September - November 1998 Oldproj

[ssmeland] Lock and load
[grossman] rock and roll
[ssmeland] Draw Steel, boys
[grossman] yes, m'lord
[grossman] l8r
[ssmeland] cya

"You let a sweaty fat man massage your back, and you didn't even know his name?" -- Rebecca Goodman

"After nuclear war, the only things that will be left will be the cockroaches and the Chasidim." -- Me

[rgg4] see, I knew you weren't thinking about going running for real
[grossman] right ... because I'm SO out of shape
[rgg4] yup ... fat ass

Yoni Amiel, to Mike Stafford, at Master G's Rosh Hashanah reception: "Sorry I just spit on you."
Shana Katz: "That's okay, he's just a goy."

"The New Pierson Weekly: More Accurate than the Daily News, and More Widely Read than the New Journal, even without 10,000 copies." -- Master Harvey Goldblatt

Me: "But you know what the problem is with speculators."
Sean Smeland: "Yeah, they always screw up the stock market."
Me: "No, they always fall down mine shafts."
Sean: "Oh yeah, well that works too."

Me: "Okay, so now I have ANOTHER application to Stanford."
Sean: "Why?"
Me: "I don't know."
Sean: "Do you want to go TWICE?"

"You're not allowed to do weird shit to another person's feet in the Olympics." -- Me

Me, trying to guess the meaning of Sean's antics: "Are you questioning my Jewishness?"
Sean: "No."
Me: "Do you have a neck problem?"
Sean: "No."

"I am trying to think of how to explain this. ... Well, the examples that come to mind are all bizarre." -- Professor Efim Zelmanov

"You know, some things have to be proved. Some things, to prove them is an insult." -- ibid.

Student: "So, you're saying there are, like, millions of groups which ..."
Prof. Zelmanov: "Well ... not millions ... one."

"It used to be called 'The Facility'. Now it's called the 'Workstation Support Group'. It's the same people in the same place." -- Professor Stanley Eisenstat

"I once calculated it (Avogadro's number) as 6 * 10^26 in a chemistry experiment. That's why I'm not a chemist." -- ibid. (the correct value being 6 * 10^23

"But I don't own a car." -- Me, after reading two paragraphs into a car insurance advertisement letter

Me: "That's what my cronjob does."
Shawn Bayern: "Mails the Pantheon consultant?"

"Yes, Pierson is 65 years old and -- in honor of the occasion -- our festivities will be held NEXT WEEKEND (October 2-4), right here in the College, right under the shadows of your beloved Pierson tower!!!" -- Master G, forgetting that at no point after 10:00am during the fall, winter, or spring, is ANY part of the courtyard in the shadow of Pierson Tower

"If you are hearing impaired, we apologize. You will not be able to enjoy this show. But please remember that's because you're deaf." -- Larry Schooler, on "The Show"

"... a bunch of big guys speaking Serbo-Croatian." -- eyewitness on "The Show"

"What do you mean you forgot the grenades in Nyack?" -- translation of Serbo-Croatian gun runner on "The Show"

"I've seen several people go flying past me. I'm hanging onto a VW microbus." -- Seth Brown, reporting "live" from the eye of Hurricane Georges on "The Show"

"Liquid: The Best Form of Matter" -- a commercial slogan on "The Show"

"... and that 'slim chance' and 'fat chance' mean the same thing." -- Schooler's closing words on "The Show"

"Your sister and my dog are two different things." -- Sean

"On Sunday we went to a town past Middletown, CT, that was being auctioned ... the entire little village.....it was really neat." -- Sean's mom

Alan Lee: "My students have their big exam on Thursday."
Me, the day before Yom Kippur: "I have my big exam tomorrow. You know, the one with God."
Alan: "Well, I hope you pass yours, or else I guess I won't be seeing you on Thursday."

Me: "I want to listen to some music."
Sean: "Yes, we should listen to music."
Sean's whip: "CRACK"
Me, walking to the stereo: "Don't hurt me."
Sean's whip: "CRACK!"
Me, pondering the stereo: "Just don't hit me."
Sean's whip: "CRACK!"
Me, returning to my desk: "Please don't kill me."
Sean's whip: "CRACK!"
Me, genuinely concerned: "Please don't kill me."

