Contentious C

Thank you for explaining the joke; have you considered that as a profession?

Man, this is some grade A insanity from the lot of you on the shaving front. Are the 87-blade monstrosities horrible? Yes. I always flash back to the Mad TV sketch about this when I see them in the store. "Blade 14 removes the second dermis layer, preventing you from ever growing hairs in that spot again!" etc. They're all of the problems of a standard disposable, only with flashier packaging. But I'd get some awful ingrown whiskers if I don't get my face warmed well, use some kind of real shaving cream or proper shaving soap - Cremo is a solid brand - and shave with an old-school safety razor (the ones that take double-sided razor blades). I bought one at an antique store for $6 and it changed my fucking life, used that thing for 10 years before I bought anything else. I'd eat a disposable razor before I'd use it on my face. You bunch of goddamned savages; madness, I tell you.

"Could you describe the ruckus, sir?"

Yeah, there was a part of me that was almost thinking this was code for something else, but, much like buttering, it's exactly what you think it is. Good to know.

This is why you watch Christmas Vacation each and every year: to remind yourself about the attic stairs. Don't stand in front of them, don't sit on them when you get stuck. Thank you, Chevy Chase. Thank you.

Just putting this here. Casually Explained: Is she into you?

If there's any notion of the NFL rigging things, this is why: they see the possibility of a JAX/MIN SB and are shitting themselves.

Is that a meteor-sized problem? Because to me that sounds more "gigantic asteroid should Pac-Man the bejesus out of Earth"-sized. Though, honestly...yeah, those fucking guys, too. (Not to insinuate all the people making those choices are men, per se - just the phrase rolls off the ol' brain-tongue better when it's 'guys'.)

Thanks, and fair points, J.T. I wouldn't call the guy a dick. More like he flat-out has the wrong mentality to be a scientist. For most of us, when something goes wrong, the first - and best - question is, "What did I do wrong?" And it's usually some fixable, easy sort of thing that takes no time and makes you feel dumb for having bollocksed it in the first place. And there's a smaller subset who are crazy/paranoid and think "What did someone else do to my experiment?" Though, that being said, there have been some high-profile instances of sabotaging labmates at major universities. But this guy is more like, "Oh, that didn't work. I guess the entire protocol - that half a dozen other people wrote, refined, and troubleshot for a combined 3 decades between them - must be wrong, so I'm going to skip entire steps because I think I can be 'efficient' and 'creative'." And then wonders why it didn't work. At one point early on, we had him doing the same general task for a good 3 months straight, with little variation, and he never did it the same way twice or figured anything out for himself that wasn't a shit idea. Since that time, he's been doing quite literally the easiest possible thing there was to do in that lab - stuff that I could train my parents how to do in a couple of weeks, tops - but, like I said, didn't comprehend the difference between "because of me" and "in spite of me". I think what chaps the collective asses of his graduate school class and those of us who had to tolerate him is that he may very well get grandfathered through a lot of stuff he doesn't deserve and end up with a degree anyway. He still has to take his quals, and the only real hope there is that he fails them and is summarily booted out. If he doesn't...well, then any degree he gets cheapens the one I just got, because I wouldn't hire him to mow my lawn. So much for the illusion of meritocracies. And am I on people's shit lists? Oh, for sure. But that's because I choose to put myself on them. In the words of Ray Velcoro, I welcome judgment.

There is also a System Shock remake supposed to come out this year. I was in on the Kickstarter.

There's all this talk about 20+ year old shows, and not a whit anywhere about Alias Grace or, as I'd like to call it, Canadian Distaff Rashomon. It brings the weird and the mindfuckery. The pacing is a little off in the early going, I feel, with two less invested episodes sandwiching a fairly heavy one, but it comes together by the end.

Oh man, thanks for that. This led to the following train of thought: - "Surely Phil means 'USFL' right?" - Search for USFL coaches turns up no Marty. - Search for UFL turns up one in the 60s and one recent one. "Surely it can't be the recent one..." - Marty's Wikipedia page. "Yup, it's the recent one. Oy vey." - And then the money shot from Wikipedia...

Reid at least made the SB once, so I think Marty's still got that one on lockdown.

The other guy who did that was Steve Young, wasn't he?

I think that article got written that way because, "Welp, House of Cards is blowed-up now, let's find something else that smacks of unspoken strife and simmering drama and try to gin up some clicks." That said, given the utter bilge and pseudoscience that's in that book of Brady's, and the matter-of-fact takedown 538 did on it...well...love the guy for nabbing the team 5 Super Bowls, but bro, you're a fucking idiot, and so is your not-a-doctor pal Alex. So I can believe there's a grain or seven of truth to that article.

