Today In Unsolicited E-Mails

I get mail.  This one came today, unsought, unanticipated, and unctuous, from some placement/staffing guy who clearly understands the extensive personnel needs of a writing teacher and sometime scribe:

I am representing the below talented professionals passively seeking their next permanent position.

“Passively seeking…”

I’m so using that one as soon and as often as I can.  “I’m passively seeking my Nobel Prize in procrastination…”

(Actually, it made me think of Zombie Eyed Granny Starver Paul Ryan’s non-candidacy for president this year, but that’s another story.)

Consider this a safe-zone thread, with nothing to do with anyone whose initials are DT, BS or HC.  Just take this as a glimpse of the more comfy* domestic absurdities that attend us every day.

*My fingers sped past my brain in my first attempt at that word:  confit.  Almost left it that way — I like the idea of confit absurdities.

Image:  Johannes Vermeer, A Maid Asleep,  c. 1656-1657

 

 

A Sunday Nerd Humor Break

Via the indomitable xkcd: Have to admit that it was…

beat…

beat…

beat…

before I snorted.

Damn that Heisenberg fella, always dodging about.

Got any good nerd/science jokes in your repertory? Put it in the comments, please.

Lysistrata Was A Documentary…

…Or so it could be, in John Scalzi’s retelling.  [h/t PZ Myers]

I want to drink in that bar.

All of which makes this a give Rush Limbaugh a feminazi sad kind of post.

Image: Francis William Edmonds Barking up the Wrong Tree, between 1850 and 1855.

Who Knew Harvard Had a Soul to Sell? (Random Brain Bubbles edition)

Indulging in my waiting-for-the-shower-to-warm-up email habit (twelve steps are not enough), this subject line caught my eye:

Faust delivers Jefferson Lecture

Oh!  The possibilities!

__

Alas, it turned out to be a story about Harvard President Drew Faust, a Civil War historian, talking about writers and war.

But still, it got me thinking.  Pairs of leased souls (or sweet ones, I guess)  and American leaders.  Say, for example:

Iago delivers the Cheney Lecture.

Don Draper delivers the Bush II Lecture.

B. Bunny delivers the Carter lecture*

…and so on.  Have at it.

*Sorry — I have great admiration for both President and ex-President Carter.  But even low humor has its own muse.

Image:  Margaret Hofheinz-Döring, Witch and Mephisto (illustration to Faust I) (2.Serie), 1960

I Love the Smell of Godwin in the Morning: Rich Iott/Gay Mexican Muslim edition

I’m as jaded on the snark-subtitled Hitler-in-the-Bunker vids as the next blogger, but this version did have a bit of a kick to it.  So in the spirit of Monday, enjoy:

Video wonderfulness of the Day: Jane Austen…Blood, Guts, No Corsets Edition

Via the often imitated, never equalled Jen Luc Piquant (nom de blog of this Author), this reinterpretation of my most re-read novelist:

See.  I still love you.

Annals of Transport/High Energy Physics division

Via friend of the blog Ian Preston’s comment on this post, I learn of one of the most significant developments in high energy particle physics of recent years.

Image:  60 inch cyclotron at UC Berkeley –the world’s most powerful particle accelerator as of 1939.

Friday Brain Candy: Puppetmaster comeuppance edition

Because I’m too lame to figure out how to embed this, you’re just going to have to click on the link.

It’s worth it.

Trust me.

Image: F. A. Philips: Spielendes Kind mit Kasperpuppe, 1878.

Can I Just Say…

That of all GOP figures, I hope that Michael Steele enjoys a long and storied — and I do mean storied — career as RNC capo.

Why?

Because in these often dark days, I need as much as I can get of writing like this.

“Steele is apparently unschooled on the history of train/cow confrontations.”

Heads turn as I snort in public.

Image:  JR EC TYPE151 KURO151.

Hard times all over…

Hang on to your day job, Tim F….