A Dixie Carpetbagger

I’m finishing up a paper for one of my classes, and I’m battering my head against a brick wall.  You see, the original professor of this class was replaced… because he died.  The replacement is bound and determined to keep to the original’s syllabus, including the portions of it that make no sense… whatsoever.  Including that the paper be in APA format, with 1 1/2 line spacing– not double spaced.  (Really?  1 1/2 line spacing?  Is that kinda like “we want white space, but not enough to be useful?”)  Cue me emailing the replacement about whether or not I could use Turabian style instead.

No go… the Computer Science department requires all papers, including theses, dissertations, and ALL term/course papers to be in APA style… which was designed for publication, not for classwork.  The irony?  Turabian style was designed from the ground up for classwork… not for publication.  Hence why it’s officially known as “A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations…”

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to return to beating my head against my desk, and seeing which breaks first.

Can I start an Occupy movement?  Like “OccupyMyThoughts” or maybe “OccupyMyChair?”  Because, I kinda need to…

(I not only had to blow cobwebs off the WordPress Dashboard, I had to shoo some raccoons out of the boiler room.  Hopefully, I got ‘em all.  If not… boiled ‘coon.  [shrugs] Win-win.)

Given that: a zombie transfers their zombie-ness through their bite and that most human illnesses can be transferred to animals (and vice-versa).

Question: Is it possible to infect an animal and have them become a zombie?  Like, say a squirrel?  Because zombie squirrels give me the friggin’ heebie-jeebies.

I’ve gathered all of you, the people I email in my business and educational life, here for a little chat today. As you can see, I am the very model of a modern major general student and future business-man.  I am neatly dressed in my suit and tie, my shoes are polished, and I am– by the miracles of modern technology and constant vigilance– in continuous contact with those who need my input on decisions or output on schoolwork.  Oh, I don’t dress like this every day (although, the shades are becoming more and more a part of my wardrobe– shades make any attire cooler), but to use a phrase from one of my favorite writers, I “eat pie with a fork.”

The reason I’ve gathered you here today is to discuss your recent performance.  You see, I have had trouble recently staying in contact with you… or, to be more blunt, keeping you in contact with me.  While I am something of an agoraphobe, and I am not the most sociable person, I am, indeed, available 24/7.  If I happen to be asleep– and I assure you, I do sleep– then a message can be routed to me which will be in front of my eyes or flowing into my ears in less than 8 hours.

Thus, I find in damnably difficult to understand why my messages to you go days or weeks with no response.  For those of you whom I do business with, it looks as if you do not want my business; for those of you whom I work with, it looks as if you do not value my labor and desire me to quit exerting myself to do an excellent job.  In either case, it offends me.

I understand that you have personal and social lives and other efforts needing your attention… but I have found the time to respond to messages during some of the most stressful and harried moments in my life, and it upsets me to think that that effort is not returned on your part.  An email sent at 1 in the morning Thursday saying (in essence) “our classwork is due Monday morning, we have the weekend to do it” is, in fact, a heads up to do the work over the weekend.  I assure you that the work in question will not delay your weekend party (or more likely, parties), and prompt submission of said work will ensure that I do not make your Monday morning more unbearable than the hangover does.

To emphasize my words here, I shall end this little missive with a small graphic to illustrate a possible solution I propose for our little situation:

We allow Aperture Science to recruit on campus:

(In case you want to see the full gallery, One, Two, Three, Four.)

Saw this in the engineering building in the computer science area (naturally).  The number is for Aperture Science.  (No, not really– it’s Valve’s number.)  Which is awesome– it’s actually in an out-of-the-way little spot, so whoever put it there wanted people to look for it.

Which means a certain angry AI is back…

“We’re a lot alike, you and I. You tested me. I tested you. You killed me. I- oh, no, wait. I guess I haven’t killed you yet. Well. Food for thought during this next test.”

Robb and Miguel are carping about the weather.  I have something to say about that, but give me a second, I need some props.

Dixie drags out a soap box and stands on it, insulated socks poking out from under the bottom of his flannel pants and housecoat.