"Here a clit, there a clit, everywhere a clit clit." -- Rebecca

[rgg4] did you put the clit quote on the plan?
[grossman] you really want it on there?
[rgg4] yes!
[grossman] you'll do anything, huh
[rgg4] not ANYTHING
[rgg4] i won't have sex with a monkey to get on the plan

"If this is an emergency, dial 2-3-3, followed by the pound sign, and ask the kiln operator to contact the foreman. Thank you." -- Peter Kaplan's .sig

"I need all the help I can get." -- "David Connell the eldest" (from an email)

"You spit on yourself." -- Joe Cohen, matter-of-factly, after Rebecca tried to spit into my glass of Cherry Coke (in retaliation for my licking her arm), which was directly below her mouth, but missed, and spit on the table and her lap

"Everything's cool in minor." -- Sean

Me, disgusted beyond words: "He's just--"
Sean: "Yeah, he'd be like ... [begins impersonating a random gurgling bald man] augroulg-gorlauagloug-augggargoulg."
Me, pulling my shirt over my nose in entirely new levels of disgust: "Oh my God! He ... SMELLS ... SO ... BAD!!!"

"What is that? Aook-gouakook? There's no hard glottals in this!" -- Sean

Sean: "Ow! That really hurt!"
Me: "What did you do?"
Sean: "I think I dislocated my kneecap!"
Me, skeptically: "Does it hurt like HELL?"
Sean, rubbing his kneecap: "It hurts ... not quite that bad."

Rona Ezer, a few days before my birthday: "You're almost not a teenager any more. Doesn't that matter to you?"
Me, thinking seriously for a second, and answering truthfully: "No."

Me: "Are you out of your gourd?"
Sean: "No, but I'm out of my bed."

"Well, that's what I was questioning: 'Does he suck, or is it just some sort of weird Yiddish thing?'" -- Sean

Me, pouting: "Rebecca won't let me play with her Gund anymore."
Sean: "She never let you play with her Gund."

"Oh ... so you're in pretty good shape ... almost. Well ... relatively." -- Shawn, commenting on how much work I had left to do on my CS323 program

"I have been playing the part of a recently beheaded chicken for the past day." -- Rebecca

"You know, when I turned 20, my mom sent me a cake from Yale Cake Services which read, 'Congratulations, Avi! You're not 18 anymore!' And I was like, 'I'm not 19 either.' Turns out that she said, 'You're not a teen anymore,' and the cake people are morons." -- Avi Kogan

Me, regarding the Master of TD: "His handshake was so weak."
Sean: "That's cause he's like 90!"
Me: "Yeah ... what's up with THAT, by the way?"

Me: "I thought he was the man."
Sean: "He IS! He's actually not 90; he's 70-something."
Me: "Yeah, but ... he does capoeira?!"
Sean: "Sure! He does all sorts of stuff! He doesn't do it WELL ... but he's out there doing it."

Sean: "Who the hell owns an ivory box?!"
Me: "Well, your dad. Oh, but that's different."
Sean: "That's ebony."
Me: "Ebony ... ivory ... what's the difference?"

"For the concert: Please refrain from wearing any kind of cologne or perfume. But please DO use deodorant/anti-perspirant. It can get warm up on stage, and we're in close quarters..." -- Lika Miyake and Andrew Bonney

"How is life, the universe, and Glee Club?" -- Clara Sturges

"Of course. Please do! Irony is what we're all about. [Y]ou could yell, 'Mom and Dad,' and Sean could scream, 'I'm a girl,' and I could chant, 'Whiffenpoofs!!' et cetera down the line. We could introduce every concert with a string of shouted untruths. Then when David gives us the downbeat for Gaudeamus, we can stare at him bitterly and respond with stony-cold silence. We could slowly file off stage, make to our secret lair, and sacrifice a goat, or better yet, a Glee Clubber, so that by the end of the year, there are none of us left." -- Lika, in response to my request to yell "Mom and Dad" while running on stage during the Parents' Weekend concert (which would have been ironic, since my parents were just about the only parents not in attendance)

