Haug Sux a Fatty

This graffiti is carved into one of the walls of one of the bathroom stalls of one of the restrooms on the second floor of the Engineering building, at the University of Saskatchewan:

It has been there for at least six years.  I, personally, cannot recall a time in which it was not there.  Side note: is it still graffiti if it's been carved into something, or is that just straight vandalism?  Anyway, I've been wondering the following since I first noticed this message:

1. Who is/was Haug?
2. Who carved this?  I assume they were male, since this is the men's room.
3. What college(s) were the participants enrolled in?  I can only assume Engineering and/or Agriculture, based on region traffic.
4. What is "fatty"slang for?  Weed?  Dick?  Large women?  Oversized Freezies?
5. "Sux" must mean sucks, right?
6. Is Haug a nickname?  A last name?
7. Does Haug, in fact, sux anything?

I'd like to mention, at this time, that I made a special trip into the stall with my camera in hand, expressly to photograph this commemorative missive - an inscription that will stand the test of time.  I liken Haug to Ozymandias, puzzling scholars of the future.  I would hope that the skilled artisan who carved this spellbinding philosophical treatise also made a special trip into the stall, armed with his tools, enlightenment for the masses on his or her mind, but I am forced to concede that it was probably just some guy, taking a crunch, who recalled that he had his keys with him when inspiration struck.  Perhaps he had to find a way to fill the time, scraping away while his legs went numb.

Stall graffiti puzzles me some.  Who takes a marker with them when they need to grunt one out?  Do you go in with premeditated intent?  Odd.  What really confounds me is urinal graffiti.  Who has the bladder capacity large enough to give you time to write some of these novels?  If you're sticking around post-urine to complete your epic, what happens when someone else walks in?  Do you keep writing?  Do you freeze up like a deer, before bolting for the door?

Mysteries of the universe, these are.

ESP: Extra-Sensory Poopception

My roommate is a Bathroom Psychic.  He is the Miss Cleo of Poops (except, you know, without all of the ironic personal bankruptcy).  Between the hours of 7am and 10pm, if he's at home and I need to eliminate nitrogen, this is what I will see when I open the door of my combination bedroom, workstation and personal spanktuary:

A sad, sad, closed bathroom door.  My bladder groans in protest.  My sphincter tightens.  Have I left myself enough Hold Time to wait him out?  Or shall I make the mad dash upstairs to the other porcelain filth receptacle?  If the upstairs John is occupied, I shall perform the tinkle dance of the five-year-old.  It is not a manly dance, nor is it a proud one.

He keeps me on my toes.  Literally.

Update:  Both bathrooms were full this morning, so I went outside and marked my territory like a wolf. 

Metric Chunch Spanner

I like to think of gynecologists as vagina-mechanics.

They put you up high, climb under the hood and tinker around with their own special set of tools (chunch-spanners) and jargon.  Seriously, they could make up anything, how would you know?  "Oh, you need a new ovary drop tray, yours is rusted out."  I figure that in North America, they need both Metric and Imperial chunch-spanners, and that every so often, women have to go in to get topped up with fluids and have their filters changed.

Fascinating, mysterious and beautiful creatures, you ladies. 

Why is there plaster in this?

The wall across from me has a grouping of new bricks, roughly the size and shape of a certain large, friendly, anthropomorphized jug of fruit punch.  Makes you wonder, doesn't it?  OH YEAH!!

I will be the best dad.

In class, on Monday, my professor was telling us about her perceived lack of time management skills (this was by way of an example, about how one stray negative comment can colour our perceptions more than years of positive reinforcement).  She went on to tell us about a friend of hers with amazing scheduling abilities - a woman with a spreadsheet for her life - and how when this woman had a baby, she tried and failed to add that baby to the flowchart of her life (in an orderly and predictable fashion).

I thought to myself, "Pfft.  I could flowchart a baby."  So I did.  Enjoy!

note:  due to old scanner being old, some minor 'shopping of the pixels has occurred.

Weekday Update, with Kev-Inn Kneel-On

I am sitting in the basement of the D wing of the engineering building at the University of Saskatchewan, trying to make a laser-driven scanning particle size analyzer stop being a useless piece of crap.  Oh, don't get me wrong, when it works, it's a wonderful piece of mid-nineties technology, in all of its retro, "install my software with twenty floppy disks," glory.  At least it's not beige.  Remember when everything that plugged into a computer was beige?  Imagine a beige iPod.  A beige flat-screen monitor.  A beige printer/fax/scanner (that one shouldn't actually be too hard, they actually used to be beige, and enormous).  God, now I'm picturing modern Apple products with a beige finish.  A beige iMac. Ew.

Align, you art deco, science artifact, oblong hunk of ostrich feces!

Grr.

I could be done testing these samples by now.  Instead, the Mastersizer (actual product name) is hemming and hawing, and will, perhaps, deign to function after some unspecified time interval.  When it's DAMN WELL GOOD AND READY AND YOU'RE JUST GOING TO HAVE TO WAIT.  

Le sigh.

