My Latest Project: Done!

Just in time for the holidays...

Stressed out?  Life too busy?  Afraid you may murder your own children?

No time to meditate, can't get to sleep, even soothing music gets on your last frayed nerve?

Need to Get Away?

Now, you can with:

THE MOST RELAXING SOUNDS OF SILENCE... EVERRRRR!!!

That's right, put on our patented noise-canceling headphones–complete with the side mounted Coh-Zee™ Valium dispenser–and you can relax to the un-sounds of...

-Padded Room!

-Awkward Conversational Pause!

-Mob-Enforced Zipped Lips On Pain Of Torture!

-Being Buried 39 Feet Underground!

All available on

THE MOST RELAXING SOUNDS OF SILENCE... EVERRRRR!!!

 

But that's not all!  Act now and you'll also receive an additional CD featuring such relaxing silences as...

-Stranded On An Ice Floe!

-Entombed In A Lost Atlantean Pyramid!

-Space!

and, the all-time favorite,

-Complete Lack Of Ears!

Your in-laws won't bother you, your daily tasks won't bother you, screaming babies won't get to you, piped-in music won't get to you

 –THE GATES OF HELL THEMSELVES COULD BE OPENED, ALLOWING THE WAILING OF TORTURED SOULS AND CACKLING DEMONS TO CONGREGATE IN YOUR LIVING ROOM– 

and still you'll be able to recline with a contented smile while listening to

THE MOST RELAXING SOUNDS OF SILENCE... EVERRRRR!!!

Call 1-900-QUIET-NOW to Order!  (Not available in Canada.)

Psst... I've got a new blog.

I don't know why. I just thought I'd start anew with a blog that will only include silliness. Here's the address:


http://justletyourselfbespecial.blogspot.com/


That is all.

What? I Post... Now And Then...

Just popping up inbetween midterms and walking pneumonia (ask me about my "Muttley laugh"!) to share this brilliant video. Enjoy!

One Day More

Let's just hope what happened to the revolutionaries doesn't happen to us...

The Great Schlep

Sarah Silverman often annoys me, but this video (and idea) is the shiznit. L'shanah Tovah!

The Circle of Life

While the circle of life has led me to fall behind on posting while cleaning the apartment and taking a brief vacation, it also has led to a new hope. And that hope is for comedy gold.

See you when I get back from the beach.

Have A Nice Day

P.S.: This is not footage from my zoo internship. The chickens there were into John Cage.

Gooooo, Team! Or Not.

Having finally made it into the 2000nds, I now have a camera in my cell phone. Which makes it possible to share exciting moments like this with you.

On the way to the dentist, I stumbled upon a typical summer brouhaha at Rockefeller Center. I paused to see what was going on, and it turned out they were announcing the United States Olympic men’s basketball team. I came in just at the end of the introduction of the members, and the announcer was trying to get the crowd fired up.

Announcer: "Now let me hear you chant for them: U.S.A! U.S.A.!"

Crowd: "Meh."

I just love it when dunderheaded nationalism fizzles.

Beat That, Whitman's

Well, my Valentine's Day involved a room full of dead cats, violent illness in a subway station bathroom, commemorative glow sticks, men dancing awkwardly while dressed as nuns, silly string, and Rufus Wainwright singing in drag as Judy Garland. Oh, and Mrs. Nator was there, too.

How was yours?

Eli Manning Becomes A Man

So here's my theory.

So many commentators have been talking about Eli "growing up," "coming into his own," or "becoming a man" in the last few weeks. They're referring to his frustrating string of mistakes and poor judgment over the last couple seasons, and his sudden turn to playing well and having almost no interceptions from the end part of this past season and right on through the Super Bowl. Fans and talking heads alike marveled at his sudden confidence and competency. He not only started making plays, but smiling and laughing, a welcome change from his usual gape-mouthed mope.

Now, a while back, I had a theory that Tiki Barber's infamous comments on how Eli trying to speak in front of the other players was "almost comical" actually helped Eli, in that it spurred him to step up. But now, I have a new idea. That idea is: sometime in the last few months, Eli Manning lost his virginity.

