Month: October 2011

Dirty Jokes: Sharing Time!

~ Clarissa ~ 69 Comments

Do you like dirty jokes? I love them. So I decided that we should have a semi-open thread where people will share their favorite off-color jokes. I have a very primitive, goofy sense of humor, so the sillier the joke is, the better.

I’m making this post temporarily sticky, so scroll down for new posts.

To begin, here is a joke from my mother. “The moment I heard this joke, I immediately thought of you, sweetie!” she said. I have no idea why she did, of course. 🙂 So here is the joke:

A man and a woman are having sex for the first time. After sex, she immediately gets up and lights a cigarette.

“I realized during sex that I’m not your first man,” the guy says. 

“And I realized you are not my last,” the woman responds.

A Weird Job Search

~ Clarissa ~ 4 Comments

This is a longish story and it didn’t happen to me, but it’s so hilarious that I simply had to share it with my readers. I got the story from here and I received permission from the blog’s owner to repost the story. Just keep reading, for it gets better with every line. So here comes the weirdest, funniest story of a job search I have ever heard:

The phone interview with these guys was very strange. They weren’t interested in talking about anything I had actually done in my career, nor anything I was currently doing. The position was for a systems engineering role, but 100% of the questions they asked me were DBA (data base administration) questions. For instance, they kept asking me to design complex SQL queries. Detailed questions about normalization techniques, etc. I asked if the interview was for a Linux systems role or a DBA role. They said systems, of course, but kept on with the DBA questions. Later, I told the recruiter that I thought they gave me the wrong interview. They told her that they only asked me exactly one database-related question, and that the rest were systems questions. Curious, eh?

Curiouser still… they said they loved me and wanted me in for a face-to-face.

At first I resisted, saying I wasn’t interested, but the recruiter ultimately convinced me to give them a second chance.

So, this past week I went in to see them.

Upon my arrival, they shuffled me into a room with two people waiting. The first person to talk introduced herself as “a database administrator.” I thought it was going to be a repeat of the phone interview.

But she then started asking me some programming questions — python libraries and what not, finally getting to “tell me a really cool one-line hack that you’ve done.”

I responded that my programming style is most influenced by my early work in Ada and embedded systems, which means that I write code in an extremely deliberate (and hence readable) fashion, so I really don’t do one-liner hacks. That got her angry. I mean angry.

Then she started in with the DBA questions. I guess as punishment.

Finally, the other guy in the room spoke up asking me, “so tell me everything you did at your job yesterday.” I said “my day started out with a call to our partners in India, where I am organizing a data center migration. Then, I had another call with some Ugandans, where I am working to set up point-to-point microwave connectivity between two schools and training the local IT staff on virtualization.”

The guy interrupted me after my second sentence with “OK… we’ve heard enough.” With that, both of them got up and walked out of the room.

Weird, I though.

But it got weirder.

Two new people entered the room. These guys started telling me why their company was so wonderful, and why I would be a fool to want to work anywhere else.

I learned that this company was without question, the most wonderful place on Earth. The best place to work in our city. The smartest people in the industry. Best at everything. And, they are all super-best-friends. So much so that a lot of them share apartments together. This sharing, this social awesomeness, is evident in their “face-wall”, they told me.

“What is a ‘face-wall’?” I ask.

That’s when they let me out of the room and showed me.

This “face-wall” is a wall in the office filled with a grid of mug shots of all the employees along with their name and start date.

So imagine your face, with your name printed right below it, with a calendar date below that. It looked like one of those memorial walls you see at the site of some massacre like 9-11 or the Holocaust. Wicked creepy.

What’s worse was that all of the photos were relatively nice, well-behaved shots. No one was doing anything off colour for the camera. No costumes, no loopy expressions. Nothing. Rien. Nada.

I turned to one of the guys and said “so has anyone defaced this?”

“NO!… why would they” he said.

“‘Cause it’d be funny” I responded. “Come on… are you seriously telling me you have never… even once… had the urge to vandalize anything on this wall? Not even adding a little ‘make-up’ here and there?”

“ABSOLUTELY NOT! I wouldn’t even THINK of that.”

“Honest?”

“Honest.”

“Wow!… Really? Not even a virtual kidnapping spree? Ransom notes?”

“A lot of these people are our friends… why would we do that?” … the guy was clearly getting a little offended, so I dialed it back and said how awesome I thought the wall was.

Then they gave me the tour.

