November 1997 - January 1998 Oldproj

"I get to break the cherry on your new plan? Yes!!!!" -- Anne

"And lidocaine is not random; it's on my finger right now." -- Me

Anne: "And, not to be ignorant, but what's Ventura?"
Me: "Ventura?"
Anne: "Yeah."
Me: "What the hell's Ventura?"
Anne: "Yes, that is my question."
Me: "What the hell are you talking about, Meyer?"
Anne: "Uh, okay ... what did you email me?"
Me: "Veracruz!!!"

Anne: "And, dude, lidocaine is not on your finger."
Me: "Lidocaine IS on my finger."
Anne: "That's so plannable of us."

Me: "Page-turning is not an instrument."
Anne: "You've just never heard it done right."

Anne: "Hey, I DID exit. And lidocaine is NOT on your finger."
Anne (a couple moments later): "Are we talking about typing in 'finger grossman'? Because I just did."
Me: "No, you fool! My FINGER! Not my finger!"
Anne: "Hmm ... well how the hell was I supposed to check that?"

"So you're a girl, and you're just sittin' there, chillin', and you're like, 'Oh, my God! What happened to my hymen?! Where'd it go! It's gone! What the hell!' And then you're like, 'Oh, that's right. I'm an athlete. All right, fine.'" -- Sean Smeland

"A memory leak doesn't literally mean silicon is dribbling out the back of the machine." -- Professor Drew McDermott

Student: "C++ has a 'constructor' and a 'deconstructor'."
Prof. McDermott: "Yes. C++ has a 'constructor' and ... 'destructor', I think. In the English department it's 'deconstructor'."

"I may have made a mistake, but I doubt it." -- Professor Jerome Bracken

"We've seen equation after equation. I think it's time to stop looking at them." -- Professor Bracken

"I snatch BUTT!" -- Hanif

Me: "You sly dog, you."
Anthony Young: "Not as sly as your dad."
Me: "Ooh ... that's original. Really. I'm going to have to write that one down."

"Hippy pappy thanksgivings!!! Sucks to be the turkey." -- Elizabeth Saunders (and I put this quote up at 11:25 AM, Friday ... so you saw it here first!)

"You know, 'Could you please explain that again?' is not a question. It is a suggestion. But even that would be acceptable now." -- Professor Efim Zelmanov

Prof. Zelmanov: "Have you ever seen the chronicer symbol?"
Class: [group murmuring of "no"]
Prof. Zelmanov: "Well, look at it."

"You know, when I was teaching in Madison, I had a teaching assistant from Greece. He would use alpha, beta, gamma, and epsilon and delta in calculus. The students complained that he was speaking in his language." -- Prof. Zelmanov

"This chapter is pretty much worthless, I think. I'm hesitant to have people even read it." -- Prof. McDermott

"We don't admire a Chinese person for being able to parse a Chinese sentence ... because there's a billion other Chinese people who can do it too." -- Prof. McDermott

"It's a mental ability because animals do it, but it's not exactly a breathtaking mental ability." -- Prof. McDermott

Student: "What exactly is the technical definition of an 'expert system'?"
Prof. McDermott: "A short program that binds the right answer 80% of the time."
Student: "So ... our homework would be an example?"

"Do you want a T-shirt? I have some manly T-shirts." -- Lauren Beslow

"You would have liked the game more if you weren't starving." -- Elana

"As a Senior Citizen, the monthly fee on your checking acct. is being waived." -- Bank of Boston, hideously dangling a participle

"But, dude -- there's no participle in that dangling participle. That's always the first requirement -- first, being a participle, it must be present, then it can be hung." -- Anne, turned English major

"Anne's right, you know. The problem with the sentence is that you've got an improperly bound anaphor." -- Peter (a.k.a. Sneha) Kaplan, who has engaged in intimate acts with anaphors (and lytotes)

"Gere, who speaks with a brogue that makes him sound like he's about to sell the FBI a truckload of Irish Spring, ..." -- CNN movie review of "The Jackal"

"... and Willis gets a level-headed kick out of blowing up buildings with his neat sophisto-cannon. You really have to wonder, though, why a man would go through this much trouble to shoot a person standing on a dais, in clear view, giving a speech." -- ibid.

"... which stars Al Pacino and actor-like performer Keanu Reeves ..." -- CNN movie review of "The Devil's Advocate"

"Let's face it, if Keanu Reeves walks in and announces that he'll be defending you in your triple murder case, ... you would be wise to run out and buy 30 or 40 cartons of Marlboros." -- ibid.