Think about it: a quiet-spoken guy, southern baptist and fond of his mother, sadly unattractive despite his tall build and athletic skills, Eli has been dating his college girlfriend (now fiancée) for five years, now. I believe that at some point in the mid-to-late 2007, that girlfriend - or someone, anyway - finally put out. I mean, did you see how drastically his demeanor changed? How his panicked, flapping runs and fumbles turned into dodges and completed passes? Something must have given him the confidence and relaxation he'd been lacking.

The only other explanation I can think of is that he sent away for this:

What I Learned In Lab Class

Behold the lamprey: not quite an eel, not quite a fish, not even quite a vertebrate. In other words, one weird-ass mothafukkin animal, my people. Damn.

What you see at its front is essentially an extended upper lip with nary a lower lip in sight. Lampreys are jawless. They sort of have heads, but you'd be hard pressed to find exactly where they end and the body begins (not to mention their brains are barely more than a cluster of cells). Their front ends are basically sensory organs with that big mouth at the end, which functions like a suction cup with teeth in it. They glom onto a hard-spined fish, stick to them and rasp away with those teeth, ingesting the fish's blood and tissues. Their tongues even have teeth on them!

I have stuck my finger into this maw - and lived!

Their skeletons are cartilaginous, like sharks, and they have both a nerve cord, which is similar to a spinal column, minus the vertebrae, and a notochord, an early version of the vertebral column which is much less rigid, and is now found in mainly lower forms and embryos (yes, you had one, too, early in your development). A bizarre throwback to ancient times, fossilized records show that they may not have changed in over 360 million years. Judging from the condition of our dessicated dissection specimen in lab class, it was probably among the first.

1. nerve cord, 2. notochord, 3. the eggs that become millions of little lampreys waiting to suck your braaaaiinnns!

My first dissection went fairly smoothly, considering the condition of the specimen and the fact that the scalpels in those dissection kits are about as sharp as prison-issue sporks. The lamprey was actually pretty small, so it's a stretch for eyeballs over thirty years old to see all the mushy parts, especially since doing so meant getting close to that smell. However, I did it, and I made a new friend in one of my new lab partners. It turns out she is a geeky gay white girl, too. In fact, she's so gay, geeky and white, she makes me look like Snoop Dogg. Let me put it this way: we ended our conversation by talking about the origin of slash in Star Trek fiction. For further research in lab: how did the idea of Kirk, Spock and McCoy all getting it on at once not kill slash in its infancy, if not actually kill homosexuality altogether? Discuss.

Do not try this at home.

After a long-ass lecture, delivered in an outrageous French accent by our professor (thank goodness I did the reading), I filled in an application at a local vet's office, and then went home to find my lab coat had arrived in the mail. Question: if you found out your animal health care professional had run around the house in his or her lab coat and underwear singing "(s)he's the one they call Doctor NOOOO PAAAANTS!", would you entrust him or her with your beloved pet? Does it help to know it was to the tune of an old Mötley Crüe song?

All in all, a very productive day. I think I'm going to enjoy this class. It makes me feel AAAAWL RIIIIGHT!

GOOOO LIIIMUUUUU!!! (aka Reality TV is Weird)

I've been in studio audiences for shows before, but being there for the live broadcast of Clash of the Choirs last night and seeing my good friend perform was pretty bizarre. I mean it's just cognitive dissonance all over the place.

First of all, TV production sets are always way smaller and rattier than they appear onscreen. Even though I knew this, it surprised Mrs. Nator, and it still makes things feel a bit strange. The whole time you're wondering, "how can that chipped, spray-painted construction of particle board even hold together, much less come across as nice-looking on television?" I guess it can, although I wonder about it as HD becomes the norm. Considering that, it makes even more sense that they filled the room with some kind of artificial smoke or mist, to pick out the spotlights and give everything a soft-focus glow.

Secondly, they are almost always cold. David Letterman's set is notoriously freezing (I can attest to that), but this was outside-temperature cold. I don't think Mrs. Nator took off her coat once last night. Maybe they wanted everybody to feel like they were outdoors caroling for the holidays.

Then comes the lead-in comic. Pretty much all comedy or live contest shows have a lead-in, who tries to whip the audience into a frenzy of adrenaline while convincing them to follow his cues to clap, cheer or quickly become silent like a bunch of lemmings. He is sort of the extremely annoying, unfunny horse trainer to the audience. In this case, the guy was even more annoying and unfunny than usual. In short order, the audience were amusing ourselves by making jokes about him to his face. I'm sure he's more than used to it, however, and he gets the paycheck in the end, so whatever works, I suppose.