Not a bad way to spend my first day back after taking some time off to attend my Grandmother's funeral.  She was 85, fiercely independent, and a tiny, little, perma-tanned, old-lady-raisin.  The tan was from years and years farming and gardening, not from a fondness for tanning beds.  The funeral service was Ukranian Catholic, of the Byzantine bent.  What that means is that the priest was from the Old Country, everything was lavish and ornate, there was a butt-ass load of incense, and the prayers were long, mumbly, tonal, repetitive and had very little to do with the person who had actually passed away, and a lot more to do with praising the Lord.  That has always seemed odd to me, and really self-centered of the church.   The priest was ever-so-slightly derp, as well.  Derp, in this context, referring to the pupils of the eyes having a slight tendency to skew outwards from centre.  I shall Google you up an image:

Religion, hooray! 

The important things, though, are that we buried Granny in accordance with her beliefs, and that loads of family and friends were there to say goodbye.  It wasn't all bad.

While I was away from the lab, sexual harassment happened!  Well, technically, it crossed the border into assault, because there was a solid and distinct boob honk.  I hope it was the best boob honk ever, because the culprit was a post-doctoral researcher, and a professor back in India, and he just flushed his career down la toilette.  That's French, for, "the toilet."  Just in case you weren't sure.  Also, note the emphasis on, "was,"  as he no longer is.  Can you say, "fired"?  I thought you could.

[Update:  I finally got the thing to align properly, and have written a new operational procedure, accordingly.  All who follow in my footsteps to use this machine shall find that I have eased their burdens significantly.  Mooching pricks.  Also, it takes a while to scan things, and I have used this time to regain my mastery of Freecell.]

I wanna be like you-oo-oo

I had lunch with my friend @SmaleChange today, during which time, and among other things, we talked about what one might do in the city of Calgary.  I mentioned the zoo, and he replied that that might be a poor choice of venue, given that his lady is a vet student, and that the Calgary Zoo has an iffy sort of track record with their animals.  He listed a few examples including my favourite:  A gorilla that got ahold of a box-cutter.

I now have a very vivid mental image of a standoff between five or six zoo employees and a gorilla brandishing a box-cutter.

"Easy, easy!" Says one of the tan-pants wearing men.

"Ooh, AAAH!" Says the gorilla, swinging the box cutter back and forth and making cutting motions.

As an aside, pertaining to yesterday's post:  the adding of the viscous binding agent did NOT make things sticky and difficult to clean up after.  Go figure.

Densified Biomass! A.K.A. Pellets! A.K.A. Oh wee oh wee oh! A.K.A. International Waters of Love

After approximately two months of jerking around with a complicated apparatus that I cobbled together from old bits of science paraphernalia, I am finally sitting and working with a different complicated apparatus that was cobbled together from bits of new science paraphernalia.  It is computer controlled, by this very computer, and it is wonderful.  It produces reproducible results, and it makes force-time graphs all by itself.  I am in love with its science bits.  None shall stand in the way of our love, except possibly laws against mechaphilia.  On an unrelated note, I will be taking a short vacation to international waters with a varied selection of clergy and an Intel Core Duo 2 desktop computer. 

I am certain that our love will stand the tests of time, although I am uncertain it will stand the portion of the testing where I have to add the viscous binding agent.  That is not a euphemism.  An euphemism.  That seems grammatically untenable, somehow.  Anyway, the binding agent.  It will make the process sticky and hard to clean up after.  Oh, quiet you.  Dirty, dirty mind. 

I'm just going to stop talking to you while I'm ahead.

Drama Llama

I hate drama. 

Now, when I say this, I am not hating on theatrical productions.  I love those.  Well, except for Mama Mia, that ended terribly.  My mom suckered me into seeing Mama Mia, once upon a time. 

"Hey Tim, your father was supposed to join me at a play, but he's going to be in Ottawa on business, would you like to take his place?"  Said my mother.

"Sure, I like plays."  Said I, the unsuspecting.

So I drove down for the weekend.  The unnamed play was on Saturday, and on Friday night I was hanging out with my sister (who was also coming to the play) and watching a little television.  A commercial for Mama Mia came on, and I mocked it casually, as one might expect of a twenty-something male when confronted with a production aimed at the sensibilities of forty, fifty and sixty-something women.  To this, my sister replied, "...you know that's the play we're going to see, right?"

"Mooooooommmm!"  Says I. 

The abridged is that I ended up seeing the play, being mildly amused by the first two acts, mildly aroused by some of the female cast, and then profoundly disappointed by the third act.  And, then, really, I'm not much of an ABBA fan.  Except for that one song about Fernando.  That one's alright with me.

This, however is not the point of this little number.

The point is that this weekend, while visiting friends that I had not seen for some time (one that I hadn't seen in person for six years), there was no shortage of what the kids these days refer to as 'drama.'  As in, relationship drama.  Histrionics and over-embellishments of events and casual comments into grand, tragic, personal insults and hurt feelings, with little to no actual justification for said hurts on the 'injured' parties.

The worst part, for me, is that given the relative frequency with which this has been happening for the last couple of solar orbits, clearly some of it must be my fault.  Either I've been coddling fragile people for a long time, or I myself am a fragile people.  I'm not sure which prospect annoys me more. 

I'm almost thirty.  When does this crap stop happening?  How do I opt out of this little shitty game?  Is there a form I can fill out?  A legal request?  Some sort of waiver, perhaps?

When do I get to say, with style and aplomb, "fuck it.  I'm done with this,"?

So, I got all of my marks back: I pulled off a 78 average in term 2, as a cancer patient.  I do believe that makes me some sort of brain champion.  My brain meats are superior to the brain meats of others. Oh, not you.  Your brain meats are also superior; although perhaps not quite so superior as mine.  Mine are awfully superior, after all.