooms somewhere else.

Riiiiiiight.

So consenting adults want to get it on in a hotel, and parents feel uncomfortable talking to their kids about sex. What else is new?

Isn't it ironic?

First, some linguistic dorkitude.

irony: when words are used to express something other than their actual meaning. Also known as "rhetorical irony."
situational irony: when actual events are completely opposite of what is appropriate or expected.
dramatic irony: when characters in a literary work know less about their situation than does the audience.

And now, the snarkitude.

I like reading cereal boxes. Anytime other than breakfast, you would catch me reading something of more substance (currently I'm having fun motoring through Atlas Shrugged). But in the mornings I'm too sticky-eyed and stupid to read anything other than the backs of cereal boxes. When I was little, I learned a lot about the difference between dry cereal and cereal with milk from the nutrition side panel. When I was particularly bored or lonely, I would read this information aloud. Niacin: 25, 35. Vitamin B6: 25, 25. Vitamin D: 45, 100. What can I say? I was an odd child.

This morning I was reading the back of the Safeway Rice Pockets box. (Rice Pockets are pretty good. I think I'd fail a Rice Pockets vs. Rice Chex taste test.) The Rice Pockets box wished to test my knowledge of literature. Rather, it wished me to play Book Trivia. Dutifully, I played Book Trivia. I aced Book Trivia. And I noticed that one of the questions in Book Trivia referred to an "Ernest Hemmingway."

The Sun Also Rises was not written by Ernest Hemmingway, as Rice Pockets would have me believe. It was in fact written by Ernest Hemingway. Interestingly, there is an IMDB listing for an Ernest Hemmingway. His credits include movies about certain other things that tend to rise, wink wink nudge nudge.

If I were feeling particularly nasty, I would say this is dramatic irony. But I'm tired, so I'll call it a typo. A well-placed one.

(By the way, some say that Alanis Morissette's song "Ironic" is ironic in that none of the situations described in the lyrics is ironic, though all of them objectively suck. For an interesting but brief analysis, see this article on Wikipedia.)