Now for the most discomfiting part. When we watch reality shows at home, Mrs. Nator and I, like most normal people, spend the entire show making nonstop snarky comments about the contestants, the judges, the production values, the hammy oversell of sob stories, poor choices of song and choreography and just about everything else. Yes, we usually end up rooting for someone, but you and I both know that the running bitchy voice-over from the couch is what brings families together. But when you're at a live event where people clearly are emotional in earnest, trying their best and sometimes even in earshot (and one of you has cramps), in makes it a little more difficult to bring the cynical observational humour.

Difficult, but not impossible. At the beginning of the show, Mrs. Nator stated flatly that she was not going to stand up and clap like a trained monkey (or horse or lemming, if they could clap) for just anyone. She would only reward actual good performances, or things she gave a crap about. She was surprised at how often I clapped, but I told her that in person one should be a wee bit nicer and show appreciation for people's efforts, even if they were not the best. I also told her that if she sung again at the office Christmas party this year, I would be sure to only be supportive of her if she sounded like Renée Fleming. She clapped a few more times after that.

Despite applauding, we were able to keep up a few closely whispered snark sessions between us. We had fun mocking the comic, of course, and the bizarre sinister version of holiday music they played for suspense during the voting results sections. However, the most maligned thing that evening was probably Michael Bolton's ridiculously obvious hairpiece, which looked like a yarmulke made of cheap carpet remnants. Everybody knows you have a bald spot, girlfriend. If you're going to go the short-hair route and try to make everybody forget about the (unforgettable) mullet years, why ruin it by slapping a dead monchichi on your pate? Embrace the bald, honey child, and live with it.

However, we couldn't mock everything. The most difficult part was reconciling our feelings of being jaded about and sick of the milking of sob stories with the fact that we knew the people who had been forced to talk about their sob stories were actually sobbing about them. In fact, my friend Liimu, the very person we were rooting for, actually broke down sobbing onstage twice that night.

So I found myself with these mixed feelings of being proud of her for her solo, and understanding all the backstory that made her cry (her father died of cancer, her mother survived two bouts with it, her association of the song with song seriously crappy parts of her life, she's worked all her life for the opportunity to sing for a large audience and her only chance could be taken away if the were voted off, etc.), but at the same time feeling oddly manipulated and like the whole thing was inappropriate. I wanted to protect her by getting the damn camera out of her face, and yet I knew she had worked to get it there. I knew that, overall, the important things were both this opportunity for her and the chance to bring home some money for the cancer charity Patti LaBelle had chosen, even while I knew any of those celebrities could have made a greater contribution out of their pocket change if they wanted to. Most of all, I had to appreciate her performance, emotion, and the awesome Philly choir, while they were singing Jesus Take the Wheel, one of the most appallingly hokey, eyeroll-inducing songs to come down the popular music pike in the last couple decades, at least. In the span of a few short minutes, I found myself going from loathing the song to cheering for it.

I think I sprained my brain, people. I slept until one in the afternoon today, and I still feel concussed. Doctor, will I ever be able to make fun of people freely again?

I will say, however, that there were some wonderful high moments. I was very proud of Liimu, and team LaBelle, and actually was impressed by how much better every choir and performer sounded live than on television. Seriously, they must have the dreaded awards-show bad-mixing problem on COTC, because watching it back at home on TiVo did not do them justice.

Also, seeing Patti LaBelle sing Over the Rainbow live with her choir has to be, as Mrs. Nator put it, one of the Top Ten Gay Experiences of our lives. Miss Patti is a force of nature, and she was spectacular. I cannot believe they missed some of the best parts on the live broadcast, where she hurled the mic stand across the stage and kicked her shoes into the sky during the climax of the song. They referred to it later, but the cameras missed it. And she knocked everybody else's shoes off, too. To quote Mrs. Nator again, Patti LaBelle is like a wonderful drag queen homage to herself. Halleluia!

Finally, I was thrilled that Liimu got such a long solo, and really did well with it, despite all the stress, hard work and emotion she has been going through for the past month over this. I really hope she gets more opportunities out of this, because she is awesome and deserves it. I love her a lot and am so proud of her! You Go, Girl!