"I hope I'm not being too revisionist to suggest that he's bad. By this, I mean, of course, that he's no good." -- ibid.

"I can't wait for Reeves and Bridget Fonda to be teamed up as incredibly attractive drying paint." -- ibid.

"Good news! Hollywood has finally screwed up the courage and ambition to make a movie about super-buffed Orkin-men killing irate, 10-foot-tall spiders, and I say it's long overdue. For a while there I thought they were gonna keep wasting our time on stupid stuff, like 'Spawn', in which a vengeful mutant roams the Earth accompanied by an insane farting clown from hell." -- CNN movie review of "Starship Troopers"

"When does the Kosher Kitchen open? I'm dying for some kugel." -- Anne Remsen

"Because [Moon has] been villified and demonized in the press, as I have, it doesn't mean that I should stay away from a man who is doing so much good for so many people." -- Louis Farrakhan, in his infinite wisdom, commenting on Reverend Sun Myung Moon, a convicted criminal who heads the cult-like Unification Church and recently married 2500 "member" couples

Me (to Vanessa Marvin): "Wow, you're tall."
Shana Katz: "I was once taller than her."

Dan Farkas: "I need a signature file."
Me: "Actually, my signature file is all about my plan right now."
Farkas: "3.141592? That's about all I know."
Me: "3.14159265358979323846 --"
Farkas: "-- Yeah, yeah. You know something? I actually used your signature once."
Me: "Really?"
Farkas: "Yeah. I had to know the first ten digits of pi for a program I was writing. So I looked at one of your old emails."
Me (elated and grinning from ear to ear): "Yes! A second use for my knowledge of pi! Whoo-hoooooooo!"

"I slept insane amounts! I slept like a drug addict." -- Hyunae Chang

Shayna Strom: "What is this thing?"
Elizabeth: "Chocolate?"

"I haven't told him I love him. He hasn't told me he loves me. We haven't even gotten to the point where we can say, 'You know, I think you're really NEAT.'" -- Melissa Mizell

Me, as Sean brandishes a ruler: "Ohhh. No. Stop. Please. Come on."

"Let me just say, you kick so much ass." -- Sarah B., being sweet

"I don't need to check it for an arbitrary vector v. There is an infinite number of them, and ... [looks at watch] ... in the remaining time, we can't check them all." -- Prof. Zelmanov, at 10:10 AM

Me: "What is this?"
Sean (holding an electric pencil sharpener): "It's dusty."

"You give it commands, and it must execute them autonomously. You say, 'Go over there,' and it must avoid any obstacles by itself. If it sees a ravine ... it's got to stop." -- Prof. McDermott, discussing the Mars Pathfinder

"Once we define it that way, we have to stick to it. Well ... we don't have that much time to stick to it because this is the last lecture." -- Prof. Zelmanov

"This may appear to be a bug, but is generally considered a feature." -- Pantheon UNIX manual, discussing the 'watch' command in tcsh

"That's kind of like with me and my dad, except I'm not a woman." -- Me

"We annexed Canada. It was great." -- Hanif

"Office hours will be from 1:00 until 3:00. ... Actually, I have another appointment at 3:00, so treat that as 3:00 plus epsilon." -- Professor David Pollard

"I love fingering you guys! Do you know anyone else worth fingering?" -- Chris C.

Pearly Sweets (after almost spilling his water bottle during the previous song): "Some of you may be asking how we stage performers deal with those difficulties presented by the live setting."
Ithamar Moses: "How's that, Pearly?"
Pearly: "I'll tell you how. Vitamin supplements. They allow you to accept the unaccep--ected. ... Like right there for instance. Did you catch what I did? I added an extra syllable to that word. Now, if you didn't have your vitamins today, there's no WAY you're on top of that."

Sarah, over the phone: "Is this Christ the King?"
Random man at Sarah's wrong number: "Umm ... no?"

Me: "Jesus Christ!"
Sean: "No. Jon Christ."

Me: "It tastes like chlorine."
Sean: "You've never tasted good chlorine."

"Sorry. I'm just using you as a tool here." -- Sarah

Sarah: "Marriage I'm unsure of ... but men ... oh, yeah."
Jon Meier: "What about horses?"

"I mean, the dog looked happy too, but there was no audio on that one." -- Jon Meier

Jon: "Does it have anything to do with horse fellatio?"
Sarah: "No! The answer to that is no! [reflecting on Jon's complete inappropriateness throughout that whole meal] Daaaaamn."