Get this. The company didn’t have any desks. That’s right. No desks.

There were basically four or five very large rooms filled with long picnic tables on wheels. Each room had maybe 50 people in it.
I asked why no desks, to which they responded that they want to encourage people to socialize and get to know each other, so when you come to work, you just find a spot on one of the tables, fire up your laptop, and that’s where you work. That’s why they also have the scary “face-wall”, they said.

Now, when I was taking this tour, it was already 6pm, and the office was packed full of people. So my last question was ” as is the case with many start-ups, I imagine you guys work a lot, so how do you manage a work-life balance here?”

“We do an awesome job with that here” one guy said.

“Give me some examples” I asked.

“Well, just this week, my whole department went out after work together to play billiards. Most groups like going out to lunch and dinner together at least one or two times a week.”

I responded with “well, the ‘life’ part of my ‘work-life’ balance usually doesn’t involve work people. I really like hanging out with my family.”
To which I got a “well, everyone here is cool, you’ll make a lot of friends here.”

“I rarely see my own friends because I still like my family better” I said. To which I got some blank stares.

And there we have it…

The recruiter called me after and asked how it went. I said “they were nice enough, but frankly, I already have a religion that works just fine for me. I don’t need a new one.”

I’m American

~ Clarissa ~ 10 Comments

Which is why I:

Believe that the US politics is the most fascinating politics in the world.

Feel a rush of emotions whenever I read the Constitution of the United States.

Reread the Constitution of the United States often.

Love being a consumer. (If you want to be critical of that, please make sure you know what it feels like to be born in the Soviet Union. If you can’t manage that, then please, forever hold your peace.)

Adore ordering stuff online and watch infomercials for fun. (If you don’t know what an infomercial is, you are definitely not American.)

Have very emotional relationships with different US cities and regions.

Love it that people never call me after 10 pm and never come to visit my house unannounced.

Adore the higher education system in the US, which, in my opinion, is the best in the world.

Agree that the US is “still the best country ever in which to peddle complete public lunacy.”  And believe that it’s  a great thing.

Love it how easy it is to shut up any opposition by saying, “But in my culture. . .”

Enjoy everybody’s curiosity about the customs and traditions of my culture.

Love it how whenever I mention I’m from Ukraine, the response is, “Oh, that’s great. Maybe you will tell me what I’m doing wrong with my borscht.”

Totally dig the American Dream.

Love it how money has nothing to do with one’s social status (just like in my country!).

Am totally in thrall to the fact that the freedom of speech is respected here like nowhere else on this planet. (I’m a blogger, so what do you expect?)

Adore the fact that a random Ukrainian immigrant can start a blog and crowds of people will listen, read, and comment. And nobody has told me they hate me for being an immigrant. (Totally unlike in my country.)

Love it that my university’s officials will jump through hoops to make sure I never felt oppressed, discriminated against, or downtrodden because of my immigrant (or any other kind) status.

Enjoy the fact that I can find Indian, Russian, and Peruvian food within 100 miles of any place I inhabit in this country.

I am absolutely convinced that this is the best country ever to live in for me.

I’m Not American

~ Clarissa ~ 61 Comments

Which is why I:

Don’t believe that every life choice is equally valid and, therefore, feel no compunction for criticizing those life choices that I find to be stupid or ridiculous.

Don’t believe that counting everything (calories, sex partners, vitamins and minerals) improves the quality of one’s life.

Feel vicarious shame whenever I see anybody unfurl a national flag, sing an anthem, or recite the Pledge of Allegiance to any country. When people place their hands on their hearts while participating in these activities, I get more embarrassed than if they engaged in group sex right in front of me.

Don’t think that alcoholism is a disease.

Don’t think that weight and income are dirty topics that need to be covered with embarrassed silence.

Believe that unless you have a body like Beyonce’s, jeans invariably make you look horrible.

Believe that cereal is not food. Unless you want to feed it to some birds that you really hate.

Love arguing about politics or religion with people I just met.

Don’t think that being on 3 prescription medications by the age of 40 is normal.

Don’t consider “Are you OK?” an appropriate response when I see a colleague crying in the bathroom.

Don’t consider that pretending not to notice anything is an appropriate response when I see a stranger crying in the bathroom.

Don’t see the “paper or plastic” issue as a field of an important ideological battle.

Don’t consider American football and baseball to be sports.

Feel very embarrassed when people begin to argue seriously that cheer-leading is a sport.

