White Flannel Sheets

Me: How's the shedding going?
Greg: Well.
Me: Wow. It's amazing you still have any left on your body.
Greg: Oh my, no. I have a veritable fountain of hair.

The Salem Witch?

Me: Why would you name your boat that? Everyone would keep trying to
burn it!
Greg: Sure, but on the up side, when you put it in water, it floats.

Six Flags Under

Greg: Hurty, but fun.
Me: Worst amusement park ever. Hurty fun for the whole family! House
of Pins! Acid Flume! Tunnel of Bees!
Greg: The Bully Simulator!
Me: Teacups! Full of piping hot tea! Actual Pirates of the Carribean!
Greg: Botulism Bay!

Thursdays with Walter, week 11

There should be a technology fight song. Go, technology, go!

You'll be sorry you came to this class. This is the get jiggy class.

It's the Mothers of Invention. It's something old people use to like.

It's always somebody and his orchestra.

We have lugged in about 3000 pounds of equipment tonight, ostensibly to show you things.

I do accept coloring books in lieu of final papers, so if you threw anything away, ha ha!

Why you trickin' me, man?

What's this http thing I keep seeing? And three w's? Is that a mystical organization? They make things appear on my screen!

And that's actually Ronald Reagan!

Okay, let's not panic, we have options.

We don't have any sound off these things. What a cheap classroom.

Whoa! That's Moby Dick the sound recorder. Is that Edison right there? Whoever he is, he liked a beer after work.

That also is Ronald Reagan, by the way.

We could do ancestry next class.

Ah, it's beautiful: the music coffin.

Open the doors! Play it for the neighbors, see if I care!

If they want credit they have to stay! I love this!

Eduard-Leon Scott de Martinville, ore Eddie Martin as we used to call him...

Oh geez, I've got a class and I forgot my crank!

In the modern era, today it's an iPod, tomorrow it's a peapod, I don't know what's coming next and neither do you, and don't say you do.

No, no, don't come up with a better solution, I can't handle it. My whole house is full of better solutions.

I'm s'posed to clean this and have gloves on and...you know, read.

We're gonna do one more yodel.

Okay that's Alpine Harry and his Bob Dylan impersonation.

That's probably the greatness of museums and libraries: that the past is still there.

If you go back through old issues of Scientific American, you'll see why our society is really odd.

This thing has more scratches than Gabby Hayes's whiskers on a cheesecake.

Who says that? Chico!

If you know this group, you have serious issues.

It's too bad we can't hear this, because this is awful.

They have metal things coming our of their heads, and they look at me like I'm some kind of tree fossil. They're surprised I'm alive.

Ah! This is one handout you'll really want to color.

It was like watching a xerox copy of a baseball game.

The wildest surrealist poet on all available drugs at the same time couldn't come up with these band names.

You inhaled, you put [Inagaddadavida] on, and the next thing you knew it was Sunday!

You listen to T.S. Eliot, you don't need an antidepressant, you need someone to see where you are on the floor.

We've got time for a song. Do you want Barenaked Ladies, or Mingus, or...ooh!

Okay, the first track is called "Oh Lord, Don't Let 'Em Drop That Atomic Bomb on Me," and the second one is "Eat That Chicken."

Thereby combining Gospel and the beatniks in an eclectic mix of noise.

Razzmatootie!

If you want to learn how to preserve it, read the material.

Thursdays with Walter, week 10

I don't want to look for it, I want it to come to me!

Then we'll see if he's just another corporate fraud.

Color wrecked all that beautiful imagery!

Ol' Hook-Nose Wellington we used to call him; I remember it well.

God, I hate the web!

A friend gave it to me. Shows what kind of friends I have.

I feel like I'm repeating myself tonight. I feel like I'm repeating myself tonight.

He tried to make an engine using gunpowder. One can imagine how well that worked out, when the engine landed in Ohio, even before there was an Ohio!

You can never have too many Google windows open.

He wrote a book, and said some people are coming up with an idea, only he was writing in Latin, so it was some people are coming up with an idea est.

I'm going to bed. It's 8:00. It's dark. There's nothing to do. There won't be tomorrow, either.

I hate to tell you, it's one guy in New Jersey with a whole lot of tricks.

These are very hypnotic, so if you're feeling sleepy, put $20 in an envelope and bring it to the front of the room.

And you'd go out and burn down a barn! You were in a tizzy!

No lights, lost kids, drunk uncles? Sort of like that experience.

There ya go. If you weren't having an epileptic seizure, wait 30 seconds.

An Edison cylinder hooked up to your ears like...an ur-iPod.

It's a venti, not a grande. Shoot me.

How many pixels on the head of a pin?

If you don't know by now, you're from Mars.

I swear, one more time, it's good that I don't have a gun, because we wouldn't have a TV, we'd just have a hole.

What you don't want is a Lincoln Log on your player head.

The next time the music comes on, you'll get blown out of your chair.

It's like a phone book of the dead.

If you know Oscar Levant, you know how funny that is.

You gotta save the footage of Hero the Wonder Dog!

Next week, bring your ears.

Thursdays with Walter, week 9

(I missed weeks 7 and 8, so don't ask me anything about disaster preparedness and recovery.)

Gigs? No, I play for the walls, and they're sorry enough.

People call me the book magnet.

Okay! I'm going to read your midterms out loud and comment on them as I go. None of you did really horribly, which was disappointing. Where are the flunkies?!

Oh, this one is in English. Good!

Some of you made a lot of sense. I was impressed.

This is a class on electronics, isn't it?

It's a waste of time looking. I won't bother. Oh, here it is!

I'm sorry, we can't hire you as investigative reporters.

When you have a good enough infection of preservation that you get the disease, then you start to be like me.