Waitress at Viva's: "And for you?"
Me: "Orange juice please."
Waitress: [confused look on her face]
Me: "Or if that's too strange an order, then I'll just have some water."
Elana, surprised (as if she always thought that when I say I don't drink, I'm kidding or something): "Dan ... are you sure you don't want something?"
Me: "Umm ... watch me not be 21?"
Elana: "Dan! [whispering] You're not supposed to say that in front of the waitress. They know that people who come here aren't 21!"
Avi: "Yeah, Dan, I've never seen anyone card themselves before."
Me: "Don't you think that that they'd prefer me to come in here and presume that they're a respectable establishment that obeys the law?"
Avi: "No ... underage people come in here because they're a 'respectable' establishment."

Sean: "Her name's Robin."
Me: "Yeah, Robin. She's PSYCHO!"
Hanif, sincerely: "Oh, Robin. I love Robin!"
Me, afraid for my life: "Dude! She's PSYCHO! She's going to KILL people some day!"
Hanif, even more gleefully: "YEAH! I love Robin!"

"Do you have three condoms and a black magic marker?" -- Hanif, at 3:30AM

Hanif: "If you have 27 condoms, why do you want three back?"
Sean: "So I can still respect you."

"Yeah, you stopped sucking." -- Me, to Hanif, after David Connell told us how good we sounded on Saturday night

"Just read your plan. Love the condom quotes. You have weird roommates. Does this mean Hanif is living with you guys again?" -- Clara

"Rock and bowl? I don't have time for this shit!" -- Me, deleting one of many pointless messages from the Class of 1999 Secretary

"Milosevic called NATO threats of airstrikes 'belligerent attempts' to solve the Kosovo problem, adding that he favors negotiations." -- from clari.news.briefs

"Actually, some days I do it a lot and then other days I don't even once. Just depends." -- Clara (re: fingering me)

"... so it's much more likely to meet a cute asian than a cute anything else." -- ibid.

"My boss is so cool. He always knows really nice clean ways to code things." -- ibid.

Nate: "Well, it's really inefficient."
Brian: "But that doesn't matter! It's just storage."

"I had a dream involving a buff Asian dude with a kimono and a sword in a seminar." -- Sean

Me: "Ha ha! I thought you were just Avi-ing me."
Sean: "No, but I did just Kaplan you."

"I hate leaving on a seg fault." -- Jacob Heitler, leaving the Zoo at 1:00AM

"I'm not even bubble sorting. I'm just bubble checking." -- Shmuel Nadata

"Wow, my loop is significantly faster when it doesn't run forever." -- ibid.

"My brakes turned into cookies." -- translation of a student's incorrect remark in Japanese class

"This is the realm -- the universe. We cannot, umm, leave it." -- Prof. Zelmanov

"What is a complement? EXAMPLE: Good is the complement of the set containing your mom." -- graffiti on a desk in LOM

"In other news, we left a message for Frank explaining that their fucking program is a piece of crap, but that it is even crappier when the computer that runs it isn't even ON." -- Sarah B.

"Program received signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault. 0xd002bf50 in fgetc (=0xdeadbeef)" -- error generated by Zoo UNIX system

Me, seriously, facing away from Jason: "Man, my hair is long!"
Jason Geiger, turning towards the back of my head with a contemptuous look: "Yeah, it really is."

Me: "We have football practice--"
Mike Stafford: "That's because you guys suck!"
Me: "Hey, I've never played you guys before."
Mike: "Doesn't matter. You SUCK!"
Me: "Ohhhh ... wait. I think you're mistaking me for someone who gives a fuck."
[we pause]
Mike: "No, that's not the right context to use that."
Me: "Yeah, but I like saying it so much."

"Oh! I LOVE your question! That's a wonderful question!" -- Professor Ming-Yang Kao

Matt: "The thing about Emacs is if there's a directional action which is CTRL-something, then the opposite of it is usually META-something."
Me: "But META-what is the question."
Matt: "Let's see what META-A does. ... Oh, it goes up by paragraphs."
Me: "That's like Mortal Kombat. 'I know what up-up-down-left-right-punch does. Now let's see what up-up-down-left-right-punch-kick does!'"