It was 31 degrees last night.  Without the wind chill.  Humans aren’t well adapted to living where water freezes.  That goes double if you have to wake up in the middle of the night to pee.  (Because you were drinking coffee and hot cocoa all day, natch.)

The worst of it is the fact that this winter, I’ll go out into this weather for fun.  I’ll wake up pre-dawn, climb into a blind, pray Bambi (or one of his relations) shows up, then hope I can feel my fingers to shoot.

Imagine my surprise when one of these appeared out of nowhere while I was driving through a downpour Wednesday and flashed his lights at me.  No, he didn’t stop me, he just wanted me to get out of his way so he could return to warp velocities.

Too bad he didn’t stop at the next rest area, because I’d have loved to get a few pictures with them.  Maybe I could have even talked them into letting me take a picture of me in cuffs, being pushed into the back seat…  Oh, yes, that would have made for the perfect leftist bait…  1. Send picture to university paper staff.  2. Wait for leftists to begin howling about Border Patrol.  3. Release picture of Smiling Dixie and Border Patrol agents.  4. Enjoy the backlash against newspaper staff.

Good riddance to bad rubbish… and here’s to him not being brought back…

All I have to say is…

Six years ago, I voted in my first election and pulled the lever (actually, filled in the little bubble, but, hey, apparently many of my fellow Floridians can’t figure out them there complicated votin’ machines) for Mel Martinez for Senator.  He turned out to be just shy of a disaster, who resigned early (to become a lobbyist!) and was replaced by Pepe LePew George LeMieux, he of the never-ending emails.

So, I pulled the lev… err, filled in the bubble for Marco Rubio with just moderate hopes.  At the very best, I was hoping for a kinda-likable guy who wouldn’t burn the country down until 2016.  Then he goes and does this:

(Blinks)  What?  Actually agreeing that people with (R) behind their names could share in the blame?  Talking about American exceptionalism?  Invoking God’s name?  Maybe this guy won’t be a forgetful ass when he gets to Washington…

Oh, and as far as President Rubio?  Please, please, I beg you, rest of the country… don’t open a vacancy… Charlie Crist might wrangle his way into it…  You can have him in 2016.  Maybe 2022.

(H/T iOwnTheWorld)

I’ll be short, sweet, and to the point.*  Tuesday night was a spanking– the Dems got themselves taken to the woodshed and beaten for a bit.  Then they went back in the house and Momma took the fly-flap to their bottoms.  Now they’re in their room, whining and crying about how unfair it is, and how Mama and Papa are just so cruel and unfair.  Keep this up, Junior, and you’ll get more of the same…

Now, for a few of the things I’ve seen here and there that make me giggle.  From MacBourne:

From iOwntheWorld, a visual representation of what just happened.  (If you don’t catch that drift, Kevin can clarify.)

From Lagniappe’s Guy: “Oh–and Rubio will be the next Senator from Florida. Nice. Suck on that, Crist.”  You know, if I were Rubio, I’d be in the Governor’s Mansion right now, blowing cigar smoke in Suntan Boy’s face while yelling: “SAY IT!  SAY MY TITLE!  SAY IT!”  But then, I’m just cruel like that– heck, I’d love to escort Charlie out of this state… I just need 7 more guys and a railroad tie to do it…

Then, from Miguel: “… with the inevitable “I am moving out of here” for good measure (And they never move, damn it!)”  No, they never do move… like human-sized ticks, they just burrow in deeper, draining blood the entire time.

On a side note, this is an anniversary of sorts for me.  Two years ago today, I walked into a gun store and purchased my Springfield XD.  (No CCW permit, so I went back and brought it home the next Friday.)  It’s been a fun two years– I’ve added plenty of company to the gun cabinet, and I’ve went from RINO to radical libertarian.  Oh, yeah, and I blog now, too.  Sometimes.

Now, i just have to get used to saying “Senator Rubio.”  (Lights cigar)

*Yeah, you thought I was to the point before?  Well, that presentation I was talking about?  Turns out we went 20:59, not 19:59– the professor gave our female teammate a minute.  Seeing as we got not question and answer time, our “A+” presentation was graded “B+.”  So, to keep us from being docked a letter grade the next time, and to please the mademoiselle, I’m working on being as quick as possible.  (Wait, that sounded wrong…)