If I had not been watching the World Series, I would've read them with my other eye, too. This is the first time I didn't give any B's. See what baseball does for you?

Is the broadcast archives person here? See? What if she was my only pinch hitter?!

You'd wish it was absinthe.

Ha! This guy was really lit up!

We're saving these stories, and then we have to spend the rest of our lives trying to keep them away from children.

Okay, okay, show us Superman now!

Do you have a library card? Are you a convicted felon?

In this one, the people and the machines are robots.

Well, that's it. Sorry we didn't have popcorn.

No! 1957 was the Milwaukee Braves!

My training for that event was to go out in a school corridor and hide under my coat. A kid's winter coat that you wear for five years without ever laundering? *cough, cough* And if they dropped the bomb, who would care? It'd be an act of mercy!

You put all these bizarre stories together, and it turns out to be the truth!

Do you ever ponder? When's the last time you pondered?

You gotta start writing these names down and start reading stuff! You're culturally deprived!!

Lemon juice on the Constitution? She would've been so fired!

We're all moving way too fast.

Dewey Decimated: it's another story where someone gets murdered with a rare book.

Wherever the Right ends, he was to the right of that.

You're not gonna write this down, because come on.

That's our homage to the Native American

Why, it's the damn Book of Kells--again!

Oh where, oh where has my Book of Kells gone...

You can make your whole family look like they're from Jupiter with a few clicks.

I knew I shouldn't have drank that hearing stopper.

A, we couldn't cover it in five semesters, and B, no one will ever cover it.

If you want to save the forests, don't go there.

Billions of pixels per square nanometer!

I'm a little capture device!

You can't open a jpeg 354 Chrysler engine with a tiff six-cylinder Packard.

It becomes present with lots of little toasters. This is toaster paradise!

Millions of colors! You could go mad!

If you're not interested in this, you won't be interested.

I have two in my office--one for each eye.

That's the Achilles elbow...heel, neck, whatever you want to do.

It's like Lucy Ricardo packing chocolates.

There's a couple of words you don't hear at Yahoo: quality control.

What's your favorite M-word? Metadata!

They are trying to standardize things, because too many things are optional things in the world of thingyness.

Okay, we have Canon, and we have Epson, and let's say it's a new merged company, called Can-Epson. Conniption would be good. And your company is...Lego. It's very colorful and has a lot of components. And yours is the Deutchland Uber Alles, machine, the Hasselblatt. Ah, the Hasselblatt! If I had the money! And if I cared!

We're little federal pea-shooters, and they have cannons in the industry.

You have to really Hasselblatt it to get it there.

They apparently have petabyte servers in their cars.

You can see a huge XML parade!

Machines are profoundly stupid.

I'm from the future.

Isn't it a lot easier to just pick up Dewey Decimated and just read it?

You say that like you mean it: it's fun. I know what kind of fun that is.

Thursdays with Walter, week 6

I have very good notes on this. Unfortunately they're not here. So tonight, we're going to get very imaginative.

You start making bird noises until a hawk attacks you.

As funds become available...so in other words, they're never going to do anything.

I don't have a pointer. Does anybody have any tall chalk?

If I want to see how Bob Dylan burns, I just light him up.

Look at what age does to you, baby. Whoa. That's what happens to rock stars. Can we have a moment of silence?

To test this, you have to build a structure and set it on fire, or it doesn't count.

Y'ever have to buy a roof?

So the guy shoots you when you're wet.

Maybe giraffes work there.

Land of a million sprinkler heads, all in a row, like a big huge insect.

The water doesn't know, "oh, I have to go around this post."

Within half an hour, the place is full of water and smoke, so I'm parboiled!

This is giving grandfathers a bad name: anything that's grandfathered in is a bad idea.

They call that the Fire Triangle in fire talk.

This is why this is the ideal job: you can only work four hours, and then you have to take a two-hour break.

You're gonna put a fire out with ice?

He moved to one side, and the pipe went whammo! If he'd stayed where he was, he would've been whammoed!

You get Fast Eddie's pipes, and two years later you have Fast Eddie's leaks.

Big smart-aleck preservation namby-pamby.

You're not supposed to git 'er done, you're supposed to git 'er tested!

Aspiration! Let's all aspirate!

It's an orange tube full of noses.

We've got a heavy breather on 2.

They test it by lighting something, hopefully not one of your rare books.

Why should we have an alarm? We're the fire department!

Get to be a consultant if you want to get rich. Hundred dollars an hour? Why stop there?

Removes oxygen from the space in four minutes? Removes oxygen from you a lot faster!

One of the problems with CO₂ is it's gonna kill you. Kind of a nasty side effect.

It's not gonna kill you. You might walk sideways or talk in a funny voice for the rest of your life, but what a price to pay.

Oh, well, we had a Gutenberg here, but it got blown off the shelf, a couple of pages got a little damaged...

Are computers all we talk about anymore?

If we don't get air in here soon, we're goners.

You see what happens with technology! Lucy showed us!

There's not much you can do about the weather. The weather's gonna win.

Doesn't that sound like a good idea? I could sell it to you.

Haven't you ever noticed when you move the toaster aside there's a little shadow of stuff?

That's my new favorite peeve.

I've talked fire suppression systems to death.

This is the real stuff, not just what I imagine.

This is the show and tell kingdom!

You touch the electrodes here...

It's like the flossing community. Big discussion.

And if it's late at night, it's a midnight quire.

Good for tomatoes, good for books.

Ah, the kettle stitch. Remains a mystery to me after all these years.

Bone folder! The terms start to thicken as you get into this.

Do you miss being in this class or what?

It has that acid free look.

If you don't know who Jack Kerouac is, you're not from this country.

He took some things in addition to his coffee.

Benzedrine is what there was before Starbucks. Starbucks is like a slow benzedrine.