"... so before then it would be a good idea for us to form a coheret slate." -- Evan Farber, entering the contest for most pointed spelling mistake of all time

Sean: "Dude, you had the entirety of New York City all standing around, holding hands, singing GOSPEL!"
Me: "Yeah, but that's plausible!"
Sean and Shana: "WHAT?!?!?!"

Sean (upon seeing Shana bite a vitamin C tablet): "Ohhhh!!! She bit it!"
Sean (upon seeing me chew mine): "Oh no!!! You bite too!"
Me: "Yeah? Wait ... you SUCK on it?!?!?!"
Sean: "Oh yeah! It's all about sucking!"

AND NOW ... ANNOUNCING THE WINNER OF THIS YEAR'S QUOTE OF THE YEAR AWARD!
"Take out the element of the birth of Jesus, and Christmas is a reminder of ideas that should be important to all people, regardless of their religion. Christmas reminds us of the importance [of] giving, of gathering together with loved ones, and of singing." -- Mary Beth LeCroy, quoted in Yale Daily News, December 10
CONGRATULATIONS, MARY BETH, FOR AFFIRMING THE SECULARIZATION AND COMPLETE LACK OF MEANING OF CHRISTMAS FOR MODERN CHRISTIANS!!!

Sean: "So, apparently, the toilet is humped up again."
Me: "Yeah ... I did that."

"That's because horses are a positive phenomenon, not a negative phenomenon." -- Sean

"Don't hang up." -- Prof. Bracken, to our answering machine

"If at first you don't succeed, then skydiving definitely isn't for you!" -- Tom Brown

"'All right, Kit, give me a blow job!' 'Sure, Michael.'" -- Sean, in the middle of a not entirely incoherent tirade concerning, among other things, the Yale University Engineering Department and Knight Rider ("a shadowy flight into the dangerous world of a man ... who does not exist")

Me (to Hanif, who, with outstretched arm, is humming Luke's Theme from "Star Wars"): "Are you trying to get your phone?"
Hanif: "Yeah. But it's not working."

"Yeah, Kit totally wanted Michael. I mean, Kit was openly gay ..." -- Peter

"I didn't do anything to your speakers, but in case anything goes wrong with them, I'd be happy to fix them." -- Me

"One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important." -- Bertrand Russell

"I have too many little things that pop up, Sean." -- Me

"I wish Indiana ran through our basement." -- Me

"What a classy joke. Thanks for sharing." -- Elizabeth, in response to the waiter joke

Sean: "Okay, now, of course, maximize the window."
Me: "I don't want to maximize the window, Sean. I like it just the way it is."

Me: "Don't ever throw a cat at me again!"
Sean: "At least it wasn't spinal."

Sean (upon hearing his computer chant "Deo Gracias" for the 876,564th time that day, in a voice not unlike G'Kar's): "Ye-e-e-e-s!"

Hanif: "Try putting down 'butthole'."
Me: [laughs]
Hanif: "Now ... come on! Try 'Zeus's butthole'."

"I frown upon people who give me negative densities." -- Prof. Pollard

"I'm not a Jedi, and don't light that thing on me." -- Me

"P.S. Yours are the best forwards because you cut all the old headers off." -- Carrie Lauritzen, an old high school friend, bestowing a final e-compliment prior to graduating from Northwestern

"That movie was pretty good ... except for the last 50%." -- Kihoon Kim, seriously, making no attempt at sarcasm, after "Tomorrow Never Dies"

Me: "Ohhhh ... wait! Did I tell you, did I tell you, did I tell you?"
Peter: "What, about your new web page?"
Me: "HUH?! I told you about that?!"
Peter: "No, but I could tell by the sound of your voice."

"I shall email you in the soon-after." -- Me, as if I were on "Star Trek: Voyager" or something

Me: "You mean, it was good despite being sucky ... like Judge Dredd?"
Kihoon: " ... No ... it just sucked."

Me: "Thanks again, Paul."
Paul: "No problem."
Me: "No, I'm sure it WAS a problem ... so thank you."
Paul: "No ... it's okay. ... Cuz you OWE me!"

"He's too old for you."
"Based on what?"
"Based on the number of times the Earth has orbited the sun since he was born!"
-- exchange on "Just Shoot Me", 1/1/98

"Why the hell does your neck hurt?! ... Oh hell, just go shop for jeans!" -- Sean (did someone say continuous fire?)