[ssmeland] On way back from Anthrop
[ssmeland] Like Antwerp, but different
[ssmeland] not nasty
[grossman] but Antwerp isn't bad
[ssmeland] Right, neither is Anthrop
[ssmeland] So Anthrop isn't like Antwerp but nasty
[grossman] ah I see

"You lost me when you started talking about the monkeys." -- John G.

"No offense for the word 'girlie'." -- Jeremy Clain, realizing that two women were present

Whitewater Lawyer: "But it's not about sex."
Reporter: "It's not? Damn, there go my ratings."
Lawyer: "It's about power."
  -- from a joke on Oracle

"I just accidentally touched his ASS!" -- Sarah, wide-eyed and grinning from ear to ear

"That's a samech." -- Sarah, dismissively, as I emphasize the sound "s"

Hanif: "Wait, how did I get to be Satan?"
Me: "Ummm ... isn't it obvious?"
Hanif: "Oh, it's because I'm black, isn't it?"
Me: "Of course."

"You have reached the Hughes Aircraft emergency hotline." -- message at the 1-800 number I called in an effort to reach the MacGray laundry hotline

"What are you thinking? You're not a very good Christian." -- Sean, reacting scornfully to my supposition that Jesus climbed ladders

Man, in radio commercial for a Halloween event: "You could be Monica ... and I'll be Bill. Let's practice right now!"
Woman: "No way. I'm not getting this dress dry-cleaned again."

"It's important to have intuitions. Intuitions are usually not correct, but it's important to have them." -- Prof. Kao

Prof. Kao: "So ... Jared. What effect does this have on the number of cycles?"
Jared, bullshitting: "It ... either increases it or decreases it."
Prof. Kao: "Good! Can you be more specific?"

"We've gone from unrequited love to bar-coded bananas, and it's too much." -- forgotten source (if someone remembers saying this, please email me)

"Baby, yeah. Whoah-oh-oh-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-oh. Now now now, now now now, now now now, no no no, no-o no-o no-o no-o-oh whoa-oh-oh-o-oh. Whoa-oh-oh-o-oh, baby, yeah!" -- Axl Rose, "Rocket Queen"

"MULTI-PASS!" -- Me, stopping conversation

"Padres: The Avot, but in Spanish." -- Sarah

"I have an hour's worth of errands that MUST be done now (2:45), class from 4:30 - 6:30, and a class trip from 7:30 until the Second Coming." -- Shmuel

Me: "What is the official program you're in as a grad student?"
Paul Kawka: "It is called, 'Something that some other poor grad student wrote before me with nary a comment in Fortran.'"

Me, saying goodbye: "Well, sir ..."
Paul: "Indeed."

"We could cover ourselves in lighter fluid and light ourselves on fire and go as the guy who [runs The Costume Bazaar]." -- Sean

"I want to be more interesting than CS." -- Melissa Harwitt

"Just a lot of classic rock; not a lot of crap." -- commercial on 105.9

"[In 2020] transistors will consist of too few atoms to be reliable, although advances in quantum computing may make it possible by then to store 1 bit using the spin of a single electron." -- CS323 text

"You know, since Yale doesn't recognize any religious holidays, they invent some of their own." -- Prof. Zelmanov, the Friday before Fall Break

"Where is c? Hmmm ... where is the matrix?" -- ibid., looking around the blackboard

"Well, we have 15 minutes left. I won't give any proofs in these 15 minutes; I will introduce 'notions'." -- ibid.

"It is a wonderful thing to multiply by identity. Nothing changes." -- ibid.

Me: "What?"
Sean: "No ... not you. I'm talking to the Tupperware."

"Actors are happy, crew are happy, everybody happy but Zathras ... but Zathras never happy ... Zathras happy once, had friend once, but wheels fell off, very sad ...." -- JMS

1:59 morpheus ~> date
Sun Oct 25 01:59:58 EDT 1998
1:59 morpheus ~] date
Sun Oct 25 01:59:59 EDT 1998
1:59 morpheus ~] date
Sun Oct 25 01:00:00 EST 1998
DING! morpheus ~> date
Sun Oct 25 01:00:01 EST 1998
  -- don't ask me why I did this, but it was fun to watch

"Everyone knows what you're supposed to do in a pogrom! You're supposed to get killed. You're not supposed to kill anyone!" -- anonymous Yale professor, on hearing how my great-grandfather killed someone during a pogrom

Sean: "I can't believe we don't have anything hard or solid in here."
Me: "Bring xxxxxx in here, and I'll show you something hard."
Sean, marcado-ly: "Whoa."