So some of the stories from the "Just Stuff" thread dredged up my previous job situation, and I felt like I - and I'm sure many of you - could use a space to describe "That FUCKING PERSON" at work who just takes your last nerve out on the front lawn, douses it in kerosene, sets it on fire, and then says, "This shit is your fault". Because I feel if you haven't been there in the workplace, then you're either not eligible to work due to child labor laws, or you're dead inside. And even 11-year-olds probably know that fucking kid they hate working with. So, no names, no specifics that make it too specific - just let it out. I just finished up a Ph.D. in Biochemistry & Molecular Biology back in April, and my adviser, while a great guy, was one of those "nice to the point of a fault" types, and it meant he took on another student in Feb. 2016. And that student...he's This guy. This fucking guy I had to tolerate for a year and a half. This fucking guy Would. Not. Shut. Up. He would ask you a question about how something works, and when you try to explain it to him, he ignores the fact that he asked the damned question in the first place and just blathers on - talking directly over you each and every time - about his own ideas, because apparently he thought the phrase "thinking out loud" was a lifelong invitation, instead of a description. And then when you tell him something that needs fixing - usually some shit he's doing completely, demonstrably wrong - he would dismiss that because doing it correctly was too inconvenient. And there really is no such thing in wet bench science. The only shortcut to the job is accepting that there are no shortcuts, because it will stop you from being a lazy moron who screws things up for months or years. But not this fucking guy. This fucking guy couldn't tell the difference between an experiment that worked because of him versus one that worked in spite of him, and if there's ever the sort of person who shouldn't be a career researcher, it's exactly that person. I think the real shit-icing on the shit-cake that got baked in the turd oven for me was that, after I defended, I stayed on for a few more months to wrap up my last publication. We had a safety inspection during that time, and I had gotten on everyone's case in the lab repeatedly for throwing particular plastic items in the regular trash, because they were sharps hazards. And that was typically met with lazy bullshit like, "Oh, but the other labs do it all the time, so it must be OK." The inspector comes through, and this brain donor asks her, Brain Donor: "So should we dispose of these more carefully?" Her: "Yeah, better safe than sorry - they're a sharps hazard." (I'm making my shocked face.) Brain Donor: "Oh, OK. I asked because another student in the lab is really particular about this." Arrrrrrghrazafrazagghrh. The one solace I take away from it is knowing that everyone else from his class, to a person, cannot fucking stand him, either. And that, as with literally everything he does, he will be the last person in the room to catch on. I'm so happy I'm not there anymore. But, I would, if I believed in such things, still make a good-faith attempt to call down some lightning, or a passing meteor, or even a golf-ball-sized hailstorm in a very specific area to just...just do the world a damn favor. So, who's yours?

Oh man. I feel that one. I had to TA and grade exams for Intro Biochemistry tests occasionally way way back in the day (the days of the Green Board), and THE SAME FUCKING GIRL took the class 3 semesters in a row, and just bombed the SHIT out of it all 3 times. I still remember her name. People like that need to learn to Take. The Goddamned. Hint...your SIL included, by the sound of it. We were not all meant to be doctors and lawyers, some classes are weed-out classes, and being smarter than your friends and family and parents and neighbors doesn't make you "Capital S"-smart. "You can do anything if you just believe in yourself enough" is some doo-doo concocted by Walt Disney to sell movie tickets. Or maybe it's just people from San Diego.

That will just get you taken out of the sim, and it will go on without you. Unless that was good enough for you...?

I don't know, that one worked as the one truly balls-to-the-wall, whackadoodle line in the whole show for me. A fat, insecure, alcoholic cop (I know, I know, 3 words too redundant) screaming that at a pre-teen? Yes, please. Doesn't make up for wasting Colin Farrell otherwise...and Rachel McAdams...and Abigail Spencer...or for subjecting us to the two fistfuls of nails on chalkboards known as Vince Vaughn and Taylor Kitsch... but I thought that scene worked. It might be my only fond memory of that season.

Mayfield won't and shouldn't go # 1. Or even in the first round. There's a definite whiff of Eau de Manziel on him.

This stuff continues to make me wonder what might have happened to Steeler Boy if all this particular worm had started turning back then, without the need for things like Ray Rice & Weinstein to have helped push things to where they are now. Then again, it was handled by Goodell, who's never found something he couldn't fuck up.

Well, we're ridiculously thin on the front 7. It's sort of like regressing to the mean after everything breaking well last year - shrugging off the Jones/Collins trades and finding McClellin/Flowers/Van Noy - whereas injuries have meant everything's broken the other way this year. Bill is probably wondering if Willie McGinest still has anything left at this point.

I did some school trip years ago where I saw the usual suspects. That's unremarkable. But this seems like the sort of place to mention the Baltimore Rock Opera Society, which does some fairly absurd stuff like this: CHRONOSHRED: The Adventures of Stardust Lazerdong, Pilot Episode I saw everything they did from mid-2013 until late last year; I don't know how their most recent show, The Terrible Secret of Lunastus was. Their best show, though, was a set of 30-minute performances, split up over two weekends. Lots of genre-subverting and strangeness, but the real winner was "Rats!", taking one of those old & moldy Broadways and adapting a little bit of the material to the Local Baltimore Mascot (well, it's either the rat or the bullet). I don't think I stopped laughing the entire show. On a separate note, I saw something yesterday that mentioned Alison Bechdel's Fun Home was turned into a musical. Has anyone seen that?

For some reason, working titles like that make me feel like Justin Roiland didn't improv Rick's series of catchphrases from "Total Rickall" but instead just read out a bunch of fake movie names.

*WHOOSH* Because "you parked illegally" wasn't dumb? Finn didn't do anything of importance in this movie - not just "his plan failed" level of non-importance but "he could have just not been in the movie and it would be the same movie" non-importance. That's one of the movie's biggest shortcomings. If his entire plotline is going to be a distraction, then it could at least be a more interesting distraction by giving him someone to put the screws to him who's more than a cardboard cutout. Just a scene where Finn's captured and Phasma gets in his face, rips her own mask off, spitting mad and finally happy to execute him (remember how she was supposed to have ended up down a garbage chute?), would have been something more engaging and enjoyable, instead of the nothing they did. So it isn't just about Gwendoline Christie - it's about making the third-most important member of the new group matter a little more, because hey, news flash, that's what happens when you make smaller characters more believable and relatable, too. You elevate the people they interact with. But hey, enjoy your mediocrity and its accompanying rationalizations.