Believe that being supportive as a friend doesn’t mean repeating mechanically, “Good for you! I know you can do it! Everything will be fine!” but, rather, letting my friends know what I really think about their situation.

Believe that it’s better to ask for a loan from a relative or a friend than from a bank.

Hate Hollywood movies.

Consider people who use the gym to be eccentric.

Consider people who drive to the gym to be very eccentric.

Eat hamburgers and pizza with a knife and a fork.

Get cranky if I have to spend an entire day without eating any fresh fruit or vegetables.

Believe that beverages served at Starbucks don’t deserved to be called “coffee.”

Don’t understand the point of going to coffee-shops that don’t have an outside terrace.

Don’t eat while walking, running, or standing.

Feel scared when I hear the word “deep-fried.”

Am terrified by the words “networking,” “support groups,” “grief counselling,” “life coach,” and “brainstorming.”

Realized that I needed to add a tag to this post to explain its intentions.

Love

~ Clarissa ~ 13 Comments

Have you ever loved somebody so much that you’d look at them and feel like your heart is going to stop because of sheer joy?

Have you ever looked at somebody at wondered how it is even possible for such an amazing creature to exist in the world?

Have you ever loved somebody so much that just being around them made you want to be the best person you can possibly be?

Have you ever loved somebody so much that you wanted to abandon your middle-aged gravitas and forget your total lack of artistic skills and start dancing and singing in the middle of the street?

There is nothing better than love, people.

The Hypocrisy of Herman Cain

~ Clarissa ~ 42 Comments

According to Cain, abortion should be illegal. Unless the decision to abort is one that needs to be made by his grandchildren. In that case, it’s up to them to decide:

“I believe that life begins at conception and abortion, under no circumstances,” Cain told Morgan.  Pressed on if he would apply this same directive to his grandchildren, Cain candidly responded.

“It comes down to, it’s not the government’s role or anybody’s role to make that decision. Secondly, if you look at the statistical incidents, you’re not talking about that number. What I’m saying is it ultimately gets down to a choice that the family or that mother has to make. Not me as president, not some politician, not a bureaucrat. It gets down to that family. And whatever they decide. I shouldn’t have to tell them what decision to make for such a sensitive issue.”

I’m glad to see that he switches to such a firmly pro-choice stance the moment his grand-kids are mentioned. As we always say in  progressive circles, one can only remain anti-abortion until one has had a daughter. After that, love of one’s children usually defeats anti-abortion bigotry. At least, for most people it does.

Bankers Eager to Donate to Obama’s Campaign

~ Clarissa ~ 11 Comments

Washington Post reports:

Despite frosty relations with the titans of Wall Street, President Obama has still managed to raise far more money this year from the financial and banking sector than Mitt Romney or any other Republican presidential candidate, according to new fundraising data. . . As a result, Obama has brought in more money from employees of banks, hedge funds and other financial service companies than all of the GOP candidates combined, according to a Washington Post analysis of contribution data. . .

Obama has raised a total of $15.6 million from employees in the industry, according to the Post analysis. Nearly $12 million of that went to the DNC, the analysis shows.

Romney has raised less than half that much from the industry, while Texas Gov. Rick Perry brought in about $2 million. No other Republican candidate has raised more than $402,000 from the finance sector, which also includes insurance and real estate interests.

The ultra-conservative Washington Post uses this information to paint Obama as pro-banks and pro-financial sector in order to make him less attractive to progressive voters. Of course, people who follow politics at least minimally will find this information to be very belated. We all remember how Obama appointed Summers and Geithner, of all people, to key positions two seconds after he was elected. This gave us all the information we could have possibly needed about the new President’s position on the economy. Today, we are reaping the results of those appointments.

In my opinion, the huge support that the financial sector offers Obama today has to do with Wall Street’s realization that Obama is the only candidate who might, if given enough reason to, listen to the #Occupy protesters and start bringing back some of the regulation measures on the financial industry that are the only way of saving us all from complete and utter economic collapse.

At this point, Obama is not listening to his erstwhile progressive supporters. However, he might. Especially, if the protests intensify as the election draws closer. This is why Wall Street is trying to buy him off as fast as possible. Overall, I’d say this is very good news because it demonstrates that the bankers are finally taking the #Occupy protesters seriously. President Obama will be well served to do the same.

A Halloween Costume

~ Clarissa ~ 4 Comments

A student just shared during the Spanish conversation hour that he is planning to dress as a participant of the #Occupy Wall Street protests for his Halloween party.