I just hope she will still love me when she learns I really don't like that song.

P.S.: I actually feel a little uncomfortable sharing her emotional breakdown here, but since it's been on national TV and YouTube already, here's a video of her performance for those who missed it.

Your Dreams Explained!

1. If you dream that you are flying, but suddenly start to fall:
You are afraid of success, or that your success and happiness will end. Is there someone or something in your life holding you back?

2. If you dream about turtles:
You will make slow but steady progress. You need to slow down and pace yourself. Alternatively, it indicates that you are sheltering yourself from the realities of life.

3. If you dream about your teeth falling out:
Either you are feeling powerless, or you are lying. Cut that shit out.

4. If you dream there are rocks you must climb:
You are taking too much Prozac. Also, you have issues with shoes. Stay away from pigs, if you know what's good for you.

5. If you dream you are a pirate bearing an uncanny resemblance to Angelina Jolie:
Alright, now you're just making shit up.

6. If you dream you are suddenly back in high school, where you have to take multiple exams you didn't know about in those infernal blue booklets, and you are late for all of them and don't remember how to do anything, and all the kids are teasing you and trying to tell the teacher that you are cheating:
You have returned to school later in life, and most of the students are 20 years younger than you. You just had an unfortunate and unlikely accident with a shopping cart that kept you out of classes that, little did you know, were to prep you for your first Chemistry homework and your first Intro to Vet Tech quiz, which requires extensive memorization of medical terms. Also? You can't ever make up that lab you missed. Oh, and you're so stressed about studying that you're procrastinating my writing stupid blog entries. Nervous, yet?

Or, you will soon come into a big fortune!

Your mileage may vary.

Chemistree fore Eediots!

Hello, and welcome to Chemistree fore Eediots! Our first installment is on significant vs. insignificant figures. And by a significant figure, we don't mean this:

I'm as significant as you get, bitches!

No, by significant and insignificant figures, we are referring to the figures in measured numbers that count for something, like this:

Remember, children: "Clickie pickie makey biggy!"

Confused? Let's try a simple similie analogy hominy:

Say you're having an orgy.

Oh, where do I begin?

Imagine that each mammal person is a number, except zero, which would mean no person is there, like so:

fig.1

To have a good orgy, you want everything arranged so that everyone is having a good time. To do this, you want everyone to be sexually engaged with at least one other person at the party. Then, each person will be having a significant relationship, and thus will count as an significant figure.

fig. 2, whoop-de-doo!

"But," you may interject, "doesn't Chemisteree have fancy things like decimals involved?" Indeed, it does. So, let's imagine your orgy is taking place in Tijuana. Therefore, the decimal point shall be represented by a donkey.

fig. three-haw

Thus, we may also include people on either side of the donkey as significant, and picture a number with decimals like so:

fig. 4: "Qué sucede en México, permanece en México."

So, from looking at these figures, we can determine the rule that All non-zero numbers in a measured number are significant.

Unfortunately, as we all know, Chemissterry can get even more complicated than that. Yes, numbers in Chemisorry Chem include zeros. So, how are we to handle these in our hominorgy? Well, let's imagine they are empty spaces where no one is. This leads us to the next rule: "Sandwiched" zeros occur between nonzero numbers and are significant.

See, for example, this doohickey here:

fig. 5, or is that 5.0?

As you can see, we count each person as significant, on either side of the donkey. We also count the empty spot in the middle as significant, too, as it is in-between the first significant person and the second... or, in this case, the donkey, and thus is a sandwich. Well, it's not actually a sandwich, or we'd have to search Google for images of a sandwich. What we mean is, a space between people, or other mammals, is okay for our purposes. It's probably just because one person needs a little space right now, or is a voyeur.

Um, okay. So next we have another another kind of zeros. These are the kind of zeros that appear at the end of numbers, and are called "trailing zeros." Our rules about trailing zeros are: Trailing zeros follow non-zero numbers in numbers without decimal points, are usually place holders, and are not significant.

Meaning, no matter how many people you have in your orgy, or spaces between them, they are all significant. But, as you'd expect, the space between the last person and the wall or door is not significant, because that's the end of the f***-chain.

fig. sex

Similarly, Leading zeros precede non-zero digits in a decimal number and are not significant.