When's the last time you were a hep cat?

You don't get free benzedrine.

The reality is that while you're at the Kerouac grave site, the guys mowing the cemetery are doing wheelies.

I was young once! Student: I was alive during the sixties. Hi! Send water!

This is relevant to the course...I'll make it relevant to the course.

There's a certificate of purity that comes with every bottle. You won't remember reading it, but in half an hour, you won't remember anything.

You're seeing things Jack Kerouac never saw.

They didn't do much editing; they just produced. Dickens was a tad wordy.

Craigslist, Harryslist, Edslist, next week it'll be Maryslist. They're all the same people. they're all Google. Google has all these pseudonyms so they can make extra money. It's like offshore banking.

The textbook industry is like an auction of your soul.

Before we go, you're gonna get one more glimpse of what's good about life.

I've accumulated quite a few things.

She was reading Kerouac.

That loaf of bread is so great to find in a book.

I need a refresher course in my own course.

Thursdays with Walter, week 5

I hope I terrified everyone: it's the midterm of midterms!

With the midterm being a big bomber, the end of the year stuff'll be a piece of cake.

This is your midterm. It's like a vision came to me.

For next week, I want you to write a short story that begins, "On the way to the wedding, I drove past a bloody corpse on the highway."

I asked them for a sample, and they send me a bible.

I'm a sham and a pretense, but I admit it.

These are the really unemployable.

Does anybody care about Google to the extent that you want to go there and say "Hi, what's new?" We just use them.

This is a cruel trade! I didn't know conservators were so ruthless!

I cooked up a horrific midterm in order to mask my ignorance.

I ain't never lickin' the tip of a ballpoint no more.

Put that in your "don't" column.

It's alcohol, alright!

If you can drink it, you can breathe it. Ooh! Write that down!

Oh wow, this is horrific, but it's original, so it's 11 million dollars.

Those tricksy conservators are behind all this.

That's what I like about the web: you get what you wanted plus 80 pages of comments.

Next week, I'll show you way more wheels. I have so many wheels now I could build an 18-wheeler.

This is your guide for the midterm. If you have trouble, light incense in front of him. If you want a color version, send me ten dollars and I'll give you a paint by number. Now that you have your totem, let's look at what you've gotten into.

If you're not here, raise your hand.

What's a Hemingway? Oh, about five pounds.

I got all of these from one box, from one dumpster. Student: Are you just hanging out by the dumpster waiting for an old guy with a box of books? Nah, these are all coincidences. I have book radar. I should be a book dowser.

"Salvation is Created" for marching band

David: I'm going to assume (hope, pray, whatever) that it's the warm-up chorale.
Me: Pfft. You know there's gonna be a flag routine with it.
David: No. I will not have that.
Me: I think you mean, "do not want."
David: That too.

Tis the Season

Me: You're so vain, you probably think Adeste Fideles is about you.

Not Helping

Austin: Oh, just what we need, more grainy, out of focus pictures of
Bigfoot. It's people like you who are ruining the field of
cryptozoology!

Could you be a little more vague, please?

Jay: What was that movie, where that guy dies?

Vinny: That’s pretty much every movie.

How's Married Life

Greg: Oh, I don't feel too good about that.
Me: What? I'm just tenting my fingers!

Surf City, It Ain't

Me: Every group going into the bar has one female and two males.
Greg: It's a good night for the ladies.
Me: And a bad day for Jan & Dean.

Jackie Chan at the Salvadoran Restaurant

Me: You're watching a Chinese movie, dubbed into English, dubbed into
Spanish, edited for television, in a mirror.
Greg: I'm not watching it for the plot.

Implausible Deniability

Greg: I deny everything!
Me: Everything?
Greg: No!
Me: Hm, even that?
Greg: No!

Fire or Ice?

Greg: It's the apocalypse, with a vampire. Can it get any worse?
Me: There could be a zombie rising out of the back seat.
Greg: There probably is.

Comedy Tonight

Me: Is there a game on? Why are the stadium lights on? Oh, it says
volleyball.
Greg: Tonight, volleyball. Tomorrow...
Me: Tragedy tomorrow, volleyball tonight.
Greg: I was going to say curling, but that's more or less the same as
tragedy.

Overheard in Port Lavaca

Teenage mother: I didn't drink at all! I had beer at the reception,
and a couple of Jagers, and that shot you gave me, and that's it!

Not Helping

Me: They really have the worst dog toy ever over there. It's the gift that if I gave it to Mike, would once and for all make Jen forbid him to talk to me.
Greg: Lemme see it.
Me, holding horrible dog toy: Look at it. It's like a mess, with a handle.
Greg: It's fantastic. You should get it for Mike.

What was that?

Me: That would be the sound of Greg's heart breaking.
Greg: It'd be kind of a clanging squeak.

Logic

Greg: There we have it: proof that John Tesh is a commie.

Pok e joe's

Me: I don't know what's in these pickles.
Greg: Crack, apparently.

If a theorem falls in the forest...

Me: It's so mathematician of you to be allergic to something outdoorsy
and not know until you're 35 years old.
Greg: I've had poison ivy before! It wasn't this bad!
Me: Actually, it'd be more mathematician of you to never find out.
Because why would a mathematician go into the woods? To get to the
other side?
Greg: It's the only possible reason. And he wouldn't see the forest
for the trees.
Me: Terrible. But there's got to be a joke in there somewhere: why did
the mathematician go into the woods?
Greg: To get to the other side!
Me: That doesn't make any sense!
Greg: That's what makes it a mathematician joke!

Damn Ivies

Me: Okay, I'll say it: Cornell crazy.
Greg: Why?
Me: Beekeeping.
Greg: One word says it all.