In case you were wondering how my students felt about the protests.

Occupy Museums

~ Clarissa ~ 16 Comments

The #Occupy movement is drowning in pleas for compassion and whiny personal stories on the one hand and pseudo-revolutionary insanity of kids who read too much Zizek and Baudrillard and never managed to digest their readings.

Via The Mahablog (that I highly recommend to everybody as a great source of balanced and insightful discussions of politics and economy), I discovered an initiative called Occupy Museums and apparently launched by the Occupy Wall Street’s Art and Culture group.

Here is what the initiative’s organizer had to say:

We see through the pyramid schemes of the temples of cultural elitism controlled by the 1%. No longer will we, the artists of the 99%, allow ourselves to be tricked into accepting a corrupt hierarchical system based on false scarcity and propaganda concerning absurd elevation of one individual genius over another human being for the monetary gain of the elitest of elite. For the past decade and more, artists and art lovers have been the victims of the intense commercialization and co-optation or art. We recognize that art is for everyone, across all classes and cultures and communities. We believe that the Occupy Wall Street Movement will awaken a consciousness that art can bring people together rather than divide them apart as the art world does in our current time.

Let’s be clear. Recently, we have witnessed the absolute equation of art with capital. The members of museum boards mount shows by living or dead artists whom they collect like bundles of packaged debt.

I sometimes complain about my students’ writing. None of them, however, could have ever managed to write something as egregiously bad as the above-quoted passage. So this is good news already.

Jokes aside, the real question now is whether the #Occupy movement can offer anything more than pleas for compassion, stories of the intense anxieties of the well-off, and the pseudo-revolutionary proclamations from a bunch of overpampered kids.

Administrator Humiliates Professors at the College of William & Mary

~ Clarissa ~ 40 Comments

I just found the following in Inside Higher Ed:

The e-mail to some faculty members at the College of William & Mary came out of the blue, reminding them to be careful about the language they use in class and, specifically, asking them not to use the word “retarded” in class.

Its appearance last week perplexed some professors and prompted one or two to tell the student newspaper that administrators were questioning their professionalism. Several experts on faculty speech said that the missive was unusual, but that rather than a threat to academic freedom, they saw a sincere effort to protect potentially vulnerable students. “…[T]he word retarded has returned in slang usage to mean dumb or stupid, but this is not an appropriate way to use the word in class,” Kelly Joyce, the dean of undergraduate studies, wrote in her e-mail.

Mind you, there had been no incidents surrounding the word “retard” on campus where this piece of idiocy originated. Based on the email of this sad excuse for an administrator, one could assume that profs at the College of William & Mary run around all day long, calling students retards. However, there was nothing of the kind going on at this college.

The insulting email that this administrator sent to professors is not a response to any existing issue on campus. It is nothing but yet another attempt by an overpaid and useless administrator to take vengeance on the teaching faculty for being more intelligent and productive than s/he is. As we all know, scholars go into administration when they realize that they can’t make a name for themselves in research. Their rage against their more successful colleagues who laugh at their ineptness as researchers makes them lash out at professors with these ridiculous and condescending demands.

The other two groups of administrators are either spousal hires (i.e. useless husbands and wives of academics who are given these cushy positions of authority because they’ll get bored at home) or people hired from the corporate environment whose overall stupidity makes them incapable of understanding what the academia is all about. Of course, such folks have no idea how to do anything useful on campus, so they insult and condescend to professors instead.

I have blogged time and again  (and then some) about attempts by administrators to rob educators and scholars of our autonomy, dignity, time, and authority. What is really frustrating is that, more often than not, academics do not resist the offensive onslaughts by the useless and ignorant administrators. Kelly Joyce, the dean who had the incredible gall of sending this condescending message on the proper use of vocabulary to people with PhDs, should immediately become a pariah on campus. A good way of showing this administrator their place would be to recite definitions of words to them whenever they appear in public. For example,

Table, 1. an article of furniture consisting of a flat, slablike topsupported on one or more legs or other supports: a kitchentable; an operating table; a pool table.

Or better yet,

Professor – a person who often gets insulted by administrators, but this is not an appropriate way to use a professor on campus.

One could also email this dean lists of offensive words s/he shouldn’t use in public and explain in detail why these words are offensive and shouldn’t be used.

Unless we start doing something to show these ignoramuses their place, they will continue to insult us.