"... and the color scheme makes it looked like Easter puked all over the walls." -- Elizabeth's friend, regarding their alma mater's renovations

"You're oh for three ... you know, you are so dangerously close to being really bad here." -- Craig Kilborn, during Five Questions, on "The Daily Show"

"White Supremacists -- The most convincing argument against the theory of white racial superiority." -- "The Cynic's Dictionary"

"Trying to change politics is like trying to change the channel from Wheel of Fortune in the day room of a senior citizens' home. Somewhere along the line you're going to get a urine bag upside the head." -- Dennis Miller Live, 1/9/98

Hanif: "Do you know why I don't have anything new on my plan?"
Me: "No."
Hanif: "Because NOTHING FUNNY HAPPENS TO ME ANYMORE!"

"Whether it's true or not, I get your point. ... Cuz, you know, there's just no telling with cocoons." -- Hanif

"Oh, my God! That's my big news, and I didn't tell anyone! I'm not a vegetarian anymore!" -- Erika G., bursting into 1521, as if she were announcing a slightly different milestone dealing with the letter "v"

"I LOVE Group III! Aaaaah ..." -- Erika, orgasmically

"My mom would scream if she got cake on her." -- Erika

"Yeah, Job had it pretty bad." -- Me

Shana: "Is this Spikey, Dylan's roommate?"
Me: "Dylan Chan?"
Shana: "Yeah."
Me: "... That's ... SPANKY."
Shana: "Oh."

"Part of your new balance is in arrears. Your account is now seriously overdue. To avoid possible legal action please call our collection department." -- Sean's Yale Co-Op bill

"If you don't know C, don't worry about it, because this doesn't make sense anyway." -- Professor James Aspnes, Computer Science 365b

"Well ... it's possible to come up with a bad algorithm for this, but you have to work at it." -- Prof. Aspnes

"I mean, this is all pretty high-level flaming here." -- Prof. Aspnes

"Resources ... you know, virgin sacrifices, what have you ..." -- Prof. A.

"Usually we're dealing with some big problem with big teeth that's going to destroy our villages ..." -- A., yet again

"I promise not to hurt anybody." -- A., yep, again

"Here you can see the importance of ... well, I have no idea what this demonstrates ... maybe I should open my can of Coke." -- A., penultimately

"I recommend not drawing [sigmas] with fangs unless you're trying to intimidate someone." -- A., finally, for today

Me: "Let's finger him. What do you say?"
Sean: "Can I finger him with my Leatherman?"

"Kamikaze bounty hunters just don't make sense." -- Clara Sturges

"Maybe it was a unidirectional thermal detonator." -- Me

"Long term predictions aren't possible ... you shouldn't trust your fortune cookies. They're usually just made up by some guy." -- Professor Ronnie Lee (of Chinese descent), Math 246b

"This is the Math 115 case. You should treat it with contempt." -- Prof. Lee

"I seem to be making mistakes. I did not have my Wheaties this morning." -- Prof. Lee

"Let me check the book.... I do not agree with the book. Let me see if I agree with my own notes.... No, I don't agree with my own notes." -- Prof. Lee, again

"I don't understand the book's formula too well. Quite politely, I think it's wrong." -- Prof. Lee, yet again

"You people will think I'm senile." -- Prof. Lee, finally

"Yes, big numbers are very abusive." -- Professor Aspnes

"It probably has very big teeth on the front of it ... because everything does." -- Prof. Aspnes

"The algorithm would probably be horrified by this." -- Prof. A

"I'll put dangerous 'bogusity bars' around it." -- Prof. A

"The bad guys come along first and tie two functions down to some railroad tracks. The good guys get to show up later with an appropriate function that has amazing rope-cutting abilities." -- Prof. A

Prof. A: "This is what mathematicians refer to as 'abuse of notation', which will grow hair on your palms if you do it too much, although it may provide temporary brief pleasures ..."
[Class and Professor Aspnes fall gradually into uncontrollable fits of incredulous snickering.]
Prof. A: "... Well, I guess you'll remember that for the rest of your lives."

"Starship lay below my crotch." -- Rebo & Zooty

"See you in my ass!" -- Sean, referring to something, I'm sure, though I don't quite know what

"That's how I flirt ... I talk about penises." -- Anonymous Yale female

"Go to Hell!" -- winning answer in the most one-sided Acrophobia Face-Off Round victory ever ... wtg, Rebo & Zooty!

Cady Scott: "My father does dishes this way."
Sean and Me: "In a bra?!"