Funereal Fun with Mike

(This is from my dad's funeral, June 2007; I just found it on a list of dad stories I keep meaning to write down. Hey: at least I have this, right?)

Mike: We have the photomosaic Christ, the needlepoint Last Supper, where's the decoupage pieta?

Honesty

Greg: I'm speaking from my heart here. My heart says "pickle."

Negative-Base Numbers

Me: Why would you do that? As a knee in the groin of the humanities
majors?
Greg: Yes! That's the whole point of mathematics!

Duration of entire conversation: 4 seconds

Greg: Stop accusing me of denying things quickly.
Me: But you do.
Greg: No, I don't.
Me: You did just then.
Greg: No!

Thursdays with Walter, week 4

about 15 minutes before class: What say we knock off early? See ya!

There's something in the atmosphere. Zombie. Spray zombie. We should all be hibernating.

I'm not real, I'm just inflatable.

"Please select logoff time." How about every fifteen seconds? That'll be fun.

One would hope that's a pseudonym, but maybe not.

What did Nicholson Baker call them? Cost-cutting, penny-pinching...whatever.

He's Canadian, so that's good. That makes him okay by me.

Let's buy a volatile toaster. BOOM! Wow! Did you see that one go?!

See what it does to people? Look at me!

Nothing exciting happens in these books unless you're about nine years old, and probably not even then.

So, you want to clean up after the parade?

Is there some place where it's just raining acid? Wait a minute--yes! America!

Call in the boys! Round up the gang!

Now we all have cultural assets, whether you like it or not.

You don't want your milk to have a friendly green putting-green top on it. Fuzzy!

I used to go to these meetings and listen to people bicker about the size of a cassette aperture. You ever wonder why that roll of 35 mm film fits in your camera the same as the last one? You forget that all of these conveniences are...convenient.

Everybody's got their master files as tifs, and now lossless jpeg 2000 comes along and it's got extensibility and flexibility and four doors instead of two and I don't know what.

Ah, dated comedy.

Why are you supposed to be using...Blue Fairy? Blue Ray? to play your movies on your...flying saucers? This is preservation class! We use technical terms all the time!!

They're in Bethesda; they must be good, because everything's more expensive in Bethesda.

Standards are a real strange business. These are people all over the world who get together and actually decide on something without starting a war.

They'd rather climb Mount Everest with nothing but a hat and bicycle.

If you speak German for more than an hour, your lips go numb.

Book repair disco music! Anyone who wants to dance, just break loose.

Oh, it's beautiful. It's like a Maserati. Don't you want to buy it, just to look at it?

Ah! Analog data compression, see?

Next thing you know, Goethe's going to appear and start singing.

You build a case with a drawer on the bottom, and on the top you have the book in the new binding, and down below is husband number one, kicked out in the cold: "I tried to give you shelter..."

Pay no attention to the man behind the thingies here.

You don't appreciate a football field-sized machine until you see people walking around it.

You people with your knowledge. You should go get jobs in technology factories or something.

What's happened to people's curiosity? "Here's a steamer trunk." "Oh, let's use it as a footrest!" How could you not look in it?

Ha ha ha, you didn't get to see the mortuary part.

Song of Myself? Boom, the ego's right there!

If you hate the Civil War, read Grant's memoirs.

Isn't technology kind of insane?

It's like a dinosaur eating a toothpick!

Mommy, what happened to the tree?

Hyah, step aside, I'm comin' though!

Do you have any papermaking videos? No? What kind of store is this?!

Doesn't that sound like a great idea? Go to a whole nother university and get a whole new degree, and never have money for 25 years, but you would know so much!

To me, that's a Frisbee that makes things happen.

Can you trust a Frenchman saying anything? Nothing personal.

The Times lies every day. All the news that's fit to print, heh heh heh.

Just one more thing about paper. Okay, just three more things about paper.

These are scientists. Have you ever hung out with scientists? They just come up with things, they don't know why. "I made paper out of tractor fenders!" "What ya gonna do with that?" "I dunno."

That's it for paper. Don't ask me any questions about paper. Forget about it. It's over. You had your chance.

Books are always talking to each other, you just need to get in on the conversation.

The Modern Classics, bound in deer hide, to display next to your gun rack.

Don't let the little paper that says "reproduction" fool you.

They all know each other, and publish incestuously.

Mobs of book-eating children going into the stacks! Can you see that?

Some rodent will see you and squeal to the press. Archy and Mehitabel will type it up.

It's hard to fine-tune a student early in the morning.

Tonight's exciting concluding episode...

Thursdays with Walter, week 3

This isn't worth anything, I hope. I use it as a Batman cape.

Help me! I'm an old map!

"page 31-34 creased, page 35 has a bullet hole, page 39 was eaten by mice, bloodstain on page 90"

This is a quintessential red state observation.

There is wisdom in the newspaper! You just have to dig deep for it.

There's only one other Rootie Kazootie book; oddly enough, it's called Rootie Kazootie.

We've all read a Little Golden Book. There's no stigma.

You all know the drill if the copyright mafia show up at your house. We live within the rules when it's possible.

It will be interesting to see if by the end of class you have a pound and a half of paper to lug around.

For this class only, I have created the Hindu god of dumpster diving. For those of you who weren't here, we talked about dumpster diving in the context of dumpster diving.

Paper you could take out to lunch, it's so good.

It's spelled "couching," but you don't say "couching" or you reveal your ignorance.

It was sitting there like paper with a match.

You're setting it on fire? It's going to burn, I think.

You try to make something safe, it's not permanent. You try to make something really exciting, it explodes.

It's...it's a horrid mutant waffle.

on burst testing: Why does that Kleenex just make it? Why does that shopping bag get you right up to the front door before the bottom drops out? They test that: it only needs to make it out of the store.

Never get into an armwrestling contest with a bookbinder.