"So each time I use this formula, I have to apologize ..." -- Prof. Zelmanov

Sara Zausmer: "And listen to this one she came up with! It's HORRIBLE!"
Sarah: "Yeah. WAS -- Women Against Shul."
Jesse Grauman: "What?"
Sarah: "Exactly. As in, '_Shul_? What?!'"
Jesse: "No, what does it mean, 'was'?"
Sarah: "'What'! It means 'what'!"
Jesse, pityingly: "Oh, you mean 'Wos'. It's 'Wos'."
Sarah: "Oh, yeah, same word. 'Wos.' Heh!"
Jesse: "I speak YEEEDISH. I didn't know what you MEANT."

Cecily Harwitt, in section, whispering and referencing Jesse: "That guy is wearing a kipah."
Melissa, also whispering: "I know."

"... and entendre-filled. ... That sounds like a jelly donut." -- Melissa

"Dereth: My boyfriend isn't always so fond of my being a biologist. Especially when I want to take controls when he cooks. He says he's going to add some basil, and I say, 'Why don't we save a sample in case the basil doesn't work?'" -- stolen from akogan@fas.harvard.edu

"All I'm going to check for is that you died." -- Prof. Eisenstat

"Never call someone a whore if you want their lox." -- Sarah

"Cause when you're six you don't understand that the odds are your parents aren't doing cocaine." -- ibid.

"It could be so cold out there. It could be minus a billion out there ... Kelvin." -- Me, commenting on the beautifully filtered sunlight in the KK

"[It] has wings ... feathers ... what could that be?" -- Prof. Kao

Prof. Kao: "How fast can we solve this problem? Is it polynomial? NP-hard?"
Me: "NP-hard."
David: "Polynomial."
Prof. Kao: "... It turns out that this problem runs in n log n time."
Rivka, to me, oozing sarcasm: "Pretty good for an NP-hard problem."

"Atheist: A person with no invisible means of support." -- stolen from manish@zoo.cs.yale.edu's .sig file

Shana: "When I say teddy bear, I mean--"
Me: "Elvis?"
Shana: "... obnoxious and obscene, like the triple threat bears that raped the clowns...."
Me: "Ok."

"I think that they cannot count ..." -- Prof. Zelmanov, after pausing for the noon bells on Hillhouse, which numbered FAR more than 12

"'*' is an indefinite article." -- ibid., explaining some notation

"A triangular matrix is just ... a triangular matrix." -- ibid., defining a triangular matrix

"Makes no sense? So let me keep talking ..." -- Prof. Eisenstat

Sean, as my paper and pen fly off my desk: "What was that?"
Me: "Dude, I have the Force tonight."
Sean: "I think the Force has YOU."

"All right! I can say, 'Your mother works in a geisha house,' now!" -- Me, in Japanese class

"Please meet the following subgroup." -- Prof. Zelmanov, introducing the class to monomial matrices

Reuben Silverman: "How do we know we can do that for a field?"
Prof. Zelmanov: "How do I know what? That I can kill?"

"I did away with the original 4, and then 5 was ... never mind." -- Prof. Eisenstat, trying in vain to explain his lecture outline

Me, referring to my bagel: "I have one too. But mine's good; it's from the Kosher Kitchen."
Sean: "Mine's bad. It's from three days ago."

Q: Who has a broom and flies?
A: A jelly-covered janitor.

Q: Mommy, Mommy, why do the kids all call me a werewolf?
A: Never mind, dear, now go and comb your face.

Sarah: [reads a Social Security Number and laughs sardonically]
Me: "What?"
Sarah: "I'm just laughing at the pathos of our situation."
Sarah: [reads another SSN and laughs again]
Me: "NO LAUGHING AT THE PATHOS!"

"There's just so damn many of them!" -- Sarah, convulsing in fits of helpless, mirthless laughter, regarding the SSN's