So, as you will see in fig. 7, like trailing zero empty spaces, leading zero empty spaces are kind of the space between the f***-chain and the other wall, and don't count, despite the donkey, who is off practicing his lines for A Midsummer Night's Dream, or something.

fig. newton 7

Finally, you may well ask, "but aren't there more complicated numbers in Colostomystery? Like, this thing I've heard of, 'scientific notation'?" Well, yes, but it's really not that complicated at all, as our last figure will illustrate.

fig. whatever, I can't be bothered.

As you can see, the multiplication symbol acts as a rift in the space-time continuum, turning the spaces between the people (and donkeys) into trailing zeros by eating the sandwiches. In addition, the midgets or children or whatever at the top right don't count, because they have no legal standing in Tijuana.

We hope you enjoyed this installment of Chem 4 Idjitiots. Tune in next week for Intro to Vet Tech for Total Morons!

Morris, is that you?

I'm Under Her Spell

If being excited to go to the midnight Buffy, The Musical Sing-Along this weekend makes me a giant goober, well... just bring it on!

Now to finish up my chemistry reading...

P.S.: We also got tickets to see Kathy Griffin at MSG in January! WOO!!!

Now My Life Is Complete

Clicky Pickie Makey Biggie

Haircut 100

Anybody remember that band? Yes, I am old.

I got a new haircut today. I've had pretty much the same hairstyle for a number of years now, and it was time for a change. Mrs. Nator likes it when my hair is a bit longer, so I let it go for a while, until finally the shagginess drove me mad (and I got some money for my birthday I could spend on a hair cut).

So, rather than my old, outdated gay boy-style haircut, something like this:

I now have something between an emo cut like this:

and a twink cut like this:

My hairstylist totally rocks, and Mrs. Nator and I are both happy with the results.

I only hope that when I go back to school the cool kids like me! I'll just die if they don't...

Ain't That America

I think I finally got myself off some of the collectibles and xtian sites that started plaguing me after I bought that Thomas Kinkade angel figurine for Mrs. Nator's grandmother. (I know. Don't get me started.) Here, however, is just a small section from one of their recent emails to me. Clicky piccy makey biggy.

The Horror.

I think the juxtaposition of the creepy preemie doll, the John Wayne knife and the Disney fairy just says it all about the U.S. of A., don't you? The Thomas Kinkade and Precious Moments links are just side Jell-O salads to this remarkable Spam Casserole of Middle American goodness.

I think I'm going to have to go do something very deviant right now. Don't wait up.

Late Registration

Well, there it is. At least for now. A few of the courses might change depending on what happens with drop/add later in the month. Also, I still haven't paid my tuition yet, as I have to get my final loan confirmation. Now that I know roughly what courses I'll be taking, I know that I have to add at least $550 per semester for the books I'll need. That's half again the tuition for this city college, people. Oy!

The biology and psychology courses aren't required, but I'm taking them because I want to see what grabs my interest. It may be that I get all excited about biology and decide to change my goal to a degree in that or zoology, or I like psych and decide to pursue becoming an animal behaviourist. Yes, I've taken those subjects before and enjoyed them (as I took Chemistry before and really struggled with the equations), but that was all 20-25 years ago. I think it would be best to brush up. Anyway, the bio course can also be used as a prereq for some vet tech courses later.

Speaking of a long time ago, I recently found my college ID cards from when I first registered in 1988 at just barely 18 years old. Good Lord.

"Hey. Wanna go out clubbing?"

Man. The hair. The makeup. The lack of fat. The enthusiasm. The youth. Who knew that nearly 20 years later I'd be dragging my sorry ass back to classes, to attend with kids fresh out of high school? Not that I'd have appreciated being called a kid at the time, what with going to live on my own in New York City and mingling nightly with the most drugged up adults Manhattan had to offer...

"New York City! Just like I pictured it... skyscrapers, and ev'rythang."

Yes, I had a fedora and a guitar pick earring. What of them? And no, I never throw anything out.

Keep laughing, people. Meanwhile, I'll keep cursing that my metabolism petered out and being grateful for my life experience since then.

I wonder if I can get my hair to swoop like that, again?