It's a German machine--it makes no mistakes.

Tell 'em to go jump. You won't have a job left, but you'll have said that: that's fun.

"Shall" the vendor silly. You only have to "will."

In the meantime, you have an intermediary who speaks the language of the evil one: the lawyers.

If you start reading the boilerplate, I guarantee your mind will not be with you long.

You can't really do it at home using baking soda and a pair of pliers.

It's amazing: after all these years no one knows this stuff. I guess that's why I teach this class.

If there's anything in this profession that isn't a headache, let me know.

As soon as you buy it it already has shelf age, unless you go to the paper mill and grab it as soon as it comes out and throw it in a cooler like an organ transplant.

Now you can impress your HVAC buddies.

You're breathing last semester's air. Ew!

Whoever said it's not the heat, it's the humidity, they were the philosophers of conservation.

Why do I have that? That's a very good question, and you're never allowed to ask it again. Because if my wife hears it, then there'll be two.

Any kind of HVAC work, you'll need more than is left of Lehman Bros.

I don't know where they hire these people; there must be a lot of circuses going bankrupt.

It's like the baleen of a whale!

Microns are way smaller than peas.

You have once again incurred an expense.

If you have big pockets, get bigger ones.

There may be other people, but he's the guy.

On the scale of difficulty, this is toward impossible.

The image of people reading in sunlight? Might as well put a book in the oven. Here I am, cooking this book.

If you don't know if your building has drainage, you'll find out when you're swimming through your collection.

In the old days, it didn't matter: your carbon footprint could be a hundred miles wide and nobody cared.

You can see the humidity's having a little party down here.

It's very seldom 131F in the stacks.

First of all, the engineer is going to kill you, so you don't have to fire him.

On the web, you can see really snazzy, beautiful pictures; they look like they're in mylar.

Thursdays with Walter, week 2

If you have a pen, they shoot you right at your chair.

For a mere four thousand dollars, you've got a dollar-fifty book all saved!

Money, it means nothing to me: save my book.

Think of microfilm as your friend, not a loathsome piece of curled-up plastic.

Instead of Blackberry thumbs, you had scroll-unrolling thumbs.

on hemp paper: You make nice paper, and you're in a mellow mood all day.

Parchment vs. Vellum, going ten rounds!

You can get pretty wiggy in this subject.

By looking at this, you've all agreed to give me one million dollars. It's an Aztec curse.

on elephant dung paper: If you think about it, the elephant's done the pulping for you.

Taking living hearts out of people? A little detail.

When you shook hands with the ambassador and got smallpox, that's not such a good deal.

Corrugated cardboard! Made into paper that looks strangely like corrugated cardboard!

We went through a whole blender doing this, but at least I have something to show for it. We're people who don't get out a lot.

Paper is used, as we know, for filthy lucre.

People who are stamp collectors...you thought catalogers were strange!

Is that animal glue? I'm glad I didn't use stamps in the 1800s.

They ran out of fonts and had to use circus flier fonts: Terrible! Ha! Shocking! Whee!

History has a way of sneaking around and hiding in the backs of newspapers.

on the history of the Remington company: Eventually they put their plowshares away and went to weapons, so they did the opposite of what the bible says.

It's like a washing machine, except it comes out paper instead of pants.

That's a switch: I get a rebate!

This has more information than you can possibly understand in your lifetime. That's what I like about the internet, too: you no longer feel like an idiot, because there's no way anyone could know everything.

on accelerated aging tests: If you sat in front of a sunlamp next to a nuclear reactor on a hot stove, there's a good chance you'd degrade.

Yeah, I'm That Professional

Me: Some tune with a name too long for me to bother to learn came in.
Component librarian: Do I need to worry about it?
Me: Maybe.
Component librarian: Did I ask you to order it?
Me: Probably.
Component librarian: Well, thanks, then.

Thursdays with Walter, week 1

Here begins a series of posts quoting the instructor of my Thursday night class, LBSC 786. You will understand that I had to adopt a new note-taking technique that would enable me to separate real, functional notes from the kind of garbage I post here.

Driving in the dark when you're almost 60? You don't need acid, man!

That's the one thing you will get in this class: an obscure humor refresher course.

The cruel world awaits you, and this course will help you in no way whatsoever.

Ah, the fall, when college campuses are a-twitter with "like."

The art of bookbinding died centuries ago, but they keep doing it!

If you had to read this, your mind would snap.

This is one of my favorite books, because every time I open it, some of it goes away.

I'm Polish, and in high school I studied German, so I fought World War II in my head.

What are you doing here? Go back to your states! Aren't you in a militia or something?!

To fight the pandemic flu, get your hands drunk.

That's a good article. I'll probably...er...you'll probably find someday someone has made a copy of it and perhaps left it on your desk.

English literature students...I don't know that any of them ever got lives.

Mylar! I imagine sometimes the entire world under mylar! Suffocating, but so cool looking!

I started in the library as a page. Then I became a chapter, and now I'm about five novels.

College Park is hard to understand. It's like a huge yard sale with a university in the middle.

It's like a conservator's asylum.

One of 'em's a recidivist English major.

You don't have to be a member of the international conservation cult.

Why do mice always "scurry about?" Don't they ever just run? I saw a mouse scurrying about! It's like something from Dickens.

Your printing is so quiet! I should make copies for everyone! It's like artwork!

Why does my coffee maker have a clock on it? I don't want it to make coffee by itself! That freaks me out!

She was driving a Disney golf cart, so she was empowered.

The guy who did Goofy's voice figures into this class in conjunction with Bozo the Clown, but that comes up later.

You're a baseball person? You're going to like today's quiz. Oh, there's a quiz today, by the way.

A mission statement! Write that down!

Any good glues? I used to listen to jazz on the radio and assemble model cars, and I wasn't sniffing glue, but man, the jazz sounded awesome.

Static cling! It's better than laundry! I put a thing in mylar inside a plastic sleeve, and you'd need a truck to pull 'em apart.

You've been contaminated by Americana.

Why would you want to drive 200 miles per hour across a salt flat? Doesn't it make you thirsty just thinking about it?

That means everybody's here, plus two strays and a Spaniard.

Good luck with that, that's my advice.

Somebody figured out paper and somebody figured out ink, but they didn't do it on the same day.

Indulge me: I'm old.

The Problem with Compact Fluorescents: Solved

Greg: I’m concerned about the mercury.

Me: We won’t put them near the Wii.

Greg: Okay, good.

Seriously, we talk like this

Me: Pretzels are scalable. I mean, tortillas are scalable, too, but not as
much.
Greg: Tortillas are quantum. Pretzels are continuous.

The State of Classical Music

Adrian: Nobody riots at premieres anymore like they used to. They just complain about it on their blogs.

The Beach Picnic Explained

Mom: Sunday night we're having a beach picnic with the Simpsons.
Greg: What's a beach picnic?
Mom: You go down to the beach...
Me: ...with food...
Mom: ...and you brush the sand off your hot dog...
Me: ...and you wonder if that's salt or sand...
Mom: ...and when you start chewing, you find out.
Greg: Ah.

Science!

Me: What's a good-looking guy like you doing with an eyebrow like that?
Greg: Mad sciencing.

I may not be a jazzer, but I'm jazzier than some

Orchestral librarian: Is “Jumpin’ at the Savoy” in that medley?

Me: No, no, no, you stomp at the Savoy and you jump at the Woodside. Where would we be if people just started jumping wherever they felt like it?

The Postmodern Chemistry Set

Mike: Firefox extensions are the new guy-DIY thing to do around the house. It's totally the "Oh, I can fix the toaster" of the 21st century, except without the electrocution or kitchen fires.

Technically, it can be both.

Greg: That's an interesting idea.
Me: No, that's a terrible idea. What the hell's wrong with you?
Greg: It's that, too. I just said it was interesting.

Job Satisfaction

Dan: Why is it I always seem to catch you on a bad day?

Me: Because that’s the only kind there are?

Gift List Issues

Me: You're really easy to shop for, it's just that the things you want and the things your mother wants to buy you...
Greg: Have a null intersect. Form a disconnected space. Are mutually exclusive.
Me, writing: Okay, slow down...
Greg: I'm trying to think of an algebra one, but I can't think of anything good. Sits in the center of a nontrivial exact sequence?

Win

Me: Your victory was only temporary.
Greg: No, my victory was awesome.

From the Last Day in Norwich

Me: The question is, how many tics can I give you by the time we get to the airport?
Greg: Probably four.

If only I knew which was which

Either Greg or Sarah: Since when is thinking illegal?

The other: Since I became the mind police.

Coming Soon!

Jenn: Crouching Picasso, Hidden Bull!

Equivalence

Me: Best Mike Gift Ever!
Greg: I know! That means Jen will hate you forever.
Me: Damnit.
Greg: Well, the two are equivalent: the better the Mike gift, the more
Jen-hated it is.

The Baby Borrowers

Greg: We're watching cute children being manhandled by people who are
not their parents.
Craig: ...dot com.

It's Not Just No Self-Esteem, It's Negative Self-Esteem

Greg: I'm going to use the bathroom.
Me: I'm going to think ill of myself.
Greg: Why?
Me: I'm good at it? Wait...damnit! How can I think ill of myself and think I'm good at something at the same time?

He Did Ask

Saxophone Player: I got an instrument for my wife so we can play duets. Guess what I got her! What instrument can absolutely anybody play with no lessons?
Me: Saxophone.

lolmikez

Mike: My nachur perservz, let me show you them.

Not Quite So Great Minds

Greg: There’s a store over there called Tot Shot.

Me: Hm.

Greg: …

Me: …

Greg: …

Me: I’ve come up with several explanations for it, and none are appropriate.

Greg: Me, too.

Me: One involves a trebuchet.

Greg: Me, too!

Me: My other one is a tiny, kid-sized firing range.

Greg: Oh. My other one involves syringes.

Awards

(overheard at a diner in Ohio)

Man: She got a medal for valor.
Woman: What kind?
Man: Bronze Star.
Woman: I thought valor was a Silver Star.
Man: Well, there's that, too.
Woman: So what's silver for? More valor?
Man: Pretty much.
Woman: So what kind of star did you get?
Man: Plastic.

Hint: parts of it are in another room

Sign: COPIER EXTREMELY BROKEN

LT: So it’s not black and white, it’s on a scale of brokenness? It’s not totally broken?

Me: No, it’s beyond just being broken. It’s extremely broken.

Lt: Oh. Well, then you should just put “Copier > Broken.”

What is Truth?

Jake: I don't really buy in to that. Wikipedia says it lacks validity.

Cause of Injury: Office Supplies

Me: And if it doesn’t work, we’ll get bigger binder clips.

Bernie: Ask Gene. He’s got binder clips that’ll take your arm off.

Plan B

Mike B: I think my planning effort should go into an escape route, rather than a congratulatory speech.

Panty hose sizes

Kevin: Queen, EE, Recapitulation, Aubergine.

Pun Reaction

Greg: I knew that was coming.
Kevin: And yet, you did not bake a cake.

Seaweed Beer

Trip: More seaweed!
Toonhead: That wasn't kelpy enough, you bitch!
Trip: Agar! Agar! Agar!

Brickskeller

Me: You're trying to get me drunk!
Greg: No, I'm allowing you to get yourself drunk.

Sondheim

Dave: I didn't even know Company was the name of a show. I've heard of Into the Woods...

Planning

Toonhead: So the puzzle calendar is empty until Con.
Kevin: Well, there's that Strip Sudoku thing in June, but I'm not going.

What is it?

Kevin: Diagnosis: Cooties!

All the same

Dave: I never know if it's Al Pacino or Robert DeNiro.
Greg: Just say it was the guy in Heat.
Dave: That was Val Kilmer.
Greg: What?!

Drunken Rambling

Me: I can has non sequitur?

Shuffle

Greg: Oh, Kenny G.
Me: Why?
Greg: Mistake.

Library Science

Aunt Carol: I usually just go to the library and pick out fluff fiction and leave, but I do have a card in WI and IL, so that makes me somewhat of an intellectual.

Getting Philosophical on the Last Day of Class

Anwar: The last librarian will work for Google.

No Points for Knowing That

IW: “Skechers” is the correct spelling.

Me: Busted!

Baby Brain

Al: This is how your whole life changes. We are now totally focused on poop.

Me: Are you hoping for solid poop?

Al: At this point, anything. We’re not worried about quality.

Protesting Too Much

Me: It sounds like you’re backpedaling a bit there.

Greg: No! No no no. Not at all. I’m not backpedaling. No.

Putting the S in Vignette

I. At the Store
Me: Would you still love me if I spent $160 on shoes, $100 of which were Sketchers?
Greg: *cringe*

II. At Home
Me: These Sketchers are comfortable. I feel dirty.
Greg: Ha-ha.
Me: Do I need cut my feet off, or can I just soak them in bleach?

III. At Home, part 2
Me: I actually like these. I put the S in hypocrite.
Greg: Hypocriste.
Me: Hyspocrite. Hypsocrite. Oh, I like hypsocrite.
Greg: Me, too.

IV. Walking
Me: My heel is starting to hurt. It's these damn Sketchers. They turn on ya.

V. The next day
Me: Check it out--my heel bled through the band-aid.
Greg: Into your new Asics?
Me: Yep. I'm telling you, Sketchers are evil.

Unclear on the Concept

Me: Marco!
Greg: What?

Economics

Me: I wonder how old your car has to be before your tankful of gas is worth more than your car.

Jay: Mine’s getting close.

I Live to Serve

Jason: You make my head hurt.

Me: Just one more service I offer.

Got to Stop Meeting Like This

Me: Doug was looking for you.

LT: He found me. Those urinals aren’t that far apart, so…

Me: He probably found more of you than he was looking for.

LT: Little bit, yeah.

No no no means no

Me: Okay, you're going to need to restate that in a sane way.
Greg: It was a perfectly reasonable triple negative!

Huh?

Vince: I would’ve heard you if these shoes didn’t squeak so loud.

Gotta be faster than that to get by me

LT: I thought we had changed that.

Jay: Yeah, that was after the fart…after the fact…after the part was made.

LT: Oh, okay.

Me: He said “After the fart.”

LT: Yes, he did.

Me: I had to point that out. You can’t just gloss over that.

Hooah.

LT: That was the most butch performance of the Army Song the chorus has ever given.

Me: At least since it became co-ed.

LT: Possibly before.

Diplomacy

IW: How’s this sound: “Should I do it your way, or the right way?” Would that go over well?

Dishwasher

Me: I keep meaning to empty that. I’ll do it when I come home for lunch.

Greg: If you don’t do it at lunch, I’ll do it after work.

Me: Geez, that has to be the lamest ultimatum ever.

These Boots Were Shown on YouTube

Me: Okay, so, I need to find the "These Boots" video to give some context to this email, right? So if you hear "These Boots" start playing, it's not because I'm obsessed with David Tennant.
Greg: I'm not sure I believe you.
Me: Okay, it's not just because I'm obsessed with David Tennant.

Carousel, check. Chestnut trees, check. Wishing well, check.

Librarian 1: We’re looking for an arrangement of “I’ll Be Seeing You.”

Librarian 2: Have you looked in all the old familiar places?

It's like Toys for Tots, only really stupid.

Greg: I'm definitely going to shave for Passover.
Me: Shaving for seder? That sounds like a terrible fundraiser.
Greg: Yeah, and you'll never get the Hassidim into it.

How's Married Life III

Greg: Did I say the wrong thing?
Me: Yes.
Greg: Am I in the doghouse again?
Me: Yes.
Greg: Oh. How much do I have to vacuum?

A particularly bad game of hangman

Me: Why does he have big ol' polyps on his feet?
Greg: Those are shoes, Sarah.

Shrimp-Counting for Fun 'n' Profit

Greg: I only counted them once!
Me: That's twice now, then.
Greg: Well that's because you called me a shrimp counter! I felt like I had to!

lolz

COL: I had to call; I don’t think I have the thumbs to respond to that message.

Me: There are 12-year-old Japanese girls who don’t have the thumbs to respond to that message.

Tragedy Tomorrow

Me: Comedy is very, very hard. Why don’t people realize this?

Mike: I’ve been asking that for years, and yet the internet still exists.

Euler's Formula < Euler's Identity

Greg: Nah, I think e+k-f=2 is less famous.

If a Jazz Society Goes Bankrupt and No One Hears, Does it Make a Sound?

Me: What did they do, get an adjustable rate mortgage?

David: They bought an interest-only loan on somebody caring about jazz.

Welcome to Kent County, Home of the Smell of Manure

Cherilyn: When I found out we were moving here, I was like, if I’m going to be in the middle of nowhere, I want to be in the middle. Not the outskirts.

Me: Yeah, you don’t want to have to commute in to nowhere.

The [insert adjective here] Fair Use Clause

Lawyer: I don’t know that I’m comfortable with calling it “infamous.”

Me: How ‘bout “notorious?”

Potentially a Compliment

Greg:The only thing he expressed interest in were mathematics and, to a lesser extent, his wife.

How I Made Greg Spew

Greg: [coworker] left for eleven days today. And [coworker] will be out Monday and Tuesday. And [coworker] is in another office for weeks and weeks. So next week, I'm going to be the only person at work.
Me: Are you going to wear pants?

"Idiosyncratic Ventures OIC"

WO1: I’m a floater. They made up a title for me. I should send you the organizational chart.

Me: Are you off to the side, connected by a dotted line?

WO1: You’ve seen it already?!

New Computer

Greg: Okay, step one, turn off old machine. Step three, profit.

And why is there no interrobang on my keyboard?!

Greg: Well, you've gotta be outraged about something.
Me: No, I don't! How dare you?!

Clarification

Greg: Where is the pie going to be, and how long is the nudity going to last?

Stationery

Me: And I was like, what the hell is an emvelope?
Greg: It's twice as wide as an envelope.

Non Sequiturs from the Illinois Trip: Not Even the Underwear Ones are Related

Cathy: I don’t think we need to S-P-E-L-L.

Tracy: Look what Uncle Derrick has on his underpants!

Greg: Cows? That’s Hinduism!

Cathy: Not everyone gets to see my special underwear.

Honey, it turns out we actually don't know the names after all.

Greg: Welcome to the jungle, Sarah.

Me: Have you got fun and games?

Greg: I don’t actually know the song all that well.

Also, Princess Peach was Kidnapped!

Greg: Did you know William F. Buckley Jr. died?

Me: I just saw it on that Newsweek, but otherwise, no.

Greg: Yeah, like a couple days ago. Friday, maybe.

Me: I live in a hole.

Greg: I saw it on Wii News.

Me: I don’t know what’s more pathetic: my not knowing or your finding out the way you did.

Mike Has No Nieces

Mike: In the mean time, there's Bill's child, whom I refer to solely as "Laser Squid" for no reason other than she is a Laser Squid.

Me: In what sense is she a Laser Squid? Does she have a beak?

Mike: No, just lasers. And tentacles. Except not really.

Why Mince Words?

Mikki: How you doin'?
Me: Shitty.

He Walked Into That One

Greg: You can't anthropromorphize everything.
Me: Sure I can.
Greg: Your closet?
Me: Mr. Closet loves it when I anthropromorphize him.
Greg: Your bathrobe?
Me: Well, I don't know what the bathrobe likes. He only speaks Japanese.

What the World Needs Now is More Math-Related Double Entendres

Greg: And then I showed her my zeta function.
Me: Is it asymptotic to zero?

I Officially Have No Respect

COL: It's my weekly lame attempt to tell you to go home.
Me: Pfft. Whatever, sir.
COL: I like how you listen to what I say and act on it.
Me: I could stand at attention if that would make you feel better.
COL: Eh.

How Not to Scam Music, part 3

Call drunk.

Important Information for Conference Attendees

MLA Listserv: The latest TSA bulletin says corkscrews are allowed in carry-on luggage.

Blame Spellchecker

Greg: Where are we going?
Me: Bethesda. Mike would like you to know that spellchecker suggests "beheads."
Greg: Well, sure.
Me: But Bethesda's a real place. With a real name. Just not here. It's a biblical place. With healing pools.
Greg: Are there healing pools in this Bethesda?
Me: No, just beheadings. And government offices.
Greg: Well, sure. They go together. Are there guillotines, also, in this Bethesda?
Me: No.
Greg: That's a shame. It would make the beheadings so much easier.
Me: Yeah, but this way creates more jobs.
Greg: "Now hiring: executioners. Must be able to work in a big mask."
Me: "No squeamishness."

Because of Skeeball

Me: That's why cops masturbate left-handed.

How Not To Scam Music, cont'd.

Guy to COL: I was just at [company]’s website, and this tune is out of print.

COL to Guy: Sarah can send you a set if you get permission to photocopy.

Guy to Me: This is out of print. COL said you could send me a set.

Me: You will need permission to photocopy from [company].

Guy: I was just at [company]’s website, and it’s out of print. COL said you could send me a set.

Me: You will need permission to photocopy from [company].

Guy: No, you need permission, because you’re the person making the copy.

"Got Milk," It Ain't

Greg: This product is reasonable. It has several flaws, but is better than its competitor at a comparable price.

Gamer Snax

Me: I got Doritos, Fritos, and Tostitos. But not Cheetos.
Greg: But that's part of the four -itos food groups!

Why, to chronicle these conversations, of course.

Matt: Thank god you’re still here…why are you still here?

Too Late, COL H Already Won

Matt: Another little communist flare-up

Me: You’re really shooting for quote of the day, aren’t you?

Matt: I’m not trying.

More Spanish. Or perhaps mas.

SGM: Shit, I’ll take it to Pachanga.

Me: That’s actually not a bad idea.

SGM: I’ll do it. Where are the lyrics?

Matt: They’re in your office I think.

SGM: I think I locked myself out.

Later…

Matt: How the fuck have we come to rely on a restaurant?!

Me: Before that, we were relying on Wikipedia.

Matt: Okay, true. But a restaurant?

How do you say "Crap" in Spanish?

Matt: God. I need to talk to someone who speaks Spanish.

Me: We are so useless. What’d you take, French?

Matt: Yeah.

Me: I took German.

Matt: God. I’m calling Lopez.

Hot Flashes

COL H: Phew! I think I’ve got menopause or something.

The Conversation's Inevitable Conclusion

Greg: Live robot salmon? There's no going back.

Posit

Mike: So let’s assume for a moment you had a picture of Cole Porter on fire.

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Greg: I told Mike you hate him.
Me: Why?
Greg: Does hate need a reason?